The Life and Letters of Dr Samuel Hahnemann By Thomas Lindsley Bradford, M.D. Presented by Dr Robert Séror

The Life and Letters
of Dr Samuel Hahnemann
By Thomas Lindsley Bradford,
M.D.
Presented by Dr Robert Séror

Chapter 49.

• Hahnemann’s advice for treatment of cholera

The
cholera advent seemed to restore

Hahnemann
to the freshness and vigor of life of a young man. It was with wonderful
acuteness that he described the symptoms and phenomena of this disease.
His marvellous knowledge of the effects of drugs on the human body enabled
him to determine according to the Homoeopathic principle those that would
be of service in this terrible scourge.

This is the more remarkable, as at this time he had never had an
opportunity of personally examining any actual cases.

In this connection the following story well illustrates this knowledge
of his materia medica :

(Hom.
Times, London, Vol. II, p. 335.)

“A gentleman consulted him about one of his family, suffering from
very severe illness, with certain very marked symptoms.

Hahnemann
heard him to the end ; ‘the patient is suffering from a medicinal
disease,’ and he named the drug.

The gentleman was certain that the patient was not so suffering,
and had made no use of that drug. But

Hahnemann
was right, as was proved upon inquiry.”

Hahnemann

soon began
to take an active part in advising his disciples. He published articles in
the papers, and issued pamphlets. The following letter, written to Dr. Stapf,
December 27, 1830, well shows his feelings upon the Allopathic treatment
of the epidemic.

He says :

(Hom.
World, Vol. XXV., p. 212. “Annals Brit. Hom. Society,” Vol.
iii., p. 254.)

“It certainly looks ill that the many indubitable reports in the
papers about the marvellous curative powers of Homoeopathy (and of

Veratrum)
in cholera have not
yet reached the ears of Nicholas
in particular, but it can hardly be doubted that they will eventually do
so. The great, infinitely good Spirit
who cares for the fate of every mite will also with mighty hand silently
bring about the establishment of that great affair which is so intimately
connected with the well being of sick mankind hitherto so neglected,
though it may not be perceived how all is ordained.

“Traditional medicine and surgery is a much too shamefully cruel
business. just read, for example, how

Hasper,
Kreuzing of Leipsic’s
nephew, in the face of the Homoeopathists, teaches how to mistreat cholera
and make it fatal with bloodletting to 30 ounces, quantities of leeches,
and Calomel
to the extent of three or four drachms, on a false theory and after the
example, as he says, of the
best physicians in the world – the English.

Is that not enough to rouse the anger of the Homoeopathists ? I
would that

Attomyr
were the man to raise his voice against the Allopathic murderers, for the
reviews of Allopathic pamphlets as they have hitherto appeared in your Archiv,
written in a mild,
deferential, gentle manner, do not appear, to me calculated to stir up the
deaf, infamous rogues.

The cautious, timid comments of our Homoeopathic reviewers are of no
use ; they have no more effect on them than so many flea bites. Can
anything worse befall us than that we should be deprived of all our civil
and natural rights if we were to proclaim aloud their injustice, give them
literary blows, and make war to the knife on the murderous gang ?

“They must be taught to fear our assaults, which should give the
death blow to their false art. They must be made to tremble before us,
otherwise we shall make no way and our immense superiority will never be
acknowledged ; we shall never gain any honor, nor induce the public to
regard them with well merited horror and disgust.

I entreat our fellow-workers to bestir themselves and do their utmost
to demonstrate the superiority of our divine art by stout resistance and
attack, and to expose the miserable nakedness of these destroyers of
mankind. If I were thirty years younger I would undertake to do this
unaided, and none would escape my death-dealing blows ; they would no
longer write in their wretched journals ; they would be reduced to
silence.

But now I may fairly expect that I might relinquish this duty to my
vigorous disciples. But I see that I am mistaken. But now I am near the
completion of my seventy-sixth year, I can no longer wield the
controversial club ; I have, at least I think I have, with great labor
built up my art on irrefragable pillars.

But to drive the rascally, conceited rogues out of the temple of

‘Aesculapius
with scorpion-whips-nothing else will do-is a task which ought not to be
imposed on me.

