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With illustrations, ..... 50 ------------------------.--------------------------------------# GENERAL CATALOGUES SENT GRATIS BY APPLICATION, HOMYOPATHY FAIRLY REPRESENTED. A KEPLY TO PROFESSOR SIMPSON'S "HOMOEOPATHY" MISREPRESENTED. BY WILLIAM HENDERSON, M.D., PROFESSOR OF GENERAL PATHOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. « MLiUA ! FIRST AMERICAN, FROM THE LAST EDINBURGH EDITION. PHILADELPHIA: LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 1854. IV £ K 185 + PROF. SIMPSON'S HOMEOPATHY. LINDSAY & BLAKISTON HAVE JUST PUBIJSHED, HOMCEOPATHY: ITS TENETS AND TENDENCIES, THEORETICAL, THEOLOGICAL AND THERAPEUTICAL. BY JAMES T. SIMPSON, M, D., PROFESSOR OF MIDWIFERY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, ETC., ETC. IN ONE VOLUME, OCTAVO. Price $1,25. WM. S. YOUNG, PRINTER. CONTENTS. Preface to the Second Edition, ......13-24 Preface to the First Edition, ......25-55 CHAPTER I. Comparative View of Homoeopathy and Allopathy, as adapted to acute diseases; in which the latter is proved to be a fatal delusion —Homoeopathic Statistics proved to be accurate —Alleged success of Lsennec and army surgeons in inflammation of the lungs shown to be incredible—Allopathic cases, when selected, proved to present a much greater mortality than the Homoeopathic unsefected—Al- lopathic treatment of pneumonia destroys human life—Acute in- flammation of the lungs better left to nature than to Allopathy— Dietl's experiments—Allopathic fatality in pleurisy, peritonitis, &c. —Pretended Allopathic cures of consumption more extravagant than those of the most ignorant Homoeopaths, .... 57-108 CHAPTER II. Outline of the life and labours of Hahnemann; his parentage; early devotion to learning; medical education; relinquishment of prac- tice from disgust at its uncertainty; distinction as a chemist; his first conception of the homoeopathic law, and return to practice— Allopathy and Anti-pathy afford no hope to practical medicine— The proving of medicines the road to Homoeopathy—First publica- tions on a new principle, or the necessity of ascertaining the actions of medicines on the healthy—Persecution of Konigslutter—Disco- very of the prophylactic power of Belladonna—Proofs of its truth, and refutation of Dr. Simpson's objections, .... 109-149 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PAGE Hahnemann settles in Leipsic in 1810—Poverty and abuse the attend- ants on his devotion to medical reform—His numerous Essays on Homoeopathy, and on speculative systems in medicine, &c.—Publi- cation of the Organon in 1810—Small-pox and vaccination as illus- trations of homceopathicity among diseases—Dr. Simpson's gross misrepresentation of Hahnemann on this subject^-Dr. Muhry and Dr. Willan—The substantial accuracy of Hahnemann's statements regarding small-pox—Remarkable errors of Dr. Simpson—Measles and hooping-cough—Dr. Simpson charges Hahnemann with false- hood—Proofs that the charge is untrue—Publication of the Pure Materia Medica, &c.—Persecutions at Leipsic—Hahnemann obliged to leave it in 1821—Residence at Coethen—Publication of his Chro- nic Diseases—The Psoric doctrine shown to be an allopathic doctrine —The itch-doctrine not a doctrine of Hahnemann at all—The Psoric doctrine substantially correct—Proofs from Willan, Budd, &c., &c. —Removal to Paris in 1835; his death in 1843, . . . 150-181 CHAPTER IV. Eleven notable charges against Homoeopathy—Hahnemann's change of opinion; his treatment of Allopathy; his morbid anatomy; his erroneous notions of the moon; the character of some of his disci- ples ; erroneous estimate of him by Dr. Mure; Homoeopathy coun- tenanced by great folks and by the clergy; Homoeopathists don't agree in every thing; Homoeopathy not universally adopted; Ho- moeopathy is witchcraft; Homoeopathy is avarice, . . . 1S2-226 CHAPTER V. The Homoeopathic law, provings, and doses—Dr. Simpson's four "in- stances " against Homoeopathy proved to be in its favour—The use of cinchona, vaccination, lemon-juice, and iodine, not due to allo- pathic science, but to chance or popular opinion—Allopathic speci- fics shown to be properly Homoeopathic—Dr. Simpson's errors and mis-statements regarding the provings—Homoeopathic doses justi- fied by experience—Andral's experiments conducted in ignorance and bad faith,..........227-285 Appendix, ........... 287-300 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. So short a time (scarcely three weeks) has elapsed be- tween the publication of the first edition of this work, and the demand for a second, that, besides the correction of such oversights of composition as were scarcely avoidable in a treatise written somewhat hurriedly and amidst many inter- ruptions, there is little or no difference between this new edition and its predecessor. I have observed nothing in the public journals, which have noticed the work, that calls for any reply; nothing indeed but the personal abuse, and the party mis-statements, which my experience of the habits of some of our professional op- ponents, and of the blamable partiality of some newspaper editors, who are of course unacquainted with the subject in dispute, had led me to anticipate, and accustomed me to dis- regard. That the more important part of this work, the statistics of acute inflammations, can be successfully attacked by the allopathic party, I have taken too much pains with the facts and calculations to have the smallest misgiving. That they will attempt it is to be expected—they cannot help themselves, they must put on the appearance of dis- puting the results to which I have been led, but I defy them to unsettle a single conclusion which is recorded in that part of the work. 14 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The only event which has happened since the publication of the first edition, that calls for particular notice, is the ap- pearance of a paper, to which the following observations re- fer:— In a late number of an allopathic journal,* a passage oc- curs that would have demanded some notice from me, (ac- quainted as I am with the particulars of the case to which it refers,) even though I had no personal concern with it. And it is not in the very least degree because I am the " homceo- pathist" referred to in that passage, it is not even on ac- count of the manner in which the reference is made to my- self and the practice I prefer, that I think it both expedient and proper to comment upon it in this place. Personal re- sponsibility for the way in which I discharge my professional duties, I am of course prepared to incur; and with the sup- port of my deliberate convictions of what is true in medical science, and right in professional conduct, it is a very insig- nificant matter to me by whom that truth is condemned, or that conduct aspersed. It is by no personal motive regard- ing either myself or the author of the article to which I have referred, that I am actuated in my present purpose. The narrative I am about to quote suggests far more impor- tant reflections than are merely personal to either of us, and it is to these that I wish to direct the attention of the reader. In considering the deaths from dysentery and diarrhoea, the author of the "Investigation," after stating that eleven such deaths had occurred in the quinquennial period, from 1845 to 1850, to which his labours were confined, observes,— " A scrutiny of the certificates shows that five of the eleven * An investigation of the Deaths in the Standard Assurance Company. By Robert Christison, M. D., V. P.R. S. E., Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Edinburgh, and Ordinary Physician to the Queen in Scotland. Monthly Journal of Medical Science, August 1853. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 15 might be justly considered first-class lives at the time of assu- rance. To these may be added a sixth, as to whom the certi- ficates supply no information, but who was familiarly known to the directors as a healthy citizen and of a long-lived family. This gentleman fell a victim to the delusions of Homoeopathy, now happily on the wane in this city. He was seized with acute dysentery, for which his attendant, notwithstanding its swift and steady advances, administered with fearful perti- nacity only infinitesimal nothings. On the fourth day his family gathered courage to put an end to this mockery; the Homoeopathist withdrew, and I was consulted, but only to see the patient in a state of hopeless collapse, afflicted with inces- sant, fluid, bloody, involuntary discharges, a fluttering pulse, a husky voice, and cold extremities; under which symptoms he expired early on the fifth day. This was the swiftest case of dysentery I have ever seen. But I never before saw a case of acute dysentery left to nature. This party very nearly at- tained his expectations of life." (P. 131.) I shall not take the trouble now to describe the surprise with which I perused these sentences, but shall restrict myself to a calm narrative of facts, and to such dispassionate obser- vations as they appear plainly to suggest. And, first, it is worthy of being noticed that, for the special and avowed pur- poses of the " Investigation," all that it was necessary for the author to do, in connexion with the case adverted to, was to specify the death by dysentery at a certain age, and after a certain period of insurance, or, if anything additional was to be expected, that the allopathic investigator should express, as he had every right to do, his honest opinion, however ill- founded, regarding the "delusions of Homoeopathy," in con- nexion with the result of the case. So much the "Investi- gation" might demand: more than this, and especially a pro- fessed account of the early progress of the malady, of which he knew nothing, the courage of the family, the withdrawing 16 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. homoeopathist, &c, &c, was quite uncalled for,—a voluntary intrusion of irrelevant and unedifying particulars into a dis- quisition on life assurance. I draw attention to this matter in order to remark that, in referring to this case, the author of the Investigation obviously did not feel himself hampered by want of space, and compelled by an imperative necessity of being brief, and of excluding whatever did not bear upon the immediate and primary objects of his paper, to omit men- tioning any important particulars bearing upon the issue of the case, but considered himself at liberty to say all he had a mind to say. Secondly, The reason for the case in question being added to the list of first-class lives is very extraordinary. It is solely on the ground that a board of " directors," composed of non-professional persons, regarded the gentleman as a " healthy citizen." " The certificates supply no information:" nothing is ascertained regarding the illnesses he may have had, or the care in regard to diet, &c, he may have needed in order to preserve his healthy appearance, and no medical evidence exists as to any one point in his actual condition at the time of his being insured, or as to anything in his pre- vious history. I am bound, however, to say, that this is the only instance throughout the investigation in which the usual evidences regarding the quality of a life are entirely dis- pensed with. In all the other cases the strictness necessary to entitle the Investigation to the confidence of the reader appears to be maintained with scrupulous propriety. But, under this second head, there is much more to per- plex and surprise than the particulars I have just noticed. The question occurs, What "directors" are referred to as the parties whose decision regarding the health of the gen- tleman is held to be so conclusive? That it cannot be the board who presided over the institution when the gentleman in question was admitted to the benefits of insurance is obvi- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 17 ous, for of the fifteen gentlemen who composed that body in 1828, when the insurance in question was effected, I under- stand that thirteen at least have been long dead, and the author of the Investigation, whose connexion with the com- pany is of a comparatively recent date, can therefore have had no opportunity of learning their opinions on the subject. Not one of these gentlemen belonged to the board of di- rectors in 1849, the year in which the individual whose case is the theme of this disquisition died. Nor can any of the more permanent office-bearers of the company have given information regarding the opinion of these directors,—for the manager of 1828 has been for many years in another part of the world, and the secretary has been long out of the world altogether. The only other directors who can be sup- posed to be the parties to whose opinion the reference is made in the Investigation, are those who were members of the board during the period embraced by the Investigation, which includes, of course, the year 1849, when the death in question took place. But it cannot have been intended by the author of the Investigation to appeal to the directors of 1849 as cognizant of the existing and habitual state of health of a citizen twenty-one years before, which they had no op- portunity of personally knowing, even were they competent to judge, and of which they had avowedly no documentary evidence to enable them to form an opinion. Their testi- mony, therefore, can only have been reasonably appealed to in regard to the apparent health of their fellow-citizen, (who was also, by the by, their fellow director,) at the time he became affected with the acute disease which made him "a victim to the delusions of Homoeopathy." Now, what are the facts? There cannot have been a sin- gle director of 1849 who was not aware that their fellow- citizen, during the winter and part of the spring preceding his death, and down to the time at which he was seized with 18 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. the acute disease of which he died, had been "breaking up," his health undermined by chronic cough and chronic disease of the stomach, and, for aught I know, by allopathic drug- ging, until, long before his last and acute illness, he had be- come sallow, haggard, and greatly reduced in strength and flesh! All this happening to a man in his sixty-eighth year, constituted a state of general decay which no medical man of experience, be he of what party he may, can deny to have been one of the most unfavourable conditions in which it was possible for a severe attack of acute dysentery to have oc- curred. His age itself was an unfavourable circumstance, but it was as nothing compared to the inroads which chronic disease had made on his whole constitution. Nearly about the same time, I witnessed quite as sudden and acute an attack of dysentery in a gentleman of seventy-six, but he was not worn with previous disease as well as old age, and he recovered in a few days. I was first consulted by the gentleman whose case is ad- verted to in the Investigation on the 31st of March, 1849. The notes of his chronic illness, which I committed to writing at the time, were as follows:— In the beginning of December last he became affected with cough and expectoration, and continues to be so to a con- siderable degree, though now better than formerly. No physical signs of disease of the chest. Tongue clean in front, loaded and pasty behind. Appe- tite much diminished, and he soon tires of anything. His habitual sensation is that he is already full, and needs no food. After eating he experiences an uneasy turning sensa- tion in the stomach, and nausea, producing a desire to vomit, or a wish that he had eaten nothing. Sometimes he does vomit, and experiences relief. After eating, too, he is liable to feel as if a hard lump existed in the stomach. He has always much flatulence after food, and is liable to be af- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 19 fected with nausea, and filling of the mouth with water, at any time. Bowels pretty regular. In the evenings after dinner he is inclined to sit cowering over the fire, is taciturn and chilly. All these symptoms date also from the begin- ning of winter. He had some homoeopathic remedies pre- scribed. 5th April.—Cough and expectoration much less. Xo flatulence till last night, after an indigestible meal; appetite much improved. No "burden" about the stomach till yes- terday, after the indigestible food referred to. No sickness. Altogether better, and feels a new activity and pleasure in business. Much less chilliness. More medicine. \§th.—Has been really very well. Knows a great differ- ence in his strength. Continue medicine. It was while thus improving in health, but before time enough had been afforded to enable the improvement to re- pair the ravages made by the previous months of disease, that he was seized, on the evening of the 22d of April, with dysentery, in consequence of prolonged exposure to cold; and on the following day, the first of my attendance for the acute disease, it had acquired a character of significant se- verity: the pulse was 100 in the minute, skin hot and dry, thirst, and the evacuations already sanguineous and slimy. Had the history of this case prior to the last illness been even hinted at, however inadequately, in the Investigation, I should not have considered myself called upon to make any comments on the opinion of the allopathic author regarding the unsuitableness of the homoeopathic treatment. It was not to be expected that, with his views and practical unac- quaintance with Homoeopathy, he should have entertained any other opinion, or have hesitated to express it. Those who practise homceopathically have no right to demand that their cases shall not be commented on by physicians who dis- sent from their principles. Homceopathists may, indeed, 20 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. even when their cases are represented by their opponents fully and fairly, very reasonably observe that they do not pretend to cure every case of acute inflammation that may occur in their practice, and they may, with undeniable jus- tice, retort on their too stringent critics, that Allopathy, in every city and hamlet in Christendom, in the best as well as in the worst hands, loses many a case of acute inflammation, dysentery among the rest, at every age and in every phase of general health, good and bad, that human creatures can possess. These remarks remind me of an anecdote which I have heard in connexion with the case I have been describ- ing. At a dinner party in this city, soon after the decease of this gentlemen, two allopathic physicians commented with much emphasis on the unhappy event: "It was very melan- choly,—really dreadful,—a sad, sad business," etc., &c.; and many the shake of the head, and half-sorrowful, half-indig- nant phrase, betokened or appeared to betoken their wounded feelings. A non-medical friend who had reason to think more favourably of the offending practice, began to shake his head too, and to groan in concert, while now and then he muttered to the gratified ears of the two," Sad, very sad,— the most melancholy case I have known for years." "Yes," said the two; "dreadful,—you may well say so." "I was thinking," said the other, " of poor J. H.; a man in the prime of life; little above 50; a rising man; really a great loss; -and so likely to have lived long." " But, but," said one of the Allopaths, "he wasn't treated homoeopathically!" "True, true; but still a very melancholy case,—very melancholy, —and of dysentery too !" Though we have no right, as I have said, to demand that our cases shall not be commented on by our opponents, we have a right to expect and to require that they shall not be misrepresented, or, what comes to the same thing, represent- ed in such a way as to leave abundant room for misconstrue- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 21 tion. In the present instance I am far from saying or in- sinuating that the misrepresentation or room for misconstruc- tion was deliberate and intentional. But I do say, that care was not taken by the author of the Investigation so to re- present the case as to allow his readers to judge for them- selves whether it was really such as would have made reco- very a probable occurrence in any circumstances or under any treatment. And, in addition to the previous history of the patient, he should have mentioned that, on examination of the body, the mucous membrane of the stomach was found to bear traces of the chronic disease which had for so long a time made healthy and healthful digestion impossible. My informant as to this point was merely a non-medical member of the family, to whom the fact had been communicated, so that I am not prepared to say to what extent the anatomi- cal change had gone. In other particulars, of minor importance, the Investiga- tion is so incorrect as to furnish the clearest proofs that the author wrote without reflection, and without notes to assist his memory. "What does he know of the " swift and steady advances" of the disease? Nothing. On the second day of my attendance, I had hopes that the disease would yield, for the pulse had fallen in frequency from 100 to 78 in the minute, during the previous twenty-four hours. And though the amendment did not advance, the pulse on the last day of my attendance had not risen above 86, while it continued of good size and strength. Besides, though they always maintained the peculiar character they exhibited at my first visit, the other symptoms did not increase so swiftly and steadily as the author of the report very uninformedly asserts. At my last visit, about 5 p.m. on the fourth day of the disease, I found the pulse 86, full and soft, the skin warm, the evacua- tions scanty, though about once an hour. The allopathic physician visited the gentleman three hours 22 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. afterwards, "-but only," he says, " to see the patient in a state of hopeless collapse, afflicted with incessant, fluid, bloody, involuntary discharges, a fluttering pulse, a husky voice, and cold extremities;" were all this correct, this great change in three hours' time, then it would be also cor- rect that " he expired early in the course of the fifth day,' or that immediately following the day (the fourth) on which this physician had made his first visit. But, and this is a re- markable instance of the strange peculiarity that character- izes the whole narrative, the patient did not die till the day after, or the sixth day! I don't know whether it will still be held as the " swiftest case of dysentery " the reporter ever saw. I have heard that the other case referred to in my anecdote was a swift one, but I do not assert that it was, for I do not know. At all events, the question comes now to be, why was this case so very swift? Had a day and a half of Allopathy nothing to do with the swiftness? I don't mean to say that the patient would have recovered but for Allo- pathy, for I am not at all sure that he would, but I incline to think that he would have lived longer. The author of the Investigation hints that it was the swiftest case he ever saw, because he had never before seen a case of dysentery "left to nature," which he facetiously suggests to be equiva- lent to being left to Homoeopathy. I am obliged to contra- dict him again, and to assert that he has seen cases left as long to nature seriously, as he affirms of this case facetiously. In his notice of the dysentery of 1826* he says certain ef- fects followed his treatment "if the patient was seen within three or four days," and he mentions of a particular case which died in his hands, that he " entered the hospital on the eighth day of his illness." Now we have no express af- firmation that these cases had had no treatment, prior to * Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, 1829. * PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 23 their being "seen" by the writer of the report, or before ad- mission into his hospital wards; but the whole tenor of his remarks justifies the conclusion that there had been no treat- ment previous to his own,—for he is giving an account of the alleged effects of a certain medicine on the peculiar symptoms of dysentery, and, in order to be a fair and unequivocal ac- count, it must refer to dysentery untampered with, and not sophisticated by drugs previously administered. Besides, every hospital physician in Europe must have seen cases of severe and acute dysentery that had undergone no medical treatment whatever for four, five, six days, and even more, previous to their being admitted as hospital patients. The poor everywhere are well known to put off the services of the doctor as long as they can. The author of the Investi- gation, in addition to what he knows on this subject from his own hospital experience, will find instances in point recorded in Mr. Brown's account of the dysentery of Glasgow,* where cases are,mentioned that were seven and fourteen days with- out medical treatment, though the disease was so severe as to prove ultimately fatal. After all this, it certainly must appear very strange that the author of the Investigation should endeavour to appal his readers by the allegation that as he had never seen a case of acute dysentery " left to na- ture" for four days, the rapidity of the example he com- ments upon must have been due to that unprecedented cir- cumstance. Not only has he seen cases left as long to nature, as I have shown, but he knew, or ought to have known, that even when not "left to nature,"—that Avheh enjoying or en- during the inflictions of allopathy, cases of acute dysentery have been fatal in six days, and that, therefore, the case he animadverts upon was not by any means a unique one. In Mr. Wilson's notice of the dysentery of Glasgow, in 1827, * Glasgow Medical Journal, vol. i. 24 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. it is remarked, " death sometimes took place so early as the sixth day," which was the date of the death selected for spe- cial remark in the Investigation. To be sure it is there made to occur on the fifth day, but that allegation, as has been seen, is incorrect, and in consequence of its being so renders the exultation of the author over the imaginary swiftness of the case rather awkward. Before concluding these remarks on dysentery, I may be allowed to ask, if one of the eleven cases referred to in the Investigation " fell a victim to the delusions of Homoeopa- thy," what delusion proved fatal to the other ten? Allopa- thy does not appear to be always a very successful opponent of acute dysentery, for the author of the Investigation ad- mits that, in 1826, the allopathic mortality was "dreadful," —twenty deaths out of eighty cases, or one in four! No doubt the disease was epidemic, and epidemic dysentery often presents a considerable proportion of severe cases; but I ask any physician of candour and experience to say, if, among eighty old gentlemen, broken down by chronic dis- ease, so many as three out of four, or even one out of four, would have escaped under the best allopathic treatment? And yet the investigation more than insinuates, pretty broadly intimates, that the case it so partially represents died for want of Allopathy! Lastly, Homoeopathy is said to be " happily on the wane in this city." The correctness of the Investigation in other particulars, will not dispose the readers of this account of it to put much faith in this crowning allegation. No doubt the wish was father to the thought, in the absence of a more legitimate parent. On this point, so momentous to Allopath- ists of every grade, I must content myself with referring to page 205 of this work. & PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. After many announcements, from time to time, of the ap- proaching event, the Professor of Midwifery brought his te- dious gestation of twelve months to a happy issue in the middle of March last. Anticipation was high among the professional kindred, the allopathic side of the family, during the in- teresting period; and we of the other party, who are but the step-sons of "our ancient mother," could gather from the sig- nificant looks of our half-brothers that we were expected to gird up our loins for a speedy retreat on the appearance of the young stranger. He was to be, for modern times, quite an unprecedented production; without a parallel, in fact, since the famous progeny of the cock's egg, whose breath, and even very look, was fatal. We would take no hint, not- withstanding, however kindly intended, thinking it would be time enough to pack up our chattels, if we must do so, after we had looked the awful creature in the face; for, great as our credulity is said to be, we had no faith in prodigies, and a strong suspicion that the powers of the new eockatrice, in- troduced with so much noise, would prove as imaginary as those of its fabulous predecessor. And now that the thing is 3 26 PREFACE. fairly before us, "combed, wattled, and spurred like the dunghill cock with a serpent's tail," as the heralds have it, we hope to be pardoned for laughing at the ridiculous asto- nishment of our friends on the other side, at the absurd object presented to them by the parturient professor. We don't mean it offensively, and hope they will take it in good part; for we can honestly assure them that we never felt so kindly towards them in our lives, or so disinclined to injure their feelings. We are quite aware that this was looked upon as their last hope, and we are not the people to triumph over chop-fallen opponents with an ill-timed merriment—when it can possibly be restrained. But really the present is al- together an exceptional case; and if we do look a degree or two merrier than in the strictness of friendly sympathy we ought, it is in a great measure because we hope that this last and sore disappointment will disenchant them, ere we part, of their delusion, both as to their own position and ours, and be the means of a better understanding among us for the future, if not of a speedy and entire coincidence of opinion regarding the matters at present in dispute. Dr. Simpson's tactics strongly remind me of the ingenious conduct of the Dutch in Charles the Second's time, who kindled bonfires and set their bells a-ringing whenever they had been thrashed at sea, in order to evade the acknowledg- ment or appearance of disaster. For, I believe, it was generally admitted, and even by not a few of his own party, that in the last engagement he was very handsomely beaten; his personal authority as to facts and doctrines shown to be quite infinitesimal; his information to be singularly defective, not only in homoeopathic matters, but in the truths that are common to all medical science; his logic to have its point turned destructively towards himself and his friends; and his theological zeal to be entirely out of place. Yet, with the face of an old Dutchman, here he is again with as much of PREFACE. 