LETTER 
T 0 
JOHN FORBES, M. D., F. R. S., 
Editor of the 44 British & Foreign Medical Review,” 
OK HIS ARTICLE ENTITLED 
“HOMOEOPATHY, ALLOPATHY, AND YOUNG PHYSIC/’ 
CONTAINED IN THE NUMBER OF THE REVIEW FOR JANUARY, 1846, 
B T 
WILLIAM HENDERSON, M.D., 
PROFESSOR OF PATHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURG 
Extracted from the British Journal of Homeopathy, for April, 1846. 
NEW-YORK: 
WILLIAM RADDE, 322 BROADWAY. 
J. T. & SMITH, 592, BROADWAY. 
ALSO, 
BOSTON: 
OTIS CLAPP, 12 SCHOOL-STREET. 
PHILADELPHIA: 
c. L. RADEMACHER, 39 NORTH-FOURTH STREET, 
1 8 4 6, WM. RADDE respectfully informs flic Homoeopathic Physicians, and the friends 
of the system, that he is the sole agent for the British Journal of Homoeo- 
pathy, which he regularly receives hy the Mail Steamer, and furnishes quar- 
terly for $3 per annum. 
H. LUDWIG. PRINTER, 
70 & 72, Vssey St. LETTER, 
ETC. 
Sir,—It is not the irritability of an author subjected to a 
rigorous criticism that prompts me to address to you the 
following remarks on your late review of Homoeopathy, for 
I can say with sincerity that you have given me, personally, 
scarcely any ground for complaint. Indeed, both as an 
author and an adherent of the system which you have re- 
viewed, I can justly pay you the compliment of stating that 
3mu are the first public opponent of Homoeopathy in this 
country who has treated it with the courtesy of a gentleman, 
and the candour, if not of an unbiassed unbeliever, at least 
of one who does not wilfully assert what is untrue. 
Nor is it solely on account of the importance of the omis- 
sions and mistakes you have made that I address you at 
present. Far greater than any you are chargeable with, and 
deliberate misrepresentations to boot, have been committed 
by some of your contemporaries, which the feebleness of 
their influence for either good or bad has rendered unworthy 
ot notice. It is, however, otherwise with you, and the pro- 
ductions of your pen ; and though I might, with little anx- 
iety for the result, leave your article on Homoeopathy to do 
the important work for which it is in many respects so well 
suited, without any comments of mine, it has occurred to me 
that the inaccuracies and defects to which I have referred 
may, under the sanction of your name, have more influence 
with many than they deserve to have, and may thereby re- 
tard the progress of an inquiry in which the profession and 
the public are very seriously concerned. I gladly avail my- 
self, therefore, of the apology for my interference which is 
afforded by the circumstance of my having a place in your 
review, in order to supply some of the omissions, and correct 
the principal mistakes, of that article. 
Though I give you full credit for having undertaken, and 4 
PROFESSOR HENDERSON^ 
prosecuted, your examination of the subject with a desire to 
act fairly by it, I am far from admitting that you have suc- 
ceeded in your object. While there is much in your paper 
that is just, and a little that will be regarded as even liberal, 
there is a great deal that is the reverse of both. Some of 
what comes under this latter designation is, no doubt, the re- 
sult of imperfect information—of views which, as you ac- 
knowledge, have been “ suddenly and prematurely ” forced 
from you. A large account, however, remains that cannot 
be regarded in this light, but which affords some curious il- 
lustrations of the psychological infirmity that often leads 
men to exhibit doctrines which they dislike to as much dis- 
advantage as they can, without absolutely affirming what 
they know to be untrue. 
To this infirmity I must ascribe the suppressing of expla- 
nations that might lessen or remove an objection ;—the ready 
admission of whatever appears likely to tell against your 
opponents; the prompt repudiation of everything like a pre- 
sumption in their favour ; and the recourse to denials or af- 
firmations regarding points on which you are not entitled, by 
your actual knowledge, to offer an opinion. 
Added to all this, there are so many misrepresentations of 
facts and doctrines, (so plainly stated by Homoeopathic wri- 
ters, that it is difficult to conceive how they can be misunder- 
stood,) that it will be scarcely surprising should many, who 
do not know you personally, doubt the possibility of their 
being unintentional. 
It is easy to perceive that you started on your inquiry 
with your mind fully made up on the more important merits 
of the case ;■ and the following are clearly the “ views relat- 
ing to the general subject which have long occupied ” your 
thoughts. You have been long satisfied that the treatment 
of diseases, according to the' old system, was, for the most 
part, radically bad,—with some exceptions, simply powerless 
as to the cure of diseases, and in many, if not in most, of 
these exceptions, worse than powerless, positively injurious 5 
you were familiar, therefore, with the belief that the majo- 
rity of the supposed cures of diseases, including acute in- 
flammations and other dangerous maladies, under the old 
system, were due to the power of nature acting independent- 
ly or even in spite of the treatment; you had heard not a 
little of the success of Homoeopathy, and the difficulty of 
conceiving that the means you supposed it to employ could 
act in any way on the body, suggested an explanation of 
this success, which chimed in with your estimate of the LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
5 
power of nature. The riddle was thus easily solved. The 
recoveries under the old system are mostly due to nature, 
ergo, the recoveries under Homoeopathy can be due to no- 
thing more. 
In order to guard myself from misrepresenting you, I shall 
quote your own words. The inferences you specify as the 
result of your deliberations are : 
“ 1. That in a large proportion of the cases treated by 
Allopathic physicians, (that is, of the old school,) the dis- 
ease is cured by nature, and not by them. 
u2. That in a lesser, but still not a small proportion, the 
disease is cured by nature, in spite of them ; in other words, 
their interference opposing, instead of assisting, the cure. 
“ 3. That, consequently, in a considerable proportion of 
diseases, it would fare as well, or better, with patients, in 
the actual condition of the medical art, as more generally 
practised, if all remedies, at least all active remedies, espe- 
cially drugs, were abandoned. * * * * 
“ Although Homoeopathy has brought more signally into 
the common day-light this lamentable condition of medicine 
regarded as a practical art, it was one well known before to 
all philosophical and experienced physicians. 
“ It is, in truth, a fact of such magnitude,—one so palpa- 
bly evident, that it was impossible for any careful reader of 
the history of medicine, or any long observer of the pro- 
cesses of disease, not to be aware of it. What, indeed, is the 
history of medicine but a history of perpetual changes in 
the opinions and practice of its professors, respecting the 
very same subjects—the nature and treatment of diseases ? 
And, amid all these changes, often extreme and directly op- 
posed to one another, do we not find these very diseases, 
the subject of them, remaining (with some exceptions) still 
the same in their progress and general event ? Sometimes, 
no doubt, we observe changes in the character and event, 
obviously depending on the change in the treatment,—and, 
alas, as often for the worse as for the better; but it holds 
good as a general rule, that, amid all the changes of the 
treatment, the proportion of cures and of deaths has remained 
nearly the same, or, at least, if it has varied, the variation 
has borne no fixed relation to the difference of treatment.” 
<P. 257-S.) 
“ The foregoing elucidations, it will not be doubted, dis- 
close a lamentable state of things ; but it is not a state to be 
despaired of; much less is it one to be concealed as some- 
thing disgraceful, it is more our misfortune than our fault 6 
PROFESSOR HENPERSON^S 
that it is as it is ; but if it were our fault, still it ought to be 
made known. There, as in morals, the more sensibly we 
feel our defects, the more openly and heartily we confess 
them, the more likely are we to get rid of them. As thus 
reflected in our critical mirror, the features of our ancient 
mother assuredly look somewhat unattractive. She seems 
neither happy nor prosperous ; yea, she seems sick, very 
sick ; yet not sick unto death. On the contrary, we believe 
that she is more vivacious and vigorous than at any preced- 
ing time; her countenance is merely ‘ sicklied o’er with 
the pale cast of thought,’ from the strength of her inward 
throes ; ‘ the genius and the mortal instruments are now in 
council, and her state, like to a little kingdom, is suffering the 
nature of an insurrection.’ And such, in truth, do we be- 
lieve to be, literally, the condition of physic at this moment. 
Things have arrived at such a pitch, that they cannot be 
worse. They must mend or end. We believe they will 
mend. The springs of life are yet untouched; the constitu- 
tion retains its rallying power; the vis medicatrix is in ac- 
tion • and we flatter ourselves that there is yet enough of 
young blood and energy and wisdom in our ranks to re- 
deem the past, and to achieve that glorious regeneration, 
which has been long announced by infallible signs and por- 
tents in these latter days. Old as we are, we yet hope to 
see raised the standard of ‘ Young Physic,’ though we can- 
not expect to see it furled, after the destined victory is 
won.”—P. 261. 
So much for your estimate of the old system; one which 
has long occupied your thoughts, and which, I may be per- 
mitted to say, was so entirely mine also, that I thought it 
worth while to examine the pretensions of a new system. 
Then, as to Homoeopathy ; in commenting on a general 
comparison of its success, with that of the old system, as 
shown in the tabulated results of Fleischmann’s practice in 
the Homoeopathic hospital of Vienna, and of several French 
and British hospitals, you say— 
u The remarks above made are even of more importance, 
in relation to the general subject now under consideration, 
than they may seem to be at first. They not only show that 
the kind of successes and failures experienced by the Homce- 
pathists, is precisely the same as that experienced by the 
Allopathists; but they also seem to show that the medica- 
tion of the former can boast of no peculiar virtue whereby 
it can achieve triumphs in fields altogether forbidden to the 
latter. Under the influence of medicines, all of which must LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
7 
be considered new—new absolutely, or new in their form, 
mode of administration, and principle of action—we would 
have hardly expected the old relations of curability and in- 
curability exactly preserved. Does not this fact, common to 
both, seem to point to a community of poioeior want of 
power, in the two classes of agents, rather than to a speci- 
ality of action and potency in one?”—P. 244. And so de- 
termined are you to make out your point against the old 
system, as possessing little, if any, potency as a system of 
curing, that you behave very liberally (as your Allopathic 
friends will think) to the recorded successes of Homosopa- 
thy; but with the purpose of bringing both the old and new 
systems to the level of your power of nature. 
“These tables, (Fleischmann’s Homoeopathic tables, for 
instance, substantiate this momentous fact, that all our ordi- 
nary curable diseases are cured in a fair proportion, under 
the Homoeopathic method of treatment. Not merely do we 
see thus cured all the slighter diseases, whether acute or 
chronic, which most men of experience know to be readily 
susceptible of cure under every variety of treatment, and 
under no treatment at all; but even ail the severer and more 
dangerous diseases, which most physicians, of whatever 
school, have been accustomed to consider as not only need- 
ing the interposition of art to assist nature in bringing them 
to a favourable and speedy termination, but demanding the 
employment of prompt and strong measures to prevent a 
fatal issue in a considerable proportion of cases. And such 
is the nature of the premises, that there can hardly be any 
mistake as to the justness of the inference. Dr. Fleischmann 
is a regular, well-educated physician, as capable of forming a 
true diagnosis as other practitioners, and he is considered 
by those who know him as a man of honour and respecta- 
bility, and incapable of attesting a falsehood. We cannot, 
therefore, refuse to admit the accuracy of his statements as 
to matters of fact; or, at least, to admit them with that 
liberal subtraction from the favourable side of the equation, 
which is required in the case of all statements made by the 
disciples and advocates of new doctrines. Even after this 
rectification, we see enough that remains to justify the in- 
ference above deduced. No candid physician, looking at the 
original report, or at the small part of it which we have 
extracted, will hesitate to acknowledge that the results there 
set forth would have been considered by him as satisfactory, 
if they had occurred in his own practice. The amount of 
deaths in the fevers and eruptive diseases is certainly below 8 
professor Henderson’s 
the ordinary proportion ; but, for reasons already stated, no 
conclusion favourable to Homosopathy can be thence de- 
duced. It seems, however, reasonable to infer that, even in 
these cases, the new practice was not less favourable to the 
cure than the ordinary practice. In all such cases, experienced 
physicians have been long aware that the results, as to mor- 
tality, are nearly the same under all varieties of Allopathic 
treatment. It would not surprise them, therefore, that a 
treatment like that of Homoeopathy, which they may regard 
as perfectly negative, should be fully as successful as their 
own. But the results presented to us in the severer internal 
inflammations, are certainly not such as most practical phy- 
sicians would have expected to be obtained under the ex- 
clusive administration of a thousandth, a millionth, or a bil- 
lionth part* of a grain of phosphorus, every two, three, or 
five hours. It would be very unreasonable to believe that 
out of three hundred cases of pneumonia, two hundred and 
twenty-four cases of pleurisy, and one hundred and five 
cases of peritonitis, (in all six hundred and twenty-nine 
cases,) spread over a period of eight years, all the cases, ex- 
cept the fatal ones, (twenty-seven in number,) were slight, 
and such as would have seemed to us hardly requiring treat- 
ment of any kind. In fact, according to all experience, 
such could not be the case. But, independently of this a 
priori argument, we have sufficient evidence to prove that 
many of the cases of pneumonia, at least, were severe cases. 
A few of these cases are reported in detail by Dr. Fleisch- 
mann himself, and we have ourselves had the statement cor- 
roborated by the private testimony of a physician, (not a 
Homoeopath,) who attended Dr. Fleischmann’s wards for 
three months. This gentleman watched the course of seve- 
ral cases of pneumonia, and traced their progress by the phy- 
sical signs, through the different stages of congestion, hepa- 
tization, and resolution, up to a perfect cure, Avithin a period 
of time Avhich would have appeared short under the most 
energetic treatment of Allopathy.”—P. 243. 
Again, in reference to the cases published in my treatise, 
you say of tAvo “ Avell-marked cases of acute rheumatism,” 
and two of “severe neuralgia,” that “it Avould be unfair 
to deny that the result obtained in these four last cases Avould 
have been regarded as very satisfactory under any mode of 
Allopathic treatment,” p. 245; and of the cases generally, 
“ Ave do not hesitate to declare, that the amount of success 
* I shall by- and-by show that this account of the doses is altogether incor- 
rect -W. H. LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
9 
obtained by Dr. Henderson in the treatment of his cases, 
would have been considered by ourselves as very satisfac- 
tory, had we been treating the same cases according to the 
rules of ordinary practice/’—P. 250. 
Now all these admissions have the appearance of fair- 
ness, and considering the manner in which the facts both of 
Fleischmann and myself have been misrepresented by un- 
candid reviewers, they will seem startling and extreme to 
most of your professional readers. Yet they are fair only in 
a degree,—only to the level of your hypothesis regarding 
the power of nature, and far short of the truth. A greater 
amount of success than the old system you will not admit 
Homoeopathy to procure; you allow it to run neck and 
neck with the former in the treatment of some of the most 
dangerous inflammations even, but not a hair’s breadth 
more. It must not pass the line of your preconceptions, let 
the “ hard words, and harder figures of statistical tables ” 
say what they may. 
But the subject is far too important to be slurred over in 
a way so summary and inaccurate, and I, therefore, hope 
you will excuse me if I keep somewhat closer to the facts 
than your hypothesis finds it convenient to do. To get rid 
of the overwhelming evidence of the superiority of the 
Homoeopathic practice, as shown on a comparison of Dr. 
Fleischmann’s tables with similar tables of Allopathic phy- 
sicians, you object to all the statistical tables that profess to 
exhibit the comparative results of treatment of any kind. 
The genius of the diseases at different seasons, the influence 
of the sex, age, and condition of the patients, are so many 
circumstances that seem to you to deprive the statistics, hi- 
therto published, of value in such a comparison. And you 
are right to this extent, that we have as yet no statistical de- 
tails sufficiently minute, or so carefully classified, as to en- 
able us to determine to a fraction what is the amount of su- 
periority which one kind of treatment possesses over an- 
other. But a degree of precision such as this is not neces- 
sary in the inquiry we have on hand. We want to know, 
simply, on which side, the Homoeopathic or the Allopathic, 
the advantage lies, and not the exact amount of the advan- 
tage. And to settle this point there is an ample accumula- 
tion of sufficiently minute information to leave no room for 
doubt respecting it. In large collections of cases of any dis- 
ease, the sex, age, and condition of the patient, and the date 
of the disease when brought under treatment, becomes so 
much equalized, that there is no danger, in comparing them, 10 
professor Henderson’s 
of drawing an erroneous inference as to the general fact of 
which group has been the most successfully treated—which 
treatment has been, on the whole, the best, and the most 
worthy of future confidence. 
I conceive that no one will be inclined to dispute that 
three or four hundred cases of a particular disease, on each 
side, taken indiscriminately from both sexes, at all ages 
above infancy, at all periods of the disease according as the 
persons affected happened to present themselves for treat- 
ment, at all seasons, and during a series of years, present 
very fair grounds for ascertaining the comparative value of 
two kinds of practice. It is in the very nature of statistics, 
collected in such circumstances, and embracing so large a 
number of cases, to do away with accidental sources of 
error, and to bring out a general fact that might be misre- 
presented by more limited data. The comparisons I am 
about to give possess all these safeguards against mistake, 
and the proofs which they afford are as completely decisive 
in respect to the general fact of the superiority of the Ho- 
moeopathic practice as any proofs we have in medicine on 
any point whatever. 
Dr. Fleischmann treated in the Homoeopathic Hospital 
of Vienna during the nine years beginning in 1834, and 
ending in 1843, two hundred and ninety-nine cases of in- 
flammation of the lungs. Of these, nineteen died, or about 
one in sixteen. 
With these cases I contrast, first, the experience of 
Chomel in the Hotel Dieu of Paris. He does not, in the 
account from which my information is drawn, specify the 
number of cases that had fallen under his care; but when 
we consider the frequency of pneumonia in Paris, the size 
of the hospital in which he practised, and the length of time 
to which the account refers, we must admit that the number 
cannot have been less than that treated by Fleischmann. 
The period of ten years, from 1832 to 1842, during which 
Chomel’s cases occurred, will be allowed to have been suf- 
ficiently extensive to have prevented any possibility of error 
from the variable genius of the disease, coinciding so nearly 
as it does, too, with the period of Fleischmann’s practice. 
