“Homoeopathic Examiner,” that this journal led off, in its first number,
with a grand display of everything the newly imported doctrine had to
show for itself. It is well remarked, on the twenty-third page of this
article, that “the comparison of bills of mortality among an equal
number of sick, treated by divers methods, is a most poor and lame
way to get at conclusions touching principles of the healing art.” In
confirmation of which, the author proceeds upon the twenty-fifth page
to prove the superiority of the Homoeopathic treatment of cholera,
by precisely these very bills of mortality. Now, every intelligent
physician is aware that the poison of cholera differed so much in its
activity at different times and, places, that it was next to impossible
to form any opinion as to the results of treatment, unless every
precaution was taken to secure the most perfectly corresponding
conditions in the patients treated, and hardly even then. Of course,
then, a Russian Admiral, by the name of Mordvinov, backed by a number
of so-called physicians practising in Russian villages, is singularly
competent to the task of settling the whole question of the utility of
this or that kind of treatment; to prove that, if not more than eight
and a half per cent. of those attacked with the disease perished, the
rest owed their immunity to Hahnemann. I can remember when more than
a hundred patients in a public institution were attacked with what, I
doubt not, many Homoeopathic physicians (to say nothing of Homoeopathic
admirals) would have called cholera, and not one of them died, though
treated in the common way, and it is my firm belief that, if such a
result had followed the administration of the omnipotent globules, it
would have been in the mouth of every adept in Europe, from Quin of
London to Spohr of Gandersheim. No longer ago than yesterday, in one of
the most widely circulated papers of this city, there was published an
assertion that the mortality in several Homoeopathic Hospitals was
not quite five in a hundred, whereas, in what are called by the writer
Allopathic Hospitals, it is said to be eleven in a hundred. An honest
man should be ashamed of such an argumentum ad ignorantiam. The
mortality of a hospital depends not merely on the treatment of the
patients, but on the class of diseases it is in the habit of receiving,
on the place where it is, on the season, and many other circumstances.
For instance, there are many hospitals in the great cities of Europe
that receive few diseases of a nature to endanger life, and, on the
other hand, there are others where dangerous diseases are accumulated
out of the common proportion. Thus, in the wards of Louis, at the
Hospital of La Pitie, a vast number of patients in the last stages of
consumption were constantly entering, to swell the mortality of that
hospital. It was because he was known to pay particular attention to
the diseases of the chest that patients laboring under those fatal
affections to an incurable extent were so constantly coming in upon him.
It is always a miserable appeal to the thoughtlessness of the vulgar, to
allege the naked fact of the less comparative mortality in the practice
of one hospital or of one physician than another, as an evidence of the
superiority of their treatment. Other things being equal, it must always
be expected that those institutions and individuals enjoying to the
highest degree the confidence of the community will lose the largest
proportion of their patients; for the simple reason that they will
naturally be looked to by those suffering from the gravest class
of diseases; that many, who know that they are affected with mortal
disease, will choose to die under their care or shelter, while the
subjects of trifling maladies, and merely troublesome symptoms, amuse
themselves to any extent among the fancy practitioners. When, therefore,
Dr. Mublenbein, as stated in the “Homoeopathic Examiner,” and quoted
in yesterday's “Daily Advertiser,” asserts that the mortality among
his patients is only one per cent. since he has practised Homoeopathy,
whereas it was six per cent. when he employed the common mode of
practice, I am convinced by this, his own statement, that the citizens
of Brunswick, whenever they are seriously sick, take good care not to
send for Dr. Muhlenbein!
It is evidently impossible that I should attempt, within the compass of
a single lecture, any detailed examination of the very numerous cases
reported in the Homoeopathic Treatises and Journals. Having been in the
habit of receiving the French “Archives of Homoeopathic Medicine” until
the premature decease of that Journal, I have had the opportunity of
becoming acquainted somewhat with the style of these documents, and
experiencing whatever degree of conviction they were calculated to
produce. Although of course I do not wish any value to be assumed for my
opinion, such as it is, I consider that you are entitled to hear it. So
far, then, as I am acquainted with the general character of the cases
reported by the Homoeopathic physicians, they would for the most part
be considered as wholly undeserving a place in any English, French,
or American periodical of high standing, if, instead of favoring the
doctrine they were intended to support, they were brought forward to
prove the efficacy of any common remedy administered by any common
practitioner. There are occasional exceptions to this remark; but the
general truth of it is rendered probable by the fact that these cases
are always, or almost always, written with the single object of showing
the efficacy of the medicine used, or the skill of the practitioner, and
it is recognized as a general rule that such cases deserve very little
confidence. Yet they may sound well enough, one at a time, to those who
are not fully aware of the fallacies of medical evidence. Let me state
a case in illustration. Nobody doubts that some patients recover under
every form of practice. Probably all are willing to allow that a
large majority, for instance, ninety in a hundred, of such cases as
a physician is called to in daily practice, would recover, sooner or
later, with more or less difficulty, provided nothing were done to
interfere seriously with the efforts of nature.
