Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, is usually credited with the
introduction of the medical maxim, _similta similibus ourantur_--like
things are cured by like. Those who would dispute his originality need
not refer to the ancient saying familiar to all topers, of "taking
a hair of the dog that bit you"; they may find the origin of the
homoeopathic doctrine in the great source of all inspiration--the holy
Bible.
The book of Numbers contains several recipes which would be invaluable
if divine grace would enable us to re-discover and correctly employ
them. There is, for instance, the holy water described in chap. v., the
effects of which will enable any jealous husband to discover if his wife
has been faithful to him or not, and in the case of her guilt enable him
to dispense with the services of Sir James Hannen.
But perhaps the most curious prescription in the book is that recorded
in the twenty-first chapter. The Israelites wandering about for forty
years, without travelling forty miles, got tired of the heavenly manna
with which the "universal provider" supplied them. They looked back on
the fried fish, which they "did eat in Egypt freely," the cucumbers,
melons, leeks, onions and garlic, wherein the Jewish stomach delighteth,
and they longed for a change of diet. Upon remonstrating with Moses,
and stating their preference for Egyptian lentils rather than celestial
mushrooms, the Lord of his tender mercy sent "fiery serpents" (the word
is properly translated "seraphim"), and they bit the people; and much
people of Israel died. Then the people prayed Moses to intercede for
them, saying, "We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and
against thee;" and Jahveh, in direct opposition to his own commandment,
directed Moses to "make a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it
shall come to pass that every one that is bitten when he looketh upon it
shall live." Moses accordingly made a serpent of brass, we presume from
some of that stolen from the Egyptians, which had the desired effect.
Instead of being but one monster more, the sight immediately cured the
wounds, and these seraphim sent by the Lord, ashamed of being beaten by
their brazen brother, skedaddled. Of course it may be contended that a
seraph is neither in the likeness of anything in heaven above, in
earth beneath, or in the water, or fire, under the earth, and that
consequently Moses in no wise infringed the Decalogue.
Commentators have been puzzled to account for this evident relic of
serpent worship in a religion so abhorrent of idolatry as that of
the Jews. These gentry usually shut their eyes very close to the many
evidences that the god-guided people were always falling into the
idolatries of the surrounding nations. Now we know that the Babylonians,
in common with all the great nations of antiquity, worshipped the
serpent. It has been thought, indeed, that the name Baal is an
abbreviation of Ob-el, "the serpent god." In the Apocryphal book of Bel
and the Dragon, to be found in every Catholic Bible, it says (v. 23):
"And in that same place there was a great dragon, which they of Babylon
worshipped. And the king said unto Daniel, Wilt thou also say that this
is of brass? Lo, he liveth, he eateth and drinketh, thou canst not say
that he is no living god; therefore worship him." Serpent worship is
indeed so widely spread, and of such great antiquity, that it has
been conjectured to have sprung from the antipathy between our monkey
ancestors and snakes. In this legend the brazen serpent is benevolent,
but more usually that reptile represents the evil principle. Thus
a story in the Zendavesta (which is clearly allied to, and may have
suggested that in Genesis) says that Ahriman assumed a serpent's form
in order to destroy the first of the human race, whom he accordingly
poisoned. In the Saddu we read: "When you kill serpents you shall repeat
the Zendavesta, whereby you will obtain great merit; for it is the same
as if you had killed so many devils." It is curious that the serpent
which is the evil genius of Genesis is the good genius in Numbers, and
that Jesus himself is represented as comparing himself to it (John iii.
14). An early Christian sect, the Ophites, found serpent worshipping
quite consistent with their Christianity.
It seems likely that this story of the brazen serpent having been made
by Moses, was a priestly invention to account for its being an object
of idolatry among the Jews, as we know from 2 Kings xviii. 4, it was
worshipped down to the time of Hezekiah, that is 700 years after the
time of Moses. Hezekiah, we are told, broke the brazen serpent in
pieces, but it must have been miraculously joined again, for the
identical article is still to be seen, for a consideration, in the
Church of St. Ambrose at Milan. Some learned rabbis regard the brazen
serpent as a talisman which Moses was enabled to prepare from his
knowledge of astrology. Others say it was a form of amulet to be copied
and worn as a charm against disease. Others again declare it was only
set up _in terrorem_, as a man who has chastised his son hangs up the
rod against the wall as a warning. Rationalising commentators have
pretended that it was but an emblem of healing by the medical art, a
sort of sign-post to a camp hospital, like the red cross flag over an
ambulance. These altogether pervert the text, and miss the meaning of
the passage. The resemblance of the object set up was of the essence of
the cure, as may be seen in 1 Sam. vi. 5. In truth, the doctrine of
like curing like, instead of being a modern discovery is a very ancient
superstition. The old medical books are full of prescriptions, or rather
charms, founded on this notion.* It is, indeed, one of the recognised
principles in savage magic and medicine that things like each other,
however superficially, affect each other in a mystic way, and possess
identical properties. Thus in Melanesia, according to Mr. Codrington,**
"a stone in the shape of a pig, of a bread fruit, of a yam, was a most
valuable find," because it made pigs prolific, and fertilised bread,
fruit trees, and yam plots.
