Hahnemann early emancipated himself from the dominion of the complex prescription: but it cost even him severe struggle. It was considered then the highest mark of proficiency to combine a large number of ingredients in the same prescription arranging them artistically under the imposing names of basis or principal, adjuvans, corrigens, dirigens and the rest,- which were supposed to “assist,” “correct” and “direct ” the action of the ingredient in chief. When Hahnemann had the courage to prescribe only one thing at a time, he could not help feeling a little ashamed of the mean opinion the apothecaries were sure to form of him, the apothecaries who make up the prescriptions being paid in proportion to their length. The opinion of the apothecaries with regard to regard to Hahnemann did not improve with time.
In 1797, the year following that in which his epoch-making “Essay on a New Principal” was published, Hahnemann contributed another notable paper to Hufeland’s Journal, entitled. Are the obstacles to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine insurmountable? In this article he delivers himself as follows:-
“Who knows whether the adjuvans or the corrigens may not act as basis in the complex prescription, or whether the excipiens does not give a entirely different action to the whole? Does the chief ingredient, if it be the right one, require an adjuvans? does not the idea that it requires assistance reflect severely on its suitability, or should a dirigens also be necessary? I thought I would complete the motley list, and thereby satisfy the requirement of the schools.
“The more complex our prescriptions are the darker is the condition of therapeutics…. How can we complain of the obscurity of our art when we ourselves render it obscure and intricate?”, p.78.
In the same year in which he first publicly attacked blood- letting, 1792, Hahnemann showed his courage i departing from the evil traditions of his profession in another matter of great importance. In his day, and long after his day, it was the custom to treat lunatics as if they had been wild beasts. Hahnemann protested against the wickedness of this practice, d his cure of the Hanoverian Chancellor Klockenbring by gentle means is a matter of European history.
“I never allow an insane person,” say Hahnemann, “to be punished either by blows or any other kind of corporal chastisement, because there is no punishment where there is no responsibility, and because these sufferers deserve only pity and are always rendered worse by such rough treatment and never improve” Ameke, p. 67. After his complete cure, Klockenbring, “Often with tears in his eyes,” showed Hahnemann “the marks of the blows and stripes his former keepers and employed to keep him in order”. Ameke, p.67.
Thus Hahnemann anticipated another of the improvements in medical practice fondly imagined to be a discovery of recent years and credited o Englishmen. All honour to the English doctor for the work they did, and the reform they brought about; but the originality is not theirs-it belongs to Hahnemann.
CONSTRUCTIVE AND DEFENSIVE Hahnemann did not spend all his powers in fighting the abuses of his time. All the while, he was assiduously working out his idea, testing the action of medicines on his own healths body, and building up his system on the solid ground of his observed results. In the year, 1810, he had so far perfected his system that he was able to publish his celebrated Organon, in which he set forth in detail what he had briefly sketched in his Essay on a New Principle, fourteen years before..
In the following year he applied to the University of Leipzig for permission to teach medicine not very well disposed to entertain his request, but they said that if he would write a thesis, and defend it before them, his request should be granted. Hahnemann readily complied, sending in his Helleborism of the Ancients, a work of such extreme merit that his censors could not find in it a single, fault, and granted him the licence to teach forthwith. For eight years he continued thus to each and to practise, aided now by an enthusiastic band of disciples, and supported by a large section of the public. But there was a growing feeling of jealousy among his professional brethren, and the apothecaries came to like him less and less. For Hahnemann had discovered that besides the great advantage there was in giving only one drug at a time-a very grave sin of itself in an apothecary’s eye-there was no need to give a poisonous dose of even that one drug in order to obtain its curative effects. This was altogether too much for the equanimity of the apothecaries. Their craft was in danger. One medicine at a time, and not much of that!-how was a poor apothecary to live? On the principal of securing the greatest good to the greatest number-apothecaries being many and Hahnemann only one-they determine to extinguish Hahnemann. There was a law in Germany forbidding a physician to make up his own prescriptions. This proved an admirable opportunity for the boycotting proclivities of the trade.
They refused in a body to dispense any prescription of Hahnemann’s, and when he dispensed his own medicines, even though he made no charge for them, they put the law in force against him, and so procured his banishment from Leipzig in the year, 1819. He was then in the sixty-fifth year of his age. After long and painful wanderings from state to state, he at last found an asylum in the little town of Coethen, under the aegis of the friendly Duke of Anhalt.
UNEXPECTED ALLIES.
When Hahnemann went into exile he left behind him enthusiastic disciples to carry on his work and develop his system. Hahnemann’s might be exiled, but homoeopathy was not extinguished. And homoeopathy had allies little reckoned on by its foes. Epidemics in their coursed fought for homoeopathy. Contagious fevers which swept off the patients of the old school doctors spared those of Hahnemann and his followers. Perhaps the most potent ally homoeopathy has ever possessed has been the dreaded cholera. It is often said that homoeopathy is all very well for children, and for mild diseases in adults; but no stretch of allopathic ingenuity can make of cholera a mild disease, or a disease peculiar to children. Yet is remains on the testimony of their own witnesses-allopathic doctors appointed under Government authority and prejudiced against the system of Hahnemann- that wherever homoeopathy and allopathy have been tried in epidemics of cholera side by side, the results of the homoeopathic treatment have proved immeasurably superior to those of the allopathic.
This is a fact which it remains for our opponents to explain; they cannot explain it away.
Hahnemann; when he left Leipzig, had already made his work’s foundation sure, and had rendered impregnable the house of his fame. Thirty-three years had passed over his head since we first found him at Dresden. The storm of the French revolution had burst and had passed. Napoleon had had his day and had fallen from his high estate. Amidst all the political turmoil of his time, and the storms of his own life, Hahnemann had accomplished a work which was destined to bring about a revolution fraught with the happiest consequences not to Europe only, but to the whole civilised world.
