ORGANON
SPECIFIC HOMEOPATHY;
OR,
AN INDUCTIVE EXPOSITION
OF THE
principle   ~f the  blmeu pat4ir  jeaiing  art,
ADDRESSED TO
PHYSICIANS AND INTELLIGENT LAYMEN.
BY
CHARLES J. HEMPEL, M. D.
Fellow and Corresponding Member of the Homoopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania; Honorary Member
of the Hahnenmann Society of London, &c. &c.
PHILADELPHIA:
PUBLISHED BY RADEMACHER & SHEEK, 239 ARCH STREET.
NEW YORK:-WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY.
ST. LOUIS:-J. G. WESSELH(EFT, 79 MARKET STREET.
185 4.



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, by
RADEMACHER & SHEEK,
In the Office of the Clerk of the District Court of the United States,
in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
KING & B VIRD, PRINTEPS, SANXO590  STREET, PHILADELPHIA.



INTRODUCTION.
Two principles make up the structure of
universal order. We meet them  in every department of knowledge, in every form of art,
either in a state of antagonism  or harmony.
They are variously named in the various spheres
of thought and observation; duty and right,
passion and reason, progress and conservatism,
represent respectively the same principles in
different orders of ideas. Whenever these principles are fully and freely united, a state of
truth, or, at any rate, the highest approximation
to truth that it is possible for finite minds to
attain, is realized in that particular instance.
Men's minds are constantly, although often
unconsciously, gravitating toward such a union.
Even those who oppose it, do so in most cases
for the sake, and in the name of, what they
believe to be truth.   Some oppose it from
motives of sordid interest, others from selfish
ambition, and malicious envy or jealousy; but



INTRODUCTION.                5
man in the love and defence of error. To establish the science of astronomy upon a basis of
truth, its leaders had to bid defiance to the
boundless powers of the Church. To substitute
any actual truth in the place of a sensual illusion in any science or art, was a task that could
only be accomplished by means of unwearying
efforts, and a self-sacrificing devotion. In medicine likewise, all the first generalizations of the
incipient science were enunciations of sensual perceptions. Because the arteries were found empty
after death, it was supposed that they never
contained any thing but air; hence the name
artery, which has been preserved up to this day,
although it embodies an essential falsehood;
for its meaning  is "air-containing vessel,"
from the Greek words (aer) air and terein (to
hold or contain); and yet we know, since the
magnificent discoveries of Harvey, that these
vessels, so far from containing air, are, on the
contrary, canals through which the blood circulates with undeviating regularity. Even in the
names which have been assigned to diseases,
the sensual perception of the pathological phenomena has been taken as the guiding or determining principle of nomenclature. On beholding
a state of inflammatory fever, with a full and



INTRODUCTION.
by the mechanical operation of an emetic, but
that it should be effected by restoring the secretory action of the liver to its normal condition, a
mode of treatment which has as little to do
with the mechanical irritation of the stomach,
by means of an emetic, as the mechanical irritation of the tongue  by pepper or mustard
would have to do with the cure of ophthalmia.
This tendency to start in the development
of science from a sensual basis, prevails in all
the varied forms of intellectual life, not only in
science, but likewise in art, in government,
education, social institutions, in the organization of the church. It is not till the human
mind has struggled  long  and hard, that it
succeeds in divesting itself from the bondage of
sensual illusions, and from the equally crushing
and paralysing bondage of traditional authority;
that it ceases to identify truth, be it in science,
religion, or art, with the form  under which it
was announced by its first discoverer; and that
it dares to, and finally considers it its duty and
legitimate right to, penetrate and explore the
realm  of truth, independently of established
formulas, theories or methods.
The followers of Hahnemann have exhibited
the same child-like faith in the words of their



10            INTRODUCTION.
reasoning, or ly the unimpeachable evidence
of facts, succeeds in making converts to his
system.  His followers accept his statements
as infallible testimony; the words of the master
are looked upon as a sacred record, and all his
technicalities of style, and his peculiar modes
of reasoning,-instead of being looked upon as
changeable manifestations of the finite understanding,-are set down as principles which
admit of no improvement, and, Minerva-like,
started out of the brain of their discoverer in
all the fulness of their truth and glory. This
species of fanaticism is decidedly out of place
in the present age; it is particularly condemnable in matters of science, and, upon a closer
examination of the scientific attainments of
those who indulge in it, it will be found that
they constitute a set of money-making, loudmouthed, impertinent  drones, or  ambitious
starvelings in the world of ideas.  By means
of worldly tact and rhetorical cunning, they may
succeed in obtaining for a season a flashy popularity in uninformed circles, but what is their
unavoidable fate?  Crushed by the oblivion of
history and the contempt of reason, they are
doomed to disappear before the memory of
those bold and honest friends of science, who



INTRODUCTION.               11
had dared to free the divine offspring from the
fetters of human authority, and to put humanity
in possession of the universal, unsullied truth.
For years past it has been my opinion, that
the existing practice of homoeopathy did not,
by any means, realise its claims to the character
of a clear, positive, and certain science; that the
homoeopathic Materia Medica is filled with a
number of unreliable, and, therefore, useless
symptoms; that a number of substances have
been introduced into the Materia Medica which
are not, properly speaking, drugs, and cannot,
therefore, be treated as remedial agents in the
common acceptation of the term; and that the
high purposes of our art, and the interests of
our patients require a simplification of the
materials with which the homoeopathic physician has been  obliged to work heretofore.
Homoeopathic physicians who treat diseases
strictly by the book, and, as they suppose, in
accordance with the symptoms, use half a dozen
or even a dozen medicines, where other homoeopathic physicians, who have fully mastered the
spirit as well as the letter of their doctrine, will
achieve the same results with one or two medicines only, in much less time, and in a much more
thorough, safe, and agreeable manner. And this



12           INTRODUCTION.
simplification may extend over the treatment
of almost every disease which is spoken of in
the books; so that from  thirty-five to forty
remedies seem amply sufficient to satisfy all the
demands of a truly rational, homoeopathic treatment. It is not my intention to discourage the
student of homoeopathy from acquiring a perfect
knowledge of the Materia Medica of our School;
far from it. It is a great shame that the primary
sources of our art, the great and immortal works
of the founder of homoeopathy, and more particularly his Materia Medica Pura and his Chronic
Diseases, together with the provings belonging
thereto, should not be studied more zealously
than they are. It is a laborious and fatiguing
study, and a good deal of ingenuity and pathological science are required, to appropriate
the immense number of symptoms which are
detailed in those works, to one's reason and
experience in such a manner that they shall
become  trustworthy, useful, and  necessary
guides in the treatment of disease. We ought
not to forget that these noble works are by far
the best part of our art; that our most brilliant
cures are achieved with the drugs which were
originally proved by Hahnemann and his first
disciples; that his own provings are perfectly



INTRODUCTION.              13
reliable, and that it is a most useful exercise
for the mind of the student to compare the
drug-symptoms as arranged by Hahnemann,
with the phenomena of disease as described in
the works of such men as Hufeland, Schoenlein, Watson, Canstatt, and many others, and
to establish a perfect union between these two
parallel orders of facts upon the permanent and
incontrovertible basis of our physiological and
pathological sciences. But while the student
of homoeopathy is engaged in this interesting
business, which is, indeed, the business of a
life-time, it is desirable that the benefits of
homoeopathy should be rendered accessible to
him, and, indeed, to all who wish to avail
themselves of the great blessings of our art;
and it is to accomplish this end that I have
embodied the results of my own investigations
and experience in the present work, which may
seem novel and startling to those who are in
the habit of blindly and thoughtlessly following the beaten track, but which cannot fail to
commend itself to all the enlightened friends
of medical science, and more particularly to the
honest adherents of our School, by its intrinsic
truthfulness of purpose, and earnestness of reasoning. My great aim is to benefit the sick;



14            INTRODUCTION.
to popularise the homoeopathic treatment by
reducing it to simpler, more accurate, more
positive principles; to free the homoeopathic
Materia Medica of a large quantity of useless
and cumbersome rubbish, and to aid, as far as
lies in my power, toward the superior usefulness
of medicine, both as a science and an art. I
doubt not that all such efforts will be ultimately
crowned with success.
It must not be supposed that I am alone in
my condemnation of that senseless agglomeration of pretended  symptoms which  a few
superficial, conceited, and self-styled leaders
of the Homoeopathic school are constantly
engaged, with a sort of frenzy, in conjuring up
in their deluded and intoxicated imaginations,
and crowding into the homoeopathic Materia
Medica, to the detriment of our art, and to the
great annoyance of all conscientious and devoted
practitioners. Hahnemann himself was just as
much opposed to this unprincipled symptomhunting mania, as any modern reformer of
homoeopathy. In a note to the provings of
Alumina, page 35, in the second volume of the
Chronic Diseases, he expresses himself as follows: " It is only with two letters, N-g., that
Doctors Hartlaub and Trinks designate a man



INTRODUCTION.              15
who furnished the greater number of symptoms
for their Annals. His symptoms are frequently
described with a careless and ambiguous prolixity. I have endeavored to extract such of
them as seemed to me to be possessed of practical value, taking it of course, for granted, that
he had acted as a conscientious and discreet
observer." It makes very little difference, however, whether the prover's name was written in
full, or whether only his initials were given.
Hartlaub and Trinks were responsible for the
prover's, name and honesty, and Hahnemann's
criticism applies not only to Alumina and most
of the other antipsorics, but to most of those
provings which were not instituted either by
himself or under his personal supervision and
direction. No more emphatic condemnation of
the practices of unprincipled provers of drugsGod save the mark!-than is contained in this
short rebuke from the master, could be uttered.
And coming as it does, from Hahnemann, who
is justly regarded as our highest authority in all
such matters, it ought to serve as a warning to
those deluded and vain-glorious jokers who pride
themselves in parading before the world thousands of illusory symptoms, that have not the
least practical value, and leave the physician, if



16            INTRODUCTION.
he means to avail himself of the drug at all, no
other alternative than to use it empirically in
the few cases to which it seems adapted. Of
what earthly use would be the provings of Lachesis, if this poison could not be used empirically? or Fluoric acid? or Glonoine? or Millefolium? or some of our boasted antipsorics, the
pathogenesis of which Hahnemann himself suspected  or condemned?  Who  cares to use
Alumina, Agaricus, Dulcamara, Magnesia sulphurica, Kali nitricum, Natrum, and a host of
other antipsoric remedies, in accordance with
their published symptoms?  If such remedies
are used at all, they are either used empirically
or in accordance with the indications which oldschool pathologists have furnished us.
I give this work to the public as an exposition, upon the basis of inductive reasoning, of
the principles of the specific homoeopathic
healing art. Homoeopathy is, indeed, not any
thing, except in so far as the remedies which it
recommends for particular diseases, are specifically related to them, and, therefore, endowed
with specific curative influences over the disease.
This term  "SPECIFIC IHOMEOPATIIY,"  may seem
startling to those who, glancing only at the
letter of our great text-book, the Organon of



INTRODUCTION.               17
Hahnemann, have failed to perceive the animus
of its teachings. In the 147th paragraph, Hahneman states with unmistakeable clearness, that
the remedy which is truly homoeopathic to the
disease, is the specific remedy in this particular
case. His words are, " Of all these medicines,
the one whose symptoms bear the greatest resemblance to the totality of those which characterize any particular natural disease, is the most
appropriate and certain homoeopathic remedy
that can be employed; IT IS THE SPECIFIC REMEDY
IN THIS CASE.  In other words, no other remedy
could, properly speaking, fulfil all the conditions
of a truly curative agent in this case, and a
cure could not, strictly speaking, be effected in
accordance with the highest demands of the
true healing art, which are to cure the patient
in the most expeditious, safe, and agreeable
manner.
Specific homoeopathic remedies do not necessarily achieve a cure in every case. Even specifics will fail of curing when the reactive energies of the organism are entirely destroyed; but
specific remedies accomplish a cure in every case
where a cure is possible, and much more speedily,
safely and thoroughly, than any other medicine
could do. A very common remedy for cough,
2



18            INTRODUCTION.
with titillation in the larynx, is Ipecacuanha,
and I have known homoeopathic physicians
who used it for weeks for such a trouble, without
any great benefit; but it is recommended in the
books, and therefore has to be used. But Ipecacuanha is not, by any means, the specific
remedy for this kind of cough; the specific
medicine cures it perfectly in a few days.  Or
take a case of chronic diarrhoea, with mucous
discharges.  A very common prescription for
such a condition of the bowels, and which is
used by a great many physicians, is Pulsatilla;
and they will give it again and again in the
same case, in stronger or weaker doses, without
doing the patient any good. Pulsatilla cures
some kinds of diarrhoea which come on suddenly, in consequence of some particular cause,
perhaps an indigestion or a cold; but even in
such cases, it is seldom the specific remedy. In
chronic diarrhoea it scarcely ever does any good,
and physicians who merely select it in accordance with the color, smell or consistence of the
alvine discharges, do not do their patients justice, and invariably fail of effecting a cure; if a
cure take place, it is certainly not the medicine
to which the patient is indebted for it.
The specific method of treatment leads to



INTRODUCTION.              19
legitimate doubts concerning the therapeutic
virtues of many drugs which have an immense
number of symptoms in our Materia Medica, and
yet do not seem to be adequately useful in practice. Some of these remedies, when testing
their therapeutic value by the specific method,
are found to be of very little, or at any rate, of
only a limited use in practice; among them we
may mention such remedies as Alumina, Natrum muriaticum, Agaricus, Carbo vegetabilis,
Lycopodium, Sulphuric and Nitric acid, the
north and south pole of the magnet, and a number of other drugs, more particularly among the
recent additions to our Materia Medica. I am
fully aware that cures are pretended to have been
effected with all these drugs; but I doubt the
correctness of many of these observations. Even
such boasted remedies as Sulphur, Antimonium,
Sepia, Calcarea and many others find their sphere
of action considerably narrowed down by the specific method. And this must be a great relief
to all thinking homoeopathic practitioners; for
what homoeopathic physician would have dared
to conduct the cure of a chronic case without
Sulphur, or of a scrofulous disease without
Calcarea? As the lancet and the leech had
become emphatically the antiphlogistica of the



20            INTRODUCTION.
Old School, so had Sulphur become the antipsoricum "par excellence," and Calcarea the antiscrofulous panacea of homoeopathy; and I am
very much afraid that both Sulphur and Calcarea, although they will not fare quite as
badly as the lancet and the leech, will be
found to have been in possession of truly royal
privileges, which the progress in rational medicine will compel them to forego. -Sulphur, Calcarea, Sepia, Acidum  nitricum, Acidum  sulphuricum, Lycopodium, Kali carbonicum, Kali
nitricum, and a large number of other drugs,
especially among the so-called antipsorics, have
now been in use for many years, some of them
twenty-five and thirty years, and yet, few of
their symptoms, comparatively speaking, have
ever been met with in practice, although these
medicines have been used by thousands of
homoeopathic physicians in every country, and
in millions of cases. What is the unavoidable
inference to be drawn from such facts? Do not
these facts go to show that a great many remedies contained in these immense lists of symptoms, are  either imaginary or that their
importance has, at any rate, been over-rated;
that the true, essential, positive, or, in one word,
specific sphere of action of a drug, is limited to



INTRODUCTION.              21
a very small number of symptoms, and that the
trifling ailments which are recorded in company
with its leading and essential effects, with the
most rigid dogmatism and pedantic importance,
have no further value than to give pre-eminence
to the really positive and essential symptoms,
and to enable an observing practitioner to determine the starting-point of the drug's action in
the organism, with scientific accuracy? It is
impossible to impress with too much emphasis
upon our provers the necessity of discriminating
between  the  symptoms which make their
appearance during the course of an experimentation. A great many of them do not belong
to the drug at all. And many others, although
belonging to the drug, yet do not point to any
distinct disease, and should simply be looked
upon as general indications of the non-homogeneity of the drug-action, and the essential principles of the normal organism. These symptoms
simply indicate, that the drug is a substance
which disagrees with the organism in the same
sense as certain otherwise perfectly healthy
articles of food do not agree with many persons,
and cause all sorts of ailments, sick-headaches,
cardialgia, colic, diarrhoea, nausea or vomiting,
etc. It would be wrong to suppose that these



22            INTRODUCTION.
same articles must, on this account, prove efficacious as remedial agents when such affections
occur to the same individuals from other causes.
My own experience, at least, does not warrant
any such general conclusions, although I am
willing to admit exceptions.  Almost every
drug  causes such general derangements as
headache, vomiting, diarrhoea, colic, and so
forth; but it would be wrong to suppose that
every drug will, on this account, prove curative
in the above mentioned affections. It is doubtful whether the carbonate of Magnesia has ever
cured a case of headache, except upon revulsive
principles; the same may be said of the nitrate
of Potash, of Sulphuric acid, and a number of
other drugs, all of which are said to produce
headache, but are never employed in such an
affection.  Why?  Because a secret instinct
seems to tell practitioners that these drugs will
prove ineffectual, if used as remedies for headache. And this observation applies to every
other series of symptoms, to the gastric symptoms, the various secretions, the cutaneous
alterations, the symptoms of the intellectual
and emotive sphere, etc. What physician ever
dreams of using Alumina in a case of mental
derangement, or Crocus in a case of rheuma



INTRODUCTION.               23
tism?  And yet, a number of symptoms is
recorded of either drug, and indeed of almost
any other drug, which might be construed into
indications for the cure of mania or rheumatism.
The common sense of physicians has assigned
to each drug a certain sphere of action, beyond
which it is scarcely  ever employed; and,
although such demarcations should be strictly
conformable to the demands of rigorous physiological experimentation, yet the principle which
this species of routine-practice embodies, is correct, namely: that drugs have specific spheres of
action, and that this specific action is revealed
by positive, essentially true and unchanging
symptoms. All these symptoms are more or
less reproduced in every case of proving, no
matter where the prover may reside, or what
his age or sex may be, except of course such
drugs as affect the sexual sphere; and symptoms which are not more or less experienced by
every prover, should be looked upon with great
suspicion; they may be the result of a peculiar
idiosyncratic relation between the prover and
the drug, but they should not be admitted as
genuine effects of the drug, without the greatest
circumspection. What has been said of the
symptoms of the same drug, applies with equal



24              I  T ROD UCTIO  N.
force to the different drugs themselves.   It
seems to me a self-evident truth, that drugs
occupy a different rank amongst each other as
curative agents.  What philosophical physician
would rank Lycopodium on a par with Arsenic
or Belladonna?  The action of such drugs as
Aconite, Belladonna, Nux vomica, Phosphorus,
and many others, is of a nmore intense quality
than the action of Sepia, Lycopodium, Silex,
Magnesia, and I infer fiom  this incontestable
fact, that the effects of the former series of
drugs are more marked, more characteristic,
and therefore more reliable as curative indications.  Suppose Arsenic and tatrum  lmuriaticum  should seem equally strongly indicated in
a certain case, I should undoubtedly give the
preference to Arsenic, and I should base my
preference  upon the  inherent superiority  of
Arsenic over Natrum  as  a remedial agent.
The substances which are used as drugs, have
various degrees of inherent remedial power,
proportionate to their more or less absolute
character  as remedial agents.  Aconite possesses a higher degree of inherent medicinal
power than Natrum muriaticum, for this reason,
that the former is a drug in an absolute sense,
whereas, the latter fulfils mixed uses, among









THE
TWELVE GOLDEN RIULES,
WHICH SHOULD BE OBSERVED BY EVERY BODY,
But more particularly by persons who are under Homceopathic Treatment, or who
habitually resort to it in sickness, or generally favor the Homceopathic
doctrines and mode of practice.
IN all acute diseases, the diet and general
treatment of the patient is, of course, strictly
regulated by the attending physician or nurse,
agreeably to the exigencies of the case; the
following rules are designed only for persons in
health, or for chronic patients whose general
health seems satisfactory, or for all those who
are not obliged, by particular circumstances, to
deviate from them.
Rule 1.
Rise early, and make it a point to retire at
ten o'clock; seven hours' sleep should suffice;
although less may do in some cases, and, in
others, more may be required.



THE TWELVE GOLDEN RULES.    31
should be particularly observed by persons who
are subject to sore throat, bronchitis, chronic
cough, and such like weaknesses.
Rule 6.
Avoid all kinds of heavy and indigestible
food, such as rich pastry, fat, heavy farinaceous
diet, warm bread, spices, mustard, pepper, etc.
Rule 7.
Avoid all stimulating drinks, brandy, beer,
wine, and content yourself with cold water,
milk, light and unspiced chocolate, weak black
tea, and syrups made of currants, raspberries,
strawberries, or other kinds of wholesome and
unmedicinal fruit. Never use tobacco in any
shape, except for medicinal purposes.
Rule 8.
Never keep on wet or damp clothes, stockings,
etc., and never sleep on damp sheets.
Rule 9.
Do not expose yourself to keen, sharp winds,
and avoid the raw and damp evening air.



32     THE TWELVE GOLDEN RULES.
Rule 10.
Live as nearly as possible in the same temperature; keep your room  moderately warm,
and make it a point never to sit near the fire.
Rule II.
Eat your meals at regular hours; eat slowly;
chew every mouthful well, and do not swallow
it until it is properly mixed up with saliva. If
possible, take about an hour for each meal, and
never eat so much as to leave the table with a
sense of repletion and oppression; do not forget
to clean your teeth with a soft tooth-brush after
eating, and never indulge in the abominable
habit of picking them.
Rule 12.
Avoid every kind of food or drink which
naturally disagrees with you; take a little
exercise in the open air every day, but not in
any kind of weather; select particularly fine,
bracing or balmy weather for a walk or ride;
exposure to rainy, windy, raw or damp weather
never does any body any good.



TIHE TWELVE GOLDEN RULES.    33
These twelve rules are golden rules, the
observance of which can never be impressed
with too much care upon the attention of those
who are anxious to preserve their health, and
to remain free from the many unpleasant feelings which are apt to trouble those who neglect
the proper dietetic and hygienic precautions.
The followers of Hahnemann should all be
distinguished by habits of cleanliness, neatness
and regularity, and by moderation in the use of
food and drink; every genuine honceopathist
will consider it his duty to cultivate a refined
taste in manners, language, feelings and habits
of life, and he will use all his influence to
discourage the sad and devastating practices
of chewing, smoking and drinking, to which so
many millions are addicted to the detriment of
their health and the ruin of their fortunes and
inward peace.









