B 477161
DUPL

100
ARTES
1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
LE PLURIBUS UNUM
PSI QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOE NAMU
CIRCUMSPICE
#615,53
S53
MI
:
A LETTER
ΤΟ
SIR B. C. BRODIE, BART.
Demy 8vo, pp. 347, price 5s., Extra Cloth,
AN INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY,
BY
WILLIAM SHARP, M.D., F.R.S.,
IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS.
Seventh Edition.
A LETTER
TO
176 491
SIR BENJAMIN C. BRODIE, BART., P.R.S.,
IN REPLY
TO HIS
IN
LETTER
'FRASER'S MAGAZINE' FOR SEPTEMBER, 1861.
BY
WILLIAM SHARP, M.D., F.R.S.
"Truths which the theorist could never reach,
But observation taught me, I would teach.”
SECOND EDITION.
COWFER.
LONDON:
HENRY TURNER AND CO., 77, FLEET STREET, E.C.
MANCHESTER :-41, PICCADILLY, AND 15, MARKET STREET.
MDCCCLXI.
J. R. ADLARD, PRINTKR, BARTHOLOMEW CLOSE.
PREFACE.
THE Medical Profession throughout the world is at
present divided by a great controversy.
Much prejudice and animosity are exhibited on
both sides, which cannot fail to damage the whole
body. No one can regret this more than I do.
I
While desiring to live peaceably with all, I am
reluctantly involved in this professional warfare.
would gladly accomplish a reunion.
In the hope of removing some misapprehensions
from the minds of the leading members of my pro-
fession, I wrote to Sir B. Brodie two years ago,
requesting an interview, and asking him to invite any
other medical men he might judge expedient to be
present.
I addressed him as President of the Medical Coun-
cil, and as President of the Royal Society, and his
reply was to the effect that his professional engage-
ments were very few; but he was busy about other
matters, and had no leisure to answer my letter then,
but he would do so at some future time.
C
Sir Benjamin's letter in the Fraser' of last month,
is his next communication; one object of which
seems to be to fix upon me personally the con-
temptuous appellations of "empiric" and "pre-
tender," which he had before applied to homœopa-
thists in general.
The only other names Sir Benjamin mentions are
those of Hahnemann and Curie. With the principal
writings of the former I have made myself thoroughly
familiar; those of the latter I have not seen, not being
aware that they were of any special interest.
vi
PREFACE.
Several replies to Sir B. Brodie's letter have
been sent to me, for which I beg to return my
thanks. I have refrained from reading them while
engaged upon my own, but shall read them with plea-
sure now that this is completed.
Very possibly the same facts and arguments have
been brought forward by others, and in a better
manner. I should have been well contented to leave
the matter in their hands, if I had not been assured
that an answer would be expected from me, I being
the only person living to whom Sir Benjamin refers by
name.
I should have been glad of more time and leisure
for the writing of my answer; it might, perhaps, then
have been more worthy of the attention of my pro-
fession and of the public, but it must appear as it is,
and be taken for what it may be worth.
Since the remark made on page 47 was printed,
my publisher has informed me that some of the me-
dical journals have admitted an advertisement of this
Reply. I hope this is some evidence of the approach
of a better state of feeling.
I hear that disappointment has been expressed at
the tardy appearance of my Reply, which I much
regret; but it has not been possible to get it written,
printed, and bound, more quickly.
That I may be guilty of no unfairness, I have re-
printed Sir B. Brodie's letter, with other letters, in an
Appendix.
HORTON HOUSE, RUGBY;
October 30th, 1861.
The first Edition having been exhausted in a week,
a second is at once called for, and is issued with very
little alteration.
PREFACE
CONTENTS.
•
PAGE
I.
INTRODUCTORY.—SUCCESS OF HOMEOPATHY.
1. The occasion of writing this Reply. 'Fraser's' refusal
2. Sir B. Brodie has written upon a subject he does not under-
stand .
3. Has not read upon it sufficiently
4. Has not given it a practical trial
5. Nor have other medical men done this
•
9
10
11
12
13
6. M. Andral's experiments in 1834; these of no value
14
7. No other experiments have been made since
20
8. The new method not quackery, and those who practise it not
empirics nor pretenders
9. The great success of the new method
10. The prejudice of medical men against it
CNN
21
25
33
11. The controversy now not so much a medical as a social
question
36
12. The remedy for this, a practical trial
36
II.
ANALYSIS OF THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
1. When written
39
2. The Preface
39
3. Essay
4.
I. What homoeopathy professes to be
II. The controversy on homoeopathy
42
45
5.
III. Reply to Dr. Routh
48
6.
7.
8.
9.
2 2 2 2 2
در
IV, V, VI. The principle of homoeopathy
51
VII. The provings of drugs
VIII. The single medicine
IX. The small dose.
54
58
59
viii
CONTENTS.
10. Essays X and XI. The difficulties and advantages of
11.
12.
homœopathy
XII. The common sense of homeopathy
XIII. A review of Hahnemann's system
III.
PRESENT VIEWS.
1. Further progress made
2. The physician is required to learn three things—the disease,
the remedy, and the dose
•
3. The disease-diagnosis-Sir B. Brodie's method
4. Hahnemann's method. The former preferred
5. The remedy therapeutics
•
6. The old method founded on indications and intentions. Case
from Sir B. Brodie
7. The new method, a system of specifics
•
8. The old method acts upon the healthy parts of the body, and
leaves the diseased; the new method acts upon the diseased
parts, and leaves the healthy
9. Some objections to the old method
PAGE
66
66
8889909
64
70
71
•
71
72
74
74
78
10. The new method expressed in propositions
888888
80
81
83
11. Examples of the propositions-Materia
12. The dose, au intricate subject
Medica
89
103
13. Doses given on the old method, large, and why so
14. Doses given on the new method, necessarily small
15. A law for the selection of the dose suggested
104
1.07
109
IV.
STATE MEDICINE.
1. Attention of Government requested
114
•
2. Efforts of the Colleges to obtain power to strike off the
names of some of their members
114
3. The Medical Act. Clauses for the protection of homœo-
pathic practitioners and students
114
4. Infraction of this law by the resolutions of Colleges
5. Are homœopathists to be constituted a separate body?
6. Consultations between medical men of the two schools
7. Arbitrary conduct of medical men in posts of authority
8. The controversy has arisen, and is carried on, within the legal
boundaries of the profession
117
•
127
129
134
140
9. Conclusion
APPENDIX
143
145
A LETTER
ΤΟ
SIR BENJAMIN C. BRODIE, BART., P.R.S.
MY DEAR SIR BENJAMIN,
I.
1. IN former years I have experienced occasional
acts of kindness from you, which I do not forget; and
I desire to retain the feelings of regard for you which
they produced in me at the time. You have now pub-
lished a letter in which, referring to me by name, you
intimate to the world that I am become an empiric
and a pretender. I am called upon to reply to this
letter, but I hope to do so in a spirit animated by the
recollection of former kindness, rather than in that
which such an injury might be expected to excite.
I have applied for permission to send a temperate
reply to be inserted in 'Fraser'; but this act of jus-
tice and fairness has been refused me by the editor;
there remains, therefore, only the alternative of an
independent publication.
Others will characterise as it deserves, this refusal
1
10
SIR B. BRODIE CONDEMNS
you
on the part of the journal which has inserted your
criticism of a system of medicine, and of those who
have adopted it; the obstacle thus raised affords me
the opportunity of being less brief, and gives me leave
to attend also to a wish of yours, implied by what
said on the occasion of your election to be Prcsi-
dent of the Royal Society, in 1858. We had then
some conversation in the Society's room, and on my
'Investigation of Homœopathy' being mentioned, you
made this remark to me, "you have not told us
enough." I shall now both answer your letter, and
also tell you somewhat more on the same subject.
We will, if you please, sit down together, and en-
deavour to go through our discussion in good humour.
Had you invited me to an interview, before publishing
your letter, this might have been undertaken in private ;
and such an invitation, on your part, would have been
a proof of friendly consideration towards a professional
brother, who, in your judgment, had fallen into error ;
and, on my part, would have been appreciated and
acknowledged as such. But, since you have acted
otherwise, and have publicly condemned me, I am
under the necessity of defending myself with equal
publicity.
*
2. You commence thus, addressing a friend;
"You desire me to give you my opinion of what is
called Homœopathy.
* I have made
myself sufficiently acquainted with several works, espe-
cially those of Hahnemann, the founder of the homoeo-
THE NEW METHOD,
11
pathic sect, and those of Curie and Sharp. The result
is, that, with all the pains I have been able to take,
I have been unable to form any very distinct notion of
the system which they profess to teach."
This being so, I cannot help expressing surprise
that you did not here close your letter. Under the
conviction that it was a subject you did not yet under-
stand, how could you feel justified in writing more?
Did it not strike you that the confidence of your
readers must be shaken by this acknowledgment?
As, in another place, you repeat the confession that
"cannot comprehend" it, and, in still another,
that it is "wholly unintelligible," your meaning can-
not be misapprehended; and, in the minds of many,
this consideration alone has disposed of your letter
altogether.
you
3. To those who have not found the subject un-
intelligible, the inference can scarcely be avoided, that
the amount of reading you have held to be "suf-
ficient," has been but a slight and imperfect perusal.
If this be so, it is another reason why it would have
been prudent to have kept silence. As regards my
'Investigation of Homoeopathy,' the book we have
now to deal with, I am well persuaded, that, had you
given it a serious and impartial reading, you could not
have designated the facts as "scanty," nor the reason-
ing as "puerile and illogical;" nor could you have
classed me, for writing it, among "empirics" and
"pretenders." It will not be difficult, I think, to
12
WITHOUT GIVING IT
bring others to the same conviction; and thus, if it
appear that you have read little of the book you con-
demn, your letter will be laid aside for a second reason.
4. Moreover, a third and an unanswerable
ground of objection to your letter appears in the
obvious consideration that no amount of mere reading
is "sufficient" to qualify you to give an opinion upon
the matter. It is an experimental question, and no
one, who has not repeated the experiments, however
well informed he may be upon other topics, is compe-
tent to offer an opinion, much less to pronounce an
adverse judgment upon it. Would a chemist be per-
mitted to question or deny the results obtained in
the laboratory of another chemist, unless he had him-
self repeated the experiments, and could not obtain
the same results? Certainly not, you will say:
neither is a medical man justified in denying the
experience of another, who has not himself tried the
same remedies in similar cases. Did you acquire
your surgical experience, and deserved reputation, by
the reading of books? And would you criticise
another surgeon, whose experience differed from your
own, if that experience was founded upon a mode of
operating which you had not yourself tried? As-
suredly not, you will reply. And should not a
similar course of procedure be pursued in the matter
of medical, as in that of surgical treatment ?
For the reason, then, that you have not made ex-
periments or practical observations in your own hands,
A PRACTICAL TRIAL.
13
and under your own eyes, nor even witnessed them in
the hands of others-either of which, if done, you
were bound to record-your whole letter, and what-
ever further you may have said on the subject, may
be dismissed, without injustice as of no weight.
Suffer me to repeat, that this is not a matter which
admits of à priori reasoning. It is one of experiment
and observation; and until you personally try these
experiments, and make these observations, however
much we may respect your judgment upon affairs you
are conversant with, your opinion upon this subject is
of no value. Forgive me, Sir Benjamin, for speaking
thus plainly; I mean it not uncourteously. I feel as
John Hunter did when he wrote to Jenner,—“ Why
think? Why not try the experiment ?"
5. It is due to you to remark that the deficiency
of information I complain of, is shared by every
nfedical writer against homoeopathy I have yet met
with. All are unacquainted with the subject, as a
practical inquiry. The truth is, that all those who
have given it a fair and sufficient practical trial have
been, on the whole, so well satisfied with its results,
that they have adopted it as their future mode of
practice. The conversion of all investigators of the
new method has been so remarkable, that, a few
years ago, it was thought necessary to meet it with
such advice and admonition as the following:- We
warn the man that is inclined to investigate this folly
against experimentation on the subject, which will be
14
INVESTIGATORS ARE CONVERTS.
almost sure to end in his adopting the delusion." What
singular distrust! Such a folly and delusion as this
is represented to be, ought to dread the exposure of
an experimental investigation. But these warnings
having proved insufficient to stay the progress of the
reformation in medicine, the colleges and medical
societies now make it a matter of compulsion to their
members not to meddle with it, or rather of expulsion
to those who dare to do so. For proof of this I refer
to the resolutions of colleges given in the latter part of
this reply, and to letters in the Appendix.
Nevertheless, a large number of intelligent practi-
tioners have had the moral courage to act conscien-
tiously and independently, notwithstanding such
warnings and threats; they have given the system a
practical trial; they have thus been induced to lay
aside their former mode of practice, and have adopted
the new one; and they have published the cases which
have led them to make the change. The facts
thus published outweigh all the assertions opposed to
them.
6. No sufficient trials have been made and pub-
lished on the other side. You will not, I am sure,
mention those of Professor Andral, but as they are
still brought forward by others, with an air of triumph,
I hope you will pardon me if I notice them in this
place. Their entire want of value has been repeatedly
shown, particularly by Dr. Irvine,* seven years ago.
* British Journal of Homœopathy' for 1844.
ANDRAL'S EXPERIMENTS.
15
They are, notwithstanding, still appealed to, their
character misrepresented, and their importance ex-
aggerated, so that this want of value must be shown
again.
They were made in the Hôpital de la Pitié, in Paris,
in 1834, under unfair and unfavorable circumstances
moreover, no practitioner of homoeopathy appears to
have been present; and the report was drawn up by
one of Andral's pupils, who, as well as M. Andral
himself, was strongly prejudiced against the method.
At the risk of being tedious, but to stay charges of
unfairness, I shall present the report of the cases
entire; it will then, I think, need little comment on
my part to show how worthless the trial was, and how
unworthy of the name of Andral.
It appears that one dose only, and that an infini-
tesimal one, of the medicine named, was given in each
case, and how much was considered a dose is not
stated. If the patient was not cured in a few days,
the result was reckoned a failure.
Little care seems to have been taken even with the
diagnosis, as may be seen without looking beyond the
first case; and no care at all in prescribing for the
actual disease. A single symptom, often having little
if any, connection with the principal malady, was
arbitrarily isolated from the rest-I wonder why!—
and a medicine was almost as arbitrarily chosen for it.
A cure was to follow, or the method was to be con-
demned.
It will be noticed, also, that a large proportion of the
16
ANDRAL'S EXPERIMENTS.
1
cases were incurable or unmanageable chronic diseases;
such as hemiplegia, gout, dropsy of the pericardium,
other diseases of the heart, and even three cases of
phthisis. It cannot but be admitted that such dis-
eases are not adapted to be test cases of any method
of treatment. It could not be for lack of more suit-
able cases that these were selected, for the trial was
carried on for thirty-five weeks, and was made in a
large hospital.
The cases were thirty-five in number.
M. ANDRAL'S CASES.*
CC
ACONITE, 24th dilution.
"1. Patient aged 25. Disease, gastritis; pre-
dominating symptom, intense fever. Effect, the pulse
fell two beats in twenty-four hours; next day, the
eruption of small-pox appeared.
"2. Intermittent fever of a quotidian type; pre-
dominant symptom, action of the heart. No effect.
"3. Acute angina; predominant symptom, intense
fever. Effect, diminution of the sore throat, and
falling of the pulse.
"4. Phthisis; predominant symptom, frequency of
the pulse. Effect, falling of the pulse.
5. Acute arthritis; predominant symptom, fre-
quency of the pulse. Effect, a violent headache.
* Bulletin Général de Thérapeutique,' Sept., 1834.
ANDRAL'S EXPERIMENTS.
17
(6
"ARNICA, 6th dilution.
6. Pulmonary symptoms; predominant symptom,
great giddiness. No effect.
"7. Cerebral congestion; predominant symptom,
violent vertigo. Effect, the patient said he experi-
enced immediate relief.
r
8. Hydro-pericarditis; predominant symptom,
giddiness. No effect.
9. Dysmenorrhoea, with chronic gastritis; pre-
dominant symptom, very violent headache. No im-
mediate effect; improvement on the third day.
c
BELLADONNA, 24th dilution.
"10. Hemiplegia; predominant symptom, confu-
sion of sight. No effect.
•
"11. Bronchitis; predominant symptom, violent
cough. No effect.
"12. Bronchitis; predominant symptom, violent.
cough. No effect.
CC
13. Affection of the optic nerve; predominant
symptom, considerable confusion of sight. No effect.
"14. Heart disease; predominant symptom, giddi-
ness. No effect.
CC
BRYONIA, 30th dilution.
«15. Intermittent fever; predominant symptom,
flying pains. No effect.
66
16. Hypertrophy of the heart; predominant
symptom, acute pain at the epigastrium. No effect.
CC
17. Acute arthritis; predominant symptom, pain
at the shoulder. No effect.
18
ANDRAL'S EXPERIMENTS.
"18. Pleurodynia, with bronchitis; predominant
symptom, continued fits of coughing.
CC
No effect.
19. Chronic gastro-enteritis; predominant symp-
tom, violent pain in the left knee and shoulder. No
effect.
"20.
"COLCHICUM, 15th dilution.
Acute arthritis; predominant symptom,
violent pain, with redness and swelling of both wrists.
Effect, abatement of the pains.
"21. Lumbago; predominant symptom, violent
pain in the loins. No effect.
"22. Tubercular consumption; predominant symp-
tom, stitch in the left side. Effect, abatement of
the pain.
CC
HYOSCYAMUS, 12th dilution.
"23. Pulmonary consumption; predominant symp-
tom, violent cough. No effect.
(6
24. Pleurisy with bronchitis; predominant symp-
tom, violent cough. No effect.
"25. Bronchitis; predominant symptom, violent
cough. No effect.
"MERCURIUS SOLUBILIS, 6th dilution.
"26. Mercurial trembling of upper and lower
limbs. No effect.
"27. Syphilis, ulcerations. No effect.
NUX VOMICA, 24th dilution.
"28. A woman aged 21. Dysmenorrhoea, with
ANDRAL'S EXPERIMENTS.
19
chronic gastritis; predominant symptom, very great
dyspnoea. No effect.
"29. A woman aged 22. Dysmenorrhoea, with
chronic gastritis; predominant symptom, dyspnoea.
No effect.
"30. A woman aged 18. Amenorrhoea; predomi-
nant symptom, inclination to vomit. No effect.
66
PULSATILLA, 24th dilution.
"31. Chronic gastro-enteritis; predominant symp-
tom, diarrhoea. Effect, sensible improvement.
"32. A woman aged 22. Chronic gastritis; pre-
dominant symptom, diarrhoea with colic. No effect.
"CHAMOMILLA, 12th dilution.
33. Diarrhoea, without colic. No effect.
"OPIUM, 6th dilution.
"34. Affection of the uterus and the heart; pre-
dominant symptom, obstinate constipation (!). No
effect.
"PLUMBUM, dilution not stated.
"35. Obstinate constipation, which has lasted eight
days. No effect."
Such are Professor Andral's famous experiments.
Many observations crowd upon the mind while reading
them, but I must content myself with noting two or
three.
First. Hahnemann never practised, nor taught such
a method as this; hence the experiments are nugatory.
20
ORGANON.
HAHNEMANN'S '
Second. The value of the principle upon which
drugs are to be prescribed, is quite distinct from the
efficacy of the infinitesimal dose, and they ought to
be tested separately; as is again and again explained
in the Investigation.' On this ground, also, the
experiments are nugatory.
C
Third. There is so little skill shown in the selection
of the remedies, that the wonder is, not that so many
produced no effect, but that, in seven or eight instances,
beneficial effects followed. It might be argued that
these positive results are really of more weight than
the remaining negative ones.
Lastly. To close the whole affair, Andral himself
subsequently condemned them, acknowledging that
they were unavailing for the object proposed.
(
7. Hahnemann published his Organon,' or new
method, in 1810; and, as you own (in the Quarterly
Review'), instead of his method being submitted to
trial, he was subjected to "a most unjustifiable perse-
cution." Not until 1834, twenty-four years afterwards,
is this unworthy attempt at experiment made by M.
Andral; an attempt in which a caricature rather
than a trial of homoeopathy is exhibited; after nearly
thirty years more, a space of half a century altogether,
these are the solitary experiments appealed to, for the
purpose of crushing a system of medicine, which,
during this same space of time, has spread over all
the civilised world!
·
You accuse us of asserting principles "on the
SIR B. BRODIE'S ARTICLES.
21
evidence of the most doubtful and scanty facts."
The whole republic of medicine have nothing to appeal
to against us, but these meagre and worthless experi-
ments of Andral. I marvel that they thus expose the
nakedness of their land. You, Sir Benjamin, are
wiser, in that you make assertions without adducing
the evidence of any facts at all. Yes, Sir Benjamin,
the assertions are on your side, but the facts are on
our side, and against you. You will not, I hope,
reply in the words of a certain illustrious personage,
Are they ?-then so much the worse for the facts!"
S. It might here be submitted to any competent
and unprejudiced judge that you have failed to make
out a prima facie claim to be heard, so that your case
may, with justice, be put out of court; but, as you
are not of this mind, and have written against the
system of medicine I have adopted and recommended,
I am compelled to write further in its defence. I
proceed, therefore, to notice next, your very persevering
endeavour to raise a prejudice against this method of
treating diseases, by classing it with quackery and
fraud, and by denominating its advocates empirics
and impostors, "who very probably never studied
disease at all.”
'
C
This plan you have pursued, Sir Benjamin, for
twenty years. In 1842, you wrote an elaborate article
in the Quarterly Review.' In 1856, in the Medical
Times and Gazette,' you referred your readers to this
article in the Quarterly.' And now, in 1861, you
<
↓
22
THE
INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
take the trouble to write an epitome of this same
article for Fraser's Magazine.' In this last paper
you add my name to the two previously given, with
whose books, you say, you have made yourself "suffi-
ciently" acquainted. It ought not to be without
some indignation that I ask you to point out a single
passage in the 'Investigation' which savours of
quackery or of fraud.
Before that book was written, by your own acknow-
ledgment, as appears in the book itself, I was a worthy
member of the medical profession; and I demand of
you either to support your accusation by proof, or to
retract it. Let us inquire what the book professes to
be:-" An Investigation of Homœopathy." The ex-
amination of this medical system is represented as
taken up with reluctance, and from a sense of duty,
and pursued with industry for several years. The
book contains an independent opinion of the matters
investigated; it assures the reader that "I have
noticed every feature of Hahnemann's exposition of
his system, and there is not one which I admire, or
can adopt in the terms in which they are propounded
by him. As expressed in his writings, they all, with-
out exception, excite in my mind a strong repugnance."
It is added, that "I may be supposed to be a disciple
of Hahnemann, and be held responsible for his follies.
I altogether disclaim such responsibility and relation-
ship."
In this book are the results of several
years of
very
careful observation; the facts are given as they pre-
HAHNEMANN, CURIE, AND SHARP.
23
sented themselves to me in the course of the inquiry;
and the opinions are inferences drawn from these
facts. These opinions were left open to be modified
by further research; but, at the time, they were
honestly entertained, and faithfully recorded; and this
record was given in the plainest language I could use,
and without reservation or concealment. All this was
done in the spirit of the motto of the book, which is
a sentence from William Harvey-a name never to be
mentioned without reverence-"I claim that liberty
which I willingly yield to others, the permission,
namely, in subjects of difficulty, to put forward as
true such things as appear to be probable, until proved
to be manifestly false." And is it just, Sir Benjamin,
when your patients come to me, as they occasionally do
is it just to tell them they leave you in favour of a
"homœopathic doctor, who, very probably, never
studied disease at all?"
