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ODIUM MEDICUM
AND
HOMOEOPATHY.
EDITED BY
JOHN HAWA
H 61575-3
Cb
с
"The Times" Correspondence,
Reprinted by permission of the Proprietors of "THE TIMES."
Editor of the HOMEOPATHIC WORLD, §c.
LONDON:
5.
M.D.,
THE HOMEOPATHIC PUBLISHING COMPANY,
12, WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
X

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Appendix
Ashwell, L. T.
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•
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Homœopathic Chemists
J. C. B.
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Johnson, Dr. G.
Millican, Dr. K.
Millican v. Sulivan
Brown, Dr. D. Dyce
Brunton. Dr. T. L.
Bucknill, Dr. J. C...
Chemical Analysis and High Attenuations
Clarke, Dr. J. H. ..
Dudgeon, Dr. R. E.
Dupré, Dr. A.
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..)
CONTENTS.
1
Ross, Mr. F.
S.
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Meissonier's Testimony
Morgan, Major W. V.
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The Facts of
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4. R
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Forty-two Years of Homoeopathic Treatment
Founder (The)
Grimthorpe, Lord...
Gutteridge, Dr. R. S.
Heath, Mr. Alfred
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Paterfamilias on Homoeopathy...
Pearse, Dr. T. F. …….
R.B.C.
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The Appeal...
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Sceptic, A
Swann, Mr. E. G....
Thudichum, Dr. J. L. W...
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14
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Times, The, Leader from, January 20
Wilkinson, W. M., Esq.
Wilson, Dr. Thomas
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PAGE
122
125
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98
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125
57, 88
35, 68, 101
85
116
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12, 16, 19, 30, 61, 91, 101, 122
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PREFACE.
In view of the great interest taken by the public in the correspondence
on "Odium Medicum and Homeopathy" that has recently occupied
so much space in The Times, and considering how completely the
subject was discussed, the publishers of THE HOMEOPATHIC WORLD
have deemed it desirable to reprint the letters entire. They have
obtained the consent of the proprietors of The Times, and, as far as
possible, have submitted the proof of the letters to their authors.
They are thus in a position to present to the public in handy form an
authorised and authentic account of the most complete threshing out
of the question of homoeopathy that has ever seen the light of the
public press, and a most vivid picture of the attitude of the two
schools of medicine towards each other.
Prefixed to the letters themselves will be found an account of the
trial out of which the discussion arose. A surgeon, Mr. KENNETH
MILLICAN, who is a member of the old school, had become the victim
of persecution because he was willing to tolerate members of the new
school. He sought to defend himself in the law courts, and in the
first hearing of the case he was successful. In the appeal, where the
merits of the case were not gone into, but only the legal points of it,
the judgment of the lower court was reversed. But before this had
happened the case had been virtually taken out of the law courts to
the bar of public opinion by Lord GRIMTHORPE's letters to The Times.
Lord GRIMTHORPE's letters were answered by certain members of
the allopathic school, who, whilst denying the imputation of odium,
approved of and attempted to justify the action of Mr. MILLICAN'S
intolerant colleagues. But besides attempting to justify intolerance
they made an attack on homoeopathy and its professors. This attack
brought to the front many champions, both medical and lay, to defend
homeopathy, whilst Mr. MILLIGAN maintained his original ground and
pleaded for tolerance. To these the allopathists again replied, and
the battle soon became general. The extent of ground covered by the
conflict, and the number of the combatants, may be seen by the
following letters. The length to which it might have been carried
may be judged by the statement of the editor of The Times that he has
published only a portion of the letters he received. The discussion
would apparently never have ceased if the editor had not judiciously
put a stop to the shedding of ink, when it had reached as clear a point
of finality as these discussions ever do.
6
In my capacity as editor of the correspondence I have little to do.
It is not for me to say who had the best or who the worst of the dis-
cussion: the letters stand to answer for themselves; and the article by
the editor of The Times saves me the necessity of any lengthy summing
up, and fitly closes the whole correspondence. In an "Appendix" we
publish the last letter written by Lord GRIMTHORPE, and not in-
serted in The Times, and one or two other letters bearing on the
discussion. Also I have added one or two foot-notes explanatory of
certain points.
It would have occupied too much space in this volume to have
quoted the opinions of the public press on the merits of the case; but
these may be found collected in the February and March numbers
of THE HOMEOPATHIC WORLD, along with other matters of interest
connected with the discussion.
34, Harrington-road, S. W.,
February, 1888.
JOHN H. CLARKE.
7
ODIUM MEDICUM AND HOMEOPATHY.
THE ACTION
WHICH GAVE RISE TO THE CORRESPONDENCE :
TIMES" REPORT.
(6
MILLICAN V. SULIVAN AND OTHERS.
The hearing of the case before Mr. Justice Manisty and a Special
Jury took place on December 14, 1887, and was reported as follows in
The Times. The chief facts are contained in the judgment.
Mr. Lockwood, Q.C., and Mr. H. F. Dickens were for the plaintiff;
Sir H. James, Q.C., and Mr. Edward Pollock were for the defendants.
His LORDSHIP, in giving judgment, said the action was brought by
the plaintiff against ten persons said to be members of the Committee
of Management of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital, Gloucester-terrace.
The action was dismissed against one; it was therefore in reality
against nine. The plaintiff complained that these nine did wrongfully
and improperly suspend him from his office as one of the medical
men who constituted the medical staff. The hospital was constituted
in the present year. By rule 6, the staff was to consist of a president,
vice-president, patrons, patronesses, governors, trustees, treasurer,
and a committee of management, a secretary, a ladies' committee and
a ladies' secretary thereto, an efficient medical and surgical staff, a
resident matron, and an efficient staff of male and female nurses and
other servants as might be deemed necessary by the committee for the
economical working of the hospital. By rule 7, the government of
the hospital was to be conducted by a committee, consisting of an
equal number of the medical and surgical staff and lay members, all
of whom were to be governors of the hospital; one-third of the lay
members were to retire annually by rotation, but were eligible for
re-election at the annual general meeting. It seemed that the com-
mittee really consisted of eleven; how then they could have an equal
number of the medical and lay members he did not know, but it
did not affect his judgment. By rule 8, the committee of manage-
ment were to appoint at any time, subject to confirmation by show of
ད
8
hands, or ballot if required, at the annual or any special general
meeting of the governors, as many physicians and surgeons as might
be desirable for the efficient care of the patients, the appointment to
be for one year and to be subject to confirmation by the governors at
the next annual general or special meeting which should be held sub-
sequent to such appointment. It seemed, therefore, that the com-
mittee had power to appoint the physicians and surgeons, and the
plaintiff was one so appointed. The question is whether the committee
had power to suspend the plaintiff. It was raised in the paragraph of
defence, which said, "The defendants, in pursuance of the printed
rules and regulations of the said hospital, held a meeting on May 26,
1887, and passed certain resolutions, as they were entitled to do, and
among others that complained of by the plaintiff." Such being the
rules and defence, what actually happened? On January 31 the
secretary wrote to the plaintiff saying that he had much pleasure in
informing him that he had been elected surgeon to the hospital. All
went on happily and pleasantly until April. On April 6 the plaintiff
was also appointed to the Margaret-street Infirmary. On April 30 he
received a letter saying there was a feeling against him consequent
upon his connection with the Margaret-street Infirmary, where homœo-
pathy was practised. (It was perfectly optional there whether they
treated the patients by homoeopathy or not.) The same day he heard
from the secretary saying he would receive a notice calling attention
to that appointment. On May 5 a committee meeting was held and
a resolution was proposed that no member of the staff of the hospital
should profess or practise homoeopathic doctrines, or be connected.
with any homoeopathic establishment, or any place where it (homoeo-
pathy) is recognised. This resolution was divided into two; both were
carried, the plaintiff, who was present, voting for the first half, but
against the second. He was then asked what he intended to do with
regard to these resolutions; in reply he wrote a long letter, in which
he declined to recognise the effect of the resolutions, or to give way
to what he considered tyrannical oppression and unmerited censure
on himself. He also commented on the assertion made by one of the
members, that "Every homoeopathic practitioner was a conscious
fraud, a liar, and an imposter." On May 26 a most extraordinary
course was taken; there were seven present, and it was proposed that
the entire business of the committee of management should be
delegated to a committee of ten, leaving out the plaintiff. They
actually took on themselves to delegate all their power. It was, he
thought, a well-settled rule of law that one person could not delegate
his duties to another. This delegated committee then carried a
resolution suspending the plaintiff from his duties. Anything more.
contrary to decency and rules of law could not be well conceived.
The plaintiff was informed of this on the 27th, and on the 30th his
successor was appointed. He held a strong opinion that the whole
proceeding was wrong from beginning to end, and contrary to the
meaning of the rules. There was no necessity for such instant action,
and for them to take the law into their own hands was a flagrant and
palpable abuse of their office. A more extraordinary or more improper
proceeding had never been done, so he would grant an injunction. As
to damages, the plaintiff said he would be content with merely nominal
:
9
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}
damages. In his interests he thought he was wise not to ask for
damages, but an order would be made restraining the defendants from
interfering with the plaintiff in the performance of his duty as one of
the surgical staff, and from suspending him from the duties of such
office. The injunction would be granted with costs.
Mr. POLLOCK applied for a stay of execution, on the ground that the
hospital would be shut up if the injunction were granted.
His LORDSHIP refused the application.
THE APPEAL.*
The appeal was heard before the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice
Fry and Lord Justice Lopes, and was reported in The Times of the
16th January, as follows:-
This was an appeal by the defendants, who were members of the
committee of management of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital, from the
judgment of Mr. Justice Manisty at the trial granting an injunction
restraining the defendants from interfering with the plaintiff in the
performance of his duties as medical officer of the hospital by suspend-
ing him. The Queen's Jubilee Hospita! was founded by Mr. Robert
Fitzroy Benham, there being numerous subscribers of one guinea each,
who were governors of the hospital. The hospital was opened in
January last, and under the rules of the hospital the staff was to
consist of a president, vice-president, patrons, patronesses, governors,
trustees, treasurer, a committee of management, a secretary, an
efficient medical and surgical staff, &c. Rule 7 provided that the
government of the hospital should be conducted by a committee
consisting of an equal number of the medical and surgical staff and
lay members, all of whom must be governors of the hospital. Rule
8 provided that the committee of management should appoint as many
physicians and surgeons as might be desirable for the efficient care
of the patients; the appointment should be for one year, and should
be subject to confirmation by the governors. Rule 15 provided that.
an annual subscription of one guinea should constitute a governor.
In January, 1887, the plaintiff was appointed one of the surgeons in
the hospital, he being also a subscriber of one guinea, and therefore a
governor. The plaintiff joined another hospital, the Margaret-street
Infirmary, where homœopathy was allowed, and in some instances,
practised, and, in consequence, at a meeting of the committee of the
Queen's Jubilee Hospital on the 5th of May, two resolutions were
passed the first that no member of the staff of the hospital should
profess or practise homeopathic doctrines; the second that no member
of the staff should be connected with a homoeopathic establishment
or with any institution in which homoeopathy is either a recognised
or an optional mode of treating the sick, or at which avowed or known
homœopathists are office holders. The plaintiff, who was present,
voted for the first resolution, but against the second. In accordance
with these resolutions, the plaintiff was asked to resign his appoint-
ment as surgeon in the Jubilee Hospital, and on his refusing to do so,
the committee on the 26th of May suspended him. The plaintiff
* We give the Report of the Appeal here for convenience sake; but it will be
understood that a large proportion of the letters were written before the date of
its hearing.
T
10
thereupon brought this action, claiming an injunction and damages.
Mr. Justice Manisty held that no damages had been proved, but
granted the injunction set out above. The defendants appealed.
Sir HENRY JAMES, Q.C. (Mr. Edward Pollock with him), for the
defendants, contended that, as no question of property arose, the Court
could not interfere by way of injunction. This institution was a
purely voluntary institution founded for charitable objects. The
plaintiff as medical man received no salary. The plaintiff was a
subscriber of one guinea to the hospital, and thereby became a
governor. His position as governor had not been interfered with, but
his voluntary position as medical officer had been interfered with.
The effect of this injunction would be to compel the defendants to
carry on the hospital. No Court of Equity would ever have granted
an injunction in a case like this. He cited "Rigby v. Connell” (14
"Ch. D.," 482) and "Johnson v. Shrewsbury and Birmingham Rail-
way Company" (3 "D. M. and G.,” 914).
The plaintiff appeared in person, and contended that there was a
question of property in this case, as his position of governor could not
be separated from his position as medical man. His appointment as
medical man was for a year, and there was a binding contract that he
should continue as surgeon for a year. There were certain privileges
attaching to the position of a medical man in a hospital which the
defendants had interfered with. This institution possessed property,
which he by his subscription had an interest in, his position in that
respect being similar to the position of members of a club.
The COURT allowed the appeal.
The MASTER OF THE ROLLS said that the principal claim was for an
Injunction, and the question was whether the plaintiff was entitled to
that remedy. The Court had only to deal with the legal aspect of the
case, and had to give no opinion as to the propriety, fairness, or sense
of what was done by either side. The question was what rights, if
any, the plaintiff had. The plaintiff said that he had the same rights
as a member of a club. When a club was formed, it was by means
of the subscriptions of members, which were expended in the purchase
or hire of certain property, and each member had a right to use that
property and had an interest in it.. Upon that ground Courts of
Equity had interfered in those cases. Looking at the rules of this
hospital, it appeared to be plain that the plaintiff in his position as
surgeon had no legal or equitable interest in any of the property pur-
chased by the subscriptions. If the plaintiff had any interest in the
property, upon which his Lordship gave no opinion, it was in his
position as subscriber, in which position the plaintiff had not been
interfered with. As medical officer, he would have a licence to use
certain rooms and certain furniture in the hospital. He would have
only a licence, and not an interest in the property. It followed, there-
fore, that, whether the relation between the plaintiff and the defend-
ants was a contractual relationship or not, the relation was a strictly
personal relation. Even, therefore, assuming that the defendants
committed a wrongful act in putting an end to that personal relation-
ship, the authorities were clear that the plaintiff was not entitled to
an injunction. The plaintiff must bring his case within the principles
upon which Courts of Equity will give such relief. Assuming, then,
11
that there was a contract here, Courts of Equity never dreamt of
enforcing by injunction agreements that were strictly personal in
their nature. Such was the decision of Sir George Jessell in " Rigby
v. Connell," and the same doctrine had been laid down by Lord Justice
Knight Bruce in the Court of Appeal in "Johnson v. the Shrewsbury and
Birmingham Railway Company." No interest in any property having
been interfered with, and the relation being a strictly personal one,
the plaintiff could not get the relief claimed. There were other
reasons why the plaintiff must fail, "Pickering v. the Bishop of Ely
(2 " Y. and C. Ch. Cas.," 249) showed that if one party could not
have this remedy against the other, the latter could not have it against
the former. It would be monstrous to say that the committee could
force the plaintiff to continue on as a medical man and attend the
patients in the hospital against his will. There was another reason,
and that was that Courts of Equity would not give their own peculiar
remedy where there was a perfect remedy at law. If there was a con-
tract here, damages at common law would afford a perfect remedy.
For these three reasons the plaintiff must fail. It remained, then, to
consider his claim for damages. He gave no evidence of any, but if
there was a contract and a breach of it, he was entitled to nominal
damages. That, however, only affected the question of costs at the
trial, and it was unnecessary to consider whether there was a binding
contract or not, as the Court had come to the conclusion in the
exercise of their discretion that there should be no costs in the Court
below, the plaintiff to pay the costs of the appeal upon which he had
been unsuccessful.
>"
Lord Justice FRY concurred. Enormous inconvenience would be
occasioned if Courts of Equity were to enforce the continuance of
strictly personal relations when those relations had become irksome,
and enforced them under penalty of imprisonment for contempt of
Court. That would be too gross an interference with the liberty of
the subject, and upon that ground Courts of Equity had refused to
enforce them. The position of the plaintiff was twofold. He was a sub-
scriber to the hospital, and so a governor, and that position was not
interfered with. He was also a medical officer. It was not necessary
to consider whether the appointment constituted a contract with him
or not. But if it did, it created a purely personal relationship. There
was sometimes a confusion between two classes of cases, one class
where the parties contributed funds which were laid out on property
which all enjoyed in common, such as clubs, and the other class where
the contract created a purely personal relationship, such as master
and servant. If in the latter class of case the party had suffered any
injury, he had a right to damages only. The plaintiff's position as a
medical officer being a purely personal one, Courts of Equity would
not interfere.
Lord Justice LOPES gave judgment to the same effect.
[Lord Grimthorpe's first letter on the subject appeared in The Times
of the 24th December, immediately after the trial of the action.]
12
LORD GRIMTHORPE (1) *
[Dec. 24.
The report of a trial of "Millican v. Sulivan and others (the
Committee of a certain "Jubilee Hospital") deserves more attention
than it will probably receive from unprofessional readers-i.e., neither
lawyers nor doctors-unless its importance is pointed out. As the
facts are all stated in the judgment, which anyone can read for him-
self, it is sufficient to say that an injunction was granted against the
committee who were trying to turn out the plaintiff (of whom I may
say I know nothing) from that hospital, of which he was a physician,
elected under no restriction as to the nature of his practice, for
the offence of being connected with the Margaret-street Infirmary, of
which the governors had lately prevented their committee and the
majority of its doctors from turning out a minority who had dared to
treat their patients homœopathically.
It was my unexpected fate to be in the chair of several adjourned
meetings of the governors of that same Margaret-street Infirmary,
last winter, which had been called by the committee to assist
the majority of themselves and the doctors in executing, or at
least depriving, two or three heretics who had presumed to prescribe
homoeopathic medicines for their patients there. I had then no opinion.
in favour of either system beyond a natural leaning to small doses,
which, at any rate, take nothing out of you, and can do no harm,
provided only they will do the business. Whether they will or not İ
should soon find out for myself in any particular case if I tried them,
and should act accordingly. What I learned then, I confess, turned
my inclinations towards heterodoxy; not that that is or was the real
question, but whether a certain set of doctors and poor patients were
to be arbitrarily sacrified to what has been well called "odium plus-
quam theologicum because medicum." After hearing both sides, the
meeting decided just as Mr. Justice Manisty did, and I do not think
his strong condemnation of the Jubilee Committee a bit too strong for
either case.
I called upon the ejectors to show cause why we should
assist them, and a more miserable attempt at showing cause I never
heard. They declared that they were not come there to discuss the merits
of homeopathy, or even to argue whether it was or was not success-
ful, but repeated ever so many times, as quite sufficient for ignora-
muses like us, that it was "not recognised by the profession. Very
well," I said, then show us where and how it has been condemned
by any body or council authorised to represent the profession;
and I reminded them that the 23rd and 52nd Sections of the
Medical Act, 1858, had done all that Parliament had then thought
sufficient to prevent any exclusion from practice or inflicting any
stigma on any such ground, and enacted that if any licensing body
3
"" 66
""
""
* One has no opportunity of correcting proofs of letters to a newspaper, except
in very special cases. I never see a proof without wanting to correct it, some-
times for serious mistakes of either writing or printing. One such occurred in
one of these letters, which, though corrected the next day in a paragraph,
furnished a topic for several letters from the least scrupulous of the writers on the
other side—“ J. C. B." It could not now silently be withdrawn without mutilating
several of my letters in reply to him, and therefore I have to point it out in its
proper place. I have also made a few alterations and additions in consequence
of information which kept coming in during the course of the discussion, or to
make a few points clearer.-G.
13
did so, it should be deprived of its powers by the Privy Council.
There could hardly be a stronger legislative condemnation of medical
intolerance. They were utterly unable to produce any such authori
tative, or even unauthoritative, condemnation, and one of the minority
read something which sounded very like a repudiation by one of the
authorised bodies of any such attempt; but I have no means of quot-
ing it accurately now. It would have been flatly in the face of the
plain intention of the Act if there had been.
In order to give the committee every possible opportunity of justi-
fying their action, I asked if there had been any complaints from, or
on behalf of, patients who had been treated by the accused doctors,
as the others had issued a manifesto which ordinary readers would,
and did, understand as a charge of incompetence, though I did not
think it grammatically was so. That intention also was disclaimed ;
and so the whole charge sank into nothing but that the majority of
them, and I daresay of the whole profession, disbelieve in the views,
or theory, or treatment, of this not inconsiderable minority, just
as they did once in the circulation of the blood, in vaccination,
and in fresh air in sick rooms; and as the fashionable treatment
of one decade of medical practice, and even their fashionable
wines, are condemned in the next by the leaders, and forthwith
by the juniors, of the profession. Most of us of sufficient age
have known certain surgical treatments denounced as "quackery,"
and the "quacks" pronounced impostors, and afterwards recognised
as having committed no sin but being ahead of their leaders,
which, no doubt, is presumption, always duly snubbed at medical
consultations. As these people evidently mean to defeat the Medical
Act by the roundabout process of closing every hospital against
those whom they are prohibited from excluding from private practice,
the time is come when the governors or subscribers must decide for
either liberty or tyranny. If the tyrants like to abdicate when they
are beaten, as they did at Margaret-street, the gaps will speedily be
filled. Nobody ever yet conquered by abdicating, if the other side.
knew their business and were resolute. Hospitals do not belong to
the doctors; they exist for the double purpose of relieving the poor
and teaching doctors by the experience they gain there for the benefit
of themselves and of all classes. If committees are so cowardly as
to allow whatever happens to be the medical majority of the day to
prescribe not only medicines but what medici are to be allowed to
practice there, and to exclude some who have gained all sorts of dis-
tinction in their schools, it is time for one of two things—either to
dethrone such committees, or, at least, to treat them as Mr. Justice
Manisty and the Margaret-street governors did; or else to make the
next Medical Act still stronger in favour of liberty and against tyranny
and prejudice. We bad to pass an "Act for the submission of the'
doctors of theology three and a half centuries ago, which they have
been constantly trying to repeal by all sorts of tricks, and are at work
upon again now, I know. We must have another for the submission
of doctors of medicine, who are now frightening timid and ignorant
committees, as the others did timid and ignorant kings, from the time
of Stephen to that of Henry VIII., into conceding them an entirely
unconstitutional dominion.
GRIMTHORPE.
>>
14
DR. MILLICAN.
[Dec. 28.
Lord Grimthorpe has pointed out that the 23rd section of the
Medical Act of 1858 expressly provides against the refusal of its
licence by any medical licensing body to a candidate on the ground
of his adoption of any special tenet or theory of medicine. It may
possibly help us to appreciate the present position of things if we
glance briefly at the origin and growth of the odium medicum in this
particular.
When first the doctrine (or, rather, the therapeutic rule)-"let likes
be treated by likes," was enunciated by Hahnemann, it was received
by the medical profession at large with derision, and scouted as an
axiomatic absurdity. Such being the state of things, one section in
the medical world, claiming as its only principle in therapeutics a
rule which the other section regarded as both impossible and absurd
under any circumstances, it was obvious that a consultation between
members of the rival schools must lead in the very nature of things to
one of two results-either a hopeless disagreement or the entire sacri-
fice by one or other practitioner of his principles. In the former
case it would be unfair to saddle the patient with the useless and
unnecessary expense of a consultation that must inevitably be barren;
in the latter the consultation would be equally a useless and unneces-
sary expense, and, in addition, a sham and a fraud. Moreover, at a
time when a homoeopath was practically pledged to infinitesimal frac-
tions of a drug for a dose, while the "regular" profession did not
believe that any action at all was to be produced by small doses, there
was another element which landed the proposer of a mixed consulta-
tion in the same dilemma as in the case of the doctrine above
referred to.
But now all that is changed. We of the "regular" profession
admit that there are individual cases where a drug, which in the
healthy body in large doses will produce certain symptoms, will, in
small doses, cure similar symptoms arising from the disease. For
instance, we have it on Dr. Ringer's authority (and very many of us
can verify it from our own personal experience) that drop doses of
ipecacuanha wine (in large doses a popular emetic with which even
most mothers of families are acquainted) will check many forms of
obstinate vomiting. But grant one instance, and the contention that
the law is an axiomatic absurdity falls to the ground. The difference
becomes no longer one of first principles, no longer one of kind, but
one of degree; consequently there is no predetermined impossibility
of an honest agreement in consultation as to the drug indicated in a
given case. The same line of argument holds good in the question of
dosage; for while many homoeopaths discard dilutions and infinitesi-
mal doses, we have on our side learnt that, although always using the
stronger preparations of drugs, there are many cases in which single
drops or grains, or even fractions of a drop or grain, will have a
distinct therapeutic effect.
There is, therefore, no longer on this score either, that predeter-
mined impossibility of an honest agreement in mixed consultations
which was the justification, or, at least, the excuse, for our action in
the past. But the enmity and rancour aroused by an exchange of the
lie direct remain—on their side since they see us admitting bit by bit,
15
but without apology or explanation, some of the points we have
hitherto denied; on ours, as is often the case, from the assailant to
the assailed. There is, of course, still a difference, and in many
respects a marked one, between the two schools, but it is a difference
of degree more than of kind, and consequently one not hopeless of a
final harmonious adjustment if approached in a conciliatory manner
on both sides. Overtures have frequently been made from the other
side, but, having proclaimed aloud our non possumus, we will not
retract. And so we find some other reason for not withdrawing our
excommunication. The homeopaths have broken the unity of the
profession. They have become sectarians, "trading on a name," with
an organisation, societies, hospitals distinct from and opposed to those
of the "regular" profession. This separate existence is, as Dr. Austin
Flint some time back expressed it, an assumption that they " repre-
sent an essentially distinct system of practice, taking an attitude of
antagonism to the regular profession, seeking popular favour on the
ground that they belong to a new school,' based on truth and pro-
ductive of good, whereas the regular profession belong to the old
school,' based on error and productive of harm." (New York Medical
Journal, April 7, 1883.) It is very convenient and soothing to forget
that by the acrimonious way in which we originally gave them the lie
direct we forced them into that position of antagonism, and that the
very ostracism to which they have been for years, and are still, though
fortunately to a less extent, subjected, scarcely tends to abolish that
antagonism.
<
In the same journal, Dr. Austin Flint continues: "If homeopathic
practitioners abandon the organisation and the name, provided they
have received a regular medical education " (which in this country
they are by law compelled to do, and that in the schools of their
opponents, moreover), "there need be no restrictions on consultations
other than those belonging to other portions of the code" (the Ameri-
can Code of Medical Ethics) "whatever therapeutical doctrines they
may hold." This view of the case, moreover, has been enunciated
and maintained in this country by our own medical journals. and by
several of our medical "men of light and leading." All that the
homœopaths have to do, therefore, to be once more restored to pro-
fessional fellowship, we proclaim, is to abandon their organisation and
their name, disband their societies, cease to circulate special direc-
tories, and dismantle their hospitals, and thus discard their attitude
of antagonism to the "regular" profession. Indeed!

I cannot comment on the case of Millican v. Sulivan and others,
the Committee of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital, as it is still sub judice,
but I may fairly suggest to anyone interested in this subject to read
the account of the action.
KENNETH MILLICAN.
58, Welbeck-street, Cavendish-square, W.
SIR,-As founder and the one who appointed Mr. Millican to the
throat department of "The Queen's Jubilee Hospital," will you per-
mit me most emphatically to contradict Lord Grimthorpe's statements
with reference to this institution?
16
The facts of the case have not yet been heard, and I am not per-
mitted to enter into any controversy on this subject until after the
hearing of the appeal which is now pending. THE FOUNDER.
[The appeal was heard on January 14, when the former judgment
was reversed on a point of law. See report of the hearing on
page 9.]
LORD GRIMTHORPE (2).
[Dec. 29.
If the angry
Founder" had been content to say that he and his
managers were going to appeal against the judgment which pro-
nounced their conduct "a flagrant and palpable abuse of their office,
and as contrary to decency and rules of law as can be conceived,"
and granted an injunction against it, I should have been silent till
the appeal is decided or abandoned. But as he breaks his own rule
against controversy by "giving an emphatic contradiction to my
statements," which is a tolerably strong piece of controversy, I beg
to ask him which of them he means to call false; for of course he
means my statements, not Mr. Justice Manisty's-at least that is not
yet a customary or very safe mode of speaking of judgments. I
daresay he and his managers dislike both the language and the sub-
" that
stance of the judgment. But if "the facts were not heard
must be their own fault. Their counsel are not likely to have dropped
any that would do them good.
But I have something to say which has nothing to do with their
appeal. I believe I was wrong in saying that if such people as these
and the late Margaret-street committee and doctors set to work to
defeat the Medical Toleration Act by shutting up hospitals against
competent medical practitioners we must have a new one. Conspiracy
at common law-luckily not spoilt by statute-mongering-has a very
wide net indeed, and the law books say it is difficult to fix its limits.
So much as this is certain however, because it has been decided, or
laid down in books of unquestioned authority: it is conspiracy at
common law, punishable by fine and imprisonment, practically at the
discretion of the Court, to combine to injure a man in his business or
his reputation; to compel him to carry on his business in any parti-
cular way, or not to do so; to employ or not to employ particular
people; or to do any act injurious to third persons or the public or
any part of them; or to make false charges not only of legal offences
but of anything discreditable-assuming in every case that justifica-
tion cannot be proved.

If a quarter of the things I have been told or read are true, of the
persecution of those whom the regulars of the medical inquisition
"bone-
call "quacks"-but never can define what they mean-or
setters who have mended the limbs of thousands of people after
the best regulars had failed, the persecutors sometimes even boycotting
those who worked for such heretics, I believe they would fare very
badly if they were indicted for conspiracy before a strong judge like
Lord Campbell, who boldly overruled some hair-splitting technicality
And now I
which a previous judge had allowed in a similar case.
see they have advanced a step further; for Mr. Millican appears not
even to be guilty of the crime of homeopathy himself, but only of
keeping company with unbelievers in the infallibility of the allopathic
17
17
blue-pill and large-dose men, at the Margaret-street Infirmary. Like
all tyranny, that must go further; any doctor who meets Mr. Millican
in consultation must be boycotted too on logical principles. But let
the homœopathists get up their case well and get a summons before a
magistrate, which is necessary for an indictment for conspiracy, and
boldly prosecute their persecutors.
GRIMTHORPE.
DR. THUDICHUM.
[Dec. 29.
The attempts of Lord Grimthorpe and Mr. Kenneth Millican to
make the public take an interest or a side in a case of questioned pro-
fessional ethics arising out of disputed doctrine will probably remain
without any useful result. For my own part, and of those who
co-operate with me, I deprecate the discussion, first because, so far as
disputed doctrines are in question, the medical profession have long
since definitely spoken, and not in the sense of those whom Mr.
Millican describes as we of the 'regular'" profession; secondly,
because an appeal against the late judgment is pending, being the
fourth act of the forensic drama by which Mr. Millican has manifested
his strong desire to be one of the surgeons of the Queen's Jubilee
Hospital; and thirdly, because both Lord Grimthorpe and Mr. Millican
put forth statements which do not bear a moment's inquiry. Against
some of the former the founder of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital has
already entered his protests; some of the latter can be judged of by
the following.
66
Mr. Millican says that "we of the 'regular' profession" admit the
allegation first made by homoeopathists "that drop doses of ipeca-
cuanha wine will check many forms of obstinate vomiting."

""
The history of this allegation has been recorded, and the allegation
itself refuted by the late Sir James Simpson, the discoverer of the use
of chloroform, in his work" Homoeopathy, its Tenets and Tendencies
(3rd edit., p. 274, note). I enclose the quotation in extract; it is an
instructive bit of history which, having the medical question only in
the back ground, can be appreciated by all your readers.
J. L. W. THUDICHUM, M.D.
Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, London, Chairman of
the Board of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital, Gloucester Terrace.
"In the British Journal of Homœopathy for January, 1882, p. 159,
is given a quotation from a pamphlet of a certain Dr. Stewart, accusing
Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Simpson, the celebrated Edinburgh
physician, discoverer of the anaesthetic action of chloroform, of having
practised homoeopathy in one instance; and the latter noticed it in
his work Homœopathy, its Tenets and Tendencies' (3rd edit., p. 274,
note), not, as he said, to defend himself against the allegation, but to
give it as a specimen of the unscrupulous assertions regarding homœo-
pathic cures and homoeopathic practice. The quotation in the journal
named is as follows:- Towards the close of last winter's session,
when Dr. Arneth, of Vienna, was in Edinburgh, he was in the habit of
attending Dr. Simpson's lectures. On one occasion, in Dr. Arneth's
presence, I recollect that Dr. Simpson told his class of a case of
vomiting in pregnancy then under his care. He had launched fortli
0
(
18
in succession all his allopathic appliances-opium, naphtha, prussic
acid, &c.-(I forget if chloroform was also used),- but without
relieving the patient. He had either taken Dr. Arneth to see it, or
had told him about it, and the latter recommended him to try
either a quarter or half a grain of ipecacuanha, I do not recollect
which. He acted upon this suggestion and with decided good results.'
The case here referred to was one under the care of Dr. Myrtle. At
the strong recommendation of Dr. Arneth, who was with Dr. Simpson
at the consultation (and whom he did not know at that time to be a
practitioner of homeopathy), the patient got half a grain of ipeca-
cuanha, but instead of producing 'decided good results,' as Dr.
Stewart alleged, it made the patient very decidedly worse, and had to
be speedily withdrawn.
"But (continues Simpson) mark the further progress of a homœo-
pathic case. In the British Journal of Homeopathy for January, 1852,
it is averred simply, though erroneously, that the use of the alleged
homeopathic remedy, ipecacuanha, was followed with decided good
results,' nothing more. In the same journal, however, for July, 1852,
p. 468, the same case is again referred to: and now it is deliberately
and quietly stated, as an actual homeopathic fact, that this was an
instance of vomiting in pregnancy which he (Dr. Simpson) could not
cure, until he gave the patient very small doses of ipecacuanha, where-
upon the vomiting cased.' Simpson has stated (i.e., p. 274), in the
name of Dr. Myrtle and himself, that upon the use of the ipecacuanha
the vomiting was not cured;' and that there were even no good
results from it; but, on the contrary, the very reverse and opposite."
+
((
(

MAJOR W. V. MORGAN.
[Dec. 29.
The letters of Lord Grimthorpe and Mr. Millican will enlighten
that portion of the public unacquainted with the position taken up by
the old school of medicine.
Over and over again the new school, called by their antagonists the
Homœopathic," have offered to drop the name and discontinue their
hospitals and journals provided fair play be conceded on the other
side. Many years ago an offer of upwards of £20,000 was made by
one bearing the honoured name of Gurney to any hospital which
would devote a large ward to the treatment (under the inspection of
its authority) of patients on the new principle. Again, when an appeal.
was made a few years ago by the Duke of Westminster for funds to
enable St. George's Hospital to utilise its wards, the writer offered to
subscribe £1,000 a year for five years on the simple condition that it
should be expended in testing the system in one of the wards of that
hospital. But no; rather would they keep the wards closed and let
the poor patients die than assist at the dissemination of such heresy.
Moreover, the discussion of the system, and even the advertisements
of books bearing on the subjects, are rigorously excluded from all the
medical periodicals. What then are those who, like myself, have a
life-long experience of the system and an ardent belief in its efficacy
to do? We have established a hospital with ninety beds in London,
and support two periodicals, but would gladly drop these if only
guaranteed fair play and a cessation of boycotting.
WILLIAM VAUGHAN MORGAN, Chairman of
the London Homœopathic Hospital.
5, Boltons, S. IV.
19
Data A
LORD GRIMTHORPE (3).
[Dec. 31.
I need hardly say I was prepared for the abuse of such papers as
The Medical Journal, and such writers as Dr. Thudichum. I dare say
other phlebotomists will have a cut at me too. But they are not
Butlers or Whatelys, and therefore had better not meddle with the
double-edged tools of analogy. They do not know that no less a per-
son than Lord Brougham asserted his right to do the very thing that
The Medical Journal says no barrister dare do, and nobody thought of
meddling with him; and that Sir Fitzroy Kelly, as I have heard him
tell at Lincoln's Inn, took his retainer in one of his greatest causes
from his client on a steamboat going across the Channel, no solicitor
being on board, and thereby anticipated the other side, who went to
his clerk just too late. It is true that counsel seldom do so, because
there are inconveniences in it. But it is quite a settled practice that
they may take instructions direct from a prisoner in criminal cases.
In Parliamentary work we often had to talk to clients of all kinds
without waiting to get a solicitor to look on. And we once passed a
unanimous resolution, in consequence of some assertion outside,
that if counsel specially agreed to take less than the universally
presumed daily "refresher," we had no right to interfere with it.
believe I moved it, though I was not then the leader of that Bar.
I
The real analogy that would suit this medical trade union would be
if the Bar were idiotic enough to try and boycott some considerable
minority of them who made speeches or examined witnesses in some
way that the majority either disapprove of or are unable to imitate.
successfully. If the minority generally failed, that would soon settle
itself; and so it would if homoeopathists generally failed. But instead
of that they increase, which proves that they do not fail, without any-
thing more. I see from a pamphlet sent to me, containing some still
worse specimens of unionistic tyranny, extending even to surgeons
who give no drugs, large or small (of which indeed Mr. Millican's is
a case), that there are above 10,000 homœopathic doctors in [England]
the world. There are two homoeopathic shops, I know, within a short
distance from my house, and I dare say more; and no large town is
without some. And as for the private boxes of pillules kept for family
use, nobody can tell the number within a great many thousands. It is
only that kind of logic which I have long observed to come with a
medical education that could dream of comparing this widely-spread
heresy to isolated cases of disreputable or incompetent practice in that
or any other profession.
-
In any other branch of physics (and why not in physic ?) the refusal
to let an experiment be tried, which cannot hurt and is not objected
to by those whom it concerns, would be taken as a decisive proof that
the refuser fears or knows that it will refute his theory. What rational
excuse can these unionists make for refusing the two munificent offers
to found and maintain experimental homeopathic wards in two
hospitals which were described yesterday? Is there a man in England
fool enough to believe that it was from a benevolent regard for hypo-
thetical patients? If I were a subscriber to St. George's Hospital,
which did so very lately, I would withdraw to-morrow, to escape next
* So corrected in a paragraph the next day.
Uorm
:
20
year's subscription. A very able and learned friend of mine used to
complain to me of the medical tyranny there in other matters too,
and one of the Homœopathic League Tracts, which have been sent to
me, is full of gross instances of resolute determination of the doctors
to put down homeopathy in every hospital that is not specially
devoted to it, that is, in all the general and old and great ones. Any
experiments may be tried on the patients except that, which they
plainly are afraid would succeed and be fatal to their own reputation.
There are some very queer revelations about hospital practice in a
new book called "St. Bernard's," which could be written by no one
who has not been initiated. What right has Dr. A. to interfere with
the way Dr. B. cures his patients? If he generally fails people will
find it out fast enough. In no kind of physiology is any proof worth a
farthing except the results of experience. I have read that such
experiments have been tried, under State protection against medical
tyranny, in some foreign hospitals, and that the results were exactly
what these people manifestly fear they would be.
Dr. Thudichum's confused ipecacuanha story, 36 years old, has been
sufficiently dealt with by Mr. Millican, except as to one awkward fact
which the doctor is a little over-zealous in parading. The infinitesimal
dose in that case not only did not cure the sickness but made it worse.
Did it? I thought the essence of the anti-small-dose case was that
such doses do nothing, and that the only way they can seem to do
good is by saving the patients from being drenched with large ones,
which means that the large ones in all those cases would have been
worse than nothing. That was the line of argument in Sir Benjamin
Brodie's article in the Quarterly long ago, which I have read again and
find as illogical as I remember thinking it at the time, and now also
more refuted by experience.
These writers very naturally "deprecate discussion," except their
own. "The medical profession have long since definitely spoken."
Roma locuta, causa finita est. If it is worth asking again, as I did in
vain at Margaret-street-When, where, how, and by what authority?
They have given me, and therefore Mr. Justice Manisty, "an emphatic
contradiction," and that ought to be enough for us and the public.
They affect to treat my "boisterous rhetoric" with contempt, and say
"the public will take no interest in it." Then they need not be in
such a fury at it. I have opposed and defeated a good deal of trade
unionism in my time-of clockmakers, architects, and even of ladies,
who all tried to beat me by abdication or secession; and I have lived
to see workmen's unions, against which I wrote ten years ago, confess
their failure to do a great deal that they expected. I am not frightened
of being washed away by black doses from a set of medical con-
spirators.
GRIMTHORPE.
DR. T. F. PEARSE.
[Dec. 31.
Certain interested individuals have been attempting to obtain capital
in favour of homœopathy from the trial of "Millican v. Sulivan and
others" still under jurisdiction. Unfortunately for them the matter
at issue is quite outside the incompetency of homeopathy or its merits.
21
It resolves itself into whether an institution favouring homeopathy is
or is not likely to get the support and good will of the medical pro-
fession. Scientific medicine has over and over again rejected the
principles and practice of homoeopathists, and therefore the Committee.
of the Queen's Jubilee Hospital, desiring that support, did not consider
it politic to retain a member in Mr. Millican, who had practically
thrown in his lot with the homœopathists.
