Both were shocked and repelled by the evils and abuses of medical practice in their day, and both fought them with all their might. Both suffered extreme poverty, although at different periods of life. Both were persecuted by the medical profession, Thomson the most shamefully, but both gained a large following and brought confusion to their enemies. Yet the two men were very different in mentally, personality and environment.
Hahnemann was the son of an artist, thinker and logician. He was trained from childhood in accurate observation and logical thinking. University educated and erudite; master of eleven languages and widely read; teacher, translator, author, chemist, physicist, physician, philosopher and savant; original researcher and innovator; formulator of the greatest, most scientific and most successful system of therapeutics the world has ever known, he stands as one of the worlds greatest reformers and benefactors, secure in his fame as one of the Immortals.
Thomson was the son of an ignorant, bigoted, cruel father. Born and reared in poverty and isolation–a child of the forest; denied the privileges of education, society and books; ill- treated in childhood and compelled to hard labor; half starved physically, mentally and spiritually, but feeding his soul on the beauty and usefulness of forest flowers and herbs; yearning for knowledge and picking it up bit by bit as he could from old women and backwoods doctors; blindly experimenting and imitating, at first, the crude practices of others almost as ignorant as himself, but soon recognizing and rejecting the worst of their blunders and selecting what appeared most useful and least harmful of the resources within his reach.
Sensing the existence and operation of a healing principle in nature and groping after it; impressed with the power of the living organism to protect and repair itself, he bravely trusted it almost to the point of recklessness. Observing, experimenting, guessing, meditating, feeling his way along almost blindly, yet persistently following the faint glimmer of light ahead of him; slowly gaining the confidence of his neighbors and building up a following; ultimately attaining recognition and leadership in a movement which went far toward reforming medicine and elevating it to a higher plane–such a man was Samuel Thomson.
He too won a place among the benefactors and reformers of mankind and well deserves it.
Thomsons theories were simple. Probably without knowing that he was following in the footsteps of the ancient Ionian and Greek sages, and later of Galen, he adopted the theory that all animal bodies are formed of “the four elements, earth, air, fire and water”; that air and fire, or heat, are the “cause and substance of life”; that “lessening of heat,” or impairment of the power of life, is the cause of all diseases; hence, that the proper treatment for disease is “restoration of heat” or the power of life, “by clearing the system of all obstructions and causing a natural perspiration.” The “four elements” are the four primary forces in nature, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen.
It would be easy to analyze and further interpret these archaic, symbolical expressions in the light of modern chemical and vital philosophy and show, not only how nearly they approach the truth, but how similar is Thomsons theory in substance to that of Hahnemann. It hardly seems necessary to do so, however, for readers of this Department of THE HOMOEOPATHIC RECORDER. They all represent phases of the vital dynamic philosophy upon which homoeopathy is based, although the mode of application of the principles was different.
One cannot but be struck by the appositeness of the following passage in the Narrative:
“I found that fever was a disturbed state of the heat (life), or more properly, that it was caused by the efforts which nature makes to throw off disease; and therefore ought to be aided in its cause and treated as a friend and not as an enemy, as is the practice of the physicians”.
That passage, when I read it, gave me a thrill. Within the last year, and often before, I have made the same statement in almost identical words in my articles in this department. Here was a man, self-educated and alone who, from his own observation and reflections, arrived at another of the most important conclusions in modern medical philosophy almost a century ago. Given the advantages and training Hahnemann and other great thinkers had, what might this man have been? Lacking the key–the principle of similia–the door was closed to him.
He saw and stated, but in quainter terms, that the primordial principle of Life must be its own renovator, restorer and preserver of the organism in which it dwells, and that the business of the physician is to work in harmony with it and assist it along similar lines and in the same direction.
He had thus a glimpse of the law of similars. He said: “All diseases are the effect of one general cause, and can be removed by one general remedy”; which is a true saying if one understands, with Hahnemann, that all diseases are disturbances of the life-force, and that the “one general remedy” is always the Similar Remedy. The one general remedy, or principle, of course, may and must be applied in many forms according to the individuality of the patient.
Such was the foundation of the system of Samuel Thomson and the Thomsonians. They cleared away much rubbish and prepared the field in America for homoeopathy. They treated and cured, or at least brought about the recovery, of a vast number of cases of the most deadly diseases, including cholera, smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles, frequently after they had been pronounced hopeless by regular physicians. In several epidemics when nearly half of the victims died under orthodox treatment their mortality was almost nil.
This gave a great impetus to the new movement and the Thomsonians, Botanical physicians and Eclectics increased rapidly in numbers and influence. They effected a sort of alliance or Entente cordiale and worked together. They organized strong societies, established schools and vigorously fought the repressive legislative measures that were quickly directed against them by the orthodox profession. They eventually won legal recognition and a large measure of freedom and profoundly influenced medical practice for good, besides paving the way for homoeopathy.
