THE 
LATEST SYSTEMS 
I N 
MEDICINE 
The Presidential Address Delivered to 
THE OHIO STATE MEDICAL SOCIETY 
JUNE. 1885, 
T5y 
J. C. REEVE, M. D., 
of Dayton, Ohio. 
COLUMBUS, O: 
Hann & Adair, Printers, 26 N. High Street 
1885 THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
SOME OF THE LATEST SYSTEMS IN MEDICINE* 
BY J. C. REEVE, M. D., DAYTON, OHK). 
The history of a science is a history of the human 
mind in its progress along a certain line. It shows by 
what stumbling steps, by what gropings through fogs of 
error, advance has been made. Medicine, like other 
branches of human knowledge, illustrates this. It has un- 
dergone evolution; the process is still going on—therefore 
it is not yet perfect. In its past, then, there has been 
much of error, and in its present there is much to be de- 
sired. Yet neither as to past or present has medicine any- 
thing to fear from comparison with other professions. A 
perfect form of government has not yet been devised. As 
bitter things have been said of the law, its delays and un- 
certainties, as of medicine, while its volumes upon volumes 
of conflicting and overruling decisions bear witness to its 
imperfections. Religious wars and religious persecutions 
furnish some of the darkest pages of human history, while 
the numerous spires of every city and village attest the di- 
versity of interpretation of the revealed Word. 
To-day I ask your attention to some points in the pre- 
ceding stages of the progress of medicine, which present 
much of interest and of profit, and a study of which is es- 
sential to a comprehension of the medicine of to-day. 
*The period of time passed over in this sketch, and the number of 
poinis touched upon, render it impossible to give references in every in- 
stance. The facts have been derived from the following works : 
Renouard; History of Medicine; translated by Comegys. 
Sprengel; Geschichte der Arzneikunde. 
Hecker; Geschichte der neueren Heilkunde. 
Fonssagrives; Principes de Therapeutique General; Introduction; 
Deuxieme Ed. 
Trousseaux et Pidoux ; Traite de Therapeutique, etc.; Intro- 
duction; Huitieme ed. 
Bouchut; Histoire de la Medicine et des Doctrines Medicales. 
Canabis; Revolutions de la Medicine. 
Bauer; Geschichte der Aderlasse. 2 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
One fact in the history of medicine stands prominent— 
it has always taken on the character of the age. In 
ancient times, and indeed down to a comparatively recent 
period, it was made a part of philosophy, and the history 
of one was the history of the other. Forced, then, to take 
its place in a rigid framework of doctrines, which included 
the mental, moral and physical world, and explained the 
economy of the universe, it had no independent existence, 
and moved but as a puppet. Again, it has always varied 
with the changes which its allied sciences have undergone. 
Thus, when chemistry was making brilliant discoveries, 
pathology and therapeutics became largely chemical; when 
physics was making rapid progress, vital actions, normal 
and abnormal, took on a mechanical aspect; under the 
influence of the discoveries of Newton, and the doctrines 
of Des Cartes, an attempt was made to give them even a 
mathematical character. 
. Medicine to-day takes on the character of the age. It 
is active, enterprising, practical and scientific. It is scien- 
tific, so far as our knowledge permits; in spirit, it is entirely 
so, for it uses, instruments of precision as far as possible, 
and much more than ever before. It accepts no state- 
ments that are not sustained by experiment or confirmed 
by numerous observers. Like the age, it is advancing, 
and more rapidly than ever before in its history. He 
would have been a bold man, who had stood up at our last 
meeting and proclaimed that the days of ether and chloro- 
form for eye surgery had passed away. The brilliant dis- 
covery of the past year is but one example of the progress 
our art is making. 
With these positive features of the medicine of to-day, 
allow me to contrast one negative. It is, the absence of 
any general theory of disease, or of the action of remedies. 
In no other point is there greater contrast between the 
medicine of the past and of the present than in this. We 
have no “system” of medicine. Upon this point the pub- 
lic is sadly ignorant. We are called “allopaths” by those 
who do not know what the term implies, and by those 
whose interest it is to make us out as narrow as themselves. 
The truth is, in the treatment of disease we are guided by 
the teachings of experience—not by theory. 
What is a “system” in medicine? A set of hypothet- 
ical explanations of the nature and processes of disease, 3 
J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
upon which are based dogmatic rules for the administra- 
tion of remedies. A system differs from a theory or 
hypothesis in this, that the temporary and provisional use 
of these is recognized, while the doctrines of the other are 
accepted as final. Theory and hypothesis are the steps by 
which scientific men reach knowledge; the dogmas of a 
system are held by its disciples to be ultimate truth. 
When theories no longer agree with facts, they are aban- 
doned ; if facts do not agree with a system, so much the 
worse for the facts. Theories and hypotheses are the serv- 
ants of the human mind; a system is its master. 
The past of medicine is full of systems. They have 
been the curse of the profession, if not of the human race. 
They have led to such exaggerations of the value of some 
remedies, and such excesses in certain lines of treatment, as 
to give foundation for some of the bitterest sarcasms which 
have been directed against our art. Under some systems, 
the treatment of disease was but pure expectancy, then 
medicine at the bed-side was justly termed, “a meditation 
upon death, ” and the biting sarcasm of Goethe’s Mephis- 
topheles was fully justified.* Under others, excessive 
activity with powerful remedies was the rule; then the 
physician was likened to a blind man striking with a club, 
sometimes hitting the disease, oftener the patient. In the 
history of medical systems you will find that the Dr. 
Sangrado, of Le Sage, was not a mere creature of the 
imagination, and that the characters of Moliere were actors 
on the stage of real life. 
It is to some of these systems that I would direct your 
attention to-day. The latest that figured in the history of 
medicine are four. They are the systems of John Brown, 
of Breussais, of Rasori, and of Hahnemann. What were 
the doctrines of these systems? What influence did they 
exert upon medical progress? What impression did they 
make on therapeutics? What remains of them now? 
In regard to all these systems the following general 
statements may be made: i. They had their origin in the 
unsatisfactory and imperfect state of medicine at the time. 
2. Each of them contained doctrines as erroneous and 
exaggerations as great as any existing in the prevailing 
*“Der Geist der Medecin is leicht zu fassen; 
Ihr durchstudirt die grosse und kleine Welt, 
Um es am Ende geh’n zu lassen, 
Wie’s Gott gefellt.” 4 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
practice. 3. Each contained a measure of truth, small 
though it may have been, and this has passed into the 
general domain of medicine, while the residue has 
passed, or is passing, to oblivion. 4. Neither of them 
gained more than a small fraction of the profession as dis- 
ciples, but these waged bitter warfare against the general 
body and its doctrines. 
Let us go back one hundred years. Within thirty or 
forty years of that time these systems had their rise. 
Cullen published his “Elements” in 1789, which for nearly 
fifty years was the text-book of the civilized world. It 
was the first effort to place the practice of medicine on a 
scientific basis. Cullen stands at the dividing line between 
ancient and modern medicine. Haller’s then recent dis- 
covery of irritability and contractibility as inherent proper- 
ties of muscular fibre and of the sensibility of nerves, sepa- 
rates these two periods as by a great gulf. The solids 
could now play their part in physiology and pathology. 
Humoral pathology was overthrown after an unbroken 
reign of nearly eighteen centuries, and therapeutics became 
something more than an attempt to correct the acridity or 
viscidity of the fluids. 
Cullen had something of a system based on spasm and 
atony of the capillaries, but at the bed-side he was a true 
clinicien, and his system never governed him ; for, although 
the father of solidism, he did not deny to the fluids a 
share in pathology, nor did he base his therapeutics 
entirely on theory. 
Within about thirty or forty years of Cullen’s appear- 
ance, the four systems alluded to took their rise. It was a 
notable period in human history., Politically, largely under 
the influence of our revolution and the establishment of our 
republic, France threw off her monarchial form of govern- 
ment, feudalism and the throne went down together, the 
foundations of social life were broken up, anarchy pre- 
vailed, until order was restored by a military despotism. 
Throughout Europe governments tottered, while up to 
1815 successive waves of war swept from one end of the 
continent to the other. Notwithstanding the clash of arms 
it was a period of great intellectual activity. The sciences 
had made and were making rapid progress; the ideas of 
the past were unsettled without establishing new ones on a 
solid foundation. Electricity was a new wonder, and J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
5 
seemed about to reveal all the secrets of vitality, normal 
and abnormal, and to furnish a universal remedy. 
