Re: a question about a scientific approach to eastern & alternative medicine


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...> Yad yada, alakazam

Hype
Pedantics
No research


It seems obvious you actually know very little about homeopathy:
http://www.hans-egebo.dk/skeptic/Homeopathy%20article.htm

One thing, it is not "Eastern" medicine since Germany is not exactly
considered an "Eastern" country.

Oh yeah? What about East Germany?? They were part of the Eastern
Bloc, even! So there.

Germany was not devided during the time homeopathy was thought of...
so there!



So you are familiar with the borders of the Gaul's, the Roman Empire?

Was the Roman Empire and Gauls around in the early 1800's? That was
when homeopathy was invented.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA AH

You don't know the history of anything, including homeopathy.

Since Vernon plonked me for pestering him for evidence of the bodies of
cancer patients being acidic, I'd appreciate it if someone would reply to
this post so he will see it. It makes clear just who does not know the
history of homeopathy. ;o) Rich

Done




Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions

Oliver Wendell Holmes

This essay were presented as two lectures to the Boston Society for the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1842 and was reproduced in Examining
Holistic Medicine (Prometheus Books, 1985). The author achieved prominence
as a physician, poet, and humorist. His son, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
became a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.



It is necessary, for the sake of those to whom the whole subject may be
new, to give in the smallest possible compass the substance of the
Homeopathic Doctrine. Samuel Hahnemann, its founder, is a German
physician, now living in Paris, at the age of eighty-seven years. In 1796
he published the first paper containing his peculiar notions; in 1805 his
first work on the subject; in 1810 his somewhat famous "Organon of the
Healing Art;" the next year what he called the "Pure Materia Medica;" and
in 1828 his last work, the "Treatise on Chronic Diseases." He has
therefore been writing at intervals on his favorite subject for nearly
half a century. [Hahnemann died in 1843.]

The one great doctrine which constitutes the basis of Homeopathy as a
system is expressed by the Latin aphorism,
"SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR,"
or like cures like, that is, diseases are cured by agents capable of
producing symptoms resembling those found in the disease under treatment.
A disease for Hahnemann consists essentially in a group of symptoms. The
proper medicine for any disease is the one which is capable of producing a
similar group of symptoms when given to a healthy person.

It is of course necessary to know what are the trains of symptoms excited
by different substances, when administered to persons in health, if any
such can be shown to exist. Hahnemann and his disciples give catalogues of
the symptoms which they affirm were produced upon themselves or others by
a large number of drugs which they submitted to experiment.

The second great fact which Hahnemann professes to have established is the
efficacy of medicinal substances reduced to a wonderful degree of
minuteness or dilution. The following account of his mode of preparing his
medicines is from his work on Chronic Diseases, which has not, I believe,
yet been translated into English. A grain of the substance, if it is
solid, a drop if it is liquid, is to be added to about a third part of one
hundred grains of sugar of milk in an unglazed porcelain capsule which has
had the polish removed from the lower part of its cavity by rubbing it
with wet sand; they are to be mingled for an instant with a bone or horn
spatula, and then rubbed together for six minutes; then the mass is to be
scraped together from the mortar and pestle, which is to take four
minutes; then to be again rubbed for six minutes. Four minutes are then to
be devoted to scraping the powder into a heap, and the second third of the
hundred grains of sugar of milk to be added. Then they are to be stirred
an instant and rubbed six minutes, again to be scraped together four
minutes and forcibly rubbed six; once more scraped together for four
minutes, when the last third of the hundred grains of sugar of milk is to
be added and mingled by stirring with the spatula; six minutes of forcible
rubbing, four of scraping together, and six more (positively the last six)
of rubbing, finish this part of the process.

Every grain of this powder contains the hundredth of a grain of the
medicinal substance mingled with the sugar of milk. If, therefore, a grain
of the powder just prepared is mingled with another hundred grains of
sugar of milk, and the process just described repeated, we shall have a
powder of which every grain contains the hundredth of the hundredth, or
the ten thousandth part of a' grain of the medicinal substance. Repeat the
same process with the same quantity of fresh sugar of milk, and every
grain of your powder will contain the millionth of a grain of the
medicinal substance. When the powder is of this strength, it is ready to
employ in the further solutions and dilutions to be made use of in
practice.

A grain of the powder is to be taken, a hundred drops of alcohol are to be
poured on it, the vial is to be slowly turned for a few minutes, until the
powder is dissolved, and two shakes are to be given to it. On this point I
will quote Hahnemann's own words. "A long experience and multiplied
observations upon the sick lead me within the last few years to prefer
giving only two shakes to medicinal liquids, whereas I formerly used to
give ten." The process of dilution is carried on in the same way as the
attenuation of the powder was done; each successive dilution with alcohol
reducing the medicine to a hundredth part of the quantity of that which
preceded it. In this way the dilution of the original millionth of a grain
of medicine contained in the grain of powder operated on is carried
successively to the billionth, trillionth, quadrillionth, quintillionth,
and very often much higher fractional divisions. A dose of any of these
medicines is a minute fraction of a drop, obtained by moistening with them
one or more little globules of sugar, of which Hahnemann says it takes
about two hundred to weigh a grain.

As an instance of the strength of the medicines prescribed by Hahnemann, I
will mention carbonate of lime. He does not employ common chalk, but
prefers a little portion of the friable part of an oyster-shell. Of this
substance, carried to the sextillionth degree, so much as one or two
globules of the size mentioned can convey is a common dose. But for
persons of very delicate nerves it is proper that the dilution should be
carried to the decillionth degree. That is, an important medicinal effect
is to be expected from the two hundredth or hundredth part of the
millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the millionth of the
millionth of the millionth of a grain of oyster-shell. This is only the
tenth degree of potency, but some of his disciples profess to have
obtained palpable effects from much higher dilutions.

The degrees of DILUTION must not be confounded with those of POTENCY.
Their relations may be wen by this table:
1st dilution -- One hundredth of a drop or grain.
2d dilution -- One ten thousandth.
3d dilution -- One millionth. -- marked I.
4th dilution -- One hundred millionth.
5th dilution -- One ten thousand millionth.
6th dilution -- One millionth millionth, or one billionth -- marked II.
7th dilution -- One hundred billionth.
8th dilution -- One ten thousand billionth.
9th dilution -- One million billionth, or one trillionth -- marked III.
10th dilution -- One hundred trillionth.
11th dilution -- One ten thousand trillionth.
12th dilution -- One million trillionth, or one quadrillionth -- marked
IV. -- and so on indefinitedly
.
The large figures denote the degrees of POTENCY.

The third great doctrine of Hahnemann is the following. Seven eighths at
least of all chronic diseases are produced by the existence in the system
of that infectious disorder known in the language of science by the
appellation of PSORA, but to the less refined portion of the community by
the name of ITCH. in the words of Hahnemann's "Organon," "This Psora is
the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless
forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria,
hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, madness, epilepsy, and
spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones, or rickets, scoliosis and
cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungus haematodes, gout -- yellow jaundice and
cyanosis, dropsy -- gastralgia, epistaxis, haemoptysis -- asthma and
suppuration of the lungs -- megrim, deafness, cataract and amaurosis --
paralysis, loss of sense, pains of every kind, etc., appear in our
pathology as so many peculiar, distinct, and independent diseases."