Suppose, then, a physician who has a hundred patients prescribes to
each of them pills made of some entirely inert substance, as starch,
for instance. Ninety of them get well, or if he chooses to use such
language, he cures ninety of them. It is evident, according to the
doctrine of chances, that there must be a considerable number of
coincidences between the relief of the patient and the administration
of the remedy. It is altogether probable that there will happen two or
three very striking coincidences out of the whole ninety cases, in which
it would seem evident that the medicine produced the relief, though
it had, as we assumed, nothing to do with it. Now suppose that the
physician publishes these cases, will they not have a plausible
appearance of proving that which, as we granted at the outset, was
entirely false? Suppose that instead of pills of starch he employs
microscopic sugarplums, with the five' million billion trillionth
part of a suspicion of aconite or pulsatilla, and then publishes his
successful cases, through the leaden lips of the press, or the living
ones of his female acquaintances,--does that make the impression a less
erroneous one? But so it is that in Homoeopathic works and journals and
gossip one can never, or next to never, find anything but successful
cases, which might do very well as a proof of superior skill, did it not
prove as much for the swindling advertisers whose certificates disgrace
so many of our newspapers. How long will it take mankind to learn that
while they listen to “the speaking hundreds and units,” who make the
world ring with the pretended triumphs they have witnessed, the “dumb
millions” of deluded and injured victims are paying the daily forfeit of
their misplaced confidence!
I am sorry to see, also, that a degree of ignorance as to the natural
course of diseases is often shown in these published cases, which,
although it may not be detected by the unprofessional reader, conveys an
unpleasant impression to those who are acquainted with the subject. Thus
a young woman affected with jaundice is mentioned in the German “Annals
of Clinical Homoeopathy” as having been cured in twenty-nine days by
pulsatilla and nux vomica. Rummel, a well-known writer of the same
school, speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by
Homoeopathic doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona. I happened to
have a case in my own household, a few weeks since, which lasted about
ten days, and this was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital
practice, so that it was nothing to boast of.
Dr. Munneche of Lichtenburg in Saxony is called to a patient with
sprained ankle who had been a fortnight under the common treatment. The
patient gets well by the use of arnica in a little more than a month
longer, and this extraordinary fact is published in the French “Archives
of Homoeopathic Medicine.”
In the same Journal is recorded the case of a patient who with nothing
more, so far as any proof goes, than influenza, gets down to her shop
upon the sixth day.
And again, the cool way in which everything favorable in a case is set
down by these people entirely to their treatment, may be seen in a case
of croup reported in the “Homoeopathic Gazette” of Leipsic, in which
leeches, blistering, inhalation of hot vapor, and powerful internal
medicine had been employed, and yet the merit was all attributed to one
drop of some Homoeopathic fluid.
I need not multiply these quotations, which illustrate the grounds of
an opinion which the time does not allow me to justify more at length;
other such cases are lying open before me; there is no end to them if
more were wanted; for nothing is necessary but to look into any of the
numerous broken-down Journals of Homoeopathy, the volumes of which may
be found on the shelves of those curious in such matters.
A number of public trials of Homoeopathy have been made in different
parts of the world. Six of these are mentioned in the Manifesto of the
“Homoeopathic Examiner.” Now to suppose that any trial can absolutely
silence people, would be to forget the whole experience of the past.
Dr. Haygarth and Dr. Alderson could not stop the sale of the five-guinea
Tractors, although they proved that they could work the same miracles
with pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe. It takes time for truth to operate
as well as Homoeopathic globules. Many persons thought the results of
these trials were decisive enough of the nullity of the treatment; those
who wish to see the kind of special pleading and evasion by which it is
attempted to cover results which, stated by the “Homoeopathic Examiner”
itself, look exceedingly like a miserable failure, may consult the
opening flourish of that Journal. I had not the intention to speak of
these public trials at all, having abundant other evidence on the point.
