Homeopathic Doctrine of Dosage



SUPPLEMENT 227

OFFICIAL DIRECTIONS FOR THE PREPARATION OF TUBERCULIN.

The Prussian Government published on April 7th, 1902, a Ministerial Decree concerning the preparation and dispensing of Koch’s “tuberculin.” It says in a passage which we quote from the “Hom. Monatsblatter,” 1902, page 192:

The dilution required for the use of tuberculin can only be prepared correctly by means of sterilised measuring-tubes and pipettes which every physicians does not possess but which are usually found in all chemists’ shops, therefore, tuberculin in the future may be dispensed by them in the diluted conditon. As tuberculin, when diluted quickly deteriorates unless a method is adopted to check this development in the dilution, and for this the best is a weak carbolic solution, therefore I decree that the dilutions shall only be made with 0.5 per cent. of carbolic acid solution and, as a rule, be prepared shortly before the remedy is required, and that it should not be kept in stock longer than four weeks. Then by mixing one part of Koch’s tuberculin with nine parts of 0.5 per cent. of carbolic acid solution a ten per cent. tuberculin solution is prepared which can be used as a stock solution for further dilutions. The receptacle must be labelled with the strength of the tuberculin solution and bear the date of preparation. The stock solution, however, must not be kept longer than four weeks.

Further dilutions must be prepared by taking one part of the stock solution and nine parts of 0.5 per cent. carbolic acid solution, and with the solution thus obtained one part is to be mixed with nine parts of 0.5 per cent. of carbolic solution and so forth.

The “Homoopathische Monatsblatter” remarks on this:

By this our homoeopathic doctrine of dosage receives official recognition, because it is of secondary importance whether spirits of wine or 0.5 per cent. carbolic solution is used.. It is particularly noteworthy in this Decree that the dilution of the Tuberculin is termed “necessary,” and that its activity is not only found in the first, second and third decimal solution, but from the additional words” and so forth,” it can be deduced that the higher dilutions are considered effective.

SUPPLEMENT 228

OPINIONS OF CONTEMPORARIES OF HAHNEMANN ON THE HOMOEOPATHIC DOSAGE PRINCIPLE.

In contrast to the majority of his contemporary colleagues, Hufeland recognised the efficacy of highly diluted remedies from the earliest days. This he did for the first time when Hahnemann was attacked on account of his Scarlet Fever remedy. He vindicated his colleague who had been attacked and wrote (“Hufeland’s Journal,” Vol. VI, page 2):

I was sorry that a man, whose services for our sciences are so incontestable, should have been so badly treated when he introduced his prophylactic for Scarlet Fever, and I do not deny that I myself was averse to the infinite smallness of the dose of Belladonna employed. In any case it (Hahnemann’s Essay-R.H.) contains excellent indications of the better effect of medicines and of the modifications which they produce through the different conditions of the organism; these are better than those of the usually neglected preparations and their descriptions. Certainly we have here secrets which the ordinary practitioner and pharmacist had never conjectured, and the voice of a man who for ten years has occupied himself with the preparation and administration of narcotics and other poisonous remedies should be listened to with the greatest attention. I am, at least, convinced that the ordinary proportion of the ingredient cannot be conclusively accepted as the correct principle for ascertaining their effects, and that some times, one grain under certain conditions, and in certain combinations, may do more than a quantity ten times as large, and even that the smallest dose may produce results which we would never obtain with a large one.

Then in the year 1826 he expressed his opinion on the homoeopathic preparations of medicines in his “Journal” (Part-I):

As regards the purely dynamic effect of remedies as accepted by homoeopathy, no one could be more, convinced of it than the author, who has long expressed this in his writings and accepted it.-That every action upon the living, and thus the effect of every remedy, is an actio viva, has always been my axiom. Moschus shows us that with some highly volatile remedies a division can take place which goes almost into infinity and beyond all ponderability, and yet retain its active power. One grain of musk will permeate the air of a large room to such an extent that the whole room smells of musk, which must therefore be present, and although this may go into a trillionth of a particle, the musk does not lose weight. In Ipecacuanha we have long recognised that the smallest doses, one-twelfth and one-sixth of a grain triturated with sugar, contain very great, yes, even new activities. May not other volatile remedies, especially the narcotic ones, be capable of a similar almost infinitesimal division, and yet retain their action upon the organism?-This is indeed a problem which deserves investigation.

