admitted so far as to entitle it to investigation, at least; and, in undertaking such an investigation, we have no more right to reject the evidence supplied in its favour by its professors, than we have of rejecting any other evidence in favour of any other medical doctrine, theoretical or practical. The first idea of the fundamental doctrine of Homœopathy, seems to have entered the mind of Hahnemann in the year 1790, (the forty-fifth year of his age,) while engaged in translating Cullen's Materia Medica into German. Dissatisfied, it is said, with the author's attempt to explain the action of bark in curing intermittent fevers, he resolved to make trials with it on his own person,-he being then in perfect health. Having taken a sufficient quantity of this drug, he affirms that he was speedily attacked with symptoms resembling those of ague; "and forthwith,' says his historian, arose in his mind a conception of the great truth which was destined to constitute the basis of the new art of medicine."* May not,' he reasoned, 'the power of cinchona to cure ague, depend on its power to excite in the healthy body a similar disease?' With the view of testing the truth of his hypothesis, he tried the effects of other medicines on himself and others, and always, it is said, with the same result, viz." that the medicines excited in the healthy body the same symptoms which they were capable of removing when these occurred naturally in the diseased body." Proceeding then to examine the records of medicine, as to the effects accidentally produced by poisons and other strong drugs, and finding everything, as he believed, confirmatory of his own views derived from experiment, he hesitated no longer to consider as established, and to promulgate the grand and universal law, that "every (dynamic) disease is best cured by that medicine which is capable of producing in the healthy body similar symptoms, or a similar disease, (öμotov malos;")† or, as it is usually stated more briefly, similia similibus curantur-Like are cured by like, i.e. homœopathically. The doctrine was hence named Homœopathy, and those who adopted it Homœopathists, or Homœopaths. In contradistinction, the common medical doctrine was named, from employing, in the treatment of disease, medicines producing an effect not like (opolos,) but different (ados) from that produced by the disease, Allopathy (allo Tatos), and its professors Allopathists or Allopaths. It is convenient, for the sake of brevity, to make use occasionally of these terms. Possessed of this, as he conceived, unfailing clue to all the mysteries of therapeutics, he and his disciples commenced an extensive and long-continued series of trials of the effects of various medicines on their own persons, and on the persons of others. The results of these experiments are recorded in Hahnemann's Fragmenta de viribus Medicamentorum positivis,' and Reine Arznei-mittellehre,' or 'Materia Medica Pura,' -the former first published in 1805, the latter in 1811. The results of the whole of these proceedings was regarded by Hahnemann as confirming, in every case, his great primary law, and as extending its application practically to a vast number of diseases. All that was requisite, hence ⚫ Miro symptomatum utriusque morbi concentu tactus, magnam statim præsagivit veritatem quæ novæ artis medicæ fundamentum facta est. (S. Hahnemanni Materia Medica Pura. Dresdæ, 1826. Introductio Edit. p. vi.) ↑ Ibid. p. vii. forth, to the successful treatment of diseases, was the selecting the medicine whose effects on the healthy body came nearest the symptoms of the particular disease to be treated. This selection was rendered easy, as to numerous diseases,-i.e. so far as the experiments had gone,-by reference to the published records of the experiments; and the knowledge was to be extended by further trials of the same kind with other medicines. Hahnemann gave this as the rationale of the cures thus effected, viz. that of two similar actions developed in the same part, the stronger destroys the weaker; but he regarded his doctrine as substantially based on experience, and therefore as independent of any theoretical explanations. The curing of diseases homoeopathically, that is, with medicines producing similar symptoms in the healthy, was, he maintained, a fact which could not be disputed, whether the theory invented to explain it was true or false. It would appear that the doctrine of infinitesimal doses constituted no original or necessary part of the general doctrine of homoeopathy. In complete accordance both with the theory and the primary experiments, medicines might be given homœopathically, and still in appreciable doses. And all the accounts we find in the writings of Hahnemann, on the origin and establishment of this part of his doctrine, strike us as being much less explicit than might have been expected on a point of such essential importance, and which has always constituted so prominent a feature of his system. He merely informs us in his Organon, (§ 240 et seq.) that it being found injurious, in the treatment of diseases, to produce a medicinal malady much greater than the natural malady intended to be cured, the object of the practitioner should be to produce an affection in the least possible degree greater than that to be removed, so that when the latter vanishes, the former may leave no trace behind: in other words, the energy of the medicament being expended in extinguishing