OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC DOCTRINES.

Ir is a matter worthy of remark, that, while the doctrines of homeopathy have fixed the attention and become the study of many learned and experienced medical men in various parts of Europe, England is the only country where it has only been noticed to draw forth the most opprobrious invectives. It is certainly true that no one but an ardent proselyte of the visionary Hahnemann could for one moment become the advocate of all his absurd ideas; yet, while we reject his errors, great and important truths beam from the chaotic clouds that shroud his wanderings; and, however wild his theories may be, incontrovertible facts have been elicited from his apparently inefficacious practice.

Before I enter into an examination of the practical views of the homoeopathists, I shall give a brief sketch of their doctrines and of their founder.

Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meïssen in Saxony, on the 10th of April, 1755. His father was an humble porcelain manufacturer. The first rudiments of education that young Hahnemann received were gratuitous; and his master, pleased with the progress of his ambitious but needy scholar, strongly urged him to repair to Leipzig, where, at the age of twenty, he arrived, with exactly the same number of crowns in his pocket as he numbered years. At this university he zealously pursued his favourite studies of the natural sciences, supporting himself by translating French works, and giving lessons; and finally he graduated in the university of Eslanin 1779.

It was during his arduous studies that Hahnemann was struck with the conflicting systems and the deplorable controversies which for centuries divided in turn the medical schools of Europe, and were triumphant or overthrown by scholastic revolutions; each doctrine being doomed to obscurity and oblivion in the ratio of its ephemeral splendour.

The result of his reflections and experiments was the system of homœopathy. Its novelty, its apparent absurdity, soon exposed him not only to opposition, but to violent persecution. As is usual in all cases of oppression, whether justly or unjustly resorted to, proselytes as furious and as fanatical as his persecutors joined their chief. Despite the sanatary regulations of Saxony, which prohibited physicians from dispensing their medicines, Hahnemann prepared and supplied his homœopathic remedies; and, being expelled from Leipzig, sought a refuge at Kathen, where, exasperated by the harsh treatment he had experienced, he fulminated his anathema on all past and present systems of medicine with no small degree of furious resentment, pronouncing his doctrine to be stamped with the seal of infallibility, and denouncing all others as the aberrations of ignorance and error, or the speculations of imposture and fraud.

As might have been expected, few of his opponents thought it worth their while to study his system calmly and dispassionately; nor, indeed, was such an application necessary, for his doctrines needed no deep investigation on the part of his foes, so fraught were they with apparent errors and false deductions, not only from his own pretended experience, but the experience of ages. Finding that he could not enjoy a despotic sway over the schools, he was resolved at any rate to seek the palm of martyrdom, and had recourse to such violence in words and actions, that many of his enemies maintained he was a more fitting subject for a lunatic asylum than the soi-disant founder of a rational doctrine; for he and his fanatical disciples set all ratiocination at nought, considering his dixit as a fiat of condemnation passed on all who dared to doubt his infallibility, although at different periods their oracle was obliged to retract many erroneous assertions and contradict fallacious statements.

In the short view of his doctrines which I am about to give, these fallacies will become evident.

Hahnemann had observed in his studies and hospital practice that the prevalent systems of medicine were founded on the rational principle of combating effects by striking at morbid causes. Physicians sometimes endeavoured to attain this desirable end by producing in the system an artificial action differing from the nature of the malady, and founded their practice on the scholastic axiom of contraria contrariis curantur; at other times they raised or depressed the vital

energies according to the prevalence of excitement or debility, or modified the character of the disease by revulsion and derivation, a practice which received the name of antagonistic, or allopathic,-a term used by Hahnemann in contradistinction to homœopathy, and derived from aos, different, and Tados, affection.