To have increased the activity by increasing the points of action, by dissolving with fluids, or by long continued trituration is undoubtedly a service for which we ought to thank Hahnemann, since he first drew our attention to it.

And Professor Riecke of Tubingen says:

Although from every chair we hear the words; simplex veri sigillum, yet at the bedside no one (as Goethe says) can resist man’s inborn mania for mixing, soiling and adulterating. The receipt books which are being multiplied show best how little consideration the physicians give to simplicity in their prescriptions. The harm which incapable physicians cause daily, by their mad compounds-and all Hahnemann’s accusations regarding this “malpractice and humdrum routine, about these bungled treatments and this bragging of pseudo-scientific quackery” which allopathy contains, even if exaggerated, unfortunately hold a good deal of truth. It is true that the human organism and its diseases are complicated and we might think that compound remedies should be suitable for the purpose. Yet it passes far beyond our power of insight to recognise correctly the nature of these complications and then prepare suitable compounds ad ex tempore. But upon the duration of the effects of the medicine he remarks:

An equally important idea of homoeopathy is that of letting the smallest dose of medicine quietly act before a second dose is given to the patient. The thoughtless humdrum practice demands a “one tablespoonful every hour” mixture. Even excellent practitioners cannot pay a visit to a patient without writing a new prescription, although the medicine they had ordered yesterday is only half finished. They drown their patients in a flood of medicines; and these pets of the apothecaries never think in their unfortunate activity of a dissemination of a general disease due to medicines. This mania for medicines pursues the unfortunate to his death-bed, and he is not allowed to quit this earth without this medicinal evil. Many a dying person could say with real earnestness: “If I had not taken it, I would have escaped.”

Regarding the question of dosage itself, Dr. Riecke says with insight “that it is not even closely united to the system of homoeopathy,” but that it is “the real stumbling-block, the object of general derision and the reason for manifold persecutions.” In criticising it, he of course still runs along the old lines when he states that even the most skilled mathematician could not have a real conception or understanding of the actual largeness or smallness of the Hahnemannian decillion, when, in writing it down, sixty noughts had to be added to the unit. He tried to picture this in the usual manner by adding up the amount of water required in order to prepare the one decillion dilution of a grain of opium. For this purpose naturally the sun and the size of the earth had to be drawn into it again. It is obvious that Riecke also did not know Hahnemann’s answer to the “Truth-Seeker” or has not thoroughly thought it out. Then he raises, as a further objection, the power of attraction of the glass walls and the penetration of the medicinal fluid into the pores of the glass, but overlooks that in this respect only the whole mass of the diluted remedy could come into consideration, and that nothing essential could be altered in the composition of the fluid as such, therefore neither the potency nor its strength. Then he reminds us himself that a billionth part of a grain of gold could be traced; that the millionth part of a grain of Arsenious iodide could be made visible by means of reagents; that water in which quicksilver had been boiled was efficacious for the treatment of worms although medicinal particles could no longer be traced in it; that Spallanzi in the decillionth part of a grain of frogs’ spawn could still fructify the eggs of the frog. And after having recognised the wonderful delicacy of our organs of sense and the impossibility of weighing odours he continues:

Richard Haehl
Richard M Haehl 1873 - 1932 MD, a German orthodox physician from Stuttgart and Kirchheim who converted to homeopathy, travelled to America to study homeopathy at the Hahnemann College of Philadelphia, to become the biographer of Samuel Hahnemann, and the Secretary of the German Homeopathic Society, the Hahnemannia.

Richard Haehl was also an editor and publisher of the homeopathic journal Allgemcine, and other homeopathic publications.

Haehl was responsible for saving many of the valuable artifacts of Samuel Hahnemann and retrieving the 6th edition of the Organon and publishing it in 1921.
Richard Haehl was the author of - Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann