History
of Homœopathy : Its Origin ; Its Conflicts.
by Wilhelm
Ameke, M. D.
Presented by Dr
Robert Séror.
Part
II : Opposition to Homœopathy.
The tragic fate which the Austrian Imperial Family experienced,
through their ” rational ” advisers, reminds us of the like
fate which befel other intellectually distinguished men through
rational treatment. How, for instance, didGoethe
fare in this respect ? He makes the following remarks on homoeopathy :
— [Vol. XXXII. of his Works,
p. 184.
Hufeland’s Journal, Vol. LXXVII., st. 3,
p. 4]
Prince Karl Phillip von SCHWARZENBERG
Both [he is speaking of Count Paar and Antony Yrokesch, adjutants
of PrinceSchwarzenberg]
conversant with Hahnemann’s
system, on which this great prince had set his hopes, made me
thoroughly acquainted with it, and it seemed to me that anyone who
pays attention to his health and observes a suitable diet,
unconsciously approximates to this method.Hofrath Dr.
Pitschaft
quotes this opinion about homoeopathy, and adds, how truly and
delicately he expresses himself in reference to the prince.”
Goethe’s
opinion cannot
be said to be more opposed to the homoeopaths than that of Jean
Paul was in their favour.He says : ”
Hahnemann,
that rare combination of philosophy and learning, whose system must
eventually bring about the ruin of the ordinary receipt-crammed heads,
but is still little accepted by practitioners, and rather shunned than
investigated.” [Zerstr.
Blätter, Vol. II., p. 392,
Stapf, l.c. I., p. 1.]It almost seems to us as if Jean Paul had penetrated deeper into
the matter than Goethe with his diplomatic utterance, and it would
have been to the interest of the latter to make himself more
intimately acquainted withHahnemann.
The account of his illness confirms this.
Hufeland’s
remarks [Hufeland’s Journal, 1833,
St. 1,
p. 31.]
(from 1783
to 1790,
he enjoyed intercourse with Goethe,
both as doctor and friend) are well known :I have never met with a man who was so largely gifted by heaven,
both bodily and mentally ; he was, indeed, a model of the most perfect
man.It was not only the power that to such an extraordinary degree
animated both his body and soul which extorted admiration, but still
more the splendid balance of his qualities, both physical and
intellectual, and the beautiful harmony of body and mind, so that
neither lived at the cost of the other or disturbed its action.
Goethe’s maladies and their rational
treatment.In December,
1830,
Goethe
was attacked by haemorrhage from the lungs, in consequence — as his
doctor, Vogel,
thought — of grief at losing his son.He recovered from this, though, in his last years the weaknesses of
old age, especially stiffness of the limbs, failure of memory for
recent occurrences, occasional inability to understand clearly and
quickly what was presented, and, besides these symptoms, deafness,
became noticeable in him.His former great activity of thought, as also the agility of his
muscular movements, diminished perceptibly from year to year, while
his usual difficulty in forming a decision increased.The above-mentioned haemorrhage filled ” a large and deep
washing basin half full,” and, at the same time,Vogel
bled the old man to the amount of two pounds.
Goethe
ate a great deal,
and even when he complained of want of appetite he often ate much more
than other younger healthy persons. He never owned to faults of diet,
however often he may have been guilty of them. His want of
self-restraint in eating, naturally enough often caused indigestion.This was remedied by daily pills of assa foetida, rhubarb and jalap
and clysters.Occasionally, too, some spoonfuls of tincture of rhubarb and some
Epsom salts were necessary. As his friendSchiller
liked the exhalation from rotten apples, so Goethe
liked the close air of a room.He could with the greatest difficulty be induced to open a window,
that fresh air might be let into his bedroom and study.
Goethe
had, owing to his
great productive tendency, at all periods of his life made much blood.
Formerly his blood-making was in favourable proportion to his
blood-consumption.In the latter years of his life, however, owing to his complete
abandonment of bodily exercise, while he continued to eat abundantly,
he became very full-blooded, and this state urgently required copious
artificial blood-letting by venesection from time to time.We have already mentioned that his doctor allowed him to take
aperients every day, and “he drank besides Kreuzbrunnen mineral
water every day, taking every year over400
bottles.”
Hufeland
remarks in a
postscript :Productivity, both mental and physical, was
Goethe’s
main characteristic ; and in the latter it was shown by rich
nutrition, extremely rapid sanguinification and reproduction, curative
crises in illness, and a fulness of blood.Therefore, in his old age, hemorrhagic crises and the necessity for
bleeding.We will not take upon ourselves to pass judgment on the treatment
ofGoethe’s
last illness, in spite of the numerous medicines he was obliged to
swallow.The report of his illness is of very great interest on account of
the information as toGoethe’s
habits of life and views that it contains.But to say that the daily administered aperients, the unremitting
use of such a strong mineral water, and the repeated ” copious
” bleedings (and we know what that meant in those blood-thirsty
days,) must have injured the valuable life of this man, can hardly
appear an exaggeration now-a-days.A physician like
Hahnemann,
who did not live far from Weimar, and who was such an advocate for
fresh air, would certainly, if consulted, have energetically insisted
upon its necessity for Goethe.A doctor, by taking a firm stand and by persistent sensible
persuasion, can conquer any prejudice.
Cavour’s scientific physicians.
That Raphael, Mirabeau, Lord Byron, Gessner, &c., were severely
injured by bleeding, that Louis XIII. was bled forty-seven times in
one year by his physicianBouvard,
besides taking 215
purgatives and emetics and 312
clysters ; that several members of the family of Louis XIV. were
killed by bleeding, even according to the testimony of the allopaths
of that day, and that Louis XV. did not fare much better in common
with very many other remarkable men, all this we will not enter into
here ; but we are interested in Cavour’s
fate. [Related at length at the
end of Count Cavour’s Life and Labours, by Guiseppe Massari, Jena, 1874.]After a stormy sitting of Parliament on
29th
May, 1861,
in Turin, Cavour
was seized with slight febrile rigor, to which in the following night
” violent pains in the bowels ” and vomiting were added.
Blood was drawn ” which relieved the patient.” On the
following morning, the 30
th May, he was bled a second time, and again in the evening of the
same day, at five o’clock, a third time. That is three bleedings in
twenty-four hours !Violent fever succeeded, the patient was ” very weak and
suffering.”He passed a good night ! Friday, the
31st,
the fever disappeared, so that Cavour
was able to hold a Council which assembled round his bedside for two
hours.In the evening he became very feverish. Quinine did no good. On the
1st
of June he was again bled twice — a quiet night followed. On the
following day, June 2nd,
he was pale and weak, his left hand and forearm cold as marble (the
natural consequence of the enormous loss of blood).On attempting to leave his bed the wound in the vein reopened, and
the profuse bleeding could not be stopped till a surgeon was called
in. Some hours later violent fever, shortness of breath, confusion of
ideas. The night was very bad, and the next morning his excitement
increased, his breathing became shorter, and severe thirst set in
(results of the loss of blood).Cavour
begged that a vein might be opened, this alone, he thought, could save
him.The physician was quickly summoned, he consented, and a surgeon was
sent for who made a new incision but no blood flowed ; by pressing the
vein he succeeded in drawing off two or three ounces of thick blood.
The incisions of the veins made on the first day were not healed. The
consulting physicians prescribed a solution of sulphate of quinine.
Cavour
begged it might be
administered in the form of a pill, because he knew that the taste of
the quinine would cause him to vomit. The doctors refused, they
thought a solution better. He took the medicine with great repugnance,
vomiting followed, and was renewed each time he attempted to take the
drug, which he would only do at the persuasion of the friends who
surrounded him. In the following night high fever and delirium.Ice compresses on the head and mustard plasters on the legs. The
next night he was very bad again. Next morning cupping glasses were
applied to the nape, and again blisters on the legs. But the blisters
would not rise and the painful application of the cupping glasses was
not, felt by the patient.Victor Emmanuel, who visited his Minister just before his death,
proposed to the doctors to open a vein in his neck. The doctors
promised to take the proposal into consideration ; but death prevented
them.
Cavour
died suffering
from unquenchable thirst. [The
case of the Princess Charlotte is a good pendant to the above.
“The princess was very well — indeed, in the opinion of the
physicians, she was ‘too well.’ For some time past they had kept down
her `abundance of humours’ by repeated bleedings and the meagerest
possible fare….. And so the unhappy princess, after a hard struggle
of 52
hours, bore a dead boy, on the 5th
November, 1817,
and 5
hours afterwards was herself a corpse.” — Mem. of Karoline Bauer,
II., 260.
— [ED.]
Homoeopaths unscientific
impostors.Before we leave the subject of the contest about the coarse views
of “science” and about blood-letting, we should add that the
opponents who attacked the homoeopaths in the most violent manner on
account of their neglect of blood-letting, almost all expressly stated
that anxiety for the public weal made them take the pen in hand,
because every year thousands were sacrificed to the bloodless
treatment, the “imposture” and “quackery” of
homoeopathy.When the homoeopaths asserted that by their mode of treatment they
obtained better results, that was ” a lie,” ” the
homoeopaths did not themselves believe it.”If patients affected with serious diseases recovered, their
diseases were only ” slight,” and the homoeopaths had made a
false diagnosis, a trivial indisposition was exaggerated by the ”
impostors ” into a severe malady, in order to throw dust in
people’s eyes.But if, for instance, a case of pneumonia died, in spite of
homoeopathic treatment, it was certain that ” energetic
treatment,” blood-letting, &c., in short,
“scientific” therapeutics would have saved the patient.Homoeopathic literature abounds with authentic instances of the
incredible persecution they were subjected to in consequence of their
rejection of bleeding, emetics, &c.I will give one other example of how the allopaths in their
periodical literature took every opportunity of acrimoniously accusing
their opponents of repudiating ” scientific ” treatment.The following evidently highly-coloured versions of certain cases,
taken fromWalther’s
journal f. Chirurgie, were
given in Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher : [Vol.
VI., 1835,
pp. 146
and 153.]
Fatal results of not bleeding.
A healthy, robust, blooming servant girl, about twenty years old,
was seized with simple rheumatic bilious fever and placed herself
under the care of a qualified physician, and after a few weeks died in
great agony and delirious.The patient had throughout got no purgatives, neither had she been
bled ; the physician had contented himself with the administration of
some of the new-fangled remedies.At the post-mortem the viscera, especially the stomach, were found
gangrenous in places ; the mesentery and intestines showed signs of
intense inflammation ; the walls of the small intestine were thickened
and studded with elevations which, on section, were seen to contain a
quantity of corroded villous intestinal membrane and partially
inclosed orange-coloured biliary matter which had caused ulceration.The large intestine was full of impacted fasces. A considerable
quantity of blood had escaped into the pleural cavity and the lungs
were intensely inflamed.A case of apoplexy, which had passed from homoeopathic into
allopathic hands, is then described :In spite of a rational physician having been called in, and the
best known remedies for sanguineous apoplexy having been administered
the patient could not be saved, and died, in spite of everything
possible being done (venesection, &c.), in three days, leaving a
widow and numerous small children.The author has seen similar cases in the time when
Brown’s
plan of treatment was the rage ; where patients suffering from fever,
to whom a sensible physician would have administered emetics and
laxatives for the excess of bile, were treated by the benighted Brownian,
who dreaded the supervention of asthenia, with cinchona and camphor,
and perished miserably, suffering from terrible colic, distortion of
the features, aberration of the mind, obviously from internal
inflammation, cursing and abusing the physician, &c.He must have been an intrepid fellow to leave this earthly scene
cursing and abusing, and theBrownian
was certainly wrong in thinking he had to do with asthenia.Such outbreaks of partizan animosity were readily admitted into the
most serious allopathic journals (Ph. VonWalter,
the editor, was, as is well-known, the preceptor of Schonlein
and Johannes Müller),
and Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher considered
them suitable for a still wider circle of readers.If the allopaths expressed themselves with such virulence in
scientific journals, we may imagine what animosity they displayed in
their intercourse with the public.
A temperate opponent. Oberhofrath Kopp on
Homoeopathy.Kopp
wrote a work
entitled :
Experiences gained and observations made during a trial of
Homoeopathy at the sick bed,by
Dr. J. H. Kopp,
Oberhofrath, President of the Wetterau Society of Natural Science,
&c., Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1832.
Hufeland
thus speaks of Kopp
: — [Hufeland’s Journal, 1833,
st. II, p. 93.]When a physician like
Kopp,
who is recognised by the whole medical public as one of their most
estimable, thoughtful and experienced physicians, distinguished also
by his powers of practical observation, expresses an opinion on this
new and important subject, he deserves our full attention.It has long been our wish that such a man should devote his
attention to an impartial examination of homoeopathy. But a rare
combination of qualities is required for such a purpose.The greatest love of truth and impartiality, no prejudice against
the matter in hand, but rather the hope and the wish to find in it
something good and helpful to medicine, readiness to accept all that
is good and useful, even if presented in the strangest form, and, as
in the case of homoeopathy, in the most repulsive manner, a complete
knowledge of, and long experience in medicine as it has been practised
up till now, and likewise a complete study and a long and extensive
experience in homoeopathy ; and, finally, what is required to crown
the whole, a calm, benevolent mind, and a spirit ennobled and raised
above the vulgar herd by true and wide culture. Happily, these
qualities are all united inKopp.
Hufeland
quotes some
sentences from him which accord with his own ideas, and speaks
particularly of his views on the subject of bleeding without
criticizing them. Kopp
held similar views respecting homoeopathy to those of Hufeland.
Hufeland
was never
violently attacked by the allopaths on this account. He was the head,
so to speak, of the family of physicians, and was respected and
honoured by the allopaths to an extent to which the history of
medicine in Germany offers no parallel.Among foreigners only
Boerhaave
can be compared with him in this respect.If
Hufeland
was attacked he always replied in a mild but firm and dignified tone,
confining his remarks to the matter in hand.
Kopp’s moderation pleases neither
side. His views.We will only recall the case of
Röschlaub,
Professor of Medicine at Landshut, and his excitement theory.
