HOMOEOPATHY TODAY


Homoeopathy exists exactly as it did in the past and so will do in the future. A law of nature and its God cannot die. Undoubtedly the number of present adherents to the ministrations of the physician who is also a homoeopath is larger than ever before since homoeopathy began its career under Hahnemann in the year 1780.


CHAPTER XII. OUTLOOK. CONCERNING THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE.

Homoeopathy exists exactly as it did in the past and so will do in the future. A law of nature and its God cannot die. Undoubtedly the number of present adherents to the ministrations of the physician who is also a homoeopath is larger than ever before since homoeopathy began its career under Hahnemann in the year 1780.

This monument is erected in the hope that from it, as a center, truth may be spread which will result in the lessening of suffering and the increased usefulness of mankind.-J. B. GREGG CUSTIS, M.D., at the dedication of the Hahnemann Monument, Washington, D.C., June 21, 1900.

The growth of homoeopathy and its practice has been steady. It is true that not always has there been an understanding of the most essential principles of the art, perhaps because its science has not been grasped, but in some measure its basic idea has been utilized, and the scientific results have not failed to appear. In Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia, England, and the Americas there have continually been nominal exponents at least of the practice, so that travellers have never been stranded in this respect.

Notwithstanding organized prejudice of the old school against the system, and in local instances against individual physicians, laws in favor of the rights of the school have found their way into the statues. Bitter antagonism of former years has gradually given way to tolerance or indifference. It has not been necessary for the lamb to lie down the lion, though it has sometimes happened.

A more agreeable phase of the conditions-inharmonious or otherwise-is the fact that individual practicians of both schools have in many cases felt no rancor, or exhibited none, and have in many instances kept alive a friendliness with corresponding cooperation in work on occasional demand.

As a matter of fact, however, there has been a striking tendency of the old school to ignore and reject at the same time all homoeopathic lore, though the homoeopathist himself has had to acquire much of the old school point of view, or at least to respect that viewpoint while rejecting it for his own having the homoeopathic background. Hence, the two schools are importantly distinct, actual agreement being out of the question, except in case the homoeopath become neutral and relinquish his distinctive art and ethics.

The two schools are now no nearer together in their view and practice than they were in Hahnemanns day. Indeed in many ways they are much farther apart. Time has extended the realization and efficacy of the law by which internal remedies are prepared and so obtain their power and lasting advantage in wider spheres than in earlier years. This advance in itself though crudely imitated has not lessened the opposition.

To mention some of the striking differences, we may cite : (a) the reason for any homoeopathic prescription is to give the patient reactive power to resist the malady instead of combat it ; (b) the selection of the proper remedy on the basis of the individual patient, and not for his disease alone ; (c) one remedy at a time, and not a compound or mixed prescription ; (d) one administration to suffice as long as improvement continues, instead of seeking the point of saturation of the system with a drug ; (e) avoidance of foods that contain known drug principles ; (f) proper consideration of the environment, to promote comfort of body and mind.

The Organon itself has the unique distinction of perennial vitality. It is published in all languages, and though five editions were issued by Hahnemann, the essential fundamental root Principles of Homoeopathy are found in the first almost as perfectly and positively stated as in the sixth. It seems then that the Organon, like Minerva from the brain of Jupiter, came forth practically perfect as a guide to the theory and practice of homoeopathy. WILLIAM BOERICKE, M.D.

Here is reproduced what one of the consistent students and practitioners has to say on Hahnemann, his Organon, and medicine:.

Hahnemann was a student of medicine, even when he had not patients to practice on. In 1784, five years after his graduation, he taught surgery for surgeons, not for barbers, shepherds and executioners. He taught hygiene, fresh air, exercise, diversion, baths hot and cold, sixty years before the first bathtub appeared in America. Professor Baldinger, of Jena and Gottingen, in 1785,recommended Hahnemanns teaching as being “better than those give up to that time”.