Happily for charitable institutions rejected members do not always
behave so enthusiastically in opposition as in this particular case, and
one cannot help drawing an inference that sympathy with the homeo-
paths and prospects of benefit must have actuated the opponents of
the Jubilee Hospital.
T. FREDERICK PEARSE, M.D., M.R.C.P.,
Physician to the Skin Department, Queen's
Jubilee Hospital.
R. B. C. (1).
[Jan. 4.
The promoters and managers of the so-called "Jubilee Hospital
have much reason to be grateful to Lord Grimthorpe for his exceed-
ingly comic outburst of indignation against "doctors," and for the
"bold advertisement" this indignation has given to the ricketty
bantling which the aforesaid promoters and managers are striving to
guide through many surrounding perils. With the precise issues.
raised in the law suit which excited Lord Grimthorpe's wrath I have
nothing to do; and I have no wish to occupy space in the discussion
of such a tempest in a tea-spoon; but I would like to protest against
the suggestion of his lordship, surprising from one who is himself so
prompt to exercise an independent judgment, that the views expressed
by Mr. Justice Manisty are conclusive on the merits of the case. I
have not the honour of knowing Mr. Justice Manisty, but I entertain
no dobt that he is a sound and learned lawyer, and unless or until his
decision should be reversed in the appeal said to be pending I am
content to accept that decision as showing that the plaintiff before him
had sustained a legal wrong. To this amount of deference a judge is
clearly entitled from non-legal persons; but on the point whether the
defendants had committed any other wrong than a technical one I
should feel entitled, if I were sufficiently interested in the question,
to form my own opinion after inquiry into the precise circumstances
of the case.
""
Passing away from this really trivial matter, I would ask your
permission to explain, and to endeavour to justify, the attitude of the
medical profession towards homoeopathic practitioners. Technically
these persons are members of the profession, practically they are not;
and, without in the least questioning their legal status, it will be con-
venient to use the word homoeopaths, to designate medical men who
profess to follow homeopathy, and the word "doctors" to designate
medical men who would entirely repudiate such an imputation.
Homœopathy, properly speaking, is a body of doctrine which was in-
vented by Hahnemann, and which, after some preliminary publication,
22
in 1796 and in 1805, was finally put forth in 1810, in a work entitled
"Organon der rationellen Heilkunde," as comprising the whole philosophy
of medicine. It was not the fruit of study or research, but was evolved
by the inventor out of his moral (or immoral) consciousness, and it
rested mainly upon the following assertions:-First, that all disease
depended upon a sort of evil principle called "psora," or,
psora," or, in plain
English, "itch," which pervaded the system of the sufferer and pro-
duced symptoms, so that disease was really latent or suppressed itch.
(In those days it was not known that real itch is caused by a parasitic
insect which burrows in the skin.) Secondly, that all the symptoms
of disease could be relieved or cured by the administration of medicines
which would produce similar symptoms in a healthy person. Thirdly,
that these medicines, in order to produce their curative effects, must
be given, not in small, but in infinitesimal doses-that is to say, in
doses ranging from the millionth to the decillionth of a grain.
Fourthly, that the potency of the medicine increased in proportion to
the diminution of the dose, and that it also increased in proportion to
the number of rubs in a mortar or shakes in a bottle which were
employed in making the mixture from which the diminished dose was
to be taken. In diluting solids powdered sugar of milk was employed,
in diluting liquids water; and a grain and a drop may be taken to be
equivalent terms. For example, a spirituous solution of opium-i.e.,
laudanum, was prepared for administration by adding one drop of it
to one hundred drops of water, and by giving the containing bottle
three shakes of a specified character, each produced by one movement
from the elbow. Hahnemann said that he at first permitted ten shakes,
but that the power of the medicine was thereby so dangerously
increased that he found it necessary to limit the number to three.
The mixture thus made, however, even if much shaken, would be of
very restricted utility, and it had to be further diluted in order to
develop its powers. One drop of the first dilution, or, as it was called,
"attenuation," was mixed with another hundred drops of water, and
this second mixture received its three solemn shakes. It was then in
a state to yield one drop, presumably containing one ten-thousandth
of the original medication, to be mixed in the same way with another
hundred drops of water, so that each drop of the result after three
shakes might contain one-millionth; but in the case of opium the
mixture was still not strong enough to be employed against serious
disease, and the attenuations were continued until the thirtieth was
arrived at, in which each drop of the result was supposed to contain
one-decillionth of the original laudanum. As illustrations of ordinary
doses, I may mention that "charcoal" was directed to be given in one
or two decillionths of a grain; "chamomile," in two quadrillionths;
"nutmeg," in two-millionths; "tartar emetic," in two-billionths;
، ،
opium," in two-decillionths of a drop of laudanum; "arsenious
acid," in one or two decillionths; and "ipecacuanha," in two or
three millionths.
The late Mr. Heckstall Smith once published a striking calculation
to show what the decillionth of a grain or drop would mean. He took
the orbit of the planet Uranus, and found that if he had a cubic
measure, each side of which was equal to the square of the diameter
of this orbit, it would be necessary to have this measure filled eleven
23
66
times and a half in order to obtain sufficient water to dilute a drop of
laudanum or other liquid in such a degree that each drop of the
mixture would contain a decillionth of the drug. In the same way,
the bulk of sugar of milk required in order so to dilute one grain of
nutmeg "that each grain of the mixture should contain a decillionth
of a grain of the spice, would be greater than the whole bulk of the
universe of which the earth forms part. Apart from this reductio ad
absurdum, it is tolerably manifest that the three shakes would not
suffice to produce a uniform mixture of two fluids of different specific
gravity, and that the drop of the first attenuatir could scarcely fail
to contain either more or less than one-hundredth part of the original
medicine.
ا
Without dwelling upon the question of infinitesimal doses, it is,
perhaps, more important to point out that the fundamental basis of
homœopathy, the doctrine that symptoms are to be cured by medicines
that would produce them, is directly at variance with the principle
which is the guiding light of modern medicine. That principle is that
it is the business of the physician to go behind symptoms to the
morbid changes which are underlying them. There is a science.
called pathology, which deals with the exact nature of those departures
from natural structure or from natural function which constitute
disease, and with the means by which such departures may be rectified
or brought under control. To the advancement of this science every
department of physical research has been made contributory; and its
progress has rescued mankind from the dominion of many evils, and
promises to rescue them from more. If a patient has a cough, the
business of the doctor is to find out why he has a cough, and then to
apply the appropriate means for his relief. His cough may be due to
an affection of the throat, to an affection of the lung, to stomachi
derangement; to irritation of some distant nerve; to the pressure of
some internal tumour, to tubercle, or to cancer; and the doctor has to
find out which of these causes, or of others, is in operation, and then
to take his measures accordingly. Of course, he may arrive at an
erroneous conclusion, just as, I suppose, a lawyer may sometimes form
an incorrect opinion. But the homoeopath ignores the whole question
of pathology :-
"A primrose by the river's brim,
A yellow primrose is to him,
And it is nothing more."
His patient coughs, and all he has to do is to look in one of his books
to find out what medicine will produce cough in a healthy person, and
then to administer this medicine, if he be very bold, in a dose so
energetic as one or two decillionths of a grain.
Perhaps the drollest part of the whole homoeopathic hypothesis is
the assumption that there is any real resemblance between the actual
symptom presented by disease, and what I may call the sham symptom
which is alleged to be produced by the curative agent. Belladonna
was adopted as the cure for scarlet fever because it was said to produce
a red rash upon the skin. Belladonna was also recommended by
Hahnemann as a cure for hydrophobia, because it produces a dryness
of the mouth which leads the patient to make efforts to relieve himself
from the annoyance of viscid saliva. But there is no real resemblance
24
between the belladonna rash and the rash of scarlet fever, nor between
the viscid saliva produced by belladonna and the condition produced
by hydrophobia. Nor, after the lapse of eighty years, has there been.
any instance of a cure of either disease by the reputed remedy.
There is, of course, no limit to the erroneous opinions which people
may entertain about subjects on which they are profoundly ignorant ;
but the absurdities of homeopathy were from the first so patent to all
who had received the benefit of a medical education that these persons
might well have been excused if they had entirely declined to
"investigate" such nonsense. They might have rested upon the well-
known dictum of Faraday, to the effect "that a man who makes
assertions, or draws conclusions, regarding any given case, ought to
be competent to investigate it. He has no right to throw the onus on
others, declaring it their duty to prove him right or wrong. His duty
is to demonstrate the truth of what he asserts, or to cease from assert-
ing. The men he calls upon to consider and judge have enough to
do with themselves in the examination, correction, or verification of
their own views. As life is limited, I am not disposed to occupy the
time it is made of in the investigation of matters which, in what is
known to me of them, offer no reasonable prospect of any useful
progress, or of anything but negative results."
The medical profession, I say, might justly have rested upon the
principle here laid down, but as a matter of fact the truth of the
homeopathic doctrines was early brought to the test of experiment.
An application was made to the French Government for permission to
establish a homeopathic dispensary in Paris, and the question was
referred by the Minister of Public Instruction to a committee of the
Académie de Médicine, presided over by the illustrious Andral. On
March 17, 1835, the committee reported to the Académie. M. Andral
said he was decidedly opposed to the project of allowing the homœo-
paths a dispensary; humanity should not be trifled with by the
experiments of these people. He had given their system a fair trial;
he had treated about 130 or 140 patients homoeopathically, in presence.
of the Hahnemannians themselves. M. Guibourt had prepared the
medicines, and every requisite care and precaution were duly observed,
yet in not one instance was he successful. He had tried various ex-
periments on his own person, and several professional friends had
followed his example, in order to ascertain the actual effects of homoeo-
pathic doses; but the results were not as Hahnemann and his disciples
described them. He (M. Andral) had taken quinine in the prescribed
globules, but had contracted no intermittent fever; he had taken
aconite, but without being affected with symptoms of plethora;
sulphur he took, to try if he could catch the itch, but he caught
nothing; neither upon swallowing certain globules of arnica did he
feel pains as if he had suffered contusion; and so with various other
substances which he and his friends took in obedience to the
Hahnemannian precepts. With respect to the attempt to cure disease
by this method, he said that in every instance the symptoms went on
from bad to worse.
-
In the discussion which followed, M. Piorry dwelt upon the absurdity
of overlooking the seat of the disorder. M. Bally said that he had
given permission to MM. Currie and Simon to treat patients homoeo-
*
25
}
1
¦
pathically in his wards; they had done so for four or five months; a
register was kept, and the result was that not one of a large number
of patients was cured by the Hahnemannian method. After similar
speeches from others, the Académie unanimously advised the Minister
to withhold his sanction from the proposed dispensary.
There was thus, more than fifty years ago, an abundance of the
experiment which Lord Grimthorpe desires; and doctors had no
difficulty in making up their minds with regard to the true character
of the homoeopathic system. To put the matter quite plainly, its
absurdities, to any who have received a medical education, are so
manifest that we do not believe such persons, if of ordinary mental
capacity, can honestly believe them; and we have abundant evidence
that many who profess to be homoeopaths do not carry their profession
into practice, but prescribe ordinary remedies in ordinary doses, and
only call themselves homœopaths in order to fleece some of the more
gullible sections of the public. To the genuine homœopaths, if such
there be, we object because we distrust their mental capacity; and to
those who are not genuine we object on grounds of ordinary morality.
I cannot refrain from pointing out that there is one almost crucial
test by which the value of the system may be judged. For many years
the members of the medical profession have been in the forefront
among the cultivators of pure science, among those whose aim in life
has been the establishment of truth, and they have enriched mankind
with notable discoveries. The undulatory theory of light was the
discovery of Thomas Young. In every department of physical re-
search, in chemistry, in electricity, in natural history, they have been
conspicuous. Both the Darwins were doctors, Dalton was a doctor,.
Huxley is a doctor, Hooker is a doctor. The fellowship of the Royal
Society, the red ribbon of science, has been bestowed upon
doctors in larger proportion than upon any other class of the com-
munity. In all this mental activity the homoeopaths have been con-
spicuous only by their absence. There may be exceptions, although I
am not aware of any; but, save as an exception, no homoeopathic
practitioner, from the time of Hahnemann until now, has ever contri-
buted a single fact to science, or left mankind one whit wiser for his
having lived. The whole tribe has been smitten with that utter
intellectual barrenness which, as a Nemesis, attends upon "whosoever
loveth and maketh a lie."
-
We shall probably be told that patients recover under homoeopathic
treatment. The extent to which this may be true is greatly obscured
by the fact already referred to, that many professing homeopaths do
not practice homopathy; but it is no doubt true in some measure.
The human body is possessed of great recuperative powers, and makes
a gallant fight against disease. The most that the doctor can do, in
a general way, is to assist nature in throwing off the burden, and she
may often throw it off without being assisted at all. On the other
hand, we see numerous instances in which a week of rational treat-
ment would lead to recovery, and in which, if that treatment be
withheld, illness may be protracted for months, and may even lead on
to a fatal issue.
For myself, I beg leave absolutely to disclaim the imputation of
odium medicum. I am as indifferent to homoeopaths as if they were
26
inhabitants of another planet. I do not object to their being con-
sulted by those who believe in them, nor to their hospitals or dispen
saries for any who please to resort to these institutions. I should
decline to consult with them, or to receive them as hospital colleagues,
because I have no common ground of science on which I could meet
them, and therefore I could not, as hospital colleagues sometimes.
must do, transfer my patients to their care. Lord Grimthorpe sneers
at the suggestion that the refusal of the staff of St. George's Hospital
to consort with homeopaths was produced by "benevolent regard for
hypothetical patients;" but I should be perfectly content to be judged
by my own hospital patients on the question of the genuineness of my
solicitude for their welfare. What surprises me most in his Lord-
ship's account of homoeopaths is to hear of their abundance. I have
been thirty-six years a qualified practitioner, the last twenty of which
have been spent in London, and I am on the staff of two great
hospitals, one general and one special. In the course of my life I
have heard the names of three homeopaths, and I have seen two of
them. They must be like the "shy animals " on which the late Mr.
Jefferies wrote an interesting paper, saying that, although the majority
of people did not see one of these animals twice in a lifetime, they
were really more numerous in England and Wales than men, women,
and children. As for the domestic practice of homoeopathy, it will
perhaps surprise Lord Grimthorpe to be told that, according to current
report in the drug trade, the pilules sold to old ladies do not contain
a particle of the various medicaments after which they are respec-
tively named. They are made in bulk of pure sugar, and are distri-
buted, when finished, into bottles bearing different labels.
"
I must make one exception to my profession of indifference. Lord
Grimthorpe has, I think, entered upon this discussion without any
accurate information concerning the facts, and he has been ludicrously
unjust to the numerous members of a profession which certainly
contains a fair proportion of highly estimable men. But we are all
proud of him." We admire his fearless, if sometimes random, asser-
tions, and we relish his trenchant style. If ever he should have a
serious illness and should commit himself to the care of a homœopath,
I trust that the individual thus honoured may be one of those who
employ globules for the sake of appearances, but who secretly prac-
tise rational medicine whenever they are confronted with urgent disease.
Having no desire for an advertisement, I will not sign this letter
with my name; but my initials will hardly conceal my identity from
members of my own profession.
R. B. C.
J. C. B. (1).
[Jan. 4.
It is clear that Lord Grimthorpe is not, any more than Dr.
Thudichum or The British Medical Journal, a Butler or a Whately,
and, therefore, had better not meddle with the double-edged tools of
analogy. The real analogy" which he draws between a supposed
course of proceeding on the part of the Bar and the action of ortho-
dox medical men in declining to consult with homoeopathic practi-
tioners is not a real analogy at all, but patently false and flimsy.
"C
27
Orthodox medical men refuse to meet homoeopathists professionally,
I take it, not because these adopt unusual methods in investigating
cases or assume peculiar arts of manner and expression in conveying
their conclusions and recommendations-conduct which would be
analogous to that of barristers who examined witnesses or made
speeches in a way that the majority of their profession either disap-
proved or were unable to imitate; but because they hold views which
render conjoint deliberation impossible, or profess principles which
they do not honestly believe. Would Lord Grimthorpe, when Sir
Edmund Beckett, have held a brief with a learned brother who had
persuaded himself that water will run uphill, or that hearsay is more
trustworthy than direct testimony, and who insisted on making these
principles the basis of his advocacy of a Bill before a Committee of
the Lords or Commons, or with another learned brother, who, in
order to win his case, persistently put forth as true statements which
he knew to be unfounded? Surely not! Why, then, should he
grudge to phlebotomists and the dispensers of black draughts a free-
dom of professional action which he would claim-to use his own
graceful style of designation-for Buzfuzes and the wearers of pre-
posterous horsehair wigs ?
But the claim of medical men to the free exercise of professional
discretion is far stronger than that of barristers. Had Sir Edmund
Beckett, in his anti-trade-union enthusiasm, agreed to have "with
him" a learned brother hopelessly wrong-headed or unscrupulous, no
great harm would have been done. Counsel on the opposite side
would have exposed the ignorance or chicanery of his leader or junior
as the case might be, the committee would have seen through it, and
public interests would not have suffered. But at a medical consulta-
tion there are no counsel on the opposite side and no committee to
appeal to, for the patient and his friends are intellectually and
emotionally incapable of deciding on any difference of opinion that
may arise. The doctors must agree as to the course of treatment to
be adopted, and that quickly; and on their judgment the life of the
patient may perhaps depend. How blameworthy, then, would that
medical man be who, in view of responsibility, consented to consult
and appear to co-operate with one from whom he radically differed, or
in whose veracity he had no confidence! Should he do so, he must
either stand by consenting to treatment he believes to be futile, assert
his own views in defiance of his colleague and at the risk of his repu-
tation, or lend himself to a gross deception. Self-respect and a sense
of what he owes to those who seek his help should prevent any medical
man from placing himself in such a position, and hence the refusal of
medical men to meet with homoeopathists is only a legitimate exercise
of their professional discretion, conceived not more in their own
interests than in those of their patients. Realising all this, genuine
homœopathic practitioners ought to be as unwilling to consult with
allopathic practitioners as the latter are to have any dealings with
them. Why then, it may be asked, are homoeopathic doctors, instead
of consulting with each other, constantly seeking countenance and
support from members of the orthodox branch of the profession?
Homœopathists probably differ very greatly among themselves in
these days, and are of many shades of opinion, some of which vary
28
but slightly from the pure white light of medical science; but it is as
impossible for an orthodox medical man to consult profitably with an
out-and-out believer in the doctrine of infinitesimals and the similia
similibus curantur theory, or with a man who, while professing homoeo-
pathy, is in the habit of treating all serious illness by large doses of
drugs, as it would be for Lord Grimthorpe to take sweet counsel in
astronomy (in which, if I mistake not, he has dabbled) with the gentle-
man who declares that this earth is flat (not in any figurative sense),
and who has challenged the world, to the amount of £500, to prove
the contrary, or to discuss ethics and keep his temper with a man who
has grown fat on commissions. Homœopathists substitute for some
of the recognised axioms of medical science axioms of their own.
Every problem and proposition that can arise in the course of medical
practice is affected by the change.
Lord Grimthorpe demands to know when, where, how, and by what
authority homoeopathy has been condemned? There have never been
any œcumenical medical councils nor formal condemnations of medical
heresies, but the estimation in which homoeopathy is held by the
medical profession may without difficulty be inferred from the attitude
towards it which has been steadily maintained by the leaders of that
profession almost without exception, and by the enormous majority of
its rank and file, in declining to consult with those who have adopted
it, and by the judgment passed on it in standard medical works. His
lordship has allowed himself to be hoaxed as to the extent of the
heresy. His allegation that homoeopathists increase may or may not
be true-fashionable follies have their ups and downs, and theosophy
and high heels, it is said, have spread widely of late-but his asser-
tion, on the faith of some pamphlet sent to him, that there are 10,000
homœopathic doctors in England is manifestly wild. I have not at
present access to the figures, but I suppose there are in all about
22,000 registered medical practitioners in England, of whom probably
20,000 would emphatically pronounce homoeopathy a delusion and a
snare.
Lord Grimthorpe accuses the writers who have briefly answered one
or two points in his special pleading for homoeopathy as being "in a
fury," whereas no one has spoken an irate word but himself. It is he
who has lashed himself into that state in recalling his onslaughts on
"clockmakers, architects, and even ladies," and in preparing himself
for another attack on what he calls trade unionism. Now trade
unionism is perhaps stronger than it ever was, notwithstanding all
Lord Grimthorpe's tilting at it, and has a recognised place in our in-
dustrial policy; it is no longer a term of reproach; but to liken to it
the attitude of the medical profession towards homoeopathy is to abuse
language and confuse thought. Medical men have never suggested
that the smallest restriction should be put on homoeopathic practice.
They have desired that homeopathists should have freedom equal to
their own, to practise, to experiment, to teach, to multiply, if it is in
their power to do so, in all places. But from a sense of duty, and to
their own pecuniary loss, individually and collectively, they have
refused to consult with them, because, differing from them on funda-
mental principles, they have felt that they could not usefully deliberate
with them on any particular case. It would be a strange sort of trade
29
unionism that would lead an artisan to say "I won't have this mate at
my bench, for he'll spoil my work or scamp it."
The odium medicum and the odium theologicum have each their proper
sphere of operation. Lord Grimthorpe would scarcely approve of the
introduction of Mr. Bradlaugh to Convocation, but Mr. Bradlaugh
would not be more out of place there than a homeopathist on a hos-
pital staff composed of orthodox medical men. His lordship by impli-
cation admits that medical men are entitled to decline to have anything
to do with disreputable or incompetent practitioners; he will perhaps
permit them to define these classes for themselves. The fact is that
there has been too little of the odium medicum in relation to homoeo-
pathy. Trusting to its inherent weakness and the good sense of the
British public, the medical profession has treated it of late years with
contemptuous indifference. But the aggressive tendencies which it
has recently displayed and Lord Grimthorpe's ill-advised and intem-
perate advocacy will perhaps rouse the profession to expose once
more, and once for all, to the popular gaze its fallacies and speciosities
and absurdities.
J. C. B.
DR. MILLICAN (2).
[Jan. 4.
It was not I who led this discussion into the merits of "Millican v.
Sulivan," nor did I enter at all upon the merits of homoeopathy as a
system. The question I raised was the general one— "Has the
homœopathic practitioner-not homeopathy-had fair play accorded
to him as a duly qualified medical man?" I may be in error, but I
decidedly think not.
With the most ludicrous inability to see the drift of an argument,
Mr. Fitzroy Benham ("The Founder" as he prefers to be styled-
not an inapt pseudonym, by the way), Dr. Thudichum, and Dr.
Frederick Pearse have entered the lists only to wander at once outside
the arena in search of their antagonist.
Mr. Benham first remarks in The Times of the 28th inst. that he is
not at liberty to say anything in reference to the action, and then in
The Globe of the 29th proceeds not only to say something, but some-
thing which he had better have left unsaid-viz., that the grounds of
my suspension were other than those alleged in his statement of
defence, a copy of which document is now before me.
Dr. Thudichum has the next tilt at the windmills, and instead of
replying to my arguments contents himself with taking shelter under
that very claim of the medical profession to infallibility for which my
letter in The Times of the 28th tried to extract some reasonable basis;
and he amuses himself by adducing a lengthy quotation of a more or
less mediæval period to prove what I never denied-viz., that ipecacu-
anha does not always cure vomiting.
Dr. Frederick Pearse is my present opponent. He, like Mr. Benham,
wanders off into the case of "Millican v. Sulivan," but he does me the
service of practically contradicting Mr. Benham. The latter gentle-
man has told us in The Globe of the 29th that “ we" (the defendants)
66
(
were prepared to prove that the grievance was not only brought
about by his joining the Margaret-street Infirmary,' but also by his
actually practising homeopathy himself at the Queen's Jubilee
30
Hospital." As this point is the subject of documentary evidence, it
needs no more than a plain denial from me. Now, on the other hand,
Dr. Pearse tells us in The Times of to-day that, "unfortunately the
matter at issue" (in the said case)" is quite outside the incompetency
of homoeopathy or its merits. It resolves itself into whether an insti-
tution favouring homœopathy is or is not likely to get the goodwill and
support of the medical profession." What I would wish these gentle-
men to settle between themselves is which of them is telling the
truth.
Personal reflections so freely made use of by all three of my oppo-
nents, are beneath my notice. So far as the public are concerned, I
leave them to judge between us from the course events have taken,
while as for the profession to which my opponents so grandiloquently
appeal, I am quite content to leave my professional character in the
hands of those leading men in the profession who know me, and they
are many, whatever may be their opinion of my views; while for my
opponents' assumption that they are the spokesmen of the profession,
I prefer to wait until I see how far the profession endorses them.
The most sensible letter of "the enemy" is that of their solicitor,
Mr. Cronin, in to-day's issue, who very wisely does his best to keep
his clients from inflicting further injury ontheir cause. I will so far
assist him that having let these gentlemen display their own incapacity
for logical reasoning, and so discount the value of any decision they
may have "definitively spoken" on the subject of controversy, it is
not my intention to trouble you with any further correspondence on
this subject.
KENNETH MILLICAN.
LORD GRIMTHORPE (4).
[Jan. 6.
I have a truly allopathic dose of three columns of bad reasoning to
work off, and I cannot treat it homeopathically, either in quantity or (I
hope) similia similibus as to reasoning. The "Plebotomist's" specimen
is the worst in every way except brevity, and for both reasons I will
take it first.
(C
He thinks it a clever and pleasant stroke of business to say I am
an example of the evils of irregular practice, and came to grief
through making a client's will without the intervention of a solicitor
-viz., for one Dent, a watchmaker." What I did for him I would do
again for any equally intimate friend in the same circumstances; and
the result would have been just the same if a solicitor had made his
will. The intimacy-an important ingredient in the case-arose from
my having managed the turret clock factory of him and his stepfather
at their request, except financially, from the time the Westminster clock
was ordered until his death, eight years after. I had also made a
codicil, only just in time, for the elder Dent, when he was dying and
wanted to alter his will and to leave one half of his business, includ-
ing the clock factory, to F. Dent, instead of a small annuity, as he
had done before through a misapprehension, which he repented of, as
to his capacity for managing such a business. When F. Dent was
dying, for some reason or other he would not let his solicitor be sent
for, and begged me to make him a will to leave the ship compass busi-
P
81
i
ness to his foreman, who had really made it for them with some valu-
able inventions, and made the great clock under me; and also a few
legacies. I wrote a rough draft for him, so far, with no disposition
whatever of the residue of his property. The next day he showed me
an executed will copied from my draft, and with a residuary bequest
added in my favour, and he wanted me to take it away. I refused to
take it, and left it on his bed. He died soon after, and I learnt after-
wards that the will had been burnt. I, as the executor in it, must
‘either defend it as a whole or give it up as a whole. I was perfectly
certain that he had not changed his mind as to his foreman, and I had
a great regard for him; so I defended it; but a British jury thought
he had ordered it to be burnt. If his relations had told me they were
willing to adopt the will except as to the residue, the case would have
been very different, but they never did. I had then a much better
business of my own, which I did not at all wish to give up, and the
idea of my managing two shops-in the Strand and in the City-was
absurd. There were doubtless some queer circumstances in the case
which are not likely to be known, except to the actors, in this world;
is as
but that is no business of mine. I hope this "Plebotomist
well pleased as I am with the success of his little bit of spite, which
he knew had no relation whatever to the question now in discussion.
""
""
11
"R. B. C.'s" letter is fitter for some homeopathist to answer than
for me, who only know these things from what I may call instructions,
in pamphlets and letters and some private information, and my own
observations of the conduct of those whom he calls the "doctors and
the "orthodox.' Let me further and more fairly abbreviate the two
systems into "H" and "A." All these A's choose to assume that the
question is whether they are justified in refusing to "meet" the H's
in consultation. They know very well that that is not the question.
You truly say that this very Jubilee quarrel is over the body of a man
who was only condemned and deprived by them because he will not
condemn somebody else elsewhere. I am not sure that even the
Inquisition or Queen Mary burnt people for only associating with
heretics while they were themselves orthodox. Still less is it the ques-
tion whether H is a better or worse mode of curing or killing than
A; and I shall not discuss whether it is a right or wrong "principle
and guiding light of modern medicine" to try and cure a cough as
soon as you can, as the H's do, or to wait with the A's till you have
found out its origin, or think you have, and then try what you can do.
I am utterly unprincipled, and I am glad to see that Darwin had the
suspicion of à priori principles " as I have long avowed. When
I have a cough I want it cured without doing me any other harm, and
I do not care the least on what principle the doctor discovered or
guessed at the proper medicine, even if it was "his own immoral
consciousness," as "R. B.C" absurdly says of Hahnemann. It is
"the province of the imagination in science," as Tyndall calls it, to
guess at the right experiments or the right theories to try. When
they have been tried and succeeded, we have no more to do with their
origin. But it is by no means so easy to prove the impossibility of
the principle as these denouncers of it assert, even independently of the
results of homoeopathy.
same "
The last time I was vaccinated-a purely homoeopathic proceeding-
32
the operator, of the most orthodox persuasion, beguiled the time by
remarking on the wonderfully small quality of actual vaccine poison
that does the business. I said, "Yes, and why should not an equally
small quantity of homeopathic medicine?" He smiled, and shut up
his lancet and himself. May I ask "R. B. C.," too, who expatiates
on the "decillionths," which he knows they have largely increased, how
big he thinks the spores are which we are gradually being told cause
nearly all our diseases, or how much poison of a tsetze fly really goes
into a horse or ox that dies of it.
He says I "shall perhaps be surprised to learn that, according to
the current report among druggists (who mostly live by allopaths), the
homœopathic pillules sold to old ladies (and therefore to everybody),
do not contain a particle of the various medicaments after which they
are named," but only sugar and such like things. I am not the least sur-
prised at any such report being circulated in A interests. But I have
heard another, and one which neither my informant nor his authority
for it, one of the principal London druggists, had any interest in
inventing, viz., that nobody (except the A druggists) has any idea of
the quantity of H medicine that is secretly prescribed by A doctors.
If an H had told me that, of course it must have been a lie, for we
know from what was sworn in the Jubilee suit, and I know from some
A letters I have been receiving, that "every H is an impostor and a
liar, and (in Jubilistic grammar) a fraud."
By way of answer to my question, what excuse the A's have to give
for making the committees of two hospitals refuse those two offers to
found and maintain experimental H wards, " R. B. C." tells us the
uselessness of it was proved above fifty years ago in France "thus
wise"-A certain French doctor, Andral, in 1835 "said he was de-
cidedly opposed to allowing a homoeopathic dispensary. He had given
homœopathy a fair trial himself. He had taken homoeopathic quinine,
but had contracted no fever; aconite, without being affected with the
symptoms of plethora; sulphur, without catching the itch; and so on
with various other homoeopathic substances, and had always failed in
curing patients homoeopathically." I have only shortened his language
a little.
The last line of it is the only one of the smallest practical
significance. The absurd unfairness, and evident dishonesty of
Andral's experiments has been several times shown up. I refer any-
body who wants to see the exposure to "Sampson's Homœopathy,'
third edition, 1850. And that one 52-year old assertion of an enemy
is all the excuse "R. B. C." has to give; and then he calls it such
"abundant evidence "of the fallacy and fraud of H as ought to pre-
vent any hospital committee from ever allowing the experiment to be
tried by those who offered to pay for it being tried fairly. But,
unluckily for him, that very thing has been done, not once, but a
good many times since 1835-unless the H pamphlets all lie too.
Here are a few specimens, which I will give as briefly as possible, from
one of them, No. 5. For three years about 1851 half of one hospital
in Paris was put under a homeopathist, and the result was that
8.5 per cent. of his patients died, while 11.3 per cent. died under
the allopaths; and the H cases were the most numerous. The H
doctor had no power of selecting his patients. In a Vienna hospital,
5.7 per cent. died of pneumonia under H and 25.5 under A; of
•
"
▼
33
pleurisy, 3 per cent. under H, and 15 under A; of peritonitis, 8 per
cent. under H, and 13 under A. A certain orthodox Dr. Routh tried
to explain away some still stronger results at Leipsic, and guessed that
those at Vienna were not fair average cases; but Sir W. Wilde, of
Dublin, who had personally inspected the H hospital, wrote that they
were quite as acute cases as he had seen elsewhere.
I had long heard that H was peculiarly successful with cholera, and
the same pamphlet shows that in several epidemics of that kind it had
cured from twice to four times as large a proportion as A. In 1854
it seems that the English Government had the courage and power to
order the general patients to be cleared out of the H hospital of
London to take in cholera ones, under its own doctors, and appointed
a large Medical Council, all of whom were "regulars," to report on
the results from all the hospitals, and medical inspectors were also
appointed. That council presented the reports from all of them except
the H hospital, though the inspector had made his report of it to them.
At last the House of Commons ordered them to report that; and
then they had to confess, with disgust, if not with shame, that
the deaths there had been only 16.4 per cent., while the average
at the others was 518 of the patients. And what made it worse was
that I see that the President of the Board of Health, who appointed
the Council, expressly said that the object was to "determine the
effects of the different systems of treatment;" which they quickly
ignored in their report, and expatiated in their favourite "pathology"
instead. It is quite certain that if cholera came again, the H treat-
ment, which had been far more successful than all the different A
nostrums which they detailed, would be excluded again from every
hospital and every Poor Law Infirmary in the kingdom, and everybody
would be denounced as a manslaughterer at least who gave a H dose
and did not cure his patient, unless at last mundus surrigat justis furiis
against these worse than manslaughterers; for they persist in forcing
what has been proved to be destructive rather than healing medicines on
their patients, and excluding the healing ones. What has "R. B. C.,"
with his "abundance of experience," and "immoral consciousness of
H's," to say to all that, either physically or morally? It would be
tedious to give more such extracts, and I will only add that in a New
York H hospital the mortality of children during twelve years was one
in 146, and in the average of the others one in 41. Many people have
told me that they find H peculiarly successful with children, and I am
more and more struck with the number of houses that keep boxes of
(doubtless only bread and sugar) pillules for the children mainly, but
also for " grown-ups; which is a very material fact in estimating
the advance of H. I now learn that there are no less than 11,000 H
practitioners in America, or more than there were in all the world a
few years ago, according to the pamphlet which I quoted from
before.
""
But see what a number of A's and how few (if any) H's have got
into the Royal Society, says "R. B. C." Is he really ignorant how
everybody else laughs at the way they push in there to advertise
F.R.S. after their M.D.? And precious little chance any H doctor
would have there of not being "pilled" by them-in the clubbicular,
not the medical sense; as it was well known that they profusely did
D
34
to a very popular H doctor some years ago at the Athenæum: another
proof of the falseness of the pretence, that they object to meet
homeopathists in consultation.
The only thing worth notice in " J. C. B.'s" letter, as distinct fron
"R. B. C.'s" (for his silly attempts at some more imaginary analo-
gies at the Bar are not), is that he at last gives an answer to my
repeated question, What formal condemnation, and (if any) by what
authority, has ever been officially launched against H? He admits,
none. Not that it would be of any scientific or moral value if they
had ventured on any, in the face of such a body of heretics as now
exist. It is true however that, individually, many great men among
the orthodox have been very unreserved in their own assemblies, and
have used the very strongest language about the "backward and
unsatisfactory condition of the art; "such infamous medical treat-
ment in hospitals that" the greatest surgeon of the century said he
"could not bear to witness it; " that "in a large proportion of the
cases treated by (a certain class of) physicians, the disease is cured by
nature, and not by them, and in a less, but not small, proportion, in
spite of them;" as I quoted before in substance from Sir B. Brodie's
article in The Quarterly-that "the leaders of medicine, both here and
abroad, are sceptical of the curative influence of (a certain class of}
drugs on disease; " and the same distinguished doctor adds that "
one of his school who met a H. practitioner would be guilty of an immoral
act." Another equally eminent and violently anti-homoeopathic Scotch
doctor said: "There has been no want of new remedies of empirical
origin introduced in the last forty years, of which some have stood
the test of time, but most have been mere rubbish ;" another that
"medicines are given at random with no defined idea of what they
should do, and trusting to chance; and a great deal more to the
same effect, and often in the same words, especially as to nature-
their favourite argument obviously adopted from one doctor by
another. I count more than thirty of such denunciations given in
No. 9 of the "Homœopathic League Tracts," (which ought to be dated,
but are not.)
any-
}
-
-
،،
You may say,
"Well, what then? We all know by this time what
the A's think and say of the H's," and naturally they speak still more
freely when they are tiled," as I believe freemasons say, in their own
assemblies. Yes, but now I have a small secret to let out. You will
hardly believe it, but every one of those hard sayings was uttered, not
about homœopathy, but about the orthodox and every-day practice and
system of the very men who uttered them. The latest of them, Dr.
Moxon, finished a speech, too long to give more of, thus: "As to
medical progress, there is no such thing. We guess our way, and call
the guesses theories to make them respectable. Those minds that
are shaken by sickness suppose that we can cure them, and we
encourage the supposition." Such are the domestic confessions of
those who go about thundering against homoeopathic lies and sugar
pills and trusting to nature.
There I will leave them-for the present, at any rate. We have
read of popes and priests who were suspected, if not known, to be in-
fidels and yet persecuted heretics as briskly as the best; but they kept
the secret of their unbelief better than these successors of them do.
!
35
All the subscription hospitals are evidently approaching a revolution,
which will end either in ruin or in support by rates or by patients,
which means external government. And that will no more stand this
medical tyranny than Parliament would in 1858, when it inserted the
23rd and 52nd sections in the Act, expressly because some of the
licensing and degree-giving bodies had begun to demand pledges not
to practise homeopathy. Their pretence now-that they only want
to leave the H's alone, and not to meet them in consultation—is
obviously false. In every possible way they have shown their deter-
mination to expel and ruin them in every place where the A's have
got dominion, though it is evident that the best of them are private
unbelievers in their own avowed faith. The H's are not that, at any
rate.
GRIMTHORPE.
DR. R. E. DUDGEON.
((
[Jan. 6.
Your correspondent "R. B. C.," whom we recognise as our old
antagonist in the controversy that took place at the period of Lord
Beaconsfield's last illness, makes, as before, a number of assertions
respecting homoeopathy which are not in accordance with the well-
known facts. It is not a fact that Hahnemann's first edition of the
Organon," published in 1810, "was not the fruit of study or research,
but was evolved by the inventor out of his moral (or immoral) con-
sciousness." On the contrary, Hahnemann's first essay on the
homœopathic therapeutic rule was published in 1796 in Hufeland's
Journal, and it was after fourteen years of patient study and self-
denying experiment that he gave to the world his perfected views on
the homoeopathic practice in his great work, the "Organon of Rational
Medicine." It is not the case that the method of treatment advocated
in this work rested on the psora doctrine. This doctrine of the origin of
some chronic diseases (not, as "R. B. C." says, of "all diseases") from a
species of miasmatic virus, shown by various eruptions on the skin,
was not peculiar to Hahnemann, but was originally suggested by
Autenrieth, and only adopted by Hahnemann with modifications in
1828. It is not the case that Hahnemann did not know that a minute
insect was the cause of itch. In 1792 he wrote an article in a popular
scientific periodical, and in 1795 another article in a medical periodical,
in which he states that itch is caused by a minute insect, and he
gives directions for killing it, and thereby curing the disease. It is
not the case that those medical men who follow the homeopathic rule
in treatment neglect pathology. On the contrary, several professors
of pathology in Universities have been practitioners of homeopathy.
I may mention Henderson, of Edinburgh, D'Amador, of Montpelier,
Rapp of Tübingen, Arnold of Zurich, and Zlatarovich, of the
Josephinum Academy in Vienna.
It is not the case that any official trial of homoeopathy has been
made in Paris. Andral's pretended trials were shown at the time to
be not only not homeopathic, but contrary to all the principles of that
method. Bally's permission to Curie and Simon was accompanied by
all sorts of obstacles and violations of the conditions agreed upon,
and the results were never published, for Bally always pretended that
36
the day-books of the cases treated, which he carried off, were lost.
It is not the case that the homeopathic chemists supply their
customers with unmedicated pilules, and "R. B. C." should not bring
what he calls a "common report" as an accusation against the honesty
of a highly respectable class of tradesmen. Your columns are not
the proper place for a discussion on the principles and practice of a
medical system. The medical societies and periodicals are the proper
places for that; but, unfortunately, we are boycotted so effectually
from these that we are forced to have societies and periodicals and
hospitals of our own.
Your correspondent "J. C. B." seems to think we are longing for
consultations with our allopathic brethren. This is not the case.