For the last three centuries, if the same authority may be trusted, under
the influence of the more refined personal habits which have prevailed,
and the application of various external remedies which repel the affection
from the skin, Psora has revealed itself in these numerous forms of
internal disease, instead of appearing, as in former periods, under the
aspect of an external malady.
These are the three cardinal doctrines of Hahnemann, as laid down in those
standard works of Homeopathy, the "Organon" and the "Treatise on Chronic
Diseases."

Several other principles may be added, upon all of which he insists with
great force, and which are very generally received by his disciples.

1. Very little power is allowed to the curative efforts of nature.
Hahnemann goes so far as to say that no one has ever seen the simple
efforts of nature effect the durable recovery of a patient from a chronic
disease. In general, the Homeopathist calls every recovery which happens
under his treatment a cure.
2. Every medicinal substance must be administered in a state of the most
perfect purity, and uncombined with any other. The union of several
remedies in a single prescription destroys its utility, and, according to
the "Organon," frequently adds a new disease.
3. A large number of substances commonly thought to be inert develop great
medicinal powers when prepared in the manner already described; and a
great proportion of them are ascertained to have specific antidotes in
case their excessive effects require to be neutralized.
4. Diseases should be recognized, as far as possible, not by any of the
common names imposed upon them, as fever or epilepsy, but as individual
collections of symptoms, each of which differs from every other
collection.
5. The symptoms of any complaint must be described with the most minute
exactness, and so far as possible in the patient's own words. To
illustrate the kind of circumstances the patient is expected to record, I
will mention one or two from the 313th page of the "Treatise on Chronic
Diseases," -- being the first one at which I opened accidentally.
"After dinner, disposition to sleep; the patient winks."
"After dinner, prostration and feeling of weakness (nine days after taking
the remedy)."
This remedy was that same oyster-shell which is to be prescribed in
fractions of the sextillionth or decillionth degree. According to
Hahnemann, the action of a single dose of the size mentioned does not
fully display itself in some cases until twenty-four or even thirty days
after it is taken, and in such instances has not exhausted its good
effects until towards the fortieth or fiftieth day,-before which time it
would be absurd and injurious to administer a new remedy.



So much for the doctrines of Hahnemann, which have been stated without
comment, or exaggeration of any of their features, very much as any
adherent of his opinions might have stated them, if obliged to compress
them into so narrow a space.
Does Hahnemann himself represent Homeopathy as it now exists? He certainly
ought to be its best representative, after having created it, and devoted
his life to it for half a century. He is spoken of as the great physician
of the time, in most, if not all Homeopathic works. If he is not authority
on the subject of his own doctrines, who is? So far as I am aware, not one
tangible discovery in the so-called science has ever been ascribed to any
other observer, at least, no general principle or law, of consequence
enough to claim any prominence in Homeopathic works, has ever been
pretended to have originated with any of his illustrious disciples. He is
one of the only two Homeopathic writers with whom, as I shall mention, the
Paris publisher will have anything to do with upon his own account. The
other is Jahr, whose Manual is little more than a catalogue of symptoms
and remedies. If any persons choose to reject Hahnemann as not in the main
representing Homeopathy, if they strike at his authority, if they wink out
of sight his deliberate and formally announced results, it is an act of
suicidal rashness; for upon his sagacity and powers of observation, and
experience, as embodied in his works, and especially in his Materia,
Medica, repose the foundations of Homeopathy as a practical system.

So far as I can learn from the conflicting statements made upon the
subject, the following is the present condition of belief:

1. All of any note agree that the law Similia similibus is the only
fundamental principle in medicine. Of course if any man does not agree to
this the name Homeopathist can no longer be applied to him with propriety.
2. The belief in and employment of the infinitesimal doses is general, and
in some places universal, among the advocates of Homeopathy; but a
distinct movement has been made in Germany to get rid of any restriction
to the use of these doses, and to employ medicines with the same license
as other practitioners.
3. The doctrine of the origin of most chronic diseases in Psora,
notwithstanding Hahnemann says it cost him twelve years of study and
research to establish the fact and its practical consequences, has met
with great neglect and even opposition from very many of his own
disciples.
It is true, notwithstanding, that, throughout most of their writings which
I have seen, there runs a prevailing tone of great deference to
Hahnemann's opinions, a constant reference to his authority, a general
agreement with the minor points of his belief, and a pretense of
harmonious union in a common faith. [Those who will take the trouble to
look over Hull's Translation of Jahr's Manual may observe how little
comparative space is given to remedies resting upon any other authority
than that of Hahnemann.]
* * *
The three great asserted discoveries of Hahnemann are entirely unconnected
with and independent of each other. Were there any natural relation
between them it would seem probable enough that the discovery of the first
would have led to that of the others. But assuming it to be a fact that
diseases are cured by remedies capable of producing symptoms like their
own, no manifest relation exists between this fact and the next assertion,
namely, the power of the infinitesimal doses. And allowing both these to
be true, neither has the remotest affinity to the third new doctrine, that
which declares seven eighths of an chronic diseases to be owing to Psora.
* * *
Let us look a moment at the first of his doctrines. Improbable though it
may seem to some, there is no essential absurdity involved in the
proposition that diseases yield to remedies capable of producing like
symptoms. There are, on the other hand, some analogies which lend a degree
of plausibility to the statement. There are well-ascertained facts, known
from the earliest periods of medicine, showing that, under certain
circumstances, the very medicine which, from its known effects, one would
expect to aggravate the disease, may contribute to its relief. I may be
permitted to allude, in the most general way, to the case in which the
spontaneous efforts of an overtasked stomach are quieted by the agency of
a drug which that organ refuses to entertain upon any terms. But that
every cure ever performed by medicine should have been founded upon this
principle, although without the knowledge of a physician; that the
Homeopathic axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the sole law of nature in
therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever
presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a dogma
of such sweeping extent, and pregnant novelty, that it demands a
corresponding breadth and depth of unquestionable facts to cover its vast
pretensions.

So much ridicule has been thrown upon the pretended powers of the minute
doses that I shall only touch upon this point for the purpose of
conveying, by illustrations, some shadow of ideas far transcending the
powers of the imagination to realize. It must be remembered that these
comparisons are not matters susceptible of dispute, being founded on
simple arithmetical computations, level to the capacity of any intelligent
schoolboy. A person who once wrote a very small pamphlet made some show of
objecting to calculations of this kind, on the ground that the highest
dilutions could easily be made with a few ounces of alcohol. But he should
have remembered that at every successive dilution he lays aside or throws
away ninety-nine hundredths of the fluid on which he is operating, and
that, although he begins with a drop, he only prepares a millionth,
billionth, trillionth, and similar fractions of it, all of which, added
together, would constitute but a vastly minute portion of the drop with
which he began. But now let us suppose we take one single drop of the
Tincture of Camomile, and that the whole of this were to be carried
through the common series of dilutions.

A calculation nearly like the following was made by Dr. Panvini, and may
be readily followed in its essential particulars by any one who chooses.

