The purely scientific bent of Hahnemanns mind, and the reason why his medical works have survived those of his contemporaries, to be as illuminating and useful today as on the day when they were penned, is seen by the following:.
“A true materia medica,” he says, “will consist of the genuine, pure, and undeceptive effects of simple drugs”; and again, “Every such materia medica should exclude every supposition every mere assertion and fiction and its entire contents should be the language of nature, uttered in response to careful and faithful inquiry”.
Many remedies, since Hahnemanns day, have been added to our armoury against disease; but all subsequent work has been done on his lines. It has never been found necessary to eliminate, or to alter. Recorded in the simple language of nature, free from theory, safe from the transient language of succeeding generations, they stand for all time, complete and true; while science, in discovering new truths, has never been able to touch Hahnemanns premises except to confirm since they are based on law.
It is interesting that, in Austria, many years ago, when doubt was thrown on some of the original provings, they started to re- prove certain of the drugs. But, finding their results identical with those of Hahnemann, they concluded to accept the rest.
For the more exact purposes of homoeopathy, experiments in drug- action on animals are useless, as Hahnemann pointed out; and that for two reasons. The proverb, “One mans meat is another mans poison,” applies with ten-fold force when it comes to animals. Substances poisonous to man are innocuous to many animals. “Ailments and poisons are convertible, according to the specific nature of different animals, so that ailments become poisons, and poisons alimentary”.
Opium, with us a medicine, is to some eastern nations an alimentary substance.
Hedgehogs feed on Cantharides, and take no hurt.
Rabbits eat Belladonna with impunity.
Morphia makes dogs drowsy and vomit, but excites cats.
Styrian mountaineers take doses of Arsenic sufficient to kill ordinary persons; and horses are given large doses of Arsenic to improve their wind and to make their coats glossy.
Rats are immune to diphtheria.
Cats are said to be immune to tubercle, whereas guinea-pigs and monkeys are highly susceptible to that infection.
By experiments on animals it may be found that certain drugs affect certain tissues of certain animals. That is all.
But more than this, homoeopathic provings have to be very fine, very delicate, and very definite, and the subjective and mental symptoms (all important for our purpose) can only be obtained from humans.
It is only men and women who, in provings, could have given us the mental symptoms, which have led to so many brilliant cures such as the depression to the verge of suicide of Aurum; the insane jealousy of Lachesis; the terror of insanity of Mancinella; the frantic irritability and intolerance of pain of Chamomilla; the suspicion and restlessness of Arsenicum; the terrors of anticipation of Argentum nitricum; the fear of death of Aconite and Arsenic; the sensation of tallness and superiority of Platina; the sensation of unreality of Medorrhinum; the sensation of two wills of Anacardium; the indifference to loved ones of Phosphorus and Sepia all straight cuts to the curative remedy, and they can only be got by provings on human beings.
Even provings on the sick are not accepted, since sickness modifies the response of the organism to drugs, and from the sick no true drug-picture can be obtained. Remedies also need to be proved on women as well as on men, in order to get their whole range of usefulness. The provings of Lilium tigrinum, for instance, entailed intense sufferings on the heroic women who undertook them; but they have given us a most useful remedy for the peculiar suffering of women, in uterine displacements, after miscarriages, etc.
As we said, the experiments of homoeopathy have always been on healthy human beings. They have always been voluntary experiments. And they have never proved detrimental to health (whatever the immediate sufferings may have been), but on the contrary they tend as Hahnemann pointed out, to raise the resistance of the prover. And Hahnemann should know, who, having spent the greater part of his life in proving drugs, lived on, in full possession of health and senses, till only one year short of ninety.
TO CURE.
The outcome of his experiments is this “To cure mildly, rapidly and permanently, choose for every case of disease a medicine which can itself produce a similar affection”.
Homoeopathy is no invention; no theory. It has been hammered out of hard facts. It is simply a scientific way of discovering what drugs can do in the way of perverting the health, mental and physical, of healthy human beings, and then applying them for the relief of just such conditions in the sick.
“Homoeopathy appeals,” says Hahnemann, “solely to the verdict of experience. Repeat the experiment, carefully and accurately, and you will find the doctrine confirmed at every step. Homoeopathic insists on being judged by results”.
