NEMANN
FOUNDER
A 574690
ERAPEUTICS
513
H15
35
UDGEON.
GOULD
& SON
AHNEMANN.
THE FOUNDER
SCIENTIFIC THERAPEUT)
BY
R. E. DUDGEON, MD).

ARTES
1837
SCIENTIA
LIBRARY
VERITAS
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E. PLURIBUS UNUM
SI-QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAM
CIRCUMSPICE
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​H610.9
415
85
HAHNEMANN,
THE FOUNDER
67.
OF
SCIENTIFIC THERAPEUTICS.
Being the Third Hahnemannian Lecture, 1882.
RUEV
BY
RE. DUDGEON, M.D.
=
Nec fas est propius mortali attingere divum.
London:
E. GOULD & SON,
Chemists by Appointment to the London Homeopathic
Hospital,
59, MOORGATE ST., CITY, E.C.
And all Homeopathic Chemists and Booksellers
1882.
1
J WRIGHT AND CO. PRINTERS, BRISTOL,

En Memoriam.
The London School of Homeopathy
may almost be said to owe its existence to
Dr. William Bayes. As its first honorary
Secretary, he worked zealously and un-
remittingly to place it on a sound financial
basis. In this he succeeded beyond ex-
pectation. His earnestness and the charm
of his manner won over to the cause of
the School a large number of supporters,
both lay and medical, and his pre-eminent
administrative faculty moulded it into its
present form. The project of an annual
Hahnemann lecture, and its publication
for distribution among the Governors of
the School, was eagerly adopted by him.
While these pages are passing through
the press, the sad news of his untimely
death reaches me. I may be permitted to
dedicate this lecture to his memory, and to
the remembrance of a friendship of many
years' standing, which was never inter-
rupted by any differences of opinion we
may have had respecting the best measures
for promoting the usefulness of the School.
December, 1882.

HAHNEMANN,
THE FOUNDER OF SCIENTIFIC
THERAPEUTICS.
Man, as the minister and interpreter of nature, does and
understands as much as his observations on the order of nature,
either with regard to things or the mind, permit him, and neither
knows nor is capable of more."-Nov. Org., aph. 1.
GENTLEMEN,
Hahnemann has been dead nearly
forty years. He now belongs to history.
We occupy the position of posterity in
relation to him. We can view him in
perspective, and can estimate him in
comparison with the great medical per-
sonages of the past. We are now able
I
1
2
Hahnemann, the Founder
to fix accurately his place in the history
of medicine. In this lecture I shall
endeavour to show what that place is.
To this end I must cast a retrospective
glance over the past.
As a preliminary, I will ask, what is
the aim and object of medicine? It is
the cure of disease. As Hahnemann
expresses it in the first aphorism of his
Organon, "The high and only mission
of the physician is to restore the sick to
health." It is necessary to remember
this, for it has often been forgotten by
some of the most illustrious names in
the history of medicine. Anatomy, phy-
siology, pathology, botany, chemistry.
and all the other so-called collateral
branches of medical science, are but the
means to the end-that end being the
of Scientific Therapeutics.
3
cure of disease.
But the means have
often been cultivated as though they
were the end; and their cultivators are
wont to look down on the therapeutist,
as though the cure of disease was but a
poor thing in comparison with the study
of disease as a branch of natural history,
or with physiological or anatomical re-
search.
It is impossible to say when or to
whom the idea first occurred that dis-
eases could be cured by drugs. In the
first edition of the Organon, §7, Hahne-
There must be in medicine
mann says:
a healing principle; common sense tells
us this." But to the common sense of
many there is no must" about the
matter. Unless we had been told that
medicines have a "healing principle,"
4
Hahnemann, the Founder
we should scarcely have suspected it.
On the contrary, seeing their uncom-
fortable effects when we swallow them,
we might easily come to consider them,
and class them among disease-producers
rather than disease-removers. That, how-
ever, medicines were believed to possess
a healing principle from a very early
age is sufficiently obvious.
We may
suppose the belief to have originated in
this way: Primitive man seeing animals
eating the herbs that grew about, would
imitate these creatures. Some herbs he
would find nourishing and good; others,
he would observe, made him more or less
uncomfortable and ill. These he would
note and set aside. When attacked by
disease, which he would endow with a
personality or entity, as he did all the
of Scientific Therapeutics.
5
forces of nature, the idea might occur to
him, that as those herbs gave him a
good scouring out, he might, when sick,
eject his troublesome disease by taking
what would make him vomit, or purge
him, or give him a thorough shaking,
and if his disease left him post hoc, he
would ascribe it to propter hoc, and re-
commend it to all his similarly affected
friends. The earliest historical records
we possess are probably the votive.
tablets preserved in the temples of
Esculapius. Pious persons who had
been cured, or thought they had been
cured of diseases, used to hang up
tablets in their temples, recording their
name, their disease, and the treatment
they imagined had cured them. In this
way medical facts were accumulated,
6
Hahnemann, the Founder
and patients visiting these temples might,
from a study of these votive tablets, be
enabled to cure their own diseases by
the same means. Ομοιον πάθος, ὅμοιον
páрμакov, as they used to say, ie, for a
like disease a like remedy, and thus an em-
pirical therapeia was gradually formed.
But it could hardly have led to much,
there were so many chances against
accuracy. The pious votary might have
wrongly named his disease, or he might
have been mistaken in his opinion as to
what had cured him, or the patient who
sought to profit by his experience might
err in thinking he had the same disease,
or might misapply the remedy. It is
true the priests of Æsculapius were there
to direct him, guided by the records of
the tablets, but they would be just as
of Scientific Therapeutics.
7
liable to err. So, on the whole, the gain
to therapeutics from this system would
be but small, and this method gradually
fell into discredit, though it still survives.
among the learned under the name of
usus in morbis, and, with modifications,
occupies the chief place in the domestic
medicine of the people.
When medicine came to be cultivated
as a special profession, the primitive
empiricism of the Esculapian priests
was scorned by the race of learned phy-
sicians, and hypothesis and speculation
were employed to determine the nature
of diseases and the virtues of medicines.
Diseases were classified as dry and
moist, hot and cold, and medicines were
arranged in similar classes. Dry dis-
eases were treated with moist remedies,
8
Hahnemann, the Founder
hot diseases with cold remedies, and
But this classification was
vice versa.
purely arbitrary and fanciful, and had
no foundation in nature; and yet it
lasted through many ages, and was not
extinct in the end of the eighteenth
century, when Hahnemann commenced
his researches. With the increase of
scholastic learning the simplicity of the
ruder ages of medicine gave place to
scientific complexity. No prescription
was considered complete or secundum
artem that did not contain at least a
base, an adjuvant, a corrigent, and an
excipient, and the greater the number of
ingredients that could be introduced
into the composite remedy, the better
satisfied was the prescriber. As pa-
thological theories changed so did pre-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
9
scriptions. But it mattered little what
pathological theory was in the ascendant,
prescriptions remained as complex and
irrational under one regime as under
another. The vitalist and the humoralist
found reasons equally plausible for bleed-
ing, purging, and blistering, and for
writing long prescriptions containing
often several dozens of medicines more
or less powerful, which only failed to
poison the patient because the ingre-
dients were mutually antagonistic, or
because the prescription contained some
powerful emetic or purgative that quickly
swept the whole of the poisonous rubbish
out of his system before it had time to
do much harm. It is astonishing that
the faith in drugs lasted so long among
physicians as it did. Up to the date of
IO
Hahnemann, the Founder
Hahnemann's discovery, and, indeed,
long afterwards, we find the foremost
representatives of medicine gravely pre-
scribing these wonderful compounds, and
repeating without hesitation the hypo-
thetical fictions regarding the virtues of
drugs that had been current since the
days of Dioscorides.
The prescriber's art seems to have
attained the climax of complex absur-
dity shortly before Hahnemann's days.
A work published in 1683—¿.e., at a time
not more distant from the initiation of
Hahnemann's reform than the latter is
from our day-gives us a detailed ac-
count of the therapeutics of that time.
It is entitled Doron Medicum, or a supple-
ment to the New London Dispensatory; its
author is William Salmon, Professor of
of Scientific Therapeutics.
ΙΙ
Physick. We there find long lists of
primary and secondary alteratives; pur-
gatives, divided into choler purges, phleg-
magogues, melanagogues, hydragogues,
and holagogues. Then medicines are
classified by their temperaments. "All
medicines," we are told, "simply con-
sidered in themselves, are either hot,
cold, moist, dry, or temperate." Then
follow lists of medicines: temperate; hot
in the first degree, hot in the second
degree, hot in the third degree, hot in
the fourth degree; cold in the first
degree, &c.; dry in the first degree, &c.;
moist in the first, second, third and fourth
degrees. Next, medicines are classified
according to their "appropriation," as
cephalicks, pectorals, cordials, stomachi-
cals, hepaticals, nephriticks, spleneticals,
12
Hahnemann, the Founder
hystericals, arthriticals. Then hot medi-
cines are arranged into those heating the
head, the breast, the stomach, the heart,
the liver, spleen, bowels, veins, womb,
joints. Cold medicaments are arranged
into those cooling the same organs.
Again, medicines are classified according
to their properties, as emollients, relaxers,
rarifiers, aperitives, attenuaters, astrin-
gents, attractives, repercussives, discus-
sives, cleansers, anodyns, narcoticks,
carminatives, diaphoreticks, alexiphar-
micks, pyroticks, suppuratives, sarco-
ticks, glutinatives, epiloticks, diureticks,
emmenagogicks, traumaticks, cosmeticks.
Purging medicaments are: catharticks,
emeticks, diureticks, sudorificks, pter-
micks, salivaticks. They are further di-
vided into medicines purging choler,
of Scientific Therapeutics.