PART I,
HAIHNEMANN'S Organon is undoubtedly the great
text-book of the Homceopathic School. It would be
just as futile to undertake to practise homoeopathy
without having previously acquired a thorough and
logical knowledge of the doctrines embodied in the
Organon, as it would be to attempt to become a perfect
mathematician without a knowledge of the theorem
of Pythagoras, or an astronomer without being
acquainted with the laws of Keppler.  Those who
wish to acquire an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the doctrines of the Homoeopathic School as
taught by Hahnemann, have to seek this knowledge
in the richly freighted pages of the Organon.  To
be sure, what has so often happened in religion and
law, may likewise happen, and unfortunately has
happened in hornoeopathy: the apparent meaning of
the literal text has been mistaken for the real, living
doctrine, and dead formulas, emanating from human
conceit and the deceitful. illusions of the sensual understanding may triumph for a time over the eternal and
boundlessly expansive reason. But then it is not the



38         H A H NE M AN N'S ORGANON.
Organon that should be held responsible for such
adulterations of its deep and momentous truths. It
is upon the unreasoning pride and cunning of those
who profess to tread in the footsteps of Hahnemann,
that all such perversions should be charged; let us
hasten to emancipate the free spirit from the dogmatic
pedantry which now holds it captive; and to elevate
our doctrine from a mere human system, to which its
magnificent proportions had been reduced by the blind
and stubborn obscurantism  of a few self-constituted
leaders, to the rank which it undoubtedly occupied
in Hahnemann's own mind, and which it possesses
in the living mechanism of nature, to the rank of an
absolute, unerring, eternally-progressive science.
In order to do full justice to the task which I have
proposed to fulfil, I will give a succinct statement of
the rules and doctrines which make up the sum and
substance of the Organon.  I shall not deem it necessary, however, to transfer to these pages Hahnemann's
searching criticism  of the old fashioned modes of
treatment, nor the mass of testimony which he has
extracted from  alloeopathic writers in confirmation
of the truth of his own doctrine.  Those who are
anxious to become  acquainted with  these  highly
interesting and valuable facts, will find them recorded
in the first part of the Organon.  My duty here
consists in explaining the synthetical portion of the
work in a logical form, and in strict obedience to the
meaning which Hahnemann seems to have embodied
in his text.



HOM(EOPATHY PROPE R.                  39
HAHNEMANN'S DEFINITION OF DISEASE.
Hahneimann is professedly a vitalist.  In the 9th
paragraph of the Organon, he expresses himself as
follows: " In the healthy condition of man, the iminaterial vital principle which animates the material
body, exercises an absolute sway and maintains all
its parts in the most admirable order and harmony,
both of sensation and action, so that our indwelling
rational spirit may freely employ these living, healthy
organs for the superior purposes of our existence.
The material organism deprived of its vital principle, is incapable of sensation, action, or self-preservation; it is the immaterial vital principle only,
animating  the  former in its healthy and  morbid
condition, that imparts to it all sensation, and enables
it to perform its functions."
Disease arises from, or rather consists in, a disturbance of the harmonious action of the vital principle
caused' "by the dynamic influence of a morbific agent
which is inimical to life."  Hahnemann expresses this
idea more fully in Sect. II. of the Organon in the
following language: "In disease, the spontaneous and
immaterial vital principle  pervading  the  physical
organism, is primarily deranged  by  the  dynamic
influence of a morbific agent which is inimical to
life, only the vital principle thus disturbed, can
impart to the organism its abnormal sensations, and
incline it to the irregular actions which we  call



40         DEFINITION OF DISEASE.
disease; for as an invisible principle which is only
cognizable through its operations in the organism, its
morbid disturbances can be perceived solely by means
of the morbid sensations and actions of the organism
which are perceptible to the senses of the physician
and bystanders; in other words, by the morticl sym1ptoms, and can be indicated in no other manner."
These perceptible symptoms, and the actual disturbance of the vital action are so much alike, that they
may be looked upon as an unitary, inseparable, morbid condition. This is manifestly meant by the following statement in Sect. XV. of the Organon: "the
sufferings of the  immaterial vital principle which
animates the interior of our bodies, and the mass of
symptoms produced by it in the organism, which are
externally manifested, and represent the actual malady,
constitute a whole, they are one and the same. The
organism  is, indeed, the material instrument of life;
but without that animation which is derived from the
instinctive sensibility and control of the vital principle,
its existence is as inconceivable as that of a vital
principle, without an organism; consequently, both
constitute an unit, although, in order to facilitate our
comprehension, our minds may separate this unit into
two distinct ideas."
Nevertheless, although Hahnemann does not object
to this separation of the perceptible symptoms and the
morbid state which they represent; and, although he
looks upon disease'as a disturbance of the vital harmony of the organism by the influence of some foreign



HOM 0EOPATHY PROPER.                 41
heterogeneous agent: yet it must not be supposed, on
that account, that disease is a peculiar and distinct
something in the human organism.  "Disease," says
Hahnemann in Sect. XIII. of the Organon, "considered
as it is by the Alloeopathic School as something
distinct and separate from  the living organism  and
from  the vital principle which animates it, as something hidden internally and as something material,
how subtle soever its nature may be supposed, is a
nonentity, which for ages has given to medicine all
those pernicious deviations that constitute it a mischievous art."
These various statements seem to imply a contradiction; but upon a closer examination it will be
found  that Hahnemann  reasons  consistently.  As
there is no life without a vital principle and without
an organism which is its necessary material embodiment or form, so there is no disease without a morbific principle and the phenomena which constitute
its form in the living organism.  The morbific principle is of the same order or quality as the vital
principle itself, and is similarly related to the organism.
Alloeopathic physicians have been in the habit of
looking upon disease as a mass of impurities scattered
through the living organism; as a vast dung-hill if you
please, that had to be swept out of the organism by
physical force as it were, driven out by the skin by
means of sudorifics, expelled from  the  bowels by
purgatives, ejected from the stomach by emetics. All
such gross notions are  very properly rebuked  by



44      TOTALITY OF THE SYMPTOMIS.
that there remains, or possibly can remain, any other
state than a state of health, or that the morbid alterations which had taken place in the interior of the
organism, have not been annihilated."
In Sect. XII. we read the following statement:  It
is solely the morbidly affected vital principle which
brings forth diseases, so that the expression of disease,
perceptible to the senses, announces at the same time
all the internal changes, that is, all the morbid disturbances of the vital principle; in short, it displays the
entire disease.  Consequently, after a cure is effected,
the cessation of all morbid manifestations, and of all
the sensible changes which are inconsistent with the
healthy performance of the functions, necessarily presupposes, with an equal degree of certainty, a restoration of the vital principle to its state of integrity, and
the recovered health of the whole organism."
Another clear and emphatic statement of the object
of treatment is contained in Sect. XVII. of the Organon.  It is expressed in the following words:  "As
the cure which is effected by the annihilation of all
the symptoms of a disease removes at the same time
the internal change upon which the disease is founded,
that is to say, destroys it in its totality; it is accordingly clear, that the physician has nothing more to
do than to destroy the totality of the symptoms in
order to effect a simultaneous removal of the internal
change, that is, to annihilate the disease itself."
Nevertheless, although Hahnemann seems to express himself as though this removal of the symptoms



HOM (EOPATIHY PROPER.               45
were a mere mechanical or outside business, it is
evident from  the fifth paragraph of his Organon,
that this removal implies something more than a
mere sensual knowledge of the morbid phenomena,
and that it cannot be effected, unless we previously
possess a knowledge of the fundarmentcd cause of the
disease.  "When a cure," says Hahnemann, "is to
be performed, the physician must avail himself of all
the particulars he can learn, both  respecting the
probable origin of the acute malady, and the most
significant points in the history of the chronic disease,
to aid him  in the discovery of their fundamental
cause, which is commonly due to some chronic miasm.
In all researches of this nature, he has to take into
consideration  the  apparent state  of the physical
constitution of the patient, (particularly when the
affection is chronic,) the disposition, occupation, mode
of life, habits, social relations, age, sexual functions,
etc. etc."  The broad and unmistakeable declaration
contained in these few lines, saves homoeopathy from
the stigma of being a mere science of symptoms,
and the homoeopathic healing art from the reproach
of consisting in the mechanical drudgery of taking
a record of these symptoms agreeably to a certain
order, and  applying  to  them  a similarly acting
remedy.  It is evident that Hahnemann looks upon
the perceptible phenomena of the disease as means
of arriving at a knowledge of their generating cause
which is, so to  speak, an  intellectual, unsensual
fact, exclusively determinable by the pure reason,



46             METHOD  OF CURE.
anterior to all sensual observation, and elevated into
the more or less speculative region of the causative
principles of nature.
METHOD OF CURE.
Having defined disease from  a therapeutic point
of view, and stated the object of all treatment, it
behooves us to inquire into the most appropriate
mode of effecting it.  In the first place we see it
stated in Sect. XVI. of the Organon, that the restoration of the diseased organism to health can only
be effected by means of the dynamic or spiritual
influence of medicines that act upon the vital energies, and whose action is communicated to every
part of the organism  by the universally distributed
sentient nerves. And having settled the point, that
cures are effected by means of drugs, we are then
prepared to inquire into the most appropriate mode
of using them.
According to Hahnemann, there are only three
possible methods of employing medicines in diseases,
the allcoopathic or leteropathic; the antipatlic or exalthiopathic; and lastly the homoeopathic.  The alloeopathic imethod has been in general use until the
discovery of homoeopathy; it consists in attacking
sound parts for the purpose of drawing off the malady
from another quarter.  Physicking the bowels to cure
a sick headache, or applying an issue or a seton to



HOMO  EOPA TIY PROPER.                 47
remove an  irritation  of the  thoracic viscera, are
instances of alloeopathic treatment.
Nature herself is incapable of curing an existing
disease by one that is dissimilar; so are the most
energetic medicines, when administered in accordance
with the alloeopathic mode of treatment, unable to
remove the disease.  Three different circumstances
may occur when two dissimilar diseases meet in the
organism.
1st.  A  disease, existing in the human body, will
prevent the accession of a new  and dissimilar one, if
the former be of an equal or suplerior intensity to the
latter.  Thus, if a patient has the small-pox, and,
while this disease is running its course, he should
be attacked with scarlatina, this eruption will not
show  itself upon the skin until the other disease
has reached its termination.  According to Larry,
the oriental plague never breaks out in places where
scurvy prevails, nor does it ever infect those who
labor under herpetic diseases. According to Jenner,
the rickets prevent vaccination from  taking effect,
and Hildebrand informs us that persons afflicted with
phthisis, are never attacked with epidemic fevers,
except when the latter are extremely violent.
2d.  Or a new  and more intense disease suspends
a prior and  dissimilar one, already existing in the
body, only so long as the former continues, but it never
cuyres it.
If a child should be vaccinated, and should become
affected with the measles three or four days after the



48              METHOD  OF CURE.
vaccination had taken place, the vaccine pustule will
not develop itself upon the skin until the eruption
has reached its termination, after which the pustule
will gradually make its appearance upon  the arm
and  run  its  regular course  of successive  stages.
Rainey, in  the third volume of his Medical Commentaries, p. 480, relates that, in epidemic smallpox, the measles broke out among several patients
four or five days after inoculation, and retarded,
until their entire disappearance, the eruption of the
small-pox which subsequently proceeded in a regular
manner.  We are informed by Tulpius, in the first
book of his observations, that two children, having
contracted tinea, ceased to experience any further
attacks of epilepsy to which  they had  till then
been subject; but as soon as the tinea was removed,
they were again attacked as before.  Other examples
of this kind of suppression of a weaker by a more
powerful dissimilar disease, may be found in Sect.
XXXVIII. of the Organon.
3d.  Or the new  disease, qfter hcavng acted for a
considerable time on the system, joins itself finally to
the old one, which is dissimilar, when.ce results a comnplication of two different maladies, eitler of which is
incapable of annihilating or curing the other.
In an epidemic, where  the  small-pox  and  the
measles prevailed simultaneously, one of these maladies was suspended  by the other in about three
hundred cases; only in one instance P. Russell met
with these two  dissimilar maladies in  the  same



IIOM(EOPATHY PROPER.                 49
patient.  Rainey saw the small-pox and the measles
together in two little girls; and Zencke saw  the
cow-pox pursue its course in a regular manner conjointly with measles and purpura. For further illustrations I refer the reader to Hahnemann's Organon,
Sect. XL.
Dissimilar drug-diseases in the same organism, are
much more troublesome and dangerous than natural
diseases. A  very frequent instance of such a combination of a drug-disease with a natural malady,
presents itself after the continued use of large doses
of mercury in syphilis.  This combination of mercurial and syphilitic symptoms constitutes a most
frightful and  unmanageable  disease which, if not
absolutely incurable, yields only to the most careful
and persevering treatment.
The antipathic or enantiopathic method is merely
palliative.  This method does very well in trifling
cases where, by hushing the disease for a time, we
give the organism  a chance to recover its reactive
energies.  But it is utterly inadmissible in chronic
or intensely acute cases of disease. Chronic diarrhoea
cannot be successfully treated with opium, nor can
inveterate constipation be removed by the continued
use of purgatives.  Habitual weakness can no more
be cured by stimulants than plethora can be moderated by repeated venesections. All such instances
of palliative treatment generally aggravate the original complaint, and frequently shatter the patient's
constitution.
4



50             METHOD OF CURE.
The injurious effects of the antipathic method are
accounted for upon the principle that every medicine
first produces a primary effect upon the organism,
which is soon followed  by an  opposite secondary
effect, or reaction.  This doctrine is embodied in
Sect. LXIII. of the Organon: "CEvery agent," says
Hahnemann, "that acts upon the human economy,
every medicine produces some more or less notable
change in the existing state of the vital powers, or
creates a certain modification in the health of man
for a shorter or longer period. This change is called
the primitive effect. But our vital powers tend to
oppose their energy to this influence or impression.
The perceptible effect of this opposition bears the
name of secondary effect or reaction,"
The organon is replete with illustrations of this
double action.  A hand that had been bathed in hot
water, is at first much hotter than the other that
had not been immersed (primitive effect); but shortly
after the hand is withdrawn, it becomes cold, and, in
the end, much colder than on the opposite side (secondary effect). Or an arm that had been immersed in
freezing water, is at first paler and colder than the
other (primitive effect); but after it is withdrawn
from  the water and dried, it becomes warmer than
the other and sometimes even burning hot (secondary
effect). Strong coffee first stimulates the faculties
(primitive effect), but leaves behind it a sense of
drowsiness (secondary effect).  Constipation caused
by opium, (primitive effect), is followed by diarrhoea



HOMOEOPATHY PROPER.                   51
(secondary effect); and evacuations produced by purgatives (primitive effect) are succeeded by costiveness
which frequently lasts for several days (secondary
effect). These and similar facts confirm the injurious
tendency of the antipathic method.  The primitive
effect of the antipathic drug soon becomes extinct,
and the  opposite or secondary effect, or in other
words the original morbid condition returns with more
inveteracy than ever.
It may here be remarked incidentally that, besides
the primary and secondary effects, Hahnemann distinguishes moreover alternate  effects of medicines.
These effects are contrary, or, in certain respects,
accessory, to other symptoms which afterwards appear
in succession. In this case they may be regarded as
consecutive effects, or as marking the transition from
one to the other of the different paroxysms of the
primitive action.
The only remaining method is the 7homoeopat/7ic
method  of healing, "which  employs against the
totality of the symptoms of a natural disease, a
medicine that is capable of exciting in healthy persons symptoms that closely resemble those of the
disease itself; it is the only one that is really salutary,
and which always annihilates disease, or the purely
dynamic aberrations of the vital powers, in an easy,
prompt and perfect manner.  In this respect, nature
herself furnishes the example when, by adding to
an existing disease a new  one  that resembles it,
she cures it promptly and effectualiy



52             METHOD OF CURE.
In Sect. XLVI. of the Organon, Hahnemann furnishes a large number of illustrations of the cure of
chronic diseases by the accession of another similar
but more intense disease.
Small-pox has cured a multitude of diseases that
were characterized by symptoms similar to its own.
Violent ophthalmia has been cured in a perfect and
permanent manner by inoculation, as stated by Leroy
in his Medical Treatise for the use of mothers, p. 384.
A case of blindness of two years' standing brought
on by the metastasis of tinea, was, according to Klein,
perfectly cured by the small-pox. See his Interpres
Clinicus, p. 293.
Dysentery is one of the bad symptoms which
frequently occurs in small-pox; for this reason it
cures the former disease homoeopathically, as in a
case recorded by F. Wendt (see his Hospital report,
Erlangen, 1783.)
Vaccination, whose special symptom is a swelling
of the arm, cured, after its eruption, the tumefaction
of an arm that was half paralyzed. (See Stevenson,
in Duncan, Annals of Medicine.)
During a case of measles, a chronic, neasle-shaped
tetter disappeared in a prompt, durable and perfect
manner, as observed by Kortum in Hufeland's Journal, Vol. XX., No. 2, page 50. A miliary eruption
that covered  the neck, face and  arms, during a
period  of six  years, attended with unsupportable
heat, and which returned at every change of weather,
was reduced to a simple swelling of the skin on the



HOMaEOPATHY PROPER.                   53
appearance of the measles; after the cessation of the
tetter, the miliary eruption was cured and never reappeared.  (See Rau in Hufeland's Journal XX., p. 50.)
After such  evidence  and  examples, argues the
discoverer of homoeopathy, it is impossible for any
reasonable physician  to  persevere in the ordinary
alloeopathic treatment, or to continue to apply remedies which attack the body in the parts that are
least diseased, by exciting evacuations, counter-irritations, derivations, etc.  "'The facts which  have
been quoted," exclaims Hahnemann in Sect. LI. of
his Organon, "will more than suffice to reveal to
the understanding of men the great law that cures
can only be effected with  medicines that are capable
of exciting symptoms analogous to those of the disease
itself. And behold the advantage which man has
here over rude nature whose arts are not guided
by reflection!  How  are the homoeopathic morbid
powers multiplied in the various medicines which
are spread over creation, all of which are at his
disposal, and  may be  used for the relief of his
suffering fellow-mortals! With these he can create
morbid symptoms as varied as the countless natural
diseases which they are to cure. With such precious
resources at his command, there can be no necessity
for those violent attacks upon the organism for the
purpose of extirpating an old and obstinate disease;
and the transition from the state of suffering to that
of durable health is effected in a gentle, imperceptible,
and often speedy manner."



54             METHOD OF CURE.
The great law  of cure, upon which the whole
structure of homoeopathy rests, is, therefore, expressed
by Hahnemann in the formula: "Sriilia similibus
curantur, or like cures like."  The whole Organon is
more or less devoted to an explanation of this law,
and of the most appropriate method of applying it
to the treatment of disease.
In Sect. XXV. of the Organon, the above generalization is defined in these terms: "Plain experience
proves to us that the particular medicine whose action
upon persons in health produces the greatest number
of symptoms resembling those of the disease which it
is intended to cure, possesses also, in reality, the power
of suppressing, in a radical, prompt and permanent
manner, the totality of these morbid symptoms, that is
to say, the whole of the existing disease." No two
medicines can be exactly similar to the same disease.
Every disease can have but one medicine that is
perfectly similar to it. This, at any rate, is to be
inferred from Sect. CXVIII., where we are told that
" each medicine produces particular effects in the
human body, and no other medicinal substance can
create any that are precisely similar." In the following paragraph it is likewise stated " in the same manner that each species of plant differs from all others
in its external form and peculiar mode of vegetative
life, its smell and taste; in the same manner that
each mineral and each  salt differ from  others in
regard to external character as well as internal
chemical properties, in the same manner do all these



56                EXPLANATION.
they accomplish sensation  and  action, a change that
expresses itself by symptoms which are perceptible to
the senses, it therefore follows, that the homoeopathic medicinal agent, selected by a skilful. physician, will convert
it into another medicinal disease which is analogous,
but rather more intense.  By this means the natural
morbific power which had existed previously, and which
was nothing more than a dynamic power without substance, terminates, while the medicinal disease which
usurps its place, being of such a nature as to be easily
subdued by the vital powers, is likewise extinguished
in  its turn, leaving in its primitive state of integrity
and health the essence or substance which animates and
preserves the body."
This hypothesis rests upon the simple fact that
the morbific power which is inherent in  drugs, is
greater than the disturbing power possessed by the
common causes of disease.  The drug possesses an
absolute, positive, unchanging power of disturbing
the animal economy in a determinate and unerring
manner.  Every genuine drug, ipecacuanha, aconite,
belladonna, arsenic, etc. produces its inherent morbid
effects in the animal economy, at any period of the
day, and  in  any individual; whereas the  natural
morbific causes act with uncertainty and indefiniteness.  In thousands of cases they have no effect at
all on the organism  that is exposed to them; in
thousands of other cases they indeed cause a disturbance of the vital functions, but, except in the
case of definite miasmatic diseases, the effects are



HOM(EOPATIIY PROPER.                 59
causes of disease, the only true, homoeopathic, id est:
SPECIFIC instruments of certain and permanent cure.
This is Hahneinann's own language as embodied
in Sect. CXLIII. of his Organon, and this extract
is an unanswerable refutation of the foolish doctrine
of a few wiseacres in the homoeopathic ranks, who
constantly sneer at the idea of specific homoeopathy,
as though Hahnemann himself had ever dreamed of
its being at all possible that a remedy should be
homoeopathic to a disease without being at the same
time  the specific remedy in  this particular case.
If, as Hahnemann asserts in Sect. CXVIII. of his
Organon, "each medicine produces particular effects
in the human body, and if no other medicinal substance can create any that are precisely similar,"
does it not necessarily follow from this fact that, in
its relations to disease, only one drug from among
all the rest, can be the true remedial agent?  A
man is sick, and he requires to be treated.  This
morbid condition can only be successfully met by
one remedy; or, if the disease be composed of a series
of successive states, each qualitatively distinct from
the other, as in the higher forms of typhus, by a
series of remedies specifically corresponding to these
respective states. But the doctrine of specific homoeopathy is here, as in many other parts of the Organon,
vindicated by Hahnemann himself, as constituting
the very soul and axiom  of all his teachings, and
in direct opposition to those who would fain substitute in the place of this saving and sublime truth,



60    NECESSITY OF PROVING DRUGS.
the ridiculous sophism that typhus may be cured by
pepper as well as by the deadly nightshade, or that
inflammatory rheumatism will yield to kitchen salt
as well as to wolf's-bane, or to the wind flower. Out
upon such disgraceful and illogical balderdash!
The manner in which the proving of medicines
should be conducted, is indicated with more or less
completeness in the Organon, from Sect. CXXI. to Sect.
CXLII.  In the latter period of his life, Hahnemann
recommended that these provings should be instituted
with the 30th attenuations of the medicines; but the
drugs which compose his grand and magnificent work,
the Materia Medica Pura, were proved with massive
doses of the original drug. And see the difference
between the character of the symptoms recorded in
this imperishable monument of the great founder of
homoeopathy, and those recorded in the volumes entitled Chronic Diseases. Whereas every symptom contained in the Materia Medica Pura, bears the impress
of its genuine therapeutic character, the symptoms of
the so-called anti-psorics can only be accepted with
great doubts and reservations, and were even suspected
and partially rejected by Hahnemann himself; not to
mention the symptoms of latter provers, who, while
drinking all the while their toddies and their coffee,
exclusively employ the higher attenuations in their
pretended experimentations, and whose endless symptom-lists are not only useless in a therapeutic point of
view, but ridiculous and fantastic encumbrances of our
Materia Medica.