And in order to do away with the possibility of any preju- 
dice to the comparison, in favour of Homoeopathy, that 
might be conjectured to arise from the cases of Fleischmann 
having been accidentally of an age more favourable to re- 
covery, than those of Chomel, I select from the statements 
of the latter, what he says of the mortality during that LETTER TO PR. FORBES. 
11 
period of adult life, when the average success is the greatest, 
and contrast this with the results of Fleischmann’s practice 
among persons of all ages. It appears, then, that between 
the ages of twenty and forty, Chomel had a mortality of 
one in eight, or double that of Dr. Fleischmann’s at all ages. 
The Homoeopathic physician does not mention the ages of 
his patients ; hut the table he has given proves that his hos- 
pital is, like other general hospitals, devoted to the reception 
of all kinds of disease ; and judging from the nature of the 
diseases he specifies in his table, it is clear that the persons 
admitted were mostly past the period of adolescence. Thus, 
of the diseases the most common in early youth, scarlet 
fever, measles, hooping-cough, convulsions, general scrofu- 
la, varicella, only one hundred and eighty-seven cases were 
admitted in the nine years, while the whole number of pa- 
tients was six thousand three hundred and twenty-two. 
Again, if we compare the mortality of pneumonia under 
the ordinary treatment, within limits of age still more fa- 
vourable to recovery, (for you know that the mortality is 
less as the age is earlier—that of early infancy excepted,) 
we still find it greater than that of Fleischmann at all ages. 
Barthez and Rilliet give us one hundred and sixteen cases 
between the ages of sixteen and thirty, and Leroux* one 
hundred and eighty-two cases between the ages of thirteen 
and thirty, including a period of seventeen years, in which 
the mortality is at the lowest, after the age of puberty, in the 
ordinary practice; and thus we have almost exactly the 
same number of cases as Fleischmann adduces, and collected, 
too, in various years and seasons. The mortality was more 
than one in twelve, or one fourth greater than that of the 
Homoeopathic practice. All that can be said or imagined, by 
any experienced and reflecting person, of the sources of fal- 
lacy in statistics, cannot subvert the conclusion from these 
facts,—that the Homoeopathic treatment of inflammation of 
the lungs is vastly superior to the ordinary treatment. The 
exact amount of its superiority may not be such as these 
facts represent; it may be greater or it may be less, but that 
is of no consequence to the present inquiry. What we want 
to determine, 1 repeat, is simply which practice is the most 
successful, and not the precise amount of the difference ; and 
yet it is only to this latter, and, in a practical point of view, 
altogether secondary and insignificant consideration, that 
your objections to statistics actually apply. 
* Grisolle. 12 
professor Henderson’s 
What makes the comparisons I have made still more im- 
portant and conclusive is, that the mortality of pneumonia 
increases after the age of forty, so that from forty to sixty, 
during Chomel’s ten years, it was one in five; and above 
sixty, one in two. This progressive increase in the mortality 
with increasing years, appears, according to M. Grisolle, the 
most learned writer on the subject, “to be the same in all 
countries, in hospitals as well as in private practice.”—P. 
520. And yet, with all the disadvantage of a comparison of 
cases, in which a portion must have belonged to periods of 
life at which pneumonia increases in danger and severity, 
with others drawn from a period when it shows much less 
of a dangerous tendency, the success of Homoeopathy is in- 
disputably greater than the ordinary practice. 
In order to convey some idea of the superiority of the 
Homoeopathic over the ordinary treatment of pneumonia, at 
all ages, I adduce the following accounts, of which the Allo- 
pathic facts are derived from Grisolle’s work,and the Homoeo- 
pathic from the statistical tables of Fleischmann and Reiss, 
carried down to 1544. On the Allopathic side we have Lou- 
is, Trousseau, Grisolle, Laennec, Bouillaud, all eminent prac- 
titioners of a country whose medical practice you hold up to 
the emulation of British physicians. Together, they furnish 
five hundred and thirty-one cases of inflamed lungs; of which 
eighty-one died, or one in six and two-thirds. In this num- 
ber there are included fifty-seven cases by Laennec, of which 
he says only two died. He is accused of having overstated 
his success, having confessedly given his account only from 
memory. And it is affirmed, on the authority of one who 
attended his wards, that his loss was actually much greater 
than he has allowed. Still, I have taken his own account of 
the matter. 
On the Homoeopathic side we have, in addition to the two 
hundred and ninety-nine cases of Fleischmann already no- 
ticed, forty-four treated by him in 1844 ; and thirty-four cases 
of Dr. Reiss, treated in the Homoeopathic Hospital of Linz* 
in 1843 and 1844—the only cases of pneumonia, treated in 
that hospital, of which an account has been published. In 
all, then, three hundred and seventy-nine cases, and nine- 
teen deaths, or one in twenty—the last forty-four of Fleisch- 
mann, and the thirty-four of Reiss, having all recovered ! 
It is well known that among females the rate of mortality 
from inflammation of the lungs is higher than among males, 
* Oestcrreichische Zeitschrift fur Homoeopathic. LETTER TO DR. TORRES, 
13 
though females are much less liable to the disease. The 
number of the latter that occurred among the cases of 
Pleischmann and Reiss is not mentioned. But it is certain 
that the accommodation for females in Fleischrnann’s hospi- 
tal is such, that no cases of pneumonia among them were 
more likely to be excluded than among the males ; and there 
is no reason to suppose that females are less liable to pneu- 
monia in Vienna than in Paris. In the account given of a 
small number of cases treated by Skoda in an Allopathic 
hospital in Vienna, the proportion of females is noted—there 
were nine, to twenty males. Among the five hundred and 
thirty-one cases that occurred in Paris, the proportion of the 
sexes is staled by some of the physicians; and we find that 
of three hundred and fifty-one cases thus classified, only 
seventy were females; so that no considerable proportion 
of the immense general mortality could have been due to 
that source. 
It does not appear that any deduction should be made 
from the success on the Homoeopathic side, on the ground 
that the statements come from the partisans of a particular 
system, which ought not to be equally made from the alleged 
success on the other side ; for the several physicians, on 
whose authority the latter is given, were contending, some of 
them acrimoniously, for the superiority of their respective 
measures of treatment. 
It is curious that while you eschew “ any close compari- 
son” of Fleischmann’s tables with those of Allopathic phy- 
sicians, on the ground of an absence of sufficient detail, no 
statement that can tell in favour of your own views, is too 
vague and meagre to be admitted in evidence. One might 
almost suspect, therefore, that, had a close comparison been 
likely to show Homoeopathy to disadvantage, it would not 
have been so scrupulously avoided. You quote Grisolle’s 
account of the expectant practice, or no practice, of Biett and 
Magendie, with the purpose of putting that on a footing 
with Homoeopathy in its claims to suffrage. And yet, while 
the Homoeopathic records are distinct as to the number of 
cases that were treated, and the mortality among them, in 
hard statistical figures, neither the one nor the other is men- 
tioned of the cases that were left by those physicians to take 
their own course. Biett’s mortality is said, merely, to have 
been “ very inconsiderable” during the year that he treated 
his patients with only emollient drinks and cataplasms, Ma- 
gendie’sis not mentioned at all; the only information we 
have regarding his treatment of pneumonia being, that “ he 14 
professor Henderson’s 
employs no other treatment” than the expectant.* “Very 
inconsiderable,” with Grisolle, would doubtless mean one 
death in every five, or four, or perhaps three, cases, seeing 
that his own practice, which he stoutly defends against M. 
Bonillaud, furnished no less than one in six and one-third. 
The “ very inconsiderable” was clearly meant to be coupled 
%vith “considering that the cases were left to nature.” His 
own mortality was very considerable beyond all dispute; 
and if he meant to say that Biett’s was, in the plain, abso 
lute, and unqualified sense of the words, very inconsiderable, 
he was bound to adopt, and to recommend it to others, in- 
stead of laying down rules for the use of blood-letting, and 
tartar emetic. 
vague and unsatisfactory is the statement you 
make on your own authority “We may add that, to out 
knowledge, the same plan has been followed in one, at least, 
of the large hospitals of Germany, and the result was con- 
sidered to have been far from unsatisfactory.”—P. 246. This 
abandonment of the old practice, in favour of none at all, is 
scarcely the most obvious tribute to its efficiency. In this 
we agree; and as to the German result, to which you refer 
in such very precise terms—so much preferable to hard sta- 
tistical tables—it amounted, we may suppose, to the loss of 
only a third, or a fourth, of the cases; a result certainly “ far 
from unsatisfactory,” as the consequence of no treatment at 
all, when even active treatment loses between a sixth and a 
seventh, or, if I may adduce the experience in one at least 
of the larger hospitals of Britain, a third! How would you 
have dealt with the luckless Homoeopath who should attempt 
to encounter the statistics of Allopathy, with such miserable 
statements as you oppose to those of Dr. Fleischmann 1 
Although I have said enough to satisfy any unprejudiced 
and intelligent person that the Homoeopathic practice in 
pneumonia is very much more successful than the Allo- 
pathic, I cannot quit the subject without affirming, that you 
* There is a small mistake in your account of this. Grisolle Uses the word 
“ guere,” which is not no, but scarcely. Even Magendie, notoriously bold and 
unfeeling as he is, dated not habitually to give up all treatment. The mistake, 
however, favours your side of the argument. For it would be a presumption, and 
you employ it as such, in favour of no treatment, and in the same measure 
against the claims of Homoeopathy to be some treatment, if any physician saw 
good reason to relinquish the employment of medicine in the treatment of pneu- 
monia. But even Magendie did use some remedies, though apparently neither 
very active, nor very successful; for your Dublin contemporary for February, 
Who appears to speak from personal knowledge, affirms that the mortality wait 
held by lookers-on to be greater under the distinguished physiologist than under 
his colleagues, and therefore much greater than under Homoeopathy, LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
15 
give the latter less than its due, small as that may be. Gri- 
solle, as yon know, left eleven slight* cases of pneumonia to 
take their own way undisturbed by treatment, and he gives 
an account of the time during which the characteristic ex- 
pectoration, pain, and fever continued, and of the period at 
which the phenomena of auscultation began to decline, and 
when they disappeared. He does the same in reference 
to the cases that were treated by blood-letting, and tartar 
emetic, and affirms, justly, that the latter were convalescent 
sooner than the former. 
The details are to the following effect: 1. In the eleven 
left to nature, the pain did not cease in a single case before 
the seventh day; in several it lasted till the 20th, 25th, and 
27th days; the mean teas fifteen days. In four he was forced 
to have recourse to cupping, owing to the persistence of the 
pain, and one of them required a blister in addition. [He 
helped the power of nature a little, after all] 
In the cases that were bled, (two hundred and thirty-two 
in all,) the mean duration of the pain was seven days. 
In those that were treated with tartar emetic alone, (forty- 
four in number,) he does not mention the mean duration of 
the symptom. But he says, “ the first sign of amendment 
consisted in a diminution, and sometimes a total cessation of 
the pain, which was often very pungent and acute.” In five 
* In alluding' to them, you say, “ Dr. Henderson misjudges these cases in 
terming them ‘ slight,’ in comparison with the one treated by him. They seem 
to have been fully as severe.’' P. 246. I persist, notwithstanding, in calling 
them slight, unquestionably slight, cases. For Grisolle not only says that the 
general symptoms were mild enough to satisfy him that he might leave them 
to themselves without danger, but he says that the inflammation wag “ of small 
extent” in all of them. Why did you not notice this most essential particular T 
If you had, you could not have added that they were “fully as severe” as the 
case of mine to which you allude. That case is stated to have had the lung 
condensed “as high as the spine of the scapula,” and from “ the axilla afl 
down the lateral aspect of the side”~about two-thirds, at least, of the whole 
lung. No small extent truly. In what other respects they were as severe, 
neither you nor I have any means of knowing, Grisolle himself, the only au- 
thority on the subject, says nothing of the frequency of the pulse, at of the respi- 
rations, of the state of the mental faculties, or of the state of quiet or restlessness 
—the very point on which, much more than on any local signs, an opinion of 
the severity of a case of pneumonia ought to rest. . But you take it for granted 
that his cases had delirium—pulses above 120, respirations 48, and much rest- 
lessness night and day ! All of these symptoms existed in my case, and must 
have existed in the eleven if they were as severe. No experienced physician 
can maintain that the mere fact of the disease having reached “the stage of 
red hepatization” is a proof that it was severe. A small extent of hepatization, 
and mild general symptoms, constitute slight cases of pneumonia if the disease 
can ever be slight. I mention these particulars only fo show how strangely you 
depreciate what is Homoeopathic, and magnify beyond all warrantable compass 
what may seem to bolster up your hypothesis. 16 
professor Henderson’ 
cases of the latter sort, it had completely ceased after the first 
day of treatment. 
2. In the eleven, the mean duration of the characteristic 
expectoration was ten days. 
In fifty cases bled in the first stage, the mean was seven 
days. In one hundred and eighty-two bled in the second 
stage, it was nine days. 
In thirty-five cases treated with tartar emetic, the state of 
this symptom was noted ; and in seventeen it existed in the 
highest degree ; and in them the expectoration was rendered 
more or less colourless in twenty-four hours after the treat- 
ment was commenced. 
In the eleven, the phenomena of auscultation did not be- 
gin to decrease till the end of the second week, and persisted 
still in various degrees till between the twenty-second and 
thirtieth days. 
In the cases bled within the first four days of the disease, 
the phenomena began to decrease between the sixth and 
seventh days. In those bled later, the mean of the com- 
mencement of the decrease was the tenth day. 
In the forty-four cases treated by tartar emetic, the phe- 
nomena began to decrease in thirty-six, between the end of 
the first and the fourth days of the treatment. 
So much for the course of slight cases left almost to na- 
ture, compared with that of severe cases treated by the ordi- 
nary means. I think that you will feel yourself in a dilemma 
when I present to you the plain inferences deducible from 
those facts, and your account of the course and duration of 
cases treated Homceopathically. You admit, on the com- 
petent testimony of a physician, (not a Homoeopath,) who 
attended Dr. Fleischmann’s wards for three months, and 
watched the progress of several cases of pneumonia, through 
the different stages of congestion, hepatization, and resolu- 
tion, up to a perfect cure, that this result occurred “ within 
a period of time which would have appeared short upon the 
most energetic treatment of Allopathy.”—P. 243. Now, 
the energetic treatment of Allopathy appears, beyond all 
question, as Grisolle’s narrative proves, to cure pneumonia 
within a period of time much shorter than the power of un- 
assisted nature can do. What is then the demonstration 
which follows ? Let us see if you have not given us a fine 
specimen of the reductio ad ahsurdum. 
Energetic treatment cures pneumonia much sooner than 
no treatment at all. Homoeopathy cures pneumonia in as 
short a time as energetic treatment; ergo, Homoeopathy LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
17 
cures pneumonia only as soon as no treatment at all! Quod 
est absurdum. I am the more astounded at this result of 
your argument, because the very facts which I have quoted 
from Grisolle, in proof of the advantage of the ordinary 
treatment over no treatment, are contained in a previous 
number of your own review. 
You have been unfortunate in not having considered at- 
tentively the means which Dr. Fleischmann used in the 
course of his remarkable success in inflammation of the 
lungs. Had you done so, you might have avoided the blun- 
der which I have now exposed, for you would have dis- 
covered that the solutions of phosphorus, which formed 
his principal remedy, contained a notable quantity of that 
very active substance. If you had consulted Fleischmann’s 
notice of his practice contained in The British Journal of 
Homcsopathy, No. 5, you would have found that his -first 
attenuation of phosphorus contains, in every hundred drops, 
a grain of the drug; in the second, nearly of a 
grain; and in the third, about one-hundredth. These are 
the attenuations used by Homoeopathists in severe cases of 
pneumonia, as you will perceive from the cases detailed by 
Fleischmann and myself. Now, if you had considered that 
the dose of this medicine, when given after the rules of your 
own school, is only about the fiftieth of a grain—or only 
double the dose of the first Homoeopathic attenuation—you 
could hardly have concluded that the Homoeopathic treat- 
ment of pneumonia is incapable of producing any positive 
effect. You would have perceived that it is not by the 
millionth, or the billionth of a grain of phosphorus that the 
Homoeopathists claim the credit of curing pneumonia so 
much more successfully than others. And I may here re- 
mark, in reference to acute diseases, that the lower or 
stronger attenuations of the medicines are those almost uni- 
versally used, a circumstance which you do not seem to 
have known when you made the general remark at p. 229, 
that “ the primary dilutions, or attenuations, are used com- 
paratively rarely/’ otherwise you would, doubtless, have 
made an exception in respect to inflammations, and thus 
have silenced the clamour of these opponents who labour to 
frighten the public out of its propriety, by representations 
founded alike on malice and ignorance. Whatever may be 
thought of the higher attenuations and their alleged value, in 
chronic diseases, there can be no doubt, in the mind of any 
rational man, as to the lower, both actually containing a very 
sensible quantity of medicine, and being capable of produc- 18 
professor Henderson’s 
ing a sensible effect, even though experience had not abun- 
dantly proved that they do. 
I feel the more desirous of removing misconception in the 
minds of professional opponents on this part of the subject, 
because it is in the treatment of acute inflammations that 
Homoeopathy possesses the most momentous advantage over 
the ordinary practice. I have already dwelt on this superi- 
ority, as shown in the case of inflammation of the lungs. 
But the tables of Fleischmann and Reiss show an equally 
remarkable superiority in regard to other inflammatory dis- 
eases. From these we learn, that of two hundred and fifty- 
eight cases of erysipelas, chiefly of the face too, only two 
died ; of one hundred and twenty-six cases of peritonitis, 
only six; of forty-five cases of inflammation of the mem- 
branes of the heart, not one died; of two hundred and forty- 
eight cases of pleurisy, only three. I need not institute a 
detailed comparison of such results, with the tables furnished 
from Allopathic hospitals. You know that this is done in the 
excellent Introduction to Homoeopathy, edited by Drs. Drys- 
dale and Russell; and you know, also, the vast superiority 
which the comparison exhibits in favour of the Homoeopa- 
thic practice. I may further observe on this most important 
point, that it would be strange indeed, contrary to every 
principle of probability, that the circumstances you mention 
as liable to vitiate the inferences that may be drawn from a 
comparison of the kind, should, in so many separate in- 
stances, be accidentally so entirely in favour of Homoeo- 
pathy. 
