Hahnemann (from years of experience) claims further that, by potentization, not only do insoluble substances become soluble, but that their medicinal virtues can thereby be fully and even infinitely developed; besides which, their chemical properties are so altered that they are no longer subject to chemical laws. They have passed, for instance, beyond the laws of neutralization. (Hahnemann was one of the foremost chemists of his day).
OPPOSITE EFFECTS OF LARGE AND SMALL DOSES.
While I have been trying to put facts before you, in all simplicity, a number of confirmatory instances must have occurred to you.
For instances, the opposite effects of large and small doses and here the Arndt-Schulz law comes to the support of Hahnemann. For, where large doses of a poisonous substance prove lethal, and smaller doses inhibit, minimal doses of the same poison actually stimulate the vital activities of the same cells.
As Bier says, “The same remedy may stimulate a function, when given in small doses, but destroy it if larger doses are administered”.
And he says, “According to Schulz, the great bulk of remedies do not act by neutralizing, dissolving, disinfecting, etc., (i.e., in a metabolic manner) but by irritating certain organs. The latter are thereby stimulated to an activity which promotes the healing process. Since the slightest irritation often produces great reaction, Schulz elucidates the action of the minimal dose; and again, since the symptoms of disease often are merely an expression of the healing reaction of the body, he explains the homoeopathic cure by symptom-similarity (the law of similars). Accordingly the remedy merely augments the natural healing process.” But, of course, this is all Hahnemann!.
The recent Medical Research Council report on radium refers to “the general principle that has been established with so many drugs, that large doses and very small doses act in opposite ways.”8.
Taylor has shown that irradiated Ergosterol, in small and medium doses, favours the deposition of calcium from blood to bone; but large doses have a reverse effect, and cause calcium to be absorbed from bone into the blood stream.9.
Duke, in a research on blood platelets, found that large doses of benzol reduced the platelet count to a point where the bleeding time was prolonged, while small doses of benzol brought about an increase in the platelet count.10 This also held good for a complex substance, such as diphtheria toxin a large dose caused an immediate fall in the number of platelets, while sub- lethal doses stimulated their production”.
It is seen that the same drug may stimulate or depress, given appropriate conditions.
But more crude instances of homoeopathy, and the opposite effects of large and small doses, are familiar to all. You use Ipecacuanha to check vomiting. Pot. iod. (which Norman Walker tells us produces skin affections diagnosed as gummata) for gumma; salicylic acid for Menieres disease, etc.
And Dr. Dyce Brown, some years ago, published a very long list of drugs, used by the official school, homoeopathically, and with success. He quotes striking testimonies from prominent physicians and teachers as to their efficacy in conditions caused by them. Among them we find the following:.
“Belladonna. Its power to produce convulsions is well known, while Trousseau and Pidoux speak in very high praise of its value in epilepsy, in eclampsia of infants, and of puerperal women. They say that Belladonna administered in small doses sometimes produces unhoped for results.
“On the brain, the action of Belladonna is well known, causing mania, hallucinations, delirium, and general mental excitement. On this Trousseau and Pidoux remark and this quotation is very important from our standpoint: Analogy, that guide so sure in therapeutics, ought to lead us to use Belladonna in the treatment of mania, inasmuch as Belladonna taken in large doses produces a temporary mania; for experience has proved that a multitude of diseases are cured by therapeutic agents, which seem to act in the same manner as the disease to which we oppose this remedy. This is a beautiful testimony to the law of similars.
“Rhus toxicodendron. Trousseau and Pidoux, Pereira, and Sanders of Edinburgh, testify to its power to produce a skin eruption exactly like erysipelas, with vesicles here and there, on the hands, arms, face, etc.; while the first-named authors say: This curious action of Rhus on the economy has led the homoeopaths to employ this substance in diseases of the skin; but already, before them, Dufresnoy of Valenciennes had published a paper in which he highly praised the virtue of this plant against skin diseases, and later, against paralysis. From that time we have found from time to time essays on this subject in the different periodicals, and many reliable physicians have confirmed Dufresnoys experiences.
