SAMUEL HAHNEMANN
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, was born April 10th, 1755, and diet July 2d, 1845. It is easy to show that when he advanced his new doctrine he not only made opposition to the spirit of medicine of that time, but that he necessarily paid his tribute to the latter by planting the roots of the new system into the old soil. We know from his biography that he withdrew in disgust from the old shallow mode of practice, and devoted himself for some time to the more fruitful study of chemistry.
The first conception of his future doctrine came to him while translating into German Cullen's Materia Medica. He was impressed with the contradictory views of the action of Cinchona, and resolved to prove it on himself. He was now strong and healthy, and the symptoms which this drug produced in him were similar to those of intermittent fever, which he had had eight years previously. He distinctly remarks, however, that the drug did not produce in him any chills. It has been frequently urged against homoeopathy that Cinchona does not produce symptoms of intermittent fever in everybody, and as homoeopathy dates its origin to this experiment, it has been declared deceptive and fallacious.
PAGE 10
The only possible excuse for this objection is the want of knowledge of homoeopathic literature and of Hahnemann's own reports of the effects of Cinchona, in which he does not at all assert that it produces a typical intermittent fever, but that it produced in him Symptoms of intermittent fever without chills. Besides, Hahnemann did not propose to make this single experiment the foundation for his new system; for a considerable time elapsed from the year 1790, when he made this experiment, before he dared announce to the world his ideas of reform, which were based on further investigation and literary proofs. As late as 1796 he published, in Hufeland's Journal for Medical Art, "An Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers and Action of Drugs", in which, starting from the effects of Cinchona and other remedies, he demands the proving of medicines on the healthy organism before they are permitted to be prescribed for the sick. He says: "Every efficacious remedy produces in the human body, a peculiar species of disease; and the more powerful the remedy the more peculiarly distinguished and severe is the disease produced". To this he adds the advice to imitate nature, which sometimes cures a chronic disease by another new disease, and to choose in a given disease that remedy which is able to produce another similar artificial disease. He says: "By the action of the similar remedy the disease is overpowered and will disappear". As proof of this, he cites a number of medicines which, according to their effects on healthy persons, have been used with success in similar diseased conditions; and thus was made the first practical application of the maxim similia similibus, which, after many years of searching for practical proof, he explained synthetically. This explanation he published in Hufeland's Journal. The following articles are of special interest in this regard, viz.: "Are the Impediments to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine insurmountable?" (Hufeland's Journal, 1797, vol. Iii, p. 4); "A Case of Colicodynia quickly cured" (the same, p. 1); "Antidotes for some Heroic Medicinal Substances" (Hufeland's Journal, 1798, vol. V., p; 3); "Some Kinds of continuous and Remittent Fevers" (the same, p. 19); "Several Periodical and Hebdomadal Diseases" (the same, p. 45); "Observations on the Three Current Modes of Treatment" (Hufeland's Journal, 1801, vol. xi., p. 4).
PAGE 11
The opposition with which Hahnemann was met by his contemporaries was very great, but it did not check him in his search for truth. In his practical application of the law of cure which he had discovered, he had acted upon the principles that an experiment to be reliable must be conducted from beginning to end by the experimenter, and when he had selected a remedy he prepared and administered it with his own hands; consequently he very soon collided with the pharmaceutists, who still have special privileges in Germany, and was often forced by them to leave the place in which he lived, when a clientage was being established. These continuous chicanes, by which, during fifteen years, he was actually chased and hunted, were no small means of strengthening his character; they might have compelled one less energetic for forsake his chosen path.
In 1805, after the attention of the medical world had been drawn to his new method by his journalistic publications, he came forward more decidedly. He published in Leipzig a work of two volumes: Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis sive in sano corpore observatis, and a pamphlet, Aesculapius in the Balance, and finally, in Hufeland's Journal, vol. xxii, p. 3, "The Medicine of Experience". The last-named work, which appeared some years later in a separate edition by Wittig, in Berlin, was the excellent precursor of the Organon, containing the clear and impressive part of Hahnemann's doctrine, of course conformably with its development at that time. In it we find the first intimation of the name from which, in future years, his followers were to derive a distinctive appellation; for prior to 1808 he had only spoken of the use of specific remedies, later he called them homoeopathic specifics, and not till after several years did he use exclusively the term Homoeopathy.