Occasionally a patient or his friends desire an old-school authority to
be called in to determine the nature of some obscure disease. We
should have no objection, but so effectually is the boycott against us
carried out that we are aware that few physicians would dare to meet
us for the purpose of such a consultation. As for desiring the opinion
of any old-school authority on the medical treatment of any disease,
that could never be, as, having practised both, we know the new system
to be in every way superior to the old. We sometimes require the
assistance of an operating surgeon, and I am glad to say the best of
them are always ready to give us their best aid, though I have met
with refusals from some narrow-minded surgeons who seem to have
forgotten the prime duty of their profession, which is to give their aid
to their suffering fellow creatures.
If "R. B. C." has seen so little of his colleagues who have adopted
the homoeopathic rule of practice, that shows how completely the boy-
cott system has been carried out. If our colleagues of the anti-
homoeopathic persuasion will admit us to their societies, I will answer
for it that they will soon both see and hear enough of us. All we want,
all we ask, is fair play and free discussion. Do our orthodox colleagues
dread these things? If fair play and free discussion in the medical
societies were allowed, we should hardly find partisans like "R. B. C."
entertaining such grotesquely erroneous views respecting homoeopathy,
and controversialists like "J. C. B." impugning the honesty of
colleagues who differ from him for the sake of discrediting their
opinions.
Homoeopathists are indebted to you for the calm judicial manner in
which you treat the subject in your leader of to-day. On one point
only I could presume to correct you, and that is that we represent
Hahnemann as having introduced a principle or rule of treatment
hitherto unheard of. On the contrary, Hahnemann himself traced the
homocpathic rule in medicine through all ages, from Hippocrates
downwards, and we have always alleged that it was no novelty in
medicine. Hahnemann's merit was that he showed it to be a rule of
more general application than his predecessors had considered it.
I shall not weary your readers by refuting all the errors of " R. B. C."
I would only say here that the astronomical calculations of Mr. Smith
are quite beside the question, as only about six ounces of alcohol are
required to make the so-called decillionth dilution.
R. E. DUDGEON, M.D.
53, Montagu-square.
é
37
DR. D. DYCE BROWN.
[Jan. 6.
Permit me, as one of the so-called heretics in the profession, to
thank you for your most able and judicially fair article in your issue
of to-day. You state our principle perfectly correctly, when you say
that "homœopaths of this school" (all homeopaths say the same)
´´´maintain that the essence of their system lies in the therapeutic rule
that the drug most likely to remove given symptoms is the one which
most exactly simulates them when administered to a healthy person.
Whoever thus prescribes is practising homoeopathy. Your next
sentence puts the whole question in a nutshell:-"This rule may be
sound or not, but at all events it brings the whole matter to the empi-
rical test, which, with all deference to medical science, is always the
ultimate and conclusive test." However beautiful a therapeutic law
or guide may be, it is valueless unless it stand the test of practical
results. We have been preaching this docrine year after year, and
what we ask and claim as a debt to mankind is that our system should
be put to the test by each individual for himself. It is the practical
results which draw our hospital and dispensary patients to come for
our treatment, when they know nothing of the principles of homœo-
pathy. It is a curious fact, but fact it is, that no practitioner who
has first made himself au fait with the right use of the medicines on
the principle of similars, and tested them in practise honestly, fails to
be convinced. Several of our best men have been converted in spite
of their desire and hope that they would find the whole thing a
mistake. An illustration of this was the late Dr. Horner, of Hull.
He was President of the British Medical Association, and was asked
to write a book against homoeopathy. While agreeing to do so, like a
sensible man, he first resolved to study what he was to write about.
The result was that he wrote a book in favour of homoeopathy, and
from that time till his death was a stanch adherent and practitioner
of the new system. For this piece of honest work he was removed
from his post as one of the heads of the Association. Let us, then,
have this ultimate and conclusive test," and if honestly carried out
the result is foregone. You also state that "It (homoeopathy) holds
that dosage is not an essential of doctrine at all, but a matter of
practice and experience." This, read along with a former sentence, is
perfectly correct. "The reason assigned for attenuation is that if
medicines are carefully selected according to the homoeopathic rule,
and given for the cure of symptoms similar to those which they pro-
duce in the healthy body, it becomes absolutely necessary to give very
small doses, otherwise aggravation instead of amelioration is the
result." This is the accurately stated rule of the dose. It must be
less than will aggravate the symptoms. How much less is the best
and most successful dose is purely a matter of experiment and
experience. And, provided the medicine is selected according to
the rule of similars, he who cures with a comparatively large dose is
equally practising homeopathy with his brother who finds he can cure
best with the higher dilutions. And here let me state that, taking
experience as the test and guide, infinitesimal doses cannot be given
up. Their value is only elicited by results, and those results are such
that no practitioner who has seen them in his own practice would
agree to give up their use. One frequently finds that, owing to the
77
38
varying sensitiveness to medicines of different constitutions, the right
medicine fails in a "tangible" dose, and at once benefits when altered
to a high dilution, and vice versa. We therefore claim it as our right
and our duty to use the whole scale of dilutions in accordance with
our judgment and experience. Even the decillionth (the thirtieth
dilution), in which, as you correctly state, "the division of matter
involved becomes simply unthinkable," is in many cases an attenua-
tion which we could not do without. Here, again, it is a ques-
tion of experience, and not of preconceived theory.
Did we
give way to our prejudices, we should never dream of using
such highly attenuated drugs, but theory must go to the wall
before results. The pharmaceutical problem of preparing this
dilution, which one of your correspondents, à la Sir James Simpson,
tries to ridicule as an impossibility, is solved by every homœopathic
chemist, with the aid of 30 phials, 6 oz. of spirits, and half an hour's
time. Taking one drop of the pure tincture, adding 99 drops of
spirit; then taking one drop of this solution and again adding 99
drops of spirit and so on, brings one to the thirtieth dilution, or the
decillionth of the pure drug, in a very short time. You also most
clearly and correctly state the mode of selection or differentiation of
a homoeopathic drug in a given disease, taking as an illustration the
use of grey powder in diarrhoea. As you truly say, "It is fair, how-
ever, to remember that homoeopaths repudiate the idea that they go
by one symptom. There are a hundred things that produce diarrhoea,
and in choosing grey powder for a given case they are guided by the
concurrence of many collateral symptoms that follow the ingestion of
grey powder in a healthy subject." Exactly so. To use our phrase,
we select a medicine which covers the totality" of the symptoms.
And here let me repudiate, in the name of my confrères, the often-
repeated charge which "R. B. C." brings up again. He says that
homœopaths ignore pathology altogether, "his patient coughs, and
all he has to do is to look in one of his books to find out what medi-
cine will produce cough in a healthy person, and then to administer
this medicine," while the "orthodox" practitioner makes it his
“business to find out why he has a cough, and then to apply the
appropriate means for his relief." Two vastly different processes.
Were R. B. C." not in lamentable ignorance of homoeopathic prac-
tice he could not thus speak. Homœopaths are as well versed in
pathology and physiology as their brethren of the old school, and
cannot value them too highly, in their place, as essential to their
knowledge of disease. They examine their patients by every known
mode, and thus can say why the patient coughs, and can diagnose the
disease present. But when it comes to the treatment, they refuse to
be guided by pathology, knowing well that the trust in pathology as a
guide to treatment has been the bane of medicine from the earliest
days, and has been the cause of the continually shifting practice of
the old school. Homœopaths maintain that, given the pathology and
diagnosis of a disease, each case manifests itself to the eye of the
physician by its symptoms only, many so-called diseases being mere
symptoms of a deeper mischief. Under the head of symptoms they
include objective as well as subjective symptoms. They maintain
that, in treatment, theory of diseases ought to be discarded and the
-
39
symptoms present taken as the only guide to the selection of the
medicine. Nor, we maintain, is the occurrence of similar symptoms
in a given disease and a given drug a mere superficial similarity. It
stands to reason that a drug which can produce an exact picture in
the healthy body of a given disease, must have some deep and inner
relation to the parts involved of a more than superficial character,
and that such a drug, if prescribed, must go to the seat of the malady,
and influence it in a very special way, for good or ill. We thus
maintain that our mode of selecting the medicine is far more sure and
scientific than any mere theoretical selection. And it will be seen
that, in treating a patient, the only point in the joint path where the
two schools diverge is the drug-treatment. Diet, general hygienic
means, &c., are the property of no school, but of the whole profession.
You quote Dr. Ringer as an authority for giving ipecacuanha in
sickness; but, may I ask, where did Dr. Ringer get his information on
this and many other bits of "new" practice? Is it a mere coincidence
that, till Dr. Ringer's book was published, the using of small doses
of ipecacuanha in sickness, of minute doses of corrosive sublimate in
diarrhoea and dysentery, of arsenic in diarrhoea and gastritis, of can-
tharis in inflammation of the kidneys and bladder, and many other bits
of treatment, was not only unknown in the old school, but was directly
at variance with the orthodox views in medicine; while these very
pieces of practice were in every-day use among homeopaths and were
to be found in every work on homoeopathy? The only journal at the
time which saw, or thought it desirable to see, the drift of this mass of
new treatment was The British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review,
which, coming out quarterly, and long after the other favourable
reviews, said: "This is neither more nor less than pure homœo-
pathy." We maintain that the popularity of the new treatment and
the gradually increasing adoption of homeopathic remedies by the old
school (vide the "Index of Diseases" in the recent work of Dr.
Lauder Brunton, physician to St. Bartholomew's and examiner in
therapeutics at the Royal College of Physicians) is ample proof how
the wind is blowing, and that it is only a question of time to see the
homœopathic method the predominant one.
-
I apologise for the length of this letter. I must leave the many
misstatements of "R. B. C." to be dealt with by others of my breth-
ren, preferring to abide by your excellent advice-"It is better worth
while to inquire by what side homeopathy appeals to men of average
probity and intelligence than to draw extreme deductions from pre-
misses possibly but partially apprehended, and then to brand all
homœopaths as either knaves or fools."
I would only commend to the personal consideration of "R. B. C."
his own sentence-" There is, of course, no limit to the erroneous
opinions which people may entertain about subjects of which they are
profoundly ignorant." If "R. B. C." had applied this to himself he
would not have written as he has done, showing to all who know what
homœopathy is that he has "but(very) partially apprehended" the subject.
As to the disgusting personal charges of dishonesty put forward by
"R. B. C." and "J. C. B.," they are beneath notice, especially after
your own remarks. One is only surprised to find that such charges,
which we thought had been dropped for ever, could at this time of day
be brought up again. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
29, Seymour-street, W.
D. DYCE BROWN.
40
DR. MILLICAN (3).
[Jan. 6.
Against my will, I find myself once more drawn into the whirlpool
of controversy, for the letters of "R. B. C." and "J. C. B.," from the
professional standing of their writers, demand a reply from me after
the line I have hitherto taken. The main points of their arguments
were, I think, replied to in anticipation by my letter in your columns of
the 28th ult. But "J. C. B." summarises the scientific objection to
professional intercourse with homoeopaths-which, as I have shown,
has been practically discarded in favour of the more practical ethical
one by Drs. Lauder Brunton, Austin Flint, The Lancet, and other
authorities—when he says, Orthodox medical men refuse to meet
homœopathists professionally, I take it,
because they hold
views which render conjoint deliberation impossible, or profess
principles which they do not honestly believe."
Now, once for all. If there be one drug which can and does check
a morbid symptom which the drug is itself capable of producing, then
there is no impossibility in the law of similars." I think I have
conclusively proved such to be the case with ipecacuanha. Now, what
happens in one instance may possibly happen in others, and whether
it does or does not is merely a question of experience. But inasmuch
as diversity of experience on other subjects-e.g., Listerism—does not
prevent the holders of opposing views from meeting one another in
consultation, there can be no reason beyond caprice or prejudice—i.e.,
no valid reason-why it should do so in this instance. Of course,
every man has individual right of refusal to meet homœopaths if he
pleases, or, indeed, any member of his own profession, just as it is
within my rights to refuse to speak to a man with a billycock" hat
when I wear a "chimney-pot." But if I call upon all others who
affect the latter wondrous headgear to do likewise-nay, even if 90
per cent. of the hat-wearing population joined me in my demand-the
request would be arbitrary, tyrannical, and morally beyond justifica-
tion.
CC
"C
As to the alternative imputation of dishonesty, that is completely
answered by the same argument. That which has occurred in one
instance may possibly occur in others; and to accuse a man of pro-
fessing "principles he does not honestly believe," simply because his
experience differs from your own, is a mode of controversy which, when
translated into its synonymous expression, "you're a liar," is usually
ruled out of order, except, perhaps, in Parliament.
I write with all due respect for "R. B. C.," as will be shown by the
admission I here gladly make of my indebtedness to him on more
than one occasion for kindness and acts of professional courtesy. But
I really must take entire exception to his view that the "fundamental
law of homoeopathy "-the so-called "law of similars "-is "directly
at variance" with the principle "which is the guiding light of modern
medicine "-viz., "that it is the business of the physician to go behind
symptoms to the morbid changes which are underlying them." In my
opinion such a conclusion is a non sequitur.
Let us take cough, the instance adduced. How are we to distin-
guish between the different sources of coughs, and "go behind the
symptoms to the morbid changes which are underlying them," except
41
by studying the respective characters of the coughs? Take, for
instance, the "throat cough" to which "R. B. C." refers. Its charac-
ter is a sharp, dry, explosive bark, and its underlying condition is
irritation—i.e., disturbance of equilibrium of a special nerve supplied
to a particular portion of the throat. Now, assuming that there is a
drug capable of reproducing a cough with exactly those characters, it
is a fair inference that that drug does so by acting especially upon the
particular parts concerned. We are not, therefore, rejecting the
underlying morbid change-that is the cause of the cough-but
merely omitting a repetition of intermediary proved facts in a manner
familiar to every schoolboy through our friend Euclid.
As regards the trials of homoeopathy in France, I have only to
remark that I have heard-though I do not recollect details—that the
trials took place under most unfair conditions. In Bally's case, it is
urged, only incurable cases were given for experiment; in Andral's
that he was absolutely ignorant of the system he was trying. Under
any circumstances, as I am not a partisan trying to prove a case either
for or against the homeopaths, but merely pleading for fairness, I
think it only in accordance with "natural justice" to withhold my
opinion on those facts until I hear a reply, which I trust will be forth-
coming. One thing, however, strikes me. "R. B. C." quotes Andral
as stating that he had treated "about 130 or 140 patients" homœo-
pathically. Now I do not know if those are "R. B. C.'s" words or
Andral's. But if the latter, I should say that such an utter indifference
to the necessity for accuracy would make me seriously discount the
value of any evidence he might offer in regard to his treatment of those
cases.
In reference to the number of homoeopaths, of course, so long as
they have no chance of obtaining hospital appointments, of joining the
medical societies, or of mixing in professional intercourse with their
confrères, either on public occasions or at private consultations, they
are scarcely likely to be much heard of. Birds of a feather flock
together. The Bohemian whose associates are all of that ilk is quite
amazed when he finds some new acquaintance objects to lawn tennis
on Sundays or is shocked at a lady who smokes; while the respectable
"the river" one summer
member of country society who is taken up
Sunday afternoon is aghast to find himself surrounded with crowds of
people, apparently unconscious that they are doing anything unusual,
who ignore every conventional rule which he has been accustomed to
see regarded on all hands as beyond question.
Finally, “R. B. C.” knows me and I him. But the vast majority
of your readers probably do not pierce, as his confrères do, the veil of
his identity. Now my name was made public property in this contro-
versy through the action referred to by Lord Grimthorpe in his letter
on the 24th ult. That being so, I would ask "R. B. C.," does he
think his final insinuation (especially when made incognito), that I
sign my name out of desire for advertisement, either just or generous?
I think his well-known professional uprightness and courtesy justify
me in assuming that the last lines of his letter, at least, were written
without due reflection.
KENNETH MILLICAN.
42
PATERFAMILIAS ON HOMEOPATHY.
[Jan. 6.
Medical men, who have vested interests, should not be allowed to
have a monopoly of the interesting discussion raised in your columns,
and I hope you will allow a father of a family, who owes a great deal
to what is called homeopathy, to say a few words in its favour.
I have not a word to say in defence of the fanatical extravagance
which characterised the foundation of the homeopathic system, though
as an extreme rebellion against the barbarous old system of the
orthodox school of medicine it had its uses, just as the absurdities of
pre-Raphaelitism had in making painting more true to nature. But
the letters of R. B. C." and "J. C. B." are directed against extinct
absurdities, though I admit that they are right in condemning homoeo-
paths for not honestly repudiating extravagances which are now
neither believed in nor practised. But this should not prevent people
from feeling grateful to homœopaths for the great reform in medicine
which their attitude and the introduction of their excellent tinctures
have produced. From the success of homoeopathy the allopaths have
been shamed out of their barbarous system of violent dosing, "blood-
ing" and weakening formerly practised.
But parents have most reason to be grateful to homœopaths for the
introduction of an easy and simple system of treating the minor ail-
ments of themselves and their children. It is a great thing to have
tasteless tinctures in place of the abominably nasty drugs that I had
to take in my childhood. For an aperient, instead of a disgusting
dose of rhubarb or salts and senna, I can now take two or three drops
of tasteless bryonia; while for an inactive liver, in place of a violently
purging "blue pill," I can put myself right with a little mercurius or
hydrastis tincture. The great benefit of these mild medicines-mild
in the small but not infinitesimal doses in which they are administered
—is that they may be taken at the very beginning of a disorder, before
one would dream of going to a doctor. Thus many serious attacks
are staved off.
wh
In my childhood I nearly died of croup more than once, and I was
frequently attacked by it. Treated by an allopath, I was dosed with
antimony wine as an emetic; but he had nothing to give me to check
the first symptoms of croup-the croupy cough. Each of my five
children has been subject to croup, but not one has had a dangerous
attack, simply because aconitum or spongia has always been adminis-
tered when the first symptoms--the croupy sound in a cough—was
manifested.
An
One great cause of the anger of allopaths against homeopaths is
that the latter have "let out" professional secrets, and so spoilt trade.
The former would never have enabled me to keep a number of simple
remedies in the house, with instructions for their immediate use.
intelligent man can deal with many minor disturbances of his system
as well as some chronic ailments, when he once knows the medicine'
that suits him, as well as a doctor. At any rate he can do better by
using remedies which have benefited him before than by waiting till
he is seriously ill and then calling in his medical man. Few people
can afford the heavy bills which doctors now send in. If called in for
ever so slight an ailment the doctor makes several calls, and usually
43
charges at least 7s. 6d. a visit. Why, when gold has appreciated and
nearly everything else is much cheaper than it was, medical attention
should have risen greatly in cost I cannot tell; but this is an additional
reason for gratitude to homœopathy, which enables thousands of people
to save heavy doctors' bills.
PATERFAMILIAS.
MEISSONIER'S TESTIMONY.
[Jan. 6.
In the present controversy on this subject, you may, perhaps, in
your spirit of fairness, think the enclosed document worth publishing.
It has been in my possession for some time.
I was studying painting a few years ago with Meissonier, whose
valuable dog-which had been given to him by his great friend
Dumas-was struck with paralysis in its hind quarters; it had also its
neck twisted.
I had long studied homoeopathy for my own use, and my little
globules were the subject of much good-humoured fun to Meissonier
and his friends and family, who did not believe in them at all.
The dog in question was condemned to death by a great "vet.” in
Paris, who attended to Meissonier's very valuable horses, as will be seen
in the enclosed testimony. The same evening I was dining with him and
his family, and the dog was in the room-a subject of much lamenta-
tion-when, in his sudden and animated manner, he challenged me to
cure it with "my homoeopathy."
I accepted the challenge, and gave the dog at once in their presence
a single dose of Rhus Tox, of a rather high dilution.
The next morning I was at work with him alone in his garden
studio before breakfast, when his clever and energetic daughter came
rushing into the studio as if the house were on fire, crying out that
"the dog walked.”
We ran out of the studio-Meissonier with his brush in his mouth
and his large palette on his thumb, in his earnest eagerness about
everything that freshly caught his attention-and there was the
animal running about on its four legs as strongly as ever.
It still had its neck twisted, however, and I was much puzzled to
know how to proceed with my patient. I then perceived that its coat
was rough and staring. Here came in one of the great principles of
homoeopathy-that every symptom must be taken into account-and
the proper remedy at once suggested itself. I gave it two doses of
Arsenicum, 3 X.; the dog quite recovered, and is, I believe, alive and
well to this day.
A PUPIL OF MEISSONIER.
Messieurs Meissonier père et fils apprenant qu'on met en doute le
guérison d'une petite chienne condamnée à mort par les vétérinaires
de Paris, affirment que cette petite bête été radicalement guérie d'une
ettaque de paralysie extrêmement violente par leur ami
qui l'a traitée par l'homœopathie. Cette petite chienne de race tres-
pure va parfaitement bien et fait l'admiration de tous.
"E. MEISSONIER.
"CH. MEISSONIER, fils."
44
THE FACTS OF "R. B. C."
[Jan. 6.
Of the statements in "R. B. C.'s" long letter, which you published
yesterday, there is only one that I can check by my own knowledge;
and that one is incorrect. In his enumeration of the members of the
medical profession who have been in the forefront among the culti-
vators of pure science, "R. B. C." says "both the Darwins were
doctors." Obviously the phrase "both the Darwins" is intended to
include Charles Darwin, whose life we have all been reading. But
Charles Darwin was not a doctor. At the age of sixteen he was sent
to Edinburgh University to enter upon medical studies, but he found
them so distasteful that he abandoned them, and afterwards thought
of going into the Church ("Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,"
vol. i., pp. 36-45).
I conclude from this that "R. B. C.'s" facts cannot be safely relied
upon until they have been verified, in spite of his authoritative tone.
LAYMAN.
R. B. C. (2).
[Jan. 10.
In the letter on homeopathy which you did me the favour to publish
on the 4th inst., my object was merely "to explain, and to endeavour
to justify, the attitude of the medical profession towards homoeopathic
practitioners." I had no wish to engage in a controversy with homœo-
paths, and must decline to do so as far as any question which requires
medical knowledge for its determination is concerned. Neither the
arena nor the audience is fitted for such a purpose. I will, neverthe-
less, with your permission, refer briefly to certain points in the replies.
which my letter has called forth; and will also offer some remarks
upon a hitherto untouched aspect of the main question.
I must first penitently acknowledge, and thank " A Layman" for
pointing out, my error with regard to Charles Darwin, who appears
only to have commenced an education which I thought he had com-
pleted. I might, of course, have taken many medical philosophers for
the purpose of the illustration; and, as the name was a matter of
detail, not affecting the argument, I neglected to verify the impression
under which my hastily written letter was composed.
Ma
(6
Lord Grimthorpe is very hard upon me. He not only describes me
(I am glad to say, in excellent company) as a "bad reasoner," and
as absurd," but he attributes to me, by placing it between inverted
commas as a quotation, the word " orthodox," which my letter did
not contain. Fortunately, his lordship diminishes the force of his
denunciations by admitting that he is not acquainted with the subject.
on which he writes, as well as by furnishing the most unequivocal proofs
that this is really so, and that the admission is not the mere façon de
parler of an ingenuous modesty. He absolutely compares vaccination
to homœopathic medication. Now, the former neither produces small-
pox nor cures it, and the efficacy of vaccine virus, as of some analo-
gous products, is due to the presence of living elements, which increase
the dose by rapidly multiplying within the body. I have not heard
the presence of such elements claimed in the case of any medicine,
and it would have to be demonstrated, as well as claimed, before any
45
analogy with vaccination could be admitted. Moreover, the vaccine
virus, as well as the poison of a snake or of a wasp, and also, I pre-
sume, of a tsetze fly, is inserted in a visible and appreciable quantity,
which bears no relation to the small doses of homoeopathy.
""
Lord Grimthorpe tells us that homeopathic medicine is "secretly
prescribed" by doctors. May I ask how that is possible? A prescrip-
tion is a written document which cannot be “secret,” which is usually
preserved by the patient, and always, in the form of a copy, by the
dispenser. Again, the phrase "homeopathic medicine" has no par-
ticular meaning. A medicine may be described as "homoeopathic
on one of two grounds-either because it is given in what is commonly
called a homœopathic dose, or because it has been selected for the
patient on homoeopathic principles. No medicine is homoeopathic "
by reason of any inherent quality which it possesses, and there is no
medicine which I should hesitate to prescribe if I thought it would be
useful to my patient. If Lord Grimthorpe means that doctors pre-
scribe in homœopathic doses, or on homeopathic principles, I shall
deny the truth of the assertion until he has produced the prescription
in evidence.
،
I do not think I need defend the Council of the Royal Society against
Lord Grimthorpe, nor that I need follow him through the statistics.
which he has culled, as I gather, from homoeopathic pamphlets intended
for popular circulation. Nor need I do more than point out that his
objection to Andral's experiments, merely on the ground that they were
conducted fifty-two years ago, would condemn us, if it were valid, to a
perpetual re-opening of settled questions. I may say, for the informa-
tion of Mr. Millican, that the account which I gave was quoted ver-
batim from an English contemporary translation of the minutes of the
The
Academy, but the word "about" was a misprint for "above."
actual report of the committee would probably give the precise number
of patients, and I confess it struck me as an evidence of Andral's
exactitude that, being possibly doubtful as to one or two, he did not
give a precise number in his verbal communication. It is at least
certain that the experiments were satisfactory to the members of the
Academy, whose decision is reported to have been unanimous; and it
is inconceivable, if the Parisian homeopaths of that day could have
urged any plausible objection against what had been done, that they
would have failed to urge it at the time, and in arrest of the judg-
ment which was delivered against them. The Academy must have
contained many members who would have shrunk from incurring any
suspicion of unfairness.
I have been reproached both by Lord Grimthorpe and by Dr.
Dudgeon, for repeating the common belief that homoeopathic globules
(and, I may add, tinctures) do not contain, in their so-called higher
potencies, any of the several medicines after which they are respec-
tively named. I will speak presently of the evidence, but would first
invite attention to the inquiry whether the supposed "attenuations"
are possible. The answer manifestly depends upon the number of
portions or pieces into which a grain of solid or a drop of fluid is
physically divisible.
Perhaps the finest division of solids known to pharmacy is that
which exists in "Dover's Powder." This preparation consists of one
46
part of solid opium, one part of ipecacuanha, and eight parts of
sulphate of potash. The sulphate is in the form of very hard, sharp
crystals, which are most efficient grinding agents; and the three
ingredients are rubbed or ground together for a long time, until they
are converted into an impalpable powder of uniform tint. Samples
of this powder have been examined for me by Mr. Brownen, F.C.S.,
whose skill in all pharmaceutical matters is well known, and he
reports that the individual particles vary in magnitude from the 110th
to the 600th of an inch in diameter. The smallest particles would
be those of sulphate of potash, but let us take the mean, 350th of an
inch, as the average size of the opium particles; 122,500 of such
particles would cover a square inch, and I should conjecture that two
layers of them of this extent would weigh a grain. If so, we have
245,000 particles of opium in the grain. We add to these 99 grains.
of sugar of milk, and triturate the prescribed number of times.
Assuming, which is a very large assumption, that the admixture of
the two powders is complete, a grain of the result would contain 2,450
particles of opium. This grain is added to a further 99 grains of
sugar; and each grain of the mixture should then contain 24 particles
and half a particle (how is the half particle to be obtained ?) of opium.
Such a grain added to 99 grains more of sugar will contain enough
opium particles to supply 24 grains of the result with a particle each,
while the other 76 grains will be left destitute. This will be the third
so-called attenuation, which is supposed to leave in the material of
each globule a millionth of a grain of the medicine; but which, if
the medicine can only be divided into a quarter of a million of pieces,
can only furnish one globule out of four with a dose of four times the
presumed quantity.
In the case of fluids we have less definite guidance, and it is
impossible to say to what extent a drop of spirit and water,
holding some medicinal matter in suspension or solution, may be
split up and distributed by admixture with a larger bulk. The
apparently equal division of colour, which occurs when a drop of
carmine solution or of blood is added to a pint or so of water, is of
no value as a test, because the structure of the eye renders what, in
relation to the subject before us, would be only a coarse mottling
quite undistinguishable from uniformity. The colour of human blood,
for example, is due to the suspension in fluid of red disc-like particles,
which individually measure from the 3,000th to the 5,000th of an inch
in diameter, and have an average thickness of the 10,000th of an
inch. The most minute artificial division into particles of which we
have any knowledge is that which exists in fatty emulsions, as
naturally in milk, the white colour of which is due to suspended fat
globules. Mr. Brownen tells me that the finest known division of
fat in an emulsion gives particles ranging in diameter from the 20,000th
to the 30,000th of an inch; but a particle of medicine of the 30,000th
of an inch in diameter would far more than suffice, on homœopathic
principles, to medicate the combined Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In
the absence of exact knowledge, we may, in the words of South, avail
ourselves of the expedients by which reason supplies the want of the
reports of sense; and it is obvious that the finest conceivable division
of a drop of fluid must be into the molecules of which it is composed.
47
I speak from recollection, when I say that Sir William Thompson has
lately endeavoured to give a notion of the probable size of the mole-
cules of water, by saying that, if a drop of water were magnified to the
size of the earth, the individual molecules would appear to be some-
thing between cricket balls and cannon balls. Let us suppose them
to be spheres 3 in. in diameter. A cubic foot would contain 61 of
such spheres, and the earth contains approximately 4,000,000,000 of
cubic feet. Hence, on the scale supposed, the molecules in a drop of
water would be 256 thousand millions in number, or 256 followed by
nine O's. That is, they would be only 6,000,000 more than a quarter
of a billion, and their total number would fall short of a decillion,
which is expressed by unity followed by 60 O's, by no less than 49
places of figures! A division into millionths of a drop is therefore
conceivable; but a division into billionths, a favourite homœopathic
quantity, would require the splitting up of each molecule into four
parts—that is, its separation into its constituent atoms-with corre-
sponding loss of its identity. It must be remembered, moreover, that
the possible millionth is only predicable of the drop itself, and not at
all of the medication of which it is the carrier or menstruum. I think
these considerations show that the supposed homoeopathic divisions
are unattainable; and therefore render superfluous such calculations
as those of Sir James Simpson, who showed that, if a man had to
take a grain of medicine divided into billionths, each of which was con-
tained in a globule, he would have to swallow one globule every second,
night and day without ceasing, for 30,000 years in order to accom-
plish his task.
Having thus assigned reasons for believing the supposed attenua-
tions to be impossible, I shall perhaps be pardoned for also assigning
reasons for the belief that they are not even attempted. Several
years ago, I was in conversation with a very scrupulous and conscien-
tious man, a chemist in a provincial town, who kept a stock of homœo-
pathic medicines for any customers who might wish to purchase
them. He told me that he had recently engaged an assistant, a
qualified chemist and a member of the Pharmaceutical Society, who
had been employed, before coming to him, in the business of well-
known homoeopathic chemists in London. On the very morning of
our conversation, a lady came into my informant's shop, and asked him
for certain globules. He expressed regret that he had none left of
this particular kind, but undertook to telegraph to London and to
have a supply sent down by an early train. As soon as the lady left
the shop, the new assistant expostulated with his employer, and
assured him that where he had been there was no difference between
the globules, but that they were sent from the manufacturers in bulk,
and were used to refill any bottles which happened to be getting low.
My informant was greatly shocked, and told me the story on account
of the strong impression which it made upon his mind. In the
Medical Times for 1858 there is an editorial paragraph to the effect
that a patient, described as being, at the time of writing, a "respect-
able man,” had told his doctor that he had formerly been a manufac-
turer of globules to a renowned London homeopath, who made
enormous profits by retailing chests of these globules to his patients,
at prices ranging from two to twelve guineas. In these chests the
48
globules were contained in many bottles differently labelled, and pre-
cise directions were given for their use. The sometime manufacturer
positively asserted that no medicine of any kind was put into any of
them; but that, however labelled, they consisted only of sugar of
milk. He added that he gave up the business because he was ashamed
of lending himself to it. In the same volume, in the number for the
following week, a correspondent writes that he was consulted by a
young man, who described himself as a confectioner. Being asked
the nature of his work, the patient replied that he had been engaged
for a considerable time in manufacturing globules for the homœo-
pathic chemists in London. He said that these globules were made
exclusively of sugar of milk, which was run through a sieve in a
state of fusion, and that he had never known any medicinal ingredient
to be added to them. He further said that no such addition was
possible, for that, as soon as the globules left his hands, or as soon
as they were dry, they were put into bottles for homoeopathic medicine.
chests. He ultimately presented the writer of the letter with speci-
mens of his handiwork, in about thirty bottles, labelled as aconite,
mercurius, lobelia, ignatia, nux, pulsatilla, camomilla, and so forth.
I cannot find that these statements were denied or questioned when
they were published; and if we remember known facts with reference
to adulteration, which, at least, on a large scale, can only be practised
by people whose prosperity would seem to entitle them to be called
("
respectable," I do not think it incredible that globule manufacturers
should be guilty of an omission which it would be absolutely impos-
sible for their customers to detect. The "mother tinctures," as they
are called, of the homoeopaths are so strong as to be, in many in-
stances, very dangerous poisons; but in the professed dilutions,
whether tinctures or globules, the most refined methods of analysis
fail to discover any trace of the matters which they are alleged to
contain. The results of some examinations by Mr. Brownen on this
point were read before the Medical Society of London in 1876 by Dr.
Farquharson, M.P.
The public, sir, are, and must remain, absolutely unable to judge
of the value of the technical arguments, whether in medical science
or in any other; and the best thing they can do is to select their
advisers with the greatest possible care, and then to trust them im-
plicitly. But I can assure them that what is called the "law of
similars" by persons who are, it seems to me, imperfectly acquainted
with the meaning of common English words is at least as old as the
time of Hippocrates, that it is well understood in the medical pro-
fession, and that it is regarded by competent judges as a grotesque
exaggeration of a few facts which have, no doubt, their place in
medicine, but which are only susceptible of very restricted applica-
tion. It is on these few facts, however, and on the admitted readiness
of some homœopaths to throw overboard, in the presence of any danger,
the practice of infinitesimal dosing which Hahnemann regarded as
essential, that the whole system of homoeopathy, or what remains of
it, is based; and the result affords an apt illustration of the truth of
Lord Tennyson's lines:-
"A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright,
But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight."
49
I venture to think that the so-called law "received a deadly blow in your
leading article of the 4th inst., in which, replying to my objection
that the symptom supposed to be caused by a drug has really nothing
in common with the disease which the drug is used to cure, you say,
"Perhaps not, but what does it matter?" Surely it matters thus
far, that, if an unreal similarity leads the prescriber to a right selection
of medicine, a real similarity would lead him to a wrong selection.
From this dilemma I can perceive no way of escape; and if there be
none, what becomes of the "law of similars"?
I am glad to see that no one has attempted to dispute my account
of the intellectual barrenness of homeopaths; and this barrenness
is as manifest within their profession as beyond it. Medical science
finds ample scope for non-contentious work, in anatomy, in pathology
(which some of your correspondents say they study), in physiology, in
diagnosis. The homeopaths have had nearly a century of opportunity,
during which these departments of learning have been assiduously
cultivated and rapidly growing; but the homeopaths have done
nothing for their advancement. Not one fact, still less one principle,
have they contributed to the sum of our scientific progress. If any one
of them would write a scientific book, containing a rational argument
resting upon facts carefully observed and properly recorded, such a
book would command the careful attention of the profession, who are
anxious to learn, and who can have no other desire than to cure their
patients as quickly and as completely as possible. But the so-called
homœopathic literature, so far as I have seen it, consists of pseudo-
scientific jargon, addressed to the credulity of the vulgar; and this
circumstance, perhaps more than any other, accounts for the low
estimation in which the authors are held by regular practitioners.
Minds accustomed to the reasonings of Hunter and Brodie, of Baillie
and Watson, cannot tolerate the pamphlets from which Lord Grim-
thorpe is content to derive what he fancies to be information.
With regard to the relative value of pathology and of symptoms as
guides in the selection of remedies, I think some non-medical readers
may understand, although Lord Grimthorpe cannot, that a method
which rests upon the intimate nature of morbid action contains within
itself the seeds of constant progress and improvement, as this intimate
nature is constantly more and more disclosed by observation and
experiment. A method which rests only on external appearances
must be condemned, in the nature of things, to remain stationary,
unless these appearances themselves undergo alteration.
Dr. Dudgeon attempts to correct me with regard to Hahnemann's
knowledge of the itch insect. Hahnemann could scarcely be ignorant
that the existence of such an insect had been surmised by Avicenna
in the tenth century, by St. Hildegard of Bingen in the twelfth, by
Ambrose Paré in the sixteenth, and by several writers-Bonomo,
de Geer, and others, at later periods. But its existence was not made
known, either by Hahnemann or anyone else, until 1834, when it
was demonstrated by M. Renucci, in Alibort's clinique at the Hôpital
St. Louis. Renucci showed its exact place of abode in the eruption,
and how at any time it might be picked out with the point of a needle;
but he, strange to say, had derived his knowledge from peasant women
in Corsica. His demonstrations afforded one of the sights of the day
E
50
in Paris, but some time had still to elapse before the insect was uni-
versally admitted to be the invariable and only cause of the disease.
(6
The story of Meissonier's dog is almost too funny, but the moral to
be drawn from it could not be determined without more precise
knowledge of the facts. "Vets.," even great" ones, like other
people, are liable to error, and dogs are subject to rheumatic affections
of their muscles, from which they speedily recover under the influence
of warmth and rest. But the case reminds me of another, in which a
young lady suffering severely from toothache went with her aunt into a
pleasant and sunny garden, while her mother prepared, and eventually
sent after her, a homeopathic globule, which, doubtless, like that
of Meissonier's pupil, was of "a rather high dilution." It was dis-
solved in a half tumbler of water, and the solution was to be taken
by teaspoonfuls at short intervals. The patient presently returned to
the house completely relieved of pain, and her mother exclaimed, "I
was sure the medicine would cure you.” "Yes, mamma," was the
reply, "but I threw it over a gooseberry bush!
""
Mr. Millican, whose courteous mention of me I am bound to
acknowledge, objects to my reference to an advertisement. Surely
the word can have no application to him, for his name was published
first in a law report, then by Lord Grimthorpe, and was throughout
of the essence of the question. If he thought fit to write at all, and
on this point he was the only proper judge, he was bound to write
over his signature. But he knows as well as I do that the most
highly-esteemed members of the medical profession avoid rather than
seek publicity. Their feelings on the subject may arise from prejudice;
but, if so, it is a prejudice which originates in self-respect and has a
tendency to cling to gentlemen.
R. B. C.
“J. C. B.” (2).
[Jan. 10.
In analogical reasoning Lord Grimthorpe does not improve. Aban-
doning without a struggle the misleading comparison which he insti-
tuted between the conduct of doctors in declining to consult with
homœopaths and a hypothetical line of conduct on the part of the Bar,
he now suggests a parallel which is still more untenable, and, indeed,
startling. Because a grain of mustard seed, which is less than all
seeds, when it is sown, groweth up and becometh greater than all
herbs, therefore a single brick can build a house. That is, in all fair-
ness, the argument with which Lord Grimthorpe, an eminent lawyer,
a self-satisfied logician, "shut up " a medical practitioner, who perhaps
thought it well to avoid discussion with so eccentric a dialectician,
and which he now gravely submits to the readers of The Times. Because
an exceedingly small amount of vaccine lymph which is charged with
living organisms capable of indefinite multiplication can "do the busi-
ness in protecting against small-pox, therefore a globule containing
a decillionth of arsenicum, which can never be more than a decillionth,
can do the business" in curing intermittent fever. Vaccination is,
according to Lord Grimthorpe, "a purely homoeopathic procedure.
The beneficent discovery of Jenner-as sound a practitioner as ever
lived-published in 1798 is to be ascribed to a portentous impostor
""
77
51
who gave to the world a concoction of nonsense in 1810, or we are to
believe that the action of bacteria which permeate the blood and tissues,
in exhausting the soil in which they grow, or in producing a chemical
substance, or poison (a contrary), inimical to a second invasion of the
same organism, is an illustration of the great and universal law,
similia similibus curantur. Lord Grimthorpe ought not to require to be
told that the vaccine lymph with which he was vaccinated was an
adequate dose of a very potent agent, and not in any sense a homœo-
pathic attenuation; that it was loaded with germs which were fruitful
and multiplied and replenished his system, and made him very uncom-
fortable while doing so; and that the vesicle which formed on his arm
contained some drops of lymph rich in the same germs, which might
by cultivation have leavened the dough of British babydom for genera-
tions to come, had it been deemed prudent to draw a lymph supply
from so irritable a source. He wants to know the size of the micro-
parasites in disease. Well, they are colossal when compared to the
decillionth of a grain, and although small in contrast to a hen's egg,
yet many of them admit of being measured. But it is not so much the
size as the number and prolificness of these micro-organisms that is
important, and there can be no question that they are present during
many acute diseases in swarms and hordes which, could they be
strained from the blood and tissues, would make a very appreciable
bulk. They are, at all events, absolutely incomparable to the decillionth
of arsenicum in Lord Grimthorpe's pet pilule, which is, as he
swallows it,
-
"Like the snow-falls on the river,
One moment white, then melts for ever,"
and which cannot increase its dimensions or reproduce its kind.