Hufeland
opposed him ; Röschlaub
became violent ; Hufeland
never lost his calm though decided tone. So the contest lasted between
these two men, through a whole decade, to the year 1806.
Five years later Röschlaub,
who was an energetic, self-reliant man, publicly owned his faults
towards Hufeland,
[Hufeland’s Journal, 1811,
Vol. XXXII., st. I, p. 3.]
and publicly apologized to him ;
a rare occurrence that does honour to both men, as a writer justly
remarks.A proof of how thoroughly
Hufeland
deserved this respect is furnished by his article in the 2nd
part of the 32nd
volume of his Journal, “An
account rendered to the public of my attitude towards Brownism.”In spite of all the personal attacks on him on the part of Brown’s
adherents, he had never defended himself personally, although by
reason of this forbearance he was frequently misunderstood and
misrepresented, of which evenSprengel
gives an example in his History
of Medicine.
Hufeland
had kept silence
in order not to embitter the strife unnecessarily. ” I was only
concerned on behalf of the truth.” With regard to his zeal for
medical science, he says, ” Not only with my understanding, but
with my whole being have I embraced this science ; it has become my
life.”
Kopp
was also highly
respected, but he was not Hufeland
; the allopaths, Simon
and Sachs,
attacked him some time after the homoeopaths had entered the lists
against him.
Kopp
was thus exposed to
a cross fire, and was on thoroughly bad terms with both parties. In
spite, however, of the violence of the attacks no one omitted to
express his respect for Kopp’s
learning, his practical skill, and honest, zealous endeavours after
truth — with the exception, indeed, of Simon,
who, when Sachs
called him “estimable” added a point of interrogation.Nothing was sacred to
Simon
; no, weapon was too bad for him to use against homoeopathy and
against his enemies — Krüger–Hansen
for example.
Kopp
says :
Even though I willingly accept the results of experience in the new
doctrine that commend themselves to me, yet I condemn the system.Judging from its present course, homeopathy, in the hands of
homoeopathists themselves will, after a few years, take an entirely
different shape. — (Preface).The treatment of diseases according to “general
indications,” as it is called, has done harm. The practitioner,
who is acquainted with the specific powers of medicines and
understands how to employ them in disease, practises medicine most
successfully (p.5).
Undoubtedly burnt sponge has an elective affinity for the throat,
phosphoric acid acts specially on the sexual organs, sabina and ergot
on the uterus, copaiba on the urethra, squills and cantharides on the
urinary passages, boletus laricis on the capillaries of the skin,
iodine on the glands, hepar sulphuris on the trachea. Each drug acts
specifically on one or more organs ; that is, it acts more powerfully
and strikingly, specially or exclusively on one or more organs (p.6).
If we regard homeopathy from this point of view — that its work
is to investigate the specific qualities of medicines — it must be
attractive to every physician. It is not the theory advanced byHahnemann
–his so-called system — but the experiences and experimental
investigations on which it is founded which form the essential part of
homeopathy (p. 8).
In the form in which Hahnemann
enunciated homeopathy, it will hardly be followed by any, even
ultra-homeopathic practitioners (p. 9).Homeopathy could hardly find a more general acceptance in its
present form among medical men — especially not in France and
England ; the older practitioners rarely occupy themselves with it
because it is so far removed from the common practice, because its
study is difficult and wearisome, and because they have been
disappointed with many former systems.As a rule, however, all medical men who have not engaged in the
practice of homoeopathy are opposed to it, and its bitterest enemies
are those who do not sufficiently know it.Everyone who wishes to judge homeopathy should test it at the sick
bed…..Hahnemann’s
system may pass away, but his experiences, if they are proved to be
new and true, will remain for ever (p. 11).The study of the specific remedies of homeopathy may be of
advantage even to allopaths : observation of the effects of remedies
on healthy persons ; a closer and more thorough acquaintance with
medicinal substances, and especially their specific properties ; the
avoidance of haphazard mixtures and compounds ; attention directed to
diseases produced by medicines and their prevention ; simplicity of
prescriptions — the stamp of all good medical treatment ; care in
the choice of remedies ; knowledge of their sphere of action (p.14).
One good feature of
Hahnemann’s
system is undoubtedly the proving of remedies on healthy persons in
order to ascertain their specific powers. This plan of ascertaining
the powers of medicines has great advantages, and Hahnemann
has the inalienable merit of having discovered and enlarged it (p. 35).
Kopp’s respect for
Hahnemann’s
great services to medicine.We cannot fail to recognise the extent of
Hahnemann’s
talent if we consider how exhaustive were his investigations of
specific remedies, and with what difficulties he had to struggle in
pursuing this path.His observations of the effects of medicines on the disposition,
the temperature of the body, the sleep, with regard to thirst,
&c., in respect to the time of day or night, movement or rest,
contact, the time before or after eating, when in the open air or in
the room, as to the duration of the action of medicines, &c., bear
witness to the fertility of his genius and to his power of discovering
new and true points of view in the realm of nature.The proving of medicines on healthy persons alone does not suffice
to show the full range of their action ; experience at the sick bed is
also a necessary factor for this purpose.Hahnemann
‘s materia medica in
its present primitive condition must be purged of false and doubtful
statements.
Kopp
then attacks in
detail some paragraphs in Hahnemann’s
Organon, which
were even then only accepted
as true by few individuals and are now regarded as true by none ;
blames Hahnemann
because he presumes to usurp a dictatorship in medicine, and shows
that cures are not always effected homoeopathically, as Hahnemann
says they are.Then examples arc given of homoeopathic cures and failures. In
these cases it can be proved by the unsuccessful issue that he
frequently made a false selection of remedies.The treatment is sometimes complicated by the employment of
blisters, an inconsistency which is much to be blamed. Such accounts
arc only confusing. These half-and-half treatments could only
displease both sides.A physician who denies the efficacy of minute doses may be asked
whether he has ever thoroughly gauged the sensitiveness of the human
organism in both its extremes.It is true that homoeopathic closes do’ often effect rapid and
wonderful cures and without any attendant sufferings ; but they
frequently also have no effect at all [certainly, if the wrong
medicine is chosen].If I were member of a jury that was to give a verdict on the effect
of the homoeopathic dilutions, I could honestly say nothing else but
this : They are generally efficacious, but there are cases where no
effect is observed from their administration (p.114).
Kopp
was not prepared to
give up bleeding. He draws attention to the fact that in adult females
of all races blood is lost periodically. ” This is the weak side
of homoeopathy — it neglects general and local bleeding by
venesection and the application of leeches, and thereby endangers the
maintenance of the integrity of the organs and imperils health and
even life itself.”“A genuine allopathy and a moderate homeopathy more nearly
approach one another than is commonly supposed ; on either hand lie
the dangerous extremes.” If the homoeopaths had acceptedKopp’s
views, bleeding would be still in full swing.Hahnemann
‘s observations
respecting specific drugs are one thing, and the theory propounded by
him is another. We should be wrong to form our opinion of homoeopathy
only on the latter. While there is much that deserves attention and is
valuable and interesting to the physician in the former, one main
cause of the number of virulent opponents of homoeopathy is that
medical men were repelled from giving it a fair trial by the defects
of the Hahnemannic theory, as also by its novelty and by its being
directly contrary to the ordinary practice (p. 465).Any unprejudiced person following critically
Hahnemann’s
practical career, from his first appearance as an author, as a
teacher, as founder and master of a special school, will not be able
to deny his unflagging spirit of research, his speculative
originality, and the mighty intellectual power of the man.He strove to carry out courageously his bold plans with great
talent, knowledge of mankind and sagacity, the accumulated learning of
years, and a rare persistency. We see in him everywhere the
experimental observer who was in his earlier days an earnest and
diligent worker in the field of chemistry. His services in more
accurately ascertaining the specific properties of drugs and the great
sensitiveness of the human organism, are undeniable (p.471).
Simon
(Pseudomessias,
third part) speaks of Kopp
as a sensible practitioner and critic — ” an excellent
practitioner….. ” of ripe age and experience ” &c.,
&c.
Sachs
[Die
Homöopathie und Herr Kopp, Leipzig, 1834,
p. 39.]
says of him :” Kopp is one of the best informed and most justly respected
German physicians, a man who has brought to the most difficult of the
arts a fine and independent intellect,” ” he enjoys a very
honourable place among German physicians.”
Sachs
angrily exclaims,
p. 271,
“Herr Kopp,
an estimable physician, a writer of varied learning, a man of ripe
experience and, as it has always seemed, without any temptation to
indulge in eccentricities, far from prone to theorise, of a reflective
mind and practical skill, not to be seduced into metaphysical
speculations, but confining himself to experimental science, has
undertaken an examination of homoeopathy !” — inconceivable !For everything ever written by
Hahnemann
is, whatever Kopp
may say, according to the decided opinion of these two allopaths,
utter nonsense.
Simon
declared Hahnemann
to be a “crass ignoramus,” “his inability to seize an
idea and pursue it, is clearly evident from everything he has
written,” (p. 5),
and Sachs,
for the second time, likens him to the devil in whom there is as much
truth as in Hahnemann.But
Kopp
was unreservedly blamed for administering homoeopathic drugs at the
sick bed — such palpable nonsense did not deserve trial.
Allopathic
opinions on the proving of medicines.
Proving medicines on the healthy
denounced as criminal. Allopathic opinions on the proving of drugs on
the healthy organism.The opinions of
Bischoff,
Puchelt, Hufeland, Gmelin, Riecke,
Eschenmayer and Kopp
on this subject have already been mentioned.
Dr Johann Christian August
HEINROTH (1773-1843)Professor
Heinroth
expressed the following opinion (l.c.
p.103)
:Who has made us acquainted with all this, with the whole apparatus
of the materia medica, based on so many thousand observations ? The
writer has often asked this question, and can only find this answer
— necessity, instinct and chance.And in a note (p.
104)
he says :In this respect chance and fate are one. What happens to us is
nothing else but what is sent to us. Sapienti sat !PAGE
105
: — Therefore it appears to us
that most probably necessity, instinct and chance are the discoverers
of the materia medica, which is transmitted by tradition and has grown
gradually.PAGE
107
: — It really appears
ridiculous that Hahnemann
should say that he has ascertained the effects of medicines on healthy
persons.
Dr
Johann Christian August Heinroth (1773-1843)
PAGE
110
: — The idea of testing
medicines on healthy persons is repugnant to reason and repellant to
common sense. The art of such almost criminal experimenting had to be
invented before one could even think of such a thing. A healthily
constituted person can at the most make one trial out of curiosity as to
how a medicine tastes, but he will never try how it acts, for he is not
ill ; and who would wish to make himself ill by means of medicine ?
Heinroth
still further
developed his views.PAGE
112
: — Once more — only sick
persons and not healthy ones have made us acquainted with the curative
properties of medicines ; and it is just as impossible to discover these
properties when in health as it is only possible to gain this experience
in a diseased condition. Diseases and their remedies are correlatives in
the same way as health and food. Just as senseless as it would be to
seek to discover the effects of
food on patients, is it to try to ascertain the effects of medicines on
healthy persons. Medicines show their power only in the diseased
condition, as food does only in the healthy condition.And what does
Hufeland’s
Journal say about
Heinroth
: ” who can vie with him in intelligence ? ”
Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher
calls this work ” the
classic work of Heinroth.”
F. Groos
wrote : [Ueber
das hom. Heilprincip., l.c., p. 4.]”
Heinroth,
this celebrated Leipzic scholar !” ” I remember having read in
Heinroth’s
notes to his translation of Georget’s
works that he declares that he has completely refuted Hahnemann’s
teachings.”But we have interrupted
Heinroth.
PAGE 134 :
— ” Human
beings become mere experimenting machines, pharmacometers to please the
materia medica.” So it goes on through several pages, and it is
proved that the proving of remedies is a ” crime” (p. 137).
” Every power in nature is to be learnt by the effect it produces,
and are we to learn the curative power before it produces an effect ? We
again exclaim with Hahnemann
— Folly ! ”That
Heinroth
did not stand alone in the views he held is clear from the criticism in
Schmidt’s Jahrbücher. His
book was looked upon as one of the best and by many as containing the
most thorough and convincing refutation of ” the heretic Hahnemann,”
as Ferd. Jahn
called him ! [Ahnungen einer
allgem. Naturgeschichte der Krankheiten, Eisenach, 1828,
p. 116.]Hahnemann
was extinguished by Heinroth
” by the irresistible force of logic.”
Mückisch
, l.c.
1826,
p. 123,
refers to the judgment of Heinroth
on ” these senseless proving-experiments of Hahnemann’s
on healthy persons,” and arrives finally at the conclusion that
such provings on the healthy ” are contrary at once to nature and
to reason.”Professor
Sachs, Simon,
Lesser, the anonymous author
of the Wonders of Homeopathy and
others wrote in the same strain, but on the other hand it is not to be
denied that many of Hahnemann’s
opponents recognised his services in having sought to found a
physiological materia medica, and
of having given the first impulse towards it.
Allopathic
opinions on the probable duration of homeopathy.
Prophecies of the speedy
extinction of Homœopathy. Allopathic views on the duration of Homoeopathy and proposals for its
destruction.As homoeopathy was ” nonsense ” it could not possibly have
a long existence, especially in view of the tremendous obstacles which
were placed in its way. if the allopaths had been right in their
judgment, it must necessarily follow that the speedy downfall of
homoeopathy was to be anticipated.But if progress were made in the spread of homoeopathy this is a
proof that the judgment of its opponents was mistaken.Professor
Kieser
prophesied in the year 1825
: — [Hufeland’s
Journ., Vol.
LX., St. 2,
p. 36.
]From what has been already stated it necessarily follows that both
Hahnemann’s
and Broussais’
theories can only have an ephemeral existence, and can receive
recognition from the public only so long as the present inflammatory
epidemic character of diseases prevails, and that both will lose their
hold on the public as soon as a different epidemic character of disease
appears.In
1825
[Hufeland’s Journ.,
Vol. LX., St. 1,
p. 99.]
the Obermedicinalrath and
physician-inordinary Stieglitz,
laments : ” the monstrous system of Hahnemann,
which has spread especially in and around Prague and Leipzic, is very
deplorable.”Professor
Heinroth
writes in the same year, [L.c., p.
