understand that the common method of supporting barefaced imposture
at the present day, both in Europe and in this country, consists in
trumping up “Dispensaries,” “Colleges of Health,” and other advertising
charitable clap-traps, which use the poor as decoy-ducks for the rich,
and the proprietors of which have a strong predilection for the title
of “Professor.” These names, therefore, have come to be of little or
no value as evidence of the good character, still less of the high
pretensions of those who invoke their authority. Nor does it
follow, even when a chair is founded in connection with a well-known
institution, that it has either a salary or an occupant; so that it may
be, and probably is, a mere harmless piece of toleration on the part of
the government if a Professorship of Homoeopathy is really in existence
at Jena or Heidelberg. And finally, in order to correct the error of any
who might suppose that the whole Medical Profession of Germany has long
since fallen into the delusions of Hahnemann, I will quote two lines
which a celebrated anatomist and surgeon (whose name will occur again in
this lecture in connection with a very pleasing letter) addressed to the
French Academy of Medicine in 1835. “I happened to be in Germany some
months since, at a meeting of nearly six hundred physicians; one of
them wished to bring up the question of Homoeopathy; they would not even
listen to him.” This may have been very impolite and bigoted, but
that is not precisely the point in reference to which I mention the
circumstance.
But if we cannot easily get at Germany, we can very easily obtain exact
information from France and England. I took the trouble to write some
months ago to two friends in Paris, in whom I could place confidence,
for information upon the subject. One of them answered briefly to the
effect that nothing was said about it. When the late Curator of the
Lowell Institute, at his request, asked about the works upon the
subject, he was told that they had remained a long time on the shelves
quite unsalable, and never spoken of.
The other gentleman, [Dr. Henry T. Bigelow, now Professor of Surgery
in Harvard University] whose name is well known to my audience, and who
needs no commendation of mine, had the kindness to procure for me many
publications upon the subject, and some information which sets the whole
matter at rest, so far as Paris is concerned. He went directly to the
Baillieres, the principal and almost the only publishers of all the
Homoeopathic books and journals in that city. The following facts
were taken by him from the account-books of this publishing firm. Four
Homoeopathic Journals have been published in Paris; three of them by the
Baillieres.
The reception they met with may be judged of by showing the number of
subscribers to each on the books of the publishing firm.
A Review published by some other house, which lasted one year, and had
about fifty subscribers, appeared in 1834, 1835.
There were only four Journals of Homoeopathy ever published in Paris.
The Baillieres informed my correspondent that the sale of Homoeopathic
books was much less than formerly, and that consequently they should
undertake to publish no new books upon the subject, except those of Jahr
or Hahnemann. “This man,” says my correspondent,--referring to one of
the brothers,--“the publisher and headquarters of Homoeopathy in Paris,
informs me that it is going down in England and Germany as well as
in Paris.” For all the facts he had stated he pledged himself as
responsible.
Homoeopathy was in its prime in Paris, he said, in 1836 and 1837, and
since then has been going down.
Louis told my correspondent that no person of distinction in Paris had
embraced Homoeopathy, and that it was declining. If you ask who Louis
is, I refer you to the well-known Homoeopathist, Peschier of Geneva, who
says, addressing him, “I respect no one more than yourself; the feeling
which guides your researches, your labors, and your pen, is so honorable
and rare, that I could not but bow down before it; and I own, if there
were any allopathist who inspired me with higher veneration, it would be
him and not yourself whom I should address.”
Among the names of “Distinguished Homoeopathists,” however, displayed in
imposing columns, in the index of the “Homoeopathic Examiner,” are those
of MARJOLIN, AMUSSAT, and BRESCHET, names well known to the world of
science, and the last of them identified with some of the most valuable
contributions which anatomical knowledge has received since the
commencement of the present century. One Dr. Chrysaora, who stands
sponsor for many facts in that Journal, makes the following statement
among the rest: “Professors, who are esteemed among the most
distinguished of the Faculty (Faculty de Medicine), both as to knowledge
and reputation, have openly confessed the power of Homoeopathia in
forms of disease where the ordinary method of practice proved totally
insufficient. It affords me the highest pleasure to select from among
these gentlemen, Marjolin, Amussat, and Breschet.”