HOMOEOPATHY  PROPER.                61
HAHNEMANN'S MODE OF SELECTING A REMEDY.
The drug-symptoms with which the homoeopathic
physician is to cure the ailments of his patients, being
known, the question then occurs, how is he to proceed
in order to arrive at a knowledge of the remedy with
which a cure in a particular case is to be effected?
To attain this end, the first duty of the physician is,
to take a record of all the perceptible symptoms of the
patient's case.  In his Organon, Sect. LXXXIII. to
Sect. CIV., Hahnemann gives full instructions concerning the best mode of proceeding in this first step
towards a cure. They are so minute that they almost
seem pedantical. The list of the questions which the
physician is directed to put to the patient, extends
over several pages. It would seem, from this endless
interrogatory, that Hahnemann looks upon the patient
as a criminal who is anxious to conceal the crime of
which he is accused, and who is cross-questioned by
the examining magistrate in every possible manner
that cunning and ingenuity can devise for the purpose
of laying bare the guilt of the accused. I should think
that any patient who is able to go through such a
searching interrogatory as Hahnemann wishes to inflict
upon him, must have more nerve and composure than
are generally possessed by a sick man. To give the
reader an idea of the strictness and minuteness with
which the examination of the patient is to be conducted, I will transcribe a single paragraph from



62          SELECTING  A REMEDY.
among  the  whole number that Hahnemann has
devoted to this subject; it is Sect. LXXXIX. of the
Organon.  " How often have the bowels been evacuated, and what was the nature of the discharges?  Did
the whitish discharges consist of mucus or faeces?
Were they painful or otherwise? What was the precise nature of these pains, and in what part were they
felt?  What did the patient throw  up?  Is the bad
taste in the mouth putrid, bitter, or acid, or what kind
of taste is it? Does he experience this taste before,
during, or after eating or drinking?  At what part
of the day does he feel it in particular?  What kind
of taste was connected with the eructation? Is the
urine turbid at first, or does it only become so after
standing a while? Of what color was it at the time
of emission?  What was the color of the sediment?
Is there any peculiarity in the state of the patient
when he sleeps?  Does he sigh, moan, speak or cry
out? Does he start in his sleep? Does he move during
an inspiration or expiration? Does he lie on his back
only, or on which side does he lay himself? Does he
cover himself up close, or does he throw off the bedcovering? Does he wake easily, or does he sleep too
soundly?  How does he feel on waking?  How often
does this or that symptom occur, and on what occasion? Is it when the patient is sitting up, lying down,
standing up, or when he is moving about?  Does it
come on merely when he has been fasting, or at least
early in the morning, or simply in the evening, or
only after meals, or if at other times, when? When



HOMCEOPATHY PROPER.                 63
did the shivering come on?  Was it merely a sensation of qold, or was he actually cold at the time? In
what part of the body did the patient feel cold? Was
his skin warm  when he complained of being cold?
Did he experience a sensation of cold without shivering? Did he feel heat without the face being flushed?
What parts of his body were warm  to the touch?
Did the patient complain of heat without his skin
being warm?  How long did the sensation of cold, or
that of heat, continue?  When did the thirst come
on?  During the cold or heat, or was it before or
after?  How intense was the thirst?  What did the
patient ask for to drink? When did the perspiration
come on?  Was it at the commencement or at the
expiration of the heat? What space of time elapsed
between the heat and the perspiration?'Was it when
sleeping or waking that it manifested itself?  Was it
strong or otherwise?  Was the perspiration hot or
cold? On what parts of the body did it break out?
How did it smell? What did the patient complain of
before or during the cold, during or after the heat,
during or after the perspiration, etc." Does it not
seem' as though many of these questions might be
dispensed with without injury to the patient? And,
if we consider that this long list of questions is scarcely
the fourth part of the whole interrogatory, does it not
seem as though this prolix mode of questioning were
tantamount to putting the patient on the rack?  I
confess that, with all due deference to Hahnemann's
experience, I cannot bend myself to his judgment in



HOM EOPATHY PROPER.                  65
avoids all revulsions or counter-irritations; that the
homoeopathic remedial agent acts upon the disease in
a most direct manner, and overcomes it, not by the
influence of brute force, but by the superior attractiveness of its inherent power, to which the disease yields
implicit and voluntary obedience.  This being the
case, it is evidently of the utmost importance that the
inherent power of the drug should be presented to the
disease in a form that will enable the remedial agent
to exercise its curative influence in the safest, most
direct and most expeditious manner. The adaptation
of the crude drug to remedial purposes is one of the
characteristic features of the homoeopathic healing art,
and deserves a passing notice in this place.
GENERAL METHOD OF PREPARING HOMEOPATHIC ATTENUATIONS.
Homoeopathic physicians use nearly the same medicines that have been or are used in alloeopathic
practice. They avoid all artificial compounds, except
such as are of a purely chemical nature.  In other
respects they prepare their tinctures and essences
pretty much in the same manner as alloeopathic
pharmaceutists are in the habit of doing. The original
tinctures are generally termed mother-tinctures in
homoeopathic practice.  From  these mother-tinctures
so-termed attenuations or potencies are derived in
accordance with the rules which Hahnemann lays
down with the most rigorous exactitude and minute5



66      MEETHOD OF PREPARING, ETC.
ness at the close of the first volume of his chronic
diseases.  These attenuations are made with alcohol.
A  drop of every succeeding attenuation contains the
one-hundredth part of a drop of the next preceding
one. Successive attenuations are obtained by mixing
one drop of any given attenuation with ninety-nine
drops of alcohol and agitating this mixture by means
of a series of powerful strokes of the hand that holds
the vial, upon some elastic cushion. Metals or minerals, and various kinds of vegetable substances which,
in their original form, cannot be dissolved in alcohol
or water, are first triturated in a porcelain mortar,
with sugar of milk, in the proportion of one grain of
the original drug to ninety-nine grains of sugar of
milk, and it is only on making the fourth attenuation
that alcohol can be substituted for the sugar of milk.
The effect of these successive succussions and triturations, is supposed to be a progressive development and
consequent increase of the inherent medicinal power
of the drug. In accordance with this fact, religiously
accepted as such by a majority of homoeopathic physicians, the peculiar mode which Hahnermann first
proposed  of converting crude drugs into remedial
agents and adopting them to therapeutic purposes, has
been not inaptly termed'"the potentization or dynamisation of drugs," and the attenuations so obtained are
frequently  termed  "potencies or  dynamisations."
This being a cardinal doctrine in homoeopathy, it may
not be inappropriate to present some more extensive
developments concerning this interesting subject, and



IHO IIEOPATHIY PROPER.                67
to throw out a few logical hints regarding the philosophy and scientific character of a doctrine that has led
to many bitter discussions among homoeopathic physicians themselves, and has cast on their practice an
immense  amount of ridicule, and  in  very many
instances, honest contempt.
ON DYNAMISATIONS, OR POTENCIES.
In a work of this kind it cannot be expected that
the arguments brought forward in support or condemnation of Hahnemann's doctrine of potentisation
should be reproduced in their totality; all I have to
do, in order to fulfil my duty to the reader, is to state
what were Hahnemann's opinions regarding this subject; for, as yet, the science of homoeopathy seems to
be confined to the limits and definitions which characterised it during the earlier period of its existence.
According to IHahnemann, the curative virtue of
a drug is rendered more active by destroying the
cohesion of its constituent particles in the manner
prescribed by him, and very fully described in the first
volume of his Chronic Diseases. The inherent spirit
or principle of the medicinal agent is set free, as
it were, by the process of succussion and trituration,
and is made available for purposes of treatment by
temporarily connecting it with some neutral body,
such as sugar of milk, alcohol or water. It would
seem  as though  the  curative  influence  or  force



HOM1IEOPATHY PROPER.                 69
the development of the curative powers of a drug,
induced by those processes, has led to the belief, that
the longer those processes are continued through a
successive series of attenuations, the more powerful
becomes the preparation.  I have frequently been
asked by patients who had heard or read something of
potentisation, potencies, and so forth, whether the use
of highly potentised drugs was not attended with
danger in particular cases. There is another erroneous
impression, which has been caused by -the doctrine of
dynamization, and which might prove a serious obstacle to the progress of homoeopathy, if this science were
not founded in the providence of God, and must, therefore, eventually triumph over all opposition. It is
insinuated by the opponents of the homeeopathic practice, that homoeopathic physicians use the most concentrated poisons, and that their medicines gradually
corrupt the body and establish a principle of decay
and putrefaction in the very marrow of the bones.
Alloeopathic physicians of high repute and character
could be named, who make themselves guilty of such
gross misrepresentations. At one time it was asserted,
that homoeopathic physicians administered  nothing
but sugar of milk, or water; this argument having
failed in crushing the homoeopathic system, its unfair
opponents have shifted to the opposite tack, and represent homoeopathic preparations as the most dangerous
and concentrated poisons. The fault of these absurd
accusations and exaggerated statements regarding the
power of homoeopathic medicines, rests, in a great



70    D YNAMISATIONS  OR POTENCIES.
measure with Hahnemann and some of his disciples,
for they have asserted, time and again, that homoeopathic preparations could be made sufficiently powerful
to destroy the lives of the patients; and Hahnemann
mentions a case of whooping-cough, where the child
came near losing its life by the sixtieth attenuation or
potency of Drosera.  But Hahnemann, with all his
transcendent genius, probably labored under the same
illusion with which so many physicians and laymen
are afflicted, namely, that the phenomena which make
their appearance after the exhibition of a medicine,
must necessarily result from  its action  upon the
patient's organism.  After the administration of Drosera, in the above case, a violent paroxysm did most
certainly occur; but is it not more than probable that
this paroxysm was a natural development of the disease, and that it had no more to do with the action of
Drosera than with the sixtieth potency of any other
medicine?
A truly scientific conception of the therapeutic
character of a drug is perfectly consistent with the
idea that the medicinal power inherent in the crude
drug, is essentially increased by the mode of preparation employed by Hahnemann; in other words, that
the different potencies which are developed out of the
original substances, are in the same relation to each
other as the terms of a geometrical progression; but
if this be true, it does not, by any means justify the
conclusion, that if the power of the first term be
equivalent to two, that of the second term  must be



HOMO(EOPATHY PROPER.                  71
equivalent to four, that of the third to sixteen, and
thus ad infinitum.  The powers of the different potencies which constitute a series, cannot be expressed
numerically, but, being of a purely dynamic character,
are in dynamic relations to each other, to which no
mathematical exponents can be affixed, and the respective value of which has to be determined by observation, and depends altogether upon the idiosyncratic
peculiarities, the disposition and  receptivity of the
patient.  In one case it may be proper to use the tincture of a medicine, whereas in another case, although
of a similar nature, a preparation of a far different
dynamic power may be required. The term'potency,"
as applied to the homoeopathic preparation, has therefore a relative meaning; it simply means that the
physician should use the medicine which seems to be
indicated in the case, in such quantity and form as corresponds as nearly as possible to the receptivity of the
patient's organism, or more particularly his nerves.
For, it is, after all, through the nervous system that
all therapeutic action upon the disease has to be
effected.  Taking this view of potency, and this is
the only true and scientific definition of the term, it
will be easily understood why a whole vialful of globules, moistened with the 30th attenuation of Aconite,
might have no effect on a patient, whereas one or two
drops of the tincture would perhaps produce a sensible
change in his condition.
Our patients frequently express their astonishment
at the absence of all evil consequences which they



72     DYNAMISATIONS, OR POTENCIES.
think should result from  swallowing a quantity of
globules moistened with the higher preparations of
some particular medicine. Their faith in the efficacy
of homoeopathic medicines is seriously shaken in consequence of this non-occurrence of some frightful
commotion.  They are accustomed to see some effect
produced by medicine; they expect to be affected by
the medicine in some shape or other. A great many
will ask on receiving  medicine from  the doctor:
Doctor, what will this medicine do to me? How do
you intend it is to affect me? It is not always easy
to quiet such patients by evasive answers, or by
merely telling them that the office of a remedial agent
is not to produce medicinal effects, but simply to cure
disease without inflicting any additional suffering. An
intelligent person may perhaps be made to understand
that disease being a dynamic state and the medicine
being a dynamic power, the action of the latter is absolutely and directly curative, an action of relief, and by
no means intended to induce an artificial drug-disease,
characterised by phenomena of disturbance of the
general functions of the organism.  It is sometimes
very difficult to get along with inquisitive patients, and
it is impossible to indicate a general course of conduct
in regard to them. A physician who has acquired a
philosophical perception of his doctrine, and has developed it to his own understanding out of the inmost
depths of reason, will never be at a loss to answer the
most pointed and embarrassing questions put to him.
In the present state of the physical sciences, the



74    DYNAMISATIONS, OR POTENCIES.
same with pepper, mustard, and a variety of other
substances whose  internal properties  and  powers
remain hidden as long as the cohesion of the constituent particles is not destroyed.  In breaking up
these particles for the purpose of developing the inherent powers of the drug, it is of the utmost importance
to observe certain precautions.  Nothing should get
lost during the process of trituration. An onion, for
instance, could not be triturated without the escape
of a large quantity of active power which might be of
great therapeutic value.  Substances containing much
volatile or aromal matter, such as onion, coffee, pepper,
&c., should be immersed in dilute alcohol while the
breaking up of their particles is being accomplished.
The propriety of potentising such substances beyond
certain limits, may justly be doubted. Are not the
aromal emanations arising from  their comminuted
particles, the necessary vehicles of the medicinal
powers with which those substances are endowed?
Is this aromal principle developed by the process of
potentisation, or is it not rather diminished by it, and
is it not finally altogether destroyed? In respect to
these points the minds of many practitioners are in a
state of doubt, and until these doubts, which appear
to me perfectly legitimate, can be cleared by the
evidence of experimental demonstration, it might be
well to use the recent tinctures and lower triturations
of all such substances as are endowed with a considerable quantity of volatile aromal matter.
The thing is different with regard to those drugs



HOM(CEOPATIY  PROPER.                  75
that contain little or no volatile or aromal matter,
whose particles cohere very firmly.  These may have
to go through a successive series of triturations before
their particles are thoroughly broken up and the medicinal power which they contain, is fully developed.
Arsenic, for instance, in its crude state, is a powerful
poison, but of very little use in the treatment of
disease.  By breaking up the original particles, the
chemical or poisonous powers of the drug are diminished, and  adapted  to  therapeutic  purposes.   In
proportion as a medicinal substance is, in its crude
state, endowed with powerful poisonous properties, it
admits of a higher degree of potentisation for the determination of its curative powers.  The same remark
applies to medicinal agents which, in their crude state,
are more or less inert. Such agents are, for instance,
lycopodium, silex, carbo, etc.
Dr. Streintz, of Germany, has instituted microscopical observations with several triturations of lycopodium, and  found  that, in  one  case, where  the
trituration  had  been  prepared  by an aloeopathic
pharmaceutist, all the seeds were left entire; in
another case the largest number of the seeds was left
unbroken; and in a few cases only were all the seeds
properly crushed.  He says furthermore that, if a
portion of the first trituration be mixed with water,
the crystals of the sugar of milk will dissolve, and the
fragments of the crushed lycopodium  remain behind
in a state of integrity, consisting of small portions of
the perisperm, of irregular portions of seed, and a



78    DYNAMIISATIONS,  OR POTENCIES.
instances at least, this susceptibility had scarcely any
limits, he may have  concluded  with  a  generous
rashness, that it was best, under all circumstances,
to attenuate or potentise medicines to a very high
degree before using them  in practice.  It behooves
us to identify our minds as much as possible with
the circumstances under which Hahnemann developed
his doctrines; this will enable us to construct them
for ourselves independently  of the  bend  of the
master's mind, to separate the wheat from  the chaffy
and, having proved all things, to keep that which is
good.  After these few critical remarks concerning
the dynamization of drugs, we may safely admit,
1. That the inherent power of a drug is developed
by breaking up its component particles;
2. That this breaking up can, in the case of a
number of drugs, be carried to a very high degree;
3. That, in many cases, it requires a considerable
number of successive  developments of power as
pointed out by Hahnemann, to obtain a preparation
which shall adequately correspond to the susceptibilities of the patient's organism and to the quality
of the disease, and effect a safe and speedy cure;
4. That the term  " potency" should only be used
qualitatively, as expressive of the curative adaptation
of a certain remedial agent to a given cure of disease
in a given organism.



HIO  EOPATIIY PROPER.                  79
GENERAL PRINCIPLES INVOLVED IN THE USE OF HO3EOPATHIC
PREPARATIONS.
Having explained the doctrine  of potentisation,
various questions of interest now present themselves
to the mind.  What potencies or attenuations should
be principally used in the treatment of disease? In
what form  should the medicine be administered to
the patient?  What should be the size of the dose?
How  often  should  the dose be repeated?  Is it
proper to administer more than one medicine at a
time?  Let us review  these various subjects in the
order in which they are here presented.
I.  Mbat I   pofnlcits or AftRniations sIonlb tri prcicitgalI ncb?
Elsewhere I have alluded to this subject in the
following language:
"For convenience sake, let us divide the whole
series of potencies now  in use, into four classes:
lower, middle, higher and  highest potencies.   The
lower potencies range from  the mother-tinctures to
the sixth  attenuation; the middle potencies from
the sixth to the thirtieth; the higher potencies from
the thirtieth to the two-hundredth; and the highest
potencies to  any  attenuation  above  that grade.
All these  different potencies are  used  by  their
respective  adherents, and  proclaimed  by them  as



SO          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
the  best and  most useful, or rather only useful
preparations.  The student of medicine should not
allow himself to be beguiled into a passive adherence
to any one of these exclusive preferences. His duty
and the interests of the sick require that he should
acquaint  himself with  the  different views now
existing in the homoeopathic ranks, relative to the
doses which  should  be used in particular cases;
that he should subject these views to a close and
impartial investigation, adopt such of them  as agree
with  his judgment, and reduce them  to practice
with caution and discrimination.  The student of
homoeopathy should scorn to swear by the words of
his master.  If  this  blind  allegiance  should  be
required of him  the master would render himself
liable to the suspicion  of charlatanism  or unenlightened intolerance; and, on the other hand, the
student who submits to this species of despotism,
is entirely unfit to practice the sacred act of healing.
The series of potencies is like the gamut in music.
A  skilful artist may indeed construct a harmony
with the various vibrations of the same chord; but
what a much more beautiful and perfect harmony
he might construct by a proper combination of all
the sounds that can be elicited from  all the chords
of his instrument!  This is likewise true in regard
to  the  various  attenuations  of  a homoeopathic
remedial agent.  Either of the  four classes into
which I have divided the whole series of potencies,
may be sufficient, in the hands of an able practi



HOMO(EOPATHY PROPER.                  81
tioner, to heal the sick; but the cure will most
assuredly be effected more promptly, and will be
more  thorough  and permanent, by selecting from
the whole series whatever attenuations may seem,
in his independent judgment, to be suitable to the
case, than by confining himself, from  prejudice or
habit, to one or two attenuations in preference to
any other.  Hahnemann, in his latter years, confined
himself exclusively to the thirtieth or some higher
potency.  If this be true, it by no means follows
that his example should be imitated.  Hahnemann
treated almost exclusively chronic diseases, and it
is possible  and  even  probable  that in  all such
diseases the  higher attenuations may have  been
sufficient.
II. rnu boat form or mobr sEhoulb tje mneicinl be abmieistueb
to te pti?
Homoeopathic medicines may be administered in
various forms to suit the requirements of the case
and  the  taste  of the  patient.   They  may  be
administered in the shape  of saccharine  globules
impregnated  with the medicine, in water, powderform, byolfaction and likewise endermatically. The
globules, may either be given dry on the tongue or
dissolved  in  water.  A  very common  mode  of
administering  the  medicine, is to dissolve a few
globules, or one or more drops of the tincture or
6



HOM(EOPATHY PROPER.                  83
a fortiori, that their curative influence is perceived
the more speedily and thoroughly, the more directly
they are applied to the diseased spot.  The whole
question, therefore, turns on this single point.  Is
it at all proper that remedies should  be applied
externally?  This question might be answered by
another question: Why should not remedies, under
certain circumstances, act from without inwards just
as well as from  within outwards, or even more
expeditiously and thoroughly?  The inmost vital
process is undoubtedly carried on from within outwards; but the vital forces are likewise affected by
external influences, either pleasantly or unpleasantly.
These external influences stimulate the vital forces
into action; without them life would become extinct,
and why should not a medicinal substance be, in
certain conditions of the organism, the most appropriate stimulus for its harmonious activity, or rather
for the restoration of that harmony?  The precise
mode of applying remedies externally in given cases,
is both the business of theory and observation, and
it is the office of therapeutic manuals to enlighten
the student of homoeopathy on this head.
III. VIy:i~e of tlye bo,.
The size of the dose has been a bone of contention
among homoeopathic physicians ever since the science
of homoeopathy was first announced by its illustrious



86          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
ments of another class, in many cases with a good
deal of bitterness of feeling.  What is the student
of homoeopathy to do  in  the presence  of these
apparently perplexing  circumstances, these  contradictory statements and inferences?  To the honest
and intelligent student there is but one way left,
and this is, to hear every side, to listen to every
opinion, and then to judge for himself and pursue a
perfectly independent course.
The use of the middle and higher attenuations is
principally confined to
1. Acute fevers without local inflammation or congestion;
2. Purely nervous affections of a non-inflammatory
character;
3. Various forms of hysteria  and hypochondria
without any apparent tendency to disorganization;
4. Acute affections which had been treated alloeopathically by repeated depletions or violent revulsive
means;
5. Chronic diseases generally, without tendency to
disorganization.
These rules, though perhaps generally true, likewise
admit of many  exceptions.  Tumors, gangrenous
disorganizations, caries of bones, have disappeared
under the use of the higher potencies.  Syphilis has
been cured with the higher as well as with the lower
attenuations.  Many cases of hysteria, where the
higher preparations proved ineffectual, have yielded
to the lower attenuations of the same drug.  On



HOMaEOPATHY  PROPER.                 87
the other hand, many cases of congestion or local
inflammation  have  been  much  more  successfully
treated with the higher than with the lower potencies. And again, in many cases of acute as well as
chronic disorders the higher or lower attenuations
are used indiscriminately with a like success.
The highest potencies are used by some practitioners
in preference to any other.  It cannot be denied that
they have effected cures, but, on the other hand, it
is admitted by all candid and philosophical practitioners that an exclusive adherence to the highest
potencies is infinitely more destructive of the benefits
of homoeopathic treatment than an exclusive preference of the lower attenuations.  My own experience
leads me to doubt the efficacy of the highest potencies
in  chronic miasmatic diseases, in disorganizations,
acute epidemic diseases, such as small-pox, scarlatina,
cholera, and in acute fevers with local congestions
or inflammations.  Nevertheless, even in such affections, the highest potencies of some drugs may act
with  an  astonishing  promptitude  and  permanent
success. As regards the general fact that cures have
been effected with the highest potencies, it seems
to me undeniable.  I assert most positively that I
have succeeded in effecting some brilliant cures by
means of them.  I have cured a case of chronic
gastritis characterised by a sense of fulness at the
pit of the stomach, bloating of the abdomen, loss of
appetite, foul taste in the mouth, and  a thickly
coated tongue which the patient himself could not



HOM(EOPATHY  PROPER.                 89
observers have  reported  cures with  the  highest
potencies; it is doubtful, however, whether lower
attenuations would not have been just as effectual
as the former; at any rate, the endeavor to make
them  the normal doses in  homoeopathic  practice,
seems to me a rash and reprehensible undertaking.
There are practitioners who would fain make their
patients believe, that the highest potencies constitute
a species of homoeopathy of a higher order.  This
is all fudge and flummery.  The truth is that, in
many respects, the highest potencies constitute one
of the delusions of modern practice.
This is an appropriate opportunity of alluding to
an erroneous impression that prevails among a certain
portion of the public, namely: that the smallness of
a dose constitutes its homoeopathicity to a given
case of disease.  It has been shown in the foregoing
pages that a medicine is only homoeopathic to a
disease when it is capable of reproducing, in the
healthy organism, a disturbance that shall correspond
in all its essential features and phenomena to the
natural disease. The size of the dose does not affect
the principle, but the principle determines more or
less the size of the dose.  It stands to reason that
a homoeopathic agent which is not given for the
purpose of causing a revulsion in the system, but
which acts directly upon the disease, in no other
way than by gradually removing it and substituting
in its stead a state of health, should be administered
in a much smaller cquantity than an alloeopathic dose