Some time ago a powder, one of a number prescribed by a homœo-
path in London for a lady who died under his care, was forwarded by
her friends, who were anxious to ascertain what she had been taking,
to Dr. Stevenson, of Guy's Hospital. After a delicate analysis that
eminent chemist reported, "I can find nothing but sugar of milk."
And this it is that doctors are asked to investigate, the effects of
nothing. There may have been in the powder a decillionth of some-
thing, but to the chemist, the physiologist, and the pharmacologist it
was practically non-existent; and yet this freedom-loving peer, Lord
Grimthorpe, will insist that doctors should waste their time in testing
speculations as to the effects of this problematical decillionth, in sup-
port of which not an atom of trustworthy evidence can be adduced.
I em surprised he does not propose that the Meteorological Department
should undertake an exhaustive inquiry into the protective influence of
cauls, the life-saving efficacy of which is a matter of ancient faith, is
attested by many remarkable experiences, and is still widely credited
by our seafaring population.
Confronted by grave imputations on the honesty of homoeopathy as
a system, and on the good faith of some of those who practise it-
imputations which have not been lightly made and which can be sub-
stantiated- -no better answer occurs to Lord Grimthorpe than an off-
hand tu quoque. He does not deny that large quantities of homoeo-
pathic globules are sold containing no particle of the medicaments.
after which they are named, but he affirms as a rejoinder, on the
52
authority of a leading but anonymous druggist, that doctors are in
the habit of prescribing secretly for their patients various Hahnemann
medicines. I felt sure that assertion was a baseless calumny, and I
have to-day made inquiries in connection with it of four firms of Lon-
don druggists of the highest standing-viz., Savory and Moore, Bell
& Co., Corbyn & Co., and Squire. They unanimously and unhesitat-
ingly declare that Lord Grimthorpe has been grossly imposed on.
They have known no instances in which doctors have ordered homoeo-
pathic drugs in homœopathic doses, but they have known many—and
this fact is particularly commended to Lord Grimthorpe's notice (it
was mentioned before, but he ignored it)-in which homoeopaths have
prescribed for their patients powerful drugs in the ordinary doses.
The head of a leading drug firm in Liverpool (Mr. Abram), to whom
Lord Grimthorpe's letter has been submitted, bears testimony to
exactly the same effect. He scouts the idea that doctors meddle with
helpless globules, and adds that he has not infrequently been applied
to by homœopathic chemists for ordinary drugs in quantities which
precluded the notion that they were going to be homeopathically
employed. And not only do homoeopaths give ordinary doses of
ordinary drugs to their patients, but they take the same themselves
when the occasion demands. I can say of my own knowledge that
homoeopaths when attacked by dangerous illness are not slow in asking
an orthodox doctor's aid, and that they swallow with the utmost
docility and without protest the anything but homœopathic pills and
potions recommended to them.
If Lord Grimthorpe has not already misgivings as to the honesty of
the homeopathic fraternity, he will, I am satisfied, be shortly
awakened on the subject by the exposure of the falsity of the state-
ments with which they are cramming him, and for which he is some-
what recklessly making himself responsible. Again leaning on a
homoeopathic pamphlet, he tells us that there are 11,000 homoeopathic
practitioners in America. Now it will take a little time to refute that
bold announcement, more especially as "America" is a vague term;
but, including in America everything from Cape Horn to Cape
Columbia, I am certain it is a monstrous exaggeration. In the mean-
time I can furnish him with some facts which can be supported, and
which will perhaps induce him to receive henceforth with more caution
the mendacious tracts and instructions with which he is being so
copiously supplied. The Scotch are a clear-headed and practical
people. Well, a reliable authority informs me that there are 2,000
registered medical men in Scotland, and that one may count the
homœopaths among these upon the fingers. The Irish, on the other
hand, are an impulsive and imaginative people, but they have
apparently no taste for the home rule of the pilule, for homœopathy
has, I am assured, no hold on them. There are in England, Scotland,
and Ireland, according to the Homeopathic Medical Directory, 278
homoeopathic practitioners. And yet Lord Grimthorpe was put up to
tell us that there are 10,000 in England alone.
Indignant with one of his critics, because he has quoted a 52-year-
old dictum of the illustrious Andral, Lord Grimthorpe immediately
adduces some 37-year-old statistics, by nobody in particular, to illus-
trate the success of homeopathic practice. But his statistics are
53
ཛ
+
worthless, and do not, in the bald shape in which he brings them for-
ward, admit of serious consideration. It would be the height of
rashness to draw conclusions from the death rates, more than the
third of a century ago, in hospitals of the sanitary state and manage-
ment of which we know nothing, and under different kinds of treatment
which are not detailed. The mortality in hospitals and many other
institutions was at that time high when compared with the rates now
prevalent, and the difference between the death rates in similar insti-
tutions was far greater than we are now accustomed to. But accept-
ing the statistics as they stand, it does not follow that they redound
in any way to the credit of homoeopathy. Take pneumonia, for
example. In that disease, says Lord Grimthorpe, the mortality under
allopathic treatment was 25.5 per cent., and under homeopathic 5·7.
But at the very same period, as has been shown by Professor Bennett,
the mortality from pneumonia fell in the Royal Infirmary of Edin-
burgh from 33.3 to 2.5 per cent. in consequence of the substitution of
rational for heroic treatment. The allopathic treatment of the
disease in Edinburgh gave far more favourable results than the
vaunted homœopathic treatment of it in Vienna.
>>
We need not feel surprised, however, should homeopathic hospitals
invariably give lower death rates than ordinary hospitals, for they are
certain to be resorted to by a less serious class of cases. Homœo-
pathy is the creed of those who suffer from minor maladies, and culti-
vate elegant varieties of invalidism. No doubt it meets a want
among the idle and frivolous. Medical instincts are deep-rooted, and
range from the cat that eats grass up to lordly intellects like that of
Bacon, who had such implicit faith in a pinch of nitre.
"All men,'
says Carlyle," are born hypochondriacs," and there are certainly few
women who do not feel an interest in medication. To a number of
hypochondriacal manifestations homeopathy ministers well enough,
and in the hands of amateur doctresses its remedies are less hazar-
dous than calomel and laudanum. But it is, for the most part,
moderately healthy men and women who amuse themselves with airy
nothings. Of course a drowning man will catch at a straw if there
is nothing else handy, but he will prefer a life belt if there be one
within reach, and it is a matter of daily occurrence that those who
have toyed with homeopathy, when there was little or nothing the
matter, turn to orthodox medicine when they find themselves in real
jeopardy, and it may well be, therefore, that homoeopaths seldom lose
a patient by death.
After all, however, we are reminded in our discussion with homeo-
paths that the empirical test is the ultimate and conclusive one, and
by that test orthodox medicine may be content to abide, for it is
accepted and approved after trial by vast majorities in every civilized
country. People will take the medicine that does them good. Yes,
but they should be quite sure that it does do them good. There was
a pathetic picture in Punch a little while ago of a fever-stricken gamin
turning on his bed and with a grateful smile_exclaiming to the physi-
cian who had just taken his temperature, "Thank ye, doctor, that's
done me a power o' good." And most homoeopathic remedies do good
in this way. They are as inert as the thermometer, but they create
the expectation of relief, and a feeling of relief sometimes follows.
54
But in the treatment of disease the immediate and the ultimate good
are not necessarily identical, and instantaneous relief is not always
compatible with permanent cure. Lord Grimthorpe is in such haste
to be cured that he will not wait even a few minutes for examination
or inquiry as to the nature or origin of his illness.
Stop my
cough!" he shouts peremptorily. But to stop his cough might under
certain circumstances be to imperil his life, and it is only by tracing
that symptom back to its pathological cause that we can prescribe for
him with the hope of permanent benefit. And here we see a beautiful
instance of the law of compensation in homoeopathy, how the prin-
ciple of infinitesimals neutralises, as it were, the principle of similia
similibus curantur. Dispensing as homeopaths do with anatomy,
physiology, and pathology, and treating a list of morbid symptoms by
a list of drugs, they might play havoc were it not that their drugs are
harmless and even powerless. It is no exaggeration to say that
homœopaths dispense with pathology, for Dr. Dyce Brown tells us that
while they take a sort of speculative interest in it they refuse to be
guided by it when it comes to treatment. Neither is it an exaggeration
to say that their drugs are frequently powerless, for the same authority
holds that a decillionth is an attenuation which they could not do
without. They still treat symptoms and follow that blind empiricism
which is the very thing deprecated in the passages quoted by Lord
Grimthorpe from Sir Benjamin Brodie and other eminent members of
the medical profession. Scientific medicine labours to extricate her-
self from empiricism. Homœopathy glories in sinking deeper into it.
The old days when a drug might be added to the Pharmacopoeia
because So-and-so had found it useful in such-and-such cases are past
for ever.
Strict tests, varied observations, minute experiments are
exacted before any new remedy is allowed to pass muster, and I should
not be surprised if we found that there dropped out of our text-books
in the future such disputable statements as that small doses of ipeca-
cuanha are useful in vomiting, although the omission of that particular
statement would be almost cruel, such a course of consolation has it
been to our homeopathic wanderers.
Too much consideration has, I think, been conceded to homeopathy,
and when the final judgment of medical science is passed on it, that
will, in all likelihood, be that it has been an unmixed evil from first
to last. It is not, I maintain, entitled to the credit sometimes
bestowed on it for having contributed to the change which has taken
place in the treatment of disease-a change from a heroic to a milder
system. That change has been wrought by the spirit of modern
rationalism, and it would have occurred all the same had Hahnemann
never lived. The late Professor Hughes Bennett, of Edinburgh, d'1
more by his vigorous scepticism and trenchant criticism to reform
medical practice and teach the curative power of nature, the import-
ance of diet and regimen, and the hurtfulness of the excessive admini-
stration of powerful drugs than all the homeopaths who have ever
prescribed globules. And as he did this and gave life and brilliance
to the Edinburgh school, there was in an adjoining class-room that
Professor Henderson alluded to by Dr. Dudgeon in his letter to you as
a pillar and ornament of homeopathy, who, smitten with that bligat
and barrenness which fall on all who walk in the shadow of Hahr e-
66
55
mann, was content to go on delivering dreary lectures on stale path-
ology, suppressing those opinions which were, he said, his guides in
private practice.
Dr. Dudgeon would have us believe that Hahnemann's "Organon
was the result of long study and research. How these homœopaths
disagree among themselves! I met one of them in a hotel a few
years ago who told me that this "Organon," which he carried about
with him in ecclesiastical binding and treated with such reverence,
was the offspring of direct inspiration. No unaided human mind, he
said, could have attained to the height of its great argument, and it
was certain that a revelation had been vouchsafed to its author. This
gentleman further confided to me that the most recent advance in
homœopathy was the discovery that lycopodium (the spores of the
club-moss, a common coating for pills) is the cure for pneumonia.
Lycopodium, he explained, causes flapping of the nostrils, flapping of
the nostrils is the characteristic symptom in that disease, and small
I told him that
doses of lycopodium are, therefore, its certain cure.
his reasoning was remarkable, and that I saw only three difficulties in
connection with it, the first being that lycopodium will not cause
dapping of the nostrils unless taken as snuff, the second that flapping
of the nostrils is not the characteristic symptom in pneumonia, and
the third that the man who trusted entirely to lycopodium in the
treatment of pneumonia would, in my estimation, be little short of a
criminal.
""
In concluding, I would say that the way in which the name of Dr.
Lauder Brunton has been imported into this controversy seems to me.
slightly disingenuous. The references made to him are calculated to
create the impression that he is half a convert to homeopathy, or, at
least, regards it with some favour. By the error of a copyist the
names of one or two homœopathic remedies found their way into the
index of diseases in the first edition of is great and admirable work
in pharmacology and therapeutics (they have been expunged from the
second and third editions), and by virtue of his generous disposition
he spoke of homoeopaths with more forbearance and less acerbity than
they were entitled to expect in such a book. But Dr. Lauder Brun-
ton's attitude towards homoeopaths is that of his profession. He
refers to their system as quackery, speaks of the falsity of their claims,
and of the utterly erroneous nature of Hahnemann's conclusions, and
he has had the honour of being roundly abused in The Homeopathic
Review of June last.
J. C. B.
DR. THUDICHUM (2).
[Jan. 10.
I cannot allow Lord Grimthorpe and Mr. Millican to misdirect, as
they have done, the issue of Sir James Simpson's ipecacuanha story.
I excluded entirely the discussion of the question of the therapeutical
value of this root. The record was quoted to prove this, namely, what
became of a scientific fact after it had been four times manipulated
by representative homeopathic writers.
The above-named correspondents also direct what they, perhaps,
conceive to be sarcasm at the ipecacuanha story, the one by alluding
56
to its age, the other by terming it "medieval." It is evident that
neither of them is aware that the original proposition underlying it
comes from Samuel Hahnemann himself, and was published in 1796
in "Hufeland's Journal of Practical Medicine," Vol. II., p. 503. It
is strictly limited to "chronic tendency to vomiting without matter."
"In such cases," says Hahnemann, "one gives it" (namely, the
ipecacuanha)" in very small doses to excite more frequent retching,
and by this artificially excited symptom of more frequent retching, the
original symptom-namely, retching or vomiting without matter-is
said to be gradually cured. Again, I expressly exclude the discussion
of the question of fact.
>"
The nature of the materials upon which some of your homeopathist
correspondents rely to put forth their case may be seen from the fol-
lowing: One quotes a number of names of otherwise obscure
professors of pathology, who were practitioners of homoeopathy, and
amongst them that of Rapp of Tübingen. Now Rapp was professor
of clinical medicine and physician to the University Hospital at Tübin-
gen more than thirty years ago. As I have myself heard him lecture
in his clinic, I know that he both practised and taught homoeopathy
after the pattern of Hahnemann. The effect of this upon the medical
faculty and school was such that, in order to save both from destruc-
tion, the Würtemberg Government found itself obliged to remove Dr.
Rapp from his professorship and from Tübingen. This historical
lesson should be closely studied by those who want us, by persuasion.
or compulsion, to admit homoeopaths to our public institutions.
K
The allegation that homeopaths had not received fair treatment
can only be made by one who is unacquainted with medical litera-
ture. The first forty volumes of Hufeland's Journal contain
fourteen papers from the pen of Hahnemann, including one written
at the request of Hufeland himself. Homœopaths were not ex-
pelled by the medical profession; but, as a contemporary says truly,
they broke away from the profession, and became schismatic by their
own act and choice. At first thousands of German physicians
accepted Hahnemann's propositions regarding the prevention and cure
of scarlet fever. When the treatment failed either to prevent or cure,
they justly reproached him with having misled them. His answer,
coming nine years after the first friendly challenge of Hufeland, and
seven years after the epidemic which excited the greatest clamour,
stands recorded in Hufeland's Journal, 1806, vol. xxiv., p. 139. He
invented a new disease, which no physician had seen before or has
seen since, called it "Purpurfriesel," or purple miliaria, and accused
physicians at large of having mistaken this for scarlatina. In this
forged miliaria he admitted his preventive and curative treatment
for scarlatina to be quite powerless, and, what is still more significant,
he never gave any advice either for its prevention or its cure.
66
In this paper
our master," as homœopaths are wont to call him,
says, .c., p. 145:-"My heart is free from deception." "I burst-
publicly, I confess it, into an invective, the violence of which I have
long since repented." And then comes the result of the repentance,
which he calls "apology." 'My colleagues have been prevented from
doing me justice, not by a base heart, but by a confusion." Such
an apology after a forgery shows an ingenuousness which cannot be
easily ruined.
66
57
But this man had carried on, since 1795, an anonymous warfare
against the medical profession, under the græculising name of Arke-
silas, in letters directed to Ekdemus, notably in The New German
Mercury, which became so violent that Wieland, its editor, refused to
insert any more of these attacks. The "Lachesis was then dis-
pensed in other newspapers, but it lasted forty years before the medical
profession finally resolved to keep its revilers at a distance, and full
sixty before the last of the notable ones among them was, as above
related, removed from the last clinical chair they ever held.
Those of your correspondents who would wait to see whether I and
my colleagues at the Queen's Jubilee Hospital were the spokesmen of
the medical profession have probably taken notice of the endorsement
which these views and principles of action have received in the corre-
spondence in your columns and the entire medical press. As one of
these endorsements proceeds from a member of the Medical Council,
it may be considered to be sufficiently representative of the medical
profession.
""
Mr. Millican must be gratified to see his services to homoeopathists
so rapidly appreciated by them that his admirers have started a public
subscription list, now in print before me, the proceeds of which are to
be presented to him as an indemnity or testimonial.
J. L. W. THUDICHUM, M.D.
DR. J. H. CLARKE.
[Jan. 10.
When a writer who "absolutely disclaims the imputation of odium
medicum" goes on to air loftily his scorn for a certain section of his medi-
cal brethren, saying that he regards them as if they were inhabitants of a
different planet from that which he adorns, we are constrained to ask
whether there is much to choose between odium medicum and contemptio
medica; and when the same writer speaks of these same members of
the profession-men who have studied in the same schools, passed
through the same course of training, and taken the same degrees as
himself as being "practically" not members of the profession at all,
we know exactly how much value to attach to his impartiality and to
the opinion he may confide to an expectant world on the principles
and practice of those "inferior persons."
To one who, like myself, has practised both allopathically and
homoeopathically, the letter of your correspondent "R. B. C." affords
no little amusement. It has been said that a controversialist, to be
successful, should know his opponent's side of the case better than his
opponent himself. "R. B. C.'s" special qualification for discussing
homœopathy seems to be that he knows neither his opponent's side
nor his own; and it is most entertaining to see him, wrapped in the
mantle of his towering scorn, deliver himself of an account of
homœopathy evolved, apparently, "from his own moral (or immoral)
consciousness."
It must be a comfort to all allopathists, whose greatest dread is to
know what homeopathy really is, to read, on the high authority of
"R. B. C." (whose initials must, he seems to think, be known and
cherished by every professional allopathist), what homeopathy is,
58
44
properly speaking." But his account is not likely to delude any
unprejudiced person-as your admirably judicious leader shows, Sir,
that it has not deluded yourself. "R. B. C.'s" "properly speaking
account of homoeopathy is just as much like the true account as the
distorted image in a much-curved mirror is like the face looking into it.
""
To set forth in the light of truth the facts distorted in the con-
temptuous mirror of "R. B. C.'s" mind would require a longer space.
than I could hope to be allowed. But I trust, Sir, you will let me
advise your readers to go to those who know something about homœo-
pathy and its founder if they want to ascertain the truth, and not to
opponents of the mental cast of "R. B. C."
1
"R. B. C." states that Hahnemann's discovery was not the fruit
of study or research." It is hard to conceive that a writer to The
Times can be ignorant of the absolute falseness of this statement.
Hahnemann was for years engaged in study and research in reference
to his method before he made his discovery known to the world. How
he was led by his studies to hit upon the idea, how he worked at it
until it became a practical guide to prescribing are matters of history,
which all the contempt in the world cannot affect in the slightest degree.
66
Hahnemann found that cinchona bark not only cured ague but
produced in himself and others, when taken in health, a train of
symptoms hardly distinguishable from ague. This observation has
since been abundantly confirmed by others. He next found that other
drugs which were known to cure certain diseases also had the power
of setting up in the healthy symptoms resembling these diseases, and
that these instances were merely expressions of a general law. He
perceived that while pathological theories were always changing, the
symptoms of patients were a fixed quantity; and that, as affording
indications of the patient's real state and of the medicine likely to
help him, symptoms were infinitely better guides than the changeable
theories of the pathologists. Hahnemann's rule merely states that in
order to cure a case of illness the symptoms of the patient must be
taken in their entirety and compared with the symptoms produced by
drugs in the healthy, and that that drug must be given which has pro-
duced symptoms most like those of the patient. This is the only prac-
tical rule of any value for prescribing that has ever been discovered,
and this alone entitles homœopathy to be called "regular" medicine.
"R. B. C." talks in his exalted way about pathology as if it were pos-
sible to get at pathology except through symptoms, or as if it were
possible to "get behind" symptoms without paying them proper regard.
Hahnemann used all kinds of doses, from the crude substances to
the very high ones. He made his attenuations in a special way, a
point always ignored by allopathists. The question of dose has no
rule," and experience is the best guide in this matter.
"R. B. C." would deny to homeopathists the possession of any
merit whatever. He ignores Hahnemann's work as a chemist and a
hygienist, the literary and scientific work of Henderson, Chapman,
Rutherfurd Russell, Drysdale, and Dudgeon. Dudgeon's sphygmo-
graph is now used in all the hospitals, and is acknowledged to be the
best that has ever been invented, though those who use it are loth to
give the credit of the invention to a homoeopathist. The last thing
contemptio medica would be guilty of is giving honour where honour is due.
JOHN H. CLARKE, M.D.
34. Harrington-road, S.W.
59
MR F. ROSS.
[Jan. 10.
I read your leading article on medical orthodoxy with interest, and
was glad to find that your attempt to state the controversy as between
the two schools was fair and impartial. I read also the two letters of
your correspondents, signed "R. B. C." and "J. C. B.," and was
astonished to find that any medical men occupying eminent positions
in the profession could be guilty of making such absurd statements.
about a medical system which numbers among its believers thousands
of the most intelligent and educated of mankind, and among its prac-
titioners many most able and trustworthy medical men. Not to tres-
pass needlessly upon your valuable space, permit me as a homœo-
pathic chemist to call your attention to one or two statements set forth
in the letter signed "R. B. C." He says:
“The late Mr. Heckstall Smith once published a striking calcula-
tion to show what the decillionth of a grain or drop would mean. He
took the orbit of the planet Uranus, and found that if he had a cubic
measure, each side of which was equal to the square of the diameter
of this orbit, it would be necessary to have this measure filled eleven
times and a half in order to obtain sufficient water to dilute a drop of
laudanum or other liquid in such a degree that each drop of the mix-
ture would contain a decillionth of the drug. In the same way, the
bulk of sugar of milk required in order so to dilute one grain of
nutmeg' that each grain of the mixture should contain a decillionth
of a grain of the spice would be greater than the whole bulk of the
universe of which the earth forms part. Apart from this reductio ad
absurdum, it is tolerably manifest that the three shakes would not
suffice to produce a uniform mixture of two fluids of different specific
gravity, and that the drop of the first attenuation could scarcely fail
to contain either more or less than one-hundredth part of the original
medicine."
Striking, indeed, if true; but what is the fact? In order to make
the 30th dilution, each drop of which contains the decillionth part of
a drop, the quantity of dilute or rectified spirit necessary for this
operation would be 3,000 drops; or, to put it simply, 12 table-
spoonfuls. Similarly, the bulk of sugar of milk required in order to
produce a mixture that will contain a decillionth of a grain of nutmeg
would be exactly 3,000 grains-somewhat different quantities to those
contained in the astounding statements above referred to.
The next statement is as follows, and runs thus:- "As for the
domestic practice of homeopathy, it will perhaps surprise Lord Grim-
thorpe to be told that, according to current report in the drug trade,
the pilules sold to old ladies do not contain a particle of the various
medicaments after which they are respectively named. They are made
in bulk of pure sugar, and are distributed, when finished, into bottles
bearing different labels."
Would, I ask, any homœopathic chemist, who has his living to get,
and whose reputation depends upon the integrity and fidelity with
which he prepares his medicines, be such a fool as to jeopardise both
his reputation and character by such a course as this ? Besides, both
the patient and medical man would soon detect the fraud, and instead
60
of being a gainer he would be a loser by his nefarious conduct. As a
homœopathic chemist, I can bear testimony to the care, both in the
selection of drugs and the strict regard paid in carrying out the phar-
maceutical processes necessary to the preparation of homoeopathic
medicines exercised by all my brethren in the trade; and I feel sure
that there is not one among them who would be guilty of such imposi-
tion, either upon their patrons in general or the medical men practising
as homœopathic physicians. As to the law of cure which governs.
all trueho mœopaths-viz., that a medicine in order to be curative.
must be a true similimum, expressed by the formula similia similibus
curentur- this has been tested in millions of instances during the last
80 years, and is established beyond all doubt as a therapeutic law.
This does not by any means imply that diseases may not be cured by
any other method. There are doubtless other means by which diseases
may be successfully combated; but the question is, Which is the best?
And experiment alone can decide this point satisfactorily. Most, or
nearly all, homoeopaths have tried the older, or so-called orthodox plan,
and have found, by comparing the one system with the other, that the
homœopathic, taking it all round, was by far the safest and quickest
system for the cure of disease, and consequently they embraced it.
one.
Then as to dosage. One dose is as good as another if it only cures,
and it matters not, in my judgment, whether it be ten drops of the
pure tincture or a millionth part of a drop of the same; but if the
smaller does is effectual, common sense would say give me the smalle
To those who have not studied the action of medicines prepared
homœopathically, and seen the splendid results which follow the
administration of a wisely selected drug, it must always appear absurd
to expect a dangerous disease to yield to what seems such inadequate
means. And it is only by observing the action of minute or infinite-
simal doses upon sick people that the mind can realise how potent they
But to ridicule a system and condemn all those who practice it
as either knaves or fools, with the crude notions and erroneous con-
ceptions which your correspondent "R. B. C." evidently has in regard
to homœopathy, is neither courteous nor just. I go into my garden
and stand upon the damp ground for a while, have a sudden attack of
lumbago, I take aconite and rhus tox., each dose containing only the
two-millionths of a drop, and in a few hours I am well. It may not be
orthodox; may not square with "R. B. C.'s" notions of what ought
to be; it is sufficient for me that I am relieved.
are.
·
Such clear and unmistakable instances of the curative action of
homœopathically prepared medicines might be adduced by hundreds ;
but why multiply them? There is not an intelligent father or mother
in the three kingdoms who has used homoeopathic medicines but can
bear similar testimony to the action and value of simple remedies
selected and administered on the homoeopathic principle. Hundreds
of artisans and working men can also bear witness to the value of
aconite in fevers and feverish colds; of pulsatilla or nux v. in indi-
gestion and liver derangements, even in doses not larger than the
millionth of a grain (plus the development of latent power developed
by the processes of succussion and trituration), and these will never,
by any ridicule which R. B. C." or " J. C. B." may bring to bear
upon the homoeopathic system, have their faith shaken in it, or their
66
01
confidence so far disturbed as to induce them ever to return to the so-
called orthodox system. We who have tried homeopathic medicines
for years and seen their operation feel that we have found "the more
excellent way," and can well afford to let those who differ from us
laugh and sneer while we go on our way rejoicing.
Apologising for this long letter, believe me,
Yours faithfully,
9, Vere-street, Cavendish-square.
FREDERICK ROSS.
THE FACTS OF "R. B. C."
[Jan. 10.
Like your correspondent "Layman," whose letter appears in The
Times of to-day, I can check one fact only in "R. B. C.'s" letter, and
that is also incorrect.
'R. B.. C." claims Dalton as one of the medical profession who
"enriched mankind with notable discoveries." Surely every school-
boy knows that Dalton was a schoolmaster and "professional
chemist." In "Pigot's Directory of Manchester and Salford" I find his
name. "John Dalton, mathematical teacher, 10, George-street.” For
six years he was a tutor at the Manchester New College, and after-
wards gave private lessons at 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. each in mathematics,
&c., and made analyses at 10s. 6d. each.
Dalton was certainly a "Doctor," but it was Civil Law of Oxford, a
distinction conferred upon him at the same time as Brewster,
Faraday, and Robert Brown.
It is to be hoped that "R. B. C.'s" medical facts are more reliable
than his biographical ones.
J. C
LORD GRIMTHORPE (5).
[Jan. 12.
These allopathic doctors have all but converted me to a belief, not
only that homoeopathy is as good as A, which I knew before, but a
great deal better, and (if that is worth anything) that it is the only
mode of medicine which has any pretence to be called a system or a
science; for the A's proclaim among themselves, though not to us
that their own has not. One need not know more of medicine than
they do of reasoning to be quite sure that a set of controversalists
who persist in shirking the real issues and charges against them, and
spend a heap of superfluous energy in playing with the fringes, know
that they have no real defence. They keep saying in every place and
every letter, that they will not discuss any evidence of homoeopathy,
or any statistics, except an old assertion or two of their own, unsup-
ported by a scrap of evidence; that The Times is not the place for it,
nor its readers competent judges, nor the governors of any hospital,
nor nobody, in short, except themselves. If I had never read, seen,
heard, or tried a single homoeopathic experiment I should know that
such arguers as those are wrong, and conscious of their case being
rotten.
But, in fact, they do discuss just as much of it as they think they
can make anything of, and just as much as is not worth a farthing by
62
itself. If it were a proved result of experience that infinitely (in the
popular sense) small doses of medicine do nothing, it might then be
worth while to inquire why infinitely small doses of other things some-
times produce very serious effects. We do happen to know how and
why vaccine virus acts. Saying that the stings of certain flies act
because the flies are alive is explaining nothing; it is only asserting a
bare and obvious fact. Do the allopathists know how poisoned arrows
act, or how much poison gets into their finger and kills them some-
times by a scratch from a dissecting tool; or why a single whiff of a
stink sometimes poisons people, while at other times the same or
other people safely live in them for hours; or how much emanation
of anything from a man enables a bloodhound to pursue and find him?
Darwin wrote that he did not expect people would believe the infinitely
small quantity of some substances, and some of them dead ones,
which, put on the leaves of Drosera, make them perform curious
antics. All those instances prove nothing positively for homœopathy,
but do refute the a priori guess that infinitely small quantities of any
medicine cannot produce the effects which every fair experimenter has
found that they do. Yet that guess is the whole argument of these
A's, and is obviously worthless against the facts which they dare not
try to refute, and against the above cases of other kinds of small doses.
For the purpose of any practical conclusion, all their elaborate calcu-
lations and displays of learning about how small particles can exist
or can colour fluids and the like, are mere fireworks. They might as
well say that gravity cannot act because nobody knows how it does or
can act, either through dense matter or an apparent vacuum and
instantaneously through all known distances.
And, speaking of gravity, I think the physicist of The Saturday Review
has "whopped all creation" for folly in this line, and for impudent
assumption of what he has to prove. For he says that the architects
have no more found it necessary to pass a formal resolution in favour
of gravity than any authorised medical council has against homœo-
pathy, as if the truth of one and the falsehood of the other were equally
indisputable. But such is the way of them. No surgical operation
can drive it into their heads-either the Scotch or the English allo-
pathic heads-that their infallibility is the very thing in question, and
that calling their opponents liars and imposters, and H "a blind
empiricism," while they refuse to let experiments be tried which would
settle it in a year in any large hospital, proves that they know or fear
that the experiments would settle them too. The same article repeats
once more the now notorious falsehood that the A's only refuse to
meet the H's in consultation, which the H's do not want any more
than they do.
Here is another of their doings, sent to me since my last letter, by
a person whose name would command attention if he allowed me to
give it, or would send it you himself, which perhaps he dares not,
for fear of more persecution. A "regular" told him that his daughter
would die in a month from cancer. He ventured to consult a H, who
told him she had nothing of the kind, though she was seriously ill,
and, in fact, she died in a year of something else, as was then made
clear. He asked the regular to examine her again, and he refused,
because her father had touched the accursed thing and convicted
63
himself of heresy. It does not signify the least that she was
incurable--if she was, which is by no means clear. What does
signify is that one of these pretenders that they will only not.
consult with H's, deliberately allowed his patient to die (as far as he
was concerned) because her father had tried to save her life by con-
sulting a man who turned out right. Now we shall see whether
"R. B. C.” “J. C. B.," or Dr. Thudichum condemns such conduct as
only the exceptional disgrace of an individual, and, for what he cared,
manslaughter, or defend it as a piece of loyalty to their great principles.
Thus far they have not attempted one word of defence of their perse-
cutions, which we now see are not even confined to their own
"wandering brethren," as "J. C. B." calls them. It is plain that
they would rather patients died than be cured by a homoeopathist.
[I learnt afterwards that this sad case was even worse than the
father had told me at first. For not only one "regular" but three,
of different orders, all concurred in assuring him positively that she
had cancer in one kidney, and that after cutting into her to see and
holding what they call a consultation. And yet after the post mortem,
which was not by a H, or they would summarily have rejected it, had
put it beyond doubt that she had not, but a perhaps curable disease
if they had found it out, they began disputing whether one of them
had not told the others that they were wrong. I was shown all their
letters, and it is quite plain that one of them did. The third, a
general practitioner, unfortunately suffered a complete paralysis of
memory as to who said what at the consultation, which is not difficult
to account for in the circumstances. So observe, first, the tremen-
dous humbug of a medical consultation; secondly, that when the
father was told they all agreed in pronouncing for cancer, he was told
what (in Jubilistic and allopathic language against every H) was a
lie; thirdly, that an ignorant old H doctor divined better what was
the matter with the poor lady, from a symptom which they had never
even asked about, than those three A's did, or said they did, by cutting
into her and actually seeing the organ before them; and yet, fourthly,
because he had done so, they refused even to reconsider their verdict
(for I suppose they all concurred in that too, or would have done).
This is orthodox "medical ethics,
"medical ethics," which except a man believes
faithfully, he is an impostor and a quack, who must be excommuni-
cated and ruined if possible, and so must those who "meet" or
employ him.]
But there is a far more striking omission in the letters of all these
three doctors. Just imagine three champions of any other profession.
filling three columns of The Times again with all sorts of arguments
whether good or bad, and all, by a unanimous instinct of self-
preservation, saying not a word in answer to that tremendous, and I
really thought, hardly credible, exposure of the sayings of not one or
two disappointed or ill-tempered men of their own, but of more than
30, of all kinds and degrees, including some of the past and present
leaders of their profession. Their vilification of homoeopathists and
homœopathy in any specific way, beyond calling them liars, is feeble
compared with their particular and precise descriptions of the state of
their own arts and methods of curing or deceiving patients. I need
not quote them again; but anyone who read the few I did quote
61
before, or will look at them, will see that they amount in substance to
this sort of thing-Gentlemen, "here we are again." We have to say
something, you know, about medical progress and science. But,
between you and me, there is no such thing. "I deny that we have
a scientific use of medicines "—(Dr. Wilks). "We have to make our
patients believe, when their minds are shaken by sickness and anxiety,
that we can cure them" (Moxon), but we know that is all nonsense.
If they are curable at all, nature will cure them, if we do not manage
to prevent it-(G. Johnson and others). "It is my conscientious
opinion, founded on long observation and reflection, that there would
be less sickness and mortality if there were not a single physician,
apothecary, &c., in the world"-(J. Johnson, editor of the Medico-
Chirurgical Review). They have had plenty of time to read the tract I
quoted and to try if they could convict it of forgery. They know better.
In full accordance with all this I remember one of the most distin-
guished living philosophers (not medical) lauding a certain then highly
fashionable physician one day at dinner. I had reason for asking him,
and I did ask, Did you ever know him do any good to anybody
seriously ill? He answered, "Well, if you put it in that way (a way
quite immaterial, of course, to his value), I cannot say that I ever
did." As "R. B. C." and Co. treat us to a variety of reports, here is
another little one. A general practitioner, and commonly reputed a
very good one, said to a relation of mine one day, I have been sending
out a box of pills which I should be very sorry to take; and another
calmly advised a friend never to take any of their medicines. So it is
not only homoeopathic medicines that are, or ought to be, "thrown
into the gooseberry bush," if these candid administrators are right
about their own doses and doings. They might very well finish any
of those domestic orations to their fellows thus-" So you see, gentle-
men, the dramatists and satirists of all ages have been right in repre-
senting us as humbugs. But mind you, we must have no homœopathy,
no hydropathy, no bone-setters. We must talk to The Times and the
public about our guiding lights of medicine, great principles, ours
being the only real science of medicine, and so forth. If experience is
thrown in our teeth, we have only to say that all such testimony can
easily be beaten by the 'puffs' of Holloway's ointment, Dr. Jacob's
oil, and the like; which is just what one of them wrote to me the
other day, a man of ability and science in other ways, and, for any-
thing I know, as successful as any of his brethren in letting nature
cure his patients when she will. Even those "patent medicines,'
which succeed in making the fortunes of their inventors, must be
included in the "remedies of empirical origin which have stood the
test of time and experience," as was admitted by Sir R. Christison,
who caused the clauses for protecting H to be introduced into the
Act by trying to extort pledges not to practise it, and yet said his own
art was in a backward and unsatisfactory condition.
""
They refuse to discuss the published statistics of homeopathy,
being from twice to four times as successful as A in every hospital
where it has been fairly tried, though they knew they were official and
done under the eyes of A's themselves, and could not be "cooked.”
And not a word has "R. B. C." or any one of them to say about their
disgraceful attempt to suppress the cholera returns from the London
""
65
66
Homœopathic Hospital in 1854, till the House of Commons made
them disgorge it. I thought when I quoted that from a homoeopathic
tract that they would surely try to dispose of it somehow; but again
they are silent, as they are about all the worst things against them.
It is a small specimen as to quantity, but was it a puff" in "Trol-
lope's Recollections" that his mother was cured in three days, and
enabled to go to Court, of erysipelas which made her head double its
proper size, by a pupil of Hahnemann's, whom Princess Metternich
sent to her? or was the well-known cure of Marshal Radetsky of a
dangerous tumour by Hydrastis, a H medicine, a "puff?" If it was,
it was a very lucky one for a lady in my family, who read it in a
newspaper, after having an eye demolished in effect by a great London
surgeon for a tumour, which soon began to grow again, till she
stopped it with that medicine, and lived thirty-two years after in
perfectly good health. I have now a letter from a gentleman saying
that two most eminent doctors had condemned a lady in his family to
a speedy death from cancer; so in despair he went to a H doctor,
and was well abused for it, but the disease was stopped, and this lady
“is now wonderfully well for a person of seventy-eight." These A's
have not the sense to perceive the difference between advertised puffs
of medicines by the sellers of them, and such stories as these by
persons who have no interest in lying. Can they say as much?
All the experience they are giving us leads me to believe that the H
stories are infinitely more true than theirs. If the old experiments
were not to be relied on, why do they make everybody they can
refuse to let new ones be tried? That refusal alone is absolutely fatal
to their case and to their credit, even if they had not told us not to
accept it, and to regard them as what they confess themselves among
themselves.
I am struck with one or two little incidental symptoms of their
honesty in another direction. Why does" J. C. B." repeat again my
twice-corrected clerical error, which was also transparent on the face
of it, of 10,000 H practitioners in "England" for "the world?" He
may have missed one correction, but could not possibly have missed
the second. It was one of those curious slips which Mr. Proctor well
described from his own experience in Knowledge, a few years ago.
Whenever I see anything that looks like one in a controversy, I sug-
gest that it may be so; sometimes I find that I have been too charit-
able. This allopathist, having nothing to say in defence of his own
side, condescends to such rubbish as dilating on an obvious and twice-
corrected clerical error. But he has a much bigger one to explain
away for himself or his party. The homeopathists naturally availed
themselves, at Margaret-street and elsewhere, of the insertion of not
"one or two," but a great many "homeopathic remedies" in the A
Materia Medica, or some such book, by an avowed opponent of homoeo-
pathy, but an equal denouncer of the fallacy and vagueness of his
own art, Dr. Lauder Brunton. The contrast between the anti-
homœopathic demonstrations by him and another pharmacopoeist,
Dr. Ringer, and their esoteric recommendations of Ĥ medicines to
their own trade, is delightfully exhibited in Mr. Millican's article in
The Nineteenth Century of this month (Feb., 1888). The Jubilee perse-
cutors must wish by this time they had been quiet.
F
66
:
Now we are told they all got in by the "error of a copyist" (he
must mean all those errors), and we are expected to believe it.
Was it by the error of a copyist that the Lancet, two years ago, pub-
lished that entirely false account of Dr. Moxon's death? Here is
another funny little indication "J. C. B.' would not be surprised
if we find dropped out of our text-books for the future such dispu-
table statements as that small doses of ipecacuanha are useful in
vomiting, although (he means, because) that particular statement is a
source of consolation to our homœopathic wanderers. Nor should
I; nor at any other anti-homœopathic amendment of the A textbooks.
They want purging, clearly. "J. C. B." may write his fingers off
before he will persuade mankind that the great diminution of allo-
pathic doses is not due to Hahnemann and the H's, but to some un-
known Scotch benefactor named Bennett, or to “modern rationalism,"
whatever that means; probably it means something as definite as the
empiricism from which scientific medicine labours to extricate
itself," according to him; while according to Professor Stokes of
Dublin (orthodox) "medicine is now simply empiricism," and accord-
ing to Dr. Wilks, of Guy's," it has no scientific basis, but is formed
out of the fancies of the human mind."
-
(C
13
What has come to the Lancet, I wonder.