189,
note.]” Homoeopathy will
receive its death blow from this axiom [the effect of medicines and the
reaction of the organism], ….. we have now accompanied it to its death
bed.”The hospital director
Mückisch
wrote in 1826,
[L.c., p. 169.]
” Both systems, the Homœopathic
and the animal magnetic are mere fashions, and will, therefore, soon be
forgotten.”In
1825
an allopath writes in the Allgemein.
Anzeig. der Deutsche ; i (p. 675)
:— “The author has seen in his forty years’ practice many
systems of medicine and methods of treatment pass like thunder clouds,
and so, too, this homoeopathic delusion will come to an end without its
being necessary to abuse it.” The opponents seem soon to have
abandoned this last opinion.Professor
Sachs
wrote in 1826
last went on Hahnemann’s
System. Kraus, whom Professor Most
[Encyclopädie der Medicin, Vol.
I., p. 1042,
Leipzig, 1836.]
calls his respected teacher, says
in the same year : [Krit.
etymolog. med. Lexicon, Gottingen, 1826,
2nd
edit., p. 403.]”
Hahnemann
has bestowed an unsuitable name on a false doctrine, which will perish
before the knowledge of the word in its new meaning, for this will be
ridiculed centuries hence by men who will compassionate the weaknesses
of our age.” ” Hahnemann’s
erroneous doctrine will have perished in a few years.”
Nietsch
[Bemerkungen
über Homöopathie , Hanau, 1826,
pp. to, 31,
44,
73.]
prophesies :” It is just as easy to foresee that the new theory will go out
of fashion as soon as any other novelty occupies the general
attention.”” Hence most doctors arc convinced that this dazzling
monstrosity, without any counter-measures will, perhaps, soon reach the
term of all perishable things.”” Truth will gain the victory over the follies of the day.”
” I think I may prophesy that very soon nobody will any longer
believe in homeopathy.”” Let us avoid all personalities in attacks on a system which
will soon cease to exist ! Had others who have formerly attacked HerrHahnemann
gone to work with the same humanity as Herr Hufeland,
it would, perhaps, never have been introduced into practical life and
non-professionals would have had one reason the less for abandoning
their good opinion of doctors and their art.” ” The already
tottering condition of homoeopathy.”
Premature rejoicings over the decease of Homoeopathy.
In
1827
Elias
[Gurkenmonate, p. 45.]
rejoices over ” the
decreasing adhesion ” of the public to homoeopathy, and says that
” this is the most striking proof that homoeopathy is a useless
thing.”In
1828,
Bernstein
[Hufeland’s Journ., Vol. LXVI I.,
St., 2,
p. 85.]
compares Hahnemann
with Broussais
and Rasori,
complains of the great spread of homoeopathy in Warsaw, and promises its
speedy downfall.In
1828,
Dr. Wetzler
wrote a book, entitled Hahnemann’s
homoeopathy at its last gasp. Augsburg.
Fischer
of Dresden (l.c. 1829),
as we showed at p. 198,
prophesied the down-fall of homoeopathy in Leipzic, and also mentioned
the reason why it cannot exist in Berlin, France, and England. At p. 53,
he says :“But my own understanding gives me security that the State
itself cannot long suffer such foolish and unreasonable quackery.”Obermedicinalrath
Wildburg
wrote, in 1830,
Some Instructive Words on the
Homoeopathic Healing Art (Leipzic,
1830,
preface), and thus administered comfort to the allopaths :Remember how eagerly gymnastics were received in their time, and with
what zeal they were long pursued ; but how soon it was recognised that
this mode of promoting exercise among youth was in many respects
injurious ! What a rage existed at one time for using magnetism in
diseases ; but how soon it was dropped. It was just so with the
prophylactic against scarlet fever,[In
1835,
Professor Fleischmann, of Erlangen, among others, reported favourable
results from Hahnemann’s
remedy for scarlatina. He had employed it since 1807
(Huf. Journ. LXXX., St. 6,
p. 21).]
with the belief in miraculous
cures and cures by starvation. And is not the same to be expected with
regard to those Russian baths which have been received with so much
enthusiasm ? Calmly and quietly, therefore, may the allopaths await the
fate of homoeopathy.
Hufeland
says in 1831,
[Die Homöopathie, Berlin, pp. 5
and 12.]
” The experiment is not yet
completed.” ” Time will show.”
Kleinert’s
Repertorium
contained, in 1831,
this encouraging news : ”
In Brunswick, homoeopathy seems to be near its
end.” [Suppl.
to Vols. IV. and V., p. 435.]The anonymous writer
of
Wonders of Homoeopathy (p. 4)
prophesied in 1833
:Homoeopathy will live, and, purged from its dross, will prove to be a
valuable method of healing.PAGE 20
: — I can foresee
that when the inflammatory constitution of diseases again prevails, the
misuse of homoeopathy will as surely come to an end, as was the case
with Brown’s
system (p. 26.)Hahnemann
bears considerable
resemblance to the old heroes of medicine. Aesculapius
had no fixed abode, but wandered through the land, accompanied by a
goat, healing the sick who came to him ; and Hippocrates,
who often changed his abode, rode on a mule through Greece and the
neighbouring countries (p. 27).The fame of
Hippocrates
was not so great during his lifetime, as we see from his complaints in
his letters to Democritus
; his fame arose after his death from his writings, but in the case of
our Hahnemann
it can easily be anticipated that his fame will be still less after his
death than during his life.
Sachs
, Homoeopathy
and Herr Kopp (1834,
p. 2),
says :” What have I
to
do with homoeopathy which is nonexistent — is nothing.””
Kopp
predicts that it will be imperishable ” (p. 272).
” Homœopathy has never
appeared, and does not exist ” (p. 272.)
Damerow saw in 1834
” that homoeopathy was
already attacked by decay.” [Med.
Ztg, d. Ver. f. Heilk. in Preussen, 1834,
No. 36.
Kleinert, Repertorium, &c.]
Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher
[Vol. III., p. 269.]
in 1834
:” Whether homoeopathy will defy time and its opponents is very
doubtful.”
Simon
, in 1834
expressed the same hopes. [Antihom.
Archiv, Vol. 1.,
H. 1,
p. 20.]Homoeopathy has already outlived its most brilliant period in
Austria, where it first gained some attention by its novelty ; the
enthusiasm of the non-professional public for it there, as well as in
Saxony, Thuringia and other places, has sensibly cooled and is steadily
diminishing. Homoeopathy resembles cholera, which, while breaking out in
new regions, is almost forgotten in those places where it formerly
prevailed.
All the allopathic medical men at that time prophesied the speedy
downfall of homeopathy, so that a homoeopathic physician was able to
write in1834
: — [Die Allöopathie, No. 6.]The grave of homoeopathy has been dug for more than thirty [more
correctly twenty] years by more than30,000
allopathic doctors ; they are all standing round the freshly dug grave,
and are waiting for the cortege
which shall commit the long
looked for corpse to their eager hands, that, they may bury it as soon
as possible and show it the last honours. Professor Sachs
already prepared the funeral sermon in his Schlusswort
some years ago, but see ! the
grave still stands open, and the corpse does not arrive.The mourners, however, did not lose patience.
Lesser
[L.c.,
p. 42,
note.] soothed them thus : “Now the good man can dismiss his cares, for homoeopathy has come to the
end of its life in Berlin.”
Augustin
, [L.c.,
p. 186.]
in 1835,
called homoeopathy, “This fashionable method of cure.”
Stieglitz
[Die
Homöopathie, 1865,
p. 9.]
advised them not to return home yet, for the corpse would soon arrive :The educated classes who chiefly favour homoeopathy [others assert
with equal assurance that homoeopaths bid chiefly for the support of the
uneducated public] will not allow themselves to be permanently deluded
by such an imposture. Many who are now inclined to Homœopathy will soon
recall to their minds what ordinary medicine has done for themselves or
their circle of acquaintances.
Stieglitz
did not probably
then suspect that a homoeopath, Dr. Weber,
would, by and bye, succeed him in his position as physician in ordinary
to the King of Hanover, and that the king would express himself most
gratefully respecting his homoeopathic treatment as compared with the
allopathic.The homeopathic physician in ordinary received an autograph letter in
which the king expresses his especial satisfaction with the results
obtained by homeopathic treatment, which had a very depressing effect on
the allopaths.[Allg. hom. Ztg.,
Vol. LVI, p. 161,
and Vol. LVIII, p. 20.]But of what use was it to talk ? The allopaths were tired of waiting
in the churchyard. Many of them began to suffer from cold feet, and went
home with colds ; they continued to bleed their patients and to write
their long prescriptions.
Some, indeed, ascended a height, and called out that they saw the
corpse coming — certainly it is coming now ! — but they met with
little attention.When the Vienna school had found the key to the success of the
homoeopaths and thought to place themselves on a level with them by
means of nihilism, hope of a joyful funeral feast again rose, and they
began again to catch sight of the corpse.” We hope still to see the whole illusive fabric confounded and
evaporate in a bad smell ; ” such was, in1853,
the wish of a hot-headed
allopath ; [Charlatanerie der
Hom., Weimar, 1853,
p. 40.]
and Professor Aug. Forster
[Grundriss der Encyclo. d.
Medicin. Jena, 1859,
p. 125.
— Fielitz, Die medic. Weltweisen, Sondershausen, 1857,
p. 26.]
thus comforted his
fellow-believers in 1857
:
Outside of Germany this system has made but very little way, and now
there are hardly any traces of it to be found.” This was very
consoling, but the complaints from France, England, Spain, Italy,
America, and other quarters of the globe of the desperate tenacity of
life shown by this tire-some system were too loud for the words of the
professor to give the longed for feeling of security.Soon the last allopath had disappeared from the side of the grave.
On the return journey they shook their wise heads and groaned forth :
”mundus vult decipi
” — ” the want of
judgment of the crowd ” — ” the world given over to folly
” — and so forth.***
In
1834
Schmidt’s Jahrbücher contained
a quotation (vol. III., p. 269)
from another paper on the spread of homoeopathy :While an anonymous writer who has just increased the number ut works
on homeopathy by a new one, describes homeopathy as a frightful abortion
with a big body, goat’s hoofs, crooked arms and long fingers, fox’s
eyes, donkey’s ears, and a hydrocephalic head, others find the system
uncommonly attractive.
Homoeopathy still lives, and
displays astonishing vitality.The number of its adherents is increasing, and it has become quite
the fashionable beauty—it is spoken of by everyone. Whether, however,
it will be able to defy time and its opponents, and, like Ninon de l’Enclos,
be able to retain its, old admirers and attract new ones in its old age,
is very doubtful, but its spread is immense notwithstanding. Not much
less than half of the medical works that appear in Germany at the
present time relate to the subject of homeopathy.Its literature is already so extensive that even homoeopathists begin
to complain that they have no time to read all and study what is good.Seven periodicals are devoted to homoeopathy — the first number has
just appeared of an eighth, which merely contains extracts from the
others ; another one will shortly see the light in Karlsruhe ; a tenth
in Paris, an eleventh in North America.The first dozen is therefore nearly complete. In Germany, its native
country, homeopathy has spread rapidly. In Baden a few years ago there
was one single homeopathic doctor ; since that time more than40
doctors have studied and are practising homoeopathy.In Wirtemberg, about ten years ago, only one doctor practised the new
method. Now it appears to be gaining ground here, and in Stuttgart there
is a young homeopathic missionary.In Bavaria there are only a few homeopathic doctors ; in Würzburg no
single apostle of the new faith has yet appeared.In Munich lectures have been given for two years on homoeopathy ; and
a homœopathic hospital is to be erected. In Austria the number of
homoeopathic doctors is increasing, In Saxony and in Thuringia it counts
a great many adherents, and its founder is still, in his old age,
labouring with youthful zeal, In Leipzic a homeopathic dispensary was
opened last year.In Sax-Meiningen the government last year issued an order to the
apothecaries to provide themselves with homoeopathic remedies.In the two Hesses it has met with a cordial reception.
In Prussia, too, homoeopathy is making its way ; in Hamburg some
doctors have recently carried its banner, and for eleven years it has
taken up its abode in the capital of Brunswick. Several societies are
labouring, etc.-Further on the progress of the new doctrine in foreign lands is
considered, in France, Switzerland, and Italy. In Italy it is dead (1834),
according to this author : ” It made only an ephemeral appearance
there : ”In the Iberian Peninsula there appears to be not yet any notion of
homoeopathy ; and it has failed in gaining any approval from the proud
English.In Russia it was long kept down by the late
Rehmann,
who was at the head of the medical faculty there, and an opponent of
homoeopathy.Now, however, it is left more free, and an Imperial rescript appeared
in October of last year which allowed qualified doctors to practise
homeopathy, ordered the establishment of homoeopathic pharmacies in St.
Petersburg and Moscow, and even allowed doctors to dispense their own
medicines themselves under certain conditions. On the other side of the
ocean, too, the new system has found its admirers.The medical faculty of New York has elected
Hahnemann
an honorary member ; in Philadelphia a society has been formed named
after him, and lately a North American homoeopathic journal was
announced.From these short notices we can see that homoeopathy has spread
considerably in the last few years, and it may not be an exaggeration
when the number of homoeopathic doctors is given by its adherents as500.
But notwithstanding this the attentive observer cannot but notice
that homoeopathy, spreading as quickly as it has done, is now
encountering a crisis in which the question of its very existence is
involved. Either it will issue from this crisis victorious and purified,
or it will tumble down and be buried under its own ruins, and this,
according to all appearance, is what will most probably happen.[That
was the account given by an old-school writer of the state of
homoeopathy in 1834.