90          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
of medicine which is professedly given for revulsive
ends. In regard to the size of the dose, homoeopathic
physicians sometimes resort to a disingenuous mode
of reasoning. To their alloeopathic opponents they
say that the size of the dose has nothing to do with
the homeeopathic  law, and  that an infinitesimal
dose of an  alloeopathically-administered  mercurial
preparation would not be any more a homoeopathic
dose than a hundred grains of the crude drug.  And
yet, the very men who employ this sort of argumentation, will turn round against such of their brethren
as habitually use the lower attenuations or give
larger quantities of medicine than themselves, and
will endeavor to discredit them with the homoeopathic
public on the plea that they are no homoeopathic
physicians.  They would fain make the world believe
that they are Hahnemann's on a small scale; but
they are not far above the followers of another great
man, Wallenstein, of whom the corporal in Schiller's
magnificent drama of that name, thus speaks to a
recent recruit: " They walk, and spit, and clear
their throats as he does, but the spirit, the mind
are wanting."
It seems scarcely necessary to remark that, whatever dose may be employed in the  treatment of
disease, it should always be given within strictly
conservative limits.  The tincture of Nux Vomica
affects the organism  more powerfully than that of
Euphrasia, and, all things being equal, should be
given in smaller quantities  than  the  latter;  so



HOMF(EOPATHY PROPER.                 91
should Arsenic be given in smaller quantities than
Calcarea. This, however, only applies to the lowest
preparations; in the higher attenuations the poisonous
powers of the drugs disappear so completely, that all
differences in the material size of the doses, depend
exclusively upon the curative relation of the medicine to the disease. We will here remark in passing
that one or two drops of the liquid attenuations, or
even one half, fourth or sixteenth part of a drop;
a few globules, or a grain or half a grain of the
trituration, constitute the size of a dose.
IV. gepetiion df 1te o e,.
Little need be said on this subject. In the earlier
period of his practice, Hahnemann was in the habit of
administering one dose only, and watching its effects
for days, weeks, and even months, until the action of
the drug seemed completely exhausted. More recently
this course has been abandoned by most homoeopathic
physicians, and the medicines are given more frequently; a dose of the lower preparations may be
repeated from every five or ten minutes, according to
the requirements of the case, or the receptivity of the
patient's organism, to every hour, or every two, three,
foul-, six or twelve hours; the higher preparations
should be repeated less frequently, every day, every
two or three days, or should even be given once a week
only. In the previous chapter, the cases where the
lower and higher attenuations are to be used respec



92          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
tively, have been indicated. It is needless to repeat
here what has been fully stated elsewhere.
This is a suitable  opportunity of warning  the
student and the beginning practitioner of homoeopathy against an error which is but too frequently
committed by homoeopathic physicians. I allude, not
to the too frequent repetition of the same medicine,
but to the unnecessary change of medicines in treating a case. There are practitioners who use ten,
fifteen different medicines in a case where an intelligent physician, one who is thoroughly acquainted
with his Materia Medica, would effect a cure in a
much easier and more expeditious way by means of
one or two remedies. This kind of treatment is either
the result of ignorance or of a want of confidence in
the efficacy of our remedies. There are diseases where
it is necessary to employ different remedies, but there
is scarcely a disease, even the higher forms of typhus,
which cannot be effectually controlled by at most three
or four remedies. In many diseases, where the books
advise the use of several remedies, a single remedy is
frequently sufficient to a cure. Thus, in regard to
inflammatory diseases, with or without local inflammations, we are advised to commence the treatment
with Aconite, and to change this medicine for Bryonia,
Belladonna, or some other remedy, as soon as the
synocha has been transformed into a simple erethic
fever. This is all wrong. If a medicine has produced
a decided improvement in the symptoms; that is, if the
symptoms remain the same, but are less intense, or if



HOMIEOPATHY PROPER.                  93
only some of them have disappeared, and the others
remain with the same degree of intensity: the original
medicine which caused this modification of the primitive group, should be continued for this reason, that
such a modification of the original disease is not an
evolution of a new group of symptoms, but simply a
quantitative reduction of the former symptoms.  Let
us suppose a case of inflammatory rheumatism with a
full and bounding pulse, high fever, pains in the joints
and bones, swelling and inflammation of the joints or
muscles. Of course, we should prescribe Aconite; and,
after using three or four doses of this medicine, we will
suppose that the fever has not only abated, but has
been entirely subdued, the pains in the bones are less,
and the inflammation is considerably reduced. This
change in the symptoms does not constitute a new
group requiring a different remedy; on the contrary,
the same remedy is still indicated, and, if continued,
perhaps in reduced quantity and at longer intervals,
the remaining symptoms will speedily disappear. As
a general rule, the books do not distinguish between a
reduction of the original disease to a lesser degree of
intensity, and the evolution of a new  or different
group of symptoms, constituting a different phasis
or stage of the original disease, and requiring a different treatment. In the higher forms of typhus, for
instance, groups of symptoms will sometimes develope
themselves in a series which are qualitatively, not
quantitatively, distinct from each other, and which,
therefore, require to be treated with different remedies.



94          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
As there is a reduction of the original symptoms to a
lesser degree of intensity, so there may be an increase
of these symptoms to a higher degree of intensity
requiring a change in the dose, not the medicine.
Supposing a patient had undergone alloeopathic
treatment for phlegmonous inflammation, or for such
a species of inflammation as we would  prescribe
Aconite for in our practice, Aconite would still be
indicated as corresponding with the original disease.
The apparent change which this treatment might
have effected in the symptoms, would not constitute
a new group pathologically distinct from the original
group; it would simply be the original disease elevated
to a higher, or depressed to a lower degree of intensity,
but absolutely identical ih a pathological point of view
with the former condition, and only quantitatively different from it.
It is of the utmost importance that the student of
homoeopathy should have these facts impressed upon
his mind. An incredible amount of injury is inflicted
upon the sick by the random sort of prescribing that
a great many practitioners resort to, and which, if
universally practised, would be a death-blow to our
art, and a disgrace to our profession.



96          GENERAL PRINCIPLES.
order to be sure that the symptoms of the disease are,
as they term it " covered" by the remedies.  This mode
of selecting a remedy, refers exclusively to the subjective symptoms, or the individual sensations of p5ain
which are experienced by the patient; it does not
take cognisance of the pathological state, of which
these  subjective  sensations of pain are the mere
external characteristics.
Cases may, perhaps, arise where the alternate use
of two different medicines may be desirable; but these
cases are few, just as few as the cases of two different
diseases co-existing in the organism with all their
characteristic symptoms distinctly and unmistakeably
developed to the observing understanding.  If we consider that every drug corresponds to a distinct pathological state, essentially differing from any other, we can
only logically resort to the alternate use of two different medicines on condition that we should have. to
act upon two distinct pathological states, existing at
one and the same time in the same organism.  It has
been abundantly shown in previous paragraphs, that
such a combination is of very rare occurrence, and
that the necessity for the alternate use of two different medicines can, therefore, only present itself as
an exceptional mode of practice.  The books present
a great display of remedies that may be used in
alternation, or in a certain order of succession. Such
doctrines are generally a tissue of flimsy sophisms.
The selection of a remedy under any circumstances
depends upon the actually existing morbid state.  In



98               APPLICATION.
Hahnenann's particular doctrines concerning these
various subjects, are referred to the Organon, sections
72, 73, 74, 77, 78, 82, 84, 100, 204, 210, 231, 233, 235,
259, 262, and 293.  In comparing the rules which
Hahnemann here lays down for the treatment of the
above mentioned classes of diseases, with the method
of treatment which now prevails among homoeopathic
practitioners, it will be found that Hahnemann's suggestions and positive teachings are deviated from in
almost every particular.  And yet, to the attentive
reader these teachings will appear full of wisdom, and
characterized by a deep love and reverence for the
Creator's masterpiece, the human organism.  How
anxiously Hahnemann avoids any interference, by the
violent action of drugs, with the marvellous operations of its divine mechanism! With what deep and
religious devotion he betakes himself to the task of
dicovering the precise wants of the sick, and applying
such remedies as by their prompt and pleasant action,
will win the willing confidence of the patient! Under
Hahnemann's guidance, the remedial agent indeed
becomes a gentle friend, a loving restorer of health,
and, for the first time since the creation of man, the
healing art has been true to its high and noble mission, and, instead of inficting pain, has kindly and
permanently relieved it.
An elaborate statement of Hahnemann's original
rules of practice could not be furnished without transcribing them in their totality.  The principal features
of these rules are



HOM(EOPATHY PROPER.                 99
1. The smallness of the dose, generally one or two
globules of the thirtieth potency.
2. Careful avoidance of unnecessary repetitions of
the dose; after having  given the first dose, the
physician is not to give a second one, until he has
convinced himself by the most careful observation
that one dose is not sufficient to make an impression
upon the disease, and that the same medicine is still
indicated by the symptoms.
3. No change of medicine unless required by a
change in the perceptible symptoms of the disease.
4. Administration of the remedy by olfaction in a
large number of cases.
5. Strict adherence to the diet recommended by
Hahnemann.
6. Administration of only one simple medicine at a
time. Hahnemann was decidedly hostile to all compounding of drugs, and to the alternate use of two
or more drugs, which is almost constantly indulged in
even by the strictest purists, and which can only be
entirely avoided by those who believe in the specific
relationof medicines to diseases.  In section 272 of
the Organon, Hahnemann uses this emphatic language
in reference to this matter: "In no instance is it
requisite to employ more than one simple medicine at
a time."  And in a note to this paragraph he records
his opposition to the horrible abuse which threatened
to break in upon the  Honoeopathic School, even
during his lifetime, in the following words, the meaning of which must seem perfectly clear and unmis



100               DISEASES.
takeable to every unprejudiced follower of the great
teacher.  "Experiments have been made by some
homoeopathists in cases where, imagining that one
part of the symptoms of a disease required one
remedy, and that another remedy was more suitable
to another part, they have given both remedies at the
same time, or nearly so; but I earnestly caution all
my adherents against such a hazardous practice,
which  never will be necessary, though, in  some
instances, it may appear serviceable."
These wise teachings are disregarded by modern
homoeopaths, some of whom regularly prescribe three
and even four medicines at a time in almost every
case of sickness. Such practices would gradually lead
us back to the worst abuses of polypharmacy, if the
seed that Hahnemann has sown, were not endowed
with the imperishable vitality of eternal truth, and
were not destined to grow  up to a tree of life,
freighted with the blessings of a regenerated race.
HAHNEMANN'S VIEW OF ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASES.
One of the peculiar features of Hahnemann's doctrines is his view of acute and chronic diseases, of
which it seems appropriate to furnish a brief synopsis
in this place.
Section 72, of the Organon, Hahnemann teaches
that, "the diseases of mankind resolve themselves
into two classes. The first are rapid operations of the



HOMCEOPATHY  PROPER.                101
vital power departed from its natural condition, which
terminate in a shorter or longer period of time, but
are always of moderate duration.  These are called
acute diseases.  The others, which are less distinct,
and often almost imperceptible on their first appearance, seize upon the organism,. each according to its
own peculiar manner, and, by degrees, remove it so
far from a state of health, that the vital power is only
able to offer a fruitless resistance, and is compelled to
allow these diseases to grow until, in the end, they
destroy the organism.  This second class of diseases
is known by the appellation of chronic diseases; they
are produced by infection from a chronic miasm."
Hahnemann classes acute diseases under two distinct heads.  The first constitutes isolated cases of
sickness, and arises from some pernicious cause to
which patients have been exposed, such as excess in
eating or drinking, starvation, violent physical influences, cold, heat, fatigue, etc., or violent emotions.
The second kind  arises from  meteoric or telluric
influences; it develops itself in a number of individuals at one and the same time, in different localities, and  is, on  that account, termed  sporadic.
Sporadic diseases are  termed epidemic, when they
become contagious by acting upon close and compact
masses of human  beings.  War, inundations, and
famine, frequently give rise to these diseases, but
they may likewise result from  acute miasms, which
always reappear under the same form; some of them
attacking man only once in his life-time, such as small



102                 DISEASES.
pox, measles, whooping-cough, the scarlet fever of
Sydenham, mumps, etc.; whereas others may attack
repeatedly, such as the plague, yellow-fever, Asiatic
cholera, etc.
All chronic diseases, which  properly claim  this
appellation, arise from  three miasms, psora, syphilis,
and sycosis. The characteristic sign of the syphilitic
niasm is the chancre, and that of the sycosic miasm a
cauliflower-shaped excrescence. The psoric miasm is
the most inveterate and most universal of all chronic
miasms.  "It is not," says Hahnemann, in Sect. 80 of
the Organon,'until the whole organism  is infected,
that psora declares its huge internal chronic miasm by
a cutaneous eruption (sometimes consisting only in a
few pimples) that is peculiar to it, and accompanied
by an insupportable titillation, a voluptuous itching,
and a specific odor. This psora is the sole, true and
fundamental cause that produces all the other countless forms of disease which, under the  names of
nervous debility, hysteria, hemicrania, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholia, idiocy, madness, epilepsy,
and spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones, or
rickets, scoliasis and cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungus
haemotodes, disorganizations and adventitious growths
of all kinds, gravel, gout, piles, jaundice and cyanosis
dropsy, amenorrhoea, gastrorrhagia, epistaxis, haemoptysis, hematuria, metrorrhagia, asthma, phthisis, impotence and sterility, deafness, cataract and amaurosis,
paralysis, loss of sense, pains of every kind, etc.,



HOMIOEOPATHY  PROPER.                103
appear in our pathology as so many peculiar, distinct
and independent diseases."
" The progress of this ancient miasm  through millions of organisms, in the  course of hundreds of
generations, and the extraordinary degree of development which it has by these means acquired, explains,
to a certain extent, why, at the present time, it
appears under so many different forms, especially if
we contemplate the multiplicity of circumstances that
usually contribute to this great diversity of chronic
affections, (secondary symptoms of psora,) besides the
infinite variety of their individual constitution. It is,
therefore, not surprising, that such different organisms,
penetrated by the psoric miasm, and exposed to so
many hurtful influences, external and internal, which
often act upon them  in a permanent manner, should
also present such an incalculable number of diseases,
changes and sufferings, as those which have, till the
present time, been cited by pathologists as so many
distinct diseases, which are described by them under
a variety of particular names."
Hahnemann spent ttwelve years in ferreting out the
true source of this incredible number of chronic affections, and discovering the principal remedies with
which the different forms of this psoric hydra could
be successfully combated. To these remedies he gave
the name of anti-psorics. The effects of these remedies upon the healthy organism  are contained in a
number of volumes, constituting, together with the
treatise on the Nature and Treatment of Chronic Dis



104                DISEASES.
eases, the second half of Hahnemann's Materia Medica.
Previous to the discovery of the anti-psoric remedies,
the homoeopathic treatment of chronic diseases was,
according to Hahnemann, exceedingly imperfect, and
often unsuccessful; the use of the anti-psorics renders
this treatment much more satisfactory.
This is the doctrine. At first it was hailed with an
outburst of delight, and with a perfectly child-like
faith.  Death had lost its sting, and disease had
been effectually and triumphantly conquered. Well,
experience has most signally failed to confirm these
brilliant expectations. Patients will die under homoeopathic treatment as well as under any other, and a
large number of diseases remain unconquerable. We
have not yet succeeded in curing cancer, phthisis,
organic diseases of the viscera; we are scarcely more
successful in removing cataract, amaurosis, deafness,
than alloeopathic practitioners; a large number of
eruptive and nervous diseases defy the efficacy of
our treatment; piles, irritations of the spinal column,
blennorrhoea of the  lungs, bowels, nose, remain
uncured in hundreds of cases under homoeopathic
treatment; in short, the acclamations of joy with
which the advent of the anti-psoric remedies was
hailed by the disciples of Hahnemann, have dwindled
down to feeble echoes of the primitive hymns of praise,
and, in many quarters, have even been superseded by
a positive want of faith, arising from bitter and frequent disappointments.
There was a time when, to differ with Hahnemann,



HOM(EOPATHY  PROPER.              ]05
was to be a renegade, a non-believer in the orthodox
church of homoeopathy. This time is no more, thanks
to the noble efforts of such men as Griesselich, Rau,
Trinks, Arnold, and a host of other manly and devoted
reformers, who had the courage and the talent to
elevate homoeopathy beyond the narrow  limits of a
mere science of sensual symptoms, to the exalted rank
of a rational and queenly truth, to which chemistry,
anatomy, pathology and physiology became subordinate and obedient, but indispensable supporters.
In company with many other honest and enlightened practitioners, I have devoted years of earnest
thought to Hahnemann's doctrine of psora, and I
must say that, however brilliant it may appear to
some, it does not strike me as founded in reason.
Was the psoric miasm inherent in man when he
first came out of the hands of his Maker, or did this
psoric miasm first develope itself in the course of
time, long after the first generations had passed away?
It is immaterial which of these views we adopt to
prove the unsoundness of Hahnemann's doctrine, that
the host of morbid conditions which he enumerates in
the first volume of his Chronic Diseases, from page 67
to page 98, constitutes a series of secondary effects of
the internal psoric miasm, the chief primary symptom
of which is the itch-pustule. Even if this doctrine
were true, it does not, by any means account for the
first origin of the internal psoric miasm of which the
itch-pustule constitutes the external vicarious manifestation.  This original miasm must, according to Hah



106                DISEASES.
nemann's own doctrine, have existed in the human
organism anteriorly to any external manifestation in
the shape of the itch-pustule, tinea, tetter, or any form
whatsoever, and the question then arises: How did it
first develope itself? From what causes did it originally spring?  Evidently not from  the retrocession,
by natural or artificial means, of its vicarious cutaneous symptom which had not as yet any existence.
This miasm must either have formed one of the constituent principles of the human organism, when it
was first moulded into form, and quickened into life
by the Divine Creator, or else the miasm must have
supervened at a later period, and in this case humanity
must either have been infected with it by some evil
genius, whom God allowed to consummate this work
of destruction, that his own high ends might be furthered thereby, or else the miasm arose from man's
universal deviation from the laws of harmonic life.
Man cannot possibly enjoy perfect health until he has
achieved  a perfect  adjustment or correspondence
between material nature and the laws that regulate human life; and this perfect adjustment cannot
possibly take place until the laws of harmonious life
are known, and all the arrangements of man's social
and sensual life are absolutely adapted to the primordial conditions of his nature. How can it be expected,
for instance, that man should enjoy health, as long as
he has it not in his power to regulate atmospheric
influences, to establish a universal system of adequate
ventilation, to introduce habits of cleanliness into



HOMEOPATHY PROPER.                107
every household, to procure for every human being a
sufficient quantity of suitable raiment, of wholesome
food, of refreshing and invigorating water, and of
harmonious exercise of the universal organism  by
productive and attractive labor, and finally, to secure
to every man, woman, and child, the perfect and
constant enjoyment of all the legitimate affections of
the soul, the spontaneous realization in action of all
the true and essentially useful ideas of the mind, and
a fulness of that deep and religious peace which
unavoidably arises from the consciousness of living in
the order of one's God-appointed destiny. Even if a
number of men, or a majority of the race were living
in these conditions of harmony, the development of a
morbific miasm could not be avoided. A single foul spot
in the best governed city, and among a perfectly
healthy population, would be sufficient to generate
disease, and decimate the population of an empire.
Here let us rest, and let us cease to speculate beyond
those self-evident agencies through whose instrumentality disease first introduced itself into the world.
Man was ignorant of the true laws of life; he ate
improper food, he lived on roots and raw meat, or he
ate enormous quantities of flesh, feasted on blood and
fat, was exposed to the inclemencies of the weather,
inhabited smoky, dark rooms, or even subterraneous
dens, deprived of fresh air, without cleanliness, doomed
to hard and enervating labor, and the fairest portion
of the race changed to an abject, degrading bondage;
nien and beasts all huddled up together in the same



108                DISEASES.
gloomy hut; wallowing in the same mire; inhaling
the same death-harboring stenches; bellowing, roaring,
barking, swearing together, in the same horrible
discord; it is to such influences that we must trace
the first immediate or proximate causes of disease, and
not to the suppression of the cutaneous symptom of a
miasm  that was itself a result of man's primitive
deviation from the divine laws of life. If chronic
diseases are decreasing in number and intensity, it is
not so much owing to the curative influence of antipsoric medicines as to improved habits of diet, to a
better system of general hygiene, ventilation, to a
more harmonious exercise of the body, to the enjoyment of better food and raiment by the masses of the
population, and to the universal spread of cleanliness
and comfort.  The strictness with which  all the
hygienic and atmospheric circumstances of the patient,
are regulated by homoeopathic practitioners, is one of
the leading conditions of their successful treatment of
chronic diseases; and what medicines may be required
to achieve the cure, are just as often selected from
among our common remedies, as from the so-called
anti-psorics.



PART II.
CRITICAL REVIEW
OF THE
DOCTRINES OF HOM(EOPATHY,
AS APPARENTLY TAUGHT IN THE ORGANON,
AND AS
COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE WHO CLAIM TO BE THE
ORTHODOX FOLLOWERS OF HAHNEMANN.



