May I not assume that my readers, too, have gained the impression that in this quotation almost the same thoughts are expressed – “only with slightly different words”-as were previously taught in the days of long ago by Galen?.
Over all these different opinions and views which, when all was said still dealt with reality and resulted from conclusions reached by the consideration of facts and experiences, but was guided throughout solely and alone by the law of “contraria” – over all these swayed, to cap the climax, the science of natural philosophy. For natural philosophy instead of being guided by conclusions based upon facts erroneous as they might be, considered the “WORD” as conclusive. What resulted from this, I wish to show by a few short quotations. I take them from the “Fundamentals of the Science of Natural Philosophy” by Heinrich Steffens. Steffens was a follower of Schelling, the champion of natural philosophy.
He was considered an able man in the scientific world and indeed was highly esteemed by Schelling himself. I infer this from a passage in Schellings polemic against the “Jenaische Allegemeine Literaturzeitung” (“Jena Magazine for General Literature”) in the year 1800. Steffens published his “Principles” in 1806, “for the purposes of his lectures.” In this, one finds the following, page 192: “The relative projection of space into time corresponds to hearing; the projection of time into space corresponds to sight. Through the essential principle of hearing and seeing, however, is the antithesis between both removed”.
Page 200 : “Poison is the phenomenon of the universal counterpoint of an individual function or of the individual counterpoint of a universal function, or, finally, the phenomenon of an external difference as counterpoint of an internal indifference”.
Page 203 : “Health is the transparency of the body for the soul, the complete identity of the soul and the body”.
But diseases are, as one can read on page 198 : “Only to be understood from the total tension of the organisation.” They “arise either because the relative-external (vegetative) tension becomes an internal (animal) tension or because the vegetative stirs in the animal.” And to conclude: “Disease is the effort of a single function to absorb the total form of the organisation in its potency”.
I think these few illustrations will suffice. One can imagine the plight of the unhappy students of science who were obliged not only to listen to but also to memorize this sort of nonsense delivered to them ex cathedra. It was impossible to understand such absurdities.
When one considers that at that time, the entire field of medicine and therefore its practitioners also, food stood under the inhibitive influence of all the movements of which I have just tried to give a short description, it gives one a feeling of great relief of realize that, despite these influences, men appeared who would not allow themselves to be championed from first to last that which they looked upon as true and actually existing, developing their field of research without being restrained by the cult of system. I will mention only two names : Karl Gren and William Hufeland!.
Who still speaks of them today? Especially Karl Gren is probably now completely forgotten. In 1894, I published a sketch of his life in Number 47 of the Berlin Clinical Weekly and endeavored to give an account of the views on the nature of medical science which our colleague from Halle, who died at an early ate in 1789, advocated during the short period of activity allotted to him.
Grens “System of Pharmacology or the Doctrine of Remedies, Studied Critically from their Natural, Historical, Pharmaceutical, and Therapeutical Side” appeared in 1791. As the title plainly shows, this publication of Grens was based on an essentially different conception from that of natural philosophy. In order to give a better idea of the nature of its contents, I will quote Grens own words as to his ideas concerning experience in medicine: “Experience alone can determine the absolute and the relative effect of remedies on the human body.
If, however, the application of experience in determining the healing power of a substance is not to be misleading; if we would, by this means, be absolutely convinced that the results observed really are derived from and by the use of a certain drug, one test is not sufficient but it is necessary that the drug should have the same effect in many instances and under varying circumstances; furthermore, that the resulted observed should not be capable of receiving any other explanation, and that all other circumstances that could cause similar results should be excluded. The real, but also the most difficult knack of observation lies in the ability of the physician to differentiate the actual effects of the drug from incidental, co-operating causes.
The history of medical remedies is full of examples showing that results which had really taken their origin in some other way were attributed to a certain drug. A large number of remedies whose supposed healing powers are merely imaginary have been incorporated into the materia medica through the lack of good judgment. Of the greatest importance and of absolute necessity for the determination of the effect of a drug, is an exact diagnosis of the illness itself.
Furthermore, the remedy whose effect is to be accurately determined by experience must be administered alone without association with anything that would tend to change its nature, if the observation of its effect is not to be deceptive. The observer must be governed by honesty and truthfulness; preconceived ideas and judgements should not blind him. A sufficient degree of scepticism must guard him from too great self confidence as well as from the influence of outside authorities. The love of invention makes the greatest sophist!”.
And further: “To assume causes for happenings in nature concerning which our senses tell us nothing and to ascribe effects to them which, in fact, do not exist within the circle of our experience, is called-not explaining, but inventing”.
These are golden words which will retain their value for all time!.
“William Hufeland, the Berlin clinician, declared himself against all systematization and phraseology on the order of natural philosophy in a very determined manner by establishing his “Journal der praktischen Arzneikunde und Wundarzneikunst” (“Journal of Practical Medicine and Surgery”). He expresses the purpose of his journal in the preface to the second volume, 1796, as follows: “It shall constitute an archive of facts, of experience concerning diseases and the effects of drugs; and, as far as possible, be free from hypotheses, system, and cures a priori.
This seems to me to be the best way to spread and to maintain true practical medicine; to direct the mind of physicians always toward nature and experience and to keep it fastened upon them as the only sources of practical medicine; to guard the medical world from intellectual despotism and forced forms of thought and, by means of a many-sided portrayal of natural phenomena, through the diversity of points of view, through the multiplicity of methods of healing, of maintain that freedom of intellect and opinion which from time immemorial, especially for our science, has been the greatest palladium for truth and perfection.
The history of medicine in its every period acclaims undeniably the fact : “The more one clung to nature and to pure experience just so much more was accomplished in medicine; the more despotically however, names, opinions, and sects ruled, just so much more faulty, limited, and un-natural was always the state of medicine”.
In the same volume of Hufelands journal, beginning on page 391, is an essay written by Samuel Hahnemann. It is entitled: “An Experiment concerning a New Principle for Determining the Healing-powers of Remedies, Together with some Views on those Previously Known”.
This essay of Hahnemanns which gave an impulse toward the establishing and further development of a method of therapeutics quiet unknown up to that time, will be studied in the following pages.
After a detailed review and estimation of the importance of chemistry for the development of useful remedies, Hahnemann develops the methods of research in regard to the effects of drugs as they were conducted in his time. He discusses the more general method in which experiments are made on animals for the purpose of acquiring accurate knowledge concerning the effects of remedies; as well as the particular one in which drugs are brought in contact with certain component parts of the animal body, such for instance as the blood. In this dissertation, he expresses the conclusion that the results of all such research methods are bound to be unreliable, for the simple reason that the animal organism varies so decidedly from the human.
He also calls attention to the fact that it is impossible in the case of some drugs especially those of vegetable origin to draw any definite conclusions, let us say, because of their close botanical relationship as to their homogeneous effect or even their similarity. So he finally concludes that in order to win a correct knowledge of the effects of drugs on the human organism, it is absolutely necessary to experiment with the drug on human beings themselves. Among the observations gains from the effects of drugs unintentionally administered, as for instance, in cases of poisoning, also observations obtained at the bedside. Thirdly, there should be added the drug-provings made on healthy human beings. As the most essential result of his deliberations and experiences, Hahnemann reaches the conclusion expressed as follows on page 433 :