Although I have commented with some rigor on a few of 
the errors of narration, and of inference, which disfigure your 
allusions to Homoeopathy as claiming the credit of a mastery 
over acute diseases, which no other plan of treatment pos- 
sesses, I sincerely believe, that if you had entertained but a 
suspicion of the truth, you would have honestly and man- 
fully avowed it. lam far from supposing that the man who 
has had the courage and candour to proclaim to the world 
the unsoundness of the ordinary practice ; the necessity of a 
thorough regeneration of practical medicine *, that “ things (in 
Allopathic physic) have arrived at such a pitch, that they 
cannot be worse,’’—and that “they must mend or end;”— 
I am far from thinking that he who could utter such truths 
as these, so unpalatable to the general taste, so truly 
Hahnemannic, would hesitate to declare that the claims of 
Homoeopathy were just, if he only knew enough of the sub- 
ject to qualify him to decide. You have borne a testimony LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
19 
to the character and genius of Hahnemann, and to the ability 
and good faith of many of his followers, that must satisfy 
your readers that you would scorn to rank among those who 
are filching his discoveries, and arraying themselves in his 
hard-earned honours. And if, in your tribute to him, you 
have stopped short of his greatest merits, and have failed to 
give him credit for having effected any positive good in the 
practice of medicine, the defect must be ascribed to the lim- 
ited extent of your acquaintance with his labours, rather than 
to any unkindly feeling towards his memory. The length 
you have gone, however, is new in this country among the 
adherents of the ancient school, and gives you a claim to such 
marked commendations as are usually paid to justice and 
generosity when they are scarce. 
These virtues appear to flourish better among our profes- 
sional brethren in Germany, so that it seems to confer no par- 
ticular claim to distinction among them, that a man should 
give honour to whom honour is due. They are generally 
much better informed also than our English physicians are, 
and, therefore, if the propensity to pilfer were exercised by 
any of their number, he would be sure of being speedily de- 
tected and pilloried for his crime. Hence it is, that while 
in this country one of the most valuable discoveries of Hahne 
mann’s method of ascertaining the curative properties of 
medicines, has been stolen from Homoeopathy, without a 
word of acknowledgment to indicate the source from which 
it was originally taken, his more just and candid countrymen, 
while they take advantage of his labours, award the disco- 
verer the encomiums to which he is entitled. “It was Hahne- 
mann,” says Professor Maly, of Gratz, “ who first recom- 
mended the use of Aconite in pure inflammatory fevers, with 
or without eruption, as well as in inflammatory diseases 
generally, in obedience to his principle, similia similibus, by 
which the effusion of blood, except in certain exceptional 
cases, is wholly obviated. Even were we under no other 
obligation to Hahnemann, by this simple discovery, he would, 
like Jenner, deserve to be ranked among the greatest benefac- 
tors of suffering humanity.” Professor Maly teaches Mate- 
ria Medica in an established university-is no Homoeopath, 
in the technical sense of the term—publishes his series of 
observations on the subjects of his professorship in an Allo- 
pathic periodical, and yet seeks no warrant in these circum- 
stances for plagiarism and injustice. It would be well if 
others would follow the honourable example in regard to this, 
and the other discoveries, of the same illustrious man, with professor Henderson’s 
which they are enriching their monographs and journals 
without once mentioning his name. 
While on this subject it may not be disagreeable to you to 
be informed of a few other particulars of the homage that is 
paid on the continent to the value of Hahnemann’s contri- 
butions to the Materia Medica, and they will, doubtless, 
receive the more favour with you that they are not furnished 
by those who enrol themselves under his standard. 
The same Professor (Maly) observes, of the Helleborus 
Niger, after commending its use in dropsies of various kinds, 
and other diseases, that “ Hahnemann’s proving of the medi- 
cine upon those in health, will be found the best guide” to a 
knowledge of what it is capable of accomplishing. 
Of Pulsatilla he says, “ The healing power of this medi- 
cine in rheumatic complaints, acute as well as chronic dis- 
eases of the eye, and the various affections complicated with 
derangement of the catamenia, &c., is taught in the experi- 
ence collected to so large an amount in the Homoeopathic writ- 
ings.” 
Another writer in an Allopathic journal for 1845, Dr. 
Popper, of Winterberg, eulogizes the use of Belladonna in 
inflammation of the throat, and acknowledges that he was 
indebted for his acquaintance with it to “ the numerous in- 
disputable testimonies of many intelligent and experienced 
Homoeopathic physicians,” and concludes in the following 
words :—■“ A more frequent employment of this medicine, in 
many diseases, is to be recommended to the use of impartial 
physicians ; and the best source of information upon its vir- 
tues is the Materia Medica of Hahnemann, and the writings 
of liberal Hommopathists.” 
I give these as samples only of the general estimation in 
which Hahnemann is held by those who do not rank 
among his followers, who cannot be suspected of a spirit of 
partisanship, but possess honesty and information, and are 
not enslaved by prejudice. Similar testimonies might be 
easily multiplied, but I leave the consideration of those 
acknowledgments which have been made of the importance 
of Hahnemann’s contributions to the details of the Materia 
Medica, in order to notice, what is more cheering still, 
because pregnant with the future recognition of all the valu- 
able parts of his system,—the acknowledgments of the ex- 
cellence of some of his fundamental principles. 
At the Scientific Congress held at Strasburg in 1842, the 
Medical Section, with Professor Forget at its head, passed 
the following resolution:—“The Medical Section is unani- LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
21 
mously of opinion, that experiments with medicines on 
healthy individuals are, in the present state of medical 
science, of urgent necessity for physiology and thera- 
peutics. * * 
Dr, Siebert,t an Allopathic writer in an Allopathic jour- 
nal for 1823, observes, “It is not to be doubted that the 
complaints so loudly made, for some time past, in regard to 
the want of a foundation for therapeutics, have produced a 
beneficial effect in two ways : the first is negative, consisting 
in greater scepticism in the existing Materia Medica; and 
the other is positive, being the proving of medicines on persons 
in health, and more accurate experiments with them in 
disease. * * To outward appearances, 
Homoeopathy stands as much opposed to the old regime as 
ever ; but Ido not believe it does so in reality. Under the 
impulse given by this doctrine, medical science continues to 
direct more attention to the effects of medicines upon the 
healthy animal frame; while on the other hand, Homoeo- 
pathists are every day directing more and more attention to 
the physiological aspects of diseases which they had before 
much neglected.” 
In the British and Foreign Medical Review for January, 
1846, the learned editor, Dr. Forbes, among the best expe- 
dients for bringing his art out of its present deplorable posi- 
tion, recommends the future cultivators of it u to re-consider 
and study afresh the physiological and curative effects of all 
our therapeutic agents, with the view to obfain more positive 
results than we now possess,” and “to endeavour to substi- 
tute for the monstrous system of Polypharmacy now univer- 
sally prevalent, [in the old school, W.H.] one that is, at least, 
vastly more simple, more intelligible, more agreeable, and, it 
may be hoped, one more rational, more scientific, more cer- 
tain, and more beneficial.” 
Professor Maly, of Gratz, already mentioned, urges the 
exhibition of medicines one at a time. Dr. Siebert, too, ad- 
vocates the greatest possible simplification of the number and 
form of drugs in prescribing. 
Now in these, and similar advices from various Allopathic 
authorities, and which have been partly carried into practi- 
cal effect, though to a very small extent, by Allopathic phy- 
sicians, both in America and Europe, a very satisfactory tes- 
timony is given to two of Hahnemann’s fundamental princi- 
ples, which he thus expressed, whilst those who now echo 
his words were enjoying the polypharmics of the nursery ; 
t British Journal of Homoeopathy. January, 1846. t Ditto. 22 
professor hewderson’s 
«There is no way more certain, or more natural, for 
finding infallibly the proper etfects of medicines on man than 
to try them separately, and in moderate doses, on healthy 
persons, and to note the changes which result from them in 
the physical and moral condition.”—P. 194.* 
It will never enter the mind (of the true physician) to 
give as a remedy more than a single simple medicine at a 
time.”—P. 280.t 
I have said, that the adoption of these principles of 
Homoeopathy is fraught with the future recognition of the 
most valuable parts of Hahnemann’s system. And, first, 
for this reason, that the proving of medicines on healthy per- 
sons will convince medical men of the accuracy of Hahne- 
mann’s experiments, and thus effectually silence the objec- 
tions which have been drawn from the supposed impossibil- 
ity of such medicinal symptoms as he describes ever having 
been produced. If the new provers of your “Young 
Physic ” proceed courageously and skilfully in their work, 
this cannot fail to be one result of their labours and suffer- 
ings. The transactions of the Homoeopathic Society of 
Vienna abundantly warrant the anticipation. The members 
of that body have begun to subject the Materia Medica of 
Hahnemann to a rigid experimental scrutiny, and as their 
mode of proceeding is worthy of being followed as an exam- 
ple, I transcribe this short account of it, and its bearings on 
the credibility of Hahnemann. 
“ The members meet, and to each is given a portion of the 
medicine to be experimented with, without telling him what 
that medicine is. At home they take this medicine in vari- 
ous doses, and write down all the effects they have observed ; 
they then meet again, and each reads over the symptoms it 
has produced on him. Thus, there is obtained a series of 
testimonies from well-qualified and independent observers. 
They have found that the general results of Hahnemann’s 
provings are perfectly accurate, and have expressed their ad- 
miration of his skill as an experimenter, and faithful describer 
of his experiments.”—British Journal of Homoeopathy, p. 8, 
January, 1846. 
You who have never proved a medicine, I presume, 
oppose your notions of how medicines ought to behave them- 
selves when taken by a person who does not need them, to 
* Exposition de la Doctrine Medicale Homceopathique, 2nd edition. Paris, 
1834. 
f Ibid. LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
23 
the deliberate and oft-repeated experiments of Hahnemann 
and his friends. 
“No unprejudiced person/’ you affirm, “ who examines 
these records ever so superficially, can for a moment believe 
that one-haif, or one-tenth of the symptoms recorded, were, 
or could be, produced by the medicaments swallowed.”— 
P. 234. Then Hahnemann and his friends have told false- 
hoods regarding the more severe symptoms, and recorded 
many that were trivial and accidental. 
I will not accuse you of making the imputation of false- 
hood, for you have already allowed the integrity of Hahne- 
mann. But that Hahnemann did err in recording trivial 
occurrences among the symptoms that followed the taking of 
the medicines, no Homoeopathist denies ; nay, the provers in 
Vienna, who “ have expressed their, admiration,” &c., pro- 
claim the fact, and reject many of these symptoms. But 
does his error in the smallest degree effect the practical use of 
his provings—supposing, for a moment, the Homoeopathic 
principle to be correct, that regulates the selection of a rem- 
edy? No, certainly. That principle requires that the symp- 
toms of the disease to be treated, should find in the provings 
of the remedy, phenomena that correspond with them—with 
all of them if possible, with the chief and most characteris- 
tic of them at least. It matters nothing that there should be 
in the proving many more, truly medicinal, phenomena than 
there are symptoms in the disease ; and, of course, it matters 
as little that there should be as many more trivial jottings, 
that neither correspond with the disease, nor are due to the 
medicine. Hahnemann himself anticipated your objection, 
but he thought it best to err on the safe side,—to note down 
phenomena that might be accidental and unimportant, rather 
than run the risk of excluding what might be of consequence. 
If the line must be drawn nicely between the genuine and the 
false phenomena, who was to decide on the precise qualifica- 
tions that entitled a symptom to be retained, or marked it for 
oblivion ? Surely not the first prover,—nor the first few 
provers. It must be the prerogative of the many, who, hav- 
ing summed up their own experiments and those of their 
predecessors, thus ascertain what bears the characters of con- 
stancy and genuineness, and what seems to be inconstant and 
accidental. The risk in all provings is rather from genuine 
symptoms being excluded, than from accidental ones being 
admitted. At least the Homoeopathist feels so, who knows 
of what importance sometimes are seemingly inconsiderable 
particulars. 24 
professor Henderson’s 
With all the exuberance of Hahnemann’s details, the case 
is not nearly so incredible as you make it appear. You ridi- 
cule the idea of one thousand and ninety symptoms being 
producible by one medicine. And yet a very little attention 
to the proving of Calcarea, the medicine you specify, will 
show you how unfair the inference is that you allow to be 
drawn by the bare transcription of the numerals which stand 
at the close of the list. The fact is, that scarcely one-tenth 
of the number consists of distinct and separate symptoms, 
(true or false.) For example, the first nine figures, (the 
seventh excepted) relate strictly to only one symptom. And 
this is multiplied into what appear to be eight to one who 
does not read the sentences corresponding to the figures, by 
the degrees of the symptom (vertigo) at different times of the 
day being separately noted, and by the circumstances of its 
being present in the open air, on walking and sitting, on 
moving and lying still, being also noted and numbered 
separately. In the same way, for the purposes of distinct- 
ness. and easy reference, are all the other symptoms split up, 
as it were, and numbered. This was Hahnemann’s method 
with all his provings, and you perceive how small a degree 
of explanation deprives your objection of its weight, and 
how little attention was necessary on this, as on other occa- 
sions, to save you the uneasiness of a misrepresentation. 
But your objections to the provings of Hahnemann ex- 
tend to other particulars besides the number of the symp- 
toms. You object to the nature of the symptoms also, and 
lay special emphasis on the absurdity of including surgical 
diseases among them. As Ido not know where you fix the 
disputed boundaries of surgery and medicine, I may not be 
qualified to feel all the surprise which appears to have per- 
vaded your mind, when somebody gave you to understand 
that many surgical diseases are recorded among Hahne- 
mann’s provings. Possibly visions of compound fractures, 
concussions of the brain, popliteal aneurisms, and carcino- 
matous tumours, were called up by the intelligence. If so, I 
can quiet your concern on the subject, by assuring you, that 
neither Hahnemann nor any of his assistants went to so great 
a length in their devotedness to science, as to incur the risk 
of such serious consequences; and that they do not any 
where allege that they ever experienced them. There is a 
little work which you do not seem to have read, called “ A 
Defence of Hahnemann and his Doctrines,” &c., that ex- 
poses the source of your error. Allow me to refer you to it 
for information on this point, and on many of the same kind, XETTER TO DR. TORRES. 
25 
that I may be spared the tedious task of correcting so many 
errors of detail. 
It is barely possible that you may consider every disease 
that is treated by a surgeon as a surgical disease. If that be 
your definition of the term, although it is somewhat of the 
oddest, we shall, no doubt, agree that many surgical diseases 
are mentioned among the provings. Surgeons treat erysi- 
pelas—belladonna produces it; surgeons treat boils—pulsa- 
tilla produces them; surgeons treat ophthalmia—aconite, 
belladonna, &c., produce it; surgeons treat cystitis—can- 
tharides produce it; surgeons treat caries—mercury produces 
it; surgeons treat psoriasis—arsenic produces it; and so on 
with twenty other disorders common to surgeons and the 
provings. You deny all this, but Hahnemann, and his com- 
pany of provers, aver it, and (you will pardon, in so impor- 
tant a discussion, my plain speaking) they were far better 
entitled to know. 
But you deny this also : “Not a shadow of proof exists 
that the symptoms were the consequence or direct effect of 
the medicine; while a thousand reasons can be adduced for 
supposing the contrary.”—P. 234. What sort of proof would 
satisfy “philosophers, and hard-headed sceptics like our- 
selves,” it is not for me to say. Philosophers are not always 
the wisest men in the world. One endeavoured to prove 
that there was no such thing as motion; another, that there 
was no difference between right and wrong; a third, the 
father of a philosophy that finds its disciples in modern times, 
that we should give no credit to our senses, and so sincerely 
did he act upon his principles, that “ if a cart run against him, 
or a dog attacked him, or if he came upon a precipice, he 
would not stir a foot to avoid the danger. He had friends, 
however, who, happily for him, were not such great sceptics, 
and took care to keep him out of harm’s way ; so that he 
lived till he was ninety years old.” Again ; “ hard-headed,” 
or “ unlimited scepticism,” as Dugald Stewart has it, “ is as 
great a proof of imbecility as implicit credulity is.” Philoso- 
phers and sceptics may carry their principles too far, it would 
seem ; and if they wanted more proof of the source of their 
sufferings (in case they should take to the proving of me- 
dicines on their own bodies) than what I am about to spe- 
cify, would stand very much in need of the “care of their 
friends.” 
Suppose some half dozen men, who had a certain confi- 
dence in the evidence of their senses, to set about proving the 
effects of a particular medicine, on their own persons, they 26 
PROFESSOR H£NDERSONJS 
being at the time in health, and, on the whole, accustomed to 
enjoy a tolerable share of bodily comfort. And suppose, 
further, that they took especial care to avoid all irregularities 
in regimen while their provings were going on. Well, one of 
them finds that in a quarter of an hour or so after swallowing 
a dose, say of aconite, “ giddiness and headache” come on. 
Has he reason to conclude that the aconite was the cause 'I 
Possibly not. He had no giddiness or headache for many a 
long day before—but let that pass; they may have been 
accidental. As soon as he is well again, or some days after, 
he takes another dose, and in ten minutes he finds his giddi- 
ness and headache return. On comparing notes with his 
colleagues, he finds that the five other have all experienced, at 
one or more trials, something of the same sort in various 
degrees and combinations. Ts he to believe his own senses, 
and the concurrent experience of others, or, like Pyrrho the 
Elean, to discard all such fallacies, and, unless the care of 
his friends prevent him, swallow the whole bottle of poison 
to vindicate his principles, and show his contempt for common 
sense ! 