Phrenology made its appearance and rapidly took a 
position from which it has ever since steadily declined. 
Mesmer came upon the scene with the first revela- 
tions of animal magnetism, now known as artificial 
somnambulism, farther to astonish and bewilder mankind. 
Never in the history of the world has there been a period 
when opinions were more unsettled and when inquiry was 
more restless. Speculation was the leading tendency of 
the times, a belief in the wonderful everywhere prevalent, 
while Germany was especially befogged by complicated 
and intricate systems of philosophy. These were fit times 
for the birth of systems of medicine, for medicine like other 
branches of knowledge was in a transition stage; the doc- 
trines of the past were shaken and undermined, new ones 
had not yet been established. Taking the best possible 
view, medicine was in a deplorable condition; it was a 
mixture of dogmatism, of empiricism, and of mysticism. 
Cullen’s influence had not yet, in the early part of the 
period, destroyed the influence of the humoral pathology, 
and based upon this, blood-letting was carried to excess. 
The materia medica was scanty, and the powers of medi- 
cine but imperfectly known. Moreover, a barbarous poly- 
pharmacy prevailed, and medicines were administered in 
complex and incongruous mixtures, as if by the number of 
ingredients to make up for want of precision of knowledge. 
It would be unjust, however, not to mention the sub- 
stantial advances made during this period, or to omit the 
names of those honest workers in our profession who at 
once added to knowledge and benefited the human race. 
Just before the opening of this period, Morgagni laid the 
foundations of pathological anatomy, John Hunter made 
his brilliant discoveries in physiology and surgery, and 
William Hunter his researches in obstetrics. Priestly dis- 
covered oxygen in 1774, and soon after Lavoisier made 
out the chemistry of combustion and respiration. Pneu- 
matic chemistry had made great advances, and at the 
beginning of the century, Sir Humphrey Davy, in one 
short sentence on nitrous oxide, gave the first index to the 
road which led, nearly fifty years later, to the discovery of 
anesthetics. Bell, in 1794, delivered those lectures on 
surgery which inspired Ephraim McDowell to perform 6 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
ovariotomy — the most glorious triumph of surgery. 
Bichat, by his study of the tissues founded general anat- 
omy. Jenner, in this period, discovered vaccination, 
never surpassed in practical benefit to mankind. Towards 
the close of it, Bright, in England, opened up a new and 
most important chapter in renal pathology, and in France, 
Laennec perfected the stethoscope, and by comparison of 
the physical signs during life, with the changes found after 
death, made an advance in practical medicine of inestima- 
ble value. These were some of the substantial gains of 
medicine during the time in which these systems rose and 
flourished. While they made progress along a very nar- 
row line, the general profession was advancing with a broad 
front. 
John Brown was a Scotchman of humble parentage. 
His early life was a struggle with poverty. Much of his 
education was gained by teaching and by translating into 
Latin, or by writing, the theses of other students. For a 
time he was a teacher, and became a tutor in Cullen’s 
family, but they quarreled, and this had, without a doubt its 
influence in the origin of a system which was in opposition 
to the leading spirit of the times. He was a man of great 
ability and good classical education, endowed with an 
excellent memory, and great powers of language. A wit, 
a brilliant conversationalist, an eloquent and ready speaker, 
with a love of controversy that left no opportunity for the 
exercise of his powers unimproved, he attacked the views 
of his adversaries with the keenest sarcasm, and main- 
tained his own opinions with that dogmatism which always 
wins the assent of the young and unthinking. Moreover, 
he was a convivialist, with the usual results; dissipation 
marred his prospects, prevented his success, and doubtless 
shortened his life. 
Brown published his system in 1780. He opens in 
the usual strain of reformers. He had passed, he says, 
seventy years in lamenting the profound uncertainty and 
the impenetrable obscurities of a salutary art. All at once 
a revolution came to him. It was the result of a fit of 
gout. Previously he had treated himself in orthodox 
fashion with debilitating remedies and strict diet. This 
time he tried the opposite plan. He feasted, he drank to 
merriment, and his gout rapidly disappeared. “I saw 
by that,” he says, “that there was an asthenic inflamma- J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
7 
tion.” This was an unrecognized fact then, familiar 
enough now. One fact would seem a narrow foundation 
upon which to build a system of medicine; yet Brown’s 
system was thus built, as others have been. It was built 
in the cabinet, out of the imagination, not from facts 
gathered at the bed-side and observations made in the 
dead-house. 
This is his system. Life is the result of incitability. 
All its expressions and phenomena are the result of the 
action of stimuli or excitants upon this incitability. It 
would seem, then, very important to know what incitability 
is. It is a word. As a thing it is unknown in nature; 
revealed only by its effects. Brown nowhere defines it, 
but says that every being is endowed with a certain amount 
of it which being exhausted, life ceases. It pervades the 
entire system, it varies in degree, but never differs in 
quality. Diseases are changes in this incitability, either of 
excess or deficiency, caused by the influence of external or 
internal stimuli. A lessened incitability is debility, and 
this may be either the effect of too little incitation, or the 
result of over stimulation. Diseases from increased incita- 
bility are sthenic, from decreased, asthenic. But there 
was a wonderful disproportion between these two classes, 
97 per cent, were asthenic, 3 per cent, sthenic. The loca- 
tion of different diseases in these two classes was entirely 
arbitrary; some very dissimilar in nature and in symptoms, 
were ranged side by side. A scale was formed, which 
read upwards toward increased, and downwards toward 
decreased incitability, and the word of the master gave 
each disease its position. 
In this system, local diseases received scant attention, 
everything depended on the condition of the whole econ- 
omy. As for etiology, students were warned against the 
study of the causes of disease, that “venomous serpent of 
philosophy.” A knowledge of anatomy was of slight 
value. Any idea of specific diseases, or of remedies act- 
ing specifically, either against disease, or on particular 
organs, was entirely lacking. The symptoms of the 
patient, even, were of little account, all depended alone on 
an estimate of the powers of the general system. 
Brown’s therapeutics was the corollary of his patholog- 
ical doctrines. For sthenic diseases, he used depletion and 
evacuants. But we have seen how small proportion of dis- 8 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
eases he recognized as of this character; therefore, vene- 
section ana other lowering measures played but an insig- 
nificant part. Nearly all diseases being asthenic, stimu- 
lants were used most frequently and most freely. Wine, 
and alcoholic liquors, camphor, ether, and electricity were 
his chief remedies, but above and beyond all, opium. His 
administration of this was in accord with his estimate of its 
powers as a stimulant—extravagant. In fevers he gave 
ten drops of laudanum every fifteen minutes, until the 
patient slept, and then doubled the dose! It is stated that 
he gave sometimes as much as 150 drops at a dose! 
which suggests grave doubts as to the quality! 
Brown’s system then was simple so far as treatment is 
concerned, and simplicity is said to be the seal of truth. 
Hear him: “So great is the simplicity to which the art of 
medicine has been brought back, that a physician upon 
coming to the bed-side has only three things to determine. 
First, whether the disease is general or local; second, if 
general, whether sthenic or asthenic; third, to what degree 
it is either. These points decided, he has only to lay 
down his plan of cure, and carry it out with appropriate 
remedies. ” 
This was the system of Brown. Almost entirely des- 
titute of clinical foundation, a creature of the imagination, 
one-sided to a degree, it combined simplicity in theory 
with simplicity in practice. Wonderful it is to us now, 
that it could gain adherents; yet, presented by an able 
advocate, in captivating style, and with dogmatic affirma- 
tion, aided by great dissatisfaction with existing practice, 
and by the charms of novelty, it made for a time a strong 
faction in medicine. Those who talk of medical sects and 
their antagonistic feelings at the present day, should go 
back to the times of Brunonianism. So bitter were the 
debates in the Royal Medical Society of Edinburg, that 
several duels were fought, and at Gottingen there were 
street fights between the students who were disciples of 
Brown and their opponents, and the military had to be 
called out to quell the riots! Emperors, and even the 
Pope, were dragged into the contest and issued decrees 
relating to the subject! 
Faulty and false as was this system, it was a reaction, 
violent and irregular perhaps, but still a just reaction 
against a prevailing humoralism, which even Cullen’s influ- J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
9 
ence had not been able to abolish, against an abuse of 
blood-letting, and against an excessive polypharmacy. 
It caused a recognition of the facts that frequently there is 
discord between the condition of a part and fhe state of 
the general system, that stimulants are often useful under 
circumstances where they had not been heretofore used, 
and that a consideration of the patient should accompany a 
study of his disease. 