“Would to

God
some man would arise among us with head, heart and mighty arm who would
devote his life to this second urgently needful work as I have mine to the
first, the foundation of Homoeopathy ! ”

Again, writing to

Stapf,
in a letter dated August 5, 1831, Hahnemann
says : (Hom. World,
Vol. XXV., p. 417 ; ” Annals Brit. Hom. Society,” Vol. III., p.
71.)

“

Preu
of Nurnberg
pleases me much. I thank you for sending me his essay. (“What
Have We to Fear From Cholera Morbus ?” He recommends Arsenic in
this.)

As
long as the Allopaths represented to us (without giving any trustworthy
picture of the disease) that cholera is a compound of vomiting and
purging, so long we poor Homoeopaths at a distance had to regard

Veratrum
and Arsenic
as the specific
remedies for it.

But the faithful description by a Homoeopath has taught us that its
character is quite different. It is a tonic, spasmodic diathesis of all
the systems, spheres and tissues of the organism, which only towards the
end of life passes into convulsions and paralysis, and then there follows
watery vomiting and diarrhoea, and that only in some cases ; nothing of
the sort is to be seen in most cases, but only rapid death.

” Such being the case neither

Veratrum
nor Arsenic
can be of much use. Schreter
writes me from Lemberg,
where he arrived on the 15th of July, that he was able to do some, but not
much good with Veratrum,
and when it did no good then Camphor
was successful (when he wrote he had just received my essay on Camphor).

“Two days ago I was told by an eye witness from

Prague
that when the cholera raged in Odessa,
some months since, and the doctors were unable to do anything serviceable,
they only rubbed the patients with Camphor,
which restored them to health ; he himself had assisted to rub nine of the
cases, and all the nine recovered. Do we need any further testimony.

” My pamphlet,

(”
Cure and Prevention of Asiatic Cholera.”)
which you are familiar with, has been refused insertion in the public
papers by the medical authorities of Vienna
and Berlin.
In Berlin
a bookseller is about to print it with Stuber’s
preface. I have sent to Stuber
(as he has written a great deal about the malicious comments upon the
large doses of Camphor)
the enclosed
explanation to be added to his preface, which I beg you to read aloud at
the meeting on the tenth of August in place of my usual communication.

” I have been asked by a

Leipsic
publisher for an enlargement of this essay (”
Appeal to Thinking Philanthropists Respecting the Mode of Propagation of
Asiatic Cholera.” See ” Lesser Writings.”)

It will appear in a few days, published by

Gluck.
I did it not long ago. The price he will sell it at will be a groschen. I
have put in it everything useful for the public to know, but I have left
out the scientific matter.

The pamphlet which

Hahnemann
mentions in the above letter was entitled ” Cure
and Prevention of the Asiatic Cholera.”
It was originally published in the Archiv
der hom. Heilkunst, Vol.
XI., part 1, page 122.
It was dated ” Coethen,
Sept. 10, 1831″ and is signed ” Dr.
Samuel Hahnemann, Hofrath.”
It may also be found translated in the Lesser
Writings.

In this he recommends

Camphor
as the principal
remedy, but says it must be used in the first stage and as a household
remedy before there is time to summon a physician and while awaiting his
arrival. He says :

” In the first stage, accordingly, the patient must get as often
as possible (at least every five minutes) a drop of

Camphor
(made with one
ounce of Camphor
to twelve of
alcohol) on a lump of sugar or in a spoonful of water.

Some spirit of

Camphor
must be taken in
the hollow of the hand and rubbed into the skin of the arms, legs, and
chest of the patient ; he must also get a clyster of half a pint of warm
water mingled with two full teaspoonfuls of spirit of Camphor,
and from, time to
time some Camphor
may be allowed to
evaporate on a hot iron so that if the mouth should be closed by trismus,
and he can swallow nothing, he may draw in enough of Camphor
vapor with the
breath.”

It will be seen that he gives the

Camphor
in quite large
doses, and because he was criticized for it – he wrote an explanation, of
which he speaks in the previous letter as there enclosing to Stapf.
Stapf
published this in the Archiv
vol. XI., part 1,
p. 100.

Hahnemann

says that
the reason he gave Camphor
in large doses is that
the effect to
be produced is an Allopathic and not a Homoeopathic one. A palliative
action must be at once produced or the patient will die before the
Homoeopathic medicine has time to act.