27 the former tattered material as he can get to hang together, and as much new canvass of the same originally bad quality as his crippled spars will carry, trying to look as if he was unconscious of defeat. But the device won't do: the former discomfiture can be forgotten only in the new calamity of a still greater. This I may venture to promise, and without laying myself open to the charge of vain confidence; for such is the mode of attack Dr. Simpson has selected, that almost any one might beat him who chose to take the trouble. Nay, the work is, for the most part, done to his hand; for the author's mind has been so confused with the undigested mass of raw material he had swallowed in his twelvemonth of hard reading, that he frequently contradicts and refutes in one page what he had affirmed on the preceding, and loads his paper with commonplace dissertations on human credulity and knavery, which tell with double effect when turned the other way. In his preface, Dr. Simpson, alluding to me, takes occasion to observe in the Dutch style,—"It is said that in a hopeless and hollow law-suit, an English barrister had his brief on the day of trial handed to him with this note: ' No case; but take a chance of decision in our favour by personal abuse of the opposite counsel.' The homoeopathic author of the principal reply to my previous pamphlet seems to have taken up the same tactics as the best or only line of defence for his system. And I have no wish to disturb him in it; more particularly as, like an unhappy lawyer pleading a bad cause, he has him- self, in my opinion, evidently no faith whatever in his own irrelevant arguments and diversified mis-statements." On the first of these charges, which always falls so easily into the imagination of persons in Dr. Simpson's situation, I would observe, that I am of course aware that my former reply was at least as severe (for plain outspoken truth is sometimes very severe) as there was any occasion for, and that others, besides 23 PREFACE. the individual who naturally felt it the most, are of opinion that the lash was laid on with more than necessary good will. I would, however, remind the objectors that, as Lord Jeffrey says, there are occasions " when severity becomes a duty a duty to the public, to the erring brother, and to one's self; and I would remind them, moreover, of the circumstances in which that reply was written. To the persecuted party, the occasion appeared one of life or death to their principles and themselves, a time for courage, energy, and plain speaking. The aggressors seemed powerful, merciless, and bent on mis- chief to the uttermost, so that we had but one choice—to crouch and be crushed like cowards, or to face the odds that were against us, as devoted men who neither gave nor looked for quarter. There was Dr. Simpson, President of the Royal College of Physicians, with all the weight of a "European reputation" in his arm, and all the strength of Colleges and Societies, and hordes of " free companions," at his back, intent on destroying us root and branch, and careless of the weapons he employed, if they seemed but fitted for his purpose. The emergency appeared critical and dangerous in no ordinary degree, and to call for prompt and decisive measures. It is all very well, after the champion—on the credit of whose sup- posed personal authority and character so much of the issue Was made to depend—was disarmed,prostrated, and "disem- bowelled," as one of his own party expressed it, for mere spectators to say, that there was an unnecessary violence in the treatment he received. Skilful and experienced artille- rymen can so estimate the strength of their powder as to make it do its work economically, but I had no scientific data, and no practice, to guide me as to the precise force that was needed gently to upset a President, loaded with the " Euro- pean" thing and what not, and buttressed behind by so many backers. As to the more important of the latter, the Colleges, they had so long ruled the profession, and lorded it over the PREFACE. 29 " sea of troubles " which afflict the public, that it is no wonder their power and importance, as props to the bellicose Pro- fessor of Midwifery, appeared greater than we now know them to be. We mistook them for something like the bluff and bearded Venitian Doge of the thirteenth century, who could say, and effectually too, with his war-ships at his elbow, to Pope and Pagan who would fish forsooth in the Adriatic, "Be off—that sea is ours!" It is all very well to laugh at their peremptory words, now that they are discovered rather to resemble a certain sapient bird, of which Goldsmith re- lates the following anecdote:—" Once upon a time, a goose fed its young by a pond side; and a goose in such circum- stances is always extremely proud, and excessively punctilious. If any other animal, without the least design to offend, hap- pened to pass that way, the goose was immediately at it. The pond, she said, was hers, and she would maintain her right to it, and support her honour, while she had a bill to hiss or a wing to flutter;" and then he goes on to say, how a mastiff, which I take to have been a type of ourselves, the strong- jawed Homoeopathists, chanced to pass by, and thought it no harm if he should lap a little of the water, as he was thirsty; and how he had a mind twenty times to snap off her head,— but finally contented himself with the remark, " A pox take thee for a fool; surely those who have neither strength nor weapons to fight, at least should be civil." For my part, I wish them no such miserable punishment; but certainly think that the "Physicians," in commemoration of Dr. Simpson's presidentship, should inaugurate an effigy of the unreasonable fowl beside the philosophers of their porch, Charon, Pandora, and the other. After the experience we have now had in controversy, there would be no excuse for me, or any one of my way of thinking, employing such deadly weapons as the seeming dangers of an earlier stage of the struggle demanded. We 30 PREFACE. are now comparatively at ease and in safety, and have no other desire than to cultivate the arts of peace; in which I, at least, hope to excel so much, that, as it was wittily said of Caesar, when some one sneered at his baldness, "He has covered that defect with laurels," so the courtesy and for- bearance of all future productions of my pen shall gracefully conceal the roughness of their predecessors. At the same time, I cannot cancel in this work all the just severities of the former; for Dr. Simpson—while he groans under inflictions applied to himself, suppresses in his new production several of the personalities which brought down on him much of the exposure he formerly underwent, and professes an anxiety to avoid "unnecessarily mixing up any personal disputations" with the matter of his new lucubrations,—has done little else from beginning to end of the strange medley he has produced, than labour to load his opponents with charges of quackery, deception, avarice, falsehood, blasphemy, witchcraft, and al- most every other conceivable wickedness and folly. He has violated the sanctity of the grave, and insulted the dead, who cannot defend themselves, as well as the living who can; though in the latter respect, in order to plead for exemption from personal retaliation, he has been more careful than for- merly to avoid specifying the individual objects of his asper- sions, as if he could escape from the guilt of misrepresenting any in particular by misrepresenting all without distinction.* Therefore it is that in defending myself and my friends from * To the best of my recollection, the dead Hahnemann is the only person pointedly and by name vilified by the brave Professor of midwifery. He, alas! is not here to reply. Death is a sad obstacle to fair play, giving all the safety to one side. Truly, as the proverb says, "Better a living dog than a dead lion." Another fact of an equally valiant nature, observable in the " Tenets," is the putting of the insulting and abusive charges with which it abounds, in the form of quotations from other allopathic works against Homoeopathy. PREFACE. 31 such reckless imputations, I find it still necessary to expose the author of them to the merited censure of the reader, as it is impossible to bring to the light of public observation a tissue of extraordinary misrepresentation and abuse, without exhibiting the artificer along with his inventions. Besides, Cumque opere in proprio soleat se pingere pictor, " As every painter paints himself in his own works," and most authors, too,—Dr. Simpson has drawn such a likeness of himself in his various publications on Homoeopathy, as makes him in a great measure harmless to the cause he so ardently aspires to in- jure; and, therefore, I feel bound, in fairness to that cause, to bring the lineaments a little more prominently before the reader than the mere attractions of the portrait would justify. Had he managed the execution of his purpose with more skill, —assumed a tone of dignity that could not stoop, or but with seeming reluctance, to make use of the assertions of the low and worthless writers who had preceded him,—had put on an air of candour and charity which could " scarcely believe so, and so," " hoped that things were not quite so bad as they appeared," and "feared that our friends the Homoeopaths had made some mistake here," in short, "would not for the world impute bad motives without proofs clear as they are painful," and finally, had he, with real caution, but the show of for- bearance, declined entering into details on various scientific questions, hinting merely that a great deal might be said if he had chosen, or had time, and so forth; by thus concealing his dispositions, purposes, and quantum of information, he might have proved, because not so easily caught and exposed, a more formidable opponent than we find him to be. But, like too keen a swordsman, he forgets half his art, which ought to consist not less in covering himself than in striving to van- quish his adversary. By abandoning himself to the passion of the hour, he has exposed himself on every page, and painted a likeness equally absurd and surprising. I can fancy how 32 PREFACE. happy his antagonist, Dr. Mure, will be to appropriate such an object from the head of the allopathic party.* Dr. Simp- son's readers will remember that he mentions an outlandish personage of that name, from somewhere in the neighbour- hood of Patagonia, as a dealer in a very unmentionable kind of insect, which he recommends as a homoeopathic remedy when duly comminuted. He will now have a suitable remedy for moral as well as bodily taints, for Milton tells us, in the preface to his Sampson Agonistes, that Aristotle held the ex- hibition of certain passions to purge the mind of the beholder of whatever he entertains that is of the like kind. "Nor is Nature," continues the poet, "wanting in her efforts to make good his assertion: for so, in physic, things of melancholic hue and quality are used against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humours." With such high autho- rity, then, for a homoeopathic way to "minister to the mind diseased," Dr. Mure is doubly armed, and holding the mirror up to Nature, in the shape of Dr. Simpson, in the one hand, and carrying his brayed insect in the other, he may well re- gard himself as a match for any corporeal or spiritual psora. The passage which I have quoted from Dr. Simpson's pre- face, besides the erroneous allegation that I had made my defence of Homoeopathy to consist of a mere personal attack upon himself, contains the charge, that I indulged in " di- versified mis-statements." This affirmation, of course, is in- tended to signify that the personalities were unfounded. As it is not my intention, in this work, to reproduce in detail several of the most serious of the charges which I formerly *In a newspaper article,—written by whom?—Dr. Simpson was lately said to be at the "top of his profession." In a review of my first edition in the Caledonian Mercury, August, 1843, written by a person who has an equal contempt for truth and good taste, he is said to be a great discoverer, and to enjoy the confidence of his Sovereign—as if he were, on these accounts, even supposing them true, entitled to insult and misrepresent with impunity. PREFACE. 33 proved against him,—and for the simple reason that, by sup- pressing, in his new work, the statements which had called for the exposure of which he complains, the reproduction of them in an extended form has become unnecessary.—I refer to them briefly in this place, merely for the purpose of ob- serving, first, that they are not withheld on the ground of having been unjust or improper; and, second, that the esta- blishing of them was of material consequence in dealing with some of the accusations Dr. Simpson and others had made against the adherents of Homoeopathy. In the postscript of my Letter to the President of the Mcdico-Chirurgical Society, the following passage occurs, which I quote in order to il- lustrate the second of these observations. " Those who be- lieve Homoeopathy to be a great and invaluable system of practical medicine have been, with unsparing acrimony and in the most offensive terms, stigmatized as unworthy of credit: all the courtesies that are usual among gentlemen have been denied us, and now that an occasion apart from all the per- plexities that pertain to the operation of medicine, has pre- sented itself, of testing the candour and uprightness of the contending parties, those who have been heretofore maligned have a right to appeal to the public,—in a question which the public is qualified to comprehend,—to decide between them and their opponents, as to which shall henceforth be esteemed the most entitled to confidence. This controversy, therefore, ceases to be a merely personal one: it is rather to be regarded as a combat in which those who are engaged do battle for the honour of their respective hosts." In these sentences re- ference is made to a question which had arisen between Mr. Syme and Dr. Simpson on the one hand, and myself on the other, as to the truth of contradictory affirmations regarding certain matters of fact, with which we were all in circum- stances to be equally and fully acquainted. No matter how trifling these matters were in themselves—(and probably no 34 PREFACE. casus belli at Donnybrook was ever more paltry)—the two champions of the allopathic party attached great importance to them, and, doing so, thought proper to make public affir- mations respecting them which were diametrically opposed to previous statements of mine. Here, then, was a fair op- portunity of testing the credibility of persons who occupied prominent places on opposite sides, and of coming to some just conclusion regarding the alleged difference between the contending sections of the profession, in respect to accuracy of statement—to use the mildest expression; for I have no desire to make this necessarily a question of veracity, in the moral sense of the term. It may or may not be so: I give no opinion; but speak only to what appeared on the surface. By referring to the testimony of third parties, the allegations of the allopathic belligerents were proved, to the conviction, if not to the satisfaction of both sides, to be totally at vari- ance with fact. It would be a miserable use of this result, and of every other imperfection that could be brought home to individual Allopaths, to make them the grounds of grave and sweeping accusations against the whole or the majority of the allopathic body. I am not so foolish as to believe, and not so wicked as to pretend to believe, that many of them would deliberately state what they know to be false, any more than they would pay their debts like Professor Webster of America, or discharge a confidential trust like Sir Everard Home, or fabricate their cases, like M. Lisfranc, or revenge themselves like Dr. Fickel.* But Dr. Simpson, when he * Sir Everard, it will be remembered, published the MSS. of Hunter, or the researches they contained, as his own. Dr. Fickel, I formerly apprized the public, was convicted of gross deceit during his professed attachment to Homoeopathy, and to revenge himself on his homoeopathic castigators, he pub- lished a book, "Die Nichtigkeit der Homoeopathie," — the Nothingness of Homoeopathy,—professing to be a proof, from cases, of the inutility of the practice. He was not long afterwards in jail for swindling. Dr. Simpson PREFACE. 35 finds, or supposes he finds any departure from moral rectitude in one who has the misfortune to differ from him as to the proper dose of a drug, and the proper rule for prescribing it, hesitates not to hold all who entertain the same offensive opinions as liable to the same moral accusations. A great proportion of his industry during the existence of this con- troversy has been employed in striving to detect something reprehensible in the conduct of individuals opposed to him, and in affixing the stigma of their real or fancied blemishes on their party in general. He must not, therefore, be sur- prised if some of the calumniated body put the worst con- struction on his own conduct in the instances I have referred to, and argue from what they believe to be proved against him, that, since the very leader of their opponents, whose reputation in the profession has acquired so considerable an eminence, has stooped to such behaviour, his colleagues of a lower grade must be capable of conduct at least as bad. If he is conscious, as he may be, that he was not guilty of in- tentional untruth in the instances in question, he ought to feel that others may be equally unfortunate in appearing to be guilty, while really innocent; and he ought to be specially careful how he advances the loathsome accusation of deceit. Happily, the very excess of his criminality in this particular has defeated his discreditable purpose, as is proved by the following quotation from a judicious and candid review of his work, in a common organ of public opinion:—"It is, in truth, most repellent to every honest mind to read the open charges of fraud so constantly flung against Hahnemann and his disciples; as if every homoeopathic doctor in Europe were an arrant knave whose only object is an unblushing system of deception, in order to enrich himself at the expense of knew all this; yet refers to him as an authority against us. He is, doubtless, as good an authority as most of the others. 39 PREFACE. the lives and pockets of the community. Human nature in- stinctively revolts at the thought,—and human nature is right."* As to the accuracy of my statements in the other parti- culars contained in my reply to Dr. Simpson's former publi- cations, I shall bring the sincerity of his general accusation to the test, by pledging myself to submit to any penalty even the College of Physicians may impose, if he will point out a single misstatement made by me; and all I ask in return, without, however, making it a stipulation, is, that he will make an honest confession for but one in every ten that I can prove to exist in his various attacks on Homoeopathy. And here I am tempted to notice a little episode in the ma- jestic march of these medical wars, which I think will prove to the satisfaction of the most incredulous, that the author of the "Tenets" has refrained from specifying any one mis- statement as chargeable against me, for the very good reason that he could discover none. A work was published some short time ago, in which the demise of a gentleman was er- roneously referred to as having been due to a chronic organic disease. As the individual in question had been attended by me, it appeared probable to Dr. Simpson, that I was the author of the statement as to the cause of death, and that if he could ascertain that point to his satisfaction, he would have a great triumph over a troublesome opponent, and indisputable * Edinburgh Advertiser, April 19, 1853. As an additional warning to Dr. Simpson to refrain hereafter from reckless imputations of falsehood against his brethren, I may recall to his notice a complaint of his own of somewhat similar conduct towards himself of his friend Mr. Syme, in the course of one of their quarrels:—"He adds, indeed, that if his object were to convict me of the most gross and explicable inaccuracy he could easily multiply examples of it, but that as he merely desires to prevent the patrons from being misled by my statements, he trusts that enough has been said to attain this object." —Memorial, &c, &c, by J. Y. Simpson, M. D.—1841. PREFACE. 37 evidence of the dishonesty of the whole homoeopathic body. Well, he, being President of the Royal College of Physicians, &c, &c, condescended to call privately in person on the author of the work, to learn if Dr. Henderson was his au- thority for that statement, "because it was not true." But no, alas! Dr. Henderson was too knowing a man, to say the least of him, to affirm an untruth, for he had somehow learnt, what many are slow to believe, that honesty in all things is the best policy; and so had no more to do with the erroneous statement than Dr. Simpson himself. Now, do not suppose, gentle reader, that I have given this anecdote merely in order to get you to join me in a laugh at the expense of the curious Professor of Midwifery. Far from it; my chief object in entering into these pitiful matters at all, is to show that where Dr. Simpson and I are at variance regarding a mat- ter of fact, the yea or nay as to which depends on our per- sonal authority, I am entitled to be esteemed by far the more likely to be in the right. Now we are at direct issue con- cerning the trumpery story which Dr. Simpson has related about a box of homoeopathic medicines, which had once been " his own former homoeopathic box," and while it was so had the contents of its many phials mixed together, as he says, by some juvenile member of his family; but which, notwith- standing, had been the means in my hands of so convincing me of the truth of Homoeopathy, that some time afterwards, I assured him, as he avers, that I "had seen some wonderful effects and cures from using the drugs contained in it;" or, as he said to himself, (in a conversation we had on several memorial topics before he published this altered version of the words put into my mouth,) were my actual expressions, " your box has converted me." To both versions I give now, as formerly, an unqualified denial, and for the simple and sufficient reason, that for me to have uttered either the one or the other would have been an untruth. In the words of 38 PREFACE. my former refutation of the whole fable—"My first experi- ments on Homoeopathy were made by medicines from five different sources, in addition to Dr. Simpson's box. The respected Secretary of the Medico-Chirurgical Society fa- voured me with a box, in connexion with which there was, as became his character, no trick, but all that was fair and honest. Dr. Russell supplied me with many other medicines; Headland of London did so too; the Chemist in this city, at a later period, did the same; and some I prepared with my own hands, The results were published, and drew from Dr. Forbes of London the admission, that had the cases been treated according to the rules of the ordinary school, he would have regarded the results as ' very satisfactory.' Among them were some ' wonderful effects and cures,' which I have always regarded as evidence of the power of homoeo- pathic remedies; but that they were due to Dr. Simpson's 1 own former homoeopathic box,' in which the trick was, I do not believe that I could ever have averred, because I was not in the habit of noting in each case from what source the medicines I employed were taken, for I suspected no trick. Since Dr. Simpson made his trick public, I have suspected, reasonably enough, that some of the failures which I could not formerly account for but on the ground of my own want of skill, must have been due to the dishonest box."* In his new work, Dr. Simpson incautiously enters so much into a pretended history of the box and its contents, while it be- longed to him, as to furnish the means of a satisfactory re- futation of another and very material part of the business, which is no less than this, that the whole account of the me- dicines being mixed is imaginary. The box containing sixty- six phials, each labeled on the glass and on the cork, with the name, in Latin, of the included drug. Every phial was full, * Letter to the President of the Medico-Chirurgical Society. PREFACE. 39 and every cork in its right place, when the box came, un- expectedly by Dr. Simpson, into my possession. Now, are we asked to believe that a child, some three years old, in the habit, as is alleged, of uncorking the bottles of his " occa- sional plaything," emptying their contents into a heap, and then refilling them from the general mass, was so precocious a scion that he could replace each cork of the sixty-six in its proper place, according to its inscription? And if not, as is perfectly certain, what learned Theban was at the trouble to rejust the disordered elements of so despised a machine? These are disagreeable topics, and such as I would never have stooped to discuss here or anywhere, if they had been brought forward by Dr. Simpson merely to injure me. I be- lieve I could afford to let them pass unnoticed. But, through me, they are designed to bring the only rational system of practical medicine into contempt; and since I know how to dispose of them, I feel bound to waive my own feelings for what I believe to be required by the general good. And now the reader may rest assured, that I am almost done with the personnel of Dr. Simpson, whom, indeed, I hope scarcely to bring on the boards again, but with his company of sauteurs to tumble a little for our diversion. Not that I can allow his whole band to make their bow to the public on these pages, for many of them are such dull and vulgar rogues as to be unfit to give entertainment to any one, and they must therefore go their way to the tune of their own particular march, a sentence which proceeds from no anger or ill-will towards them, for Homoeopathy can well afford to imitate the good-nature of my Lord Derby's "tall navvy," and, smiling on the whole generation of such small men, give them full liberty to practise their vocation, with the bene- volent and senatorial reflection, "It amuses them, and don't hurt me. A selection, then, of the best performers being 40 PREFACE. necessary, I shall introduce first a foreigner of some note m his own line. It seems that a transatlantic gentleman, who rejoices in the classical denomination of Mr. Horace Green, related an instance to Dr. Simpson, in which a nervous lady had been recovered from a tedious state of fancied inability to walk, by what she supposed homoeopathic globules, but which were in reality percussion pellets of fulminating silver that had been brought to her by mistake. The patronymic of our re- spectable contemporary is suggestive of much that is incom- patible with the curiosa felicitas and knowledge of men that distinguished the celebrated heathen from whom he derives his baptismal appellative, and I scarcely know in what ca- pacity to take him. Considering him simply as Mr. Green, we have one explanation of the anecdote; but regarding him as Horace, we have another totally different. Verdure is inseparably associated with ideas of simplicity and play, and allusions to the connexion abound in our finest pastorals; while so intimate is the association in the popular mind, that the moment a Mr. Green appears, he is instinctively appro- priated to amusement. Viewing him, therefore, patronymi- cally, I would incline to the opinion that, as green, (and, no doubt, as young too, for I find it as impossible to conceive of an old American, as De Quincy does of a young Chinese,) our innocent friend has been played upon by the knowing husband, who did not choose to own his conversion to Homoeo- pathy by the miraculous recovery of his wife, and sought to justify his incredulity in the amazing circumstances by such cock-and-bull story as might obstruct the tender vision of his professional friend. Regarding him, again, in his more Pagan aspect, and decking him in fancy with the attributes of his harmonious name-father, who somewhere sings,— "Sine amore et jocis Nil est jucundum," PREFACE. 