HOMOEOPATHY AND MEDICINE


In order to reach a just estimate of Hahnemann and his work and influence, the author briefly reviews the period of his activity and the scientific and pseudo- scientific theories then in vogue. He pays a generous tribute to the profound erudition, intellect and imagination possessed by Hahnemann, and to his conspicuous contributions to Medicine and Biology.


The author has been stimulated, as the result of the famous Bier article to review the historical and present position of homoeopathy, the motives of its fonder, and the attitude of the world in general toward this branch of medicine. He is impressed by the fact that “for the first time we see a university professor, research worker and physician of unquestioned eminence take so decided a stand in favor of the despised homoeopathy, that the matter cannot be ignored. Bier does not hesitate to acknowledge that, unknown to himself, a large number of the remedies which he has long been using and recommending, he now finds to be based on homoeopathic principles, and he states that he was guided to homoeopathy as a result of the theoretical and practical development of the irritant-therapy therein involved.

Finally, he reports upon three distinct series of observations in which homoeopathic methods of cure employed by himself, were crowned with unquestioned success.” In the face of these startling findings, the author insists that the non-homoeopathic world at large is under the moral obligation of subjecting its ideas on the question of searching revision, and as his personal contribution, he proposes to assemble the various material which has hitherto prevented the establishment of any degree of understanding between Official Medicine and homoeopathy.

The writer questions what are the fundamental grounds of difference existing between these twin branches of medicine. “What, he asks, “is the reason for the continued prescription of Hahnemanns teachings at the hands of Official Medicine, despite the fact that its adherents have for a number of decades recognized many of the scientific truths underlying the teachings of the latter; that they have accepted the findings of pathological and diagnostic investigation and have preserved but a very limited number of their palladia ? Why, in spite of these facts, does the verdict still apply that, so long as homoeopathy insists upon the principle of similars and its own form of dosage, its scientific claims cannot be seriously considered?”.

In order to reach a just estimate of Hahnemann and his work and influence, the author briefly reviews the period of his activity and the scientific and pseudo- scientific theories then in vogue. He pays a generous tribute to the profound erudition, intellect and imagination possessed by Hahnemann, and to his conspicuous contributions to Medicine and Biology. When, in 1796, at the age of forty, he published his “Research into a new principle for detecting the therapeutic powers of medicinal substances,” following upon various publications in the domain of chemistry and pharmacy, “Hahnemann was already generally known and respected as a physician.

He was the first person in Germany to fight for the abolition of force in the treatment of the insane; he had indicated the necessity of applying dietetic, hygienic and psychic treatment for chronic invalids, and in the domain of surgery he had suggested methods of treating ulcers, bone caries and wounds in general, which suggest aseptic procedure. Thus, when he first presented his reformatory ideas in a definite form he had, in the words of one of his critics, been known for twenty years as a thoughtful and careful observer, as well as a skillful and successful practitioner.

The author states that Hahnemanns revolutionary theories were at first limited to questions of therapy, for which he finds ample justification in its lamentable condition at that time. “Nowhere was there any evidence of rationality, and where this appeared to exist it in reality represented the worst forms of speculative rationalism, as in the doctrine of Brown. Apart from this, the general principles accepted were the humoral- pathological theories of ancient Galenism, associated with a poly-pragmatism which in the preparation of prescriptions indiscriminately combined the most varied substances, exercising particular lack of discretion in the matter of emetics, cathartics and the never-failing blood-letting. These dubious curative methods were the first to receive Hahnemanns attacks”.

His attention became directed to the law of similars as a result of his work of translating Cullens Materia Medica. Not satisfied with that authors explanations relative to cinchona bark, he instituted investigations on his own person, in order to test its effect. He noted that he repeatedly presented pathologic conditions resembling those of intermittent fever, and continuing his experimentation, “he found the rule to apply that certain drugs, when applied to healthy subjects, produced pathologic phenomena resembling those noted in certain diseases. When used in the latter, moreover, those drugs proved effective which, if given to healthy persons, produced similar symptoms.