But I think it best, on the whole, to mention two of them in a few
words,--that instituted at Naples and that of Andral.
There have been few names in the medical profession, for the last half
century, so widely known throughout the world of science as that of M.
Esquirol, whose life was devoted to the treatment of insanity, and who
was without a rival in that department of practical medicine. It is from
an analysis communicated by him to the “Gazette Medicale de Paris” that
I derive my acquaintance with the account of the trial at Naples by Dr.
Panvini, physician to the Hospital della Pace. This account seems to
be entirely deserving of credit. Ten patients were set apart, and not
allowed to take any medicine at all,--much against the wish of the
Homoeopathic physician. All of them got well, and of course all of them
would have been claimed as triumphs if they had been submitted to the
treatment. Six other slight cases (each of which is specified) got well
under the Homoeopathic treatment, none of its asserted specific effects
being manifested.
All the rest were cases of grave disease; and so far as the trial, which
was interrupted about the fortieth day, extended, the patients grew
worse, or received no benefit. A case is reported on the page before
me of a soldier affected with acute inflammation in the chest, who took
successively aconite, bryonia, nux vomica, and pulsatilla, and after
thirty-eight days of treatment remained without any important change in
his disease. The Homoeopathic physician who treated these patients was
M. de Horatiis, who had the previous year been announcing his wonderful
cures. And M. Esquirol asserted to the Academy of Medicine in 1835,
that this M. de Horatiis, who is one of the prominent personages in the
“Examiner's” Manifesto published in 1840, had subsequently renounced
Homoeopathy. I may remark, by the way, that this same periodical, which
is so very easy in explaining away the results of these trials, makes a
mistake of only six years or a little more as to the time when this at
Naples was instituted.
M. Andral, the “eminent and very enlightened allopathist” of the
“Homoeopathic Examiner,” made the following statement in March, 1835, to
the Academy of Medicine: “I have submitted this doctrine to experiment;
I can reckon at this time from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and
forty cases, recorded with perfect fairness, in a great hospital, under
the eye of numerous witnesses; to avoid every objection--I obtained my
remedies of M. Guibourt, who keeps a Homoeopathic pharmacy, and whose
strict exactness is well known; the regimen has been scrupulously
observed, and I obtained from the sisters attached to the hospital a
special regimen, such as Hahnemann orders. I was told, however, some
months since, that I had not been faithful to all the rules of the
doctrine. I therefore took the trouble to begin again; I have studied
the practice of the Parisian Homoeopathists, as I had studied their
books, and I became convinced that they treated their patients as I had
treated mine, and I affirm that I have been as rigorously exact in the
treatment as any other person.”
And he expressly asserts the entire nullity of the influence of all
the Homoeopathic remedies tried by him in modifying, so far as he could
observe, the progress or termination of diseases. It deserves notice
that he experimented with the most boasted substances,--cinchona,
aconite, mercury, bryonia, belladonna. Aconite, for instance, he says
he administered in more than forty cases of that collection of feverish
symptoms in which it exerts so much power, according to Hahnemann, and
in not one of them did it have the slightest influence, the pulse and
heat remaining as before.
These statements look pretty honest, and would seem hard to be explained
away, but it is calmly said that he “did not know enough of the method
to select the remedies with any tolerable precision.” [“Homoeopathic
Examiner, vol. i. p. 22.]
“Nothing is left to the caprice of the physician.” (In a word, instead
of being dependent upon blind chance, that there is an infallible
law, guided by which; the physician MUST select the proper remedies.')
['Ibid.,' in a notice of Menzel's paper.] Who are they that practice
Homoeopathy, and say this of a man with the Materia Medica of Hahnemann
lying before him? Who are they that send these same globules, on which
he experimented, accompanied by a little book, into families, whose
members are thought competent to employ them, when they deny any such
capacity to a man whose life has been passed at the bedside of patients,
the most prominent teacher in the first Medical Faculty in the world,
the consulting physician of the King of France, and one of the most
renowned practical writers, not merely of his nation, but of his age?
I leave the quibbles by which such persons would try to creep out from
under the crushing weight of these conclusions to the unfortunates who
suppose that a reply is equivalent to an answer.