Adopting the view that two similar irritants cannot exist in the body side by side, but that the stronger must destroy and extinguish the weaker, he came to the conclusion that it was only necessary to oppose the unnatural irritation, the disease, by setting up another morbid process similar to that manifested by the disease. Starting from this deduction he concluded that in order to discover agents capable of opposing disease, it was necessary to prove drugs on the healthy organism; and he verified this conclusion at the bedside. Upon this inductive verified conclusion is based Hahnemann's logic. Other inferences which he drew, and which corresponded with the spirit of the time in which he lived, must at present be denominated as partly erroneous; for example, he presumed that the similar remedy inoculated the patient with a similar, an opposing disease, which would take the place of the original one, and which the organism would then easily conquer. This theory, we repeat, suited exactly the spirit of the past century, with its neuro-pathological views; but, of course, it had to be abandoned as physiology, freed from empiricism, and pathological anatomy, etc., took their places. In later years Hahnemann modified this original and too arbitrary explanation. In the fifth edition of his Organon (§ 29) he speaks of the vital energy as being exalted by the simile. The fact has been elaborated by von Grauvogl and Wislicenius, who have given a real basis to the law of similars, and to whom we shall return later.
PAGE 12
We mentioned in the beginning that Hahnemann placed the roots of his doctrine partly in the soil which he found. This is particularly true with his doctrine of specifics, for he talks of opposing specific remedies to the so-called specific diseases, as gout, scrofulosis, etc.; as is still the practice in the gross empiricism of the modern mode of treatment of the old school, in spite of its pathological knowledge. Hahnemann's doctrine of specifics differed from that of the old school in that the former insisted upon something special corresponding to the individuality of the patient, while the latter made the application general.
By this placing himself in opposition to the doctrine of the dominant school, and more particularly by his assertion that the specific remedies were to be used in diminished and refined doses, to avoid a severe primary action (medicinal aggravation), a controversy with his colleagues was at once established. In their attacks upon him they did not confine themselves to the journals devoted to the advancement of science, but they defamed him in the daily literature, principally in the Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen.
PAGE 13
Hahnemann defended himself, and at the same time enlightened the public, in popular pithy articles concerning his doctrine. The following articles, published in the above-mentioned paper, are especially interesting in this respect, viz.: "On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine, etc." '1808, p. 263), "Extract from a letter to a physician of high standing on the great necessity of a regeneration of medicine" (1808, p. 343); "To a Student of Medicine" (1809, p. 227); "Signs of the times in the ordinary system of Medicine" (1809, p. 326). At the same time a sensation was created by his cures, which, in the opinion of his adversaries, were effected by non-medication.
These newspaper skirmishes, etc., lasted about four years, during which time Hahnemann observed, aside from their intentional misunderstanding, his opponent's honest, total ignorance of the principles laid down in his Medicine of Experience. In 1810 he published an elaborate treatise entitled Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, which reappeared in 1818, 1824, 1829 and 1833, in new, revised and enlarged editions.
In the Organon he explains each and every dogma, and comes forward more bodily with his so much attacked doctrine of potentization. In this work, § 242, he speaks of the division and diminution of the drug by mixing it with an indifferent vehicle (alcohol, sugar of milk, water), in order to bring the well-selected and adapted agent to such a strength that it will abolish the natural disease without enfeebling the system in the least. Although in this edition of his work, generally called the Bible of Homoeopathy, he only spoke of the diminution of the power of a medicine by diminishing the dose, vet it is evident, from an article which he published in Hufeland's Journal, that he knew, at least twenty years ago, of the increased effect of medicine by the separation of its molecules through its subdivision in an indifferent substance.
PAGE 14
In the year 1811, Hahnemann moved to Leipzig, in order to found there an institution where young physicians might be instructed, both theoretically and practically, in his method of treatment. He found, however, no support, but in order to achieve at least something, he established himself as a teacher in the university.
On the 216th of June, 1812, he defended the dissertation, written for this purpose, De Helleborisme Veterum, his son, Frederick Hahnemann, at that time Bacc. Med., serving as respondent.