“Stramonium. Trousseau and Pidoux then quote M. Moreau, of Tours, who says, It is especially useful in cases of monomania with hallucinations, founding this statement, say Trousseau and Pidoux, on the fact that Stramonium causes hallucinations; and that mania ought to be cured by Stramonium in the same way as the majority of irritating agents are employed topically to cure irritations. If this is not homoeopathy, I would ask, what is?”.
But one might multiply indefinitely examples, simple and complex, to show the opposite effects of large and small doses of substances medicinal or poisonous.
INDIVIDUALIZATION.
Homoeopathy takes into account the individual, with his personal reactions to environment, physical, mental and moral; his deviations from the normal, and especially from his own normal, due to sickness. With Hahnemann, when it comes to prescribing, “We know no diseases, only sick persons,” whose sickness has to be matched in materia medica.
And this is only common sense, since no illness, if we take the trouble to inquire, affects all persons alike.
In rheumatism one person, like Bryonia in its provings, has pain on the slightest movement; another, like Rhus, needs to be constantly on the move, to make the pain endurable. One, like Rhus, is always worse for wet and cold; the other, like Bryonia, is more affected by dry weather. One rheumatic patient may have pains intolerable in the warmth of the bed; another, only tolerable when warm. It is the identical symptom-complex of drug and patient that insures a successful prescription.
Even in pneumonia, for abortive and curative work, the individual patient has to be considered in prescribing. A number of drugs have caused and cured pneumonia Phosphorus, Bryonia, Nitric acid, etc. But which are we to use since one will not do for the other.
The Bryonia patient wants to be let alone is very irritable; is worse for any movement. Has a white tongue is dry and thirsty. Cough is dry and painful. The pleura is apt to be involved with stitching pain, relieved by pressure, worse by movement even respiration therefore he lies on the affected side.
The Phosphorus pneumonia especially attacks the right base. The patient is unable to lie on the left side. He is very thirsty; wants company, sympathy; there is bright blood in the sputum, or possibly the prune-juice expectoration.
The Mercurius picture, in pneumonia, is very different and distinctive. Here you have profuse offensive sweat, offensive mouth, filthy, tooth-notched tongue, with much saliva of horrible taste. Here Mercurius will quickly cure.
And yet, though homoeopathy knows no specifics for diseases there are certain substances which, in poisonous doses and in provings, reproduce so nearly described disease conditions as to be practically specific for most cases of those diseases.
Crotalus horridus (rattle-snake poison) which produces bleedings from every organ and orifice of the body even the pores of the skin, and which affects gravely liver and kidneys, etc., is our great remedy for black-water fever.
Latrodectus mactans, a spider poison, whose bite occasions symptoms not to be distinguished from those of angina pectoris, proves astonishingly curative in infrequent doses, for that condition. We have recently seen several such cases.
Corrosive sublimate poisoning, as said, simulates dysentery, and in infinitesimal doses cures rapidly most cases of dysentery.
Ptomaine poisoning, which simulates arsenical poisoning in its agony of vomiting and purging, its deadly anxiety and restlessness and collapse, is promptly cured by Arsenicum, in potency.
Belladonna simulates scarlet fever; and Belladonna given for scarlet fever ensures a minimal mortality, and freedom from sequelae.
Camphor, whose symptoms resemble those of the early stage of cholera, has proved astonishingly and rapidly curative in that disease; while in the later stages with severe cramps, Cuprum or in collapse with severe vomiting, purging, and profuse cold sweat, Veratrum, have demonstrated to the world, in the epidemics of 1830-1 and 1854, the dramatic curative powers of remedies homoeopathically indicated.
Dr. Macloughlin, inspector to the Board of Health, wrote in 1854, to one of the doctors at our hospital, which had been cleared for cholera patients, “You are aware that I went to your hospital prepossessed against the homoeopathic system; that you had in me, in your camp, an enemy rather than a friend. That there may be no misapprehension about the cases I saw at your hospital, I will add, that all I saw were true cases of cholera, in the various stages of th disease; and that I saw several cases which did well under your treatment which I have no hesitation in saying would have sunk under any other.
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