For the first dilution it would take 100 drops of alcohol.
For the second dilution it would take 10,000 drops, or about a pint.
For the third dilution it would take 100 pints.
For the fourth dilution it would take 10,000 pints, or more than 1,000
gallons, and so on to the ninth dilution, which would take ten billion
gallons, which he computed would fill the basin of Lake Agnano, a body of
water two miles in circumference. The twelfth dilution would of course
fill a million such lakes. By the time the seventeenth degree of dilution
should be reached, the alcohol required would equal in quantity the waters
of ten thousand Adriatic seas. Trifling errors must be expected, but they
are as likely to be on one side as the other, and any little matter like
Lake Superior or the Caspian would be but a drop in the bucket.
Swallowers of globules, one of your little pellets, moistened in the
mingled waves of one million lakes of alcohol, each two miles in
circumference, with which had been blended that one drop of Tincture of
Camomile, would be of precisely the strength recommended for that medicine
in your favorite Jahr's Manual, against the most sudden, frightful, and
fatal diseases! [In the French edition of 1834, the proper doses of the
medicines are mentioned, and Camomile is marked IV. Why are the doses
omitted in Hull's Translation, except in three instances out of the whole
two hundred remedies, notwithstanding the promise in the preface
that -some remarks upon the doses used may be found at the head of each
medicine"? Possibly because it makes no difference whether they are
employed in one Homoeopathic dose or another; but then it is very singular
that such precise directions were formerly given in the same work, and
that Hahnemann's "experience" should have led him to draw the nice
distinctions we have seen in a former part of this Lecture.]

And proceeding on the common data, I have just made a calculation which
shows that this single drop of Tincture of Camomile, given in the quantity
ordered by Jahr's Manual, would have supplied every individual of the
whole human family, past and present, with more than five billion doses
each, the action of each dose lasting about four days.

Yet this is given only at the quadrillionth, or fourth degree of potency,
and various substances are frequently administered at the decillionth or
tenth degree, and occasionally at still higher attenuations with professed
medicinal results. is there not in this as great an exception to all the
hitherto received laws of nature as in the miracle of the loaves and
fishes? Ask this question of a Homeopathist, and he will answer by
referring to the effects produced by a very minute portion of vaccine
matter, or the extraordinary diffusion of odors. But the vaccine matter is
one of those substances called morbid poisons, of which it is a peculiar
character to multiply themselves, when introduced into the system, as a
seed does in the soil. Therefore the hundredth part of a grain of the
vaccine matter, if no more than this is employed, soon increases in
quantity, until, in the course of about a week, it is a grain or more, and
can be removed in considerable drops. And what is a very curious
illustration of Homeopathy, it does not produce its most characteristic
effects until it is already in sufficient quantity not merely to be
visible, but to be collected for further use. The thoughtlessness which
can allow an inference to be extended from a product of disease possessing
this susceptibility of multiplication when conveyed into the living body,
to substances of inorganic origin, such as silex or sulphur, would be
capable of arguing that a pebble may produce a mountain, because an acorn
can become a forest.

As to the analogy to be found between the alleged action of the infinitely
attenuated doses, and the effects of some odorous substances which possess
the extraordinary power of diffusing their imponderable emanations through
a very wide space, however it may be abused in argument, and rapidly as it
evaporates on examination, it is not like that just mentioned, wholly
without meaning. The fact of the vast diffusion of some odors, as that of
musk or the rose, for instance, has long been cited as the most remarkable
illustration of the divisibility of matter, and the nicety of the senses.
And if this were compared with the effects of a very minute dose of
morphia on the whole system, or the sudden and fatal impression of a
single drop of prussic acid, or, with what comes still nearer, the
poisonous influence of an atmosphere impregnated with invisible malaria,
we should find in each of these examples an evidence of the degree to
which nature, in some few instances, concentrates powerful qualities in
minute or subtile forms of matter. But if a man comes to me with a pestle
and mortar in his hand, and tells me that he will take a little speck of
some substance which nobody ever thought to have any smell at all, as, for
instance, a grain of chalk or of charcoal, and that he will, after an hour
or two of rubbing and scraping, develop in a portion of it an odor which,
if the whole grain were used, would be capable of pervading an apartment,
a house, a village, a province, an empire, nay, the entire atmosphere of
this broad planet upon which we tread, and that from each of fifty or
sixty substances he can in this way develop a distinct and hitherto
unknown odor; and if he tries to show that all this is rendered quite
reasonable by the analogy of musk and roses, I shall certainly be
justified in considering him incapable of reasoning, and beyond the reach
of my argument. what if, instead of this, he professes to develop new and
wonderful medicinal powers from the same speck of chalk or charcoal, in
such proportions as would impregnate every pond, lake, river, sea, and
ocean of our globe, and appeals to the same analogy in favor of the
probability of his assertion.

All this may be true, notwithstanding these considerations. But so
extraordinary would be the fact, that a single atom of substances which a
child might swallow without harm by the teaspoonful could, by an easy
mechanical process, be made to develop such inconceivable powers, that
nothing but the strictest agreement of the most cautious experimenters,
secured by every guaranty that they were honest and faithful, appealing to
repeated experiments in public, with every precaution to guard against
error, and with the most plain and peremptory results, should induce us to
lend any credence to such pretensions.

The third doctrine, that Psora, the other name of which you remember, is
the cause of the great majority of chronic diseases, is a startling one,
to say the least. That an affection always recognized as a very unpleasant
personal companion, but generally regarded as a mere temporary
incommodity, readily yielding to treatment in those unfortunate enough to
suffer from it, and hardly known among the better classes of society,
should be all at once found out by a German physician to be the great
scourge of mankind, the cause of their severest bodily and mental
calamities, cancer and consumption, idiocy and madness, must excite our
unqualified surprise. And when the originator of this singular truth
ascribes, as in this page now open before me, the declining health of a
disgraced courtier, the chronic malady of a bereaved mother, even the
melancholy of the love-sick and slighted maiden, to nothing more nor less
than the insignificant, unseemly, and almost unmentionable ITCH, does it
not seem as if the very soil upon which we stand were dissolving into
chaos, over the earthquake-heaving of discovery?

And when one man claims to have established these three independent
truths, which are about as remote from each other as the discovery of the
law of gravitation, the invention of printing, and that of the mariner's
compass, unless the facts in their favor are overwhelming and unanimous,
the question naturally arises, Is not this man deceiving himself, or
trying to deceive others?
I proceed to examine the proofs of the leading ideas of Hahnemann and his
school.

In order to show the axiom, similia similibus curantur (or like is cured
by like), to be the basis of the healing art -- "the sole law of nature in
therapeutics" -- it is necessary --
1. That the symptoms produced by drugs in healthy persons should be
faithfully studied and recorded.
2. That drugs should be shown to be always capable of curing those,
diseases most like their own symptoms.
3. That remedies should be shown not to cure diseases when they do not
produce symptoms resembling those presented in these diseases.



1. The effects of drugs upon healthy persons have been studied by
Hahnemann and his associates. Their results were made known in his Materia
Medica, a work in three large volumes in the French translation, published
about eight years ago. The mode of experimentation appears to have been,
to take the substance on trial, either in common or minute doses, and then
to set down every little sensation, every little movement of mind or body,
which occurred within many succeeding hours or days, as being produced
solely by the substance employed. When I have enumerated some of the
symptoms attributed to the power of the drugs taken, you will be able to
judge how much value is to be ascribed to the assertions of such
observers.