You refer your friend to my book, as well as to those
of Hahnemann and Curie, and you rank me along
with them as an empiric and a pretender. I also
gladly refer to the same book, and am not afraid to
abide the judgment of every honest and unpreju-
diced reader.
You are offended because "Hahnemann treats the
subject in one way, Curie in another way, and Sharp
in another way still." But is there anything unusual
or unreasonable in this? When a new subject of
study is first introduced, is it not always looked at
from different points of view by early investigators?
24
SIR B. BRODIE IN ERROR.
Are there to be no independent thinkers in medicine?
I respect you much, Sir Benjamin, as formerly Presi-
dent of one of our colleges, but you must pardon
me if I decline to submit to your dictation in matters
of science. I am loyal as can be wished, and desire
to render to all their due; but tyranny in the region
of knowledge has reigned long enough. "Amicus
Socrates, amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas."
You make many sensible observations upon quackery,
but they are beside the mark. The new method of
medical treatment is not quackery; it has no secrets,
it has purchased no patent. Like other medical sys-
tems, it may be practised in an empirical manner; and
there may be pretenders and quacks, who hope to gain
by using its name; but, alas! what part of the profes-
sion is free from such unwelcome intruders?
The new method may have errors in it, and it is
the duty of those who can discover such errors to point
them out; no one has done this more freely than my-
self; but medical errors are not criminal, except when
they arise from culpable negligence, as you remark in
your letter, "humanum est errare.'
You are in error, whether culpably or not, others
will judge, when you put down the whole method as
"absurd and nonsensical," and all its advocates as
quacks and pretenders. You are plainly in the wrong
when you apply such terms of reproach to men who
have enjoyed the same liberal education, who have
pursued with the same good conscience the path of
professional duty, and who are the objects of as much
THE NEW METHOD SUCCESSFUL.
25
confidence and esteem from those who know them, as
yourself.
To conclude an unpleasant subject, and one which,
though keenly felt by the profession, is not cared for
by the public. The new method, even if it could be
proved to be erroneous, is far removed from empiricism,
and never can be justly condemned as such. And,
though there are disreputable persons, who call them-
selves homœopathists, and seek by this to further their
selfish ends, there are also men who have the same
claim to be acknowledged to be professional men of
respectability and honour as yourself, and whose tes-
timony is as worthy of credit as your own. I cannot,
therefore, avoid again remarking that the language
you have suffered yourself to use is untrue, because it
is misapplied, and that you should regret having made
such charges, and retract them.
9. We now arrive at something more agreeable.
-the success of the new method. "But, however
this may be," you had been speaking of its inefficiency,
I
may be met," you go on to say, "by the assertion,
that there is undoubted evidence, that a great number
of persons recover from their complaints, under homœo-
pathic treatment, and I do not pretend in the least
degree to deny it.”
It is well you are willing to admit this success as
an undeniable fact; it is very comfortable that this
need not be a subject of discussion between us; I
2
26
REASONS FOR
wish we were as well agreed upon all the other features
of the question.
But there may be different ways of accounting for
this success, and you may account for it in one way,
and I in another; it becomes necessary, therefore,
to inquire what reasons you give for the success of
this treatment in individual cases, and for its spread
over the world.
As I have noticed in another place, you offer three
reasons.
First, spontaneous recovery; "the living machine
has the power of repairing itself. If the arts of medi-
cine and surgery had never been invented, by far the
greater number of those who suffer from bodily ill-
ness would have recovered, nevertheless." This doc-
trine differs from that which medical men have usually
held; but, admitting it to be true, homeopathic
treatment, not interfering so much with nature as
other methods do, must really be the best. In all
cases which can recover spontaneously, strong dosing
and active counter-irritation must rather hinder than
help. The homoeopathist at least lets his patient get
well, while another practitioner, if he does not do
worse, at any rate prolongs his patient's illness, by
interfering more than is necessary with nature's pro-
ceedings. It is well that this should be understood by
medical men, as well as by patients, that, on your own
showing, and in your own words, "whenever homœo-
pathy is a substitute for bad treatment, it must be the
THIS SUCCESS.
27
better of the two." And seeing that patients will
seldom be content without treatment of some kind,
this is a large admission.
But-
Secondly, "this does not account for all the success
of homœopathy;" there is the large class of imaginary
or exaggerated ailments. "It is astonishing," as you
say, "to what an extent some persons contrive to ima-
gine diseases for themselves; * * * and such feelings
will disappear as well under the use of globules as they
would under any other mode of treatment, or under
no treatment at all." For this class of sufferers you
thus admit that homoeopathy is at least as good as
any other treatment. For the
Third reason, you mention cases in which medical
men have made mistakes in their diagnosis and treat-
ment. "If it should so happen that a medical prac-
titioner, from want of knowledge, or from a natural
defect of judgment, makes a mistake in his diagnosis,
and the patient whom he had unsuccessfully treated
afterwards recovers, *** and the recovery takes place
under the care of a homoeopathist, or any other em-
piric, ***
we really cannot very well wonder, that,
with such knowledge as they possess of these matters,
the empiric should gain much credit with the public."
Why should you descend to such language as this?
Have we not been educated in the same school?
You are the older and more eminent member of our
common profession, but I do not yield to you in the
love of that profession. The empiric, you say, has
knowledge,—of what kind? Where did he obtain it ?
28
REASONS FOR
Is it not similar to your own, and has it not been ac-
quired in the same manner? And, in the case you
have supposed, it is used to better advantage for the
patient. Is it consistent with reason or justice to
call one practitioner, who, from want of knowledge,
makes a mistake, and unsuccessfully treats the patient,
the "regular" and the other, who, by more knowledge,
corrects the mistake, and cures the patient, the "em-
piric ?"
To return to the causes assigned by you for the
success of homoeopathy. It is to be remembered that
in all these large classes of cases, including those
which will of themselves naturally recover; those
which are more or less imaginary; and those in which
the physician has made a mistake; in all these cases,
and they must form a large proportion of the actual
amount of illness, you admit that homoeopathy is as
good as, if not better than any other treatment. May
not the public be congratulated in having met with
educated medical practitioners, who can so often cure
them with so much comfort and safety?
There remains only one class of cases unconsidered.
In 1842, you say, "If they (homoeopathic remedies)
have the virtue of being in themselves innocent, no
harm can result from their use where nothing is
wanted, or nothing can be done; but it is quite other-
wise on those occasions which call for active and scien-
tific treatment, and we have good reason to say that
many individuals have lost their lives from trusting to
their use under these circumstances." In 1861, you
THIS SUCCESS.
29
repeat this sentiment in these words: "There are nu-
merous cases in which spontaneous recovery is out of
the question; in which sometimes the life or death of
the patient, and at other times the comfort or discom-
fort of his existence for a long time to come, depends
on the prompt application of active and judicious
treatment. In such cases homoeopathy is neither
more nor less than a mischievous absurdity; and I do
not hesitate to say that a very large number of persons
have fallen victims to the faith which they reposed in
it, and to the consequent delay in having recourse to
the use of proper remedies.'
Now this is the point of your letter-it is written to
alarm and to deter; but it is just what you ought to
hesitate to say, for you do not know it to be true. I
am very anxious to avoid saying anything uncourteous,
but I am persuaded that you cannot sustain this asser-
tion by facts. It has been much observed by your
non-medical readers, that you do not advance a single
example or fact in proof of one of your many asser-
tions. For example, you assert that homoeopathy is a
mischievous absurdity; but you have not tried one
experiment with its remedies, and do not know that,
instead of being mischievous, they are efficacious in
the cases you have just now referred to, beyond any
other. You assert of my book, that the reasoning is
puerile and illogical; but you do not quote, or refer to,
a single sentence in proof. You say that in all times
there have been pretenders, and imply that I am one
of them; but you do not advance an item of any
30
SUCCESS IN BOTH ACUTE
kind, in support of an accusation which, without proof,
is a calumny. And so here you assert that "a very
large number of persons have fallen victims," without
any statements or references in proof. As I have
already remarked, you condemn me for making state-
ments on the evidence of scanty facts, but you out-do
me in this, and make all these assertions without the
evidence of any facts.
No, Sir Benjamin, you have been misinformed, very
large numbers of persons do not fall victims to homœo-
pathic treatment. Here is issue joined between the
parties, and the onus probandi rests upon you.
The truth, on the contrary, is that in sudden and
acute disease, where no time is to be lost, the recoveries.
are far more numerous, and much more expeditious
under the new method, than under anything you wish
us to understand by the term " active treatment." In
proof of this I refer to cases in the Essays,' and to
my daily practice for the last twelve years.
Again, as to serious chronic disease, it is equally
true that many cases considered to be incurable by the
usual modes of treatment have been cured by the
homœopathic remedies. I think you must remember one
or two yourself; and I may again refer to the Essays,'
to my own practice, and to that of every respect-
able practitioner who makes use of similar remedies.
I should be sorry to appear to boast, but your letter
compels me to say that I have seen cases of asthma,
of epilepsy, of hæmorrhage, of tabes mesenterica, of
diabetes, of scirrhus, of abscess of the kidney, and
AND CHRONIC DISEASE.
31
of other serious diseases, which were incurable in the
hands of their former medical advisers, recover. I
am aware that it is objected to statements like this,
that they are far surpassed by those of Holloway or
Parr, and that they weigh as little in the minds of
medical practitioners. Pity that these last should be
so blinded by prejudice that they can see no other dif
ference between the experience of physicians, and the
advertisements of nostrum vendors.
I would also earnestly call your attention to the
value of the new treatment in the diseases of children
-the bright jewels in the family circle. How merci-
fully gentle, how conspicuously efficacious, in their
severest sufferings it is, only daily experience can ade-
quately teach.
Nor is the effect of the same treatment, transferred
to the diseases of the lower animals, to be overlooked.
It is a fact which bears a direct and powerful testi-
mony in contradiction to your assertions. Many gen-
tlemen have their horses treated exclusively by this
method; many farmers are thankful for it for their
cattle and sheep. I am informed that more than one
dairy in London, and many in the country, are glad
of its benefits. The recoveries of cows attacked with
pleuro-pneumonia, an epidemic so prevalent of late
years as to be known as the "lung disease," and,
under all other treatment so fatal, have been numerous
and remarkable.
To return to my own experience, it is no more than
bare justice to say, that I have had much better success
32
THIS SUCCESS PROGRESSIVE.
in the results of treatment, since I became acquainted
with these remedies than I had before; and for the
character of my previous position, I take the liberty to
refer you to the town and neighbourhood where I
formerly resided, and from which I retired because I
had not health and strength to get through the work.
You admit the superiority of the homeopathic over
the usual treatment, in a very large number of com-
plaints; it is, you say, the better of the two. In the
remaining cases, from your present inexperience, you
are very naturally afraid to trust it; you think it
would not be sufficiently efficacious. In reply, I
beg to assure you, that twelve years of daily practice
with these remedies have convinced me that
fears upon this point are groundless, and that in these
remaining cases, as well as in the others, it is the better
of the two.
your
So much for this part of our subject, the suc-
cess of homœopathy, and the reasons which may
be assigned for it. That it has been a progressive
success is evident from your own writings. In your
article in the Quarterly,' a certain amount of preva-
lence of the method is implied; but it is plainly ac-
knowledged in your letter in 'Fraser.' From this we
may gather, that you are aware that, notwithstanding
you then wrote so strongly against homoeopathy, in
the hope, doubtless, of checking its progress, the suc-
cess it had attained in 1842 has been greatly on the
increase during the twenty years which have since
elapsed.
MEDICAL OPPOSITION PROGRESSIVE.
33
10. But if the success of homoeopathy has been
progressive, so also has been the prejudice of medical
men against it. It may be of service to inquire into
the origin of this dislike, and the reason of its con-
tinuance; and whether there may be any means of
removing it.
The German physician, Hahnemann, the originator
of what he called homœopathia, first conceived the
notion of it in 1790, and published the first paper
on it in Hufeland's Journal,' in 1796. This journal
was well known as the leading medical periodical of
Europe, at that time. There seems to have been no
feeling one way or the other, on either side, at this
commencement. The notion of similia similibus
curantur was the result of an earnest endeavour, per-
severingly followed out, to answer the question which,
on engaging in practice as a physician, rose up with
great power in his mind,-" How is it possible, with
conscientious fidelity, to discharge my trust? Is
there no great principle by which I can guide my
course ?”
His propositions were novel, and opposed to the
bias of thought which the professional mind had
yielded to for many ages. A difficulty in appre-
hending their meaning, and an unwillingness to give
attention to them, were naturally the first results of
their appearance; and neglect and delay were the
consequences of these.
In the irritable mind of the
proposer, this neglect and delay gave rise to im-
patience; the conviction that he had discovered a
34
ALL NEW TRUTH OPPOSED.
truth of high value to mankind increased his self-
esteem, and led him to press his reform with an
unwise eagerness; and the two together tempted him
to use words of disparagement towards his fellow-
practitioners which they did not deserve, and which
he was not justified in using.
Hahnemann did not remember how much oppo-
sition all new truth and all real reformation must.
encounter; nor how much time must elapse, and how
much forbearance must be exercised, before they are
accepted by mankind. Channels of education, grooves
of thought, and forms of expression are mighty hin-
derers of progress and improvement; and when to
these are added the barriers of prejudice, the tide of
fashion, the cries of party, the claims of self-interest,
and the necessities of life, progress and improvement
are all but impossible. And yet these impediments
lie, more or less, in the path to every kind of know-
ledge; and are met with, and must be surmounted
in every field of inquiry. It is not wonderful then,
that, though thought is quick, progress and improve-
ment are slow.
Hahnemann did not remember this, and the
beginning of strife is as the letting out of waters ;
when once evil passions have been roused they rapidly
spread. He was criticised, ridiculed, and abused;
and, at length, as you have yourself expressed it, a
most unjustifiable persecution followed."
He was
(C
driven from city to city, and was made to feel himself
an outcast from society. It was but too natural that
THE QUARREL INCREASES.
35
co
these angry feelings should arise in his mind, and be
vented in no measured language.
Such, I think, if impartially viewed, will be
acknowledged to have been the origin of the estrange-
ment between Hahnemann and his colleagues and
contemporaries. As you have reminded us, humanum
est errare; he should have been more modest, and
more patient; they should have been more willing
to listen and to investigate. But the storm had now
arisen, which was to rage and spread from kingdom
to kingdom, and, after more than half a century,
to be to-day fiercer than ever. For, while nearly all
neglected or condemned, a few began to admire and
to follow; these few have been succeeded by an
increasing number, who, along with the instruction,
have imbibed the spirit of opposition, and so have
exposed themselves to the enmity of the still remain-
ing majority.
When Hahnemann had added to his system the
infinitesimal dose, it is not surprising that his state-
ments should have been viewed with increasing sus-
picion and incredulity by those who had now become
his opponents; and some raillery might have been
innocently indulged in, which he ought to have borne
with good-humour and cheerfulness; but he had not
the privilege of being a native of Ireland, and, his
choler rising, the justifiable limits of distrust and
hesitation, on the opposite side, were quickly overstept,
and an implacable hostility against him burst through
every bond of reason and charity. Indignant, and,
36
A MODE OF RECONCILIATION
I fear, even revengeful feelings were soon indulged in
on his side, and pride, dogmatism, and supercilious
scorn became but too painfully visible in his writings.
11. The controversy has now become a social,
rather than a medical question, and the clashing of
interests, and the workings of jealousy, have reduced
both sides to the condition of two political factions;
a state of things I for one very much deplore.
12. Such is the lamentable picture of a house
divided against itself; is there no sponge by which it
can be obliterated? It is yet possible, it is not yet
too late for the profession to do now what it ought to
have done fifty years ago.
Let it lay aside its preju-
dices and its self-interested motives, and take up the
question as one of science, and apply its powers of
experimentation and reason,—and no class of men has
greater,—and let it aim at the elucidation and esta-
blishment of truth, whatever that may be. Hahne-
mann, at the best, had but a glimpse of the object
before him; it needs to be illuminated and exhibited
much more clearly, and to be drawn out in fuller pro-
portions, and with more correct definitions.
I
Of course I believe you when you say, "whatever
may think at present, I had originally no prejudice.
either in favour of or against this new system;" and
you will see from what I have now said, that I agree
with you, when you add, "nor do I believe that the
members of the medical profession generally were, in
RECOMMENDED.
37
the first instance, influenced by any feelings of this
kind." What I earnestly desire is, that you, and
others of our medical fraternity who, with you, are
now, as the sentence just quoted admits, so strongly
prejudiced against the new method, the origin and
progress of which prejudice I have just related,
would return to your former state of unprejudice,
and be willing to undertake a real, that is, a practical
investigation of it,-each one for himself,-and let
your judgment be a fair inference from the facts as
they present themselves in the course of the inquiry.
This, I am sure, is a reasonable demand; and com-
pliance with it is the only way by which the quarrel
can be ended, the unity of the profession be restored,
and the respect and confidence of the public be re-
gained.
Sir Benjamin, we will now wish each other good
night, and resume our discussion to-morrow.
38
ANALYSIS OF
II.
I TRUST that I have sufficient love of science to
lead me to desire nothing so much as the attainment
of truth; and that I am not so vain as to believe that
none of my views can be erroneous." These senti-
ments I have often admired, and, seeing that the words
are your own, Sir Benjamin, you will not be offended
with me if I remind you of them now; nor think it
unbecoming in me to express a similar confidence that
I earnestly desire to discover truth, and a similar dis-
claimer of infallibility for my opinions. Your Ob-
servations on the Diseases of the Joints' have not
been less valued because they were thus introduced to
the notice of our profession; and that which we
respectively wish to teach on the knotty subject we are
at present engaged in, will not be received with less
consideration should it be uttered in the same spirit.
Let us endeavour to continue our discussion in this
propitious and happy frame of mind.
1. You speak thus :-"I have made myself suf-
ficiently acquainted with several works,
*
*
especially that of Hahnemann, and those of Curie and
Sharp.
*
*
米
​***
But Hahnemann treats
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
39
the subject in one way, Curie in another, and Sharp
in another way still." It would lead us too far were
we to undertake an examination of all these books, we
will, therefore, limit our inquiries to the last.
(
This Investigation of Homœopathy' contains a
series of essays which, except the thirteenth, were suc-
cessively written in the years 1851, 1852, and 1853.
They were published as they were written, four in each
of those years, and they enjoyed a large circulation in
England and America. The seventh edition contains
the thirteenth essay, which was written in 1856; this
gives the latest views on the subject which I have yet
published.
With respect to the author of the 'Investigation,'
and his claim to be heard, I would rather be silent. It
is both unwise and unpleasant to be egotistical, or a
satisfactory account of my professional antecedents,
which commenced in the beginning of the year 1821,
could be given; suffice it to say, that I was educated
in the most orthodox manner, and had advantages
and successes sufficient to satisfy any moderate
ambition.
I venture, therefore, and I think it not unfitting, to
ask you to read with me again this 'Investigation;
first, because it is one of the books to which you
specially refer your correspondent; and, secondly, that
I may remind you of certain passages in each of the
essays, as we pass them rapidly in review.
2. We will read the preface first, which contains,
40
ANALYSIS OF
among other matters, a sketch of your proceedings and
of my own, with reference to Hahnemann's new medi-
cal system; noting, before we commence, two things:
-the one, that up to the moment when our attention
was first directed to the subject, there was no difference
between us, save those of age and distinction, which I
have already mentioned; we were embarked on board
the same college ship, and engaged on the same pro-
fessional voyage;-and the other, that, seeing neither
of us lays claim to intuitive knowledge, we were, at
starting, equally uninformed on the subject, and were
equally unable to say whether it was valuable or worth-
less.
In the sketch I have just referred to, we begin by
agreeing that there is no important practical knowledge
but that which is "derived from the only true sources.
of all knowledge-observation and experience;" but
we then diverge into two opposite paths. The one
pursued by you is thus described:-
"The first step in Sir Benjamin's direction is to pass
judgment upon the new method, and to pronounce
its condemnation as an imposture, and this, so far as
I can learn, without waiting to try a single experi-
ment himself, or being willing to listen with patience
to any account of the experiments or experience of
others.
*
"Sir Benjamin's second step is to adopt the ancient
artifice of attempting to vilify and disgrace indivi-
duals or subjects, by associating them with what is
known or supposed to be disreputable and vile. Before
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
41
C
arriving at Homœopathy, in the article of the Quar-
terly,' a long list of quackeries is introduced, with no
other apparent motive but that of pouring contempt
and ridicule upon the subject intended to be added to
the list,—with any other view such an enumeration is
irrelevant and out of place.
'
*
*
The fact of numerous recoveries under homœo-
pathic treatment not admitting of denial, Sir Benja-
min's next step is to insist upon spontaneous reco-
very.' Because people have many attacks of disease
from which they do not die, but, under any treat-
ment, recover, the inference is suggested that all cases.
treated homoeopathically get well of themselves; and
that all who think otherwise, are as credulous as Dr.
Johnson, who is ridiculed for believing in the Cock
Lane ghost. * *
"The fourth step taken by Sir Benjamin betrays
his want of practical information on the subject with
painful clearness, and shows how far the first false
step has led him away from his starting point-im-
portant practical knowledge must be derived from the
only true source of all knowledge-observation and ex-
perience.' When speaking of the dilutions or pre-
parations of drugs used by homoeopathists, he says,
'Here we meet with a very great difficulty as to the
method by which this extreme degree of dilution of
medicinal agents is to be determined; nor does
the most diligent examination of the homeopathic
writings enable us to get over it.' Sir Benjamin
is then greatly troubled at the contemplation of the
3
4.2
ANALYSIS OF
thousands of hogsheads of alcohol which the dilutions
must require; in which trouble of mind his successor
in these calculations, Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh,
has greatly sympathised."
For the four corresponding steps taken by myself,
I must refer to the Preface itself.
Who will not be surprised to find that, after
your
attention had been thus called to the weakness of
your condemnation of the new method, written by
you in 1842, you should re-issue it in 1861? What
wisdom can there be in this? You had given the subject
no experimental examination when you first wrote;
you have given it none since. Why should you compel
us to tread again this wearisome and barren path?
3. But since, after twenty years of thinking, you
are not able to do more than reproduce the old objec-
tions, I must not be weary of repeating the old re-
plies; we will, therefore, procced to the re-perusal of
the first Essay, which tells you what, according to the
view I took of it ten years ago, homoeopathy professes
to be. We there read that homoeopathy is not a
novelty, inasmuch as it is plainly recommended in the
Hippocratic writings; that it is not quackery, inas-
much as it is no secret nostrum, but courts profes-
sional inquiry; that it is not an uncertainty, but a
well-defined object, capable of being exhibited in
a clear and intelligible light, as explained by Hip-
pocrates, in the treatment of mania, and as illustrated
in the practice of the ill-used Dr. Groenevelt, who
THE
43
INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
ઃઃ
was committed to Newgate in 1694, by the President
of the College of Physicians-his own college-for
prescribing cantharides internally in cases of stran-
gury; still you call those practitioners who have
adopted homoeopathy empirics, and still say that you
are "unable to form any very distinct notion of it."
The Essay goes on to remark, that homoeopathy is
not an infinitesimal dose, and that to think so is
a popular mistake, diligently, though, perhaps, igno-
rantly fostered by the opponents of homœopathy;" that
the principle, embodied and expressed in the name,
says nothing about the dose; all that the rule requires,
as announced by the Hippocratic writer, being this,
give the poison as a remedy in disease in a smaller
dose than would be sufficient to produce similar
symptoms in a healthy person; "-how much smaller
is a matter of experience. I remind you that you
read in the same place, and we have reached only
the ninth page, "It should not be forgotten that
homœopathy, as a principle, was discovered by ex-
periments made with ordinary doses, and a man may
be a true homœopathist though he never prescribe
any other; the nature and effect of the so-called in-
finitesimal doses are separate questions."