Broussais was born in 1772 and died in 1838. The 
early part of his professional life was spent in the French 
navy and army. His first publication in 1803 was on hec- 
tic fever, and in 1808 he put forth a more considerable 
work on thoracic and abdominal inflammations. His pecu- 
liar views did not attract much attention until he had 
impressed them upon successive classes of students at the 
military hospital of Val de Grace. In 1816 he made his 
appearance as a reformer, in his Ex amen des Doctrmes Med- 
icates, extended and completed in 1821; a work, which 
high authority says is illuminated by flashes of genius. 
He was a man of marked ability, endowed with great 
rhetorical powers, ardent in temperament, aggressive in 
spirit, positive in conviction, bold in attack, bitter in 
invective and keen in satire. He divided the profession of 
Paris; as usual, the young joined the ranks of the innova- 
tor, the old remained true to the doctrines in which they 
had been educated. Moreover, there was a touch of pol- 
itics in his doctrines harmonious with the times—the 
ancien regime of medicine was to be overthrown! 
Again was proposed reform heralded by arraignment 
and denunciation of the past and self-laudation of the 
reformer. Medicine was covered with the darkness of 
night, he says, until he appeared; pathology had been a mass 
of errors; now doctrines were taught which would prove 
most beneficial to the human race! The “incitability” of 
Brown now became “irritation.” As with Brown the 
general system was alone considered, with Broussais the 
part became the principal factor. The relative proportion 
of asthenic and sthenic disease was now reversed; the lat- 
ter by far out-numbered the former. A state of irritation 
having been occasioned in an organ or part, by the influ- 
ence of irritants, either external or internal, it was but a 
step to inflammation, and this was the keynote of his system. 
By sympathy, distant organs were affected; the heart, and 10 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
there was fever; the brain, and there was delirium. Crisis, 
instead of being favored, according to Hippocratic doc- 
trine, was to be avoided as a violent and dangerous effort 
of Nature* All pathology was in the one word, inflam- 
mation. 
Hear him: “It is by an inflammation which destroys 
with more or less promptitude, one or several of the 
organs essential to life, that the largest number of man- 
kind perish. Every practitioner accustomed to contem- 
plate the ruins of this admirable structure, which he has 
not been able to prevent crumbling to decay, is impressed 
with this truth. If we turn over the pages of the immortal 
work of Morgagni, we find everywhere the unequivocal evi- 
dences of inflammation. When we examine patients afflicted 
with chronic diseases, the majority of them complain of fixed 
and permanent pain of some internal part, while the wast- 
ing fever they suffer, indicates to us, too often, that they 
will perish by phlogistic disorganization of some of the 
viscera. If we give close attention to the symptoms of 
acute diseases, we find almost always, a trouble of the cir- 
culation, a more intense local heat, accompanied with red- 
ness and swelling, if the organ is external, and if not, these 
signs are manifest upon an examination when life is 
extinct.” 
Of all the organs of the body, the stomach and upper 
part of the alimentary canal, were, according to Broussais, 
the most frequently attacked by inflammation, and disease 
of this part from the wide range of its sympathies was 
also the most important. How could be better explained 
the loss of appetite, the nausea, the coated tongue, the 
malaise, the headache and depression of spirits which 
attend the onset of all acute diseases? Gastro-enteritis was 
the prime factor in pathology; the cause, the consequence 
or the accompaniment of almost every disease. He who 
studied the stomach, studied the most essential part of all 
diseases. Only by study of the stomach could fevers 
be understood, for all fevers were gastro-enterites. Essen- 
tial fevers were denied, and upon no point did he fight the 
faculty more strenuously than upon this. In vain did 
Chomel adduce one hundred autopsies made at la Charite, 
in which not a trace of gastric inflammation was found. 
What had facts to do with a system ? When anatomical 
changes in the intestines were present, as in typhoid fever, J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
11 
they were the cause, not the consequences of the fever. 
All anatomical changes were the result of inflammation and 
positive proof of its existence. Such growths as melanosis, 
scirrhus, and all forms of cancer, together with the effu- 
sions of dropsy; and what could be more positive than 
scrofulous enlargement of lymphatic glands, and the tuber- 
culous deposits of phthisis? Small-pox began with a 
gastro-enteritis, so did measles and scarlet fever! Corvi- 
sart, who had just published the first work on diseases of 
the heart, and Laennec, who was introducing and perfect- 
ing the stethoscope, were both reproached with overlook- 
ing gastro-enteritis, the most important accompaniment of 
cardiac diseases. Even the neuroses did not escape. 
What plainer proof of inflammation than delirium, coma, 
and convulsions? Hysteria, mania, melancholia and imbe- 
cility, were also submerged in this gulf of gastric path- 
ology. 
Here, then, was a system as simple as Brown’s. It dif- 
fered only in that diseases were all local instead of general, 
sthenic instead of asthenic. Departures from health 
varied only in degree, not at all or but little, in kind; 
whatever the locality, however diverse the symptoms, the 
morbid element was ever the same; changes in the fluids 
were ignored, all was inflammation. 
Broussais therapeutics can be soon disposed of. His 
treatment was the logical result of his pathology. The 
healing powers of nature were practically denied, and the 
powers of the physician over-estimated. It was only duty to 
combat vi et armis these congestions and this inflammation. 
Blood-letting was the most powerful means at command, 
consequently blood-letting was the leading, almost the 
only, remedy. The lancet was used for diseases the most 
diverse, as dropsies, hypochondria, and other mental aber- 
rations, phthisis, and the exanthemata. Intermittent and 
remittent fevers were periodical gastro-enterites, and were 
to be treated by bleeding at every accession of the par- 
oxysm. Bark was only to be given during the apyrexia. 
A trace of this doctrine has remained within my remem- 
brance, and we still occasionally hear, from the laity, 
expressions of surprise at the administration of quinine 
during fever. Consequent on this gastro-enteritic pathol- 
ogy, leeching to the epigastrium was a favorite procedure. 
Under Broussais, leeches were used more freely than ever 12 
THE president’s ADDRESS. 
before or since, or ever will be again. Thirty or forty 
were applied to the epigastrium at once, nor was one appli- 
cation all. Besides these measures there was virtually 
nothing. His views of gastric and intestinal inflammation 
caused him to reject purgatives and emetics as positively 
injurious, and to neglect salines. Emollient drinks, 
ptisanes, gum-water, barley-water, decoction of althea; 
these, and only these, besides blood-letting. 
It would seem impossible that any good could result 
from such a system as this. Yet it bore some good fruit. 
It brought back to consideration the local affection, and 
in this was a counter balance to Brunonianism. It gave 
great stimulus to the study of pathological anatomy, in 
which the profession demonstrated the falsity of his doc- 
trines. Ir was the means of advancing our knowledge of 
fevers, individualizing them, substituting simplicity for 
complexity, anatomical knowledge for theoretical explana- 
tions. Broussais, like Brown, overthrew for a time poly- 
pharmacy, but at the same time he destroyed the materia 
medica. His therapeutics, however, will not bear com- 
parison with Brown’s. It was better to be sick in Edin- 
burgh than in Paris. Of these two systems, we may 
accept a good deal of the treatment of Brown and reject 
his pathology; and accept much of the doctrine of Brous- 
sais and reject his therapeutics. 
The system of Rasori need not detain us long. It 
did not extend much beyond Italy, the land of its birth, 
but it modified the other systems, had its influence upon 
medicine, and so demands notice. Rasori translated 
Brown’s work and was at first an ardent Brunonian, 
but afterward modified and even reversed the doctrines of 
his master. He published no formal treatise, but papers 
and pamphlets, and the system reached its full develop- 
ment under his disciple, Tommasini, in 1821. 
Again, diseases were only of two classes, sthenic and 
asthenic, but now the terms were, “the diathesis of stimu- 
lus and of contro-stimulus. ” But Rasori agreed with 
Broussais and differed with Brown as to the relative pro- 
portion of the two. Again diseases were sthenic or 
asthenic by the word of the master—chlorosis, for instance 
was a slow angioleucitis, an inflammation, therefore a 
sthenic disease. Remedies were stimulant or contro-stim- 
ulant as they had proved beneficial in one or the other J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
13 
class of diseases. In case of doubt as to which class a 
given case belonged to, the physician was to make a trial, 
of venesection for instance, and decide from the effects. 
