// . .'■>* 1, •: ;i'. l"1* ; |:- '•*'• '•"'■' t '" ■ 4 ^v . »* • \% . 'i---- i'i ■ *■'* ,- *■ <~f '*•■'■ "' :,. «*■&■';'': .-::; '< ? ^-■'^r' ■ •'* : :\ \ ■,' . .." '&'* \\ •'■ ■' . v*.-; •'• il NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE Bethesda, Maryland The National Center for Homeopathy JflUiesimund Ibanriinq yanos Library <.■■[ r 19 M- °+ <*, 174 ^OajoeO ,**!- Of mmM RWMMTOH FOR HOMOEOPATHY *>!M l/< Western Bank Note &. EnG.Cc. Ch'Caso. (£>/, ■ J? ■ 7& Er^nwed extressly fo: the '' o Medical & Surreal Journal. FROM DR. HOYLE, 84, HOLLAND PARK, LONDON, W. AMERICAN FOUNDAJ^FOR HOMOEOPATH^ ice of Homoeopathy OR, A CRITICAL AND SYNTHETICAL EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINES OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC SCHOOL. BY CHARLES J. HEMPEL, M.D. &hir& (EMtion. PHILADELPHIA: BOERICKE & TAFEL. 1894. LIBRARY AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR HOMOEOPATHY Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1ST3, by CHARLES J. IIEMPEL, M.D., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. (nlm) TO PROFESSOR R. LUDLAM, M.D., OF CHICAGO, THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED AS A MARK OF RESPECT FOR HIS EMINENT QUALITIES AS A MAN, A SCHOLAR, A TEACHER, AND A PHYSICIAN, BY HIS FREEND, THE AUTHOR. - ^ , „,- }^J- He*** -^cJ^~ ^ £i . (U i^c }<^«J' TABLE OE CONTENTS. PAGE DEDICATION TO PROFESSOR R. LUDLAM, M. D. PREFACE...................................................................................................... V SECTION I. A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE CURRENT DOCTRINES OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC SCHOOL. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................ ix CHAPTER II. DEFINITION OF THE HOMOEOPATHIC LAW OF CURE FROM THE STANDPOINT OF VITALISM.............................................________ 47 CHAPTER III. AN INQUIRY INTO THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICA- TION OF DRUGS.................................................................................... 65 SECTION II. SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF HOMOEOPATHY. PART FIRST. INADEQUACY AND UNRELIABILITY OF CHEMICAL ANALYSIS AS A MEANS OF DETERMINING THE THERAPEUTIC POWERS OF DRUGS, AND ESTABLISHING THE HEALING ART UPON A SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION......................................................................................... 83 PART SECOND. PRESENTATION OF THE HOMCEOPATHIC LAW OF CURE AS A COS- MOGONICAL PRINCIPLE, AND AS THE BASIS OF THERAPEUTIC SCIENCE................................................................................................ 113 , PART THIRD. PATHOGENESIS AND PATHOLOGY, OR, CORRELATION OF ARTIFI- CIALLY DEVELOPED DRUG DISEASES AND NATURAL MALADIES.. 161 PART FOURTH. CONCLUSION................................................................................................ 171 v PREFACE. Ever since a clear perception of the glorious truths of Homoe- opathy took possession of my mind, many years ago, I have felt that it behooved me, as indeed it behooves every other true-hearted cultivator of this Science, to endeavor to develop the idea which originally gave rise to the founding of the homoeopathic School, and to establish this idea upon a basis of Scientific universality and exactness. How far I have succeeded in this task, the reader may judge for himself after perusing these pages. In tins work I offer him new views on a subject of all-important and eminently practical interest, in the firm belief that my humble effort will be judged with all the honesty and leniency to which every devoted and true seeker of the Truth can lay claim. We cannot evince our reverence for the great founder of our School in a more earnest and effectual manner than by continuing to tread the path of inquiry which his own high Reason has illum- ined with the light of wisdom. In the name of the emancipated genius whose rays have warmed the desolate and gloomy pages of Therapeutics with their life-quickening power, I protest against the dogmatic rule of an unmeaning conservatism in our School. Let us never sacrifice the Law upon which the homoeopathic edifice is founded, to accidental technicalities. Let us not exclude the dictates of Common Sense and the prerogative of Free Inquiry from the boundaries of our Science. If I have succeeded in showing that the Science of Homoeopathy is as liberal and progressive as Nature ; that it is a Truth not belonging to any one man, or set of men, but that it is heaven-born, resting upon eternal-foundations, shedding its vitalizing rays over all minds and enlightening each according to the measure of his capacity : I shall believe that I have done our Cause some service. Homoeopathy is something more than a mere Art, the exercise of which may afford us a good living and a position in Society. Let us remember that the medical systems of the day are the systems of men, which pass away and are forgotten. Written upon the pages of Nature, Homoeopathy vii nii PREFACE. invites us to study and to apply her laws, without prejudice or conceit, with the wisdom of serpents and the innocence of doves. If we pursue our studies in this spirit, Homoeopathy will unfold to our inner souls the glorious harmonies of the Divine Government, even amid the agonies of the sick chamber, and will dispose us to worship its behests in pleasure or pain, as the Fiat of Infinite Love. It may not be improper, in this place, to consider the objections which are sometimes raised by homoeopathic practitioners against didactic works like the present, in which the fundamental prin- ciples of our Science are expounded, and traced to their origin in Nature and in the over-ruling order of God's government. We want practical works, say these objectors ; we do not want any theories. In so far as any objection of this kind refers to specula- tive and fanciful hypotheses, the objection is valid, because founded in reason; but it does not preclude the propriety and duty of examining Homoeopathy as a philosophical truth, and demonstrating its validity as a law of Nature from the stand-point of universal reason. The antagonism of Old School physicians and philosophers to Homoeopathy would have disappeared long since, if instead of re-hashing