CC
Do you remember reading, on page 12, "Homœo-
pathy is a practical fact? It is not a speculative
theory to be reasoned upon in the closet, but a fact to
be observed at the bedside; it is no metaphysical
subject to be logically shown by à priori reasoning to
be absurd; it is not a piece of presumption to be
44
ANALYSIS OF
put down by authority; it is the statement of a fact,
to be examined, like the statement of any other fact,
upon evidence. You are not called upon to sit down
and imagine its possibility or its impossibility; but
you are urgently pressed to observe whether it be
true or not. Hundreds of credible witnesses tell you
that curable diseases are, for the most part, readily
cured by the new method. This is stated as a fact.
Is it true? This is the question. Try the medicines.
Why should you not? The interests of humanity
require it. If they succeed, it is a great blessing; if
they fail, publish the failures. This is the only fair
and honest way to oppose homoeopathy, and in no
other way is it likely to be opposed with success."
tr
On page 16, you read-" Homœopathy is medical
treatment. It is not the do-nothing system' (the
'no-treatment at all '), which it is represented to be by
opponents who thus only betray their ignorance.
And, on page 22,—“ Medicine, in the general, is
poison to the healthy frame of man, and a remedy to
that frame when sick; this is admitted by all, and
this is homœopathy in the general. Why not, then,
have homoeopathy in detail? Why not first ascertain
what symptoms each poison produces, when taken in
health? And why not give it as a remedy for similar
symptoms in natural disease? Medical men have
been experimenting in the treatment of disease for
many centuries, why not try this experiment? Our
opponents admit, in general, what they ridicule and
oppose, when carried out in particulars."
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
45
Now, Sir Benjamin, all this, and much more to the
same effect, having been said to you in vain in 1851, 1
do not know that anything more can be said in 1861.
If you will not be like Jenner, and follow John Hunter's
advice, and try the experiment, there is an end of the
matter between us; you will not be satisfied by any-
thing it is in my power to advance. We are old people
to compare each other to children; but it is the child's
argument to say, "I won't because I won't," and when
coming from a child, the only answer is coercion;
when coming from such aged and venerable lips as
yours, I know not how it should be answered, it can
but call forth a lament.
I hear you express a wish to interpose a remark on
what was said a short time ago on the infinitesimal
dose. In speaking of this in your letter you charge
"some of the homoeopathic writers" only, as holding
this to be of great importance, and of course you
admit that others do not. I am quite aware of this:
but inasmuch as you bind all together in the bundle
of empirics and pretenders, and do not acknowledge
any exceptions, the admission is of little value. What
I have to say upon the small dose will find a more
fitting place hereafter.
4. In the second Essay the question of the ex-
pediency, or otherwise, of bringing this medical con-
troversy before the public is examined. My own
judgment has always been very decidedly against the
propriety of thus appealing to the public. The sub-
46
ANALYSIS OF
C
ject is one so entirely professional that, in my opinion,
the discussion of it ought to have been confined to
professional circles. We read this: "all are ready to
admit that, in the present condition of medicine, an
appeal to the public is in itself an evil. But it must
be observed that this evil did not originate with the
homœopathists. Hahnemann did not take this step;
he published his first essay in Hufeland's Journal,'
a periodical strictly professional. The step was taken
by the physicians who opposed him, who, instead of
meeting Hahnemann on their common ground, with
arguments and facts, wherewith to refute his opinions,
and to show the fallacy of his method, appealed to
the public authorities, and, by the aid of this un-
professional force, drove him from city to city, and
from village to village. And, moreover, this appeal
to the public by the allopathic portion of the profes-
sion has been continued to the present hour, and is
still continued."
Your own letter, just now published in Fraser's
Magazine,' bears testimony that this observation is
still true. In this letter you affirm "that any one,
though he may not be versed in the science of
medicine, who possesses good sense, * * will
arrive at the same conclusion as yourself." This may
be so; but inasmuch as, with all your professional
and scientific knowledge, and "with all the pains you
have been able to take, you have been unable to form
any very distinct notion of the system which (either
Hahnemann, or Curie, or Sharp) professes to teach;"
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMŒOPATHY.'
47
and inasmuch as you are satisfied that unprofessional
investigators will arrive at no better conclusion, I am
strongly of opinion that their "good sense will
preserve them from the discredit of condemning what,
under this hypothesis, they would not comprehend.
Were this indeed as you suppose, it would have been
wiser not to trouble the public with the difficulty;
but, Sir Benjamin, the fact in this case also is against
you. Very large numbers of talented and educated
people, and possessing good sense, have read the
books you refer them to, and have not arrived at the
same conclusions as yourself. They have understood
homœopathy at least well enough to attain a "very
distinct notion" of its practical and beneficial effects;
and thus, as is remarked in the Essay, "though the
public discussion of medical matters be an evil, good
has come out of it."
It was with much regret that I ascertained, ten years
ago, that every medical periodical belonging to the old
school was absolutely closed against any writer who
did not entirely reject and condemn homoeopathy.
Even advertisements of publications in its favour were
excluded; my publisher informed me that he had
applied, money in hand, to every medical journal in
London, Edinburgh, and Dublin, and the advertise-
ment of my book was refused by them all. It was
with much reluctance that I was driven to publish my
'Investigation,' as I then did; and it is with still
greater regret that I find myself compelled, by your
letter, to write in the same manner again.
48
ANALYSIS OF
I have, however, this consolation, I know that several
medical men did read my former Essays, and were in-
duced by them to undertake a practical trial of the
new method, and in this manner became converts ;
and I venture to hope that the same thing will happen
again, and be the result of the present publication.
The public cannot help themselves better in this
matter, than by endeavouring to persuade their medi-
cal advisers to overcome their repugnance, and, as a
duty, to work at the unwelcome task.
The remainder of this Essay is occupied by the dis-
cussion of the four following arguments against
homœopathy: from authority; from antiquity; from
the majority; and from improbability. I must ask
you to re-peruse them in private.
5. The third Essay continues the controversy, and
contains a defence of the new treatment against medi-
cal writers. Dr. Routh's book, as the best which
had then appeared, was selected to represent the ob-
jectors. Professor Simpson, of Edinburgh, who has
since written, has been well answered by his colleague,
the Professor of Pathology in the same university, Dr.
Henderson.
Dr. Routh admits, as you do, the success of homoeo-
pathy. "This system," he says, "has unfortunately
lately made, and continues to make such progress in
this country, and the metropolis in particular, and is
daily extending its influence, even amongst the most
learned, and those whose high position in society gives
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
49
them no little moral power over the opinions of the
multitude, that our profession is, I think, bound to
make it the subject of inquiry and investigation."
Would that this good advice of Dr. Routh's had been
followed! Other counsels have prevailed, and the
universities and colleges, and medical men in general,
have resolved that the unwelcome light shall be ex-
tinguished. They have rejected candidates, made bye-
laws, passed resolutions, expelled members, engaged
periodicals on their side, and now they have succeeded
in persuading you to give them the help of your name,
that it may be said of the anathema, “stat magni
nominis umbrá.”
*
*
*
Hear Dr. Routh rebuke these unwise and unworthy
proceedings: "Violent opposition to homeopathy can
do no good. Abuse, intolerance, cannot be accepted
by the world as a fair and philosophical inquiry. These
can only call forth new defenders.
All doc-
trines are founded on truth, or what is supposed to be
truth. The way to disprove a doctrine is, therefore,
not by assailing it as ridiculous or absurd,-a convic-
tion of error can only follow when the foundations
upon which it is based are shown to be untenable.'
Now, Sir Benjamin, the foundations on which our
belief in the truth of homoeopathy is based, are expe-
ments which we have tried, and observations which we
have made, and, consequently, however much we may
have been misled by these experiments and observa-
tions, I must repeat, for the hundredth time, that it is
not consistent with the constitution of man to be
50
ANALYSIS OF
convinced of this misleading by any process of reason-
ing or mere argument whatever. A conviction of error
can be produced, in such a case, only by other experi-
ments and other observations, made in greater number,
and with superior care and skill. If, in such a
manner, the foundations of our doctrine can be shown
to be untenable, we shall, I am sure, be willing to own
ourselves mistaken.
Dr. Routh's book is then analysed under three heads:
-1. The consideration of the principle of homoeopathy.
2. The question of small doses. 3. The statistics upon
which is founded a preference of homoeopathy, as the
most successful method yet known of treating diseases.
All which I ask you, Sir Benjamin, to read again.
Under the last head it is remarked, “in conclusion,
the published statistics of homœopathy are of value to
medical practitioners, either as preliminary information,
to induce them to study the subject, seeing that by
them at least a prima facie case for inquiry is made
out; or as a confirmation of their own private trials,
if the information come, as it no doubt often does, after
that private examination has been made. Still the
main reliance is to be placed upon what happens in our
hands, and under our eyes. Whatever charges of un-
fairness or fraud may be brought against other persons,
we know whether we ourselves are sincere or not. The
subject is too serious, and the consequences too im-
portant to each individual practitioner, to allow him to
be careless in his own proceedings. He is almost
necessarily cautious, and awake to all the sources of
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
51
fallacy to which he may be exposed." He makes the
trial, and becomes the convert.
There has been no rejoinder from Dr. Routh to this
reply to his book. I am more anxious to have truth
on my side than victory, but this looks like having
both.
6. Essays IV, V, and VI. The principle of
homoeopathy; its limits with reference to disease; its
limits with reference to remedies. I propose to invite
your attention to the principle, or rule of the new
method, in the third part of this letter; nevertheless,
I think these three Essays deserve a re-perusal. You
will find in the first, after some illustrations drawn
from the laws or general principles of other branches.
of physical science, and some evidence that medicine
has hitherto been uncertain and unsatisfactory, from
the want of such a guide, a series of cases which are
given as a sample of the kind of trial the new method
has been put to in my own practice. It is useless for
you cavalierly to designate these facts "
scanty and
doubtful;" they are neither the one, nor the other;
they are both numerous and certain, and demand
respectful consideration; at the same time they are
declared to be only a "small portion of my trial of
homœopathy."
In the fifth Essay I have cleared away some doubt
and confusion as to the application of the principle to
disease, and have shown that it is adapted to every
case, but that there are parts of some cases which
52
ANALYSIS OF
need help in other ways, mechanical, chemical, or
surgical, which help is, of course, to be rendered in
the most effectual way possible, by the practitione
in attendance.
In the sixth Essay the subject is examined in a
similar manner, with a view to ascertain and define
the limits within which the principle is confined in its
application to remedies. This is a field of inquiry not
previously laboured in; the old writers who speak of
the rule, do so very vaguely; Hahnemann supposes it
applicable through a wide extent of agencies, namely,
to the action of diseases upon each other, to the in-
fluence of mental emotions, to that of physical agents,
such as heat, light, electricity, and magnetism, and to
the action of drugs; others have extended its supposed
applicability still more indefinitely. In this Essay I
have endeavoured to prove that it ought to be under-
stood as limited to the action of drugs. This view
was, at first, opposed by homoeopathists, but it seems
to be generally acquiesced in now, and we not un-
frequently meet with the expression "law of drug-
healing," or, as I prefer to put it, the law of healing by
drugs.
As I trust you will read these three Essays again, I
will quote from them only the conditions under
which the examination and testing of this medical rule
were carried on by myself, as this may assist others,
when undertaking a similar labour.
The manner of my trial is thus described:
"The only trial upon which a statement such as
THE ´INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
53
*
the principle or law of the new treatment can be
fairly put, is the trial by experiment. This must be
obvious. To argue about it is foolish, and a waste of
time. To experiment upon it is rational. I
I propose,
therefore, to give the evidence adduced upon such a
trial in my own hands. It has occupied my attention
some years; it has been made in candour and good
faith, and with, I think, all the conditions requisite
for drawing a legitimate conclusion.
“It has been made, in many cases, without the
knowledge of the patient, and therefore to the exclu-
sion of any possible influence from the imagination.
"It has been made under a much greater variety
of circumstances, and upon patients in more diversified
ranks, ages, and constitutions, than can meet together
in the wards of an hospital.
rr
It has been made very much with medicines
whose injurious or poisonous symptoms, or effects in
health, were previously well known to me; these
poisonous symptoms or effects in health having been
before learned, without any reference to the medicinal
or curative effects of the same drug in disease.
CC
It has been made with doses of all kinds; not
only with the infinitesimal one, but with palpable and
ponderable quantities of the substances so tried.
"And I have had the advantage of comparing the
results of the new method so obtained, with those in
my own hands under the old practice, during a pre-
vious successful career of many years.
Now, Sir Benjamin, compare this trial of mine with
54
ANALYSIS OF
the only one on your side, that of M. Andral in 1834,
and say if they are not rather matters of contrast than
of comparison; and then remember, that a very large
number of physicians have made trials similar to
mine, which have ended, as mine has done, in their
adoption of the rule in their own practice.
7. The seventh Essay is on the 'Provings' of drugs,
or experiments with them in health. In this Essay
it is remarked that "if drugs are remedies for disease,
it is obvious that some means must be used to dis-
cover their various properties: in other words, to learn
the effects they are severally capable of producing
upon the human body." And it is inquired: 1, What
have been the means hitherto adopted for this pur-
pose, and the result? 2, What new method has been
suggested? and 3, How far this new method has been
carried out?" The answer to the first inquiry is, the
giving of the drugs in disease, that is, to patients; and
the result is described, from the most eminent medical
authorities, as a failure. The answer to the second
query is, that a suggestion was made by Haller, and
acted upon by Hahnemann, to give drugs in health;
and so to learn the phenomena producible by them in
a healthy body, before experimenting with them on the
body in a state of disease. The reply to the third
inquiry is, some account of the indefatigable labours
of Hahnemann, their extent, and their imperfections.
You cannot well object to the making of such ex-
periments as these, having been extensively engaged
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
55
in similar ones yourself. It is true that the object you
proposed, in the performance of these experiments, was
different; it was to assist in discovering means likely
to obviate the fatal effects of such drugs when taken
as poisons, in other words, for the discovery of anti-
dotes; the same object which the ancients proposed to
themselves in similar experiments; and, moreover,
your trials were made upon the lower animals. But
if it is consistent with true science to perform such
experiments for the objects you proposed, it cannot be
less consistent with it to engage in them for the pur-
pose of becoming better acquainted with the thera-
peutic use of these drugs. Some of the conclusions
you arrived at are of sufficient interest and value to be
worthy of being remembered by practitioners of the
new method; that is, for instruction in therapeutics,
as well as in toxicology. For example:
Alcohol, the essential oil of almonds, the juice of
aconite, the empyreumatic oil of tobacco, and the
woorara, act as poisons by simply destroying the func-
tions of the brain; universal death taking place,
because respiration is under the influence of the
brain, and ceases when its functions are destroyed.
"The infusion of tobacco when injected into the in-
testine, and the upas antiar when applied to a wound,
have the power of rendering the heart insensible to
the stimulus of the blood, thus stopping the circula-
tion; in other words, they occasion syncope.
(C
Arsenic, the emetic tartar, and the muriate of
barytes, occasion disorder of the functions of the heart,
56
ANALYSIS OF
brain, and alimentary canal; but they do not all affect
these organs in the same relative degree.
CC
Arsenic operates on the alimentary canal in a
greater degree than either the emetic tartar, or the
muriate of barytes. The heart is affected more by
arsenic than by the emetic tartar, and more by this
last than by the muriate of barytes." *
This is very much the kind of information which
we require, concerning the mode and sphere of action
of all drugs; but, in these experiments of yours there
is an element of doubt, from these being the effects
produced on the lower animals, and not on man; and
there requires to be added, the effects of smaller quan-
tities of the same poisons.
That our knowledge of the properties of drugs may
be as perfect as it ought to be, the provings must be
made upon ourselves, with the additional information
which can be gained from cases of poisoning. For
this latter purpose no book is more useful than Pro-
fessor Christison's Treatise on Poisons.'
There is nothing so much wanted in medicine as a
materia medica which shall contain a true picture of
the sphere of action of each drug. This picture must
not be like Hahnemann's, made up of dismembered
and detached fragments, and' crowded with insignifi-
cant, and often perhaps imaginary sensations, and
other trivial matters which mingle with, and hide the
meaning of the real and important symptoms; but a
steadily drawn and well-defined exhibition of all that
Phil. Trans.' for 1811 and 1812.
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
57
is characteristic and specific in the effects which each
drug, in its various forms and doses, is capable of
producing. For some time I have been attempting
this, but it is a work of extreme difficulty and labour.
Such, Sir Benjamin, is what is meant by the “Prov-
ings" of drugs; the discovery of their physiological,
or, as they are often called, their pathogenetic effects in
health, as contrasted with their curative effects as
remedies in disease; and the notion which is the
foundation of the new method of treating disease, and
that which really distinguishes it from all former
methods, is this, that there is a relation or connection.
between these two series of effects. Is not this a
CC
very distinct notion?" There may be different
modes of expressing this relation or connection, and
some of these modes may be much nearer the truth
than others, but the important feature is the relation
itself.
Every medical man who embraces the new method
is expected to labour in both these fields of experi-
ment and observation;-in the proving of drugs in
health, as well as in the administration of them in
disease. But in the language of the Essay, "volun-
tarily to make ourselves ill with poisonous doses of
drugs, for the sake of learning, in the first place, upon
what organs they act, and the changes they produce
on them, and afterwards in what diseases such drugs
may be given as remedies, is a painful path, of indefi-
nite extent, beset with obstacles, and demanding an
unknown amount of labour and self-sacrifice."
4
58
ANALYSIS OF
In an appendix to this Essay a few cases are given
as examples of the Provings.
8. The " single medicine" forms the subject of
the eighth Essay.
CC
The almost stationary condition of the science of
medicine has arisen, not only from the natural impedi-
ments to the discovery of truth, and from the difficul-
ties peculiar to this subject, but still more from the
want of simplicity in the method pursued.
"This method has been defective in two princi-
pal particulars, by which the progress of knowledge
in the treatment of disease has been effectually
hindered. One of these defects has been the trial of
a drug only during the existence of disease, by which
its effects are complicated and obscured; instead of
first experimenting with it on the body in a state of
health, when its own symptoms would appear, unmixed
with those of disease. The other great defect has
been the giving of the drug in combination with
others, by which its effects are still further complicated
and obscured, if not altogether antidoted and prevented,
instead of administering it alone, so that its specific
action might be produced without let or interference.
Had physicians adopted these two proceedings, experi-
menting in health, and giving the medicine singly in
disease, the real properties of each drug might have
been, ere this, accurately ascertained."
Read the remainder of this Essay, Sir Benjamin, I
think your trouble will be repaid; you will find the
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
59
advantages of the method not indistinctly pointed out;
read carefully what is said on the indications of treat-
ment; and how they are, by giving one remedy at a
time, reduced to one indication. Read also the account
of another feature by which the new treatment is dis-
tinguished from the old, on pages 188-194. How
on the old plan the healthy parts of the body are dis-
turbed in their natural action, excited, disordered, in-
flamed, and stupified, and often nothing at all pre-
scribed calculated to act, or intended to act directly upon
the affected part, whereas, upon the new plan all healthy
parts are left undisturbed, and a single remedy is given
having a specific action upon the ailing part. Surely,
Sir Benjamin, you can form a very distinct notion of the
difference between these two methods of treatment.
In the one case, artificially produced symptoms are to
be added to those of the natural disease; the sick
man is to be cured by being made more sick; in the
other case, the natural complaint is to be removed, as
a direct effect of the drug which is administered.
Some examples, in illustration of the new practice,
are given at the close of the Essay, which ends with
the advice of Basil: "The physician should attack the
disease and not the patient."
9. Essay IX. The small dose." Will it be
one of the labours of Hercules to get you to take a
small dose, Sir Benjamin? Perhaps so. Some time
ago I met one of my allopathic colleagues, an elderly
gentleman, and, after shaking hands, I asked him how
60
ANALYSIS OF
he was? "Oh, I am very bad; I have got the
diarrhoea." I expressed my sorrow, and inquired,
"What medicine have you taken ?"
take medicine!" was his quick reply.
"Oh, I never
Is it not so
with you, Sir Benjamin? You will not take a small
dose, am I right in fancying that you seldom take a
large one? Then, read again this ninth Essay with
the care and thought which the subject deserves; read
it through at a sitting, and, when you have reached
the end, tell me, if you then feel disposed to do so,
that its reasonings are "puerile and illogical." I will
not diminish your pleasure in reading it by making
extracts, but I may remind you that its object is to
answer the three following questions :
"I. Are we acquainted with any facts which render
it probable that infinitesimal quantities of ponderable
matter may act upon the living animal body? In
other words, what does analogy teach us?
CC
II. Are there any facts which show the action of
infinitesimal quantities of ponderable matter on the
healthy body?
rr
III. What are the actual proofs in support of
the assertion that such minute quantities of ponderable
matter act remedially on the diseased body ?”
There are some cases, of both acute and chronic
diseases, added as an appendix. The diabetic patient
treated in 1850, and who recovered in about six
months, is still living and well.
Since this Essay was written a very remarkable
discovery has been made in Germany by Professors
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
61
Kirchhoff and Bunsen, which has greatly interested all
scientific men. It is, as you are aware, the applica-
tion of light, decomposed by a prism, to chemical
analysis.
The discovery is based upon the two following
facts :----
Certain substances impart characteristic colours to
the flames in which they are heated. For example,—
if a salt of strontium is dissolved in weak alcohol, and
the solution is set on fire, the flame is red; if a salt
of barium, it is yellow. This fact is familiarly known.
And when coloured light, thus produced, is analysed
by a prism, spectra exhibiting different coloured bands,
or lines of coloured light, are seen.
These coloured lines are found to be characteristic
of the substances thus exposed to the high tempera-
ture of flame. They therefore constitute an entirely
new method of chemical analysis.
.
The apparatus employed, and the experiments per-
formed with it, are described in the Philosophical
Magazine' for August, 1860.
To what extent of subdivision the particles of the
substances examined by Professors Kirchhoff and
Bunsen have been carried, may be learned from a
single quotation from the paper I have referred to:
"In a far corner of our experiment-room, the capacity
of which was about sixty cubic metres, we burnt a
mixture of about three milligrammes of chloride of
sodium with milk-sugar (a globule), whilst the non-
luminous colourless flame of the lamp was observed
62
ANALYSIS OF
through the slit of the telescope. Within a few
minutes, the flame, which gradually became pale
yellow, gave a distinct sodium line (bright yellow),
which, after lasting for ten minutes, entirely dis-
appeared. From the weight of sodium burnt, and
the capacity of the room, it is easy to calculate that,
in one part by weight of air, there is suspended less
than0,000,000 of a part of soda-smoke. As the reaction
can be observed with all possible comfort in one
second, and as in this time the quantity of air which is
heated to ignition by the flame is found, from the rate
of issue and from the composition of the gases of the
flame, to be only about fifty cubic cent., or 0·0647
grm. of air, containing less than 500,000 of sodium salt,
it follows that the eye is able to detect, with the
greatest ease, quantities of sodium salt less than
3,000,000 of a milligramme in weight." Similar experi-
ments and calculations were made with lithium, potas-
sium, calcium, and other substances.
I
Some of these experiments I had the pleasure of
witnessing at one of your soirées at the Royal Society's
Rooms, in the spring of this year, and more beautiful
experiments I never saw.