* See Myths in Medicine and Old Time Doctors, by Alfred C.
Garratt, M.D.
** Journal Anthropological Institute, February, 1881.
In Scotland, too, "stones were called by the names of the limbs they
resembled, as 'eye-stanes, head-stane.'" A patient washed the affected
part of his body, and rubbed it well with the stone corresponding. In
precisely the same way the mandrake* root, being thought to resemble
the human body, was supposed to be of wondrous medical efficacy, and was
credited with human and super-human powers.** The method of cure, when
the Philistines were smitten with emerods and mice, was to make
images of the same (1 Sam. vi. 5), and the same idea was found in the
well-known superstition of sorcerers making "a waxen man" to represent
an enemy, injuries to the waxen figure being supposed to affect the
person represented.
* Gregor, Folk-lore of North-East Counties, p. 40.
** See the paper on "Moly and Mandragora," in A. Lang's
Custom and Myth; 1884.
Many curious customs and superstitions may be traced to this belief. In
old medical works one may still read that to eat of a lion's heart is
a specific to ensure courage, while other organs and certain bulbous
plants are a remedy for sterility. The virtue of all the ancient
aphrodisiacs resided in their shape. This notion, which largely affected
the early history of medicine, is known as the doctrine of signatures.
Certain plants and other natural objects were believed to be so marked
or stamped that they presented visibly the indications of the diseases,
or diseased organs, for which they were specifics; these were their
signatures. Hence a large portion of the ancient art of medicine
consisted in ascertaining what plants were analogous to the symptoms of
disease, or to the organ diseased. To this doctrine we owe some popular
names of plants, such as eye-bright, liver-wort, spleen-wort, etc. The
mandrake, from its supposed resemblance to the human form, was credited
with marvellous powers, and anyone who will take the trouble to inquire
into the folk-lore concerning plants and disease will find that much
depends upon the appearance of the remedy.
One of the most curious peculiarities of Christianity is its doctrine of
a God crucified for sinners. So strange, so repugnant to reason as such
a doctrine is, it was quite consonant to the thoughts of those who held
the belief in salvation by similars. If Paul said, since by man came
death by man came also the resurrection of the dead, the development of
the doctrine necessitated that if it is God who damns it is also God who
saves. Any casual reader of Paul must have been struck by the antithesis
which he constantly draws between the law and the Gospel, works and
faith, the fall of man, and the redemption through "the second Adam."
The very phrase "second Adam" implies this doctrine, which is summed
up in the statement that "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us" (Gal. iii. 13).
God, in order to redeem man, had to take on sinful flesh and be himself
the curse in order to be the cure. Hence we read in the _Teaching of the
Twelve Apostles_, chap. xvi., that "they who endure in their faith shall
be saved by the very curse." Thus may we understand that which modern
Christians find so difficult of explanation, viz., that the whole
Christian world for the first thousand years from St. Justin to St.
Anselm believed that Christ paid the ransom for sinners to the Devil,
their natural owner. Christ in order to become the Savior had to become
the curse, had to die and had to descend to hell, though of course,
being God, he could not stay there. Hence his being likened to the
brazen serpent, that remnant of early Jewish fetichism which was smashed
by Hezekiah (2 Kings xviii. 4). John makes Jesus himself teach that "as
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness [as a cure for serpent
bites] even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life."
So Irenæus says (bk. iv., chap. 2), "men can be saved in no other way
from the old wound of the serpent than by believing in him, who in the
likeness of sinful flesh, is lifted up from the earth on the tree of
martyrdom, and draws all things to himself and vivified the dead." That
is, Christ was made sinful flesh to be the curse itself, just as the
innocent brass appeared a serpent, because the form of the curse was
necessary to the cure. Paul dwells on the passage of the law "Cursed is
he that hangeth on a tree," with the very object of showing that Christ,
cursed under the law, was a blessing under his glad tidings. The Fathers
were never tired of saying that man was lost by a tree (in Eden) and
saved by a tree (on Calvary), that as the curse came in child-birth* and
thorns, so the world was saved by the birth of Christ and his crown of
thorns. Justin says, "As the curse came by a Virgin, so by a Virgin the
salvation," and this antithesis between Eve and Mary has been carried on
by Catholic writers down to our own day.
* Notice too 1 Tim. 15, where women are said to be saved by
child birth, their curse.
As the Christian doctrine of salvation through the blood of Christ has
certainly no more foundation in fact than the efficacy of liver-wort
in liver diseases, we suggest it may have no better foundation than the
ancient superstition of salvation by similars.