and re-asserting old definitions, we had entered upon new and independent paths of inquiry, and had finally succeeded in presenting the Goddess of homoeopathic Truth stripped of all human wrappings and adventitious rules and substitutions. In the present work I do not propose to furnish a theory of my own, but to explain the Science of Homeopathy as it is revealed by the study of Nature's own arrangement of facts. Another objection comes to us from the camp of our opposing brethren of the Old School. " We are physicians," say they ; and, in saying this, they imagine they have said everything needful to exculpate their criminal remissness in ignoring the very existence of Homoeopatliy. But the Indian medicine-man, too, claims to be a physician ; the Chinese enchanter is a physician ; many spirit- mediums call themselves physicians. If the gentlemen who boast of being physicians were in possession of every truth and every curative means that might lead to the cure of every curable disease in the most expeditious, safest and most agreeable way, the argument of our Old School brethren might be accepted as satisfac- PREFACE. ix tory and final. But when it is known, and admitted by the chiefs of Old-School Therapeutics, even by such a man as Sir Thomas Watson, that the wheels of Old-School medicine are still revolving in the same old ruts of dark uncertainty and doubt, and that all guiding principles in the treatment of diseases are still wanting, we cannot concede the justice of the appellation which our opposing brethren claim for themselves with so much unction and persis- tency. We certainly have a right to expect that, if their claims to the appellation of physicians be justly founded, they should be acquainted with at least the essentials of Hahnemann's great dis- covery. But the orthodoxy of an allopathic physician would be doubted by his co-members of medical societies, if he dared to pub- licly acknowledge his belief in the curative efiiciency of reasonably small doses of medicine, when administered in accordance with the homoeopathic law, u Similia similibus curantur;" there is not one of them who has anything but derision and contumely with which to refute the claims of Homoeopathy as a therapeutic system of practical value and importance. To these gentlemen of the Old School I here offer a volume which will enable them to acquire the knowledge which they are so much in need of, and which will establish some foundation for their claim of being consi- dered " Physicians." A practitioner armed with this knowledge, would cease to be a blind empiric, and would combat the enemy u Disease" with all the resources which an enlightened and truly rational Science could suggest. I cannot conclude these prefatory remarks without expressing my deep sense of gratitude to such writers as Doctors Clotar Muller, Grauvogl, and other authorities, whose works are replete with suggestions and statements of which I have not hesitated to avail myself in preparing this volume. Although more particularly designed for the professional public, yet it may likewise prove botn attractive and instructive to cultivated lay-readers. Homoeopathy is not simply a technical Science, it is preeminently Nature's Philosophy, fraught with high common sense, and with inspiring and fruitful life-truths, which may be perceived and enjoyed by every one who chooses to avail himself of God's great gift to all men : the prerogative of an unshackled reason. Charles J. Hempel, M.D. Grand Kapids, Mich., March, 1874. CRITICAL EXPOSITION OF THE CURRENT DOCTRINES OF THE HOMCEOPATHIC SCHOOL. SECTION I. SECTION I. A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE CURRENT DOCTRINES OF THE HOMCEOPATHIC SCHOOL. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. CHAPTER II. DEFINITION OF THE HOMCEOPATHIC LAW OF CURE FROM THE STAND- POINT OF VITALISM. CHAPTER III. A.N INQUIRY INTO THE POSSIBILITY OF A SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION OF DRUGS. xii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Although the number of publications which have already been issued on the subject of Homoeopathy, with a view of defining and popularizing the fundamental tenets of this Science, is already quite considerable, yet I have no apology to offer for adding the present volume to their list. Having devoted the best part of my life to the study and practice of Homoeopathy, I have deemed it my right, as well as my duty, to promulgate my own conception of this medical doctrine, such as years of observation and reflection have developed it in my own mind. It is true the storehouse of facts and life-truths which constitute the boundless universe of Homoeopathy has been opened j yet the Holy of Holies of her glorious temple does not yet seem to have been fully entered by the cultivators of this Science. With this conviction on my mind, this present effort of mine to add a mite to the noble work, will be considered a pardonable weakness, and will be kindly received as the tribute of an earnest and ardent seeker and worshipper of Truth. Of late years the labors of the homoeopathic School seem to have been chiefly concentrated on the cultivation of the collateral Sciences of Medicine, which were sadly neglected by the earlier disciples of Hahnemann. Homoeopathy has been practised as an Art with brilliant success; our Materia Medica has been enriched with a number of new and carefully proved remedies; our thera- peutic resources have been correspondingly enlarged and perfected ; but Homoeopathy as a science has not been investigated with equal perseverance and success; a good deal even that is regarded by leading members of our Craft as a legitimate development of the science of Homoeopatliy, will be shown by further inquiries to be foreign to her genuine domain. In the presence of such aberrations of the professional mind, every effort to demonstrate the scientific character of Homoeopathy and her perfect accord with the recent discoveries in the realm of physicism, more especially with the great doctrine of the CORRE- XIV PHILOSOPHY OF HOMOEOPATHY. LATION OF FORCES, should be hailed as the dawn of a brighter day on the distant horizon of therapeutic truth. A perusal of the present work will show that it is not a rehash of worn-out arguments, but the fruit of independent thought. Whatever