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  113
it on a number of healthy persons; in other words,
a number of healthy persons of both sexes, and of
various ages, temperaments and constitutions, must
have swallowed a sufficient portion of the original
drug to develope all the various effects which it is
capable of producing in the human organism.  As
long as these effects are not exactly known, it is
impossible that any homoeopathic physician should,
under any circumstances, be able to administer one of
his drugs in strict conformity with his principle of
" sinilia similibus," or "like cures like."  Indeed, in
order to secure a perfectly true application of this
formula to the treatment of diseases, it would, in the
first place, seem necessary that, before we can be perfectly sure of the curative operations of a drug in any
given case, the patient should have tried, or, according to the technical phrase of homoeopathists, "proved"
this drug upon himself, while in a state of perfect
health; for no two  persons are ever affected alike
by the same drug; nor does the same disease ever
develope exactly the same symptoms in any two cases;
the careful observer will perceive differences, were
they ever so minute, but still differences arising from
differences of temperament and constitution, or from
various idiosyncrasies which, in the great society of
men, constitute  every human being an individual
perfectly distinct from all other individuals of the
same family.  This mode of reasoning shows that
the homoeopathic law of " like cures like," is, in reality,
a dogmatic abstraction, and that its strict or literal
8



114            CRITICAL REVIEW
application in the treatment of disease, is simply
impossible.  For, it cannot be expected that every
person who may possibly be sick once in his lifetime,
should previously poison himself with every drug that
is used in medical practice, in order to find out what
diseases it might possibly cure in his own case; nor
can it even be expected that a sufficient number of
devoted men should be found willing  to swallow
sufficiently large portions of a poisonous substance,
and to persevere in this practice for a sufficient length
of time, in order to obtain even a tolerable certainty
of the varied effects of the drug upon the animal
economy, and a sufficiently correct representation of
the various diseases to which these effects are similar,
and which the drug, in accordance with the homoeopathic law of similarity is, therefore, supposed capable
of curing.  There are many diseases which it would
be absolutely impossible to reproduce in the human
organism by artificial means. Of this number are the
various cutaneous eruptions, eruptive fevers, chronic
hereditary taints and organic diseases, such as enlargements of organs, arthritic deposits, effusions into the
cavities of the  brain, chest, abdomen; glandular
indurations, schirrous disorganizations, consumptive
conditions, malformations.  A  great many of these
diseases can be, and have been, cured, and yet no
prover has ever yet succeeded in developing similar
diseases by mere  drugs; indeed, howsoever far a
single man's devotion to science may, now and then,
be carried, it is not probable that a number of men



116            CRITICAL REVIEW
form; and this preparation is undoubtedly the true
remedy for this disease, and cures it specifically much
better than any other known or probably unknown
drug.  But what symptoms, among the provings of
Aconite, point so evidently and unmistakeably to this
drug as the most appropriate remedy for fever, that
no other medicine could possibly be thought of in preference to Aconite?  And what now shall we say of
the literal honoeopathicity of Aconite to the various
acute inflammations which homoeopathic physicians
cure with this drug?  With Aconite they cure an
inflammation of the lungs, save those cases where
some other drug may be required. With Aconite they
cure acute pleurisy, acute ophthalmia, an acute inflammation of the bowels, of the liver, or of almost any
organ and tissue in the body. But what symptoms,
among the known provings of Aconite, point to this
drug as the true remedy for orchitis, for acute hepatitis, or for pneumonia? I do not say that there is
any better remedy for these diseases; I simply ask,
what are  the  therapeutic  indications, among  the
known physiological effects of Aconite, which justify a
homoeopathic practitioner to prescribe it as the first
and best remedy for acute inflammations of glandular
organs, of the muscular tissue, of the eye, ear, rectum,
and so forth?  I say that these indications do not
exist, and that the use of Aconite, in these affections,
is either based upon empirical routine, or else upon
grounds which the literal formula  similiac similibus"
cannot legitimately claim as its own. No enlightened



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  117
practitioner will undertake to find, among the provings
of Aconite, a group of symptoms which shall be an
exact and unmistakeable representation of ophthalmia,
pneumonia, hepatitis, orchitis, gastritis, dysentery, etc.,
or of any of the acute gastric, bilious or rheumatic
fevers for which Aconite is prescribed  by every
homoeopathic physician.
My literary labors in the field of homoeopathy have
enabled me to become tolerably well acquainted with
both the truths and the fallacies of the huge and
inattractive fabric of our provings; and the result of
my long-continued, earnest and conscientious studies,
concerning the adaptation of the homoeopathic law of
similarity to the cure of disease, so far as this similarity is based upon an actually known resemblance
between the symptoms of the drug and those of the
disease, is this discouraging conclusion, that the homoeopathic law of "like cures like," is only an apparent
truth, and, therefore, in many cases, without any practical value. The cases of cure where the strikingly
favourable results of the treatment are evidently to be
traced to an exact resemblance between the natural
action of the drug and the phenomena of the disease,
simply tend to render the absence of this resemblance
in other cases, so much more evident and striking, and
to confirm every unprejudiced practitioner of homoeopathy in the belief, that all his decidedly brilliant and
unmistakeable cures depend upon a law which, if not
superior to the mere law of external similarity, implies



118            CRITICAL REVIEW
such a comprehension and application thereof as has
not yet prevailed among a majority of our physicians.
But it is not merely the non-existence of a true
similarity between the known symptoms of our drugs
and those of the disease, that renders the homoeopathic
law illusory, if understood in a purely external or
literal sense; the illusory character of this law is
demonstrable to common sense by a pure process of
reasoning based upon the general and universallyadmitted facts of nature.
According to Hahnemann's mode of understanding
the term  similarity," and applying his formula C simitia similibus" to the treatment of disease, a physician
has to proceed in this manner: All the symptoms that
a patient complains of, the various sensations of pain
that he experiences, the various eruptions, pimples,
blotches, tubercles, tumors, etc., which are seen upon
the skin; the color, smell, consistence and frequency
of the urinary and alvine evacuations; the abnormal
phenomena of the nervous system  generally; the
symptoms occurring during sleep, such as dreams,
startings of the limbs or body, etc.; the period of the
day when the pain is felt, the side of the body where
it is felt, the conditions and situations in which it is
excited, aggravated or diminished; all these symptoms
have to be recorded with the most perfect minuteness
on a sheet of paper, commencing at the head and ending at the feet, after which a remedy has to be found
in the Materia Medica which shall present the same
array of symptoms, and, if one cannot be found which



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  119
is exactly similar, then the next similar, and, for the
remaining symptoms another remedy, so that the
group of symptoms which the natural disease presents,
is covered, as it is termed, in its totality, by the combined symptoms of the remedies employed in this case.
Those who desire to be acquainted with Hahnemann's
own teachings in reference to this matter, may consult
his " Organon of Homioeopathic Mlediciine," 3d American
edition, from pages 143 to 154. They will there find
it stated in substance that Hahnemann repudiates all
classification of diseases, all physiological and patlological relation of the symptoms; that disease, according to him, consists merely in a certain numerical
arrangement of its perceptible symptoms, and that a
cure is effected by means of a drug which is known to
have produced these very symptoms in a healthy
person, when taken by the latter in a sufficient quantity and for a sufficient length of time. These external
symptoms are, according to Hahnemann, all that we
can ever know of disease; the internal connection of
the symptoms, the internal states of the organism, of
which these symptoms are merely the outward manifestations or perceptible signs, must for ever remain
hidden from the searching reason. Hahnemann denounces in bitter and emphatic language all attempts
to interpret the true meaning of the outward symptoms agreeably to the light of physiology and pathology; a pain is to him a mere pain, no matter what its
pathological character may be; it may be more or less
severe, more or less permanent, more or less screwing,



122            CRITICAL REVIEW
he consulted his repertory, or, from his memory, copied
the prescriptions which were recommended for this
disease.  Either the patient got well, or else he died;
but, if he did die, he died secundun artem, and this was
the doctor's consolation and his justification before the
world.  It was Hahnemann's mission to break this
charm, and it must be confessed that he proved a
terrible disturber of the self-complacent dogmatism
which had enchained the minds of physicians for so
many centuries, and had rendered the science of medicine inaccessible to all rational reforms.  Hahnemann
promulgated, and insisted upon, the interesting truth
that every case of disease constitutes a distinct and
characteristic deviation from the normal condition of the
organism; that its phenomena or symptoms should be
carefully observed and recorded, and that the case should
be treated upon its own merits, not as a rheumatic,
nervous, or gastric disease, but as a disturbance of the
organism characterized by certain observable outward
signs or symptoms.  This process of individualizing
the phenomena of disease, was undoubtedly a progress
over the old-fashioned method of prescribing, in regular
order, a set of medicines for mere names of diseases;
but, in the hands of Hahnemann, this process of individualization became as fatiguingly and pedantically
minute, as the dogmatic generalizations of the old
School had been destructive of the individual characteristics of disease. His directions to the physician
for discovering and tracing out an image of the disease,
as it is termed by Hahnemann; or, in other words, for



124            CRITICAL  REVIEW
for in the middle of the night to arrest an haemorrhage
from the lungs or uterus, will stand idly by, and,
while the life-pulse of his patient is ebbing feebler
and feebler, amuse himself with taking a record of all
the principal and accessory symptoms of the case?
And so in a case of impending paralysis. What more
positive indication does the physician require in such
a case than the state of the pulse?  Does not the
labored and slow beating at the wrist point in unmistakeable language to the necessity of an immediate
stimulation of the heart's action?  The alloeopathic
physician seeks to attain this result by venesection
and revulsive means, the homoeopathic by the exhibition of suitable internal agents; but whether alloeopathic or homoeopathic, what need is there of any
protracted examination?
If tie healing art embody a principle of scientific
truth, the physician will at once perceive the character and extent of the danger, and be able to avert it,
if this be at all possible, by a definite, certain, and
safe course of medication.  And, if Hahnemann's
method of taking a record of all the perceptible phenomena of a disease, be the only true mode of diagnosing
its essential nature, and determining our choice of a
suitable remedial agent, what is to become of the brute
creation? Are our valuable domestic animals to be
abandoned to their fate when sickness overtakes them?
Is veterinary surgery, this most interesting portion of
the healing art, to be abolished?  This will inevitably
result from the Hahnemannean formula, " like cures



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  125
like," unless the Creator should consent, for the special
benefit of homoeopathists, to endow the brutes with
rationality and such other means of communication as
may be required for a satisfactory statement of their
pains and derangements.
The objections which I have thus far offered against
the law of similarity, as propounded by Hahnemann,
it strikes me, are of a very grave character, and
appear to me unanswerable.  Nor are they the only
ones. The present homoeopathic Materia Medica is
composed of some three hundred drugs, all of which
have been proved, more or less fully, on healthy persons. I shall hereafter have occasion to show that
these provings are exceedingly unreliable and illusory.
But, the homoeopathist who has incorporated these
provings in his Materia Medica, is of course disposed,
and indeed, bound to be guided by his drug-symptoms
in the selection of a remedy for some particular case
of disease. Now let us open the ponderous volumes
of the homoeopathic Materia Medica, and we shall
find that the symptoms of many homoeopathic drugs
are so nearly alike, that it is absolutely impossible to
select a remedy with any thing like certainty, for any
disease you may name. Let a physician who is not
acquainted with the established routine-practice of
homoeopathy, undertake to cure a headache with the
means offered him in his Materia Medica. A simple
headache seems to be a very trifling affection, which
ought easily to be cured, if there be any truth in
medicine.  Years of practice and observation have



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  127
recorded as belonging to it in the Materia Medica.
Take any thirty or forty of the leading drugs, Platina,
Arsenic, Calcarea, Sulphur, Alumina, Natrum muriaticum, etc., and you will find nearly the same pains
recorded  among  the  headache-symptoms, be they
shooting, lancing, jerking, twisting, burning, stinging,
screwing, constrictive, compressive, aching or any
other kinds of pain. And if, after comparing all these
different drugs with each other with the most faithful
perseverance, a physician finally decides in favor of
a certain remedy, and administers it in the positive
expectation of relieving his patient; how bitter must
be his disappointment, if no favorable change follows
the exhibition of his drug? What is he to do now?
He had made every effort to select his remedy in
accordance with the perceptible symptoms of the case;
he feels unable to discover a greater degree of similarity between the symptoms of the disease, and those
of any other drug besides the one he had used; nothing
now  remains for him  than blind empiricism. His
sheet-anchor having failed him, he now has to try one
drug and then another, until he finally, by some lucky
chance, either hits on the right remedy, or until,
which is much more probable, and is, indeed, much
more frequently the case, the disease has, in the meanwhile, run its course, and arrived at its natural terrnination.  This is not an imaginary case, but it is the
fate of every new convert to homoeopathy, who.undertakes to practise his art agreeably to the demands of
the Organon.  He soon finds out that he has to for



128            CRITICAL REVIEW
sake the speculative paths of the master, and has to
betake himself to some kind of routine-practice in
order to satisfy his conscience, and afford relief to his
confiding patients.  The symptoms which we find
recorded in the homoeopathic Materia  Medica as
constituting the genuine effects of drugs upon the
healthy organism, are too much alike to enable the
practitioner to discriminate with scientific accuracy
between the symptoms of one drug and those of
another.  This homogeneity of the symptoms not
only runs through the symptoms of the head, but
exists throughout the Materia Medica in the recorded
symptoms of almost every part of the human body.
The throat-symptoms, the symptoms of the chest,
bowels, extremities, and those of the special senses,
are, in most respects, so nearly alike, that those of one
drug might easily be taken for the symptoms of
another.  What homoeopathic physician would undertake to cure-a case of constipation, or of the opposite
state, diarrhoea, if he had no other therapeutic indications to depend upon than the abnormal conditions of
the alvine evacuations, as recorded in the Materia
Medica?  The same drug is invariably a remedy for
constipation and a remedy for diarrhoea, a remedy for
strangury and a remedy for the opposite state, enuresis,
a remedy for a loss of appetite, and for a ravenous
desire for food, for excessive menstruation, and for
retention of the menses.  Opposite states, such as farsightedness and nearsightedness; emaciation and adiposis; sleeplessness and drowsiness; desire for, and



130            CRITICAL  REVIEW
eases.  Take a case of gastric fever.  If the pulse be
full, hard and bounding, and the skin hot and dry,
the homoeopathic physician will prescribe Aconite as
the proper remedy for this condition; but, if the
bowels should, at the same time, be constipated, most
physicians will consider themselves bound to alternate
the Aconite with a few  doses of Nux vomica or
Bryonia, simply because they had learned from somebody, or read in some manual, that Nux and Bryonia
are proper remedies for constipation, and that, on this
account, the aforesaid case of gastric fever with constipation, would not be treated secundum  artem, if
the Aconite were not duly alternated with Nux or
Bryonia.  Not all physicians seem to understand that
the constipation, in this case, is not a primary symptom, but a necessary result of the embarrassed or
depressed condition of the capillary action, and that,
if the capillary system be restored to its normal vigor
and elasticity by specific remedial influences, the
constipation will cease of itself. But, if the fever
should happen to be accompanied with diarrhoea, then
Pulsatilla would generally be substituted for Nux, for
no other earthly reason than because Pulsatilla is
recommended for diarrhoea as a symptom  of gastric
derangement.  And, if the fever should be accompanied with vomiting of mucus or bile, the probability
is that most physicians would alternate the Aconite
with a few doses of Ipecacuanha, simply because they
happen to know  that this drug is recommended for
vomiting. But, if the vomiting should be moreover



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  131
complicated with burning in the pit of the stomach,
Arsenic would undoubtedly take the place of Ipecacuanha, because it is an invariable rule with  most
homoeopathic physicians to prescribe the former drug
for "burning."  Now, it will be readily admitted by
all intelligent practitioners of the homoeopathic healing
art, that this method of prescribing remedies for mere
symptoms, is not, by any means, satisfactory to the
scientific reason, and that, if it were carried to its
ultimate boundaries, homoeopathy would indeed become, in the words of the illustrious Hufeland, "the
grave of medicine."
These remarks lead me to another grave and vital
objection to the mode in which homoeopathy is practised by some physicians, an objection which is founded
on the incompleteness and unreliableness of the materials out of which the homoeopathic Materia Medica is
composed. Let us examine this subject a little more
closely, and it will at once become apparent that the
material basis of homoeopathy, viz., the provings or
drug-symptoms which make up the homoeopathic Materia Medica, so far from constituting a series of incontrovertible facts, is, on the contrary, liable to the grave
and well-founded charge of being, in a great measure,
a tissue of fallacies, illusions, misapprehensions, absurdities, and childish observations.
Previous to Hahnemann, regular provings of drugs
upon the healthy, were not deemed necessary to secure
a perfect adaptation of the remedial agent to the disease. The pharmacodynamic properties of drugs were



132            CRITICAL  REVIEW
generally known only from  some accidental cases of
poisoning, or from the effects produced by an excessive
dose of the drug, which constituted, after all, a peculiar species of legalised poisoning.  One drug was
simply known as an emetic, more or less mild or
severe in its operations, but still only as an emetic;
another drug as a febrifuge; another as a sudorific;
another as a diuretic; another again as a rubefacient;
another as an antiphlogistic; and these unsatisfactory
generalizations led to, and confirmed the exceedingly
speculative practice of former times. The healing art,
it strikes me, consisted simply of the few very general
and very vague operations of bleeding, sweating, purging, vomiting, salivating, stupefying, stimulating, or
blistering the patient; and the scorching satire which
the keen genius of Moliere has inflicted upon the dogmatism  and the self-sufficient pride of the profession,
in his " MALADE IMAGINAIRE;" howsoever humiliating
this imperishable monument of wit and comedy may
appear to all superficial and truth-dreading followers
of AEsculapius, must, nevertheless, be received as a
permanent protest of the  insulted  sense and the
wounded sensibilities of humanity against the barbarous empiricism which had been enthroned in the
schools as the goddess of medical truth, and was worshipped by an infatuated and ignorant multitude as
heaven's sublimest inspiration, and the prerogative of
unapproachable and mysterious genius.  It is true, a
great many, and, indeed, all the noble spirits of the
profession, had recorded their condemnation of the



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  133
blind empiricism and sweeping generalizations of their
art. Boerhaave, Sydenham, Huxham, Hoffmann, Girtanner, Haller, had expressed their dissatisfaction
with the uncertainties of medicine and and the fanciful theories of her professors; but no positive and
radical reforms had ever been proposed by any of
these writers, and it must be admitted, that the first
signal revolution in the principles and practice of medicine, whatever'value may otherwise be attached to it
by its friends or opponents, dates from the period when
Hahnemann proclaimed the doctrine, that a cure can
only be effected by means of drugs which are capable
of producing, in the healthy organism, a train of symptoms exactly similar to those of the natural disease.
This doctrine opened an entirely new field to the
observing reason.  Facts which had hitherto been
overlooked as unimportant and unessential, had to be
investigated with the minutest care; it was no longer
sufficient to know that the patient suffered pain, but
the sensually-perceptible character of the pain had to
be ascertained, whether it was a boring, screwing,
lancinating, burning, stinging, twitching, jerking orany other kind of pain; it was no longer sufficient to
be told that the patient complained of a stitch, but
the direction, quality and size of tie stitch had to be
known, whether it was from within outwards, or from
without inwards, from  above downwards or from
below upwards, whether it was a slow or a rapid, a
tearing or a boring stitch, or whether it was striking
through the space of an inch, a foot or the whole



134            CRITICAL  REVIEW
body.  The new doctrine being, that the totality of
the symptoms constitutes the'disease, in a therapeutic
point of view at least; and that the disease is cured
internally when all the symptoms are extinguished,
(see Hahnemann's Organon, pages 96-98:) it followed,
as a matter of course, that an exact knowledge of the
symptoms was the first requisite towards a cure.  Nor
can there be any logical difference of opinion among
the strict followers of Hahnemann regarding the question: What constitutes a symptonm?  Nothing can
possibly come under the category of symptoms which
is not a sensually-perceptible  deviation  from  the
normal condition of the organism. It must be a pain,
an eruption, or some kind of a perceptible disturbance
of the functions.  The physiological relation of one
pain to another; of a dyspeptic state of the stomach
to irregularities of the heart's action; of an abnormal
coloring of the skin or a dropsical condition of the
cellular tissue to a diseased state of the liver; of
paralysis or atrophy of the extremities to spinal disorganizations; of the general emaciation of a child and
the tympanitic distention of its bowels to a scrofulous
enlargement of the mesenteric glands; of an effusion
into the cavity of the chest to some organic affection
of the heart; all such purely intellectual perceptions
of the patient's condition, are logically speaking,
banished from the domain of the homoeopathic healing
art, and, if Hahnemann's formula be strictly and
literally true, must be necessarily superseded by the
new  art of recording all the morbid sensations, or,



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  135
indeed, all the sensations of the patient, with the most
rigorous exactitude. No perceptible alteration of the
functions is allowed to escape.  With pen in hand,
the Hahnemannian follower is obliged to note every
perceptible irregularity in the organism from the head
to the foot, every little spot or pimple, every twinge
of pain, the character, duration, starting-point, or
periodicity of the pain, its alternate appearance or
disappearance in one or the other side of the body;
the exact color, shape, consistence, smell and quantity
of the  alvine  and  urinary evacuations, and  the
manner in which they are expelled, together with
all the accompanying sensations of urging, pressing,
smarting, ease  or embarrassment; the  cutaneous
sensations and appearances, such as itching, gnawing,
stinging, creeping, every little pimple, blotch, spot,
and the like; the various conditions observable during
sleep, such as dreams, whether pleasant or unpleasant,
and about what; startings of tile body or limbs; the
position of the body, whether the patient is inclined
to sleep on his back or belly, on the right or left side,
with his arms extended along the sides of the body,
or lying crosswise on the chest, or stretched above
the head; with the lower extremities drawn up or
stretched out, closely joined or spread apart; and so
through every known function of the organism; every
possible indication  of a disturbed  equilibrium  is
recorded with the greatest care as an essential feature
of what Hahnemann terms "the image of the disease;"
inferences or purely intellectual perceptions are cate



136            CRITICAL REVIEW
gorically excluded from this world of symptoms; the
patient's sensations as described in his own language,
sensations of constriction or compression, fulness or
emptiness, distention or sinking, weakness or strength,
all the various noises of buzzing, ringing, fluttering,
roaring, cracking, hissing, humming, snapping, blowing, thundering, whizzing, seething; all the various
sensations  of itching, gnawing, jerking, burning,
thumping, hammering, jumping, bounding, twitching,
screwing, boring, stinging, shooting, cutting, pinching,
griping, grasping, clutching, clawing, forcing, urging,
pressing, tearing, boring, pushing, aching, crampy or
spasmodic pains; every possible form of pain, and all
the conditions and influences which have reference to
the external character of the pain, such as locality,
period of occurrence, periodicity and so forth; in one
word, all visible or tangible signs of disease, all alterations of the functions whether perceptible externally
to the senses or internally to the patient's own consciousness, constitute, in the professional logic of every
strict homoeopathist, the chief, and, indeed, the sole
object of cure; all these external signs form the true
image and constitute the only attainable knowledge of
the disease; it is to a correct perception and a complete and accurate record of these signs that the
physician should bend all his energies; all investigations of the actual condition of the nervous system
during the occurrence of certain pains; all inquiries
into the pathological state of the organs during the
development of certain alterations of the functions,



OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE.  139
changed the aspect of the Homoeopathic School in
Germany, at least,-and Germany is still a focus of
all genuine reform in science, philosophy, and religion-that, so far from its being the grave of medicine,
as it fairly threatened to become under the invasion
of a mass of spurious symptoms and baseless theories,
many of the homoeopathic reviews and journals now
published in Germany, England, and the United
States, rank undoubtedly among the most valuable
and philosophical contributions to medical literature.
The opposition  to Hahnemann's doctrine arose,
then, not so much from his own criticism of the existing doctrines of the Schools, as from the incompleteness
and partial unsoundness of the system which he
sought to force upon  the profession, first by his
unsparing criticism of the humoral pathology which
was then in vogue, and secondly, by his reiterated and
positive assurance that the homoeopathic system, as
taught by him, was the only true method of cure.
Here was the chief point of difference between
Hahnemann and his alloeopathic opponents, as well as
his most distinguished disciples. Supposing we admit
the correctness of his premises, that the removal of all
the perceptible symptoms of a disease, constitutes a
cure, does it then follow that we must necessarily
accept the means which he proposes to effect this
end, as the best, most rational, and most expeditious?  It is not so much his original premises that
were assailed, as the means which he proposes to
remove the totality of the perceptible symptoms. His