13
flegm, melancholia, water, all humours;
by vomit, by urine, by sweat, by the
nose, by the pallate.*
The following are some of the queer
remedies physicians prescribed and their
patients swallowed in all faith-
CC
Quinta Essentia Bufonum Fabri, Faber's
Quintessence of Toads.-R. Toads in great
numbers in the month of June, hang them up
and dry them in the sun, then calcine till the
ashes are white, from which, with Carduus or
Scabious water, or water of Limon-Peels, ex-
tract a Salt to the highest whightness: mix,
and keep this Salt with Treacle water. There
are some which order this Quintessence to be
made with the distillation of live Toads; but
Faber affirms that water to be the highest
poison, and, from its Volatile Spirit, to kill by
its odour. This salt is one of the chiefest Anti-
dotes against Poison, resisting all Venom to a
wonder."
(C
Quinta Essentia Ossium Humanum Fabri.
Quintessence of Mans Bones.-R. Mans bones
The spelling of the original is retained.
14
Hahnemann, the Founder
in gross powder (and infused in generous wine
for 8 days) of which make an Oyl per descensum,
which rectify by a seavenfold distillation in a
Retort. The fæces or Caput Mortuum calcine
in a strong fire, from which Calx, with boyling
water, extract a Salt, which purify and make
white; then conjoyn it with its afore-prepared
Oyl, and digest, that they may be perfectly
incorporated. This will be best and most effi-
caciously done, at Sol his entrance into Aries,
which is about the tenth day of March every
Year. The same ought to be observed in
making the Salt of Mans skull, with sweet Spirit
of Vitriol. There is nothing in Rerum Natura
more powerful than this Balsam in curing and
taking away all manner of arthritick pains and
torments. It speedily takes away all kinds of
rottenness, and corrects every other vice of the
Bones. Let it be applied warm in manner of a
Balsam, with Lint, to the part affected. The
Potestates Cranii Humani is a similar prepara-
tion employed chiefly for the cure of Epilepsia
or Falling Sickness.”
I need not waste time by giving the
details for the preparation of Pulvis Vi-
perinus or Powder of Vipers, a specifick
against Scabs, Itch, Morphew, Breakings
of Scientific Therapeutics.
15
out, Erysipelas and Leprosies, and many
other diseases, nor those for making
the Balsamum ad Cancrum, containing,
amongst other choice ingredients, Mum-
my, Powder of dryed Toads, and Oyl
of Soot.
I shall pass on to-
(C
Unguentum Sympatheticum, The Sym-
pathetic Oyntment. R. Bears Grease, the
Brains of a Boar, Powder of washed Earth-
worms, red Sanders, Mummy, Bloodstone, ana,
zi; Moss of a dead Mans Skull, not buried, 3j;
make an oyntment according to Art. Or thus
according to Barbet (which he affirms to be the
best description): B. Oyl of Roses, fine Bole,
ana, 3j, Oyl of Linseed 3 ij, Moss of a dead
Mans Skull, Mans Fat, ana, zij, Mummy, Mans
Blood, ana, ss. Mix and make an Oyntment.
All wounds are cured by this Oyntment (pro-
vided the Nerves and Arteries, or some of the
principal Members be not hurt) thus: Anoint
the Weapon that made the Wound daily once,
if there be need and the Wound be great, other-
wise it will be sufficient to anoint it every other
day. When note, I. That the Weapon be kept
16
Hahnemann, the Founder
in clean Linnen, and in a temperate heat; for if
the dust fall, or Wind blow upon it, or it be
cold, the Sick will be much tormented; so also
if it be kept too hot. 2. That if it be a stab,
the Weapon must be anointed towards the point
descending. 3. That if you want the Weapon,
take Blood from the Wound upon a stick, and
use it as if it were the Weapon. Thus the
Tooth-ache is cured by pricking the Gums and
anointing the Instrument."
Many other medicines of a too dis-
gusting character to be named to ears
polite are described in this book, and the
most marvellous healing virtues attri-
buted to them.* Directions are given
*As this lecture was delivered to an audience
presumably consisting of medical persons and
students, whose minds are case-hardened by their
studies to all nastiness, I made no concealment
as to the nature of these revolting remedies.
But a valued friend and colleague has reminded
me that the lecture, in its printed form, is for
general distribution among the Governors of the
School, who are not all medical men, nor yet all
men, but the reverse; and that, therefore, it
of Scientific Therapeutics.
17
1
for preparing amulets to protect the
wearer from the plague and other ma-
lignant diseases, and full particulars are
given for making the Universal Medi-
cine, which ought to have rendered all
others superfluous.
The book in which these ridiculous
and often loathsome remedies are grave-
ly described and seriously recommended
was published thirty-seven years after the
death of Bacon, twenty-five years after
the death of Harvey, during the life
of Sydenham and Boerhaave, and only
twenty-five years before the birth of Cullen.
might be as well not to call a spade a spade,
but to employ some such euphemistic para-
phrase as “horticultural implement.” On the
whole, I think it best to omit the description
of the spade altogether, for fear it might be
thought to bear too great a likeness to a graip.
2
Uor M
18
Hahnemann, the Founder
It may perhaps be thought that the
work I have been quoting from contains.
the vagaries of an eccentric, and that
such filthy medicines as he describes
were peculiar to himself. But this is
not so. The writer was a learned phy-
sician, the author of many other works
on medicine, chemistry, botany and
astrology. We find, besides, that almost
all the objectionable ingredients of his
prescriptions have formed the subjects
of learned essays and dissertations by
his contemporaries and successors far
into the eighteenth century. Those
curious in these matters will find in
the great Dictionary of Materia Medica
of Merat and De Lens, numerous rc-
ferences to works published in all
countries of Europe extolling the me-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
19
dicinal virtues of the most repulsive
substances.
I do not suppose that these loathly
and grotesque remedies were patronised
by Stahl, Hoffmann, Boerhaave, Haller
and Cullen, the great medical authori-
ties of the eighteenth century, to which
Hahnemann belonged; but medicine has
never been practised solely by great men,
and it was long before their half-hearted
teachings of an unprincipled therapeia
exercised much influence on the practice
of the rank and file of the medical pro-
fession, as they could give no more rea-
son for the remedies they proposed than
against those they denounced. Down to
a very recent period some of the most
repulsive remedies were employed by
physicians of high standing, and though
20
Hahnemann, the Founder
most of the filthy compounds I have
alluded to without naming (for fear of
shocking my readers) were eliminated
from the published works on Materia
Medica, some of them still retained their
reputation among individual practitioners,
even to our times. From want of a
guiding principle for ascertaining the
curative properties of medicines, thera-
peutics had degenerated into a senseless
farrago of uncleanness and absurdity, a
caput mortuum of inert rubbish, a cess-
pool of filthy abominations, and a tor-
ture chamber of painful and noxious
appliances. But though some of the
grosser elements were discarded by the
contemporaries of Hahnemann, the the-
rapeutics of his time and for many years
afterwards remained as irrational as ever.
替
​of Scientific Therapeutics.
21
When, in 1796, he first tentatively put
forward the idea that, in the treatment
of chronic diseases, medicines might be
given on the similia similibus principle,
and when he launched his system per-
fectly excogitated, in his Organon, in
1810, no sign had been given by the
chiefs of the medical schools that they
thought that complex prescriptions were
irrational, that inflammations were not
best treated by blood-letting, that fre-
quent purgation was not eminently con-
ducive to health, in spite of the wise saying
of Sauvages "nil magis nocet quam repe-
tita evacuantia," that alteratives—mean-
ing thereby, generally, mercury pushed
to salivation-were not scientific remedies,
or that painful processes under the theo-
retical name of "counter-irritants" were
22
Hahnemann, the Founder
not indispensable curative agents. Ho-
mœopathy was not "in the air" when
Hahnemann wrote about it, nor, I may
say, for many years after the Organon
appeared. Thirteen years after the
publication of the Organon, a new medical
periodical was set up in London, and it
took the title of The Lancet, as though
blood-letting was the chief of remedies.
The earlier editions of Sir Thomas
Watson's great work on the Practice
of Physic recommended blood-letting for
everything inflammatory without a doubt
as to its excellence. Even in 1858 he
says about peritonitis, "It is of great
importance that blood-letting should be
performed early. After a full bleeding
from the arm, such as has produced
some sensible impression upon the cir-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
23
culation and brought the patient to the
verge of syncope, the surface of the
belly should be covered with leeches-
from 20 to 40 may be applied at once."
But in the same edition he makes an
exception in the case of pneumonia :
"Years have passed by since I have
met with any instance of that disease
which has required blood-letting. I may
say the same of inflammatory diseases
in general. They have all become less
tolerant of blood-letting since the cholera
swept over us in 1832." It is not easy
to understand how the sweeping over
us of the cholera should render pneu-
monia and inflammatory diseases less
tolerant of blood-letting; but, as the
celebrated article by Sir Daniel Sand-
ford on "Homöopathie" appeared in the
24
Hahnemann, the Founder
Edinburgh Review in 1830, and as, about
the same period, the practice of homoeo-
pathy was introduced into Britain, and
began to be much talked about, it is
more likely that the "sweeping over
us" of homœopathic knowledge, rather
than of the cholera, made patients less
tolerant of blood-letting, and so doctors
had to give it up; and as they found
that diseases did better without it, they
had to alter the teachings of their text
books accordingly, and they had to in-
vent some other reason for their altered
practice, and the "sweeping over us of
cholera," or the "change of type of dis-
ease" served to save their dignity and
excuse their change of front. But that
was not till many years after the publi-
cation of the Organon.
of Scientific Therapeutics.
25
I
Hahnemann gradually led up to his
finished method by a careful examina-
tion of all the systems of therapeutics
that had previously been advocated.
say, "all" the systems, but indeed, they
were only two in number, viz., the treat-
ment of disease by medicines having an
action contrary to the disease, and that
by medicines having an action different
to the disease. He showed that these
were irrational, futile, and when not use-
less, pernicious. He demonstrated by
reasoning and experimental proof that
the true rule of drug selection, was to
employ in a disease a medicine whose
pure effects on the healthy body were
similar to the phenomena of the disease
to be cured. This was not a theory but
a logical deduction from observed facts
26
Hahnemann, the Founder
arrived at in the true experimental way.