may be said of the merits of this book, it will be found replete with new views, new deductions, and I humbly hope, new generalizations, that may lead to still higher, more fruitful and more universal definitions. I not only commend this volume to homoeopathic practitioners of a philosophical turn of mind, who do not practise their Profession merely as a means of earning their bread and butter, but who are anxious to ascend to a clear comprehension of the fundamental truths of our Science ; but likewise to practitioners of other medical schools, who will become satisfied, after perusing these pages, that the principles and practice of Homoeopathy embody the fulness of all that is philosophically correct in the doctrines of Old School therapeutics. I would kindly urge upon our brethren the fact, a full substantia- tion of which will be presented in these pages, that symptoms, infinitesimal doses, hypothetical potencies and microscopic globules do not constitute the Alpha and Omega of homoeopathic wisdom. Let us have the science, grand, progressive, universal as Nature, and bounded only by the limits of mind. It is by worshipping at the shrine of universal truth that we best honor the great discoverer of Homoeopathy, and erect an imperishable monument to his memory. There are those among us who believe that Homoeopathy issued from Hahnemann's brain, fully armed and equipped for the contest with the old routine of bleeding, blistering, purging, or salivating the poor patients until nature had either triumphed over both the disease and the doctor, or had succumbed to the reiterated and aggravated assaults of her combined enemies. The number of these faith-men, who know of no higher authority, and of no stronger argument than the words of the master, is, fortunately for the cause of Humanity, diminishing from year to year in proportion as the number of converts to our Cause is increasing. Homoeopathic practitioners generally regard Hahnemann as the discoverer of a new medical truth which has to depend, for its highest development as a practical rule of therapeutics and a new PHILOSOPHY OF HOMOEOPATHY. XV and higher principle of life, upon the progress of Science generally, and upon a more philosophical development of the human mind. One of the most characteristic distinctions which separates the literal followers of Hahnemann from the progressive cultivators of the science of Homoeopathy, is the theory concerning doses. The former generally hold to the doctrine that any thing more material than an infinitesimal dose of medicine, is a violation of the rules of what they are pleased to term " pure Homoeopathy." The latter, among whom are to be found the most enlightened and liberal- minded Homoeopaths in this country, as well as in Europe, hold that any dose, large or small, is legitimate and scientifically correct which will effect a cure in the most thorough, safe, and expeditious manner. I may be permitted to state that I have constantly been found among the foremost to condemn all exclusivism regarding doses, and that I have always contended, and do now contend, that it is every physician's right to prescribe such a dose of the appro- priate remedy as; in his judgment, may seem best calculated to strike down the enemy disease most effectually and quickly. No objection is made to Hahnemann's general doctrine of preparing what is called homoeopathic attenuations or triturations ; of shaking up one or ten drops of the saturated tincture of a medicine with ninety drops of alcohol, which preparation is designated as the first potency; of afterwards shaking up one or ten drops of this first potency with another ninety drops of alcohol, wmich preparation is designated as the second potency, and thus continue this process of potentizing or sub-dividing the drug to the third, fourth, and any other higher number. What is objected to by the more liberal-minded friends of our Cause is that the literal followers of Hahnemann have arrogated to themselves the right to say that, unless a physician recognizes the so-called high potencies as the normal, orthodox dose in the treatment of diseases, he cannot be a true Homoeopath, and should be ostracised as a faithless and destructive heretic. I will take this opportunity of declaring my adherence to a belief in the boundless susceptibilities of the human organism, which enable it to perceive the curative influences even of the most refined preparations of our drugs. I have become satisfied, by XVI POTENCIES. hundreds of successful trials, that the attenuations, from the sixth to the thirtieth, will often produce the most startling and brilliant curative effects; and I feel likewise called upon to testify to the efficacy of the higher preparations, even the two hundredth, of Arsenic, Belladonna, Nux vomica, Ipecacuanha, Euphrasia, Nitri acidum, and a few other drugs ; but I am not prepared to assort that a lower preparation would not have acted equally well in the cases where these high attenuations produced positive and even brilliant results. On the other hand, I can affirm with equal positiveness that, in hundreds of cases, I have derived more benefit from the employment of material doses than from the exhibition of the same remedy in the attenuated form. This is a fact which I am satisfied is not generally conceded by those who are in the habit of lauding the so-called high potencies as homoeopathic preparations PAR EXCELLENCE. It would be well if homoeopathic physicians would exercise the utmost liberality towards each other in the matter of dose. There is certainly no inherent wrong in resorting to high potencies in the treatment of diseases, provided they are prepared in accordance with Hahnemann's rule in a conscientious manner. The introduction and use of the so-called high potencies in our practice may involve a great loss of time and labor; but I cannot see that there is any more impropriety in using the two hundredth,than there is in using the thirtieth or even the twelfth attenuation. The great question, after all, is not so much: do such high potencies cure, but do they cure more satisfactorily than the lower preparations 1 I am well aware that those who are continually parading the miraculous effects of high potencies before the readers of our journals, strenuously reject the charge of