With Brown, debility was relative or indirect, the rela- 
tive being from insufficient stimulus, the indirect from 
exhaustion of the incitability, the result of over-stimulation ; 
there was no such thing as a direct debility or asthenia. 
This direct debility, especially as produced by remedies, 
was recognized by Rasori, and so it was by Broussais, but 
blood-letting was his only sedative or contro-stimulant, 
while Rasori found in tartar-emetic, digitalis and other 
medicines efficient contro-stimulants. Inflammation was 
now fought with vascular sedatives, as well as with vene- 
section. Tartar-emetic was Rasori’s leading medicine. 
By study of its action he was led to the doctrine of toler- 
ance. He found that in large, even enormous doses, it 
did not produce emesis, and his explanation was that it 
acted directly on the disease. By Rasori, medicines were 
almost always given singly. While, for Brown, they only 
cured by affecting the general system, Rasori taught the 
important doctrine that they had a special or specific action 
on individual organs, which was a decided advance. Thus, 
he had vasculo-cardiac and cardio-vascular sedatives, 
gastric, spinal and cephalic contro-stimulants, etc. 
Here, again, was a system based on the impotency of 
nature, and on the power of art to cure disease. Any 
tendency towards health by crisis or otherwise was denied. 
The most violent and perturbative and depressing meas- 
ures were pushed to extremes. It was the system of con- 
traria contrariis carried to excess. The contraria, however, 
was directed against the diathesis, for the disease was often 
treated by similars; as jalap and gamboge for dysentery, 
nitre for diabetes, etc. Medicines were administered in 
doses simply enormous; nitrate of potash, two and a half 
ounces; gamboge, a scruple; tartar-emetic, twelve grains; 
jalap, one to four scruples. 
Let us take a case from the records: The patient was 
a robust man in the second day of the disease. He had 
considerable fever, violent pain in the right side of the 
chest, pulse strong, breathing short. Venesection to two 
pounds, and eighteen grains of digitalis. On the third day 
there was still pain, pulse 112, expectoration bloody; 
bleeding eighteen ounces, twenty four grains of digitalis; 14 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
in the evening eighteen ounces more blood taken. On the 
fourth day the same symptoms, eighteen ounces of blood 
morning and evening and thirty-six grains of digitalis. 
Fifth day same state of affairs; two venesections and two 
scruples of digitalis. Sixth day, all the symptoms worse, 
pulse very small, 108, great depression of strength ; bleed- 
ing to one pound and two scruples of digitalis. Seventh 
day no change, the bleeding and digitalis to be repeated as 
on the day before. Eighth and ninth days, breathing very 
short, small and frequent pulse, worse in every respect; 
again venesection to a pound; bronchial rattling, great 
anxiety, death. No wonder! He died, as did the notary 
in Gil Bias, because he could not stand another venesection, 
and another dose of the favorite remedy! 
It would seem to us now as if a fatal result must neces- 
sarily follow in every case treated upon these principles. 
Yet Rasori gives 22 per cent, as his mortality from pneu- 
monia; while for all diseases it was 16 per cent. Tom- 
masini claims that the mortality of his hospital practice 
was the lowest ever recorded, 10 per cent, or including the 
mild cases, only 5 per cent. I think we are forced to the 
conclusion that, while the Rasorian system furnished 
ample evidence of how much the human frame could 
endure, it also shows the utter unreliability of figures as 
indicating the results of any mode of practice. Unless you 
can “go behind the returns” there is nothing so unreliable 
as statistics in medicine. 
It was time for some one to appear and revive the 
teaching of Hypocrates, that nature sometimes cures 
disease, and that the physician is her minister and assis- 
tant, not her autocrat. Instead came Hahnemann, and 
again the curative powers of Nature were denied, and the 
effects of medicines exaggerated. Again the profession 
was arraigned and denounced for its imperfections, and 
the new doctrines proclaimed with intense egotism. The 
origin of Hahnemann’s system, like that of Brown, was in 
a single observation. Reflecting on the mode in which 
Peruvian bark cured fever, he took a dose himself; it was 
followed by fever, therefore, it cured by exciting a disease 
similar to the one for which it was given. From this pro- 
ceded the doctrine of similia similibus curantur. It was 
announced as the universal law of cure, and a “system” was 
built up which equals the others in assumptions, in hypothe- J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
15 
ses and speculations, and surpasses them in demands upon 
credulity. It is a system to one feature of which, the 
small doses of medicine, attention has been too exclusively 
directed, while its monstrous doctrines in pathology de- 
serve equal, if not more, attention. 
1. Disease is purely dynamical; a change in the 
spiritual nature of man. Its causes cannot possibly be 
material. It is known only by its symptoms therefore, 
all study of pathology is useless, nor does the physician 
need a knowledge of anatomy.* 
2. Diseases are never cured by antipathic or by allo- 
pathic treatment. These methods may apparently cure, 
but they really result in increase of the disease. Disease 
can only be cured homeopathically; that is, by exciting 
by medicine, a disease similar to the one under which the 
patient suffers. This artificial disease extinguishes the 
natural disease and no more; it acts exactly to the line of 
health and no further, f 
3. All palliative treatment results in positive injury to 
the patient. If opium be given for pain, as soon as it has 
ceased to act, the pain will be increased beyond its original 
intensity. X 
4. All direct treatment of local diseases, non-trau- 
matic, is wrong and injurious. Those of the eye and ear 
are not excepted. Removal of an encysted tumor, may, 
and is likely to, be followed by blindness, deafness, insan- 
ity, dropsy or apoplexy, ff 
5. Treatment directed to any leading symptom will 
only bring worse disaster. Electricity for partial paralysis 
is specified; it will be followed by entire loss of power.** 
6. The powers of medicine should be ascertained by 
trials or “provings” on healthy persons, and in no other 
way. 
7. But a single medicine should be given at a time, 
and the dose of that should not be soon repeated, its ef- 
fect may last 40, 50, or 100 days.Jj; No matter how suit- 
* Organon, introduction, and £ 16.—The references are to the third 
American edition, by Hering; New York, 1849. 
t §§ 67, 112 
t §69. 
tt l 205 note. 
** 8 59- 
tt § 246. 16 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
able the medicine, an aggravation follows if it be repeated 
on the morrow or the day following.* 
8. The dose of medicine must be small, exceedingly 
small; so minute that why it is limited at all remains a 
mystery. You well know the formula: one drop of the 
mother tincture to ninety of alcohol, to be shaken together 
twice and only twice; one drop of that, to ninety more 
of alcohol, and so on thirty times, when a drop contains 
the decillionth part of the original. Then a globule of sugar 
moistened with this makes a dose more potent than the 
original drop. 
9. A dynamical or spiritual power is conferred on 
medicines by the shakings, or the rubbings of solids. The 
influence of these shakings is so great that whereas in the 
beginning, ten were used, later he was forced to reduce the 
number to two. Why successive dilutions are required, is 
not clear, for it is positively stated that having shaken for 
half an hour, a grain of natron with half an ounce of water, 
the fluid attained an energy equal to the thirtieth dilu- 
tion. f 
10. By this process of preparation inert substances 
such as common salt and charcoal and flint become en- 
dowed with powerful medicinal virtue.** 
11. It is not necessary that medicines be swallowed. 
Applied to any sentient part of the body, their action ex- 
tends to all other parts.;}; Smelling one of the medicated 
globules, and smelling but once, is sufficient in many cases 
for a permanent cure.^ 
12. The vast majority of chronic diseases are caused 
by psora, the principal outward manifestation of which is 
common itch. This psora in the system, notwithstanding 
that diseases are all of spiritual nature and that their causes 
cannot be material, is the cause of almost all chronic dis- 
eases. The following are mentioned: insanity, epilepsy, 
cancer, gout, dropsy, paralysis, nervous debility, spasms 
and pains of all kinds, worms and intermittent fever.ff 
“It has cost me twelve years of study,” says Hahnemann, 
“to discover this great truth.” A few years afterwards, 
* § 246, note. 
t £§ 270, note, 271, 269. 
** § 269. X § 289. tt Introduction note-, $ 246, 285, 228, and notes. 
tt Introduction, note; %% 210, 244, 242, 80 and note. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
17 
the microscope revealed the cause of itch to be an insect 
burrowing under the skin. 
These are the doctrines of the Organon as briefly 
stated as possible. They need no examination, now, since 
those who avow themselves homeopaths hasten to add 
that they are not such as Hahnemann was. But no study 
of this system is complete which does not include a chron- 
ological view of its development, and the mental charac- 
teristics of its author. 