Is it because Hutton, who
used to fill this street (Queen Anne) with cabs, is dead, or because Sir
James Paget is too great a man for that unscrupulous phlebotomist to
revile, that the Lancet thinks it best to say in answer to me that he “has
done magnanimous justice to the bone-setters," whose chloroformist
the regulars boycotted out of serving Hutton any more? Justice,"
is it? Then what have all of them, except Sir James, been doing all
this time, assuring us that Hutton knew nothing and cured nobody,
but spoilt many people or their limbs for ever? He cured five people
in my family alone after the regulars had failed utterly, and I do not
know how many others that I knew. But homoeopathy is enough to
discuss just now, and I see a successor to Hutton has set up his tent,
or his brass plate, next door to him; so the Lancet had better not be
too candid in a hurry. Mr. Ross has dealt sufficiently with one of the
mare's nest stories of these people; and, as it happens, I can person-
ally confirm what he says about lumbago, having been cured last year
of the worst fit of it I ever had, and in the least time, by a homoeo-
pathic doctor. There is nothing worth notice in Dr. Thudichum's
letter or their other stories or contradictions. Nor do I see any use
in exposing people any further who expose themselves as these writers
have done equally by their silence and their speech. They have
lighted a jubilee candle which will not soon go out. The time will
come when another Hume will write of them as he did of their
fathers' persecution of Harvey. He says that not a single contempo-
raneous physician above forty years of age ever accepted the circula-
tion of the blood.
GRIMTHORPE.
66
DR. MILLICAN (4).
Jan. 12.
I am thankful that my share in this controversy is now practically
done. I have adduced in all sincerity certain reasons for thinking
that the position of exclusion adopted by orthodox practitioners
67
towards homoeopathists has no longer any firm basis, and I fail to
have observed one single argument-with all due respect to my oppo-
nents—that in the slightest degree shakes the platform I took. I have
shown that the profession, as represented by such authorities as Brun-
ton, Austin Flint, The Lancet, and others, has discarded the scientific
in favour of the ethical objection to homeopaths-viz., that they are
separatists and disturbers of the unity of the profession. But when a
large section of the profession is so bigoted that (as you admirably
express it in your leader) it "will not tolerate a man who tolerates a
heretic," how can the homeopaths be expected to put credence in the
appeals which are made to them to abandon their works of self-
defence and accept the terms of truce held out to them?
The bulk of the scientific arguments are directed against the system
of Hahnemann as a whole. To this system no homoeopath is pledged
merely by reason of his being one. Therefore, whatever insurmount-
able differences there may be between the profession at large and
iudividual practitioners of homoeopathy, they cannot be predicated of
the lot, or even of the large majority.
One word in reference to the infinitesimal theory. This is not of
the essence of homœopathy, even if it be of Hahnemannism, but a
detail of experience to be decided by each practitioner for himself.
Therefore, even if it should be shown to be full of absurdities, or
beyond the pale of reason in theory, its existence as part of Hahne-
mann's scheme is no valid argument in favour of the refusal of
professional intercourse to homœopaths.
But I have two considerations bearing upon this subject to
submit:-
Michael Foster says: "Odorous particles present in the inspired
air falling on the olfactory epithelium produce sensory impulses
which, ascending to the brain, give rise to sensations of smell."
("Text-book of Physiology," 3rd edition, 1879, p. 522.)
A grain of musk is exposed in a large room. Say the room is 15ft.
in each dimension, then its cubic capacity will be 3,375 cubic feet.
The air in this room will be entirely changed several times per diem.
by ordinary diffusion with such natural ventilators as the chimneys,
chinks in the window and door fittings, and crevices in the walls and
floors. Yet the smell of musk-that is to say, the presence in the
tmosphere of particles of musk capable of producing a nerve reaction
in the human organism—will persist in the room for days. This is
an experiment which anyone can try for himself.
Secondly, are the material particles given off by a man in rapid
flight across country "thinkable" divisions of matter, or do they bear
a thinkable relation to their surroundings? Yet they are sufficient to
to produce a material contact with the olfactory nerves of the blood-
hound who tracks him. Is it, therefore, so very "unthinkable" that
infinitely more minute drug atoms than we are accustomed to credit
with any therapeutic powers may, when in a state of intense sub-
division and solubility, which may be compared to the diffusion of the
odorous particles in a gaseous medium to which Foster refers (eod. loco,
p. 523) as "necessary for the development of smell," induce a physio-
logical reaction of the organism?
One more instance. I have before me an original glass receptacle
68
which came from Constantinople many years ago with attar of roses.
The inside of that receptacle has been absolutely free from perceptible.
contents of any kind for upwards of twenty years. Yet there are
material rose particles therein at this moment, enough to scent even
the box in which it lies.
I submit these facts as supplementary to the remarks in my letter
of the 20th ultimo, in proof of the contention that even if infinitesi
mals be included, the leading and essential principles of homœopathy-
are not axiomatically absurd. Whether they are true or not is a
matter of evidence, and evidence of a nature the negative side of
which is always liable to change. I have not seen them proved in a
sufficient number of cases to convince me of their general application,
but I cannot, therefore, impugn either the honesty or the intelligence
of those who say they have.
In the matter of professional advertisement referred to by " R. B. C.,"
whose disclaimer I frankly accept, I would say this. To parade in
public one's professional achievements, abilities, or reputation may be
objectionable, though even this is permitted in the case of bulletins
relating to persons of high rank whose condition is a source of general
interest; but to brand the acceptance of publicity in questions of an
impersonal nature such as this, and whose bearing upon the public
liberty and welfare is indisputable, and to regard any form of publicity
as due to a prejudice "which originates in self-respect and which has
a tendency to cling to gentlemen," would be to inhibit all kinds of
work in the public interest on account of the inevitable prominence
they entail, and to overwhelm in common reproach political leaders,
social reformers, bishops, scientists, and even lecturers on sanitary or
other topics to the Kensington exhibitions or the admirable ambulance
classes, whose establishment has proved a boon to the community at
large.
The only point that calls for notice in Dr. Thudichum's letter is the
assertion that I misdirected the issue of Sir James Simpson's ipeca-
cuanha story. If the issue was not such as I stated it, then it was
entirely irrelevant. I might add that the contemptuous tone of his
final paragraph, wherein he gives me news which, I fear, in view of
possible law expenses, my modicum of human nature will not allow
me to regard altogether with unmitigated dissatisfaction, rings some-
what with the hollow clang of envy.
KENNETH MILLICAN.

DR. R. E. DUDGEON (2).
[Jan. 12.
The Times of this morning contains an allopathic dose of homopathy.
I wish I could make my reply more in conformity with our posology,
but I fear that is hardly possible. "R. B. C.," nothing daunted by
the slight effect produced by the astronomical calculations of Smith,
now tries the chemical calculations of Brown-I beg pardon, Brownen
—and the molecular calculations of Thomson. These elaborate sums
in arithmetic have no bearing on the subject, but if you like to give
"R. B. C." space to display them we cannot object; they amuse him
and they do not hurt us. After all, the question is, Does homœopathy
cure more, more quickly, and more pleasantly than the old system?
69
է
Lord Grimthorpe has given you some statistics from our opponent
Dr. Routh and others which show that it cures more; the experience
of Tessier, in the Hôpital Ste. Marguerite of Paris, and many others.
shows that it cures more quickly; and everyone knows that it cures
more pleasantly. "R. B. C.'s" calculations remind me of the mathe-
matician who had proved to his own satisfaction that there was no
such thing as motion, but failed to convince his friend, who practically
proved that there was by walking across the room -solvitur ambulando.
No doubt the contemporaries of Galileo proved mathematically as well
as theologically that the earth did not move, but the correctness of
Galileo's "E pur si muove" has been sufficiently proved.
"R. B. C." has apparently been inquiring into the history of the
itch insect, since I told him Hahnemann knew all about it; but his
statement then was, "In those days it was not known that real itch
is caused by a parasitic insect which burrows in the skin," and he
even now says that its existence was not made known either by
Hahnemann or anyone else until 1834. Now, in a paper entitled Der
Anzeiger-Anglice, The Advertiser-on the 31st of July, 1792, after
corroborating the statement of another contributor to that periodical
that the cause of itch was certain small insects that burrow beneath
the epidermis, for which he quotes the authority of August Haupt-
mann, Bonome, and Schwiebe, Hahnemann says:-"These exceed.
ingly small animals are a kind of mite; Wichmann has given a
drawing of them; Dover, Legazi, and others have observed them."
So much for "R. B. C.'s" newly acquired knowledge of the subject.
"R. B. C." is "glad to see that no one has attempted to dispute
my account of the intellectual barrenness of homoeopaths." Well, we
are a modest as well as a feeble folk, and we do not care to lay claim
to all the learning and science, let alone the moral virtues of honesty
and truthfulness, which our opponents are never tired of claiming for
themselves. But when challenged in this way by "R. B. C.,” we may
be allowed to give a few testimonials in our favour from our opponents.
And first of Hahnemann. Hufeland, called the Nestor of Medicine
by his German contemporaries, who knew Hahnemann intimately,
says:-"Having been connected with him for more than thirty years,
by ties both of friendship and of letters, I have always esteemed him
as one of our most distinguished, intelligent, and original physicians."
I could give many similar testimonials to Hahnemann's learning and
genius from eminent medical men, his countrymen, but I shall only
quote one other from our own countryman, Sir John Forbes, a cour-
teous though earnest opponent of homoeopathy:-" Hahnemann was
undoubtedly a man of genius and a scholar, a man of indefatigable.
industry, of undaunted energy. In the history of medicine his name
will appear in the same list with those of the greatest systematists
and theorists, surpassed by few in the originality and ingenuity of his
views, superior to most in having substantiated and carried out his
doctrines into actual and extensive practice." Now for his disciples,
and here my modesty will only allow me to quote one allopathic
authority, Dr. Bristowe, who, in his address at the meeting of the
British Medical Association in 1881, said, speaking of practitioners of
homœopathy:-"It is absolutely certain that men of learning and
ability are contained within their ranks. If you care to dive into
70
homœopathic literature, you will find in it plenty of literary ability
and I have perused many papers by homoeopaths on philosophical and
other subjects unconnected with homoeopathy which prove their
authors to be men of thought and culture, and from which I have
derived pleasure and profit.'
""
That the department of pathology which "R. B. C." says we are
specially deficient in owes something to a homeopath may be seen
from the notice of Professor Henderson, of Edinburgh, in The Lancet, at
the time of his death. This allopathic periodical says Henderson was
the first to "notice the murmur of efflux in a case of sacculated
aortic aneurism; while he was also the first to demonstrate as a
diagnostic sign of aortic regurgitation that the radial pulse followed
that of the heart by a longer interval than usual." "He was the first
to show on irrefutable grounds that these two forms (typhus and
relapsing fever) were in reality distinet and were due to different
causes." I may add that he was the first to show the cause of the
sudden subsidence of the febrile symptoms in pneumonia.
"R. B. C." still harps upon Andral's pretended trial of bomœopathy,
though it is hard to see how a trial of homeopathy could be made by
a man who knew nothing about it, who had previously asserted that
it was a delusion, and set about to prove it so. Such ignorant trials
are occasionally made even nowadays. In the 13th volume of The
Practitioner, p. 241, Mr. R. Brudenell Carter (same initials, by the bye
as "R. B. C.," of course a mere coincidence) gives an account of his'
treatment of the late Dr. Anstie in his last illness. Dr. A. had pricked
his finger while dissecting, and four days afterwards Mr. Carter saw
him, and "found him in bed with a perfectly dry, hot skin, a tongue
so dry that he could scarcely articulate, and complaining of intense
headache." Now if there is one homeopathic bit of treatment better
known than another to all the world it is the power of aconite to allay
certain kinds of acute fever. So Mr. Carter, thinking no doubt this
was a case for aconite, prescribed a minim" (Anglicè one drop) "of
the tincture in water every hour until diaphoresis" (Anglicè, sweating)
"was produced." But, as everyone acquainted with homœopathy
could have told him, that is not the sort of fever for which aconite is
useful so it did no good, perhaps harm. This was the sort of
homeopathy Andral tried, and with the same result as Mr. Brudenell
Carter. "A little (homeopathic) learning is a dangerous thing."
،،
""
Possibly "R. B. C." may think that the public will believe his
anonymous stories of the dishonesty of homoeopathic chemists. Well,
I will not attempt to set bounds to human credulity, but I think most
sensible people will consider them as belonging to the "cock and
bull" kind.
I am sorry to trespass on your space so much, but I must say that
"J. C. B.," in his persistent accusations of dishonesty against his col-
leagues, reminds me of a motion proposed at an extraordinary meeting
of the Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians on December 27,
1881, by Dr. J. C. Bucknill (same initials as your correspondent-
again a mere coincidence), "That no competent medical man can
honestly practise the so-called homœopathic system." This was too
strong even for the Royal College of Physicians, so it was negatived.
Perhaps your readers will think "J. C. B.'s" accusations of dishonesty
71
against colleagues as well educated and probably just as honest as
himself a trifle too strong.
Dr. Thudichum's reference to Hahnemann's essay of 1796 seems to
me to be à propos of nothing. At that time Hahnemann had done
nothing more than suggest that remedies which caused symptoms
similar to the disease might perhaps be useful in some chronic affec-
tions, but the homeopathic system of treatment was not excogitated
by him till long after that.
Rapp was professor of clinical medicine and special pathology at
Tübingen from 1850 to 1854. I am quite aware that it was alleged
that his presence in the University was the cause of a great falling off
in the number of students. But this. like many other of our opponents'
statements, was incorrect. It was shown from the inscription list of
the University that while in his six summer and winter courses he had
289 students for his class of clinical medicine and 149 for his class of
special pathology, his predecessor, Wunderlich, during a similar period,
had only 191 and 99 students in these classes, and his successor,
Griesinger, during a similar period, 254 and 124 students respectively.
It was the odium medicum of his fellows in the faculty which brought
about his removal, not his want of success as a teacher. The Govern-
ment knew this very well, and gave him a post unconnected with the
University of equal pecuniary value.
R. E. DUDGEON, M.D.
DR. D. DYCE BROWN (2).
[Jan. 12.
The general tone of "R. B. C.'s" letter is such that my first
impulse was to consider it unworthy of reply. But as certain state-
ments are made in it which might be expected not to remain un-
challenged, will you permit me a few words? He tells us that Lord
Grimthorpe "absolutely compares vaccination to homeopathic medi
cation." Lord Grimthorpe is quite correct. The use of vaccine lymph
as a preventive of smallpox is that of a substance which produces in
the healthy human body a disorder which is very similar in most points
to smallpox. The appearance of the vesicle, the concomitant fever,
the period of maturation, and the gradual falling off of the scab,
leaving a permanent scar, are points which mark out strongly the
similarity of the one disease to the other. And that the similarity is
not a superficial one is shown by the fact that if a cow is inoculated
with smallpox matter the result is vaccinia. By being passed through
the body of the cow, an animal not susceptible to smallpox, the small-
pox inoculation develops a similar but different disease, which, in
virtue of its similarity but non-identity, has the power of preventing
the development of smallpox, or of at least modifying it to a remark-
able degree. Vaccination is thus a very pretty example of homœo-
pathic medication. "R. B. C." states that the vaccine "dose" being
a "visible and appreciable quantity, bears no relation to the small
dose of homœopathy." After what you said, Sir, in your able leader
of last Wednesday, on what constitutes a homœopathic dose, and my
remarks in support of your statement, I can hardly understand how a
fair opponent can completely ignore it, and calmly repeat his own
crude notions of what constitutes a homoeopathic dose. Everyone
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knows what a minute quantity of vaccine lymph is required to moisten
a scratch, and it was pointed out at the time of the epidemic of small-
pox in 1865 or 1866, when there was a scarcity of lymph owing to
the great demand for it, that it was equally efficacious when diluted to a
very considerable degree with glycerine. The actual amount of lymph
absorbed in vaccination is far less than the amount which is used to
moisten the scratch. The dose, therefore, which is absorbed is an
extremely minute one. "R. B. C." goes on to say that "vaccination
neither produces smallpox (sic) nor cures it." We make him a present
of the former statement; but may I remind "R. B. C." that, at the
time of the smallpox epidemic to which I have referred, a number of
cases were recorded in the medical journals of the treatment of small-
pox by vaccination. The result was that (1) many cases were believed
to have been much mitigated after the development of the disease,
especially if adopted sufficiently early; (2) a certain number of cases
seemed uninfluenced; while (3) others were much aggravated. In
the latter the vaccine (similar) dose had evidently been too strong for
these particular patients, thereby affording an illustration of what
homoeopaths aim at in the dose-not only to give less than will
aggravate, but to give the smallest dose which is curative, and so
avoid any risk of aggravation. Of course, "R. B. C." is in happy
ignorance of the fact that homoeopaths have obtained excellent results
in the treatment of smallpox by the internal administration of con-
siderably diluted vaccine. And because Lord Grimthorpe correctly
states that vaccination is "a purely homœopathic procedure,"
"R. B. C." vents his wrath in saying that this view ascribes Jenner's
discovery "to a portentous impostor (sic), who gave to the world a
concoction of nonsense in 1810." How can one argue with a man
who thus writes? He goes on to tell us that vaccine lymph contains
"living elements which increase the dose by rapidly multiplying
within the body," and that the bacteria " permeate the blood and
tissues." This is a pure piece of hypothesis and assumption. The
relation of these minute organisms to the causation of disease is a
point about which there is vast difference of opinion, the current of
opinion at present running adverse to the belief in their casual rela-
tion. But whether the bacterial theory of disease lives or dies out,
the fact remains the same-that a minute dose of vaccine lymph in
producing a disease similar to smallpox can both prevent and
cure it.
"R. B. C." returns to the charge of the homoeopathic pilules, or even..
tinctures, being non-medicated, and therefore, not what they are stated
to be. Mr. Ross, in The Times of to-day, indignantly denies such an
insinuation, and every homœopathic chemist would speak in the same
way. If a chemist's assistant turns out a black sheep, and acts dis-
honestly to his employers, is that a reason for "R. B. C." insolently
charging with dishonesty a class of men who are known to be careful
to the minutest detail, and whose whole business interest it is to have
in their pharmacies the best drugs which can be prepared? The
charge is monstrous and disgraceful. If "R. B. C." knew anything
of homoeopathic practice, he would be aware that if the wrong medi-
cine is selected, either by doctor or patient, no result follows, while,
as soon as the right selection is made, it at once tells. But, accord-
73
•
ing to "R. B. C.," this should never be observed, one medicine being
as good as another.
"R. B. C." says:
-"I am glad to see that no one has attempted to
dispute my account of the intellectual barrenness of homœopaths; and
this barrenness is as manifest within their profession as beyond it.
Medical science affords ample scope for non-contentious work-in
anatomy, in pathology, in physiology, in diagnosis. The homœopaths
have had nearly a century of opportunity, during which these depart-
ments have been assiduously cultivated and rapidly growing; but the
homœopaths have done nothing for their advancement.
Not one
fact, still less one principle, have they contributed to the sum of our
scientific progress."
This is simply preposterous. I meant to have noticed this state-
ment of "R. C. B.'s" in my last letter, but I was afraid of making
it too long.
For a man calmly to say that because homœopaths do
not work on the same lines as those of the old school they are
intellectually barren is on a par with "R. B. C.'s" other insolent state-
ments. Homœopaths consider therapeutics as their special depart-
ment, and keep to it. There is no need for them, since this
department is almost entirely unworked by the old school, to neglect.
their own special work in order to do what is admirably done by the
overcrowded old school. They are quite content to act on the
division of labour principle, allow their brethren of the old school to
labour in the only departments of medical science which, with the
therapeutical scepticism of the present day, are likely to yield any
fruit, and to labour at the ultimate end of medicine, the perfection of
therapeutics. The mass of their labours is open to all who will look
at it, although "R. B. C.," in his lofty self-esteem, utterly ignores the
existence of such labour. The mine of therapeutic rescource, which
has been worked steadily and quietly by homoeopaths, is being even
now largely tapped by our opponents, and the day will come when, in
spite of "R. B. C." et hoc genus omne, the value of the labours con-
ducted by homoeopaths will be recognised. Men will then find, to
their surprise, how completely this most important of all fields in
medicine has been cultivated by homoeopaths, and is within reach of
all who will open their eyes. "Not one fact," says "R. B. C.,” still
less one principle, have they contributed to the sum of our scientific
progress." With the greatest principle in therapeutics ever promul-
gated, and the labours in drug investigation open to him, if he will
but look, "R. B. C." calmly shuts his eyes, and then avers that things
do not exist.
""
The only point on which I would think it necessary to notice
"J. C. B.'s" letter is his allusion to my statement in regard to Dr.
Lauder Brunton. He says "the references made to him are calculated
to create the impression that he is half a convert to homœopathy, or at
least regards it with some favour." Most undoubtedly, and it is difficult
to come to any other conclusion. “J. C. B.” tells us that, "by the
error of a copyist, the names of one or two (sic) homoeopathic remedies.
found their way into the index of diseases in the first edition of his
great and admirable work," and that they have been expungel from
the second and third editions.
Either "J. C. B." has not seen the Index of Diseases, or he does
74
guza sister tape a
not know what remedies do and do not belong to the Britis
Pharmacopoeia. To say that "one or two" homoeopathic remedies
are there to be found is amazing, and, supposing "J. C. B.'s" good
faith, we leave him in the above dilemma. He will also find that
these remedies are not expunged in the second edition, and if in the
third edition (!) Dr. Brunton has found it desirable to overhaul “his
copyist," how is it that he still retains apis as a remedy in sore-throat
Has "J. C. B. " ever even heard of apis as a medicine? The " copy-
ist" must have had unlimited power in compiling the "Index," and
if it was his mistake, to be indignantly rectified in the third edition
by the author, the occurrence is a very remarkable one.
Finally, I would ask "R. B. C." if, in the face of the imputations of
dishonesty, his remarkable ignorance of his subject, and his paltry
theoretical difficulties, he will be good enough to ask himself the
following questions:-1. Is it in the least probable that about 300
medical practitioners in Great Britain, and 10,000 (the correct figure)
in the United States, who have the same education and the same
diplomas as their old-school brethren, should be so hopelessly wrong-
headed on this one particular point, however sane on others, as not
to be able to form a judgment as to the comparative success of two
modes of treatment? 2. How is it that, at least in this country, all
but the homœopaths of the last five or six years were previously
allopaths, and consequently had tested both systems, and gave up
professional fellowship and honours for their opinions? 3. How is it
that this is the one" heresy" in medicine which has not died a natural
death in a few years, but which is yearly increasing, is represented
bypractitioners all over the world, and in numbers such as no mere
mistaken heresy ever could boast of, and is, despite "R. B. C.'s"
denials, fast leavening the ranks of their opponents? 4. How is it
that, while scepticism in regard to the action of medicine in the old
school is notorious, homœopaths are staunch believers in their own
treatment? 5. How is it that fully half, if not more, of the symptoms
produced by drugs on the healthy body are of no therapeutic use
whatever, except on the homoeopathic principle? It is this dishearten-
ing discovery that prevents the prosecution of investigations as to
the pure effects of drugs on the healthy body-both schools agreeing
that this is the only reliable mode of investigation-while on the
homœopathic law every drug-symptom elicited becomes a key to its
therapeutic use.
D. DYCE BROWN.
A SCEPTIC.
[Jan. 12.
It is an amusing controversy about the odium medicum, but what I,
as a sceptically-minded layman, find most amusing is, first, the proof
so abundantly and so unconsciously supplied by the orthodox contro-
versialists of the existence of that odium which they disclaim; and,
second, the splendid audacity of their pretensions on the score of
medical knowledge and pathology. No one reading the tremendous
diatribes of "R. B. C." and “ J. C. B.” can have the least idea what
very nice, modest, candid fellows doctors are in private life. As soon
as you convince them that you cannot be bounced or bluffed by claims
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правите
to medical knowledge transcending ordinary faculties, they become
quite confidential and humble, admit that their so-called science is
only more or less clever guess-work, and bemoan the impossibility of
making substantial advance. But in public, as your readers see, they
talk in a style calculated to persuade the simple that medicine is an
exact science, marching with the inexorable step of mathematics upon
the fast-diminishing realm of the unknown.
I have just opened at random " Ringer's Handbook of Therapeutics."
It opened at Nux Vomica, and as that is a drug used in both schools it
is interesting to learn what medical knowledge about it comes to.
Ringer, be it observed, is a doctor just about as good as they make
them. He has got all the pathology, and so forth, at his fingers'
ends. He can tell you what happens when you inject a medicine, and
cut this or the other nerve, or tie up this or the other duct. When a
man or frog dies under treatment Ringer knows which nervous centre
was affected by the poison. I opened his book at page 553, right in
the middle of nux vomica, and the first thing I read was this:
The tincture or extract of nux vomica has long been employed to
correct constipation, habitual or temporary." This looked like know-
ledge, and I went on cheerfully. Presently I read-
"As our knowledge of the action of nux vomica in its relation to
constipation is at present imperfect the results appear to be capricious.
It is as well, therefore, not to be too sanguine of success; for in some
cases it answers beyond all expectation, while in other, apparently
similar, cases it completely fails."
Is not this a perfectly lovely specimen of "science"? Nux vomica is
an exceedingly well-known drug, constantly in use either under its
own name or as strychnia, which is its active principle. Constipation is
one of the most familiar of all maladies, offering boundless facilities
for the exercise of a scientific method. Ringer is one of the persons
best equipped, by knowledge of pathology on one side, and of drugs on
the other, to apply the right drug with the unerring exactitude of
science. What does it all come to? Why, just this, that the
exponent of science, the master of that "medical knowledge" so arro-
gantly vaunted by your correspondents, dealing with a common-place.
ailment and an every-day drug, knows no more what that drug will do
for a given patient than the first old woman he might meet in the
street. He will try it and see what happens-that is all. Why, I
could do as much for myself, at any rate, with the aid of one of the
homœopathic manuals that excite the derision of lofty scientific spirits.
However, there are weak points in every system, and as nux vomica
might not be Ringer's "strong suit," I turned to his index in order to
see what else he could do for constipation. I found no end of things
recommended―aloes, belladonna, Carlsbad water, coffee, cascara,
croton oil, jalap, rhubarb, senna, guaiacum, magnesia, sulphate of
potash (sometimes poisonous, but you can only find out by trying
whether it is so or not in a given case), mercury, oranges, and ever
so many more. I turned up a number of these remedies, and searched
in vain for a cure for constipation. These drugs, most of them quite
familiar to the old woman before mentioned, are only laxatives or
purgatives. That is to say, they relieve constipation, but do not re-
move the condition on which it depends, any more than baling out a
76
boat stops the leak in its bottom. Ringer does not know any cure
for constipation, and he does not know, except by direct experiment
upon the patient, which is the best palliative in any given case.
They call this sort of thing science, and medical knowledge, and
pathology, and Heaven knows how many other fine names! On the
strength of this blundering guess-work they come down in thunders
of indignation upon the poor homoeopath who, at worst, only adds one
more guess to the pile, and whose stuff, to take their account of it, is
at least in no danger of turning out poisonous like their sulphate of
potash. Can you conceive anything more ludicrous than this fine
Ephesian rage?
Turning over the leaves, I came, at page 386, to nitrite of amyl,
about which I read “In thirty or forty seconds, whether inhaled,
subcutaneously injected, or swallowed, it flushes the face and increases
the heat and perspiration of the head, face, and neck." Then comes
a lot of pathological discussion as to how it does this. How a drug
acts is always a great question, and people like your correspondent
"J. C. B." are full of scorn for practitioners who are content to know
that it does act in a particular way. But here, again, these doctors.
are excruciatingly funny if you only follow them up. After all their
pathology they generally leave it quite an open question how a drug
acts, or if one is cocksure that it acts in one way you may be very
certain that another will not be long in carving up a few frogs to
show that it acts in quite another way. As to nitrite of amyl, Ringer
says it "must act either on the vaso-motor nerve-trunks, or on the
muscular coats of the arteries." Brunton believes it partially
paralyses the sympathetic ganglia and their motor nerves." Here
exact science offers you three alternatives, and at the same time con-
demns as pernicious heretics the men who say they can do without
settling the question. Could anything be funnier than this pathology
ending in a quagmire and accompanied by a dogmatism which holds
up to scorn men whose only offence is that they wait for the orthodox
to make up their minds ? But having had enough pathology I turned
over a page or two and lighted upon this passage "Nitrite of amyl
will prevent or greatly lessen these flushings or heats," which have
just been described and precisely resemble the symptoms already
quoted as following inhalation, injection, or swallowing of amyl nitrite.
What is this but curing by similars? A little farther on I find that
Ringer has discovered, like the homoeopaths, that when like cures like
a very small quantity of the drug inust be given. He finds the
thirtieth part of a drop sufficient, and in one case a great deal too
much, for it threw the patient into "a trance-like state," with the
"breathing becoming rather panting." Here, then, we have the
homoeopathic rule and the homoeopathic dose, yet nobody excommu-
nicates Ringer. Homœopaths, I believe, use amyl nitrite in the same.
way and for the same symptoms and in the same doses, but they are
knaves or fools for their pains. What is the difference? Just this-
the homoeopaths say they choose the drug because from its effect on
the healthy they feel sure it will cure heats and flushings; and the
orthodox find it out somehow, and then write pages of contradictory
twaddle about how it acts, which they call pathology.
Doctors would do well to get it into their heads that a patient wants
77
to be cured, and does not care a brass farthing how his doctor lighted
upon the proper drug. Pathology is a nice amusement for the doctors,
because it enables them to string their guesses together and call them
theory or science, and furnishes material for learned and inconclusive
papers to be read to their societies. But a great deal that goes under
the name of pathology, and just that part of it that the paper-reading
part of the profession are most proud of, is of no earthly use to the
patient. It enables a man to talk grandly about how a disease acts,
and to interpose a number of secondary causes between the primary
cause and the effect. But it does not tell him why the disease is there;
it does not give him a grip of the primary cause, or tell him how to
meet it. Anything he happens to know of that branch of the subject
has been found out empirically-that is, by trying experiments upon
patients as Ringer does with his nux vomica. Homœopaths try experi-
ments too, and they say with success. They say, moreover, that their
rule gives them some clue to the right drug and some power of predic-
tion. That may or may not be, but when everybody is groping in the
dark their clue can do no harm; and, oddly enough, the more medical
reading one does the more examples turn up of agreement in pract.ce
between people who abuse one another's theories.
One more point. It is all very fine for a few gentlemen in London
to talk big about a "method which rests upon the intimate nature of
mobid action." I have shown by one or two instances how much their
knowledge comes to, and how far it helps them forward; but, at any
rate, they can always reel you off the possible explanations of secondary
causes. Take the profession at large on the other hand. Take the
general practitioner who does the great mass of physicking all over the
country. What does he know or care, as a rule, about pathological
theories? Just nothing at all. He got a certain amount of pathology
at college, and he is content. All the rest he gets from experience,
and he can get it from no better source. But observe that every
homœopathic doctor gets just the same equipment from the same
teachers. He knows all the pathology that serves the great mass of
the profession, and what he neglects is merely this fine talk by a few
clever gentlemen who cannot agree among themselves about vasomotor
centres and sympathetic ganglia.
How, I wonder, could "R. B. C." write without a smile about
progress depending upon intimate knowledge of morbid action? He
knows well enough that there is no such progress. A great physician
is like a great artist, and other men cannot catch the trick. They try
very hard. They copy his prescriptions, and they use his drugs,
thereby causing as many changes of fashion in this exact and pro-
gressive science as in ladies' bonnets. But they cannot get his
results, and so in their private conclaves they call him a humbug and
ascribe his success to anything except his capacity to cure his patients.
A physician must know the human body, and he must know the
properties of drugs, just as a sculptor must know the human body
and the proporties of marble. But this equipment being given, it is
art, not science, that makes a man great in one line or the other.
Just as the great sculptor is endowed with an exquisite perception of
form, so is the great doctor endowed with an exquisite perception of
his patient as a whole. He instinctively grasps the medical form-
Ag
78
the thing which, I suppose, homoeopaths try to get at under the
name of totality of symptoms. All this theorising about the intimate
nature of morbid action does not enable any man to stop morbid
action. They have tracked cancer down to its cellular home. They
can show you drawings and preparations illustrating every step of its
operation, and they can detect cancer cells in the merest fragment of
tissue. But they cannot tell you why the spindle-shaped cell makes
its appearance, nor can they stop its growth. The secrets of life and
death, of heredity and habit, lie far beyond the utmost reach of our
finest appliances, and an atom of protoplasm in which our most
powerful lenses can discover no trace of structure holds enfolded
within itself the history and the future of a race.
A SCEPTIC.
DR. GUTTERIDGE.
[Jan. 12.
On reading that "by the error of a copyist one or two homoeopathic
remedies had found their way "into Dr. Brunton's "Index of Diseases,"
I at once reached down my copy in order to verify this statement. I
found that aconite was very extensively advised in fever and feverish-
ness, that belladonna was very frequently mentioned, and such other
well-known names as arnica, bryonia, pulsatilla, cimicifuga, gelse-
mium, chamomilla, ignatia, sanguinaria, chimaphila, hydrastis, rhus
toxicodendron, veratrum album, hamamelis, veratrum viride, phyto-
lacca, and apocynum, together with apis mellifica grindelia, viola
tricolor, and thuja, were to be found as I looked through that alpha-
betical arrangement. A very good two or three it must be admitted,
especially as they are mentioned and prescribed for on distinctly
homoeopathic lines, as I will presently show in detail. For instance,
in measles we are directed to aconite, pulsatilla, antim. tart., and
veratrum viride; in scarlet fever, to aconite, arsenic, belladonna,
mercury (in -grain doses), rhus tox., and veratrum viride; in sore
throat, to aconite, belladonna, hydrastis, ipecacuanha, mercury, nitric
acid, phytolacca, podophyllum, pulsatilla, sanguinaria, and veratrum
viride; in quinsy, to aconite, apis, arsenic, belladonna, mercury, and
phytolacca; and, finally, in lumbago, to aconite, cimicifuga, and rhus.
I give these only as examples to prove how thoroughly different to
ordinary practice the treatment indicated is, and how thoroughly
homœopathic. I would submit that as the index in which all this is
found is part and parcel of Dr. Brunton's work, so he, and he alone,
must be held responsible for it, and further that the directions must
be taken to be thoroughly reliable, the homoeopathic as well as the
orthodox, though both indiscriminately follow each other, or the whole
should be put aside as the mistake, and a very dangerous one too, of
this said copyist. I know full well that Dr. Brunton is not a homœo-
path, and, further, that personally he has no leaning that way, still
it is only fair to the public for them to know, not to how small, but to
how large an extent one of our chief medical examiners is willing
without intimation or acknowledgment to borrow from his ostracised
brethren.
Homœopathy has done something for the good of mankind, since it
has presented us with an array of new medicines like those I have
79
referred to. It has taught the value of one remedy at a time, of a
small and frequently repeated dose, it has demonstrated the specific
action of drugs, it has proved the existence of the law of "like curing
like," it has shown that medicines need not be nauseous, and that it,
at all events, can treat disease cito, bene, et jucunde. I have tried it
"among all sorts and conditions of men," from the pauper to the
prince, and in nearly every disease that flesh is heir to, and especially
in cancer and consumption, and I am very well satisfied with its
results.
R. S. GUTTERIDGE, M.D.
58, Brook-street, Grosvenor square, W.
THE FACTS OF R. B. C.
[Jan. 12.
Allow me to point out an extraordinary mistake in arithmetic in
the letter of "R. B. C." in The Times of to-day. Your correspondent.
states that the earth contains approximately 4,000,000,000 (four
thousand million) of cubic feet, and founds an argument on these
figures. But the earth is nearly 8,000 miles in diameter, and a
sphere of that size contains in round numbers 250,000,000,000 (two
hundred and fifty thousand million) cubic miles, while each cubic
mile contains about 130,000,000,000 (a hundred and thirty thousand
million cubic feet). I fear the doctors had better leave figures tc
another profession.
F. G. S.
J. C. B. (2).
66
[Jan. 14.
Retreating, but fighting still, Lord Grimthorpe gives up vaccine
lymph and falls back on the hellish oorali," as the Laureate calls it.
One of his allies seems.disposed to defend the vaccine position a little
longer, and argues as follows:-Vaccinia and small-pox are one and
the same disease; the proper treatment for small-pox is a little more
small-pox (just as the treatment of vitriol poisoning is, I presume,
according to such wiseacres, a little more vitriol); and the man who
has the small-pox ought, therefore, to be well vaccinated through his
stomach or skin, which is a strictly homoeopathic procedure. But
Lord Grimthorpe prefers to instance oorali, or the arrow poison, in the
action of which, he thinks, with his incorrigible analogical perversity,
he has discovered a resemblance to the action of a homœopathic
remedy. "Do the allopaths," he asks defiantly, know "how it acts?”
Thanks to the labours of Claude Bernard and others, they know very
well how it acts, but does his Lordship, without levity, maintain that
the fact that certain poisons kill with definite symptoms when intro-
duced into the blood in small but appreciable quantities gives plausi-
bility to the view that other poisons when administered in infinitesimal
doses will cure diseases which are mimicked in a few symptoms by
their actions when given in large doses? Oorali is the extract of a
plant which the natives of Demerara and the valley of the Amazon
used to smear freely on their arrows. The lethal dose of it is not a
decillionth of a grain or any infinitesimal phantom, but one grain,
80
and as much as half a grain has been given medicinally. Now what
Lord Grimthorpe has to do in order to make oorali serve his purpose
is to show that in infinitesimal doses it is useful in the treatment of
paralysis, for its "provings" are of a paralytic nature. But this will
probably puzzle him, and in the meantime it has been shown that in
ordinary doses producing a physiological effect it is useful in an exactly
opposite condition-namely, tetanus or lock-jaw.
Two grains of strychnine will infallibly kill every man, woman, or
child to whom it may be administered, and so will an eighth of a grain
of digitaline-and these are small doses no doubt, but they are a
whole universe greater than a decillionth of a grain, are followed by
symptoms which "who runs may read," and are capable of recognition
by the chemist. A fine needle introduced into the pithing point will kill.
That is a small dose of cold steel, but because it is effective, and, like
Mercutio's wound, "enough," are we to infer that an ultimate atom of
gold will cure ophthalmia ?
"Then how about stinks," continues Lord Grimthorpe, with custo-
mary emphasis, "stinks, a single whiff of which sometimes poisons.
people, while at other times the same or other people safely live in them
for hours?" Well, stinks are due to odorous particles or gases.
coming in contact with the mucous membrane of the nose, and stimu-
lating the nerve cells there, and stinks, as stinks, are sensations and
nothing more. But with the stinks there may be living organisms-
disease-bearing bacteria or spores-which entering the blood by the
nasal or pulmonary mucous membranes, plant themselves and breed,
and cause illness where the conditions are congenial to them (and
hence some folks are poisoned by stinks), or perish where the condi-
tions are unpropitious (and hence some folks inhaling the same stinks
are not a penny the worse); or with the stinks there may be poisonous
gases, like sulphuretted hydrogen or carbonic acid, which will have
the same deleterious effects on all who breathe them. Lord Grimthorpe
has been already convinced that there is nothing homoeopathic in the
action of micro-parasites, and he will be readily satisfied that neither
is there in the action of gases, poisonous or innocent. Has he ever
taken chloroform? A quarter of an ounce of that fluid, not a very
homœopathic dose, had probably to be vapourised and inhaled before
he became unconscious. All poisonous gases kill in quantities which
can be accurately measured and determined by the chemist, and many
of them cause visible changes in the solids and fluids of the body, but
who shall gauge a decillionth or track its path? Has Lord Grimthorpe
reflected that every time he enters a druggist's shop or walks past one
he inhales countless decillionths of at least a hundred powerful drugs?
Why waste his money on globules then? Why not sniff and be
cured? I have heard of a man for whom a homeopath prescribed a
decillionth of a grain of camphor. But he was in the habit of pro-
tecting his clothes against moths by that solid volatile oil, and every
time he went to his wardrobe took in millions of decillionths of it.
Where, then, was the virtue of this extra one decillionth, unless it be
that decillionths are sticklers for etiquette, and will not close with a
disease until they have been ceremoniously introduced to it in globule
form ?
Dr. Millican, who is making rapid progress in his homœopathic
81
education, drags once more before us that time-honoured grain of
musk, and would have us believe that because minute particles can
produce a sensory thrill still more minute particles can cure disease.
He might, however, have taken up a stronger position, and have
sought a parallel for his drug atoms, not in the gross emanations of
odorous bodies, but in the subtle modulations of light, the violet rays
of which enter the eye at the rate of 699,000,000,000,000 in a second.
And even light waves are coarse when compared with homeopathic
remedies, for it has been calculated that these rays, travelling at the
rate of 192,000 miles a second, would take millions of millions of
millions of years to pass from one end to the other of one grain of
sulphur, laid out in decillionth globules at 20 to the inch. And a
decillionth is homoeopathically a gigantic dose, for Hahnemann
latterly employed the olfaction, or, in plain language, smelling of
decillionth globules. Putting two globules in a phial containing two
drachms of alcohol, mixed with an equal quantity of water, he caused
this to be inhaled once or twice with each nostril in acute and chronic
diseases. An apt disciple was the lady of whom Simpson tells, who,
having been subjected to this process of the administration of a
homœopathic dose by olfaction by her doctor, passed the fee before his
nose and then replaced it in her pocket.
