class of individuals who buy their dinners without tasting all the
food there is in the market. “On all discoveries there are persons who,
without descending to any inquiry into the truth, pretend to know, as it
were by intuition, that newly asserted facts are founded in the
grossest errors. These were those who knew that Harvey's report of the
circulation of the blood was a preposterous and ridiculous suggestion,
and in latter later days there were others who knew that Franklin
deserved reproach for declaring that points were preferable to balls for
protecting buildings from lightning.”
Again: “This unwarrantable mode of offering assertion for proof, so
unauthorized and even unprecedented except in the condemnation of
a Galileo, the persecution of a Copernicus, and a few other acts of
inquisitorial authority, in the times of ignorance and superstition,
affords but a lamentable instance of one of his remarks, that this is
far from being the Age of Reason.”
“The most valuable medicines in the Materia Medica act on principles of
which we are totally ignorant. None have ever yet been able to explain
how opium produces sleep, or how bark cures intermittent fevers; and yet
few, it is hoped, will be so absurd as to desist from the use of these
important articles because they know nothing of the principle of their
operations.” Or if the argument is preferred, in the eloquent language
of the Perkinistic poet:
“What though the CAUSES may not be explained,
Since these EFFECTS are duly ascertained,
Let not self-interest, prejudice, or pride,
Induce mankind to set the means aside;
Means which, though simple, are by
Heaven designed to alleviate the woes of human kind.”
This course of argument is so often employed, that it deserves to be
expanded a little, so that its length and breadth may be fairly seen.
A series of what are called facts is brought forward to prove some very
improbable doctrine. It is objected by judicious people, or such as have
devoted themselves to analogous subjects, that these assumed facts are
in direct opposition to all that is known of the course of nature, that
the universal experience of the past affords a powerful presumption
against their truth, and that in proportion to the gravity of these
objections, should be the number and competence of the witnesses. The
answer is a ready one. What do we know of the mysteries of Nature? Do
we understand the intricate machinery of the Universe? When to this is
added the never-failing quotation,
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,”--
the question is thought to be finally disposed of.
Take the case of astrology as an example. It is in itself strange and
incredible that the relations of the heavenly bodies to each other at a
given moment of time, perhaps half a century ago, should have anything
to do with my success or misfortune in any undertaking of to-day.
But what right have I to say it cannot be so? Can I bind the sweet
influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? I do not know by
what mighty magic the planets roll in their fluid paths, confined to
circles as unchanging as if they were rings of steel, nor why the great
wave of ocean follows in a sleepless round upon the skirts of moonlight;
nor can I say from any certain knowledge that the phases of the heavenly
bodies, or even the falling of the leaves of the forest, or the manner
in which the sands lie upon the sea-shore, may not be knit up by
invisible threads with the web of human destiny. There is a class
of minds much more ready to believe that which is at first sight
incredible, and because it is incredible, than what is generally thought
reasonable. Credo quia impossibile est,--“I believe, because it is
impossible,”--is an old paradoxical expression which might be literally
applied to this tribe of persons. And they always succeed in finding
something marvellous, to call out the exercise of their robust faith.
The old Cabalistic teachers maintained that there was not a verse,
line, word, or even letter in the Bible which had not a special efficacy
either to defend the person who rightly employed it, or to injure his
enemies; always provided the original Hebrew was made use of. In the
hands of modern Cabalists every substance, no matter how inert, acquires
wonderful medicinal virtues, provided it be used in a proper state of
purity and subdivision.
I have already mentioned the motives attributed by the Perkinists to the
Medical Profession, as preventing its members from receiving the new
but unwelcome truths. This accusation is repeated in different forms and
places, as, for instance, in the following passage: “Will the medical
man who has spent much money and labor in the pursuit of the arcana
of Physic, and on the exercise of which depends his support in life,
proclaim the inefficacy of his art, and recommend a remedy to
his patient which the most unlettered in society can employ as
advantageously as himself? and a remedy, too, which, unlike the drops,
the pills, the powders, etc., of the Materia Medica, is inconsumable,
and ever in readiness to be employed in successive diseases?”
