Work


A detailed note on the work of Dr. Hahnemann done to establish the Homeopathy system of medicine. Dr. Hahnemann’s dissatisfaction towards the venesection….


CLEANSING THE AUGEAN STABLE.

Hahnemann’s work was of a threefold kind. He had first to clear his ground of the rubbish of ages, taking care to preserve everything of value that lay concealed among the heaps; he had to build a new edifice on the ground he cleared; and all the time he had to defend his work and himself against the attacks of his numberless foes the blind lovers of darkness, the pharisaic stickers of the old order, right or wrong, for, as there were those in the days of plato who would rather be in error with him than be right with any less authority; and as, in Harvey’s time, almost all his professional brethren declared that they would rather be wrong with Galen than be “circulators” with Harvey; so at the beginning of this boasted Nineteenth Century of ours-and I fear not at the beginning alone-the medical profession were almost unanimous in preferring to slay with Galen secundum artem- according to the most approved rules of their art-than to heal with the revolutionary Hahnemann. And verily they did slay secundum artem, as we shall presently see.

The one measure most relied on by the physicians of Hahnemann’s time in their endeavours to combat disease was blood- letting.

Next in importance to this came the administration of complex mixtures, the prescriptions for which were regarded as in themselves works of art to be compiled as carefully as a sonnet, almost as much for the admiration of awe-struck apothecaries as for any possible good the compounds might do to the patients. Hahnemann’s keen eye soon perceived the folly and the wrong of both of these fashionable measures. in 1791, translation of “Monro’s Materia Medica,” Vol.II P.275. Ameke P. 76.just when the idea of homoeopathy had taken possession of his mind, we find him writing of blistering and bleeding in this philosophical strain:- “It is the common delusion that the sores produced by vesicating agents only remove the morbid fluids. When we consider that the mass of the blood during its circulation is of uniform composition through out, that the blood vessels give off no great variety o matter under otherwise identical conditions; no rational physiologist will be able to conceive how a vesicating agent can select, collect and remove only the injurious part of the humours. In fact the blister under the plaster is only filled with a part of the common blood when it is drawn from a vein. But according to the insane idea at these short-sighted doctors, venesection, too, draws off the bed blood only, ad continued purging only evacuates the depraved humours. It is terrible to contemplate the mischief which these universally held foolish ideas have caused.”

In the following year, 1792, Hahnemann’s sentiments on this question brought him for the first time into open conflict with his professional brethren. He alone of all men had the courage to criticise publicly the medical treatment of the Emperor Leopold II. of Austria, who died secundum artem, in this way.-

“The monarch was on the 28th of February attacked with Rheumatic Fever”,-This is the report of Lagusius, the Physician in Ordinary to the Emperor, with a running commentary (in the brackets) by Hahnemann:- “and a chest affection (which of the numerous chest affections, very few of which are able to stand bleeding? Let us note that he dose not say pleurisy, which he would have done to excuse the copious venesections if he had been convinced that it was this affection.) and we immediately tried to mitigate the violence of the malady by bleeding and other needful remedies (Germany-Europe-has a right to ask; which?) On the 29th the fever increased (after the bleeding! and yet) three more venesections were effected, where upon some (other reports say distinctly-no) improvement followed, but the ensuing nigh was very restless and weakened the monarch (just think! it was the night and not the four bleedings which so weakened the monarch, and her Lagusius was able to assert this positively), who on the last of March began to vomit with violent retching and threw up all he took (nevertheless his doctors left him, so that no one was present at his death, and indeed after this, one of them pronounced him out of danger).

At 3.;30 in the afternoon he expired, while vomiting, in the presence of the Express.” Ameke, pp. 88, 89.