making the belief in the efficacy of these high and highest potencies and their legitimacy as orthodox developments of the Hahnemannian idea of Homoeopathy, a test by which the quality of homoeopathic practitioners as genuine followers of the master, ought to be measured. Nevertheless, I insist that the persistent manner in which the high-potency scheme is on all and every'occasion placed in the fore-ground as a cardinal point of doctrine and a fundamental rule of practice, shows that the advocates of this scheme cling to it with all the tenacity of enthusiastic believers, as a tenet of paramount importance and fruitful in corresponding results. HIGH AND LOW POTENCIES. xvii I would like to be informed upon what grounds it is wrong or unscientific to employ the more material doses of our drugs. Is the use of such doses inherently improper f Is it inherently wrong to use the common tincture of Aconite in a case of acute diarrhoea, provided the remedy is homoeopathic to the case ? Is it inherently wrong to use the common tincture of Belladonna in a case of rheumatism to which the medicine is homoeopathic ? There is nothing inherently wrong in such a proceeding; all we want to know is whether we have satisfactory evidence that in the case before us the tincture will prove more efficiently curative than the attenuated drug. If, upon good grounds, we are led to decide in favor of the tincture, we act wisely in preferring it to the attenua- tions ; the opposite course would be a gross wrong to the physician, to the patient, and to the cause of scientific truth. I have cured numbers of cases of diarrhoea, during the great cholera-epidemic of 1S48, by means of the first decimal trituration of Arsenious acid. I have often given two grains of this preparation at one dose, without ever witnessing a single untoward result' from such medication. In the cases where these arsenical powders were used, the outbreak of the disease took place all of a sudden ; the diarrhoea was characterized by enormous and frequently- repeated evacuations having an offensive, cadaverous smell, and resembling a homogeneous mixture of dirty water and excremen- tious matter. Accompanying symptoms were : a sudden and excessive prostration, extreme coldness of the skin, sinking pulse, deathly sickness and burning at the epigastrium, collapse of the features, a feeling of anxiety and an unquenchable thirst, which could only be allayed by the frequent imbibition of small quantities of ice-water. On the other hand I can boast of equally striking curative effects obtained bv means of the higher attenuations of Arsenic. A young gentleman, who had taken cold, and had indulged in a hearty supper, notwithstanding he had experienced during the day a sensation as if his bowels might become disturbed, found himself all at once laid up with an attack of dysenteric diarrhoea, character- ized by verv small, muco-sanguinolent discharires,which occurred everv five minutes, had a very offensive odor, and were exceedingly prostrating. The attack commenced about ten o'clock in the 2 xviii INTRODUCTION. evening, and there had already been some twenty evacuations when my aid was requested. A most agonizing- tenesmus had gradually set in. I prepared twelve powders of the eighteenth attenuation of Arsenicum, each powder containing the one-twelfth of a drop, and directed the patient to take a powder every fifteen minutes, until an improvement should set in. Alter the third powder the patient dropped to sleep, and, after sleeping four hours, awoke perfectly restored to health. Even the catarrhal symptoms had all disappeared. In subsequent pages of this work I shall furnish a number of cases where the curative efficacy of very high attenuations of our drugs will be abundantly shown. It may, therefore, be proper, in connection with my foregoing remarks, to relate here a few cases of cure, where some very brilliant results were obtained with material doses of our drugs. A young gentleman was attacked with articular inflammatory rheumatism. He was taken to a water-cure establishment, where I saw him after he had been under the usual hydropathic treatment for eight davs. I found him late in the evening enveloped in a wet sheet, Iving on a cot by an open window, while a pelting rain was pouring down. He was so stiff that he was unable to move either arms or legs. All the joints in his body seemed inflamed ; they were swollen and excruciatingly painful. I had him taken out of the wet sheet and blankets, had the window closed, and gave him table spoonful doses of a mixture of one drop of the tincture of Aconite in a tumbler-full of water. The young man had not perspired once since he commenced his wTater-cure treatment. After taking a single dose of the Aconite solution he began to perspire so profusely that he was drenched several times in the night, and had to change his linen a, number of times. When I visited him in the morning the rheumatism had entirely disappeared, the pulse was noimal, and in a few days the patient was able to walk about as usual. A laboring man was attacked with inflammation of the hip joint. The joint was very much swollen, exceedingly painful when touched or moved, and had a rose-colored appearance. The patient had a scrofulous diathesis. I mixed three drops of the tincture of Bella- CURES WITH LOW POTENCIES. xix donna in a tumbler of water, of which solution the patient took a table spoonful every two hours. At the end of three days the rheumatism had entirely disappeared, and in a few days more the man was able to resume his work. A young lady was attacked with inflammatory rheumatism of the abdominal integuments. The integuments were swollen, had a rose colored appearance, and were very painful to contact. The young lady complained of headache and was slightly delirious. I gave her the foregoing preparation of Belladonna and had the pleasure of seeing her restored to health in a week's time. Another young lady was attacked with inflammatory rheumatism of the abdominal integuments. The inflammation spread around the abdomen like a belt from five to six inches wide. The patient took the above named preparation of Belladonna, and was cured in less than a week. A lady was attacked with frightful erysipelas of the face and scalp. She was delirious and complained of the room being full of