its hostile double, none is left to harm the constitution of the patient. But owing to the remarkable sensibility of the diseased body to the agent producing a like action in the part affected, it is, he says, very conceivable how an extremely minute dose of a well-chosen remedy should suffice to produce the necessary degree of action. And experience, he assures us, verifies this presumption; it being found, on trial, that it is hardly possible to attenuate too much the dose of a remedy, provided it be well chosen. "It is of little consequence that this attenuation may go so far as to appear impossible to common physicians, whose minds are only conversant with gross material notions. Vain declamations (he truly adds) must cease in the presence of an experience that cannot err." (§ 278.) In the fourth edition of the 'Organon,' he tells us that experience had led him to diminish the doses much more than he thought necessary at first; and this smallness of dose, astounding as it is, now constitutes, as we have already said, one of the most striking parts of the practice of homœopathy, and is, indeed, now universally considered as inseparable from it, and even an essential part of it. The consideration of this reduction of the homoeopathic doses, from a sensible to an infinitesimal amount, suggests to the sceptical or suspicious mind another explanation of the cause much less favorable to Hahnemann's views. It may be said, for instance, that while medicines were administered in sensible doses, on the homeopathic principle, similiasimilibus, they were found to act not beneficially, because any effect they produced was, at best, not curative, and, probably, was injurious by dis turbing the curative effects of nature. When they were reduced to infinitesimal doses, they ceased to produce any effect on the system, and so came to seem beneficial by not interfering with the vis medicatrix. There seems also to be a contradiction in the facts, as well as the reasoning of Hahnemann, in regard to this matter. He says it is from the sensitiveness of the affected part being exalted to an extraordinary pitch by the disease, that the remedy operates in the infinitesimal dose. If this is the case, how does he explain the alleged facts, on which all his therapeutics is based, viz. the production of such a multitude of symptoms (i.e. medicinal diseases) in the healthy body, as recorded in his 'Materia Medica Pura,' and his Fragmenta?" Every one has heard of this incomprehensible posology; but we are inclined to believe that few, if any, but the homoeopathists themselves, or those who have read their books, (and only a small number have) are aware of its infinite and astonishing minuteness. What passes respecting it, in common medical parlance, is regarded as a playful exaggeration of the truth, garnished good humouredly for the nonce, like the ornamental facts of the story-teller. And it is no wonder that this is so. Mere imagination, working primarily on its own ground, could never have reached such a climax of the marvellous. Here, assuredly, if anywhere, the truth, if truth it be, is stranger than fiction. So minute are the doses prescribed by the Hahnemannic school, that they are scarcely conceivable by the human mind. They defy all the powers of chemistry and physics to detect in them any trace of the remedial substances which they profess to contain, and they almost confound arithmetic in reckoning their amount. We are not ashamed to confess, that our own powers are inadequate to put down in figures an ordinary homœopathic dose, and we suspect that many of the homoeopathists themselves would find themselves in the same predicament on trial. The following are the different attenuations or doses used: The primary dilutions or attenuations are used comparatively rarely; the higher ones, as the sixth, twelfth, twenty-first, and thirtieth, very commonly. It may be worth a moment's trouble to try how far we really understand or comprehend these numbers. Looking at the first of these we have no difficulty. The hundredth (100th) part of a grain, is intel-, ligible enough; the ten-thousandth (10,000th) is comprehensible, but begins to waver before the mental view; while the millionth (1,000,000th) part of a grain, puts our powers of comprehension on the rack, and leaves us in a chaos of undefined entities or non-entities, we know not which. We fancy that we grasp the reality, and then it instantly vanishes as a phantom, even beyond the sphere of imagination itself. Having got so far, the additional subdivisions, or attenuations, scarcely add to our difficulties. The mind, in any such case, is occupied by a word more than a thing, and whether the word be a Millionth, Billionth, or Decillionth, the power of comprehension seems the same. And yet the actual difference between these quantities is immense,- -so immense as to be almost as inconceivable as the actual things themselves. This will be more intelligible, we think, by setting it down in words thus: One thousand thousands, is One million billions One million trillions A Million. A Billion. A Trillion. A Quadrillion. A Decillion. Now, we believe this last denomination (according to the English mode of numeration) would stand thus in figures:: 1,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000,000000. Imagine, if you can, a grain of silica, or charcoal, or oyster shell, (powerful remedies, according to Hahnemann and his followers, in