Again, though naturally possessing a good digestion, and 
a peaceable stomach, he discovers that very soon after a dose 
of this pernicious aconite, he feels a very inconvenient disgust 
for his victuals, or such qualms as threaten to end in something 
worse, and sometimes actually do so, or is tormented with 
pains in his entrails, or his liver. He repeats the experiment 
again and again ; asks his comrades how they felt after their 
doses, and consults old authors concerning their experience 
and observation on the subject ; and after all his researches 
and trials, he finds that there is a remarkable concurrence of 
evidence that those who knew no abdominal ailments for 
weeks or months before, did, after every dose of that par- 
ticular potion—some sooner, some later—undergo afflictions 
of various kinds;—some nausea ; some nausea and vomiting ; 
some pain, pressive shooting, or constrictive ; some diarrhoea; 
some vomiting and diarrhoea; some mere regurgitations; 
some vomiting of blood, some of bile. And he finds, besides, 
in himself and others, that, after the interval of a day or two 
from the use of the medicine, he and they eat, and relish, and 
digest their food as well as ever. He thinks all this affords 
some ground for believing, on the principles of common sense, 
that aconite produces certain serious evils in the digestive 
organs. He notes down his own sensations and doings under 
its influence, as they occurred at different periods after the 
several doses he had taken—as they happened to be solitary LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
27 
or combined—or as they varied in character and duration ; 
he notes down all he can learn from his friends of the same 
kind, or gather from other credible authorities ; and he num- 
bers them separately to keep them distinct, though they are 
sometimes the same, sometimes but little different from one 
another, and so the list becomes long. In the same way, 
tedious and toilsome, he gathers a list of sufferings experi- 
enced, if any, in every region of the body, and he is very 
precise, and very anxious to be correct, all the symptoms— 
their diversities, and degrees, and shades of difference or of 
sameness—are classified and numbered: and the last number 
of the last shade turns up five hundred and forty. He might 
have omitted some repetitions, and some trifling differences, 
and some trifling sensations—but he is precise, and he puts 
them down ; he may have felt certain of them often before 
independently of medicine ; at all events he feels them now, 
and their presence can do no harm. 
Many years after, a number of men, some twenty or so, 
anxious to prove this medicine over again, take dose after 
dose, on numerous separate occasions, and their experiments 
corroborate all the principal details of the original proving, 
and add some considerable items to the number. They, too, 
are healthy men, accustomed to no such aches and pains as 
they experience while taking the physic; and they too, on 
the principles of common sense, refer their sufferings to the 
same cause, and in their simplicity never consider that “ a 
thousand reasons can be adduced for supposing the contrary 
to be the fact!!” Two or three good reasons will satisfy 
them entirely, I have no doubt, and when they are favoured 
with these, they will take to aconite afterwards as kindly as 
goats to milkthistle, or pigs to henbane ! 
Besides these objections to the provings in general, you 
single out some substances as peculiarly liable to be consi- 
dered utterly incompetent to produce any symptoms at all. 
Thus you say—“ When we find the Homceopathist maintain- 
ing that substances utterly powerless in a state of sensible 
bulk, even in the greatest amount, acquire astonishing powers 
by mere subdivision, without any discoverable change in 
their physical or chemical properties,—can any proposition 
be submitted to human apprehension that seems more utterly 
impossible—mrore ludicrously absurd P. 235. And you 
ridicule the idea that the decillionth of a grain of such sub- 
stances (charcoal and carbonate of lime,) can produce any 
symptoms. But neither Hahnemann nor any one else ever 
affirmed that the decillionth of a grain of charcoal or car- 28 
professor Henderson’s 
bonate of lime is capable of doing any thing of the sort. 
Hahnemann, in reference to substances commonly esteemed 
inert, while he maintains that it is only after many tritura- 
tions that they acquire any power of acting on the system, 
says, that in experimenting with them on the healthy body, 
the high trituration selected for the purpose, must be taken 
dose after dose in increasing quantities, and for many days, 
until their effects become sensible. That they do produce 
sensible effects when taken in this manner, is substantiated 
on the same grounds as those which have, I trust, rendered 
the provings of aconite abundantly credible to any one but a 
disciple of Pyrrho. If it be not, either Hahnemann could 
not “ have been sincere in the belief of his doctrines,” as you 
say he was, or he must have belonged to another extreme in 
philosophy from that maintained by the sceptics, that every 
real event was imaginary, he must have believed on a large 
scale in the occurrence of the most painful bodily sufferings, 
which had no actual existence ! He must have imagined 
several distressing aches in his bowels and his brains, spasms 
and palpitations that never actually occurred. He and those 
who experimented with him on such substances, had been 
well and hearty when they partook of them ; yet, again and 
again, as they returned to them, they became affected with 
sufferings of no equivocal or contemptible kind. You do 
not seem to be aware that the potency of minute division, in 
giving activity to substances innoxious in the gross state, has 
other advocates besides the Homoeopaths. Fluid mercury, 
you will admit, has been swallowed in ounces and pounds 
without producing any serious evil. Yet there are undoubted 
examples of persons inhabiting places in which a quantity of 
this metal was kept, having become violently affected by the 
“ infinitesimal” dose of it that found its way, at the ordinary 
temperature, into the air they breathed. Some think that 
the mercury had become oxidized, and had thereby acquired 
an activity not possessed by it in its reguline state. But 
Orfila, the greatest authority I could produce to you on this 
subject, ascribes the effects simply to the minuteness of the 
division in which the metallic mercury was afloat in the air, 
Buchner and Pereira concur with him in the opinion. It 
seems, then, to be no “ gratuitous outrage” to the reason of 
the most able and best informed men, whatever it may be to 
that of others, to assert that substances which we can take 
“ into our stomachs with no other inconvenience than their 
mechanical bulk,” in “ ounces, nay, pounds,” can produce 
the most formidable symptoms when in a state of very LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
29 
minute division. The fact is believed, you perceive, by very 
high Allopathic authorities. The principle, therefore, of 
your objection is the reverse of an acknowledged one among 
scientific men—and the only difference between Allopathy 
and Homoeopathy on the subject is, that what Orfila and 
others assert of mercury, Hahnemann asserts of charcoal, 
carbonate of lime, and some other substances; and he has 
this advantage over those who impugn his opinions, that 
he has experimentally tested their truth, and his opponents 
have not! 
Of the same complexion with your statements on this 
subject is the following:—“ We hold the great alleged fact 
from which the doctrine took its rise to be no fact at all; or, 
at least, not to be a fact of that generality of manifestation 
which a theory said to be of universal applicability ought to 
rest upon. We deny, on the other hand, that many of the 
medicines said by Hahnemann to be capable of exciting 
artificial diseases in the healthy body, are really possessed of 
such powers. We instance, in proof of our assertion, the 
very medicine which gave rise to the idea of the doctrine in 
its author’s mind—cinchona. We deny that it will produce 
ague, or any thing like ague, or any other form of fever, in 
the majority of human beings ; and so of a large proportion 
of the Homoeopathic remedies in common use.”—P. 23-1. 
This extract is brimful of mistake, gratuitous assumption, 
and false inference. The “great alleged fact” on which you 
strangely imply that the doctrine rests, is, I may inform your 
readers, that Hahnemann, when trying on his own person 
the effects of cinchona, says he became affected with the 
symptoms of ague, a disease, as is well known, generally 
treated by that medicine. You might just as well say that 
the great fact on which the theory of mutual attraction, or 
gravitation, among the heavenly bodies, rests, is Newton’s 
having witnessed an apple fall from a tree ! That very small 
fact “ gave rise” to the train of ideas in the philosopher’s 
mind which issued in the discovery of a great law; but I 
nowhere learn that it is made the basis of his doctrine. 
That basis is found in calculations and facts, which embraced 
an ample range of observation. The small fact suggested, 
and found its explanation in the general law, but would have 
made but a poor basis for so magnificent and comprehensive 
a theory. Just so with Hahnemann and cinchona. The 
effects of the drug suggested and found their explanation in 
the Homoeopathic law, but are as innocent in being a basis 
as the fall of the redoubtable apple. The great fact on 30 
professor Henderson’s 
which the doctrine rests is, that diseases like those which may 
be produced by medicinal substances, admit of being cured 
by such of those substances as, in their effects on the healthy 
body, resemble those diseases ; and that fact, or general law, 
is based on experiments that embraced an ample range of 
observation too. But, say you, agues, or any other fevers, 
do by no means so universally follow the taking of bark, as 
apples fall to the earth when loosed from the tree. Well, be 
it so ; the latter is a great fact, then, because universally true; 
and the other is not so great a fact, because not universally 
true. But does it follow that it is no fact at all ? That it has 
so little of fact about it, that it had no business to “ give rise 
to the idea” of the Homoeopathic law ? if the excitement of 
febrile symptoms by cinchona were but occasional and acci- 
dental, Hahnemann had as good a right to be the subject of 
them as any one else. He seems to have been so, and has 
made a better use of the accident than most men would have 
done. 
But is the occurrence of fever from the free use of cin- 
chona so incredible or rare a thing as you affirm'.2 Ido not 
know whether you deny that it ever occurs, or merely that 
it occurs often. You say, first, that “ the great alleged fact 
from which the doctrine took its rise is no fact at all;” and 
afterwards only deny “ that it (cinchona) will produce ague, 
or any thing like ague, or any other form of fever, in the 
majority of human beings.” As there is some obscurity, or 
contradiction here, I shall construe the passages in a way 
the most favourable to you, and presume that, in the first 
clause, you mean to say that it is no fact at all that cinchona 
produces the symptoms of ague, and in the second, that it 
will produce “ any other form of fever” only in a minority of 
human beings. 
In answer to this latter allegation, I refer you to any 
authentic work on Materia Medica. Dr. Pereira, describing 
the effects of bark on healthy persons, says, that by large 
doses, “ a febrile state of the system is set up, (manifested 
by the excitement of the vascular system and dry tongue,) 
and the cerebro-spinal system becomes disordered, as is 
shown by the throbbing head-ache and giddiness.”—p. 1404, 
He does not pretend to determine what proportion of men 
will be so affected, but seems to think the operation in ques- 
tion rather characteristic, by the use of the indefinite article. 
“ If a man in perfect health,” &c., take a considerable quan- 
tity of cinchona, febrile action is set up. So much for the 
production of fever, in regard to which property of cinchona, LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
31 
you will acknowledge yourself either to be mistaken, or to 
have no countenance whatever in the authority of those 
who know most upon the subject. 
Then, as to the power of bark to produce ague, meaning 
by the term a fever, consisting of certain stages, completely 
ceasing for a time, and recurring in paroxysms, I fully agree 
with you, that we have no evidence that such a power exists. 
But if you imply, in the passage I have quoted, that Hahne- 
mann alleges that he experienced an ague, in this sense, from 
the use of cinchona, you are very much mistaken. He no 
where says so. His words are :—“ How is it possible, (if not 
by Homoeopathic action,) that the tertian and quotidian fevers 
which I have radically cured, some weeks past, by a few 
drops of the tincture of cinchona, should have presented 
symptoms almost identical with those which yesterday and 
to-day I have observed in myself, when, by way of experi- 
ment, I have taken a little at a time, though in perfect 
health, four drachms of good cinchona ?”—Letire a un 
Medecin. 
Now, I confess, I never could see any reason for suppos- 
ing that he meant any thing more than this,—that the bark, 
(taken in doses, frequently repeated, observe,) produced 
chilly feelings and shiverings, followed by heat of the sur- 
face, and perspiration. If he be also said to affirm, that the 
proper periodicity of ague was produced also by the bark, 
then he is made to say that he had a quotidian and a tertian 
at the same time, which is ridiculous. And if you look at 
his proving or the medicine, you will find that he says nothing 
of a succession of such stages being followed by an interval 
of cessation, and that again by a new paroxysm. Shiverings, 
chilliness, flushing, and perspiration, compose the most cha- 
racteristic symptoms of an ague when the fit is present, no 
symptoms at all characterize it when it is not, that is, in the 
intermission. And when cinchona cures ague, I suppose it 
does quite enough when it cures the febrile symptoms, in the 
same sense as other means cure spasmodic asthma, epilepsy, 
and other paroxysmal diseases ; that is, prevents their return. 
That cinchona does produce the chilliness, shiverings, heat, 
sweatings, and other febrile conditions that commonly cha- 
racterize a fit of ague, is attested by twenty other authorities 
besides Hahnemann. You will find their names appended 
to the symptoms they had severally witnessed, in this Materia 
Medica ; and you will distinguish among the number some 
that belonged to the same school as yourself. 32 
professor Henderson’s 
It is possible that you meant, in alleging that the “ great 
fact ” is not “ a fact of that generality of manifestation which 
a theory said to be of universal applicability ought to rest 
upon,” to signify that such is the case, because cinchona fails 
often to cure ague, even in Allopathic doses, and this may be 
one of the cases in which you say Homoeopathy failed where 
it ought to have succeeded. If such be your meaning, it 
originates from misapprehension. Cinchona does not produce 
all the diversities that may occur in the symptoms of ague 
in all manner of persons; and when one is affected with 
an ague, the paroxysms of which is distinguished by symp- 
toms which do not closely resemble those producible by 
cinchona, Homoeopathy declares that cinchona will not cure 
that ague. The simple fact of its being an ague is never 
alleged by Homoeopathists, and was never alleged by Hahne- 
mann, as being all that is necessary to make it curable by 
cinchona. It must be an ague, with symptoms of a particular 
kind. This is the doctrine of Homoeopathy in respect to 
cinchona and agues, and in respect to every other medicine 
in relation to disease, be it true or false. As every diarrhoea 
is not curable by the same medicine, neither is every ague, 
nor every stomach complaint. And the peculiar difficulty of 
the practice lies in selecting that medicine, among several that 
may appear to suit, more or less, the particular disease, which 
suits the particular case of that disease. Your allegation, 
therefore, that certain private trials by those who were stran- 
gers to the practice, (and it can be to such only that you 
refer,) were unfavourable to the claims of Homoeopathy, is 
the weakest of all conceivable arguments 5 and, with a few 
others of equal calibre that I have yet to notice, shows an 
eagerness nugis addere pondus which proves that you must 
have been at a sad loss for argument, and can scarcely have 
left any stone unturned in search of objections.* 
Among the nugce more particularly connected with the 
provings of medicines, and their value as guides to practice, I 
may notice here an objection you make on the ground that 
some diseases are latent, and can, therefore, afford no symp- 
toms to guide us in the selection of a remedy. “ How many 
diseases,” say you, “have been detected only on dissection 
after death, and which have escaped the recognition of the 
most experienced physicians !” How would a Homoeopath 
* Andral is the only Allopath who has published trials of the Homoeopathic 
practice, and his are, as is proved by Dr. Irwine, as absurd as can well bo 
imagined. LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
33 
treat such cases, is the implied interrogation ? How would 
you? How would “ the most experienced physicians ?” For 
my own part, I humbly confess, I should not know how to 
treat them. Homoeopathy makes no claim to the power of 
resuscitation. But as you allow that the members of your 
side of the profession “continue to be almost as ignorant of 
the actual power of remedies in modifying, controlling, or 
removing diseases,” p. 253, as they have been in all times 
past, and that the changes which follow their treatment are, 
“alas ! as often for the worse as for the better,” p. 258, it 
seems pretty clear that they must sometimes procure, or 
hasten, the fatal issue of the maladies they undertake to cure, 
an amount of potency which you do not grant to Homoeo- 
pathy, and which Homoeopathists, to do them justice, are 
not ambitious of claiming ;—as Allopathy, I say, appears 
thus to possess the power of killing, it is possible that it may 
aspire to make alive, were it only as a matter of simple 
compensation. If such be the fact, Homoeopathists give way 
at once, acknowledging the imperfection of their art in this 
particular, an imperfection which has reduced them to the 
necessity of consigning their dead to the treatment of the 
undertaker. 
You next observe, “Every physician, for example, has 
met with cases of chronic pleurisy, with extensive effusion 
into the chest, which presented no 'pectoral symptoms, and 
which were only detected by auscultation. How could the 
fitting remedy for such cases be selected on the principle of 
similia similibus ?” This is a fair question, and the cases 
fair ones for practice, if you mean to bend so far to the im- 
perfection I have acknowledged as to Jet us try our skill 
before death and dissection. In the first place, then, a 
Homoeopath, ignorant of auscultation and percussion, could 
not treat such cases at all, any more than an equally ignorant 
Allopath could. But Homoeopaths study auscultation and 
percussion quite as much, and know them as well, as your 
Allopaths, whether of the old, or young,physic school;’and 
as pleurisy is not always latent, but is commonly attended 
by pectoral symptoms, they have been able to determine what 
remedies are useful in the ordinary cases. When, therefore, 
extraordinary cases of the kind you mention occur, they 
still use the same remedies, and on the very rational suppo- 
sition, that if they cured the pleurisy with the pectoral symp- 
toms, they have a fair prospect of curing it without them. 
Analogy, it is true, suggests the means in such latent cases ; 
but the similia similibus furnished the initiative. At the 34 
professor Henderson’s 
same time I admit that the similia similibus principle doc 
not apply to the latent disease individually. We must b* 
contented with having got our , treatment of it in a round- 
about way, and with finding that experience justifies its 
adoption. 
But a more important circumstance is involved in this part 
of the subject than answering the question you have put. 