Its doctrines were first propounded in the medical 
journals, and at first, medicines were administered in ordin- 
ary doses. To meet the aggravation of symptoms caused 
by adding fuel to the fire, the doses were gradually dimin- 
ished until the infinitesimal was reached and the mysticism 
of dynamization was conjured up. The new doctrines then 
were sharply criticised by the profession. They could not 
have escaped this had they been far less revolutionary. 
There is a natural conservatism in the human mind which 
is not confined to medicine. Great and valuable truths 
have at first met with opposition. You all know the his- 
tory of the telegraph, the locomotive and transatlantic 
steam navigation. Hahnemann did not bear criticism well. 
In this respect he stands in marked contrast to Haller and 
Harvey. When their doctrines were assailed, they pointed 
again to the facts sustaining them, and awaited with dig- 
nity that verdict in their favor which both lived to see. 
Then, in preparing his own medicines, Hahnemann violated 
the law, and the apothecaries prosecuted him. This is the 
foundation for the cry of persecution by his adherents. 
He became more and more embittered at the profession, 
broke with it, and appealed to the people. The Organon, 
published in 1810, is this appeal. It contains the first 
complete presentation of his doctrines. It is full of bitter 
denunciation and of misrepresentations of the profession, 
while it nowhere approaches in character to that of a scien- 
tific treatise. It is full of positive affirmations, without a 
shadow of proof; words figure for things as imaginary as 
the incitability of Brown; in its claim that man can endow 
matter with spirit by rubbing it in a mortar it taxes belief to 
an extent never before attempted; the fundamental doctrine 
of similia similibus curantur is supported by illustrations 
from the physical world that are simply ridiculous, and the 18 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
medical proof consists of a few dozen isolated cases ex- 
ceptional in character. 
Later in life came the psoric theory. The treatise on 
Chronic Diseases was published in 1828. By this time 
Hahnemann felt his position as the head of a medical sect, 
together with the necessity of maintaining it, and he enun- 
ciated his doctrines with the tone and authority of a master. 
He brooked no difference of opinion, was autocratic and 
dogmatic in the highest degree. Hear him: 
“He who does not walk on exactly the same line with 
me, who diverges, if it be but the breadth of a straw, to 
the right or to the left, is an apostate and a traitor, and 
with him I will have nothing to do.” 
“It holds good, and will continue to hold good, as a 
homeopathic therapeutic maxim, not to be refuted by 
any experience in the world, that the best dose of the 
properly selected remedy, is always the very smallest one 
in one of the high dynamizations as well for chronic, as 
for acute diseases.” 
Here then, was all right of opinion denied, and all 
future progress blocked, by the word of the master. And 
this is the man that homeopaths place on a pedestal and 
worship as a hero! 
The question arises as to how and why such a system 
as this could gain any acceptance whatever. A satisfac- 
tory answer contains three divisions. 
1. The character of the times in which it was pro- 
mulgated. It gratified the love of the mystical; it had, for 
the masses, the charms of novelty, for the educated, those 
of speculative philosophy. 
2. Medicine was brought down to the level of the 
laity. Amateur prescribing was a marked feature of the 
early days of homeopathy. It was simplicity itself to 
hear the patient’s symptoms, look in a book for a drug 
which would cause just such symptoms, and deal out med- 
icines which by no possibility could injure. 
3. Chief above all other things it was, like Brunoni- 
anism, a reaction and a protest against the abuse of blood- 
letting by the profession. 
The latter point deserves more than a passing men- 
tion. Few of us now realize how sad a chapter in the his- 
tory of medicine is that on bloodletting. We need not be 
ashamed to acknowledge it now; we are not responsible for [. C. REEVE, M. D. 
19 
the errors of our ancestors. Had the abuse of venesec- 
tion been confined to individuals, like Broussais and Ra- 
sori, or Guy Patin, who bled a patient 84 years of age four 
times, and an infant of three days, not much could be said, 
but the profession at large was guilty of an abuse of this 
remedy. It was the standard remedy for all inflammatory 
diseases. Inflammation was then a phlogosis, a burning, and 
he who would not take away the fuel, was as culpable as one 
who should see his neighbor’s house burn and not throw on 
water. Bleeding was the leading remedy in fevers of all 
kinds. I can remember the last illness of my mother; she 
died of bilious remittent fever; she was bled several times 
“because the fever had risen again.” Almost within a 
stone’s throw of this building, lives one of the early set- 
tlers of Dayton, a matron around whom cluster grand-chil- 
dren and great-grand-children; she has told me that in one 
attack of fever she was bled sixteen days in succession. 
What can we say now as to the necessity of a formal argu- 
ment against venesection in phthisis, or in regard to 
bleeding in cases of placenta previa even after large losses 
of blood.* 
Is there any explanation of such palpable abuse of a 
remedy? It may be found, I think, first, in the compara- 
tively few remedies then at command; chemistry had not yet 
showered her gifts upon the profession. Second, in the 
fact that the lancet always produced an effect, and that ef- 
fect was sometimes markedly for good. Then followed 
the great error of the system makers, generalizing from a 
few facts, and the remedy was used always because bene- 
ficial sometimes. Looking back to the early years of my 
professional life, I can recall cases in which great and im- 
mediate relief was given by a venesection. The subjects 
were young and robust countrymen with severe acute af- 
fections of the chest one or two cases, of injury with great 
oppression of breathing, and puerperal convulsions. Fur- 
ther, it should be borne in mind that the profession was 
not alone to blame. This remedy was enthroned as a 
sovereign in the popular mind. Any physician who omit- 
ted it would have been arraigned at the bar of public opin- 
ion. Herein is the history of this error like that of others 
* Chapman, Essay on Midwifery, 1733; Treatise, 1753• Smellle, 
Midwifery, 2nd Ed., Vol. Ill, in collection of cases; Smellie himself did 
not thus practice. 20 
THE president’s ADDRESS. 
belonging to humanity. How many murders have been 
committed by duelling under the pressure of a false public 
sentiment? 
Venesection was not only the great popular remedy, 
but it had been elevated to a hygienic measure of the first 
importance, probably because in those times nothing was 
known of hygiene. The peasantry went in troops to be 
bled; with all classes, it was as regular as spring and fall 
house-cleaning. In the life of Louis XI we read, that in 
one year, to preserve his Majesty’s august health, he was 
bled forty times, and took one hundred purges. This must 
have made it lively for royalty! 
To return to homeopathy. It rendered service by the 
assistance it gave in ascertaining the natural history of dis- 
ease, which, for obvious reasons, is one of the most difficult 
problems the profession has ever had to solve. Behind 
the curtain of an active medication, it was pure expectancy, 
and thus while denying Nature’s power it gave the oppor- 
tunity to observe it. Again, it supplemented the work 
of Brown by showing that diseases could be recovered 
from without any lowering measures. It also assisted in 
the overthrow of an excessive polypharmacy, and it gave 
a stimulus to the study of the physiological action of 
medicines. 
In these directions, then, homeopathy exerted a 
favorable influence upon medicine. The extent of that in- 
fluence must possibly be left to the historian of the future, 
to the time when partisanship shall have passed away, as 
it has now disappeared in regard to the systems of Brown 
and Broussais. With no desire to abate the just 
of credit due to Hahnemann, it is impossible to accord all 
that is claimed for him. Thus, the whole merit of testing 
medicines by personal observation of their effects is 
claimed, by his followers, to belong to him. But Haller 
preceded him in this work, as Hahnemann admits, and 
Stoerck, Hahnemann’s own countryman, but whom he 
does not mention, antedates him thirty years. Stoerck 
tested the powers of aconite and conia and hyoscyamus, 
and gave us stramonium. To*grant the claim that Hahne- 
mann deserves all the praise, or even the major part of it, 
for testing medicines or for a milder therapeutics, would be 
to do gross injustice to other workers in the field, and to 
ignore other influences. It would be to overlook the J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
21 
direct influence of Brunonianism, and the indirect influence 
of Broussaism. The former had demonstrated that inflam- 
mations and fevers were cured without depletion; the latter 
incited a spirit of revolt against its extravagant doctrines 
which was led by Laennec and Louis, and sustained by 
Rostan and Grisolle. It would be to overlook the general 
current of progress, which was setting strongly in that di- 
rection. Graves, during the period under consideration, 
revolutionized the treatment of fevers. He banished all 
lowering measures, and gave food and stimulants. So 
great was the change and so beneficial the effects, that he 
expressed the wish to have engraved on his tombstone, 
“This man fed fevers.” Graves derived his inspiration 
from Brown, not Hahnemann. Minor and Tully, in 
New England, under the same influence, most emphatic- 
ally condemned the abuse of venesection.* About 1830 
Marshall Hall showed that certain cerebral symptoms in 
children, appearing in the course of exhausting diseases, 
did not indicate inflammation and required food and stim- 
ulants instead of leeches and purgatives. Then came the 
Vienna School, under Skoda and Rokitansky, with cour- 
age to watch the progress of acute disease without inter- 
ference of any kind, and opened a way afterwards so hap- 
pily followed in the treatment of pneumonia by Hughes 
Bennett of Edinburg. The value of quinine in malarial 
fevers, and the importance of large doses, became' recog- 
nized, and blistering and bleeding were abandoned in this 
large class of diseases. I see men sitting before me who 
can remember when two grains of quinine was considered 
a full dose, and that never to be given when the fever was 
on. For this advance, the surgeons of our army, and 
practitioners in the southern part of this country, deserve a 
large share of the credit. Nor must the introduction of 
veratrum viride be overlooked. It was pushed with energy 
by its advocates as a substitute for venesection, and they 
succeeded in establishing it as such to no small degree. 