:
Thus certain diseases were known to
be curable by certain medicines. These
medicines he tested on himself and
others, and found that they caused mor-
bid states, closely resembling the diseases
they were known to cure. He did not
jump to this conclusion from his one
experiment with cinchona bark. That
experiment set him thinking and led
him to other experiments with other
drugs. After six years of patient reflec-
tion and experiment he suggested that
the administration of medicines accord-
ing to the rule similia similibus curentur
might be the best method of treating
chronic diseases-acute diseases might
still be best treated by the contrary or
palliative method. His suggestion fell
of Scientific Therapeutics.
27
unheeded by the great and the small
men of the day. They were quite con-
tent with their old and traditional
methods, their bleeding, blistering, purg-
ing, salivation and complex prescrip-
tions. Hahnemann, nothing daunted,
went on with his experiments, and nine
years later published a work in Latin
On the Positive Effects of Medicines,
partly ascertained by experiment on
himself and the members of his own
family—for as yet he had no disciples—
partly culled from the records of poison-
ing and observations of the effects of
drugs in the writings of medical authors.
At the same time he published that re-
markable work The Medicine of Expe-
rience. Fortified by his nine years of
diligent experimentation with medicines,
28
Hahnemann, the Founder
in order to ascertain their pathogenetic
powers, and his equally long trials of
the curative powers of medicines given.
on the similia similibus principle, he felt
himself justified in declaring this thera-
peutic rule to be of general application,
and the use of palliatives to be limited
to tiding over temporary difficulties, such
as apparent death from freezing or
asphyxia, and hysterical convulsions.
He was practising at Torgau, a small
town on the Elbe, at this time. Five
years more of reflection and experiment
enabled him to perfect his system to
such a degree, that he published his
great work, to which he gave the title of
Organon of Rational Medicine, according
to Homeopathic Laws (Organon der
rationellen Heilkunde, nach homöopa-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
29
thischen Gesetzen). Simultaneously with
the appearance of this work he came to
Leipzic, and the following year he pub-
lished the first volume of the Materia
Medica Pura. The actual provings in
this volume were made by himself alone,
probably assisted by some of the mem-
bers of his family. But he was now in
a famous university town, where there
were many medical students, some of
whom he might hope to get to assist
him in his gigantic undertaking, the con-
struction, namely, of a materia medica
which should contain nothing but the ex-
perimentally ascertained positive effects
on the healthy human body of the
medicines treated of. Such a thing had
never before been attempted, nor even
suggested-unless we are to consider the
30
Hahnemann, the Founder
oft-repeated quotation from Haller as a
suggestion. Hahnemann felt that his
own unaided provings would not suffice
to furnish the ideal materia medica his
therapeutic system required. The art
was too long and his single life too short.
for such a task. He must have the
assistance of intelligent co-operators,
who were convinced of the truth or at
least of the reasonableness of his thera-
peutic rule. How to get these zealous.
co-operators was the problem.
If he
could become a teacher of medicine as
he understood it, he might succeed in
convincing a class of students of the
truth of his rational therapeutics, and
enlist them in his work. He applied to
the authorities of the Faculty of Medicine
of the University for permission to teach
of Scientific Therapeutics.
31
medicine.
He was informed that he
would only be allowed to do this by
passing an examination and defending
a thesis before the Faculty of Medicine.
He willingly complied with these condi-
tions. He wrote a thesis on the Helle-
borism of the Ancients, which was so
excellent, that when he came to defend
it before the Faculty, his examiners
could find no fault with it, and were
forced to acknowledge its superlative
merits. Having thus obtained the licence
to teach, he soon collected around him a
class of enthusiastic young men, who
entered heart and soul into his scheme,
and aided him so effectually in his work
of proving medicines that, between 1816
and 1821 he was enabled to publish five
more volumes of his pure materia medica.
32
Hahnemann, the Founder
The six volumes of this colossal work
contain the positive effects of sixty-
It constitutes a real
four medicines.
treasury of materia medica, displaying
the accurately observed effects of medi-
cines on the human body, without any
alloy of hypothesis or conjecture. Such
a materia medica had never been offered
to the medical world since medicine had
been cultivated as an art.
It upset and
rendered useless all the treatises and text
books on materia medica that had hitherto
passed current in medicine. These con-
tained mere hypothetical or traditional
accounts of the supposed virtues of
medicines. Hahnemann's materia medi-
ca, excluding hypothesis, recorded only
the well-ascertained effects of medicines
on the human body. Hahnemann's
of Scientific Therapeutics.
33
provings were the necessary corollary to
his therapeutic rule. Previous to his
time a distinction had been made be-
tween poisons and medicines. All drugs
which were so powerful that they could
not be given in ordinary doses without
danger, were banished from the material
medica, and those only that could be
given in considerable quantities without
much risk were allowed to be medicines.
Hahnemann abolished this distinction.
He said with Shakspeare, "in poison
there is physic," and he might have said
'the stronger the poison the greater the
physic."
It will be observed that, during his
stay in Leipzic, Hahnemann had no
thought of separating himself from the
established medical school. He qualified
3
34
Hahnemann, the Founder
himself to be a teacher in that school in
the usual manner. He gave lectures
and formed a class of students in con-
nexion with the existing Faculty of
Medicine, and though the doctrines het
taught were novel and original, he was
quite within his legal right in teaching
medicine as he understood it, and any
medical teacher would do the same.
During all this period he broached no
theory either as to the nature of the dis-
ease or the mode in which the cure was
effected. He proved his medicines in
substantial doses, and he reduced the
dose of the medicine he administered
for the treatment of disease, expressly
in order to avoid the too violent effects
of large doses. He varied his doses
according to the nature of the medicine
of Scientific Therapeutics.
35
and of the disease.
When I say he
broached no theory as to the curative
action of medicines, I may be reminded
that he held that medicines cured diseases
by substituting a more powerful medi-
cinal artificial disease for the weaker
natural disease; but this, though appa-
rently a hypothesis, was in fact a deduc-
tion from what he believed he observed
in every case in which a medicine acted
curatively, viz: that it caused an appa-
rent aggravation of the natural disease.
We may believe he was mistaken in this,
and probably he may have got the idea
from a statement of John Hunter, as
Dr. Fredault supposes; still it was a
legitimate deduction from what he be-
lieved to be facts-but which we now
think we have found not to be facts—a
36
Hahnemann, the Founder
logical inference from the premises, only
we now hold these premises to have been
However, this is a matter of
unsound.
quite secondary importance.
The great central truths of Hahne-
mann's teaching up to the time when he
was driven from Leipzic by the hostility
of his colleagues, were these: the de-
monstration by reasoning and proof of
the truth of the therapeutic rule similia
similibus curentur-let likes be treated
by likes; the necessity for ascertaining
the effects of medicines on the healthy
human body; the administration of
medicines in disease singly and alone,
and in the precise form in which they
had been proved; the diminution of the
dose for the purpose of avoiding its too
violent action. There is nothing theo-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
37
retical here, all these maxims are de-
rived from observation and experience;
conjecture and speculation have no part
in them.
No theory of disease or of medicinal
action is involved in the therapeutic rule ;
the reasoning employed in its discovery
is strictly logical. Certain medicines are
known to cure certain diseases, these
medicines, when tested on the healthy
human being, are found to cause morbid
states similar to the diseases they cure.
This is found to be the case with all
medicines that have been subjected to
trial; it is, therefore, so far as can be
judged, a general rule that medicines
that can cure diseases can produce on
the healthy morbid states resembling
those diseases; and, conversely, medi-
38
Hahnemann, the Founder
Hence
cines that can produce on the healthy
certain morbid states can cure diseases
resembling those morbid states.
the therapeutic rule: in order to cure any
disease select a medicine that can pro-
duce a similar morbid condition on the
healthy-similia similibus curentur—let
likes be treated by likes. This is a prac-
tical rule deduced from experience.
Hahnemann first called his system the
"Medicine of Experience." Then, as if to
show its logical character, he called it
"Rational Medicine," and later on simply
"Medicine," or "the Healing Art," as
though there were none other that de-
served the name.
To render it possible to apply this
rule some one must undertake the heavy
task of ascertaining the effects of medi-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
39
cines on the healthy human body. Hahne-
mann did not shrink from this herculean
labour. For years and years he worked
away silently and solitarily at the task
of rendering the rule he had discovered
of practical use. It was only after he
came to Leipzic that he received any
help from others. It was fortunate, in-
deed, for homœopathy that he came to
Leipzic, for had he lingered on in the pal-
try little town of Torgau, he could never
have attracted disciples around him able
and willing to assist him, and homoeo-
pathy might have remained in its initial
stage-the revelation of the true rule for
treatment, but incapable of being applied
for lack of proper instruments.
The single remedy was a necessity,
for if medicines cured by virtue of their
40
Hahnemann, the Founder
1
power to produce certain morbid states
on the healthy, they must be given in
the same shape in which they had been
proved to produce these morbid states.
If given in combination with other medi-
cines having different effects, or if given
deprived of any of the constituents they
possessed when they produced these mor-
bid states, we could have no warranty
that they would possess the power, under
this new form or combination, of acting
as they had acted when given singly and
simply. If a chemist tells us that, ac-
cording to the laws of chemistry, if we
wish to produce a certain effect on a
solution of carbonate of soda we must
add a certain substance called tartaric
acid, we would never be so foolish as to
expect to obtain the same effect if we
of Scientific Therapeutics.
41
I
gave the tartaric acid in combination
with other things, say, potash, magnesia,
and nitre, even though we should learn-
edly bestow on our additions the titles
of adjuvant, corrigent and excipient,
nor if we gave the carbonic acid alone,
or the soda alone.
The small dose was also a deduction
from experience, which taught that the
ordinary large doses act too violently.
Experience taught that diseased parts of
the human organism are more sensitive
to the action of medicines having a
particular affinity to them as evidenced
by their causing effects on the healthy
similar to those of the disease; just as a
diseased organ is more sensitive to its
ordinary stimulus than a healthy one;
witness the excessive sensitiveness of
42
Hahnemann, the Founder
the inflamed eye to light, of the in-
flamed ear to sound, of the inflamed
skin to touch. No theory, then, was
required to justify small doses of the
homœopathic medicine; they were the
outcome of experience and observa-
tion.
