Incidentally Crowe has repeated Hahnemanns observations, on the value of smaller and smaller doses; in his earlier work, he advised the use of doses containing millions of bacteria now he recommends the employment of such minute doses as a 100 bacteria.
But Hahnemanns work on micro-doses has been further confirmed by workers in the State Laboratories in Leningrad. There Dr. Persson has shown that mercury in potencies of 115 dilution, that is to say 10 to the power of 115 had the power of activating the enzyme amylase. Person repeated these experiments with many homoeopathic remedies on various ferments and found that many remedies has the power of activating various enzymes in dilutions up to 10-60.
This classical research demonstrates that various drugs in dilutions which we might term ultra-atomic, have the power of influencing the activity of the various enzymes or ferments, which constitute the basis of practically every vital process in the living cell.
So far I have demonstrated that Hahnemanns intuitive genius has forseen three most important developments in modern medicine:.
(1) That cure depends on the stimulation of the bodys natural defence mechanisms rather than by the artificial sterilisation.
(2) That successfully to stimulate the bodys natural forces, it is necessary to study each individual constitution rather than to treat a so-called disease.
(3) That such stimulation involves the use of drugs in micro- doses.
We have just celebrated the centenary of Faraday. Hahnemann was the Faraday of Medicine. Indeed, the two men had much in common. Hahnemann has often been called a quack, though he was a qualified man; Faraday had no degrees, from an academic point of view he was a quack. Both men had broad views as to the unity of natural forms; and in both men, these views were held with such conviction, that they were driven to investigation. Faraday said, “Without experiment, I am nothing.” We can imagine Hahnemann saying the same words. When one considers the enormous number of experiments involved in Hahnemanns provings, as published in his works, on “Materia Medica” and “Chronic Diseases,” we can but wonder at the energy which compelled Hahnemann to put his intuitions to the practical test.
I have no time to tell you, how Hahnemanns practice in many other branches of medicine foreshadowed modern therapy. This will you learn from others much better qualified than myself. As Sir Basil Blackett has written:.
“Again and again in human history, generation after generation has been content to go on using the most clumsy and indifferent means to serve necessary ends, while there was waiting for mankind round the corner as it were some utterly simple device, which once discovered made all previous methods appear inconceivably and ridiculously laborious and uncivilised.”
I claim for Hahnemann that his discoveries have been too long kept round the corner. I hope this introductory lecture has served to stimulate your interests in this teaching centre, the only teaching centre of Homoeopathy in this country for its establishment we are indebted to the generosity of believes in homoeopathy. The funds are vested in the Honeyman Gillespie. Trust, the Compton Burnett Bequest, the Sir Henry Tyler Scholarship Fund and the Tutorial Fund of the Hospital. Each of these concerns itself with part of the subject and together supply all that is necessary to enable any enquiring medical practitioner to equip himself for the practice of homoeopathy.
Finally I must tender my thanks to the Council of the B.H.A. for asking me to open the Session. Coming from the Wild West, I appreciate the honour all the more, and trust that those medical men and women in my audience have been sufficiently interested to study further the fascinating possibilities of homoeopathy.