The following list was taken literally from the Materia Medica of
Hahnemann, by my friend M. Vernois, for whose accuracy I am willing to be
responsible. He has given seven pages of these symptoms, not selected, but
taken at hazard from the French translation of the work. I shall be very
brief in my citations.

"After stooping some time, sense of painful weight about the head upon
resuming the erect posture."
"An itching, tickling sensation at the outer edge of the palm of the left
hand, which obliges the person to scratch." The medicine was acetate of
lime, and as the action of the globule taken is said to last twenty-eight
days, you may judge how many such symptoms as the last might be supposed
to happen.

Among the symptoms attributed to muriatic acid are these: a catarrh,
sighing, pimples; "after having written a long time with the back a little
bent over, violent pain in the back and shoulder-blades, as if from a
strain," -- "dreams which are not remembered -- disposition to mental
dejection -- wakefulness before and after midnight."

I might extend this catalogue almost indefinitely. I have not cited these
specimens with any view to exciting a sense of the ridiculous, which many
others of those mentioned would not fail to do, but to show that the
common accidents of sensation, the little bodily inconveniences to which
all of us are subject, are seriously and systematically ascribed to
whatever medicine may have been exhibited, even in the minute doses I have
mentioned, whole days or weeks previously.

To these are added all the symptoms ever said by anybody, whether
deserving confidence or not, as I shall hereafter illustrate, to be
produced by the substance in question.

The effects of sixty-four medicinal substances, ascertained by one or both
of these methods, are enumerated in the Materia Medica of Hahnemann, which
May be considered as the basis of practical Homeopathy. In the Manual of
Jahr, which is the common guide, so far as I know, of those who practise
Homeopathy in these regions, two hundred remedies are enumerated, many Of
which, however, have never been employed in practice. In at least one
edition there were no means of distinguishing those which had been tried
upon the sick from the others. It is true that marks have been added in
the edition employed here, which serve to distinguish them; but what are
we to think of a standard practical author on Materia Medica, who at one
time omits to designate the proper doses of his remedies, and at another
to let us have any means of knowing whether a remedy has ever been tried
or not, while he is recommending its employment in the most critical and
threatening diseases?

I think that, from what I have shown of the character of Hahnemann's
experiments, it would be a satisfaction to any candid inquirer to know
whether other persons, to whose assertions he could look with confidence,
confirm these pretended facts. Now there are many individuals, long and
well known to the scientific world, who have tried these experiments upon
healthy subjects, and utterly deny that their effects have at all
corresponded to Hahnemann's assertions.

I will take, for instance, the statements of Andral (and I am not
referring to his well-known public experiments in his hospital) as to the
result of his own trials. This distinguished physician is Professor of
Medicine in the School of Paris, and one of the most widely known and
valued authors upon practical and theoretical subjects the profession can
claim in any country. He is a man of great kindness of character, a most
liberal eclectic by nature and habit, of unquestioned integrity, and is
called, in the leading article of the fast number of the "Homeopathic
Examiner," "an eminent and very enlightened allopathist." Assisted by a
number of other persons in good health, he experimented on the effects of
cinchona, aconite, sulphur, arnica, and the other most highly extolled
remedies. His experiments lasted a year, and he stated publicly to the
Academy of Medicine that they never produced the slightest appearance of
the symptoms attributed to them. The results of a man like this, so
extensively known as one of the most philosophical and candid, as well as
brilliant of instructors, and whose admirable abilities and signal
liberality are generally conceded, ought to be of great weight in deciding
the question.

M. Double, a well-known medical writer and a physician of high standing in
Paris, had occasion so long ago as 1801, before he had heard of
Homeopathy, to make experiments upon Cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He and
several others took the drug in every kind of dose for four months, and
the fever it is pretended by Hahnemann to excite never was produced.
M. Bonnet, President of the Royal Society of Medicine of Bordeaux, had
occasion to observe many soldiers during the Peninsular War, who made use
of Cinchona as a preservative against different diseases,-but he never
found it to produce the pretended paroxysms.

If any objection were made to evidence of this kind, I would refer to the
express experiments on many of the Homeopathic substances, which were
given to healthy persons with every precaution as to diet and regimen, by
M Louis Fleury, without being followed by the slightest of the pretended
consequences. And let me mention as a curious fact, that the same quantity
of arsenic given to one animal in the common form of the unprepared
powder, and to another after having been rubbed up into six hundred
globules, offered no particular difference of activity in the two cases.
This is a strange contradiction to the doctrine of the development of what
they call dynamic power, by means of friction and subdivision.

In 1835 a public challenge was offered to the best-known Homeopathic
physician in Paris to select any ten substances asserted to produce the
most striking effects; to prepare them himself; to choose one by lot
without knowing which of them he had taken, and try it upon himself or an
intelligent and devoted Homeopathist, and, waiting his own time, to come
forward and tell what substance had been employed. The challenge was at
first accepted, but the acceptance retracted before the time of trial
arrived.

From all this I think it fair to conclude that the catalogues of symptoms
attributed in Homeopathic works to the influence of various drugs upon
healthy persons are not entitled to any confidence.



2. It is necessary to show, in the next place, that medicinal substances
are always capable of curing diseases most like their own symptoms. For
facts relating to this question we must look to two sources; the recorded
experience of the medical profession in general, and the results of trials
made according to Homeopathic principles, and capable of testing the truth
of the doctrine.
No person, that I am aware of, has ever denied that in some cases there
exists a resemblance between the effects of a remedy and the symptoms of
diseases in which it is beneficial. This has been recognized, as Hahnemann
himself has shown, from the time of Hippocrates. But according to the
records of the Medical profession, as they have been hitherto interpreted,
this is true of only a very small proportion of useful remedies. Nor has
it ever been considered as an established truth that the efficacy of even
these few remedies was in any definite ratio to their power of producing
symptoms more or less like those they cured.

Such was the state of opinion when Hahnemann came forward with the
proposition that all the cases of successful treatment found in the works
of all preceding medical writers were to be ascribed solely to the
operation of the Homeopathic principle, which had effected the cure,
although without the physician's knowledge that this was the real secret.
And strange as it may seem he was enabled to give such a degree of
plausibility to this assertion, that any Person not acquainted somewhat
with medical literature, not quite familiar, I should rather say, with the
relative value of medical evidence, according to the Sources whence it is
derived, would be almost frightened into the belief, at seeing the pages
upon pages of Latin names he has summoned as his witnesses.