Here is a literal translation of an original letter, now in my
possession, from one of these Homoeopathists to my correspondent:--
“DEAR SIR, AND RESPECTED PROFESSIONAL BROTHER:
“You have had the kindness to inform me in your letter that a new
American Journal, the 'New World,' has made use of my name in support of
the pretended Homoeopathic doctrines, and that I am represented as one
of the warmest partisans of Homoeopathy in France.
“I am vastly surprised at the reputation manufactured for me upon the
new continent; but I am obliged, in deference to truth, to reject it
with my whole energy. I spurn far from me everything which relates to
that charlatanism called Homoeopathy, for these pretended doctrines
cannot endure the scrutiny of wise and enlightened persons, who are
guided by honorable sentiments in the practice of the noblest of arts.
“PARIS, 3d November, 1841
“I am, etc., etc.,
“G. BRESCHET,
“Professor in the Faculty of Medicine, Member of the Institute, Surgeon
of Hotel Dieu, and Consulting Surgeon to the King, etc.” [I first saw M.
Breschet's name mentioned in that Journal]
Concerning Amussat, my correspondent writes, that he was informed by
Madame Hahnemann, who converses in French more readily than her husband,
and therefore often speaks for him, that “he was not a physician,
neither Homoeopathist nor Allopathist, but that he was the surgeon
of their own establishment; that is, performed as a surgeon all the
operations they had occasion for in their practice.”
I regret not having made any inquiries as to Marjolin, who, I doubt not,
would strike his ponderous snuff-box until it resounded like the Grecian
horse, at hearing such a doctrine associated with his respectable name.
I was not aware, when writing to Paris, that this worthy Professor,
whose lectures I long attended, was included in these audacious claims;
but after the specimens I have given of the accuracy of the foreign
correspondence of the “Homoeopathic Examiner,” any further information
I might obtain would seem so superfluous as hardly to be worth the
postage.
Homoeopathy may be said, then, to be in a sufficiently miserable
condition in Paris. Yet there lives, and there has lived for years, the
illustrious Samuel Hahnemann, who himself assured my correspondent that
no place offered the advantages of Paris in its investigation, by reason
of the attention there paid to it.
In England, it appears by the statement of Dr. Curie in October, 1839,
about eight years after its introduction into the country, that there
were eighteen Homoeopathic physicians in the United Kingdom, of whom
only three were to be found out of London, and that many of these
practised Homoeopathy in secret.
It will be seen, therefore, that, according to the recent statement of
one of its leading English advocates, Homoeopathy had obtained not quite
half as many practical disciples in England as Perkinism could show for
itself in a somewhat less period from the time of its first promulgation
in that country.
Dr. Curie's letter, dated London, October 30, 1839, says there is “one
in Dublin, Dr. Luther; at Glasgow, Dr. Scott.” The “distinguished”
Chrysaora writes from Paris, dating October 20, 1839, “On the other
hand, Homoeopathy is commencing to make an inroad into England by
the way of Ireland. At Dublin, distinguished physicians have already
embraced the new system, and a great part of the nobility and gentry
of that city have emancipated themselves from the English fashion and
professional authority.”
But the Marquis of Anglesea and Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer patronize
Homoeopathy; the Queen Dowager Adelaide has been treated by a
Homoeopathic physician. “Jarley is the delight of the nobility and
gentry.” “The Royal Family are the patrons of Jarley.”
Let me ask if a Marquis and a Knight are better than two Lords, and
if the Dowager of Royalty is better than Royalty itself, all of which
illustrious dignities were claimed in behalf of Benjamin Douglass
Perkins?
But if the balance is thought too evenly suspended in this case, another
instance can be given in which the evidence of British noblemen and
their ladies is shown to be as valuable in establishing the character of
a medical man or doctrine, as would be the testimony of the Marquis of
Waterford concerning the present condition and prospects of missionary
enterprise. I have before me an octavo volume of more than four hundred
pages, in which, among much similar matter, I find highly commendatory
letters from the Marchioness of Ormond, Lady Harriet Kavanagh, the
Countess of Buckinghamshire, the Right Hon. Viscount Ingestre, M. P.,
and the Most Noble, the Marquis of Sligo,--all addressed to “John
St. John Long, Esq,” a wretched charlatan, twice tried for, and once
convicted of, manslaughter at the Old Bailey.