I have made experiments with this apparatus on
the remedies used by homoeopathists, which are satis-
factory; but this is not the place for their publication.
It is now demonstrated, not only that infinitesimal
particles of known substances exist, but that such
particles can be analysed, and be made to exhibit
characteristic properties. This has been effected in a
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
63
manner independent of the careful observation of the
action of such particles upon living beings, the only
method of examining them previously known. You
have doubted and denied the effects produced by
minute quantities of matter upon living bodies; you
will scarcely question these new experiments with
prismatic light. In them the optic nerve is impressed
by an infinitesimal quantity; and, if one nerve of the
living body may be impressed, why not also other
nerves?
Such is the case (in the legal sense) of the small
dose, which, as you observe, "some of the homœo-
pathic writers hold to be of great importance."
You will have observed from a perusal of the 'Essays,'
that I have always distinctly separated homoeopathy
from the infinitesimal dose, but I have also thought it
right to say what may fairly be said in justification of
the use, in practice, of such minute doses of medicine.
This, I think, is due to those who have adopted them.
But I am not myself an advocate for the frequent em-
ployment of what are called the higher dilutions. I
prefer giving comparatively substantial doses of the
drug which I think is the specific in each case; and
this for the following reasons:-
1. Because I wish to have the certainty that I
am giving the substance I am thinking about, and in-
tending to give. The higher dilutions, no doubt, may
have the drug in them, but, in the preparation of each
successive dilution, there must be an increasing possi-
bility of such small particles of the drug being lost.
64
ANALYSIS OF
2. Because the larger doses seem to me generally
to do as much good as, and sometimes more than the
smaller ones; and with as little harm. I mean in the
hands of a medical man; they are not so safe in
those of an amateur. It is to be understood that the
larger doses here spoken of are small compared with
the old doses of the same drugs.
3. And because, without forfeiting any advantage,
the prejudice against the new method is thereby dimi-
nished, and the confidence of the patient is increased.
Let me add one word on the preparation of the
dilutions, which you speak of, both in the Quar-
terly' and in Fraser,' as if it were an incredible
or impossible process. If you will take the trouble
to pay a visit to a homoeopathic chemist, you may
see them made in two minutes. The process is
described at page 42 of the Investigation.' Some
years ago, Dr. Lardner wrote an article to prove that
steam navigation across the Atlantic was impracticable;
this was before it had been done. What would be
thought of him, if he re-published that article now?
C
10. Essays X and XI. The "Difficulties" and
the "Advantages" of Homœopathy. The former are
considered as temporary or permanent; the latter, as
they belong to the physician, or to the patient. I
must not make lengthy extracts from these, but I hope
you will read them again with attention; I am sure
the subjects deserve this at your hands. "The work of
the physician is encompassed with difficulties, his path
THE INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
65
beset with obstacles, the struggle he is engaged in,
whatever advantages he may at times gain, will always
end in his defeat. How happy to meet with any
knowledge by which some difficulties may be dimin-
ished, some obstacles removed, some new advantages
enjoyed! Enough will still remain to try to the utter-
most his patience and temper, his industry and perse-
verance. Were these difficulties, which at times
almost lay prostrate the honest labourer in the art of
healing, better known and felt, they would enlist on his
behalf the sympathies of his fellow-men." Page 251.
The eleventh Essay closes with these words: "Sir
Benjamin Brodie formerly entertained respect for me,
for he proposed and obtained my election as a Fellow of
the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, at the
time he was President of that excellent society. I have
done nothing since to forfeit that respect, except, in
the most honest, the most searching, the most distrust-
ful manner, going through this investigation of a new
method of treatment, at the request of a medical friend,
and at the bidding of my conscience; it has been no
pecuniary or other speculation with me; it has been the
performance of a duty. He calls homoeopathy an
imposture; I respectfully ask him to retract that ex-
pression, lest he should hereafter suffer in his well-
earned reputation, for having unjustly condemned
what he did not understand." Page 282.
This friendly remonstrance has been before you, Sir
Benjamin, for several years, and you still write with
bitterness, and endeavour to brand me as an alien,
66
ANALYSIS OF
because "I have sufficient love of science to lead me
to desire nothing so much as the attainment of truth,"
and because this earnest search after truth in medicine
has led me to turn aside somewhat from the path of
custom and routine. You have written me down an
impostor. I willingly acknowledge you to be a distin-
guished member of the medical profession; but what
has become of your case? Is it not lost when you
take refuge in abuse? Is it not universally admitted
that recourse to personalities by an advocate is the
strongest proof of the weakness and badness of his
cause?
11. Essay XII. "The Common Sense of Homœo-
pathy." I will not take away from the interest of a
reperusal of this Essay by making any extracts from
it. You shall read it in private. The objects I had
before me in writing these twelve Essays were to
remove hypotheses while explaining all that admits of
explanation, to show that the new method has nothing
to conceal, that it is not an obnoxious quackery, but a
beautiful science, to publish cases as medical men have
always been in the habit of publishing them since the
days of Hippocrates, and thus to persuade other
physicians to practise this method, not to secure a
monopoly of it to myself. Is not this truth, and
honesty, and common sense?
12. Essay XIII. Four or five years after the
former Essays had appeared, it seemed proper to place
THE
67
INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
+
before my friends and readers some account of the
further progress my mind had made in this professional
inquiry. The results of thought and experience
during this space of time are given in the thirteenth
Essay, written in 1856. They are described under
the following heads :-
"I. I will, first, give some account of those things
in the system and teaching of Hahnemann which I
reject.
66
II. I will recapitulate what my practical trial of
homœopathy has led me to acknowledge and accept
as true.
P
"III. I will then state what those parts of the
usual method of treating diseases are, the discon-
tinuance of which is involved in the adoption of
Homœopathy.
"IV. Lastly, I will point out what those parts of
the usual method are, which still remain available and
useful, and are to be retained."
your
I ask your attention, Sir Benjamin, and that of
colleagues, to the contents of this Essay. You will
find that the "phantoms of darkness," which hover
over and obscure the pages of Hahnemann, are dis-
persed; and that statements are made which claim in-
vestigation, and are suggestive of new paths of scientific
and useful discovery.
reject the explanation of the principle of homoeo-
pathy, as announced in the Organon,' as an imaginary
hypothesis. I observe that "not only the explanation,
but the very definition itself of the homoeopathic law
68
ANALYSIS OF
which he gives, has, so far as I can discover, no trust-
worthy evidence to support it. On the contrary, his
statement is open to an insuperable objection, so that
if it really expresses the principle of homoeopathy,
that principle itself must be rejected."
And, "as the explanation of the principle of
homœopathy given by Hahnemann is an imaginary
hypothesis, and his definition of it a mere assertion
without proof, so his view of the extent to which it
applies is vague and erroneous. He was apparently
so enamoured with his discovery, and his imagination
was so unrestrained by reason and judgment, that he
could not brook the idea of any limitation of his law;
he would have it to be of universal application." As
I have already remarked, he applies it to diseases
acting upon each other; to the physical agencies
heat, light, electricity, and magnetism; to moral, and
even, as is shown in this Essay, to political influences.
I have given reasons for rejecting all these applica-
tions, and for limiting the investigation of it to its
influence in the physiological and therapeutic action.
of drugs.
Many other doctrines of Hahnemann are rejected.
Under the second head I earnestly entreat my
medical brethren to give the following points a
searching and fair trial in their own hands :-
The principle; the provings; the single medicine;
the small dose; the pharmacy.
The principle, as viewed by me at that time, was
expressed in three propositions:
THE
69
INVESTIGATION OF HOMEOPATHY.'
"That each drug selects certain portions or organs of
the body upon which to produce its injurious action.
"That the injurious action produced upon the
parts or organs of the body thus selected, is more or
less peculiar to each drug; that it is characteristic; so
that by this action each drug may be known from the
rest.
'
That drugs are to be given as the best remedies
for the diseases which affect the same parts or organs
of the body which such drugs affect; and specially
when the symptoms manifested by the affected parts
or organs resemble the symptoms produced by the
drugs.
دو
Such was the issue, at that stage of it, "of my
painful examinations of the doctrines of Hahnemann."
Why the undertaking of it should have alienated the
affections of some of those I most loved, I am unable
to understand; but, if I have suffered much in
personal feelings, I have kept a good conscience and a
quiet mind.
Lord Rosse has observed that, "to the human
mind nothing is so fascinating as progress," and it
may be added that, in a study so intricate and per-
plexed as is the philosophy of medicine, nothing is so
encouraging. To-morrow then, Sir Benjamin, I shall
hope, notwithstanding your prejudice and dislike, to
engage your attention, and even perhaps to win your
sympathy, by a brief exposition of the progress I am
making in this matter.
70
FURTHER PROGRESS
III.
<<
1. Ir is related of John Hunter, whom you and
I have the honour to claim as our professional parent,
that, when asked with surprise by Sir Astley Cooper,
then one of his pupils, whether he had not, the year
before, stated an opinion on some point directly at
variance with one he had just put forth, he replied,
Very likely I did; I hope I grow wiser every year."
Under the protection of this illustrious example,
and in obedience to your implied request to tell you
something more, I proceed to explain to you the
further progress of thought and inquiry I have been
able to make, during the five years which have elapsed
since my last Essay was written.
<
You complain that in the Essays' I have not told
you enough, and that you are unable to form a dis-
tinct notion of the system I have undertaken to teach
in them. I purpose, therefore, now to do my best
endeavour to make my views of medicine as plain and
intelligible as I am at present capable of doing. But,
that I may not wander into too wide a field, the con-
IN THE INQUIRY.
71
sideration of the subject will be limited to an inquiry
into the difference between your method and mine.
It will be an advantage, in helping you to under-
stand wherein our views differ, if I take the liberty
first to explain your own. If I fail, or be in error in
this, I will willingly apologise, and submit to your
correction; but, seeing that you have adopted and
taught the prevailing method of our time, and that
this same method was my own study for thirty years,
I shall not be in much danger of mistaking or of mis-
representing it.
2. When our advice is asked by any person suf-
fering from disease, we have three things to ascertain
and decide the nature of the complaint; the remedy;
and the dose.
3. The nature of the complaint; out of many
diseases to fix upon the one from which the patient is
suffering;-pathology, nosology, diagnosis. This,
according to your view, is best learned by a twofold
inquiry, first, into the symptoms, or signs of the in-
ternal morbid condition; and, secondly, into that
morbid condition itself. The symptoms are to be
gathered by a careful observation of the patient, and
by acquainting ourselves with all the information
which he and others can give us respecting his ail-
The pathology, or internal morbid condition,
is a more difficulty inquiry, and one in which much
evil has arisen from mistaken speculations; it is to be
ment.
72
THE NATURE OF
learned, as well as it may be, by physiological and
pathological investigation; that is, by observing, on
every opportunity which presents itself, all that can
be ascertained of the structure and functions of the
internal organs, in a state of health, and during the
progress of disease. In the skin, and external organs,
as in the eye, for example, these changes can, to a
certain extent, be seen; in the inner parts they are
more concealed, but they must as truly exist, and be
a legitimate object of scientific research; and, more-
over, it must be useful to the physician to know
them.
Previous to and up to Hahnemann's time, the want
of better knowledge of internal pathology was much
to be deplored; little more than vain or hurtful hypo-
theses prevailed; for example, pain was defined to be
"a solution of continuity;" a rebounding pulse was
said to be produced "by the sooty vapours contained
in the arteries," and fever "by the pricking of the
spiculæ of saline particles."
4. In such a state of things, it is not surprising,
though it is much to be regretted, that Hahnemann
rejected pathology, and even, as much as he could, the
classifying and naming of diseases-nosology—also,
and that he should insist that diagnosis should be
nothing more than an inventory of the symptoms,
collection of everything "which can be perceived ex-
ternally by means of the senses," and nothing more;
"only the deviations from the former healthy state
a
THE COMPLAINT.
73
which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by
those around him, and observed by the physician.
According to Hahnemann each case stands alone,
isolated from all others; the totality of the symptoms
constitutes the disease, and the removal of the symp-
toms is the cure of the patient.
There are homoeopathists, in the present day, who
follow Hahnemann in this. For example, a writer in the
Monthly Homœopathic Review' for August, 1859,
teaches thus:"The homoeopathic relation between
the drug and the disease is not this-between the
pathological changes produced by the disease and those
producible by the drug; it is this-the relation
between the symptoms of the disease and those of the
drug. It is a matter of pathognomy, not of pa-
thology."
There may be a sense in which such language is
true, but it is very liable to misconstruction, and so
to lead to the neglect of that serious study of disease
which the physician should, at all times, feel it to be
his duty to pursue; for this reason I cannot adopt
this language. Thus, then, on the subject of diagnosis,
the discovery of the nature of the patient's complaint,
I agree with you, and not with Hahnemann, and
prefer using the old modes of investigation, and,
generally, the old language to express the ideas I
entertain. Pathology and nosology have been dis-
figured by many errors; they are true sciences not-
withstanding, and are worthy of the earnest study of
the medical practitioner.
5
74
THE REMEDY
5. The remedy; out of many remedies to select
the best-therapeutics, treatment, prescription-that
department of medicine in which the need of a com-
plete change has been so long and so deeply felt, as
is evident from the strong expressions made use of by
the most eminent medical writers for some centuries;
with these you are so familiar that I need not quote
them.
I trust we shall carry on the discussion of this part
of our subject with lively feelings of interest and plea-
sure; nay, I even venture to hope that, before we
separate at the close of it, you will have found, perhaps
to your surprise, that your unkind feelings towards
me have melted away, and that you will be disposed
to say, "After all, I have been mistaken about him; I
will once more give him the right hand of fellowship,
and I hope he will forgive my past want of charity!"
6. Let me try to exhibit the old and usual
method first.
This is based upon two foundations, that of indica-
tions and that of intentions. That is to say, the
symptoms of every case are noted, from which the
internal morbid condition is inferred; from this view
of the case conclusions are drawn supposed to be
nature's indications, and it is believed that a cure will
be most speedily obtained, or, if not a cure, that relief
will be best afforded by attending to these indications.
Medicines are then prescribed with certain intentions,
believed to be the best way of attending to these pre-
ON THE OLD METHOD.
75
sumed indications of nature. For example, in the be-
ginning of a fever the shivering, the aching of the back
and limbs, the nausea, the headache, the loss of appe-
tite, and the prostration of strength, are supposed to
indicate the presence of some morbid condition of the
blood and of the secretions; the indications gathered
from the consideration of this condition or state of
disease are met by prescribing ipecacuanha with the
intention to produce vomiting, blue pill and senna with
the intention to purge, antimony with the intention to
bring on perspiration, saline draughts with spiritus
ætheris nitrici with the intention to increase the secre-
tion of the kidneys; and thus it is expected, by open-
ing all the "emunctories," to meet the indications of
the case.
What follows? On a subsequent visit the
practitioner finds that the patient has been made very
sick by the emetic, that the bowels have been freely
evacuated by the purgatives, and that the other inten-
tions have been satisfactorily accomplished; he con-
gratulates himself upon all this, and feels happy in
the reflection that both he and the nurse have done
their duty. Perhaps the patient is not better, perhaps
he is worse; for this he is sorry, but, attributing it to
the malignancy of the fever rather than to any mis-
take in the treatment, he becomes only the more
anxious to prescribe again as before, but with increased
vigour. It does not occur to him that his method
may be faulty, or that better success might possibly
follow on the adoption of some other mode of proceed-
ing. So-to give another instance-in the cases of
76
THE REMEDY
colic with constipation, the indication is presumed to
be that there is an obstruction which nature calls
upon
us to remove, and, with the intention of effecting this,
drastic purgatives are given in quick succession until
the stomach is oppressed by them, the spasm in the
bowels is converted into inflammation, and the vital
powers are exhausted; if, at length, a diarrhoea comes
on, this is taken as a justification of the treatment,
though it be but the prelude to the death of the patient,
which necessarily follows in a few hours. Read also,
as a further example, the indications in Millar's
Asthma, at page 187 of the Investigation.'
But let me take a case of your own, for the sepa-
ration of medical and surgical practice is so arbitrary
and artificial, that this will easily be found. I open
your 'Lectures on the Diseases of the Urinary Organs'
at page 101, and find a case of inflammation of the
bladder. After describing the symptoms you proceed
to the treatment:-
"The disease is to be combated by taking blood
from the arm, or from the loins by cupping, or from
the lower part of the abdomen by leeches." The in-
dication supposed to attach to this case is that in-
flammatory action must be lessened, and the bleeding,
I presume, is prescribed with the intention of dimin-
ishing the flow of blood to the inflamed part. "The
patient's bowels should be kept open by occasional
doses of castor oil." This, I presume, is in obedience
to 'Dr. Hamilton on Purgatives,' and the prescriptive
rights of all Englishmen to be treated according to
ON THE OLD METHOD.
77
CC
the Scotch method; to require purging is understood
to be a general indication in all cases. Opium may
be administered with advantage." To give opium
when there is pain is as much of prescriptive right as
to give aperients in all cases. Pain indicates that
something must be done to relieve it; opium is given
with that intention, regardless of the mischief it so
often occasions, and forgetting that it can generally
relieve pain only by stupifying the nervous system,
not by lessening the disease which is the cause of the
pain. To proceed, in certain cases which you describe,
"the patient will derive benefit from the use of mer-
cury-two grains of calomel and half a grain of opium
being administered twice or three times daily." The
mercury given in this manner is called by the conve-
nient name of an "alterative." The patient being in
dangerous state from
a very uncomfortable and even
severe pain, strangury, &c., the mercury is given to
"alter" this.
دو
Thus we have, in your treatment of this case of in-
flammation of the bladder, the orthodox or "regular,
because routine treatment for almost every kind of
inflammation, namely, bleeding, purging, opium, and
mercury. It is presumed that the indication in in-
flammation is to lower by antiphlogistics, and the
bleeding and drugs just named are prescribed with
the intention of effecting this, they being supposed to
be the best remedies for this purpose.
But all extremes have their connecting links, and
your next paragraph bridges over the gulph between
78
THE REMEDY
* ·;
and
your method and mine, in a manner worthy of notice.
"In other cases the urine is alkaline, *
under these circumstances I have known much good
to arise from the use of the Vinum Colchici." I sup-
pose you would consider this remedy somewhat in the
light of a specific; that is, you would give it because
you know it does good, without knowing why or how,
as sulphur and cinchona are used for their respective
This opens the way for an explanation of my
cases.
method.
7. Now, the difference between your practice and
mine is this—that while you are happy to prescribe a
specific in the few cases for which you are furnished
with them, I endeavour to prescribe nothing but
specifics in every case. This is the new method; it
is the doctrine of specifics; to seek, and, when found,
to use a specific remedy for every malady. But those
already known to the old practice scarcely reckon up
to half a dozen, and they have been borrowed from
domestic use or from patent medicine vendors, at long
intervals of time between each addition, so that there
is little to be hoped for from a further pursuit of them
in this direction; hence another vast superiority of
the new method, that it not only seeks and uses
specifics, but is furnished with a means of discovering
them. "Ah!" I hear you exclaim, "now I have
caught you! You say, and it is true, that I have
two or three specifics, which I know how to use, but
without knowing why or how they do good; but in
ON THE NEW METHOD.
79
all my other prescriptions I can give the reason why.
If I prescribe an aperient or a sudorific, I know
why I do so; but now the whole of your practice,
on your own showing, is prescribing in the dark ;
you are ignorant of the action of every remedy you
use.”
Wait, Sir Benjamin, I am not quite so soon
silenced, for the next great difference between your
system and mine is this, that a reason can be given
why even specifics do good, and that from the action
which is peculiar to and characteristic of each of
them.
Such, then, is one view which may be taken of
the new method-that it administers specifics in
every disease, that is, remedies which are naturally
endowed with special properties fitting them to act
upon the diseases for which they are given, so as to
cure or relieve them. Is this a distinct notion, Sir
Benjamin ?
Moreover, that it possesses a means of discovering
these specifics for diseases for which we were not pre-
viously provided with such remedies; and, further-
That it supplies some explanation of the reason
why such remedies do good. Are not these distinct
notions also?
Again; the old treatment is the method of inten-
tions, to meet certain assumed indications; and the
object of this treatment is, by producing increased or
additional morbid actions in sundry organs of the
body, to cure or relieve the disease; it is thus an
indirect method of attempting to restore health.
80
THE REMEDY
While the new treatment is the method of specifics,
the remedy given possessing a natural and efficacious
action upon the disease itself; it is thus a direct
method of cure.
8. We will take another view; the old system
generally leaves the diseased organ untouched by the
remedies given, and seeks to relieve it on the prin-
ciple of revulsion or counter-irritation, by producing,
artificially, morbid action in parts of the body com-
paratively healthy, and more or less remote from the
principal seat of disease; while the new treatment
prescribes remedies having power to act upon the
diseased organ itself, avoiding, as much as pos-
sible, the production of any disturbance in healthy
organs. You leave the ailing parts, and operate
upon the healthy ones; we leave the healthy parts
undisturbed, and act with our remedies upon the
ailing ones. Are not these distinct notions? And
which of them commends itself most to common
sense? If you say, but I also sometimes give reme-
dies to act upon the part affected, I reply, that
when you
do so, you practise upon my method, and
there is little or no difference between us. Thus,
again, upon this view, the old means employed are
indirect, while the new ones are direct; the old ones
create new ailments, in order to remove or relieve
those present, and so increase debility and retard
recovery, or at the least prolong convalescence; the
new ones let well alone, and act at once upon
ON THE NEW METHOD.
81
the ailing part. I think all these notions are dis-
tinct, and I hope you will own that you can under-
stand them.
9. Before proceeding to explain further my own.
method, having given a fair statement of yours, I
think it fitting to remind you of a few of the objec-
tions which lie against the old mode. In doing so I
shall be very brief. There is-
The difficulty of reading nature's book so as to
gather truly what the indications really are; hence the
probability that numberless mistakes will be com-
mitted in practice by a large proportion of medical
men.
There is a similar difficulty, and a similar liability
to err, in meeting these indications with suitable inten-
tions.
There is another difficulty in judiciously selecting
the remedies best fitted to carry out the intentions
when formed.
The obscurity and guesswork of the whole proceed-
ing, and, consequent upon this, the perpetual and
hopeless disagreement between medical men, even
when engaged in consultation upon the same case.
The mischievous and fatal notion that when the
practitioner has accomplished his intentions he may be
content, even though the patient becomes worse and
dies under his treatment. As in surgery it is said,
"the operation was most successfully performed, and
the patient died two hours after;" so in medicine,
82
THE REMEDY
when this "active treatment " has been carried out,
the friends of the departed are consoled by being told
that everything has been done that could be." I
call this notion mischievous and fatal, because it
quietens the physician's conscience and encourages an
acquiescence in present attainments, while a contrary
state of feeling might inspire earnest efforts to discover
a better way.
But you reply to this "The fact is that the fault
of the profession for the most part lies in the opposite
direction. They are too much inclined to adopt any
new theory, or any new mode of treatment, that may
have been proposed; the younger and more inexpe-
rienced among them especially erring in this respect,
and too frequently indulging themselves in the trial of
novelties, disregarding old and established remedies."
Yes, Sir Benjamin, this is all too true; this error is to
be lamented as well as the opposite one. But a singu-
lar peculiarity attaches itself to this fault-the invita-
tion to try the new remedy must come in a certain
channel, or it will be refused; the novelty must be
presented by the hands of fashion or of high caste, or
it will be repulsed, whatever may be its intrinsic
value. With reference to the special subject before us,
another remark may be offered-the profession, by
their hasty dislike and condemnation of it, have placed
themselves in a false position, so that now, though
they have many misgivings and surmises that it is a
good thing, they are in the predicament of the fox and
the grapes in Æsop's fable; when the fox found the
ON THE NEW METHOD.