It has hitherto been customary, when examining the writings of authors of
Preceding ages, upon subjects as to which they were less enlightened than
ourselves, and which they were very liable to misrepresent, to exercise
some little discretion; to discriminate, in some measure, between writers
deserving confidence and those not entitled to it. But there is not the
least appearance of any such delicacy on the part of Hahnemann. A large
majority of the names of old authors he cites are wholly unknown to
science. With some of them I have been long acquainted, and I know that
their accounts of diseases are no more to be trusted than their
contemporary Ambroise Paré stories of mermen, and similar absurdities. But
if my judgment is rejected, as being a prejudiced one, I can refer to
Cullen, who mentioned three of Hahnemann's authors in one sentence, as
being "not necessarily bad authorities; but certainly such when they
delivered very improbable events;" and as this was said more than half a
century ago, it could not have had any reference to Hahnemann. But
although not the slightest sign of discrimination is visible in his
quotations -- although for him a handful of chaff from Schenck is all the
same thing as a measure of wheat from Morgagni -- there is a formidable
display of authorities, and an abundant proof of ingenious researches to
be found in each of the great works of Hahnemann with which I am familiar.

It is stated by Dr. Leo-Wolf, that Professor Joerg, of Leipsic, has proved
many of Hahnemann's quotations from old authors to be adulterate and
false. What particular instances he has pointed out I have no means of
learning. And it is probably wholly impossible on this side of the
Atlantic, and even in most of the public libraries of Europe, to find
anything more than a small fraction of the innumerable obscure
publications which the neglect of grocers and trunk-makers has spared to
be ransacked by the all-devouring genius of Homeopathy. I have endeavored
to verify such passages as my own library afforded me the means of doing.
For some I have looked in vain, for want, as I am willing to believe, of
more exact references. But this I am able to affirm, that, out of the very
small number which I have been able to trace back to their original
authors, I have found two to be wrongly quoted, one of them being a gross
misrepresentation.

The first is from the ancient Roman author, Caelius Aurelianus; the second
from the venerable folio of Forestus. Hahnemann uses the following
expressions,-if he is not misrepresented in the English Translation of the
"Organon": "Asclepiades on one occasion cured an inflammation of the brain
by administering a small quantity of wine." After correcting the erroneous
reference of the Translator, I can find no such case alluded to in the
chapter. But Caelius Aurelianus, mentions two modes of treatment employed
by Asclepiades, into both of which the use of wine entered, as being in
the highest degree irrational and dangerous [Caelius Aurel De Morb. Acut.
et Chron. lib. 1. cap. xv, not xvi. Amsterdam. Wetstein, 1755].

In speaking of the oil of anise-seed, Hahnemann says that Forestus
observed violent colic caused by its administration. But, as the author
tells the story, a young man took, by the counsel of a surgeon, an acrid
and virulent medicine, the name of which is not given, which brought on a
most cruel fit of the gripes and colic. After this another surgeon was
called, who gave him oil of anise-seed and wine, which increased his
suffering [Observ. et Curat. Med. lib. XXI. obs. xiii. Frankfort, 1614].
Now if this was the Homeopathic remedy, as Hahnemann pretends, it might be
a fair question why the young man was not . cured by it. But it is a much
graver question why a man who has shrewdness and learning enough to go so
far after his facts, should think it right to treat them with such
astonishing negligence or such artful unfairness.

Even if every word he had pretended to take from his old authorities were
to be found in them, even if the authority of every one of these authors
were beyond question, the looseness with which they are used to prove
whatever Hahnemann chooses is beyond the bounds of credibility. Let me
give one instance to illustrate the character of this man's mind.
Hahnemann asserts, in a note annexed to the 110th paragraph of the
"Organon," that the smell of the rose will cause certain persons to faint.
And he says in the text that substances which produce peculiar effects of
this nature on particular constitutions cure the same symptoms in people
in general. Then in another note to the same paragraph he quotes the
following fact from one of the last sources one would have looked to for
medical information, the Byzantine Historians.

"It was by these means" (i.e. Homeopathically) "that the Princess Eudosia
with rose-water restored a person who had fainted!"
Is it possible that a man who is guilty of such pedantic folly as this,-a
man who can see a confirmation of his doctrine in such a recovery as
this -- a recovery which is happening every day, from a breath of air, a
drop or two of water, untying a bonnet-string, loosening a stay-lace, and
which can hardly help happening, whatever is done -- is it possible that a
man, of whose pages, not here and there one, but hundreds upon hundreds
are loaded with such trivialities, is the Newton, the Columbus, the Harvey
of the nineteenth century!

The whole process of demonstration he employs is this. An experiment is
instituted with some drug upon one or more healthy persons. Everything
that happens for a number of days or weeks is, as we have seen, set down
as an effect of the medicine. Old volumes are then ransacked
promiscuously, and every morbid sensation or change that anybody ever said
was produced by the drug in question is added to the list of symptoms. By
one or both of these methods, each of the sixty-four substances enumerated
by Hahnemann is shown to produce a very large number of symptoms, the
lowest in his scale being ninety-seven, and the highest fourteen hundred
and ninety-one. And having made out this fist respecting any drug, a
catalogue which, as you may observe in any Homeopathic manual, contains
various symptoms belonging to every organ of the body, what can be easier
than to find alleged cures in every medical author which can at once be
attributed to the Homeopathic principle; still more if the grave of
extinguished credulity is called upon to give up its dead bones as living
witnesses; and worst of all, if the monuments of the past are to be
mutilated in favor of "the sole law of Nature in therapeutics"?

There are a few familiar facts of which great use has been made as an
entering wedge for the Homeopathic doctrine. They have been suffered to
pass current so long that it is time they should be nailed to the counter,
a little operation which I undertake, with perfect cheerfulness, to
perform for them.

The first is a supposed illustration of the Homeopathic law found in the
precept given for the treatment of parts which have been frozen, by
friction with snow or similar means. But we deceive ourselves by names, if
we suppose the frozen part to be treated by cold, and not by heat. The
snow may even be actually warmer than the part to which it is applied. But
even if it were at the same temperature when applied, it never did and
never could do the least good to a frozen part, except as a mode of
regulating the application of what? of heat. But the heat must be applied
gradually, just as food must be given a little at a time to those
perishing with hunger. If the patient were brought into a warm room, heat
would be applied very rapidly, were not something interposed to prevent
this, and allow its gradual admission. Snow or iced water is exactly what
is wanted; it is not cold to the part; it is very possibly warm, on the
contrary, for these terms are relative, and if it does not melt and let
the heat in, or is not taken away, the part will remain frozen up until
doomsday. Now the treatment of a frozen limb by heat, in large or small
quantities, is not Homoeopathy.
The next supposed illustration of the Homoeopathic law is the alleged
successful management of burns, by holding them to the fire. This is a
popular mode of treating those burns which are of too little consequence
to require any more efficacious remedy, and would inevitably get well of
themselves, without any trouble being bestowed upon them. It produces a
most acute pain in the part, which is followed by some loss of
sensibility, as happens with the eye after exposure to strong light, and
the ear after being subjected to very intense sounds. This is all it is
capable of doing, and all further notions of its efficacy must be
attributed merely to the vulgar love of paradox. If this example affords
any comfort to the Homoeopathist, it seems as cruel to deprive him of it
as it would be to convince the mistress of the smoke-jack or the flat-iron
that the fire does not literally "draw the fire out," which is her
hypothesis.