Dr. Baillie, one of the physicians in the great Hotel Dieu of Paris,
invited two Homoeopathic practitioners to experiment in his wards. One
of these was Curie, now of London, whose works are on the counters
of some of our bookstores, and probably in the hands of some of my
audience. This gentleman, whom Dr. Baillie declares to be an enlightened
man, and perfectly sincere in his convictions, brought his own medicines
from the pharmacy which furnished Hahnemann himself, and employed them
for four or five months upon patients in his ward, and with results
equally unsatisfactory, as appears from Dr. Baillie's statement at
a meeting of the Academy of Medicine. And a similar experiment was
permitted by the Clinical Professor of the Hotel Dieu of Lyons, with the
same complete failure.
But these are old and prejudiced practitioners. Very well, then take the
statement of Dr. Fleury, a most intelligent young physician, who treated
homoeopathically more than fifty patients, suffering from diseases
which it was not dangerous to treat in this way, taking every kind of
precaution as to regimen, removal of disturbing influences, and the
state of the atmosphere, insisted upon by the most vigorous partisans
of the doctrine, and found not the slightest effect produced by the
medicines. And more than this, read nine of these cases, which he has
published, as I have just done, and observe the absolute nullity of
aconite, belladonna, and bryonia, against the symptoms over which they
are pretended to exert such palpable, such obvious, such astonishing
influences. In the view of these statements, it is impossible not to
realize the entire futility of attempting to silence this asserted
science by the flattest and most peremptory results of experiment. Were
all the hospital physicians of Europe and America to devote themselves,
for the requisite period, to this sole pursuit, and were their results
to be unanimous as to the total worthlessness of the whole system in
practice, this slippery delusion would slide through their fingers
without the slightest discomposure, when, as they supposed, they had
crushed every joint in its tortuous and trailing body.
3. I have said, that to show the truth of the Homoeopathic doctrine,
as announced by Hahnemann, it would be necessary to show, in the third
place, that remedies never cure diseases when they are not capable of
producing similar symptoms! The burden of this somewhat comprehensive
demonstration lying entirely upon the advocates of this doctrine, it may
be left to their mature reflections.
It entered into my original plan to treat of the doctrine relating to
Psora, or itch,--an almost insane conception, which I am glad to get rid
of, for this is a subject one does not care to handle without gloves. I
am saved this trouble, however, by finding that many of the disciples
of Hahnemann, those disciples the very gospel of whose faith stands upon
his word, make very light of his authority on this point, although he
himself says, “It has cost me twelve years of study and research to
trace out the source of this incredible number of chronic affections,
to discover this great truth, which remained concealed from all
my predecessors and contemporaries, to establish the basis of its
demonstration, and find out, at the same time, the curative medicines
that were fit to combat this hydra in all its different forms.”
But, in the face of all this, the following remarks are made by Wolff,
of Dresden, whose essays, according to the editor of the “Homoeopathic
Examiner,” “represent the opinions of a large majority of Homoeopathists
in Europe.”
“It cannot be unknown to any one at all familiar with Homoeopathic
literature, that Hahnemann's idea of tracing the large majority of
chronic diseases to actual itch has met with the greatest opposition
from Homoeopathic physicians themselves.” And again, “If the Psoric
theory has led to no proper schism, the reason is to be found in the
fact that it is almost without any influence in practice.”
We are told by Jahr, that Dr. Griesselich, “Surgeon to the Grand Duke
of Baden,” and a “distinguished” Homoeopathist, actually asked Hahnemann
for the proof that chronic diseases, such as dropsy, for instance, never
arise from any other cause than itch; and that, according to common
report, the venerable sage was highly incensed (fort courrouce) with
Dr. Hartmann, of Leipsic, another “distinguished” Homoeopathist, for
maintaining that they certainly did arise from other causes.
And Dr. Fielitz, in the “Homoeopathic Gazette” of Leipsic, after saying,
in a good-natured way, that Psora is the Devil in medicine, and that
physicians are divided on this point into diabolists and exorcists,
declares that, according to a remark of Hahnemann, the whole civilized
world is affected with Psora. I must therefore disappoint any advocate
of Hahnemann who may honor me with his presence, by not attacking a
doctrine on which some of the disciples of his creed would be very happy
to have its adversaries waste their time and strength. I will not meddle
with this excrescence, which, though often used in time of peace, would
be dropped, like the limb of a shell-fish, the moment it was assailed;
time is too precious, and the harvest of living extravagances nods too
heavily to my sickle, that I should blunt it upon straw and stubble.