We may say, then, that as long as
Hahnemann remained in Leipzic at-
tached to the Medical Faculty of the
University as an extra-mural yet acade-
mical lecturer and teacher of medicine,
he presented his medical system in a
truly logical manner, quite devoid of
theory or hypothesis; indeed, in all his
writings up to this time, he inveighs
against theory and speculation in me-
dicine.
So utterly opposed was he to hypo-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
43
thesis, that he ridiculed the idea of our
ever obtaining a knowledge of the proxi-
mate causes of disease. Thus in §§ 5
and 6 of the first edition of the Organon
we read: It is allowable to think that
(C
every disease must depend on an altera-
tion in the interior of the organism, but
this can only be surmised by the reason
from what the external phenomena
reveal concerning it; but it is not in
itself cognizable in any way whatever.
The invisible morbid alteration in the
interior and the observable alteration of
the health in the exterior (symptom-
complex) together constitute what is
called disease; both make up the disease
itself." This teaching is curiously empha-
sized and expanded in the correspond-
ing paragraphs of the second edition.
44
Hahnemann, the Founder
thus: "It is allowable to think that
every disease presupposes an alteration in
the interior of the human organism. But
this can only be dimly and delusively
surmised by the reason from what the
morbid symptoms reveal concerning it;
but it is not in itself cognizable, still less
infallibly cognizable in any way what-
ever. The invisible morbid alteration
in the interior and the alteration of the
health of the exterior observable to our
senses (symptom-complex) together con-
stitute to the eye of Creative Omnipo-
tence what is called disease; but the
totality of the symptoms only is the
side of the disease turned towards the
physician; this alone is observable by
him, and is the sole thing he can know,
or needs to know, in order to enable
of Scientific Therapeutics.
45
him to cure." We fondly think we know
something more about the essence of
disease now, and talk learnedly about
increase and diminution of the inhibitory
power of vaso-motor nerves, reflex action,
cell-proliferation, bacilli, bacteria, and
microbes, of which Hahnemann and his
contemporaries knew nothing; but it is
doubtful if we can improve on Hahne-
mann's dictum, that we can only know
diseases by their morbid symptoms. As
our instrumental aids to diagnosis im-
prove, we are able to make additions to
our knowledge of symptoms; but the
revelations of the stethoscope, the plexi-
meter, the thermometer, the sphygmo-
graph, the microscope, and chemical
reagents, are merely additions to the
sum of observable symptoms in disease;
46
Hahnemann, the Founder
and the same methods must be applied
to the investigation of the morbid states
produced by medicines on the healthy,
if we would keep pathogenesy abreast
of pathology, and ascertain the most
exact simile of the disease in the agents
we employ for its cure. The more com-
plete our knowledge of the artificial
symptom-complex in medicinal diseases
and of the natural symptom-complex in
real diseases, the better shall we be able
to employ medicines for the cure of
diseases. Even should our improved
methods enable us to determine with
certainty the actual pathological changes
in disease which they are far from
having yet done-Hahnemann will still
be right in saying that diseases are only
cognizable by their observable morbid
of Scientific Therapeutics.
47
symptoms, for it is only through the
symptoms that we can infer the patho-
logical state, or as he words it: "the
invisible morbid alteration in the inte-
rior." As far, then, as we are concerned
the observable symptoms constitute the
disease, and when we have ascertained
everything about a disease by means of
our senses, aided by all the instruments
we can employ, we have ascertained the
disease itself. This is no theory; it is a
bare statement of fact.
Thus, as long as Hahnemann lived in
Leipzic, his teachings were free from
hypothesis and speculation; he kept to
the firm ground of observation and ex-
perience, and made no excursions into
the treacherous quicksands of conjecture.
In fact, he constantly denounced specu-
48
Hahnemann, the Founder
lation and hypothesis as will-o'-the-wisps
leading only into the quagmires of un-
certainty and self-deception.
But Hahnemann was forced to leave
Leipzic in 1821. He accepted from the
Duke of Anhalt-Coethen an asylum in
the petty capital of the petty duchy.
He exchanged the pleasant and varied
life in the literary and commercial capital.
of the kingdom of Saxony for the dull
monotony of a fifth-rate provincial town,
whose inhabitants gave him no welcome,
in fact, insulted him to such a degree
that for years he never crossed his own
threshold unless to visit his one patient,
the Duke, but took the air in the narrow
strip of garden attached to his house.
In Leipzic he enjoyed a large and lucra-
tive practice, where he had constant
of Scientific Therapeutics.
49
opportunities of testing his method in
all sorts of acute and chronic diseases.
In Coethen he had actually no practice
among the townsfolk, and never visited
a patient, except his patron. The only
practice he had was occasional consul-
tations by letter, and a few rich patients,
the subjects of chronic diseases who, at-
tracted by the fame of his name, paid
short visits to Coethen in order to consult
him. He was no longer surrounded by
the crowd of admiring disciples, whom he
taught and with whom he used to work.
almost every day, and who amused him
every evening with cheerful conversation
over pipes and small beer. He was now
relegated to the society of his wife and
daughters, excellent persons, no doubt,
in their way, but not of much use to him
4
50
Hahnemann, the Founder
in a scientific point of view. He was
thus driven in upon himself, as it were,
with plenty of time to cogitate on the
meanness and injustice of the colleagues
who had conspired to effect his ruin in
Leipzic, and who would have rendered
it impossible for him to earn his bread,
had not the charity of an amiable prince
offered him a paltry post with the mild
dignity of Hofrath. Otium cum digni-
tate he might now be said to possess,
but the otium was torture to a man of
his active mind and habits, and the dig-
nitas was rather given than received by
him. Deprived of his practice, torn from
the society of his friends, no longer able
to superintend an admiring circle of de-
voted and enthusiastic fellow labourers
in the construction of his indispensable
of Scientific Therapeutics.
51
Ո
Materia Medica, the sense of having
been unjustly treated by colleagues, by
whom he felt that he ought to have been
honoured and respected, gnawing like a
canker-worm at his heart; conscious as
he was of having done more for scientific
therapeutics than any physician of the
past or present, of having found the
way to truth in medicine and of having
trodden it all alone;* in his enforced.
solitude and isolation, as he grew old he
took to the dangerous course of spinning
hypotheses, which being uncorrected by
discussion with other minds and inca-
pable of being tested by experience at
*"In these investigations I discovered the
road to the truth, which I had to tread all alone,
far away from the beaten highways of traditional
medicine."-Preface to the first edition of the
Organon.
52
Hahnemann, the Founder
the sick-bed, he came to consider as
truths of equal value with the great
fundamental truth he had slowly and
painfully elaborated by experiment and
observation. We see this fatal tendency
to speculation and dogmatism in the
works and revised editions he published
during his exile in this Patmos of
Coethen. From a close and diligent
observer of nature in the prime of his
life, he became a seer of apocalyptic
visions in his old age.
Unmindful of what he had formerly
said, that it was impossible to ascertain
the pathological process that took place
in the hidden interior of the organism,
he now tells us that disease consists in
an alteration of the vital force, which he
seems to regard as a distinct entity.
7
F
53
of Scientific Therapeutics.
1
This notion of a vital force presiding
over the functions of organic life is as
purely a hypothesis as the archæus of Van
Helmont, with which, in fact, it is iden-
tical. I am far from denying the value
of speculation, imagination or hypothesis
in scientific matters when used to ex-
plain observed facts, but there is always
a danger of regarding a hypothesis as
a proved truth; and if the hypothesis
should be false, it will assuredly vitiate
all the reasoning founded upon it. The
hypothesis of a vital force is now gene-
rally regarded as false, consequently a
theory of disease founded on it can find
no acceptance in the present day. When
Hahnemann wrote, the vital-force hypo-
thesis was a universal belief; so it may
be said that Hahnemann was not to
!
54
Hahnemann, the Founder
blame in adopting the belief. But, as
a scientific man, he was to blame in
adopting any belief at all. The true
scientiate knows, he does not believe.
He could not know that there was a
vital force; he was not justified in be-
lieving in the existence of what he could
not know. He should have stuck to his
original declaration, that what takes.
place in the hidden interior of the or-
ganism is unknowable, and remained
faithful to his own maxim, that the phy-
sician has only to do with observable
and ascertainable phenomena, which in-
deed is identical with the first aphorism
of Bacon's Novum Organum.
The idea of an immaterial vital force
being the cause of diseases by its de-
rangement, naturally led to the theory
of Scientific Therapeutics.
55
that medicines, by the processes of tritu-
ration and succussion, became divested
of their material substance, and their
powers thereby liberated; they became
spiritual immaterial forces without a
substratum of matter. And this idea
he now promulgated, though he had
formerly declared that, however much
diluted, there must still remain some
material stuff in the dilution. And the
two opposite and conflicting statements
stand side by side in the last edition of
the Organon.*
The hypothesis of the liberation of
the spirit of the medicine by the phar-
maceutical processes he employed, in the
end suggested to Hahnemann this other
* See § cclxxx, note, and § cclxxxvii, note.
56
Hahnemann, the Founder
!
hypothesis that the power of the me-
dicine was increased by dilution. To
express this idea, "dilution" became
(C
dynamization," and it is curious to
observe that, again side by side with
this new idea of the increase of potency
by dilution, the last edition of the Or-
ganon retains the statement originally
made in the first edition, that the power
of a medicine decreases by dilution in a
regular mathematical progression.
In the solitude of his Coethen exile
Hahnemann elaborated his wonderful
theory of chronic diseases. He tells us
that the subject had occupied him since
the year 1816; but he never breathed a
syllable of it, even to his most intimate.
friends, until the year 1827, when he
summoned to his side two of his most
.
of Scientific Therapeutics.
57
faithful disciples-Stapf and Gross-and
to them he communicated his theory
that all chronic diseases, excepting those
produced by unhealthy surroundings, evil
habits and improper medicinal treatment,
were owing to three chronic miasms, sy-
philis, sycosis and psora, the two former
causing one-eighth, the latter seven-
eighths of all chronic diseases. Similar
views as regards the origin of many
chronic diseases from psora had already
been enunciated by Hoffmann, before.