As usual with these people, much indignation was expressed at any
parallel between their particular doctrine and practice and those of
their exploded predecessors. “The motives,” says the disinterested
Mr. Perkins, “which must have impelled to this attempt at classing the
METALLIC PRACTICE with the most paltry of empyrical projects, are but
too thinly veiled to escape detection.”
To all these arguments was added, as a matter of course, an appeal to
the feelings of the benevolent in behalf of suffering humanity, in the
shape of a notice that the poor would be treated gratis. It is pretty
well understood that this gratuitous treatment of the poor does not
necessarily imply an excess of benevolence, any more than the gratuitous
distribution of a trader's shop-bills is an evidence of remarkable
generosity; in short, that it is one of those things which honest men
often do from the best motives, but which rogues and impostors never
fail to announce as one of their special recommendations. It is
astonishing to see how these things brighten up at the touch of Mr.
Perkins's poet:
“Ye worthy, honored, philanthropic few,
The muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you,
Who in Humanity's bland cause unite,
Nor heed the shaft by interest aimed or spite;
Like the great Pattern of Benevolence,
Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense;
And though opposed by folly's servile brood,
ENJOY THE LUXURY OF DOING GOOD.”
Having thus sketched the history of Perkinism in its days of prosperity;
having seen how it sprung into being, and by what means it maintained
its influence, it only remains to tell the brief story of its
discomfiture and final downfall. The vast majority of the sensible part
of the medical profession were contented, so far as we can judge, to
let it die out of itself. It was in vain that the advocates of this
invaluable discovery exclaimed over their perverse and interested
obstinacy,--in vain that they called up the injured ghosts of Harvey,
Galileo, and Copernicus to shame that unbelieving generation; the
Baillies and the Heberdens,--men whose names have come down to us
as synonymous with honor and wisdom,--bore their reproaches in meek
silence, and left them unanswered to their fate. There were some others,
however, who, believing the public to labor under a delusion, thought it
worth while to see whether the charm would be broken by an open trial of
its virtue, as compared with that of some less hallowed formula. It
must be remembered that a peculiar value was attached to the Metallic
Tractors, as made and patented by Mr. Perkins. Dr. Haygarth, of Bath,
performed various experiments upon patients afflicted with different
complaints,--the patients supposing that the real five-guinea Tractors
were employed. Strange to relate, he obtained equally wonderful effects
with Tractors of lead and of wood; with nails, pieces of bone, slate
pencil, and tobacco-pipe. Dr. Alderson employed sham Tractors made of
wood, and produced such effects upon five patients that they returned
solemn thanks in church for their cures. A single specimen of these
cases may stand for all of them. Ann Hill had suffered for some months
from pain in the right arm and shoulder. The Tractors (wooden ones) were
applied, and in the space of five minutes she expressed herself relieved
in the following apostrophe: “Bless me! why, who could have thought it,
that them little things could pull the pain from one. Well, to be sure,
the longer one lives, the more one sees; ah, dear!”
These experiments did not result in the immediate extinction of
Perkinism. Doubtless they were a great comfort to many obstinate
unbelievers, and helped to settle some sceptical minds; but for the real
Perkinistic enthusiasts, it may be questioned whether they would at that
time have changed their opinion though one had risen from the dead to
assure them that it was an error. It perished without violence, by an
easy and natural process. Like the famous toy of Mongolfier, it rose by
means of heated air,--the fevered breath of enthusiastic ignorance,--and
when this grew cool, as it always does in a little while, it collapsed
and fell.
And now, on reviewing the whole subject, how shall we account for the
extraordinary prevalence of the belief in Perkinism among a portion of
what is supposed to be the thinking part of the community?
