History of Homœopathy : Its Origin ; Its Conflicts. by Wilhelm Ameke, M. D. Presented by Dr Robert Séror.

Main

History
of Homœopathy : Its Origin ; Its Conflicts.
by Wilhelm
Ameke, M. D.
Presented by Dr
Robert Séror.

Editor’s
Preface.

Dr. Robert Ellis Dudgeon (1820-1904)

The history of homoeopathy is the indictment of he medical
profession. A physician distinguished above his fellows for his services
to medicine, chemistry and pharmacology, endowed with quite a phenomenal
talent for ancient and modern languages, and well read in all the
medical lore of past times, after mature thought and at a ripe age,
announces to the profession that, as the result of years of arduous
experiment, investigation and reflection, he believes he has discovered
a therapeutic rule which will enable us to find the remedies for
diseases with greater certainty and precision than can be effected by
any of the methods hitherto taught.

The reception which this announcement met with, and which was given
to all

Hahnemann’s
subsequent efforts to give certainty and scientific accuracy to
therapeutics, is described in the following pages, and forms one of the
most melancholy and deplorable episodes in the history of medicine.

Homoeopathy having had its origin in Germany, and its founder having
spent his long life chiefly in that country, it is natural to expect
that the historical events of homoeopathy have occurred chiefly, at all
events primarily, in Germany.

Hahnemann’s
active life was carried on in Germany, and his works were written in
German or in Latin, which in his early days was the language often
employed by medical and scientific authors.

The main incidents of

Hahnemann’s
life and the chief sphere of his activity being Germany, the history of
homoeopathy is practically its history in Germany, and the task of
writing it could most appropriately be under-taken by a
fellow-countryman of Hahnemann.

How, well Dr.

Ameke
has performed his self-imposed task, the English reader has now an
opportunity of seeing. He has brought into full prominence the labours
and industry of his hero before he commenced those investigations that
led to his discovery of the therapeutic rule which he first enunciated
as the general principle of medical practice.

He clearly shows that

Hahnemann
was as far in advance of his chemical contemporaries in their special
science, as he afterwards surpassed all his medical contemporaries in
their special art. He also brings out the fact that Hahnemann,
before his discovery of the homoeopathic rule, had acquired a great
reputation for his improvements in the practice of medicine, in
pharmacology, and especially in hygiene, a branch of medicine which he
may almost be said to have created.

We see in this history the high esteem in which he was held by his
contemporaries, and especially by the Nestor of German physic, Hufeland,
who never lost his respect for

Hahnemann’s
genius and services to medicine even when he differed from him in
opinion.

The high esteem in which

Hahnemann
was held by the most illustrious of his contemporaries contrasts
remarkably with the unworthy treatment he received from the next
generation of medical men, who knew him only as the propagator of a
medical system, which, if it were true or even only partially true, must
upset all the teachings and traditions of medicine.

Pr. Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836)

However we may regret, we cannot wonder at the desperate efforts of
the sup-porters of Galenic medicine to discredit the new system which
threatened the annihilation of all their most cherished doctrines and
methods.

It must strike every unprejudiced observer as a very hopeless way of
suppressing a novel system of therapeutics, to abuse and calumniate its
author, to persecute its adherents by criminal processes, coroners’
inquests, expulsion from medical societies, deprivation of hospital
appointments, exclusion from periodical literature, and social and
professional ostracism.

One would think that the right way would be to afford them
opportunities in hospitals to test its value side by side with
traditional methods, to court discussion in societies and periodicals,
to make careful experiments with the remedies and the mode of their
employment recommended by its partisans, mare especially as those
partisans were the equals of the others in social and professional
status — integral parts of the same professional brotherhood. That the
dominant majority preferred the former plan, only shows that they were
doubtful of the superiority of their own methods, which, nevertheless,
they constantly vaunted as the only regular,” scientific and
rational ” ones.

Time has shown that

Hahnemann
was right at least in his condemnation of the cherished methods of
traditional medicine, for we have seen them all abandoned one by one by
the champions of orthodoxy, until nothing was left but blank nihilism,
euphemistically called ” expectancy.”

After arriving at this zero, the mercury of medical opinion was bound
to undergo a reaction, which we now see in the search for specifics
(which, for the most part, are sought for and found in the homoeopathic
materia medica) ; the physiological experiments on man and beasts —
but principally beasts — in order to discover the remedial power of
drugs ; the germ-theory with its corollary germicide medicines and
methods ; the tentative employment of new and powerful drugs, and the
use of ice-cold bathing and other “anti-pyretics” in almost
all diseases with heightened temperature.

As our old-school brethren have approximated so much to the teachings
of

Hahnemann,
chiefly by abandoning what he disapproved, but also, to some degree, by
adopting what he recommended, it might be expected that their hostility
towards his professed adherents would have ceased. But this is far from
being the case. The more they are indebted to homoeopathy, the less do
they seem disposed to admit its adherents to the full communion of
brotherhood.

They have so long abused and calumniated

Hahnemann
and his doctrines that they seem unable to give up their long-indulged
habit. Not being able now to revile us for our disparagement of the
methods they have themselves discarded, nor for our belief in the
therapeutic rule of “similia
similibus curentur,” which
they now generally acknowledge to be one of the methods of medicine,
their sole grievance is that we call ourselves homoeopathists (which we
do not any more than they call them-selves allopathists — we only
accept the name for want of a better, to avoid circumlocution, and to
indicate that we acknowledge a general therapeutic rule which our
opponents do not), and thus commit the unpardonable sin of ”
trading on a name,” an accusation which is manifestly absurd, as
that is but a poor trade in which all the gains of the profession in the
way of emoluments and honours are withheld from those who exercise it.

What is considered a sin in us does not seem to be so regarded in
their own ranks when used by oculists, aurists, gynecologists,
ovariotomists, laryngoscopists and other specialists, who trade on a
name to all intents and purposes, and are quite right in so doing. The
objections to homeopathy being practically reduced to this fanciful
charge, it is evident that the attitude of the representatives of
traditional medicine towards their re-forming brethren must soon change,
and they must allow homoeopathy to take its proper place in medicine.
When that is the case, the history of the origin and the conflicts of
homoeopathy will be read with interest by the school which now presents
a hostile front to that of

Hahnemann,
for, it will feel that it has purged itself of the reproach of op-posing
the truth by its late acknowledgement of its error.

My share in the work is that I have carefully revised Dr. Drysdale’s
manuscript and have superintended its passage through the press ; I have
also added an index and a few notes which serve to complete the history
in some places where it seemed defective.

LONDON,

September, 1885.
R. E. DUDGEON.

Copyright
© Robert Séror 2006.

Main