Hahnemann's birth, by Autenrieth in
1808, and by Wenzel in 1825; so the
idea was not absolutely novel, and
Hahnemann took it up and developed
it to an extent undreamt of by his pre-
decessors in this line. I will not attempt
to show the plausibility of the theory,
58
Hahnemann, the Founder
that has already been fully done by
Henderson, in his reply to Simpson, by
Dr. Hughes in this place, and by myself
on a former occasion. I would only
remind you that it is a mere theory, and
as such inconsistent with Hahnemann's
oft-repeated denunciations of patholo-
gical theories and speculations. In 1828
Hahnemann published the first three
volumes of his first edition of the Chronic
Diseases. In the first volume this theory
is set forth with great elaboration, and
in the editions of the Organon published
after this date, he introduced this theory
of chronic diseases among his aphorisms.
In the other two volumes he gave a
number of pathogeneses of new medi-
cines, which he termed "anti-psorics,"
this term involving another theory, viz.:
:
of Scientific Therapeutics.
59
that these medicines had a specific an-
tagonism to the theoretical psora, which
was again a departure from his former
doctrine, that treatment should not be
directed against the hypothetical cause
of the disease, but against the actual dis-
ease as revealed to us by its symptoms.
Another innovation was introduced in
the method he employed for ascertaining
the pathogenetic effects of these new.
medicines. They were not proved, like
the former medicines in the Materia
Medica Pura, by testing them on himself
and his band of zealous co-operators.
The symptoms recorded were all ob-
tained by his own observations
names of fellow-provers are mentioned.
He could not and did not attempt to
prove the new medicines on the healthy.
no
60 Hahnemann, the Founder
The symptoms he gives were those ob-
served during the administration of these
medicines to patients.
What an uncer-
tain, what an impure source this is, needs
no argument to prove. It cannot be said
that this mode of ascertaining the effects
of drugs was exactly a novelty to Hah-
nemann, for he indicates it already in
the first edition of the Organon, & cxix:
"But how we are able to discover the
symptoms of the medicine even in dis-
eases, especially chronic ones, among the
symptoms of the original disease, is a
subject of higher art, and should be left
to masters in observation only." That
he did not trust to this doubtful source
for ascertaining the effects of his earlier
medicines is sufficiently obvious; but we
now find him employing it to the exclu-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
6I
sion of what in the previous paragraph
he declares to be the most important
method, viz.: trials of medicines on him-
self by the accurately observing and
unprejudiced physician.
In Coethen also he fixed on the 30th di-
lution as the standard dose of every ho-
mœopathic medicine, for every disease, in
every constitution, at every age. He says
he was led to select this dose by innumer-
able experiments. But as his experiments
would require to be made with every di-
lution, in every disease and at all ages,
it is obvious that no man's life would be
long enough to test even one medicine
in this way; especially when it is re-
membered how various are the charac-
ters of every case of a disease called by
a particular name, how diverse are the
62
Hahnemann, the Founder
idiosyncracies of patients, what a differ-
ence of sensitiveness is to be met with
among them. We must therefore regard
Hahnemann's dictum, that the 30th di-
lution is the best in every case, as an
arbitrary maxim, not founded on expe-
rience, and therefore purely hypothetical.
In the first edition of the Organon he
laid it down as a rule for the dose that
it should be so small as just to be able
to cause a slight apparent aggravation
of the disease. But this was evidently
an impossible problem, as no one could
have gone on trying all kinds of doses
in a disease until he found the one that
caused a very slight apparent aggrava-
tion, more especially as, with all possible.
attention and even expectation, there
are few who have ever observed this so-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
63
called "homœopathic aggravation in
disease from any dose, great or small.
Nor is there any reason for diluting
medicines at all, if we are to accept as
true what Hahnemann tells us in the
last edition of the Organon, § cclxx,
note, viz: that precisely the same medi-
cinal power can be communicated to an
undiluted medicinal solution by con-
tinuous shaking for half an hour, as by
diluting it up to his standard limit. “I
dissolved," says he, "one grain of soda
in one ounce of water mixed with alcohol
in a phial which was thereby filled two-
thirds full, and shook this solution con-
tinuously for half an hour, and this was
in dynamization and energy equal to
the 30th potency." Were this so, the
homœopathie pharmacy would be very
Ι
64
Hahnemann, the Founder

much simplified. There would be no
sense in expending time and labour in
making dilutions through thirty phials
with accurately measured quantities of
alcohol. One grain of the crude drug
dissolved in an ounce of fluid and shaken
continuously for half an hour would fur-
nish us with a preparation precisely
similar in potency to the standard 30th
dilution.
Unfortunately, as we cannot help per-
ceiving, Hahnemann, during his residence
in Coethen, was too apt to accept as
truths many speculations of his own, and
even some crude suggestions of others,
the accuracy of which he did not suffi-
ciently test. Thus we find him in 1833,
when preparing for the press the last
edition of the Organon, eagerly accepting

of Scientific Therapeutics.
65
Ægidi's proposal to give medicines
no longer singly and alone, as had
hitherto taught, but in combinatòn ;
and it was only owing to the remon
strances of some of his oldest disciples
that he refrained from adding a para-
graph recommending these double-re-
medies (Doppelmittel), the admission of
which would have been a serious mis-
fortune to homœopathy, and a complete
departure from his former teachings.
A careful consideration of Hahne-
mann's writings during his period of
banishment in Coethen forces on us the
conclusion that his expulsion from
Leipzic was an unmitigated misfortune
for homoeopathy. It was during this
period that he introduced all those sur-
prising doctrines that have rendered his

5

66
Hahnemann, the Founder
system so repugnant to the intelligence
of educted physicians. He then aban-
dond the safe and fruitful path of obser-
ation and experiment for the hazardous
and unprofitable way of speculation and
hypothesis, the folly of which he had
previously demonstrated.
He adopted
the hypotheses of disease being a de-
rangement of the vital force; of the
spirit of a medicine being liberated from
the matter; of the increase of power of
a medicine by trituration and succussion;
of the origin of chronic diseases from
three fixed miasms; of the antipsoric
power of certain substances, and of a
certain dilution being the appropriate
dose for all medicines in all diseases.
Had Hahnemann remained in Leipzic,
attached as an office-bearer, a lecturer,

of Scientific Therapeutics.
67
a sort of extra-mural professor in the
Medical School of that city, engaged in
extensive practice among patients of all
sorts, surrounded by an attached circle.
of intelligent students and practitioners,
his mind not embittered against his me-
dical brethren by their injustice and
persecution, we may safely say that he
would never have abandoned his original
method of investigation and observation.
and his Newtonian boast: "hypotheses
non fingo." The hypotheses he spun out
of his imagination in his solitary old age.
at Coethen would probably never have
occurred to him in his busy Leipzic life,
or, at least, they would have been sub-
jected to the wholesome criticism of a
number of intelligent and independent
minds, and their hollowness exposed in
68
Hahnemann, the Founder
the fierce fire of discussion. The grand
truths of his immortal discovery would.
have been cultivated with assiduity. The
evidence in favour of the excellence of
his therapeutic rule would have been mul-
tiplied and assured. The acquisitions of
pathology and physiology would have
been utilized in the reformed therapeutics,
the improved methods of research would
have been applied by him to both na-
tural and medicinal diseases. Rational
therapeutics would have been engrafted
on medical science. Hypothesis and
speculation would have found no place
in the new therapeutics, or, at least, they
would have been kept within due bounds
and not elevated to a creed. The dog-
matism and intolerance that are SO
conspicuous in the writings of the sep-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
69
tuagenarian hermit would never have
been developed in the society of sharp-
witted and independent companions.
Homoeopathy would have remained
what Hahnemann originally declared it
to be, "rational medicine" par excellence,
and its practitioners would not, as now,
be handicapped in medical controversy
by having to defend, explain away or
repudiate a number of crude speculations
which are not of the essence of ho-
mœopathy, but which are clustered like
parasites around that great therapeutic
discovery, and which serve only to hide
its fair proportions by their unwelcome
obtrusiveness.
It is no doubt true that Hahnemann
insisted on his hypothetical doctrines
being accepted as of equal certainty and
}
70
Hahnemann, the Founder
i
value with his doctrines that are founded
on experience and reason; but we are
not bound to accept them, or to accept
anything that has not been proved and
is incapable of experimental proof, and
is not satisfying to our reason. Now the
soundness of the therapeutic rule similia
similibus curentur is capable of proof,
and has been experimentally proved
thousands of times, and it commends
itself to our reason. The proving of
medicines on the healthy, the single rc-
medy and the small dose are necessary
corollaries to the therapeutic rule; but
the homœopathic aggravation, the dyna-
mization of medicines by pharmaceutic
processes, the origin of seven-eighths of
all chronic diseases from one miasm, the
antagonism of certain drugs to the fan-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
71
ciful psora, the possibility of ascertaining
the pure effects of medicines by giving
them in small doses to the sick, the
identical dose of all medicines in all
diseases-all these teachings may bear
the stamp of genius and show great
originality of mind, but that is not the
question. We have to determine if they
are true by an appeal to experience and
reason, as we appealed to experience
and reason in the matter of the thera-
peutic rule, similia similibus; and if they
do not stand the ordeal, we must reject
them, even though they be Hahnemann's
teachings-magis amica veritas! Hah-
nemann did not submit these, his later
teachings, to the ordeal of discussion
and experiment. His disciples have
done this, and have more or less rejected
72
Hahnemann, the Founder
the hypotheses of the Coethen period.
But the rejection of what is hypothe-
tical in Hahnemann's teachings does
not affect that which is practical and
experimental.
His discovery of the general thera-
peutic rule, similia similibus curentur, his
immense and self-denying labours to
render the application of this rule pos-
sible by proving medicines on himself
and others, so far excel all that had
previously been done for therapeutics,
that the heroes of medicine of ancient
and modern times sink into insignifi-
cance beside him; indeed, disappear
altogether from the field of therapeutics;
and it is a case of Hahnemann first, the
rest nowhere.