Things have altered somewhat since then. Germany, including
Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, has upwards of 400
practitioners, four or five hospitals, and four journals. In Great
Britain there are upwards of 250
avowed, and a large but unknown number of unavowed practitioners, three
hospitals, and two monthly periodicals. In France there are mare than 150
practitioners, two hospitals, and three monthly periodicals. In Russia
there are about too practitioners and one or two periodicals. In Belgium
there are twenty-seven practitioners and one monthly periodical. Italy
has only forty-one practitioners and one monthly periodical. Spain has a
large number of practitioners, two hospitals, and three or four monthly
periodicals. In the United States of North America there are between 7
and 8000
practitioners, fifty-four hospitals, several State-supported lunatic
asylums, upwards of 100
societies (some of them numbering many hundreds of members), twenty
periodicals, besides nine annual transactions of societies, and five
annual reports of hospitals. The neighbouring British province of Canada
has a considerable number of practitioners. Mexico has a good many, and
a monthly periodical. In South America most of the States are well
provided with practitioners, and several of them, as La Plata, Monte
Video, Colombia, have homeopathic periodicals. Australia, New Zealand,
Hindostan and China, are all provided with homoeopathic practitioners,
indeed there is scarcely a corner of the world where the disciples of Hahnemann
have not penetrated. — [ED.]Whichever way the matter may be decided, something useful may be
gained for medicine, and even if homoeopathy should be destroyed and be
recognised as but a barren fruit-tree, yet a greater attention to diet,
a restraint on the abuse of drugs, greater simplicity of treatment, more
attentive observation of the specific effects of medicines, and a more
severe criticism with regard to medical experience, will be the happy
final result of the bitter contest.
Homoeopathy will not die
without the help of the State.Another allopath is staggered by an incomprehensible fact (
1835)
: [Simon’s Antihom. Archiv, I., 3,
p. 36.]It is certainly remarkable that a system resting on such an insecure
foundation should be so well received in spite of all opposition —
that it should even find reception and defenders among the educated
classes.No other system has made such an epoch, such rapid progress ! When
did non-professionals ever evince so much interest in a medical system ?
After hardly thirty years, homoeopathy has travelled through all
civilised countries both of the old and new world.
How could the allopaths protect themselves against the spread of
homoeopathy ? They had not spared their abuse and calumnies, but no
satisfactory result followed.The State must help.
Fischer
(Dresden), in 1829,
had clamoured loudly for State help.Three years previously we learn from
Hufeland’s
journal, that
the action of the government against the homoeopaths was required.In Austria, in
1819,
the celebrated guardian of the health of the Emperor Francis I., his
Excellency v. Stifft,
obtained an imperial edict against the practice of homoeopathy.In
1831,
Professor Dr. C. H. Schultz
completed his Homöobiotik, and
dedicated it to the minister von Stein zum Altenstein, and on p. 13
he advised the government ” to forbid entirely the practice of
homoeopathy.”In
1834,
Dr. Burmann,
the Court physician and physicus in Hanover, wrote : [Henke’s
Zeitschrift f. d. Staatsarzneikunde, 1834,
VII. Kleinert, Repertorium der ges. med. Journalistik.]“Homoeopathy — the unscientific audacity of which defies every
canon of reason — should not be suffered by any State.”Professor Sachs :
[Die Hom. und
Herr Kopp, Leipzig, 1834,
p. 6-36.]
” Hahnemann
has called us ` prejudiced people, who go about unpunished, and do the
greatest injury to the State by robbing it of its citizens.’Supposing
Hahnemann
were right ? Supposing homoeopathy were not destitute of wholesome truth
? It would not be absolutely impossible.If a military professor were to teach that fortresses should be
attacked with sugar-plums or soap-bubbles ; if a teacher of mathematics
were to assert that two and two make five, and that a part is greater
than the whole ; what would the State do ? It would, certainly, send him
about his business.Hahnemann
makes similar
assertions ; no good can, therefore, come from him ; what should the
State do ? Doctors take an oath to the State to act, according to the
laws of science, ` on a scientific basis.’The homeopaths contemn science ; they have broken their contract with
the State, and, therefore, have norights
as regards the State.”
Thus writes with incisive logic this “talented author.”Dr.
Fischer,
of Erfurt, [Med. Zeit. des Ver. f.
Heilk. in Preussen, No. 55,
1833.
Kleinert, Repertorium, &c.] holds
the following opinions : — One bright side of homeopathy is the
excellence of its narcotic tinctures, as compared with allopathic
extracts ; another good point is its discovery of specific remedies and
their use in diseases ; an indirect advantage is the great
simplification of medical treatment.But the State ought to forbid homoeopathy in cases of syphilis,
ophthalmia, and intermittent fevers. Dispensing their medicines ought to
be forbidden to doctors.In the
Würtembergischer
Landbote, [1834,
No. 125.
– Die Allöopathie, 1834,
No. 17.]
a physician says, ” that
it is the duty of the authorities to forbid any one to practise who
gives himself out as a homoeopath.”In Bavaria the allopaths at last obtained so much, that
[By
ministerial ordinance of the 23rd
Dec., 1835,
according to others, of 4th
January, 1836.]
(the medical committees through the country having been consulted) the
use of homeopathy in medico-judicial cases was forbidden.As a sign that there were exceptions among the allopaths, we notice
that one doctor wrote against this proceeding, and he was, according to
his own statement, far from being a friend of homoeopathy.He says :
If the State will only help homeopaths may
be burnt like witches.This order is an attack on the personal rights of the patient and on
the most sacred rights of science. Science is a republic, and every
scientist is a representative citizen thereof. Here there is no
dictator-ship, least of all in medicine and the natural sciences.
Distant as we still are from the truth and from the limit of scientific
knowledge, we see in the rise of new systems and theories a striving of
the human spirit of investigation after truth and the light of
knowledge.Opponents of homoeopathy who rejoice at these measures should
re-member that they are acquiescing in the infringement of a right which
all medical men should defend with every intellectual weapon at their
command. Such a proceeding is a triumph for homoeopathy a defeat of
their opponents, because it is evident, from the fact of their invoking
physical force, that they are unable to fight and defeat it with reason.[Annalen der Staatsarzneikunde, 1836,
19.
— Kleinert, Repert.]In the same way Dr.
Stachelroth,
district physician of Ottweiler, [Henke’s
Zeitsch. f. Staatsarzneikunde, 1835,
10
— Kleinert, l . c. ] although no
adherent of homoeopathy, looks upon it as hardly possible that the
homoeopathic system, ” which is valued and practised by so many
excellent men,” rests entirely on a delusion, and he defends the
trustworthiness of the homoeopathic method.Such views however, are but rarely met with. The majority were in
favour of State help, and the State exerted itself with sufficient
energy.The allopathic opinions were very frankly expressed in a pamphlet :
The
Road to the Grave of Homeopathy. [Quedlinburg
and Leipzig, 1834.]The author has preferred to barricade himself behind ”
anonymity,” and thence to dedicate his work ” to the public
and to governments.” Part I. the author begins :Homoeopathy had hardly come to life, it did not breathe, its organ
was still powerless to announce its existence by a cry — the dumb and
naked creature was shunned and hated by all as an abortion.When the doctors were called upon by the father to view and to judge
of his little daughter they found that its organs from the larynx to the
lungs were well formed, but it was in truth a monster ; a big trunk,
feet likea goat,
crooked arms and long fingers, eyes like a fox, ears like a donkey, and
much water in the head.It was abandoned, and not visited. Weeks grew to months, months to
years, years to decades, and see ! Homœopathy appears as a maiden of
thirty years — that despised and neglected abortion is now surrounded
and flattered by stalwart young men, she shows herself to the world and
displays her true flesh and blood even to those who, not taken by her
charms, looked upon her as nothing but carrion. This vermin will not
disappear so long as it finds nourishment.PAGE
26
: — Prince ! Minister ! learn
with astonishment what that homoeopathy which you have suffered and
which flourishes in your land really is Is it not a disgrace to any
public paper even to mention homeopathy ?PAGE
29
: How ought government to treat,
not homeopathy, but homoeopathic doctors ? It would be disgraceful to
the State if only the theologian and the jurist should enjoy a fixed
salary, protection, respect, while the physician, who must expend more
rather than less time, money and mental labour to arrive at his
position, should be treated like a pedlar and neglected.So it goes on to p.
32,
where the grave is dug :(1)
Let the public be taught what its opinion of homeopathy ought to be
;(
2)
let the truth be told respecting the assertions of homoeopaths about
the pretended progress of homeopathy in foreign countries, which are
mere lies and false statements.Let the loudly-trumpeted homoeopathic miraculous cures be exposed
when that can be done ; let the concealed hirelings be unmasked ;
for it is well known that in Dresden many people have been bribed to
insert reports of marvellous cures in theDresdener
Anzeiger.
(
3)
Let the position of homoeopathy in relation to medical police and the
law be explained.PAGE 23
:
Homeopathy is dead, its ghost only haunts us.PAGE
38
: So long as the invention of an
eccentric doctor is allowed to circulate in the land, order ceases to
prevail.
Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher
(II. p. 372)
declares its agreement with the tenor of this pamphlet, though the
fact of its being anonymous does not seem to please it.In
1841
Medicinalrath Dr. Sander
[Hitzig’s Annalen der
Criminalrechtspflege, Vol. XVII, H. 3,
p. 350.
— Allg. hom. Zeitg., Vol. XXII, p. 198.]
energetically demands State help
for the suppression of homoeopathy.We are surprised at the horrible stupidity of our ancestors, who
piously burnt with solemn legal forms women afflicted with hysterical
convulsions as witches possessed by the devil, but will not a later
age smile at our boasted enlightenment, at our weakness, who dare not
suppress a manifest imposture in a practical science, a
life-destroying mode of treatment, a palpable superstition ?……
Many have already been sacrificed to this system, and until time
disabuses the public and the physicians there will be many more
victims. If this method is recognized as deception and error, why are
not forcible steps taken against it ?This treatise speaks of the case of a woman suffering from mental
illusions, who did not improve under homoeopathic treatment. ” I
can,” soSander
had declared in his report to the authorities in which he at the same
time demands the prosecution of the homoeopathic practitioner, ”
I can however, as a doctor, give the assurance that under the true
appropriate treatment with blood-letting, with cooling, derivative,
opening, alterative and soothing medicines, the disease was quite
curable.”We must mention that the patient subsequently enjoyed the benefit
of ” rational” treatment, but this time, as it happened,
without the desired result. ” Let us,” the Medicinalrath
further exclaims, ” let us leave their sinister nocturnal habits
to these obscure night creatures — but as soon as homoeopathy
appears in the light of day and in practice, it ceases to be harmless
mysticism ; it becomes quackery, which must not be ridiculed, but
seriously combated and suppressed.” ” There is a true
science of medicine — founded on scientific principles, and derived
from the experience of a thousand years.”The desire for the support of the police in their combat with the
homoeopaths was most prominent at the time of the cholera and soon
after.
Causes
of the spread of homoeopathy.
Causes of the rapid spread of
Hahnemann’s
system.The reasons for the spread of homeopathy were the same as those of
to-day.Foolish, simple, silly people ” were attracted by the
homeopathic snare.” Some asserted that the homoeopathic public
was chiefly formed of uneducated people ; others declared that the
educated public contributed the larger contingent of adherents ; one
controversalist thought that clergymen and schoolmasters were ”
the pillars of homoeopathy ; ” another was convinced that the
higher ranks of the military and lawyers were attracted by the
“delusion.”It was agreed that
Hahnemann
had been very adroit in appealing to the non-medical public (this he
only did after the medical profession had rejected him). But there
were men who looked deeper.
Allgemeiner
Anzeiger der DeutschenThe espousal of the cause of homoeopathy by the
Allgemeiner
Anzeiger der Deutschen contributed
largely to the spread of the new doctrine, and this paper was very
unfavourably regarded by the allopaths.They termed the editor the Sancho Panza of the Don Quixote
Hahnemann,
and made many other jests at his expense, which are to be found in the
Wonders of Homoeopathy, 1833.It was a deadly crime to admit articles favourable to homoeopathy
into its columns ; and it was no atonement that its opponents too were
allowed to hold forth in the language peculiar to them.Thus Dr. A. H.
Nicolai
in the same paper of 1832,
p. 4254,
was allowed to call the founder of homoeopathy ” weak minded or
insane, most probably the former, as is usual in old age.”What could induce the editor, Dr.
Hennicke,
publicly to espouse such nonsense ? He was, in other respects, as no
one could deny, an intelligent man. But that too was to be explained.
Kraus
was acquainted with
the circumstances and revealed them : [L.
c., p. 405.]
” I cannot believe the
report which has just been spread that Hahnemann
is indebted to a certain secret alliance for many of these deplorable
articles in favour of his system and for their spread.I cannot think that sensible men would willingly engage in such
stupid cheatery — for such secret alliances are nothing else —
which is more abominable and criminal than highway robbery and
arson.” ” Attention should be called to an attempted stroke
of policy to gain the support of the mob by summoning the police
against themselves, and thus posing as martyrs.”Besides State help — the favourite resource up to the present
time — other proposals were made. Prof.Töltenyi,
of Vienna, declared in the Hungarian medical paper Orvosi
Jar of July 6th,
1845,
that the best way to overthrow homoeopathy was by means of publicity.He owns that he had formerly expressed the contrary opinion, and
had been opposed to publicity. ” My readers will be astonished at
hearing me express this opinion.
Publicity will surely kill it.
I willingly own my fault in having opposed publicity. I had not
then learnt by experience.” ” So long as the homoeopaths
pose before the public as persecuted individuals, as victims of a good
cause (as they say), so long they will find proselytes among doctors
and protectors among the non-professionals.”In the professor’s opinion homeopathy is everywhere losing ground
— only in Austria does it flourish — because there it is
persecuted.The homoeopaths in Hungary are still greater braggarts than those
in Austria. The Etna which has been kindled in other states has opened
a new crater here.For heaven’s sake, my dear compatriots, let them alone. Only do not
get involved in any scientific discussions with then, for you know
that they have always protested against reason. Take care not to enter
into any practical trials of curing diseases with them, for on this
field they will certainly wriggle away from you.But publicity is the most effectual weapon. Let the homeopaths,
then, open their hospitals and mount their rostra ; the hundreds of
ears that will hear them, the hundreds of eyes that will follow them
with attention will soon overthrow them. If history does not deceive
us, and if experience deserves respect, then the result of this
publicity must be the same as it has been in England, France and
Germany.In those countries homeopathy had been destroyed, the author
thinks.[Allg. hom Ztg., Vol.