41 one may be disposed to conclude, that the playful Horace, discerning something greenish in the eye of his obstetric ac- quaintance, as they sipped their Falernian together, and mistaking its import, (for alas! there is a wide difference in the characters expressed by that optical tint,) conceived on the moment to relieve the monotony of their professional talk about moonstone and windpipes, (a weak point with our exotic brother,) the pleasantry about homoeopathic globules and fulminating pellets. And it is, no doubt, though manu- factured and issued under the poetical license, an apt instance of the power of imagination on the nervous hypochondriac, and as such deserves to be recorded among the thousands of a similar nature which in every age have made fame and fees the fruits of allopathic delusions. The fertile Horace can, of course, diversify his narratives to meet every imaginable aspect of the great question, and, accordingly, he next assumes the tragic vein, and concentra- ting his fierceness on some allopathic rival, he enjoys in pro- phetic vision the delight of pouring a phial of homoeopathic globules over his throat, medicated for the occasion with enough of imaginary strychnia to despatch him to his place. The whole story will remind the reader of Newman Noggs' pugilistic enjoyments on the image of Mr. Ralph Nickleby. Of course, no mortal was ever slain by such means as Mr. Horace pretends; but I shall stretch courtesy and imagina- tion so far as to assume, that it actually happened that" a gen- tleman swallowing in sport a number of homoeopathic glo- bules" that did not belong to him, suffered on the spot the extreme penalty of the law due to such freedoms with pro- perty and poisons; and I shall slump this well-authenticated case with two others equally entitled to credit. One of them is the melancholy demise of the Duke di Cannizzaro, some twelve years ago, in Sicily, asserted by Mr. Edwin Lee (ap- parently a bookseller's traveller) to have been due to an 4 42 PREFACE. over dose of nux vomica; the second is the alleged instance, in which Dr. Taylor of London detected in a powder, also professing itself to contain only a "homoeopathic dose," one- third of a grain of morphia, quite an allopathic quantity. Now, these examples, supposing them true, may be regarded in one or other of two lights. First, they may be said to prove that three medical men, out of the many hundreds, if not thousands in the world, who now avow themselves ho- moeopathists, were guilty of deceiving their patients, and were actually treating them with allopathic quantities, (as doses are termed when they reach or approach the poisoning potency,) while they professed to be giving only the homoeo- pathic, (as doses are termed without the risk of killing.) No doubt such deception was extremely wrong—highly disho- nourable and immoral; but it tells nothing against the multi- tude of homoeopathic practitioners who do not practise any such deception. If we apply to the allopathic body in gene- ral, the discredit of similar deceptions (mutatis mutandis) practised by some among them, Dr. Simpson will perhaps see that the principle ho attempts to apply so injuriously to us tells with a hundred-fold greater severity against himself and his friends. For it is an undoubted fact that a propor- tion of professedly allopathic practitioners employ, for par- ticular diseases, the remedies which were discovered and announced by Hahnemann, as due to his homoeopathic law for the selection of remedies; while with extraordinary meanness they ignore the discoverer, and treat his more honest followers with an affected disdain. Far different was the conduct of the late Mr. Liston, of whom Edinburgh has reason to be proud, as the greatest surgeon she has produced. He had the manliness, the honesty, to avow in public, that he derived his knowledge of the remarkable powers of aconite in subduing inflammatory fever, and of belladonna in curing erysipelas, from homoeopathy, and to declare besides, that he had given the medicines "in much smaller doses than PREFACE. 43 have hitherto been prescribed."* Others of the allopathic body go still farther in their secret use of homoeopathic remedies, for I have been informed by a homoeopathic che- mist in London, that his shop is chiefly supported by practi- tioners who procure from him homoeopathic remedies which they distribute to their patients disguised as allopathic mix- tures. So much for the first aspect in which these tales may be viewed. According to the second light in which they may be regarded, it may be maintained, as was no doubt intended by Dr. Simpson, if he had any distinct idea on the subject, that the detection of such large doses of strychnia and morphia in the hands of three homoeopathic practitioners proves, or makes it likely, that the whole body of Homoeopathists use doses of the like magnitude, while they profess to employ only the "infinitesimal" quantities. Now, granting the rea- sonableness of this generous allegation, it may be replied, first, that Homoeopathists must be very verdant gentlemen indeed, if they attempt to impose on the public, by falsely professing rules, as to doses, which make Homoeopathy absurd in the ignorant eyes of the very persons intended to be en- trapped; for it is undeniable that the only obstacle to the progress of Homoeopathy in the world is the incredulity which meets it on the ground of the unprecedented minuteness of its doses. The truth is, so little relish have many Homoeo- pathists for the ridicule bestowed on the doctrine of minute doses, that there is a far greater risk of some of them being guilty, like so many of their professedly allopathic brethren, of pretending to give large doses, while they actually give the small. Small doses they know from experience to be the safest and best, and they are, with an exception or two, determined at all hazards to adhere to them; but it may * See Lancet, 1836; where the reader will find, in eztenso, the Clinical Lectures by Mr. Liston, containing a distinct recommendation of homoeopa- thy to his pupils. 44 PREFACE. sometimes be difficult for them to do so, and keep their foolish patient at the same time, who may have a preference, even in physic, for things he can taste and smell, like the majority of silly mankind. Again, if Homoeopathists are really believed by Dr. Simpson and his friends only to pretend that they give small doses, while they are known, as is alleged, to give doses as large as do the gentlemen of the other school, what is the use of calling in the aid of mighty mathematicians to prove that there can be nothing in the pretended homoeopathic at- tenuations? The whole of this charge against them assumes that such attenuations are never actually made, or never em- ployed, and if the accusers really believed this, as they pro- fess to do, the calculations might be left, for any necessity they are of to the success of the charge, to the wisdom of Toby the learned quadruped. But the bare fact that such calculations have been regarded as of immense importance to the opponents of Homoeopathy, proves that they have them- selves no confidence in the statement that Homoeopathists do in reality practise the deceit of which they are so shamefully accused. If they felt secure in the evidence and credibility of that statement, where was the necessity of bothering re- spectable elderly gentlemen, who happen to have a calcu- lating faculty, with sentimental journeys to the sun, moon, and stars, in search of an argument which Mr. Horace Green had found without going a yard from his own door? And, lastly, if Homoeopathists are believed by their opponents to use no other doses than are used by ordinary physicians, to what end are the elaborate endeavours to prove that the success of Homoeopathists in treating diseases is inferior to that of their rivals, while the whole object of the assertion now under review is to prove that the practice of the two bodies is the same? This is surely a robbing of Peter to pay Paul, and a very stupid and foolish consummation of the whole argu- ment. PREFACE. 45 There is yet another aspect in which these asserted in- stances of homoeopathic deception can be viewed, and a far more rational one it is than either of the others, namely, that let Mr. Horace Green, Mr. Lee, Dr. Taylor, and Dr. Simpson, assert what they may, the deceptions that are al- leged were and are impossible. The charge is, not simply that large doses were used in the cases referred to—that would be a minor matter, as a man is at liberty to employ what dose he prefers—but that the said doses were pretended to be minute. Now, reader, I hope you will be in a humour to apply the knout to the inventors of foul charges against their honester brethren, when I tell you, that such a dose of strychnia, nux vomica, or morphia, as these persons specify, could not possibly be taken by any man, in possession of his senses, without being detected by the intense bitterness of their taste I Had the accusers remembered this difficulty in the way of their instances being credible, they would not have ventured to prefer the charges they have made, in con- nexion with such substances at least; for they must have be- thought them that, as "homoeopathic doses"- are well known to have no taste, no Homceopathist could dream of deceiving his patients by drugs so furiously bitter as these. To give the unmedical reader some idea of the obstacle to the alleged deception, presented by the bitterness of strychnia, I may observe that, according to Sir Robert Kane, one part "re- quires 7000 parts of cold water for solution, and yet, if one part of this be diluted with 100 parts more of water, this liquor tastes strongly bitter." * Or, what is the same thing, one grain of strychnia, dissolved in seven hundred thousand grains of water, or above eleven gallons, may still be detected by its strongly bitter taste. If, then, the 700,000th part of a grain of strychnia is strongly bitter, what must be the bit- * Elements of Chemistry. 842. 46 PREFACE. terness of the 16th of a grain, the ordinary dose, diffused in a spoonful of water, which Homoeopathists are accused of giving to their patients as "infinitesimal," and therefore taste- less ! The bitterness of morphia is well known, but I may mention that Pereira says of it that, "notwithstanding that it is insoluble, or nearly so, in cold water," the water, which can hardly be said, therefore, to dissolve an appreciable quantity of it, "has a distinctly bitter taste." Yet Dr. Simp- son wishes us to believe that a Homoeopathist expected to elude the senses of his patient by so large a dose as a third, or half of a grain! Now I hope these gentlemen have tum- bled to some purpose, and that the spectators will express their sense of the performance with their usual judgment. Dr. Simpson's work abounds in charges as demonstrably untrue as those I have just disposed of, but, as I have no ambition to write a work so tiresome and unreadable as almost every body declares his to be, I shall pick out for notice in this place only the one remaining example which has an appearance of resting on respectable authority, and which may possibly be believed by very credulous and un- reflecting people. Dr. Glover of Newcastle asserts that the agent of a London wholesale firm for the manufacture of homoeopathic drugs, which prepares " 60 lbs. weight of them every fortnight," (*. e. 1560 lbs. weight per annum,) stated to a company of allopathic druggists in Newcastle, that his firm, aware that the homoeopathic method of preparing drugs was a "farce," gave up the troublesome proceeding, and put no- thing into the powders and pilules which they sold as medi- cated. I do not know that Dr. Glover makes the assertion on his own authority; if he does not, of course he will not be implicated in the unavoidable inference suggested by the fol- lowing considerations. The story is incredible, first, because it would be at variance with the known principles which re- gulate human intercourse, that the agent of a mercantile firm PREFACE. 47 should reveal, (supposing the fraud to be actually practised,) to the most implacable enemies of his house, what must de- stroy his trade if generally believed; it is incredible, se- condly, because it is infinitely more likely that the allopathic druggists would invent a story that would be to their own advantage, than that the other would disclose a fraud, the public knowledge of which must be to his own ruin;-it is in- credible, thirdly, because no London homoeopathic wholesale druggist exists who prepares 60 lbs. weight of drugs, or pre- tended drugs, in a fortnight, for most of the homoeopathic chemists in London, and throughout the country, prepare all, or nearly all, their own drugs, and there is no market for such a wholesale business; it is incredible, fourthly, because Dr. Glover, having been repeatedly called upon to give the name of the fraudulent firm, has declined to do so, which it is plain he never would if he were certain of his ground, and did not fear that compliance with the demand would explode the whole story. But, even supposing that some swindling com- pany of homoeopathic druggists actually do dispense unmedi- cated powders, and pilules, and tinctures, how does that tell against Homoeopathy? Those who are unfortunate enough to deal with the swindlers will be unsuccessful in their practice, and be instrumental in making a few skeptics as to the power of homoeopathic drugs. This is the whole result, and is quite on a par, and no more, with the following allopathic anec- dote, which has the advantage of being credible: "Making and Taking Pills.—We remember (says the Englishman) an occurrence which took place in the practice of a country apothecary in England. He had only one ap- prentice upon whom the entire duty of pill-making fell. A patient of rather inquisitive and nervous temperament called one morning with a pill-box in his hand, to show the apothe- cary that by cutting the pills in halves he had discovered some- thing extraordinary in the manufacture. The apprentice was 48 PREFACE. sent for, who confessed, that being naturally of a gay dispo- sition, he preferred spending his evening with friends to wasting his time in weighing, and adjusting, and rolling into pills, the various drugs which his master had prescribed in the course of the day. After much consideration, he had found no method so quick as that of wetting a quantity of juniper berries in gum water, and next shaking them up in powdered chalk, and then most impartially filling all the boxes. He stated that he had continued this practice for a year and a half without a single complaint, except from the gentleman who had just called, and he insisted that the cases under treatment had all done exceedingly well." I shall conclude these prefatory samples of the credibility of the representations Dr. Simpson has made, partly from the fruits of his own inventive genius, partly from the equally re- liable stores of his friends, of the practice of homoeopathic physicians, by two very characteristic specimens of his scru- pulous honesty as a controversial writer. To one of them I drew the notice of the public in my former reply, but, as he repeats the same offence in his new work, after he had been told that it had led to false conclusions in the minds of some of his readers, and had been apprized, if he did not know the fact right well before, that his authority was notoriously fictitious, I am induced to advert to it again. A single sen- tence will dispose of the deception, and I presume of the last remaining fragment of confidence which the most partial of his readers may have retained in his candour. He quotes in a note a passage from the " Confessions of a Homceopathist," in which the author pretends to confess that homoeopathic physicians employ "powerful doses" of "morphia, strychnia, arsenic, corrosive sublimate, and such like," in the form of " globules," and without allowing the patient to know that he is getting any thing but some hundred-thousandth part of a grain, Dr. Simpson quotes this pretended confession as au- PREFACE. 49 thentic evidence against us, without informing his readers that the work from which he quotes is a work of fiction, as he well knew it to be when he selected his extract! The other specimen is still worse, if worse can be. He begins by asserting that there are homoeopathic physicians " who doctored people according as people themselves wished, either with drachms of drugs, or billions of a grain of the same;" a charge which he sustains by the authority of the veriest zany in the profession, and then proceeds to quote the following passage, as if it was a passage which confirmed his accusation, from his " colleague, Professor Henderson," who observes in one of his publications, "I rejoice to say that I know many physicians, who, while they adhere to the homoeopathic law as the great regulator of their practice, consider themselves entitled, in the free exercise of their profession as independent men, to prescribe any quantity of medicine they think necessary for their patients, and where the homoeopathic principle cannot be of service to them, whether from its present or necessary limitations, or their insufficient acquaintance with it, consider themselves not only entitled, but bound in duty, to employ any other expe- dients for the benefit of their employers that may be within their knowledge." And then, still further to persuade his readers that his colleague is an advocate for treating people "according as people themselves wished," he subjoins a quotation from my excellent friend, Dr. Black, as affording a view of "the due estimation of such a combination of principles and practices" entertained by homoeopathists themselves; the quotation being as follows: "There is a class of practitioners who merit the indignation of every right- minded man,—a class who, viewing medicine only as a trade, a mere barter for pounds, shillings, and pence, act obsequi- ously as the patient wishes; at his desire their practice is either homoeopathic or allopathic." Now, Dr. Simpson's 50 PREFACE. work has been termed clever by one or two of his admirers, and I grant the justice of their assertion if it be clever to misrepresent, to suppress the truth, to give that as a true version of an opponent's doctrine which is the very reverse of it; and I add, may I and my friends be patterns of stu- pidity in all time coming, if this is to be clever! Why, im- mediately before the sentence he has extracted in order to show that I approve of physicians " doctoring people accord- ing as people themselves wished," I had actually said as fol- lows—"That Dr. Simpson knows of any such persons I do not believe. I know a great deal more of those whom he delights to calumniate than he does, and I solemnly aver, that I neither know, nor ever have known, a single instance of .the conduct he has ventured to lay to their charge." My information on the subject of such practices might be defec- tive, and even incorrect, but my disapproval of the practice of allowing patients to choose how they were to be treated, and my refutation of it personally, are abundantly mani- fest in the two sentences I have just given, and yet Dr. Simp- son makes me appear an advocate for the very practice which I plainly condemn! A concern for the " laurels " I hinted at on a previous page, restrains me from .uttering a single word in the way of commentary.* Having touched on the question of the need there may be for Homoeopathists sometimes employing an allopathic expe- dient, I shall finish the subject in this place; and the more willingly that it admits of a very summary treatment. The amount of allopathic medicine which I would retain for oc- casional, though unfrequent employment in curable diseases, is an aperient, chiefly a teaspoonful of castor oil. For incu- * The truth is, that instead of Homoeopaths being chargeable with treating their patients either way, it is allopaths to whom the remarks of Dr. Black apply, who, finding Homoeopathy "go down" with some of their patients, give their services on the homoeopathic principle when required. PREFACE. 51 rable diseases that have nearly reached their final stage, and are the occasions of sleepless nights and weary days, of pain and misery to decaying nature, I would give whatever pro- mises to smooth the way a little to the not distant grave. For this end, there may be some two or three drugs, each suitable to his own class of cases;—too often, alas! there are none. As to ancient appliances that are not properly medi- cinal,—do not consist of medicines in the proper sense, I would reserve my right to employ heat and cold as I think best, and, speaking for myself personally, I would also re- gard myself at liberty, and without forfeiting my title to the honour of being a homoeopathic physician, to facilitate the action of my homoeopathic remedies by local abstraction of blood in some acute diseases,—a practice which I have fol- lowed some ten times in about as many years. These are the true "Confessions of a homoeopathist;" and they are complete. Give me the little I have mentioned, and the rest of your physic to the dogs. In these views and conclusions all the homoeopathic physicians of my acquaintance, with the exception, I think, of two, substantially agree. Among the exceptional dissentients is my respected friend, Dr. Scott of Glasgow. He is of opinion, that, when an allopathic ex- pedient is required, an allopathic physician should be called upon to administer the same. I am not sure that our friends of the opposite party would altogether relish this proposal: it would make occasional demands on their exertions net quite up to the mark of professional dignity. But I have no objection to the proposal; provided always, that the gentlemen of the other side will bind themselves scrupu- lously and honestly to use none of our remedies, and to leave to us all the diseases that we can treat more success- fully than they. It seems to me that a much better contract would be this: that both we and they should employ the very few allopathic drugs that are of any service as palliatives, 52 PREFACE. and that they should honourably acknowledge the many instances in which they make use of homoeopathic remedies. We claim no exclusive right to the latter; we merely expect and ask that they shall not be used without acknowledg- ment. Dr. Simpson, at least, cannot object to the small modicum of Allopathy I would retain; for he not only, like his bre- thren universally, employs many drugs whose operation is homoeopathic, as we shall by and by see, when they are ac- cidentally of any benefit to his patients, but, notwithstanding his pretended unbelief in the homoeopathic law of Thera- peutics, has actually, in his place as a Professor in the Uni- versity, commended a remedy in circumstances where its ac- tion is confessedly homoeopathic, after having employed it himself, moreover, by the advice of a homoeopathic friend of his own. Behold the evidence: " Ipecacuanha causes vomit- ing; and the celebrated Dr. Simpson of Edinburgh, as he stated in my hearing, failed to cure a case of chronic vomit- ing from pregnancy, until he took the advice of Dr. Arnt, a Homoeopathist, and gave half a grain of ipecacuanha, and so cured his patient." (Homoeopathy: by George Wyld, M. D. Page 25.*) * Dr. Stewart, in his controversy with Dr. Christison, gives substantially the same version of this passage in the Lectures of Dr. Simpson. Both he and Dr. Wyld were pupils of Dr. Simpson at the time it was delivered. The lecturer, however, denies one part of their statement, and says that the ipe- cacuan did no good, but the reverse; and he refers to the alleged testimony of a person whose patient the lady in question is said to have been, in cor- roboration of his assertion. This, however, must relate to another case, and seems to show that Dr. Simpson employed ipecacuan for vomiting more than once—successfully when the proper occasion for it was pointed out by a Ho- moeopath, unsuccessfully when he used his own discretion. Both of his for- mer pupils aver that he gave credit to the ipecacuan in the instance they heard him speak of; and two witnesses are better than one, especially when that one has a personal interest in representing the subject of dispute in his own way. Internal evidence, too, is strongly against Dr. Simpson in this PREFACE. 53 In this instance we have the admission by the Coryphaeus of Allopathy, that he did employ a homoeopathic remedy, and with success, too, when all his other remedies (?) had failed. Will he have the goodness to reconsider the fol- lowing sentences he has composed against the Homoeopath who would dare to use an allopathic palliative, and tell us, in his next publication on medical ethics, if he continues to regard the opinions expressed in them as candid and honour- able: "Some men pretended they could honestly and ho- nourably mix up the two practices. Most physicians natu- rally doubted whether any man could in honour and honesty combine such incompatible incongruities. Neither any true Homoeopath, nor any true Allopath, would give this spurious set credit for their integrity of purpose and principle." P. 21. There are many more of this " hybrid and equivocal class of practitioners," as he terms them, in the ranks of Allopathy, besides Dr. Simpson. Belladonna, as a preservative against scarlet fever, and as a remedy for the disease in some of its aspects and stages, was first proposed by Hahnemann; and it has been employed, in the former character especially, very generally throughout the civilized world by allopathic physi- cians, from Dr. Locock down to the obscurest Sangrado of the sect. Dr. Simpson cannot deny this fact, although he at- tempts to show that belladonna has not the protective power ascribed to it. The latter question will be discussed in its matter. For what end did he allude to the ipecacuan in his class, in the presence of the friend who recommended it, if not for the purpose, partly, of paying a compliment to the latter, a stranger from a far country, who honoured the lecture by his presence ? Surely not to point at him by name, in so public a place, as having advised a remedy which did harm instead of good! This is incredible. Dr. Simpson is surely too hospitable a man to be rude to a foreigner, and he a friend too. Dr. Simpson tries to get out of this scrape by another plea. He didn't know, forsooth, that Dr. Arnt was homoeopathic! Well, what of that? He knew that ipecacuan was so to vomiting, and no one accuses him of having prescribed Dr. Arnt. 54 PREFACE. proper place, and the medical knowledge of the objector put " through its paces." Meanwhile, the adoption of the homoeo- pathic preventive — (whether truly so or no)—by allopa- thic practitioners, stands condemned by Dr. Simpson as at variance with "honour and honesty;" and thus is included in the same category of crimes with his own employment of ipecacuan in the instance mentioned above. I had almost forgotten the Magnetoscope! This is an in- strument invented by Mr. Rutter, Manager of the Gas-Works at Brighton; and was supposed by the inventor to be so sen- sitive a machine that its pendulum would make certain mo- tions under the influence of impressions not discoverable by ordinary means. My able friend, Dr. Henry Madden, was the first medical man who saw the instrument, and probably, for that reason, was the first physician who was deceived by it. Had it come first in the way of the Allopaths, they would have had the priority in being duped; but as the thing hap- pened, the deception fell to one of us in the first instance, and, of course, Homoeopathists must bear the undivided re- proach of gullibility. I wonder, now, if a Homoeopathist, with the best intentions in the world, were to get his neck broken, whether we should not all be accused of being "shaky" in the cervical region, or if he should chance to swallow a plum-stone, whether he would not be charged with doing it "o' purpose," and because we all had gizzards. Well, Dr. Madden was the first to be taken in by the magnetoscope, but he is entitled to the credit of having been the first also who discovered and exposed its worthlessness; and, to con- clude this eventful history, while the two or three homoeo- pathists, who of all the body were imposed upon by the deceit- ful machine, have long seen their mistake, it remains the ap- propriate protege of a knot of their allopathic brethren, who certainly need something more than human to discover the PREFACE. 