What, let me enquire, have the greatest
of Scientific Therapeutics.
73
physicians of the past done for practical
medicine?
Hippocrates, the so-called "Father of
Medicine"-on the lucus a non lucendo
principle, as he did almost nothing for
medicine proper, and might rather be
called the father of therapeutic nihilism
-is hardly remembered for anything
except his saying: "Art is long, life is
short," which is but the weary wail of
disappointment and failure.
*
Herophilus, whose name is indelibly
inscribed on our dura mater, though he
discovered that human beings had a
pulse, could not find the cause thereof,
though he is said to have dissected 600
living human beings; but his therapeu-
* Torcular Herophili, the name of a conflu-
ence of venous sinuses in that membrane.
74
Hahnemann, the Founder
tical teaching was most disastrous, for it
is believed that he was the author of the
maxim, that diseases being compound,
they required compound medicines —
which was similia similibus of the wrong
sort and he was thus the parent of
complex prescriptions, which have been
the bane of the medical art ever since.
Erasistratus is now only remembered
as the physician who got the largest fee
on record for one prescription, nearly
£25,000, which must make him an object
of envy to all self-respecting physicians.
Galen is credited with the enunciation
of the therapeutic rule contraria contrariis
curentur, which being exactly and en-
tirely wrong, was, of course, held to be
the ne plus ultra of medical wisdom
down to Hahnemann's time.
of Scientific Therapeutics.
75
Dioscorides is said to be the father of
Materia Medica. He arranged medi-
cines in an arbitrary classification, ac-
cording to their hypothetical qualities,
as hot, cold, moist, dry, which has no
foundation in nature, and therefore his
book remained the classic text book,
and his classification of drugs was re-
tained down to quite recent times, as I
have shown in my quotations from the
Doron Medicum.
Paracelsus came very near to discover-
ing the truth, but as he wrapped his
doctrines in mystic language, and neg-
lected altogether the true way to discover
the fitting similia by testing medicines.
on the healthy, preferring to trust to his
imagination, the school he founded had
no substantial back-bone, and was lost
76
Hahnemann, the Founder
in a cloud of mazy hypotheses. Much
of Paracelsus's treatment was conscious
homœopathy, much of that of his pre-
decessors and successors has been uncon-
scious homœopathy; many a physician
has been homœopath, malgre lui, or
practised homoeopathy, as M. Jourdain
spoke prose, sans qu'il en sût rien; but
none has taught that the homœopathic
was the general rule of therapeutics.
Van Helmont may be looked upon as
the inventor of the vital force, which he
called archæus, and he thus set men's
minds on a wrong track, which they
persistently followed for many years.
Hahnemann himself could not avoid it
when he took to theorizing on the nature
of disease. Van Helmont was not with-
out merit in exposing the futility of the
•
of Scientific Therapeutics.
77
therapeutics of his day, but he was only
great in destruction, and did little or
nothing in the way of construction.
Harvey was a great physiologist, and
his grand discovery of the circulation of
the blood formed a noteworthy epoch in
medical history, but his contributions to
therapeutics were nil. Nor was his merit.
in his discovery so great as Hahne-
mann's in his, for in Harvey's day some
happy guesses at the truth respecting the
circulation of the blood had already been
made, and men's minds were prepared
to receive it, whereas there was nothing.
of the sort in Hahnemann's case.
Sydenham is often called the English
Hippocrates. While he sighed for spe-
cifics, and wrote uncommon good sense
about the desiderata of therapeutics, he
78
Hahnemann, the Founder
bled like Sangrado, and wrote prescrip-
tions containing nearly four-score in-
gredients. He will be remembered as
having declared: "sine opio nolo esse
medicus."
Stahl recast the doctrine of Van Hel-
mont, altering the name of "archæus "
to "animal spirits," but his therapeutics
consisted mainly of bleeding and eva-
cuants, and he denounced cinchona bark
as a mischievous drug.*
Among the works attributed to Stahl's prin-
cipal disciple, Michael Alberti, I find one with
the significant title, "De curatione per similia,"
which is said by a writer in the British and
Foreign Medica-Chirurgical Review for July,
1871, to be the key-note of homœopathy. But
I strongly suspect this writer never saw the
work in question, and only made a guess at the
subject. I believe, too, that Alberti never wrote
such a work, for though I have not been able to
find it in the British Museum, I have looked
of Scientific Therapeutics.
79
Hoffmann defended cinchona from
Stahl's depreciation of it, and accounted
for its success in ague by its tonic pro-
perties. The rest of his therapeutics
was equally conjectural, and, indeed, he
seems to have thought that diseases
were best let alone, for he wrote: “fuge
medicos et medicamenta si vis esse salvus;”
but perhaps he only intended this as a
warning against other doctors, not him-
through scores of works attributed to him by
Haller and the catalogue of the British Museum,
and found that they were all merely inaugural
theses of candidates for the degree of M.D. in
the school of Halle, of which Alberti was presi-
dent. It is thus that Haller has been enabled
to father upon Alberti no less than 372 separate
works, whereas I believe his extant writings
do not amount to more than a dozen. Most of
the essays falsely ascribed to him are the usual
crude lucubrations of inexperienced students,
and I have no doubt this one is of the same
character.
So
Hahnemann, the Founder
self; for he carried on a traffic in secret
nostrums like many of his great contem-
poraries and predecessors.
says:
Boerhaave professed the doctrine of
contraria contrariis, but explained it as
we have seen the rule similia similibus
explained in our own time. Thus he
"Contraries are removed by con-
traries-not by such means as are di-
rectly opposite or contrary to the disease
present, but by such remedies as will
afterwards manifest their effects contrary
to the cause of the disease. If a hot
drink produce perspiration in fever, then
give a hot drink, for that will cool the
body, which is what we want to do. If
the primary action of opium is consti-
pating and of rhubarb laxative, and the
secondary the reverse, according to the
of Scientific Therapeutics.
SI
•
principle of re-action, then opium may
be the remedy in constipation and rhu-
barb in diarrhoea." Hahnemann him-
self might almost have accepted this
explanation.
Haller is chiefly known to us by his
recommendation to test medicines on
the healthy human body, before pro-
ceeding to experiment with them in
diseases-but there is no record of his
having carried his recommendation into
practice.
Cullen was great in nosology, or the
classification of diseases. He was a
stout defender of theory in therapeutics,
and it was the unsatisfactory character
of his theory to account for the curative
action of bark in ague that led Hahne-
mann to reject theory and consult expe-
6
82
Hahnemann, the Founder
riment in order to ascertain the true rule
of practice.
John Hunter made no notable contri-
butions to therapeutics, but, as Fredault.
has pointed out, he first suggested the
idea that one disease attacking the or-
ganism at a point where another disease
is, cures the latter. This notion was
further developed by Hahnemann, and
forms the basis of his attempted expla-
nation of the method of cure by homœo-
pathic remedies. From this germ, too,
sprang Hahnemann's hypothesis of an
apparent aggravation in all cases preced-
ing the curative action. In Trousseau's
“médicine substitutive" the same idea is
apparent.
John Brown constructed a complete.
system of therapeutics, founded on a
of Scientific Therapeutics.
83
double theory of disease and medicinal
action. In spite of these merits it failed
to obtain general acceptance, though its
partisans in Göttingen heroically en-
deavoured to get it into the heads of
its opponents by cracking their skulls
with cudgels.
Rasori and Broussais, the contempo-
raries of Hahnemann, both tried their
hands at constructing systems of thera-
peutics, the simplicity of which was ad-
mirable, but the results of their practical
application were disastrous, though they
are not yet altogether abandoned in
their native lands.
The retrospective glance I have cast,
with much aid from our Russell's admi-
rable History, at the most prominent
representative men of the past histo y
84
Hahnemann, the Founder
nemann.
of medicine, shows us not a single name
among the heroes of medicine connected
with any real advance in therapeutics—
which is, after all, the sole object of
medical science-until we come to Hah-
What strikes us most is, that
the homœopathic therapeutic rule was
not discovered, or at least suspected to
be a general rule for treatment, by any
of the illustrious and thoughtful men
who adorned the medical schools of the
past. Now that we know it, it appears
so simple and so obvious. But so did
the way to make an egg stand on its
end appear after Columbus had shewn.
how to do it. Hahnemann's is the one
name in the whole history of medicine
connected with a rational, simple and
efficacious system of therapeutics, based
of Scientific Therapeutics.
85
on the solid foundation of impregnable
facts.
Hahnemann has not yet obtained a
universal recognition of his true place.
in medicine; but even among those who
most persistently ignore his claims and
who affect to treat him as a dreamer or
a charlatan, the influence of his genius
is conspicuous by the change he has
wrought in their practice. The san-
guinary and cruel treatment of disease
has almost been abolished. Bleeding,
whether local or general, is now rarely,
very rarely, resorted to, though ominous
signs of a desire to rehabilitate the long
disused practice have lately appeared
in the medical periodicals. Possibly,
doctors have fondly imagined there has
been again a "change of type" back to
$6
Hahnemann, the Founder
the old state of things when diseases
were "tolerant of blood-letting," but
since homœopathy has taught them
better, they will hardly find that pa-
tients have resumed their tolerance of
phlebotomy. Blistering and cauteriza-
tion are scarcely ever heard of. Mercu-
rial salivation is only practised in holes.
and corners. Complex prescriptions are
generally allowed to be unscientific,
though still too often written; but the
pedantic jargon of base, adjuvant, corri-
gent and excipient has passed away, and
the true reason of the multiplication of
the ingredients in the prescription is
frankly acknowledged; and that reason
is the same as impels the sportsman to
put a number of shots in his cartridge,
to wit, that if some miss others may hit.
of Scientific Therapeutics.