140            CRITICAL REVIEW
opponents say that these means are inadequate, and
not, by any means, conformable to sound science.
They say that his method of removing the symptoms
reduces the healing art to the mechanical process of
opposing a series of natural symptoms by its exact
counterpart of drug-symptoms, without considering
the essential or internal states of the organism of
which the external or sensually-perceptible symptoms
are mere phenomenal manifestations; and they assert
furthermore, and certainly very  justly, that this
mechanical " COVERING, as it is termed, of one series
of symptoms by another, will prove destructive of all
true medical science, and will, in the end, destroy
itself as one of the illusions of the infantile reason of
humanity.  Leaving for the present a close examination of the dazzling sophisms which this illusion
embodies, with a view of resuming it by and by in
its order, let us now look at the character of the means
with which we are required to remove the symptoms
of disease.
The disciples of Hahnemann, as well as most other
physicians, cure diseases by means of drugs.  The
same drugs are mostly used in both the homoeopathic
and alloeopathic Schools, although homoeopathic physicians generally use a great many more drugs than
their alloeopathic opponents. To oppose a series of
natural morbid symptoms by a similar series of drugsymptoms, the symptoms which a drug is capable of
producing in the healthy organism, have not only to
be known with perfect exactitude, but also in their



OF THE PROVINGS.                141
totality.  For, taking it for granted that the homoeopathic formula "similia similibus" embodies the whole
of therapeutic truth, how could this formula be applied
to the treatment of disease unless all the symptoms of
a drug were known?  Twenty different drugs may all
produce the same kind of a headache, or a headache
so nearly alike that differences can hardly be said to
exist. But a few characteristic differences may be
discovered between the abdominal or thoracic symptoms, and it may be the accidental co-existence of one
or more of these accidental differences in the natural
morbid group, that may lead us to the selection of the
true remedy from among this number. But, supposing
these characteristic symptoms should be wanting either
in the natural or artificial group, how then are we
going to decide which of these twenty remedies will
cure the headache? This will be found a hard matter,
and, in truth, a sheer impossibility, as every beginner
in homoeopathy will soon discover to his great sorrow
and disappointment.  The natural group of symptoms
is entirely beyond our control; the laws of life, and
the influences by which they happen to be disturbed,
are the determining causes of this group, and regulate
it according to their own sovereign pleasure. But
the artificial group, or the symptoms which the drug
contains,as it were, within the recesses of its structural
organization, and which it is the business of the prover
to develope in a regular series, are more or less subject to his control, and their exact and complete evolution depends a good deal upon the arbitrament of his



144            CRITICAL REVIEW
hundred drops of the strong tincture at one time.
Professor Zlatarovitch emptied a whole tumblerful of
the tincture of Thuja occidentalis, after having tried
lesser quantities for months. Dr. Muller proved the
nitrate of silver with  massive doses; others, the
tinctures of Colocynth, Bryonia, Nux vomica, and so
forth; all the  medicines composing  Hahnemann's
Materia Medica Pura, and the additions thereto by
his original co-provers, and which have been collected
by Dr. Stapf into a separate volume, were experimented with in large doses of the tincture, in such a
manner that these founders and apostles of the New
School of medicine finally succeeded in obtaining a
perfect picture of the pathogenesis of many drugs, and
defining their positive spheres of action as remedial
agents and the exact boundaries of their usefulness.
But what shall we, what can we say of an enormous
mass of symptoms which have been incorporated into
the homoeopathic Materia Medica by men who never
knew how to distinguish between a fancy and an
actual truth? In what way are the symptoms which
are set down to the account of many drugs, which
have been introduced since Hahnemann's demise, by
a number of provers in different countries, distinguished from the numerous unpleasant sensations by
which thousands of nervous systems are disturbed in
the course of twenty-four hours, while merely exposed
to the common influences of life, the anxieties and
cares of business, the irritating action of atmospheric
impurities, changes in the weather or wind, unwhole



OF THE PROVINGS.                147
drugs empirically?  And if he have not sufficient
genius or independence to form to himself a routine
practice out of the frightful mass of incoherent
materials of which the present homoeopathic Materia
Medica is composed, I pity him  with all my soul.
Launched upon an ocean of doubts and uncertainties,
he can scarcely ever know what remedy to prescribe;
and he would lose seven-eighths of his patients, if kind
nature did not come to his aid, and cured them for
him.
It is interesting to inquire what makes a great many
of our recent provings so unreliable in practice. This
fact is easily accounted for. The homoeopathic law of
similarity led to an administration of the medicines
totally different from that of the Old School. The
medicines acting similarly to the disease, they had, of
course, to be given in small quantities, lest the sympathy which naturally existed betwen the medicine
and the disease, should give rise to a violent or even
dangerous aggravation of the natural morbid symptoms. This, at any rate, was a natural supposition,
and naturally enough gave rise to the doctrine of
medicinal aggravations.  Hahnemann at first gave a
drop of the tincture at a dose, but he soon found that,
in many cases at least, a much smaller quantity was
sufficient to rouse the reactive energies of the diseased
organism, and to effect the restoration of the patient's
health. To divide a drop, Hahnemann resorted to the
following process: With one drop of the tincture he
mixed ninety-nine drops of alcohol, shook the mixture



148            CRITICAL REVIEW
well in a corked vial, and thus obtained the first
attenuation or potency of the original drug. To obtain
the second attenuation, a drop of the first attenuation
is mixed in a second vial with ninety-nine drops of
alcohol, and shaken in a similar manner. The third
attenuation is made from the second, and every succeeding attenuation from  the preceding one. This
process of attenuation has recently been continued,
with a number of drugs, to the thousandth, two thousandth, and even the eight thousandth potency. This
last potency constitutes a fractional portion of the
original drop, the numerator of which being the drop,
the denominator would form a line of cyphers which
would 5probably stretch across one-third of the whole
breadth of Manhattan island.  The three hundreth
potency is a fraction of a drop, the denominator of
which contains no more nor less than six hundred
cyphers; the eightieth potency is a fraction of a drop,
the denominator of which contains one hundred and
sixty cyphers; the denominator of the fortieth potency
has eighty cyphers; that of the twentieth has forty
cyphers; the twelfth has twenty-four; the sixth
twelve; the third six cyphers.  A vial full of the
third attenuation, holding one hundred drops of medicine, contains, therefore, only the millionth part of a
drop of the original tincture. It is with these socalled potencies that homoeopathic physicians cure
their patients. I may say here in passing, that the
term  "potency" is very badly understood by the
uninitiated. It is commonly supposed that the power



OF THE PROVINGS.                 149
of the drug is developed in proportion as these attenuations of the original drop are multiplied. It is not
in this sense that the term potentization or dynamization is understood by intelligent homoeopathic physicians.  By potency they understand  the  superior
degree of curative adaptation to the disease which the
original drug  acquires by successive  attenuations.
This, at any rate, is my understanding of the term,
although I am free to say that it was not thus understood either by Hahnemann or his disciples.  The
attenuated drug may, therefore, be actually weaker
than the drug in its original or crude form, and yet it
may possess more perfect, more precise curative relations to the disease, and, therefore, a superior faculty
or power to remove it. Of course this removal is not
effected by a revulsive action, but by a direct alteration of the disturbed nervous functions. But it will at
once be perceived, that although a direct curative relation may exist between the attenuated drug and the
disease, it would be absurd to infer from this fact the
existence of an actual power, in a highly attenuated
drug, to disturb the functions of the healthy organism.
Are not the restoration of the disturbed functions to
a state of health, and the disturbance of the healthy
functions by medicinal agents, two opposites? How,
then, could it be possible that the same rule should
apply to both? If it require a highly attenuated drug
to restore the functions from a state of disease to a
state of health, how then could a similarly attenuated
drug possess the power of altering the same functions



150            CRITICAL REVIEW
from a state of health to one of disease? And yet, it is
upon such paradoxes that a great many of our provings
are based. Before retiring to bed in the evening, a few
globules of the third, sixth, twelfth, thirtieth, sixtieth,
or two hundredth attenuation are taken dry on the
tongue; and if, next morning, the prover wakes up
with a sick headache, or is troubled with the nightmare during the night, or perhaps with a little pinching
and griping in the bowels, it is invariably the few globules that did all this mischief, whereas it is infinitely
more probable that the globules were perfectly innocent
of all this terrible work, and that the real cause of the
trouble ought to have been traced perhaps to a cup of
tea of an inferior quality, or a little stronger than
usual, to the fatigue of the previous day, to a little
excess at dinner, a bad cigar, a little exposure, and
the like. One person among a thousand may be possessed of such a remarkable idiosyncratic sensitiveness
to the action of particular drugs, that this action may
yet be perceived even if the drug were highly attenuated; but would it be wise to suppose every body
endowed with a similar idiosyncratic sympathy for
the same drug, and to base upon such a hazardous
theory a whole system of provings, which is to guide
the physician in the important business of healing the
sick, and perhaps in a case, too, where the patient's
life is in imminent peril?
It is not merely the unreliability of the provings
that renders a great number of our symptoms objectionable; it is the  promiscuous and  injudicious



OF THE PROVINGS.                 151
crowding, into the Materia Medica, of a great many
pretended drugs which are not drugs properly speaking.  One of the  glaring  errors of our modern
symptom-hunters consists in the delusion, that every
substance which is not positively required for the
sustenance of the body, constitutes a drug, and is,
therefore, endowed with medicinal properties.  According to this doctrine, every animal which is not
used for domestic purposes, from the smallest entozoon
to the largest beast of prey; or every non-nutritious
plant, from the most insignificant lichen to the tallest
tree; or every mineral, from  the  minutest atom
of dust floating on the sunbeam to the most ponderous
boulder; in one word, every non-nutrient substance, of
whatever form, color, or taste, is a drug, and, therefore,
capable of curing certain forms of disease. This doctrine
seems, on the face of it, so absurd, because so utterly
incomplete and superficial, that it is a wonder to me
why not one of the many enlightened thinkers in the
homoeopathic School should have raised his voice
against it. The idea to prove the lion, the tiger, the
hyena, the crocodile, the shark, the boa-constrictor, or
to prescribe a few globules of the two or three thousandth potency of one of these ferocious beasts, seems
certainly somewhat ludicrous; nor does the idea of
proving an entozoon, though this animalcule may look
ever so formidable when seen through the solar-microscope, inspire one with any more respect.  Some
things are made to be drugs; others fulfil purely
chemical or technicological uses; others again exist



152            CRITICAL REVIEW
to complete the great series of beings; others result
from  the temporary ignorance or neglect of man in
properly taking care of his globe, draining the marshes
and cultivating the soil; and some have undoubtedly
been created in every kingdom of nature for therapeutic uses, and are, therefore, properly speaking,
drugs. But there are few such substances as Arsenic,
Belladonna, Aconite and the like, which are capable of
altering the physiological functions of the organism in
a positive, determinate, unchanging manner; whose
relations to the organism can, therefore, be studied
with scientific precision, and which can be made
available for purposes of cure according to fixed and
immutable laws. If the number of drugs were not
limited; if their effects upon the organism were not
fixed and certain; if their spheres of action in disease
were not enclosed within unchangeable boundaries; if
the ravings of certain homoeopathic purists concerning
modifications which they suppose are taking place in
the action of drugs at certain intervals, had any
foundation in truth; if Ipecacuanha, Aconite, Stramonium, or any other drug, did not affect the organism
to-day, as they did when they were first created,
medicine would be a contemptible agglomeration of
foolish hypotheses and wild speculations, and would
indeed appear to the reason that frightful chaos which
the symptom-hunters of the homoeopathic School bid
fair to make it.  To determine what is a drug, and
what not, what is a drug-symptom and what merely
an accidental disturbance of the functions, requires



OF THE PROVINGS.                153
consummate judgment and unerring powers of observation. It seems contrary to common sense to offer as
true and reliable indications of the curative action of
drugs a series of vague, insignificant symptoms, which
ninety-nine persons out of a hundred experience every
day of their lives while attending to their daily pursuits, without having tasted or smelled a particle of
medicine. Symptoms produced by the 12th, 18th,
30th, or even the 200th or 300th potency of a drug,
forsooth! What rational and calm observer would be
willing, in such a grave matter, to be guided by the
ipse-dixit of men whose judgments are evidently
blinded by the ridiculous mania of symptom-hunting?
I have no doubt that the ten thousand trifling pains,
sensations, pimples, spots, noises and the like, which
they have recorded, were. actually perceived; but,
instead of being set down as evanescent and spontaneous phenomena of the hour, they were paraded
before the profession as products of the drug, and
incorporated in the Materia Medica as unimpeachable
testimony in the solemn business of curing.
I am now prepared to devote a few moments to a
critical examination of the law upon which the whole
structure of homoeopathy rests, I mean the celebrated
formula, " similia similibus," or "like cures like."  Its
import has been abundantly explained. The series of
symptoms which constitutes the natural disease, is
effaced by applying to it a drug that is capable
of producing a series of similar symptoms in the
healthy organism. This similarity embraces, merely



154            CRITICAL  REVIEW
the outward form of the symptoms; it is a purely
external similarity, totally distinct from the internal
or essential condition of the organism. And yet, it
is undeniable that disease is not merely a numerical
juxtaposition of symptoms or subjective sensations,
but a state of the organism, a disturbance of its
normal laws. But a state of the organism  has both
quality and form.  The sensually perceptible symptoms are the form, but not the quality of that state.
Quality and form  constitute an inseparable unit in
the light of reason; they cannot be parted without
appearing altered in their essential principles. Quality
without form, is like love without wisdom, or like an
idea without the word, or an attribute without a
subject; and form without quality, is an unmeaning,
lifeless, illogical, and deceptive appearance. What
constitutes the real man? Is it not the outlines of
his body, the shape of his nose, the color of his eyes
or hair, the size of his head and mouth? All these
external signs form a part of his identity, but they do
not, by any means, make up the real man. It is,
after all, the indwelling spirit, the man's passions and
intellect, the purposes of his will and the energies and
fire of his genius, that constitute the real man. A
fact without its motive or quality, is not any thing, or
it is a mere illusion. The character or value of the
fact depends upon the purpose of the will from which
it emanated. Murder is not murder, except in so far
as there was a premeditated, positive design to take
human life. Facts, disconnected from their internal



156            CRITICAL REVIEW
the pain shoots through the lower limb of the affected
side, and is accompanied with a burning and throbbing
sensation, sense of numbness and enlargement in the
limb; at the same time there is a frequent urging to
void the bladder, but the emission of urine which is
dark and deposits a sediment at the bottom of the
vessel, is rather difficult and painful; the bowels are
costive, the complexion of the patient is rather sallow,
at times a little flushed; pulse somewhat irritated;
tongue coated whitish or brown; a good deal of thirst,
but no appetite; flesh soft and flabby, and a tendency
to general emaciation.
The strict Hahnemannian takes a record of these
symptoms in their incoherent form, and then applies
to his Materia Medica to find a medicine that produces
a similar series of symptoms on the healthy. He will
not find such a remedy in his whole Materia Medica;
in such a case he takes the next best; it will disappoint him, but no matter; this is the regular mode of
practising homoeopathy; if the patient should die of
his complaint, he dies by the book, and the infallibility of the treatment is not questioned for a moment.
The physician who has trained his reason to look
below the surface of the symptoms, and to understand
their true meaning and internal connection and relation, would not be satisfied with a mere apparent
similarity in prescribing for such a group of symptoms;
he would want to understand the connection existing
between that pain in the kidneys and the numbness,
heat, and sense of enlargement in the extremity,



158           CRITICAL REVIEW
not be up to the boiling point, although the essential
character of the disease and the constitutional condition of the patient might point to Aconite ever so
much as the only true remedy in the case; if the discharges have a foul smell, he thinks of charcoal or
Arsenic; if the patient feels cold, he tries to warm him
up by a dose of Veratrum, and, if he should feel very
weak, Arsenic or Cinchona is the proper tonic; an
excessive tenesmus requires Mercurius or corrosive
sublimate; if the stools have a greenish tinge, Chamomilla is prescribed; if there should be much pain in
the bowels, Colocynth is applied to, and, if the blood
begins to look foul or decomposed, Arsenic or charcoal
again becomes the sheet-anchor. The symptom-doctor never thinks of studying the symptoms as an
unitary group; he selects some prominent symptom,
or a symptom that happens to strike his fancy, and
then prescribes a remedy for this one symptom, in the
expectation that its removal will cure the whole
disease. But is it not evident that the pain in the
bowels, the tenesmus, the discharge of blood, mucus
and bile which is invariably present in dysentery, constitute one and the same alteration of the normal
condition of the organism? Is it not wise to study
these symptoms in their connection with the functions
of the liver, and the general condition of the capillary
system? This highest prerogative of the enlightened
reason is rejected by the mere symptom-doctor as
insane speculation and dangerous hypothesis; and yet
it is this rational view of the physiological and patho



OF SIMILIA.                   159
logical character of the symptoms that alone can lead
us to the discovery, and determine the proper use of,
the specific remedy in the case. A similar criticism
applies to every other form of disease. Asiatic cholera
for instance, presents a variety of symptoms, but what
thinking practitioner will hesitate to view them as
members of the same group, as effects of the same
unvarying cause, as phenomena characterizing the
same unitary disturbance of the physiological functions of the organism? Should not the remedy which
is prescribed for this condition apply to the primary
alteration of the nervous action, which, after all,
determines the true character and meaning of all these
apparently disconnected symptoms? Can there be an
essential difference in an attack of cholera, between the
cerebral congestion, the vomiting, the cramps, the
rice-water discharges, the thirst, the burning in the
epigastric region, the discoloration and shrivelling of
the skin, the collapse of the pulse, the general sinking
of strength and temperature?  Is not this difference
an illusion of the sensual understanding, or does it
really exist in the light of the scientific reason?
The Hahnemannian homoeopathist considers every
symptom as a distinct morbid condition, not in theory,
oh no! but in practice, constantly; and, agreeably to
this method, he prescribes some thirty or forty different
medicines for a disease which, if properly understood
in its inmost or essential principles, is cured much
more thoroughly, more expeditiously, and with infinitely more  satisfaction to the physician and the



160            CRITICAL REVIEW
patient by means of two or three specifically-adapted
remedial agents.  The symptomatic differences only
appear such to the sensual understanding; the real
difference resides in the structural organization of the
parts over which the nerves and mucous membranes,
these first recipients and reflectors of the morbid cause,
are distributed. There is, so far as we know, no essential difference between the mucous membrane of the
nose and that of the stomach; but, if either be irritated by the powdered root of Ipecacuanha, the irritation in the nose will be characterized by sneezing, and
that of the stomach by vomiting or retching.  This
difference results from a difference in the structural
organization of the parts, not from any essential difference in the action of the drug. It is the same with
disease. Take the pneumogastric nerve, which is both
a nerve of sensation and a nerve of motion.  As a
nerve of sensation it supplies the lining membrane of
the respiratory and digestive passages, and it becomes
a nerve of motion when it supplies the muscles and
the muscular coats of the same canals. The pneumogastric nerve supplies branches, on the one hand, to
the larynx, the lungs, and the heart; and, on the other,
to the pharynx, the oesophagus, the stomach and the
solar plexus.  These various parts could not fulfil
their organic functions, without their inherent vitality
being constantly stimulated by the nerve. The nerve
is essentially the same in all its branches; the functional differences reside in the structural organization
of the parts over which the branches are distributed.



162            CRITICAL  REVIEW
In the critical remarks which I have offered, it has
been my endeavor to show,
First, that the literal interpretation of the homoeopathic formula "similia similibus curantur," does not
admit of a comprehensive and strictly scientific application in the treatment of disease;
Secondly, that a vast number of the symptoms by
which homoeopathic physicians profess to be guided in
the selection of their remedies for particular cases of
disease, is not only unreliable, but positively false and
imaginary;
Thirdly, that the practice which some physicians
have adopted, of crowding indiscriminately into the
Materia Medica any substance which happens to strike
their fancy, or to harmonize with their theoretical illusions, is condemnable, because it has a tendency to
convert the Materia Medica into a huge curiosity-shop
filled with insignificant and worthless trifles; and
Fourthly, that the law  "similia similibus" refers
purely to an outward similarity between the symptoms of the disease and those of the drug, but that
it takes no cognizance of the essential states of the
organism, and that, without a lucid appreciation of
these states by the scientific reason, their phenomenal
indications, the symptoms, remain unmeaning, incoherent and deceptive abstractions.
Now, if all this criticism be true, and it strikes me
that I have not merely asserted any thing, but that
I have substantiated my objections to the orthodox
practice of homoeopathy by fair argument, it is proper



OF SIMILIA.                   163
to inquire: If there be a fundamental principle upon
which the true science of medicine rests, what is the
principle that will secure a positive, certain, unerring,
and expeditious treatment in every case of disease?
This is a question of vast import, and its satisfactory
solution demands perhaps more knowledge than I can
bring to bear upon it. Nevertheless, I will enter upon
the task of showing the existence and elucidating the
formula of a true therapeutic law,-and beg the reader
to peruse the third part of this work with a desire of
doing justice to the doctrines therein advanced.