83
sweet grapes were above his reach, he was fain to con-
tent himself by pronouncing them sour.
Now, Sir Benjamin, I have gathered some of these
grapes, and respectfully present them to you; and
though I sadly fear and sincerely regret that you are
now too old to taste their sweetness, I do hope that
there is chivalry enough in your venerable age to in-
duce you to hand them over to your juniors, with a
courteous expression of regard for the donor.
Let me once again remark that the difference
there is between us is confined within very narrow
limits; it refers only to the method of prescribing
drugs. On all other subjects we are, so far as I am
aware, entirely agreed. We think alike that one
patient may be benefited by change of diet, a second
by change of occupation, a third by travelling or
change of air, a fourth by new society, a fifth by leaving
off bad habits, a sixth by a surgical appliance, and
that the practitioner ought to make himself familiar
with all these topics, and be alive to them in consult-
ing the welfare of his patients.
10. I will now resume the narrative of the
further progress of the new method in my hands.
It is to be observed, first, that I have made no re-
trograde movement, that I have taken no backward
step, but have endeavoured to advance a pace or two
forward.
Next, that I continue to maintain the value of the
suggestion that the properties of drugs should be
84
THE PRINCIPLE
ascertained by experiments upon the healthy; that
these experiments, along with those made upon the
sick, should yield the materials for a Materia Medica
in which the characteristic sphere of action of each
drug is discovered and described.
Next, that until this great work has been accom-
plished, all drugs should be given alone; otherwise
the undertaking can never be finished. After this
has been done, it may become lawful, and sometimes
expedient, to combine two or more drugs together.
A species of modified polypharmacy may possibly
then be unobjectionable; but now, and for some years
to come, the single medicine should be adhered to.
The principle or law of healing by drugs I am dis-
posed to express in the two following propositions:-
I. All drugs given in health act partially, or select
certain portions or organs of the body upon which
their injurious action is produced.
II. Drugs are to be used as remedies for diseases
of the same parts or organs as those upon which they
act as poisons in health.
Or the two propositions may be combined and ex-
pressed in these words :-
Drugs select certain organs to act upon, both as
poisons and as remedies, these organs being the
same for each drug in both its characters, as a poison
and as a remedy.
OF THE NEW METHOD.
85
The key note of this proposition is local action, and
the rule is that the local action shall be on the seat of
disease.
:
But this proposition is only part of a more compre-
hensive one, which is this -All noxious agents, the
causes of diseases as well as drugs, act on the principle
of selection, e. g., the poison of scarlet fever selects the
brain, throat, and skin, and a drug will act as a
remedy in this disease if it has the power to select
the same organs.
And this last proposition may be still more com-
prehensively stated conversely:-Those agents which
select are noxious, those which do not select are salu-
brious and nutritive.
That contagions, or whatever generates disease, act
locally, you will remember was affirmed by John
Hunter. "Poisons," he says, meaning not drugs, but
the causes of disease, "take their different seats in the
body as if they were allotted to them.”
While walking through pure air the body is re-
freshed, and health is preserved and even invigorated;
but if a miasm or infection be mixed up with a portion
of the air respired, the balance of the vital powers
is interfered with, and disease is the consequence.
Thus, whatever destroys the equilibrium of life
changes a healthy state into a morbid one.
And, again, if there are any agents at our own dis-
posal and within our control, and drugs are such,
which act locally upon those organs of the body which
are already in a state of derangement or disease, these
may prove to be a remedy.
86
IIYPOTHESES REJECTED.
Looking at health in this aspect, it is the balance
of the functions of organs acting in opposing direc-
tions, the equilibrium of the vital forces of all the
different parts of the body.
Here, for the present, I am arrested; observation
has not taught me more, and "I affect not the pomp
of superfluous "* hypotheses. Thoughts beyond the
boundary line of observation, except such as suggest
further experiment, are dreamy and fantastical; and
were I to indulge in them I should soon be lost, as so
many have been lost before me, in the treacherous
and mis-leading by-paths of vain speculation. The
witty definition given of metaphysics, "quand celui
qui écoute n'entend rien, et que celui qui parle n'en-
tend plus, c'est metaphysique," is literally true of
hypothetical explanations.
But in the statements I have just made there are no
hypotheses; they are statements of facts, which it may
be well to repeat.
The causes of disease, so far as we are acquainted
with them, act on the living body partially, producing
their injurious effects on special organs, each having
its own seat or sphere of action.
Drugs resemble these causes of disease in this, for
they also act partially, one on this organ, another on
that.
Drugs further resemble the causes of disease by
being themselves able to produce varieties of disease
very
similar to those which arise from other causes.
But drugs are also remedies for disease, and the
* Sir Isaac Newton, Principia.'
ACTION OF DRUGS.
87
rule for using them for this purpose is to give each
drug as a remedy in diseases of those organs upon
which it has itself a local, and, in health, an injurious
action.
I may remark further that drugs were supposed,
until recently, to act in a general manner upon the
living body; this is now denied, and local action alone
admitted. The truth is, both actions are possessed
by them; they have a general action, the tendency of
which is to depress the vital powers, and it is on this
account that, if habitually had recourse to, either in
large doses or in small ones, they seriously exhaust;
in this way, as Lord Bacon expresses it, "medicines
shorten life;" they have also a local action, as already
explained, and the skill of the physician lies in the
wisdom with which he uses this local action in the
treatment of disease.
By the possession of both these modes of action,
general and local, drugs are characterised and dis-
tinguished from food and from stimulants; the link
which connects them with these other two classes is
formed of the substances called condiments.
But it is the local action which makes them of use.
as medicines, and it is this local action in health and
in disease which ought to be the object of the phy-
sician's study.
Formerly," says Pereira, "no distinction was
made between the effects which medicines produce
in health and those which they give rise to in
disease, and the terms virtues, properties, faculties, and
88
EXPERIMENTS ON THE HEALTHY.
powers, were applied to both classes of effects.
But
Bichat, and subsequently Barbier and Schwilgue,
pointed out the propriety of considering them sepa-
rately." Here is an example of the disingenuous
manner in which writers on your side adopt the views
and practice of homoeopathists, while they unjustly
ascribe the discovery of them to others. It was
Hahnemann, not Bichat, who introduced experiments
in health, and charity itself will not permit us to sup-
pose that the injustice done to Hahnemann in this
sentence was inflicted in ignorance. Nevertheless,
the value of provings, or experiments with drugs in
health, is here not only admitted, but contended
for, by this well-known authority in the Materia
Medica.
As it is so difficult to you to acquire distinct notions,
I repeat that the new treatment, as taught by me, is
a doctrine of specifics.
That it is provided with a mode of investigation by
which these specifics may be discovered in any number,
and for any form of disease.
That it gives a reason for the curative action of
such specifics.
Again, the specifics, the use of which is thus taught,
and their method of discovery, are drugs, some of
which have long been known, others have been
recently discovered.
The manner in which they are discovered is by
experiments made with them, first upon healthy per-
sons, and afterwards upon sick ones. The results of
A NEW MATERIA MEDICA.
89
the experiments on the healthy pointing out the cases
in which they should be tried on the sick.
The connecting link which joins these two series of
experiments together is the local action of the sub-
stances with which the experiments are made.
And the reason which this doctrine supplies for the
successful treatment of sick persons by specifics is
that such specifics have a local action upon the organs
in which the disease exists.
11. Now, to relieve this didactic dissertation, and,
I fear, wearisome repetition-wearisome, at least, to
those who have not experienced the difficulty you have
met with in forming distinct notions-I shall introduce
a few pages from the 'Materia Medica' I have been for
some time engaged upon, and give two remedies as ex-
amples of my method, and in illustration of the manner
in which the doctrines I have been attempting to ex-
plain may be applied in practice. One of these drugs
shall be an old one revived, the other a new one, which
will, in this manner, make its entrance into the materia
medica, and be presented for the first time before the
medical profession, though, doubtless, should it be
adopted by your party, some other name than mine
will be attached to it as its discoverer.
The opportunity, for which I am thus indebted to
you, also enables me to convey to my own party,
through this small specimen, some notion of the plan
upon which I am working; and they can express to
me, in any way that they think proper, their opinion
6
90
GOLD.
as to the utility of such an undertaking, and whether
they are disposed to encourage me to persevere with it
or not.
GOLD AS A POISON.
"Professor Christison, quoting from Orfila, writes
thus of gold:-'Its poisonous properties are power-
ful, and closely allied to those of the chlorides of
tin and nitrate of silver. In the state of chloride it
occasions death in three or four minutes when in-
jected into the veins even in very minute doses;
and the lungs are found after death so turgid as to
sink in water. But if it be swallowed corrosion
takes place, the salt is so rapidly decomposed that
none is taken up by the absorbents, and death en-
sues simply from the local injury.' Even doses so
small as the tenth of a grain have been known to
produce an unpleasant degree of irritation in the
stomach.' (Majendie.) In the state of fulminating
gold this metal has given rise to alarming poisoning
in former times, when it was used medicinally.'
It excites griping, diarrhoea, vomiting, convulsions,
fainting, salivation; and sometimes has proved fatal.'
(Plenck.) Hoffmann likewise repeatedly saw it prove
fatal, and the most remarkable symptoms were vomit-
ing, great anxiety, and fainting. In one of his
cases the dose (which caused death) was only six
grains.'
GOLD.
91
"Metallic gold was pulverized or triturated by the
Arabians. Several modern physicians have experi-
mented with it, thus reduced to minute subdivision,
upon themselves, taking, in divided doses, one or two
grains. The result of these experiments shows that
gold acts upon-
"1. The mind and the brain; producing in the
former great melancholy and depression of spirits, in
the latter congestion.
“2. The chest ; causing dyspnea, expectoration of
viscid phlegm, palpitation of the heart, congestion of
the lungs.
"3. The digestive organs; fetid odour from the
mouth, putrid taste, salivation, nausea, flatulence,
vomiting, first constipation, afterwards diarrhoea, with
burning in the rectum.
"4. The bones, generally, particularly the nasal,
palatine, and facial bones; giving rise to inflammation
and caries.
"It is thus seen that gold has a penetrating or
deep-seated action; commencing in the brain, and
affecting very specially the mind, passing through the
chest and abdomen, and, finally, concentrating its
energies on the bones in general, but particularly on
those of the face."
GOLD-AS A REMEDY.
Gold was much used as a medicine some centuries
ago. It was thought to promote the production of
92
GOLD.
animal heat, to strengthen the heart, to restore the
blood, to expel noxious humours, and particularly to
exhilarate depressed spirits. For some time gold has
been abandoned as a medicinal drug, it is now begin-
ning to be employed again.
"I have prescribed triturated gold with success in
the following, among other, cases:
"1. A case of extreme melancholy and despond-
ency, arising from a Chancery suit; the patient was in
a most distressing state; after various other remedies
had failed, I prescribed the first trituration (one hun-
dredth of a grain); he wrote after this, 'I felt better
at once.'
"2. A case of ozæna, of long standing, in which
the constitution was greatly deranged, and the osseous
system affected; this boy was permanently cured.
"3. A child in a hopeless state of disease, one of
the features of which was severe ophthalmia, with ulcers
on the cornea in both eyes, which had resisted the
prolonged and varied use of many excellent remedies;
the poor child was emaciated and exhausted with
suffering and fretfulness; and the mother was almost
as bad from nursing, anxiety, and want of rest. The
quantity taken was a minute fraction of a grain, in di-
vided doses. The little patient was restored, by God's
blessing, to perfect health.
"4. A case of exostosis of the tibia, just below
the knee, a boy; the first trituration was given with
benefit; I believe a cure was effected, but, as is often
the case when that happens, the patient's friends did
A NEW REMEDY.
93
not think it worth while to communicate this intelli-
gence directly to me.
"Gold is an antidote to mercury, relieving the neu-
ralgic pains and other mischievous effects of that
metal, especially when the bones have been injured by
it; and, vice versa, mercury is an antidote to gold.
The organs selected by gold upon which to pro-
duce its effects are distinct, and its action profound;
and, whether it be given in health or in disease, as a
poison or as a remedy, the organs upon which it acts
are, in both cases, the same."
C
The following substance has never, to my know-
ledge, been used in medicine before. I have proved
it upon myself some years ago, and have prescribed it
in a considerable number of cases, and generally with
the greatest satisfaction. I have been anxious to
introduce it to my professional brethren, but have
hitherto kept it back, partly that I might attain a more
settled confidence in it myself, and partly because I
intended it to appear in its place in my own Materia
Medica.' But as that undertaking is not yet com-
pleted, for, as may be supposed, it is one of great
extent and labour; as life is uncertain; and as this
opportunity seems to be a fitting one, I have much
pleasure in presenting it in this place, under your
auspices, Sir Benjamin, for to you it is indebted for this
happy opportunity of revealing its admirable utility. I
give it, not only as a specific itself, but as an illustra-
tion and proof of the value of experiments upon the
94
TITANIUM.
healthy, as a method of discovering specifics in any
number, and for any complaint; the limits to these
discoveries being the very few physicians who are
willing to try to make them, and the limiteď zeal, in-
dustry, and talent of mankind.
TITANIUM- AS A POISON.
"Titanium was discovered by Gregor in 1791, but
we are indebted to Wollaston's experiments, in 1822,
for a better acquaintance with it. This rare metal is
obtained chiefly from the bottom of the large smelting
furnaces in iron works. Several years ago, when one
of these furnaces at the Low Moor Iron Works, in
Yorkshire, which had been burning without intermis-
sion for many years, was blown out for the purpose of
undergoing repairs, through the kindness of Mr.
Wickham, I obtained a considerable lump of titanium.
The metal was in beautiful cubic crystals, of a deep-red
copper colour, and very brilliant metallic lustre. I
had some of these crystals triturated by the late Mr.
Turner, of Manchester, and experimented with this
trituration upon myself. The proportion was one
grain to ninety-nine of sugar of milk. I am not
aware of any other proving.
"From these experiments I am assured that tita-
nium has a powerful action upon the human body.
After taking the preparation I have described, in doses
of two grains, once a day for a week, I became greatly
disordered, and felt and looked wretchedly ill. On a
TITANIUM.
95
careful consideration of my indisposition, I am justi-
fied in summing up the action of the drug as being
upon-
"1. The stomach; bringing on nausea, loss of
appetite, and feeling of discomfort.
"2. The brain and nerves; giddiness, imperfect
vision, the peculiarity being that half an object only
could be seen at once, desire to keep the eyelids
closed.
"3. The blood; a perceptible derangement of the
whole system, which could not, without danger, have
been carried further."
TITANIUM-AS A REMEDY.
"I have found titanium a most valuable remedy
for certain cases, for which no good remedy was known
before. They are cases of degeneration of the blood.
A time will come when, with a more refined chemistry,
our knowledge of the constitution of the circulating
fluid which is the life of man's body, and the changes
it undergoes in disease, will be better understood than
they are at present. We can now speak of the morbid
conditions of the blood only in a crude and general
manner. We know that the blood is altered from its
healthy state in typhus, in chlorosis, in jaundice, in
cholera, in inflammatory fever, and in some other dis-
eases, and we can describe, in an imperfect manner,
some of these changes, but there remains an inexhaust-
ible field of research in this department of physiology
96
TITANIUM.
and pathology. The morbid condition of the blood,
which may be called the titanium condition, will be
understood with some degree of accuracy by a careful
study of the following case, which was the first in
which it was given as a remedy.
"1. Blood disease.-Mr. C. F-, a middle-aged,
and formerly stout and healthy man, seven years ago
had an attack of typhus fever, recovered imperfectly,
and has not been thoroughly well since; during the
last five years has gradually but steadily become worse.
He vomits a great deal, but not food; the matter
rejected is a sour, watery phlegm; he has diarrhoea,
the stools consisting of yellow, frothy, slimy matter; the
secretion of the kidneys is high coloured and thick,
(in some other cases it has been albuminous); he spits
blood, and sometimes has hæmorrhage from the
bowels; he has pain in the region of the liver and kid-
neys, and also in the lower bowels, with much cramp;
the eyes slightly jaundiced; there has been great loss
of strength and flesh, and two stones (twenty-eight
pounds) in weight. The tongue is not much furred,
and the pulse is 80. This gentleman tells me he has
had a great deal of medical advice, but as yet has
derived no benefit either from medicines or from careful
diet, or from change of air, having during the five
years paid two or three long visits at the sea-side and
also one on the Welsh mountains. This account I
received on the 28th of April, 1858. I prescribed
half a grain of the first trituration, (one grain in a
hundred), three times a day for a week, being moved
TITANIUM.
97
to this by the vivid recollection his narrative pro…
duced in my mind of the condition I was myself fall-
ing into while proving titanium. At the end of the
week he wrote to me that he was "altogether a different
man;" and, without any repetition of the remedy,
and without the use of any other means, in a very
short time he regained perfect health. He continued
well a year; in the spring of 1859 he made himself
ill by hunting too much, and some of the former
symptoms showed themselves again, but they were
immediately removed by the same remedy; he has
continued generally well since."
It would extend this extract too much to give the
cases which follow; suffice it to say, that other cases,
to the number of about twelve, more or less similar
to the above, in which there was an evident breaking
up of the constitution from this special kind of de-
terioration of the blood, have been cured or greatly
benefited by this metal, given in the first or second
trituration.
The nature of the occasion which has called forth
this letter, and the urgent appeals of my publisher
for its issue, forbid that I should do more than draw
sketches of my subject. They are hastily done now,
but they are the expression of several years of labour ;
I cannot be ashamed to acknowledge this when I
remember the delight with which Sir Astley Cooper
was wont to tell us that "the genius of John Hunter
was the genius of industry."
98
REGULAR' PRACTICE.
Let me add a few more sentences on the remedy,
and we must then pass on to the dose.
I admit that you have the privilege of long custom
on the side of your method. It was fully established
by Galen, for the carrying out of his favorite hypo-
thesis of the cardinal qualities of heat, cold, moisture,
and dryness; one or more of these, he imagined,
characterised all diseases, and were the indications
for the remedies; while his intentions were, acting
upon the principle of contraries, always to give a
hot remedy for a cold disease and a dry one for
a moist ailment. For the accomplishment of this
purpose it was necessary that drugs should be en-
dued with one or other of these fanciful properties.
This, as you know, was the "regular" medicine for
fifteen hundred years, and yet Dr. Paris, one of
your brother presidents, says of it, in a lecture
given before the College of Physicians, "it is a web
of philosophic fiction which was never surpassed in
absurdity."
The present
regular" practice of depletory mea-
sures on the one hand, and strengthening ones on the
other aperients and tonics-which, as a matter of
fact, constitutes the routine of nine out of ten of the
medical men of this country, is the modern represen-
tation of the doctrine of the ancient Methodists and
of the Brunonians of later days. The strictum and
laxum of the former, the sthenic and asthenic of the
latter, embracing all diseases; while the corresponding
characters of relaxing and bracing, or of lowering and
REGULAR' PRACTICE.
99
stimulating, sums up, with convenient brevity, all the
properties of all the substances applied to a thera-
peutic use. The injurious effects of this union of
opposite extremes, as the daily guide in the treatment
of the sick, have raised up many condemning voices
besides those of the homoeopathists, and bleeding and
even purging are not nearly so popular now, as they
were twenty years ago; while the other extreme is
thus censured by a well-known French physician.
"This doctrine, so seductive in its exposition, so easy
in its application, is one of the most disastrous that man
has been able to imagine, for it tends to propagate the
abuse of diffusible stimulants, of which spirituous
liquors make a part, an abuse excessively injurious to
health in general and to the intellectual faculties in
particular-an abuse to which man is naturally too
much inclined, and which the sophisms of Brown
have contributed to spread in all classes of English
society."*
Then, again, those who decline this simple but
injurious method of prescribing, run riot in all the
luxuriancy of an endless polypharmacy. This is the
catalogue of the properties of drugs given by Dr.
Paris-emetics, cathartics, diuretics, expectorants,
diaphoretics, demulcents, antacids, absorbents, emmena-
gogues, refrigerants, astringents, tonics, stimulants,
antispasmodics, narcotics, and anthelmintics; a some-
what shorter list than that of others before him, who
added cardiacs, cephalics, carminatives, hysterics,
*Renouard, Histoire de la Médecine.'
Uor M
100
THE NEW TREATMENT
agglutinants, sialogogues, stomachics, balsamics, emol-
lients, detergents, &c. &c.
The Babel confusion of such a method is a suffi-
cient condemnation of it, especially when you remem-
ber that the same drugs, as described by different
physicians, glory in the possession of virtues not only
different and opposite to, but incompatible with, each
other. So that the whole system would scarcely be
too harshly described as-
fume
Or emptiness, or fond impertinence:
And renders us, in things that most concern,
Unpractis'd, unprepar'd, and still to seek."*
Such being an unexaggerated picture of the actual
condition of medicine, you must acknowledge that
there is ample justification for any attempt to effect a
reformation. Now, in the practice I advocate all the
considerations just described, and which, according
to your own writers, are absurd, false, and inju-
rious, are laid aside; drugs are individually and very
carefully examined, and their real physiological action
ascertained by experiments made with them upon
healthy persons. In this manner their sphere of
action, and its character, are learned with some pre-
cision; the record is permanently attached to each
drug, and becomes the guide for its use as a remedy,
according to the intelligible principle I have already
explained.
The treatment founded upon this method is so
* Milton, Paradise Lost.'
VERY GOOD.
101
good that it rewards, by its success, all labour be-
stowed upon it; and, if generally adopted, as I trust
it will be ere long, it can afterwards fall into oblivion
from two causes only-either by being so highly
extolled as to raise unreasonable expectations, or
because it will fail, as you own your treatment does,
and as all treatment must fail, to "make men im-
mortal."
The opposition to this treatment, at the head of
which you have placed yourself for twenty years, is
weak and foolish; this is proved by the ignorance ex-
hibited in the arguments adduced. Your own I have
shown are quite unworthy of you, and those of others
are no better. The principal objection brought against
homœopathy by Pereira, in his gigantic work on the
materia medica, is the following: "In many cases
homœopathic remedies would only increase the original
disease; and we can readily imagine the ill effects
which would arise from the exhibition of acrids in
gastritis, or of cantharides in acute inflammation of
the bladder, or of mercury in salivation." Such pro-
found ignorance as this sentence displays, in the most
learned and indefatigable writer on the materia medica
of our day, is almost incredible. Each of the examples
he gives is a case which clearly proves the truth and
value of the system he wishes to condemn by it.
Acrids are given by homoeopathists in every case of
gastritis, and are admirable remedies; as for can-
tharides, you can scarcely find so good a remedy for
inflammation of the bladder in the whole pharmaco-
102
BALY AND PEREIRA.
pœia; and there is none better for salivation than
mercury. It would seem that the old College grudge
against Dr. Groenvelt has not yet died out. You can
readily imagine the ill effects! While you are imagin-
ing the mischief, we are doing the good.
66
A short time before his melancholy death, I had
some conversation with the late Dr. Baly, one of her
Majesty's physicians, during the course of which he in-
quired, Will opium cure apoplexy?" I answered,
Yes, if the case can be cured at all." This was a
question in point, but it testified how entirely unac-
quainted he was with homoeopathic literature and
practice.
