It is obvious that any enthusiast who would blindly embrace the foregoing doctrines without serious and deep investigation, and boldly apply the wild theory to practice, would at once throw open the flood-gates of absurdity, and lend his aid in destroying, if possible, with one fell swoop, the result of ages of mature study and experience. Hahnemann, to fertilize the fields of science, had recourse to inundation instead of wise and cautious irrigation; and the fury with which he and his rash disciples maintained their opinions materially tended to retard their progress. Truth needeth not violence; its own lustre will beam through surrounding darkness, without being dragged into light.
The objections to Hahnemann’s doctrines are glaring. The art of healing, from the dawn of science until the present day, has been more or less founded on the faculties of reasoning. We are taught, in the first instance, to observe carefully the phenomena of disease, and, by referring effects to probable causes, endeavour, however difficult the task, to trace their catenation. Many of these causes are perhaps sealed for ever in the inscrutable book of our destinies; yet, if we cannot obtain a knowledge of the origin of these disorders, still when we take into mature consideration the complication of all accidental circumstances, and from visible effects seek invisible relations, guided by our experience in anatomy, physiology, and the revelations of pathology, we may find this pursuit less difficult than it may be imagined. But the homœopathist despises and rejects as idle, all those collateral means of diving into nature’s arcana. He bids us dwell only upon evident symptoms, or, in other words, look to the effects alone, and cast away all thoughts of discovering their causes. Nothing can be more illogical than this argument; for certainly we can scarcely hope to remove effects without striking, as far as in our power lies, at their cause. To deny the existence of any specific affection because we cannot account for its origin, is absurd. As well might we reject the use of medicines known to possess specific properties, from our utter ignorance of their modus operandi. The exclusive consideration of symptoms would lead us into lamentable error, since the same symptoms are observable in various diseases. Similar pains, for instance, may be the symptoms of rheumatism, nephritic affections, and calculus; headaches may arise from inflammation, and from various and well-known sympathies with distant organs: yet, without seeking to ascertain these relations, the mechanical and empirical homœopathist will prescribe such medicines as are known to occasion pains in the loins, or headaches; only bearing in mind perceptible derangements, heedless of the phenomena of organization, the state of the secretions and excretions, the history, the rise and progress of the disorder, or the idiosyncrasy of the patient. The liver is diseased; the discovery is of no importance. We have only to attend to the pain extending up the clavicle and shoulder, or the uneasiness experienced in the right hypochondrium: the pulse, the respiration, the condition of the excretions, the temperature of the skin, the appearance of the tongue, are all regarded as minor considerations. It is not hepatitis that we are called upon to cure; it is to relieve a pain in the shoulder and in the hypochondrium, or a difficulty of lying on the left side.
No one will pretend to deny that our safest, perhaps our sole, guide in the study of disease is the group of symptoms, that become more and more perceptible during the course of our investigations. It was principally on the study of symptoms that the most learned practitioners of every age and country grounded their diagnosis and their prognosis; but they never viewed them either singly, or in their complexity, as unconnected with the particular diseases to which they were not only essentially united, but from which they originated, and of the existence of which they were to be considered the diagnostic signs. Therefore did the ancients classify them as principal and accessory, univocal and equivocal, characteristic or common, as they afforded more or less information in our pathological deduction; and in that light they were weighed with greater or less application, as our judgment could only be formed by the attentive consideration of the phenomena of the organism in health and in disease.
But while the homœopathist’s attention is chiefly directed to the discovery of means that can enable him to produce symptoms analogous to those of the disorder, he seems to disregard the laws of sympathy, by which our organism appears to be ruled; a mysterious agency which can only be ascertained by observation and experiment, when, to use the words of a distinguished writer,[37] “by the former we may be said to listen to nature, by the latter to interrogate her.” Health depends upon the due co-operation of all these associations; and one organ in the wonderful machinery cannot be deranged in its functions without influencing others, however distant and unconnected they may appear. In this co-ordination, these vital relations have been very properly divided into mechanical, functional, and sympathetic. Their study constitutes the groundwork of all rational induction. It is not by individual or complex symptoms that we can decide where the want of equilibrium is to be traced. Various have been the theories on this most important subject, and great have been the erroneous ideas dogmatically laid down. The illustrious Bichat himself erred when he maintained that sympathies were aberrations—morbid developments of our vital properties. Sympathies, on the contrary, may be considered as constant phenomena, essential and inseparable from our organism, whether in health or in sickness; and are, if I may be pardoned the expression, co-ordinated to co-operate with each other in their mechanical, their functional, and their sympathetic associations.
An incarcerated hernia causes hiccup, nausea, vomiting. Will the homœopathist tell us that we must seek in his catalogue of innumerable effects some substance which is known to produce similar symptoms? Surely the rupture must first call our attention. This example is adduced as referring to nearly every case in which it might be rashly attempted to separate causes from effects. The mammary glands are variously affected in uterine diseases; their impressions are reciprocal, yet the uterine affection must be the chief object of our solicitude. A peculiar pruritus is a symptom of calculus. Are we then to administer a homœopathic dose of cannabis, or any other medicine which may give rise to a similar sensation? It may be objected to this observation that these are purely surgical cases, in which we need not be guided by symptoms to discover causes; but it has too frequently happened that nausea and vomiting have been attended to, while the hernia was overlooked, until fatal accidents were manifested. Moreover, a diseased liver, a diseased spleen or kidney, would be just as perceptible as hernia or calculus, if these parts could be brought into view or contact.
It may be said that an erroneous notion of Hahnemann’s doctrines on this subject has been taken; it is therefore necessary to quote his own words:
“It may be easily conceived that the existence of a malady presupposes some alteration in the interior of the human organism; but our understanding can only lead us to suspect this alteration in a vague and deceitful manner, from the appearance of the morbid symptoms, the sole guide we can depend on except in surgical cases. The essence of the internal and invisible change is undiscoverable, nor have we any means of guarding against deceptive illusions.”[38]
“The invisible substance that has undergone a morbid alteration in the interior of the human body, and the perceptible changes, which are externally developed,—in other words, symptoms,—form by their union what is called disease; but the symptoms are the only points of the malady which are accessible to the physician, the sole indication whence he can derive any intuitive notion, and the principal objects with which he ought to become acquainted to effect a cure. From this incontestable truth there is nothing discoverable in disease beyond the totality of its symptoms to guide us in the selection of our curative means.”[39]
It is not to be supposed that an experienced physician, although a homœopathist, will rest satisfied with this study of symptomatic medicine, without endeavouring to attach these effects to some cause, however occult it may appear; but such a doctrine becomes pernicious, since it bids us close the only book of truth that can reveal our errors,—post mortem investigations. Surely, if a group of certain symptoms attend a disease which, when terminating fatally, shows disorganization in certain viscera, we are not only justifiable in giving to that disorganization a specific name in our scientific classification and categories, but in considering the symptoms of no other importance than as corroborative of those facts that morbid anatomy daily brings to light.
It is generally admitted that most nosologies are imperfect, and may occasionally lead the young practitioner into error. This is easily accounted for when we consider the Protean forms that the same disease assumes in different individuals; yet, without this classification, the science of medicine could not be studied. A certain arrangement is necessary to simplify all our pursuits in natural science, and to seek a variety we must know the order and the genus.