55 curative value of their drugs, when administered on their distinctive principle. Having now gone over a long list of most contemptible "arguments" against homoeopathy, the reader may be in- clined to ask how it is to be explained, that Dr. Simpson, commonly reputed to be among the advocates of progress in scientific matters, should be found so bitter and unscrupulous an opponent of the new practice. It cannot be from an in- telligent conviction of its unsoundness, for he is practically but little acquainted with it, and the little he knows is, as we have seen, rather in favour of its claims than otherwise. But Dr. Simpson's medical glory, such as it is, is pinned to the old standard, and his medical existence is all but ignored by the followers of the new. The discerning student of such affairs will have no difficulty, then, in finding a parallel to, and an explanation of, the conduct of the Professor of Mid- wifery in the instructive history of Haman, the once prospe- rous son of Hammedatha the Agagite. HOMCEOPATHY FAIRLY REPRESENTED. CHAPTER I. Comparative View of Homoeopathy and Allopathy, as adapted to acute dis- eases: in which the latter is proved to be a fatal delusion—Homoeopathic Statistics proved to be accurate—Alleged success of Laennec and army sur- geons in inflammation of the lungs shown to be incredible—Allopathic cases, when selected, proved to present a much greater mortality than the Homoeo- pathic unselected—Allopathic treatment of pneumonia destroys human life —Acute inflammation of the lungs better left to nature than to Allopathy__ Dietl's experiments—Allopathic fatality in pleurisy, peritonitis, &c.__Pre- tended Allopathic cures of consumption more extravagant than those of the most ignorant Homoeopaths. A considerable portion of Dr. Simpson's work is occupied with the usual diatribe on human credulity, and the usual illustrations of human folly, from Mesmerism, amulets, charms, Mormonism, &c. The reader who peruses this chapter to the end will probably be of opinion that the author ought to have added Allopathy to the list, which, like its twin sister Calamity, is "of so long life," merely because of the fears which lead men rather to "keep those ills they have, than fly to others that they know not of," though the latter, as in the case of Homoeopathy, may be only imaginary. At all events, the parallel between these delusions and Homoeo- pathy foolishly takes for granted the very point at issue, and 5 58 PHYSICIANS no FRIENDS to PROGRESS. assumes that Homoeopathy is a delusion. Every previous great step in scientific discovery has had to undergo a similar novitiate of obloquy from the prejudiced and the ignorant; and if Homoeopathy did not, it might be fairly regarded as but little, if at all, better than the system it purposes to supplant, and therefore not worth quarreling about. It is absurdly supposed by those who have no acquaintance with " scientific" men, and know not the mettle of which they are made, that they are always gratified by the addition of new facts and principles to their respective sciences. Nothing can be gene- rally more untrue than such a conclusion; nay, I suspect the instances are comparatively few in which the disposition of men, already matured in their own field, towards all that is new, may not be illustrated by an anecdote of a late eminent professor of chemistry, who, on receiving from a colleague an answer in the negative to his inquiry, if there was any- thing new in the fresh Number of a scientific Journal, replied, "I am very glad to hear it;" or by another, of a professor of the same science in a northern university, who, compelled at last to advert to the discoveries of Sir Humphrey Davy, regarding the composition of certain alkalis, dismissed them with the shortest possible notice, and dubbed their author, '' a verra troublesome person." Of course there are exceptions in every pursuit, but fewer, it may be justly said, in medicine proportionally than in any other. Medical men, in general, are more concerned to ply their arduous vocation with the in- structions they may have received in early life, and such small and easy additions to their stock as they have leisure to pick up from the journals of the day, than to sound the depths of science, and seek the treasures of knowledge that lie hid in her bosom, by the light of the midnight oil, when a "good soft pillow" for their tired heads, whether white or black, is what the proprieties of the time demand. And of the exceptional instances—the busy-minded men who roll in THEIR GENERAL EGOTISM. 59 their carriages by day, and are fresh enough for study by night—it may be justly said, that their welcome, when they have any to spare for the researches of others, is offered very rarely to doctrines opposed to the labours of their own lives, but is reserved for such as are in harmony with their pre- vious opinions, and with the views to which all their success and importance in the medical world is inseparably linked. It is nothing, that second or third rate men, whose field of vision is naturally and unavoidably of small extent, should be incapable of perceiving new and great truths just in proportion as they are new and great, and therefore far aloof from their own habitual trains of thought, or petty additions to the common currency. We look for blemishes of this kind in ordinary mortals, and are in no degree moved by their occurrence. But when first-class men, standing so high above their fellows as to command the whole field of intellectual enterprise, fix their eyes with a fond partiality on the fruits of their own genius, and what may be closely akin to them, to the neglect of other objects good in their way and important in their own place, we remember with re- gret that man in his best estate is but vanity, and that to ex- pect among terrestrial beings freedom from weakness is but to look for "A faultless monster, which the world ne'er saw." We cease, then, to wonder that even Hahnemann, with all his genius and learning, and keen-eyed scientific instinct, overlooked a few things in-medical science, which he might have studied with advantage to his reputation, and to the cre- dit of his system. In the brightness of his own discoveries, these inferior objects "hid their diminished heads," and the eye that dwelt so long and so intently on the light that appeared amidst the general gloom, from its first faint glimmering in his path, as he meditated mournfully on the surrounding 60 AN APOLOGY FOR HAHNEMANN. chaos where "darkness brooded," on through its gradual kindling into the dawn of a better day to patient humanity, may well be pardoned its insensibility to the ineffectual glow-worm lights that could, do little else in his day than make the darkness visible. This plea is specially applicable to his contempt for morbid anatomy, and to his ignoring of ordinary palliatives that are capable of producing temporary ease in incurable organic diseases. With him the office of the physician was to cure; on that grand consummation his heart was set, and he had no eyes for any end short of the best that could be wished for. Morbid anatomy presupposes death; and whatever light the scalpel shed on disease, to Hahnemann it showed only the discomfiture, the imperfec- tion, sometimes even the deadly error of the art that should have healed. He sought only for the means of curing dis- eases, and believed that means existed which, known and rightly used, were equal, by the goodness of the Almighty,' (" compared to which," he says, " the tenderest mother's love is as thick clouds beside the glory of the noonday sun,") to the cure of almost all maladies: so that morbid anatomy was in his opinion merely the proof, if not the result of error. Hence it was that he threw on Allopathy and its disciples so much blame for the anatomical disorders which death ena- bled them to study. And true it is, beyond all question, that as the proper science of the physician becomes more under- stood and effective, there will be less for the anatomist to contemplate, though it may well be doubted whether, even were remedies fully ascertained for every ill that flesh is heir to, men would generally submit to them at the right stage of their disorder, continue them for the proper time, or give them a fair field for the full and free exercise of their vir- tues. That, however, is the business of the sufferer: the chief duty of the physician is to know how to cure him if he will but give the opportunity. But even in order to acquire ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASES. 61 this coveted knowledge, Hahnemann should have remem- bered, that to every honest man on the right road "his fail- ures are the preparation of his victories," and that the mor- bid anatomy of the dead was capable of teaching much that might be of service to the still living, even on his own thera- peutic principle; for medicines taken to a poisonous excess, or given to the lower animals in experiment, have, of course, their morbid anatomy too, the effects of their action on the living organs, and therefore similar to those producible by disease. To leave these examples of human imperfection, even in the wisest of physicians, I would devote some space now to a subject of the gravest interest—to an exhibition of homoeo- pathy in the capacity of the curer of maladies esteemed de- structive of a large amount of human life in the hands of the ordinary practitioner. It is in the treatment of acute in- flammatory diseases that Homoeopathy appears in its most striking aspect to common observers. Such maladies are naturally regarded with the greatest apprehension, on account of the suddenness of their invasion, the intensity of their symptoms, the rapidity and brevity of their course, which is so liable to terminate fatally under the ordinary treatment, in a very large proportion of cases, within a few days from the date of its commencement. Hahnemann, however, never esteemed the curative powers of Homoeopathy in acute dis- eases, remarkable as he knew them to be, to afford the great- est triumphs of his art. He looked upon the cure of chronic maladies as far more difficult, and therefore far more honour- able to the physician and to the method which were capable of accomplishing it. Chronic ailments, unimposing at their outset, insidious and seemingly inconsiderable through a great part of their course, and tardy in their issue, are not the less fatal or the less productive of suffering, when unsuc- cessfully opposed by the physician, but either directly or in- C2 INJUSTICE TO HOMOEOPATHIC STATISTICS. directly are much more fertile sources of misery and devas- tation among mankind, than all the acute inflammations in the world taken by themselves. Hence it is that Hahne- mann refers to the latter with an indifference bordering on contempt, as the assumed tests of medical prowess. Many of them he speaks of as ceasing spontaneously, and in spite of the many ingenious appliances of his contemporaries, that had a tendency to thwart the curative powers of nature. But of chronic diseases his estimate was very different. Of them he entertained the opinion that they were not capa- ble of spontaneous recovery, and arose from or rather were the signs of constitutional taints that could not be eradicated without the greatest skill on the part of the physician, and much perseverance and circumspection on the part of the patient. To this question I shall claim the attention of the reader when I come to the consideration of the " psoric" hy- pothesis, when I hope to prove that there is far less of gra- tuitous speculation, and much more of accurate observation and sound pathological doctrine in it, than superficial obser- vers and shallow thinkers appear to suppose. The statistics which have been published of the results of the homoeopathic treatment of acute inflammatory diseases by the hospital physicians of Germany, have, as might be ex- pected, been attacked with peculiar virulence by the wri- ters of the allopathic party. The small proportion of deaths which they exhibit is so astounding a contrast to the mortali- ty of the same diseases when treated by even the best allo- pathic physicians, that it is no wonder it should be regarded with astonishment by those who have no practical knowledge of Homoeopathy, and be treated with every injustice by those who are resolved at all risks to disparage that practice. Without any acquaintance with the character of the homoeo- pathic physicians who report these results, the allopathic writers have not scrupled to attack their integrity and their MEDICAL STATISTICS NEVER UNEXCEPTIONABLE. 63 professional discrimination. They sometimes accuse them of falsehood, sometimes of inaccurate diagnosis. By one or both of these defects their alleged success must be explained, for that their statistics are correct the opposing party are de- termined not to allow. I shall not contend for the invariable accuracy of the ho- moeopathic statistics, because I know that physicians of the greatest name and largest experience are liable to occasional mistakes. But I have not the smallest doubt that the number of mistakes is exceptional on both sides among hospital phy- sicians of considerable experience, and that an equal allow- ance should be made for such imperfections in all statistics of the kind issued by either party. In the more common acute inflammations, diagnosis is acknowledged to be simple and easy in all but a small proportion of cases, and if it were even to be granted that wherever it was difficult it was in- correct, I do not think that a very material element of inac- curacy would exist, after all, to vitiate comparative statistical results. That mistakes in diagnosis would be all on the ho- moeopathic side must be incredible to every one who reflects on the indubitable truths, that profound diagnosticians, who greatly excel such of their brethren as have fair abilities and practice, in the art of discriminating one disease from another, are exceedingly rare, and that public professional duty is discharged by men of both parties, who are endowed with but an average amount of talent and insight. Dr. Simp- son, following the example of Dr. Routh and others, adduces from the medical statistics of the army examples of an appa- rently remarkable success in the treatment of inflammation of the lungs, and it is with these more particularly that they attempt to prove the superiority of allopathic practice. Now, I have no disrespect for the medical service of the army; on the contrary, I have no doubt that there are many able and efficient men in that department, but at the same time I take 64 QUESTIONABLE STATISTICS OF THE ARMY AND OF LAENNEC the reasonable liberty of questioning very much whether every young dandy or ancient beau (for such there are) who carries a sword and a lancet, is nearly so perfect in the art of undoing a difficulty in diagnosis, as in the correlative cun- ning of tying a knot on his cravat. Some, again, of the allo- pathic writers, adduce the statements of Laennec in favour of the allopathic treatment of pneumonia. He says that he lost only one case out of twenty-eight, which is about the same mortality as is mentioned in some of the army statistics. Louis, however, one of the best diagnostic physicians of the allopathic school, expresses his belief that Laennec had com- mitted errors of diagnosis among his alleged cases, having mistaken the " crepitation" due to other diseases in the lungs for the "crepitation" of pneumonia; for Laennec tells us, with a confidence pardonable in the discoverer of ausculta- tion, that his only evidence that pneumonia existed at all in some of his cases, was the presence of some crepitation; "therefore," says Louis, "he must have confounded acute pulmonary catarrh, which attacks the last bronchial twigs, and is accompanied by a subcrepitant rattle, with pneumonia; and thence doubtless the immense apparent difference be- tween the results of his practice and mine."—(Rech. de la Saignee, p. &Q.) Are the ordinary allopathic hospital phy- sicians, here or elsewhere, in civil or military service, better diagnosticians than Laennec? By the by, Dr. Simpson ad- verts to the remarkable success of Laennec, but carefully shuts his eyes to M. Louis' explanation. It is a pity he can't shut ours.* * There is no need, however, of charging the allopathic authorities with any peculiar deficiencies; and in adducing a few among the many instances of errors in diagnosis committed by eminent allopathic physicians that have come to my knowledge, I have no desire to ask the reader to conclude that bad diagnosis are peculiar to gentlemen of the other side, but simply to ap- prize him, that if they are chargeable against us, they are likewise charge- able against them, and, considering the parties who were at fault, that it is INTEGRITY OF HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIANS. 65 As to the other question, the integrity of the homoeopathic physicians, I shall say very little, because the details I have to lay before the reader must settle that point triumphantly, and on clear allopathic authority too.* It is no small plea- sure to be able to take the accusers by the ears, and point- ing their unwilling eyes to the proofs that their injured likely they are at least as common on the one side as on the other. I have, then, known an accomplished consulting physician, and an eminent general practitioner, overlook our mistake in double pneumonia, of great extent, and discover it only on dissection; I have known a great advocate for cod-liver oil consumption mistake chronic pleurisy for the other disease; I have known an eminent stethosQopist, for mere irritation of the throat, which he treated with caustic as usual, mistake pulmonary consumption which was fatal within the week by the bursting of a tubercular abscess into the pleura; I have known an instance in which a notable hospital physician, not finding on dis- section the pulmonary disease he had mapped out and described to his pupils, adroitly remarked, "Gentlemen, you perceive the appearance on dissection don't correspond with the stethoscopic signs heard during life," (the lung was sound;) and, not to be tedious when samples alone are required, I be- lieve Dr. Simpson knows of a case of diabetes mellitus, which a whole bevy of "foremost" physicians mistook for some chronic inflammation within the cranium, and treated accordingly. Let us hear no more of errors of diagnosis, else the list may be greatly enlarged. Humanum est errare. * It may be worth noting, notwithstanding the conclusive evidence about to be adduced of the accuracy of the homoeopathic statistics, that Dr. Forbes, a distinguished allopathic physician, bears the following testimony to the cha- racter of Dr. Fleischmann, the physician of the principal homoeopathic hos- pital in Vienna:—"Dr. Fleischmann is a regular, well educated physician, as capable of forming a true diagnosis as other practitioners, and he is con- sidered by those who know him as a man of honour and respectability, and incapable of attesting a falsehood."—British and Foreign Medical Review. Dr. Simpson, however, is made so desperate by the statistics of Dr. Fleisch- mann, as to catch at the merest straws to help his halting argument. Thus, he adduces the authority of a youth, fresh from his elementary studies, and known to no human being as competent to distinguish any one chest disease from another, as superior to Dr. Fleischmann's in regard to the fact of a cer- tain case having been pneumonia or not; Fleischmann's having stated two deaths from that disease to have occurred during a particular period, and the modest youth asserting that there were three. 66 OUTLINE OF THE ARGUMENT. brethren were guiltless, to ask them, with closed teeth, and an excusable twisting of the imprisoned appendages, how they dared to put so foul an affront on innocent men. As the unprofessional reader may have some difficulty in appre- hending by what magic we have thus been enabled to clap the " twitch" as farriers have it, on our ferocious adversaries, I shall briefly sketch for his guidance the maiu particulars in the following details which have given us this advantage:— Dr. Dietl of Vienna, the physician of a large allopathic hospital, took the happy thought into his head of trying how inflammation of the lungs would deport itself, if he left it en- tirely to unsophisticated nature. Having done so in a large number of cases, he made the extraordinary discovery, for an Allopath at least, that nature was a vastly better doctor than he or any of his sect; but not only so, he also found that the mortality of this expectant method, as it is called, was very nearly as small as the homoeopathic physicians had aver- red theirs to be. Now, granting the common allopathic as- sertion to be true, that homoeopathic treatment is just no treat- ment, in other words, expectant treatment, it follows plainly, that the homoeopathic statistics of inflammation of the lungs must be correct; for they nearly correspond with the expectant treatment, or no treatment, of Dr. Dietl. But where is Ho- moeopathy then? say you. By no means extinguished yet; nay, more vivacious than ever. For here, in the first place, is settled, beyond appeal, the integrity of our homoeopathic authorities. If they be correct in regard to inflammation of the lungs, as they must be, unless Homoeopathy is actively injurious, which no one maintains it to be, they are correct in regard to other inflammations, where the difference of suc- cess in favour of Homoeopathy, and against Allopathy, is not more startling than in the case of inflammation of the lungs, where the difference is proved to be in favour of Homoeo- pathy, even supposing Homoeopathy to be nothing. Next, ALLOPATHY CONDEMNS ITSELF. 67 the reader will find it proved also, that Homoeopathy is some- thing; for an examination of details enables us to affirm, that it cures inflammation of the lungs in a much shorter time than unassisted nature does; so that it cannot be merely unas- sisted nature too. Besides, it can be shown that there is a peculiarity in inflamed lungs which enables unassisted nature to save so many lives, which peculiarity does not exist in other inflammations; and hence we argue, that though we do not save many more lives from inflammation of the lungs than nature alone does, we save a vastly greater number from death by other inflammations than nature can do. In the immediately following pages, also, the reader will find allopathic statistics compared with the homoeopathic, and brought to the test of Dr. Dietl's experiments. I am not answerable for the awful contrast; the astounding facts are mainly from Allopathy itself, and Dr. Dietl has been ap- pealed to (save the mark!) by Dr. Simpson, and others of his party, as an authority against us, but without entering into dan- gerous particulars. Allopathy may mourn with the stricken eagle, as she gazes on her wound, that she herself "Nursed the pinion that impelled the steel." As some cases of my own are introduced into the calcu- lations which follow, I am induced to mention a circumstance here which further illustrates the reckless and dishonourable manner in which homoeopathic statistics, and homoeopathic physicians, are maligned. In my former reply to Dr. Simpson, I mentioned in a note that I had treated with success a number of cases of inflammation of the lungs. In the course of last spring, a lecturer in Edinburgh accused me to his pupils, (though not by name,) of having ascribed the death of one case, that was actually inflammation of the lungs, to organic disease of the heart, and thus he attempted to show that no confidence was to be placed in homoeopathic statistics. 68 TESSIER'S CONVERSION TO HOMOEOPATHY. Will the reader believe that this malicious and false accusation was made in the face of the fact, that I had published that identical case three years ago, along with the cases adverted to in the following pages, and ascribed the death to inflam- mation of the lungs, which I regretted I had not seen my way to treat homoeopathically, for that otherwise the event might have been different! The fact is, the case was one of very unusual difficulty, and puzzled Dr. Alison as well as myself, so that it properly belongs to no statistics. Of M. Tessier, and his contribution to the homoeopathic sta- tistics, the following particulars are worthy of attention. This gentleman is physician to one of the ordinary public hospitals of Paris, and had, previously to his experimental inquiry into the practice of Hahnemann, been well known as an allopathic practitioner of most respectable attainments, to say the least of him. His homoeopathic experiments on cholera, and inflammation of the lungs, issued in his becoming a believer in the homoeopathic system. To his cases no objec- tions have been made by the Allopaths, but such as are so easily and satisfactorily set aside in the following pages; indeed, the Allopaths have been sorely at a loss how to dispose of Tessier's experience, and the utmost they have attempted, though unsuccessfully, to do, has been to lower his success to about the level of their own. This attempt, had it succeeded, would have at least proved that Homoeopathy was as good as Allopathy in the treatment of pneumonia; such are the per- plexities and inconsistencies to which the desperate and con- founded advocates of the falling practice are reduced. I think, then, it will be admitted that the accuracy of the homoeopathic statistics, to be adverted to in this chapter, is unobjectionably guarantied,—a remark which does not apply to those of the other party universally, for Bouillaud is charged by his colleague, Grisolle, with the suppressio veri. But I shall take no exceptions to their statistics as they stand; SOURCES OF FACTS FOR COMPARISON. 69 we can afford to give them a liberal drawback on the actual mortality of their practice. What follows regarding pneumonia in this Chapter was published by me in much the same form in the British Journal of Homoeopathy for October 1852. Dr. Simpson has taken care not to meddle with it, though he is well acquainted with the Journal. In comparing the allopathic and homoeopathic methods in the treatment of pneumonia, it is not my intention to enter at great length on the subject, or to bring together all or nearly all the statistical details that may have been more or less fully given on both sides. The task I have proposed to myself is much less laborious and extensive. I intend chiefly to examine in detail, as far as the recorded facts will enable me, a moderate number of cases from both sides; and I think that those I have selected for comparison will be found to present unobjectionable samples of the disease, its treatment, and consequences, under each system; there can be no ob- jection at least on the ground that the homoeopathic cases do not present as full a proportion of conditions usually regarded as unfavourable to recovery as any number of allopathic cases brought into comparison with them. I have, indeed, been at pains to discover accounts of allopathic cases that were unusually favourable for the happy issue of the treat- ment, and I have been successful in my search, having found them in treatises by Louis and Bouillaud. These with the examples from the practice of Drs. Walshe, Taylor, and Pea- cock, published by Dr. Routh, and those of Dietl of Vienna,* are all I have taken from allopathic authorities. The ho- moeopathic side gives me no latitude for selection, for I know of no groups of cases published by Homoeopathists, with the exception of the forty-one by Tessier, in his Recherches Cliniques, 1850, and the eleven by myself in the British * Der Aderlass in der Lungenentziindung. 