CC
>>
Pereira, while recommending the same drug, opium,
for almost every kind of ailment, says, "In some
cerebro-spinal diseases great benefit arises from the
use of opium; while in other cases injury only can
result from its employment; the latter effect is to be
expected in apoplectic cases. How often has it been
observed that in experimental philosophy that which
was expected did not happen! So often that to say,
that will happen which is least likely, has become an
axiom. And if Baly and Pereira, instead of uttering
an incredulous question and an ignorant surmise, had
honestly set themselves to try the experiment, they
would at least have placed themselves and their repu-
tation in a more creditable position.
But the opposition to homoeopathy got up by me-
dical men is bad, not only because it is weak and
foolish, but because it is not sincere. The opposition
THE DOSE.
103
has not respect to merits or defects in the treatment,
but to social position; it is a personal rivalry, and
betrays a conviction of the danger of being personally
supplanted. The proof of this grave charge against a
body of professional men, otherwise respectable, is this
that they are eager enough to give aconite on the
recommendation of Dr. Fleming, or phosphorus on
that of Dr. Cotton, or nux vomica, or belladonna, or
any other remedy, provided some allopathic name can
be attached to it as having recommended it, while they
pretend that the same remedies used by homoeopathists
for many years previously are useless and hurtful.
Such conduct has been characterised as "the lowest
commercial rivalry," and must bring the whole pro-
fession, and especially your section of it, into general
contempt.
You say of the present state of things, "it cannot
be helped." I trust it may be; but if not, what
generous youth will willingly engage in a such a call-
ing? And what then is to hinder the profession
sinking lower and lower in the social scale? You
speak of the "harm done to the regular profession;"
in this way it is greater than you can estimate.
12. It is painful to discuss the subject thus,
as if it were a social question. I return to it as a
medical one with pleasure; and, as I have given you
some additional information on the principle or law
of healing by drugs, I will now tell you something
more on the matter of the dose, though not so much
104
THE DOSE
as I could wish, my observations not being yet suffi-
ciently advanced.
We commenced by remarking that a physician,
when consulted, has to inquire into and decide upon
three things-the nature of the patient's complaint,
the remedy most likely to do him good, and the dose
or quantity of that remedy which is required to be
taken. We have now considered the two former, and
there remains the last, the study of which forms the
science of posology.
The dose must be one sufficient to produce the effect
intended, that is, to answer the object for which the re-
medy is given; but this word "sufficient" embraces a
wide range, and involves many perplexing considera-
tions.
Physicians have laboured to untie the intricate
twists of this Gordian knot for many centuries, but
they have not yet succeeded. Many facts have been
ascertained, but they are of a discouraging and contra-
dictory character. I will again adopt the same arrange-
ment as before, and first give a sketch of the posology
of your party, and then a similar one of Hahnemann's.
Afterwards I will add a brief statement of my present
views upon the subject of the dose.
13. It must first be observed that it has not been
possible for you to adopt one uniform dose for all
drugs; on the contrary, a very wide difference exists
between the quantity sufficient for a dose of one drug
and that enough for a dose of another drug. "The
>
OF THE OLD METHOD.
105
doses," says Dr. Paris, "of medicinal substances are
specific with respect to each." This at once creates
a great difficulty.
Again, the same drug acts differently in different
quantities; of some drugs larger doses produce a more
powerful effect than smaller ones; on the contrary,
with other drugs the action is increased by diminish-
ing the quantity. "The young and eager practi-
tioner," says the authority just quoted, "is too often
betrayed into the error of supposing that the powers
of a remedy always increase in an equal ratio with its
dose." Did you, Sir Benjamin, wish us to consider
you a young and eager practitioner when you ignored
this well-known fact, and indulged in the following
satire?" Hitherto it had been supposed that the
effects of any medicinal substance taken into the sys-
tem bear some proportion to the quantity taken; that
if two mercurial pills taken daily would make the
gums sore, four would make them very sore." (Quar-
terly Review.')
Again, of drugs in a solid state, some act in pro-
portion to the quantity taken, but others, the common
metals, for example (see Christison), are inert in the
crude form, that is, in a state of mechanical aggrega-
tion, whereas the same substances, triturated or finely
pulverized by rubbing, act powerfully in very small
quantities; a pound of mercury may be swallowed
without medicinal action, while two or three grains,
after trituration, will act strongly.
And again, of drugs in a state of solution, some
7
106
THE DOSE
act more or less energetically in proportion to the
quantity, while with others smaller doses, largely
diluted, exhibit more power than larger ones given in
a more concentrated form. In general, solution in-
creases the action of drugs, as trituration does.
The continued repetition of the same dose of some
drugs produces a cumulative or increasing effect; on
the other hand, with other drugs, the effects of the
first doses diminish or wear out.
Such are the principal facts or conclusions hitherto
ascertained in your school; it will be seen that they
rather exhibit the uncertainty, difficulty, and confusion
of the subject, than its elucidation.
The object for which you prescribe drugs is, in
general, to produce certain specified effects, such as
evacuation of the stomach, perspiration, &c., and the
doses of the drugs given for these purposes must be
strong enough to produce these intended results.
They are therefore necessarily large, often as large as
if they were given to produce the poisonous effects
of the drug in health.
The only exception to this rule is in the case of
drugs given under the significant name of "altera-
tives." Of these the dose is generally smaller. If
the drug so given happens to be the specific remedy
for the complaint for which it is prescribed, it is the
adoption of the practice of our school; if it is not
specific, more harm than good will result from its
administration.
Need I repeat the remark that medication, in this
OF THE NEW METHOD.
107
gross form, must be injurious to that very large pro-
portion of sick persons who, according to your
letter, would recover with "no treatment at all"?
And for those who cannot so recover it is, at the best,
but a very indirect method of assisting them.
If to these difficulties of the dose in the old school
be added those arising from the adulteration of the
drugs; the mistakes and carelessness in their prepa-
ration; the interference of one drug with another, when
several are mixed together in one prescription; and
the fact that they are often thrown away by the patient
instead of being taken by him as prescribed, it may be,
in some degree, understood that the task of unravel-
ling such a knot is hopeless.
You have no rule to guide you in the choice of re-
medies; you can have none for the selection of the
dose, except the old one, so full of humour, "let it be
done secundum artem!"
14. We now turn to the members of the new
school, and desire to learn how it stands with them in
the matter of the dose. We have seen that they have
a rule for the selection of the remedy, and that the
object for which drugs are given by them is very dif
ferent from yours, namely, that it is to act upon, not
the healthy, but the diseased organs; it follows from
this, as a necessary consequence, that the doses must
be small. Beyond this general point of agreement,
however, there is nothing settled as yet; as with
you, it is a matter of experience, and consequently,
108
THE DOSE
as with you, every practitioner is left to form an
experience for himself, and he is to be guided by
that.
Hahnemann began with ordinary doses, but was
compelled to reduce these by the mischief frequently
done by them. Having gone from less to less, and, to
his amazement, still finding effects follow his dose, the
novelty and surprise overpowered his judgment, and in
his old age he issued the decree that the best dose for
all diseases, whether acute or chronic, was the smallest
quantity of the thirtieth dilution. As far as I can
learn, however, he did not adhere to this unwise dic-
tum himself, nor have I heard of any homœopathist
after him who has done so.
Nearly all practitioners make use of a considerable
variety in the dilutions and triturations they select for
doses.
Some confine themselves very much to the higher
dilutions or smaller doses, others to the lower or
stronger ones, while a few prescribe the original
preparations, or, as they are called, the mother
tinctures.
In the earlier days of homoeopathy it was thought
best by some to prefer the higher dilutions as espe-
cially adapted for acute disease of short standing,
and the lower ones for chronic or long-lasting ail-
ments.
At the present time the contrary opinion prevails,
and the lower preparations are given in acute cases,
and the higher in chronic ones.
OF THE NEW METHOD.
109
All which fluctuations must continue to prevail, as
they do in your school, so long as, in both cases, the
subject is one of personal experience only.
15. A question of great interest, therefore, arises
-Can any law or principle for the selection of the
dose be discovered, as there has been for the
remedy?
The earlier homœopathic writers answer this inquiry
by a direct negative; one says, "it is, in fact, alto-
gether impossible to lay down any precise rules as to
the dose." This reminds one of the language used
by Dr. Paris as to a similar impossibility of dis-
covering a rule for the choice of the remedy.
Later authorities are pretty much of the same way
of thinking. When the subject was last discussed, a
few years ago, one physician remarked that he "did
not believe that a law as to the dilution could ever be
arrived at ;" another "feared a law relating to the
dilution could not be established, experience being the
only sure guide in this matter." But, as we have seen,
experience is not a sure guide, and I marvel that, when
one difficulty has been overcome in respect to the
drug, the remaining difficulty with respect to the dose
should be considered invincible.
The truth is, that so long as physicians looked only
in the direction of the disease and the patient, Syden-
ham's earnest wish for the possession of a "fixed,
definite, and consummate method of healing" could
not be attained, though pursued for many centuries;
110
A LAW
and in like manner, while the attention of practitioners
is directed only to the same objects, the possession of
a fixed rule for the dose will be equally unattainable.
But no sooner was the direction changed, and the
thinking mind turned towards the drug as well as to-
wards the disease, than the first law of healing was laid
hold of, imperfectly, indeed, at that time, but so as to
admit of more distinct and accurate definition now.
And, in like manner, if we tread in the same steps,
if we look in the same direction, that is, if we examine
the drug with more care and precision, we shall find
the law of the dose. It is the counterpart of the law
of the remedy, as stated in this letter, is dependent
upon the relation which exists between the dose or
quantity of a drug and the disease connected with it,
and may be expressed provisionally in these words :-
Different doses of the same drug, given in health,
select different organs on which to act injuriously.
Corresponding, but smaller, doses of the same drug
are to be given as remedies in the diseases of the
organs which they select.
The key-note, as was observed in the law of the
drug, is local action, and belongs to the relation which
ties together the dose and the organ.
You will not be interested in, nor is this the place
FOR THE DOSE.
111
to give detailed illustrations of this rule; I must con-
tent myself with adducing one drug as an example,
and with adding two or three remarks.
Oxalic acid :—this drug, as a poison, acts in the
largest doses upon the alimentary canal; in smaller
ones, upon the heart; in still smaller, upon the spinal
cord; and in the smallest, upon the brain. The effects
of the concentrated acid are to inflame and corrode
the stomach; the other effects are thus described by
Professor Christison:" When considerably diluted,
the phenomena are totally different. When dissolved in
twenty parts of water, oxalic acid ceases to corrode,
nay it hardly even irritates, but it causes death by
acting on the brain, spine, or heart, the symptoms
varying with the dose. When the quantity is large,
the most prominent symptoms are those of palsy of
the heart. When the dose is less, the animal perishes
after several fits of violent tetanus, which affect the
respiratory muscles of the chest in particular, causing
spasmodic fixing of the chest and consequent suffo-
cation. When the dose is still less, the spasms are
slight or altogether wanting, and death occurs under
symptoms of pure narcotism, like those caused by
opium; the animal appears to sleep away. The
poison produces nearly the same effects to whatever
texture of the body it is applied."
According to the rule just expressed, this drug must
be given in corresponding but smaller doses as a
remedy. If for an affection of the brain, the dose
must be the smallest which will produce any effect;
112
A SUFFICIENT DOSE.
if for one of the spine, a somewhat larger dose will be
required; if for a disease of the heart, the dose is to
be still further increased.
Other examples might easily be given, but I must
forbear. Of course our knowledge on the subject
must be, at present, necessarily very imperfect, but
labour will improve this, if only it is directed in the
proper channel.
Of many drugs it will be objected that we know no
such distinction as is here indicated in the selection
made by different doses; the reply to this objection
is, that until such distinctions are made out there is no
sufficient reason for varying the dose.
Much has been said on the different susceptibility
of different patients to the action of remedies, and it
has been argued that the dose must vary according to
this. I am of opinion that this difference has been
much exaggerated, and that if the right remedy
is really known, the dose need vary little on this
account.
A dose may be known to be sufficient in two ways
-first, by curing the complaint; and secondly, by
producing some of the effects known to belong to the
drug; this last may happen either along with the
cure of the ailment or without it; if without it, the
remedy should be immediately discontinued, as an
improper one.
I need scarcely say that I have no sympathy with
those who talk of dividing a globule into halves and
quarters, nor much with those who use globules at
A SUFFICIENT DOSE.
113
all; at the same time I cannot but condemn in the
strongest manner the wicked sneers and sarcasms
which some of the opponents of homoeopathy have in-
dulged in with respect to them.
I will not at present venture to add more on this
difficult and intricate subject; but if it please God
we live a few years longer, and you should write
another letter in 'Fraser,' I shall hope to have some-
thing more to tell you in reply.
114
STATE MEDICINE.
IV.
1. In the concluding part of your letter you enter
upon the subject of State medicine, and the conduct of
the authorities towards the profession and towards the
public in affairs relating to health.
This affords me both the opportunity and the justi-
fication, which you cannot blame me for availing
myself of, for inviting the attention of Her Majesty's
Government, Parliament, and the British nation, to
the manner in which power was first sought, and,
when this could not be obtained, license has been
since taken by the medical colleges to oppose
gress of medical reformation.
the pro-
The
2. In the month of June, 1855, a Medical Bill
was introduced into the House of Commons, read a
first time, and ordered to be printed for the purpose
of circulation and discussion during the recess.
preamble stated that "it is expedient to amend the
laws relating to the medical profession," and the Bill
provided for a Medical Council and a general
MEDICAL BILL.
115
registration of qualified men, and defined the privi-
leges of the faculty thus registered. I read the Bill
at the time, and saw no reason why I should take any
part either for or against it.
In February, 1856, at the beginning of the follow-
ing session, this Bill was reintroduced into the House
of Commons, and read a first time. On this occasion
the Premier (Lord Palmerston) is reported to have
said that the Bill had met with so little opposition.
from the profession that it should have the support
of the Government. In a few days it was read a
second time, and ordered to be committed in a week.
It was not till this stage of its progress that I saw it,
nor was I anxious to see it, supposing it to be a re-
production, in all fairness, of the model Bill. I now
read it, however, and to my intense surprise I found
the following clause introduced, not a word of which
existed in the Bill of 1855, and about which nothing
whatever had been said in the House.
"XXIX. If any of the said several colleges shall
at any time strike off from the list of such college the
name of any one of their members who has been guilty
of misconduct, such college shall signify to the Medi-
cal Registrar the name of the member so struck off,
and the Medical Registrar shall erase forthwith such
name from the Register, and shall not restore such
name," &c.
This was revealing an object, and introducing an
element altogether so new and different from the ap-
parent purpose of the model Bill, that I felt it impera-
116
MEDICAL BILL.
tive to do what I could to frustrate the clandestine
effort; for, were such a clause to become law, I
knew well that there would be no greater "miscon-
duct" in the eyes of the medical colleges, than the
adoption of homoeopathy; and that no names would
be so quickly "struck off" as those of the members
who had seen it to be their duty to embrace this mode
of practice.
I, therefore, immediately went to London, and along
with three medical colleagues, Dr. M. J. Chapman,
Dr. J. Hodgson Ramsbotham, and Dr. J. B. Metcalfe,
sought an interview.with the honorable member, (Mr.
Headlam,) who had charge of the Bill. We explained
the probable operation of the "striking off" clause,
Mr. Headlam was not easily convinced that it could
be turned to such a persecuting purpose as we be-
lieved; but when he did see it, he said that rather
than carry such a clause he would give up the Bill,
and readily assented to move in Committee the follow-
ing addition to it :-" Provided always that any differ-
ences of opinion on the theory or practice of medicine
or surgery shall not be construed into misconduct."
When the day for the committee arrived, the Secre-
tary of State (Sir George Grey) moved several amend-
ments. The mover of the Bill complained of this,
and in justification, the Secretary of State explained
that the College of Physicians had waited on him only
the day before, to request him to do this for them.
Some confusion arose, and the Bill was referred to a
select committee.
MEDICAL ACT.
117
It would be tedious to pursue the details of the
struggle which followed; but, during the sessions of
1856, 1857, and 1858, a rapid succession of amended
medical bills was printed, in which this proviso was
alternately omitted and inserted, as the college or
myself happened to prevail.
On the 2nd of August, 1858, the Bill became an
Act, and the clause, considerably modified, and with
the proviso, which had become altered in expression,
but not in meaning, attached, became law.
Another, but a shorter, effort was made by other
homœopathic practitioners, for the introduction of a
clause for the protection of medical students; this
was also successfully incorporated into the Act in the
House of Lords.
3. The law upon these two subjects is now con-
tained and expressed in the two following clauses of
the Medical Act:
CC
XXVIII. If any of the said colleges or the
said bodies at any time exercise any power they
possess by law of striking off from the list of
such college or body the name of any one of their
members, such college or body shall signify to the
General Council the name of the member so struck
off; and the General Council may, if they see fit,
direct the registrar to erase forthwith from the Register
the qualification derived from such college or body
in respect of which such member was registered, and
the Registrar shall note the same therein: Provided
118
MEDICAL COLLEGES
always that the name of no person shall be erased from
the Register on the ground of his having adopted any
theory of medicine or surgery."
This clause protects homeopathic practitioners; the
following was intended for the protection of students
inclined to adopt homoeopathic practice :-
"XXIII. In case it shall appear to the General
Council that an attempt has been made by any body,
entitled under this Act to grant qualifications, to im-
pose upon any candidate offering himself for examina-
tion an obligation to adopt or refrain from adopting
the practice of any particular theory of medicine or
surgery, as a test or condition of admitting him to
examination or of granting a certificate, it shall be
lawful for the said Council to represent the same to
Her Majesty's most honorable Privy Council, and the
said Privy Council may thereupon issue an injunction
to such body so acting, directing them to desist from
such practice; and in the event of their not complying
therewith, then to order that such body shall cease to
have the power of conferring any right to be registered
under this Act so long as they shall continue such
practice."
4. Such was the successful issue of the struggle
in Parliament, and such is now the law of the land.
But how has the law been obeyed? Among other
breaches of it, take the following resolutions of two of
the medical colleges as examples.
At a meeting of the Council of the Royal College
INFRINGING THE ACT.
119
of Surgeons in Ireland, held in August, 1861, it was
ordained that-
* *
"No fellow or licentiate of the college shall pretend
or profess to cure diseases by the deception called
homœopathy, or the practice called mesmerism, or by
any other form of quackery.
It is also
hereby ordained that no fellow or licentiate of the
college shall consult with, meet, advise, direct, or
assist any person engaged in such deceptions or prac-
tices, or in any system or practice considered derogatory
or dishonorable by physicians and surgeons.
>>
Is not this an illegal by-law? Is it not in direct
contravention of the Act of Parliament? Certainly,
whatever lawyers may make of the letter, it is directly
in opposition to the spirit and intention of the legisla-
ture; it is an act of tyranny, betrays great bigotry and
improper feeling, and calls for the interference of some
power to compel its withdrawal.
To the same effect the Irish College of Physicians
has adopted the following form of declaration to be
taken by licentiates on admission :
CC
I engage not to practise any system or method
(so called) for the cure or alleviation of disease, of
which the college has disapproved. (!) *
and
in case of any doubt relative to the true meaning or
application of this engagement, I promise to submit to
the judgment of the college. And I solemnly and
sincerely declare, that should I violate any of the con-
ditions specified in this declaration, so long as I shall
be either a licentiate or fellow of the college, I shall
120
INFRINGEMENT OF ACT.
render myself liable, and shall submit, to censure of the
college, pecuniary fine (not exceeding twenty pounds),
or expulsion and surrendering of the diploma, which-
ever the president and fellows of the college, or the
majority of them, shall think proper to inflict.
It is difficult to believe that men of intelligent
minds and upright moral principles can enter the
college on such humiliating terms.
This again,
therefore, must deteriorate the profession, lower the
standard of character of its members, and her Majesty
and her subjects must receive "great damage and
hurt" thereby.
Such unconstitutional and, as it would appear,
illegal proceedings as these demand the exercise of a
restraining and controlling power; the twenty-third
clause of the Medical Act intimates the existence of
such a power; and it is to be hoped that some
members, either of the Government or of Parliament,
will exert themselves to bring this power into opera-
tion, so that the liberty of professional and scientific
investigation by qualified men, intended to be guaran-
teed by the Sovereign and the Legislature in this Act
of Parliament, may be effectually and practically se-
cured to them.
The medical profession is a commonwealth, and
cannot, with justice or safety to the national welfare,
be subjected to despotic government within itself.
All its members, when once called to its duties, are
on an equal footing; and though it is needful that a
dozen individuals be chosen to regulate the education
MEDICAL PROTECTION.
121
and secure the fitness of candidates, and to admit
them when so fitted, these individuals are in no way
qualified or entitled to hamper or victimise thought
and experiment in medical science. I hope, Sir Ben-
jamin, this is a very distinct notion, and that our gra-
cious Sovereign and her whole people will be able to
perceive its force and act upon its requirements, and
so secure, to all members of the medical faculty alike,
that freedom in the pursuit of their professional duties,
without which the nation cannot be duly and faith-
fully served, in the matter of health and life.
In addition to this freedom for thought and inquiry,
which ought to be granted to and exercised by all
qualified men equally, there are two other points of
importance in this subject on which it is necessary to
have "very distinct notions."
،
They are so well expressed by Mr. Rumsey, of Chel-
tenham, in his Essays on State Medicine,' published
in 1856, that I cannot do better than adopt his words.
'A weighty hindrance to legislation," this gentle-
man observes, "has consisted in the indifference of
the majority of the profession to any measure which
would not guarantee to them a monopoly of curative
practice. Their cry is 'protection.**
*
They require that none should be admitted into
the ranks of the profession except those adhering to
'orthodox' medical theories and authorised modes of
practice.
،،
Now it cannot be denied that improvements in
medical science, of great benefit to mankind, have now
8
122
PROFESSIONAL PROTECTION.
and then originated externally to the pale of the
'regular' faculty, whilst many of those still more im-
portant reforms and discoveries, made within that pale,
have been vehemently opposed, and the progress of
truth for a time checked, by the heads and governing
councils of the profession.
66
Any medical doctrine not sanctioned by those
authorities has accordingly been accounted heterodox,
and no discreet aspirant for medical honours has
ventured to consider it even an open question.
*
CC
*
*
The prohibition sought for would not apply
specially to uneducated medicine-vendors, who, not-
withstanding their entire ignorance of the merest ele-
ments of pharmacy and therapeutics, profess, without
legal hindrance, to furnish infallible remedies for every
ailment.
*
*
"But on the protective hypothesis most in favour
with the medical profession, what would become of
certain legally qualified practitioners who forsake the
beaten path, as, for example, the disciples of Hahne-
mann ?
*
*
*
"Let any of these-more especially if highly edu-
cated or keen witted, most certainly if skilful or suc-
cessful-be found in the nominal ranks of the medical
profession, and they would inevitably be expelled, for-
bidden to exercise their occupation, probably punished
severely.
**
*
"It appears that there are two very distinct de-
mands:
PUBLIC PROTECTION.
123
"First. That no one should be legally authorised to
practise medicine who does not avow that he is pre-
pared to treat disease on principles and precedents
approved by the most eminent professors and prac-
titioners of the day; in other words, on the therapeu-
tical systems sanctioned by the heads of the medical
colleges.
"Secondly. That the state should grant its licence
to practise medicine to those only (1) whose knowledge
of anatomy, physiology, and pathology, and of the
various branches of abstract and natural science, on
which philosophical medicine rests, has been duly
tested; (2) who can produce evidence, by certificates
fairly earned and fairly granted, of having carefully
observed by clinical attendance, enough of the medical
systems now in force, and who have sufficiently studied
the history of those in past ages to preserve them from
ignorant, precipitate, and fallacious conclusions; (3)
whose preliminary education has been sound and libe-
ral, and whose character, disposition, and habits are
such as to fit them alike for the sterner requirements
and the more scrupulous proprieties of their calling.
t
One of these demands, it will be at once per-
ceived, is for professional protection against irregularity,
heterodoxy, and intrusion.