Dr.

Boenninghausen,
in September, 1831, published at Munster
this article in a small pamphlet, and with it another letter addressed to
him by Hahnemann
and dated September 18, 1831. He also makes some original suggestions.
This is really another edition of the Hahnemann
pamphlet. He says in the preface :

“The account given in No. 210 of the

Westphalian
Mercury about
the remedy discovered by Dr. Hahnemann
for Asiatic Cholera,
was copied from No. 235 of the Prussian States
Gazette, because
I had not at hand then the Gotha
German General Advertiser,
which, under date of 20th August, contains the ungarbled essay of this
indefatigable investigator.

“I have just received an original essay of the date of September
10, and, therefore, I presume still more complete, and accompanying it was
a letter from the Hofrath himself. Said letter was dated September 18th,
and it contained much additional valuable information respecting this
frightful disease. So I deem it my duty to publish both of them.

“C, V. Boenninghausen.”

“Munster, Sept. 23, 1831.”

Hahnemann’s

article was also published in the form of a tract and freely distributed
in Vienna, Hungary,
Berlin, Magdeburg, and
other places where the cholera was active.

Hahnemann

in a
letter addressed to Dr. Schreter
in Lemburg,
thus speaks of the cholera : (Brit.
Jour. of Hom., Vol. VI., p. 413 ; also Hom. Times, London, Vol. I.,
p. 84 ; Kirby’s Ani. Jour. of Hom., Vol. iii., p. 87 ; Stapf’s
Archiv, 1848, Vol. III., part 3.)

Coethen, 19 th Dec., 1831.

Dear Colleague :

“I have had no opportunity of treating fully developed cholera
myself, but have often, by advice and directions, been enabled to stifle
it in the bud. At least 30,000 copies of my directions have been
circulated among the inhabitants of

Vienna,
Hungary, Berlin and Magdeburg,
and many thousands have been saved, when each, the instant he was attacked
with cholera, had administered to him by his friend a drop of spirit of Camphor
every five minutes,
and was well washed over head, neck and chest with a solution of Camphor
(1 to 12) by
means of the hand, and in less than an hour he was quite well, without
secondary sufferings, as if nothing had happened to him.

“By this means as I said, according to the accounts I have
received, many thousands have been saved in secret without the knowledge
of a physician or of the neighbors in the house. Now, as by my experience,

Camphor
vapor is the only
trustworthy means of annihilating the probable animated miasma of cholera,
it is easy to understand how the cholera was so rapidly extinguished by
its means in Vienna,
Berlin and Magdeburg.

This extinction of cholera in the first quarter of an hour by

Camphor
is available only
in the acute attacks of cholera, and as I have said only in the first hour
in which the aid of a physician cannot be obtained, and the disease is
still in its stage of tonic cramp ; when, however, this, as is soon the
case, passes into the stage of relaxation and of clonic cramps, then the
Homoeopathic physician can still do good, though with difficulty enough,
with Veratrum,
Cuprum, etc.

” Much more troublesome are those (not acute) gradual diseases
which arise from cholerine (as

Father
Veith, in Vienna,
calls these insidious cases), when the inhabitants of a town, owing to the
widely diffused and hence more diluted miasmatic vapor (the focus of which
are the dead bodies of those who die under Allopathic treatment), get only
a few symptoms of the cholera, which pass off in the case of robust
individuals, but in weak persons turn gradually into vomiting, but
principally into painless but very debilitating diarrheas, with much
flatulence, and which (if not well treated) end in tetanic convulsions,
delirium, and death.

In these insidiously occurring affections the employment of

Camphor
is inadmissible ;
it would only hasten the patient’s death. Phosphoric
acid, as
Father Veith
found, has proved specific in these colloquative diarrheas as accompanied
with rumbling in the bowels, which exhaust the vital powers ; and I, too,
have found it the same in patients affected in this way in Magdeburg.

” When the cholera actually attacks, if those seized by It should
be immediately treated by their friends with

Camphor
spirit, there would then be no fully developed cholera ; or such cases
would at least be much more rare, and still more rare fatal cases ; and
hence also no spreading of the miasmatic vapor through the town,
consequently also no cholerine, nor any of that lingering kind of cholera,
which I consider the most dangerous of all.