1849. 70 FLEISCHMANN'S STATISTICS VINDICATED. Journal of Homoeopathy for 1850, which possess the condition which I regard as indispensable, on our side at least, of being a complete series of cases, from which none had been excluded or withheld from publication, that had occurred to the nar- rator between the commencement of his observations for the time, and the preparation of his treatise for the press. A few indeed of Tessier's earliest cases are not recorded, owing to the imperfection of the notes regarding them; but as they terminated favourably, their suppression is at least no objec- tion to his contingent of cases, which may therefore be fairly regarded as commencing with the first that appears in his work. If the comparison about to be instituted between these allo- pathic and homoeopathic cases shall be found to harmonize as to mortality with what we know of the groups of cases which are marshalled against each other on the grand scale, each containing many hundreds, we shall be entitled to con- clude that the latter, had they been subjected to the same analysis, would have furnished nearly the same proportion of favourable and unfavourable conditions, as to age, sex, com- plications, &c, for these are the particulars which are sup- posed to influence more or less the rate of mortality under every treatment, and you cannot have the aggregate result in a multitude of cases, irrespectively of the conditions which produce a similar result in a smaller number. The same proportional results must be due to the same proportion of conditions, on the greater as on the smaller scale. If the mortality in Tessier's cases and mine be the same as in Fleischmann's, we may be certain that Fleischmann's cases must have closely resembled the others in all the essential par- ticulars that are believed to bear on the mortality of pneu- monia; for had he selected his cases, his mortality must have been less. The details of these other cases, therefore, will afford us a very safe ground for judging of the quality of Fleischmann's cases. The most interesting part of this discussion, however, is DIETL'S EVIDENCE AGAINST ALLOPATHY. 71 connected with another element which has been lately thrown into the controversy; I allude to the very remarkable state- ments of Dietl regarding the effects of a merely dietetic or expectant practice. I shall say of these statements at present only thus much, that they settle finally two questions; the fate of allopathic practice, in pneumonia at least, and the thorough, nay, on the principles of our opponents, the neces- sary correctness of the rate of mortality affirmed by Homoeo- pathists as the result of their practice, even if, as is asserted, it be no better than doing nothing. Before proceeding to the analysis of the cases on the ho- moeopathic side of the question, I have a few words to say in reply to some of Dr. Simpson's* misrepresentations of Tes- sier's cases. Dr. Simpson maintains that one case that died of erysipelas, which began twelve days after the pneumonia was cured, and two that, he alleges, (though in reality only one, and he died three months after his pneumonia had been cured,) died of consumption before leaving the hospital, should be added to Tessier's mortality, because, according to him, these cases would be included among the deaths from pneu- monia in the statistics of allopathic hospitals. We are not, however, about to compare the cases of Tessier with the crude returns of hospitals, but with the discriminating statements of individual physicians, who knew when an inmate of their hospital wards died of pneumonia, and when of some other disease that had no connexion with it; they, in common with Tessier, all speak expressly and intelligently of pneumonia, and of what they noted in their patients throughout that dis. ease on to its termination, and there their business with every case ended in so far as the only purposes they had in view were concerned. If the allopathic physicians had told us all that happened to these patients weeks or months after their * I substitute Dr. Simpson's name for Dr. Routh's in these passages, be- cause the former has adopted the misrepresentations of the latter. 72 TESSIER'S CASES UNEXCEPTIONABLE. pneumonias were cured,.no doubt they would have had to re- cord casualties from erysipelas, or dysentery, or fever, or con- sumption, but then they would have treated of such under their proper titles, and not as casualties from, or during pneu- monia. Dr. Simpson next objects to the admission into the number of successful cases treated homoeopathically six that had been bled* prior to the commencement of the latter treat- ment, on the ground that the blood-letting must have bene- fited these cases, and thus disqualified them for bearing testi- mony to the efficacy of Homoeopathy. Blood-letting, however, as we shall find from the researches of Dietl, so far from les- sening the mortality of pneumonia, actually increases it; and when it does not do so, but appears to be of service, merely shortens the early stages of mild cases that would have termi- nated favourably of themselves. Besides, if the limited em- ployment of a single allopathic expedient should be regarded as a ground for excluding these successful cases, the employ- ment of other allopathic means in one of the cases that died, ought to be enough to exclude that case also from the homoeo- pathic calculation; and thus the proportion of deaths would be further reduced, and Homoeopathy would appear to be still more successful than Tessier makes it to be. To proceed to the analysis, first of the homoeopathic cases. and beginning with the question of Age,—I find that among the 50 cases that were beyond the period of puberty, 25, or just one-half, were above 40 years old, and of these, 16 above 50 years old; while the average age of all the cases was 41 years. There was then an un- * In one of these cases the bleeding was only by means of a few leeches, which in pneumonia must be utterly inoperative for either good or evil. It is venesection that is adverted to in the text as the deadly method. The six cases recorded by Tessier were not bled by him, but before they came under his care. Previous to his confiding in Homoeopathy alone, he used to com- bine blood-letting with it; and he found that " the less he bled the more were the patients benefited after the administration of the minute doses."—P. 4. ANALYSIS OF HOMOEOPATHIC CASES. 73 usually great proportion of cases at the later periods of life, of which excess an estimate may be formed from the follow- ing larger statistics given by Grisolle: among 630 cases col- lected by him, 239, or three-eighths, that is 76 less than the half, were above 40, and above 50 there was little more than a fifth. Sex.—The number of females amounted to 9,—about 1 in 5 J, which is a smaller proportion than usual; for in the 542 cases of Briquet, Chomel, and Grisolle, there were 138 fe- males, or about 1 in 4. This disparity is, however,-of no real consequence, for the following reasons:—both Grisolle and Briquet conclude that the greater mortality which is acknow- ledged to occur among females affected with pneumonia, de- pends chiefly on the more advanced age at which they are liable to the disease; the excess therefore in point of advanced age, already noticed among the homoeopathic cases, will counterbalance any advantage that may be presumed to de- pend on the smaller proportion of females; and it may be re- marked, besides, that we have actually no evidence that pneu- monia of itself is apt to be more fatal among females, as such, than among males. It is true a greater proportional mor- tality does occur among females, in allopathic practice, which is not entirely accounted for by their ages, but there is too much reason to believe, as we shall see in the sequel, that such excess of mortality among females, treated in the ordi- nary way, is actually due to the practice, and not to the dis- ease apart from the injury done by the treatment; for females have generally less robust constitutions than males, and blood-letting would appear to be fatal in proportion to the number of the more delicate persons who are subjected to its operation. Complications and Constitution.—In regard to local com- plications, and general deterioration of the constitution, I find that there were (exclusive of jaundice and pleurisy) 14 with 6 74 ANALYSIS OF HOMOEOPATHIC CASES. complications, or about 1 in 3J. The complications consisted of organic disease of the heart, chronic bronchitis, delirium tremens, pericarditis, acute bronchitis, and meningitis: besides those 14, in which local complications are specified, there were 8 others in which the complication is noted as enfeebled and deteriorated health, a state certainly as unfavourable in pneumonia as most of the chronic local complications are,— so that we have 20 cases of complication, or 1 in 2£; a larger proportion than the worst of the allopathic groups present, and very much larger than some of them do to which I shall have to refer. The Homoeopathic complications were chiefly chronic; and it would appear from Dietl's observations, that in allopathic practice acute complications are apt to abound, in consequence, as he thinks, of the tendency of the depleting measures to produce new inflammations. He supports this opinion by what he noticed after death in the bodies of such as had died under each of his three methods of treatment, blood-letting, tartar emetic, and the expectant plan. Among 17 of the first class, 7 presented complications with meningitis or pericarditis: among 22 of the tartar emetic class, only one presented acute complication (pericarditis;) and, of 14 that died under the expectant practice, not one instance of acute complication was found. Affection of the upper lobe.—Among the homoeopathic cases 10 examples of pneumonia of the upper lobe occurred. This is a smaller proportion.than has been sometimes noticed in allopathic practice. Andral had 30 pneumonias of an upper lobe in 88 cases; and Grisolle's proportion has varied in dif- ferent periods tfrom a fifth to a third. The pneumonias of the upper lobe are believed by Louis to be more fatal be- cause they are most liable to happen at the more advanced periods of life; so that the unusually great proportion of aged persons among the homoeopathic cases will probably nullify the apparently more favourable condition of these ANALYSIS OF HOMOEOPATHIC CASES. 75 eases as to the lobe affected. To show, moreover, how little the smaller proportion of pneumonias of the upper lobe ac- counts for the small mortality of the homoeopathic cases, it may be mentioned here, that while, according to Sestier and Grisolle, the mortality of such cases in allopathic practice amounts to 1 in 4, or 1 in 5, in our homoeopathic cases it amounted only to 1 in 10; and in that one case purulent infil- tration of the lobe had occurred before the treatment was begun. Double.—When pneumonia occurs in both lungs simultane- ously, it is not surprising that the rate of mortality should be increased. One half of such cases die according to Chomel; Grisolle lost 7 out of 16. This, therefore, appears an impor- tant element in the quality of the cases, when a comparison is being made, such as I have now in hand. I admit that the number of double pneumonias among the homoeopathic cases was less than appears to be common under the allopathic practice; but it would appear highly probable that the excess of double pneumonias found among the latter class of cases has some connexion with, and dependence on, the nature of the treatment. Thus Dietl, in 85 cases treated by blood- letting, had 10 double pneumonias, or 12 per cent., while, in 106 cases treated by tartar emetic, he had but 6 cases of double pneumonia, or less than 6 per cent., and in 189 cases, under the expectant treatment, there were only 11 double, or less than 6 per cent. Blood-letting, therefore, would seem to increase the proportion of double pneumonias. Bouillaud, who is a great bleeder, gives among his details, without being aware of this inference, what appears to corroborate the conclusion of Dietl; in75 cases he had 18 double pneumonias, (he had one more than he expressly mentions.) No doubt some of these were double pneumonias before any treatment was used. This, however, was the case only in half of them; of the remaining 9 cases, 8 were bled one or more days before 76 ANALYSIS OF HOMOEOPATHIC CASES. the first stethoscopic examination was made, and when it was made, the lung last affected was found in the earliest stage of the disease, as if it had begun but very recently, and after the bleeding was performed; in one case the pneumonia be- came double three days after the depleting practice was in full operation, the patient having been all that time in the hospital previous to the extension of the disease. Bouillaud had double pneumonias in the proportion of 24 per cent., and Grisolle, in the 1430 cases, collected from various allopathic authors, says the proportion was 18 per cent. In our homoeo- pathic cases there were 5 double pneumonias, at the rate, therefore,.of 10 per cent.,—or if we exclude one of the cases, because blood-letting had been employed before it fell under homoeopathic treatment, there were but 4 cases, or 8 per cent. We shall afterwards notice Dietl's reasons for believing that blood-letting causes the more extensive diffusion of pneumo- nia, and I advert to it here as an additional ground (and he, too, views it in the same light) for the opinion that depletion favours the occurrence of double pneumonia. If such, then, be the case, allopathic physicians cannot plead the greater proportion of their double pneumonias as a reason why their cases cannot be justly compared with ours, for that disad- vantage on their side appears fairly traceable to their injurious practice itself, which, of course, creates the evils that produce its greater mortality, and it seems this excess of double pneu- monias among the rest. Epidemic constitution affects the mortality of pneumonia, and chiefly in this way, that during influenza the pneumonias that are epidemic are unusually fatal, at least in allopathic practice. No such plea is set up on behalf of any of the groups of cases I am to compare with the homoeopathic, and it shall not therefore be taken into account, although several of Tessier's cases occurred during such an epidemic. Mortality.—Of our 50 cases 3 terminated fatally; the LOUIS' CASES OF PNEUMONIA. 77 proportion of deaths to recoveries being one to 17, or just 6 per cent. Of the 26 cases that were aged 43 years and under, only one died, and at the age of 43; none died of the 25 that were under 40. The others were aged respectively 58 and 60. Here, then, are 3 deaths in 25 cases aged be- tween 40 and 70 years, a period of life when, according to Grisolle's extensive data, the mortality is at the rate of 23 per cent, in allopathic practice. I compare with the homoeopathic mortality as given above first the two groups of cases furnished by Louis. The first group, consisting of 78 cases, wa3 mentioned in the Archives Generales for 1828, and in a reprint of the memoir, published in 1835, the author says in a note that he had excluded 46 other cases that had occurred to him along with these 78, because the pneumonia in them occurred in unfavourable cir- cumstances, such as previous bad health, while of the 78 cases he says—" all were in a state of perfect health at the mo- ment when the first symptoms of the disease began." Here then we have 78 selected cases of pneumonia, in persons in the most favourable circumstances, as to previous health, for the successful issue of the disease; and I might justly decline admitting such cases to a comparison with the unselected cases of the homoeopathic group, in which many—about a third—were in bad health at the commencement of the pneu- monia. This disadvantage will tell, however, all the more to the credit of Homoeopathy, when it is known, that of Louis' 78 cases, 28, or nearly one-third, died! What makes the difference in the success of the two systems still more •remarkable is, that Louis' cases were, in a large proportion, of an early age, and even the average age of the 28 fatal cases was only 49. That of the 50 that recovered was about 35. The same author, writing in 1834, or 1835, says, that in the course of the 4 preceding years 150 cases of pneumonia 78 BOUILLAUD'S CASES. had passed under his notice, but that he limits himself again to a selection of cases, 29 in all, who were, like the former group, "in excellent health at the moment when the first symptoms of pneumonia occurred." In this smaller selec- tion he was much more fortunate, 4 only of the 29 having died, or 1 in 7, about 14 per cent.; but still nearly 2£ times greater than the mortality of the unselected homoeopathic cases. The treatment of the first group of cases consisted en- tirely of blood-letting; of the second, of blood-letting, tar- tar emetic, and blisters. Louis ascribes the less fatal results in the second group in some measure to the bleedings, though fewer, having been more copious at a time. But the whole quantity of blood drawn in these cases was less than in the others, and the facts to be quoted from Dietl appear to show that it is rather to this smaller loss of blood that the happier consequences should be ascribed, than to the manner in which the evacuation was performed, Bouillaud's cases.—Pelletan, in the eighth volume of the Mem. de VAcad. R. de Medecine, has published an account of 75 cases of pneumonia treated by Bouillaud, with the view of setting forth the advantages of his method of employing venesection, a method which is known as the coup-sur-coup plan of bleeding, in the course of which blood is abstracted daily for 4 or 5 successive days, in such cases as seem capa- ble of bearing the loss. Age.—In respect to age, these cases had the advantage of a considerably larger proportion at the earlier periods of life than occurred among the homoeopathic cases. Of th§ latter, 25 cases, or one-half only, were below 37 years of age, while, of Bouillaud's cases, 46, or three-fifths, were below that time of life. Again, above 57 years old he had only 5 cases, while the homoeopathic cases numbered 14 above that age. This disparity is important, for the mortality, according bouillaud's cases. 79 to Grisolle's large statistics of pneumonia, between the ages of 50 and 60, is not less than 27 per cent. Sex.—Among Bouillaud's cases there were only 7 females, about 1 in 11 only, or 9| per cent.; while the homoeopathic cases had 9 females, or 18 per cent. A disproportion of great consequence if it is true, as allopathic physicians as- sert, that the mortality of females is one-third greater than among males. Seat.—Among Bouillaud's cases there were only 7 in- stances of pneumonia of the summit of the lung. This is at the rate of 10 per cent., while among the homoeopathic cases the proportion was 20 per cent. In this respect, therefore, the advantage is again on the side of Bouillaud's cases, for the mortality of pneumonia of an upper lobe is ascertained by Grisolle to be nearly double that of pneumonia of other parts of the lung. I have already said that Bouillaud had 18 cases of double pneumonia, or 24 per cent., while the homoeopathic cases had only 5 examples, or 10 per cent.; and I have also already shown that the excess of double pneumonias among allopa- thic cases is to be ascribed to blood-letting, and that, not being an original disadvantage of such cases, but an evil con- sequence of the treatment, it cannot be pleaded in extenu- ation of the allopathic mortality. Complications.—Of chronic complications, Bouillaud's cases had only one example—chronic bronchitis; the other com- plications, amounting to 10, were acute diseases of various kinds, chiefly of the bronchi and pericardium, and probably due in a great measure to the treatment. Mortality.—Ten deaths occurred among the 75 cases, or 1 in 7|, being at the rate of 14| per cent. Several of the cases are mentioned as being trivial, and treated with emol- lients merely, and three are noticed as having had no physical signs at all of pneumonia, and therefore were only conjee- 80 CASES OF.DRS. TAYLOR, WALSHE, tured to be cases of that disease. Notwithstanding these and the other favourable circumstances of those cases of Bouil- laud, the mortality was more than double that of the homoeo- pathic cases. Among the deaths, one, not included by the author in estimating the rate of mortality, occurred within 2-4 hours after the patient was admitted into hospital. A similar instance occurred among the homoeopathic cases, and is expressly included by Tessier in his mortality. If either is deducted, the other should be deducted too. Of the 75 cases of Bouillaud, Grisolle remarks, that in reality only 49 were treated in the heroic manner he recom- mends. Of these 6 died, or 1 in 8. The average age of these 49 cases was only 33 years, and when we take into con- sideration the fact rendered evident by the experience of Dietl, that the mortality of pneumonia at all ages, indis- criminately, when no remedial treatment is employed, is only one half so great as in Bouillaud's 49 cases, we shall see rea- son to regard the recoveries in those allopathic cases as due to the powers of young and vigorous constitutions, which re- sisted the fatal tendency of the blood-lettings. Cases of Drs. Taylor, Walshe, and Peacock.—Dr. Routh, in his suspiciously inaccurate work, entitled—"Fallacies of Homoeopathy," furnishes the particulars of these cases, and as he would give at least the most favourable view of them that they could honestly admit of,—that is, would take the utmost pains to display their disadvantages, and to find ex- cuses for their mortality, I have the less hesitation in quoting the account of them from a work so little entitled to confi- dence, for I desire to contrast our homoeopathic details with any that even such an opponent can venture to publish in favour of the system which he defends. Age.—The ages are given of 126 cases, and of them 96, (Routh says 86!) or above two-thirds, were under 40 years AND PEACOCK. 81 old; while, in the homoeopathic cases, only one-half was under that age. Sex.—21 of the 140 were females, or less than a fifth, so that the proportion was nearly as in the homoeopathic cases. Complications.—The number of complicated cases is said to have been 62. Of these a large proportion, no doubt, con- sisted of acute diseases, as probably always occurs when blood-letting is employed freely. No specific statement is made .regarding the proportion of chronic complications. We have seen that the homoeopathic cases had, including the examples of chronic bad health and acute disease, 20 com- plicated cases, or two-fifths, being rather more than the pro- portion stated to have occurred in these allopathic cases. Seat.—No details are given respecting pneumonia of the upper lobe. Among the uncomplicated cases, 14 instances of double pneumonia are said to have happened, being at the rate of 18 per cent.; a number must have occurred also among the complicated cases, but nothing is recorded of them. Enough, however, is mentioned to strengthen the inference, formerly adverted to, regarding the influence of the treat- ment in producing that fatal form of pneumonia. Mortality.—The deaths amounted to 43, being rather less than 1 in 3, or above 30 per cent. From this enormous mor- tality I am quite willing to allow 10 deaths to be deducted, on the ground that they occurred among 17 cases of secon- dary pneumonia, that is, pneumonia succeeding fever, &c, of which we had no corresponding examples in the homoeopathic cases. Notwithstanding the deduction, 33 deaths remain, 1 in every 4 cases, or above 26 per cent.! Of the complicated cases 32 died, or above one-half; while, of the 14 homoeopa- thic cases complicated with known local disease, only 1 died. DietVs cases.—He gives three sets of cases, of which two were treated respectively by blood-letting, and by tartar emetic. By the former method 85 cases were treated, of 82 dietl's cases. which 17 died, or 20-4 per cent. By tartar emetic, in large doses, 106 cases were treated, and of them 22 died, or 20-7 per cent. There are no details respecting the ages, compli- cations, sex, or parts of the lung affected, with the exception of what relates to the number of cases of double pneumonia. Of these, 10 occurred among the cases that were bled, or 12 per cent., and 6 among the cases treated by tartar emetic, or less than 6 per cent. We have some very important and instructive details by Dietl, regarding the effects of venesection. His remarks are so strongly opposed to the employment of this practice, that we might be inclined to suspect him of a leaning to Homoeo- pathy, did he not express himself as strongly opposed to it, and as "clinging more firmly than ever to the old standard," —a declaration that must have some strange and peculiar motive, considering the startling account he publishes of the evils of the common practice in pneumonia—evils which, on his own showing, must equally follow the employment of vene- section in other inflammatory diseases. Dietl left 189 cases of pneumonia to follow their natural course uninterrupted by medical treatment of any kind, taking care merely to restrict them to cool drinks and meager fare during the febrile period of the disease, and preventing them from moving about. The result was 14 deaths, being one in 13J, or only 7-4 per cent.! A result such as this can- not but be regarded as in the highest degree remarkable by all who have been accustomed to rely on medical expedients for the cure of serious, and especially acute inflammatory diseases. That the narrator of so striking a series of expe- -riinents has conducted them fairly, and given an honest ac- count of them, cannot be doubted. He is not, as we have seen, an opponent of the established methods of treatment, and could have had no conceivable purpose of a sinister kind to serve by recording alleged facts that reflect so injuriously expectant practice. 