mice. I gave her Belladonna as above ; under the use of this drug the erysipelatous inflammation gradually and steadily subsided, and the patient was fully restored in two weeks. A young lady was attacked with erysipelatous inflammation of the neck, ears and face. The parts were frightfully swollen. The inflammation penetrated to the meningeal membranes, and caused an agonizing distress as if the brain had been cut up with knives. There was no delirium. The inflamed parts were of a deep purple color. This patient took table spoonful doses of a mixture of five drops of the German tincture of Aconite, in a tumbler of water, every hour. At the end of a week the inflammation and swelling had disappeared, and at the end of another week she was able to walk out. A lady of forty years of age had been subject to a cough, which affected principally the left lung and caused considerable distur- bance in the functions of the heart. There were occasional paroxysms of quick, although feeble palpitation. When I first saw the patient, she was confined to her bed, with signs of hectic fever XX INTRODUCTION. and night sweats. After an attack of coughing the patient raised quantities of a purulent mucus. She was unable to take a full inspiration with the left luiur, and complained of considerable dyspnoea. The breath seemed to be arrested about half way. The patient was of a consumptive habit. 1 prepared a solution of five drops of the fluid extract of Digitalis in a tumbler of water, and gave the patient a table spoonful of this solution every two hours. She began to improve very speedily ; the improvement was more pirticu'arly marked after I had increased the quantity of the medicine to ten drops. In one fortnight from the commencement of this treatment she was free from cough and fever and able to a tend to her family duties as usual. A man of forty-five years of age had been coughing for several weeks and had been losing his strength so completely that he was confined to his bed. I found him in the following condition : Every now and then a severe paroxysm of cough, more particularly at night. The paroxysms were succeeded by the raising of quan- tities of purulent mucus. The patient showed hectic flushes and had night sweats. A marked symptom in this case was a feeble, intermittent and irregular pulse. There were symptoms of oedema of the lungs, and the hands and feet were likewise (edematous. I prescribed the fluid extract of Digitalis as in the previous case. The patient,who was a porter in a hotel, was entirely restored to health in a fortnight and able to resume his work. A servant girl who had been melancholy and home sick for some weeks, missed her catamenia. She was attacked all of a sudden about midnight with vomiting of a grass-green fluid, attended with a feeble and intermittent pulse. The vomiting occurring again the second and third night with increasing prostration, I was requested to prescribe. The girl took a few tablespoonfuls of a solution of five drops of the fluid extract of Digitalis in a tumbler of water, after which the vomiting ceased and the home sickness likewise disappeared. A young lady was attacked with dysentery. The attacks coming on every other day at a time when fever and ague were prevailing, a few sugar-coated, one grain pills of Quinine were administered, after which there was no return of the disease. A similar treat- CURES WITH LOW POTENCIES. XXI ment was adopted in intermittent pneumonia, intermittent rheuma- tism and other intermittent attacks, with the effect of arresting these forms of masked fever and ague immediately and permanently. In a case of constitutional tuberculosis of the lungs, where the cough had assumed an intermittent type, with marked exacerba- tions every other day, and where the patient, owing to mismanage- ment and neglect, had sunk into a state of apparently hopeless consumption, with hectic fever, night sweats, a hurried pulse, extreme prostration and emaciation, the patient was speedily restored to her usual health by means of one grain doses of Quinine taken every two, three, and finally every four hours. The treatment lasted about two weeks. A young lady of eighteen years of age returned to her paternal home, from a visit to friends in New York, with all the signs of what her parents and friends considered confirmed consumption. Her case was characterized with the following symptoms: great debility, inability to ascend the stairs or walk up-hill; bloating of the face, hands and feet, dyspnoea with slight palpitation of the heart, and a feeble and occasionally intermitting pulse ; bellows- murmurs in the region of the aorta ; great pallor of the face, with occasional circumscribed flushes on the cheeks ; attacks of vertigo with frontal headache ; constipation of the bowels with frequent and scanty discharges of a light-colored urine depositing a sediment of mucus and albumen; the attacks of dyspnoea were attended with a hacking cough and seemed to originate principally in an cedematous condition of the lungs. Diagnosticating this case as one of inveterate chlorosis, I prescribed five drops of the fluid extract of Digitalis in a glass of water, to be taken in tablespoon- ful doses every three or four hours. The patient likewise took two grains of Iron in the form of a sugar-coated pill every day. After this treatment had been persistently followed for four weeks, the young lady re-appeared among her friends like the picture of health. A case of purpura haemorrhagica, where the blood rushed in a torrent from the nostrils and mouth, and oozed from the pores of the abdomen and extremities, and where the resulting anaemia was attended with frightful convulsions, yielded at once to the alternate use of five-drop doses of dilute Phosphoric acid and teaspoonful xxn INTRODUCTION. doses of five drops of the tincture of liyoseyamus in half a goblet of water ; the medicines were repeated every ten minutes, until the patient, a bov of twelve years, dropped to sleep, and slept soundly until he awoke convalescent. A case of St. Vitus's dance, where the patient, a girl twelve years of age, had to be strapped to her bed, yielded promptly and penna- nentlv to five-drop doses of dilute Phosphoric acid administered every four hours; the indication for this treatment was a constantly increasing sediment of albumen