Did Hahnemann make no medical observations as town physician of Dresden, as physician to the law courts, and as medical practitioner between 1785 and 1789 ? He was esteemed worthy of the acquaintance and friendship of the philologist Adelung, the anatomist Blumenbach, the chemist Lavoisier, all three pathfinders in their respective spheres of activity. Hahnemann did not leave medicine because he translated medical, pharmacal, chemical works. Not infrequently, part of the translated works consisted of original contributions of Hahnemann of more value than the parts translated.

His insistence on medical men preparing their own medicines, his wine test, his work on arsenical poisoning, his arsenical test, all these fall into this time, three years before Klockenbring comes into the pale of the asylum, and the work of Hahnemann speaks for itself as a work of medical importance with never ceasing interest on the part of Hahnemann in medical problems.

Who but a physician of the very first order could have made those undeniably valuable annotations to Hahnemanns translation of Cullens Materia Medica ? Would societies and academies of science have made Hahnemann an honorary member, as they did at this time, if he had been give to making “extravagant claims”? In 1790, he prepared his soluble mercury, an achievement in chemistry for medicine ; raised his voice against the customary methods of venesection and purgation and further debilitation of patients, a cry of profound medical conviction.

In 1792, he put to critical judgment the treatment of repeated venesection given Emperor Leopold, suffering from pneumonia, by three of Viennas foremost physicians, Lagusius, Storck and Schreiber ; Curt Sprenkel, the historian, does not record any disapproval of Hahnemann making “extravagant claims” ; and it was in that same year, 1792, that the Duke of Gotha placed a wing of his hunting lodge at Georgenthal at the disposal of Hahnemann for the use of an insane asylum.

That only Klockenbring entered the asylum, was not Hahnemanns fault, but the fault of the times. The general run of physicians, attendants, and people could not understand why Hahnemann would not treat an insane person as a beast of the jungle, that Hahnemann was then laying the foundation for successful medication of the insane, more than Pinel. All Hahnemanns subsequent writings show his increasing understanding of the unceasing emphasis on mental disease and symptoms and their removal by humane treatment and scientific medication.

Becker wrote of Hahnemann as the “well known physician” and advised people to see him. Schlichtegroll wrote of Hahnemann as “the celebrated Dr. Hahnemann, on whose knowledge as a physician,” in several inquires, “there was only one voice to be heard,” namely, “that nothing could be so desirable as to have such a penetrating physician for the treatment of the insane.” He wrote of Hahnemann as “der gelehrte Arzt,” the scholarly physician, the learned physician, who cured Klockenbring when “der verdeienstvolle Leibmedicus Wichmann in Hanover, in Verdindung mit mehreren anderen,” the meritorious physician Wichmann and several other physicians, could not cure the insane man.

Whoever has an eye to the facts cannot help but find that Hahnemanns moral as well as intellectual integrity is unassailable. He carried his moral principles to moral ends and his intellectual principles to intellectual ends. Nowhere does his intellectual integrity appear in such convincing light as in the Organon, which in 1810, he issued as the Organon der rationellen Heilkunde, Organon of the Science of Medicine, and in 1819, 1824, 1833, the second, third, fourth, and fifth editions, as Organon der Heilkunst, Organon of the Art of Medicine, Organon of the Healing Art. This last title appears also in the last, the sixth, edition, finished by Hahnemann before his death in 1843, and published by Dr. Haehl in German in 1921, and by Dr. Boericke in English in 1922.

What is Hahnemanns Organon of the science of medicine in 1810 and of the art of medicine after 1810 ? What is an organon anyway ? Organon is a Greek term. The term means a tool. In the history of science and letters, this term has been used by three men, Aristotle, Bacon, and Hahnemann. With Aristotle, logic was the organon, the tool, of reasoning. With Bacon, observation and experiment represented the novum organum, the new tool, of knowledge. With Hahnemann, homoeopathy is the organon, the tool, of medical science in 1810 and of medical art after 1810.

John Hutchinson