This phenomenon he formulated under the name of the Law of Similars, for although a sworn enemy of all grey theory. Hahnemann felt compelled to base the general applicability of his law on a theoretic foundation.” In resorting to the then prevalent theory of vitalism, he was but following the current dynamic and mechanistic theories of his time, for it should be borne in mind that at period dynamistic-mechanistic conceptions under various forms represented the prevailing trends of biological theorization, which a later more enlightened age has rejected in favor of a more fundamentally scientific viewpoint. “He claimed that the original cause of a disease was immaterial, that it represented a discord, a reduction of vital force, associated of course with certain organs.

The effects of the disturbance there manifested, were expressed as the symptoms which, in his opinion, constituted the only means of determining the disease. In the same way that they represent the reflex of the disease, the phenomena produced as a result of taking certain drugs are characterized by similar symptoms. Then the drugs produce the more acute disease. which vanquishes and neutralizes the primary one. What remains of the former can then easily be neutralized by the vital force. According to this theory, there exist original relations between the drugs and those organs which serve as points of attack. The attention of the physician is directed to them by the drug symptoms which he must learn to recognize and to differentiate by indefatigable testing”.

The author points out that the law of similars goes back to the time of Hippocrates, and that von Haller was the first to suggest that drugs be proved on healthy individuals. But the careful and rationally developed methods, as well as his understanding of the patients individuality are the special merit of Hahnemann. The graduated dosages, leading finally to the great “potencies,” were only arrive at after long study and experimentation.

The fact that, in spite of possessing a reputation for benevolence and humanity, Hahnemann vented himself in acrimonious attacks against the allopaths and their “erroneous theory” is excused by the writer on the ground that all reformers are compelled to express themselves in passionate language. “They must destroy in order to upbuild, and their only weapon herefore is the word”.

From the very outset there prevailed fundamental differences within the ranks of the followers of Hahnemann, more especially with respect to the theory of dosage. Hahnemanns law of potencies was recognized by some and rejected by others. The points that remained unquestioned were the law of similars, the demand for systematic drug proving on healthy subjects, and the principle that the selection of drugs should be based on their symptomatic mode of operation.

The author states emphatically that “the method suggested during the last quarter of the nineteenth century by leading homoeopaths to solve the whole question of drug proving and dosage was and is by no means unscientific. In 1879, at a General Meeting of the Central Society, the Hungarian homoeopath, Prof. von Bakody, submitted the request that in healthy humans and animals the individual drugs be proved in doses of progressive size, in consideration of all functional changes of a pathologico- histological, chemical and toxic nature, and that these changes be strictly compared with other phenomena resembling them, produced by a hypothetical pathologic cause in natural diseases.

On the basis of this law of similarity obtained from the healthy organism, in the sense of a causal specific (we should say organospecific) effect on the tissue, remedies corresponding to the various phases of the disease were to be applied, in such form and quantity as to preclude the operation on the organism of any pathologic secondary effects”.

He emphasizes the disadvantages to which homoeopathic physicians are exposed by being practically leaderless. “Homoeopathy,” he says, “exists outside of the Faculties, and only in Hungary and North America does if possess institutes of learning”.

Turning to the attitude toward homoeopathy assumed by the official medical world at different periods, the writer is urged to state that it has been met not exclusively by hostility, but also by a great deal of fair-minded and objective criticism. Nevertheless, “at the outset, it was not the law of similars, but the rejection of the theory of derivative therapy and of small doses which constituted the chief points of attack and gradually became more acute. As an instance of this mutual hostility of the two parties it may be stated, that in 1829 Dr. Trinks, a homoeopathic physician of Dresden, was legally indicated for drug poisoning and faulty treatment (failure to resort to blood-letting).

G. Honigmann