"The other is for public protection against igno-
rance, incompetence, and, what is worst of all, a low
standard of professional morality.
"Now I do not hesitate to assume that the second
only of these demands would be acceded to by an en-
lightened government.
124
DUTY OF THE STATE.
r¢
"A law carrying protection to this extent, and no
further, is so essential an item of public health pro-
tection, that it can no longer be neglected in this
country, with just regard to the safety of its inhabi-
tants For many other sensible remarks and sug-
gestions on medical education and sanitary measures,
I am glad of the opportunity of referring to this book.
"
As you have set me the example of quoting your-
self, I venture to repeat some observations made by
me in a review of Mr. Rumsey's essays in a medical
journal published at the time (1856). This must
close what I have to say at present on state medi-
cine.
The truth upon this important subject seems to be
contained in the following propositions
1. The Sovereign, viewed in the patriarchal or
parental character, will necessarily take an active part
in the care of the people, when suffering from bodily
disease.
2. The state, therefore, will use preventive mea-
sures, directing its attention to everything calculated
to promote the sanitary or healthy condition of the
people, and to ward off disease.
cure.
3. The state will also provide the best means of
This implies the providing and supervision of
a medical profession-physicians, accoucheurs, and
surgeons-also of drugs and druggists, nurses, medi-
cines, and hospitals.
4. The provision of medical attendants on the sick
implies a suitable education, a state licence, and a
sphere of duty.
DUTY OF THE STATE.
125
5. The education of men to be engaged in so im-
portant a duty implies a provision by the state of a
preliminary liberal school and university training, and
a subsequent professional one.
6. The licence to practise implies examination as
to competency and to character, and is a certificate to
that effect.
7. This examination ought to extend only to the
subject matter of the previous education, to the talents,
acquirements, and moral character of the candidate.
It ought not to fetter the future progress of thought
or inquiry, nor exact any pledge except that of a con-
scientious discharge of the duty undertaken towards
rich and poor, with integrity, humanity, and good
morals. These examinations should be public, as
they are for degrees in our universities.
8. The protection afforded by this state licence
is not, and ought not to be, a protection of the pro-
fession in favour of any exclusive, speculative, or prac-
tical orthodoxy, or in favour of the heads of colleges
and their private friends and personal supporters,
and against those who, while equally well educated,
and possessing the same legal qualification, differ in
matters of opinion and practice, and have not the
same court influence; such a protection cannot fail
to be inquisitorial and tyrannical, and must greatly
impede scientific progress and practical improvement;
it would also exceed the object desired by a parental
government, and cripple the just liberty of the
subject.
126
DUTY OF THE STATE.
H
9. The protection the state wishes to supply is
the protection of its people from ignorance, incom-
petency, fraud, and immorality.
10. It is in order to supply this protection that
the state should interfere and provide suitable educa-
tion, and give a testimonial or licence.
11. For this object the state should establish by
law an appropriate machinery in teachers, professors,
and examiners; all of whom, while left free in the
intelligent pursuit of their professional studies, would
be the servants of the state, and under its supervision
as to the efficient discharge of their respective duties.
12. A sphere of duty implies that the state
should seek to regulate the supply by the demand, so
as to prevent the mischief which would otherwise arise
from an overstocked and impoverished profession.
Such are the considerations which, as it appears to
me, should engage the grave attention and stimulate
the active efforts of a paternal government with re-
ference to the sick among its people.
The sick and suffering are always to be found, and
claim the care of the community of which they form a
large proportion.
The state must care for these, and protect them by
providing that means of succour be within their reach.
On the other hand, the medical attendant needs
some sympathy, care, and protection also; he is not
to be overborne, nor taken advantage of, nor blamed
when unreasonable expectations cannot be fulfilled,
when pain continues, disease advances, and life ebbs
DUTY OF THE STATE.
127
away, notwithstanding his most anxious and best
directed efforts.
Sometimes, indeed, pain and disease are aggravated,
and death is hastened, by unskilful treatment; but
more frequently pain is relieved, disease arrested or
removed, and life prolonged by the blessing of God
on the knowledge, skill, and care of the physician.
Such knowledge and skill are acquired with diffi-
culty and pain; the care needful in the use of them
often calls for self-denial, and is attended with much
labour, and sometimes with suffering. The office of
the physician is, therefore, a worthy post, and the
faithful performance of its duties gives him a claim
upon his Sovereign for countenance, and upon his
fellow-subjects for grateful respect.
5. Another topic akin to the one we have just
now discussed is the question whether the homoeo-
pathists shall be constituted a separate medical body.
On your side, there has been a great effort to compel
them to take this step, and, on their side, there has
existed a considerable desire for the accomplishment
of such a separation. This was a natural consequence
of the mutual animosity. In America the separation
has been effected, and there are now homoeopathic
universities at Philadelphia, at Cleveland in Ohio,
and at New York, charged by the government with
the same duties, and in all respects possessing the
same privileges and position as the older allopathic
universities. There are, I am informed, about three
128
ARE HOMEOPATHISTS TO
thousand practitioners of this school in the different
states.
But shall it be done in England? I hope not;
I think it would be unwise; and whenever the subject
has been discussed, during the last twelve years, I
have used what influence I might have, to dissuade
homœopathists from making the attempt. And for
these reaosns :-
The separation would constitute two rival sects,
and perpetuate the opposition and enmity indefinitely,
and there would be no hope of either party con-
vincing or silencing the other.
By waiting and ventilating the subject, and
especially by the exhibition of a better spirit, which
ought not to be despaired of, the truth will gradually
insinuate itself, even into the most exclusive and
bigoted seats of authority; and so the reformation
in medicine will become general and national, and the
universities, colleges, schools, and hospitals remain
united as at present. In spite of all the outward
manifestations of hostility, a great amelioration of
general practice, through the unwelcome influence of
homoeopathy, has already been brought about; and;
if Plato is right when he says “ τό γάς ἀληθὲς οὐδέποτε
¿λéyxeraι,” truth is never refuted or vanquished, the
ἐλέγχεται,
accomplishment of the happy result may be con-
fidently expected.
Suppose the separation effected, and the homœo-
pathists by Royal Charter, or by Act of Parliament,
constituted an independent faculty of medicine, why
FORM A SEPARATE FACULTY ?
129
should not every new opinion, and every modification.
of practice, which may arise within the profession,
claim a similar privilege? If, instead of adopting
and incorporating what is good in each, a process of
propagation by slips is to be adopted, where is it to
end?
And, for your side of the fence, Sir Benjamin,
neither would it be less unwise, for, as it is not for
the good of the public to be without a profession, so
neither would it be for the good of the profession to
detach from it a portion of its members. You cannot
amputate a limb without mutilating the body.
Other reasons might be added, but these are abun-
dantly sufficient, I think, to satisfy reasonable and un-
ambitious persons that it is best to bear the inconve-
niences of the present transition state, great though they
undoubtedly are, than plunge into the difficulties and
distractions which would necessarily accompany the
division of a profession which should always remain a
united body.
6. Then, if we are to remain united, what is to
become of the exhibition of childish temper on the
subject of consultations? The Dublin College con-
descends to forbid medical men of different views to
meet, and you have written thus :-
"To join with homoeopathists in attendance on cases.
of either medical or surgical disease would be neither
wise nor honest. The object of a medical consultation.
is the good of the patient; and we cannot suppose
130
CONSULTATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS
that any such result can arise from the interchange of
opinions where the views entertained, or professed to
be entertained, (!) by one of the parties as to the na-
ture and treatment of disease are wholly unintelligible
to the other." Or, as you touch the tender point in
another letter:
cc
I do not think that any well-educated medical
practitioner can honestly meet one of these homoeopa-
thists in consultation. The only object of a consulta-
tion is to do good to the patient; and it is out of the
question to suppose that any interchange of ideas with
one in whose professed opinions we have not the
smallest faith, and whose notions, indeed, we cannot
comprehend, can tend to this result."
Now, the bitter animus displayed in these sentences
will not escape the notice of the most casual general
reader; and I do not think it unbecoming in me
to rebuke you for it. I have heard that your letter
has been called “a crushing letter" by one of your
supporters. It has not crushed me, and, as it did
not crush homoeopathy twenty years ago, it is not
likely to crush it now; shall I tell you what it will in-
jure? Your fair fame, your reputation in the next
generations, these, I am sorry to believe, will be tar-
nished by the unworthy part you have acted in this
controversy.
But you ask, "Why are we to meet ?" I will tell you;
because the patient, a suffering fellow-creature, wishes
it. But you somewhat impatiently exclaim, "What
good can arise ?" I will tell you again; more to your
OF THE TWO SCHOOLS.
131
of all the col-
Not long ago
side than to ours, besides the patient's satisfaction. It
is the patient, not I, who requests the consultation ;
it is you who are afraid, not I, of the meeting. Why?
Because in this way we make converts.
And it may
as well be told that all the anathemas
leges will not prevent such meetings.
I was visiting a lady at some distance, and she asked
my leave to send for her ordinary medical adviser,
that I might tell him my opinion of her case, which
I willingly consented to do. When he came, I
warned him of the risk he run in seeing my face
in opposition to the resolutions of his professional
brethren; his manly answer was, "But I will if I
like!" This will serve for a rebuke for Mr. Fergus-
son; and it is by no means a solitary proof that
Britons do not yet intend to be made slaves.
But I earnestly desire not to be overcome by pro-
vocation to write unadvisedly, and I wish to tell you
further of the good that may arise from consultations—
there can be an interchange of thought; there can be
a friendly recognition, and mutual courtesies; there
may be mutual instruction; and men thus brought
together may learn to respect each other, who, but for
such a meeting, might have learned only to disparage
and to despise each other. The late Mr. Babington
and I met in this manner, I believe with comfort and
pleasure on both sides, and why may not others do
the same?
In thus advocating an occasional interview between
medical men of the two schools, I am not to be
132
CONSULTATIONS BETWEEN MEMBERS
misunderstood or misrepresented as seeking this as a
matter of help, countenance, or benefit to the homœo-
pathic party; this body is quite competent to manage
its own cases, and is not dependent upon aid from
your side. The opportunities which offer for such
meetings arise out of the circumstances in which
homœopathists are occasionally placed, and they are
these two-the scattered and isolated position of some
practitioners, who are, perhaps, many miles distant
from their nearest colleague, who could help them
were he accessible; but not being so, and the nature
of the case rendering the presence of a second medi-
cal man unavoidable, it becomes necessary to ask the
help of an allopathic neighbour. This circumstance
is not common, but it happens sometimes; it belongs
to the department of the accoucheur or the surgeon
almost exclusively.
The other circumstance is more common, and
occurs when a homoeopathist is sent for to see a
patient fifty or a hundred miles off; it may be a
case of dangerous acute disease, and there is no
homoeopathist near at hand; or a chronic case, which
has been long in the hands of some favorite and
well-known medical friend. The acute case ought to
be seen daily, but the distance makes this impos-
sible, and the friends of the patient remark that it
would be a comfort to them if their usual medical
attendant may be asked to meet the homoeopathist,
and come, from time to time, in the intervals between
his visits; they may thus learn from the allopathic
OF THE TWO SCHOOLS.
133
attendant how the case is going on, and their anxiety
be somewhat relieved. There is nothing unreasonable
or unprofessional in such a course; it differs little from
other distant consultation visits; it is a position of
affairs which has frequently happened to myself, and
I have much pleasure in testifying to the readiness
and courtesy with which, in general, such a service
has been rendered. I am always frank; I say to my
medical brother when he arrives, "I am glad to see
you; I hope we shall agree in our diagnosis and views
as to the general management of the case; and with
regard to the drugs which may be required, I shall
explain to you what I wish to prescribe; you will thus
have an excellent opportunity of witnessing and watch-
ing the results of homoeopathic treatment, without the
responsibility of a first trial made by yourself. I have
nothing to conceal, and you have only to act honora-
bly, of course making no attempt to undermine the
confidence of the patient or his friends during my
absence." The attendance continues, in acute cases,
perhaps a few weeks, in chronic ones for months or
even a year or two, and ends with feelings of mutual
respect. Why should such meetings be interfered
with or prevented? It is for the public to see to it
that they are not deprived of such a benefit; they have
the power to do so, if they are willing to exert it.
I have alluded to Mr. Fergusson. The call made
upon him was for a consultation visit to render sur-
gical assistance; it belongs, therefore, to the first of
the two circumstances I have now described. I think
134
FERGUSSON.
it fitting his letters should be preserved, and you will
find them in the Appendix along with your own. The
awkward corner he has placed himself in may operate
as a warning to others, and lead to the exercise of
more moral courage, and the exhibition of more
creditable conduct.
7. When the subject of state medicine is under
consideration it is impossible to overlook that section
of it which relates to the arbitrary and tyrannical con-
duct of individual medical men placed in posts of
public duty. Among other departments, this is often
conspicuous in the army, and needs to be restrained
by exposure, and by bringing to bear upon it the
force of public opinion. I cannot describe the work-
ings of professional prejudice, in positions of authority,
better than it has been done in the ingenuous and
lively autobiographical sketch given us by the late
Dr. William Fergusson, Inspector-General of Military
Hospitals; whether any relative of the gentleman I
have just named, I do not know.
<<
Until our experience in the Peninsular war, there
had been but one opinion amongst us of the utter
incurability of the disease but by mercury, and if,
through chance, the disease got well without it, we
had as little hesitation in declaring that it could not
possibly have been the disease, but some other putting
on that form. In short, there was one specific, which
was mercury, and that was to be administered, at
all hazards, to all the afflicted, no matter what may
MEDICAL OFFICERS.
135
have been the patient's capability of bearing the
remedy, the nature of his constitution, or the suffer-
ings it entailed. Things were in this state at the
beginning of the present century, when, during the
year of the peace of Amiens, I was made to accom-
pany the late Duke of Gloucester in a tour to the
north of Europe, during which we chanced to arrive
at Moscow when a contest was raging between the
pro- and anti-mercurialists of the faculty for the ap-
pointment to an hospital that had just been founded
by one of the Prince Gallitzins. His excellency, an
enlightened man, was sufficiently inclined to the first,
but, before deciding, did me the honour to consult
me on the occasion. I need not say to what side I
inclined, or how much I wondered at what appeared
to me the barbarous ignorance of the people where such
a question could have been raised. I set it down, how-
ever, as one of the strange things a passing traveller
often hears of, but has neither time to investigate nor
understand.
"Two or three years after this, when I was doing
duty in the home district, on my promotion to be
Deputy-Inspector of Hospitals, and it became my busi-
ness to examine the weekly returns of the regiments
in England at the Medical Board Office, we were
utterly astonished on its being reported that more
than one surgeon of the King's German Legion were
infected with the same heresy as the non-mercurialists
of Moscow and they promptly met the treatment of
136
PREJUDICE RESISTING.
heretics. Instant retraction, or expulsion from service,
was the alternative.
"I certainly never expected to hear more of what
appeared to me so strange and pernicious a delusion;
but on my appointment to be chief of the Medical
Department to the Portuguese Auxiliary Army in the
Peninsula, in the year 1810, I found that the native
faculty never used mercury, or very little if any, and
they obstinately contended for the right and propriety
of their practice. Such infatuation, as I then thought
it, was not to be reasoned with. I applied to the
Commander-in-Chief, and obtained the strongest
general order that could be penned, ordaining the use
of mercury.
"Still I was beat. Wherever I could not per-
sonally superintend, the remedy was neglected; if
present, the mercury was neutralized with sulphur ;
and when I insisted upon seeing whether it had been
rubbed in, was presented with a skin as black as an
Ethiop's. At first their dislike and horror for the
remedy was so great that they would rush from the
room when it was applied, and wash it off with
soap and water. In fact, I saw that I was playing a
losing game where I could not help myself, [I hope
you will see this is your case, Sir Benjamin,] yet at
the same time I could not help acknowledging that
the grave consequences I apprehended must have
ensued from their preposterous conduct did not follow,
and that our soldiers, who were mercurialized I may
PREJUDICE YIELDING.
137
say to extremity, often suffered them in the most
lamentable degree. [This is just what you should
acknowledge, in our present controversy.]
"Things went on in this way for about two years
longer, when I was despatched to Evora, in the
Alentego, to take charge of the medical department,
where I found a large hospital under excellent manage-
ment, by far the best I had ever seen in Portugal,
and the list of cases amounted to nearly fifty, all of them
severe, and all doing well, without ever having taken a
particle of mercury, which had never been used
amongst them from time immemorial. I had been,
meanwhile, in the constant habit of inquiring amongst
and observing our own soldiers, and when I compared
the difference of their condition, full of mercury,
with that of the native troops, who never took a
particle, I cannot describe the astonishment it raised.
[This is what you ought to have done in our
case; had you inquired and observed in the same
honest manner, your astonishment would not have
been less.] Still I could not bring myself to believe
that I had lived so long in utter error, and I wrote
from the spot the first English essay that had appeared
in our times, of the curability of the disease without
mercury amongst the Portuguese, for I durst not at
first open my eyes to the whole truth; and within two
years afterwards, first Mr. Rose, and then Mr.
Guthrie, ventured upon bolder views, and published
to the world the feasibility, propriety, and safety of
9 -
138
FORCE OF PREJUDICE
treating British soldiers in the same manner as the
Portuguese.
6 C
I confess that nothing in the practice of physic
ever staggered me more than this discovery-that
the creed of ages should be found utterly baseless—that
the wisest amongst us should have, in all the inter-
mediate time, been destroying instead of saving their
patients, by murderous and unnecessary courses of
mercury-was enough to shake the firmest faith in
physic, and to prove that what might seem the best
established principles of medicine were no more than
the delusion of the passing day.
* * This
stumbling-block (a course of mercury) we ourselves
had set up, misled the philosophic Abernethy. He,
believing in the incurability without mercury, was
utterly confounded when he saw some of the worst cases
yield as if by magic to some of the simplest mercurial
alteratives, which he had administered as preliminary
to the established course. [You might have sometimes
witnessed such speedy cures of other complaints
if
you had tried our method.] He inquired amongst
the best surgeons of his own school, who assured him
that the cases could not be what he took them for. To
be sure, they looked like it; but, as they got well in the
way they did they must be something else, and he there-
fore wrote his work on pseudo-diseases. A stronger in-
stance of the tenacity of the human mind in adherence
to error never was exhibited. [Perhaps, Sir Benjamin,
you have surpassed Mr. Abernethy now.] He was a
OVERPOWERED BY CANDOUR.
139
philosopher, but he could not forego the prejudices
that had been instilled into his mind in early life;
and, rather than open his eyes to the truth, he chose
to invent an imaginary order of diseases, which, had
he allowed to be real, must have held up a mirror
to his view, which he could not have looked into
without owning that he had all his life been destroying
in many instances, instead of curing his patients.
* * * Amidst all this blundering and prejudice,
it seems never to have been discovered that mercury
was, after all, making its own work, by producing the
very appearances it was given to eradicate; for so like
are the abrasions of the mouth and throat, or other
secreting surfaces, resulting from mercury and from
disease, that the best experienced cannot, even now,
distinguish between them; and in former times went
on destroying in the dark, always believing, while
their patients were falling before their eyes, that their
practice was orthodox and indisputable."
"*
Such is the language, not of a homoeopathist, but
of the late Inspector-General of Military Hospitals.
It is a long quotation, but I could not curtail it; every
word may be intelligently applied to our more recent
controversy. It is, on the one hand, a melancholy
picture of the mischief prejudice can do, and, on the
other, a noble example of candour and manliness
worthy of your imitation.
Before quitting the subject of army medical autho-
* William Fergusson, M.D., 'Notes and Recollections of a Profes-
sional Life.' 1846.
140
HOMEOPATHY FALSELY ASSUMED
rities, I may remark, that considerable efforts were
made to obtain for our soldiers the benefit of homœo-
pathic treatment during the Crimean War in 1855,
but they were frustrated by the medical autocracy;
the same has occurred in India; the same, I suppose,
everywhere; but, are such despotic restraints upon
thought and the progress of medical science, at once
so disgraceful to the ruler and degrading to the ruled,
to be permitted to continue? It would have been
a bright illumination of your posthumous character
had you used your
your influence to dissipate, instead of
to encourage, such evils, to break rather than to
rivet the chain which for so many centuries has crip-
pled research in medicine.
8. Before concluding your letter you again call us
"pretenders ;" let me therefore point out more clearly
than I have yet done the leading mistake which has
had firm possession of your mind from the first, and
which has drawn you on until it has placed you in
your present false position. The error appears very
distinctly in your article in the Quarterly' in 1842,
and it is the substratum of your letter in Fraser' in
1861. It is the error of your party, which looks
upon homœopathy, either in ignorance or of set pur-
pose, as if it were something which had sprung
up external to the profession; as if it were like Mrs.
Stephen's powder, St. John Long's ointment, or the
'brandy and salt" cure, and required to be treated
by medical men in the same manner. You wish the
66
TO BE UNPROFESSIONAL.
141
qualified practitioner to keep himself aloof from it, to
abstain carefully from any intercourse with those who
advocate such an imposture, and thus to leave it to
flourish and to die away, when the public are tired of
it, as all other quackeries have died away before it. It
will thus, you imagine, ere long, disappear, and, toge-
ther with Perkinism and white mustard-seed, be laid
in the tomb of all the Capulets.
"It cannot be otherwise than provoking," you say,
"to those who have passed three or four years of the
best part of their lives in endeavouring to make them-
selves well acquainted with disease, in the wards of
a hospital, to find that there are some among their
patients who resort to them for advice only when their
complaints have assumed a more painful or dangerous
character; while they are set aside in ordinary cases
which involve a smaller amount of anxiety and respon-
sibility, in favour of some homoeopathic doctor, who,
very probably, never studied disease at all. But it
cannot be helped. In all times there have been pre-
tenders who have persuaded a certain part of the
public that they have some peculiar knowledge of a
royal road to cure, which those of the regular craft
have not. It is homoeopathy now; it was something
else formerly; and, if homoeopathy were to be extin-
guished, there would be something else in its place.
The medical profession must be contented to let the
thing take its course.
Now, this would be excellent advice, if the fact
were as you represent it; but your supposition
is not true. Homœopathy is not, and never
142
HOMEOPATHISTS ARE
was, external to the profession; it originated within
the profession, and still remains within it. It is a
professional effort at improvement, and has no relation-
ship whatever with such frauds as the metallic trac-
tors of Perkins; if it had, all that would be required
of the profession would be to furnish a Dr. Haygarth,
who could plainly expose the imposition. No, Sir
Benjamin, it is as much within the profession as Har-
vey's discovery of the circulation of the blood, or
Laennec's invention of the stethoscope, and those who
have adopted it have met with similar treatment from
their professional brethren. Harvey was hooted at as
a "circulator," and the physician who first used the
stethoscope in this country was cried down as "the
man with the penny trumpet," and now we are called.
globulists." And so it seems, as you say, that it
cannot be helped but that discoverers and inventors
and benefactors of mankind must be ridiculed and
abused. But
But upon whom has the real disgrace
ultimately fallen in the case of Harvey, and in that
of Laennec? I need not, therefore, hesitate to an-
ticipate the future vindication of those who have
laboured in the present reformation of medicine, and
the removal of the dishonour now lying on their
heads, to rest finally on those of others.