XXXIV., Nos. 10
and 11.]This very sensible proposal met with no applause among the
allopaths, and this was fortunate for them ! for if they had allowed
the homoeopaths free scope, the beauty and the dominant position of
their own therapeutics would soon have come to an end. It was only
possible by means of State help to defend their mode of treatment
against homeopathy.
An
anti-homoeopathic periodical.
But even this mighty aid seemed not enough for some of them.
Calumnies, and the most violent personal attacks onHahnemann
and the homoeopaths were called in to help.The most remarkable achievements in this line are found in the
Wonders
of Homeopathy of 1833
; The way to the Grave of Homeopathy ; [Both
works were characteristically published anonymously.]
Lesser, o. c., and many
others.
Simon
was a shining
example to all. In conjunction with others who held his views, he
published, besides the works already mentioned, a special periodical
for combating homeopathy — the Anti-homoopathische
Archiv.”
The frolicksome manner in which the allopaths here disported
themselves is shown by the following examples : —Hahnemann
is thus described by an allopath [Vol.
I., H. 2.]
who professes to have met him
several times (such epithets as ” shameless deceiver,”
“swindler,” ” charlatan,” &c., we will pass
by, as they are things of course) :PAGE 46.
— “Hahnemann’s
language bears the stamp of ignorance.”PAGE 52.
— ” I
do not know how the idea has
arisen that Hahnemann
possesses acumen and learning. He has certainly not revealed either in
his writings.” Repeated mention is made of Hahnemann’s
” stupidity ” (p. 44,
47,
53,
113.)PAGE 46.
— ” When he
examines a patient the deceiver pretends to take notes for the sake of
appearance.”PAGE 50
. — A
story is related that on one
occasion an-other allopath, with whom Hahnemann
was not acquainted, went to him as a pretended patient.Hahnemann
examined him a long
time — a whole hour — and entered the statements of the ”
patient” ill his journal, and finally demanded a large fee.
” When the strange doctor discovered himself and called Hahnemann
a monstrous quack, he behaved like a madman.” This was in 1835,
and Hahnemann
was eighty years old.“At the first visit it cost me much trouble to keep serious,
and not to laugh in the faceof
the old impostor, every time
he opened his mouth.”
The allopaths knew very well that they might say what they liked
without fear of contradiction. At p.53,
a statement of Hahnemann’s
is mentioned that he did not read the attacks on him.If
Hahnemann
had wished to read and answer all the hostile pamphlets that appeared
even only up to the year 1840,
he would be still at work. But his reticence encouraged this class of
combatants.All impartial writers of that time and the personal accounts of men
still living who knewHahnemann,
are unanimous that he was amiable and courteous in personal
intercourse.PAGE 49
—
” If the most modest
objections are made, he becomes wild, stamps with his feet, behaves,
in short, like a lunatic.”PAGE 44
—
A story is told which
manifestly bears the stamp of invention. ” The Russian princess
N. met Hahnemann
while walking with her little boy, of about seven years, and in
passing the child did not take off his cap to the great man. The
shameless humbug vehemently reproached the princess the next day,
spoke so bitterly about naughtiness and bad bringing-up that the lady
was seized with an attack of convulsions, which frequently recurred
when she got home.Although the old rascal was the cause of it all, he would not visit
the princess in spite of the most urgent entreaties. This conduct
nearly cost the great man his life, for the highly exasperated husband
of this lady was very near running him through with his sword.”After a long discourse on the excellence of bleeding, we are `told
on p.71
: “A doctor who has ever seen the wonderful effect of a big
bleeding, I mean to the extent of twenty ounces and upwards, could
never entertain the foolish and cruel notion of neglecting it and
waiting till an attack of bleeding at the nose should come on This is
my advice, to banish doctors from the country as soon as bleeding,
emetics, and purgatives are pronounced unnecessary.”We should not certainly be expecting too much if we cherished the
hope that some, at least, among the allopaths would raise their voices
against this method of carrying on the warfare. But there was silence
all round ! Silence ? Joy reigned in Israel, and care was taken to
circulate this allopathic periodical as much as possible.The most severe criticism of this
Archie
is found in Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher. [Vol.
VIII., p. 242.]
” The exterior of the Anti
homöopathische Archiv is attractive.”In order to annihilate
Hahnemann
morally, certain letters, said to be by him, are published in this
periodical, whose sole object seems to be to propagate personal
attacks on Hahnemann
and his adherents.No evidence is given of the genuineness of a single one of these
letters, thoughSimon
gives it to be understood that the originals could be seen at his
house in Hamburg.A man such as
Simon,
against whom so many intentional untruths and the complete loss of all
self-control can be proved, deprives himself of the right to be
believed, and the whole contents of this periodical serve only to show
the height which was reached by party hatred, and can, for that very
reason, never be used as a proof against Hahnemann
or against homoeopathy.Almost all the ” facts” alleged, in so far as they can
now be investigated, can be proved to be malicious inventions.
A certain class of his opponents dwelt, with special pleasure, on
”Hahnemann’s
avarice.”They, at last, even dared to make the statement that
Hahnemann
had only been induced to propagate his system by love of gain, and
that he himself knew it to be a swindle by which he could make money.To prove this, an extract was made from the
Dorfzeitung,
the object of which was to
entertain the readers at the expense of truth. Hahnemann
is said to have given his fiancée a ring, in 1835,
which cost 500
thalers, and to have given to her in addition 40,000
thalers, and 32,000
to each of his children.As this subject was pursued with much zeal by his adversaries, we
must discuss the repulsive theme.According to
Hahnemann’s
will, [Given literally in
Fliegende Blätter fiber Homöopathie, 1878,
No. 15
and 16.]
he possessed, in the year 1835
— being then in his 81st
year — a fortune of 60,000
thalers (£ 9,000),
and two small houses in Cöthen, which represented a value of about 10,000
thalers (£ 1,500).He had saved this sum, after a long life of hard toil, by dint of
great economy, and by denying himself all expensive pleasures.An allopathic “rational” practitioner would have been
sorely dissatisfied withHahnemann’s
income.And how many benefits did
Hahnemann
confer on the sick ! And what good was ever done at the sick bed by
the ” rational ” professor of that time ?
Hahnemann’s
chemical mistake. “Alkali
pnëum.”Hahnemann
thus denominated a
substance which he thought he had discovered (in 1800)
in borax. In order to understand this mistake we must transport
ourselves to that period.We must repeat what we have once already stated : If a substance is
placed before a chemist, now-a-days, for investigation, he asks
himself of what known substances is this body composed ? Then the
question was, generally : What new substance, hitherto unknown, does
it contain ?From the faulty modes of investigation, the absence of a definite
method of analysis, and — what was worse — the impurity of the
re-agents, which were shamefully adulterated in that day, many
mistakes arose.
Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817)Professor
Klaproth
— who was then the first, or one of the first chemists of Germany
— discovered a new and hitherto unknown substance, “diamond
spar ” : it was a mistake. [Crell’s
Annalen, 1789,
I., p. 7,
and ib., 1795,
II., p. 534]
Proust
discovered ”
sal mirabile perlatum,” a salt of pearl (Monro
1.67),
in the urine ; it was supposed to be a combination of soda with a new
acid (pearl acid) ; it was subsequently ‘ascertained to be the already
known phosphate of soda.
Mistakes have been made before now.
Other chemists — among them von
Ruprecht,
Professor of Chemistry — discovered new metals : borbonium in
baryta, parthenum in chalk, austrum in magnesia ; also the sedative
salt (boracic acid) was supposed to have been reduced to a metal ; on
examination, these discoveries were found to be iron, probably derived
from impure Hessian crucibles.
Klaproth
, who, together
with Karsten,
Hermbstadt,
and others, detected these errors, warned the public against these
discoveries in the Intelligenzblatt
of the Janaer
Literaturzeitung of 1790,
No. 146.
(Crell’s Annalen, 1791,
I., 5
and 119.]Borax had long been an object of special attention to chemists.
Prof.Fuchs
wrote, in 1784,
a monograph [Versuch ‘einer
natürlichen Geschichte des Borax und seiner Bestandtheile, Jena, 1784.]
upon it, with a historical
account of the views as to its composition ; which, in 1784,
were still uncertain and contradictory. “`We know very little
about borax, and are not yet agreed as to its composition, for one
says it contains this substance, and another that,” says Fuchs
in his preface.
Jean-Claude de la Metherie (1743-1817)
The celebrated
De la
Metherie, [Ueber
die reinen Luftarten, translated by Hahnemann,
II., p. 273.
] in 1791,
thus speaks of boracic acid : ” The constituents of this acid are
atmospheric air, inflammable gas, caloric and water.But it is probable that it contains the other gases also.” In
1796
[Crell’s Annalen, 1796,
II., 453.]
it was still thought ” that
boracic acid was composed of phosphoric acid.”In
1799
Crell
states [Ib., 1799,
II., 320.]
that borax is composed of soda
and boracic acid, but thinks (ib.
P. 323)
that the acid in borax “is intimately mixed with some unknown
earths or a kind of phlogiston.”In order to ascertain this, he instituted sixty-seven experiments,
which he describes in detail, but without coming to any conclusion
from them ; he, however, maintains that borax contains something
peculiar besides.
One man may steal a horse, another must
not look over a hedge.Crell’s
Annalen,
[1800,
T.,
p. 392-395.]
published, in 1800,
an article of four pages entitled : Pnëumlaugensalz,
endeckt von Herrn Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,
in which the latter
describes the properties of a ” new kind of fixed alkali, called
“alkali pnëum”, from its property of swelling out to twenty
times its size when heated to redness.”This article was also copied into other periodicals.
Hahnemann
had worked
zealously as an amateur in the field of chemistry for twenty years,
and with the most valuable results for chemistry and for the welfare
of mankind.He never obtained any assistance from the State, or any other
source, and was not even able to fit up a proper laboratory, such as
the apothecaries possessed. Disinterested love of research and of
science had made him go to great expense for a laboratory, costly
re-agents, &c.Thinking he had made a very valuable discovery, he handed over his
alkali pnëum to an agent in Leipzic who sold it for a friedrichs d’or
the ounce. In those days there were no patents whereby chemists
now-a-days secure remuneration for their discoveries, and make the
consumer, and eventually the patient, pay so heavily (as in the case
of salicylic acid).Professors
Klaproth,
Karsten
and Hermbstadt
analysed the new alkali, and found that it was borax ! Instead of
communicating their results to Hahnemann
who had given proofs enough that he was striving after the same
objects as themselves, and asking him for an explanation, they
published their discovery in the Jenaer
Literaturzeitung, and called Hahnemann
to account.Prof.
Trommsdorff,
who owned an apothecary’s shop, hastened to communicate this incident
to a larger public in the Reichsanzeiger,
the name then borne by the Allgemein.
Anzeiger der Deutschen, and
called Hahnemann’s
proceeding, ” unexampled impudence.”
Crell
, [Index
to the vol. for 1800.]
however, lamented Hahnemann’s
” great mistake.”The latter at once explained the matter in several journals, among
others in Prof. A. N.Scherer’s
journal der Chemie (1801,
p. 665).
”
I am incapable of
wilfully deceiving, I may, however, like other men be unintentionally
mistaken. I am in the same boat with Klaproth
and his diamond spar,’ and with Proust
and his ` pearl salt.’ I had before me some crude (probably Chinese)
borax (supplied by J. N. Nahrmann,
of Hamburg). A solution of potash dropped into a filtered ley of
borax, not yet crystallizable, precipitated a large floury saline
sediment.As authors assure us that pure borax is rendered uncrystallizable
by the addition of potash.….. is it wonderful that I took the
precipitate for some new peculiar substance ? The re-agents also
displayed different phenomena from those of ordinary borax” asHahnemann
had already stated in Crell
(loc. cit.). Hahnemann
now gives in three pages a detailed account of the course and cause of
his mistake, and finally states that he had already given back what
money he had received.Prof. A. N.
Scherer
adds (l.c.)
:Why did Professor
Trommsdorff
(the only person who has dared to throw any doubt on Hahnemann’s
integrity), not await this defence before making (in the Reichsanzeiger)
such an exceedingly
ill-natured and intolerant attack on Hahnemann
? Everyone who, like myself, knows him, will acknowledge that Herr Hahnemann
is an upright and truth-loving man.It is incredible that he would consciously sell borax as a new
substance, that could not be expected from him ! Such charlatanry
cannot be attributed toHahnemann
! What well-merited aspersions would he not have anticipated ?…. Our foreign colleagues will, from this proceeding, receive new
confirmation of their assertion that savants are nowhere as malicious
in their treatment of each other as in Germany…. Is no one capable
of making mistakes ? or has ProfessorTrommsdorff
himself never made a mistake ? Let him recall to mind his celebrated
denial of the existence of oxygen in oxide of mercury.At all events,
Hahnemann
has more readily acknowledged his error than did Herr Trommsdorff
in the case alluded to. In Hahnemann’s
case it was unintentional error, in Trommsdorff
it was wilful, for he admitted that he had combated Lavoisier’s
system before he had begun to study it.Lastly, he says that
Klaproth’s
” diamond spar ” was a mistake similar to Hahnemann’s.Six years later
Hahnemann
wrote in the Allgem. Anzeig
der Deutschen, 1806,
p. 2297,
” If I once made an error in chemistry — for to error is human
— I was the first to acknowledge it as soon as I was better
informed.”
Doctors never take fees from uncured
patients — oh, no !This story of the pnëum has been misrepresented, even to this day,
by the adversaries ofHahnemann,
in order to demonstrate to the public that he was a vulgar impostor,
and hence to draw the inference that homoeopathy is an imposture of a
similar character.Does such an unscrupulous method of carrying on the contest redound
to their honour ?
Letter to
the father of the epileptic.