83 on the practice of that allopathic section of the profession of which he avows himself a firm adherent. At the same time, as he has unfortunately not furnished us with any informa- tion regarding the ages of the cases thus left to nature, and has said nothing of the proportion of females among them, of the number of complications, or of affections of the upper lobes, we are left in doubt as to whether the 189 cases may not have been accidentally more favourably circumstanced for a mitigated severity, and a happy issue, of the disease, than those cases are believed to be in which the usual pro- portion exists of the aged, of the chronically diseased, of the female sex, and of affections of the upper lobes. Still, even supposing these 189 cases to have been in a more advantage- ous condition than usual in one or more of the several re- spects adverted to, the amount of advantage cannot, in unse- lected cases, have been so considerable as very materially to affect the results. Accident may have helped to increase the apparent success of the dietetic or expectant treatment, and so the comparatively small mortality which followed that treatment, in these 189 cases, may not be a strictly accurate measure of the real superiority of the expectant over the ordinary allopathic practice; yet, let every reasonable al- lowance be made, and still the expectant method must by all candid persons be admitted to have presented, in the expe- rience of Dietl, an amount of success unapproached in the published experience of any other allopathic physician of any * country. The first reflection suggested by these cases is, that we can now be at no loss to account for recoveries taking place under every variety of allopathic practice. The disease would ap- pear to tend towards recovery in about 92 per cent, of those affected, unless disturbed in its course by injurious interfe- rence; and even when such interference has unhappily been practised, a very large proportion, notwithstanding, of those 84 ALLOPATHIC RECOVERIES EXPLAINED. affected have such natural powers of resistance—so much of the vigour of youth, or of the toughness of hale old age, that commonly the number of recoveries cannot be lessened by more than an additional 10 or 15 per cent. That this ex- planation is just, is plainly proved by the circumstance, that the more vigorous, strong, and previously healthy the per- sons are who labour under pneumonia, the better is their prospect of recovery under the common practice, as well as under the expectant, the latter, however, giving even to such cases the more favourable prospect; while the more feeble, whether owing to age, sex, or previous bad health, die also of course in a much larger proportion under the allopathic practice than under the other. The common notion among allopathic physicians is, that in aged and feeble persons, in whom, as their phrase is, "there is no room for practice," the dietetic plan may do very well, but that it is far other- wise with the young and robust, who, it is said, demand ener- getic measures. That there is a great mistake on this matter is proved by the following facts:—assuming age to be a proxi- mate indication of the degree of strength and robustness, we find from Dietl's work, that among the younger and more ro- bust constitutions, in other words, among the patients under 40 years of age, the treatment by blood-letting lost 5 cases, which supposing 50 (the usual proportion) of the whole 85 cases to have been under 40 years old, gives 1 in 10, or a proportion of 10 per cent, of deaths during the 26 years above puberty, when pneumonia is presumed to stand the most in need of " active measures," and to be the most easily cured by them. Among the expectant cases only one death occurred under 40 years of age, and as the whole of these cases amounted to 189, the proportion under 40 years old would be 114, so that the expectant practice had one death in 114 cases at the most vigorous period of life, when allo- pathic evacuations, &c, are fancied to be so essential. In TEN TIMES MORE FATAL THAN DOING NOTHING. 85 the same number of cases (114) the latter practice would have lost eleven cases, in other words, would have caused 10 more deaths than occurred when the cases were not subjected to any medical treatment. Above 40 years old, the depleting plan of treatment had also a larger mortality, 12 having died among the 35 cases, which, according to the usual propor- tion, must have been above 40 years, in the 85 cases; this gives us a mortality of 1 in 3, or 33 per cent. Among the 75 cases of the expectant class, which are presumed, accord- ing to the ordinary calculations, to have been above 40 years of age, 13 deaths occurred, about 1 in 6, or 17 per cent, about one-half the mortality of the other practice among the feebler class of patients—who certainly appear therefore to be proper cases for an expectant method, but not nearly such proper cases for that method, in its comparative superiority over the allopathic, as the young, strong, and vigorous are, among whom blood-letting—that active treatment—^ ten times more fatal than the dietetic plan is! Of the treatment by tartar emetic in large doses, I need only remark, that the mortality over the whole cases was much the same as under venesection, (such are the evil conse- quences of using indiscriminately, and in excessive doses, even a remedy which is homoeopathic to some cases of pneu- monia,) and that it was fatal in a smaller measure in the cases under 40 than venesection was; having lost 1 in 15, or be- tween 6 and 7 per cent, below 40 years old, and 1 in 2| or 36\ per cent, in the cases above 40. In what we learn from Dietl of the tendency of pneumonia to recover spontaneously, and even in spite of any and every sort of injurious treatment, we have a sufficient explanation of the fortunate issue of so large a proportion of cases at the earlier periods of life, which allopathic writers, prematurely and needlessly as it now appears, have been accustomed triumphantly to appeal to in testimony of the virtues of blood- 86 ARMY STATISTICS ACCOUNTED FOR. letting and tartar emetic. One death in 20 or 30 cases, be- tween 20 and 30 years of age, has now and then been the happy result in the experience of some of these physicians, and more frequently, perhaps, among the athletic young men in military practice than in civil life. When it is mOre gene- rally known, however, that without any medical treatment, the mortality is less than one per cent, among patients under 40 years of age, some other ground for the complacency of our allopathic brethren will appear to be reasonably required. It will, notwithstanding, always remain a remarkable cir- cumstance, that even young and vigorous persons should be able to survive, in so large a proportion of instances, the simultaneous attacks of an acute inflammation of one of the most important organs of the body, large and repeated losses of blood, and the violent purgings and vomitings produced by excessive doses of tartar emetic. Lest it should be suspected that the mortality exhibited in the comparatively small groups of cases, from allopathic and homoeopathic practice, which have been contrasted in the foregoing pages, does not represent fairly the general rate of mortality from pneumonia under the two systems, I add the statistics on this point furnished on a large scale by allopa- thic and homoeopathic hospitals. Taking Dr. Routh's state- ments on the subject, we find that among 783 cases of pneu- monia, treated in homoeopathic hospitals, the deaths amounted to 45, or 5-7 per cent.; while according to the same authority, among 1522 cases that occurred in the Glasgow Infirmary, the General (allopathic) Hospital of Vienna, and the practice of Drs. Walshe, Taylor, and Peacock, the deaths Avcre 373, or 24 per cent. The almost exact correspondence of the mor- tality among the homoeopathic cases on the large scale, with that among the 50 cases analyzed in the preceding pages, cannot fail to repel the insinuations which have been so reck- lessly made as to the admission into the homoeopathic hospi- VINDICATION OF HOMOEOPATHIC SUCCESS. 87 tals of only favourable cases. The 50 cases referred to are altogether unexceptionable in respect to the proportion of conditions usually esteemed unfavourable to recovery, and if they presented no greater a mortality than occurred among the 783 hospital cases, the fair conclusion is, that the latter must have been of the same mixed quality, pretty much in the same proportion, and not cases unfairly selected for the purpose of leading to a false impression of the superiority of the homoeopathic practice. This conclusion is still further supported by a comparison of these 783 cases, with 189 die- tetic cases of Dietl, a comparison which the Allopath will gladly accept, as proving, according to his notions, that ho- moeopathy is no more than a merely expectant practice. Those cases of Dietl have been referred to, indeed, by Drs. Simpson, Routh, and others, as actually proving such to be the fact, while they have overlooked, in their zeal, another part of the same testimony which is altogether ruinous to the reputation of their own system. If the dietetic cases prove homoeopathy to be merely an expectant prattice, because the mortality among them was so nearly the same as in homoeopathic hospi- tals, they prove at the same time, that allopathy is frightfully worse than its rival,—that it actually destroys from 13 to 17 per cent, of patients that would have recovered if treated homoeopathically, or if left to the remedial powers of unas- sisted nature! On the supposition, then, that the homoeopa- thic treatment was actually no other than a dietetic treatment, and granting, what no Allopath will deny, that the deaths, at least, occurred which are specified by the homoeopathic authorities, and are not likely to have been magnified, the number of bond fide cases of ordinary pneumonia must, if calculated from the rate of mortality among the 189 die- tetic cases, have been fairly and honourably stated by the homoeopathic physicians, for the difference is only 1-7 per cent, of deaths in favour of the homoeopathic practice;—the 88 VINDICATION OF HOMOEOPATHY. deaths under the dietetic treatment having been 7-4 per cent., under the homoeopathic 5-7 per cent. We have thus, from an unexpected source, evidence, the most conclusive, of the substantial accuracy of the homoeopathic records on the sub- ject of pneumonia; evidence which ought to cover with shame those who have, without a shadow of excuse for their conduct, advanced charges against the homoeopathic hospital physi- cians, painful to peruse, and disgraceful even to have conjec- tured. I am quite prepared to admit that the results of Dietl's expectant treatment, completely destructive, as they even- tually must be, of all confidence in the ordinary treatment of acute inflammations, ought to lower materially our esti- mate of the favourable influence even of Homoeopathy on the mortality of pneumonia. To those who know the efficacy of Homoeopathy in other inflammatory diseases, usually es- teemed of the most dangerous kind, and have witnessed the power it has of controlling and cutting short the course of pneumonia, it cannot but appear remarkable that there should be so small a difference, in the rate of their respective mor- tality, between it and a merely dietetic treatment. The fact, however, is so; and I think good reasons can be adduced to show why it is so, while at the same time it can be proved that in acute inflammations, pneumonia not excepted, Homoeo- pathy does possess an active, real, and positive remedial power of the highest importance. There is a speciality in pneumonia, which has been almost universally overlooked, on which depends, beyond all reasonable doubt, the remarka- ble capacity it displays of running spontaneously to a favoura- ble issue in all but exceptional cases. It is now twelve years since I incidentally pointed out, in a paper on the Anatomy of Pneumonia* a peculiarity in the * Monthly Journal of Medical Science, 1841. EXPLANATION OF THE DIETETIC RESULTS. 89 effects of inflammation of the pulmonary air-cells—the true anatomical seat of pneumonia. On minutely examining the inflamed parts after death, it was not difficult to perceive that as the inflammatory exudation increased, the parts affected became gradually paler and less loaded with blood, until, on the inflamed cells becoming filled with the viscid substance, so much pressure was exerted on the blood-vessels, between the fibrous investment of the lobules on the one hand, and the exuded matter which distended the cells on the other, that the diseased portion of the lung became actually blood- less, or very nearly so, the deep red colour of the earlier stages of the pneumonia giving place to the straw or drab, or sometimes bluish gray colour that distinguishes completed hepatization.* As soon as this stage arrives, if the earlier stages of the inflammation be not going on in other parts of the lung, the pneumonia as an active inflammatory process is literally put out,—extinguished by mechanical force; for it is undeniable that an excess of blood, in vessels dilated be- yond their ordinary size, is necessary to the existence of such a process. That compression is capable of producing the effect I have mentioned on the inflammatory process is well known from what has been observed of the consequences of bandaging in erysipelas of the extremities, and of " strap- ping" in acute orchitis. In neither of those diseases, how- ever, are the facilities for an effectual pressure on the vessels at all to be compared with those which exist in the minute cells of the lungs, where every little mesh of capillary blood- vessels may be said to be exposed on all sides, and in detail, to the immediate pressure of the exuded matter in the air- cells, on whose surfaces they are spread; while counter-pres- sure is close at hand on the exterior of each cell, in the form of other distended cells of the same group, and on the exte- * i. e., Lung made solid by inflammation. 7 90 DIETL'S EXPLANATION OF THE rior of every little lobule, or group of cells, in the form of the fibrous covering which they each possess. This view of the effect of completed hepatization in sup- pressing pneumonia, is strikingly corroborated by the obser- vations of Dietl, on the mutual relation of the general or febrile symptoms of pneumonia, and the completion of hepa- tization. " The fever and dyspnoea," says he, " increase with the continuance and progress of the exudative process, but decline in pneumonias left to themselves, as by enchantment, as soon as this is completed." (P. 71.) Again: "The febrile stage of pneumonia lasts in very few cases no longer than three days, in more from three to six days, especially in chil- dren; in most instances, however, seven to nine days; and extends to even eleven or thirteen days only when the pneu- monic infiltration happens to be arrested in some measure." (P. 72.) And when narrating the subsidence of symptoms which in some cases of pneumonia (cases, it should be no- ticed, which, according to the plain tenor of his observations on the disastrous. consequences of venesection, as a general remedy for pneumonia, must have been mild, of small extent, and in strong individuals) follow venesection, he says, " This improvement was in the majority of (such) cases permanent, so that the pneumonia appeared to be cured by a single ve- nesection; or, in other cases, it was transitory, so that after 24 or 48 hours a getting worse or relapse began, which, how- ever, by a second venesection was finally set aside. These unquestionable facts appear loudly to proclaim that pneumo- nia, in many cases by a first or second venesection, is cured in its first stage, and that its passage on to hepatization can be prevented. By physical examination of such cases, this, how- ever, has appeared—that these apparently cured pneumonias almost never become stationary in this stage of mere conges- tion, but much more frequently pass very quickly into that of hepatization; so certainly, that within 24 hours not unfre- SUPPOSED BENEFITS OF BLOOD-LETTING. 91 quently a whole lobe, or even a whole lung, has become in- filtrated. . . . We may conclude from this fact, that the relief in those cases must be ascribed not immediately to venesection, but to the quiokly succeeding exudation, since by a constant law of nature, fever and dyspnoea of a regu- larly progressing pneumonia are almost instantaneously ex- tinguished with the completion of the exudation." (P. 80.) While he has witnessed in cases of dietetically treated pneu- monia the same speedy cessation of the fever and dyspnoea due to speedy hepatization, he says he has observed this happen in a greater number of cases after venesection, al- though in most cases it had no such effect. (P. 87.) Hence he concludes that venesection hastens the exudative process in the inflamed parts in certain cases of pneumonia, although in most cases it does not do so. (P. 81.) "Most cases of quickly cured pneumonia are therefore cases of rapid hepa- tization, the development of which is rather favoured than hindered by venesection." His conclusion is somewhat re- markable—"I believe, therefore, that venesection in many cases of pneumonia operates in an eminently homoeopathic way, i. e., it shortens the pneumonic process, while it forwards it." (P. 82.) A consequence which he believes to be pro- duced by venesection acting on the constitution of the blood in the same way as the inflammation itself does, and thereby increasing the intensity of that state of the fluid on which the exudation depends. Unfortunately this somewhat strange homoeopathic remedy exerts the beneficial part of its influence on but a small pro- portion of pneumonias. Dietl does not tell us his propor- tion, but a strenuous advocate for venesection, Briquet, in detailing his experience of the rapidly favourable results which sometimes follow venesection, observes that this oc- curred in only one-fourth of his cases, i. e., in 22 out of 87; 92 BENEFITS OF VENESECTION DELUSIVE. and he gives us a clue also to the reason, if not of its occur- rence in them, at least of venesection being borne in such cases without injury—" three-fourths of these patients were of*a strong constitution, and seven-eighths of them presented at the same time crepitant rattle with the bronchial respira- tion," that is, were in an early stage of the disease. In the great majority of the other cases of pneumonia that re- covered, he acknowledges that the phenomena of the disease during the period that venesections continued to be practised either persisted unchanged, or commenced to diminish, as would certainly have been the case, judging from Dietl's ex- perience of the expectant practice, had no venesection been performed, and fewer of the whole number, also, would have become progressively worse. It would appear, therefore, that the prepossession in fa- vour of venesection in pneumonia rests chiefly upon two grounds: 1st, On the suppression of the general symptoms speedily after venesection in a proportion of cases, although these are cases which, from the robustness of the patients, belong to the very class which we now know furnishes a smaller mortality when left to nature; the benefited cases therefore did not need venesection to prevent their dying, although from peculiar circumstances the disease in them was hurried through its febrile stage, and thereby made shorter, though not safer, by venesection. I may add to these the few cases in which pneumonia is stopped by venesection in its first stage, or stage of congestion, of which cases Dietl observes, " If in a very few cases the pneumonic process is arrested after powerful venesection in the stage of inflamma- tory congestion, yet this occurs still more frequently under dietetic treatment, so that we believe we ought to ascribe this circumstance with much more justice to the originally limited and more insignificant intensity of the pneumonic process, VENESECTION DESTROYS LIFE. 93 than to the influence of venesection." (P. 75.) 2d, On the foregone and hereditary conclusion that venesection was ne- cessary in the general treatment of pneumonia, and conse- quently that the recoveries which took place were, in all se- vere cases at least, due to the venesection in a great mea- sure ; a conclusion which was not unnatural in the absence of actual clinical proof, that even in this formidable-looking dis- ease recoveries would occur in a much larger proportion of cases had no such evacuation been employed. The manner in which venesection proves injurious, and so often fatal, in the treatment of pneumonia, may be satisfac- torily shown by the facts we now have in our possession. Formerly it might be argued with some plausibility, that the large mortality which occurred when venesection was a prin- cipal means by which it was sought to cure the disease, hap- pened in spite of the remedy; for the best remedy in the hands of the best physician must occasionally fail to do good, as no human being can be so complete a master of the instru- ments he employs as always to wield them to the best pur- pose of which they are capable. This explanation will not now suffice, for it is placed by actual experiment beyond all question, that venesection destroys life in an appalling pro- portion of cases in which death would not have been the issue but for the employment of the supposed remedy. The strong and robust resist it for the most part, and happily recover, yet no contemptible proportion of them, and many of the weaker, whether owing to sex or age or morbid in- firmity, are its unquestionable victims. The manner and cir- cumstances of its operation in leading to this result are thus detailed by Dietl: "We cannot forbear this expression of our belief,—that venesection favours the spreading of hepa- tization, and favours it all the surer the oftener it is repeated, and the poorer the patient is in blood,—so that many pneu- 94 CAUSE OF THE FATALITY monias, both intense and extensive, were first pushed to their height by venesection—progressed and throve, so to speak, under the lancet." (P. 85.) And again, "In other cases we saw the hepatization proceed in pauses in two or three attacks, so that after the infiltration of a portion, the fever and dysp- noea ceased, the patient experienced the greatest relief,— the whole appeared to be ended. After the lapse of one or two days, however, the hepatization undergoing recrudes- cence, began to spread itself wider, until it affected a whole lobe or a whole lung, or even spread itself to both lungs, which sometimes first occurred after a second attack. These intermittent pneumonias happened almost exclusively in old and enfeebled persons, and as well under the dietetic as the venesection treatment, with this striking difference, however, that in the latter the second attack was much more severe, and the hepatization more rapidly extended, reached an ex- traordinary extent of surface, and that almost all the patients died; while, in the former, the second attacks proceeded much more calmly, the hepatization attained no such extent, and the most of the patients, even when the disease was very tedious and left indurations or wastings of the lung behind, recovered." At p. 88 he concludes,«that venesection favours the transition of red hepatization into suppuration,..... and that the resorption of purulent hepatization was not fa- voured by venesection, but that death often follows in the midst of it." " We have remarked the most extensive pneu- monias, as well in private as in hospital practice, in the prac- tice of others as well as our own, always to occur under the use of .venesection." (P. 84.) "Of the patients treated die- tetically, not one died in consequence of the pneumonia alone; or, what is the same thing, pneumonia left to itself is, of itself alone, proved not to be a fatal disease, but is so by being complicated with chronic disease." (P. 108.) "By OF VENESECTION. 95 venesection seven fatal cases of uncomplicated pneumonia OC' curred—one at 18 years of age, two at 40, two at 37, and two at 60; so that the deaths cannot be ascribed to the greater age." (P. 103.) "It cannot be doubted, therefore, that vene- section increases the mortality of pneumonia as such, and the question occurs how? By the extension of hepatization over a greater amount of lung, the exciting of other acute exuda- tive processes, especially pericarditis and meningitis,* and favouring suppuration, and the coagulation of the blood in the heart and great vessels." He adds to this catalogue of the evil consequences of venesection," that it tends also to cause acute oedema (dropsy) of the lungs, which was more re- markable in the cases that died under venesection than under the dietetic treatment." (P. 105.) And that no sure ground exists for the selection of such cases as are likely to bear the venesection well, appears from this observation: "We have not unfrequently remarked that a single venesection, apparently well indicated, had, as consequences, striking sinking of strength, profuse sweat, miliaria, vibrating pulse, and a rapidly fatal termination." (P. 108.) After all this his conclusion will appear abundantly just: "That venesection has its certain and not unimportant share in the greater mor- tality of pneumonia." (P. 107.) Much more to the same ef- fect as the preceding important and startling observations is scattered through the work, but the statements which have been extracted are sufficiently distinct and conclusive. I proceed next to prove, that though, owing to the peculi- arity referred to in the anatomy and consequences of hepati- zation, pneumonia is a much less fatal disease when left to nature than has been generally supposed; the success of the expectant method does not account for the small mortality under the homoeopathic treatment. That it does is the con- * Inflammati on of the membranes of the heart and of the brain. 96 HOMOEOPATHY SHORTENS elusion of Dietl, a conclusion which is valuable, at least to this extent, that it admits the accuracy of the homoeopathic state- ments as to the rate of mortality under the system, and the fairness with which the homoeopathic statistics of the success- ful treatment of pneumonia are given by his fellow-citizen Fleischmann. For Dietl seeks no solution of the question by gratuitous and unmannerly insinuations regarding the candour and ability of the latter, the justice of whose claim to be con- sidered a trustworthy physician he must have had opportuni- ties of knowing, and does not dispute; as indeed he could not for another reason, that, regarding homoeopathy as merely an expectant practice, he must admit it to be at least as suc- cessful as his own expectant treatment. A comparison of de- tails would, however, have satisfied him that he greatly erred in his denial of active and positive virtues to the homoeopathic method, and that its success is due to some other cause than that which favours the expectant plan—a cause calculated to pro- duce still happier results. This truth is illustrated by the— duration of the disease under the different plans of treatment. The duration of the disease ought to be computed from the first symptoms of the inflammatory fever to the cessation of the local physical signs, or complete disappearance of the hepa- tization. And it is thus that Dietl proceeds in the analy- sis he has given us of the duration of pneumonia under the expectant and the allopathic treatment. When the resolu- tion of the hepatization is not made the final particular in the estimate of duration, the physician is left to a somewhat arbitrary and uncertain criterion in fixing the period of cure, and is exposed to the temptation of under-estimating the length of time his remedies have taken to effect recovery. Louis tells us that he placed the date of convalescence " at the period when the patients have commenced to take some slight nourishment, three days at least after the cessation of the fever; the local symptoms not being yet dissipated in all THE DURATION OF PNEUMONIA. 97 the cases." Bouillaud adopts a still more questionable me- thod, fixing the commencement of convalescence at the period when the characteristic signs of pneumonia and the fever have almost entirely disappeared, and when he had begun to give some " bouillons;" " as if," says Grisolle," one had a right to regard as cured, patients in whom fever had not yet entirely ceased." Objectionable as both these methods are, yet as the French authors appear generally to adopt the course followed by Louis, I shall not conclude this part of the sub- ject without comparing our results with theirs, as ascertained by their own mode of procedure. I have first, however, to advert to Dietl's averages, and to compare the homoeopathic data with them. He found the average duration of the cases treated by ve- nesection to be 35 days; of those treated by tartar emetic, 28*9 days; and of those under the expectant method, 28 days. The whole duration of the disease, from the commencement of the fever to the complete resolution of the hepatization, is ascertainable in 43 of the 50 homoeopathic cases. In a few of Tessier's cases the last report regarding the state of the lung is, that resolution was almost complete. To the duration of such cases I have added two days succeeding the final report, which is at least not too little. The average duration, then, of the disease in these 43 cases amounts to only 111 days. This very remarkable result places beyond all rational doubt the claim of homoeopathy to a high de- gree of active curative power in pneumonia. The cases un- der the expectant treatment lasted, on an average, 16 days longer than the homoeopathic cases. Of the whole expec- tant cases, 36 (not much less than one third) were prolonged to between 30 and 60 days, while only 5, or less than one- eighth, of the homoeopathic cases lasted beyond 18 days, and only once did the duration extend to 27 days. Lest it should be supposed that an average duration of 28 days is an incredi- 98 GRISOLLE'S EXPECTANT CASES bly long period for the duration of pneumonia, down to the period of complete resolution, it may be as well, by way of corroboration of Dietl's statements, to mention some parti- culars of 11 cases treated by Grisolle, according to the same plan. They were mostly young persons, the disease of small extent, and the attendant symptoms mild; so that cases more favourable to such rapid recovery as diet alone can achieve, could not be selected. M. Grisolle states that the commence- ment of resolution in these mild cases occurred towards the end of the second week—say, on the twelfth or thirteenth day, or after the hepatization had entirely disappeared in most of the homoeopathic cases; and that some of the local signs of the disease persisted till between the twenty-second and thirtieth days. The author adds: "It results from the analysis of these observations, that in mild pneumonias, treated by emollients, the local symptoms of the malady, and especially the pain, have a very long duration, which has no proportion to the intensity of the fever and the extent of the disease. A circumstance equally remarkable is the slowness with which the pulmonary congestion is resolved, although it does not certainly extend to a great depth: one might remark, in fact, that there was an interval of nearly four days between the complete cessation of the fever and the period when the phenomena of auscultation commenced to decrease.'1 (P. 362.) The facts which I have just adduced present not only a triumphant and irrefragable testimony to the positively remedial powers of homoeopathy, but they likewise prove, I think, that it cures, and saves life, in a different way from that in which unassisted nature does in this disease; it tends to cut short the disease by preventing exudation, or re- straining it within very narrow limits, both of extent and degree. Consolidation may indeed take place under ho- moeopathic treatment, but that it does not consist in any con- COMPARED WITH THE HOMOEOPATHIC. 