Could the cures have been real ones, produced by the principle of ANIMAL
MAGNETISM? To this it may be answered that the Perkinists ridiculed the
idea of approximating Mesmer and the founder of their own doctrine, that
nothing like the somnambulic condition seems to have followed the use of
the Tractors, and that neither the exertion of the will nor the powers
of the individual who operated seem to have been considered of any
consequence. Besides, the absolute neglect into which the Tractors soon
declined is good evidence that they were incapable of affording any
considerable and permanent relief in the complaints for the cure of
which they were applied.
Of course a large number of apparent cures were due solely to nature;
which is true under every form of treatment, orthodox or empirical.
Of course many persons experienced at least temporary relief from the
strong impression made upon their minds by this novel and marvellous
method of treatment.
Many, again, influenced by the sanguine hopes of those about them, like
dying people, who often say sincerely, from day to day, that they are
getting better, cheated themselves into a false and short-lived belief
that they were cured; and as happens in such cases, the public never
knew more than the first half of the story.
When it was said to the Perkinists, that whatever effects they produced
were merely through the imagination, they declared (like the advocates
of the ROYAL TOUCH and the UNGUENTUM ARMARIUM) that this explanation
was sufficiently disproved by the fact of numerous and successful cures
which had been witnessed in infants and brute animals. Dr. Haygarth
replied to this, that “in these cases it is not the Patient, but the
Observer, who is deceived by his own imagination,” and that such may be
the fact, we have seen in the case of the good lady who thought she had
conjured away the spot from her friend's countenance, when it remained
just as before.
As to the motives of the inventor and vender of the Tractors, the facts
must be allowed to speak for themselves. But when two little bits of
brass and iron are patented, as an invention, as the result of numerous
experiments, when people are led, or even allowed, to infer that they
are a peculiar compound, when they are artfully associated with a new
and brilliant discovery (which then happened to be Galvanism), when they
are sold at many hundred times their value, and the seller prints his
opinion that a Hospital will suffer inconvenience, “unless it possesses
many sets of the Tractors, and these placed in the hands of the patients
to practise on each other,” one cannot but suspect that they were
contrived in the neighborhood of a wooden nutmeg factory; that legs of
ham in that region are not made of the best mahogany; and that such as
buy their cucumber seed in that vicinity have to wait for the fruit as
long as the Indians for their crop of gunpowder.
*****
The succeeding lecture will be devoted to an examination of the
doctrines of Samuel Hahnemann and his disciples; doctrines which some
consider new and others old; the common title of which is variously
known as Ho-moeopathy, Homoe-op-athy, Homoeo-paith-y, or Hom'pathy, and
the claims of which are considered by some as infinitely important, and
by many as immeasurably ridiculous.
I wish to state, for the sake of any who may be interested in the
subject, that I shall treat it, not by ridicule, but by argument;
perhaps with great freedom, but with good temper and in peaceable
language; with very little hope of reclaiming converts, with no desire
of making enemies, but with a firm belief that its pretensions and
assertions cannot stand before a single hour of calm investigation.
II.
It may be thought that a direct attack upon the pretensions of
HOMOEOPATHY is an uncalled-for aggression upon an unoffending doctrine
and its peaceful advocates.
But a little inquiry will show that it has long assumed so hostile a
position with respect to the Medical Profession, that any trouble I, or
any other member of that profession, may choose to bestow upon it may be
considered merely as a matter of self-defence. It began with an attempt
to show the insignificance of all existing medical knowledge. It not
only laid claim to wonderful powers of its own, but it declared the
common practice to be attended with the most positively injurious
effects, that by it acute diseases are aggravated, and chronic diseases
rendered incurable. It has at various times brought forward collections
of figures having the air of statistical documents, pretending to show
a great proportional mortality among the patients of the Medical
Profession, as compared with those treated according to its own rules.
Not contented with choosing a name of classical origin for itself, it
invented one for the whole community of innocent physicians, assuring
them, to their great surprise, that they were all ALLOPATHISTS, whether
they knew it or not, and including all the illustrious masters of the
past, from Hippocrates down to Hunter, under the same gratuitous title.
