experiments, it would be a satisfaction to any candid inquirer to
know whether other persons, to whose assertions he could look
with confidence, confirm these pretended facts. Now there are many
individuals, long and well known to the scientific world, who have tried
these experiments upon healthy subjects, and utterly deny that their
effects have at all corresponded to Hahnemann's assertions.
I will take, for instance, the statements of Andral (and I am not
referring to his well-known public experiments in his hospital) as to
the result of his own trials. This distinguished physician is Professor
of Medicine in the School of Paris, and one of the most widely known and
valued authors upon practical and theoretical subjects the profession
can claim in any country. He is a man of great kindness of character,
a most liberal eclectic by nature and habit, of unquestioned integrity,
and is called, in the leading article of the first number of the
“Homoepathic Examiner,” “an eminent and very enlightened allopathist.”
Assisted by a number of other persons in good health, he experimented
on the effects of cinchona, aconite, sulphur, arnica, and the other most
highly extolled remedies. His experiments lasted a year, and he stated
publicly to the Academy of Medicine that they never produced the
slightest appearance of the symptoms attributed to them. The results of
a man like this, so extensively known as one of the most philosophical
and candid, as well as brilliant of instructors, and whose admirable
abilities and signal liberality are generally conceded, ought to be of
great weight in deciding the question.
M. Double, a well-known medical writer and a physician of high standing
in Paris, had occasion so long ago as 1801, before he had heard of
Homoeopathy, to make experiments upon Cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He and
several others took the drug in every kind of dose for four months, and
the fever it is pretended by Hahnemann to excite never was produced.
M. Bonnet, President of the Royal Society of Medicine of Bordeaux, had
occasion to observe many soldiers during the Peninsular War, who made
use of Cinchona as a preservative against different diseases, but he
never found it to produce the pretended paroxysms.
If any objection were made to evidence of this kind, I would refer to
the express experiments on many of the Homoeopathic substances, which
were given to healthy persons with every precaution as to diet and
regimen, by M. Louis Fleury, without being followed by the slightest of
the pretended consequences. And let me mention as a curious fact, that
the same quantity of arsenic given to one animal in the common form of
the unprepared powder, and to another after having been rubbed up into
six hundred globules, offered no particular difference of activity in
the two cases.
This is a strange contradiction to the doctrine of the development of
what they call dynamic power, by means of friction and subdivision.
In 1835 a public challenge was offered to the best known Homoeopathic
physician in Paris to select any ten substances asserted to produce the
most striking effects; to prepare them himself; to choose one by lot
without knowing which of them he had taken, and try it upon himself or
any intelligent and devoted Homoeopathist, and, waiting his own time,
to come forward and tell what substance had been employed. The challenge
was at first accepted, but the acceptance retracted before the time of
trial arrived.
From all this I think it fair to conclude that the catalogues of
symptoms attributed in Homoeopathic works to the influence of various
drugs upon healthy persons are not entitled to any confidence.
2. It is necessary to show, in the next place, that medicinal substances
are always capable of curing diseases most like their own symptoms.
For facts relating to this question we must look to two sources; the
recorded experience of the medical profession in general, and the
results of trials made according to Homoeopathic principles, and capable
of testing the truth of the doctrine.
No person, that I am aware of, has ever denied that in some cases there
exists a resemblance between the effects of a remedy and the symptoms
of diseases in which it is beneficial. This has been recognized, as
Hahnemann himself has shown, from the time of Hippocrates. But according
to the records of the medical profession, as they have been hitherto
interpreted, this is true of only a very small proportion of useful
remedies. Nor has it ever been considered as an established truth that
the efficacy of even these few remedies was in any definite ratio to
their power of producing symptoms more or less like those they cured.
Such was the state of opinion when Hahnemann came forward with the
proposition that all the cases of successful treatment found in the
works of all preceding medical writers were to be ascribed solely to the
operation of the Homoeopathic principle, which had effected the cure,
although without the physician's knowledge that this was the real
secret. And strange as it may seem, he was enabled to give such a
degree of plausibility to this assertion, that any person not acquainted
somewhat with medical literature, not quite familiar, I should rather
say, with the relative value of medical evidence, according to the
sources whence it is derived, would be almost frightened into the
belief, at seeing the pages upon pages of Latin names he has summoned as
his witnesses.
It has hitherto been customary, when examining the writings of authors
of preceding ages, upon subjects as to which they were less enlightened
than ourselves, and which they were very liable to misrepresent, to
exercise some little discretion; to discriminate, in some measure,
between writers deserving confidence and those not entitled to it. But
there is not the least appearance of any such delicacy on the part of
Hahnemann. A large majority of the names of old authors he cites
are wholly unknown to science. With some of them I have been long
acquainted, and I know that their accounts of diseases are no more to be
trusted than their contemporary Ambroise Pare's stories of mermen,
and similar absurdities. But if my judgment is rejected, as being
a prejudiced one, I can refer to Cullen, who mentioned three of
Hahnemann's authors in one sentence, as being “not necessarily bad
authorities; but certainly such when they delivered very improbable
events;” and as this was said more than half a century ago, it could not
have had any reference to Hahnemann. But although not the slightest
sign of discrimination is visible in his quotations,--although for him
a handful of chaff from Schenck is all the same thing as a measure of
wheat from Morgagni,--there is a formidable display of authorities, and
an abundant proof of ingenious researches to be found in each of
the great works of Hahnemann with which I am familiar. [Some painful
surmises might arise as to the erudition of Hahnemann's English
Translator, who makes two individuals of “Zacutus, Lucitanus,” as
well as respecting that of the conductors of an American Homoeopathic
periodical, who suffer the name of the world-renowned Cardanus to be
spelt Cardamus in at least three places, were not this gross ignorance
of course attributable only to the printer.]