But if it were true that frost-bites were cured by cold and bums by heat,
it would be subversive, so far as it went, of the great principle of
Homoeopathy. For you will remember that this principle is that Like cures
Like, and not that Same cures Same; that there is resemblance and not
identity between the symptoms of the disease and those produced by the
drug which cures it, and none have been readier to insist upon this
distinction than the Homoeopathists themselves. For if Same cures Same,
then every poison must be its own antidote, which is neither a part of
their theory nor their so-called experience. They have been asked often
enough, why it was that arsenic could not cure the mischief which arsenic
had caused, and why the infectious cause of small-pox did not remedy the
disease it had produced, and then they were ready enough to see the
distinction I have pointed out. O no! it was not the hair of the same dog,
but only of one very much like him!

A third instance in proof of the Homoeopathic law is sought for in the
acknowledged efficacy of vaccination. And how does the law apply to this?
It is granted by the advocates of Homoeopathy that there is a resemblance
between the effects of the vaccine virus on a person in health and the
symptoms of smallpox. Therefore, according to the rule, the vaccine virus
will cure the small-pox which, as everybody knows, is entirely untrue. But
it prevents small-pox, say the Homoeopathists. Yes, and so does small-pox
prevent itself from ever happening again, and we know just as much of the
principle involved in the one caw as in the other. For this is only one of
a series of facts which we are wholly unable to explain. Small-pox,
measles, scarlet-fever, hooping-cough, protect those who have them once
from future attacks; but nettle-rash and catarrh and lung fever,- each of
which is just as Homoeopathic to itself as any one of the others, have no
such preservative power. We are obliged to accept the fact, unexplained,
and we can do no more for vaccination than for the rest.

I come now to the most directly practical point connected with the
subject, namely --
What is the state of the evidence as to the efficacy of the proper
Homoeopathic treatment in the cure of diseases.
As the treatment adopted by the Homoeopathists has been almost universally
by means of the infinitesimal doses, the question of their efficacy is
thrown open, in common with that of the truth of their fundamental axiom,
as both are tested in practice.

We must look for facts as to the actual working of Homoeopathy to three
sources.
1. The statements of the unprofessional public.
2. The assertions of Homoeopathic practitioners.
3. The results of trials by competent and honest physicians, not pledged
to the system.
I think, after what we have seen of medical facts, as they are represented
by incompetent persons, we are disposed to attribute little value to all
statements of wonderful cures, coming from those who have never been
accustomed to watch the caprices of disease, and have not cooled down
their young enthusiasm by the habit of tranquil observation. Those who
know nothing of the natural progress of a malady, of its ordinary
duration, of its various modes of terminating, of its liability to
accidental complications, of the signs which mark its insignificance or
severity, of what is to be expected of it when left to itself, of how much
or how little is to be anticipated from remedies, those who know nothing
or next to nothing of all these things, and who are in a great state of
excitement from benevolence, sympathy, or zeal for a new medical
discovery, can hardly be expected to be sound judges of facts which have
misled so many sagacious men, who have spent their lives in the daily
study and observation of them. I believe that, after having drawn the
portrait of defunct Perkinism, with its rive thousand printed cures, and
its million and a half computed ones, its miracles blazoned about through
America, Denmark, and England; after relating that forty years ago women
carried the Tractors about in their pockets, and workmen could not make
them fast enough for the public demand; and then showing you, as a
curiosity, a single one of these instruments, an odd 6ne of a pair, which
I obtained only by a lucky accident, so utterly lost is the memory of all
their wonderful achievements; I believe, after all this, I need not waste
time in showing that medical accuracy is not to be looked for in the
florid reports of benevolent associations, the assertions of illustrious
patrons, the lax effusions of daily journals, or the effervescent gossip
of the tea-table.

Dr. Hering, whose name is somewhat familiar to the champions of
Homoeopathy, has said that "the new healing art is not to be judged by its
success in isolated cases only, but according to its success in general,
its innate truth, and the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles."

We have seen something of "the incontrovertible nature of its innate
principles," and it seems probable, on the whole, that its success in
general must be made up of its success in isolated cases. Some attempts
have been made, however, to finish the whole matter by sweeping
statistical documents, which are intended to prove its triumphant success
over the common practice.
It is well known to those who have had the good fortune to see the
"Homoeopathic Examiner," that this journal led off, in its first number,
with a grand display of everything the newly imported doctrine had to show
for itself. It is well remarked, on the twenty-third page of this article,
that "the comparison of bills of mortality among an equal number of sick,
treated by divers methods, is a most poor and lame way to get at
conclusions touching principles of the healing art." In confirmation of
which, the author proceeds upon the twenty-fifth page to prove the
superiority of the Homoeopathic treatment of cholera, by precisely these
very bills of mortality. Now, every intelligent physician is aware that
the poison of cholera differed so much in its activity at different times
and places, that it was next to impossible to form any opinion as to the
results of treatment, unless every precaution was taken to secure the most
perfectly corresponding conditions in the patients treated, and hardly
even then. Of course, then, a Russian Admiral, by the name of Mordvinow,
backed by a number of so-called physicians practising in Russian villages,
is singularly competent to the task of settling the whole question of the
utility of this or that kind of treatment; to prove that, if not more than
eight and a half per cent of those attacked with the disease perished, the
rest owed their immunity to Hahnemann. I can remember when more than a
hundred patients in a public institution were attacked with what, I doubt
not, many Homoeopathic physicians (to say nothing of Homoeopathic
admirals) would have called cholera, and not one of them died, though
treated in the common way, and it is my firm belief that, if such a result
had followed the administration of the omnipotent globules, it would have
been in the mouth of every adept in Europe, from Quin of London to Spohr
of Gandersheim. No longer ago than yesterday, in one of the most widely
circulated papers of this city, there was published an assertion that the
mortality in several Homoeopathic Hospitals was not quite five in a
hundred, whereas, in what am called by the writer Allopathic Hospitals, it
is said to be eleven in a hundred. An honest man should be ashamed of such
an argumentum ad ignorandam. The mortality of a hospital depends not
merely on the treatment of the patients, but on the class of diseases it
is in the habit of receiving on the place where it is, on the season, and
many other circumstances. For instance, them are many hospitals in the
great cities of Europe that receive few diseases of a nature to endanger
life, and, on the other hand, there are others where dangerous diseases
are accumulated out of the common proportion. Thus, in the wards of Louis,
at the Hospital of La Pitia, a vast number of patients in the last stages
of consumption were constantly entering, to swell the mortality of that
hospital. It was because he was known to pay particular attention to the
diseases of the chest that patients laboring under those fatal affections
to an incurable extent were so constantly coming in upon him. It is always
a miserable appeal to the thoughtlessness of the vulgar, to allege the
naked fact of the less comparative mortality in the practice of one
hospital or of one physician than another, as an evidence of the
superiority of their treatment. Other things being equal, it must always
be expected that those institutions and individuals enjoying to the
highest degree the confidence of the community will lose the largest
proportion of their patients; for the simple reason that they will
naturally be looked to by those suffering from the gravest class of
diseases; that many, who know that they are affected with mortal disease,
will choose to die under their care or shelter, while the subjects of
trifling maladies, and merely troublesome symptoms, amuse themselves to
any extent among the fancy practitioners. When, therefore, Dr. Muhlenbein,
as stated in the "Homoeopathic Examiner," and quoted in yesterday's "Daily
Advertiser," asserts that the mortality among his patients is only one per
cent since he has practised Homoeopathy, whereas it was six per cent when
he employed the common mode of practice, I am convinced by this, his own
statement, that the citizens of Brunswick, whenever they are seriously
sick, take good care not to send for Dr. Muhlenbein!