DOCTRINES OF HAHNEMANN.
But it was not enough for Hahnemann to have merely discovered power; he devoted a long life to its investigation, and to showing under what conditions it best works. And he has bequeathed to us, not only the law, Similia Similibus Curentur, but also what he called his “Doctrines,” which not to obey is to render much of our work inferior, if not futile.
May I here point out that these doctrines of Hahnemann apply equally to such homoeopathic measures as vaccines; and that, had Hahnemanns laws been known and observed in regard to vaccine, x- ray and radium therapies, better and more reliable results might, from the first, have been obtained; since those who use them have had perforce to approximate to the methods of Hahnemann.
For Hahnemann teaches, not only
The like remedy, but also
The single drug,
The small dose,
The infrequent dose,
Non-interference with vital reaction,
Initial aggravation, and
Potentization.
VITAL FORCE.
I think we all recognize, in these days, what Hahnemann insisted on, that cure comes by the reaction of what he calls vital force against disease. We know a little more about the complicated mechanism of such reaction; but it is no longer absurd to teach, as he taught, that vital reactions are evoked by disease, and that such reactions are curative; and that the utmost we can do, curatively, is to stimulate such reaction.
He says that thousands of substances, subversive to health, simulate disease conditions, and can be employed to evoke enhanced curative reaction, where such is the case.
For instance who will diagnose belladonna poisoning from scarlet fever? They have often been mistaken; or diagnose between dysentery and poisoning by corrosive sublimate? Or between ptomaine and arsenical poisonings? Hahnemann contends and demonstrates that substances which stimulate natural diseases can be used, in fine dosage, for their cure. And the most striking homoeopathic curative results can be seen when using Arsenic (in infinite subdivision) for ptomaine poisoning, Merc. cor. (corrosive sublimate) for dysentery, or Belladonna for scarlet fever. Anyone who desires to put homoeopathy to the test, cannot do better than start with one of these.
Homoeopathy never contemplates curing disease by drugs in massive and repeated doses. Its object is to stimulate the patient to cure himself. Therefore, it is never a question of quantity, where the vital stimulus is employed, but always of precise selection and quality, in the drug employed for the purpose.
SINGLE DRUG.
As to the single drug that goes without saying. For what can be learnt, in provings, or in practice, from mixed prescriptions? If work is to be exact and scientific, drugs, as Hahnemann contended, must be proved separately, and can only then be used with foreknowledge and confidence, for the cure of sicknesses of like symptoms.
THE SMALL DOSE.
And then the small dose that ancient bugbear as Hahnemann foresaw, even for his own followers; and for others, a subject for endless witticisms. No need to apologize for the small dose now! Radium vitamins ferments ions colloids even mineral waters have done that, and have demonstrated, to some extent, the immense potentiality of the infinitely little. Even chemistry teaches that chemical affinity comes into play only on surface, which are enormously increased when mass is reduced to impalpable powder. A lump of antimony plunged in chlorine gas shows nothing spectacular; but powder the antimony and throw it into chlorine, and the violence of the reaction will be almost explosive.
By minutest subdivision, energy is liberated from inert mass bulk weight; from things palpable and manifest to our grosser senses. We are at last beginning to realize the potentialities of the intangible and the imponderable. But the most sensitive thing in the world is the diseased cell or tissue for the remedy of like symptoms, in infinitesimal subdivision. And it is with this that we have to deal.
Weir received his medical education first at Glasgow University MB ChB 1907, and then on a sabbatical year in Chicago under the tutelage of Dr James Tyler Kent of Hering Medical College during 1908-9. Weir reputedly first learned of homeopathy through his contact with Dr Robert Gibson Miller.
John Weir wrote- Some of the Outstanding Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Conditions with Margaret Tyler, Homeopathy and its Importance in Treatment of Chronic Disease, The Trend of Modern Medicine, The Science and Art of Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl, The Present Day Attitude of the Medical Profession Towards Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl XVI, 1926, p.212ff, Homeopathy: a System of Therapeutics, The Hahnemann Convalescent Home, Bournemouth, Brit Homeo Jnl 20, 1931, 200-201, Homeopathy an Explanation of its Principles, British Homeopathy During the Last 100 Years, Brit Homeo Jnl 23, 1932: etc