It is stated by Dr. Leo-Wolf, that Professor Joerg, of Leipsic, has
proved many of Hahnemann's quotations from old authors to be adulterate
and false. What particular instances he has pointed out I have no means
of learning. And it is probably wholly impossible on this side of the
Atlantic, and even in most of the public libraries of Europe, to
find anything more than a small fraction of the innumerable obscure
publications which the neglect of grocers and trunkmakers has spared
to be ransacked by the all-devouring genius of Homoeopathy. I have
endeavored to verify such passages as my own library afforded me the
means of doing. For some I have looked in vain, for want, as I am
willing to believe, of more exact references. But this I am able to
affirm, that, out of the very small number which I have been able, to
trace back to their original authors, I have found two to be wrongly
quoted, one of them being a gross misrepresentation.
The first is from the ancient Roman author, Caelius Aurelianus;
the second from the venerable folio of Forestus. Hahnemann uses the
following expressions,--if he is not misrepresented in the English
Translation of the 'Organon': “Asclepiades on one occasion cured an
inflammation of the brain by administering a small quantity of wine.”
After correcting the erroneous reference of the Translator, I can find
no such case alluded to in the chapter. But Caelius Aurelianus mentions
two modes of treatment employed by Asclepiades, into both of which the
use of wine entered, as being “in the highest degree irrational and
dangerous.” [Caelius Aurel. De Morb. Acut. et Chron. lib. I. cap. xv.
not xvi. Amsterdam. Wetstein, 1755.]
In speaking of the oil of anise-seed, Hahnemann says that Forestus
observed violent colic caused by its administration. But, as the author
tells the story, a young man took, by the counsel of a surgeon, an acrid
and virulent medicine, the name of which is not given, which brought on
a most cruel fit of the gripes and colic. After this another surgeon was
called, who gave him oil of anise-seed and wine, “which increased his
suffering.” [Observ. et Curat. Med. lib. XXI obs. xiii. Frankfort,
1614.] Now if this was the Homoeopathic remedy, as Hahnemann pretends,
it might be a fair question why the young man was not cured by it. But
it is a much graver question why a man who has shrewdness and learning
enough to go so far after his facts, should think it right to treat them
with such astonishing negligence or such artful unfairness.
Even if every word he had pretended to take from his old authorities
were to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these
authors were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to
prove whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility.
Let me give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's
mind. Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of
the “Organon,” that the smell of the rose will cause certain persons to
faint. And he says in the text that substances which produce peculiar
effects of this nature on particular constitutions cure the same
symptoms in people in general. Then in another note to the same
paragraph he quotes the following fact from one of the last sources one
would have looked to for medical information, the Byzantine Historians.
“It was by these means (i.e. Homoeopathically) that the Princess Eudosia
with rose-water restored a person who had fainted!”
Is it possible that a man who is guilty of such pedantic folly as
this,--a man who can see a confirmation of his doctrine in such a
recovery as this,--a recovery which is happening every day, from
a breath of air, a drop or two of water, untying a bonnet-string,
loosening a stay-lace, and which can hardly help happening, whatever
is done,--is it possible that a man, of whose pages, not here and there
one, but hundreds upon hundreds are loaded with such trivialities, is
the Newton, the Columbus, the Harvey of the nineteenth century!
The whole process of demonstration he employs is this. An experiment is
instituted with some drug upon one or more healthy persons. Everything
that happens for a number of days or weeks is, as we have seen, set
down as an effect of the medicine. Old volumes are then ransacked
promiscuously, and every morbid sensation or change that anybody ever
said was produced by the drug in question is added to the list of
symptoms. By one or both of these methods, each of the sixty-four
substances enumerated by Hahnemann is shown to produce a very large
number of symptoms, the lowest in his scale being ninety-seven, and the
highest fourteen hundred and ninety-one. And having made out this
list respecting any drug, a catalogue which, as you may observe in any
Homoeopathic manual, contains various symptoms belonging to every organ
of the body, what can be easier than to find alleged cures in every
medical author which can at once be attributed to the Homoeopathic
principle; still more if the grave of extinguished credulity is called
upon to give up its dead bones as living witnesses; and worst of all, if
the monuments of the past are to be mutilated in favor of “the sole law
of Nature in therapeutics”?