The line, then, has been drawn by the champions of the new doctrine;
they have lifted the lance, they have sounded the charge, and are
responsible for any little skirmishing which may happen.
But, independently of any such grounds of active resistance, the subject
involves interests so disproportioned to its intrinsic claims, that it
is no more than an act of humanity to give it a public examination. If
the new doctrine is not truth, it is a dangerous, a deadly error. If it
is a mere illusion, and acquires the same degree of influence that we
have often seen obtained by other illusions, there is not one of my
audience who may not have occasion to deplore the fatal credulity which
listened to its promises.
I shall therefore undertake a sober examination of its principles, its
facts, and some points of its history. The limited time at my disposal
requires me to condense as much as possible what I have to say, but
I shall endeavor to be plain and direct in expressing it. Not one
statement shall be made which cannot be supported by unimpeachable
reference: not one word shall be uttered which I am not as willing to
print as to speak. I have no quibbles to utter, and I shall stoop
to answer none; but, with full faith in the sufficiency of a plain
statement of facts and reasons, I submit the subject to the discernment
of my audience.
The question may be asked in the outset,--Have you submitted the
doctrines you are professing to examine to the test of long-repeated and
careful experiment; have you tried to see whether they were true or not?
To this I answer, that it is abundantly evident, from what has often
happened, that it would be of no manner of use for me to allege the
results of any experiments I might have instituted. Again and again have
the most explicit statements been made by the most competent persons of
the utter failure of all their trials, and there were the same abundant
explanations offered as used to be for the Unguentum Armarium and the
Metallic Tractors. I could by no possibility perform any experiments
the result of which could not be easily explained away so as to be of no
conclusive significance. Besides, as arguments in favor of Homoeopathy
are constantly addressed to the public in journals, pamphlets, and even
lectures, by inexperienced dilettanti, the same channel must be open to
all its opponents.
It is necessary, for the sake of those to whom the whole subject may
be new, to give in the smallest possible compass the substance of
the Homoeopathic Doctrine. Samuel Hahnemann, its founder, is a German
physician, now living in Paris, [Hahnemann died in 1843 at the age of
eighty-seven years. In 1796 he published the first paper containing his
peculiar notions; in 1805 his first work on the subject; in 1810 his
somewhat famous “Organon of the Healing Art;” the next year what
he called the “Pure Materia Medica;” and in 1828 his last work, the
“Treatise on Chronic Diseases.” He has therefore been writing at
intervals on his favorite subject for nearly half a century.
The one great doctrine which constitutes the basis of Homoeopathy as a
system is expressed by the Latin aphorism, “SIMILIA SIBILIBUS CURANTUR,”
or like cures like, that is, diseases are cured by agents capable
of producing symptoms resembling those found in the disease under
treatment. A disease for Hahnemann consists essentially in a group
of symptoms. The proper medicine for any disease is the one which is
capable of producing a similar group of symptoms when given to a healthy
person.
It is of course necessary to know what are the trains of symptoms
excited by different substances, when administered to persons in health,
if any such can be shown to exist. Hahnemann and his disciples give
catalogues of the symptoms which they affirm were produced upon
themselves or others by a large number of drugs which they submitted to
experiment.
The second great fact which Hahnemann professes to have established is
the efficacy of medicinal substances reduced to a wonderful degree of
minuteness or dilution. The following account of his mode of preparing
his medicines is from his work on Chronic Diseases, which has not, I
believe, yet been translated into English. A grain of the substance,
if it is solid, a drop if it is liquid, is to be added to about a third
part of one hundred grains of sugar of milk in an unglazed porcelain
capsule which has had the polish removed from the lower part of its
cavity by rubbing it with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an
instant with a bone or horn spatula, and then rubbed together for six
minutes; then the mass is to be scraped together from the mortar and
pestle, which is to take four minutes; then to be again rubbed for six
minutes. Four minutes are then to be devoted to scraping the powder into
a heap, and the second third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk
to be added. Then they are to be stirred an instant and rubbed six
minutes,--again to be scraped together four minutes and forcibly rubbed
six; once more scraped together for four minutes, when the last third
of the hundred grains of sugar of milk is to be added and mingled by
stirring with the spatula; six minutes of forcible rubbing, four of
scraping together, and six more (positively the last six) of rubbing,
finish this part of the process.