Homœopathists are qualified practitioners; they
stand upon your own platform, and cannot be pushed
off it. They have passed "three or four years," and
some of them many more, in endeavouring to make
themselves well acquainted with disease. They are
every whit as legal and as professional as your-
QUALIFIED PRACTITIONERS.
143
self, and therefore the advice you have so fre-
quently given is of no avail; it is not applicable to
the state of the case, and it cannot be followed.
In like manner the resolutions of medical societies
and the ordinances of medical colleges cannot stand
their ground any better. If not rescinded voluntarily
and with some acknowledgment of error, they will be
abrogated by lawful authority, or torn to pieces by
the force of circumstances. No violent efforts at ex-
pulsion or exclusion can extinguish the light which
has been kindled; it may, perhaps, be smothered for
a time, but only to break out again afterwards with a
brighter flame.
Let medical men listen to wiser counsels; a divided
house may be restored to unity and peace, and the
present unhappy heartburnings and jealousies may
be banished by the exhibition of a more Christian
spirit, and by the adoption of more appropriate
measures. Let wrath, and anger, and clamour, and
evil speaking, be put away, and let men learn to be
just and kind one to another; let the obnoxious
college by-laws be withdrawn; let a general invi-
tation to medical men be issued, to give the new
method a fair practical examination; let it be tried,
under fitting circumstances, in public institutions,
and let proper reports of all these trials be published;
and, on the part of homoeopathists, let all unessential
matters be relinquished, and let them abstain from
words of provocation or triumph.
9. And now, Sir Benjamin, I think I have
144
CONCLUSION.
noticed all the points of your letter. I have done so
without shrinking from any of them, and as fully as
the very limited time allowed me has permitted. I
have not been able to make any references but those
with which memory supplied me, but I have written
freely and confidently from what my own observation
and experience have taught me. The opportunity
has enabled me to present the law of the new method
in a modified form, which, while it makes it more
comprehensive, will, I hope, also make it less ob-
jectionable to you and those who think with you; I
have, for the first time, suggested a law for the
selection of the dose, and I have introduced a drug
of great value into the materia medica.
The painful part has been that this had to be done
in opposition to one whom I was formerly led to con-
sider a friend, and for whom, for a large part of
my life, I have entertained a most sincere regard.
My classical friends will remember one who was
placed in a similar position : “ Δόξειε δ᾽ ἂν ἴσως βέλτιον
εἶναι ἐπὶ σωτ
αν
ɛîvai kai deйv éπì owτnpia," &c.—it is one's duty, when
the safety of truth is involved, to sacrifice one's private
feelings; for though both are dear to us, it is a sacred
duty to prefer the claims of truth.*
Farewell, Sir Benjamin, farewell. If we never meet
again until we stand together before the Great White
Throne, may we then meet in charity and peace; but,
that we may do so on that august occasion, we must
not leave this present life otherwise than in charity
and peace.
* Aristotle, Eth. Nic.'
APPENDIX.
THE following is the letter of Sir B. Brodie, which
is addressed to "J. S. S., Esq.," and printed in
'Fraser's Magazine' for September, 1861.
DEAR SIR,-You desire me to give you my opinion
of what is called homoeopathy. I can do so without
any great labour to myself, and without making any
exorbitant demand on your patience, as the question
really lies in very small compass, and what I have to
say on it may be expressed in very few words.
The subject may be viewed under different aspects.
We may inquire, first, whether homoeopathy be, of
itself, of any value, or of no value at all? secondly, in
what manner does it affect general society? and
thirdly, in what relation does it stand to the medical
profession?
I must first request of you to observe that, what-
ever I may think at present, I had originally no pre-
judice either in favour of or against this new system ;
nor do I believe that the members of the medical pro-
fession generally were in the first instance influenced
146
APPENDIX.
by any feelings of this kind. The fact is, that the
fault of the profession for the most part lies in the
opposite direction. They are too much inclined to
adopt any new theory or any new mode of treatment
that may have been proposed; the younger and more
inexperienced among them especially erring in this re-
spect, and too frequently indulging themselves in the
trial of novelties, disregarding old and established
remedies. For myself, I assure you that, whatever
opinion I may now hold, it has not been hastily formed.
I have made myself sufficiently acquainted with several
works which profess to disclose the mysteries of
homœopathy, especially that of Hahnemann, the
founder of the homoeopathic sect, and those of Dr.
Curie and Mr. Sharpe. The result is, that, with all
the pains that I have been able to take, I have been
unable to form any very distinct notion of the system
which they profess to teach. They all indeed begin
with laying down, as the foundation of it, the rule
that similia similibus curantur; or, in plain English,
that one disease is to be driven out of the body by
artificially creating another disease similar to it. But
there the resemblance ends. Hahnemann treats the
subject in one way, Dr. Curie in another, and Mr.
Sharpe in another way still. General principles are
asserted on the evidence of the most doubtful and
scanty facts; and the reasoning on them for the most
part is thoroughly puerile and illogical. I do not ask
you to take all this for granted, but would rather refer
you to the books themselves; being satisfied that any
APPENDIX.
147
one, though he may not be versed in the science of
medicine, who possesses good sense, and who has any
knowledge of the caution with which all scientific in-
vestigations should be conducted, will arrive at the
same conclusions as myself.
But, subordinate to the rule to which I have just
referred, there is another, which, by some of the
homœopathic writers, is held to be of great import-
ance, and which is certainly the more remarkable one
of the two. The doses of medicine administered by
ordinary practitioners are represented to be very much
too large. It is unsafe to have recourse to them, un-
less reduced to an almost infinitesimal point; not only
to the millionth, but sometimes even to the billionth of
a grain. Now observe what this means. Supposing
one drop of liquid medicine to be equivalent to one
grain, then, in order to obtain the millionth part of
that dose, you must dissolve that drop in thirteen
gallons of water, and administer only one drop of that
solution; while in order to obtain the billionth of a
grain, you must dissolve the aforesaid drop in 217,014
hogsheads of water. Of course, it is plain that this
could not practically be accomplished, except by suc-
cessive dilutions; and this would be a troublesome
process. Whether it be at all probable that any one
ever undertook to carry it out, I leave you to judge. At
any rate, I conceive that there is no reasonable person
who would not regard the exhibition of medicine in so
diluted a form as being equivalent to no treatment
at all.
Uor M
148
APPENDIX.
*
*
*
*
*
But however this may be, I may be met by the
assertion that there is undoubted evidence that a great
number of persons recover from their complaints under
homœopathic treatment, and I do not pretend in the
least degree to deny it. In a discourse addressed by
myself to the students of St. George's Hospital, in the
year 1838, I find the following remarks:-"There is
another inquiry which should be always made, before
you determine on the adoption of a particular method
of treatment; what will happen in this case, if no
remedies whatever be employed, if the patient be left
altogether to nature or to the efforts of his own con-
stitution?
The animal system is not like a clock, or a steam-
engine, which, being broken, you must send to the
clockmaker or engineer to mend it; and which cannot
be repaired otherwise. The living machine, unlike
the works of human invention, has the power of re-
pairing itself; it contains within itself its own engineer,
who, for the most part, requires no more than some
very slight assistance at our hands." This truth
admits, indeed, of a very large application. If the
arts of medicine and surgery had never been invented,
by far the greater number of those who suffer from
bodily illness would have recovered nevertheless. An
experienced and judicious medical practitioner knows
this very well; and considers it to be his duty, in
the great majority of cases, not so much to interfere
by any active treatment, as to take care that nothing
should obstruct the natural process of recovery; and
1
APPENDIX.
149
to watch lest, in the progress of the case, any new
circumstance should arise which would make his active
interference necessary. If any one were to engage in
practice, giving his patients nothing but a little dis-
tilled water, and enjoining a careful diet, and a prudent
mode of life otherwise, a certain number of his patients
would perish from the want of further help; but more
would recover; and homoeopathic globules are, I
doubt not, quite as good as distilled water.
But this does not account for all the success of
homœopathy. In this country there is a large pro-
portion of individuals who have plenty of money, com-
bined with a great lack of employment; and it is
astonishing to what an extent such persons contrive to
imagine diseases for themselves. There is no animal
machine so perfect that there may not at times be
some creaking in it. Want of exercise, irregularity as
to diet, a little worry of mind-these, and a thousand
other causes, may occasion uneasy feelings, to which
constant attention and thinking of them will give a
reality which they would not have had otherwise; and
such feelings will disappear as well under the use of
globules as they would under any other mode of
treatment, or under no treatment all.
What I have now mentioned will go far towards
explaining the success of homoeopathy. But other
circumstances occur every now and then, from which,
when they do occur, it profits to a still greater extent.
Humanum est errare. From the operation of this
universal law medical practitioners are not exempt, any
150
APPENDIX.
more than statesmen, divines, lawyers, engineers, or
any other profession. There are cases in which there
is a greater chance of too much than too little being
done for the patient; and if a patient under such cir-
cumstances becomes the subject of homoeopathic treat-
ment, this being no treatment at all, he actually derives
benefit from the change.
:
In a discourse to which I have already alluded,
I thought it my duty to offer the following caution
to my pupils:-"The first question which should
present itself to you in the management of a particular
case is this is the disease one of which the patient
may recover, or is it not? There are indeed too many
cases in which the patient's condition is so manifestly
hopeless, that the fact cannot be overlooked. Let
me, however, caution you that you do not in any in-
stance arrive too hastily at this conclusion. Our know-
ledge is not so absolute and certain as to prevent even
well-informed persons being occasionally mistaken on
this point. This is true, especially with respect to the
affections of internal organs. Individuals have been
restored to health who were supposed to be dying of
disease in the lungs or mesenteric glands." * *
"It is a good rule in the practice of our art, as in the
common affairs of life, for us to look on the favor-
able side of the question, as far as we can consistently
with reason do so. I might have added that hysteri-
cal affections are especially a source of error to not
very experienced practitioners, by simulating more
serious disease; seeming to resist for a time all the
>>
APPENDIX.
151
efforts of art, and then all at once subsiding under
any kind of treatment, or, just as well, under none at
all. Now, if it should so happen that a medical prac-
titioner, from want of knowledge, or from a natural
defect of judgment, makes a mistake in his diagnosis,
and the patient whom he had unsuccessfully treated
afterwards recovers under the care of another prac-
titioner, it is simply said "Dr. A. was mistaken;" and
it is not considered as any thing very remarkable that
the symptoms should subside while under the care of
Dr. B. But if, on the other hand, the recovery takes
place under the care of a homoeopathist, or any other
empiric, the circumstance excites a much larger portion
of attention; and we really cannot very well wonder
that, with such knowledge as they possess of these
matters, the empiric should gain much credit with the
public.
So far the practical result would seem to be that
homœopathy can be productive of no great harm; and
indeed, considering it to be no treatment at all, when-
ever it is a substitute for bad treatment, it must be the
better of the two. But there is great harm neverthe-
less. There are numerous cases in which spontaneous
recovery is out of the question; in which sometimes
the life or death of the patient, and at other times
the comfort or discomfort of his existence for a long
time to come, depends on the prompt application of
active and judicious treatment. In such cases homœo-
pathy is neither more nor less than a mischievous ab-
surdity; and I do not hesitate to say that a very
152
APPENDIX.
large number of persons have fallen victims to the
faith which they reposed in it, and to the consequent
delay in having recourse to the use of proper remedies.
It is true that it very rarely happens, when any symp-
toms show themselves which give real alarm to the
patient or his friends, that they do not dismiss the
homœopathist and send for a regular practitioner ;
but it may well be that by this time the mischief is
done, the case being advanced beyond the reach of
art.
That the habit of resorting to homoeopathic treat-
ment which has prevailed in some parts of society
should have occasioned much dissatisfaction among
the mass of medical practitioners, is no matter of won-
der. It cannot be otherwise than provoking, to those
who have passed three or four years of the best part
of their lives in endeavouring to make themselves well
acquainted with disease, in the wards of a hospital, to
find that there are some among their patients who re-
sort to them for advice only when their complaints
have assumed a more painful or dangerous character;
while they are set aside in ordinary cases, which in-
volve a smaller amount of anxiety and responsibility,
in favour of some homoeopathic doctor, who, very
probably, never studied disease at all. But it cannot
be helped. In all times there have been pretenders,
who have persuaded a certain part of the public that
they have some peculiar knowledge of a royal road to
cure, which those of the regular craft have not. It is
homœopathy now; it was something else formerly;
APPENDIX.
153
and if homœopathy were to be extinguished, there
would be something else in its place. The medical
profession must be contented to let the thing take its
course; and they will best consult their own dignity,
and the good of the public, by saying as little as pos-
sible about it. The discussions as to the evils of ho-
mœopathy which have sometimes taken place at public
meetings, have quite an opposite effect to that which
they were intended to produce. They have led some
to believe that homoeopathists are rather a persecuted
race, and have given to the system which they pursue
an importance which it would never have had other-
wise; just as any absurd or fanatical sect in religion
would gain proselytes if it could only make others
believe that it was an object of jealousy and persecu-
tion. After all, the harm done to the regular profession
is not so great as many suppose it to be; a very large
proportion of the complaints about which homoeo-
pathists are consulted being really no complaints at
all, for which a respectable practitioner would scarcely
think it right to prescribe.
There was a time when many of the medical pro-
fession held the opinion that not only homœopathy,
but all other kinds of quackery, ought to be put down
by the strong hand of the law. I imagine that there
are very few who hold that opinion now. The fact is,
that the thing is impossible; and even if it were pos-
sible as it is plain that the profession cannot do all that
is wanted of them, by curing all kinds of disease, and
making men immortal-such an interference with the
10
154
APPENDIX.
H
liberty of individuals to consult whom they please
would be absurd and wrong. As it now is, the law
forbids the employment in any public institution of
any one who is not registered as being a qualified
medical practitioner, after a due examination by some
of the constituted authorities; and it can go no fur-
ther. The only effectual opposition which the medical
profession can offer to homoeopathy, is by individually
taking all possible pains to avoid, on their own part,
those errors of diagnosis by means of which, more than
anything else, the professors of homoeopathy thrive
and flourish; by continuing in all ways to act honor-
ably by the public; at the same time never being in-
duced, either by good nature or by any motives of
self-interest, to appear to give their sanction to a sys-
tem which they know to have no foundation in reality.
To join with homoeopathists in attendance on cases of
either medical or surgical disease, would be neither
wise nor honest. The object of a medical consultation
is the good of the patient; and we cannot suppose
that any such result can arise from the interchange of
opinions, where the views entertained, or professed to
be entertained, by one of the parties as to the nature
and treatment of disease, are wholly unintelligible to
the other.
I am, dear Sir,
Yours, &c.,
B. C. BRODIE.
The following letter from Sir B. Brodie, on the
APPENDIX.
155
same subject, has been published in the medical jour-
nals, dated Betchworth, July 27th, 1861.
k
"I feel confident that our profession generally will
do me the justice to believe that I would not, either
directly or indirectly, do anything that would in any
way sanction a system so absurd and nonsensical as I
know the so-called homoeopathy to be.
Having been in the habit of seeing, especially at
my own house, many patients attended by prac-
titioners of whom I had no knowledge, I cannot say
that I may not by accident have occasionally seen
some one attended by a homoeopathist; but I have
never knowingly done so; and I do not think that
any well-educated medical practitioner can honestly
meet one of these homoeopathists in consultation.
The only object of a consultation is to do good to the
patient; and it is out of the question to suppose that
any interchange of idea with one in whose professed
opinions we have not the smallest faith, and whose
notions, indeed, we cannot comprehend, can tend to
this result."
I have alluded to Mr. Fergusson, one of Her
Majesty's surgeons-extraordinary, in consequence of
the manner in which he has acted in the matter of
consultations with medical men who have adopted
homoeopathic practice; it seems necessary, therefore,
to add his letters to those of Sir B. Brodie. The
156
APPENDIX.
whole will, no doubt, be looked upon hereafter as
an edifying but melancholy picture of the condition
of the medical profession in England in the year
1861.
I.
The 'Lancet,' May 8th, 1858.
ર
"To the Editor of the Lancet.'
SIR,-In compliance with your courteous notice
in the 'Lancet' last week, I beg to state that I accom-
panied Dr. Bell to Lincolnshire, on the 26th of Feb-
ruary last, to see an urgent surgical case. I have not
seen the patient since.
"I do not consult with homoeopaths; and I am not
and never have been, in attendance on a noble duke
in conjunction with a homoeopath.
"I have no faith in homoeopathy. I give no en-
couragement to homoeopaths to consult me. I never
refuse my surgical assistance when it is called for in
any urgent or important case; and were a fatal result
to arise from any neglect of mine, I should consider my
conduct unjustifiable.
"I have the honour to be, Sir,
Your obedient, humble servant,
(Signed)
"WM. FERGUSSON.
CC
George St., Hanover Square;
"May 7th, 1858."
2
APPENDIX.
157
II.
The 'Lancet,' July 20th, 1861.
"The late Elections at the Royal College of Surgeons.
<C
*
"To the Editor of the Lancet.'
SIR,-Three years ago a clamour was raised
against me for alleged communion with homoeopaths.
In consequence of an urgent and courteous appeal on
your part, I sent a note of explanation, which you did
me the favour to publish in your number for May 8th,
1858. That explanation was accepted by some, but
not by others; although, as far as I know, my name
has not since been publicly associated with the subject
until within the last few weeks.
I
"Recent events at the College of Surgeons have
given occasion to a revival of the clamour referred to,
and my orthodoxy has been again challenged.
might refer to the note above alluded to, as my answer
now, as it was then; but years make a difference in
various ways, and I shall, with your leave, say a little
more than when I last addressed you.
"The fault of which I was accused three years ago,
was that I travelled in company with a homoeopath to
relieve a gentleman of retention of urine, when the
regular surgeon in attendance had failed; and I was
further accused of holding consultations with homœo-
paths. The former charge I admitted, and the latter
I distinctly denied. In addition, I stated that I had
no faith in homoeopathy,' and that I gave no en-
158
APPENDIX.
couragement to homœopaths to consult me.' I added
further, that I never refused my surgical services in
any important case where they might be required, and
would hold my conduct unjustifiable if any evil or
fatal result ensued from negligence or refusal on my
part.
"To all these views I hold as strongly now as I did
at the time in question. I still do not consult with
homœopaths; I still have no faith in homoeopathy,
and I still give no encouragement to homœopaths to
consult me.
CC
I never intended, and do not wish now, to have
or leave room for any quibble on these points. I
have been told that to meet a homoeopath, in any way
in a case, is to consult with him, and that therefore
my denial is worthless; that such meeting amounts to
a consultation. With those who take this view I at
once plead guilty. I am occasionally consulted by
homœopaths, (as I know other surgeons are,) and,
hearing their history of a case in clearer terms than
from the patient or a friend, I give a surgical opinion;
with this the interview ends. From first to last there
is not a word about homoeopathy introduced; but
should there be, I invariably let the patient know that
I have no faith in such doctrine, and that I am giving
my opinion solely as a surgeon.
(6
I am not aware that I have met with any man
who has stronger views, prepossessions, or objections
against homœopathy, than I have. No homoeopath
can say that I ever ceded to him one tittle on homeo-
APPENDIX.
159
pathic principles; and as a public teacher of thirty-
five years' standing, I appeal to my numerous pupils
with the utmost confidence that they will free me from
the imputation of ever having encouraged such
doctrines.
"I have the honour to be, Sir,
(Signed)
CC
Your most obedient servant,
"WILLIAM FERGUSSON, F.R.C.S.
George Street, Hanover Square; July, 1861."
III.
The Medical Circular,' August 21st, 1861.
<
To the Editor of the Medical Circular.'
"SIR,-The explanations I offered in my lettter to
the Lancet' of the 20th July last, regarding my
alleged communion with homoeopaths, not appearing
satisfactory to the profession, I beg to state that for
the future I shall feel it incumbent on me to decline
any meeting or so-called consultation with homeopathic
practitioners.
"Enjoying a large share of professional confidence,
and holding various important public appointments,
I should consider myself unworthy of such honours
were 1, at the present time, to offer any objections to
160
APPENDIX.
the expressed wishes and declared opinions of my
professional brethren.
"I am, &c.,
(Signed)
"WM. FERGUSSON.
"16, George Street, Hanover Square ;
August 12th, 1861."
Alas! for conscience, poor brow-beaten conscience,
when, after all the vindications it can offer, only a
tumult is made, and the "clamour" increases!
And so Mr. Fergusson's conscience has been telling
him, for three years past, that to refuse to help a sur-
gical patient, at the request of any professional brother,
would be unjustifiable conduct.
But the medical brother holds views on medical
treatment which Mr. Fergusson has not investigated,
and therefore does not understand; a "clamour" is
raised, his conscience must yield and be silenced, and
the patient be refused his help, though a fatal result
ensue!
Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that
thing which he alloweth."
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ment. Iu cloth case, 1s. 6d.; in sheet, ls.
WILLIAMSON (DR. WALTER). DISEASES OF FEMALES AND
their Homœopathic Treatment; containing also a full description of the
Dose of each Medicine. Second English Edition. Cloth, 2s.
WOLF (DR. C. W.) APIS-MELLIFICA; OR, THE POISON OF THE
Honey-Bee, considered as a Therapeutic Agent. In stiff cover, 1s. 6d.
YELDHAM (S., M.R.C.S.) THE MORAL EVIDENCES OF HOMŒO-
pathy. Two Lectures delivered at the Homeopathic Hospital. Sewed, 6d.
YELDHAM (S., M.R.C.S.) REMARKS ON THE DIFFERENT MODES
of administering Homeopathic Medicines, with a view to the disuse of the
Globule. Sewed, 3d.
YELDHAM (S., M.R.C.S.) ARNICA, RHUS, AND CALENDULA. A
Lecture on Surgery as Modified by Homœopathy,' delivered at the
London Homœopathic Hospital. Sewed, 6d.
YOUNG (DR. G. H.) HOMEOPATHY, WHAT IT IS, AND WHY IT
should be adopted. Sewed, 6d.
New Books and Pamphlets on Homœopathy published in this
country are supplied as soon as issued, and New American
Works, imported as soon as possible after their issue, are punc-
tually supplied on their arrival.
HENRY TURNER AND CO.,
Homeopathic Chemists and Medical Publishers,
77, FLEET STREET, LONDON, E.C.,
AND
41, PICCADILLY, AND 15, MARKET STREET, MANCHESTER.
OTHER WORKS BY DR. SHARP.
Demy 8vo, pp. 347, price 5s., extra cloth.
An Investigation of Homeopathy,
IN A SERIES OF ESSAYS.
SEVENTH EDITION.
TRACTS ON HOMEOPATHY.
1. What is Homœopathy? Eighth Edition.
2. The Defence of Homœopathy. Sixth Edition.
3. The Truth of Homœopathy. Sixth Edition.
4.
The Small Dose of Homœopathy. Sixth Edition. (Single numbers out of print.)
5. The Difficulties of Homœopathy. Third Edition.
6. The Advantages of Homœopathy. Third Edition.
7. The Principle of Homœopathy. Third Edition.
8. The Controversy on Homœopathy. Second Edition. (Single numbers out of print.)
9. The Remedies of Homœopathy. Second Edition.
10. The Provings of Homœopathy. Third Edition.
11. The Single Medicine of Homœopathy.
12. The Common Sense of Homœopathy.
Third Edition.
Third Edition.
In all, 48 Editions, comprising 173,000 Copies. The Series was
begun in 1852, and completed in 1854.
The Series of 12, complete in stiff covers, 2s., or the single parts
not out of print, may be had separately, at 2d. each.
LONDON:
HENRY TURNER AND CO., 77, FLEET STREET, E.C.
MANCHESTER :-41, PICCADILLY, AND 15, MARKET STREET.
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