The letters which Lord Grimthorpe takes upon him to answer he
does not apparently take the trouble to read, for he now protests that
not a word has been said in answer to his tremendous citation of lead-
ing authorities in the profession who have spoken disparagingly of
medical science and work, whereas he was distinctly told that what
these authorities condemned is the fast disappearing empirical element
in medicine which is common to it and homeopathy. If their censures
on medical science are good for anything, equally good must be their
censures on homeopathy, which are tenfold stronger. But it is past
finding out what his Lordship would be at, for in one place he says
that there is no driving "into allopathic heads, English or Scotch,” that
their infallibility is in question, and in another, a few lines further on,
pours withering disdain on them for confessing their own incom-
petency. The quotations which he has adduced are scraps, riven
sometimes from a context which would have put a different com-
plexion on them, in the writings of a paradoxical philosopher, who is
seldom to be taken quite seriously, and of others who have dwelt at
times on the backwardness which must always fret ardent students in
every progressive science. It may be taken for granted that Lord
Grimthorpe never wasted a qualm on the mode of practice at the
Parliamentary Bar, now threatened with extinction, under which a
barrister may hold as many as 10 or 12 briefs for one day of four
hours, and receive enormous fees for undertaking work which he can-
not possibly perform.
Empiricism is for Lord Grimthorpe the one criterion in medicine.
Significant discoveries as to a connection between the chemical con-
stitution and physiological action of drugs, investigations into
selective affinities of drugs for certain tissues and organs, experiments
as to their influence on the various functions of life and the pro-
cesses of disease, have no interest for him. All he wants to know
is-What did So-and-so good when he was ill as I am, or thought
G
82
he was? Bone-setters and rubbers are his surgical advisers, and a
study of the advertisements of the quack medicines ought to be his
guide to the selection of a physician, and he is somewhat to be
pitied if he has to balance their conflicting claims. The British
Parliament, made up of men like him, when it had never granted a
farthing for the advancement of science, once voted £5,000 for the
purchase of Mrs. Stephen's specific against certain diseases, which
was found, when the prescription was handed over, to consist of
"egg-shells and snails' shells, with the snails in them calcined, ash-
keys, hips and haws, swine-cress, and various other vegetables all
burned to a cinder, with camomile flowers and fennel." And not a
whit more idiotic was Mrs. Stephen's specific than a number of pre-
scriptions that might be culled from homoeopathic books-prescrip-
tions in which Lord Grimthorpe is bound to believe, as all of them
are certified to have done people good. One of the most recent
advances in homoeopathy is the discovery, just published in a
homœopathic journal, that anacardium is good for profane swearing.
Given to healthy men it causes blasphemy; but to those who have
contracted a habit of swearing, infinitesimal doses of it are corrective.
It was very soothing in the case of a clergyman, who had knocked his
nose against a door in the dark, and forgotten himself accordingly.
Homœopathy has been before the medical profession in this
country for nearly eighty years. Its literature has been open to all,
and all have been free to test for themselves its much be-lauded
remedies. The general practitioner, one of your correspondents, who
is in agreement with Lord Grimthorpe, avers he cares nothing for
pathological theories. He wants in these fiercely competitive days to
cure his patients and achieve a reputation for skill, and he is not
likely to neglect any means that may aid him in so doing. Is it not
conclusive, then, against homoeopathy, to anyone capable of weighing
evidence, that 22,669 medical men out of a total of 23,027, according
to the latest returns in England, Scotland, and Ireland, absolutely
reject it as a mixture of twaddle and trickery, while only 258 accept
it more or less? And the number of homeopaths is dwindling
year by year, and so is the number of homoeopathic druggists.
But doctors, proceeds Lord Grimthorpe, will not examine the proofs
of homœopathy. They have done so again and again, and found
them wanting. They will not, he grumbles, discuss its published
statistics. They have done so repeatedly, but they may be excused if
they dismiss summarily what he calls statistics, and which consist of
second-hand versions of the rates of mortality in a hospital in Vienna,
I have
and half a hospital in Paris, which he does not even name.
already shown him that, taking his figures as he offers them, they are
unfavourable to homeopathy, and I would here add that if they are
drawn from the returns of Dr. Fleischmann, of the Homœopathic
Hospital of Sisters of Charity at Vienna, then they have been reduced
to mincemeat more than once. It would take more space than you,
sir, could allow me, to reproduce the destructive analysis of these
figures, which has long been before the medical world, and I shall
only repeat the conclusion arrived at, after a careful survey of them,
by Professor Gairdner, of Glasgow, than whom there is no more
candid or open-minded man. "I maintain," he said, "without fear
83
of contradiction, that the homoeopathic returns are not only without
all triumph to the system, but that they cover it with disgrace."
The case in medical ethics stated, and very lamely stated, by Lord
Grimthorpe, scarcely admits of judgment being passed on it, because
the facts are not sufficiently fully set forth. A regular practitioner,
who declared a lady to have cancer, was superseded in his attendance
on her by a homoeopath, who declared she had not cancer, and the
lady's father then asked the regular practitioner to examine her again,
and it is certainly curious that he should have sought further assist-
ance of one who had blundered so egregiously. But in deciding whether
the regular practitioner was justified in declining the father's invita-
tion, we must know more than we do of the lady's situation. If she
was living in a country place, where other medical advice was not
available, then he was wrong-utterly wrong-in withholding from
her in her suffering whatever assistance it was in his power to offer,
and I take leave to doubt that Lord Grimthorpe and his " person
whose name would command attention" are able to show that any
regular practitioner has acted in such a way. But if she was residing
where medical skill was plentiful, then he was well warranted in
declining to have anything more to do with the case, and in saying to
the patient's father, "As you have discarded me for a homoeopath,
whom I look upon as a quack, and have been informed that my dia-
gnosis was wrong, I think you had better call in someone else. I can-
not carry out homoeopathic treatment, which I believe to be nugatory,
and your daughter and you will probably have more confidence in
someone who comes to the case unbiassed." Is a doctor so poor a
thing that he is to be allowed no remnant of amour propre, but is to
be buffeted and insulted at pleasure by every person whose name
would command attention"? What would Lord Grimthorpe have
done if, when he was at the Bar, a Parliamentary agent, who, annoyed
by his oversights and provocations to the Committee, had taken his
brief from him and given it to another, had come to him after a lapse
of a day or two and said, "Here, I wish you to take your brief again,
and go on with the case?" Would he, bending low,
66
"And in a bondman's key,
"With 'bated breath, and whispering humbleness,"
have accepted it with thanks, or would he? Well, I prefer not
even to imagine the other and more probable alternative. But what
in Lord Grimthorpe would have been becoming dignity and self-
respect, in a doctor was disgraceful and murderous trade-unionism.
Let Lord Grimthorpe note that it was the daughter of a "person
whose name would command attention" whom the practitioner
declined to see, and that it must have required some loyalty to
principle in a struggling man to resist the temptation to resume his
attendance on her and pocket the affront. Did he ever hear of a
practitioner who refused to see a beggar or pauper because he had
been to the homœopaths?
Lord Grimthorpe suggests that I have taken an unfair advantage
in repeating again his erroneous statement that there are 10,000
homœopaths in England, whereas the actual number is 258 (not 278
as stated in my last letter). He says this slip of the pen has been
twice corrected. I have seen no correction of it but my own, and it
84
66
is not a little remarkable that, after that correction of mine, which
appeared in The Times of January 4, Lord Grimthorpe should have
written a letter to the extent of a column and a half, which appeared
in The Times of January 6, without withdrawing or explaining it. He
tells us now that it was a clerical error transparent on the face of
it," and that when he wrote "England" he meant the "world." How
comes it, then, that this scrupulous controversialist tells us in his
letter of January 6, that there are 11,000 homoeopaths in America ?
Eleven thousand in America and 10,000 in the world! And the fact
that he had made this computation for America was clearly before
him when he penned his letter which appeared in The Times of
January 12, and explained that by "England" he meant "the
world," for it is the foundation of the paragraph in my letter on a
criticism of which he ventures to impugn my honesty. Let him look
to his own, and tell us what he thinks of a debater who can con-
descend to such "rubbish," for I shall not use a stronger epithet than
he does.
But Lord Grimthorpe's "clerical error," although unworthy of a
vicar-general, and more suitable to a slipshod scientist like Mr.
Proctor, is, he retorts, a bagatelle beside an aberration of mine.
"Not one or two," as I have said, but "many homoeopathic remedies
have found their way into Dr. Lauder Brunton's Materia Medica,” and
Dr. Dyce Brown, assuming that I write in good faith, which he thinks
doubtful, supposes that I have not seen the index of diseases in that
book. Now, I have not attributed dishonesty to any individual
homœopath; indeed, I have always maintained that there are many
warp-brained and weak-minded members of the sect, and Dr. Dyce
Brown would perhaps be well advised not to challenge personalities.
But the benevolent construction which he puts on my "amazing mis-
statements is politely declined. I stand to my guns. Dr. Lauder
Brunton, who ought to know, says in the preface to his third edition
(p. 9), which Dr. Dyce Brown has read, that there is included "in the
Therapeutic Index one remedy which the homeopaths claim as theirs.
To the best of my knowledge," he goes on, "this is the only
remedy I have taken from a homeopathic source." Insinuating that
Dr. Lauder Brunton has unjustifiably sheltered himself behind the
error of a copyist, Dr. Dyce Brown asks why "apis " is retained as a
remedy for sore throat in the third edition of his book. It is not so
retained, and Dr. Dyce Brown ought to spare us the trouble of cor-
recting such gratuitous blunders. And what, it must here be asked,
constitutes a homoeopathic remedy? Not simply the fact that it is
used by homoeopathists. They use aconite, which was known to
Dioscorides and Galen; nux vomica, which we probably owe to the
Arabian physicians; and lead, which was a tonic amid the Greeks and
Romans. Not simply the fact that it is used in small doses, for small
doses of poisonous drugs were necessarily in vogue long before
Hahnemann had made his first venture in humbug by selling his quack
borax nostrum; and what is called a small dose by a doctor, as a drop
grain, has about the same proportion to a homeopathic dose that
the solar system has to a mote in the sunbeam. That remedy can
only be called homeopathic, our knowledge of which we owe to
homœopaths, or which is employed in homeopathic attenuations.
or
>>
85
Now, no drug is employed by doctors in homeopathic dilutions, and
I cannot recall one of the slightest utility, and in actual use, which a
homœopath has primarily introduced to us. Eager as doctors are for
fresh means of combating the terrible complexity of disease, they will
ask no questions as to the parentage of a drug that comes to them with
healing on its wings. Mr. Martindale's list of extra-pharmacopoeial
remedies shows how little they restrict themselves to the official list,
and it is therefore extraordinary that the homoeopaths, whose whole
work has been in therapeutics, have given us not one drug worth
having. Their toils have been sterile as those of the lads and lasses
who engage in the Hallow-e'en pastime described by Burns as
"win-
ning three weights o' naething," and who, as the reward of their
industry, have sometimes the satisfaction of seeing an illusion. False
principles and faulty methods have crippled all their efforts, and the
greatest achievement which one of your sympathetic correspondents
can claim for them is Dr. Dudgeon's sphygmograph. Why, one might
suppose that Dr. Dudgeon, and not Vierodt, had invented the insɩru-
ment, while all he has done has been to make some infinitesimal
mechanical alteration on Pond's American sphygmograph, thus pro-
ducing an instrument which Dr. Burdon Sanderson* and Mr. Hawksley
(and where shall we find higher authorities ?) regard as most untrust-
worthy. The clinical observations of Henderson, to which Dr.
Dudgeon refers, were made before he strayed into the Hahnemannian
quagmire. When young Toots began to have whiskers he left off
having brains, and when Dr. Henderson became a homœopathist he
ceased to contribute usefully to medical science.
The cloudy difficulties of a sceptic would be best dissipated in a
medical journal, for it would be manifestly inconvenient to discuss
with him constipation and the actions of drugs in the columns of The
Times. He seems to think that medical science is synonymous with
therapeutics, and forgets all about anatomy, physiology, vital chemistry,
and pathology, as, with the mischievous propensities of a schoolboy of
tender years, he seeks out what he thinks will be hard nuts for the
doctors to crack-hard nuts which are rotten and hollow, every one
of them.
Dr. Dudgeon is too shrewd in his guesses, and I can only hope that
he is more successful in seeing through the mystery of disease than in
piercing the veil of anonymity.
J. C. B.
DR. A. DUPRE.
[Jan. 14.
To argue with a believer in homoeopathy about homeopathy is as
profitless an undertaking as to argue with table turners, spiritualists,
and earth-flatteners, and I am not inclined to essay the task. I
should, however, like to ask Dr. Millican the following question :—
Why was it found necessary to bring the attar of roses all the way
* In a letter to Dr. Dudgeon, dated Jan. 18, Dr. Burdon Sanderson says:
"I am not aware that I have ever been asked my opinion on the merits of your
instrument, and I do not think that I have ever expressed any opinion unasked
I do not know sufficient about it myself, but know that it has been found by
others a satisfactory instrument."
86
from Constantinople ? If Dr. Millican had merely asked a friend to
spill a drop of the attar at Constantinople, this would, on homœo-
pathic principles, have been more than sufficient to scent his house
here in London for years after.
The main object of this letter, however, is to give some facts.
regarding homeopathic pilules which may show the sensible portion
of the public on which side unbounded credulity is to be found.
In 1873 I examined, for my friend the late Dr. Anstie, a number of
homœopathic pilules obtained from houses well known in London and
Liverpool. The results were published by Dr. Anstie in The Practi-
tioner, vol. x., page 254, and vol. xi., page 55. Those specially
interested will find in the latter volume the names of the houses from
which the pilules were purchased. The dilutions chosen were what
are known as the first and second, these being the only dilutions which
are at all within the range of chemical analysis.
The following, shortly stated, are the results of the analyses:-
Sulphate of copper pilules, second dil.-First sample-No copper
could be detected in 100 pilules. Second sample-No copper could
be detected in 200 pilules. If in the second case as little as
1-2,000,000th of a grain of sulphate of copper per pilule had been
present it would have been detected.
Corrosive sublimate pilules, second dil.-Two samples. It was just
possible to detect mercury when 200 pilules were taken for analysis.
Less than 1-400,000th part of a grain of corrosive sublimate per pilule
was present.
Nux vomica pilules, second dil.-No strychnine could be detected,
even when 300 pilules were taken.
Belladonna pilules, second dil.-No atropine could be detected in
300 pilules. If as little as 1-2,000,000th of a grain per pilule of
either strychnine or atropine had been present it would have been
detected.
Aconitum napellus pilules, first dil.-First sample-No aconite
could be detected in 100 pilules. Second sample-No aconite could
be detected in 100 pilules. If as little as 1-800,000th part of a grain
of aconite per pilule had been present it would have been detected.
Belladonna pilules, first dil.-First sample-No atropine could be de-
tected in 100 pilules by chemical means. Second sample-No atropine
could be detected in 100 pilules by chemical means. If as little as
1-600,000th part of a grain of atropine per pilule had been present it
would have been detected.
The above facts were published in The Practitioner in the year and
volumes before mentioned, and, as far as I am aware, they were never
called in question.
It will be seen that the only instance in which I could at all detect
the presence of the active ingredient was that of the corrosive sub-
limate pilules. In all the other cases I failed to detect the active
ingredient professedly present, and, although I do not wish to affirm
that these ingredients were entirely absent, I have given the quantities
more of which they cannot have contained, and they are infinitesimal
doses. Yet, according to homeopathic notions, even these quantities
are exceedingly large. These pilules represent the weakest kind used
—i.e., those containing the maximum amount of drug. To render
87
them really powerful they would have to be diluted many millions of
times.
It is but fair to state that the method adopted in the manufacture
of at least several varieties of the pilules satisfactorily explains some
of the statements made in " R. B. C.'s " letters, which seem to throw
doubt on the honesty of the dispensers of these pilules.
The pilules are, in the first place, made from pure milk sugar, and
are then individually moistened with the desired amount of a tincture
containing 1-100th, 1-10,000th, &c., of a grain of a so-called mother.
tincture of the drug required.
I leave the public to draw their own conclusions, and remain
A. DUPRE.*
Westminster Hospital.
R. B. C. (2).
[Jan. 14.
Professor Michael Foster, who is quoted by Mr. Millican, is an
eminent physiologist, but eminent men have before now carried on
customary statements from text-book to text-book without verifying,
or perhaps without even noticing, them. There is no evidence that
the sense of smell is excited by detached particles; what evidence
there is and all analogy point to an opposite conclusion. We know
that an odorous substance may incite the sense of smell for an indefi-
nite time without appreciable loss of weight, and hence, in all
probability, without diminution of substance. We have reason to
believe that all conduction through nerves is the same, however the
nerve may be excited, or whatever results to consciousness may follow
from its excitation; and we know that these results depend neither
on the nerve nor on the stimulus, but solely on the endowments of the
brain centre, to which the impression is conveyed. Every impression
made on the optic nerve is felt as light; every impression made on the
nerve of hearing is felt as sound, and so on. The sensations which we
know best, those of sight, hearing, and warmth, are not excited by
particles (although light was once supposed to be particulate), but by
movement, originating in external matter, and propagated to the
nerves concerned through air or ether, and ultimately through covering
tissue. The case of smell is, in all probability, the same; and one
reason for thinking so is that it can only be excited through a gaseous
medium. If the nostrils be filled with water, even scented water, no
smell can be perceived; and it may easily be understood that water
would be likely to quench delicate vibrations. In any case, the possible
minuteness of odorous particles does not affect the measurable magni-
tude of the particles which are obtained by the use of a pestle and
mortar. In my argument that the supposed homeopathic dose would
often be smaller than anything we can conceive of the magnitude of the
ultimate particles of matter, I took from a publication by Sir James
Simpson the statement that the earth contains 4,000,000,000 cubic
feet. I did not verify the statement, and "F. G. S." says it is wrong.
If so, the error is not large enough to affect my argument. The figures
given by "F. G. S." leave a probable ultimate minuteness which does
*For replies to this letter see Appendix.
88
not much fall short of being four times the size of that favourite dose
the quadrillionth, and which exceeds the size of a decillionth by
thirty-eight places of figures. Dr. Dudgeon says that Hahnemann says
that the itch insect is a kind of mite, and that Wichmann had given a
drawing of it. Many people gave drawings of supposed itch insects;
but the patients from whom the insects were taken were probably
hospitable to more than one variety, and the work of Renucci showed
all previous drawings to be incorrect, and to have been made from
wrong originals.
I. B. C.
DR. J. H. CLARKE (2).
[Jan. 14.
In all discussions about the powers of different doses of medicines.
one fact of vital importance is almost inv .riably left out of sight
namely, that there is no definite relation setween the size of a dose
and the size of a patient. Two patients, the one being twice the
weight of the other, may take the same medicine in the same dose,
and no one can tell beforehand whether the larger patient may not be
ten times more powerfully affected than the other. It is true that a
medical man of eminence, Dr. Lauder Brunton, did once gravely say
that it would be "more exact" to weigh the patient before prescribing
the dose, though it would be inconvenient. But Dr. Brunton belongs
to the school of drug students who think that the best way to find out
how drugs will effect men is to give them in poisonous doses to animals
under all sorts of abnormal conditions. These experimenters are
always careful to note the weight of the animals they poison, and the
colour of their coats, as well as the weight or measure of the dose.
This looks very scientific and exact, but really it is very unscientific,
for the reason that no one can tell whether a large dog will not be
affected as powerfully as a small one by an equal dose of a drug, or
whether a black-and-tan dog is more susceptible to its action than a
white one.
And the idea of weighing a patient before dosing him is,
for the like reason, as ridiculous as it looks.
Susceptibility to drug action depends on many things, but scarcely
at all on mere weight, It is of two kinds-constitutional suscepti-
bility and induced. There are some people who never can endure
certain drugs, even in the minutest quantities. We call this “idiosyn-
crasy," but we cannot explain it. When the health is deranged it is
found by experience that there is induced a temporary susceptibility
to the influence of those drugs which are capable of producing similar
disturbance in the healthy. For example, aconite, in some of those
who have taken it while in health, has caused inflammation in the
eyes, but not in every ne, since all are not susceptible. But if the
eye has become inflamed, as after an operation or an accident, then it
is much more susceptible to the action of aconite than when in health,
and every person taking it in these conditions will experience its
effects. This is induced or temporary susceptibility. To argue about
the size of doses as if they were an abstract quantity, without taking
into consideration individual peculiarities or the conditions of disease,
is unscientific and absurd.
The power of physically minute quantities of substances to effect
great changes in animate things is not a question of astronomy, of
89
physics, or of chemistry, but one of physiology, and is to be decided
by observation and experience, and in no other way. Darwin showed
in his work on
Insectivorous Plants" that one 20,000,000th of a
grain of phosphate of ammonia was sufficient to produce a distinct
effect on the glands of Drosera rotundifolia. He says further:
"When a dog stands a quarter of a mile to the leeward of a deer or
other animal, and perceives its presence, the odorous particles pro-
duce some change in the olfactory nerves; yet these particles must be
infinitely smaller (italics mine) than those of the phosphate of ammonia
weighing the 20,000,000th of a grain." It would be just as easy to
prove by astronomy, physics, or chemistry that this is absurd and im-
possible as it is to prove that the infinitesimal doses of the homœo-
paths are of no effect. Experience alone can decide in either case.
The size of the animal has little or nothing to do with it. It would
not be a bit more "exact" if we knew the weight of the dog that
scented the deer at a given distance; and a small dog might be less
keen to discover it than a large one, though the latter received a
proportionally smaller dose of the scent.
Metallurgy also furnishes evidence of the power of minute quanti-
ties. All practical workers in metals are aware of the vast difference
that the minutest quantity of one metal in excess of the right propor-
tion over another will make in the resulting alloy.
The eagerness of some disputants to avoid the argument of the
power of small quantities, as evidenced in vaccination, has led them
to assume that cowpox is a microbian disease, and is due to the
development of certain microbes in the body. It would have been
more to the point if they had proved this instead of assuming it. It
is not too late for them to prove it now-if they can.
Mention has been made of the statistics of homoeopathy in America.
I have before me the figures returned in 1886. There were then
thirteen homoeopathic medical colleges established under Government
authority. In 1886, 1,121 students matriculated at these, and 384
graduated; and in the States there were then 7,345 alumni of these
colleges. In addition to these graduates of homeopathic colleges,
there are numbers who have graduated at allopathic colleges and
embraced homeopathy subsequently. The last return gives the total
number of homeopathic doctors in the States as 11,000.
JOHN H. CLARKE, M.D.
<
DR. G. JOHNSON.
[Jan. 14.
Lord Grimthorpe's letter contains the following sentence, marked
as a quotation: "If they are curable at all, nature will cure them, if
we do not manage to prevent it." (G. Johnson and others.)
I know not who the "others" may be, but I beg to say that neither
that sentence nor anything like it is to be found in any publication of
mine. The clients for whom Lord Grimthorpe holds a brief have
evidently supplied him with a mendacious perversion of what I have
written on the important subject of the vis medicatrix naturæ-a subject
which is entirely ignored by those unscientific empirics whose sole
aim is the treatment of symptoms by drugs, and who would have
their dupes believe that every recovery is a cure.
GEORGE JOHNSON, M.D., F.R.S.
11, Savile-row, W., January 13.
90
MR. ALFRED HEATH.
It is difficult to conceive that there should be any educated man so
[Jan. 14.
careless of ascertaining the actual facts of the case before rushing into
print, or so ready to listen to the gossip of every allopathic chemist's
assistant, as your correspondent "R. B. C." His ignorance is almost
sublime. His assertions are devoid of a grain of truth or fair argument.
I have been excessively amused at his statement as to how our
medicines are made, as all your readers will be if they will take the
trouble to consult the "Homœopathic Pharmacopoeia." They will see
at once the blunder into which "R. B. C." has fallen. Every homœo-
path knows quite well that the pilules and globules are made first
from absolutely pure sugar, and they are afterwards medicated with the
particular strength of medicine required. If the medicine were added
before the sugar was melted it would be spoilt; so much for his
knowledge. All his deductions are absolutely b.side the mark, and
have actually nothing to do with the "law of similars" any more than
this, that better cures are made with infinitesimal doses than with
crude drugs.
There are some medical men who believe that the small
dose is the most effectual in curing disease, and they are led to this,
not by fancy (all of them having used large doses as allopaths before
they became homeopaths), but because their experience has shown
that they will act and cure better; otherwise, I presume (as they wish
to cure), they would not use them. Others may use larger doses, but
no homoeopath gives medicine as strong as the allopath does, neither
are the homœopathic mother tiuctures so proportionately strong as the
allopathic tinctures (as "R. B. C." says) when dry substances are
used the proportion is generally one in ten. In the allopathic, or
British Pharmacopoeia, the strength of the tinctures are mostly two
and a half to twenty, in some cases one in five. The calculations of
“R. B. C." are simply intended to ridicule; there is no argument in
them. Perhaps he will be astonished if I tell him that a grain of
musk may give its overpowering and characteristic perfume for years
and not appreciably lose weight, and that even the imponderable
amount of odour perceived will, in some individuals, cause distressing
symptoms. I did not intend writing so long a letter; my object in
writing at all is to try and show to persons like "R. B. C." that
even the 30th dilution will not only act curatively, but it will produce
symptoms. Now, Sir, whatever the dilution is, or according to
R. B. C." is not able to do, whether it contain the millionth or the
decillionth, whether his absolutely material mind can conceive anything
smaller than a milestone or not, I suppose he will grant that a fact is
a fact, and that if an infinitesimal dose will produce symptoms, it is
evidence that it is strong enough to cure them, especially if given.
according to the law of similars." I am prepared to make the
following challenge :-If a drug whose effects are well known on the
healthy human system be prepared in the 30th potency, I will under-
take to tell the name of that drug or some of its most prominent
symptoms, although only a letter or a number be marked on the label
of the bottle. Of course such a trial as this to convince everyone must
be done publicly.
114, Ebury-street, S.W.
ALFRED HEATH, F.L.S.
+
91
The following portion of the correspondence appeared after the
hearing of the appeal on January 14, in which the former judgment
in favour of Mr. Millican was reversed on technical grounds.
LORD GRIMTHORPE (6).
[Jan. 17.
“J. C. B." is determined I shall not pass him over lightly this
time, and I will not. But I will dispose of a smaller matter before
taking his verbosa et grandis epistola in hand. I really cannot see what
Dr. George Johnson has to complain of, unless the homoeopathic tract
"Allopathy judged by its Professors" invented the following utterance.
for "Dr. Johnson, of King's College," who certainly was and is Dr.
G. Johnson :-" The most general and comprehensive statement with
regard to the cure of diseases that can safely and confidently be made
is this-most of those diseases that are curable by any means are
curable by the unaided powers of nature." When doctors talk
learnedly to outsiders, as he does now, about the vis medicatrix naturæ,
they do not mean outsiders to introduce that fatal word "unaided.'
They keep that for domestic use. I added the word "others" to his
name, to save multiplying quotations to the same effect and nearly in
the same words, of which there are plenty in the same tract, both as
to unaided nature and as to the floundering state of A. physicians
in what Sir Thomas Watson called "a sea of doubt on questions of
the greatest importance; and Dr. Todd (both eminent K.C.L.
physicians) said that "no department of knowledge demands so
urgently the reform of a close and scrutinising induction."
>>
J. C. B." and all these objectors to experiments which not one.
of them has ever tried honestly, while they call those who have
impostors, have to learn that induction means forming a conclusion
from the greatest possible number of instances, and not excluding
one that contradicts it; and that a man who refuses to try experiments
which are said by credible people to contradict it, and, still worse, who
tries to burke them or to suppress any evidence, as the A's have done
in sundry places, convicts himself of preferring falsehood to truth.
And none the less if he pretends to prove the impossibility of ascer-
tained facts by reasoning which only means that he no more knows
their primary cause than why the sun and earth attract each other,
nor indeed any more than he knows why any physic or poison
generally does what it does. With some we can go a stage further
than others in the chain of second causes, but with all we come some-
where to a stop and have to say," It is their nature to.” " J. C. B.,"
with his usual veracity, is pleased to say that I "give up vaccina-
tion," though Dr. Dyce Brown said I was quite right in calling it a
strictly homoeopathic proceeding, as it plainly is. Only such philoso-
phers as "J. C. B." and "R. B. C." would deny it on the ridiculous
ground that we know rather more about why it acts than we do of
some others, both A. and H. It is not more certain that vaccination,
stings, stinks, and sweet smells, poisoned arrows, poisons so invisible.
that the chemists who maintain their existence confess that no
analysis can find direct evidence of them, in enormous quantities of
water often produce great effects, than that homoeopathic doses of the
proper kind often do what allopathic ones of the best known kinds will
""
92
(C
not. Yet they go on writing their nonsense about decillionths, and
making no end of mistakes too (if that signifies), as if such writing
could alter such facts, or as if the H.'s were any more bound to stick
to Hahnemann's decillionths than the A.'s to the black doses and
filthy jorums of our youth, which the more honest of them confess
that we have to thank H. for reducing. But, again, the doctor
of The Saturday Reviler (as Mr. Bright well called it), in a fury
at being laughed at, which his friends had better look after,
has reached a lower logical bathos than even J. C. B.;" for
he considers his former parallel of the truth of gravity and the
falseness of homoeopathy completely and sufficiently established by
the fact that every doctor says so "who is not a homœopathist." I
think that staff of superior persons whose wisdom closes the week for
us wants a little weeding after such prelections in logic as it has now
given us twice. Moreover, that is one of those truisms which are not.
true. For by no means every A doctor thinks that H is not true,
though they dare not say so publicly. The big A's only sit upon the
safety-valve to prevent any H. steam from escaping, as it some day
will, and blow them off as they deserve.
"
After J. C. B.'s" pretence that homeopathic remedies and
diseases" enough to fill more than two pages of a closely-printed H.
tract (No. 14) when put together got into the A. "Materia Medica
book all " through the error of a copyist," it is a work of supereroga-
tion to expose his credibility fur her; and yet when one has got a
dirty job to do it is as well to sweep it clean. In my last letter I said
he might have missed seeing the paragraph correcting my self-evident
error of “England" for "the world" the day before any answer to it
appeared, but that he could not have overlooked the correct version in
my next letter. That would have been enough for most people, but
it is not for him. I must be a liar because I defend the homœopa-
thists, I suppose, for he gives no other reason except this convincing
one, to be sure, that I also quoted from a tract of earlier date that there
were then 10,000 H. doctors in the world, and then, from informa-
tion sent to me the other day, that there are now 11,000 in America
alone, which are perfectly consistent for different dates. That sort of
thing, he says, may do very well for a slip-shod scientist like Mr.
Proctor," but will not go down with a genuine philosopher like him.
I am glad to see him expose his own well-shod science and knowledge
by applying such epithets to an astronomer who is known all over the
world as having corrected and advanced on some of the most celebrated
ones in various matters. As he likes legal analogies, he reminds me
of what a northern client of mine once said behind me when I was
cross-examining a sort of “J. C. B.”—“My eye, but that chap's a
lunger." He had better mind his own business and try to answer the
charges against his own fraternity, of which I keep receiving more and
more evidence after every one of these letters.
66
-
Did you ever read anything more contemptible than his answer to
that case of the "regular" who had pronounced a lady dying of
cancer within a month, and refused to examine her again, because
her father, whose name I said would command attention, had mean-
while consulted a H., who had presumed to doubt this regular
diagnosis, and, worse still, turned out to be right-a little fact which
93
he naturally drops. My statement of the case was so "lame" that
he can make nothing of it, which is very true; "if the lady lived where
no other medical assistance could be got (which he must know from
my description was impossible), then he should say the regular was
wrong;" if not, that he was right, as he had been "discarded" (which
he had not), and he could not carry out homoeopathic treatmen',
which he was not asked to do, unless looking at a patient who has
been looked at by a H, is carrying out homeopathic treatment." We
know it is heresy already. Then he runs off into another guess at
legal practice, and mine in particular, which is as wrong as all the
others of himself and his colleagues.
Perhaps he would like to try his hand on another case or two of
"medical ethics," as these people call it. Here are two then, ju‹t
come from an old friend whom I had not heard of for I do not know
how long, since I was told he was dangerously ill. And so he was,
and had been drenched by all the best "regulars" of the day, and
fiually told that he had a disease which would finish him in six
months, as it always did if it could not be cured speedily. He did
discard them after they had so discarded him, and went to a H, by
whom he was straightway cured, and lives, like Wycliffe. "to expose
the evil deeds of the (allopathic) friars." Here is another of them, a
sill nicer case for "J. C. B.'s" casuistry to dispose of, from the same
friend. A formerly well-known, very rich man was pronounced so
very near dying that the eminent "regular," who was doing his best
to aid or to beat nature, told his sister that she might give him any-
thing she liked; and just as a matter of civility, or business, called
the next day and inquired at what hour he died. "Died, sir,
answered the footman, "he's had a very good night, and is much
better." Of course he went in and asked what had she given him?
"A homœopathist." As soon as he heard that, he got into such a
passion that she had to tell the servants to turn him out. She might
have helped her brother off with too large a dose of laudanum by
mistake, as a great London doctor sent for "special" was considered
to have done to a well-known Yorkshireman, or by any other too big
dose; but helping him to stay in the world by a little one (as he did
for years after), was much worse than manslaughter.
"}
If that too was a case on which "J. C. B." would like to reserve
judgment till I can tell him some immaterial facts about it, here is
another from a quite unquestionable source, with all particulars--
unless I have been imposed upon by a correspondent, who writes to me
exactly this:
"From a pompous (I should have added catch-penny titled) book,
The Stomach and its Difficulties,' by Sir James Eyre, M.D., &c., ninth
thousand, 1879, p. 63 :- I look back with much satisfaction upon an
instance, where (being a medical director, that is, physician, for there
was no other examiner during eight years, at an insurance office) I
refused the life of a nobleman of high rank, because [italics in book]
his medical man was a H, and my brother directors concurred with
me unanimously."
That is, in plain English, this medical director and sole examiner
looked back with much satisfaction on having cheated the company,
who paid him for only telling them the truth about the value of
94
insurers' lives, and having done his best, out of mere spite and
ignorance, to deprive a family of some thousands of pounds because
their father had consulted a heretic. No doubt, however, that was
avoided by the nobleman going to some other Board less cowardly with
some other doctor less dishonest or idiotic. He could not possibly
have believed that the nobleman's constitution was secretly under-
mined by homoeopathic medicines, because he believed, or would have
sworn he did, that they do nothing. And yet he solemnly rejoiced
that he made the company reject a life, otherwise good, solely because
the man only took innocent medicines. Perhaps by this time he
rejoices less.
It is worth while to add, as a practical commentary on that dis-
graceful confession, that it appears in the discussion in The
Times about Lord Beaconsfield's treatment, in 1881, that in New
York there actually is a company which insures homœopathic lives for
10 per cent. below the ordinary premiums, and is well justified by the
result; for in the latest period given, only one in 75 of such lives had
died against one in 30 victims of allopathy, out of about 11,000 lives
altogether, of which the H were the most numerous; again a
superiority of more than two to one, as in the hospitals. One such
fact as that-and nobody in the Beaconsfield correspondence disputed
it is worth 1,000 columns of argument to prove that such facts have
no business to exist. Even Sir Joseph Banks, P.R.S., had to confess
at last (see Peter Pindar) that "Fleas are not lobsters, d
souls," though he had proved beforehand that they were.
their
Again, one such fact, though a more private one, as this, among
those which have been sent to me, is worth more than any amount of
argument; for there can be no mistake about such cases.
A clergy-
man to whom money was of the usual consequence was told by the
surgeon of a special hospital, and by another of St. Bartholomew's,
of well-known reputation, that he must have a serious operation,
which would cost him £50. By chance he was advised to consult a
provincial H first. He did so, and was cured at the cost of 30s., ten
years ago, and has been quite well since. I cannot remember a single
instance where any A doctor has done the smallest atom of good to
me or any of my relations, friends, or servants in the commonest of
all semi-chronic ailments now, rheumatism, though I have in rheu-
matic fever, more or less. The alternatives are—(1) “Unaided
Nature," whom I am sorry to say I must leave as she has always left
me, on a level with the A's. (2) Bath and Buxton and some German
baths. I have often been to the two former, and am going again to
the first in a day or two, because I have never found them fail for
inyself, and very seldom for my friends and hospital patients-perhaps
once in ten times. (3) Homœopathic bryonia, of which I have found
so little as a single globule a day do so much good that I should not
think it worth while to go away now, except that I find it generally
beneficial for the year. And I have this further remark to make
about those waters. As J. C. B." knows all about vaccination, and
poisoned arrows, and stings and stinks, and everything, except H
medicines, can he tell us why such waters cure rheumatism, and
especially the Buxton ones, which are the freest (one cannot put in
three e's) from mineral ingredients, and the coolest, and yet much the
95
!
[
:
strongest, as measured by the time you must stay in? If he can, erit
mihi magnus Apollo, for nobody at Buxton can; they are wisely content
with experience and success, and so am I; and I prefer them infinitely
to theory and failure. Sometimes of course everything fails, as the
A's do always with rheumatism.
He asks, with an affectation of indignation, what I mean by
saying that he and his fellows have not even attempted to answer that
array of their confessions of incompetence and confusion of their so-
called scientific medicine, when I must know that it was only made
up of "
scraps riven from a context which would have put a different
complexion on them." Well, if I must tell him what I mean, it is
that he knows very well that there is not a single word of truth in that
assertion; first, because from the nature of those quotations, which
nobody disputes are accurate, it is impossible, and, secondly, because
if it were possible it is quite certain that he or somebody else would
have shown it fast enough. I gave them the full reference to the
tract, and probably they knew it well enough before. And therefore
I now sum up their case by saying that they have given no rational
answer to a single one of the charges that have kept pouring in
against them since they pulled the string of the shower-bath some
weeks ago, of these domestic confessions of their impotence and
ignorance; of persecuting everybody that they can or dare who takes
them at their word, and practises or encourages something else; of
tyranny over hospital committees; of deceiving and boasting that
they had deceived insurance companies who paid them to tell the
truth; of preferring that their patients should die in the odour of
allopathic sanctity rather than be cured by heretical small doses; of
suppressing in one case here, and embezzling in another at Vienna,
returns which were against them; of charging with ignorance and
"intellectual barrenness" those who necessarily know both systems,
while they know only one. I hope they like this summary, and
are duly grateful to "J. C. B." for inviting it.
I do not suppose anybody cares, except for curiosity, whether there
is any more than that initial identity which Dr. Dudgeon noticed
between "J. C. B." and Dr. J. C. Bucknill, who tried in vain to per-
suade the College of Physicians to denounce homeopathic doctors ex
cathedra though they are bound by Act of Parliament to license
them as much as themselves, and prohibited from revoking any such
licence afterwards for that reason. One "J. C. B." may be ashamed
of the other for what I know. I merely take this one as the imper-
sonal representative of allopathic wisdom. But if anybody else cares
for his apparent denial, I warn them that "J. C. B." might swear
the final sentence of his letter as an affidavit, and yet be clear of
perjury, if he vanished like "Dr. Jekyll" and J. C. Bucknill suddenly
appeared in his shoes.
The Court of Appeal has decided that the Jubilee Hospital Com-
mittee had a legal right to turn out Mr. Millican for associating with
homœopathists, or for anything else. And it was clearly only a ques-
tion of time, and whether they had done it regularly. The moral
question remains exactly where it was, and it is now clearer than ever
that some more of either legal protection or enlightenment of the
public is necessary. Committees are mere tools of the majority of
96
doctors, and I have always steadily refused to be on any hospital
committee for that reason. Subscribers are as much sheep as share-
holders generally are.
It is time that either Parliament, or some
resolute Minister with control over some national hospitals, should
insist on fair play being given to homeopathists and homeopathy by
a sufficient period of fair experiments, not sham ones, and unquestion-
able, and undoctored, and even un-nursed reports, for they will have
all that to contend with. All public hospitals should be obliged to
report to the public truly.
I hope everybody read the admirable letter of the "Sceptic" on
January 12, which I suppose not two men in England could have
written, notwithstanding "J. C. B.'s" impudent affectation of con-
signing it to "a medical journal." Of course he knows the value of
such a limbo-especially as it seems the A journals refuse to print
even advertisements of anything homeopathic. Now I think I have
done enough for both sets of doctors. The A's pretend to laugh at it
abroad, but I know what they are saying at home.
GRIMTHORPE.
DR. MILLICAN (5).
[Jan. 17.
""
I am not prepared to accept "J. C. B.'s" and "R. B. C.'s' con-
tention that smell is produced by waves comparable to those of sound
and light, which produce the senses of hearing and sight, in the face
of Dr. Michael Foster's view that it is the result of the contact of
material particles.
