Homeopathic Doctrine of Dosage


Dr. Willmar Schwabe, who founded the Homoeopathic Central Pharmacy of Leipsic, which is known throughout the world, has advocated most strongly the accurate adherence to Hahnemann’s instructions for the preparation of medicines, has repeated Hahnemann’s tests at great expenditure of time and money, by following his instructions….


HOMOEOPATHIC MEDICINES.

SUPPLEMENT 220

HAHNEMANN’S DOSAGE OF MEDICINES TOWARDS THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

In “Essay on a New Principle,” etc (“Hufeland’s Journal,” 1796) we read for instance about powdered arnica root for dysentery:

I had to increase the dose daily, more rapidly than is necessary with any other effective medicine. A child of four years of age got at first four grains daily, then seven, eight and nine grains. Children of six or seven years of age could at first only bear six grains, afterwards twelve and fourteen grains were requisite. A child of nine months, which had not taken anything by the mouth. could at first only stand two grains (mixed with water only) in an enema: ultimately six grains were necessary.

Hahnemann possessed a self-prepared good tincture of AEthusa cynapium; of this he once took a grain himself because he felt very absent-minded in consequences of much mental work which he had undertaken in rapid succession, and which rendered him incapable of reading.He ordered for a child of six years ten grains of Ledum infusion. He ordered arsenicum for periodical headaches in doses of I/6th to I/10th grain in solution.

A strong muscular inn-keeper, who suffered from asthma and at the same time was afflicted with disturbances of his mental balance, received each morning three grains of Veratrum. The remedy was continued for four weeks and the ailment, which had been of four years duration, gradually lessened, until he was completely cured.

A young woman of 35 years, who had many attacks of epilepsy, a few days after her confinement, was attacked with mania accompanied with general twitching of the limbs. After other physicians had in vain tried to cure her, she received from Hahnemann half a grain of powdered white hellebore (Veratrum album) in the forenoon, and also at two in the afternoon, after which she quickly improved and made a complete recovery.

Nux Vomica was administered by him daily for vertigo, fear and rigors, up to an amount of seventeen grains, after which the fever and nerve attacks disappeared and did not return although the patient had previously suffered, for many years, from these attacks.

In a sick report in “Hufeland’s Journal” of 1797 on a “case of rapidly cured Colicodynia” which we have already mentioned in detail. Hahnemann recommends Veratrum in single doses of four grains of which the patient took two doses each day, therefore, eight grains, in the hope of a more speedy recovery. The “Artificial nerve colic”: as Hahnemann calls the condition was so increased by it that the patient nearly died.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE PREPARATION OF BELLADONNA AS A PROPHYLACTIC FOR SCARLET FEVER.

For the preparation of this remedy which is a preventative of Scarlet Fever, a handful of the fresh leaves of the wild growing belladonna (atropa belladonna L.). is taken before the flowers have opened. These are pounded in a mortar to a pulp and the juice is squeezed through a cloth. This pulp is immediately (without previous cleansing) poured upon a flat porcelain basin to the thickness of the blade of a knife, and dried in a current of air; it will evaporate within a few hours. It must then be stirred and again spread with a spatula so that it may harden equally and having become completely dry it may be made into a powder. The powder is then stored in a warm bottle and corked.

If we wish to prepare a prophylactic from this remedy, we dissolve a grain One grain equals approximately the 35th part of an apothecary’s pound of this powder… by trituration in a small mortar with one hundred drops of distilled water. We pour the thick solution into a one-ounce bottle and rinse the mortar and the pestle with three hundred parts of diluted alcohol (five parts of water to one of spirit); we then add this to the solution and render the unions perfect by diligently shaking the liquid. We label the bottle “Strong solution of Belladonna.” One drop of this is intimately mixed with three hundred drops of diluted alcohol by shaking it for several minutes and this is marked “Medium solution of Belladonna.” Of this second mixture one drop is mixed with two hundred drops of the diluted alcohol, by shaking for several minutes, and marked “Weak solution of Belladonna,” and this is our prophylactic remedy for scarlet fever, each drop of which contains the twenty-fourth millionth part of a grain of the dry Belladonna juice.

Of this week solutions of Belladonna we give to those not affected with scarlet fever, with intention to render them immune from the disease-to a child one year old, two drops; to a younger child one drop; to one two years old, there; to one three years old, four; to a child four years old, according to the strength of his constitution, five to six; to a five year old child, from six to seven; to a six year old child, from seven to eight; to a seven year old child from nine to ten; to an eight year old child, from eleven to thirteen; to a nine year old child from fourteen to sixteen drops; and with each successive year up to the twentieth, a dose every seventy-two hours, well stirred with a teaspoon for a minute in. any kind of drink, as long as the epidemic lasts, and four and to five weeks there after.