* “The lancet is a weapon that annually slays more than the sword. 
The king of Great Britain, without doubt, loses every year more subjects 
by these means—depleting remedies, — than the battle and campaign of 
Waterloo cost him with all their glories.”—Dr. Tully. 
“Such practices have been the scourge and devastation of the human 
race for more than two thousand years.”—Dr. Miner. 
For these extracts I am indebted to the kindness of Dr. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes. 22 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
Then came other publications in favor of milder measures; 
in England, Forbes’ “Young Physic,” and “Nature and 
Art in the cure of disease;” in this country, Bigelow’s 
treatise on “Self-limited Diseases.” The influence of 
these writings in the same direction was immense. Thus 
there were a host of influences, all progress was that way, 
and to attribute the change in practice entirely to Hahne- 
mann is not only untrue, but absurd. 
Time renders a verdict upon all human doctrines. 
First, by the fruits they bring forth; second, by the 
modifications they undergo. We have now to examine 
these systems in these two respects, and see what they 
have given to us of value, and what remains of them as 
originally promulgated. 
Of Brunonianism, we have the doctrine of asthenic in- 
flammation ; i. e. a recognition of the fact that some cases 
of inflammation demand stimulants; also that the treat- 
ment of the general state takes precedence of the local af- 
fection. These date from Brown, and were a great advance 
on the times preceding him. All else he did or wrote has 
passed away and is forgotten. 
Rasori extended and established more firmly, the 
doctrine of the action of certain medicines upon certain or- 
gans. He restored to the materia medica the febrifuges, 
the vascular sedatives, and other classes of medicines. 
Broussais had made nearly a clean sweep of everything but 
leeches and the lancet, and gum water. Corrected by the 
experience of other observers, and modified by the influ- 
ence of more sober minds, Rasori’s teachings have restored 
to favor many valuable medicines, and benefited the art. 
What remains of Broussais therapeutics? Noth- 
ing, literally nothing. Venesection is a lost art. The 
lancet rests in its sheath. Under the influence of that un- 
seen giant, Opinion, fostered and nourished by homeo- 
pathy, if you will, the pendulum of reaction has swung to 
the extremity of the arc. Will it ever return ? I am one 
of those who believe that it will; not to swing to the other 
extreme, but far enough to bring within recognition a val- 
uable remedy with a restricted range of application. My 
belief is based on physiological principles, on observation, 
on experience, on the history of the changing fortunes 
which many other remedies have undergone. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
23 
And now, of homeopathy in these two aspects. 
First, what has it given us? Nothing. It has not made 
a single direct contribution of value to medicine, not one 
addition to our therapeutic resources of such evident worth 
as to cause its adoption by the profession at large. Its 
indirect influence in changing practice has been considered. 
I would not belittle it. But when it comes to direct ad- 
ditions to our knowledge or powers, there are absolutely 
none. This system has now occupied the field for three 
quarters of a century with ultra doctrines, revolutionary in 
character, and making the loudest pretensions. During that 
time the regular profession has introduced the stethoscope, 
the laryngoscope, the ophthalmoscope, the sphygmograph, 
the hypodermic syringe, and the thermometer. It has 
discovered vaccination. It has introduced scores of new 
medicines of the highest value, such as the bromides and 
chloral, iodine and the iodides. Surgery within that time 
has been twice revolutionized, once by anesthetics, and 
once by antiseptics. Not one of these additions has 
come from homeopathy, or been suggested by it. Tak- 
ing a department, which it claims as peculiarly its own, 
the investigation of the action of medicines, and it has 
given us nothing which will bear comparison with Magen- 
die’s and Bernard’s investigations of the action of the alka- 
loids, nothing equal to Leibreich’s brilliant application of 
chloral, based on its chemical changes, or to Brunton’s dis- 
covery of the therapeutic value of nitrite of amyl from its 
physiological action. 
And now as to doctrines. If Hahnemann’s doctrines 
were great truths in medicine they would have remained 
unchanged, or but slightly modified, by those who accept- 
ed them, however slow might have been their acceptance 
by the profession at large. The fact is, the doctrines of 
Hahnemann have undergone modification in every decade 
since his time, and in the most essential points. There is 
not a single doctrine now generally accepted by the sect as 
it was taught by the founder. Immediately after Hahne- 
mann’s death, discord and schism began among his follow- 
ers. The psora theory was too much for some even of 
his ardent votaries. Then for a time an exaggeration of 
the doctrine of similia threatened to swallow up the origi- 
nal homeopathy; this was isopathy, or the treatment of 
diseases by the products of disease, triturations of diseased 24 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
liver for affections of that organ, of expectoration for dis- 
eases of the lungs, etc. Psorin, the pus and mucus from 
the vesicles of itch, is still a standard remedy in homeo- 
pathic practice. 
Time does not permit me to trace the numerous 
changes which homeopathic doctrines have undergone 
within the last fifty years, and to point out those which 
have been from time to time in the ascendant.* I can 
only give briefly the aspect they have taken on at present; 
in other words show what is the homeopathy of to-day. 
It is far easier to say what it is not, than what it is. 
First of all, it is not Hahnemannism; not for the large ma- 
jority. Against nothing do homeopaths protest more 
earnestly than that they should be judged by Hahnemann, 
and claim that it as unjust so to judge them as to compare 
our practice of to-day with that of the times of Rasori and 
Broussais. The plea is fair, and the mistake so often com- 
mitted should not be again made, of attacking homeopathy 
by exposing the fallacies, the absurdities and the extrava- 
gancies of the founder of the system. Homeopaths 
would convey the impression that their creed has been im- 
proved since the days of its founder; the student of the 
subject finds that instead of widening, extending, and ad- 
ding to, the changes consist in the lopping off of absurdi- 
ties, in rejection of many articles, in the restriction of 
others, and that every change made is in the direction of 
regular medicine. 
We all know from daily observation, that they no 
longer follow their master in regard to palliative treatment; 
they give opiates as freely, and resort to the hypodermic 
syringe as readily as we do. Amateur doctoring has pass- 
ed away, and the practice of medicine is not the simple 
thing it once was. The spiritual doctrine of disease has 
disappeared; the advances of pathological anatomy have 
compelled this. They have been forced to acknowledge 
the value of a study of physiology and even of anatomy, 
in spite of the dictum of one of Hahnemann’s near disciples, 
that by seeing a butcher slaughter a hog, a physician 
could get all the anatomy necessary. They no longer 
hold to their leader’s doctrines in regard to the treatment 
* “The history of homeopathy shows as many sects as there are 
temperaments of men.”—C. Wesselhoeft, Neiv England Med. Gaz., 
(Horn.) Nov. 1883. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
25 
of local diseases. Their representative men everywhere, 
now admit the curative powers of nature.* This is not 
much for any lay-man who ever recovered from a cold 
without using remedies, but it shakes the very foundations 
upon which rest the proofs of cures by infinitesimals. 
I will take but one point to show how widely the 
homeopaths of to-day have departed from their early doc- 
trine. I will not select that montrous absurdity, the psoric 
theory, but the doctrine of potentization, which is essenti- 
al if medicines are to be given in the decillionth of a grain, 
or if charcoal and common salt are powerful curative rem- 
edies. I quote only from homeopathic writers. 