As I am unable to see the bearing of Dr. Dupré's argument, I can
form no opinion as to its value.
But these do not affect my position in the least degree. I am
prepared to discard them on disproof, without finding it requisite to
change front with reference to the extension of professional fellowship
to homœopaths.
"J. C. B." speaks of me as "making rapid progress" in my
homœopathic education." Upon what grounds does he make this
assertion? Merely because I adduce three well-known circumstances
apparently as incomprehensible as the infinitesimal dose theory, and
tending to illustrate (unless and until the analogy be proved insufficient)
the bare possibility thereof.
It is just such thoughtless misrepresentation-if thoughtless it can,
indeed, be called, judging from "J. C. B.'s" first letter, though I am
willing to give him the benefit of the doubt-which envenoms con-
troversy of all kinds. Surely a mau owes it to his own self-respect
either to master his adversary's contentions and try to construe them
fairly, or if he considers him entirely impracticable to say so and
forbear argument altogether.
"C
A little cosmopolitanism in acquaintance-which the older ethics.
of the profession have not encouraged-makes earnest men less
dogmatic in their own opinions and more inclined to do justice to
those of others.
KENNETH MILLICAN.
97
A SCEPTIC.
[Jan. 17.
You have placed two and a-half columns at the disposal of the
voluminous "J. C. B." and the nonluminous "R. B. C." You could
not possibly have made a better use of the space. Nothing can more
powerfully further the spread of rational and healthy scepticism than
the letters of these two dogmatical gentlemen.
“J. C. B.” informs us that "stinks are due to odorous particles or
gases coming in contact with the mucous membrane of the nose and
stimulating the nerve-cells there." In the next column but one "R.
B. C." tells us that "there is no evidence that the sense of smell is
excited by detached particles; what evidence there is and all analogy
point to an opposite conclusion." There you are! Two luminaries of
medicine, each cocksure about everything, and each brimful of con-
tempt for everybody who does not bow humbly before their infallibility,
contradict one another flatly and categorically upon a point which lies
at the very threshold of "medical science." The smell of musk gives
some people a headache, the smell of roses will do as much for others,
the smell of a man a mile off will put a herd of deer in motion, yet
"medical science" has not the ghost of an idea how smell comes
about. This is a comparatively simple and external physiological
affair, yet we are asked to believe that men who know nothing about
it are competent to say with certainty what goes on in the inmost
recesses of the organism when a grain or a decillionth of a grain of a
drug is administered.
Neither of your correspondents has so much as got the scientific
habit of mind.." J. C. B.'s" habit is wholly forensic. He is the Sir
William Harcourt of this controversy. Like that eminent man he
busies himelf with declamation about the fringes and accidents of the
discussion, never by any chance settling down to close and dispassion-
ate examination of the real question. Also like that eminent man, he
lays about him in a manner which his antagonists themselves must
admit to be amusing, but when his fireworks are over the argument is
found not to be advanced by a single step.
"R. B. C." is forensic too, and fires off plenty of crackers, but he
has a comical consciousness that he ought to be scientific if he only
knew how. Just observe how completely he is enslaved by vulgar
notions of magnitude, which it is the first business of the physicist to
escape from. Had the milligramme instead of the grain been the
English unit of drug measurement, people like "R. B. C." would
have accepted the first dilution of the homeopaths as quite in the
order of nature. He never saw a decillionth, and cannot conceive it;
therefore he is cocksure there can be no such thing. Before the
microscope was invented he could not have seen or conceived a blood
corpuscle or a spermatozoon; but if there is one thing that the
microscope teaches more clearly than another it is that its limits
correspond to no real boundary in nature, but only measure the
imperfection of the human observer. While drawing hard-and-fast
lines concerning magnitudes on one side, he has no faculty for
appreciating them on the other. He based an argument on the
number of cubic feet in the terrestrial globe. He stated that number
at just about one ten billionth of its true magnitude, and when the
H
98
mistake is pointed out he says it does not matter. Unity and ten
billions are all the same to "R. B. C." when it suits him; but when
a homœopath uses a billionth instead of "R. B. C.'s" grain he is a
fool. Observe, again, the confusion of "R. B. C.'s" ideas about
matter. He says smell is not produced by the impact of particles.
upon the olfactory nerves, but by movement. Movement in what?
Movement of what? "Air or ether," says "R. B. C." with the fine
insouciance of a man not particular to twelve places of figures, and not
pedantic about historical or biographical accuracy. Air or ether;
you pay your money and take your choice, just as with Ringer's cures
for constipation. Air we know something about, we can feel it,
breathe it, and weigh it. Ether is the mere postulate of a theory.
We know nothing about it except that if you grant its existence and
do not prove too exacting in the matter of definition of its qualities,
then a working hypothesis concerning the nature of light may be
constructed. Take it as they vaguely conceive it, and you will find
that an ounce bottle full of air bears the same unthinkable relation of
ponderability to a solar system full of ether that a material dose does
to a decillionth. Still, air or ether is all one to “R. B. C."; but you
must accept his dictum about movement without question else you are
a fool, and at the same time you must believe with "J. C. B." that it
is not movement, but particles, else you are a knave.
"J. C. B." does not want to discuss with me the actions of drugs.
Convenient blindness! What I discussed was not the action of drugs,
but the ignorance of their action and the contradictory jumble of
ideas that we are asked to accept as "medical science." He says I
forget everything except therapeutics, whereas the larger part of my
letter dealt with what they call pathology. But a chain is only as
strong as its weakest link, and all the pathology and vital chemistry
in the world will not cure a man unless it can indicate the proper
treatment. Anybody who has hit upon the proper treatment, no
matter how, will cure him without knowing as much pathology as
would suffice to fill a paragraph with unproved assertions.
I should write a longer letter than "J. C. B." himself were I to
expose all the contradictions and absurdities of the orthodox cham-
pions. But I have no "pathy" and no sect to defend, no interests to
be fought for, and no temper to be roused. If the homoeopaths had
the whip-hand it would very likely become a duty to rebel against
their dogmatism and intolerance. At present it is the other gentle-
men who sit upon us, and to point out the slenderness of their claim
and the monstrous arrogance of their attitude is all that concerns,
A SCEPTIC.
DR. T. L. BRUNTON.
[Jan. 17.
I thought that in the preface to the third edition of my work on
Pharmacology, Therapeutic, and Materia Medica, I had expressed my
opinions regarding homoeopathy sufficiently clearly to prevent them
from being misunderstood; but as the writer of a letter in The Times
of the 12th inst. says it is difficult to come to any other conclusion
than that I am half a convert to homeopathy, or at least regard it
with favour, I should like to correct this misapprehension. My
99
opinions are that what is true in homoeopathy is not new, and what
is new is not true, or, as I have expressed them in my preface,
6. In
founding the system of homoeopathy, Hahnemann has proceeded with
his facts as he did with his medicines, diluting his active drugs with
inert matter, and diluting his facts with much nonsense." Unless for
the purpose of correcting a mistake regarding my personal opinions, I
should not have troubled you with this letter, nor shall I occupy your
space with any attempt to defend my opinions, for I do not intend to
take any part in the controversy now going on. Those who desire the
reasons I have for my opinions will find them either in the preface to
the third edition of my work on Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and
Materia Medica, or in the Monthly Homœopathic Review for June, 1887,
where my preface is re-printed and adversely reviewed. This review
is re-printed in a separate form as No. 15 of the "Tracts of the
Homœopathic League." For the benefit of those who may take the
trouble to read the review, I may mention that my authority for
saying that Hahnemann suffered from ague, of which, according to
the reviewer, there is no evidence, is to be found at page 104 of
Ameke's "History of Homoeopathy," translated by A. E. Drysdale,
M.B., and published for the British Homœopathic Society_by
E. Gould and Son.
T. LAUDER BRUNTON.
10, Stratford-place, W.
DR. J. C. BUCKNILL.
[Jan. 17.
I had hoped to have kept myself quite outside of this "Odium Grim-
thorpe." When I see hay on the horn I am glad to get behind a tree,
but the reference to me by name in your columns of the 12th inst. by
your correspondent Dr. Dudgeon made it imperative upon me that I
should write to you to disclaim having had any hand or part in the
letters you have published under my initials, "J. C. B." I do not
even know who is the author of those letters. If Dr. Dudgeon had
taken more pains with his diagnosis he would possibly have found
rational grounds for the opinion that the letters were not written by
me; but in true homoeopathic fashion he allowed himself to be con-
vinced by the most prominent symptom-namely, the signature, and
thus jumped to a wrong conclusion, which he, no doubt, will now
regret.
"motion
Dr. Dudgeon, moreover, smarting under the lash of the other
"J. C. B.," whoever he may be, charges me with having made accu-
sation of dishonesty against colleagues as well educated and probably
as honest as myself, and in support of this charge he quotes a
proposed" by me to the College of Physicians in 1881. But Dr.
Dudgeon will perhaps be a little surprised to learn that I do not con-
sider that I have ever made any accusations of dishonesty against
homœopathic colleagues. I have but suggested dishonesty as one of
the horns of a dilemma of which incompetence was the most pro-
minent; and surely it must be, admitted that in medicine, politics,
theology, and other phases of ideational authority in which some men
profess to guide the lives of others, the honesty of the agent in relation
to his knowledge must be considered. But beyond these generalities,
I think I may fairly ask your permission to explain the particulars
UorM
100
under which the offending motion was made. At the date mentioned
the President of the College of Physicians had summoned an extra-
ordinary comitia to pass some sort of judgment on the homoeopaths,
and at this comitia the following resolution was duly proposed :-
"While the College has no desire to fetter the opinions of its
members in reference to any theories they may see fit to adopt in the
practice of medicine, it nevertheless thinks it desirable to express its
opinion that the assumption or acceptance by members of the profes-
sion of designations implying the adoption of special modes of treat-
ment is opposed to those principles of the freedom and dignity of the
profession which should govern the relations of its members to each
other and to the public. The College, therefore, expects that all its
Fellows, members, and licentiates will uphold these principles by
discountenancing those who trade upon such designations."
To wit, the homoeopaths. When I heard this I could not forget that
the College of Physicians itself did not discountenance those of its
Fellows who traded, not in designations, but in patients who were
incarcerated in their private lunatic asylums, and I had the audacity
to move an amendment in the terms quoted by your correspondent-
namely: "No competent medical man can honestly practise the so-
called homoeopathic system."
This was brief; I think it was intelligible, and I am sure it was not
intended to be insulting, and if Dr. Dudgeon will take the trouble to
turn it over in his mind with impartial criticism I shall not be sur-
prised if he admits it to be a not unfair statement of the allopathic
contention. If its converse be true, then cadit quæstio, and allopathy
is a vain delusion; for it is not possible that both allopathy and
homœopathy can be practised in good faith by competent physicians.
I have read the letter of your able correspondent "Sceptic" with
great interest, and yet I do believe in orthodox medicine and in the
justice of its claim to be considered a science and one of the highest,
if not the very highest of all in importance. No doubt it is an im-
mature science, and from the vast extent of its relations it will pro-
bably always remain so. But it is built upon the sure foundations of
biology and chemistry, from which henceforth it can never be shaken.
Its professors, comparatively ignorant as "Sceptic" thinks them, are
yet diligent seekers for brighter light and better knowledge, and by
aid of the scientific methods they now use they are quite sure of their
attainment.
But almost the converse of all this may be said of homœopathy. Its
facts are mostly accidental observations, unconnected with the organ-
ised systems of knowledge, and therefore, even if true, destined to be
unprolific. Its principles-if principles they can be called-are
dogmata, inspired by the very spirit of paradox. Take the dogma of
the infinitesimal dose. Is there anything in nature, the homœopathic
drug alone excepted, the energy of which increases as the substance
decreases? Is not this dogma as if some new school of mystical
physicists should declare that gravitation decreases with the substance
and increases with the distance of gravitating bodies? Is it not, in
truth, contra naturam, and, in the absence of miraculous intervention,
impossible and incredible ?
Then, as to the second dogma that, similia similibus curantur, does
Maou
101
}
all nature contain any other instance in which motion of any kind is
checked or stopped by similar motion in the same direction? In the
magnificent experiment of breeding in men, animals, and plants,
which nature is ever carrying on for our instruction and delight, and
by which we can ourselves interrogate nature in the most subtle man-
ner, do we find that diseases and defects in progeny can be avoided in
new progeny by parents having the like diseases and defects? Or is
not the contrary true? In the world of mind, do we quench passions
by the motions of like passions? Does " Sceptic "try to cure our
conceit, as he thinks it, by the administration of faint praise, or by
heroic doses of contempt and censure? No; this dogma also is pure
paradox, whose only home is in the mystic mind.
The homoeopaths in their league pamphlets call me "mad-doctor,"
and under that designation they must allow me to tell them that I
take a deeper interest in their minds than in their medicines, and
that I have been greatly perplexed to find a rational explanation of
the fact that men of such high intelligence and culture, as some of
them undoubtedly are, can steadfastly believe in such paradoxes as
the above, and can use them as principles of action wherein the lives
of multitudes of men stand in peril. The best explanation I can
afford is the hereditary transmission of tendency to mystical thought,
which is not and cannot be confined to what are called spiritual
matters. In the duration of the human race the date of the "Novum
Organon" is as of yesterday, whereas the cerebral tendency to mystic.
notions has been inherited through unrecorded æons; and perhaps
the closest congeners of the homeopaths may be the most remote,
and have existed in those practitioners of the Stone period who
trephined the skulls of the cave-men with the supposed intention or
letting out the spirit of disease.
JOHN CHARLES BUCKNILL.
Hillmorton-hall, Rugby.
-
LORD GRIMTHORPE (7).
[Jan. 18.
After correcting a misprint which appeared in his previous letter,
his lordship continued :
Dr. Bucknill has not improved the allopathic case by showing that
the vapid resolution of the College hits mad-doctors, hydropathic
doctors, throat doctors, oculists, aurists, dentists, not one of whom
they have ever dared to meddle with, quite as much as homoeopathists.
The other "J. C. B." could not have beaten that. I hope that they
have all seen that a lot of Irishmen were condemned to five weeks
in prison for "boycotting," as conspiracy, and the conviction was
confirmed the other day.
GRIMTHORPE.
DR. R. E. DUDGEON (3).
[Jan. 19.
At last the great original anti-homoeopathic champion, as he informs
us, is going to retire from the controversy. Possibly he "sheaths his
sword for lack of argument," but before doing so he discharges a
Parthian dart, but as it is aimed chiefly at Professor Foster we may
pass it by, and leave the professor to defend his statement about smell
102
""
being excited by detached particles from an odorous body. Possibly
most people will incline to attach more value to the opinion of the
"eminent physiologist" that to that of his critic.
R. B. C." now
seems to think that it does not affect his argument whether the earth
contains 250,000 million cubic miles or only 4,000 million cubic feet.
He takes his calculations, as he tells us, from Simpson's "Tenets and
Tendencies," and apparently his knowledge of homoeopathy, as well as
that of "J. B. C.," to judge from an admission in his letter, is derived
from the same pure source, which is about as appropriate a work in
which to study homoeopathy, as would be the writings of the late
Thomas Paine for the study of theology, or the Comic Blackstone for
the study of the law. "R. B. C." must have another fling at the
itch-insect before he goes. He now insinuates that Wichmann's
drawing of the itch-mite was of some other insect not uncommonly
seen on dirty patients-possibly Burns's
(C
Ugly, creepin', blast it wonner,
"Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner."
(C
Unfortunately for this guess, Küchenmeister (vol. ii., p. 23), who is,
or was, the greatest authority on these matters, tells us that Wichmann
knew all about the itch-mite. As my chief business in this contro-
versy has been to correct the errors of "R. B. C.," I rather regret that
he now 6.
throws up the sponge," for I think that if he had only gone
on a little longer, he might have eventually come to have some real
knowledge of homoeopathy slightly different from what he has learnt
from Simpson.
“J. C. B.” at all events shows no signs of exhaustion, for he gave us
on Saturday the longest letter of the whole series, but I hardly think its
lucidity is proportionate to its length, indeed, it seems rather to tend to
darken couns 1. “J. C. B." is something like the molluse from which
we derive one of our medicines, sepia, the more ink he sheds the more
obscure does it become all around him. He (" J. C. B.,"not the cuttle-
fish) says two grains of strychnine and one-eighth of a grain of
digitaline will infallibly kill a man, and these doses " are a whole
universe greater than a decillionth of a grain." It may be so, but
then we do not want to kill a man, but cure him, which makes all the
difference.
It strikes me that "J. C. B." might find more analogues for Mrs.
Stephen's specific in the prescriptions of his own school than in those
of ours, for one of our maxims is to give medicines singly and alone, and
not to mix up a quantity of heterogeneous substances in one prescrip-
tion, as is done by Mrs. Stephen and our allopathic friends.
It may be true that in this country only 258 medical men have
adopted homœopathy, while 22,669 have not adopted it, but then it
should be remembered that these 258 have carefully studied and tested
it, while the 22,669 have neither tested nor studied it. If this is an
argument against homoeopathy, it strikes me that the Irish criminal
who offered to bring twenty witnesses to prove that they did not see
him commit the crime to upset the evidence of two witnesses who
swore they saw him do it, was wrongfully condemned. If he had had
a jury of J. C. B.'s" he would certainly have been acquitted.
·
Doctors, says "J. C. B.," have examined the proofs of homeopathy
again and again, and found them wanting." I know a good deal
103
about the literature for and against homoeopathy, and have not yet
met a single instance of an intelligent examination by doctors of the
proofs of homoeopathy in the only possible way-viz., by careful trial
at the bedside-that was not followed by entire or (in one case, that
of Kopp) partial acknowledgment of the truth of the homeopathic
rule. As "J. C. B." knows that this has been done with an opposite
result " again and again," I call upon him to refer me to any published
record of any such examination. “J. C. B." dislikes statistics, and
no wonder, they are all against him; in this he resembles the French
theorist, who declared "If the facts are against my theory—so much
the worse for the facts." But
But J. C. B." could make "mince-meat
of our statistics if he only had space. Well, I daresay any of the
medical periodicals of the old school will willingly give him as much
space as he requires, for there is nothing they so earnestly desire as
"destructive analysis of these figures." We, too, should be charmed
to witness his attempt. We do not much care for what Professor
Gairdner " maintains," as from experience we have a very poor
opinion of his "candour and open-mindedness" in the matter of
homœopathy.
a
"J
The number of homoeopathic practitioners in the world varies from
year to year. The pamphlet from which Lord Grimthorpe quoted was
published in 1881, at which time there were about 10,000 medical
men practising homœopathy in the world. But as from 300 to 400
are added every year to the number in the United States it happens
that the total number there at last year's enumeration amounted to
about 11,000. In all Europe there are about 1,000, and probably
there are upwards of 100 in other parts of the world, which make the
total number of practitioners of homoeopathy about 12,100. The
reason why homoeopathic practitioners are so much more numerous in
America that in Europe is that there being no monopoly of medical
education by one sect in the New World, they have plenty of colleges
and even a University where all the professors are favourable to
homeopathy; whereas in the Old World all the medical schools are in
the hands of the opponents of homoeopathy, only one University, that
of Budapest, having a chair of homoeopathy; but, as the study is not
compulsory, the Hungarian students do not attend the professor's
class, which is frequented only by those who have taken their degrees,
or by foreign inquirers.
"J. C. B.," with the magnanimous condescension of the superior
person he undoubtedly is, says :-"I have not attributed dishonesty
to any individual homoeopath; I have always maintained that there
are many warp-brained or weak-minded members of the sect." Well,
I suppose we ought to feel grateful at being assured on such high
authority that we are all either knaves or fools. Possibly it is better
to be a knave than a fool, for there are hopes that a knave may
reform, but for a fool there is no hope-" Er bleibt ein Narr sein
Leben lang."
"J. C. B." falls foul of my poor little instrument, the pocket
sphygmograph, which may be "an ill-favoured thing" likely enough
in his eyes, but is "mine own," and so, though I never would have
dreamt of bringing it into the controversy, I feel disposed to defend it
now that "J. C. B." has drawn it like a red herring across the scent.
104
"Why," he says, "one might suppose that Dr. Dudgeon, and not
Vierordt, had invented the instrument, while all he has done has been
to make some infinitesimal mechanical alteration on Pond's American
sphygmograph, thus producing an instrument which Dr. Burdon
Sanderson and Mr. Hawksley (and where shall we find higher authori-
ties ?) regard as most untrustworthy." Now, if " J. C. B." will do me
the honour to read my little book on the spygmograph, he will find I
have rendered all honour to Vierordt, to whose instrument mine
has no more resemblance than has a "hawk to a hand-saw." Dr. B.
Sanderson in 1867 (about fourteen years before my sphygmograph
came out) published a "Handbook of the Sphygmograph," in which
he extols Marey's instrument altered by himself, but I was not aware
that he regarded mine as untrustworthy, and I am sorry to hear it.
Mr. Hawksley is a very respectable surgical instrument maker, who,
as he himself told me, was much employed by physicians in taking
sphygmograms with the cumbrous and difficult instrument in general
use before mine, which required the skill of an expert to apply pro-
perly. He was therefore naturally not biased in favour of my instru-
ment, which is so simple as to require no special skill in its application,
and may be used by a child. I did not know he was a high authority
in the science of sphygmography; but we live and learn. In this con-
nection I may mention that I have before me a letter, dated April 16,
1882, from the late Dr. Mahomed, the inventor of a modified Marey's
sphygmograph, which was the favourite before mine appeared. Dr.
Mahomed writes :-"I constantly use your little instrument, which I
find most convenient for ordinary work." As many thousands of my
instruments are in constant use, not only in this country, but in
Germany, France, Italy, and America, and as it has almost every-
where superseded the instruments formerly in use, I may dispense.
with the approbation of Dr. Sanderson and Mr. Hawksley. I am
sorry to have been obliged to dwell so long on this subject, but
"J. C. B.'s" attack on my instrument, though it cannot injure me,
as I have never had any pecuniary interest whatever in its sale,
touches my vanity as an inventor.
I pointed out the remarkable coincidence that the initials of your
correspondent "J. C. B." were the same as those of Dr. J. C.
Bucknill, who had also distinguished himself by charging his homœo-
pathic colleagues with dishonesty in the motion he endeavoured to
get the College of Physicians to pass. He now denies that he ever
brought a charge of dishonesty against us; his motion only implies
that we are either incompetent or dishonest-fools or knaves, in
short-the usual allopathic argument. He now tells us that he pro-
posed this motion because the College had not discountenanced
"those of its Fellows who traded in patients who were incarcerated
in their private lunatic asylums." The logic of this proceeding would
hardly be appreciated outside the walls of a lunatic asylum. The
resemblance between "J. C. B." and Dr. J. C. Bucknill extends also
to the amount of their knowledge of homoeopathy. Both might with
advantage attend to the admonition conveyed in the heading of one of
the chapters in "Tom Jones," an essay to prove that an author
will write the better for having some knowledge of the subject on
which he writes." Dr. Bucknill will perhaps be surprised to learn
(6
105
(6
that we have no dogma" of the "infinitesimal dose." Doses are
a matter of experience, and homoeopathy may be and often is practised.
without the use of so-called infinitesimals. Neither is there a dogma
similia similibus curantur. Hahnemann's formula is similia similibus
curentur, "let likes be treated by likes," which is a therapeutic rule
deduced from observed facts and not a dogma at all.
So there is little to choose between "J. C. B." (the other claimant
for these initials being Sir J. C. Browne) and Dr. J. C. Bucknill.
Like the two Dromios, they resemble one another in many points.
Arcades ambo! Both are "mad-doctors." Both speak dogmatically
on a subject they know little or nothing about; both insult their
colleagues by leaving them the choice between being considered
knaves or fools. To both I might address the words of an old con-
troversialist—“No doubt you are the people, and wisdom shall die
with you." My modesty will not allow me to continue the quotation.
In the meantime I challenge those who are always prating about
the scientific character of old-school medicine and the great principles
of therapeutics to mention one single principle, one single guiding rule
of anything like general applicability to be found in their school. They
know they cannot; the homoeopathic rule still holds the field, there is
no other general therapeutic rule or principle known to medical science.
One word of advice I would venture to give to my opponents-If
your cause is a bad one, it cannot be made a good one by accusing
your opponents of dishonesty and mendacity, and affecting to treat
them with lofty scorn. If it is a good one, it can only be injured by
such devices. "La promptitude à croire le mal sans l'avoir assez
examiné est un effet de l'orgueil et de la paresse."
As regards Dr. Brunton's disclaimer that he is "half a convert to
homoeopathy," considering his wholesale depredations from the
homoeopathic materia medica, I will leave your calculating correspond-
ent “R. B. C." to find out what fraction of a convert he is. If, as he
says, what is new to homeopathy is not true, then the new remedies
and new uses of old remedies he has taken from homeopathy, at first
or second hand, it matters not which, stamp his "Index of Diseases
and Remedies," of which they form such a large part, with the
character of untruthfulness; a pleasant reflection for those who take
his work for what it claims to be in its title, a "text-book." Dr.
Brunton does not certainly act a friendly part towards the homœo-
pathy from which he so largely borrows. It is not so long since he
refused to insert the advertisement of the work on the "History of
Homœopathy," which he mentions in his letter, in the periodical he
edits, The Practitioner. Perhaps it is remorse for his previous unkind-
ness which leads him now to give this advertisement of the book in
your pages, which is worth more than a decade of continuous
advertisement in his own journal.
•
Mr. Dupré's letter commences so insolently that it scarcely deserves
notice. As regards his chemical experiments, it would have been
more to the purpose if he had himself made the dilutions according
to Hahnemann's method and analysed them in comparison with the
preparations he got from the druggist. Until he does this, I shall
quite believe that the preparations were what they were represented
to be, and yet that Mr. Dupré's analyses were as negative as he
states.
R. E. DUDGEON.
106
MR. E. G. SWANN.*
[Jan. 19.
I am afraid it is too true that, on strict investigation, the state-
ment that large quantities of globules, pilules, and tinctures, supposed
to be medicated, are sold just in the condition in which they
come from the confectioners and distillers-except, as to the tinctures,
that a considerable volume of water is added-must inevitably be
proved to demonstration. I doubt if one hundredth part of the osten-
sible medicines could escape such a result of inquiry-speaking of the
past, of course. I feel certain none at all have hitherto ever been
prepared for trade purposes in this country in accordance with the
Homœopathic Pharmacopoeia, on the compilation of which I take my
stand. Some of those who profess to prepare and dispense these
medicines now, I see, disclose the fact that they do not even know
how they should be made. One says that the tincture, attenuated to
the proportion of the decillionth of a minim, would only require 121
tablespoonfuls (I suppose he means 12 tablespoonsful, or somewhat
over six ounces) of spirit in all. Well, for purposes of stock on sale,
such things as aconite, nux vomica, and 30 or 40 others, at any rate,
would have to be prepared by, at the very least, the pound of globules
or pilules, or by the pint of diluted tincture; and it would be impossi-
ble to properly steep one pound of globules or pilules in less than one
pint of tincture, for each attenuation wanted; so that for the pre-
paration of every single pound or pint of every attenuation or dilution
truly prepared, very many gallons of spirit of wine must have been
used. I need not bother you with rows of figures, because the general
suggestion is enough. I would also remind those who evidently pro-
fess to be homoeopathic "chemists" that the saturation of globules or
pilules in prepared tinctures of dilute spirit would not do, because they
at least become sticky if they do not deliquesce; and, further, that
supposing a pint of tincture at the 30th dilution be used—that is, a
pint of rectified spirit of wine supposed to contain one decillionth of a
minim of this or that medicine-it would be impossible to fix the
quantity absorbed (if any were absorbed) by each separate globule out
of a pound or more. I speak, of course, about the preparations as
they profess to be made by "homoeopathic chemists," not as they
ought to be made. But that, in truth, very few indeed, if any, have
been made at all, even as they have professed to be made, I grieve to
declare as my conviction, derived from a very close and very melan-
choly insight with technical knowledge.
EDWARD GIBBON SWANN, author of "Laurie's Homoeo-
pathic Domestic Medicine Great Edition of 1850.”
* Answers to this letter will be found in the Appendix. Mr. Frederick Ross.
(of Leath & Ross, publishers of Laurie's Domestic Medicine) wrote a letter to
The Times, showing that so far from Mr. Swann being the "author" of the work
referred to, he was merely employed as a literary person to collect some of the
material, but all had to pass under Dr. Laurie's judgment before it was received,
and to Mr. Swann's great annoyance the greater part of it was rejected.
107
J. C. B. (3).
[Jan. 20.
Lord Grimthorpe can scarcely expect me to go on giving him
lessons in elementary biology, more especially as the instructions
already bestowed on him seem to have fallen on stony ground. I will,
therefore, merely point out that he has not yet grasped the difference
between a living organism and an infinitesimal particle of inorganic
matter. There may be in water, as he says, disease-causing elements,
micro-organisms, which the chemist cannot discover, any more than
he can discover a decillionth in a homoeopathic globule; but the exis-
tence of these micro-organisms is proved in other ways, by the uniform
effects of the water containing them upon large numbers of persons
consuming it, by microscopic examination, and by artificial cultivations,
whereas the decillionth cannot be recognised by its effects on human
beings or animals or by any other method of investigation-for the
homoeopaths had to give up their sham magnetoscope long ago; and,
again, the micro-organisms in water have the power of increasing its
population at a stupendous rate, whereas the decillionth must for ever
remain a hermit in its solitary cell. A decillionth (and I am now
answering "A Sceptic" as well as Lord Grimthorpe), although incon-
ceivably small, may exist like any other infinitesimal division of
matter, and until ultimate atoms and molecules have been measured
(if they exist) we cannot dogmatise upon the subject; but what doctors
assert is that the decillionth is practically non-existent, that not one
shred of scientific evidence has been adduced in support of its existence,
and that all analogy is opposed to the notion that such an infinitesimal
dose-not being a living organism with powers of reproduction—can
have any effect whatever on the human frame.
There is one experiment in homoeopathy, at any rate, which, not-
withstanding their alleged disinclination to test it, doctors have
frequently performed. Innumerable medical students, I suppose, have
in joke, or from curiosity, taken homoeopathic globules—I have seen
a bottleful swallowed at a time-and their unvarying testimony has
been that they have remained unconscious of the slightest effect from
these agents, alleged to be so potent. Nay, the effects of these globules,
taken singly and in numbers, have been tested by observations on the
temperature, blood, pulse, respiration, &c., by all the instruments of
precision which we possess, and with this result that not one trace of
their influence can be detected. Now, in all the small-dose agents
that have been adduced in order to suggest the possibility that
decillionths may be efficacious-although, indeed, their small doses
are as incomparable to decillionths as the National Debt is to half a
farthing-in all these small-dose agents-animal and vegetable
poisons-the effects of their administration to healthy human beings
or animals are marked and determinate, and the nature of the poison
may, in most instances, be inferred from an observation of their effects.
They are subject to experiment, but the decillionth is not.
Homœopaths admit that their infinitesimal doses have no effect on
healthy human beings, but they add that these are nevertheless mighty
in counteracting disease. Is disease, then, some new thing introduced
into the body, sensitive to influences to which the body itself is insus-
ceptible? Assuredly not; no, not even in those instances in which
108
is caused by micro-parasites in the blood; for the micro-parasites are
not the disease, but the cause of the disease, acting at close quarters,
and, by the material ravages which they cause, or the poisons which
they generate, disturbing the functions of organs and tissues, and the
rational treatment of a micro-parasitically induced disease is not by
similars but by contraries, by antidotes or antagonists, as in the case
of toxic agents, by whatever will kill, extirpate, or destroy the parasite,
check its growth, limit its productiveness, or counteract its effects.
It may be proved to homoeopaths that their decillionths have no effect
when directly applied to colonies of pathogenic bacteria outside the
body, and how infinitely less than nothing must be their effect when
the decillionth is diluted with the bulk of the blood, and when the
bacteria are scattered through the body in countless myriads? Can
the homoeopaths mention a single symptom of disease which is not a
modification of a natural function, a single morbid growth not made
up by histological elements that exist in health? They cannot, and
they know they cannot. Upon what, then, do their infinitesimals act?
On the imagination, and on that alone. They allow that on healthy
persons they have no effect, and a diseased person is a healthy person.
out of tune, but with no new chords added which might be responsive
to more delicate vibrations than the normal instrument is capable of
responding to. Now, imagination has a recognised place in the sick
room, as in science. It may be an excellent aid to treatment, but it
can never take its place, except in fictitious ailments. What would a
coroner's jury say to a practitioner who trusted to imagination in the
case of a man who had taken a poisonous dose of arsenic and did not
use the proper antidotes? And yet a conscientious homoeopath, who
restricts himself to homeopathic doses, must frequently stand by and
see a man sink under organic changes quite as gross and conspicuous
as those caused by arsenic while he trusts to imagination for a cure.
Notwithstanding all this, however, homoeopaths come to doctors and
ask them to try their system, and Lord Grimthorpe is wrath because
doctors will not listen to their appeal. Try it, they say, and observe
its effects in certain diseases; and these certain diseases are always
the most trifling or most obscure, for surgery they will not touch, nor
certain maladies which yield readily to external application. And the
answer to their appeal is, Why should we try it? Show cause why
we should put aside the remedies in which we have learnt to trust,
and experiment on our patients, who lean on us for life and health,
with your infinitesimals, which are discredited by all that we know of
physical science, of physiology, and pathology. Your empirical
argument that they do good is just that which is employed in favour
of every quack remedy. Perkin's metallic tractors were certified to
have done good to thousands, but they are forgotten. St. John Long
produced on his trial a long list of nobility and lawyers who were his
patrons and grateful patients, and Lord Ingestre swore that he had
seen him draw several pounds of a liquid like mercury from a man's
brain but he died of the disease which he professed to cure, and his
nostrum is lost in oblivion. Not a day passes that quack remedies are
not brought to us, with loud-sounding praises of their restorative
power. Are we to try them all, even although there is not a presump-
tion in their favour? If a substance has distinct physiological
•
109
actions, if it is allied to other substances the utility of which is
established, or if it comes to us recommended by an observer of known
probity and scientific attainments, it may be entitled to a trial; but
as for your decillionths, it would be folly to meddle with them, more
especially as many of the diseases in which you propose to use them
have a tendency to spontaneous recovery which would make any
limited number of observations, or any observations not carried out
under the strictest conditions, exceedingly fallacious.
Then, further, say doctors to homœopaths, your remedies have been
tried again and again by those in whose sagacity and fairness we have
complete confidence, and they have pronounced against them. Why
should we persevere with the fruitless inquiry? Moreover, they go
on, you homœopaths do not, as a body, impress us so favourably as to
dispose us to put much confidence in any representations you may
make. You evidently do not trust in your own system, for when you
have really dangerous illness to treat you adopt ours. (I have before
me at this moment a list, furnished by a well-known druggist, of pre-
scriptions recently dispensed for practising homoeopaths for the follow-
ing drugs, all in full ordinary doses :-Cocaine, extract of hemlock,
hydrastis, iodide of sodium, oxide of mercury, and boracic acid.) And
not only do you frequently desert your ship under stress of weather,
say the doctors to the homoeopaths, but you are widely at variance
among yourselves, and not rarely display concomitant variations of
homoeopathy which fills us with suspicion. Some of you are mes-
merists as Hahnemann was, some are vegetarians, and some, in
America at any rate, are addicted to fanatical phases of religious.
belief.
Last of all, say the doctors, we have looked into your system, and
have considered the methods on which you proceed, and these we are
able to declare, from our own daily experience, to be absurd and
unworkable. No drug can, as you assume, produce a picture of any
disease, or even such a rough sketch of one as would for a moment
deceive a practised eye; and as for your provings they are a maze of
bewilderment. I write this letter in the country, as I have done two
former ones, without access to books, but I am certain I am not
exaggerating when I say that Dr. Dudgeon gives among his provings
of aconite the following observations, though not in these exact words:
-Face ghastly, face deadly pale, face pale, face pallid, face pink, face
red, face crimson, face turgid, face livid, face dusky, and so through
all other provings; and yet by these a homoeopath is to be guided in
his administration of the drug.
"A Sceptic," whose somewhat sanctimonious air of superiority is
worthy of a true believer, alleges that I have busied myself with the
"fringes" of homoeopathy, and if I have done so it is because I have
found no texture in it. It is "all ruffles and no shirt." I trust,
however, that I have in my "forensic manner" somewhat frayed the
already tattered fringes. And is not "A Sceptic" on a fringe him-
self in his elaborate endeavour to show that "R. B. C." and I differ
about the sense of smell and have not the scientific habit of mind?
But I beg to assure him that his ingenuity has been thrown away,
and that we do not differ at all. In writing about that sense I added
the word "gases
to Michael Foster's " odorous particles" for the
""
110
express purpose of making room for that "undulatory theory," if I
may so call it, which "R. B. C." has stated with such rare brevity
and lucidity, for it seems probable that the motion which excites
smell, if the undulatory theory be correct, is propagated by air, which
is a mixture of gases, from the odorous body to the peripheral ex-
pansion of the olfactory nerves in the nostrils. But I would point
out to "A Sceptic" that the particulate and undulatory theories of
smell are not exclusive of each other. The distances at which odorous
bodies act in exciting the sensation of smell are very varied. Some
are scented a mile off, and others not until they are in actual contact
with the mucous membrane of the nose. But nerve endowment is
invariable, and whatever the stimulus may be; and therefore particles
or waves of motion impinging on the nerve ends in the nostrils,
smell may equally be induced. A scratch of the optic nerve will
cause a sensation of light as well as the undulations of luminous
ether, and solids, liquids, and gases alike excite the nerves of common
sensibility. But the nature of the external excitant of the sense of
smell, whether that be movement in air or ether or particles in motion,
is not, as "A Sceptic" sophistically alleges, "a point which lies at
the very threshold of medical science," but a point which lies entirely
in the domain of the physicists, and to them I refer him, merely re-
marking that perhaps in the phenomena of the absorption of light or
of phosphorescence or fluorescence he may find some analogy to the
scent left by animals on their trail which has perplexed him and Dr.
Millican so sorely. It is to be regretted that "A Sceptic" has not.
dipped into some physiological book, which would have saved him from
asserting that we know nothing of smell, and from writing about it as if
the sensation was something outside the percipient subject. Of course,
the smell of musk may bring on a headache; we have been told that
a man may “die of a rose in aromatic pain," but we also know that
the most horrible stenches may be felt where they have no existence
because there is disease of the brain or irritation of the olfactory
nerves.
And we are favoured with this long disquisition on smell because
Dr. Millican chose to compare incomparables-a nerve stimulus and
the therapeutic powers of a decillionth of a grain. Taking him on his
own ground and his particulate theory I endeavoured to reduce his
speculation to absurdity, and did not, therefore, enter on the undu-
lating theory. And the whole discussion is really beside the question,
for the best of our homœopaths have now given up decillionths and
admit all Hahnemann's attenuations to have been preposterous. They
have abandoned the itch miasm as the cause of seven-eighths of
disease. They have abandoned the spiritual potency conferred by
succussion and trituration. They have abandoned the infinitesimal
dose. What, then, remains of this disintegrated creed to its more
enlightened followers? Nothing but the similia similibus curantur
theory, and that many of them admit to be only of partial application.
The instances they rely on, for even this partial application, can all be
explained on other hypotheses, and it is to be hoped, therefore, that
the enlightened homoeopaths will yet quit a camp in which they have
some shady companions.
One excellent result this controversy has had, in driving homœo-
111
pathy to take up its right place among the other forms of advertising
empiricism. It has for some time been deluging the country with
trumpery tracts, distorting the opinions of leading members of the
medical profession, and it has now taken to advertising its cures, as
your columns on Saturday bore witness. We have them wholesale at
first, we shall have them in detail by and by. By the adoption of the
tactics of our enterprising soap-boilers, by flaming posters and funny
puzzles widely distributed, homoeopathy may retrieve its fallen for-
tunes and do business for a time. But this, again, must lead to
cleavage, for it is impossible to believe that the men of "high intelli-
gence and culture" of whom Dr. Bucknill speaks, learned homeo-
paths, homoeopaths by early inculcation, or those who have in youth
rashly taken up a theory which they never wholly believed, will con-
sent to be dragged through the mire by their less nice and more
commercial associates.