Commenting on he case elsewhere Hahnemann said: “His physician, Lagusius, observed high fever and swelling of the abdomen early on February 28th; he combated the malady by venesection, and as this produced no amelioration, three more venesections were performed without relief. Science must ask why a second venesection was ordered when the first had produced no amelioration, three more venesection, and as this produced no amelioration, three more venesections were performed without relief. Science must ask why a second venesection was ordered when the first had produced no amelioration. How could he order a third; and, good Heavens! how a fourth, when there had been, no amelioration after the preceding ones? How could he tap the vital fluid four times in twenty-four hours, always without relief, from a debilitated man who had been worn out by anxiety of mind and long continued diarrhoea? Science is against!” Ameke, p. 88.

But bleeding was not to be abolished at one blow Hahnemann strove against the practice with all his might and for years the neglect of bleeding continued to be the chief sin of homoeopathy in the eyes and mouths of its opponents. But except in the practice of Hahnemann and his followers `bleeding continued to be the favourite method of treatment; and it was only when he immeasurably and incontestably superior statistics of homoeopathic over the ordinary treatment emboldened some practitioners of th unreformed faith to leave their patients without any medical treatment at all that they began to perceive the truth of Hahnemann’s teaching-that bleeding was slaying.

When they left their patients to Nature their death-rate fell in an amazing way, though it still remained distinctly higher than that of homoeopathists. It is now the fashion to describe the discontinuance of blood-letting to certain experiments on animals performed by Marshal Hall. This is a very pretty story, and quite good enough for those who wish to believe anything rather then the truth of their indebtedness to Hahnemann; but the wise know well that great reforms are not brought about in that way. Another ingenious device for robbing Hahnemann of his credit due is the theory advanced by some that diseases have changed their type since his time, ad that the Sangrado bleeders of the past were quite right in their bleedings, and that Hahnemann was quite wrong in denouncing them. this is another pretty story; but the race of blood-letters is not yet entirely;y extinct, and the results the modern Sangrados have to show bear a striking resemblance to those of their fore-runners, notwithstanding the supposed “change of type” in disease. Witness the case of Count Cavour. On May 29th, 1891, Cavour as taken ill, in the midst of his parliamentary duties, with chills, followed, after some hours, by pains in the bowels and vomiting. He was bled the same night, and again the next day both morning and evening. On the Ist of June he was again twice bled.

On the 2nd of June the wound in the arm re-opened during on effort, and further bleeding took plant. On his doctors attempting to bleed him again (this time at the request of Cavour himself, who thought that nothing else could relieve him of his sufferings, which were really the result of the bleedings he had already been subjected to) no blood would flow. Quinine was then given. Cavour asked that it might be given in pills instead of in solution because he knew from experience that the solution would make him vomit. The doctors would not consent to this, and violent sickness ensued. The next day he was cupped and blistered, but the blisters could not be made to rise. King Victor Emmanuel, who visited the minister proposed to his doctors that they should open a vein in his neck. This proposal they were saved further trouble by the death of the patient. Cavour died suffering from unquenchable thirst. Ameke.p.261 It may fairly be said that Cavour resisted the treatment he received better than the Emperor Leopold, although the illness of the latter occurred before the supposed “change of type: of disease had been discovered. the proposal of Victor Emmanuel to still further deplete the already bloodless man met with a singular nemesis when some years later within the memory of us all, he himself perished-secundum artem-of his sanguinary doctors.

These historic examples will serve to show how firmly rooted in the medical mind was the idea that blood-letting was necessary thing, an how much courage it demanded on Hahnemann’s part to depart from the received tradition. His attitude on this question caused him to be denounced as a murder-for denying his patients the “benefits” of blood-letting!-throughout the medical world, and cost him the friendship of some of the ablest physicians of the day who had Previously been on terms of the closest intimacy with him.

John Henry Clarke
John Henry Clarke MD (1853 – November 24, 1931 was a prominent English classical homeopath. Dr. Clarke was a busy practitioner. As a physician he not only had his own clinic in Piccadilly, London, but he also was a consultant at the London Homeopathic Hospital and researched into new remedies — nosodes. For many years, he was the editor of The Homeopathic World. He wrote many books, his best known were Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica and Repertory of Materia Medica