in the urine. By its enemies our practice has been styled the " Infinitesimal Practice." A honueopathic physician is one who uses infinitesimal doses. We often hear it said that " my doctor practices Homceo- pathv ; he gives little or no medicine."' Not only lay-people, but phvsicians will permit themselves, in their blind fanaticism, to denounc as no Honneopaths such of their professional brethren as employ more massive doses. The great law upon which the whole structure of Homoeopatliy rests, is thus made subordinate to tin; incidental processes of trituration and succussion, by means of which Hahnemann accomplished a most perfect division and sub- division of the drug-particles. It is supposed by those who an; in the habit of principally depending upon the so-called high poten- cies that, in thus sub-dividing drugs, we may succeed in detaching the dynamic drug-force from its material substratum and, by temporarilv grafting it upon a neutral vehicle, such as sugar of milk or alcohol, enable the force to act with more freedom and power. This view has given rise to the doctrine of dynamization or poten- tization,to which I shall advert more particularly in another part of this work. Whatever, if any, truth is embodied in this doctrine, I shall show, by what I conceive to be irrefutable argu- ments, that this doctrine, as expounded and applied by the high- potentialists of our School, is erroneous, and will either have to be considerably modified or else relinquished as a baseh ss fabric of the fancy. It is undoubtedly true that drugs act by virtue of an inherent power or force : but they thus act whether exhibited in lame or small quantities. I believe, and I shall furnish satisfactory reasons for my belief, that this drug-power cannot be separ- ated from its material substratum without the identity of the drug being utterly destroyed. I likewise hold that the DOCTRINE OF DYNAMIZATION. XX11] division of the drug-particles beyond a certain limit may result in an utter disintegration or annihilation of the drug as a remedial agent. In common with many of my co- l.iborers in the vineyard of Homoeopathy, I desire to rescue the law which is alone eternal and divine in our therapeutic edifice, from the mass of hypothetical trifles in the midst of which it has almost been forgotten. It is time that we should make the study and philosophical comprehension of this law our most important business; it is time that our allopathic brethren should know that a man maybe a Homoeopath without abjuring common sense; that he may be a student of Nature, a worshipper of Truth ; yea, that he professes a doctrine which is as infinite and eternal as the Providence which operates by means of it. I would invite my allopathic colleagues to dwell with grateful hearts upon the immense service which Hahnemann has rendered to the healing art, and to the cause of suffering humanity, by that simple and yet all-important contrivance, fractional doses. By means of this simple process the most active poison is transformed into a gentle and safe healing agent, which may be administered even to the nursing babe without injuring its tender organism. Truly may it be said of the homoeopathic agent that "the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and a little child shall lead them." Look at Arsenic, a poison so fierce that Hufeland, Dierbacli and other great lights of the dominant School of Medicine obstinately refused to use it, as harboring disorganizing principles in its bosom which might undermine the organic life of the pulmo- nary apparatus and even destroy it by consumption. Hahnemann appears upon the stage of a suffering world, and by one flash of genius he converts the fierce lion into a gentle lamb, the harbinger of health and peace. A heavenly truth had illumined his mind ; henceforth even a virulent poison is transformed into an agent for the restoration of man's tottering health. I can affirm from personal experience that homoeopathic physi- cians who confine themselves exclusively to the use of infinitesimal quantities in their practice, throw away immense advantages which are possessed by those who know how to use low or high doses as the case may be. Enlightened practitioners of the dom- inant School, like Trousseau and Pidoux, are fully aware of the XXIV INTRODUCTION'. vast superiority of fractional doses. They inform us in their classic work on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, that Baudin, who has been physician in chief to the most important military hospitals in France, and whose experience in the use of Arsenic, mo>t pro- bably surpasses that of any other practitioner living, has given this agent, in fractional dases, at the rite of IS centigrammes, two grains aid nearly four fifths (Troy), a day in cancerous affections, and that h.; ha< continued this medication for six weeks in succession, day after day, without exciting the least untoward symptom. Trous- seau mentions this fact as a proof of the immense advantage of pro- scribing drugs in fractional doses. I have quoted this statement not for the purpose of inviting imitation, but for the purpose of showing that in the vast series of remedial quantities, from the extraordinary extreme at which the dominant School has arrived in the matter of dosing, to the other extreme of the infinitesimal attenuations of Homoeopathy, there must be many intermediate fractions of dose that will prove acceptable, in the course of time, to moderate men of both medical Schools. Homu'opathic physicians who cannot learn a great deal from the writings and practice of recognized ()Id-School authorities, are to be pitied. Even on the subject of dose the great masters of that School can teach us a great deal that may prove of immense benefit to the furtherance of our own cause. On the other hand, tears of grief might be shed over the blindness and fanaticism which pre- vent allopathic physicians from studying the writings of the homoeopathic School and recognizing the practical good which that School has accomplished in the sick-room in the matter of dose. Homoeopathy has achieved the deliverance of humanity from the nauseous compounds which for thousands of years had been inseparable from the treatment of diseases as conducted by practitioners of the dominant School; under her gentle and delicate