Of course he had but few hearers, as the professors had warned the students against the new heterodoxy; but a few had become interested in him, and these he formed into "a society of drug provers". It consisted of the following persons, who afterwards distinguished themselves in homoeopathy, and to whom we revert further on: Frederick Hahnemann, Ernest Stapf, G. William Gross, C. Hornburg, G. Franz, C. Wislicenius, who were afterward joined by Teuthorn, C.T. Herrmann, Fred. Rueckert, Langhammer, Sal. Gustmann, A. Haynel, Bethmann.
Hahnemann himself prepared the remedies for the provers, according to certain rules, and the symptoms produced were collected and accurately registered by him; so that after having published, in 1811, his first volume of Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing the following remedies proved by himself: Belladonna, Dulcamara, Cina, Cannabis, Cocculus, Nux vomica, Opium, Moschus, Oleander, Mercurius, Aconitum and Arnica, he was able, in 1816, to issue the second volume. The latter contains the provings of the following: Causticum, Arsenicum, Ferrum, Ignatia, Magnet, Pulsatilla, Rheum, Rhus tox., and Bryonia. In 1817, the third volume followed, with Chamomilla, China, Helleborus niger, Asarum, Ipecacuanha, Squilla, Stramonium, and Veratrum album; in 1818 the fourth, with Hyoscyamus, Digitalis, Aurum, Guaiacum, Camphora, Ledum, Ruta, Sarsaparilla, Conium, Chelidonium, Sulphur, and Argentum; in 1819 the fifth, with Euphrasia, Menyanthes trifoliate, Cyclamen Europaeum, Sambucus, Calcarea acetica, Muriatis acidum, Thuja, Taraxacum, Phosphori acidum, Spigelia and Staphysagria; in 1821 the sixth, with Angustura, Manganum aceticum, Capsicum, Verbascum, Colocynthis, Spongia, Euphrasia, Bismuthum, Cicuta virosa and Stannum; making in all sixty-one remedies proved by Hahnemann himself, and under his directions. Each volume was furnished with an extremely valuable preface, in which he tried to explain some obscure points in his doctrine, and to combat the material medica and the empiricism of his adversaries. A new edition of this work appeared between the years 1822 and 1827, in which the different remedies were arranged more correctly according to the symptoms produced, and the symptomatology was more complete.
Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homoeopathy, was born April 10th, 1755, and diet July 2d, 1845. It is easy to show that when he advanced his new doctrine he not only made opposition to the spirit of medicine of that time, but that he necessarily paid his tribute to the latter by planting the roots of the new system into the old soil. We know from his biography that he withdrew in disgust from the old shallow mode of practice, and devoted himself for some time to the more fruitful study of chemistry.
The first conception of his future doctrine came to him while translating into German Cullen's Materia Medica. He was impressed with the contradictory views of the action of Cinchona, and resolved to prove it on himself. He was now strong and healthy, and the symptoms which this drug produced in him were similar to those of intermittent fever, which he had had eight years previously. He distinctly remarks, however, that the drug did not produce in him any chills. It has been frequently urged against homoeopathy that Cinchona does not produce symptoms of intermittent fever in everybody, and as homoeopathy dates its origin to this experiment, it has been declared deceptive and fallacious.
PAGE 10
The only possible excuse for this objection is the want of knowledge of homoeopathic literature and of Hahnemann's own reports of the effects of Cinchona, in which he does not at all assert that it produces a typical intermittent fever, but that it produced in him Symptoms of intermittent fever without chills. Besides, Hahnemann did not propose to make this single experiment the foundation for his new system; for a considerable time elapsed from the year 1790, when he made this experiment, before he dared announce to the world his ideas of reform, which were based on further investigation and literary proofs. As late as 1796 he published, in Hufeland's Journal for Medical Art, "An Essay on a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers and Action of Drugs", in which, starting from the effects of Cinchona and other remedies, he demands the proving of medicines on the healthy organism before they are permitted to be prescribed for the sick. He says: "Every efficacious remedy produces in the human body, a peculiar species of disease; and the more powerful the remedy the more peculiarly distinguished and severe is the disease produced". To this he adds the advice to imitate nature, which sometimes cures a chronic disease by another new disease, and to choose in a given disease that remedy which is able to produce another similar artificial disease. He says: "By the action of the similar remedy the disease is overpowered and will disappear". As proof of this, he cites a number of medicines which, according to their effects on healthy persons, have been used with success in similar diseased conditions; and thus was made the first practical application of the maxim similia similibus, which, after many years of searching for practical proof, he explained synthetically. This explanation he published in Hufeland's Journal. The following articles are of special interest in this regard, viz.: "Are the Impediments to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine insurmountable?" (Hufeland's Journal, 1797, vol. Iii, p. 4); "A Case of Colicodynia quickly cured" (the same, p. 1); "Antidotes for some Heroic Medicinal Substances" (Hufeland's Journal, 1798, vol. V., p; 3); "Some Kinds of continuous and Remittent Fevers" (the same, p. 19); "Several Periodical and Hebdomadal Diseases" (the same, p. 45); "Observations on the Three Current Modes of Treatment" (Hufeland's Journal, 1801, vol. xi., p. 4).