It is this, that in every disease, of which the pathology is so 
far known as to enable the physician to ascertain the nature 
of the anatomical changes and morbid actions of the part of 
the body which is diseased, the Homoeopathist regards them 
as of primary importance in guiding his practice, and the 
more remote concomitant symptoms of inferior, often of no 
consequence to that end. It is thus that in pneumonia, 
pleurisy, and other well-defined diseases, in which the condi- 
tion of the parts affected are known and can be ascertained 
during life, the remedies which the Homoeopathist uses are 
few, notwithstanding that the symptoms which may attend 
such diseases are numerous and variable. He conceives the 
more constant and characteristic conditions of the disease, 
when these can be ascertained, to be the surest indications 
for the treatment,—because denoting with the most certainty 
the part that is affected, and the distinguishing peculiarity of 
the affection. To him the anatomy and physiology of dis- 
ease, when they are not mere conjectures or assumptions, but 
ascertained truths, are of infinite value, and, therefore, he 
regards pathology (in this its only scientific sense) as a de- 
partment of medicine which he is not merely entitled, but, 
for the progress and perfecting of his art, imperatively 
required, to study. If he knew as much of the pathology of 
all diseases as he does of those I have specified, he would in 
every one of them, I have no doubt, find occasion to make 
the pathological condition the more immediate object of his 
concern, and the director of his practice ; and would regard 
such symptoms as were not necessarily connected with, and 
indicative of it, as claiming little of his consideration. As it 
is, he regards the most constant and characteristic symptoms 
as alone of consequence in pointing out the proper remedy 
in cases where the true pathological condition which causes 
them is unknown. When he varies his remedy, in diseases 
commonly considered the same, although their pathology is 
unknown, or imperfectly known, he does so only when the 
particular cases of that disease differ in such a way that the 
symptoms of one resemble the characteristic effects of one 
medicine, and the symptoms of another the characteristic LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
35 
symptoms of another medicine; and he acts thus in the 
very reasonable belief that, when the distinguishing symp- 
toms of one case differ from those of another, the difference 
depends on some difference in their pathology, notwithstand- 
ing the general similarity of the cases. If he had any direct 
way of getting at the difference in their pathology, in all 
diseases that are closely related, as he has, by auscultation 
and percussion, of ascertaining the different pathological con- 
ditions of inflammations within the chest, that way would be 
much preferred by him in practice, to the less certain method 
of selecting his remedy by external phenomena and sensa- 
tions. Yet, in this preference, he would not be giving up 
the law similia similibus ; for, of course, the medicines have 
their pathology (in order to produce the symptoms of the 
provings) as well as the diseases; and all that is wanting to 
make pathology the basis of Homoeopathic practice is, a cor- 
rect knowledge of the pathology of both the diseases and the 
medicines. Where that double knowledge exists, the Ho- 
moeopathic practice is founded essentially on pathology,—as 
in bronchitis, pleurisy, pneumonia, peritonitis, nephritis, cys- 
titis, gastritis, dysentery, and many others,—the more vari- 
able symptoms of these diseases leading to the use of various 
remedies, but only of such remedies as produce respectively 
bronchitis, cystisis, &c., of some sort, and with varieties in 
the more important symptoms that correspond to those of the 
remedies. Where such knowledge does not exist, there is 
no help for it. If we know nothing more of the diseases and 
the medicines than their symptoms, we must be content to 
make the similarity of the symptoms of the one to those of 
the other the rule of practice ; and well does it answer; so 
well, indeed, that in the great majority of those cases, even, 
whose pathology is known, and known by experience to re- 
quire particular remedies, the ordinary symptoms serve to 
indicate these remedies to one who does not know the patho- 
logy of the diseases he is treating, as well as to one who 
does. 
In a minority of such cases, however, the pathological 
practitioner has the advantage ; and I may illustrate the 
statement by the example of pneumonia. When the com- 
plement of its symptoms has the usual amount and degree of 
completeness, he who neglects auscultation can prescribe for 
the disease as well as he who relies on the assistance of aus- 
cultation ; but when, as happens in some cases of pneumonia, 
the symptoms are very few, or of a nature that does not dis- 
tinguish it from pleurisy or bronchitis, the former may be 36 
professor henderson?s 
unable to select the most suitable and successful remedy; 
while the Stethoscopist, by the aid of his additional means 
for ascertaining the pathology of the case, is able to do so 
with certainty and ease. Both may succeed eventually in 
their object, even with this disparity of knowledge, in the 
majority of instances; but he who has the aid of the more 
accurate diagnosis will succeed the soonest, and the most 
frequently. 
While the explanation I have given of the manner in 
which some cases of disease are now treated by Homoeo- 
paths, which have had no actual parallel' in the effects of 
the provings of medicines on healthy persons, shows how 
the principle—similia similibus—has led to the practice, 
there are, undoubtedly, not a few instances in which 
remedies have been introduced among Homoeopathists, with- 
out having been suggested by that principle. These are 
termed by Homoeopathists—empirical remedies,because they 
did not spring from the general law, but were discovered by 
chance, or something akin to it, like the empirical remedies 
in general. They believe such remedies to cure Homoeo- 
pathically, because they do so in the same doses as the 
Homoeopathic remedies in general do. This belief may be 
right or it may be wrong ; but the fact explains how diseases 
may be maintained by Homoeopaths to be curable Homoeo- 
pathically, which it may be difficult to conceive were ever 
experienced by a provcv. 
As you seem to have read no other work on the doctrines 
of Homoeopathy than those of Hahnemann, and to be unac- 
quainted with the practice as now almost universally pursued 
by the physicians of his school, it is not surprising that you 
should have given a very inaccurate account of the actual 
state of the Homoeopathic art and doctrines. It never seems 
to have struck you that the third of a century might have led 
to considerable alterations in such parts of the system as ad- 
mitted of being corrected or modified by experience ; or that 
it was possible that those who embraced the leading precepts 
of the practice could differ from their author on the soundness 
of some of his views. To go back to works of Hahnemann, 
published twenty or thirty years ago, for an account of 
Homoeopathy, to be presented to the public for the present 
day, as a fair exposition of the system, is about as fair as if 
one were to produce the views and statements ofLaennecas 
exhibiting, in all respects, the existing principles and prac- 
tices of auscultation. That distinguished man has had many 
disciples, (among whom none in this country deserve to rank LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
higher than yourself,) who have added much to auscultation 
that he had overlooked, and corrected many errors into which 
he had fallen. Yet auscultation, with all the additions it has 
gathered in the last five-and-twenty years, and with all the 
refinements which have been introduced into it by the multi- 
tude of its acute and zealous students, is, in point of magni- 
tude and difficulty, utterly insignificant compared with 
Homoeopathy. While it, however, has altered and expanded, 
by the assiduity and acuteness of its cultivators, Homoeo- 
pathy must not be allowed to move a pinion, or change a 
feather. Its principles and practice, as they came from their 
author, must be stereotyped, and go down to posterity with 
all their imperfections on their head. What work is there in 
medicine, whose contents twenty, or even ten, years have not 
rendered more or less antiquated and obsolete ? I cannot 
charge my memory with one ; and if such have been the fate 
of medical dissertations, down even to the smallest on the 
smallest subjects in the “orthodox” school, how unreason- 
able and unfair to admit of no modifications and improve- 
ments of the original views and precepts of a system which 
embraces almost the whole field of practical medicine ! I 
need not say more to satisfy a man of your understanding and 
literary attainments, that you have committed a very pal- 
pable violation of justice in the course you have adopted, 
and that it is incumbent on you to correct the error into 
which you have inadvertently fallen. Meanwhile, in order 
to remove the false impression which your review is calcu- 
lated to make on those whose information does not extend 
farther than yours, I may inform your readers that there is a 
very great difference between Hahnemannism and modern 
Homoeopathy. 
The customs and doctrines of Hahnemann, which are 
now either abandoned, or regarded as open questions, by 
Homoeopathists, are his psoric theory of chronic diseases, or 
that which refers them generally to the miasm of psora, or 
itch, contaminating the constitution ; his potential or dynami- 
cal hypothesis, which maintains that, by triturations and 
shakings, medicines undergo an increase or development of 
virtue, in addition to that which proceeds from the finer 
division of their substance by mere dilution or attenuation ; 
the employment of the higher or weaker attenuations in 
acute diseases; the necessity of very long intervals between 
the doses of medicines. And it is but fair to Hahne- 
mann and to Homoeopathy to add, that, latterly, he saw it 
necessary to abandon in his own practice the two last of 
these. 38 
professor Henderson’s 
To my mind, if I viewed the subject from the same point 
as you do, it would appear a very suspicious circumstance if 
the original propounding of a system, so vast in its compass 
as Homoeopathy, had been brought forth in a form so seem- 
ingly complete and perfect as to admit of no alteration in its 
theoretical principles and practical details ; if, as the exposi- 
tion of one man’s opinions and precepts, however profound 
his genius, it had received the unqualified acquiescence of 
all his disciples ; if its hypothesis had not met with opposition 
among them, and its practical rules had not been modified by 
their larger experience. The history of every great discovery 
in art and science, of every new announcement, that proved 
to be fundamentally true, would mock its pretensions and 
throw ajust suspicion on its adherents, if Homeopathy, after 
more than forty years’ existence before the world, had 
remained exactly as it came from its author. On the other 
hand, I affirm that it is no small testimony to its truth, that 
in no particular of essential consequence to it, as a rule of 
practice, has the long period of its searching probation found 
it to be false, (for the whispers to the contrary are too con- 
temptible to be thought of;) and that where it has been 
modified, it is in those very points where a large and varied 
experience would have been expected to modify it; and that 
there should be so general a concurrence, among the hun- 
dreds in almost all countries who have made it an experi- 
mental study, on the particulars in which it ought to be modi- 
fied. 
As early as 1824, Dr. Rau, of Giessen, published both his 
high opinion of the Homoeopathic treatment and his dissent 
from the extreme and hypothetical dogmata of Hahnemann, 
Since then, the moderate Homoeopathy, which employs the 
lower attenuations for the most part—the very lowest, and 
even the original or “mother” tinctures in some diseases, 
more especially the acute—which administers them at short 
intervals, even every hour in severe acute diseases—which 
discards the psoric theory and the potential hypothesis— 
which contends for the practical importance of the knowledge 
afforded by the pathology of internal diseases, and for the 
value of the most careful diagnosis, has grown up, and is the 
almost universal Homeopathy of the present day. With all 
this the Homoeopathic law, the similia. similibus principle, 
the only fundamental principle of Homeopathy, remains the 
motto and the maxim of this, the true—the only possible 
“ Young Physic.” 
Now, what is “degrading” in this Homeopathy rt You LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
39 
make use of the opprobrious epithet on two occasions in your 
review, and under the avowed conviction that the system is 
“ calculated to destroy all scientific progress in medicine.”— 
P. 251. But the manner in which you work out your con- 
clusion, if it were not palpably the result of ignorance, would 
call for a very strong term of reprobation to characterize it. 
You first misrepresent the subject of your criticism in a man- 
ner that may be excused in the obscure editors of our monthly 
and weekly prints, but is altogether unworthy a man of your 
place and reputation ; and then you pelt it with your scien- 
tific contempt. You, indeed, qualify the sneer I have quoted 
by saying, that if, by Homoeopathy, “ diseases were to be 
better treated and more speedily and frequently cured, it 
would be not only absurd, but transcendently wicked to sacri- 
fice the welfare of humanity for the sake of a scientific phan- 
tom.” What is the scientific phantom that you would thus 
magnanimously sacrifice for the good of humanity ? Phan- 
tom ! I suspect humanity will think it a strange phantom— 
somewhat of the gouhl or vampyre genus—that would make 
the glory of the physician to consist in diagnostic and patho- 
logical acuteness, more than in the recovery of his patients. 
“I am sometimes disposed to doubt,” says an eminent disciple 
of this phantom school, “ whether the untoward event of a 
disease, which his science had enabled him to predict, and 
which he had assiduously endeavoured to avert with all the 
resources of his art, is not productive of more real satisfac- 
tion—as it certainly is more creditable—to the philosophic 
practitioner, than the recovery of a patient of the nature of 
whose disease he is ignorant.” A remarkable sentence,— 
and all the more so because containing not the opinions of 
an individual merely, but of an entire school—the modern 
school of ultra-pathological physic. It is no wonder that 
those who entertain such opinions should think that even if 
Homoeopathy were partially true, and, therefore, that it 
might fairly be received as one of the recognised methods of 
treating diseases, yet owing its success to the guidance of the 
bare empirical formula similia similibus, as that is commonly 
understood by the ignorant, it would “ be very unfortunate 
for medicine if this were done.” Unfortunate for medicine ! 
No matter for humanity. When we consider the vast num- 
ber of diseases whose nature is unknown, and the paucity 
and feebleness which you acknowledge in the resources of 
the ordinary practice, we can suppose that the cup of supe- 
rior satisfaction and credit habitually overflows. 
But wherefore unfortunate for medicine ? Homoeopathy, 40 
PROFESSOR HENDERSONS 
as is known to all who are familiar with the history of 
its progressive improvements within the last twenty years, 
overlooks no pathological knowledge that can be of conse- 
quence to a practitioner of whatever school, and if there 
would be anything unfortunate to medicine in its being re- 
ceived as one of the recognised methods of treating diseases, 
on the supposition that it is partially true, the misfortune 
would consist, along with others, in its furnishing the physician 
with the means of treating diseases whose internal pathology 
is avowedly unknown, (with a degree of certainty that he can- 
not derive from any other source,) by a careful study of what 
is known of such diseases, and the application to that of the 
Homoeopathic principle of therapeutics. In your work on 
diseases of the chest you affirm, “ that there are many dis- 
eases of the pathology of which we are entirely ignorant; 
and there is every reason for believing that not a few of these, 
if really consisting in any change of organic structure, are of 
such a nature as will never be exhibited beneath the knife of 
the dissector; and though the progress of science since that 
sentence was written has lessened our ignorance of pa- 
thology, you will not deny that the statements it contains are, 
notwithstanding, still extensively applicable. In regard to 
those diseases whose pathology is yet unknown, are we to 
do nothing in the way of improving our treatment, little 
satisfactory or creditable as it may be even when successful, 
save by the fluctuating empiricism that tries this drug and 
the other, without a rational guide or motive ? Est ridicu- 
lum, (says the orator,) ad ea quce habemus nihil dicere; 
qucerere, quce habere non posswmus—at least for the present. 
When pathology succeeds in doing any thing to remove the 
darkness that still hangs over so many maladies, Homoeo- 
pathy will as gladly take advantage of the new disclosures 
as your Allopathy can do; and if there be any degradation 
in treating such diseases, till then, without the light of pa- 
thology, it seems to me to attach much more to the senseless 
empiricism of the old school, than to the regulated method 
(empiricism, if you please,) of the new. 
As Homoeopathy, then, seeks avowedly for all the assist- 
ance that pathology, or an intimate knowledge of all that 
can be known about diseases, can afford it, what is the 
branch of medical science which it neglects ? Anatomy and 
physiology are necessary to the pathologist, and, therefore, 
cannot be discarded by Homoeopathy. Materia Medica, in- 
cluding botany and chemistry, are necessary to the distin- 
guishing, identifying, and preparing of drugs, and, therefore, LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
41 
cannot be discarded by Homoeopathy. A knowledge of the 
action of medicines on healthy persons is now called for on 
all hands, and Homoeopathy has anticipated the general voice, 
and added an immense amount of information to that de- 
partment of science,—nay, has made it a branch of science 
peculiarly its own ; for on your side there is no proper infor- 
mation on the subject, and I shall by and by show that you 
could not use it if there were. What is there, then, in the 
science of medicine that Homoeopathy has not ? Antiquity. 
Yes, simply antiquity ! That is the only particular in which 
it is wanting. Now, apart altogether from the general opin- 
ion (erroneous it would appear) that the science is not the 
better of being old,—that the science of a century or two ago 
is scarcely equal to the science of to-day,—pray what is the 
difference between the antiquity of the present Allopathy 
and its Homoeopathic rival? Homoeopathy, we may say,is 
fifty years old; how much older is the Allopathy you ad- 
mire ? Pathology, physiology, botany, and so forth, are the 
same in both; it is in therapeutics alone that they differ. 
And yet while you contend in one page (240) for the weight 
of the “ accumulated materials supplied by millions of ob- 
servers during an experience of two thousand years” as tell- 
ing vastly in favour of Allopathic therapeutics, you tell us, 
very candidly and deliberately, in another, (260,) that “ this 
department of medicine must indeed be regarded as yet in its 
merest infancy.” In the interval between the two quota- 
tions you adduce abundant evidence that the latter opinion 
is correct. For example you say of the ordinary practice,— 
“ This comparative powerlessness and positive uncertainty of medicine, 
is also exhibited in a striking light, when we come to trace the history 
and fortunes of particular remedies and modes of treatment, and observe 
the notions of practitioners, at different times, respecting their positive 
or relative value. What difference of opinion ; what an array of alleged 
facts directly at variance with each other; what contradictions; what oppo- 
site results of alike experience; what ups and downs ; what glorification 
and degradation of the same remedy ; what confidence now—what des- 
pair anon in encountering the same disease with the very same weapons; 
what horror and intolerance at one time of the very opinions and prac- 
tices which, previously and subsequently, are cherished and admired ! 
“ To be satisfied on this point, we need only refer to the history of any 
one or two of our principal diseases or principal remedies, as, for instance, 
fever, pneumonia, syphilis ; antimony, blood-letting, mercury. Each of 
these remedies has been, at different times, regarded as almost specific 
in the cure of the first two diseases; while, at other times, they had 
rejected as useless or injurious. What seemed once so unquestionably, 
so demonstrably true, as that venesection was indispensable for the cure 
of pneumonia ? and what is the conclusion now deducible from the facts 
already noticed in the present article, (p. 246,) and from the clinical re- 42 
professor Henderson’s 
searches of Louis and others'l Is it not that patients recover as well, or 
nearly as well, without it 1 Could it have been believed possible by the 
practitioners of a century since, that syphilis could be safely treated, and 
successfully cured, without mercury 1 Or that it could even be question- 
ed that mercury was not specific in the cure of this disease 1 And yet 
what are the opinions and the practices of the surgeons of the present 
day, and the indubitable facts brought to light during the last thirty 
years 1 Are they not, that mercury is not necessary (speaking generally) 
to the cure of any case, and that it is often most injurious, in place of 
being beneficial 1 The medical god, Mercury, however, seems as unwill- 
ing to be baulked of his dues as the mythological. If he has lost the 
domain of syphilis, he has gained that of inflammation; and many of 
our best practitioners might possibly be startled and shocked at the sup- 
position that their successors should renounce allegiance to him in the 
latter domain, as they themselves had done in the former. And yet such 
a result is more than probable, seeing that there exists not a shadow of 
more positive proof (if so much) of the efficacy of the medicine in the 
latter than in the former case. 
“ The same truth, as to the uncertainty of practical medicine generally, 
and the utter insufficiency of the ordinary evidence to establish the effi- 
cacy of many of our remedies, as was stated above, has been almost al- 
ways attained to by philosophical physicians of experience in the course 
of long practice, and has resulted, in general, in a mild, tentative, or ex- 
pectant mode of practice in their old age, whatever may have been the 
vigorous or heroic doings of their youth.”—P. 258-9. 