This poor creature, too, like all of his tribe, speaks of the medical
profession as a great confederation of bigoted monopolists. He, too,
says that “If an innovator should appear, holding out hope to those
in despair, and curing disorders which the faculty have recorded as
irremediable, he is at once, and without inquiry, denounced as an
empiric and an impostor.” He, too, cites the inevitable names of Galileo
and Harvey, and refers to the feelings excited by the great discovery of
Jenner. From the treatment of the great astronomer who was visited with
the punishment of other heretics by the ecclesiastical authorities of a
Catholic country some centuries since, there is no very direct inference
to be drawn to the medical profession of the present time. His name
should be babbled no longer, after having been placarded for the
hundredth time in the pages of St. John Long. But if we are doomed
to see constant reference to the names of Harvey and Jenner in every
worthless pamphlet containing the prospectus of some new trick upon the
public, let us, once for all, stare the facts in the face, and see how
the discoveries of these great men were actually received by the medical
profession.
In 1628, Harvey published his first work upon the circulation. His
doctrines were a complete revolution of the prevailing opinions of all
antiquity. They immediately found both champions and opponents; of
which last, one only, Riolanus, seemed to Harvey worthy of an answer, on
account of his “rank, fame, and learning.” Controversy in science, as in
religion, was not, in those days, carried on with all the courtesy which
our present habits demand, and it is possible that some hard words may
have been applied to Harvey, as it is very certain that he used the most
contemptuous expressions towards others.
Harvey declares in his second letter to Riolanus, “Since the first
discovery of the circulation, hardly a day, or a moment, has passed
without my hearing it both well and ill spoken of; some attack it with
great hostility, others defend it with high encomiums; one party believe
that I have abundantly proved the truth of the doctrine against all
the weight of opposing arguments, by experiments, observations, and
dissections; others think it not yet sufficiently cleared up, and free
from objections.” Two really eminent Professors, Plempius of Louvain,
and Walaeus of Leyden, were among its early advocates.
The opinions sanctioned by the authority of long ages, and the names of
Hippocrates and Galen, dissolved away, gradually, but certainly, before
the demonstrations of Harvey. Twenty-four years after the publication of
his first work, and six years before his death, his bust in marble
was placed in the Hall of the College of Physicians, with a suitable
inscription recording his discoveries.
Two years after this he was unanimously invited to accept the Presidency
of that body; and he lived to see his doctrine established, and all
reputable opposition withdrawn.
There were many circumstances connected with the discovery of Dr. Jenner
which were of a nature to excite repugnance and opposition. The practice
of inoculation for the small-pox had already disarmed that disease of
many of its terrors. The introduction of a contagious disease from a
brute creature into the human system naturally struck the public mind
with a sensation of disgust and apprehension, and a part of the medical
public may have shared these feelings. I find that Jenner's discovery of
vaccination was made public in June, 1798. In July of the same year the
celebrated surgeon, Mr. Cline, vaccinated a child with virus received
from Dr. Jenner, and in communicating the success of this experiment,
he mentions that Dr. Lister, formerly of the Small-Pox Hospital, and
himself, are convinced of the efficacy of the cow-pox. In November
of the same year, Dr. Pearson published his “Inquiry,” containing the
testimony of numerous practitioners in different parts of the kingdom,
to the efficacy of the practice. Dr. HAYGARTH, who was so conspicuous
in exposing the follies of Perkinism, was among the very earliest
to express his opinion in favor of vaccination. In 1801, Dr. Lettsom
mentions the circumstance “as being to the honor of the medical
professors, that they have very generally encouraged this salutary
practice, although it is certainly calculated to lessen their pecuniary
advantages by its tendency to extirpate a fertile source of professional
practice.”
In the same year the Medical Committee of Paris spoke of vaccination in
a public letter, as “the most brilliant and most important discovery
of the eighteenth century.” The Directors of a Society for the
Extermination of the Small-Pox, in a Report dated October 1st, 1807,
“congratulate the public on the very favorable opinion which the Royal
College of Physicians of London, after a most minute and laborious
investigation made by the command of his Majesty, have a second time
expressed on the subject of vaccination, in their Report laid before the
House of Commons, in the last session of Parliament; in consequence of
which the sum of twenty thousand pounds was voted to Dr. Jenner, as
a remuneration for his discovery, in addition to ten thousand pounds
before granted.” (In June, 1802.)