99 siderable amount of exudation into the air cells, appears from the rapidity with which it vanishes. Within an ave- rage of four days after the cessation of the fever, the whole local disease was gone, whereas in Grisolle's mild cases, left to diet, the process of resolution had then only begun, and took from 11 to 17 days to be completed. M. Grisolle ad- verts to the hepatization in his cases, as if it amounted only to vascular congestion, or, what he considers the same, red hepatization; but complete hepatization is never merely vas- cular congestion, and he has no means of knowing, but by dissection, what the actual state of the hepatized part is. Besides, it is not in harmony with what we know of the state of inflamed parts elsewhere, to believe that intensely congested vessels should continue to afford signs of consoli- dation for four days after the fever had ceased, and should take so many days more to disappear. In these, as in Dietl's cases, (for he more correctly regards hepatization as almost synonymous with infiltration of the lung with exudation matter,) the local disease must have issued in distention of the air-cells with inflammatory exudation,—a condition which admits of being remedied only by the slow processes of ab- sorption and expectoration. It is thus only that we can ac- count for the very remarkable difference in the duration of pneumonias treated homoeopathically, and of those treated by the expectant method. Louis, and probably most other French physicians, as ap- pears from the terms in which Grisolle refers to the practice of Louis, reckon the duration of their cases of pneumonia only down to the complete cessation of fever, and the capa- city to receive and digest some more nourishing food than was previously safe. In 36 of Tessier's cases, the daily re- ports are such as enable us to ascertain the duration of his cases, according to this mode of reckoning; no data of the kind are furnished by my cases, as I allow nothing but fever- 100 DURATION OF ALLOPATHIC AND diet till the lung is nearly in its natural state again. The average duration of the 36 cases was 9£ days. Bouillaud makes the duration of his cases nearly the same, or 9| days, but his colleague Grisolle reminds us that he did not wait till the fever was entirely gone, as Louis did, otherwise he ought to have made the average duration of his cases, even according to this objectionable method, from 12 to 14 days at least, and Grisolle adds, "I can give but an approximation to the truth here, because, as M. Bouillaud approaches the period of convalescence, he becomes excessively sparing of details." The average duration of Louis' two sets of cases, calculated according to his notion of the termination of the disease, amounting in all to 75, was above 18 days, or exact- ly twice the duration of the homoeopathic cases. It is evident that were the disease in those examples re- garded as cured, as they ought to have been, only when the signs of exudation had entirely ceased, the actual duration of them would have been very much the same as those of Dietl under the depleting treatment; as it is, the facts furnished regarding them amply corroborate the statement of Dietl in this important particular,—that the duration of pneumonia, when treated in the ordinary way, is very protracted,—and display the superiority of the homoeopathic method in a very striking aspect. I have said " in the ordinary way," because the 20 cases in Louis' second set, which were treated with tartar emetic, and other ordinary means, as well as venesec- tion, lasted 18 days, or almost quite as long as the others who were treated only by venesection, so that the average given of the whole cases represents fairly what is to be ex- pected under all the appliances of the ordinary practice. Fever.—The duration of the fever, in Dietl's experience, was for the venesection cases, 11-1 days, for the tartar emetic cases, 9-2, and for the dietetic, 9-1. The duration of the fever in the first of these cases would appear closely to cor- HOMOEOPATHIC CASES COMPARED. 101 respond with that of Louis' cases; for while 18 days was the duration of them down to the period when he thought it safe to give aliment, he says that this latter period was at least three days after the cessation of the fever, and we may pre- sume that it was often several days more, which would leave us somewhere about twelve days as the average duration of the fever in his cases. In 43 homoeopathic cases, the data are sufficient to enable us to determine the duration of the fever, and we find that the pulse in them was reduced to the natural standard, or below it, on the average in 8 days. This appears but a small difference as compared with the length of fever in the dietetic cases, but then it should be remem- bered that the homoeopathic treatment was employed only during half the febrile stage, for the patients generally came under treatment about the fourth day of their disease. The subsequent part of the febrile stage was therefore shortened by a fifth part of the duration it had under the dietetic plan. Were the homoeopathic treatment begun earlier, the result would doubtless be much more striking; and as an illustration of this, from a few cases, I find, that in 16 cases in which the homoeopathic treatment was begun within the first 2 days, the duration of the fever averaged only 6 days. Besides all this, it is worthy of special notice, that the number of un- important cases which are pushed, by venesection, rapidly on to complete hepatization, are, though they take a long period to recover perfectly, soon brought to the end of their febrile stage, and thus lessen the average duration of the fever in the whole cases, by means of an occurrence which is actually due to an increased activity of the local disease. Whereas, under homoeopathic treatment, that accidental mechanical ef- fect, which ensues on rapid and excessive exudation, is pre- vented, and the fever is less liable to be suddenly checked, though the whole course of the disease is greatly shortened. With this analysis of the most important particulars of 102 INFERENTIAL PROOF OF THE pneumonia, under different methods of treatment, I draw these remarks to a close. I have compiled the facts with the utmost care and fairness. For some of the comparative results I was not prepared when I began the investigation, but I did not on that account the less faithfully record them as they successively emerged, and if each in its turn bears its unequivocal testimony to the efficacy of homoeopathy, and to the serious evils of the common practice, the explanation is to be found solely in the details as I found them in authen- tic publications. A single remark remains to be made, and although it does not bear on the further elucidation of the subjects treated of in the preceding pages, it is a plain and most important in- ference from some of them. The homoeopathic hospital sta- tistics, regarding the mortality of pneumonia, being proved to be correct by the evidence adduced from two sources, as narrated in the course of this chapter, the same hospital sta- tistics regarding other acute inflammations, deemed not more dangerous than pneumonia has generally been supposed to be, are to be regarded as equally entitled to credit. The good faith and accuracy of the authorities having been de- monstrated, in reference to what have been stigmatized as their incredible allegations regarding their success in pneu- monia, a disease so deadly in allopathic practice, they are justly entitled to the benefit of that demonstration in respect to their not more extraordinary allegations as to the success of their practice in pleurisy, peritonitis, pericarditis, and other acute diseases.* Of all these inflammations, peritonitis is pro- bably the most serious, and we have something like an ad- mission of the alleged success of homoeopathy in that disease, by an opponent of the system, who was an eye-witness of its operation in Fleischmann's hospital. True, says he, they cure * Inflammation of outer covering of lungs, bowels, and heart. ACCURACY OF THE OTHER HOMOEOPATHIC STATISTICS. 103 peritonitis readily enough, but then their cases are, for the most part, only tubercular (scrofulous) peritonitis. I need not remind any professional reader, of respectable attain- ments, that tubercular peritonitis, when of any considerable extent, as it must be in many instances, is the most incurable form of the disease, (that which follows perforation excepted,) if indeed it is ever cured. Yet such an explanation of the homoeopathic success as this, was actually made by a writer against homoeopathy, in Dr. Forbes's Review, whose opinions and statements are even still quoted and referred to as au- thoritative by Dr. Simpson, Dr. Routh, and other allopathic controversialists! Even if we grant that, in a large propor- tion of such cases of tubercular peritonitis, the inflammation was sub-acute, and not extensive, the superiority of homoeo- pathy, in the treatment of peritonitis, would be in no degree less manifest; for it is not pretended that tubercular perito- nitis, even in its slighter forms, was not equally prevalent in the allopathic hospitals of Vienna, in which the proportion of deaths among cases of peritonitis is so much larger than in the homoeopathic; indeed, the writer in question admits that he saw such slight cases only in an allopathic hospital! It is altogether unnecessary, after the complete vindica- tion contained in the preceding analysis of the various sta- tistics of pneumonia, of the accuracy of the homoeopathic statements regarding the success of homoeopathic practice in that disease, to enter into any details in proof of the supe- riority of the same plan of treatment in other inflammatory diseases. Pneumonia has been regarded as an important and dangerous disease, scarcely inferior in gravity to any of the other common inflammations; it affords the largest statisti- cal tables, on both sides, for the institution of a comparison between the claims of the rival methods of treatment; and a searching analysis of these statistics, along with the appli- cation to each class of the test of their respective merits, and 104 HOMOEOPATHIC SUCCESS IN PLEURISY, to one class, whose accuracy has been ignorantly or mali- ciously impugned, the test of its correctness, afforded by the expectant practice of M. Dietl, has proved both the fidelity of homoeopathic statements, and the vast superiority of the homoeopathic treatment over the allopathic. The inference, from the proofs which have been adduced, of the correctness and fairness of the homoeopathic records concerning pneu- monia, which I am entitled to draw, as bearing upon the ho- moeopathic statistics of other inflammations, is this, that they too must be regarded as correct and fair, for there was no- thing known of the peculiarities of pneumonia, in reference to spontaneous recovery, prior to the researches of Dietl, that was not equally known regarding the other inflamma- tions ; * and as the former could not therefore be misrepre- sented by homoeopathists, in order to meet a corroboration which they did not know was possible, but has been shown to be a fair and faithful record, therefore the other homoeo- pathic records must be held to be equally fair and faithful, whether they shall meet with a similar corroboration or not. I content myself, then, with a simple notice of the results of the same treatment jn other inflammmatory diseases, regard- ing which the homoeopathic statistics are not more incredible than they were supposed to be in regard to pneumonia, prior to the proofs of their accuracy. Among 299 cases of pleurisy the homoeopathic practice in the German hospitals lost only 4, or 1 in 74; among 189 cases of peritonitis it lost only 9, or 1 in 21; while in these two diseases the allopathic mortality is from eight to sixteen * With the exception, probably, of pleurisy, which has been generally be- lieved to be frequently cured spontaneously, on the ground, that traces of pleurisy, long previously recovered from, have been often found in the dead bodies of persons who had never been treated for that disease. These traces, however, have usually shown that the attacks thus spontaneously cured had been of small extent. PERITONITIS, ERYSIPELAS, ETC. 105 times greater. The reason of there being this still larger comparative mortality under the allopathic system than under the other, in these two diseases than in pneumonia, probably is, that the allopathic measures have not in other inflammations the assistance of the anatomical peculiarities which enable cases of pneumonia to recover in spite of the injurious tendency of the treatment. Among 315 cases of erysipelas, there were only two deaths in the homoeopathic hospitals; and a similar success attended the practice in mem- branous inflammations of the heart, and in dysentery. The records from which these facts are taken extend over a period of about fourteen years, a circumstance which obviates every objection that may be made on the ground of variable types of the several diseases in different years. Allopathic writers, and Dr. Simpson among them, have lately begun to talk a great deal of the power of acute dis- eases to disappear of themselves. They have been forced to this by the undeniable recoveries under Homoeopathy, which they desire to represent as no medical treatment at all. We, however, assert the same thing regarding acute diseases, and go a great deal farther in our assertions on the point than they do; for we contend that recoveries would be much more common in their hands than they are known to be, pro- vided they would suspend their peculiar treatment, and leave such diseases to the less dangerous methods of nature alone. The justice of this opinion is amply attested by the statistics of pneumonia already given; and the continued inquiries that are now being made, by skeptical physicians of their own party, will, by and by, put us in possession of similar proofs in respect to other inflammations. It is not in acute diseases of the inflammatory kind only that Homoeopathy is superior to the common practice. But as I have already exceeded the space I had intended for the comparison of the two systems in the treatment of particular 8 106 HOMOEOPATHIC SUPERIORITY IN FEVER. diseases, I must satisfy myself with the testimony of Dr. Forbes, the distinguished allopathic reviewer, in regard to this point. Alluding to Fleischmann's reports, he give3 him the character of being a "well-educated physician," "of honour and respectability," says, " we cannot, therefore, re- fuse to admit the accuracy of his statements as to matters of fact," acknowledges the general correctness of his statistics of mortality among acute and chronic diseases, and of fevers he affirms—" the amount of deaths in the fevers and eruptive diseases is certainly below the ordinary proportion;" * although he explains this on the ground that Homoeopathy does merely no harm, while Allopathy often does. We may take the li- berty of denying the validity of the explanation, in so far as Homoeopathy is concerned; but we are satisfied for the pre- sent with the admission of the fact, that the superior success is on our side. I cannot pass from the consideration of medical statistics without a few remarks on each of two important points fre- quently adverted to by allopathic controversialists; and on both of which I have the fortune to agree with them. The first is, what I believe to be their just denial that the gene- ral statistics (including all the cases admitted) of their hos- pitals can be fairly compared with those of the homoeopathic institutions. I entirely concur with them in thinking that the far greater proportion of incurable organic diseases that find their way into the large, old, allopathic hospitals, as into medical poor-houses for the incurable, places them at a dis- advantage as to the class of cases subjected to treatment, when their mortality is brought into comparison with that of homoeopathic hospitals. This much is due to fairness; but, at the same time, I strongly suspect that, although our mor- tality would be greater than it is if our hospitals had the * British and Foreign Medical Review, 1846. ALLOPATHIC ROMANCE ABOUT CONSUMPTION. 107 same proportion of incurable organic diseases as the allopa- thic have, the difference between the results of the two me- thods would be quite as great, if not greater, were the allo- pathic hospitals to have acute inflammations substituted for their excess of organic diseases; for it is only a proportion of the latter that die annually, though all of them must die within a few years. The second point is, that the returns of one or two ho- moeopathic dispensaries in this world of diversity are not faultless. They give what to me, as well as to our allopathic friends, appears an incredible proportion of cures of consump- tion. I do not know who presides over the Munich Dispen- sary, or the London Homoeopathic Institution's out-patients; but if the reports are sanctioned by them, they must submit to be regarded as very incompetent persons in matters of di- agnosis. I am not the defender of the errors of every medi- cal man who chooses to call himself a homoeopathist; and I have never thought that Allopathy monopolized all the apo- cryphal authorities and ill-informed physicians in the world. But while I dispute the accuracy of the reports which would make Homoeopathy appear to cure consumption so readily, I am firmly of opinion that the only cures that are met with in practice are, when due to medicine in any degree, due to Homoeopathy. It is chiefly as a homoeopathic remedy that cod-liver oil acts, in the proportion of cases in which it acts beneficially, by dint of its minute quantities of phosphorus and iodine; and I have reason to think that Homoeopathy has other remedies which are sometimes beneficial when that oil fails to be of service. I must not leave the reader to sup- pose that the homoeopathic physicians adverted to above stand alone in their extravagant conceptions of the prow- ess of their art in consumption. M. Bayle, the allopathic writer on Digitalis, in the Bibliotheque Therapeutique, has collected, from a number of the authors of his sect, 151 108 CAUTION ABOUT PRIVATE PRACTICE. cases of that disease treated by digitalis,—of which they say 83 were cured, and 35 relieved. Docs Dr. Simpson believe their assertions; and, if not, does he think that all allopathic statistics are monstrous fabrications or ignorant rhapsodies? Lastly, Dr. Simpson most incautiously sneers at the statis- tics of the private practice of homoeopathic physicians. (See p. 90 of the "Tenets.") Let him beware lest he provoke some of that body to constitute themselves a commission of inquiry into matters which had better remain as private as may be: Allopathy could ill stand such an investigation. As to the instance he refers to at Huddersfield, in connexion with cholera, the two gentlemen engaged in the conflict very plainly, I believe, gave each other the flattest contradiction, and it will always remain impossible for us to decide who was in the right; at all events, it has not been found that al- lopathic controversialists are usually trustworthy, certainly they are very far from being monopolists of credibility. ( 109 ) CHAPTER II. Outline of the life and labours of Hahnemann; his parentage; early devotion to learning; medical education; relinquishment of practice from disgust at its uncertainty; distinction as a chemist; his first conception of the homoeo- pathic law, and return to practice—Allopathy and Antipathy afford no hope to practical medicine—The proving of medicines the road to Homoeopathy —First publications on a new principle, or the necessity of ascertaining the actions of medicines on the healthy—Persecution at Konigslutter—Disco- very of the prophylactic power of Belladonna—Proofs of its truth, and refu- tation of Dr. Simpson's objections. No earnest or truth-loving man can peruse the facts re- corded in the last chapter, without very seriously meditating on the state of medical affairs, or without the conviction that there is something fearfully wrong where both the public and the profession in general have been totally unsuspicious of error. These revelations are startling, and new to most of us, for we have been slow to believe the many solemn warn- ings of Hahnemann regarding the dangers and the many ir- retrievable evils, of the course usually pursued in the treat- ment of acute diseases. His language on the subject has been regarded as extravagant by many even of his own fol- lowers, and as the expression rather of his personal antipa- thies towards the practice of those who had loaded him with every imaginable abuse, than as the sober utterances of a man of deep and dispassionate thought, as well as of rare powers of observation: we may say now, with such evidences before us, that the half had not been told, that the warning voice of Hahnemann, strong as it is, is not half so loud as the 110 BIRTH OF HAHNEMANN. occasion demands; and may well lament that while many of the medical guardians of life are wasting time on irrelevant trifles, and darkening counsel with words, thousands, yea, tens of thousands, are perishing that might be saved.* Me- dical men, by whatever orthodox name they distinguish them- selves, cannot longer, without the deepest guilt, go on in a course of blind prejudice or indifference. Ignorance may be innocent when it is unavoidable; it is guilty when the means are at hand by which it may be exchanged for knowledge; and guilty just in proportion to the value of the knowledge which it excludes. Having given in the preceding pages a sample of the benefits of Homoeopathy, such as fully to justify the high estimate formed of it by its founder, and to establish his paramount claims to the lasting gratitude of mankind, I cannot be mis- taken in supposing that a historical sketch of Hahnemann, and of the origin and development of his great discovery, will be welcome to such as take a genial interest in whatever relates to human worth, and is subservient to human happi- ness. I shall, therefore, devote this and the succeeding chapter to a narrative of his scientific life and labours. Samuel Hahnemann was born in 1755, and ought, therefore, to be regarded as more a man of the last century than the present; a truth which is either forgotten, or kept out of view, by those who minutely criticise his knowledge and opinions, on some parts of medical science, by the standards of a suc- ceeding age, remarkable beyond any other for the growth, and often for the beginning too, of whatever is held to be certain and of value to practical medicine, in physiology, morbid anatomy, organic chemistry, and physical diagno- * From calculations founded on the reports of the Registrar-General, taken in connexion with the facts contained in the preceding chapter, it appears that in the United Kingdom there die, under the common treatment, in every ten years, about 20,000 cases of inflammation of the lungs alone, that might be cured. HIS EARLY EDUCATION. 'Ill- sis.* His native place was the little town of Meissen, on the Elbe, near Dresden; and his parents, like those of many others who have risen to distinction in science, were in humble life; his father having been by trade a painter on porcelain. Hahne- mann appears to have been at first destined for some lowly occupation, and to have been enjoined by parental authority to eschew the liberal studies for which he showed an early preference. But a love of knowledge being stronger in the boy than filial piety, he contrived means to evade the pater- nal injunctions, and by a midnight lamp, of his own secret construction, to gratify his intellectual longings when the household was asleep. " His aptitude for study," says his accomplished biographer, Dr. Dudgeon, " excited the admira- tion of his schoolmaster, with whom he became an immense favourite, and who undertook to direct his studies, and en- couraged him to a higher order of study than what constituted the usual curriculum of a high-school. This did not please his father, who several times removed hinr-from school, and set him to some less intellectual work, but at length restored him to his favourite studies, at the earnest request of his teacher, who, to meet the pecuniary difficulty, instructed the young Samuel until his twentieth year without remuneration."! He soon after began his medical studies at Leipsic, and it deserves to be noticed, to the credit of his youthful attain- ments, that he supported himself there by teaching French and German, and translating works from the English. From Leipsic he resorted to Vienna, where he enlarged his profes- sional acquirements under the friendly direction of the once celebrated Dr. von Quarin, whose esteem he had the good fortune to gain, and who treated him with the kindness of a father. * He was nearly seventy years old before the introduction of auscultation by Laennec. f Hahnemann. An Introductory Lecture, by R. J. Dudgeon, M.D. 1852. 112 REASONS FOR GIVING UP PRACTICE. Having completed the orthodox curriculum, he graduated at the University of Erlangen in 1779, and appears forthwith to have commenced the practice of his profession. After some years of—as we may be sure, considering the man and his attainments—more thoughtful and intelligent experience than had often been exemplified in medicine, he wrote his first medical treatise, which gives the results of his profes- sional labours in Transylvania, "and takes rather a des- ponding view of medical practice in general, and of his own in particular, as he candidly admits that most of his cases would have done better had he let them alone." * It would appear from his letter many years afterwards to the cele- brated Hufeland, with whom, in 1808, he was on terms of inti- mate friendship, that after " an eight years' practice, pursued," as he says, " with conscientious attention," he had so " learned the delusive nature of the ordinary methods of treatment," as to be induced to relinquish his professional pursuits. His own words, descriptive of his views and feelings at this time, are as follow:—"It was painful to me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books on the treatment of the sick—to prescribe, according to this or that (fanciful) view of the nature of the diseases, substances that owe to mere opinion their place in the Materia Medica; I had conscientious scru- ples about treating unknown morbid states in my suffering fellow-creatures with these unknown medicines, which, being powerful substances, may, if they were not exactly suitable, (and how could the physician know whether they were suita- ble or not, seeing that their peculiar special actions were not yet elucidated?) easily change life into death, or produce new affections or chronic ailments, which are often much more difficult to remove than the original disease. To be- come in this way a murderer, or aggravator of the sufferings * Dr. Dudgeon. HIS DISTINCTION AS A CHEMIST. 