The general testimony of millions of physicians for two 
thousand years amounts, then,but to a very small matter; and 
if you prefer Allopathy on evidence of that kind, you may, on 
as good, prefer believing in ghosts too. It was precisely on 
such testimony that Johnson did so. “ This opinion,” says 
the sage, “ which perhaps prevails as far as human nature 
is diffused, could become universal only by its truth.” 
One word more and I have done with this question of an- 
tiquity. You never once advert to the notorious and admit- 
ted fact, that some of the medicines long used in the old 
school act Homceopathically. Nor do you hint that, so far 
back as the time of Stahl, at least, that is, about 150 years 
ago, the Homoeopathic principles, similia similibus, was ex- 
pressly enforced as the proper rule for the prescription of 
remedies !* 
* In the following terms, “ The rule admitted in medicine, to treat diseases 
by remedies contrary or opposite to the effects which they produce, is completely 
false and absurd. lam persuaded, on the contrary, that diseases yield to agents 
which produce a similar disorder (similia similibus.')” This passage is quoted 
in Hahnemann’s Organon ; for Hahnemann does not lay claim to the discovery 
of the Homoeopathic law by which remedies act, but to the merit of having de- 
termined the methods by which it may be carried out into full practical effect; 
as the proving of medicines on the healthy body more carefully, and the dimi- 
nution of the doses—two desiderata which had rendered the law, before his 
time, of very limited use in practice. BETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
43 
If what I have said of the existing state of Homoeopathy 
shall convince you or your readers that, in giving Hahne- 
mannism—that is, the theories, hypotheses, and practices, 
without exception or modification, of the founder of the sys- 
tem—as the Homoeopathy of the present day, you have 
made a great mistake ; it may be replied that you have, at 
least, beat Hahnemann out of the field, and, to that extent, 
have accomplished the purpose of your review. This would 
be a mistake, however, quite as glaring as the other. For 
anything that you have said to controvert his principles and 
practices, they stand just where they were before you en- 
gaged in the conflict. Not an argument, or the shadow of 
an argument, appears in your paper that touches a single 
position of Hahnemann. Hahnemannism might, in every 
particular, be received as truth itself, if no more could be 
adduced against it than is contained in your attack upon it. 
In proof of which assertion, I shall briefly notice the manner 
in which you think you dispose of one or two of its precepts 
and doctrines, in addition to those I have already con- 
sidered. 
After detailing the manner in which Hahnemann recom- 
mended the medicines to be prepared for use, the triturations 
and scrapings of the dry preparations, and the shakings of the 
liquid attenuations, you say, “ altogether, it must be admit- 
ted, that the whole complexion of the thing bears a much 
closer resemblance to what we have heard or seen of magical 
ceremonies and the tricks of conjurors, demonstrations for ef- 
fect, and to produce an impression, than to any operation of a 
scientific or bond fide character,”—a sentence which you 
justify, because, “ in the first place, it is manifestly impossible 
for any human being, during the course of a long life, much 
less in the course of a few years, to have performed a suffi- 
cient number of experiments, or made a sufficient number of 
comparative trials, to enable him to state, with any degree 
of certainty, that these particular manipulations, and none 
others, were the exact and exclusive means to produce the de- 
sired effect. * * * In the second place, it certainly has 
a very suspicious look of a foregone conclusion, rather than 
of a legitimate deduction from facts, that all the scrapings 
and rubbings to which each remedy is subjected, in each sin- 
gle state of its transmigration, should occupy exactly one 
hour, and not one minute more or less.” P. 238. 
In reply to all this I remark, first,that Hahnemann nowhere 
alleges that he had been led to adopt the six minutes’ friction 44 
professor Henderson’s 
in the mortar, and the four minutes’ scraping to detach the 
powder from the instruments, preparatory to renewed fric- 
tion, by having found these preferable to any other number 
of minutes. The precise directions given by him for the 
preparation of the medicines, is universally known by Ho- 
moeopaths, and might have been easily ascertained by you, 
to have for their object a uniformity of medicinal power in 
the several attenuations, by whomsoever manufactured. In- 
deed, within fifteen lines of the place where your translation 
of his directions stops, he says as much. He there lays 
down additional rules for carrying on the attenuations to the 
higher degrees, and he does so expressly, “in order to insti- 
tute some uniformity in the preparation,” &c. Quite enough 
to have made it evident to any unprejudiced person, not 
eager to put a disparaging construction on his proceedings, 
that all his directions were for the same purpose, and yet you 
actually say, “ we cannot find in Hahnemann’s writings any 
explanation of or reason for the precise and peculiar mode 
and amount of the manipulations prescribed.”—P. 237. 
The explanation and the reason, notwithstanding, lie in the 
very pages you must have read ; and of all the misstatements 
into which you have fallen in the course of your article, 
none surprises me more than this. Hahnemann states in 
the plainest language, that he believes the powers of all re- 
medies to be exalted by trituration, (distinct from mere sub- 
division ;) and though experience has proved that such is not 
the fact, that belief of his, and the desire that the prepara- 
tions everywhere should be made of a uniform potency, are 
the very obvious explanation and reason for the precise and 
peculiar mode and amount of the manipulations, and ought 
to have protected him from the sneer about juggling tricks, 
and magical ceremonies. 
Homoeopathists, with few exceptions, do not concur with 
him in thinking that medicines acquire any such increase of 
power by trituration besides what is due to mere minuteness 
of division. They admit, however, that in chronic diseases 
the higher attenuations sometimes act better than the lower 
as remedies, either because the fineness of the division of the 
particles, or the smallness of the dose, is more suitable to the 
exigencies of particular cases. 
Then as to the “ exactly one hour, and not one minute 
more or less,” to which you remark that the frictions and 
scrapings are precisely limited, I confess that I felt with you 
on the point,—that it was very ridiculous ; and, besides, that 
Homoeopathy must have an intense vitality indeed, nothing LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
45 
short of that which invaluable truth alone can give, to have 
survived the unfortunate notions which Hahnemann has 
tacked to it. Still, as I knew he was no pretender to magic, 
no conjuror, and as I had had occasion to observe that you 
were not an accurate historian of his proceedings, it occurred 
to me that I might as well consult himself in regard to this 
awkward particular. I did so, and, while my mind was im- 
mediately relieved regarding Hahnemann and his directions, 
I acknowledge that I did feel a momentary uneasiness about 
Dr. Forbes. Magic there may have been, nay, there must, 
in the conversion of six sixes and five fours, (minutes,) into 
“ exactly one hour, and not one minute more or less,” But 
who is the conjuror,—Hahnemann or you ? I fear you must 
plead guilty, as Hahnemann says nothing on the point, but 
innocently leaves his arithmetical readers to find out that the 
sum of the minutes he specifies for rubbing and scraping is 
just fifty-six ! which, it may be necessary to add, is four 
minutes less than an hour,—that magical division of time 
which you have selected for your commentary. 
Hahnemann, it seems, is not very intelligible to you when 
he speaks of as great an amount, but lower degree of medi- 
cinal power, being developed by some differences in the pre- 
paration. A knowledge of his doctrines would have pre- 
vented your difficulty. He thought friction and agitation 
developed, or brought out, the latent virtues of medicine, so 
that the same quantity of medicine might, according as it 
was triturated or not, have its powers either partly latent or 
fully developed. Here, also, he may be wrong, but bis mean- 
ing is intelligible enough. And in one sense, he cannot be 
held to be very palpably wrong, when supported by the au- 
thority of Orfila, and Buchner, and Pereira. According to 
their views of mercury in fine division, as compared with 
mercury in a crude undivided state, a grain of the latter, 
though it contained the same actual amount of power or ca- 
pacity of action, would exert far less medicinal energy than 
after having been finely divided by trituration with some 
inert powder. 
In all that you have said, then, on the manner in which 
Hahnemann directs the medicines to be prepared, and of the 
effects of that preparation, you have not succeeded in proving 
him to be absurd ; and if any of your readers thought that 
you did, their opinion must have rested on your inadvertent 
misstatement of the facts. 
Lest it should be thought that the differences between 
Hahnemann and his followers on the points just adverted to, 46 
professor henderson’s 
are of a nature that necessarily vitiates and invalidates his 
claims to success as a practitioner, I may remark that the one 
difference relates only to a hypothetical explanation of the 
reasons why the high attenuations are capable of acting as 
remedies, namely, whether it is merely that in a state of ex- 
tremely minute division they are still capable of acting, or 
that their activity depends on their virtues being augmented 
and developed by friction and agitation; and that the other 
is a question which relates solely to the energy of their ac- 
tion. Modern Homosopathists do not deny that the high 
attenuations exert a remedial action in many chronic dis- 
eases ; but they consider that the lower are preferable in ge- 
neral, because they act more speedily and energetically. 
Similar differences of opinion exist every where among 
other physicians, while they profess equally to be guided by 
experience, and neither party is entitled to assume that the 
mode adopted by the other is without its measure of suc- 
cess. 
That Hahnemann erred on this subject, simply practical 
as it is, was, doubtless, owing to his attachment to his poten- 
tial hypothesis—an hypothesis which necessarily enforced 
the employment of the higher attenuations, as signifying 
the greatest degree of energy. Why he was so misled by 
an hypothesis may be a proper subject for the derisive in- 
quiries of those, if such there be, who have never been mis- 
led by hypothesis themselves, but have always walked by 
the unerring rules of demonstration. 
Men, who like Hahnemann, have discovered important 
truths, and are endowed with an ardent genius, learn, it may 
be too easily, to place implicit confidence in the suggestions 
of faculties which had already penetrated far into new and 
unexplored regions of science. They do not always wait 
for the tardy steps of induction; but, as the history of 
almost all the great discoveries, as well as of the great errors 
of genius, declares, grasp by anticipation at conclusions which 
future experience is left to confirm or annul. The latter is 
much the more frequent result; and hence, if genius be the 
benefactor of philosophy, “it is genius also, and not the 
want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error 
and false theory.” _ Such being the frailty common to minds 
of that class to which he belonged, it can be only ignorance 
and injustice that would found on the acknowledged errors 
of Hahnemann an argument or a sneer against the whole of 
his system. The more especially that, from the very nature 
of the subjects to which his hypothesis referred, many diffi- LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
47 
culties arose to prevent a speedy and conclusive proof of its 
fallacy ; and that the particular view which he took of new 
and extraordinary phenomena was countenanced, and, it 
may have been, suggested, by certain facts, which seemed to 
admit of no other interpretation, namely, the actual acquisi- 
tion of medicinal energy, by means of trituration, by sub- 
stances otherwise inert. Minute division, and the solubility 
which it bestows, appear to be the true explanations of these 
facts—explanations, however, which could have been afford- 
ed with certainty only by long and unbiassed observation. 
I must, however, do you the justice to acknowledge, that 
you do not argue in the way I have condemned; you admit 
that though the theory, doctrines, or principles of Homoeo- 
pathy were proved to be false, “we have no demonstrative 
evidence that it is false in its practical bearings—false, that 
is, powerless, as a means of cure.” If this be true of the 
doctrines in general, it is very plainly so in reference to the 
potential hypothesis, which has nothing to do with the main 
law of Homoeopathy—the similia similibus principle. The 
former is disproved by Hahnemann’s own followers, and by 
them only ; the latter they hold to be demonstrably true. 
The psoric theory, or rather hypothesis of Hahnemann, is, 
perhaps, the most unfortunate of his speculations. Not, 
indeed, on account of anything essentially unphilosophical in 
either its pathological or practical bearings—but because of 
the peculiar light in which the disease from which it takes 
its name is regarded—at least in this country. And as I, like 
yourself, am an undeniable Caledonian, I am not less sensible 
than you are, that there is something of the ludicrous about 
it. But if we lay aside our national feelings on the subject, 
and look at it in sober seriousness, we must admit, I think, 
that it may bear a construction discreditable neither to the 
pathological acuteness of its author, nor to his practical sa- 
gacity. It amounts essentially to this, that the majority of 
chronic ailments are due to a constitutional taint, which be- 
trays itself by a variety of symptoms and sensible etfects in 
different persons, or in the same person at different times ; 
and that, in order radically and effectually to cure those 
chronic disorders, it is not enough that the physician should 
direct his treatment against them individually or dollectively, 
but that he should also have regard to the state of the con- 
stitution from which they spring. There is nothing new in 
all this. Every one knows that in one form or another the 
doctrine is applicable to a multitude of troublesome and dan- 
gerous disorders. Scrofula, gout, syphilis, rheumatism, are 48 
professor Henderson’s 
each held to be constitutional affections, and any one of them 
may persist for years, or for a life time, sometimes latent, or 
lulled into inaction, sometimes betraying itself by more or 
less considerable disorders of one kind or another. In the 
treatment of these occasional outbreaks of disease, the pru- 
dent physician does not always content himself with seeing 
them disappear, but follows up his treatment of them by 
means that are supposed capable of improving the condition 
of the system, of modifying or subduing the constitutional 
evil. 
Had Hahnemann admitted psora to rank but as one among 
many constitutional taints that might from time to time dis- 
cover itself by various local symptoms, I do not know that 
any one would be prepared to convict him of error. Nay, it 
is certain, that his opinion would be strengthened by the con- 
currence of more than one respectable authority. For it is 
not a doctrine peculiar to Hahnemann, that the disappearance 
of the psoric eruption from the skin gives occasion to other 
evils of a more serious kind. One of his opinions is, that 
the mischief to the constitution is less when the eruption is 
abundant on the surface ; and it is at least some excuse for 
his notions on the subject, that when the persons affected 
with the disease are enfeebled by chronic ailments, of one 
kind or another, the eruption is much less considerable than 
in the vigorous and robust, as Biett justly observes. He may 
be wrong in having supposed that the chronic disorders of 
such persons are due to the “ miasm” of psora being thrown 
in upon the system; but the two facts,first, that the eruption 
is abundant when it affects the robust; and, 2nd, that it is 
scanty in the feeble and otherwise unhealthy, form as good 
grounds for his particular vieAV of the matter as many of our 
common pathological opinions regarding cause and effect can 
boast of. And when it is further considered that such a man 
as Pringle, not to mention earlier writers, avers that the 
psoric eruption is sometimes critical, or appears on the surface 
just when some serious internal maladies have ceased, and 
apparently in a pathological connexion with their cessation, 
we see some additional reason for regarding the doctrine of 
Hahnemann on this subject with leniency. 
I confess I have not given the subject so much considera- 
tion as to justify me in giving an opinion on the question,— 
Whether psora is ever the cause of a constitutional taint 
which may appear in the form of chronic maladies of various 
characters ? And I hesitate all the more to give an opinion 
regarding it, that the question is answered in the affirmative LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
49 
by men who are held, even in our day, as no contemptible 
authorities in medicine. For example, Autenrieth advocates 
the doctrine in the following remarkable terms, and at great 
length in the same strain ; 
“ The most formidable, and, in our country, the most frequent source 
of the chronic diseases of the adult, are the psoric eruptions badly treated by 
sulphur ointment, or generally by other active greasy applications. I have 
so often seen here the misery which by psora occurs to the lower classes, 
and to those who have a sedentary occupation, and I see it daily in such 
a manifold, melancholy aspect, that I do not hesitate a moment to declare 
it loudly as a subject worthy of the observation of every physician and 
even of every magistrate, who lays to heart the health of those commit- 
ted to their care.”* 
I may notice that pulmonary consumption is one of the 
diseases he traces to this cause. 
Again, Schdnlein, the present professor of pathology and 
therapeutics in the University of Berlin, in his Clinical Lec- 
tures for the year 1840, is reported to have expressed himself 
to the following effect :t (The case under observation was 
one of organic disease of the heart, with dropsy.) 
“ What is the cause of this affection 1 On looking backwards we find 
no other complaint than the itch. Latterly, the admission of sequelae of 
the itch, that old medical dogma, is not only become dubious, but has 
been abandoned and turned into ridicule. Among the older physicians, 
we particularly notice Autenrieth, who wrote a masterly treatise on this 
subject, so that it was remarkably impudent in Hahnemann to pretend 
that he wras the first to point out the sequela 3 of the itch.j: * * * I 
must confess that, according to my own observations, and to those of 
many other physicians who deserve the fullest confidence, I have no 
doubt whatever about the existence of sequelae of the itch.” 
And then he goes on to show reasons for his opinion, and 
the grounds on which he presumes that the chronic disease 
under consideration took its rise from the itch, which had 
existed nine years before. 
If the errors of one set of reputable physicians can be 
admitted as some extenuation of the errors of another, sup- 
posing them to be in error on this point—and they do so in 
the way of dividing the unenviable distinction of being wrong 
—we can adduce some nearly parallel examples of an un- 
warrantable pathology. Stahl, you know, restricted all chro- 
nic diseases to affections of the vena portae (porta malorum.) 
* Vcrsuche fur die praktische Heilkunde, p. 229. Tubingen, 1807, 
| Lancet, 1844, p. 211, &c. 
t Hahnemann did not do so. He claims only the credit of having traced 
almost all chronic diseases to the itch, which is more than others had done. 50 
professor Henderson’s 
Portal ascribed all hereditary diseases (and they include a 
pretty long catalogue of chronic ailments of all kinds) to 
scrofula ; which, again, in all its multitudinous forms, Astruc, 
Lalouette, and others, (Portal himself among them,) conceived 
to be degenerated syphilis. 
Once more, and 1 have done with my apology for the 
psoric hypothesis. Psora is the most common of diseases, in 
all parts of the habitable globe. No age, sex, or condition 
can resist its pestilent infection ; and back to a remote 
antiquity its attachment to the family of man is recorded with 
humiliating certainty. The poor it attends everywhere with 
the fidelity of a shadow, intrudes wherever men gather in 
numbers, from the workshop of the tailor to the tent of the 
soldier. Wherever a chronic disease can creep in, psora can 
lead or follow. And if it be argued that chronic diseases often 
afflict persons who never had the eruption of psora, it may 
be replied that no one can tell with certainty how long the 
infection, which is commonly betrayed by the eruption, may 
remain latent in the system. Biett admits that it may for 
months; Hahnemann thought that it might much longer, 
and even never cause an eruption at all. 