The letter to the father of the
epileptic patient.In order to brand
Hahnemann
as a charlatan, a letter which he wrote in Brunswick to the father of
an epileptic, on June 1,
1796,
was widely circulated, and it was published, twelve years later, in
the Allgemeiner Anzeig. d.
Deutschen, in 1808,
by the ex-Ducal physician in ordinary, Dr. Brückmann.Hahnemann
had an epileptic
under treatment, and demanded an unusually high fee in a letter
addressed to the father of the patient, from which Brückmann
and his other opponents sought to prove that he was a
“charlatan.”It was only after
1830
that this letter, published by Brückmann,
evidently from personal motives, was seized upon by Hahnemann’s
opponents to use as a weapon against him. This letter does not prove
that Hahnemann
acted like a charlatan ; that he, for the sake of making money,
promised results which he himself knew to be impossible.In many places of his medical writings, in
Hufeland’s
Journal (1796)
— Apothekerlexicon, &c.
— he
maintains the possibility of
curing epilepsy. He employed in those days especially belladonna,
hyoscyamus, stramonium, conium, &c. ; these medicines had only
been introduced into the materia medica a short time before by Storck.The use of these “heroic vegetable substances” was not
general. Most doctors avoided them on account of the violent toxical
symptoms which they produced in the ordinary doses and in their
uncertain preparations.Hahnemann
had, likewise,
administered these narcotics in the ordinary doses, and obtained bad
results. [Hufeland’s Journ., 1798,
Vol. V., St. 1.]But he did not on that account abandon them, he diminished the
dose, as we have already seen, and was thereby enabled to make
extensive use of them ; while his colleagues either did not know these
remedies, or ab-stained from their use on account of their poisonous
effects. Moreover, he administered his properly-prepared remedies
singly, and not in complex prescriptions.Hahnemann
was thus already in advance of his colleagues.PAGE
787,
l. c. — Brückmann
writes :” Dr.
Hahnemann
gave to our patient, for several months, little pills about the size
of a large pin’s head, and only very few of them ; ” his practice
thus agreeing with his statements as to the proper size of the dose of
the narcotics, e.g., in his Apothekerlexicon.
Therefore, when
Hahnemann
promised good results from his treatment of epilepsy, it is clear that
it was his firm conviction that he would obtain them.The reason for the
personal
attack of Brückmann is very
obvious. ” Hahnemann
blames and belittles his colleagues simply from love of gain.” Hahnemann
gave many and sufficient proofs, up to 1796
— and still more up to 1808
— that he was convinced that physicians did a great deal of harm.They rejoined by ascribing to him bad motives from their hatred of
his behaviour.Hahnemann,
by his fearless conduct on all occasions, served humanity. He had
access to the Duke of Brunswick, and may, very probably, have freely
expressed his views to him, and have succeeded in arousing his
attention. This fact would not render the position of Brückmann,
the physician in ordinary, more comfortable.PAGE
785,
l. c. — Brückmann
says : ” Hahnemann
has little practical knowledge.”PAGE
788.
— ” Several physicians
afterwards attended patients who had been treated and mal-treated by Hahnemann,
and restored them to health.” Doctors of that day against Hahnemann
!PAGE
788.
— ” Hahnemann
did not act well by his patients from a moral point of view. I might
mention a certain young lady from Hanover, and others.”
A “worthy man” not necessarily a
man of worth.The adversaries of homoeopathy called
Brückmann
a “worthy man,” in order to gain credit for his calumnies.
A man who does not hesitate to publish such wretched scandals in one
of the most widely-read papers of the day in order to depreciate a
personal opponent cannot be called ” a worthy man ; ” we
have seen how high Hahnemann’s
moral standard was both for himself and others.If opponents appeal to the judgment of a third person who calls
Brückmann
“a worthy old man,” the fact must not be sup-pressed that
this third person [“H. of
the department Ocker.”] thus
expresses himself concerning Hahnemann
(p. 973)
: ” I only know Dr. Hahnemann
through his learned and useful works, and I respect and admire this
man for his God-like intelligence, even if all his observations on the
mode of action of the remedies he describes, may not be entirely
confirmed.”
Brückmann
had scoffed [L.c.,
p. 792
and 793.]
at the proving of drugs on healthy subjects, and concerning Hahnemann’s
Fragmenta de viribus
medicamentorum, the
incompleteness of which had been admitted by Hahnemann
himself, he expresses the following opinion : — ” If all
medical men were to make such experiments on themselves, I am afraid
that they would soon be crippled both in mind and body.”The third person already mentioned writes : — ” The letter
here quoted is certainly a rather remarkable composition, but we
should rather look to the good and useful things this man, to whom
medicine owes so much, has done.” Further, “it is very much
to be desired that the public should be spared the recital of such
matters — they are an abomination to it.”A man to whom such contemptuous advice could be given as is here
given to DoctorBrückmann,
cannot really be held to be a ” worthy old man,” and this
epithet appears to be only an empty formula, and the only real means
of judging his character is furnished by his article.Twelve years after the event he retails the scandal in order to
injure an opponent, and that, too, in one of the most widely read
journals in Germany. That sufficiently indicates his character ! He
calledHahnemann
a ” charlatan.”Hahnemann
replied : —
[Ib., No. 97,
p. 1025.]His character is known in Brunswick, and his article reveals in
every line a mind reveals in the blacker sides of noble humanity. He
artfully kept back this calumny twelve years, until the witnesses who
could have proved its falsehood were dead, and until the clear-sighted
Duke of Brunswick, who would have punished such an action towards me
whom he loved, was dead.A scandal of this kind (I cannot understand how the editor of a
paper like theAnzeiger der
Deutschen, which is
generally kept so free from personalities and rascally abuse of men of
unstained character, could have allowed its pages to be soiled with
it) deserves no refutation.Envy prompted this libel, and in the concoction of the calumny,
mendacity and weakness of intellect strive for the mastery. It was
envy respecting several cures of a remarkable nature which I was
successful in accomplishing in Brunswick, which incited him to make
the malicious private insinuations with which he persecuted me for
many years.Envy was the spark which, smouldering for twelve years within his
breast (for up to this time I get patients from his district), broke
out at last into a fire, by the light of which the world was to read
the important secret that, l had not succeeded in the treatment of
such and such a case.It was
Brückmann,
too, who first used against him publicly his mistake as to the alkali
pnëum. ” Was this simply love of gain, or was there any other
reason ?” This turn of expression was calculated to have its
effect upon the uninstructed public. Brückmann
must have known, or at least he should have ascertained, how matters
really stood before writing publicly in this manner.The period when the mistake occurred was only eight years distant.
” Another part,”Hahnemann
replies, “consists of old accusations which were long ago
refuted, but are now raked up by him (he has never read, or he ignores
the refutation), and mixed up with ignorant statements and
misrepresentations. The remainder are simple untruths which could have
had their birth only in his own mind.”
Franz Ernst Brückmann (1697-1753)
Brückmann
had called him
a dealer in secret nostrums, and had scoffed at his frequent change of
residence, and had thus again gossiped about his private affairs in a
widely-read journal.Hahnemann
answers :
When I then aroused his envy I was not in a position to lay the
principles of my new and efficacious system of treatment before the
world ; they had not arrived at a sufficiently advanced stage.But when I had sufficiently matured them I gave them to the world
in a book, which neither he, nor the like of him, could ever have
appreciated, encased, as they are, in old-world prejudices ;hinc
illoe lacrimae
!
I submitted my mode of treatment to a more intelligent public. A
dealer in secret nostrums does the exact contrary.Whether I ought to have gone on vegetating, rooted like a polypus
to my native rock, and never have dwelt occasionally in freedom in
different countries in order to attain a wider culture (as the most
distinguished men of all ages have done), is a matter on which I can
hardly suffer myself to be dictated to byBrückmann
and his friends.
Hahnemann’s alleged denial of the vis,
medicatrix naturae.
Did Hahnemann
deny the Vis medicatrix Naturae ? “Hahnemann
Denies the Healing Power of Nature.”From a passage in the
Organon
Hahnemann
is accused of denying the healing power of nature. His opponents
have repeated this reproach so frequently, that in the end even the
homoeopaths themselves have been confused, and a in their writings
and even at a meeting of the Central Society in Magdeburg in 1830,
they declared ” that they did not agree with Hahnemann
in rejecting the vis
medicatrix naturae.”
In order to understand the passage of the
Organon
quoted below, we must
endeavour to realise the situation of that day. His enemies had cast
upon him the following reproach among others : Your method of
treatment is in direct contradiction to our great teacher —
Nature.Open your eyes ! A rush of blood to the head, a congestive
headache, is healed by nature by a wholesome bleeding from the nose.
We copy nature and draw blood when congestion is present. You fly in
nature’s face and reject bleeding. In a case of ophthalmia you see
an eruption make its appearance in the contiguous parts of the face
and the inflammation is thereby diminished.We follow this hint of nature and excite an artificial eruption
or inflammation by means of blisters, moxas, cauteries, setons,
&c.Have you never seen the original malady relieved by metastases ?
have you never seen a skin eruption disappear on the supervention of
diarrhœa ? At variance with nature you try to fulfil her
requirements !
Hahnemann was often
assailed with such reproaches by his earlier opponents, and the
passage cited by later opponents from the fourth edition of the Organon,
was an answer to these
attacks, as is clearly shown by the text.They (the allopaths) allege that their multifarious evacuant
processes are a helpful mode of treatment byderivation,
wherein they follow the
example of nature’s efforts to assist the diseased organism, which
resolves fever by perspiration and diuresis, pleurisy by epistaxis,
sweat and mucous expectoration — other diseases by vomiting,
diarrhœa, and bleeding from the anus, articular pains by ulcers on
the legs, inflammation of the throat by salivation, &c., or
removes them by metastases and abscesses, which it develops in parts
at a distance from the disease.Hence they thought the best thing to do was to
imitate
nature…. In this
imitation of the self-aiding power of nature they endeavoured to
excite by force new symptoms in the tissues that are least
diseased…. in order to admit of a gradual lysis by the curative
powers of nature. [And in a note] : It is only slighter acute
diseases that are wont, when the natural period of their course has
expired, to terminate quietly in resolution, as it is called, with
or without the employment of not very powerful allopathic
remedies…. But in severe acute and in chronic diseases, crude
nature and the old school are equally powerless.
[Organon, Dudgeon’s translation, p. 24,
25.]Here, it will be observed, he is only speaking of the derivative
method ; the meaning is, in this connexion, that by means of ulcers
and metastases, &c., severe acute and chronic diseases cannot be
cured by an imitation of the, in this case, crude operation of
nature.The old-school merely followed the example of crude instinctive
nature in her efforts, which are barely successful even in the
slighter cases of acute diseases.[Loc.
Cit., p. 27.]He remarks in a note :
The pitiable and highly imperfect efforts of the vital force to
relieve itself in acute diseases, is a spectacle that should excite
our compassion and command the aid of all the powers of our rational
mind.
Proof that Hahnemann
acknowledged Nature’s healing power.He tries to show that the self-help of nature, to which his
opponents appeal in order to justify their bleedings, purgatives,
setons, &c., is not worthy of imitation. That our interpretation
of his meaning is the true one is shown by other passages, and at
all times he gives full credit to the healing power of nature.In his
Essay on a new
Principle &c., [Lesser
Writings, p. 307.]
1796,
he maintains that nature, unassisted, will triumph over most acute
diseases if the obstacles to recovery are removed.In the year
1797
he says : — [Lesser
Writings, p. 363.]I do not now allude to cures effected by dietetic rules alone
without drugs, which if simple are not to be despised, and which are
very successful in many cases.…. If it be necessary to make considerable changes in diet and
regimen, the ingenuous physician will do well to mark what effect
such changes will have on the disease before he prescribes the
mildest medicine.In his criticism of
Brown
in Hufeland’s
Journal, [Lesser
Writings, p. 413.]
which we have already quoted,
we read :That kind nature and youth will, assisted by such appropriate
regimen and even by itself, cure diseases having far other producing
causes than deficiency and excess of irritability, is the common
experience of every impartial observer ; butBrown
must deny this in order to support his scholastic system. But
without reckoning this divine power, &c.In
1801
he thus criticises Brown.
[Lesser Writings, p. 618.]According to him we must not trust anything to the powers of
nature ; we must never rest with our medicines, we must always
either stimulate or debilitate. What a calumniation of nature, what
a dangerous insinuation for the ordinary half-instructed
practitioner, already too officious ! What a ministration to his
pride to be deemed the lord and master of nature !In
Aesculapius in the
Balance, 1805,
he again draws attention to the healing power of nature : [Lesser
Writings, p. 492.]It were easy to run through a catalogue of similar acute
diseases, and show that the restoration of persons who, in the same
disease were treated on wholly opposite principles, could not be
called cure but spontaneous recovery.In
1808
Hahnemann
writes : — [Lesser Writings,
p. 553.]Do not the poor, who take no medicine at all, often recover much
sooner from the same kind of disease than the well-to-do patient,
who has his shelves filled with large bottles of medicines ?In
1831
he, in Allopathy, says
: — [Lesser Writings, p. 830.
He is speaking of blood-letting in cases of fever, especially
pneumonia.]If they call this an efficacious sort of method, how can they
reconcile this with the fact that of all that die in a year, a sixth
part of the whole number dies under them of inflammatory affections,
as the r own statistics prove ! Not a twelfth of them would have
died had they not fallen into such blood-thirsty hands — if they
had but been left to nature, and kept away from that old pernicious
art.
Dr Philip Wilhelm Ludwig GRIESSELICH (1804-1848)
Griesselich
, [Skizzen
aus der Mappe eines reisenden Homöopathen, 1832,
p. 35.]
who visited Hahnemann
in 1832
in Cöthen, says :”
Hahnemann
has often been reproached for his contempt for the healing power of
nature. I myself was led into this error by something in the Organon
In conversing with Hahnemann
I have never perceived anything tending to the denial of this
healing power. It appears that the reformer must have given occasion
to misunderstandings.” Negligent perusal and ignorance of his
works are the causes of these misunderstandings.A follower of
Hahnemann’s,
Dr. Kammerer,
of Ulm, wrote a small book in 1834
: Die Homöopathik heilt
ohne Blutentziehungen (Leipzig,
1834).
