History
of Homœopathy : Its Origin ; Its Conflicts.
by Wilhelm
Ameke, M. D.
Presented by Dr
Robert Séror.
Conclusion.
Since the foundation of homoeopathy, the point of hostile attack
has been constantly shifted. At first it was opposed by Brown’s
adherents, the natural philosophers, chemical theorists, the crude
views of the advocates of bleeding and purgatives, which would not now
be defended by any ” scientific physician.”Then appeared the anatomical and that after the Vienna school,
which, as was stated by a professor at the Medical Congress of1882,
held that : ” We are not able to cure a disease, the patient is
only an object for observation, and it is at most a triumph for us
when we can verify our diagnosis on the dissecting table.”
All medical systems have opposed
Homoeopathy and have perished.This school was forced to give way to that of cellular pathology,
on which it was sought to build a cellular therapeutics.With what pleasing expectations were the foundation stones laid !
but its basis was unsound, and at the Science Congress of Kassel in1878
it was stated that ” the most important task of medicine,
therapeutics, is not advanced by cellular pathology.“
Biology, too, which some hoped would be engrafted on the minds of
medical men through the cellular doctrine, has had very little effect.At present bacteria are relied upon to draw the therapeutic cart
out of the mud. In the Congress for Internal Medicine of1883,
it was stated that there are only four remedies capable of destroying
bacteria,—quinine, iodine, mercury and salicylic acid. ” These
facts have not, however, been ascertained by methodical scientific
research, but by crude empirical methods.” ” The idea would
be dreadful,” says one speaker, ” if the lapse of several
thousands of years were necessary in order to discover four more such
remedies.“Therefore the Congress unanimously decided a search for
bactericidal remedies should be made. It is not necessary to be a
prophet in order to foresee that this mode of searching for medicines
will be valueless to internal therapeutics. The allopathic principle,
” much helps much,“ gains great support from
these endeavours, so that there is every reason to anticipate that the
allopaths will attack the diseased human body with strong, profoundly
acting medicines still more ” energetically” than before.Daily experience shows that the investigations instituted by
orthodox medicine vastly increase the knowledge and the power of the
physician. This advance depends partly on hygiene and partly on the
development and extension of mechanical treatment, which latter,
however, threatens continually to overstep its limits.
Through homoeopathy alone can
therapeutics be advanced.
The condition of allopathic internal medicine is thoroughly
unsatisfactory to the physician. This coarse symptomatic treatment,
this use of remedies which endanger both health and life, this
unphysiological method, cannot but dishearten every thoughtful
physician. Where can any sure help be found ?The more zealously we penetrate into the matter the more we feel
the want of firm ground under our feet, and the greater is the number
of contradictions which confronts us. What long lists of medicines are
recommended in all diseases without any precise differentiation of
them ! The endless recommendations of remedies dance like ignes fatui
before the investigator ; they appear and disappear, come into fashion
and then go out of fashion.All these different therapeutic systems and schools have waged war
with homoeopathy, have attacked it with the most unworthy weapons,
have prophesied its downfall, and have themselves come to a disastrous
end ; but homoeopathy stands firm, secure through its therapeutic
results.Fashion does not prevail in homoeopathy as in the opposite camp.
The same remedies whichHahnemann
used are still employed according to the same indications as before,
though perhaps they arc given with more precision, in consequence of
the careful observations of many zealous and laborious medical men.Holding fast by the old proved remedies
does not prevent the reception of new medicines, given in homoeopathic
preparations and doses. But the medicines of homoeopathy are not
subject to the caprices of fashion.Here the exact sphere of action of each drug is discoverable, and
if any one wishes to introduce a new remedy into therapeutics, the
homoeopaths require first a careful proving on the healthy organism
and then an accurate description of the cases of disease in which it
is used with advantage. Anatomical diagnosis is made use of as a help,
but it is not sufficient for them.“There are no remedies for names of diseases,” they say.