ministrations the frail bark of the patient is piloted into the haven of recovery without any of the violent perturbations of the organism which have signalized from time immemorial the therapeutics of our allopathic brethren. The employment of infinitesimal doses and the doctrine of medicinal aggravations have led to so many misrepresentations and erroneous conceptions of the doctrine of Homoeopathy that I deem it necessary to dwell upon this subject a little more fully. Through IMPORTANCE OF FRACTIONAL DOSES. XXV some unfortunate twist in the argument, homoeopathic practitioners have presented the subject of infinitesimal doses in such a manner as to convey the impression that these doses and Homoeopathy mean one and the same thing. It is a common belief among the uninformed laymen, as well as among physicians, that a disease is not treated homceopathically unless the dose is exceedingly small. Any unprejudiced person may understand that a medicine which is specifically homoeopathic to a disease, may manifest curative results, even when administered in a very small quantity. Hahne- mann, carried away by the startling and extraordinary character of this phenomenon, made the infinitesimal size of the dose a prominent feature of his System of Practice. Outside observers have accepted this sign as the characteristic badge of Homoeopathy. It was no business of theirs to set professed Homoeopaths, who ought to have known better, right before their own law and the public. If Homoeopaths were forgetful of the great fact, that Homoeopatliy does not mean either small or large doses, but a System of Practice where the curative action of a remedial agent depends upon its inherent capability to affect the living tissues similarly to the natural disease, and to overcome the latter by virtue of a superior affinity existing between it and the action of the drug ; if Homoeo- paths, I argue, were unmindful of this cardinal truth, or were disposed to hide it under a bushel and to cover it up with all sorts of fanciful and childish baubles, why should the public, especially the professional public, who nnry have looked upon the homoeopathic intruder with invidious eyes, trouble themselves about informing the Homoeopaths that they had inverted the natural order of things in giving such extraordinary prominence to the theory of small doses, and leaving others to find out for themselves the basis upon which the Divine Architect of Nature had erected the homoeopathic edifice. It is not without difficulty or without exciting hostile passions that this grievous error can now be corrected, and that the law of therapeutic affinities can be rescued from the mass of adventitious absurdities by wdiich its dignity and glory have been tarnished. The smallness of homoeopathic doses has been the subject of a good deal of ridicule at the hands of allopathic physicians. How can it be otherwise than that a globule of the two hundredth, or even of the thirtieth or twelfth attenuation of a remedy, should call xx vi INTRODUCTION. forth the derision and contempt of men who have been in the habit of dealing out Mercury to their patients by the pound. i'ne more philosophical minds among the practitioners of the < >ld School, begin to see and to admit the propriety of small doses. " We do not belong to the number of those," say Trousseau and Pidoux, in their classical work on Materia Medica and Therapeutics, " who fancy that they have done with Hahnemann after invoking Arago's authority, in order to prove that the decillionth portion of a grain is to a grain, what an atom, which is almost invisible to the naked eye, is to the bulk of the sun. The quantity of pestilential or variola-virus which is required to kill a man with the plague or variola, is undoubtedly very small, nor do we know whether Arago has ever sought to determine its weight or volume with reference to any known body." Nature delights in working out stupendous results from micro- scopical beginnings. Look at the marvellous cell-development of plants. According to an approximative calculation, twenty^ thousand new cells are formed every minute in the Bovista gigantea, a fungus which is met with in European countries. By filtering the juice of a ripe grape we obtain a clear, watery liquid. Already, after the lapse of an hour, it commences to become turbid, to develop gaseous vesicles, to ferment. After the lapse of three hours, a grayish-yellow layer, or yeast, collects on the surface of the fluid which, under the microscope, is seen as numberless little plants. Millions of these form in a few hours, a cubic inch of yeast containing upwards of a few millions. *7 We read in Schleidens " Life of Plants," that an East India nettle, the urtica stimulant, or urtica crenulata, causes by its mere contact a frightful swelling of the arm for weeks. The urtica urentissima, on the island of Timor, is called by the natives Daoun Setou (devil's leaf), because the pains which it causes by simple contact continue for years, and amputation is often the only means of saving life. These terrible effects are produced by a quantity of the poison equal to the one hundred and fifty thousandth of a grain. " It is doubtless," writes this beautiful and philosophical poet of Nature, '"it is doubtless characteristic of a rude age and low degree of culture, to measure the value or importance of a thing by its large or small size ; this measure cannot be applied to the most w QUANTITY AND QUALITY. XXV11 essential and most valuable thing known to us, the human mind, which cannot be determined by feet, inches, and lines. It is only to a sensual nature that the physically large appears imposing ; the more cultivated man endeavors to learn to know the objects of his contemplation in every direction ; from a complete knowledge thereof, he will derive an opinion concerning their essential or non-essential character, and frequently he will find that that which has the smallest dimensions is of the utmost importance." Nevertheless, while upholding the use of small, and even infinitesimal doses as a proper and, in many respects, inevitable consequence of the application of the homoeopathic law to the exhibition of remedial agents in disease, I would at the same time express my emphatic condemnation of the so-called highest potencies which a few lovers