Hahnemann
wrote the preface, and in it he declares that he fully concurs with
its contents. What rôle does
the healing power of nature play in it ? (p. 1)
:” Blood-letting implies an undervaluing and slighting of the
great healing power of nature.” At p.6
the course of inflammatory diseases, pneumonia, &c., is
described, where they are left to nature and generally recover.
” Venesection weakens the organism and interferes with the
healing power of nature.”PAGE
16
: — ” The beneficent
power of nature.”PAGE
17
: — ” The proper
healing power of nature often effects wonderful and rapid
cures.” ” The severest illnesses often get rapidly well of
them-selves.” ” Even in chronic diseases the marvellous
healing power of nature is seen.”
Hahnemann’s
alleged theft of his system from older writers.
Did Hahnemann
steal his system from Paracelsus ?PAGE
18
: — ” Another power–a
medicinal power cannot possibly be more beneficial than the inherent
recuperative power.”PAGE
21
: — ” Diseases are
cured as rapidly, or more so, by the proper healing power of nature
than by the best remedies.” In this work of eighty pages, on
almost every page the healing power of nature is lauded.Finally he says : ” Let leading medical men pay more
attention to the requirements of nature.”Hahnemann
thus concludes his preface : ” Our dear Kammerer,
of Ulm, whose sensible treatise I have now great pleasure in
introducing to the public.”
” Hahnemann
Stole his Doctrine from other Authors.”We have already said that
Hahnemann
referred in 1805
to the testimony of older authors as supporting his principle of
cure, mentioning among others, that of Hippocrates
in the passage from
Wilhelm
Gottfried Ploucquet, 1744-1814In
1806
Ploucquet
[Hufeland’s Journ., St. 1,
p. 170.]
entered the field, and quoted
a passage from Thom. Erasti
Disputat. (III. 226),
in which this sentence occurs :“Cum dicit
Paracelsus,
simil. similibus curari, non insanit, non stulte loquitur, sed recte
sentit et philosophice pronunciat.”
Ploucquet
adds no
remark of his own — he seems to imply that he discovered this
passage incidentally while reading this author.In
1808
an opponent of Hahnemann
quotes this remark of Ploucquet’s
in the Allgemein. Anzeig.
d. Deutschen, No. 78,
in order to contest the priority of Hahnemann
for his doctrine.In
1829,
a Dr. Mannsfeld
wrote in Henke’s Zeitsch.
für Staatsarzneikunde [Kleinert,
Repert. der ges. deutsch. med. u. chic. Journalistik, I., p. 143.]
mentioning Hahnemann’s
sim. simil. as
a ” repetition of the Paracelsian paradox.”In
1831
Professor Schultz,
of Berlin, entered the arena, and wrote the Homöobiotik.
In this it is asserted
that Hahnemann
borrowed his homoeopathy from Paracelsus.
Schultz
distinctly
asserts that the principle of similars, the denial of nature’s
healing powers, and the rejection of the principle contraria
contrariis, and of the use
of mixtures and of large doses, are found in Paracelsus,
as is also dynamism. Consequently, Hahnemann
borrowed his system from Paracelsus.
Notwithstanding this, he has totally misunderstood the latter.
” Homoeopathy is the principle of Paracelsus
misunderstood, falsely represented, and dressed out in an
unscientific garb” (p. 108).In the
Archiv f d. hom.
Heilk. [Vol. II., H. 1,
p. 196.]
Rummel
has taken the useless trouble to refute this nonsense instead of
laughing at it. It would have been a useful undertaking if the
professor had shown that Paracelsus
mentions in such and such a place that certain remedies show their
healing power on the homoeopathic principle.
Schultz
would thereby
have excited great interest, and have earned the gratitude of all
homoeopaths, who would not have grudged him the innocent pleasure of
accusing Hahnemann
of plagiarism. He, however, observes profound silence respecting
this point, and quotes instead two vague expressions which Rademacher
interprets in quite a different way, and Rademacher
is certainly one of the men most thoroughly acquainted with Paracelsus’s
writings.
Dr Johann Gottfried RADEMACHER (1772-1850)
In the whole book —
263
pages long — however much we may search, we can find no further
proof of the allegation respecting Paracelsus’s
principle ; instead of this, the reader meets with vague
expressions, such as the following in p. 192.Hence the essential principles of potentiation, of
self-attraction and self-repulsion, and of the direct development of
a new repulsion from the substance formed by attraction — which is
the organization of these powers to a living system — cannot be
understood.None the less this article served the opponents of homoeopathy as
a proof of the statement thatHahnemann
had not himself discovered his therapeutic principle, but had stolen
it from others. Simon
took up the idea eagerly.
Paracelsus taught not Homeopathy,
but something quite different.Unfortunately
Rademacher,
who understood the merits of Paracelsus
and his teaching better than any one else, and who had rendered it
accessible to medical men, ex-pressed the following opinion : [Third
edit., Berlin, 1848,
I., p. 87.]” He rejected the principle
contraria
contrariis — but that he
substituted for it the principle : sames are cured by sames (so R.
translates here and on p. 115
the similia similibus) has indeed been recently asserted, but it is
quite untrue.
Paracelsus
says :
A physician who is faithful to nature says : this is morbus
terebinthinus, this is morbus sileris montani, this is morbus
helleborinus, etc. ; and not : this is branchus, this is rheuma,
this is coryza, this is catarrhus. These names are not founded upon
the basis of the medicine ; for same should be compared to its
nominal same.
Paracelsus
asserted
that every diseased organ has its remedy in external nature. These
remedies he calls (parodying the doctrine of signatures) the
external organs, and he thence constructs the apparent paradox
” same must be driven out by same.” Thus, says Paracelsus,
herbs are also
members. This is a heart, that a liver, this a spleen, &c.,
which means that such and such a herb acts on the heart, the liver,
&c.The (allopathic) historian H.
Damerow
contests the statement that Hahnemann
borrowed from Paracelsus.
[Jahrbücher f. wissenschaftl.
Kritik, 1832,
p. 274.]By the homoeopaths, however,
Paracelsus
was frequently said to be a forerunner of Hahnemann.
[Trinks, Hahnemann’s
Verdienste um die Heilkunst, Leipzig, 1843,
also Oesterr. Zeitsch. f. Hom., 1848,
p. 478.]He is indeed to be looked upon as such, but not with regard to
thesimilia similibus, but
rather, in so far as he, in opposition to the followers of Galen
— did not attack the supposed materies
morbi, and the
pathological appearances discovered in the dead body, but used
specific remedies without having attained the experimental and
individualising standpoint occupied by Hahnemann.In any case the ferment produced by
Hahnemann
was the principle cause why the man who had been misjudged for three
centuries was rescued from the heap of abuse and calumny with which
he had been covered. A hundred years after his death Guido Patin
resented the fact that the booksellers sold the works of the ”
great rascal ” (Rademacher),
and A. F. Hecker
(l.c.
p. 67)
designates him, in 1819,
“an extremely rude, ignorant, immoral and selfish man.”
JOHANN GEORG
ZIMMERMANN
(1728- 1795)
J. G.
Zimmermann,
who treated Frederick the Great in his last illness, writes thus of
him :He even assured his disciples that he would seek advice from the
devil if God would not help him. He lived like a pig, looked like a
carter, and found his greatest pleasure in consorting with the
lowest and most abandoned characters. He was drunk during the
greater part of his famous life, and all his works seem to have been
written when he was tipsy.
Hermann Conring (1606-1681)H.
Conring,
professor in Helmstädt, called him a
“Monstrum hominis, in perniciem minis melioris doctrinae
natum.” [Comp. F.
Mook, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Würzburg, 1876,
4,
p. 3,
also M. B. Lessing, Paracelsus, &c., Berlin, 1839,
p. 247.]
Paracelsus
was partly
to blame for this want of recognition on the part of his colleagues,
because he attacked them too severely, and contemned both anatomy
and the ordinary knowledge possessed by doctors. But his greatest
crime was that he ventured to oppose the learned big-wigs, and such
behaviour has never been left unavenged by them ; just as doctors
generally have always persecuted with peculiar animosity those who
dared to disparage the customs they held sacred and to introduce
revolutionary novelties.They only differed from the religious parties in that they lacked
an inquisition. Had the allopaths had power to send their enemies to
the stake,Hahnemann
and his adherents would have been burnt. The reader will, by and
bye, have an opportunity of judging what the allopaths of to-day
would like to do if they had the power.
Hippocrates
was accused
by his contemporaries of burning the library attached to the Temple
of Health at Cnidos, in order that he might enjoy a monopoly of the
knowledge it contained, and he was called by his rivals the
“dung-eater”, because he so carefully took note of the
character of the excrements.
Harvey’s discovery now said to be
a mere plagiarism.Galen
, who guided the
ideas of medical men and their treatment for many centuries, was
persecuted so passionately by the doctors of his time that he was
obliged to leave Rome.
William Harvey (1578-1657)
Harvey
(died 1657)
met with the most violent opposition when he made known his
discovery of the circulation of the blood. He was declared to be
insane, so that the public lost all confidence in him, and his
practice fell off. Thirty years later Professor Riolan
in Paris called him a charlatan. ” Malo cum Galeno errare, quam
cum Harveyo esse circulator” (circulator signifies also
charlatan).And yet the proofs were so clear that it was only necessary to
look in order to be convinced, and long and careful study and
numerous experiments, such as were essential in order to judge of
homoeopathy, were not required. WhenHarvey’s
teaching became gradually recognised, writers arose who proved that
he had not the priority of the discovery.
Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach (1752-1840)
Blumenbach’s
Medic.
Bibliothek thus describes
the way of the world : — [Vol.
III., No. 1,
p. 365,
Gottingen, 1788.]Many persons thought it a serious risk to trust their health to a
man who went so far as to dare to state that God caused the blood to
circulate in our bodies in a different way from that described by
the greatGalen
! Pretended refutations were hailed upon him from all quarters of
Europe — each one more bulky and more contemptuous than the last.
And when this was found of no avail, and the correctness of the
matter had to be acknowledged, another lot raised their voices and
demanded how people could possibly look upon it as a new discovery.
Had not King Solomon, in Ecclesiastes (Chap. XII., v. 6),
spoken most clearly of the silver cord and the golden fountain, of
the pitcher at the fountain and the wheel at the cistern, and was
not the circulus sanguinis major described there to the life ?
Others wished to force this honour not on the wise Solomon, but on
the sage Plato ; others on their father Hippocrates
; others on the estimable Bishop Nemesius ; others ascribed the
discovery to a Spanish farrier, de la Reyna ; others to various
other persons, to anyone but the true discoverer !Even after the lapse of two centuries, at the beginning of the
year1840,
an American professor could not be quiet, he attempted to snatch the
laurels from Harvey’s
head and to place them on that of an American.On this side of the Atlantic an Italian joins in the fray (
1846),
and tirades “against the impudence of that Englishman Harvey,
who by forged papers which were circulated through Italy, robbed Cesalpino
of the honours due to him ; and in the life of this English pirate
we read that he left Italy in the year 1606.”
The Italian Andreas Cesalpinus
was the discoverer of the circulation for all who wish to believe
it. [See Janus, Zeitschrift f.
Geschichte der Med. II., p. 547.]Our
Hahnemann
fared no better. The passages from old authors, which he himself had
quoted in corroboration of his views, were sharply criticised by his
opponents and pronounced irrelevant ; Kurt Sprengel
declares that the passage from Hippocrates,is detached from its context and is rather to be understood in
the sense of contraria
contrariis. [Kurt Sprengel,
Ueber Homöopathie, eingeleitet von Schragge, Magdeburg, 1833.]Professor
Sachs
caused this passage to be translated in his Schlusswort
(1826,
p. 88)
by a philologist, as he says, and quotes the whole passage in full,
which is only given in brief by Hahnemann,
and comes to the conclusion that Hahnemann
did not believe in his own interpretation. Others for whom Simon
acted as spokesman, [Geist der
Hom. Pseudomessias.]
considered this a new proof that Hahnemann
was an impostor.This passage was also discussed in the
Allge.
Anzeig. der Deutschen, but
was interpreted in the sense Hahnemann
gives it (1822,
p. 2617).In
1846,
an article appeared in the periodical Janus
(vol. i., p. 787),
Hippocrates a Homoeopath, which
begins thus : ” Dr. Landsberg
has just made the equally interesting and striking discovery that
homoeopathy is not a discovery of Hahnemann’s,
but is contained in its essence in the works which have come down to
us under the name of Hippocrates.
We must call this discovery striking, because on one hand Hippocrates
has been studied so many thousand times without the discovery which
is so clearly expressed ever having been made.
Hahnemann stole all his
ideas from Hippocrates.Knowledge is often ascribed to
Hippocrates
which he did not possess ; and here a fact so important, in a
historico-medical point of view, has been overlooked — a fact
which is not only the result of inferences which are often only too
deceptive, but which is stated as a manifest apophthegm.And yet, on the side both of the allopaths and the homoeopaths,
as HerrLandsberg
justly remarks [the article by Dr. Landsberg
is taken from the well-known Journal
of von Walther
and von Ammon,
Vol. 3,
and these introductory remarks appear to come from Professor Henschel],
a great deal of trouble has been taken,” &c.We eagerly look for this celebrated, newly-discovered passage.