(Ipecacuanha was administered in single doses of one in two thousand; Opium the five-millionth of part of a grain; and Chamomilla the 800.000 th part of a grain of the extract were given in one two, or more drops as a single dose.)

SUPPLEMENT 222

INFORMATION FOR THE TRUTH SEEKER.

As evidence for the correctness of his principle of dilutions and potencies Hahnemann further explains in this essay: “Steel in itself is as cold as is flint. When both are sharply rubbed together for a brief period by means of raps they produce heat which is of such high degree that the steel fragments which fly off are glowing, which process pre-supposes a heat of 1,000* F. Horn, ivory, bone and the limestone known as “swinestone” have no odour of themselves, but if strongly rubbed the evil smell lying latent is liberated. Rubber in itself has no power of attraction; if vigorously rubbed it reveals this power and the more vigorous the friction the more effective the results. Also magnetic power is in a similar way transmitted to iron.

For hundreds of years nothing was known of the power of many crude medicinal substances. These, if made into a solution, can by repeated shakings or by long continued trituration with non- medicinal power, be worked up to very intensive medicines with marvellous effects (thus fine gold, fine silver and platinum).

The homoeopathic dilutions of medicines-Hahnemann regrets that there is no word to suitably express this process-are therefore not a minimising or lessening of the medicinal power, but rather an actual increase of this capacity, a truly marvellous unfolding and vitalising of their medicinal essence.

Hahnemann then concludes his demonstration by saying:

By trituration (shaking) the latent medicinal power is wonderfully liberated and vitalised, as if one freed from the fetters of matter, it could act upon the human organism more insistently and fully. In reality dilution is potentising, not merely a material splitting up and lessening, in which every part must be smaller than the whole, but a spiritualising of the inner medicinal powers by removing the covering of nature’s force, and the palpable substances which can be weighed, no longer enters into consideration.

Hahnemann’s new thought is therefore this: That medicine does not act materially, atomically, but only dynamically, that is, it is not the substance, the material part which acts but the spirit which is the power within the substance, that once freed from matter, can be many times increased by correct manipulation.

SUPPLEMENT 223

ON THE SMELLING OF MEDICINES.

In an annotation to 288 of the “Organon” (5th Edition, 1833), Hahnemann says: It is especially in the form of vapour, by olfaction and inhalation of the medicinal aura that is always emanating from a globule impregnated with a medicinal fluid in a high development of power, and placed, dry, in a small phial that the homoeopathic remedies act most surely and most powerfully. The homoeopathic physician allows the patient to hold the open mouth of the phial first in one nostril, and in the act of inspiration draw the air out of it into himself and then, if it wished to give a stronger dose, smell in the same manner with the other nostril more or less strongly, according to the strength it is intended the dose should be; he then cords up the phial and replaces it in his pocket case, to prevent any misuse of it, and unless he wishes it, he has no occasion for an apothecary’s assistance in his practice. A globule, of which ten, twenty, or one hundred weigh one grain impregnated with the thirtieth potentised dilutions, and then dried, retains for this purpose all its power undiminished for at least eighteen or twenty years (my experience this length of time), even though the phial be opened a thousand times during that period, if it be but protected from heat and the sun’s light. Should both nostrils be stopped up by coryza or polypus, the patient should inhale by the mouth, holding the orifice of the phial betwixt his lips. In little children it may be applied close to their nostrils whilst they are asleep, with the certainty of producing an effect. The medicinal aura thus inhaled comes in contact with the nerves in the walls of the spacious cavities it traverses without obstruction, and thus produces a salutary influence on the vital force, in the mildest yet most powerful manner, and this is preferable to every other mode of administering the medicament in substance by the mouth. All that homoeopathy is capable of curing (and what can it not cure beyond the domain of mere manual surgical affection?) among the most severe chronic diseases that have not been quite ruined by allopathy, as also among acute diseases, will be most safely and certainly cured by this olfaction. I can scarcely name one in a hundred out of the many patients that have sought my advice and that of my assistants during the past year, whose chronic or acute disease we have not treated with the most happy results solely by means of this olfaction; during the latter half of this year, moreover, I have become convinced (of which I could never previously have believed) that by this olfaction the power of the medicine is exercised upon the patient in, at least, the same degree of strength, and that more quietly and yet just as long as when the dose of medicine is taken by the mouth, and that, consequently, the intervals at which the olfaction should be repeated should not be shorter than in the ingestion of the material dose by the mouth.

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