But all this is no proof of Hahnemann’s hypothesis. It is 
not intended to be so ;—if it be received as some extenuation 
of his error, my object is gained. He, in common with 
Autenrieth and Schonlein, has failed to prove it, or even to 
make it very probable ;—yet it is not utterly and absolutely 
absurd, whatever “ the half-educated multitude” might think 
of it. 
The really important inquiry in reference to this hypothe- 
sis is, whether it affects the practice of Homoeopathy, so as 
to involve in its overthrow the pretensions of the latter to 
success in the permanent cure of chronic diseases. That it 
does, is the drift of your jocose observations on the subject,— 
that it does not, is the unquestionable inference, from a candid 
consideration of the “ anti-psoric” treatment. All that is 
really of consequence in Hahnemann’s instructions respecting 
that treatment is, that chronic diseases in general can be radi- 
cally cured with certainty only when the remedies which are 
used for the purpose are selected from among those which 
cure psora. I have no doubt that he regarded this circum- 
stance as an additional proof of the accuracy of his psoric 
hypothesis, and if the circumstance be as he says it is, I 
should consider his inference from it by no means contempt- 
ible. That it is true, Ido not believe, any further than this, 
that Hahnemann had some reason to conclude, from experi- LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
51 
ence, that the so-called anti-psoric medicines produced a more 
lasting benefit to the constitution than many other medicines. 
A much greater range of observation than one man can over- 
take in a lifetime would have been necessary to have war- 
ranted him in saying more. His psoric hypothesis probably 
appeared to him sound enough to supply the deficiency of 
actual observation. 
It is of some consequence to notice one peculiarity of 
Hahnemann’s psoric hypothesis which you seem to have 
misapprehended. You make it appear as if he affirmed that 
when a chronic disease is not treated anti-psorically and Ho- 
moeopathically, it must infallibly relapse, and get worse, until 
it ends in death. He says nothing of the kind. So compre- 
hensive is his psoric hypothesis that it makes chronic diseases, 
with few exceptions, to be of one family,—the offspring of 
the same blood. Hence, though one chronic disease, in the 
common acceptation of the term, may be perfectly and per- 
manently removed, yet if another, though totally different 
in its symptoms should at any time subsequently appear, 
Hahnemann would have called it merely a different form of 
the same radical distemper, of the same chronic disease. So 
that if a man who once had some chronic disorder of his 
bowels, should, twenty years after it was removed, become 
affected with palsy, in Hahnemann’s opinion it would have 
been the old disease recurring in a new form, either because 
the constitutional psora had not been cured along with the 
former illness, or because the taint had been contracted anew. 
This affords an explanation of what he means by chronic 
diseases occurring in a worse and worse form as age ad- 
vances ; and the fact that they very often do so, you will 
hardly deny, although you may reasonably demur to the 
doctrine that would make them all essentially the same, 
however dissimilar in their symptoms ; and their occurrence 
to depend on the one constitutional taint having been un- 
cured. You are, doubtless, sufficiently aware that it is too 
commonly the characteristic of even the same chronic disease 
to go on from year to year gradually gaining strength, and 
becoming less and less amenable to treatment, until it eventu- 
ally ends in death. This unfortunate course is not witnessed 
only under what Hahnemann would have termed improper 
Homoeopathic treatment. It is common enough under Allo- 
pathy, and every other “ pathy,” despite of anti-psorics. At 
the same time, my conviction is, that Homoeopathy can do 
more for many such chronic complaints than any other treat- 
ment can,—and it may be, that the “ anti-psorics are the most 
useful of the Homoeopathic means. 52 
PROFESSOR HEtfDERSON^S 
When you speak of the “ anti-psoric” treatment being a® 
chronic as the diseases, in referring to the “ two years” that 
it requires in order to eradicate them, you mistake the mean- 
ing of Hahnemann. He refers not to the cure of what you) 
would call the chronic disease, but to the removal of the psoric 
taint in the system, his chronic disease. And Ido think that 
the time he demands is not unreasonable in that view. Most 
men would be very thankful if they could get scrofula, or 
gout, eradicated in two years, or ten ; though they might! 
think either period rather long for the cure of a single fit of 
the latter, or of the sore eyes, or glandular swellings of the 
former. 
Once more on this subject. When Hahnemann says that 
your power of nature cannot cure chronic diseases, he still 
plainly refers to the “ psoric miasm,” the constitutional dis- 
temper. If his psoric doctrine be regarded as true, the affir- 
mation in question is also true ; for psora is well known ne- 
ver to disappear spontaneously. But, waiving the psoric 
doctrine, it is pretty certain that the power of nature does not, 
in the sense of Hahnemann, cure the liability of human be- 
ings to become affected with chronic ailments, from time to 
time, throughout their lives ; and that is what Hahnemann 
considered a proof that nature does not cure chronic diseases, 
or psora with its many heads. There is no small difference 
between this, the true view of the doctrine, and your version 
of it. The latter you give in italics, as if to appeal to every 
man’s experience to testify that Hahnemann was grossly in 
the wrong; whereas he made no such allegation as your 
words imply. 
But I must shortly notice my second reason for believing 
that the course of provings which you and so many others 
recommend to “ Young Physic,” must pave the way for a 
universal adoption of Homoeopathy. Suppose the task exe- 
cuted, and executed well, what can you gain by it, as Allo- 
paths, but some additional purgatives, emetics, narcotics, anti- 
spasmodics, diuretics, diaphoretics, and such like, of which 
you have a store already ample enough to melt the mammi- 
ferous creation from off the face of the earth, or to lull it into 
an endless sleep ? I can understand how you may stumble 
on remedies for particular diseases by trying drug after drug, 
as each comes to hand, on persons that are ill. This is 
the method that has been pursued for two thousand years, or 
thereby, and it has brought some useful remedies to light, of 
which some, probably the most, act Homoeopathically where 
they act with advantage. But what you can learn of the Letter to dr. eorbes. 
virtues which a medicine, tried on the healthy bod}r, shall 
<exert on the diseased, beyond its probable evacuating and 
nauseating, and narcotising, and one or two other energetic 
influences long since abundantly supplied, I am at a loss to 
conjecture. Will “ Young Physic.” then, allow all his pangs 
to go for nothing ? Was it only for this that he has panted, 
and groaned, and writhed, and coughed, and spit, and sneez- 
ed, and bled ? That he has endured headaches and colics, 
.stitches and twitches in every section of his frame, and so 
many a fac-simile more of the ills “ that flesh is heir to ?” 
Can he make no use of them Allopathically, or Antipathi- 
cally ; or must he be contented to let them stand as pen- 
ances ? 
Supposing he should try to turn them to some remedial 
account, what can he make, Antipathically* or Allopathical- 
ly ,t of such an effect of a medicine as a racking pain in his 
stomach, for example, or a fiery redness of his nose ? Why, 
A7/opathically, he can get up an artificial pain in his stomach, 
to remove a natural pain from his head, or his feet; or he 
can set his nose in a blaze, to cure an erysipelas of his legs, 
on the principle that one fire puts out another. But will the 
cure not be as bad as the disease ? Then, Antipathically, 
how will he manage to make a practical use of his voluntary 
afflictions ? I can understand how he may succeed, when 
his nose is disagreeably white, to strike the more becoming 
hue by a skilful administration of the reddening remedy,— 
but I am at a loss for the useful employment of the pain in 
his stomach. The opposite of a painful is an agreeable sen- 
sation, and I know notan instance of a pleasurable feelingin 
the stomach playing an important part in pathology. Yes, 
there is one such. You will find it in the treatise of worthy 
Dr. Underwood, on the diseases of children. The “ inward 
fits,” quoth he, are betrayed by a frequent and sweet 
smiling during sleep ; the which is provoked by wind 
pleasantly tickling the stomach. Now, for just such a 
dose of the ache-causing remedy as shall nicely strike the 
balance between a pleasure and a pain. What an op- 
portunity for our infant Hercules, our young Antipath! to 
still the apprehensions of a fond mother, and disappoint 
the forebodings of the lugubrious nurse. 
Seriously, what can be made of nine-tenths of the know- 
* Antipathy, I may remind the reader, means the treatment which ams at 
producing a state opposite to the disease. 
f Allopathy,—the treatment which aims at producing a state merely dife ent 
from the disease, or in a different part of the body. 54 
professor Henderson’s 
led "e of the effects of medicines taken in health by the Allo- 
pathic or Antipathic methods ? The Homoeopathic turns 
them all to account, and noprover suffers in vain. Because, 
for every morbid symptom or effect it seeks a corresponding 
medicinal one. Let your new provers but bring their expe- 
rience of medicinal diseases to corroborate that of the Homoeo- 
paths, and the universal adoption of Homoeopathy is at hand. 
They cannot leave their knowledge of the provings of medi- 
cines to lie useless while others turn theirs to the advantage 
of mankind. They will try if they cannot do the same, and 
for a rational man to try Homoeopathy is tantamount to his 
conversion. 
But when they do try to employ the medicines they have 
proved on the healthy body, as remedies for disease on the 
Homoeopathic principle, does it follow that they must adopt 
the Homoeopathic doses ? May they not continue to use 
them in the larger quantities of the old practice ? These are 
points which they must determine by experience for them- 
selves, if they will not extend their confidence to those who 
have practised Homoeopathically before them. I may, how- 
ever, in the meantime observe that, even in the old system, 
nothing is less determined than the proper doses of medicines. 
A sagacious and experienced Allopathic physician, not very 
long ago remarked to me, in reference to this subject, “ What 
do we know of the proper doses of medicines V’ Almost 
every thing has yet to be determined among you on the sub- 
ject, for it does by no means follow that the utmost quantity 
of a drug which a patient can swallow without speedy and 
obvious detriment, is the right quantity for curing his disease, 
although this is unquestionably the principle which guides 
the common practitioner in his prescriptions. In regard to 
the doses of medicines, and the frequency of their repetition. 
Professor Jorg, ol Leipsic, the very opposite of a Homoeopa- 
thic practitioner, made the following suggestions twenty 
years ago, which his brethren have been slow in adopting 
“the smallest doses of medicines that are yet effective, exhi- 
bit their essentially curative powers with most purity and 
most certainty, and secure us best against any secondary or 
concomitant medicinal effects, * * * Most of the powerful 
medicines are at present taken at far too short intervals, and 
the recovery of the patient thereby greatly retarded, if not 
altogether prevented, by his becoming affected with medici- 
nal disease in too great an extent.”* Jorg is esteemed a great 
* Materialien zu einer kiinftigen Heilmittellehre, p. 9. 1825. LETTER TO DR. FORBES, 
55 
authority among your best writers on Materia Medica ; and 
he is almost the only physician, as he certainly was the first 
of the old school, who followed the example of Hahnemann 
in proving medicines on the healthy body. You will not, 
therefore, despise his opinion on the doses that ought to be 
given, when medicines are employed Homaeopathically. 
“ Medicines operate most powerfully upon the sick when the symp- 
toms correspond with those of the disease. A very small quantity of 
medicinal arnica will produce a violent effect upon persons who have an 
irritable state of oesophagus and stomach. Mercurial preparations have, 
in very small doses, given rise to pains and loose stools when adminis- 
tered in an inflammatory state of the intestines. * * * Yet why should 
I occupy time in adducing more examples of a similar operation of medi- 
cines, since it is in the very nature of the thing that a medicine must pro- 
duce a greater effect when it is applied to a body already suffering under 
an affection similar to that which the medicine itself is capable of produc- 
ing.” (P, 16.) 
In the last number but one of your review you had occa- 
sion to lament the loss of a physician who took a Homoeo- 
pathic remedy in Allopathic doses, “ The case,” you say, 
“ may be a most useful warning, and speaks more power- 
fully than any reasoning as to the absolute necessity of cau- 
tion in the use of aconite.” Let us hope it will be so. Had 
the unfortunate gentleman taken the medicine in the Homoeo- 
pathic doses, he would have experienced all the good effects 
it was capable of affording, and he might yet have been 
alive. In the work which is reviewed in that article, there 
are several cases mentioned in which patients narrowly es- 
caped destruction from the same medicine, by the instructions 
of the physician having been misunderstood. And thus it is 
that the discovery of a medicine which justly entitles Hahne- 
mann to a rank among the greatest benefactors of mankind, 
is made to peril or destroy human life—to leave it at the dis- 
cretion of careless or stupid attendants, by the doggedness of 
practitioners who sneer at his advice, for its safe and effica- 
cious employment. 
On your criticism of the cases which I have published I 
have little to say. You affirm that the recoveries are all due 
either to nature or imagination, while you admit “that the 
amount of success obtained by Dr. Henderson in the treat- 
ment of his cases, would have been considered by ourselves 
as very satisfactory, had we been treating the same cases ac- 
cording to the rules of ordinary medicine.” No doubt they 
would, but why not consider them a great deal more satis- 
factory than those rules can enable you to effect, seeing that 56 
professor Henderson’s 
the acute cases were cured without the effusion of blood, the 
pains of purgation, or the miseries of nausea and blistering, 
and that not a few of the chronic cases had resisted the rules 
of ordinary medicine, though applied, and in the most serious 
instances too, by some of the wisest practitioners of your art. 
I know no reason for presuming that the rules of ordinary 
medicine in other hands could have effected what it could not 
in theirs; though I feel very certain, that if any ordinary 
practitioner had had the opportunity of trying, and had suc- 
ceeded, he would have regarded the cases as both aery satis- 
factory, and his treatment very superior to that which had 
failed. Since you think that the medicines employed in the 
cases I have published, deserve no credit for the success, a 
way is open for you to place the pretensions of Homoeopathy 
on their proper footing. Produce a hundred and twenty-two 
cases of the same kind, treated by your bread pills, (farina 
30,) and the experiment will be complete. You have already 
endeavoured to prove that that favourite remedy of yours 
was as useful in an epidemic diarrhoea of considerable 
violence, as “ a course of orthodox physic.” It was unne- 
cessary to make any argumentative exertion to prove that it 
was so, for all Homoeopaths, (and your argument is special- 
ly addressed to them,) will heartily concur in your conclu- 
sion, and believe, moreover, with you, that it would be far 
better for mankind if the farina practice were more generally 
adopted in preference to orthodox physic. 
I have given one half of an experiment, give you the other. 
It can cost you no other difficulty than keeping notes of your 
cases ; you can have no scruples, founded on the advantages 
of the rules of ordinary physic, to overcome, considering that 
the amount of success in my cases was, in yoUr estimation, 
very satisfactory, though by means which you deem no bet- 
ter than doses of flour. Such is your assertion in favour of 
your crumbs, and the onus probandi on that point lies with 
you. Bread pills seem to be one of your recognised me- 
thods of treatment; you have shown them to be preferable 
to orthodox physic, show them next to be preferable, or 
equal to Homoeopathy, in the same kind and number of cases 
as I have published ; and not only will your professional sa- 
gacity be magnified, but you may aspire to the thanks of 
the agricultural interest, at present so much in need of 
consolation. 
Hard-headed scepticism and credulity go hand in hand. 
Those who are sceptical on one subject, are very easily sa- 
tisfied on another ; and their unbelief arises quite as much, LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
57 
or more, from a blind attachment to the notions they cherish, 
as from a deficiency of probability or proof in favour of the 
doctrines they reject. Hard-headed scepticism of this, the 
ordinary quality, utterly unfits men for philosophical and 
scientific investigations on a subject to which they are op- 
posed. If it be beset with sources of mistake, the biassed 
mind of the sceptic can see nothing but these ; lays hold of 
them with avidity, and delights itself in the sapient convic- 
tion that, because there are some things fallacious in the sub- 
ject of its hasty and partial study, there can be nothing that 
is true. If Jenner had started on his researches regarding 
vaccination with the antipathies of a hard-headed sceptic, 
wedded to a foregone conclusion, as all hard-headed sceptics 
are, his studies might easily have issued in a deliberate refu- 
tation of the popular supposition, in his neighbourhood, that 
cow-pox was a protection against small-pox ; and the world 
might yet have wanted the blessing of his discovery. As it 
was, with all his determination to know the truth, he almost 
yielded before the sources of fallacy he had to encounter. 
Hoav speedily would a hard-headed sceptic,—whether an In- 
genhouz, or a Rowley,—have closed his inquiries on the sub- 
ject, when he had ascertained that the cow milkers often con- 
tracted sores on their hands in the course of their occupation, 
and were not, therefore, exempt from small-pox. What a 
clear proof that all the whispers to the contrary were old 
women’s fables ! What truly sceptical spirit could want 
more satisfactory evidence ? But Jenner’s head having been 
made of penetrable stuff,—not yet become indurated and sap- 
less by the seasoning processes of scepticism,—admitted the 
idea that, though the circumstances in question were undeni- 
ably true, they might not constitute the whole truth. He 
persevered in his researches, and obtained a glorious reward 
of his labour. 
Scepticism is much more a matter of feeling than of judg- 
ment ; and there is ample reason for believing that the gene- 
ral scepticism of the profession regarding Homoeopathy is ow- 
ing far more to a dislike of it than to any convictions ot the 
understanding at variance with its pretensions. In almost 
utter ignorance of its principles and practice, many, no doubt, 
like yourself, think the general adoption of it would be “ very 
unfortunate for medicine,” and therefore, hate it with all the 
sincerity of hard-headed scepticism, as the supposed enemy 
of their favourite “ phantom.” And yet it is this temper 
which men ridiculously mistake for the philosophic—for that 
which preserves the mind neutral in the investigation of con- 58 
professor henderson’s 
tending claims,—which shuts the door against no evidence, 
but impartially weighs and listens to the arguments on both 
sides. With this spirit they strangely confound the one-sided 
scepticism which locks the door against all new comers, or 
says, with the man in the play, “ I’m fixed, determined ; so 
now produce your reasons. When I’m determined, I always 
listen to reason, because it can then do no harm.” And this 
scepticism, 100, which was once held to be a very fine thing, 
the property of these quite superior minds, which ought not 
to believe with the vulgar, appears to have overflowed its 
receptacles among the lustrous population of the higher re- 
gions of mind, and to have gravitated to those low-lying val- 
leys of intellect, where there can be but little reflection, be- 
cause there is little light, and where scepticism is easily ac- 
commodated, because there is little to dispute with it the vir- 
gin soil. In reference to Homoeopathy, at least, it can be 
said truly, that scepticism is no indication of superior wisdom, 
for if there be men of talent and learning (on other subjects) 
opposed to it, it is undeniable that, among the bitterest unbe- 
lievers are to be found, both in and out of the profession, a 
host of persons distinguished alike by their ignorance and 
their incapacity. 