Wesselhoeft says of this doctrine that, “Those given 
to spiritism may believe in it, practical people will confine 
themselves to doses in which the presence of matter is 
demonstrable.” Nowhere can you find a more complete 
refutation of this chimerical doctrine, based on experi- 
ment, than in the pages of this homeopathic writer, f 
A contributor to the N. Y., Medical Times calls the 
potentization doctrine, “An outrage on well known philo- 
sophical principles, an insult to common sense and an of- 
fense to common honesty.” The editor of the same jour- 
nal says,;}; “The idea that a given substance can be indef- 
initely diluted and its powers indefinitely increased by it, 
is an allegation that would have astonished the inhabi- 
tants of the earth in the darkest and most superstitious 
ages of ancient Egypt.” Kidd speaks of the doctrine as, 
“A whimsical notion begotten of fanciful dogmatism.” 
Sorge as, “A folly pushed to extremes. ”ff Huber terms 
it an extravagance. 
I could quote equally strong language and from as 
good authorities in regard to the folly of “provings” by 
which hundreds of symptoms have been attributed to an 
* Kidd; The Laws of Therapeutics. 
Maylaender; Ueber heutige Homoeopathic, Berlin, 1885. 
Weisselhoeft; The Law of Similars, Boston, 1883. 
Hirschel; Compendium der Homoeopathic, 1864. (quoted by Jur- 
gensen.) 
t The Law of Similars, 
t Jan., 1878. 
tt Die Homoeopathic befreit von Uebertriebungen. 
ft “Audiatur et altera pars!” A reply to Jurgensen, Vienna, 1877. 26 
THE president’s ADDRESS. 
infinitesimal dose of such a substance as oyster shell, some 
of them experienced days and weeks after the dose was 
taken. 
I will consider briefly what are claimed as the three 
distinctive features of modern homeopathy; they are, 1st. 
The small dose. 2d. The single medicine. 3rd. The law 
of similars. 
These have all been changed from Hahnemann’s 
teachings. This is especially the case in regard to dose. 
That it shall be small as compared with ours, is generally 
held, but as to how small there is no agreement. Some 
few hold to the high dilutions, many more to the lower 
potencies, from the first to the sixth. Moreover, the dec- 
imal dilution has been largely substituted for the centes- 
imal of Hahnemann, so that with doses repeated several 
times every hour, as is their custom, the patient could 
soon be as fully under the influence of a medicine as if 
treated by one of us. 
Other homeopaths again, and a large division of 
them, claim the right to give any dose they please, and 
use sudorifies, diuretics, etc., as such, in full doses. “Up- 
on these points the votaries of homeopathy are as wide 
apart as the material and spiritual, as time and eternity.”* 
There is not only discord upon this dose question, but 
often war, and it is carried on with no gentle words. A 
writer in the “Investigator,” f speaks of the high 
potency men as “those, who, for the most part have 
lied like Cretans about their cures, or have been so 
incompetent in the matter of diagnosis as not to distinguish 
between ephemera and true pathological conditions.” On 
the other hand, the President of the International Home- 
opathic Institute for 1883, says that, “Low potencies 
and crude drugs suppress symptoms, and the prescriber 
who, in his therapeutics, has never risen above them 
has never breathed the refined atmosphere of pure 
homeopathy. ” 
Upon this leading point of doctrine homeopathy is a 
house divided against itself, its foundations undermined by 
opposing factions, and, it will be remarked, the modern 
changes in doctrine all lead towards regular medicine. 
* Drugs; by Asa S. Couch, a paper read before the Amer. Institute 
of Homeopathy, 1883. 
t April 21, 1883. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
27 
II. Upon no point of doctrine do homeopaths lay- 
more stress, especially to the laity, than the single medi- 
cine. No feature of regular medicine do they attack more 
vigorously than that of combining medicines to modify or 
increase their effects. Nor are they at all particular to 
confine themselves to recent times, but with gross unfair- 
ness, go back to the days of polypharmacy for examples 
upon which to animadvert.* Yet no teaching of their 
school do they more frequently violate than this. It is 
only necessary to look through their journals to find abund- 
ant evidence that the law is broken daily. Medicines 
are not mixed together but they are given alternately, in 
close succession of doses, sometimes as near together as 
every ten or fifteen minutes. Now, the difference between 
mixing two medicines before swallowing, and mixing them 
in the stomach, by taking one soon after the other, is just 
the difference between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. 
There is nothing in which homeopathy has departed 
farther from the teachings of Hahnemann than in this, and 
nothing connected with it is so dishonest, and therefore 
so disgraceful, as this. 
III. There remains but the doctrine of similia. This 
is the keystone of the arch, the one portion of the creed 
from which there is the least dissent. Belief in the uni- 
versality of this law, they claim to be the one thing which 
separates them from us.f It is upon this that homeopaths 
base their claims to science, and justly so, for if the law of 
cure by similars is a universal law, as claimed by Hahne- 
mann, then homeopathy is a science. But the universal 
laws of nature have no exceptions. There are none to the 
law of gravitation, none to the law that the planets move 
* Thus, the author of “The grounds of a Homeopath’s Faith,” 
1880, goes back to the Theriaca, of the Pharmacopeia of 1682; and Sharp, 
in his Tracts on Homoeopathy, No. XI, does the same, and gives the 
Mithridate of 1782, which contains fifty ingredients, as examples of our 
prescribing. 
t Yet they are not all agreed upon this. Thus, in “The Grounds 
of a Homeopath’s Faith,” three lectures delivered by request to the 
students of the University of Michigan, by Prof. Jones, of the Homeo- 
pathic Department, we read: “If I were asked to state what chiefly 
distinguishes the homeo.pathic physician from his older brother in the 
science and art of medicine, I should at once reply: ‘Not the law of cure, 
not the infinitesimal dose, not the Hahnemann hypothesis of chronic 
diseases; none of these, but simply this—his fixed faith in the efficiency 
of drugs." 28 
THE president’s ADDRESS. 
over equal areas in equal times, none to the law of union 
by definite proportions in chemistry. Is similia similibus 
curantur a universal law? Rapou, the French defender of 
homeopathy, says it is not.* 
Hirschel, in his Compendium of Homeopathy, says 
it is not.f Dr. Kidd says it is not the only law, and gives 
examples of cures by Dr. Wyld, Vice Pres- 
ident of the Homeopathic Society of Great Britain, says 
that now homeopathy includes the law of contraries.** 
Maylaender says, similia similibus is not a law, it cannot 
be proved by experiment, and it is therefore, an hypothe- 
sis, a belief, a dogma; “There is no universal law for the 
cure of human ailments. ”§ Heinike says a “scientific 
foundation for the law cannot be given. ”ff These are all 
homeopaths. 
Now we all know that Hippocrates recognized this law 
of cure, when he said that diseases are sometimes best 
treated by similars and sometimes by contraries. The 
profession has recognized it ever since, and we act upon it 
to-day, whenever we can effect good by it, as for instance, 
in the treatment of dysentery with saline cathartics, diar- 
rhea with aperients, etc. 
This doctrine, the leading one of the system, has also 
undergone great change since Hahnemann’s time. It has 
now “assumed a form essentially different from that held 
by the founder of the sect.”Jt And Huber says that, “as 
explained by Hahnemann, it is no longer in accord with 
the advances of science.”|| With Hahnemann, the law re- 
ferred to a similarity between the symptoms produced by 
the medicine and those of the disease; now, it refers to a 
likeness between the pathological changes produced by the 
medicine, and those caused by the disease. Again the 
progress of pathological anatomy has forced this change. 
Now, instead of the effect of medicines being determined 
* Quoted by Smythe, Medical Heresies, 1880. 
t Quoted by Jurgensen. 
J The Law of Therapeutics. < 
Letter to Dr. Richardson, published. 
§ Op. cit. 
tt E>ie Principien der Homeopathie, 1871. Quoted by Koeppe, Die 
Homeopathic Hahnemann’s und der Neuzeit, Berlin, 1881. 