PART III.
MEDICINE must either have come to man by revelation or by the slow process of observation. It is not
probable that Providence ever revealed to man the
uses of drugs by any other method than that of experience. If he did possess such a revelation at any
time, it is certain that all traces of it have disappeared,
and that, as far as existing records bear us testimony,
medicine is emphatically a science, which, under the
over-ruling Providence of God, has been developed by
human reason, and is enlarged and perfected more and
more, by a more accurate perception, and a more
universal unfolding of the facts that constitute its
legitimate domain. We can easily imagine that, at
one period, in the first ages of the world, man must
have been totally ignorant of all distinction between
poisons and nutrient substances, and that, not being
posessed of instinct which, to the animal, is a perfectly
safe guide in the selection of its food, he may have
mistaken the deleterious berry of Belladonna for some
pleasant fruit, or a poisonous mushroom for an innocuous vegetable. The probability is that man frequently
allowed himself to be deceived by appearances, and
that he was frequently beguiled into the notion that,
what seemed beautiful and attractive to the eye, must



170                   ORIGIN
wise perceived, that when this principle of contraries
was elevated to the rank of a curative law, it became
a dangerous fallacy. As man became better acquainted
with the operations of the nervous system, he sought
to bring the treatment of disease more in harmony
with the eternal principles of nature.  It was observed that an internal pain would sometimes cease
with the appearance of an eruption or boil upon the
skin, or that some lingering disease, a weakness of the
stomach, an oppression on the chest, a headache, a
lingering fever, debility, and so forth, would disappear
spontaneously with the breaking out of a sore, or of
some eruption upon the chest, head, or extremities.
These observations gave rise to the so-called derivative
or revulsive method of treatment. This method, too,
as well as the palliative method, is a legitimate mode
of affording relief to the patient, as long as it is not
carried beyond its true boundaries of palliation; there
cannot be any reasonable objection to a warm poultice,
a mustard-plaster, a pitch-plaster, as long as the sufferings of the patient are really palliated by such applications; but when the principle of counter-irritation
is made the basis of a compact system of treatment, it
then leads to results which are justly condemned by
every friend of man as frightful aberrations of an
insane and barbarous science. Will it be believed by
an enlightened and refined posterity, that the great
and sacred purpose of the healing art, which is to alleviate, and not to inflict suffering, was ever sought to
be attained by scorching a man's back with a red-hot



OF MEDICINE.                  171
iron, or burning his skin by a slow fire? And yet,
these practices which have been repudiated now-a-days
by every true-hearted physician, were once the fashionable tortures which the cruel genius of man had
devised for the relief of the sick.
Various theories were imagined by the leaders of
medical science to account not only for the phenomena
of disease, but also to construct the edifice of medicine
upon a scientific basis. It is well known that, among
these various classes of medical philosophers, the
humoralists and the vitalists hold the principal rank.
The humoralists explain disease upon the principle of
vitiated humors in the body, and their whole treatment is directed towards correcting or expelling the
humors. The vitalists attribute the phenomena of
disease to a deranged action of the vital forces, but,
although they differ from  the humoralists in their
theory of disease, their practice is pretty much the
same, and whatever differences may exist, principally
result from differences of taste and judgment in the
individual practitioners.  Drugs were made to harmonise with preconceived theories; if different classifications of the Materia Medica were adopted by the
authors of new medical systems, it was not because
the essential properties of drugs were better known,
but because the classifications previously in use, did
not suit the new  definitions.  The great question,
to study the therapeutic properties of drugs without reference to any preconceived medical theory,
remained yet to be solved. Evidently a true science



172             TRUE SCIENCE.
of pharmacodynamics should inform us of the precise
effects of Laudanum, of Arsenic, of Belladonna, or of
any other drug upon the human organism. How is
this knowledge to be acquired?  By speculative
theories, by accidental observations, or by systematic
provings upon the healthy organism?  There was a
time when speculative theories constituted the chief
means of determining the therapeutic uses of drugs.
These theories were based upon the grossest sensual
perceptions. It was the shape, taste, or color of a
drug that indicated its relation to disease. Such gross
fantasies no longer misguide the reason; and the
authors of our modern treatises of pharmacodynamics
are not satisfied with any thing short of actual observation in determining the uses of drugs and assigning
them a proper place in their classifications. Accidental poisonings are not sufficient for a complete and
correct investigation of the properties of drugs, were it
for no other reason than because all the more delicate
effects of the poison upon the nervous system remain
unheeded under the fright and the excitement consequent upon the discovery of the dangerous mistake;
and, if the poisoning should be a voluntary act, the
self-destroyer will certainly not amuse himself with
watching the gradual evolution of symptoms, while
his whole soul is bent on death as the ultimate result
of his insane proceeding. Nevertheless, a great many,
and probably the most valuable contributions to our
Materia Medica, have been obtained from  cases of
poisoning. For, an observing physician was frequently



PHARMACO-DYNAMI C S.               173
called in time to note all the more striking effects of
the poison while listening to a report of the case and
preparing his antidote.  And some of these cases
occurred so frequently, that a tolerably accurate picture of the physiological effects of many poisons was
gradually obtained in a long series of successive observations. Still the sketch was incomplete, the broad
outlines were drawn, but all the more delicate shades
which alone could give tone and character to the picture, were wanting. These delicate, but truly characteristic effects of the poison would probably never be
revealed  to a casual observer.  They had  to  be
studied, and, for this purpose, the poison had to be
introduced into the organism according to a definite
method, in measured quantities, at regular intervals,
and while the prover enjoyed perfect bodily and mental health.  More than one eminent physiologist had
pointed out the necessity of this mode of experimentation; but it was reserved for the genius and perseverance of the founder of homoeopathy to pave the way
for a positive science of pharmacodynamics, by instituting a series of drug-provings, which, for reliability,
comprehensiveness, accuracy of observation and devotion to science, will commend themselves at all times
to the confidence and admiration of every friend of
scientific truth.
Let us now suppose every drug to be known; every
effect of the drug carefully and correctly ascertained
and universally acknowledged: it is evident that this
solves only the first half of the problem, and that the



174              TRUE SCIENCE.
other half, the application of drugs to the treatment of
disease, or, in other words, the conversion of drugs
into remedial agents, remains yet to be disposed of.
Supposing we are fully and positively acquainted with
the physiological effects of all drugs, does this knowledge reveal to us their therapeutic uses? Does it tell
us, for instance, in what way the effects of Mercury
are related to disease?  Or to what diseases?  These
are now the important points that require our earnest
and unprejudiced attention.
The first notions of the therapeutic uses of certain
substances in nature were based upon purely sensual
perceptions.  A  certain  substance was known to
purge the bowels, and, when the bowels were constipated, this substance was resorted to to move them.
This was a material mode of proceeding; material
results were sought to be removed by material causes.
The natural condition of the bowels, viz: their confined state, was looked upon as the real disease, and
the removal of their contents by means of a cathartic
was supposed to constitute a cure. This was a sensual
system  of medicine, based upon phenomenal appearances, but without any rational conception of the
inmost or real nature of disease, and therefore deprived
of a true law of cure.  For, the rational observer has
no difficulty in perceiving that the confined state of
the bowels is merely a material indication of an
altered condition of the normal vital action, and that,
unless this abnormal alteration is exactly met by a
corresponding curative influence, the bowels may be



THERAPEUTICS.                   175
temporarily or palliatively forced into action, without
the vital economy of the organism being at all relieved
of its embarrassment.  Disease is not a mere assemblage of sensual phenomena, but a state of the organism, no more than man is a mere  delineation of
outward features, but a living form of thoughts and
affections. It is to this state of the organism that the
remedial agent must respond; otherwise a cure by
therapeutic means is impossible. Disease is the problem, as it were, and the remedial agent its solution.
Or disease and its true remedy may be said to be the
terminal points of a straight line. As there can be
but one true answer to a question, or one true solution
to a problem, so there can be but one true remedy to
a disease.  To be sure, a disease may consist of a
variety of states, which may develope themselves in a
regular series, and each state may require a different
remedy; but whatever state prevails at any one time,
must be met by its appropriate remedy; it cannot be
acted upon by any other remedy than the one which
is specifically related to it as a curative agent, and corresponds to all its essential characteristics. What
other conclusion could the rational mind arrive at,
in viewing a list of the drugs and their complete
effects upon the organism? If we know that it is the
business of these drugs to cure disease, will not the
question force itself upon our minds: Will any of
these drugs cure any disease?  Or will some particular drug cure some particular disease?  The idea
that any drug will cure any disease, is so manifestly



178              TRUE SCIENCE
clear, unmistakeable and complete  manner.  But,
is not the highest object which we seek to attain in all
drug-provings, to know what diseases the drugs will
cure safely, thoroughly, and expeditiously? A mere
abstract knowledge of the natural effects of drugs,
would be hardly worth the trouble of inflicting systematic pains and privations upon the organism in a
regular course of drug-provings. And yet, a mere
abstract knowledge of isolated, incoherent drug-symptoms, is all that the present Materia Medica conveys
to the student of homoeopathy. To make it practicable, the arrangement of its symptoms has been subjected to various modifications. In its present form,
the Materia Medica is in harmony with the fundamental law of the Hahnemannian practice of homoeopathy, and is, therefore, liable to the same objections
as the law itself. It does not exhibit the curative
relation of a single drug to any known disease, in a
positive and unmistakeable manner. Let a physician
study the homoeopathic Materia Medica, from beginning to end, with conscientious care, and with a
willing, open, and capable mind, and let him then,
with his brain stocked with symptoms, step to the
bed-side of a patient, and undertake to prescribe for a
case of pneumonia, of inflammation of the brain,
liver, pleura, or for any other inflammatory, nervous,
or cutaneous disease: his Materia Medica will sadly
disappoint him in the hour of need, and, bewildered
and spurred on by the sting of necessity, of confounded
ambition and the desire to help his patient, he will be



180              TRUE  SCIENCE
where all physiological relations of the symptoms, are
either completely effaced or left unexplained, and
where cunning devices have to be resorted to in the
place of eternal principles, for the purpose of introducing some kind of order into this dreary and uninteresting chaos of details, and making it available in
practice?  The mere symptom-doctor is obliged to
visit his patients with his repertory or clinical guide
in the pocket of his overcoat, and, after he has
examined  the symptoms, not the  patient or his
disease, to depend upon his book for an indication of
the medicine, to the effects of which the symptoms of
the disease seem to resemble, and which is, therefore,
supposed to be the true remedial agent in this case.
But is it not humiliating for a physician to be reduced
to the necessity of carrying his dead books from door
to door, instead of consulting the living reason, and
deriving from its wisdom a true knowledge of both the
disease and  the remedy?  Pharmacodynamics has
no value except as the handmaid of therapeutics, and
in every rational Materia Medica, the action of drugs
should be explained with reference to the diseases to
which the drugs are specifically related as curative
agents.  Let me now proceed to an examination of
the bond that unites pharmacodynamics or the science
of the' medicinal properties of drugs and therapeutics, or the science of applying them to the purposes
of the healing art, into one harmonious unit.
If we had a perfect knowledge of the real nature of
disease, and of the inmost principle of our drugs, a



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 181
therapeutic law would become a thing of mathematical
precision; but, in the absence of this knowledge we
have to content ourselves with an approximation to
the truth, and to depend, in a great measure, upon
the pure reason for a definition of disease and upon its
true relation to remedial agents.
Disease is not, as is generally supposed, a state of
bhe system  opposite to health.  This may seem
paradoxical; and, nevertheless, if disease, generally
speaking, were the opposite of health, this general
truth must certainly remain true in its particular
applications. There must, therefore, be a quality or
state  of health  opposite  to  typhus-fever, another
quality of health  opposite to measles, another to
rheumatism, another to paralysis, another to smallpox, another to dropsy, or, in one word, every form
of disease must have an opposite state or quality of
health.  This is, evidently, not the case; hence we
infer that the general principle, being false in all its
particular applications, must, itself, be a fallacy, an
illusion of the sensual understanding. Now then, if
health and disease are neither opposite, nor identical
states of existence, they must hold towards each other
relations of more or less; health, therefore, is a less
degree of disease than what we generally term disease;
and disease is a less degree of health than what we
generally term  health.  In adopting this mode of
reasoning I use the terms health and disease in an
absolute  sense, meaning  by  health  the  perfect
harmony, and by disease the perfect disharmony of



OF THERAPEUTICS.                  183
himself would be exposed to its disturbing agency
and the universal order would be annihilated.  The
material organism may perish, but man's essential life
can never be destroyed; on the contrary, death must
simply be the evolution of a more beautiful, more
harmonious, more heavenly life, the birth of the soul's
true organism that shall live and grow for ever as a
form  of love and wisdom.  This organism can never
be invaded by disease; it is only its material counterpart, the earthly body, whose functions are subject to
alterations and whose organs decay.  Wherever the
inmost or essential life-principle exists in all its fulness
and strength, disease can never penetrate. In order
not to be misunderstood, let me state very fully and
explicitly that it is an immaterial, spiritual lifeprinciple that I allude to, in contra-distinction to the
material vital principle which is possessed even by the
brute creation. The supposition of the existence of a
soul in man does not sufficiently account for the
phenomena of life unless we admit the existence of
an intermediate spiritual organism, which is the soul's
essential embodiment and mediately supports and
feeds every fibre of the living frame. Without the
renovating aid of this spiritual organism, which is
unassailable by disease, the material body, if once
deranged, could never recover its harmony; it would
inevitably perish. If the soul were not universally
and minutely connected with every least portion,
nerve or fibre, of the material organism by means of
an exactly similar spiritual organism, how could the



184              TRUE SCIENCE
soul be of the least use to the support and renovation
of the material frame? I am fully aware that, in
the opinion of many physiologists and metaphysicians,
the soul is merely a thinking and feeling abstraction,
a vaporous, shapeless and undefinable something; but
these philosophers establish the same relation between
the soul and body that deists fancy exists between
God and his universe. He is merely a selfish, unfeeling looker-on; he has made his universe a self-existing
machine, and man has been endowed by him  with
reason for the purpose of regulating his own affairs
and the affairs of his globe in such a manner that
he shall either derive pleasure or misery from the
administration of his office. But this doctrine of God
is suggested by the mere appearances of things. The
sensual philosopher cannot imagine that a world
where the divine principles of justice and charity
constitute the exception, and heartless self-love, cunning, tyranny and hatred, the ruling principles of
order, can be, in the remotest degree, cared for by
Providence; and yet, with a little reason, he might
know that God can never separate himself from  his
creation, and that it can only be, and remain, what it
is, in so far as God is, and remains, in it. God cannot
divide himself, and yet, he must either do this, or else
Creation would  relapse into its original chaos or
nothing; for, if the Divine Principle should withdraw
itself from Creation, what would support this mechanism?  The in-dwelling power?  But that power is a
part of God, essentially and eternally one with him,



OF THERAPEUTICS.                  185
with his love and his wisdom.  God's Providence,
therefore, pervades every nook and corner of the
universe, watches over every trembling leaf, decks the
budding flower with its hue of beauty, feeds the
warbling lark, and leads man, step by step, towards a
higher life of love and truth.  And what God, and
his eternally-true, his ever-present, ever-watchful, selfexisting, all-providing love and wisdom are to the
universe generally, that the soul and its spiritual
organism are to the human body in particular.  It is
from  this spiritual organism  that the body exists;
the spiritual organism preserves it not like a deus ex
machina, but by virtue of an intimate, fixed and
perfect union which, in fact, makes man a living man,
a feeling, thinking, and acting being.
The spiritual organism, personating God's Providence
to the material frame, is forever free from all disease.
This organism  is not an aggregate of metaphysical
abstractions, but an organization embodying the soul's
essential life, its active powers termed passions, affections, emotions, impulses, and the inherent forms
thereof which  are  the  spontaneous or voluntary
thoughts of the mind.  These constituent principles
are substances, of a transcendently ethereal nature, if
you please, but infinitely more real than the material
frame and its inherent vital principle.  For, these
ethereal substances are imperishable, whereas the
material organism is destined to decay. The spiritual
organism  is governed by its own sovereign laws of
orderly freedom, and is the supreme, though scarcely



186              TRUE  SCIENCE
known regulator, of man's sensual life, which it endeavors to expand into such directions and forms as agree
with the soul's essential conscience, which is but too
often in direct antagonism to the acquired conscience
of the actual man and to all his modes of life and
habits of belief.  The material body cannot enjoy perfect health until it has become absolutely subordinate
to the influences of the spiritual organism, and moves,
acts, feels, tastes, in one word, lives in all respects
agreeably to the dictates of the soul's essential wisdom
and genuine impulses and affections.  The union
between the spiritual and material organisms may
not be sufficiently perfect to preserve the latter in
health.  We must not forget that no perfect adjustment between man's spiritual and material natures
has yet been attained, and that the inmost principle
of life in man, of which it is stated in the sacred
record that God blew into man's nostrils the breath of
lives, is anxious and willing to unite itself with the
material organism  in perfect freedom, but that it
cannot force its law of order upon this organism.
Before a perfect union between the internal spiritual
and the external material organism can exist, reason,
which is the soul's wisdom, has, in the first place, to
reveal to man's sensual understanding the true order
of his physical life: the production, preparation and
use of food; the various industrial pursuits, architecture, education, social government, and the whole complex of our social rules, customs and institutions, have
to be known and organized agreeably to the eternal



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 187
and unchanging principles of Divine Truth and Justice, before the internal spiritual organism, the soul's
true life, can infuse its regenerating energies into the
material frame, and transform it again into what God
had originally made it, a perfect tabernacle of divine
harmony and beauty.  The disunion between the
internal spiritual and the external material organisms
must be characterized by sensations of pain, as the
perfect union between these two organisms would be
characterized by sensations of pleasure. Otherwise by
what signs should man recognize the disunion?  This
disunion may embrace the whole of man's interests,
his affections, ideas, tastes, talents and bodily powers.
It is the peculiar province of the physician to look at
this disunion as existing between the bodily life as it
is, and as it ought to be agreeably to the demands and
indications of the internal reason. In a general sense
this disunion may be marked by an absence of the
blissful feeling of buoyant health; and, in a special
sense, the disunion may be characterized by positive
sensations of pain and by abnormal appearances which
indicate the presence of, but are not, the disease.
Disease is a condition, a state of the material organism;
it is a sign of its deviation from the essential order of
the soul's divinely-inspired love and wisdom, agreeably
to whose indications and demands the material man
should regulate his outward existence. For present
purposes of cure a knowledge of the real nature of
disease is not material. Some view it as the invasion
of the material organism by some evil spirit; others



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 189
physician  invariably connects dyspepsia with  the
healthy process of digestion, or explains fever with
reference to the normal state of the circulation.  It
is proper and necessary to first account for the physiology of a sick headache before we can undertake to
cure it, just as necessary as it is for a surgeon to understand the relation of the artery to the accompanying
vein and nerve before he can proceed to apply his
ligature.
But a knowledge of the physiology of disease does
not explain its essence, any more than a knowledge of
the physiological functions accounts for the inmost
principle of life. Evidently a cooling draught of air
is no essential cause of disease; if it were, it would
disturb the physiological functions, more or less, in
every case, nor would it generally be accompanied
with a sensation of pleasantness; but it is well known
that thousands can sit, or even sleep, in a draught
without hurting  themselves; thousands will bear
exposure  to  wind, rain, poisonous  miasms with
impunity; how  then could these conditions themselves be the primary causes of disease?  If they
were, they would produce, in every case, more or less
uniform  and positive disturbances of the organism,
and a cure would invariably follow the removal of
these causes, upon the well known principle, " cessante
causa, cessat effectus," when the cause ceases, the effect
ceases likewise. But it is well known that a considerable period sometimes has to elapse after the cessation
of the exposure, before the real disease develops itself



OF THERAPEUTICS.                  191
mony and discord, which is manifestly impossible and
absurd.  Nor can vitiated humors be the primary
cause of disease in the organism, for the humors are
results of the vital action, and it is not so much the
vitiated humors, as their vitiation, that constitutes the
real disease. Now, if disease be not directly caused
by the circumambient influences of atmosphere, climate,
food; or if it be not merely an abnormal condition of
the vital essence, or consist of vitiated humors, what
else then can it be, but a thing of its own, a vital
spirit, an ethereal principle or miasm, or any thing
else you please, but, at all events, a substantial something, obeying its own order of existence, which it
endeavors to impose upon the organism, and which
the organism tries to resist? This struggle between
the organism  and the principle of disease, is characterized by pains and by various abnormal sensations
and appearances, by which it manifests itself to the
sensual understanding. The understanding perceives,
and the reason determines the character of, these
phenomena, and their relation to each other, and to
the organism and its particular parts. To the understanding, therefore, the disease seems an assemblage of
symptomatic  appearances, pains, nervous derangements; but the reason views it as an internal state of
the organism resulting from the invasion of an hostile
principle, and its struggle with the organic vital forces.
What this morbific principle is in its inmost essence,
is just as difficult to determine, in the present state of
our knowledge, as the inmost nature of the vital prin



192              TRUE SCIENCE
ciple itself. Nevertheless, we may offer suggestions
which, although more or less hypothetical, may be in
harmony with universally admitted facts. And, in
the first place, it is evident, that, at whatsoever infinite a distance the vital principle may exist from man
in its primary source, yet with its emanations, it must
surround and pervade the organism, even to its inmost
parts, just as the emanations of the material sun pervade the tissue or grain of every known substance of
material nature.  The fact that the vital principle
has never yet been discovered in the crucible of the
chemist, is no reason why its presence in and around
man should be denied.
There was a time when the atmospheric air was
supposed to be an elementary body, and yet, we know
now that it is composed of a number of other elements,
among which oxygen and nitrogen bear a conspicuous
part. A vital sphere may, and I should say, must
constitute  the inmost nature of the  surrounding
medium; for, the universe having once been called
into existence as a complete and compact unit, God
has confided its preservation and progressive development to mediate forces which act in a continuous
series from the spiritual-ethereal down to the sensualmaterial order, and finally, by acting  upon and
embodying themselves in the molecules of matter,
give rise to the infinitely-varied substances of nature,
distinguished from each other by their shape, color,
taste, weight, chemical and physical attributes, and
more essentially by the uses which man is enabled to



OF THERAPEUTICS.                  193
accomplish by means of them.  It is upon these uses
that their value to man depends. These uses are as
varied as the things themselves; every thing fulfils
uses, even those things which we call hurtful. But it
is evident that there must be an essential difference
between a thing which serves to develope, strengthen,
and beautify the organism; and a thing which, by its
direct action upon the organism, tends to disturb and
destroy it. This antagonism must depend upon essential differences in the inmost principles, the spiritualethereal forces, or whatever they may be, which were
mediately instrumental in creating either the useful
articles of food or the deleterious poisons.  For, the
chemical constituents of cauliflower and stramonium
are the same, except that they exist in different
proportions. But that which makes them  to exist
in different proportions, this inherent principle, without whose permanent presence in the inmost tissues
the things would cease to be what they are, and
return again into their original molecular state; this
principle differs in different substances, and is either
good or evil in its relations with the organism in a
state of harmony. But, if it be true that God looked
at every thing after he had created it, and said it was
good, then how could any created substance affect the
organism as something absolutely evil?  Every thing
must be useful to the organism in some way, and the
use of a thing must depend upon the state in which
the organism  happens to be.  If, then, a thing be
hurtful to the organism in health, it must be useful to
13



194              TRUE SCIENCE
it when diseased. Reason tells us that the highest use
which a poison can fulfil in the human organism, is to
restore the diseased organism to health. A  poison
which is capable of fulfilling such uses, is essentially a
remedial agent, or, generally speaking, a drug; and,
inasmuch as each drug is specifically different from
every other, it follows that each has specific therapeutic uses to fulfil towards the organism  in a
state of disease. In other words, the diseased organism holds specific relations to a particular drug, and
the purpose and ultimate result of these relations, if
realized in action, must be the restoration of the organism to health, in the most direct, safe, agreeable, and
expeditious manner.  This curative relation must be
based upon some essential sympathy existing between
the drug and the disease, not between the drug and
the organism; for we have seen that the essential
relation between the drug and the organism is one of
antagonism, not of sympathy; whatever sympathy
there is, must therefore exist between the drug and
the disease, and as a matter of course, the more intimate this sympathy, the more certain and positive
becomes the curative relation; so that, if the sympathy be perfect, the curative relation becomes perfect.
This perfect sympathy between the drug and the
disease can only exist on one condition, which is, that
the principle of disease and the inmost or mediatelycurative principle of the drug should be essentially the
same, in fact identical.  The same morbific force,
which, by invading the organism  under appropriate



OF THERAPEUTICS.                195
circumstances, developes a certain series of pains and
derangements which we term disease: by acting upon
the material molecules of nature, embodies itself in
the shape of some poisonous animal, plant, or mineral,
which, in its turn, by its action upon the healthy
organism, would be capable of reproducing the symptoms which  the  original morbific principle had
developed. Hence, what more natural method  of
finding out what drug holds specific curative relations
to a particular disease, than to introduce this drug
into  a sufficient number of healthy  organisms,
according to some definite method, in determinate
quantities and at regular intervals, for the purpose of
developing the whole series of its natural effects upon
man? But in order that we may be enabled to determine the specific curative relation of a certain drug
to some particular disease, it is not necessary that the
series of drug-symptoms should correspond  exactly
with the series of the natural morbid symptoms in all
its details.
The object of proving is not to elicit this perfect
correspondence between the symptoms. The object of
every rational proving is, to find out the starting-point
of the action of the drug in the organism. Where
and how does the action of the drug first commence?
It is the solemn business of pharmacodynamics to
acquaint us with this important fact. This fact being
known, we have made one great step towards a scientific organization of our Materia Medica. The next
step would then be to construct the action of the drug