PAGE 11
The opposition with which Hahnemann was met by his contemporaries was very great, but it did not check him in his search for truth. In his practical application of the law of cure which he had discovered, he had acted upon the principles that an experiment to be reliable must be conducted from beginning to end by the experimenter, and when he had selected a remedy he prepared and administered it with his own hands; consequently he very soon collided with the pharmaceutists, who still have special privileges in Germany, and was often forced by them to leave the place in which he lived, when a clientage was being established. These continuous chicanes, by which, during fifteen years, he was actually chased and hunted, were no small means of strengthening his character; they might have compelled one less energetic for forsake his chosen path.
In 1805, after the attention of the medical world had been drawn to his new method by his journalistic publications, he came forward more decidedly. He published in Leipzig a work of two volumes: Fragmenta de viribus medicamentorum positivis sive in sano corpore observatis, and a pamphlet, Aesculapius in the Balance, and finally, in Hufeland's Journal, vol. xxii, p. 3, "The Medicine of Experience". The last-named work, which appeared some years later in a separate edition by Wittig, in Berlin, was the excellent precursor of the Organon, containing the clear and impressive part of Hahnemann's doctrine, of course conformably with its development at that time. In it we find the first intimation of the name from which, in future years, his followers were to derive a distinctive appellation; for prior to 1808 he had only spoken of the use of specific remedies, later he called them homoeopathic specifics, and not till after several years did he use exclusively the term Homoeopathy.
Adopting the view that two similar irritants cannot exist in the body side by side, but that the stronger must destroy and extinguish the weaker, he came to the conclusion that it was only necessary to oppose the unnatural irritation, the disease, by setting up another morbid process similar to that manifested by the disease. Starting from this deduction he concluded that in order to discover agents capable of opposing disease, it was necessary to prove drugs on the healthy organism; and he verified this conclusion at the bedside. Upon this inductive verified conclusion is based Hahnemann's logic. Other inferences which he drew, and which corresponded with the spirit of the time in which he lived, must at present be denominated as partly erroneous; for example, he presumed that the similar remedy inoculated the patient with a similar, an opposing disease, which would take the place of the original one, and which the organism would then easily conquer. This theory, we repeat, suited exactly the spirit of the past century, with its neuro-pathological views; but, of course, it had to be abandoned as physiology, freed from empiricism, and pathological anatomy, etc., took their places. In later years Hahnemann modified this original and too arbitrary explanation. In the fifth edition of his Organon (§ 29) he speaks of the vital energy as being exalted by the simile. The fact has been elaborated by von Grauvogl and Wislicenius, who have given a real basis to the law of similars, and to whom we shall return later.
PAGE 12
We mentioned in the beginning that Hahnemann placed the roots of his doctrine partly in the soil which he found. This is particularly true with his doctrine of specifics, for he talks of opposing specific remedies to the so-called specific diseases, as gout, scrofulosis, etc.; as is still the practice in the gross empiricism of the modern mode of treatment of the old school, in spite of its pathological knowledge. Hahnemann's doctrine of specifics differed from that of the old school in that the former insisted upon something special corresponding to the individuality of the patient, while the latter made the application general.
By this placing himself in opposition to the doctrine of the dominant school, and more particularly by his assertion that the specific remedies were to be used in diminished and refined doses, to avoid a severe primary action (medicinal aggravation), a controversy with his colleagues was at once established. In their attacks upon him they did not confine themselves to the journals devoted to the advancement of science, but they defamed him in the daily literature, principally in the Allgemeiner Anzeiger der Deutschen.