I will close the subject with a brief examination of some of the
statements made in Homoeopathic works, and more particularly in the
brilliant Manifesto of the “Examiner,” before referred to. And first, it
is there stated under the head of “Homoeopathic Literature,” that
“SEVEN HUNDRED volumes have been issued from the press developing the
peculiarities of the system, and many of them possessed of a scientific
character that savans know well how to respect.” If my assertion were
proper evidence in the case, I should declare, that, having seen a good
many of these publications, from the year 1834, when I bought the work
of the Rev. Thomas Everest, [Dr. Curie speaks of this silly pamphlet as
having been published in 1835.] to within a few weeks, when I received
my last importation of Homaeopathic literature, I have found that all,
with a very few exceptions, were stitched pamphlets varying from
twenty or thirty pages to somewhat less than a hundred, and generally
resembling each other as much as so many spelling-books.
But not being evidence in the case, I will give you the testimony of
Dr. Trinks, of Dresden, who flourishes on the fifteenth page of the same
Manifesto as one of the most distinguished among the Homoeopathists
of Europe. I translate the sentence literally from the “Archives de la
Medecine Homoeopathique.”
“The literature of Homoeopathy, if that honorable name must be applied
to all kinds of book-making, has been degraded to the condition of the
humblest servitude. Productions without talent, without spirit, without
discrimination, flat and pitiful eulogies, exaggerations surpassing the
limits of the most robust faith, invectives against such as dared to
doubt the dogmas which had been proclaimed, or catalogues of remedies;
of such materials is it composed! From distance to distance only, have
appeared some memoirs useful to science or practice, which appear as so
many green oases in the midst of this literary desert.”
It is a very natural as well as a curious question to ask, What has been
the success of Homoeopathy in the different countries of Europe, and
what is its present condition?
The greatest reliance of the advocates of Homoeopathy is of course
on Germany. We know very little of its medical schools, its medical
doctrines, or its medical men, compared with those of England and
France. And, therefore, when an intelligent traveller gives a direct
account from personal inspection of the miserable condition of the
Homoeopathic hospital at Leipsic, the first established in Europe, and
the first on the list of the ever-memorable Manifesto, it is easy enough
answer or elude the fact by citing various hard names of “distinguished”
practitioners, which sound just as well to the uninformed public as if
they were Meckel, or Tiedemann, or Langenbeck. Dr. Leo-Wolf, who, to be
sure, is opposed to Homoeopathy, but who is a scholar, and ought to know
something of his own countrymen, assures us that “Dr. Kopp is the only
German Homoeopathist, if we can call him so, who has been distinguished
as an author and practitioner before he examined this method.” And Dr.
Lee, the same gentleman in whose travels the paragraph relating to
the Leipsic Hospital is to be found, says the same thing. And I will
cheerfully expose myself to any impertinent remark which it might
suggest, to assure my audience that I never heard or saw one authentic
Homoeopathic name of any country in Europe, which I had ever heard
mentioned before as connected with medical science by a single word or
deed sufficient to make it in any degree familiar to my ears, unless
Arnold of Heidelberg is the anatomist who discovered a little nervous
centre, called the otic ganglion. But you need ask no better proof of
who and what the German adherents of this doctrine must be, than the
testimony of a German Homoeopathist as to the wretched character of the
works they manufacture to enforce its claims.
As for the act of this or that government tolerating or encouraging
Homoeopathy, every person of common intelligence knows that it is a mere
form granted or denied according to the general principles of policy
adopted in different states, or the degree of influence which some few
persons who have adopted it may happen to have at court. What may be
the value of certain pompous titles with which many of the advocates of
Homoeopathy are honored, it might be disrespectful to question. But in
the mean time the judicious inquirer may ponder over an extract which
I translate from a paper relating to a personage well known to the
community as Williams the Oculist, with whom I had the honor of crossing
the Atlantic some years since, and who himself handed me two copies of
the paper in question.
“To say that he was oculist of Louis XVIII. and of Charles X., and
that he now enjoys the same title with respect to His Majesty, Louis
Philippe, and the King of the Belgians, is unquestionably to say a great
deal; and yet it is one of the least of his titles to public confidence.
His reputation rests upon a basis more substantial even than the
numerous diplomas with which he is provided, than the membership of the
different medical societies which have chosen him as their associate,”
etc., etc.