I
I shall not follow Lord Grimthorpe in his desperate plunges about
the ring, nor ask the umpire's opinion on his style of hitting-as, for
instance, in carrying through what I am glad to see he admits is " a
dirty job," in representing that his calculations of the number of
homœopaths in the world at 10,000, and in America at 11,000,
referred to different dates. Both these calculations clearly referred
to the present time, and both are outrageous for any date that he may
choose to fix. He was warned not to trust these mendacious
pamphlets, and he now sees what comes of neglecting advice.
wonder how he looked when he read Dr. Bucknill's and Dr. Brunton's
letters this morning, upsetting, as these do, two of his most effective
and elaborate paragraphs, and I wonder still more that he should have
the coolness to assume that I am going to bestow a thought on his
collection of “marvellous homoeopathic cures in cases given up by the
faculty." In any provincial paper he will find columns of such cases,
far better than his, bolstering up the virtues of soothing syrups, and
oils, and balsams without end. It is good sport to contend with Lord
Grimthorpe; but I am tired of it, and so, I daresay, are your
readers. Let me disclaim, however, having spoken of Mr. Proctor,
for whom I have the highest esteem, as a slipshod scientist" except
in irony. I have remarked, however, that weapons finer than the
bludgeon are scarcely noticed by Lord Grimthorpe. What I meant
to convey was, that in Lord Grimthorpe's estimation all scientists,
even the best of them, are slipshod and stumble, and that only
lawyers and lords are fully booted and spurred, and walk unerringly.
66
I have declined already to discuss with "A Sceptic," except in a
medical journal, the actions of drugs, and I still more strenuously
object to discuss with him their non-actions, to the consideration of
which he now invites me. Neither with him nor with the homœopaths,
in search of a dose, shall I consent to grope my way through the
endless reaches of nonentity. I have even resisted the temptation,
which some unwary expressions in his letter held out, to excellent
fun at his expense. I can assure him, however, that his difficulties
are puerile, just such as assail the medical student in his second or
third year, to be brushed away by riper knowledge. Singularly
enough, he has selected as an illustration of medical ineptitude, one
drug, the nitrite of amyl, which was brought into use by a physio-
112
logical study of its actions, which has incontestably saved and pro-
longed many lives, and given relief to innumerable sufferers, who but
for it must have endured the bitterest anguish. In the presence of
such facts his cavils are shallow and ungracious.
"One of the Laity," who ought, I think, to date from Trafalgar-
square, exhorts all true-hearted Englishmen to subscribe to the
Millican Defence Fund, without, however, mentioning the amount of
his own contribution, and declares that Dr. Millican is making a noble
stand for liberty of opinion. Who, I should like to know, has attempted
to curtail the liberty of opinion of Dr. Millican, whom, notwithstanding
my“ venom,” I regard as a very able man, although not exactly a west-
end Hampden, or of any other medical pervert of any sort? They are
free to think, to speak, to write, to practise as they please, no man
gainsaying them. Is it an interference with liberty of opinion that
doctors will not consult or hold professional intercourse with homoeo-
paths, whom they believe to have adopted opinions so erroneous as to
vitiate their professional action and judgment at every turn or to be
conscious charlatans? Does "One of the Laity," like Lord Grim-
thorpe, propose to remedy this by a new dispensation which might be
called the Boycott-positive to distinguish it from the Boycott-negative,
the Irish form? Does he propose that doctors shall be compelled to
have dealings with homœopaths, on all occasions, and under police
supervision if need be, that they shall meet them at the bedside of
their private patients and in their hospital wards, swallow their
pilules, elect them honorary members of their societies, and invite
them to dinner? Then, why stop at homœopaths? Why should not
the liberty of the true-hearted Englishman be extended to herbalists
and bone-setters and the pill men in the booths at the fairs? There
is much craziness outside Bethlem and Colney Hatch.
Unless Lord Grimthorpe springs up in some wholly unexpected
quarter, I shall not trouble you again on this odious subject.
J. C. B.
DR. G. JOHNSON (2).
6.
[Jan. 18.
Lord Grimthorpe does not see what I have to complain of, unless
the homœopathic tract, "Allopathy Judged by its Professors," invented
the following utterance: The most general and comprehensive
statement with regard to the cure of disease which can safely and
confidently be made is this-most of those diseases which are curable
by any means are curable by the unaided powers of nature." The
author of the tract, which I have not seen, but which Lord Grimthorpe
gives as his authority, does not complete the sentence which he pro-
fesses to quote from me. The sentence concludes as follows:-" And
the chief art of the physician, as of the surgeon, consists in regulating
and directing those natural forces which will cure a fever or an in-
flamed lung as surely and as completely as they will heal a wound or
mend a broken bone." From this it will be seen that my patients are
not consigned to the " unaided" powers of nature. What, therefore,
I have to complain of is, that in Lord Grimthorpe's former letter I am
made to say that every curable disease is cured by nature if we do not
113
manage to prevent it; whereas what I actually said was that most
curable diseases are curable by the unaided powers of nature, while
even with regard to them the duty of the physician is to regulate and
direct the natural forces.
The lecture in question was addressed to a mixed audience of
teachers and students of medicine, who, in the course of the same
lecture, were told, what most of them knew before, that many diseases
can be cured only by the discovery and removal of their exciting
causes, while others are to be removed by the employment of special
remedies and methods of treatment. I should feel thankful to Lord
Grimthorpe if he would reprint the whole of that lecture, which, how-
ever, would not be pleasant reading for his homoeopathic allies.
It is much to be regretted that a man in the position of Lord Grim-
thorpe should quote as authoritative and trustworthy an anonymous
pamphlet containing extracts (in my own case a garbled extract) from
the writings of well-known physicians-extracts so detached from the
context as to convey an entirely erroneous impression of their author's
doctrines.
i
Believing as I do that the columns of a newspaper are unsuited for
the discussion of the respective merits of homeopathy and scientific
medicine, I should have taken no part in this discussion, but that,
having been personally referred to, I felt called upon to protest against
the flagrant unfairness of homeopathic controversialists. But now,
having made this protest, I beg permission to refer briefly to a part of
the subject in which the general public have an especial interest, and
which they can easily be made to understand. One of the leading
doctrines of Hahnemann was that remedies are to be given in infinite-
simal doses. Now, it is notorious that this doctrine, so opposed to
common sense and to the general experience of mankind, has been
abandoned by many modern homeopaths, who have passed from the
irrational and ludicrous extreme of infinitesimal dilution to the oppo-
site and dangerous extreme of employing active and poisonous drugs
in the form of the greatest possible concentration. Of the alarming
effects of one of these homeopathic poisons I have had considerable
experience. I refer to the so-called "homoeopathic or Rubini's con-
centrated solution of camphor," which is in very general use for the
treatment of colds and other ailments. This preparation is a saturated
solution of camphor in spirit, and is more than seven times stronger
than the spirit of camphor of the British Pharmacopoeia. In a recently
published volume of "Medical Lectures and Essays" I have given the
histories of nine cases of poisoning by this dangerous preparation.
The slighter symptoms, resulting from doses of from three to seven
drops, have been giddiness, headache, faintness, and drowsiness; but
in five cases out of the nine a dose of from 15 drops to a teaspoonful
caused violent epileptiform convulsions and profound stupor. It is
probable that in more than one case death would have resulted if the
poison had not been speedily ejected by vomiting.
The patients and their friends were greatly surprised to find that
such alarming symptoms should have been caused by a homoeopathic
medicine, since they had been led to believe that all such preparations.
were largely diluted and therefore harmless. The preparation in
question is as potent a poison, drop for drop, as the prussic acid of
I
114
the Fharmacopoeia, and it ought never to be sold without a "Poison "
label on the bottle.
It surely is not too much to ask for some explanation of this substi-
tution of concentrated poisons for the infinitesimal dilution which has
been generally supposed to be one of the essential dogmas of
homœopathy.
GEORGE JOHNSON.
DR. THOS. WILSON.
[Jan. 20.
Magna est veritas et prævalebit. Truth is what the disciples of
Hahnemann wish for; if homeopathy is wrong, it will soon die a
natural death; if right, no persecution can put it down.
There is nothing new in the doctrine of similars. See the
"Genuine Works of Hippocrates," translated from the Greek by
Francis Adams, LL.D., surgeon, 1849. On page 77, vol. i., the
author remarks :—
"The treatment of suicidal mania appears singular-give the
patient a draught made from the root of mandrake, in a smaller dose
than will induce mania. He then insists in strong terms that, under
certain circumstances, purgatives will bind the bowels, and astringents
loosen them, and he further makes the important remark that,
although the general rule of treatment be contraria contrariis curantur,
the opposite rule also holds good in some cases-namely, similia
similibus curantur. The principles both of allopathy and homoeopathy,
it thus appears, are recognised by the author of this treatise. In
confirmation of the latter principle he remarks that the same sub-
stance which occasions strangury will, sometimes, also cure it, and so
also with cough.' And, further, he acutely remarks that warm water
which, when drunk, generally excites vomiting, will also sometimes
put a stop to it by removing its cause. He estimates successful and
unsuccessful practice according to the rule whether the treatment was
rightly planned or not. For, he argues, what is done in ignorance
cannot be said to be correctly done, even if the results are
favourable."
Surely when the father of medicine declares both practices, allo-
pathy and homoeopathy, to be correct, the two schools need not
quarrel over the matter, as each is right after its own way; the fact
is that both rules hold good when correctly applied. But, how diffi-
cult it is to get a contrary or opposite to a disease under drug treat-
ment! Certainly you may give an astringent in diarrhoea, or an
opiate to procure sleep. How will you find a contrary to a skin
disease? The homoeopathic provings of drugs indicate their power
in producing eruptions on the skin. Thus, tartarized antimony pro-
duces eruptions of a pustular nature, outwardly applied or taken
internally. In the treatment of smallpox, tartarized antimony in
minute doses is invaluable.
Some years ago I was much puzzled in the treatment of a severe
case of sycosis menti-a pustular eruption on the skin. I treated the
case for months without benefit, not having selected the true homoeo-
pathic remedy. My patient discontinued attendance, and I considered
the case incurable. One day, in looking over the homœopathic symptom
115
books, I came across the extraordinary powers of tartarised
antimony in producing pustular eruptions. Some time afterwards I
met my patient in the street, still frightfully disfigured with the disease,
I advised him to call on me again, as I thought I had discovered the
means to cure him.
Once more he became a patient. I commenced the tartarised
antimony with the best result. In a few weeks he was perfectly
cured, and never had a relapse.
Why should allopaths find fault with the small dose and say it is
impossible for infinitesimals to cure disease? When it is simply a
matter of experience, the small dose frequently cures much quicker
than large ones-nay, more, removes the complaint when a large
dose of the drug has failed.
If any allopath wishes to test the power of a small dose on himself,
let him get an ounce of the third centesimal trituration of calomel,
made correctly after the plan of Hahnemann. Let the same allopath
take steadily one grain of the preparation dry on his tongue night
and morning until the whole is consumed. Each grain only contains
the millionth part of a grain of calomel. Take my word for it that
he will cry peccavi long before he has finished his ounce of calomel
tituration. If he escapes salivation it will be fortunate for him, and
will only show that he is not easily susceptible to the action of
mercury. To make the experiment sure, let one dozen allopaths begin
at the same time to take a grain of the preparation night and morning.
and report the result to one another. If they try the experiment
fairly they will have much to say afterwards on the subject, when
each has completed his ounce of powder.
We are all still extremely ignorant of the powers of nature. Every
year brings forth something new and wonderful.
Who can explain why a powerful horeshoe magnet can magnetize.
a bar of steel and lose no power, in fact, improve by the operation?
One may continue to magnetize steel with the same horseshoe magnet
for ever and ever, until all the steel in the world becomes magnetic,
and still the magnet remains as lively as ever.
How presumptuous of anyone to assert that infinitesimal doses of
drugs are inert, until he is acquainted with all the secrets of nature!
What quantity of scarlatina poison will a person inhale who receives
a letter from a house where scarlatina exists? And yet a patient of
mine took the complaint after the receipt of such a letter, when no
other cause could account for the disease.
:
In the strictest sense of the word, I am not a homeopath nor an
allopath. Having used homoeopathic remedies for over forty years,
and having had medical experience for more than fifty years, I still
prescribe from my fifty years' experience, and take the entire range of
medical knowledge as far as my experience has gone-that is, sticking
to the bridge that has safely carried me over before.
My opinion is that far too much reliance is placed on drug treatment
alone. We all know that thorough cleanliness, free ventilation, and
the avoidance of all noxious effluvia contribute greatly to health. Our
hospitals are kept in a much better sanitary condition than they were
forty years ago, but are still in many cases overcrowded. The old-
fashioned plan of darkening the rooms of the sick-dungeon-like-did
116
much to prevent recovery. The light of the sun is very beneficial in
sick apartments. There are other great aids to removing disease, such
as manual magnetism, massage, electricity, hydropathy, change of air,
climate, &c.
I must apologise, Sir, for the length of this communication; but I
find homœopathy completely boycotted in allopathic journals, which
must plead my excuse.
Above twenty years since, the senior physician to the Hull General
Infirmary became a convert to homoeopathy, and asked the governors
of the hospital to let him have a ward to himself. This was refused,
and he was so boycotted by the remainder of the medical staff that he
was compelled to resign. Perhaps they considered "comparisons
odious."
Withernsea, Hull.
THOMAS WILSON, M.D.
FORTY-TWO YEARS OF HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENT.
[Jan. 20.
The battle is still raging between the doctors, under the able super-
vision of Lord Grimthorpe. The doctors must have nearly exhausted
themselves, but so little has appeared from any of the dupes of the
homœopaths that I ask you to let me give my experience of forty-two
years under the impostors.
My friend "R. B. C." has reduced the question to a sharp issue.
"To put the matter quite plainly," he says, "its absurdities, to any
who have received a medical education, are so manifest, that we do not
believe such persons, if of ordinary mental capacity, can honestly
believe them, and we have abundant evidence that many who profess
to be homœopaths do not carry their professions into practice, but
prescribe ordinary remedies, and only call themselves homœopaths, in
order to fleece some of the more gullible sections of the public. To
the genuine homœopaths, if such there be, we object because we dis-
trust their mental capacity, and to those who are not genuine we
object on grounds of ordinary morality."
The case could not be more clearly stated. Forty-two years ago my
brother, having attended my family for some years and having given
12 months' study to homœopathy, announced to us that he was con-
vinced of its truth, but offered to treat us by either method. We told
him that we trusted in him, and preferred to be treated by what he
considered the best method. He is a man of whom Emerson said some
years afterwards, in his "Representative Men," that he had one of
the greatest minds since Bacon. He had also received a medical
education, and he thereby falls necessarily into "R. B. C.'s" classifi-
cation as a consummate scoundrel. My dear brother and I are old
men now, and it is too late for him to recant, after his 42 years of
successful scoundrelism. For 25 years his attendance on us and our
children endeared him to us for his successful treatment, and it is
only now that we find what a villain he has been.
For fifteen years, when we removed to another neighbourhood, we
have had the admirable talents of one of our dear friends in a
similar capacity. Indeed, he is attending me now for an attack of
gout (pulsatilla, 3d dilution). He, too, I find, is another of "R. B. C.'s"
rascals. During the whole of these forty-two years my wife and I
117
have been constantly making use of homoeopathic remedies upon our
children and grandchildren, and have, with loving eyes, observed
their wonderful efficacy. Can parents be deceived for forty-two years,
or is it possible that "R. B. C." can be wrong? Are we rogues, too,
or only fools? Have we and our children benefited by homœopathic
treatment, or have we only foolishly thought that they did?
Another of these scientific allopathists, who is the Jubilee Hospital
doctor, is also in the good company of "R. B. C." when he says that
"every homœopathic practitioner is a conscious fraud, a liar, and an
impostor." Such people ought to be very sure of their ground, and to
be sure that they speak from a true scientific standpoint, of obvious
truth, and generally accepted among their fellows. Dr. Wilks says,
"I deny that we have a scientific use of medicines." Sir Astley
Cooper said of them in his day, "The practice of medicine is founded
on conjecture, and improved by murder." It was of an allopath that it
was said, “Sir, if thou hadst not been here, my brother had not died.”
*
Homœopathy, on the contrary, is a system and a science, and, like
all true science, is constantly enlarging its boundaries, and it may en-
large its doses, too, when it finds occasion, its grand principle not
being affected by the quantity of the remedy. One would think, to
hear these gentlemen talk, that it is the homoeopathists who invented
death. It is not only they who have to "carry their work home,"
but, happily, they do it much more seldom than the others.
One weakness, however, it appears they have, and that is their
wish to be associated with the old school. In my opinion, they ought
to be ashamed of being seen with them, until the old school mends its
practice, as well as its manners. The sooner they take to saving life
by giving nothing but sugar globules the better it will be for their
patients.
44, Lincoln's-inn-fields.
W. M. WILKINSON.
MAJOR W. VAUGHAN MORGAN.
[Jan. 20.
Will you permit me to state for the information all who sympathise
with freedom of action in medical matters that I am the treasurer
of the fund mentioned by Dr. Thudichum which is being raised to
assist Mr. Millican in his gallant stand against medical bigotry?
I would also venture to ask your assistance in making known that,
in addition to similar institutions in Liverpool, Birmingham, Bath,
and elsewhere, there exists in Great Ormond-street a hospital con-
taining upwards of ninety beds, where every species of non-contagious
disease is treated. There all inquirers are welcomed, and scores of
patients of all ages and both sexes may be seen under treatment.
Is it too much to hope that "R. B. C.,” “ J. C. B.," and others who
have recently been displaying their ignorance of homeopathy may
seize the opportunity of seeing and testing its actual practice? The
members of the staff of the hospital will gladly explain everything to
their medical confrères, and students can receive clinical instruction in
the wards. In the dispensary the mode of preparing the medicines
can also be witnessed, and the absurdities of "R. B. C.'s" statements
be proved by ocular demonstration. I abstain from touching upon
professional matters.
WM. VAUGHAN MORGAN.
5, Boltons, S.WV.
118
"S."
[Jan. 20.
Fighting yet floundering, hitting wildly at his men of straw, your
correspondent "J. C. B." displays a marvellous ignorance of the
subject of homoeopathy. The homeopathy he threatens to expose,
and for believing in which he denounces some of his fellow-practitioners
as impostors, is evolved, in a great measure, out of his own inner con-
sciousness, and is thus the more easily demolished to his entire satis-
faction. How often is it to be denied that the infinitesimal dose is not
an essential part of the creed of a homœopath; how small the dose
may be is a matter of experience.
But I take exception to his statement that "that remedy can only
be called homœopathic our knowledge of which we owe to homœopathy,
or which is employed in homoeopathic attenuation;" and claim that
that remark alone shows to anyone who has the least knowledge of the
subject that "J. C. B." has not in any way touched the bottom of his
opponents' arguments. No drug is in itself homoeopathic, such an
expression is a manifest misnomer; its homoeopathicity consists in
the method in which it is applied for the relief of disease. Let me
take one example. Calomel was a favourite remedy long before
Hahnemann's time, and its action known and noted; but homœopathy
can show an additional and valuable use of that drug (viz., in certain
forms of diarrhoea) without excluding its allopathic action, or without
its being used in the so-called homœopathic attenuation.
""
The scouted" sterile toils" of the homœopaths have, notwithstand-
ing " J. C. B.'s severe criticism of their labours, worked a marked
change in the administration of drugs during the past twenty or thirty
years, and have placed in the works of the orthodox therapeutical
writers of the day, loth as they are to acknowledge it, some of their
most valuable hints for the relief of suffering and disease.
S.
At this stage of the controversy The Times found it necessary to close
its columns to further letters on the subject. The entire substance of
the matter is reviewed in a leading article which appeared on January
20, and is here reprinted.
LEADER FROM THE TIMES OF JANUARY 20.
Lord Grimthorpe must be highly delighted with the results of the
di scussion he started in our columns. In the first place, it has been
a very lively one, and he loves animation. In the second, it has
excited an immense amount of public interest, which, we presume, is
a gratifying circumstance. We have given what will be admitted to
be a liberal allowance of space to the correspondence, but the letters
we have been able to insert represent a mere fraction of the number
we have received from all sorts and conditions of men. In the third
place, Lord Grimthorpe has the satisfaction of reflecting that he has
been entirely successful in establishing his original contention. So
wide is the field over which the discussion has travelled, that it is
perhaps necessary to remind the public what the original contention
It was simply that an odium medicum exists, exactly analogous
to the odium theologicum of a less enlightened age, and no whit less
was.
119
capable of blinding men otherwise honest and kind-hearted to the
most elementary conceptions of candour and justice. That contention
has been proved not so much by what Lord Grimthorpe has directly
advanced as by the revelations of temper and mental attitude made
by those who took up the cudgels on behalf of the orthodox profession.
There have been one or two verbal denials of the existence of this
odium, always accompanied, however, by an expression of contempt
which comes in practice to much the same thing. But the strength
of Lord Grimthorpe's case lies in the fact that whole columns have
been filled with contentions which have no point or meaning except
to justify the hatred that is verbally denied. Homoeopaths are fools
if they believe and practice what they profess, and knaves if they do
not; therefore, we are justified, and, indeed, bound, by the lofty con-
siderations which alone influence professional action, to hate and
despise them in either case-is a fair and accurate summary of the
attitude assumed by orthodox champions at the opening of the dis-
cussion, and maintained with unswerving consistency up to the present
moment. But that is the precise attitude which Lord Grimthorpe
intended to describe by the phrase odium medicum, and, therefore, out
of all the confused discursiveness of the controversy emerges the fact
that he has amply justified his main and original statement.
We do not know exactly what end our orthodox correspondents
have proposed to themselves, consequently it might be unscientific
upon our part to express any positive opinions upon their mode of
conducting the controversy. If they wrote merely to relieve their
feelings and comfort those who already agree with them, they probably
have every reason to look complacently upon their own performances.
But if they either desired to convince homoeopaths of the greatness of
their delusion or sought to enlist the sympathy and command the
confidence of the lay public, we are quite sure that they have made an
egregious mistake. At an early stage of the controversy we tried to
hint as much to our professional advisers and guides. We pointed
out that it is a mistake to fling charges of knavery and folly, either
alternatively or cumulatively, at men taught by the same teachers,
trained at the same schools, and declared qualified practitioners of
medicine by the same authorities as themselves. To call a man a fool
who holds exactly the same diploma as the men who abuse him merely
because he differs upon some medical subtlety which laymen are told
they cannot form an opinion about, has the effect of filling the lay
mind with distrust of the very certificates upon the strength of which
the doctors challenge our confidence. If one M.D. duly licensed by an
orthodox faculty can be such a fool and as nearly a criminal lunatic
as his brethren make him out, poor laymen cannot but feel that there
may be other wolves in sheep's clothing passed by the same authorities,
and all the more to be dreaded because they carry no distinctive
badge. When doctors are denounced as knaves whom laymen have
kuown all their lives, and who, in all the ordinary relations of life,
behave with quite average common-sense and integrity, it becomes
rather difficult to repose implicit confidence in some practitioner whom
we only know by name, merely because he professes utter disbelief in
the efficacy of decillionths. When our orthodox friends descend in
their wrath to the practices of the tenth-rate politician, and pick up
120
any bit of malicious gossip at second or third hand-the chatter of a
discarded servant or the loose statements of an anonymous but
necessarily interested druggist-it is hard for the ordinary layman,
who does not readily rise to their temperature, to feel very deeply con-
vinced of the sobriety and trustworthiness of their judgment. We
poor laymen are painfully aware of our natural deficiencies, and, if we
were not, we have been reminded of them most forcibly and frequently.
Some laymen have taken part in this controversy, and have shown.
what seemed to other laymen a certain degree of knowledge. But
they have been summarily dismissed as persons destitute of qualifica-
tion for discussing those high matters, and all of us have been admon-
ished that our only safety lies in choosing a good doctor and placing
ourselves unreservedly in his hands. It is clear that we cannot choose
him on medical grounds, because we are unfit to understand them.
Our intelligence has, indeed. been flattered at great length by the
assumption that we are competent to pronounce infinitesimal doses
absurd, but then other things have been mentioned which look quite
as absurd to the lay mind, and which we have to accept as the
infallible conclusions of science. No guide remains for us except
common-sense operating upon considerations such as we are familiar
with in our ordinary affairs. Consequently, a real injury has been
inflicted upon us by those orthodox practitioners who have so con-
ducted this controversy as to arouse in every unprejudiced lay mind
the horrible doubts to which we have just referred.
When we last wrote upon this subject it was already evident that
the controversy covered a much wider field than that of Lord Grim-
thorpe's first letter. It had become a dispute between two systems or
schools of medicine. Being only laymen, we are of course incompe-
tent to hold a rational opinion upon such a subject, but it was open
to us to endeavour to get the controversy conducted in accordance
with the general rule that disputants ought to deal with the arguments
of their opponents as stated by themselves, not with any loose travesty
of these arguments that prejudice or ignorance may suggest. We
accordingly took some pains to ascertain and set forth the homeopathic
position as stated by homœopaths themselves, and we were afterwards
encouraged to believe that we had done so with--for laymen-tolerable
exactitude. It ought not to have been necessary, because every ortho-
dox practitioner ought to know the best as well as the worst of homoeo-
pathy, and every orthodox controversialist ought to be ready to state
his opponents' position accurately and fairly. It was necessary,
however, and we did it, but without the slightest effect. Orthodox
writers went on through column after column blazing away at what is
non-essential, accidental, and extrinsic, while the essential points
upon which the whole argument turns were left untouched. What
disquisitions we have had about decillionths, and how utterly irrelevent
they are when homeopaths maintain that dose is a mere affair of
experience and that the essence of their system is a rule of drug
selection based upon observation of the effects of drugs upon the
healthy body! Their rule may be rotten and worthless, but we can
never advance one step towards proof of that fact by losing ourselves
in calculations concerning the space that a decillion of grains would
occupy. A correspondent tells us to-day that the cases in which like
121
seems to cure like can be explained upon some other hypothesis,
which he does not mention. But that is not the point. Homœopaths
do not offer any explanation or hypothesis. What they say is that
the rule leads them to the choice of the right drug for a given case,
and if that is so it does not greatly matter although what they call
likes are really wide as the poles asunder. The same correspondent
tells us that infinitesimal doses have no effect upon a man in health
and therefore can have none in disease. Here he rather trenches upon
When a layman
the domain where even a layman can check him.
has an inflamed eye, he finds that it will not bear the ordinary day-
light in which he rejoices when his eye is well. When his nervous
system is out of gear, he is driven nearly mad by noises which do not
affect him in health. When he is recovering from an illness, his
stomach will not bear the solid food he finds necessary at other times.
It follows that whatever is based upon our correspondent's dictum
manifestly stands upon a quicksand. Another correspondent says
to-day that if anybody likes to try the effect of one-millionth of a
grain of calomel three times a day, he will find that it is unpleasantly
potent even in health. The effects produced are the ordinary physio-
logical effects of a dose of calomel, and the experiment may be tried
by anybody in his own person. How much less than a millionth will
do we cannot say, nor do we know whether the millionth would be
more active in disease. These are matters of fact, and we mention
them only to show that we laymen have not had that assistance from
our orthodox friends which we might fairly have expected.
-
122
APPENDIX.
Containing certain letters sent to The Times, but not inserted; and
also the letters headed HOMEOPATHIC CHEMISTS, really belonging to
the controversy, but not published until after it had been brought
to a close.
LORD GRIMTHORPE (8).
Simultaneously with the above leading article, and therefore covered
by it, there appeared two more letters from "J. C. B." and Dr. C. Johnson.
The first I have not read beyond glancing at the style of it, and casually
seeing that he tried to shuffle out of the exposure of his ignorance in
calling a great astronomer "a slipshod scientist" by pretending that
he meant it "ironically," expecting us to forget that that would have
made absolute nonsense of it. In short, that was another specimen of
"medical ethics." One need read no more from such a man.
After The Times had closed its correspondence, and though Dr.
Johnson had had the last word in it, he began a fresh correspondence
with me, sending me a copy of his lecture, which, of course, was
correctly quoted in his letters in The Times. I was rather amused to
see that it ended with the much better quotation, "Prove all things:
hold fast that which is good." Remembering the efforts that his
party have always made, and are making every day, to prevent any
proof being given to the public of what is good, even to suppressing
the truth whenever it has been given, as in that disgraceful cholera
business in 1854 after which I do not see what claim they have to
be believed in any general assertion on any subject. Dr. Johnson
in one letter intimated that he might publish our continued corres-
pondence, to which I answered, "Do, by all means, if you like," but
in his last he changed his mind. It is too long to add here, and I
can say all I need by way of remarks on his last letter to The Times.
It is strange that any man could think such a great question as this
can turn in the smallest degree on whether he had told his lecturees.
that all "diseases that are curable at all are curable by the unaided
powers of nature," or most diseases. For either of those statements
are a plain confession that the only medical treatment he knows of
generally does no good. And the more so, because I only quoted him,
together with above a dozen more eminent authorities, all saying
substantially the same thing in various phrases and with varying in-
tensity, from his up to those who said it would be better for mankind
if there were no doctors at all. Of course no one quotation could
be verbally accurate for all of them. I would gladly have given them
individually, but for the space it would have required.
His last letter in The Times complained further that the 9th H. tract
123
""
had done him injustice by omitting another sentence, or part of the
same, in his lecture, viz., that "the chief art of the physician consists
in regulating and directing the natural forces, which will cure a fever,
&c.' His fresh correspondence gave me the opportunity of asking
him whether he meant us to understand that there is any difference
between" aiding nature" and "regulating and directing the natural
forces." He confessed that he was not aware of any, and there
obviously is none. Therefore, the whole oracle that he delivered was
really this: "Most diseases that are not known to be incurable are cur-
able by unaided nature, but the chief business of the physican is to aid
nature -or to do what is generally useless. If he had said that
of the homœopathists, of course we should not be surprised; but say-
ing it of his own craft was a degree of modesty which is only the
more extraordinary to outsiders because it seems quite ordinary among
these priests of Apollo at home among their own disciples. In fact,
as it is indisputable that they do sometimes cure patients who would
die without them, I conclude that what they mean by so depreciating
their own art is that, if all drugs and doctors were cast into the sea,
as one or two of them said they had better be, not quite the same in-
dividuals would die, but on the whole fewer.
""
K
I really don't know why he complained also, both in The Times and
to me, that I had "intimated that his patients are consigned to the
unaided powers of nature." I said not a word about them, and pri-
vately I was obliged to tell him that I certainly never suspected
doctors of doing that, though, according to his own dictum, it might
be better if they did. "And yet he is not happy." There is no
pleasing some people. But what is more to the purpose is that he
said in The Times that he had seen and mentioned in his lecture nine
cases of homœopathic poisoning-to put it shortly (for he has the
usual allopathic tendency to large doses of words), by " the so-called
H. or Rubini's concentrated solution of camphor, which is in very
general use for the treatment of colds, &c." He says probably several
of them would have died but for spontaneous vomiting. Having the
opportunity to ask about that also, I did ask whether any H. doctor
or book had given or prescribed those doses; and again he admitted
that he could not say, except that one of them, of about 20 drops, was
given to a guide on the Alps by an amateur H., who had a bottle in
his pocket from his own H. attendant. I then asked a H. doctor
whether any of them would give such a dose as that to anybody, and
he answered that none of them would dream of doing so, or half of it.
And so end Dr. Johnson's nine convictions of homoeopathic poisoning:
or rather, so they don't end; for it is evident, as I told him, that the
people who are really responsible for all such poisonings are the A.
doctors, who go about assuring mankind that the H. medicines are
only sugar and milk and water impregnated with nothing, or nothing
beyond the proportion of a drop of poison in the Thames or the sea,
and that consequently we may take a box or gallon of them without
being either better or worse for it. They and their chemists, who
dare not offend them, had been going on saying and "proving this
all through the previous correspondence while it was wanted. The
moment the contrary is wanted, there is Dr. Johnson ready to prove
that too; and he tops it up by saying that it is "notorious that Hahne-
""
124
mann's doctrine of infinitesimals had been abandoned by many modern
homœopaths." So I asked him, and he did not answer it: Then what
excuse remains for excommunicating them? I now begin to see that
in allopathic ethics, "Prove all things," means "Prove all things that
are wanted," for the moment.
G.
HOMEOPATHIC CHEMISTS.
[Jan. 25.
Some serious reflections having been cast upon homoeopathic phar-
macists during the discussion of this subject, especially by Mr. Swann
in a letter published in your issue of the 19th inst., we crave permis-
sion to make a few remarks in reply.
C
Mr. Swann would have your readers believe that not a single honest
homœopathic pharmacist exists who has hitherto prepared globules,
pilules, or tinctures "for trade purposes in this country according to
the Homœopathic Pharmacopoeia,'" and then proceeds to dilate upon
the difficulties of preparing pilules and globules for "purposes of stock
or sale,” in a manner which shows an absence of the technical know-
ledge to which he lays claim, and which anyone acquainted with the
processes of the " British Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia" would charac-
terise as nonsensical.
'R. B. C." and other orthodox practitioners have also from time to
time suggested the impossibility of decillionths having been honestly
prepared, on account of the enormous quantity of spirit which would
be required for dilution. Now, any one who cares to make a simple
calculation can verify the fact that one minim can be reduced to the
proportion of a decillionth by means of rather over a quarter pint of
liquid (12 tablespoonfuls as stated by Mr. Ross), by preparing 30
small phials of attenuations each containing 1 per cent. of that pre-
viously obtained, as directed by Hahnemann-one minim of the strong
tincture being thoroughly mixed with 99 minims of spirit, then one
minim of the resulting solution being again treated in the same
manner, representing 1 in 10,000, and so on through the series until
the 30th is reached, representing 1 in a decillion (assuming matter
capable of such degree of subdivision). Thus we use 30 x 100=3,000
minims=61 fluid ounces less than one-third pint of spirit.
=
If, then, for stock purposes, the pharmacist keeps the 100 minims of
28th attenuation, he can convert it when required into about 12
gallons of the decillionth potency or 30th attenuation. Where, then,
is the overpowering temptation to dishonesty which our detractors
consider irresistible?
The analyses referred to by Dr. Dupré as having been made by him
some fourteen years since show that the pilules in question were not
made according to our present "Pharmacopoeia," though they may
have been conscientiously prepared by some older methods, perhaps
unskilfully, and, in the case of the vegetable preparations, from drugs
very deficient in alkaloid. Dr. Dupré is, however, in error when he
states that "if as little as 1 in 800,000th part of a grain of aconite per
pilule had been present it would have been detected;" he surely in-
tended to write aconitine. He also says the pilules were made from
125
pure milk sugar, whereas pilules are in this country invariably made
from cane sugar, but, as far as we know, such an error would not have
affected his results.
We maintain that there are men among the homeopathic pharma-
cists of this country as honest and conscientious as any who are to be
found in other professions, and we are personally acquainted with a
considerable number of our confrères who are of this class, but as we
believe the charges brought against us and our competitors too
sweeping and unjustifiable to have any influence on the credulity of
your readers, we will refrain from trespassing further on your space.
E. GOULD AND SON.
No. 59, Moorgate-street, E.C.
Will you allow me to inform Mr. Edward Gibbon Swann that it is
quite possible to saturate pure sugar pilules with a tincture made with
a diluted spirit, and that it is not necessary to steep the pilules in the
tincture? (See "Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia," page 40.) A little
should be added at a time until saturation is effected, and if carefully
done the pilules will not even become sticky. He also questions the
directions of the "Homœopathic Pharmacopoeia" as to the saturation
of pilules with strong alcoholic tinctures. If he will take the trouble
to purchase a small quantity of unmedicated pilules and treat them as
directed on page 41, afterwards adding carefully in portions a suffi-
cient quantity of strong alcohol coloured with sandal wood (this will
give a dark-red colour, and will be found a good test as an experi-
ment), he will find on cutting each pilule in half that the fluid has
penetrated them thoroughly. Surely we have had enough of these
statements concerning the honesty of homoeopathic chemists. They
are all false, and I shall be most happy to explain and demonstrate
the foregoing processes to any person interested in the subject, whether
physician or layman, who will call at our pharmacy.
74, New Bond-street.
L. T. ASHWELL,
(Keene and Ashwell).
•
The following letter was written by Mr. Heath in reply to that of
Dr. Dupré, but was not published in The Times :·
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS AND HIGH ATTENUATIONS.
I have no doubt the homeopathic chemists generally are much
obliged to Dr. Dupré for so kindly exonerating them from the charge
of selling unmedicated pilules and globules. It will comfort some
people to know that an allopath of standing and ability admits that
these preparations are honestly and properly made, but having said
that they are medicated with dilutions containing 1-100 and 1-10,000,
&c., why does he then imply that these very dilutions are not made
correctly (it is as easy to make them correctly as incorrectly), it seems
to me that he has placed himself on the horns of a dilemma. Now
with regard to the dilutions, I think I can show how that the fact of
126
his not being able to detect aconite, by no means proves that there
was none present in the 100 pilules he examined. The tincture of
the first dilution no longer gives the tingling sensation to the tongue
which is characteristic of aconite. Now the presence of aconitine
could therefore only be proved in such a dilution, by physiological
tests; chemical science would, I believe, fail to detect quantities of
aconitine that would be still capable of producing physiological action.
Dr. Dupré tells us that he chemically examined the first dilution (does
he mean the first decimal or first centesimal, because there is a wide
difference between them?) I take it that he means the latter, because
the former would produce tingling. Mother tincture of aconite,
according to the homeopathic pharmacopoeia, is made from the freshly
collected root or the dried root. But supposing that it were made
from the dry root, which loses in drying about 70 per cent. of mois-
ture, there would be more than double as much dry root, as if the
fresh root were used. The dry root tinctures contain the activity of
one part of root in ten of spirit, this is the mother tincture; to make
the first decimal you take of this mother tincture one part and spirit
nine parts, which makes it contain actually one-hundredth of the
active or soluble parts of the root. The second decimal or first cen-
tesimal, the strength Dr. Dupré I suppose means, is made by taking
one part of the first decimal and adding nine parts of alcohol: this
makes it one in a thousand. Now when we consider that it takes one
hundredweight of the dried root to make about an ounce of the
alkaloid, I think Dr. Dupré will in fairness admit that it would be im-
possible to find chemically a trace of aconitine in 100 pilules, but
nevertheless this alkaloid is so exceedingly powerful, that although it
exists in such minutes quantities in the root that a few scrapings of
the root would be more than anyone would like to eat, and it would
probably entail serious consequences. With reference to atropine.
and strychnine, the same arguments and calculations will apply, there
being a little greater proportion of alkaloid. Lastly, in reference to
the profitless undertaking of convincing a true homeopath that he is
wrong; who is to judge between the homoeopath and the allopath?
I take it that the remark applies in an inverse ratio, equally to the
allopath, at any rate I hope so. I trust pride is not their principle.
Further, who ever heard of an Englishman giving in after being con-
vinced that he was right? Would Dr. Dupré ?
Now if Dr. Dupré will test the action of the second decimal of the
tincture of aconite, which he says according to his analysis contains
not a trace of aconitine, and which he will find is too weak to cause
the tingling of the tongue characteristic of aconite, I will write him a
note describing to him or to any friend of his, some of the symptoms
which will certainly be produced by the tincture, unless there is a
personal idiosyncracy with regard to the drug. I shall be happy to
send him a bottle of the tincture of the above strength, to test upon
himself and his friend. Facts alone, not arguments, are the only basis
for a fair judgment. He will then be in a position to say whether
the second decimal tincture is capable of physiological action or not.
114, Ebury-street, January 15.
ALFRED HEATH, F.L.S.
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MEDICINE AND SURGERY
PUBLISHED BY
THE HOMOEOPATHIC PUBLISHING
COMPANY,
WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C.
In a handsome Volume. Demy 8vo., 1,034 pages, cloth, price 21s.; or half-morocco, 25s.
TEXT
BOOK
A
OF
MODERN MEDICINE & SURGERY,
ON HOMEOPATHIC PRINCIPLES,
By E. H. RUDDOCK, M.D., L.R.C. P., M.R,C.S., L.M. (Lond. & Edin.), &c.
For the use of the Professional Student, the Clergyman, the Missionary, the Colonist,
Heads of Families, &c.
Ninth Edition. Sixty-Third Thousand, much enlarged and improved; best paper,
Crown 8vo., wide margin, price 10s. 6d. cloth.
Half-bound, morocco, suitable for presentation, libraries, medicine chests, &c., 14s.
The Homœopathic Vade Mecum
OF MODERN MEDICINE AND SURGERY.
With CLINICAL DIRECTORY, containing the results of personal experience of many physicians
in addition to those who contributed to former editions. This portion of the work has been
greatly extended. Also a chapter on POISONS, an APPENDIX OF FORMULE, TABLE OF DILUTIONS
of the remedies prescribed, &c.
By E. H. RUDDOCK, M.D., F.R.C.P., M.R.C.S.,
L.M. (Lond. and Edin.), &c.
For the use of Junior Practitioners, Students, Clergymen, Missionaries, Heads of Families, &c.
CHEAPER EDITION, without Clinical Directory, &c., suitable for family
use, may also be had, cloth, 5s.
Ninth Edition, revised and improved. Crown 8vo., neatly bound in cloth, price 3s. 6d.
THE LADIES' MANUAL
OF
Homœopathic Treatment.
In the Various Derangements Incident to her Sex.
By E. H. RUDDOCK, M.D., L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S.,
L.M. (Lond, and Edin.), &c.

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BOUND IN LI KARY
JUN 25 1902
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
3 9015 02011 8348
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