of the fanciful and the marvellous have of late years sought to introduce into the homoeopathic School as legitimate and reliable preparations. If what we read on this subject, page 376 of the October number of the New England Medical Gazette, 18G9, be correct, we cannot help regarding these new-fangled highest potencies as a lamentable and disgraceful perversion of Hahnemann's original method of preparing his attenuations. As regards the doctrine of medicinal aggravations, it naturally followed from Hahnemann's peculiar mode of accounting for a cure in accordance with the law " Suiilia Similihus." Hahnemann was a vitalist, an enlightened and true hearted believer in a vital organism, an organism in which the phenomena of vitality are developed, in accordance with chemical and physical laws, through the agency of a pre-existing vital influence or force. In his admirable Essay, entitled "Spirit of the Homoeopathic Doctrine," he expresses himself as follows on the subject of vitality and the manner in which it is affected by the pathogenetic as well as the curative power of drugs : — "A multitude of disease-exciting causes act daily and hourly upon us, but they are incapable of deranging the physiological equilibrium of the organism ; being resisted by the activity of the life-sustaining power within us, the individual remains healthy. It is only when these external inimical agencies assail us in a very aggravated form, and we are especially exposed to their influence, that we contract disease ; but even then we do xxviii INTRODUCTION. not become seriously ill unless the organism is disposed, by virtue of a peculiar inherent predisposition, to bo affected, bv the morbific cause in question, and to be deranged in its health. " If the inimical agents in Nature, which we term morbific agents and which are partly physical and partly psychical, that is pertaining either to the bodily or spiritual range, possessed an unconditional power of deranging the human health, they would not leave any one in good health;on account of their being so universally distributed, every one would become-ill, and we should never be able to obtain an idea of health. But since, upon the whole, diseases are only exceptional states of the organism, it follows that it is only in consequence of a particular predisposition that the individual becomes liable to be affected by morbific causes, and the organism becomes capable of being disturbed by disease." " It is far otherwise with the artificial dynamic agents which we term medicines. Every true drug acts at all times, under all circumstances, on any living body, and excites in it the symptoms" peculiar to the drug in a perceptible form, provided the dose is large enough; so that every human organism must always and inevitably be affected by the medicinal disease, which, as is well known, is not the case with respect to natural diseases. " All experience proves incontestably that the human body is much more readily affected by medicinal agents than by morbific principles and contagious miasms; or, what amounts to the same thing, that medicinal substances possess an absolute power of deranging human health, whereas morbific agents possess only a very conditional power, vastly inferior to the former." According to Hahnemann's further teachings, this circumstance enables us to employ drugs for definite curative purposes, in obedience to a second natural law, which he expresses in the following proposition :—" A stronger dynamic affection permanently extinguishes the weaker in the living organism, provided the former is similar in kind to the latter; for," argues Hahnemann, "the organism, as a living, individual unity, cannot receive two similar dynamic affections at the same time, without the weaker yielding to the stronger similar one : consequently, as it is more disposed to be more strongly affected by the medicinal affection, the other, MORBIFIC AND MEDICINAL AGENTS. XXIX similar, weaker one, or the natural disease, must necessarily give way or allow itself to be cured." As if foreseeing the objection which would be raised against this mode of explaining the operation of homoeopathic agents, Hahne- mann adds:— "Let it not be imagined that the living organism, if a new affection is communicated to it by a homoeopathic agent, will thereby become more seriously deranged, or burdened with an addition to its sufferings, just as a leaden plate which is pressed upon by an iron weight, is still more severely bruised by placing a stone in addition upon it; or a piece of copper heated by friction, must become still hotter by pouring upon it water of a more elevated temperature. No, our living organism does not behave passively ; it is not regulated by the laws that govern dead matter; it reacts by vital antagonism, so as to surrender itself as an individual living whole to its morbid derangement, and to allow this derangement to be extinguished within it, when a stronger affection of a similar kind, produced by an homoeopathically-acting agent, takes possession of the organism." The power which the artificial morbid affection, or the drug disease, or drug-impression rather, possesses over the natural morbific agent and its disturbing influence in the tissues, is so specific, so positive—provided the drug impression is exactly similar, or homoeopathic, to the natural disease—that, according to Hahnemann, a very small dose, even an infinitesimal globule, is sufficient to secure a return of the vital organism from the abnormal to the normal condition ; any, even inconsiderable, excess of dose might lead to the unnecessary, and therefore avoidable, development of medicinal symptoms. This view is expressed by Hahnemann in the concluding paragraph of his essay on the " Spirit of the Homoeopathic Doctrine," in the following language: " As the human organism, even in health, is more readily influenced by drugs than by natural morbific agents, this influence is felt in the highest degree by an organism which is properly predisposed by disease, provided the artificial drug-disease is homoeopathic to the natural malady. Hence the smallest dose of the remedial agent is sufficient for a cure: for the spiritual XXX INTRODUCTION. power of the medicine docs not, in this instance, accomplish its object by means of (pii, but by potentiality and r/u