These and similar accusations, so often brought up against the Medical
Profession, are only one mode in which is manifested a spirit of
opposition not merely to medical science, but to all science, and to all
sound knowledge. It is a spirit which neither understands itself nor the
object at which it is aiming. It gropes among the loose records of the
past, and the floating fables of the moment, to glean a few truths or
falsehoods tending to prove, if they prove anything, that the persons
who have passed their lives in the study of a branch of knowledge
the very essence of which must always consist in long and accurate
observation, are less competent to judge of new doctrines in their own
department than the rest of the community. It belongs to the clown in
society, the destructive in politics, and the rogue in practice.
The name of Harvey, whose great discovery was the legitimate result of
his severe training and patient study, should be mentioned only to check
the pretensions of presumptuous ignorance. The example of Jenner,
who gave his inestimable secret, the result of twenty-two years of
experiment and researches, unpurchased, to the public,--when, as was
said in Parliament, he might have made a hundred thousand pounds by it
as well as any smaller sum,--should be referred to only to rebuke the
selfish venders of secret remedies, among whom his early history obliges
us reluctantly to record Samuel Hahnemann. Those who speak of the great
body of physicians as if they were united in a league to support the
superannuated notions of the past against the progress of improvement,
have read the history of medicine to little purpose. The prevalent
failing of this profession has been, on the contrary, to lend a too
credulous ear to ambitious and plausible innovators. If at the present
time ten years of public notoriety have passed over any doctrine
professing to be of importance in medical science, and if it has not
succeeded in raising up a powerful body of able, learned, and ingenious
advocates for its claims, the fault must be in the doctrine and not in
the medical profession.
Homoeopathy has had a still more extended period of trial than this,
and we have seen with what results. It only remains to throw out a few
conjectures as to the particular manner in which it is to break up and
disappear.
1. The confidence of the few believers in this delusion will never
survive the loss of friends who may die of any acute disease, under a
treatment such as that prescribed by Homoeopathy. It is doubtful how far
cases of this kind will be trusted to its tender mercies, but wherever
it acquires any considerable foothold, such cases must come, and with
them the ruin of those who practise it, should any highly valued life be
thus sacrificed.
2. After its novelty has worn out, the ardent and capricious individuals
who constitute the most prominent class of its patrons will return to
visible doses, were it only for the sake of a change.
3. The Semi-Homoeopathic practitioner will gradually withdraw from
the rotten half of his business and try to make the public forget his
connection with it.
4. The ultra Homoeopathist will either recant and try to rejoin the
medical profession; or he will embrace some newer and if possible
equally extravagant doctrine; or he will stick to his colors and go
down with his sinking doctrine. Very few will pursue the course last
mentioned.
A single fact may serve to point out in what direction there will
probably be a movement of the dissolving atoms of Homoeopathy. On the
13th page of the too frequently cited Manifesto of the “Examiner” I read
the following stately paragraph:
“Bigelius, M. D., physician to the Emperor of Russia, whose elevated
reputation is well known in Europe, has been an acknowledged advocate
of Hahnemann's doctrines for several years. He abandoned Allopathia for
Homoeopathia.” The date of this statement is January, 1840. I find on
looking at the booksellers' catalogues that one Bigel, or Bigelius,
to speak more classically, has been at various times publishing
Homoeopathic books for some years.
Again, on looking into the “Encyclographie des Sciences Medicales” for
April, 1840, I find a work entitled “Manual of HYDROSUDOPATHY, or the
Treatment of Diseases by Cold Water, etc., etc., by Dr. Bigel, Physician
of the School of Strasburg, Member of the Medico-Chirurgical Institute
of Naples, of the Academy of St. Petersburg,--Assessor of the College of
the Empire of Russia, Physician of his late Imperial Highness the Grand
Duke Constantine, Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, etc.” Hydrosudopathy
or Hydropathy, as it is sometimes called, is a new medical doctrine or
practice which has sprung up in Germany since Homoeopathy, which it
bids fair to drive out of the market, if, as Dr. Bigel says, fourteen
physicians afflicted with diseases which defied themselves and their
colleagues came to Graefenberg, in the year 1836 alone, and were cured.