Homoeopathy contains a treasure of valuable experiences, the
outcome of the most careful observations ; but the form under which
they are offered at first excites the repugnance of the physician who
has been educated allopathically (and we have all been brought up as
allopaths), and this repugnance can only, be overcome by earnest
professional zeal.But if we have once gained a deeper insight into it, all trouble is
well rewarded by the results obtained at the sick bed, and the
physician who was beginning to despair of therapeutics takes a
pleasure in his profession which richly repays his labours. Here is a
field in which the physician, by zealous study, can develope his
therapeutic usefulness without being confused and disheartened by
therapeutic contradictions.Homoeopathy has existed for more than seventy years, thousands of
medical men practise it, millions of laymen are attached to it, and
made enthusiastic by its success in the treatment of disease. The
adherents of this system go on increasing in spite of enormous
external hindrances. A large number of periodicals is published in all
civilized languages exclusively devoted to this subject ; its
literature numbers thousands of volumes.And it is attempted to upset such an established system of medicine
by misrepresentations, by abuse, by denunciations, and by all sorts of
unworthy odious machinations ! A foolish enterprise !Abandonment of their pernicious arrogance and of their blind
respect for authority, self-knowledge and improvement of their own
obvious faults, are what is required by the allopaths, and for this
vulgar vituperation is a very poor substitute. When they have put
their own camp in order they will cease to marshal their forces in
order to attackHahnemann’s
system, they will joyfully receive and assimilate its important and
everlasting truths.History will then recall the remarkable circumstance that the truth
in therapeutics was discovered by medical practitioners who received
no State-support, and that the universities which were established in
order to search out truth trampled upon this truth for many years, and
wandered in the pernicious paths of therapeutic error.
Ecce quam bonum at jucundum habitare fratres in
unum !Legislators whose medical counsellors are all allopaths, should
weigh well the following facts : — Homoeopathy is a power that must
be reckoned with, since it has already millions of zealous adherents
in Germany alone. If the allopaths had not been exclusively listened
to, if the homoeopaths had been admitted to free competition, the
empire of the bleeding and purging therapeutics would soon have come
to an end ; the lives and health of many citizens which have, under
the present conditions, fallen a sacrifice to allopathy, would have
been preserved.They should not permit themselves to be guided exclusively by
allopaths who represent homoeopathy as the enemy of science and of
scientific investigation. Allopathic therapeutics is a pseudo-science,
a science of the same sort as the phlebotomizing therapeutics. The
allopaths of that day, with similar emphasis, called their treatment
“scientific” and “rational,” while they destroyed
their fellow-creatures who regarded them as their saviours.At present, too — as we saw above — health and life arc too
often sacrificed to allopathy. Is it always to be like this ? Or does
anyone suppose that the allopaths will, of their own accord, abandon
their barbarous treatment in the coming centuries ? Those who indulge
this hope know little of the history of medicine.Let homoeopathy be admitted to free competition, let a position
corresponding to its importance be given it in the hospitals, which
the public will thankfully and extensively avail themselves of, and
let the condition be attached that only medicines in homoeopathic
preparations shall be used, and that the occasional use of allopathic
methods shall always be specially recorded.This would not be giving free licence to the ideas of a fantastic
dreamer in a field where an earnest spirit of investigation should be
at work for the preservation and restoration of the chief blessing of
mankind. Homoeopathy cannot be seriously compared with “sympathy
and moonshine cures,” notwithstanding the efforts of its
opponents to establish its relation to these absurdities.Those medical men who leave all to nature, the ” nature
doctors,” ought to have an opportunity given them of
demonstrating their right to exist, that is, if they can show a
sufficient number of adherents among the public. An institution in
which doctors had an opportunity of observing the healing powers of
nature would be of great importance.Physicians would then have
a
tercium comparationis to
enable them to estimate the value of the results obtained by their own
peculiar treatment. So much misfortune would not have befallen mankind
through medical men, if an opportunity had been given them of
observing the action of the vis
medicatrix naturae.
The Universities ought to have gratefully received the offer of the
” nature doctors ” and their adherents. The fact that they
scornfully rejected it throws no favourable light on their belief in
their own powers.The dispensing of medicines by the practitioner — this natural
right of all medical men of whatever way of thinking — of which the
allopaths make the freest use, in spite of the privileges of the
apothecaries, in their employment of subcutaneous injections, ought to
be allowed in the case of homoeopathic medicines, the genuineness of
which in the present state of analytic knowledge it is impossible to
control.The idiopathic apothecaries are the natural enemies of homoeopathy,
they have given proof upon proof that they ardently wish for the
overthrow of this system, which they openly denounce as quackery ;
some even cheat the public who want homoeopathic medicines, and hold
it no sin to give their customers simple spirit instead of medicine.Some governments force the homoeopaths into a disastrous dependence
on their arch-enemies, and compel them to get their prescriptions
dispensed by such hostile persons, who look upon it as a matter of no
importance whether they are prepared well or ill. Is it not then a
most just and fair demand that the homoeopaths should be allowed to
dispense their own remedies beyond the third or fourth decimal potency
?
Any Government which seeks to put in practice the reasonable
proposals we have just made will, indeed, raise a storm of indignation
in certain quarters, but will confer a lasting benefit on mankind, and
will both deserve and receive the thanks of the more enlightened of
their contemporaries and of future generations.
Copyright
© Robert Séror 2006.