“As regards the controversy upon the contagiousness of cholera, I
beg you will read at your leisure my little pamphlet, entitled :

‘Appeal to Philanthropists Respecting the Mode in Which Cholera is
Infectious, With an Appendix by Anthony Schmit,’ published by Charles
Berger ; and thereafter Schnitzer’s ‘Cholera Contagiosa,’ Breslau.” *
* *

In a letter to

Stapf,
September 23, 1831, he says : (Hom.
World, Vol, XXV., p. 419. Annals Brit. Hom. of Med. Society,” Vol.
II., p. 356)

“I have already sent

Schweikert
two different articles on the treatment of cholera ; he has not answered
me, and I don’t know if they have been printed. I have also offered him
the situation, and he has not given me any answer upon that subject. Has
the man whom I considered my friend anything against me ?

” Many thanks to your Provincial Counselor for having inserted my
paper in the local newspaper, and still more thanks to you for having got
him to print and distribute separate impressions of it.

Schmit
has had some thousand copies of it made in writing (it is not allowed to
be printed in Austria
because I am the author) and widely circulated. The indefatigable man ! If
Attomyr
should refuse the appointment to England
I will offer it to Schmit.

“I am afraid lest our letters containing medicine should be cut
through and fumigated, and thereby spoiled. We might employ thin glass
tubes, such as you once sent me with

Iodine,
filled with the
larger sort of globule, so that they lie one above the other, and not side
by side.

” The glass tubes might be inserted into a quill corked up and
placed at the side of the letter, with directions to take the topmost
globule first, and so on. By this plan the globules would escape the
fumigation.

“Our
Rummel
has also issued a paper of directions for the treatment of cholera, in
which he recommends Cuprum
and Camphor.
It is only
Homoeopaths that can act thus. The remedies recommended by the blind
Allopaths, everyone advising a different medicine, are almost uncountable.

One of the last is a stomach plaster, which is much be puffed and
distributed by the Duke
of Bernburg.
A just Providence has sent cholera to serve as a sort of pillory for the
Allopaths, in which the uncertain and pitiful character of their treatment
is exposed ; then all the world can see their nakedness. * * *

” What do you say to this, that Schmit
assures me of, namely, that Matternich
has taken globules of Cuprum
as a prophylactic, and that his wife is partial to Homoeopathy ?

And here is another piece of important intelligence communicated to me
by another friend from Prague.
Father Veith, of Vienna
(a practical friend of Homoeopathy), when the cholera broke out in Vienna
cured several persons who were suffering from cholera with Camphor
according to my directions (he was previously doctor of medicine and
director of the Veterinary College in Vienna).

He is preaching in the Cathedral of St. Stephen,
and he preached a sermon before the Imperial Court in this church on ‘The
Cholera in the Light of Providence,’
in which he says (the sermon is now printed) :

‘It is a remarkable provision of Providence that in the same part of
the earth which was the birthplace of cholera its most powerful remedy (

Camphor)
is also to be
found.’ Everyone, says my correspondent, was delighted and in ecstasies at
this.

” Dr.

Schmidt,
of Konigsberg,
writes that though he had had no opportunities of seeing and treating
cases of cholera he had to treat a boy who had been suffering for
twenty-four hours from cholera and was extremely ill with vomiting and
purging, and yet he cured him with Camphor,
given according to
my method (spirits of Camphor
diluted with hot
water).

First the diarrhoea and finally the vomiting yielded. The people there,
he says, firmly believe (and rightly too, alas !) that the doctors
administer poisons. Do you think the anecdote about

Father
Veith suitable for the Allg.
Anz. d. Deutschen ?

” I enclose a cutting from the

Journal
des Débats which
will do for the Archiv
or Schweikert’s
periodical, or the Allg.
Anz. d. Deutschen. When
you are done with it, please return it to me. What about the Edinburgh
Review ?

“Yours truly,

” Sam. Hahnemann.”

Dudgeon

, in a note
to this long letter, says :

” Doubtless

Hahnemann
had just heard of the article on his system that was published in the Edinburgh
Review of January,
1830.”

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