87
Many of the most scientific physicians.
practise a more than Hippocratic ni-
hilism, under the euphemistic name of
"expectancy." Remedies derived from
the homoeopathic materia medica are
furtively introduced into practice and
given on homoeopathic principles in frac-
tional doses. No opposition is offered
to their introduction, provided the pro-
poser makes no mention of the source of
his inspiration, and can make it appear
from some futile experiments on frogs or
rabbits-which seem to furnish different
results to every different experimenter—
that they promote or destroy the inhibi-
tory influence of some nerves, or that
they retard or accelerate the movements
of a heart removed from the body, or do
something equally instructive. Anything
88
Hahnemann, the Founder'
of this sort suffices to give a kind of
physiological imprimatur to a remedy,
and so render it a welcome and valued
addition to the old-school thesaurus me-
dicaminum, but its true source is well
known to all who choose to enquire.
The most popular modern works on
therapeutics, such as those of Ringer
and Phillips, are in the main mere ré-
chauffés of homoeopathic practice. New
pharmaceutical preparations are con-
stantly being introduced under the names
of “granules," "parvules" and "dosime-
tric medicines," which homoeopathy may
accept as sincerest flattery, they being
a close imitation of her pharmaceutical
preparations. Almost the only relics of
pre-Hahnemannic therapeutics that still
survive are purgatives and sedatives, and
of Scientific Therapeutics.
S9
the use of these, I am bound to admit,
is as frequent as ever. Indeed, to invent
or introduce a new purgative salt, powder,
pill, water or lozenge, or a novel narcotic,
is a sure way to fame and often to for-
tune. The great Virchow, whose fame
overtops that of every living medical
scientiate, as Mont Blanc does the Alps,
does not scruple to certify publicly to
the "invariable and prompt success" of
the purgative water called "Hunyadi
Janos," which is merely a strong solution
of Epsom and Glauber's salts; and at
the last International Congress he had
the temerity to assert that no medicine
discovered by the Hahnemannian method
of physiological proving on the healthy
human body could be even distantly
compared for therapeutic utility to chlo-
90
Hahnemann, the Founder
rai hydrate, which was discovered in his
laboratory by experiments on the lower
animals, and which promises to be as
destructive to health and life as opium
itself.
The vaunted success of this mode of
discovering the powers of drugs by tor-
turing stupid frogs and rabbits with them
will hardly have the effect of convincing
us of its superiority over the Hahne-
mannian method of testing them on in-
telligent human beings, more especially
when we observe the exceeding diversity
of opinion with regard to the mode of
action of almost every drug arrived at by
our most intelligent vivisectors. Take,
for example, aconite. From a series of
experiments on frogs, one observer is
convinced that it acts primarily by pa-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
91
ralysing the peripheries of the motor
nerves; another, that it produces its
effects by its action on the medulla ob-
longata; another, that it paralyses the
central nervous system; another, that
it paralyses both central nervous and
muscular systems; another, that it first
augments excito-motor functions and
sensations, and only paralyses them
secondarily; another, that it paralyses
the sympathetic nerve; another, that it
paralyses the terminations of the pneu-
mogastric; another, that it stimulates the
inhibitory centre of the pneumogastric ;
another, that it paralyses all nitrogenous
tissues; another, that it first paralyses
the sensory, then the motor part of the
spinal cord; another, that it acts directly
on the protoplasm. You may accept
92
Hahnemann, the Founder
which of these conclusions you like, but
will not find any of them of the slightest.
use in practice. On the other hand,
Hahnemann's experiments with aconite
on human beings have furnished us with
a series of objective and subjective symp-
toms which have proved of the greatest
value in enabling the practitioner to cure
many of the most dangerous and fatal
diseases to which humanity is subject,
and which will prove equally valuable to
all future generations. When we com-
pare the relative value to the sick and
suffering of Hahnemann's mode of in-
vestigating the powers of medicines by
testing them on the healthy human being,
with that adopted by our modern phy-
siologists by experimenting with them
on tortured and mutilated reptiles, we
of Scientific Therapeutics.
93
shall surely arrive at the conviction, that
in order to obtain useful information
with regard to medicinal agents, "the
proper study of mankind is man"-not
frogs.
Every now and then the patient world
is excited, and the medical world is flut-
tered, by the announcement of some
wonderful discovery in anatomy, physi-
ology or natural history that, we are told,
will revolutionize the art of medicine
and make possible the cure of diseases.
hitherto deemed incurable. The latest
fad of this sort is the ingenious specula-
tion of Pasteur, who, though no medical
man, has propounded a new pathology
which has fascinated a credulous profes-
sion and a large portion of the semi-
scientific public. According to him, all
94
Hahnemann, the Founder
diseases are divisible into two classes,
those in which a microzoon has been
found, and those in which one will be
found. And it was authoritatively an-
nounced that the universal microzoocide
was discovered in carbolic acid, which we
were informed kills bacteria, vibriones,
bacilli, micrococci, microbes, and all other
morbific vermin, and yet, like a celebrated
insect powder, is "perfectly harmless to
animal life." So the logical inference was
that carbolic acid was the universal re-
medy. But it gradually transpired that
some of these minute organisms, so far
from being destroyed by carbolic acid,
increased and multiplied, and enjoyed
themselves amazingly under carbolic
acid dressings, and that almost all their
varieties could exist in the organism
of Scientific Therapeutics.
95
without causing disease; and more asto-
nishing still, it was shewn by Rossbach*
that an inorganic chemical ferment of
vegetable origin, free from foreign or-
ganisms, when introduced into the blood
of a healthy living animal, caused this
blood to swarm with bacteria in count-
less profusion in an incredibly short time;
and further, it was found that carbolic
acid was not so harmless to animal life"
re
as had been represented, for some sur-
geons have had to give it up, because it
poisoned not only their patients-which
might be borne with equanimity, for
patients are used to be poisoned, as eels
are to be skinned-but even their illus-
trious selves, which was intolerable. A
* Medical Record, Aug. 1882, p. 311.
96
Hahnemann, the Founder
recent attempt in the Paris hospitals to
apply the carbolic acid treatment to the
cure of typhoid fever was followed by
disastrous consequences, the mortality
having been something shocking even to
the allopathic mind and conscience.*
The "carbolic craze
"} must be near its end
when one of the most intelligent surgeons and
successful operators can thus write of it: “I
have shown in my published writings that car-
bolic acid has done much more harm than good;
perhaps it would have been better if we had
never heard of it.”—Lawson Tait, on the Useless-
ness of Vivisection. Proceedings of Birmingham
Phil. Soc., vol. ii, p. 127.
Another surgeon, Dr. Keith, of Edinburgh,
if possible still more distinguished for successful
operations, spoke thus at the International Me-
dical Congress of 1881: “For some time I have
not found the carbolic spray necessary, and have
not used it in my last 27 cases, all of whom
have recovered easily. With every possible
care, the spray has not, in my hands, prevented
the mildest septicemia, and its effects on the
kidney were sometimes disastrous. I have fre-
of Scientific Therapeutics.
97
These continual announcements, that
at length something has been found that
is certain to do wonders in the way of
curing disease, never seem to get beyond
the stage of hope or prophecy-like man,
medicine "never is, but always to be,
quently seen kidney hæmorrhage follow long
operations, and two deaths in hospital patients
were occasioned, I believe, by carbolic poison-
ing. . . I have given it up, believing that, on
the whole, it did more harm than good."—
Trans. of the Intern. Med. Congress of 1881
vol. ii, p. 236.
But the fertile genius of M. Pasteur has not
rested contented with the mere cure of diseases
by destroying their microbes. He conceived
the grand idea of “cultivating" these microbes
to harmlessness, taming or civilizing them, so to
speak, and then inoculating them into the bodies
of animals liable to catch the virulent disease
from uncultivated microbes. In this way a mild
form of the disease would be produced and the
animal protected from the graver form, as vac-
cinated children are protected from small-pox.
This idea has been developed by an enthusiastic
7
98
Hahnemann, the Founder
blest." They remind me of Mr. Snod-
grass's attitude on a certain memorable
occasion, when he made a feint of pulling
off his coat and announced that he was
just going to begin, but he never did
actually begin. Medicine in the Snod-
disciple to the length shown in the following
quotation "Considering the results already
obtained, we are justified in hoping that some
day science will gain possession of the viruses
of all diseases in the world, and will transform
them into their own peculiar vaccines [¿.e., culti-
vate and tame their microbes.] And then, in-
stead of waiting for the onslaught of contagious
diseases, the human and animal populations
may be protected against them by anticipatory
inoculations of their viruses modified by cultiva-
tion into prophylactics." (Dr. Bouley, Le pro-
grès en médecine par l'experimentation, p. 438.)
When that time comes it will be all up with
doctors both human and veterinary, so they
will do well to make the most of their present
opportunities before all disease-producing mi-
crobes have been cultivated into innocuousness.

of Scientific Therapeutics.
99
grassian attitude is not a very imposing
spectacle, more particularly when some
candid friend like James Johnstone whis-
pers in its ear that it would have been
better for the sick if the whole race of
physicians and apothecaries had never
existed; or like Sir Astley Cooper, who
said that the art of medicine was "found-
ed on conjecture and improved by mur-
der;" or like Virchow, who flatly denies
that we have any rational therapeutics,
and that in spite of his eulogium of
chloral and Hunyadi Janos; or like
Osterlen, the author of a standard work
on Materia Medica, who says that when
physicians reflect that medicines are
powerful substances which may easily
become poisons, they will confine them-
selves to the treatment of diseases by
Uor M

100
Hahnemann, the Founder
BOLW
hygiene and dietetics. Thirty-six years
ago Sir John Forbes wrote thus of the
condition of old physic: "Things have
arrived at such a pitch that they cannot
be worse. They must mend or end."
They have not mended-why have they
not ended? Because old physic, like
*
some other condemned female offenders,
always asserts, as a plea for a respite,
that she is pregnant with some wonderful
new idea. And she can always get a
jury of respectable matrons impanneled,
led on by Professor Tyndall or some
other amicus curia, who are ready to
swear that they believe her to be really
in the family-way this time, and about
to be delivered of a precious offspring
that will be of inestimable value to the
patient world. But nothing ever comes
of Scientific Therapeutics.
ΙΟΙ
of it. The poor old creature is hopc-
lessly barren, never indeed was other
than an epicene monstrosity.