In his therapeutic pursuits Hahnemann had been forcibly struck with the long-acknowledged fact that medicinal substances supposed to possess a certain specific property in the treatment of diseases, were known in the healthy subject to produce phenomena bearing a close analogy to the symptoms of those identical diseases. Thus, mercurial preparations occasioned symptoms of syphilis, sulphur produced cutaneous irritation, and, in some instances, the exhibition of cinchona had been known to bring on febrile intermissions. In various works he found these observations established. For instance, amongst many others, he found in the publications of Beddoes, Scott, Blair, and various writers, that nitric acid, which was known to produce ptyalism, relieved salivation and ulceration in the mouth. Arsenic, which, according to Henreich, Knape, and Heinze, occasioned cancerous anomalies in healthy subjects, was stated by Fallopius, Bernharde, Roennow, and many other surgeons, to be efficacious in relieving, if not curing, similar disorders; preparations of copper were asserted by Tondi, Ramsay, Lazermi, and numerous practitioners, to have produced epileptic attacks; and Batty, Baumes, Cullen, Duncan, and several experienced medical practitioners, recommended similar remedies in epilepsy. In short, the illustrations of the power inherent in certain substances to produce accidents analogous to the symptoms of the various diseases in the treatment of which they had proved efficacious, induced Hahnemann to consider whether a treatment founded on similia similibus curantur might not be found more effectual than the former practice based upon the contraria contrariis. He was of opinion that no medicine was possessed of any curative property, but solely acted by its morbific power of producing a disordered condition in the system; and on this and other principles, which we shall shortly notice, he asserts that nature does not possess any curative power, totally denying the vis medicatrix of the schools. He further maintained, that there does not exist any specific malady; but that which we consider to be a disease is nothing but a complexity of symptoms, and that a

cure can only be effected when these complex symptoms are made to disappear.

Impressed with these ideas, he and his disciples proceeded to try various medicinal substances upon themselves and others when in health, and, carefully recording the symptoms which these medicines produced, they drew up a statement of their various powers, that they might be afterwards resorted to, to relieve the same symptoms in a morbid state. Grounding this practice on the principle (in many instances correct) that two similar diseases cannot coexist, they conceived that if, to counteract a natural malady, one can produce by any medication an artificial derangement of the same nature, the artificial disorder will overcome the natural disease, and a radical cure be obtained. To explain more distinctly this idea, I shall quote the author's words.

"The curative power of medicines is thus founded on the property they possess to give rise to symptoms similar to those of the disease, but of a more intense power. Hence no disease can be overcome or cured in a certain, radical, rapid, and lasting manner, but through the means of a medicine capable of provoking a group of symptoms similar to those of the disease, and at the same time possessed of a superior energetic power."* And further,

"If two dissimilar maladies happen to be coexisting, possessed of an unequal force, or if the oldest disease is more energetic than the recent one, the latter will be expelled by the former. Thus, an individual labouring under a severe chronic disease will not be subject to the invasion of an autumnal dysentery, or any other slight epidemic. Larrey affirms that the districts of Egypt in which scurvy was prevalent were exempt from the plague. Jenner asserts that rachitis prevents the effect of vaccination; and Hildebrand assures us that phthysical patients never experience epidemic fevers unless of the most severe character."+

"If a recent affection, dissimilar to a more ancient one be more powerful than the latter, then will the progress of the latter be suspended until the malady is either cured or has been expended in its career, and then the old one will reappear."‡

"But the result is totally different when two similar diseases meet in the organism; that is to say, when a pre

*Organon, xxxii.

+ Op. cit. xxxi.

Ibid. xxxiii.

existing affection is complicated with one of the same nature, but possessed of more energy."*

"Two maladies resembling each other in their manifestation and their effects, that is to say, in the symptoms which they determine, mutually destroy each other, the strongest conquering the weakest."+

He further contends that the essential nature of every disease is unknown; that their existence is revealed by alterations and changes in the system perceptible to our senses, and constituting what are called symptoms, and it is the series of these symptoms which characterize the disease in its course and its development. According to his notions, the physician has only to follow and study the succession and the grouping of these symptoms; in short, the phases and the phenomena of diseases. Attack and destroy these symptoms, and you will have destroyed the malady.

All classification of diseases, and their various denominations, he therefore deemed absurd, as, according to his doctrines, no one disease resembles another; so various were their modifications, that, with few exceptions, it was idle to give them a particular name, since disease was simply a derangement in our organization manifested by peculiar symptoms.

We are also, according to Hahnemann, ignorant of the essential properties of medicines, and can only observe and record their effects by experimental observation. Like diseases, they also produce a derangement in our organism, manifested by peculiar symptoms, their sole action consisting in developing specific diseases.

In conformity with these notions, to cure disease we have only to produce a similar affection; the primitive one would then give way to the secondary affection artificially produced, and in time the artificial one would cease to exist when the means that produced it were no longer brought into action.

Homœopathic medicines, he maintained, have the property of acting in a direct manner upon the affected part of the system; and this is proved when the disease, and the medicine given to relieve it, produce similar morbid manifestations and he further contended that our vital organism was

:

* Op. cit. xxxviii.

+ Organon, xl. This will be found to be the case in all diseases that are dissimilar; the stronger suspends the weaker, except n case of complication, which is a rare occurrence in acute diseases, but they never cure each other reciprocally.