It is a matter worthy of remark, that, while the doctrines of homœopathy 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 homœopathists, 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 Eslan—in 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 Kœthen, 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 αλλος, different, and παθος, 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.”[31] And further,