There are a few familiar facts of which great use has been made as an
entering wedge for the Homoeopathic doctrine. They have been suffered
to pass current so long that it is time they should be nailed to
the counter, a little operation which I undertake, with perfect
cheerfulness, to perform for them.
The first is a supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law found in
the precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by
friction with snow or similar means. But we deceive ourselves by names,
if we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat.
The snow may even be actually warmer than the part to which it is
applied. But even if it were at the same temperature when applied, it
never did and never could do the least good to a frozen part, except as
a mode of regulating the application of what? of heat. But the heat must
be applied gradually, just as food must be given a little at a time to
those perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm
room, heat would be applied very rapidly, were not something interposed
to prevent this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is
exactly what is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly
warm, on the contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not
melt and let the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain
frozen up until doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in
large or small quantities, is not Homoeopathy.
The next supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged
successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. This is a
popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence
to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of
themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces
a most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of
sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and
the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it
is capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be
attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords
any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of
it as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the
flatiron that the fire does not literally “draw the fire out,” which is
her hypothesis.
But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and burns by
heat, it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle
of Homoeopathy.
For you will remember that this principle is that Like cures Like, and
not that Same cures Same; that there is resemblance and not identity
between the symptoms of the disease and those produced by the drug which
cures it, and none have been readier to insist upon this distinction
than the Homoeopathists themselves. For if Same cures Same, then every
poison must be its own antidote,--which is neither a part of their
theory nor their so-called experience. They have been asked often
enough, why it was that arsenic could not cure the mischief which
arsenic had caused, and why the infectious cause of small-pox did not
remedy the disease it had produced, and then they were ready enough to
see the distinction I have pointed out. O no! it was not the hair of the
same dog, but only of one very much like him!
A third instance in proof of the Homoeopathic law is sought for in the
acknowledged efficacy of vaccination. And how does the law apply to
this? It is granted by the advocates of Homoeopathy that there is a
resemblance between the effects of the vaccine virus on a person in
health and the symptoms of small-pox. Therefore, according to the rule,
the vaccine virus will cure the small-pox, which, as everybody knows, is
entirely untrue. But it prevents small-pox, say the Homoeopathists. Yes,
and so does small-pox prevent itself from ever happening again, and we
know just as much of the principle involved in the one case as in the
other. For this is only one of a series of facts which we are wholly
unable to explain. Small-pox, measles, scarlet-fever, hooping-cough,
protect those who have them once from future attacks; but nettle-rash
and catarrh and lung fever, each of which is just as Homoeopathic to
itself as any one of the others, have no such preservative power. We
are obliged to accept the fact, unexplained, and we can do no more for
vaccination than for the rest.
I come now to the most directly practical point connected with the
subject, namely,--
What is the state of the evidence as to the efficacy of the proper
Homoeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases.
As the treatment adopted by the Homoeopathists has been almost
universally by means of the infinitesimal doses, the question of their
efficacy is thrown open, in common with that of the truth of their
fundamental axiom, as both are tested in practice.
We must look for facts as to the actual working of Homoeopathy to three
sources.
1. The statements of the unprofessional public.
2. The assertions of Homoeopathic practitioners.
3. The results of trials by competent and honest physicians, not pledged
to the system.
I think, after what we have seen of medical facts, as they are
represented by incompetent persons, we are disposed to attribute little
value to all statements of wonderful cures, coming from those who have
never been accustomed to watch the caprices of disease, and have not
cooled down their young enthusiasm by the habit of tranquil observation.
Those who know nothing of the natural progress of a malady, of its
ordinary duration, of its various modes of terminating, of its liability
to accidental complications, of the signs which mark its insignificance
or severity, of what is to be expected of it when left to itself, of how
much or how little is to be anticipated from remedies, those who know
nothing or next to nothing of all these things, and who are in a great
state of excitement from benevolence, sympathy, or zeal for a new
medical discovery, can hardly be expected to be sound judges of facts
which have misled so many sagacious men, who have spent their lives in
the daily study and observation of them. I believe that, after having
drawn the portrait of defunct Perkinism, with its five thousand printed
cures, and its million and a half computed ones, its miracles blazoned
about through America, Denmark, and England; after relating that forty
years ago women carried the Tractors about in their pockets, and workmen
could not make them fast enough for the public demand; and then showing
you, as a curiosity, a single one of these instruments, an odd one of a
pair, which I obtained only by a lucky accident, so utterly lost is the
memory of all their wonderful achievements; I believe, after all this, I
need not waste time in showing that medical accuracy is not to be looked
for in the florid reports of benevolent associations, the assertions
of illustrious patrons, the lax effusions of daily journals, or the
effervescent gossip of the tea-table.
Dr. Hering, whose name is somewhat familiar to the champions of
Homoeopathy, has said that “the new healing art is not to be judged
by its success in isolated cases only, but according to its success in
general, its innate truth, and the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles.”
We have seen something of “the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles,” and it seems probable, on the whole, that its success in
general must be made up of its success in isolated cases. Some attempts
have been made, however, to finish the whole matter by sweeping
statistical documents, which are intended to prove its triumphant
success over the common practice.