this attenuated condition,) divided into this number of parts: and one of these parts is not only a fit and proper dose to be given as a remedy for severe diseases, but is an agent of such potent influence on the animal economy, that one dose of this amount will continue acting for thirty, forty, or fifty days, and must not be interfered with by any repetition of it, for fear of deranging or destroying its curative virtue! Thus, Hahnemann tells us that a sextillionth of a grain of carbonate of ammonia will act beneficially upwards of thirty-six days;† that the decillionth of a grain of oyster shell (calcarea) will require forty, fifty, and even more days, "to effect all the good it is capable of;" that a similar dose of plumbago (graphites) will act for at least from thirty-six to forty-eight days :§ and a like dose of phosphorus, at least forty days.|| "Of such minute division," remarks Dr. Alexander Wood, in his very clever pamphlet, "no language can give even the slightest idea, and though calculations may express it in figures, yet they fail to convey any mental conception of the amount." He accordingly gives the following analogical illustrations, as tending, at least, to help us to comprehend the unbounded vastness, or, rather, infinite littleness, of the subject contemplated, if not to compass themselves in our minds. "A billion of moments have not elapsed since the [Mosaic] creation of the world, and, to produce a decillion, that number must be multiplied by a million seven separate times. The distance between the earth and the sun is ninety-five millions of miles; twenty of the homoeopathic globules, laid side by side, extend to * This is according to the English mode of calculation. The French calculate by thousands-not by millions; e. g. with them a billion is a thousand millions only. Ib. p. 148. Ib. iii, p. 48. + Die Chronischen Krankheiten, band ii, p. 20. Ib. p. 67. * about an inch, so that 158,400,000,000 of such globules would reach from the earth to the sun. But when the thirtieth dilution is produced, each grain is divided into 100,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000; 000,000 parts, so that a single grain of any substance, in the thirtieth dilution, would extend between the earth and the sun 1,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262; 626,262 separate times!" (p. 108.) After this, the more familiar illustrations that one hears of, such as a grain or drop of the original medicine being dissolved in the lake of Geneva, the Caspian, or the Mediterranean, and then a drop of the marine solution given as a homœopathic dose, will hardly appear extravagant. It is, however, but justice to Hahnemann and his followers to state, that they only then attribute such powers to their infinitesimal doses, when the remedies are prepared in a peculiar manner; maintaining that new properties and powers are developed in them by the frictions and shakings to which they are thereby subjected. The evidence they adduce in support of this opinion, is entirely derived from experience, they say: medicines prepared in their peculiar manner being found capable of curing diseases, while, if otherwise prepared, they are not. The character of this evidence may be more particularly considered hereafter; we will only now remark, that its validity will depend entirely upon the quality of the evidence which they can adduce under the name of experience. If they adduce no other proof but the fact of diseases ceasing on or after the employment of their medicines, the fact, though repeated ad infinitum, if standing simply by itself, must go for nothing in the way of proof. If they can show a sufficiently large number of instances of two parallel series of diseases, the one series treated homœopathically, the other left to nature, and show that all or the vast majority of the one set were cured or benefited, and the other set not, then, indeed, we shall be prepared to admit the conclusiveness of the argument based on experience. And in this case we must concede to the Homoeopathists, that no argument based on the mere ground of a positive inconceivableness of a dose, or a supposed impossibility of its action, will have any weight. "Empty declamations," to repeat Hahnemann's own words, must give way before the might of infallible experience." The doctrine of infinitesimal doses, based, as it is, on the alleged infinitesimal sensitiveness of the diseased body, or, at least, of the affected part, must, as a matter of course, draw after it, as a corollary, the necessity of a strict regimen during the cure of diseases. If medicinal substances, reduced below the standard of mental conception, are able to produce such great effects on the animal system, a fortiori may many other things entering the body in the shape of food or drink, or acting on it from without, produce similar, or, at least, somewhat analogous effects, to the great detriment of the individual and the utter counteraction or derangement of the remedial process instituted by the homœopathic medicament. To be sure, it might be argued that, as the former class of substances are not "prepared" according to the homoeopathic formula, they ought not to act so energetically. But to this it is replied, that many of the substances in question are taken in such large doses, that they affect the system allopa⚫ We believe Dr. Wood is here under the mark, and that the real sum is that given by us above. |