In the coarse of your strictures on my work, you extract 
three cases apparently as samples of the whole. If this was 
the intention with which they are given, I can only say, and 
say with justice, that you could hardly have acted more un- 
fairly. Even on the supposition that all the recoveries were 
due to your power of nature, the proceeding is unfair. There 
are cases, and not a few among those I have published, the 
recovery of which, within the period specified of each, and 
more especially considering the time during which the dis- 
eases had lasted, and the nature of the sufferings, was suffi- 
ciently remarkable to have entitled them to notice, were it 
only to show how much better no treatment at all was than 
the ordinary treatment. There are cases, also, which had 
been under no treatment for a long time before the Homceo- 
pathic was employed—and some of these might have been 
noticed as striking examples of what your power of imagi- 
nation can do, or of the remarkable coincidences that some- 
times happen between the commencement of a particular 
treatment, and the spontaneous termination of a disease. 
Your readers might then have formed some conception of 
the reasonableness of the shifts by which you endeavour to 
explain away the apparent efficacy of the practice. They LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
59 
would have been able to discover the rules by which one 
shift or another was selected, as thus : 
First,—That when cases recovered, promptly, from chronic 
diseases that had resisted the rules of orthodox treatment, 
continued down to the time when the Homoeopathic was 
adopted, the results must be ascribed to the lucky cessation 
from orthodoxy. 
Second,—That when cases recovered, promptly,from chron- 
ic diseases that had not been under orthodox treatment for a 
long time before the commencement of the Homoeopathic, 
the results must be ascribed to the power of imagination, or 
the accidental and spontaneous cessation of the diseases. 
Third,—That when the persons affected were too young to 
be the likely subjects of this power, the result must be as- 
cribed only to the spontaneous cessation of their diseases. 
Referring your readers to the work itself for the particu- 
lars which you have withheld, I have no hesitation in affirm- 
ing that no candid and experienced man can peruse the cases 
attentively and say, with sincerity, that he has no doubt that 
the results are adequately accounted for under one or other 
of these three heads. This is the utmost that I expected the 
narration of the cases to accomplish ; and this, I am satisfied, 
it is fitted to accomplish. I did not dare to hope that it 
would overcome the strong prejudices of the hard-headed, 
or silence the opposition of the feeble-minded and malignant. 
These are conquests which no record of cases can ever 
achieve. 
To those who do not belong to this corps of invincibles I 
would suggest the propriety of calculating the probability of 
the causes you assign for the recoveries under Homoeopathy. 
In regard to one of these causes, the coincidence of recovery 
and the use of the Homoeopathic remedies, some approach 
to a mathematical estimate of probability may be obtained ; 
as, for example, a disease having lasted, without improve- 
ment, for six, eight, twelve, twenty-four, or two hundred 
months, and having no ascertained natural limits, what are 
the chances of its ceasing of itself in one, two, four, or six 
weeks, after a certain day I With every instance, in a given 
number of unselected cases, in which the amendment com- 
mences shortly after that clay, (on which a particular practice 
has been commenced,) the probability lessens of its being 
due to chance ; until, if nine-tenths of the cases do so amend 
and recover, no probability is left that chance can account 
for the results. As to the influence of imagination in produc- 60 
professor Henderson’s 
ing the benefits in the cases to which I advert, I think that 
reasons satisfactory to all but the invincibles can be shown 
for its absence in the majority of them, while it remains only 
as a presumption or possibility in the others. Thus, in some 
cases the coincidences occur in persons who are too young 
for the work of fancy ; in some, the persons affected have no 
notion of the marvellous nature of their physic, and are 
very plainly incapable of being moved by the knowledge if 
it were imparted to them; in some there is a total want of 
expectation of any result whatever ; and in some the reme- 
dies given are not at first correctly chosen, according to the 
rules of the practice, and produce no effect; but when after- 
wards they are better selected the good effects follow. These, 
however, are particulars which can be properly estimated 
only by the man who practically examines, and experiments 
for himself. No printed records and statements can impress 
them on the reader as they impress themselves on the prac- 
titioner, and therefore it is that documentary evidence can 
never settle the question in all its divisions. 
But why is the subject left to be settled in any measure by 
documentary evidence ? If the practice of Homoeopathy 
have grown to the vast extent which you allow, all over 
Europe and America—has learned, experienced, and honest 
men among its practitioners—is so successful as you admit in 
the treatment of acute, as well as chronic, diseases, and so 
forth, that you “ can refrain no longer” from noticing it,—if 
“ as an established form of practical medicine, and as a great 
fact in the history of our art,” (p. 239,) you are obliged 
nolentes volentes to consider Homoeopathy,—why should you 
restrict your consideration of it to documents, which cannot, 
in regard to every particular, furnish conclusive evidence, 
and omit to examine the practice in person, or to recommend 
it to others ? This is the only way of considering it that can 
lead to a definite result on the general question. No man 
will believe in Homoeopathy, in all its extent, on the tes- 
timony of those who have practised it, because testimony in 
practical medicine is so easily evaded by the doubter; and 
no man ought to disbelieve on the authority of those who 
have not. 
Some of my cases you object to as trivial. Now, apart 
from the fact that a disease does not need to be deadly, or 
even severe, in order to test the action of a remedy, the 
objection has probably been founded on the very success of 
the practice. Take, for instance, the cases of dysentery, and 
others among the acute cases ;—after the practice was begun LETTER TO DR. TORRES. 
61 
their course was mild enough certainly, and their recovery 
was for the most part very speedy. Does it, therefore, follow 
that the cases were slight? Would any man be entitled to 
say from the first report of them, before the treatment, that 
they were slight of their kind ? I say no. And it is rather 
too much to urge the very success of the practice, as lessening 
the evidence in its favour ! If the cases had continued as 
at first, or had increased in intensity, for a number of days, 
you would call them severe, no doubt; and you would at 
the same time have evidence, which no Homoeopath could 
gainsay, that the practice was useless. We are entitled to 
the converse of this, however,—the cases decreased rapidly 
in severity after the treatment was begun; affording some 
evidence that the practice was not useless. 
Of three cases you quote, there are two concerning which 
a few remarks are called for. The one is that of a gentleman 
who had become, from necessity, dependent on aperient 
medicine for above two years. He took some Homoeopathic 
medicine, and soon became restored to perfect health. The 
you consider to have been due to the pill system 
having been discontinued. Possibly you may be right, and 
possibly you may not. But you act unfairly in conveying 
the impression to your readers that I adduced the case as a 
proof of the marvellous effects produced by the millionth 
part of a grain of mix vomica. You profess to have read 
the introductory part of my work, and quote from it a pas- 
sage to the effect that I published every case of which an 
account had been taken down at the commencement of the 
treatment. You seem also to have read the summary at the 
end of the work, in which it is stated that I do not mean to 
assert that all the recoveries were due to the Homoeopathic 
remedies. These statements might have suggested to you 
that, in publishing the cases, I committed myself to no 
opinion of the cause of recovery in any individual case, 
(one of the cases of pneumonia excepted,) but acted the 
part merely of a faithful transcriber of the details of a series 
of experiments—contenting myself with the remark, that I 
could not believe the very favourable course and issue of so 
large a proportion of the cases to be due to accident, or 
imagination. 
You may say, indeed, that if a case were of such a nature 
that its recovery could not help us to form an opinion of the 
value to be attached to the treatment, it was useless to detail 
it at all. But then you forget that, though the recovery of 
a case may not prove any thing in favour of the treatment, 62 
PROFESSOR HENDERSONS 
its not recovering may help to prove something against the 
treatment. Had the case in question, and others of the 
same kind, undergone no improvement under the treatment, 
would you have sneered at them as contemptible ? I sus- 
pect not,—and you would have been right. 
The other case to which I refer I transcribe, with your 
comments upon it. 
“ A young lady, aged 19. Aug. 3,—For between two and three years 
has been subject to diarrhoea, with pain in the bowels, after intervals 
rarely exceeding a week. The attacks last for several days, and the 
bowels are moved from six to ten times a day. She is ill at present with 
one of them. Pulsatilla, 6 twice a day. 89th.—A day or two after last 
report, the diarrhoea ceased, and has not recurred. 10th September.—* 
Continues without having had a return of diarrhoea ; a length of interval 
which she does not remember to have occurred since the complaint 
began. 
“ When the intervals did exceed a week, how much did they exceed 
it 1 Did they ever reach four weeks 1 If the young lady could not 
remember this, Dr. Henderson should have inquired of those who could, 
before he adduced this flimsy case as evidence of the potency of his biD 
lionth of a grain of Pulsatilla. Does Dr. Henderson think it a strange 
thing in the economy of nature, and only to be explained by the Deus ex 
machina of Homoeopathy, that a case of diarrhoea, characterized by inter- 
vals of health, should stop as usual, although an incomprehensible some- 
thing was given, and that it should not return for a few days longer on 
one particular occasion 1 These may seem little things to commentoofnf 
but surely little things will not be despised by Homoeopathists of all 
men; and here they very significantly show the sort of philosophy we 
have to deal with. Men capable of admitting cases of this kind as 
evidence—and we could extract fifty from Dr. Henderson’s book much 
feebler than this—‘are demonstrably disqualified to treat of things which 
demand for their handling the stern logic of a masculine mind.”-—-P. 249. 
The severe observation which the last sentence contains 
on myself I let pass without remark, as I have reason to 
believe that you regret it. I may say, however, that it gave 
me no uneasiness, because I felt it to be undeserved. As 
to your inquiries about the case, I confess I am puzzled to 
know to whom I should have applied for the particulars you 
desiderate so very much. Who ought to know more of such 
matters than the person chiefly concerned, when arrived at 
years of discretion? I know no one who took so lively an 
interest in the transaction as she, or who had a better right 
to do so ; and if she could not remember, who knew all the 
outs and ins of it, whose memory could have been trusted ? 
It is certain, however, that she could have remembered 
whether, for two or three months before, she had had an in- 
terval of four weeks’ freedom from her complaint. That, I 
think, will be allowed. Then, she may be allowed to have LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
63 
had no such interval for several months, at least, before the 
commencement of the practice as she had immediately after. 
Still the case does not prove that Homoeopathy was the 
source of her improvement. Granted: but had the com- 
plaint continued to recur with intervals “ rarely exceeding a 
week” after that treatment was begun, as it had done for 
some two or three months before, (her memory may be 
trusted so far, surely,) the case would have proved that Ho- 
moeopathy had failed. In a series of experiments regarding 
the truth of an allegation, the failures are of no less impor- 
tance than the successes, nay, in physic they are of far more 
value as evidence, for successes may be only apparent, may 
be fallacious, whereas about failures there can be no mistake. 
You say that you can extract fifty much feebler cases than 
this from the book. You cannot extract one that does not 
bear upon the investigation in the same way, and with even 
more significance than this; and though the view of these 
experiments which I have now given appears never to have 
occurred to you, it is not the less an important one, or pne 
which you ought to have seen without my help. 
The cases in general were of that kind which composes 
the great majority of the ailments which are treated by the 
rules of orthodox medicine, by purgatives, anti-spasmodics, 
emrnenagogues, leeches, blisters, anodynes, tonics, antacids, 
mercurials, &c., and yet without any of these they recovered, 
as you admit, very satisfactorily. Some of them were of a 
more serious description, and had resisted the orthodox rules, 
though applied in a few of them by some of the best practi- 
tioners in this city ; and yet of these the majority recovered, 
or were greatly benefited also ; and in a very short time. 
Those that did not, were mostly of a kind, or in a stage of 
disease that defies all medical treatment, with the exception, 
possibly, of the Irish. For, though your new contemporary 
of Dublin,* with a racy Irish equivoque, proclaims that 
results which you term very satisfactory, would, in the hands 
of Dublin Allopathy, “ have been widely different”—l will 
suppose the writer to mean that the Dublin practice would 
have proved more successful; that the Allopathy of the 
favoured Isle, where the “vulgar regard the physician as 
scarcely second to the priest,” (p. 179,) and where the polite, 
we presume, regard him with much less reverence,—would 
have been more fortunate than the Allopathy of Edin- 
burgh, or of London—for modesty does not flourish every 
* The Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science, No. I, February, 1846, 64 
professor Henderson’s 
where. I leave you and your contemporary to settle 
the point between you; while I content myself with the 
fact that the results of my cases must have appeared to the 
said writer too satisfactory to be published in his review, 
seeing that in his report of them he has taken such liberties 
with the text as, I trust are not to be regarded as specimens 
of Irish honesty, among priests or physicians, the vulgar or 
the polite. It promises little for the character and prosperity 
of a new periodical that it should come into the world with 
disingenuousness stamped on its forehead. For, unwilling as 
I am to make a grave charge against an opponent as long as 
charity can suggest an excuse for him, in the present instance 
no choice is left me ;—and I accuse the writer of that review 
of having studiously misrepresented the cases he has quoted. 
Flow sad it is that an uncandid spirit should befoul the current 
of criticism in questions of science and humanity. In the 
words of Hazlitt, “ a writer who assumes the garb of candour, 
and an inflexible love of truth, to garble and pervert it, to 
crouch to power, and pander to prejudice, deserves a worse 
title than that of a sophist,” 
If the literal truth were known, I suspect it would appear 
that the cases are something of a puzzle to you Allopaths.— 
One will have it, that the recoveries are so satisfactory that 
they must be due to the cunning hand of nature,—whose 
works so far excel the doings of man; another, that they are 
so incredible that the cases must have been too highly colour- 
ed,—(The Lancet, 1845;) a third (the Dublin Journal,) that 
Allopathy could have done better. On the whole, then, the 
cases and recoveries may be regarded as tolerably good. 
That portion of your article which is specially addressed 
to the practitioners of orthodox medicine, and lays down 
rules for the future guidance of “ Young Physic,” does not 
lie within the scope of what I proposed to myself in this 
letter, and I shall say little about it. Almost the only thing 
that strikes me as worthy of remark, in connexion with it, is, 
that your Dublin contemporary is somewhat unkind in receiv- 
ing so coldly your scheme in reference to a “ Young Physic,” 
considering that you propose that a part of his nursing should 
be according to a genuine Irish receipt. Your ninth rule runs 
thus:— 
“To discountenance all active and powerful medication in the acute 
exanthemata, and fevers of specific type, as small-pox, measles, scarlatina, 
typhus, &c., until we obtain some evidence that the course of these diseases 
can be beneficially modified by remedies.” LETTER TO DR. FORBES. 
65 
“ I’ll never go into the water again till I learn to swim”— 
was the wise resolution of the Irishman, as the story has it, 
who narrowly escaped being drowned. “ Use no physic in 
the acute exanthemata till we learn that it is of use,” is the 
new practical rule of a system strongly suspected of having 
drowned not a few in its day. 
Even the young Dublin Quarterly has some doubts, al- 
though not very definite, of the great advantages to science 
of such a contemplative method as this ; and ventures, very 
innocently, to surmise that “ Young Physic, if it ever germi- 
nate at all. cannot possibly be expected to bear any fruit till 
our children, and our children’s children, have been gathered 
to their fathers.” If I mistake not, the treatment of the 
acute exanthemata will not have commenced even then, 
unless Young Physic apply to mesmerism for a revelation on 
the point. 
On looking over the extracts I have made, in the foregoing 
pages, from your review, I observe that they do not include 
your reservations in favour of a mild and judicious Allopathy. 
As it would be unjust to allow the readers of this letter to 
carry away with them the impression that you condemn the 
ordinary practice altogether, I am bound to inform them that 
this is not the case. While you boldly arraign the medical 
art, as generally practised,—denounce the too indiscriminate 
and profuse administration of drugs,—and lament the existing 
ignorance respecting their remedial powers, you distinctly 
affirm that Allopathy is a system “ which, with all its faults, 
contains a considerable amount of truth, and a yet greater 
amount of good.” 
This statement, indeed, does not refer especially to the 
Allopathic art, but appears to include its pathology, and other 
branches of medical science. These, as I have already said, 
are equally the property of Homoeopathy, and therefore no 
Homoeopath will desire to controvert your opinion. Yet, sup- 
posing it to include a little of Allopathic practice also, I can 
offer no objection to its justice. For while embracing Ho- 
moeopathy, in the sense in which I have explained it in this 
letter, I do not think that it contains the whole truth of thera- 
peutics, though 1 believe it to contain much more than any 
other system. lam aware that in making this avowal 1 
shall not please the bigots among the disciples of Hahne- 
mann, and may incur the sneer of the suspicious and sordid 
(the sordid are always suspicious) among their opponents of 
the old school. I count either event a very small matter, 
persuaded that when the candid and intelligent on both sides 66 
professor Henderson’s letter, etc. 
come to know one another, and understand one another’s 
views and methods better than they do at present—when the 
dusts of controversy have had time to settle and the atmo- 
sphere is clearer, they will find that they are not so very far 
asunder as they at present suppose. Yet we may have many 
a tough encounter before we “ sheath our swords for lack of 
argument,”—a prospect which we Homoeopaths rather re- 
joice at, We claim nothing but a fair field and no favour; 
and are ready to fight it out, without a shadow of doubt as 
to the issue. 
The contest may be conducted as it becometh gentlemen 
to contend, without the rash imputation of unworthy motives 
—without appealing to the prejudices and passions of the 
ignorant—without wilful unfairness, and without discourtesy. 
You have set the example of an onset free from those degrad- 
ing vices of controversy, and I trust that I have in this 
defence been also successful in my endeavour to avoid them. 
If not, I shall be heartily sorry for my failure. 
With every sentiment of esteem, I am, 
Your obedient servant, 
WILLIAM HENDERSON.