Prof. v.Walther,
the King of Saxony’s physician in ordinary, von Ammon
and Prof. Henschel
regard it as convincing ; and the historian, Prof. Haesar,
mentions it in the same volume (p. 872),
and has nothing to say against it ; he can only add, with a sigh,
” So the inspiring hope grows of being able to trace the
earliest germs of homoeopathy to the gods and demi-gods of
India.” And what is the celebrated passage which nobody as yet
knew ?the identical one that
Hahnemann
had quoted forty-one years before, and the interpretation of which,
in his sense, was held to be a proof that he was an impostor !In the
Janus the
passage was quoted more fully, and furnished with notes :Another way,
Hippocrates
says, of practising medicine is the following :“By using just that which produces the disease — a cure is
effected by the disease itself.” Here some examples of
strangury, of cough, and of fever are given, and it is stated that
they may sometimes be cured by the same things that produced them
homoeopathically — and sometimes by the contrary —
allopathically ; — and again, as a pharmacodynamic illustration,
the instance is given of the free use of warm water, both for drinks
and baths, because by means of the heat they bring to the body, the
fever heat is expelled.In the same way gastric vomiting is removed by the use of an
emetic, which produces vomiting in healthy persons. , however, adds
and thus, to a certain extent, as the author remarks, recognizes
homoeopathy as a method, that there are cases which are better
suited for allopathic treatment others better suited for
homoeopathic treatment &c.At the end of this division — from which only extracts have
been given —Hippocrates
further speaks about the size of the dose, and remarks in this
connexion that we ought not to employ powerful medicines needlessly
and seek to weaken them by quantitative relations, but strong
remedies ought to be used for severe maladies, and weaker remedies
for the less severe. Hahnemann,
indeed, has only made use of this maxim in order to caricature it, i.
e., to surround his
teaching with a nimbus which corresponds to the principle of mundus
vult decipi.
So
much
is, however, certain that he had already met with the idea of his
dilution-theory, as well as with the and that, in fact, no part of
his teaching is peculiar
to himself except that which was developed at a later period — the
psora theory.But as
Hahnemann’s
psora theory is rejected by his adherents, Hippocrates
remains the father of the actual Homœopathy, so that all the harm
it has done and all the annoyance it has caused the allopaths ought
to be visited on the head of Hippocrates.
All their abusive epithets, therefore, hit Hippocrates
and not Hahnemann.One thing is, however, difficult to understand ; all those who
accuse the founder of Homœopathy of plagiarism call it a false
doctrine.Why, then, is it necessary to ascribe this false doctrine to
another man ? Is not a great inconsequence involved here, the point
of which is directed against the combatants themselves ?One further remark on this subject. We own, indeed, that to
representHahnemann
as a man who has no ideas of his own, and who, in his cunning or
folly, has stolen from others that which has been for more than
seventy years considered as in the main true, and which has been
practically tested by thousands of physicians, is well adapted to
the purpose of disparaging him. It makes Hahnemann
and his adherents appear as charlatans and fools.Therefore, this manoeuvre has been continued up to a recent date
with the aid of the whole allopathic press. If, however, there is a
want of agreement in this not unimportant matter, there is a danger
incurred that in the end the public will not believe in it in spite
of the most decided assurances. We think then that we are advising
the allopaths to their own interest when we recommend them to arrive
at a final decision as to who the culprit was — whetherHippocrates
or Paracelsus.
Galen and Alberti homoeopathists.
Or is it, perhaps H.
Alberti,
as Köppe
will have it. To be sure, the man whose work is quoted is not H. but
M. Alberti,
and he says something quite different, as Sorge
showed. [Zeitsch.
des Berliner Ver. horn. Aerzte, 1.,
p. 35.
Michael Alberti
or (Latinized) Albertus
enjoys in indexes and biographies the reputation of having written
an enormous number of works on every conceivable subject connected
with medicine. But when we come to examine these works, many of
which are sure to be found in every good medical library, we find
them to consist mostly of inaugural theses written by medical
candidates for the medical degree in Halle, during the period when
M. Albertus
held the office of dean. The work Köppe
manifestly alludes to, though it is evident from his mistakes he
only knows it at ‘second or third hand, is a dissertation by one
Frederick Adrian la Bruguiere
of Stargard in Pomerania, written in 1734,
and entitled De curatione
per similia. Several
authors besides Köppe
have been led by the title of this work to credit Alberti
with the discovery of the homeopathic method, but Sörge
who has had an opportunity of seeing and reading the dissertation
shows that it has nothing to do with Hahnemann’s
homeopathy. The author only says that the curative efforts of nature
to free herself of disease by means of crises and evacuations,
should be assisted by the administration of such medicines as cause
or promote such crises and evacuations, thus sweating is to be
forwarded by diaphoretics, vomiting by emetics, hemoptysis and
epistaxis by blood-letting, diarrhea by purgatives, for these
processes being all efforts of nature to throw off something morbid
and injurious to the organism, the doctor as the servant of nature
should help her to do this in the way she shows she wishes to do it.
— [ED.]But an allopathic combatant desirous of obtaining his end is not
put out by such trifles.Leupoldt
[Geschichte der Medicin, 1863,
p. 145.]
again says of Galen,
that he was not disinclined to the principle of similia
similibus.
So
that
Galen
might very well be represented as the one whom Hahnemann
robbed.
Trials of Homeopathy by its
Opponents.Hahnemann
‘s course of
development shows that he did not arrive at his discoveries on
paper, but that he followed the path of induction. He undoubtedly
sought to support his discoveries by theories, but expressly
asserted that he wished to be judged only by results. He constantly
calls the results of his experiments ” unheard of,” ”
incredible.” ” Repeat my experiments, but repeat them
accurately,” is his well-known phrase. ” If the results
are not exactly as homoeopathy teaches, then homoeopathy is
lost.” [Reine
Arzneimittellehre, 2nd
edit., 1825,
p. I.]
As was shown,
Hahnemann
very soon began to use medicines in a way peculiar to himself. At
first he advocated ” energetic treatment,” and preferred
to use ” strong ” medicines. We notice that he was
especially careful with the narcotic herbs, gradually increasing the
strength of the doses till the desired effect was obtained.Then he left off the medicine in order to watch carefully the
result and the duration of the effects of the medicine. In the
course of many years he arrived at giving a single dose and
care-fully watching the effect on the body ; only after the effect
had passed away did he repeat the dose.What physician has ever studied this difficult question so
carefully as the great observerHahnemann
? None of his opponents have seriously followed him on this
important path of investigation ; medical literature makes mention
of no physician who sought to solve in this indispensable manner
this important problem with such zealous care and such calm and
faithful observation.By such studies, extending over years, was
Hahnemann
led step by step out of the ordinary routine to the vast and
beneficent field of his system of therapeutics. The allopaths — to
give one example only from this department of medicine —
administer mercury like the homoeopaths in certain kinds of catarrh
of the bowels.The size of their dose is about a grain of calomel. Has any
professor or doctor carefully noted down the cases with all the
attendant circumstances, (they have as yet been vainly sought for in
allopathic writings) in which calomel has been of use, and has he
then, in one such case, prescribed a ten times ” weaker ”
dose, which he is certain was prepared according toHahnemann’s
directions ? Has he carefully observed the effect of it ?
They all with one consent began to make
excuse.Has he, in case of a non-result, given a stronger dose to the
patient in question, and found curative effects which did not result
from the “weaker” dose ?Has he continued such observations, which are, moreover, to the
real interest of the patient, through many years, and noted them
down with the most careful attention to all objective and subjective
phenomena ?This was the mode gradually adopted by
Hahnemann
in his treatment. None of his opponents have imitated him. Even his
finished results, which were attained with so much labour, have been
treated with contempt, and that in spite of his earnest and repeated
entreaties, and pills and mixtures have been more used than ever.” What would my opponents have risked,” so
Hahnemann
says, [Chron. Krankh., Vol.
I., p. IV. Preface.] ” if
they had followed my directions from the first and begun with the
use of these small doses ? Could anything worse befall them than
that they should do no good ? Such small doses could not hurt !
”Most of his opponents did not even make superficial trials, and
the few who did experiment seemed to have carried out their
superficial experiments with a preconceived purpose.
Bischoff
[L.c.,
p. 127.
] says that duty will not
allow homoeopathy to be tested in cases of inflammation of the
lungs.
Dr Johann Christian August HEINROTH (1773-1843)
Heinroth
, who lived in
Leipzic at the same time as Hahnemann,
and had therefore an opportunity of observing him, writes (l.c., p. 5.)
:
”
Hahnemann
has given many proofs that he is as thoroughly convinced of the
truth of his doctrine as that he is a man of firm character.”
However, Heinroth
would make no trials of homoeopathy : ” False notions lead to
false results.”Neither did
Elias
(p. 18)
: ” Facts against homeopathy are very much wanted.”
Sachs
, in his Schlusswort,
and Fischer
say nothing about trials.
Simon
[Pseudomessias,
p. 300.]
agrees with Mückisch
that Hahnemann’s
appeal to them to make a trial of homoeopathy is a ” wretched
proposition,” because valuable time would be lost. ” We
cannot be expected to test every palpable absurdity — life is too
noble for that.” [Geist
der Hom., p. 77.]
Sachs
(Homoeopathy
and Herr Kopp, p. 56)
attacks Kopp’s
remark :” The facts may be true, while the theory founded on them is
false.” This does not apply to Homœopathy (p.57)
“ because
there is no such thing.”
Stieglitz
(i.e., p. 163)
: ” Hahnemann’s
utter untrustworthiness acquits us of any obligation to give his
system a practical trial.”Prof.
Munk
: — [Die Homöopathie, Bern,
1868,
p. 166.]I should consider it contrary to my conscience to treat my
patients according to a method which, from the moment of its first
appearance until now, has been regarded by the whole scientific
world as useless and injurious.Besides this the further testing of homoeopathy at the sick bed
is quite superfluous, because this test has often enough been
employed, and that quite impartially and objectively.All subsequent controversialists express themselves exactly or
nearly in the same way.
Hufeland, Groos, Kopp
made trials which resulted favourably to homoeopathy. Others, such
as Lesser
and Friedheim,
made trials of the system, and arrived at the conclusion that
bleeding is necessary in diseases in which everyone now knows that
it is injurious.
Eigenbrodt
, a young
military doctor, who was still studying, and therefore without
practical experience, by desire of the Hessian Government, witnessed
the treatment of patients in the Vienna Homoeopathic Hospitals, and
stated, as his opinion, that homoeopathy was of no use, and sought
to prove it.The homoeopathic physician of one of the hospitals in question
[Caspar,
Parallelen zwischen Hom. u. Allop., Vienna and Olmütz, 1856.)
showed the course of the cases treated during Eigenbrodt’s
attendance was not as stated by him, and that Eigenbrodt’s
accounts were coloured by a foregone conclusion.
Public trials of homoeopathy by its partisans.
Trials of homoeopathy seen
through different spectacles. The following Public Trials of Homeopathy were undertaken :In
1821
Stapf
treated some patients suffering from chronic diseases in the Berlin
Charite. The patients recovered, and the trials were broken off.
Sachs
[Schlusswort,
p. 67.]
says : ” The results are
said to have been very unfavourable ; the silence of the commission
can be looked upon as a proof of their utter worthlessness.” As
if the commission would not have announced the results to the whole
world if they had been unfavourable.In the same year trials were made by
Wislicenus
in the Garrison Hospital at Berlin, under the control of military
surgeons. The results were favourable. ” The military doctors
took away the journal of the cases kept by Wislicenus
under their superintendence, in order to read it at their leisure.
In spite of his urgent entreaties, they forgot to bring it back
again.” [Rosenberg, l.c.,
p. 21.]
Lesser
[L.c., p. 305,
note.] says that the journal
was kept by a military surgeon appointed for the purpose and
delivered to the commission. ” To give an account of these
experiments was not the business of the highest functionaries.Some day I shall make them known.”
Lesser’s
book is full of spite against the homoeopaths,. so that even Schmidt’s
Jahrbücher expressed
its dissatisfaction with it. The reader would not have been referred
to some future time, and would not have had to wait in vain to this
day if there had been anything un-favourable to homoeopathy in this
trial.In the year
1829
— 30,
the Leipzic homoeopath, Dr. Herrmann,
in Russia (at Tultschin and St. Petersburg), treated some hospital
patients at the request of the Russian War Minister.At Tultschin
165
patients were treated thus, 6
of them died ; at St. Petersburg 409
patients came under homoeopathic treatment, 16
of them died. This is the account of the homoeopaths. [Rosenberg,
l.c., p. 12.]The allopaths say : At Tultschin, out of
128
patients who were treated by the homoeopathic physician 5
died, notwithstanding that he had obtained all possible advantages
for his patients, but among those treated allopathically not one
died out of 457
patients.At St. Petersburg, according to the allopathic account,
31
patients died out of 431
treated homoeopathically. [See
Antihomöop. Archie, 1834,
Vol. I., H. 2.]The Russians were just as much attached to the ”
scientific” mode of treatment as the German and other
professors.In cholera, too, so
Hasper
tells us, the homoeopathic results were “very unfavourable as
compared with the treatment by bleeding.”The great mass of patients in these experiments were suffering
from inflammation of the lungs, gastric and nervous fever. According
to the allopaths, the homoeopathic doctor laid great stress on fresh
air, cleanliness, and diet.In Vienna (
1828)
trials of homoeopathic treatment were instituted by the staff
physician Dr. Marenzeller.
The homoeopaths give favourable accounts (Rosenberg,
l.c.), and publish the 37
cases.The allopaths are silent on the subject. The judgment of the
allopathic commission was to the effect that these trials were not
in favour of, but that at the same time they were not against
homeopathy. But the trial was stopped sooner than had originally
been determined.The allopaths assert that the Emperor declared that his soldiers
were too dear to him for him to abandon them any longer to the
murderous homoeopathic treatment (Rosenberg,
l.c.).
Simon
[Antihomöop.
Archiv, 1834,
Vol. I., H. 2.,
p. 125.]
is still more minutely
acquainted with the details :The homoeopath sent his patients, when they were dying, into the
allopathic division of the hospital, and so lessened his number of
deaths.This story came to the ears of the Confessor of his Majesty the
Emperor, either through having seen the records of the homoeopathic
department, or simply by crediting the current reports.So much is certain, that the Emperor, after an interview with
him, gave commands to put an end to the homeopathic experiments. [Simon
goes on true to his principle of personally attacking his opponents
: ]With regard to
Marenzeller,
he is a man without scientific training, and even without ordinary
cultivation. He cannot write two lines of German correctly …
He maintained that women should be delivered on all fours like
beasts.
Copyright
© Robert Séror 2006.
