Looking further afield, our French colleagues have attempted to bring into line homoeopathy and and the laboratory. In this age, the test-tube is, of course, the symbol of accuracy, and the supporters of this theory claim that it is impossible to unite the method of homoeopathic prescribing and modern laboratory findings without employing “le drainage”. But to attain this synthesis, the modern French School have been obliged to sacrifice the single remedy and the totality of characteristic symptoms as the indications for the correct prescription.
This abandonment of the great principles laid down by Hahnemann has been warmly debated: but it has the one advantage of sending the prolegomenists back to the study of Hahnemanns original writings, and perhaps to a clearer conception of the great Founders wide vision in the field of therapeutics.
Of course polypharmacy, in any form, is utterly alien to the homoeopathy of Hahnemann, and makes no appeal to Hahnemannians.
We have also progressed along the lines of Hahnemann in regard to potencies. He was careful to set no limits to potentisation. He gave it that, so long as the dose, immediately after being taken, is capable of producing a slight aggravation of symptoms, there is still evidence of power.
We do not know how high, actually, he raised his potencies, but we must remember that his preparations, made by hand, each time one drop in 99, were actually what they represented: that his favourite 30th potency was actually one in a decillion. Such precision can never by obtained in machine-made potencies, though it would be humanly impossible to make the highest otherwise than by machine.
We know that hahnemann used the 60th, the 200th, and I think he somewhere mentions the 500th also. We shall not know definitely in regard to this point till someone gets to work on his case-books, happily preserved, but not, at present, at our service. But since Hahnemanns day many of us use incredibly higher potencies, and obtain fine results from their use; and it is claimed for them, what Hahnemann claimed in regard to potentised drugs, that they go deeper into life, and that the reaction to such “Spirit-like forces” is more long-lasting.
Had Hahnemann lived another fifty years, one cannot think that his restless genius, his intuition, his induction, his ultra- scientific mind, always concerned with experimentation and positive facts, would have advanced no further.
And in another development of homoeopathy, mainly since his day, but in which we have again been the pioneer-the use of disease- products for the cure of disease, he was already on the track with his Psorin, or Psorinum: proved, and published, with some of his later efforts, in Stapfs Archiv, (1832).
From some of his writings it has been inferred that, although, at first, he decried such “isopathic” remedies, yet later on, he was himself using them in the treatment of the sick: that he had potentised, but had not proved them with sufficient thoroughness on the healthy, as to warrant his giving them to the profession. It is Dr. Swan who goes into this question.
He points out that Hahnemann in his Chronic Disease says, “In the subsequent list of antipsorics no isopathic remedies are mentioned, because their effects on the healthy organism have not been sufficiently ascertained”, and this surely means that he not only recognised them, but had, to some extent proved them, and that he had used them. And again, in regard to the “psoric virus ” Hahnemann contends that trituration and succussion had so altered the material that it was no longer idem-the same, isopathic, but similimum-like, homoeopathic. “If it were not so,” he contends, “it would not have any effect on an organism tainted with the identical virus.” Isopathy is never what it claims to be, “since it administers only a highly potentized, and, as it were, altered miasm to a patient”.
It is very interesting to deduce that Hahnemann had already used such remedial agents, but that, until they were demonstrated by actual and adequate provings on the healthy, he would not give them to the world. He had seen too much, and had tilted too long against reckless prescribing without knowledge and accurate definition, to jump at things however promising. His work, as we have said, was firmly based on experimentation, long experience, and actual facts. And that is why it stands. And that is why, as knowledge advances, science adds daily confirmation to what, in the eyes of his contemporaries, were the wildest and most extravagant of his teachings.
But, in regard to the use of disease-products for the cure of disease, Constantine Hering was the great pioneer, with his Anthracinum in 1830, followed by Swan and the rest while in this country, where they were regarded at first with almost horror, it was Heath and Compton Burnett who first used, them, and that, long before the imagination of “medicine” was stirred with the idea of their possibilities; when, having no Law to guide, it proceeded to “abuse” them.
Then again, in the difficult realm of chronic disease, we, following Hahnemann and taking up his work where he laid it down, have advanced yet further.
It was his refusal to accept defeat to to acknowledge the possibility of failure for homoeopathy, when confronted (from time to time) with the stop-spot of obvious remedies, that led to his brilliant “discovery” in regard to the nature of chronic disease: “the result of 10 years toil day and night”: namely, that certain diseases were chronic because caused by fixed, chronic, semi-vital miasms of a parasitical nature which never disappeared of themselves nor could be conquered and extinguished by the most vigorous constitution, or the best regulated mode of life and diet: that these obscure underlying must be taken into account and treated by remedies homoeopathic to their own (now latent) symptoms, before anything like cure could be anticipated.
Here, of course, he was years ahead of orthodox medicine; though science has since has since confirmed him in the case of syphilis and gonorrhoea. But we know that, had he lived, his third chronic miasms, “Psora”, must have resolved itself into many. Take tuberculosis, for instance, which fulfils his postulates as a “fixed, chronic, semi-vital miasm of a parasitical nature” an which, when it does not kill, persists as an underlying dyscrasia and interferes with the normal reactions of the individual, requiring a special line of drug-treatment, including, ad we are experiencing every day, occasional doses of its own potentised virus.
Again, since his day, Burnetts “Vaccinosis” has established itself as a separate chronic disease, with its most special remedy, Thuja, which often needs to be given before the apparent remedies of the patients symptoms can come into perfect play. And it is even a question whether all acute diseases of a certain fixed type, such as scarlet fever, measles, small-pox, even though they “tend to recovery” do not actually leave behind them some chronic infection that has to be reckoned with and treated with its own disease product in potency, if the best is to be done for the patient.
We have seen this again and again in the beneficent reaction to Variolinum, even 40 and 50 years after an attack of small-pox; and in all sorts of obscure and obstinate conditions supervening on influenza, only to be cured by Influenzinum, and the amelioration following the administration of Scarlatinum, etc., under similar circumstances. Here the great pioneer was Swan: though with us it was again Burnett who led the way. Has Hahnemann lived on, he would undoubtedly have further extended his homoeopathy on these lines.
And here again, official medicine following, at long distance, has had some amount of success with its disease-products to evoke vital reaction, but often with tragedies and legacies of disaster and suffering, unknown to the School of Hahnemann. Allopathy, unfortunately, had always to begin de novo: it is never concerned with the fact that the thing has been done already, and done better. It is by way of many victims that it has demonstrated the doctrines of Hahnemann, which it could have had a century ago.
But we observe that wherever homoeopathic measures, however crude, such as vaccines (changed, as Hahnemann puts it, from idem into similimum by the preparation they have undergone) are employed by the profession, gradually all Hahnemanns conclusions and dicta come perforce into play; and the single remedy, with the small dose, initial aggravation and non-interference with vital reaction are forcing their way into “Medicine”. One wonders how soon they will get the rest, i.e., that other subversive agents besides disease-products may be “like” enough in their effects on life to evoke curative reaction; and again, that systematic reduction of mass, bulk, density, does not mean dilution but potentisation. Then Burnetts prophecy may even come true.
“Homoeopathy is the winning horse at the Medical Derby of the world, and will presently by hurried past the winning post by Orthodoxy itself as her rider”.
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