Every grain of this powder contains the hundredth of a grain of the
medicinal substance mingled with the sugar of milk. If, therefore, a
grain of the powder just prepared is mingled with another hundred grains
of sugar of milk, and the process just described repeated, we shall have
a powder of which every grain contains the hundredth of the hundredth,
or the ten thousandth part of a grain of the medicinal substance. Repeat
the same process with the same quantity of fresh sugar of milk, and
every grain of your powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the
medicinal substance. When the powder is of this strength, it is ready
to employ in the further solutions and dilutions to be made use of in
practice.
A grain of the powder is to be taken, a hundred drops of alcohol are
to be poured on it, the vial is to be slowly turned for a few minutes,
until the powder is dissolved, and two shakes are to be given to it. On
this point I will quote Hahnemann's own words. “A long experience and
multiplied observations upon the sick lead me within the last few
years to prefer giving only two shakes to medicinal liquids, whereas I
formerly used to give ten.” The process of dilution is carried on in
the same way as the attenuation of the powder was done; each successive
dilution with alcohol reducing the medicine to a hundredth part of the
quantity of that which preceded it. In this way the dilution of the
original millionth of a grain of medicine contained in the grain of
powder operated on is carried successively to the billionth, trillionth,
quadrillionth, quintillionth, and very often much higher fractional
divisions. A dose of any of these medicines is a minute fraction of a
drop, obtained by moistening with them one or more little globules of
sugar, of which Hahnemann says it takes about two hundred to weigh a
grain.
As an instance of the strength of the medicines prescribed by Hahnemann,
I will mention carbonate of lime. He does not employ common chalk, but
prefers a little portion of the friable part of an oystershell. Of this
substance, carried to the sextillionth degree, so much as one or two
globules of the size mentioned can convey is a common dose. But for
persons of very delicate nerves it is proper that the dilution should
be carried to the decillionth degree. That is, an important medicinal
effect is to be expected from the two hundredth or hundredth part of
the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of
the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of a grain of oyster-shell. This is only
the tenth degree of potency, but some of his disciples profess to have
obtained palpable effects from “much higher dilutions.”
The third great doctrine of Hahnemann is the following. Seven eighths
at least of all chronic diseases are produced by the existence in the
system of that infectious disorder known in the language of science
by the appellation of PSORA, but to the less refined portion of the
community by the name of ITCH. In the words of Hahnemann's “Organon,”
“This Psora is the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all
the other countless forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous
debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy,
madness, epilepsy, and spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones,
or rickets, scoliosis and cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungua haematodes,
gout,--yellow jaundice and cyanosis, dropsy,--”
[“The degrees of DILUTION must not be confounded with those of POTENCY.
Their relations may be seen by this table:
lst dilution,--One hundredth of a drop or grain.
2d “ One ten thousandth.
3d “ One millionth, marked I.
4th “ One hundred millionth.
5th “ One ten thousand millionth.
6th “ One million millionth, or one billionth, marked II.
7th “ One hundred billionth.
8th “ One ten thousand billionth.
9th “ One million billionth, or one trillionth, marked III.
10th “ One hundred trillionth.
11th “ One ten thousand trillionth.
12th “ One million trillionth, or one quadrillionth, marked
IV.,--and so on indefinitely.
The large figures denote the degrees of POTENCY.]
“gastralgia, epistaxis, haemoptysis,--asthma and suppuration of the
lungs,--megrim, deafness, cataract and amaurosis,--paralysis, loss of
sense, pains of every kind, etc., appear in our pathology as so many
peculiar, distinct, and independent diseases.”