It is evidently impossible that I should attempt, within the compass of a
single lecture, any detailed examination of the very numerous cases
reported in the Homoeopathic Treatises and Journals. Having been in the
habit of receiving the French "Archives of Homoeopathic Medicine" until
the premature decease of that Journal, I have had the opportunity of
becoming acquainted somewhat with the style of these documents, and
experiencing whatever degree of conviction they were calculated to
produce. Although of course I do not wish any value to be assumed for my
opinion, such as it is, I consider that you are entitled to hear it. So
far, then, as I am acquainted with the general character of the cases
reported by the Homoeopathic physicians, they would for the most part be
considered as wholly undeserving a place in any English, French, or
America periodical of high standing if, instead of favoring the doctrine
they were intended to support, they were brought forward to prove the
efficacy of any common remedy administered by any common practitioner.
There are occasional exceptions to this remark; but the general truth of
it is rendered probable by the fact that these cases are always, or almost
always, written with the single object of showing the efficacy of the
medicine used, or the skill of the practitioner, and it is recognized as a
general rule that such cases deserve very little confidence. Yet they may
sound well enough, one at a time, to those who are not fully aware of the
fallacies of medical evidence. Let me state a case in illustration. Nobody
doubts that some patients recover under every form of practice. Probably
all are willing to allow that a large majority, for instance, ninety in a
hundred, of such cases as a physician is called to in daily practice,
would recover, sooner or later, with more or less difficulty, provided
nothing were done to interfere seriously with the efforts of nature.

Suppose, then, a physician who has a hundred patients prescribes to each
of them pills made of some entirely inert substance, as starch, for
instance. Ninety of them get well, or if he chooses to use such language,
he cures ninety of them. It is evident, according to the doctrine of
chances, that there must be a considerable number of coincidences between
the relief of the patient and the administration of the remedy. It is
altogether probable that there will happen two or three very striking
coincidences out of the whole ninety cases, in which it would seem evident
that the medicine produced the relief, though it had, as we assumed,
nothing to do with it. Now. suppose that the physician publishes these
cases, will they not have a plausible appearance of proving that which, as
we granted at the outset, was entirely false? Suppose that instead of
pills of starch he employs microscopic sugarplums, with the five million
billion trillionth part of a suspicion of aconite or pulsatilla, and then
publishes his successful cases, through the leaden lips of the press, or
the living ones of his female acquaintances,-does that make the impression
a less erroneous one? But so it is that in Homoeopathic works and journals
and gossip one can never, or next to never, find anything but successful
cases, which might do very well as a proof of superior skill, did it not
prove as much for the swindling advertisers whose certificates disgrace so
many of our newspapers. How long will it take mankind to learn that while
they listen to "the speaking hundreds and units, who make the world ring"
with the pretended triumphs they have witnessed, the "dumb millions" of
deluded and injured victims are paying the daily forfeit of their
misplaced confidence!

I am sorry to see, also, that a degree of ignorance as to the natural
course of diseases is often shown in these published cases, which,
although it may not be detected by the unprofessional reader, conveys an
unpleasant impression to those who are acquainted with the subject. Thus a
young woman affected with jaundice is mentioned in the German "Annals of
Clinical Homoeopathy" as having been cured in twenty-nine days by
pulsatilla and nux vomica. Rummel, a well-known writer of the same school,
speaks of curing a case of jaundice in thirty-four days by Homoeopathic
doses of pulsatilla, aconite, and cinchona. I happened to have a case in
my own household, a few weeks since, which lasted about ten days, and this
was longer than I have repeatedly seen it in hospital practice, so that it
was nothing to boast of.

Dr. Munneche of Lichtenburg in Saxony is called to a patient with a
sprained ankle who had been a fortnight under the common treatment. The
patient gets well by the use of arnica in a little more than a month
longer, and this extraordinary fact is published in the French "Archives
of Homoeopathic Medicine."
In the same journal is recorded the case of a patient who with nothing
more, so far as any proof goes, than influenza, gets down to her shop upon
the sixth day.

And again, the cool way in which everything favorable in a case is set
down by these people entirely to their treatment, may be seen in a case of
croup reported in the "Homoeopathic Gazette" of Leipsic, in which leeches,
blistering, inhalation of hot vapor, and powerful internal medicine had
been employed, and yet the merit was all attributed to one drop of some
Homoeopathic fluid.
I need not multiply these quotations, which illustrate the grounds of an
opinion which the time does not allow me to justify more at length; other
such cases are lying open before me; there is no end to them if more were
wanted; for nothing is necessary but to look into any of the numerous
broken-down Journals of Homoeopathy, the volumes of which may be found on
the shelves of those curious in such matters.

A number of public trials of Homoeopathy have been made in different parts
of the world. Six of these are mentioned in the Manifesto of the
"Homoeopathic Examiner." Now to suppose that any trial can absolutely
silence people, would be to forget the whole experience of the past. Dr.
Haygarth and Dr. Alderson could not stop the sale of the five-guinea
Tractors, although they proved that they could work the same miracles with
pieces of wood and tobacco-pipe. It takes time for truth to operate as
well as Homoeopathic globules. Many persons thought the results of these
trials were decisive enough of the nullity of the treatment; those who
wish to see the kind of special pleading and evasion by which it is
attempted to cover results which, stated by the "Homoeopathic Examiner"
itself, look exceedingly like a miserable failure, may consult the opening
flourish of that Journal. I had not the intention to speak of these public
trials at all, having abundant other evidence on the point. But I think it
best, on the whole, to mention two of them in a few words -- that
instituted at Naples and that of Andral.

There have been few names in the medical profession, for the last half
century, so widely known throughout the world of science as that of M.
Esquirol, whose life was devoted to the treatment of insanity, and who was
without a rival in that department of practical medicine. It is from an
analysis communicated by him to the "Gazette Médicale de Paris" that I
derive my acquaintance with the account of the trial at Naples by Dr.
Panvini, physician to the Hospital della Pace. This account seems to be
entirely deserving of credit. Ten patients were set apart, and not allowed
to take any medicine at all,-Much against the wish of the Homoeopathic
physician. All of them got well, and of course all of them would have been
claimed as triumphs if they had been submitted to the treatment. Six other
slight cases (each of which is specified) got well under the Homoeopathic
treatment -- none of its asserted specific effects being manifested. All
the rest were cases of grave disease; and so far as the trial, which was
interrupted about the fortieth day, extended, the patients grew worse, or
received no benefit. A case is reported on the page before me of a soldier
affected with acute inflammation in the chest, who took successively
aconite, bryonia, nux vomica, and pulsatilla, and after thirty-eight days
of treatment remained without any important change in his disease. The
Homoeopathic physician who treated these patients was M. de Horatiis, who
had the previous year been announcing his wonderful cures. And M. Esquirol
asserted to the Academy of Medicine in 1835, that this M. de Horatiis, who
is one of the prominent personages in the "Examiner's" Manifesto published
in 1840, had subsequently renounced Homoeopathy. I may remark, by the way,
that this same periodical, which is so very easy in explaining away the
results of these trials, makes a mistake of only six years or a little
more as to the time when this at Naples was instituted.