Sorge; Op. cit. 
|| Op. cit. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
29 
by provings on the healthy, they are more sought for in 
the changes produced in the various organs or tissues by 
excessive doses.* Thus, bichloride of mercury for dysen- 
tery and Bright’s disease, arsenic for cholera, because the 
toxicological effects of these medicines on the organs re- 
semble the pathological changes found after death. Hence, 
with homeopaths post-mortem examinations of cases of 
poisoning assume a very high value. By study of the 
lethal effect of drugs, they now seek to find specifics for 
disease. This has become the great aim of the sect, 
whether it accords with or is contrary to the law of simi- 
lars. “The main desideratum is to find a medicine be- 
tween which and the disease there exists a specific rela- 
tion. ”f 
It is needless to say that any general, not to say uni- 
versal, relation or connection between the pathological and 
toxicological changes in the organs remains yet unproven, 
just as does any relation between medicinal and disease 
symptoms according to the original doctrine of Hahne- 
mann. Until this is done, homeopathy cannot establish 
its character as a science. Sciences are not built on truths 
of limited range and application. 
The diversity of homeopathic doctrines shows that 
the term,, “homeopath” does not define a man’s position 
with any accuracy at all. It covers very diverse, even op- 
posite opinions. This fact has an important bearing upon 
the medical politics of the present. You know that our 
sister society of New York has been divided upon the 
question of consulting with homeopaths. It would be well 
for us, therefore, so long as this question remains a possi- 
ble one for this and other societies to consider, to under- 
stand as clearly as possible what the term “homeopath” 
implies. 
It includes, at least, three distinct and well defined 
classes: A few homeopaths are Hahnemannians. At the 
meeting of the N. Y. Homeopathic Society in 1883, three 
acknowledged themselves to be such out of sixty present. 
According to the British Medical Journal, the real homeo- 
* The relative importance of the two are well shown in a monograph 
on ‘‘Gelsemium Sempervirens,'n by the Hughes Club, Boston, 1883. Those 
who would obtain a just idea of the scientific(P) character of homeopathy 
are referred to this recent and much lauded production of the school, 
t Wesselhoeft, Op. cit. 30 
THE president’s ADDRESS. 
pathists of Great Britain can be counted on the fingers of 
a single hand. With this portion of the sect it is impossi- 
ble to consult. You cannot reason with a man who main- 
tains that a part is greater than the whole. These are in- 
tellectual cranks, f 
A considerable larger portion of the sect is made up 
of those who have been educated in all the branches of 
medical science, who practice in good faith according to 
the law of similars, but who are bound by no rigid rules 
as to dose. This class is more numerous in eastern cities 
than here. It is large enough to have an organ. This 
journal carries at its head this extract from our code of 
ethics: “A regular medical education furnishes the only 
presumptive evidence of professional abilities and acquire- 
ments, and ought to be the only acknowledged right of an 
individual to the exercise and honors of his profession.” 
And this: “Our practice is not based on an exclusive dog- 
ma, to the rejection of the accumulated experience of the 
profession, and of the aids actually furnished by anatomy, 
physiology, pathology and organic chemistry.” 
These men comprise the best of the sect. They sup- 
port medical legislation to establish boards of health and 
ensure to the public educated physicians. They are on 
their way back to the ranks of the profession; they are 
dropping their distinctive appellation, and certainly no ob- 
stacles ought to be placed in the way of their return. It 
is folly, and worse, to call them charlatans and quacks. 
They are men who exaggerate the value of the law of sim- 
ilars, and the efficacy of the small dose. There is room 
for honest difference of opinion as to the range of the law, 
and it will not do for men who use “Ringer” as a text- 
book, to be too particular about small doses. These men 
are but little farther from the general line of practice than 
many of our number who ride “hobbies,” who appear so 
f Dr. Buchman thus explains a cure, by high potencies, of a case of 
amblyopia with mental depression; “Just as alcohol by its greater physi- 
cal affinity to water expels the sugar of milk from its watery solution, 
just as arsenic expels phosphorus from the living vitellin in the brain 
by its greater pathopoetic affinity to it than the nutritive one to phos- 
phorus and assumes its place, so in our case, similia similibus, by its 
greater pathopoetic affinity, empowers the high potency of phosphorus 
to expel the morbic cause, grief, etc., acting on the cerebral and nervous 
cells, and takes up the place formerly occupied by the morbific cause.” 
Amer. Jour. Homeopathy, Aug. 1884. J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
31 
frequently in the journals with new and wonderful modes 
of treatment of diphtheria, scarlet fever, or of some other 
epidemic they have passed through. We smile at the en- 
thusiasm of these men, we recognize their error to be the 
same as that of the system-makers, generalizing from a 
few facts, we glean from their bushel of chaff the few 
grains of truth there may be; we do not cut them off from 
professional fellowship. We ought to treat as profession- 
al brethren all men who have been educated in medicine, 
who are honorable in conduct, who elevate the profession 
above any of its sects, who are honestly trying to advance 
our knowledge and to cure disease and alleviate suffering, 
whatever may be their methods. 
The majority of homeopaths are unfortunately of quite 
another character. They have adopted this line of prac- 
tice for whatever there may be of popularity in it, and they 
pursue their calling in the sole spirit of trade. Shall I be 
charged with slandering my neighbors? Hear what the 
Medical Times* says. It has dropped the distinct- 
ive title of “homeopathic” and advises others to do 
the same: “We are as confident as we can be of any- 
thing, that many use the term from mercenary motives, 
and that it is in many instances only a trade mark!” The 
editor says farther that the reply to this advice always is, 
that practice would be lost in doing so: “With this fact in 
view how can we reach any other conclusion than that the 
title is retained for the purpose of business.” In plain 
English this means that they are obtaining money by false 
pretenses. These are the men who have kept bright the 
spirit of the founder—hatred of the regular profession. 
They habitually indulge in the grossest misrepresentations 
of regular practice, and play upon every prejudice which 
exists, or which they can excite in the public mind. They 
sneer about “drugs.” It is a good word to use, it sounds 
like dregs, and dregs means dirt. They boast much of 
using “pure medicines,” thereby conveying the slander that 
others are not careful about the quality of the chemicals 
they administer. They instill into the minds of their pat- 
rons the fear of “strong medicines,” and, while doing so, 
deal out “lachesis, ” serpent venom, and “crotalus, ” the 
poison of the rattlesnake—medicines which are too strong 
1884. 32 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 
for our pharmacopeia. They emphasize the single medi- 
cine doctrine while dispensing several different kinds to be 
given at intervals of ten or fifteen minutes. These are the 
men who prate of being the “advanced thinkers” of the 
age, implying that no one else is trying to extend the 
knowledge or cure of diseases, while they bitterly oppose 
all efforts to enforce thorough medical education. These 
are the men who, to prevent the establishment of boards 
of health, go to the public and whine about “class legisla- 
tion!” These are the men who are homeopaths in one 
house and in the next are anything that will suit. With 
these men we cannot consult. We want a basis of com- 
mon honesty, at least, to say nothing of that dignity and 
education which should attach to a profession which deals 
with the dearest interests of humanity. We must treat 
them as we do those of our own practice, who with un- 
blushing impudence placard the walls and fill the columns 
of the daily papers with boasts of their superior skill and 
false statements of cure. 
But all members of our profession who advocate con- 
sulting with homeopaths may set their minds at rest. The 
homeopaths do not want us to consult with them. When 
we decline to meet them there is a loud outcry about pro- 
fessional intolerance, and bigotry and persecution. But 
during this great movement in the State of New York to 
terminate this schism, and bring about common consulta- 
tions, not a motion in its favor was made on their side of 
the house. I have looked carefully through the files of 
their journals but failed to find one word of friendly ad- 
vance. Of course schisms and sectarianism do not elevate 
medicine, or increase respect for it, any more than they do 
religion. It were better if this division was closed. But 
judging from the spirit of the times, it will be a long time 
before this sect disappears. The better portion of the home- 
opaths make no organized effort toward reunion; those 
who ply it merely as a money-getting calling will never 
leave it as long as principles and prejudices exist in the hu- 
man mind which make it profitable. 
The extent to which I have occupied your time allows 
but a single question as to the future. Shall we have any 
more systems in medicine? The nineteenth century is 
not favorable to their growth, as shown by the time which J. C. REEVE, M. D. 
33 
has elapsed since the last was promulgated. Still there 
are signs in the air. Is pathology to be hereafter based on 
micro-organisms, and therapeutics to consist only in the ad- 
ministration of germicides? In the past, systems would 
have been built over and over again upon what we know 
already of minute organisms and their relation to disease. 
Let us not commit again the great error of the past, that 
of generalizing from too few facts, and if what has been 
said during this hour shall in the slightest degree tend to 
prevent this, then not in vain has this feeble effort been 
made to trace through the last hundred years some of the 
side currents of medical doctrine.