When time, the great healer, shall
have allayed the anger and prejudice of
the profession against the importunate
reformer who rudely routed them out
of their fool's paradise of contented self-
sufficiency, and dared to lay an impious
hand on the cherished maxims of tra-
ditional routine, and to throw doubts
on the value of their methods and me-
dicines; when the generation who hate
Hahnemann because they are conscious
of having acted unjustly towards him
shall have passed away; when the bulk
of the profession shall have acquired.
that "lucidity," which Matthew Arnold
has too flatteringly credited them with;
102 Hahnemann, the Founder
when the enthusiasts who have bur-
lesqued some of the most purely theo-
retical speculations of his old age and
foisted on our rational therapeutics their
fluxion potencies and their grotesque
પ
*Those who call themselves Hahnemann-
ists" do so apparently on the lucus-a-non-lucendo
principle. Their teachings and practice are in
almost every particular at complete variance
with, if not the exact opposite of what Hahne-
mann taught in his Organon and elsewhere.
Thus, Hahnemann directs that dilutions of medi-
cines shall be made with alcohol in as many
separate phials as there are dilutions, each phial
receiving one drop of the previous dilution in
99 drops of pure spirit, and being shaken
vigorously to ensure thorough admixture. The
Hahnemannists have rejected all this, and make
all their dilutions with ordinary service water
with all its impurities, in one single bottle, no
shaking being administered, but the bottle being
merely inverted at each so-called dilution.
Whereas Hahnemann fixed the 30th dilution as
the limit of his preparations, the Hahnemannists
carry on their un-Hahnemannic processes to the
of Scientific Therapeutics. 103
and often loathsome preparations, such
as lac caninum, lac defloratum, saccha-
rum album, syphilinium, sycotinum, go-
norrhin, leucorrhin, sol, luna, nix, &c.,
by which they show themselves to be
the lineal descendants of those who in-
10,000th, 100,000th, 1,000,000th and. even higher
figures. Whilst Hahnemann by precept and
example taught us to investigate the properties
of substances that either have or may reasonably
be expected to have a powerful action on the
human frame, the Hahnemannists devote their
energies to proving common articles of food,
such as white sugar and skim milk, or allied
nutritious substances such as milk-sugar and
bitch's milk, or mystic imponderables, such as
sun's or moon's rays, and diluted magnetic
force. Lastly, though Hahnemann taught that
the remedy was to be selected by reason of the
perfect correspondence of its ascertained effects
with the totality of the symptoms of the disease,
the Hahnemannists teach the novel doctrine of
choosing the remedy from some one arbitrarily
selected peculiar symptom, which they euphe-
mistically term a “key-note.” Now, all these
I04 Hahnemann, the Founder
troduced into ancestral medicine the
aqua aurea, oleum philosophorum, album
græcum and nigrum, bezoars, murderer's
bones, sympathetic ointments and amu-
innovations and novelties in doctrine and practice
may be improvements or otherwise, but they are
not what Hahnemann taught, they are in fact
entirely different, I may say utterly opposed to
what he taught, and it is difficult to comprehend
how their authors can arrogate to themselves the
title of "Hahnemannists," which to the common
understanding implies that they are par excel-
lence and the only true followers of Hahnemann;
while they denounce as "mongrels" and un-
worthy to be considered as true homoeopa-
thists those who still obey Hahnemann's direc-
tions in preparing their medicines, in not ex-
ceeding the 30th dilution, in prescribing real
medicines, and in being guided as much as pos-
sible by the totality of symptoms in the selection
of remedies; in short, who comply with the teach-
ings of Hahnemann as long as these were de-
duced from experiment and observation, though
they may refuse assent to the hypothetical doc-
trines of his old age.
of Scientific Therapeutics.
105
lets-when these enthusiasts shall have
discredited themselves by their absur-
dities; when a new generation of earnest
and unprejudiced enquirers shall have
arisen, who will be capable of winnowing
the golden grains of truth from the chaff
of fanciful speculation, what position
will Hahnemann occupy in the domain
of medicine?
He will be known to all future ages
as the physician who first taught that
discases must be treated by medicines.
which have an elective affinity for those
parts of the organism that are the seat
of the morbid process;* that it is only
*“There can surely be no ground for doubt-
ing that, sooner or later, the pharmacologist
will supply the physician with the means of
affecting, in any desired sense, the functions of
any physiological element of the body. It will,
106
Hahnemann, the Founder
by testing medicines on the healthy that
their affinities can be learned, and that
they must be administered for curative
purposes in disease in quantities too
small to produce collateral disturbances.
In one word, Hahnemann will be ac-
knowledged to be the one, the sole
founder of rational therapeutics, the fa-
cile princeps of true physicians, whose
in short, become possible to introduce into the
economy a molecular mechanism, which, like a
very cunningly contrived torpedo, shall find its
way to some particular group of living elements,
and cause an explosion among them, leaving
the rest untouched." These words of Professor
Huxley in his address to the International
Medical Congress, 1881, convey the idea of an
eminent scientific authority as to the desiderata
of scientific medicine. They exactly express
what homoeopathy is doing, and has to a great
extent fairly accomplished. It has supplied the
physician with medicines whose mode of action
on the organs and functions of the body he has
of Scientific Therapeutics.
107
mission it is, as he says, “to restore the
sick to health." The history of medi-
cine may be ransacked in vain to find
any figure at all comparable to him.
He stands out in bold relief as the first,
the only one who brought order into the
chaos of therapeutics, who transformed.
medicine from a wild wilderness of hy-
pothesis and caprice into a blooming,
>>
experimentally ascertained, and enabled him to
send a "molecular mechanism
to any spot in
the organism where disease may be lurking,
leaving all other parts and organs untouched.
And yet neither old physic nor her scientific dry
nurse perceive that homeopathy has done for
medicine what science requires. While they talk
of the right way to be pursued by the medicine
of the future they fail to take notice that this
right way has been followed with success for
more than two generations by the despised dis-
ciples of Hahnemann, whose methods they must
pursue if they would place their art on the basis
of scientific truth.
ミ
​1
108 Hahnemann, the Founder
fruitful garden of regularity and beauty
It was not so much by intellectual great-
ness, it was not by superhuman intuition
that he accomplished his great reform,
it was by his innate love of truth and
abhorrence of specious falsehood, by his
firm resolve to accept nothing as true
that did not stand the test of experi-
ment, even though it were hallowed by
the tradition of millenniums. And having
once discovered the clue, he pursued it
with a singleness of mind, with a self-
sacrificing diligence that grudged no toil
and shirked no pains, and was not to
be diverted from its object by any pro-
mise of ease or honour, nor yet by the
sneers of the heads or the persecution of
the tail of the profession. The greatness
of his aim, to relieve the sufferings of
of Scientific Therapeutics.
109
his fellow-men, was at once his stimulus
and his reward. When he found that
his efforts to perfect the medical art
procured him only insult, calumny and
persecution at the hands of his col-
leagues, he never condescended to reply
to the hostile and unfair criticisms that
were passed upon his work, and he
offered no resistance to the machinations
of his foes, even when they sought to
ruin him and deprive him of his means
of earning his bread. Rather than sacri-
fice one jot or tittle of what he held to
be necessary for the practice of his sys-
tem in all its purity and integrity, he
sacrificed himself. In his behaviour
under persecution he displayed an an-
tique heroism. He had his weaknesses
and his faults, he would have been more
IIO
Hahnemann, the Founder
than human if he had not. As Balzac
well says: "Quelque grands que puissent
être les grands hommes connus ou in-
connus, ils ont des petitesses par les-
quelles ils tiennent à l'humanité." But
his weaknesses only showed themselves
in his old age, and during his exile and
enforced solitude. He then became too
prone to accept without sufficient ex-
amination any idea that occurred to
himself or others that he fancied would
contribute towards the development and
perfection of his method. He grew in-
tolerant of the criticism and opposition
of his own disciples with regard to
matters of minor importance. No such
faults manifested themselves during his
prime and when he lived in the world.
They were the natural consequences of
of Scientific Therapeutics.
III
the harsh treatment of his colleagues, of
his old age and enforced solitude, when
he had ample time to brood over the
vast importance of his discovery and the
criminal folly of those who rejected it
without enquiry, and sought to discredit
its author by detraction, calumny and
persecution. The wonder is, not that he
manifested some irritation under these
circumstances, but that he showed so
little.
When the experience and observa-
tions of intelligent and impartial en-
quirers shall have purged his system of
the adventitious and repulsive excres-
cences that have gathered about it, the
great truths he taught will come out
more conspicuously and clearly, and the
united voice of the profession will ac-
112
Hahnemann.
knowledge that the merit of having
indicated a general rule for the curative
employment of medicine in disease, and
of having rendered the application of
this rule possible by ascertaining the
true powers and qualities of medicines,
is Hahnemann's and Hahnemann's only.
Hahnemann told us that the true rule
of therapeutics is similia similibus cu-
rentur―let likes be treated by likes-
when Hahnemann shall have obtained
his true place in medicine, the actual
practice of the medical world will be
expressed by the words similia similibus
curantur-likes are treated by likes.

J. WRIGHT AND CO., PRINTERS, BRISTOL.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
Translations.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
By SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
Translated from the fifth German edition.
LONDON: HEADLAND, 1849.
THE LESSER WRITINGS OF
SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
LONDON HEADLAND, 1851.
:
MATERIA MEDICA PURA.
By SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
VOL. I, LONDON, 1880.
VOL. II, LONDON, 1881.
сс
Original Works.
LECTURES ON THE THEORY AND
PRACTICE OF HOMEOPATHY,
Delivered at the Hahnemann Hospital School of
Homœopathy, Bloomsbury Square, London.
MANCHESTER: TURNER, IS54.
THE HUMAN EYE:
Its Optical Construction popularly explained.
LONDON: HARDWICKE BOGUE, 1878.
THE SPHYGMOGRAPH:
Its History and Use as an aid to Diagnosis.
in ordinary practice.
LONDON: BAILlière, Tindall & Co.
CO-EDITOR OF THE
BRITISH JOURNAL OF
НОМ ЕОРАТНУ,
A Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,
since 1846.
LONDON: TURNER.
Filmed by Preservation 1990

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DEC 18 1959
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