M. Andral, the "eminent and very enlightened allopathist" of the
"Homoeopathic Examiner," made the following statement in March, 1835, to
the Academy of Medicine: "I have submitted this doctrine to experiment; I
can reckon at this time from one hundred and thirty to one hundred and
forty cases, recorded with perfect fairness, in a great hospital, under
the eye of numerous witnesses; to avoid every objection I obtained my
remedies of M. Guibourt, who keeps a Homoeopathic pharmacy, and whose
strict exactness is well known; the regimen has been scrupulously
observed, and I obtained from the sisters attached to the hospital a
special regimen, such as Hahnemann orders. I was told, however, some
months since, that I had not been faithful to all the rules of the
doctrine. I therefore took the trouble to begin again; I have studied the
practice of the Parisian Homoeopathists, as I had studied their books, and
I became convinced that they treated their patients as I had treated mine,
and I affirm that I have been as rigorously exact in the treatment as any
other person."

And he expressly asserts the entire nullity of the influence of all the
Homoeopathic remedies tried by him in modifying, so far as he could
observe, the progress or termination of diseases. It deserves notice that
he experimented with the most boasted substances -- cinchona, aconite,
mercury, bryonia, belladonna. Aconite, for instance, he says he
administered in more than forty cases of that collection of feverish
symptoms in which it exerts so much power, according to Hahnemann, and in
not one of them did it have the slightest influence, the pulse and heat
remaining as before.

These statements look pretty honest, and would seem hard to be explained
away, but it is calmly said that he "did not know enough of the method to
select the remedies with any tolerable precision." [Homoeopathic Examiner,
vol. i. p. 22. "Nothing is left to the caprice of the physician. ('In a
word, instead of being dependent upon blind chance, that there is an
infallible law, guided by which the physician must select the proper
remedies.')" Ibid., in a notice of Menzel's paper.]

Who are they that practice Homoeopathy, and say this of a man with the
Materia, Medica of Hahnemann lying before him? Who are they that send
these same globules, on which he experimented, accompanied by a little
book, into families, whose members are thought competent to employ them,
when they deny any such capacity to a man whose life has been passed at
the bedside of patients, the most prominent teacher in the first Medical
Faculty in the world, the consulting physician of the King of France, and
one of the most renowned practical writers, not merely of his nation, but
of his age? I leave the quibbles by which such persons would try to creep
out from under the crushing weight of these conclusions to the
unfortunates who suppose that a reply is equivalent to an answer.

Dr. Baillie, one of the physicians in the great H6tel Dieu of Paris,
invited two Homoeopathic practitioners to experiment in his wards. One of
these was Curie, now of London, whose works are on the counters of some of
our bookstores, and probably in the hands of some of my audience. This
gentleman, whom Dr. Baillie declares to be an enlightened man, and
perfectly sincere in his convictions, brought his own medicines from the
pharmacy which furnished Hahnemann himself, and employed them for four or
five months upon patients in his ward, and with results equally
unsatisfactory, as appears from Dr. Baillie's statement at a meeting of
the Academy of Medicine. And a similar experiment was permitted by the
Clinical Professor of the H6tel Dieu of Lyons, with the same complete
failure.

But these are old and prejudiced practitioners. Very well, then take the
statement of Dr. Fleury, a most intelligent young physician, who treated
homoeopathically more than fifty patients, suffering from diseases which
it was not dangerous to treat in this way, taking every kind of precaution
as to regimen, removal of disturbing influences, and the state of the
atmosphere, insisted upon by the most vigorous partisans of the doctrine,
and found not the slightest effect produced by the medicines. And more
than this, read nine of these cases, which he has published, as I have
just done, and observe the absolute nullity of aconite, belladonna, and
bryonia, against the symptoms over which they are pretended to exert such
palpable, such obvious, such astonishing influences. In the view of these
statements, it is impossible not to realize the entire futility of
attempting to silence this asserted science by the flattest and most
peremptory results of experiment. Were all the hospital physicians of
Europe and America to devote themselves, for the requisite period, to this
sole pursuit, and were their results to be unanimous as to the total
worthlessness of the whole system in practice, this slippery delusion
would slide through their fingers without the slightest discomposure,
when, as they supposed, they had crushed every joint in its tortuous and
trailing body.



3. 1 have said, that to show the truth of the Homoeopathic doctrine, as
announced by Hahnemann, it would be necessary to show, in the third place,
that remedies never cure diseases when they are not capable of producing
similar symptoms. The burden of this somewhat comprehensive demonstration
lying entirely upon the advocates of this doctrine, it may be left to
their mature reflections.
It entered into my original plan to treat of the doctrine relating to
Psora, or itch -- an almost insane conception, which I am glad to get rid
of, for this is a subject one does not care to handle without gloves. I am
saved this trouble, however, by finding that many of the disciples of
Hahnemann, those disciples the very gospel of whose faith stands upon his
word, make very light of his authority on this point, although he himself
says, "it has cost me twelve years of study and research to trace out the
source of this incredible number of chronic affections, to discover this
great truth, which remained concealed from all my predecessors and
contemporaries, to establish the basis of its demonstration, and find out,
at the same time, the curative medicines that were fit to combat this
hydra in all its different forms.

But, in the face of all this, the following remarks are made by Wolff, of
Dresden, whose essays, according to the editor of the "Homoeopathic
Examiner," "represent the opinions of a large majority of Hornoeopathists
in Europe."

"It cannot be unknown to any one at all familiar with Homoeopathic
literature, that Hahnemann's idea of tracing the large majority of chronic
diseases to actual itch has met with the greatest opposition from
Homoeopathic physicians themselves." And again, "If the Psoric theory has
led to no proper schism, the reason is to be found in the fact that it is
almost without any influence in practice."
We are told by Jahr, that Dr. Griesselich, "Surgeon to the Grand Duke of
Baden," and a "distinguished" Homoeopathist, actually asked Hahnemann for
the proof that chronic diseases, such as dropsy, for instance, never arise
from any other cause than itch; and that, according to common report, the
venerable sage was highly incensed (forct courroucé) with Dr. Hartmann, of
Leipsic, another "distinguished" Homoeopathist, for maintaining that they
certainly did arise from other causes.

And Dr. Fielitz, in the "Homoeopathic: Gazette" of Leipsic, after saying,
in a good-natured way, that Psora is the Devil in medicine, and that
physicians are divided on this point into diabolists and exorcists,
declares that, according to a remark of Hahnemann, the whole civilized
world is affected with Psora. I must therefore disappoint any advocate of
Hahnemann who may honor me with his presence, by not attacking a doctrine
on which some of the disciples of his creed would be very happy to have
its adversaries waste their time and strength. I will not meddle with this
excrescence, which, though often used in time of peace, would be dropped,
like the limb of a shell-fish, the moment it was assailed; time is too
precious, and the harvest of living extravagances nods too heavily to my
sickle, that I should blunt it upon straw and stubble.



.

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