Hahneman has obtained special favor with the refined and learned and wealthy; while Thompson has been for the most part the favorite with those of common minds and limited information.
There is one particular in which the two systems differ very widely. Though it cannot be said of Thompsonism, that it has never cured anybody, for it may chance to cure like anything else; yet, in its general influence upon the medical practice of the community, it has been an unmitigated evil. Its influence has been to give currency to the over-dosing, which has been so popular, and so destructive to health and life. But Homœopathy, on the contrary, is doing a good work in helping to destroy the undue reliance upon positive medication, of which I have spoken in the chapter on Popular Errors, as being quite prevalent in the medical profession, and exceedingly so in the community at large. And when Homœopathy shall have passed by, as pass it will, like other delusions before it, I believe it will be seen, that Hahneman had a vocation to fill, of which he never dreamed, and that he has unwittingly done more good than harm to the permanent interests of medical science.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] It may be proper to state at the outset, that the author has himself suffered no encroachments from Homœopathy, and so has no personal feelings to gratify in attacking it. It has not seemed to find, for some reason, a congenial soil among the hills and rocks of Norwich. Two Homœopathic physicians, (one of them a man of good education, and with favorable adventitious circumstances) have tried to get a foothold among us, but have failed. The author has many friends and acquaintances who are inclined to Homœopathy, some of whom have their little boxes of medicines, and swallow globules, and administer them to others. He is, however, on the best possible terms with them; and Homœopathy is, in his intercourse with them, more a subject for agreeable pleasantry, than for warm or even grave discussion.
[15] Dynamic is a word of Greek derivation, meaning simply powerful. Hahneman’s ‘dynamic power’ then, learned as it sounds to vulgar ears, in plain English, is powerful power. It reminds me of a patient, who in her fondness for expletives always spoke of her weakness as a debilitated weakness.
Hahneman seems to have been fond of words derived from the Greek, and those, too, of no Homœopathic size. Hence such words as Allopath, Homœopath, Heterogeneity, Pharmaco-dynamics, &c.
[16] The discoverer of this fact is certainly a great benefactor to his race—what multitudes may be saved by Sabadilla from a drunkard’s grave!
[17] The inconsistency of Homœopathists in using medicines in Allopathic doses is sometimes of the most barefaced character. An instance of this kind I lately met with in a New York paper. It seems that the Homœopathic physicians in that city appointed a committee to draw up some directions, to be given to the citizens for the prevention and treatment of Cholera. The directions are all quite consistent till you come to the 12th which reads thus: “If the diarrhœa should become profuse (with or without pain, and vomiting,) the discharges being watery and whitish, and the strength rapidly failing, take five drops of spirits of Camphor every half hour until it is effectually stopped. Should these symptoms become very severe, three drops of Camphor may be administered every five minutes.” In this direction they make a complete leap from Homœopathy over to Allopathy. In the first eleven directions they adhere most strictly to the Hahnemanic attenuations and triturations. But these, you will observe, respect those only who are threatened, or imagine themselves to be threatened, with cholera. It is well enough to amuse such with the ‘third attenuation’ of Cuprum or Veratrum. But in the twelfth direction, which is for those who are actually attacked with the disease, the attenuations and triturations are forgotten; for it now gets to be a serious business, and the tiny doses will not do. Three drops of Spirits of Camphor every five minutes!!! If the patient should be dosed at this rate, for twenty-four hours, he would take nearly two ounces of spirit of Camphor. The whole Homœopathic committee could not use up this quantity in a twelvemonth in all their extensive practice, if they should give it strictly on Hahnemanic principles.
[18] In the Domestic Physician, intended as a guide for families who practice Homœopathy, this same Dr. Hering, who has adorned the book with an engraving of himself represented as learnedly poring over some work, (I presume one of that same 15 octavo volumes,) thus discourses of physicians, under the head of Effects of Mercury. “This is the universal elixir of the quacks in all diseases—who, whilst they pretend to restore their patients to health, destroy their constitution. They administer it as calomel in powders, or dissolved as corrosive sublimate, or in pills—those abominable blue pills.” And then, “that no one may be deceived, at least not those for whom a physician prescribes,” he goes on to give the different Latin names of these preparations of mercury, as they are written in the prescriptions of physicians, or quacks, as he so modestly calls them: This is a little impudent in one who prescribes as remedies, and in this very book, two preparations of mercury, and one of them the most powerful of all, corrosive sublimate, made more powerful too, according to his theory, by the ‘dynamic power’ imparted to it by Homœopathic subdivision and trituration.
[19] It is proper to remark here, that some, who at first adopted Homœopathy from mere pecuniary considerations, may afterwards have come to a full belief in it. For if, previous to their adoption of this practice, they were undiscriminating over-dosers, as most of those physicians who have turned Homœopathists once were, they find themselves actually more successful in the treatment of disease than they were before their conversion. This is owing only to the discontinuance of their over-dosing, but they of course refer it to the “dynamic power” of their globules.