Now Dr. Bigel, “whose elevated reputation is well known in Europe,”
writes as follows: “The reader will not fail to see in this defence of
the curative method of Graefenberg a profession of medical faith, and
he will be correct in so doing.” And his work closes with the following
sentence, worthy of so distinguished an individual: “We believe, with
religion, that the water of baptism purifies the soul from its original
sin; let us believe also, with experience, that it is for our corporeal
sins the redeemer of the human body.” If Bigel, Physician to the late
Grand Duke Constantine, is identical with Bigel whom the “Examiner”
calls Physician to the Emperor of Russia, it appears that he is now
actively engaged in throwing cold water at once upon his patients and
the future prospects of Homoeopathy.
If, as must be admitted, no one of Hahnemann's doctrines is received
with tolerable unanimity among his disciples, except the central axiom,
Similia similibus curantur; if this axiom itself relies mainly for its
support upon the folly and trickery of Hahnemann, what can we think of
those who announce themselves ready to relinquish all the accumulated
treasures of our art, to trifle with life upon the strength of these
fantastic theories? What shall we think of professed practitioners of
medicine, if, in the words of Jahr, “from ignorance, for their personal
convenience, or through charlatanism, they treat their patients one
day Homoeopathically and the next Allopathically;” if they parade their
pretended new science before the unguarded portion of the community;
if they suffer their names to be coupled with it wherever it may gain a
credulous patient; and deny all responsibility for its character, refuse
all argument for its doctrines, allege no palliation for the ignorance
and deception interwoven with every thread of its flimsy tissue, when
they are questioned by those competent to judge and entitled to an
answer?
Such is the pretended science of Homoeopathy, to which you are asked to
trust your lives and the lives of those dearest to you. A mingled mass
of perverse ingenuity, of tinsel erudition, of imbecile credulity, and
of artful misrepresentation, too often mingled in practice, if we
may trust the authority of its founder, with heartless and shameless
imposition. Because it is suffered so often to appeal unanswered to the
public, because it has its journals, its patrons, its apostles, some
are weak enough to suppose it can escape the inevitable doom of utter
disgrace and oblivion. Not many years can pass away before the same
curiosity excited by one of Perkins's Tractors will be awakened at the
sight of one of the Infinitesimal Globules. If it should claim a longer
existence, it can only be by falling into the hands of the sordid
wretches who wring their bread from the cold grasp of disease and death
in the hovels of ignorant poverty.
As one humble member of a profession which for more than two thousand
years has devoted itself to the pursuit of the best earthly interests
of mankind, always assailed and insulted from without by such as are
ignorant of its infinite perplexities and labors, always striving in
unequal contest with the hundred-armed giant who walks in the noonday,
and sleeps not in the midnight, yet still toiling, not merely for itself
and the present moment, but for the race and the future, I have lifted
my voice against this lifeless delusion, rolling its shapeless bulk into
the path of a noble science it is too weak to strike, or to injure.
THE CONTAGIOUSNESS OF PUERPERAL FEVER
Printed in 1843; reprinted with additions, 1855.
THE POINT AT ISSUE. THE AFFIRMATIVE.
“The disease known as Puerperal Fever is so far contagious as to be
frequently carried from patient to patient by physicians and nurses.” O.
W. Holmes, 1843.
THE NEGATIVE.
“The result of the whole discussion will, I trust, serve, not only to
exalt your views of the value and dignity of our profession, but to
divest your minds of the overpowering dread that you can ever become,
especially to woman, under the extremely interesting circumstances
of gestation and parturition, the minister of evil; that you can ever
convey, in any possible manner, a horrible virus, so destructive in
its effects, and so mysterious in its operations as that attributed to
puerperal fever.”--Professor Hodge, 1852.
“I prefer to attribute them to accident, or Providence, of which I can
form a conception, rather than to a contagion of which I cannot form any
clear idea, at least as to this particular malady.”--Professor Meigs,
1852.
“... in the propagation of which they have no more to do, than with the
propagation of cholera from Jessore to San Francisco, and from Mauritius
to St. Petersburg.”--Professor Meigs, 1854.
---------------------
“I arrived at that certainty in the matter, that I could venture to
foretell what women would be affected with the disease, upon hearing by
what midwife they were to be delivered, or by what nurse they were to
be attended, during their lying-in; and, almost in every instance, my
prediction was verified.”--Gordon, 1795.