PAGE 13
Hahnemann defended himself, and at the same time enlightened the public, in popular pithy articles concerning his doctrine. The following articles, published in the above-mentioned paper, are especially interesting in this respect, viz.: "On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine, etc." '1808, p. 263), "Extract from a letter to a physician of high standing on the great necessity of a regeneration of medicine" (1808, p. 343); "To a Student of Medicine" (1809, p. 227); "Signs of the times in the ordinary system of Medicine" (1809, p. 326). At the same time a sensation was created by his cures, which, in the opinion of his adversaries, were effected by non-medication.
These newspaper skirmishes, etc., lasted about four years, during which time Hahnemann observed, aside from their intentional misunderstanding, his opponent's honest, total ignorance of the principles laid down in his Medicine of Experience. In 1810 he published an elaborate treatise entitled Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, which reappeared in 1818, 1824, 1829 and 1833, in new, revised and enlarged editions.
In the Organon he explains each and every dogma, and comes forward more bodily with his so much attacked doctrine of potentization. In this work, § 242, he speaks of the division and diminution of the drug by mixing it with an indifferent vehicle (alcohol, sugar of milk, water), in order to bring the well-selected and adapted agent to such a strength that it will abolish the natural disease without enfeebling the system in the least. Although in this edition of his work, generally called the Bible of Homoeopathy, he only spoke of the diminution of the power of a medicine by diminishing the dose, vet it is evident, from an article which he published in Hufeland's Journal, that he knew, at least twenty years ago, of the increased effect of medicine by the separation of its molecules through its subdivision in an indifferent substance.
PAGE 14
In the year 1811, Hahnemann moved to Leipzig, in order to found there an institution where young physicians might be instructed, both theoretically and practically, in his method of treatment. He found, however, no support, but in order to achieve at least something, he established himself as a teacher in the university.
On the 216th of June, 1812, he defended the dissertation, written for this purpose, De Helleborisme Veterum, his son, Frederick Hahnemann, at that time Bacc. Med., serving as respondent.
Of course he had but few hearers, as the professors had warned the students against the new heterodoxy; but a few had become interested in him, and these he formed into "a society of drug provers". It consisted of the following persons, who afterwards distinguished themselves in homoeopathy, and to whom we revert further on: Frederick Hahnemann, Ernest Stapf, G. William Gross, C. Hornburg, G. Franz, C. Wislicenius, who were afterward joined by Teuthorn, C.T. Herrmann, Fred. Rueckert, Langhammer, Sal. Gustmann, A. Haynel, Bethmann.
Hahnemann himself prepared the remedies for the provers, according to certain rules, and the symptoms produced were collected and accurately registered by him; so that after having published, in 1811, his first volume of Reine Arzneimittellehre, containing the following remedies proved by himself: Belladonna, Dulcamara, Cina, Cannabis, Cocculus, Nux vomica, Opium, Moschus, Oleander, Mercurius, Aconitum and Arnica, he was able, in 1816, to issue the second volume. The latter contains the provings of the following: Causticum, Arsenicum, Ferrum, Ignatia, Magnet, Pulsatilla, Rheum, Rhus tox., and Bryonia. In 1817, the third volume followed, with Chamomilla, China, Helleborus niger, Asarum, Ipecacuanha, Squilla, Stramonium, and Veratrum album; in 1818 the fourth, with Hyoscyamus, Digitalis, Aurum, Guaiacum, Camphora, Ledum, Ruta, Sarsaparilla, Conium, Chelidonium, Sulphur, and Argentum; in 1819 the fifth, with Euphrasia, Menyanthes trifoliate, Cyclamen Europaeum, Sambucus, Calcarea acetica, Muriatis acidum, Thuja, Taraxacum, Phosphori acidum, Spigelia and Staphysagria; in 1821 the sixth, with Angustura, Manganum aceticum, Capsicum, Verbascum, Colocynthis, Spongia, Euphrasia, Bismuthum, Cicuta virosa and Stannum; making in all sixty-one remedies proved by Hahnemann himself, and under his directions. Each volume was furnished with an extremely valuable preface, in which he tried to explain some obscure points in his doctrine, and to combat the material medica and the empiricism of his adversaries. A new edition of this work appeared between the years 1822 and 1827, in which the different remedies were arranged more correctly according to the symptoms produced, and the symptomatology was more complete.
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