196              TRUE  SCIENCE
in a complete series by means of our pathological
experience at the sick-bed. And this experience must
lead us to the same result as the proving of the drug;
it must lead us to a precise knowledge of the startingpoint of the disease, or of the point where the first
invasion of the organism  by the morbific principle
takes place. Whatever drug-action has the same starting-point with the principle of disease in the organism,
would, of course, develope the same series of phenomena which constituted the natural disease, and
such a drug would, therefore, be the true curative
agent in this particular case. I have said before that
this series could not be reproduced in our provings
without ruining, and perhaps destroying, the organism; but a sufficient number of prominent symptoms
should, at all events, be reproduced to show, by
unmistakeable signs, both the starting-point of the
drug's action and its general correspondence with the
character and symptoms of the disease. No drug can
effect a cure whose action upon the organism does not
start from the same point as the disease, and no Materia Medica can be considered scientifically arranged,
where the pharmacodynamic properties of drugs are
not arranged and classified with reference to the phenomena of disease. Let me illustrate this theory by
means of one or more drugs in our Materia Medica,
say Aconite and Mercurius.  In order to determine to
what diseases Aconite specifically corresponds as a
remedial agent, our first duty is to prove it upon the
healthy organism in such a manner as will make us



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 197
correctly acquainted with the starting-point of its
action. We know from a variety of experiments upon
men and animals, that the first action of Aconite in
the living organism is upon the ganglionic and the
capillary systems of nerves.  The character of this
action is depressing, benumbing, paralysing. Under
the influence of Aconite, the pulse gradually sinks
until a perfect collapse takes place; the skin becomes
cold, the blood seems to retreat from the surface, and
the heart's action becomes embarrassed in consequence,
which gives rise to depression of spirits, and a state of
mental apprehensions, sad forebodings, fitfulness of
mood, which is sometimes characterised by the most
opposite extremes, such  as immoderate, spasmodic
laughter, and a moaning and weeping despondency.
Without extending this picture of the  effects of
Aconite upon the organism, it is sufficient for my
present purpose to point out the fundamental characteristic of its action, which consists in its depressing
effects upon the ganglionic and capillary systems of
nerves. From the capillary nerves the effect is necessarily transmitted to the capillary vessels, both arterial
and venous, and the first symptom of embarrassment
in the capillary circulation is a sense of coldness,
shivering, a chill. If the quantity of Aconite, which
produced these symptoms, was but small, the natural
reaction of the organism  will soon  overcome the
depressing effects of the poison, and an opposite state
will develope itself characterised by a full and bounding pulse, warmth of the skin, perspiration. In an



198              TRUE SCIENCE
actual case of poisoning, the natural reaction of the
organism, after the material poison had been withdrawn by means of the stomach-pump or an emetic,
may have to be assisted by large quantities of strong
coffee, and will then exhibit so much more fully a
series of febrile phenomena, or phenomena of venous
and arterial congestion.
It being ascertained, by what door, as it were, and
in what manner the Aconite-poison invades the organism, our second duty, then, is to determine what disease
or diseases, have a similar starting-point as the poison.
And we are at once led to that whole class of diseases
which are characterized by inflammation and congestion. Aconite, therefore, corresponds specifically with
every disease which is characterized by true venous
congestion, or synochal inflammation; and, for this
reason, it corresponds with all diseases which are legitimate developments of true states of venous congestion
or of inflammation, and only differ quantitatively, not
qualitatively, in other words, in extent, but not in
degree, from the original malady. The suppurative process differs from simple inflammation only in quantity,
not quality. An abscess of the liver or psoas-muscle, is
the same in degree, but not in extent, as the simple
inflammatory condition out of which the abscess had
originally developed itself by a process of simple continuation, but not by any essential change of state.
Hence, the treatment for both these apparently different
conditions, should be the same. If the specific remedy
should have been employed for a simple inflammatory



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 199
tumor, and the suppurative process should nevertheless, develope itself in the course of the treatment,
this process will have to be considered, and really is, a
curative termination, which, with proper care, and with
the use of the ordinary appliances of a poultice, will
result ini a restoration of the parts.  The use of
Aconite, in this case, as a positive, specific, remedial
agent, does not, by any means, depend upon the exact
reproduction, by provings upon the healthy, of all the
pains, pathological changes of tissues, etc., which
belong to the whole series of morbid phenomena that
constitute the disease to be cured. So soon as we are
sure that the starting-point of both the drug-action
and the action of the morbific principle is the same,
we may safely infer that these two forces will correspond throughout the whole line or series of the sensations and changes which characterize their respective
action in the living organism. This point being well
established, we have acquired the basis of a certain,
positive, scientific system of therapeutics, and we have
it in our power to apply, with perfect certainty, a certain remedy to morbid phenomena, which may never
have been observed by a prover, but which we know
form the elements of a series of phenomena that have
uniformly, and in accordance with  the fixed and
immutable laws of physiological and  pathological
science, developed themselves out of the starting-point
which we have been enabled to assign to them. It is,
in this way that, knowing as we do, from the beautiful
investigations and discoveries of modern science, that



202             TRUE SCIENCE
copious perspiration, thirst; all these interesting phenomena can be accounted for in the light of physiology, and, indeed, ought to be accounted for, in order
that, on the one hand, we may be enabled to determine the correctness or incorrectness of the treatment
of this condition by depletion, and that, on the other
hand, we may be guided in an attempt to substitute a
true treatment of fever for whatever may have been
found to be fallacious in the existing method. Formerly it was supposed that, during a paroxysm of
febrile heat, the system makes a good deal more blood
than it did immediately previous to the paroxysm,
and that, on this account, the volume of blood must
be diminished, and the system reduced. This increase
of the volume of blood was inferred from the bounding, the fulness and undue strength of the pulse. But
a more enlightened knowledge of the physiology of
the circulation shows that this notion is erroneous,
and that the treatment which is based upon it must
be so likewise. How then is the bounding of the
pulse to be explained? Is it sufficiently accounted
for by setting it down as a sign of reaction?  The
whole series of phenomena which constitutes, in common parlance, fever, denotes a state of reaction, rather
than the original malady; the chill is, properly speaking, the characteristic sign of the primary invasion of
the disease. And this fact alone is sufficient to condemn the process of blood-letting as a remedy for
fever. For, the chill certainly neither indicates an
excess of blood, nor an excited condition of the circu



OF THERAPEUTICS.                205
ing sign of healthful reaction, the accumulation of
moisture upon the cutaneous as well as the inner
surfaces, and simultaneously with it the disappearance of the dryness and of the thirst. A correct
understanding of this phenomenon will enable us to
determine the value of sudorifics in fever for the
artificial production of sweat, and we shall have no
difficulty in arriving at the important conclusion that
there is a great and vital difference between natural
sweat and the moisture which sweating medicines,
excessive heat, or violent exercise, drive out upon the
skin.  In the generation and equilibration of the
animal heat of the organism, the skin has an important office to perform.  It is well known that an
essential condition for the generation of animal heat
is the oxydation of the tissues. During the chill this
oxydation is partially interrupted, and is, on this
account, and for the sake of the restoration of the
equilibrium, carried on so much the more actively
during the process of reaction, or the true inflammatory stage of the fever; hence the buffy coat.  I
am not, by any means, of the opinion of our chemical
physiologists that the oxydation of the tissues is the
primary cause of the generation of animal heat; but
I look upon it as an essential condition out of which
the vital principle evolves the normal temperature of
the organism. But the oxydation of the tissues is
only one element in the production of animal heat.
A counterbalancing influence is required to prevent
the evolution of animal heat by the oxydation of the



206              TRUE SCIENCE
tissues from overstepping its legitimately-conservative
boundaries. This counterbalancing influence is the
absorption of moisture from the surrounding atmosphere.  It is the business of the skin and of the
internal mucous surfaces to perform this office, and
it is the business of the capillary nerves to enable
them to perform it.
I am not aware that this fact has ever been alluded
to by chemical physiologists.  They talk of the combustion of food in the organism, and of the result of
combustion which are carbon and water, but this
evidently does not include the natural moisture upon
the cutaneous and internal surfaces.  For, during the
inflammatory stage of the fever, the oxydising process
goes on with increased intensity, and yet the skin
remains hot and dry.  This shows that the natural
moisture of the skin must come from  some other
source, and from what other source could it possibly
be derived than from  the surrounding atmospheric
air?  While the capillary system of nerves is embarrassed by some hostile influence, and its action is
depressed, the skin and inner surfaces which derive
their absorptive power from those nerves, remain dry
and hot.  But as soon as the embarrassment is
removed, the absorption of moisture goes on again
with renewed  vigor, and  in  increased  quantities,
until the temperature of the system is restored to its
natural standard. This sweating process is the very
opposite of the artificial sweating which is occasioned
by the use of sudorific medicines.  For, these medi



OF THERAPEUTICS.                207
cines do not act upon the capillary nerves with a
view of relieving them of their embarrassment, and
enabling them to resume their functions of absorption
by means of the cutaneous organ and the internal
mucous surfaces. These medicines act as drains upon
the system. All they accomplish is, to drive the
vital moisture out upon the skin, which then evaporates and leaves the organism deprived of one of its
most essential means of support and restoration.
Thirst being occasioned by an interruption of the
absorption of moisture from the atmospheric air, it
ceases, of course, as soon as this process of absorption
is restored in its integrity.
The office, which is performed by the skin and
mucous membrane, of absorbing moisture from  the
atmospheric air, accounts for the fact why feverpatients desire to lie in a cool rather than in a warm
room. The air in a cool room contains more moisture
than warm air, and, therefore, offers a larger supply
to the absorbing surfaces. Upon the same principle a
patient suffering with a paroxysm  of asthma, or
attacked with hydrothorax, desires to be fanned or
to have the window opened, in order that the largest
possible amount of air may be presented to the lungs.
I have deemed it expedient to explain a few of the
phenomena of life to satisfy the reader of the absolute
necessity of possessing an accurate knowledge and
rational understanding of the physiological functions
of the organism in order to conduct the treatment
of disease to the satisfaction of one's own internal



208              TRUE SCIENCE
conscience.  Without the  aid  of physiology  and
pathology it is useless to attempt to construct the
art of healing upon a scientific basis. These twinsisters of medicine  enable  us to give a positive
direction to our provings towards the sublime object
of our art, which is the restoration of health; they
enable us to understand the exact meaning, and to
measure the true value of our drug-symptoms, and to
connect them with the phenomena of disease in such
a manner that they shall complete and explain each
other, and, by this harmonious alliance, lead us to
discover and establish this great and fundamental
truth, that a mere apparent similarity of the drugsymptoms and the symptoms of the disease is not
sufficient to constitute a certain drug the true remedial
agent in a given case; that this similarity is even
unnecessary, nay, impossible in many cases; that it
is frequently deceptive, almost always incomplete, and
that, on this account, the law of cure, as expressed by
Hahnemann, although embodying an abstract perception of the truth, is nevertheless a fallacy of the
sensual understanding, and not, by any means, a
conception of the living reason. And they furthermore teach us, that a drug, in order to acquire the
character of a remedial agent in a given case of
illness, must invade the organism by the same door,
as it were, as the morbific principle. The startingpoint of the action of the drug, and that of the disease,
must be identical. Then, and only then, is the drug
a specific remedial agent in the case, and will effect



OF THERAPEUTICS.                 209
a speedy, safe and positive cure, provided a cure be
at all possible.
And having offered these recapitulations of the
general principles which I have endeavored to develope, I will simply ask my readers once more to dwell
with particular attention upon the important truth,
that the specifically curative character of a drug
depends upon the identity of the starting-point of its
action upon the organism with the point of invasion
of the morbific principle. If these points be identical,
the whole action of the drug will correspond with the
nature of the disease; not otherwise, be the perceptible symptoms ever so similar. If the true formula
of the specific law of cure be then "Similia similibus,"
this formula should not be understood as simply refering to an outward similarity of the drug-symptoms to
the symptoms of the natural disease. This similarity
should be understood in a compound sense, as applying
to the drug-disease reflected by its pathogenetic symptoms, and to the morbid condition of the organism, or
the pathological state, as manifested to the senses by
its characteristic phenomena.  The formula should,
therefore, imply a perfect CORRESPONDENCE between the
drug-disease and the natural pathological disturbance
as MORBID STATES, not as mere SERIES OF SYMPTOMS, and
in order to leave no doubt that this compound similarity or perfect correspondence is the import of the
formula, a more adequate expression thereof would be
" CORRESPONDENTIA CORRESPONDENTIBUS CURANTUR."
And now, if the remedial character of a drug
14



210              TRUE SCIENCE
depend upon the identity of a mere point, and if,
according to the definition of mathematicians, a point
be so transcendently delicate, that it is without all space,
without all length, breadth, height, or depth, a mere form
of thought, instead of a geometrical body, does not then
my theory of cure, if the mode of reasoning which I
have adopted, be otherwise correct,-and I humbly
submit that it is, —naturally lead to a justification of
the  small doses of medicine which  homoeopathic
physicians generally use in their practice? If the
cure of a disease depend upon the identity of its point
of invasion with the starting-point of the drug-action,
then the disease itself, so far as the therapeutic process
is concerned, is undoubtedly reduced to a mere point,
and that point not even a concrete body, but such an
immaterial something, that it seems more like a mere
form of thought, a spiritual perception, than a palpable
substance. And it would seem as though to combat a
mere point, could not possibly require massive doses of
the crude drug. And even, if we admit, that the
reduction of the dose ought to have its limits in the
present condition of our sensual existence, and that,
beyond these limits, all further reduction becomes a
senseless waste of time and an imposition upon the
credulity of our patients, it would seem, on the other
hand, providing my mode of reasoning is correct, that
the smallness of the doses which homoeopathic physicians have been in the habit of using, has a legitimate
claim to the respectful regard of true science, and that
such doses can no longer appear ridiculous before the



OF THERAPEUTICS.                211
tribunal of enlightened practitioners. Theoretically,
the dose may be a mere point; practically, it may be
one or more grains of the prepared drug, a drop or
two of the tincture, or part of a drop; and, under
certain circumstances, this part may even be infinitesimally small. A vast quantity of bitter and profitless
controversies have been carried on concerning the true
size of homoeopathic doses; and the question is still as
far from being settled as ever. The determination of
the suitable dose in a case depends, for the present at
least, upon the skill and judgment of the individual
physician.  One of the great reasons why the dose
was gradually reduced by Hahnemann to the infinitesimal portion of a drop, was the idea he entertained,
that a larger dose would produce an aggravation of
the symptoms of the disease. The doctrine of aggravations became a settled doctrine in homoeopathic
practice, and it was finally supposed that no cure could
be effected according to the homoeopathic law, without
a previous aggravation of the symptoms.  But this
whole theory of aggravations must be set down as a
metaphysical subtlety, which has little, if any, foundation in actual observation.  Aggravations have
undoubtedly occurred, and do occur, after the exhibition of a homoeopathic agent; but such aggravations
are scarcely ever attributable to the action of the drug,
but constitute a natural development of the disease,
owing probably to the inefficiency of the dose or of
the medicine employed.  Both patients and physicians
are too much in the habit of attributing any unfavor



212         TRUE. THERAPEUTICS.
able changes, that may occur in the symptoms of the
disease, after the exhibition of a certain drug, to the
agency of this medicine. This is, generally speaking,
a mistake, which gives rise to a great many important
and even dangerous errors in practice. In prescribing
specific remedies, it is, of course, advisable to begin
with the smallest possible dose, but it is unnecessary
to be frightened, at every nook and corner of the
treatment, by the bugbear of medicinal aggravations.
My work is ended. To some it may prove acceptable, to others objectionable. I have endeavored to
be just, although the interests of true science have at
times obliged me to use the pruning-knife of criticism
without friendship or favor.  Truth never loses by
candor, and doctrines which do not bear a critical
examination, have no business to claim  our respect
on the score of expediency or traditional authority.
Let us then continue to prove all things, until truth
shall have descended amongst us in all the glory of
her divine lineage, and every man shall have become
what the Creator originally designed he should be, a
living form of love and wisdom.
THE END.



214                                 INDEX.
On dynamizations or potencies..........................  67
General principles involved in the use of homceopathic preparations,........................................   79
1. What potencies  or attenuations  should  be
principally  used?...............................  79
2. In what form  or mode should the medicine
be administered to the patient?..............  81
3. Size of the dose.................................  83
4. Repetition of the dose..........................  91
5. On the alternate use of medicines,............  95
Application of these general doctrines to the treatment of disease as taught by Hahnemann.........  97
Hahnemann's view  of acute and chronic diseases,.... 100
PART II.
CRITICAL REVIEW  OF THE DOCTRINE OF HOM(EOPATHY AS
APPARENTLY TAUGHT IN THE ORGANON, AND AS COMMONLY UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE WHO CLAIM TO BE THE
ORTHODOX  FOLLOWERS OF HIAHNEMANN,...................... 109
It is the duty of a homceopathic physician  to be a
reformer of medicine,................................... 111
Definition of "' similia  similibus,"........................ 112
The homoeopathic law is an abstraction............... 113
Many diseases cannot be reproduced in the organism
by drugs................................................. 114
Hahnemann confines himself to observing the external symptoms.......................................... 119
Hahnemann  rejects all attempts to obtain a knowledge of the internal nature of the symptoms,...... 121
Cases where the law  " similia similibus"  cannot be
applied................................................... 123
Homoeopathists prescribe  for names of symptoms;
alloeopathists for names of diseases.................. 129



INDEX.                                       215
What constitutes a symptom   in  homoeopathic practice?......................................................   134
Reason why Hahnemann and his disciples have
been ridiculed and persecuted,........................ 138
Unreliability of our drug-symptoms..................... 144
Abuse of drug-provings,................................... 146
Classification of natural substances,..................... 151
The number of genuine drugs is limited............... 152
Union of quality and form,............................... 154
Pathological unity of the symptoms of disease,....... 155
PART III.
FORMULA OF THE HOM(EOPATHIC LAW, AS SUGGESTED BY THE
UNION OF PHARMACO-DYNAMICS AND THERAPEUTICS UPON A PHYSIOLOGICO-PATHOLOGICAL BASIS,.. 165
Origin of medicine........................................ 167
"Contraria contrariis curantur,"  the  first medical
form ula...................................................   169
True method of discovering the virtues of a drug,... 173
Man's first notions of therapeutics were  based upon
sensual perceptions,..................................            174
Difference  between  the  Hahnemannian   " Sinilia
similibus,"  and  the  Celsean  "contraria  contraris,......................................................    176
The  homoeopathic  practice  became  of necessity  a
routine practice...............1...........  179
Definition of disease,...................................... 181
Existence of a spiritual-vital organism.................  183
The  spiritual organism   connects the  soul with  the
body.....................................................         185
A  vital sphere constitutes the  inmost nature  of the
surrounding medium..................................  192
Antagonism  between the so-called useful and hurtful
substances................................................ 193



216                                     INDEX.
Every thing is useful to the organism.................. 193
Highest use of a poison.................................. 194
Specific  relations of the  diseased  organism   to  particular drugs............................................ 194
Essential sympathy  between the  drug  and the
disease................................................... 194
The object of proving drugs is to discover this sympathy.....................................................   195
Scientific organization of our Materia Medica,........ 195
Its basis is the identity of the starting-point of the
drug-action, and of the action of the morbific principle......................................................   196
This  doctrine  illustrated  by means  of aconite  and
mercurius............................................... 196
Theory of fever,............................................ 201
Explanation  of the phenomena of fever................ 202
Origin of animal heat.................................... 205
The oxydation of the tissues counterbalanced by the
absorption of moisture from  the atmosphere........ 205
Physiology   and  pathology  are  indispensable  to  a
scientific organization of the Materia Medica,...... 208
The true therapeutic  formula is:  " Correspondentia
correspondentibus curantur,......................... 209
Justification  of small doses.............................. 210
Refutation of the doctrine of medicinal aggravations, 211
Conclusion,................................................. 212
Index,........................................................ 213
ER RATA.
Page 107, line 2 from  below, instead  of " changed," read " chained."
"    154,  "  14    "           "     leave out "not."



HOMC]OPATHIC BOOKS
Just published by Rademacher &  Sheek, 239 Arch Street,
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Organon of Specific Homceopathy, or, an Inductive Exposition
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Medica and Therapeutics in the Homoeopathic Medical College of Pennsylvania. (460 pages.) Bound $1 00.
The Homceopathic Treatment of Indigestion, Constipation,
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Kreussler's Therapeutics will be published on the 1st of April, 1854.



4           Catalogue of Hlomoeopathic Books for sale by
G.
Guenther, Dr. E. A., New Manual of Homoeopathic Veterinary Medicine; or the Homceopathic Treatment of the Horse, the Ox, the Sheep, the
Dog, and other Domestic Animals. 1847. Bound, $1 25.
Guernsey's Homeopathic Domestic Practice.  Containing also
Chapters on Anatomy, Physiology, Hygiene, and an Abridged Materia
Medica. 1853. Bound, $1 50.
H.
Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel, The Lesser Writings of, collected and translated by R. E. Dudgeon, M. D. With a Preface and Notes by E. E. Marcy,
M. D. With a beautiful steel engraving of Hahnemann, from  the statue
by Steinheeuser. Bound, $3 00.
[1  This valuable work contains a large number of Essays of great
interest to laymen as well as medical men, upon diet, the prevention of
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be enabled to peruse in this volume the ideas of a gigantic intellect when
directed to subjects of general and practical interest.
Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel, Materia Medica Pura. Translated by C. J.
Hempel, M. D. 4 vols. 1846. Bound, $6.
Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel, the Chronic Diseases, their Specific Nature
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Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel, Organon of Homceopathic Medicine, third
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Hamilton, Dr. Edward, Guide to the Practice of Homoeopathy; translated and compiled in alphabetical order, from the German of Ruoff, Haas,
and Rueckert. With many additions. London, 1844. Bound, $1 50.
Hartmann, Dr. F., Acute and Chronic Diseases, and their Homceopathic Treatment. Third German edition, revised and considerably enlarged
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American profession, by C. J. Hempel, M. D. 4 vols. $5 75.
Hartmann, Dr. F., Diseases of Children and their Homoeopathic Treatment. Translated, with notes, and prepared for the use of the American
and English Profession, by Charles J. Hempel, M. D. 1853. Bound, $2.
Hartmann, Dr. F., Practical Observations on some of the chief Homoeopathic Remedies. Translated from the German by A. H. Okie, M. D. Two
series. Bound, $2.
Hempel, Dr. Charles Julius, Organon of Specific Homoeopathy; or,
an Inductive Exposition of the Principles of the Homceopathic Healing
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Hempel, M. D., Fellow and Corresponding member of the Homoeopathic
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Hempel, Dr. Charles Julius, A Treatise on the Use of Arnica, in cases
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cases illustrative of the use of that drug. 1845. 19 cents.
Hempel, Dr. Charles Julius, Complete Repertory of the Homoeopathic
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and indispensable for every Homoeopathic Practitioner. 1224 pages. 1853.
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Hering, Dr. C., Domestic Physician, revised with additions from the
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Homceopathic Cookery. Second edition, with additions, by the Lady
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Homoeopathic  Treatment of Diseases of the Sexual System, being a complete Repertory of all the symptoms occurring in the
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Hooker, Dr. Worthington, Homceopathy: An Examination of its
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Humphreys,' Dr. F., the Cholera and its Homceopathic Treatment.
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Hydriatics; or Manual of the Water Cure, especially as practised by
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Jahr, Dr. G. H. G., Diseases of the Skin; or Alphabetical Repertory
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Jahr, Dr. G. H. G., and Gruner's New Homceopathic Pharmacopoeia
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Jahr, Dr. G. H. G., and Possart's New Manual of the Homoeopathic
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Jahr, Dr. G. H. G., New Manual: originally published under the
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