113 of my brethren of mankind, was to me a fearful thought—so fearful and distressing was it, that shortly after my marriage I abandoned practice, and scarcely treated any one for fear of doing him harm, and—as you know—occupied m)Tself chiefly with chemistry and literary labours."* In chemistry his talents seemed to have found a field for their successful exer- cise, for, during several years prior to 1790, he published many articles on that science; among which are still remem- bered that on his valuable tests for ascertaining the purity of wine, and his treatise upon arsenic. To the value of the latter we have the testimony of the best writers on toxicology, among whom I may mention Professor Christison, who quotes Hahnemann's account of poisoning by arsenic, as no doubt the most graphic and accurate he could discover, and who cannot be accused of partiality. To his proficiency as a che- mist, too, we have the tribute of Berzelius, one of the highest authorities in chemical science, though apparently of very mean information in medicine, who is reported to have said of him, "That man would have been a great chemist had he not turned a great quack."f In 1789 we find him settled in Leipsic, and publishing his treatise on the only class of diseases he appears to have found amenable to treatment, although not yet suspecting that the cause of the exception was that the practice he recommended, * Letter upon the Necessity of a Regeneration of Medicine, 1808. It may be worth mentioning that Louis, the eminent hospital physician of Paris, also forsook private practice, and went to work again at the public hospitals, in order to discover some means of practising medicine to better purpose. This happened, I believe, within the last thirty years. j- It was afterwards, however, remembered against him, when his name began to be distinguished in medicine, that he had mistaken borax for a new alkali, and had sold it as such. But it is not added by his enemies, that on discovering his error he hastened to correct it, and to refund the money he had received. Many a great chemist has made as great a blunder, and in more recent times too. 114 HIS ANTICIPATION OF HOMOEOPATHY. and which was but a modification of the customary method, was in accordance with the world-old, but yet unseen and unacknowledged law, with which his own name was by and by to be wedded, for better or worse, in all time coming. In this work he describes the manner of preparing and using his "soluble mercury," still known in Germany as "Hahne- man's." In 1790 he translated Cullen's Materia Medica, and we may reasonably suppose the task to have had some influ- ence on the current of his meditations, which, during this eventful year, set strongly in a direction from which they never afterwards swerved till the close of his long life. Working on the Materia Medica, he must have thought much and anxiously, as indeed he tells us he was now doing, on the possible ways of turning to the advantage of mankind the powers which so many substances in every kingdom of nature seemed beyond question to possess, of altering the actions and conditions of the living human frame. At this point it is that the mind of Hahnemann presents those features which distinguish the genius of discovery, wheresoever it has shown itself at work in its highest mood. It is a mistake to suppose that his first conception of the homoeopathic law of therapeutics was suggested by the accidental observation of the similarity of the effects of Peruvian bark on his own person to the symptoms of ague, a disease for which that drug is a frequent remedy. He specifies that observation, in his letter to Hufe- land, merely as having at that early period strengthened the idea he had previously conceived, on totally different grounds, of the probable existence of such a law. I shall presently allow him to tell in his own way the reflections which led him to anticipate the experimental proof that there is a ho- moeopathic law in nature, by which the virtues of medicines and the processes of disease are adapted to one another, as they are by no other law, and in such a way and to such an extent as to make the powers which plants and minerals possess of VULGAR ERRORS ABOUT THE "INDUCTIVE METHOD." 115 altering the states of the body almost commensurate in their healing qualities with the vast diversity of corporeal disor- ders. But before doing so, I would direct attention to the fact, that in the manner of its first being thought of, the ho- moeopathic law belongs to the category of probably all the great additions to science that were ever made. It is errone- ously supposed by many who talk of the inductive method, that experiment, or the accumulation of details or particular facts, precedes the detection of great general principles or laws; but it would appear that neither in ancient nor in modern times has any such method been the instrument of great discoveries. " The process of Lord Bacon," says Sir David Brewster, "was, we believe, never tried by any phi- losopher but himself. As the subject of its application, he selected that of heat. With his usual erudition, he collected all the facts which science could supply,—he arranged them in tables,—he cross-questioned them with all the subtlety of a pleader,—he combined them with all the sagacity of a judge,—and he conjured with them by all the magic of his exclusive processes. But, after all this display of physical logic, nature thus interrogated was still silent. The oracle which he had himself established refused to give its responses, and the ministering priest was driven with discomfiture from his own shrine. This example, in short, of the application of his system, will remain to future ages as a memorable in- stance of the absurdity of attempting to fetter discovery by any artificial rules."* In another place he observes,—"It would be interesting to ascertain the general character of the process by which a mind of acknowledged power actually proceeds in the path of successful inquiry. The history of science does not furnish us with much information on this head, and if it is to be found at all, it must be gleaned from * Life of Newton. 116 Hahnemann's theology the biographies of eminent men. Whatever this process may be in its details, if it has any, there cannot be the slightest doubt, that in its generalities, at least, it is the very reverse of the method of induction." Hahnemann, as we have seen, had in a great measure, if not entirely, withdrawn from practice some time towards the year 1790, in consequence of the dissatisfaction he felt at the uncertainty, general inefficiency, and frequent dangers of the ordinary method of practising medicine. But he was not, therefore, unoccupied with reflections on the healing art, and the possibility of discovering some better method than those in common use; and he has left us traces of the steps by which he was led to discover the surer and more effectual way of using remedies. And first, it is remarkable enough, considering the strange attempt that has been made of late to attach to Homoeopathy the reproach of theological hete- rodoxy, that he places in the foreground of the sketch he has given of his meditations on the possibility of raising medicine from its low position, such conceptions of the bounty of God, and such reliance on His wise beneficence, as are striking no less for their lofty piety, than as the solitary in- stance in which a deep sense of the divine goodness proved to be the special incentive to arduous medical researches, and the starting point of a scientific voyage of discovery. Perhaps we are entitled to regard it in still another light— as the compass by which he steered, and as therefore the cause of his success. Having stated his sad experience of the methods of Sydenham and Hoffmann, of Boerhaave and Gaubius, Stoll, Cullen, and De Haen, he continues, "But per- haps it is in the very nature of this art, as great men have as- serted, that it is incapable of attaining any greater certainty. Shameful, blasphemous thought! What! shall it be said that the infinite wisdom of the Eternal Spirit that animates the universe could not produce remedies to allay the sufferings FAIRLY REPRESENTED. 117 of the diseases He allows to arise? The all-loving paternal goodness of Him whom no name worthily designates, who richly supplies all wants, even the scarcely conceivable ones of the insect in the dust, imperceptible by reason of its minute- ness to the keenest human eye, and who dispenses through- out all creation life and happiness in rich abundance—shall it be said that He was capable of the tyranny of not per- mitting that man, made in His own image, should by the ef- forts of his penetrating mind, that has been breathed into him from above, find out the way to discover remedies in the stupendous kingdom of created things, which should be able to deliver his brethren of mankind from their sufferings worse than death itself? Shall He, the Father of all, behold «• with indifference the martyrdom of His best-beloved crea^ tures by disease, and yet have rendered it impossible to the genius of man, to whom all else is possible, to find any method, any easy, sure, trustworthy method, whereby they may see diseases in the proper point of view, and whereby they may interrogate medicines as to their special uses, as to what they are really, surely, and positively serviceable for ? "* " Well, thought I, as there must be a sure and trustworthy method of treatment as certainly as God is the wisest and most benefi- cent of beings, I shall seek it no longer in the thorny thicket of ontological explanations, in arbitrary opinions, though these might be capable of being arranged into a splendid sys- tem, nor in the authoritative declarations of celebrated men. No, let me seek it where it lies nearest at hand, and where it has hitherto been passed over by all, because it did not seem sufficiently recondite, nor sufficiently learned, and was not hung with laurels for those who displayed most talent for constructing systems, for scholastic speculations, and trans- cendental abstractions. . . . How, then, canst thou (this * Letter to Hufeland. 118 REASONS FOR PROVING MEDICINES. was the mode of reasoning by which I commenced to find my way)a scertain what morbid states medicines were created for ? . . . Thou must, thought I, observe how medicines act on the human body, when it is in the tranquil state of health. The alterations that medicines produce in the healthy body do not occur in vain, they must signify something, else why should they occur? What if those alterations have an im- portant, an extremely important signification. What if this be the only utterance' whereby these substances can impart information to the observer respecting the end of their being; what if the changes and sensations which such medicine pro- duces in the healthy human organism, be the only compre- hensible language by which—if they be not smothered by severe symptoms of some existing disease—it can distinctly discourse to the unprejudiced observer respecting its specific tendencies, respecting its peculiar, pure, positive power, by means of which it is capable of effecting alterations in the body, that is, of deranging the healthy organism, and—where it can cure—of changing into health the organism that has been deranged by disease! This was what I thought. " I carried my reflections farther: 'How else could medi- cines effect what they do in diseases than by means of this power of theirs to alter the healthy body?—(which is most certainly different in every different mineral substance, and consequently presents in each a different series of phenomena, accidents, and sensations.) Certainly in this way alone can they cure. " But if medicinal substances effect what they do in diseases only by means of the power peculiar to each of them of al- tering the healthy body, it follows that the medicine among whose symptoms those characteristics of a given case of dis- ease occur in the most complete manner, must most certainly have the power of curing that disease; and in like manner, that morbid state which a certain medicinal agent is capable SEARCH OF MEDICAL RECORDS FOR HOM030PATHIC CURES. 119 of curing must correspond to the symptoms this medicinal substance is capable of producing in the healthy human body. In a word, medicines must only have the power of curing diseases similar to those they produce in the healthy body, and only manifest such morbid actions as they are capable of curing in diseases! , "If I am not deceived, I thought further, such is really the case; otherwise how was it that those violent tertian and quotidian fevers which I completely cured four and six weeks ago, without knowing how the cure was effected, by means of a few drops of cinchona tincture, should present almost exactly the same array of symptoms which I observed in my- self yesterday and to-day, after gradually taking, while in perfect health, four drachms of good cinchona bark, by way of experiment?" Thus, the conception of the homoeopathic law, and of the necessity of ascertaining the powers of medicines to alter the health by proving them on the healthy body, had mani- festly preceded the "yesterday and to-day" of inquisitive experiment, as the first conception of the law of gravitation is known to have preceded the existence of the data required to make it provable. Abundance of experiment was yet to follow, unparalleled in its demands on patience, perseverance, and toil of mind and body; but, first, the records of medicine were to be searched to learn where accident had hit on the grains of gold that must exist even in that chaos. Accord- ingly, to chaos he next betook himself, with the pick-axe and shovel of his rare learning and discrimination, and ardent with hope as ever went gold-seeker in our days to California or Mount Alexander. In the works of his predecessors the "yield" was not enormous, so manifold were the alloys and impurities of polypharmacy; but specimens he got of the precious metal, of whose value they were as unconscious as the aboriginal Indian or Australian must once have been of 120 HOMOEOPATHIC CURES IN ALL AGES. the market worth of their yellow dust. Accidental cures of maladies whose symptoms resembled the effects producible on healthy persons by the drugs that had been given, sparkled here and there in ancient volumes, elsewhere dark as mid- night. The discovery of some pure specimens of such acci- dental homoeopathic practice of former days, and of others of doubtful character* the result of his studies at this pe- riod, was subsequently published in his Organon. For he was far from holding, as many of his obtuse and ignorant de- tractors affirm, that medicine had been utterly ineffective for permanent good before his day. On the contrary, he ex- pressly adverts again and again to cures in the highest de- gree remarkable, as having been performed by physicians in every age. What he laments, and with the most admirable acuteness and force of argument exposes, in several of his works, is the absence of any previous rule by which reme- dies, unquestionably serviceable at one time, can be made so with any degree of cer.tainty at another: a defect which he shows to have arisen from the universal ignorance of the reason why, when they happened to be efficacious, they ac- tually were so. It was to supply this fundamental want that he laboured: in order that men might have a principle for their guidance in the attempt to cure diseases, and no longer be successful by rare accident, or useless or injurious by pe- dantic ignorance. In order to perceive the depth of meaning that lies in the passages we have quoted, and to discern the logical continuity of what seemed to Hahnemann the legitimate process of rea- * There can scarcely be stronger evidence of the captious spirit, and the poverty of serious argument, with which Dr. Simpson attacks Homoeopathy, than the fuss he makes about these dubious instances. As if it was of the smallest consequence to Homoeopathy, though a single instance of accidental homoeopathic cure could not be proved from the records of the dark ages that preceded Hahnemann. INADEQUACY OF ANTI-PATHY. 121 soning on the subject, we need to place ourselves where he stood, and look at the field of medicine from his point of view. Medicines, by divine appointment, have powers, al- most endless in variety, of affecting the healthy human frame: these powers must be there for some purpose, as every thing in nature has its use; if they are conferred with the design, not of adding to human woes, by means of human ignorance, but of lightening the miseries of this mortal life by means of human intelligence and human labour, (on which, in all else that concerns his well-being, man has been encouraged, indeed necessitated, to rely as the instruments of his tempo- ral comfort,) there must be some other way of employing them than such as have failed almost utterly, in all time past, some surer foundation for medical practice than the shifting sands of pathological opinion concerning the unknowable essence of disease, than unsteady hypothetical theories of medicinal actions, or than the blind and senseless empiricism that acts it knows not why! Each and all of these may have hit occasionally on a happy expedient which has proved a cure, but accident is a miserable substitute for the surer me- thod, which, "as God is the wisest and most beneficent of beings," must exist somewhere for the benefit of "his best loved creatures." Anti-pathy, or the method which would proceed on the principle of contraria contrariis curantur, and prescribe me- dicines whose primary action is opposed to that of the dis- eased part, has been found in its operation temporary and palliative only, leaving the malady, (if it be not in its nature and degree fleeting and unimportant,) when the strong me- dicinal action is over, worse than it was before, and worse in proportion to the completeness with which it was silenced for the time; and all this owing to the reaction of the dis- eased living organs after the force that overpowered them had been spent. Witness, for example, the baneful effects of 9 122 INADEQUACY OF ALLOPATHY. opium in habitual sleeplessness, when the dose has been large enough to reduce the resisting brain to a poisoned insensi- bility;—of purgatives in habitual constipation,—and the re- maining small number of instances in which we have any thing that can be justly called an anti-pathic action. Be- sides, even were anti-pathy good, its employment to any con- siderable extent would be impossible, for the plain and suffi- cient reason, that no opposite can exist to thousands of the symptoms that disease presents, and it is by symptoms or sen- sible effects we must be guided, unless we are to lose our- selves again in ever groundless conjectures, and fanciful speculations, regarding that hidden essence of disease which makes its presence knowable only by its effects, while these tell nothing of its nature. The absence of a symptom or ef- fect is not its opposite, and no opposite is conceivable for hundreds of different sensations, of altered appearances and secretions, and therefore we can oppose to them no contrary medicine,—except on hypothetical grounds, again, both of the disease and the remedy. Hahnemann knew all this, and therefore he had no hope from anti-pathy, and he was right. Nothing has been made of it to this hour, beyond what it al- ways has been, and must be—palliative, temporary, not cura- tive. Nor was there better promise from Allopathy, or the me- thod which would attempt to remove natural disease from one part by exciting artificial disease in another. This is es- sentially the system of counter-irritation applied to other parts than those which are diseased,—and though temporary checks may be caused by it in a few of the more important disorders, and though those which are unimportant, and na- turally of short duration, may come to an end during the ex- istence of the counter-irritation, as when blisters, or yet more violent applications, have produced inflammation of some part of the surface contiguous to the disease, the number of INADEQUACY OF ALLOPATHY. 123 maladies is small in which it admits of being exemplified in this, its apparently most favourable illustration, and it is more than questionable whether, when recovery succeeds such counter-irritation, it is materially, if at all, the result of the artificial disease, in any considerable proportion of cases. In our own day it has been asked, by so decided an allopath as Andral, whether, in acute inflammations, blisters amelio- rate the disease, by the exudation they cause to take place from the circulation, or increase it by aggravating the fever, and augmenting the inflammatory state of the blood; and Louis, another of the same school, questions their utility in one of the acute diseases, in which they are, perhaps, the most frequently employed, pleurisy,—which he is inclined to suspect is rather liable to be made worse by vesicatories ap- plied to the chest. Allopathic applications of this kind, therefore, must have appeared to Hahnemann, also, as per- taining to the catalogue of dubious or hurtful expedients; and as the same estimate was still more applicable to allopa- thic medicines, his expectations from an allopathic method, even were it supposed to be practicable in the case of any large proportion of drugs,—which it obviously could not be without the aid of the everlasting theories and fanciful specu- lations regarding the nature of diseases, and the mode in which medicines acted, speculations infinitely more liable to be wrong than right,—must necessarily have been of the least satisfactory description. If so questionable in the sim- plest and most obvious form, how much more so, how uncer- tain and ineffectual must it have appeared to be in the ob- scurer and less manageable instances? Several indirect operations of the allopathic remedies, be- sides those properly included under counter-irritation, were as well known in Hahnemann's time as in the present, and apparently as much employed. Diaphoretics, diuretics, pur- gatives, were all in vogue then as now, and if they are now 124 PALLIATIVE USE OF ALLOPATHY. employed with a discrimination that often prevents the inju- rious consequences that must have followed their adminis- tration in cases in which an improved pathology shows us they are calculated to do harm, they were still then as noAV justly open to the general charge of being merely temporary and palliative, capable, it may be, of removing some of the products of diseased action, by one channel or another, but not curative or capable of remedying the primary disease. In certain of these capacities they may be still properly em- ployed, when the primary disease is incurable. Dropsy, for example, when a consequence of organic disease of the heart, or kidneys, may frequently, and can only, be lessened or re- moved, for the time, by the allopathic action of diuretics or cathartics,—but it will return when their action is exhausted, because it is a mere effect or symptom of another disease which is not remediable. When, however, dropsy depends on a primary disease that is remediable, Hahnemann justly condemns the allopathic palliatives which are directed against the removable effect, and leave the removable cause untouched. Besides all these objections to the allopathic method, as a method of curing, there remained this other, that the patho- genetic effects of drugs on the healthy body were, in the great majority of instances, of a description that could have no al- lopathic use. On this part of the subject I shall quote a pas- sage from my letter to Dr.Forbes* who, although an allo- path, is a strong advocate for proving medicines on the healthy body, and recommends the task to the young hopefuls of the profession, whom he humorously designates "Young Physic."—"Suppose the task executed, and executed well, what can you gain by it, as allopaths, but some additional purgatives, emetics, narcotics, antispasmodics, diuretics, dia- phoretics, and such like, of which you have a store already ample enough to melt the mammiferous creation from off the * See British Journal of Homoeopathy, 1846; and Homoeopathy in 1851. PROVINGS OF NO SERVICE TO ALLOPATHY. 125 face of the earth, or to lull it into an endless sleep? I can understand how you may stumble on remedies for particular diseases, by trying drug after drug, as each comes to hand, on persons that are ill. This is the method that has been pursued for two thousand years, or thereby, and it has brought some useful remedies to light, of which some, pro- bably the most, act homoeopathically when they act with ad- vantage. But what you can learn of the virtues which a me- dicine, tried on the healthy body, shall exert on the diseased, beyond its probable evacuating, and nauseating, and nar- cotising, and one or two other energetic influences, long since abundantly supplied, I am at a loss to conjecture. Will ' Young Physic,' then, allow all his pangs to go for nothing? was it for this that he has panted, and groaned, and writhed, and coughed, and spit, and sneezed, and bled? That he has endured headaches and colics, stitches and twitches, in every section of his frame, and so many a fac-simile more of the ills that flesh is heir to? Can he make no use of them allopa- thically, or antipathically: or must he be contented to let them stand as penances? "Supposing he should try to turn them to some remedial account, what can he make antipathically or allopathically of such an effect of a medicine as a racking pain in his sto- mach, for example, or a fiery redness of the nose? Why, a//opathically, he can get up an artificial pain in his stomach, to remove a natural pain from his head or his feet; or he can set his nose in a blaze, to cure an erysipelas of his legs, on the principle that one fire puts out another. But will the cure not be as bad as the disease? Then, anfo'pathically, how will he manage to make a practical use of his voluntary afflictions? I can see how he may succeed, when his nose is disagreeably white, in striking the more becoming hue by a skilful administration of the reddening remedy; but I am at a loss for the useful employment of the pain in his sto- 126 PROVINGS RECOMMENDED BY mach. The opposite of a painful is an agreeable sensation, and I know not an instance of a pleasurable feeling in the stomach playing an important part in pathology. Yes, there is one such. You will find it in the treatise of worthy Dr. Underwood on the diseases of children. The 'inward fits,' quoth he,' are betrayed by a frequent and sweet smiling during sleep; the which is provoked by wind pleasantly tickling the stomach.' Now, for just such a dose of the ache-causing remedy as shall nicely strike the balance between a pleasure and a pain! What an opportunity for our infant Hercules, our young Antipath! to still the apprehensions of a fond mother, and disappoint the forebodings of the lugubrious nurse." We have already seen that the proving of medicines on per- sons in health formed a prominent and essential part of Hah- nemann's scheme for the advancement of practical medicine, and the considerations which have now been laid before the reader appear to show beyond dispute that such provings can be of little or no service to medicine on the allopathic or antipathic plan. Dr. Forbes is not the only allopathic physician who concurs with Hahnemann on the desirableness of medicinal provings. Dr. Forbes recommends the future cultivators of medicine "to reconsider and study afresh the physiological and curative effects of all our therapeutic agents, with the view of obtaining more positive results than we now possess."* Professer Forget of Strasburg had previously given the same advice at the Scientific Congress in 1842, the following deliverance having been presented to that body by the Medical Section over which he presided:—"The Medical Section is unanimously of opinion that experiments with medi- cines, on healthy individuals are, in the present state of medi- cal science, of urgent necessity for physiology and therapeu- tics." And, indeed, so general is the feeling, however vague, * British and Foreign Medical Review, 1846. ALLOPATHIC PHYSICIANS. 127 as to the consequences that may ensue to the healing art, of the propriety of having such provings, and of the discredit of not having them, that, in every allopathic work on the pro- perties of drugs, their action on the healthy body is never, if possible, omitted. This is no small testimony to the saga- city of Hahnemann, who had so long previously descried the importance of such knowledge; and when it is acquired in a full and satisfactory manner by allopathic physicians, the re- sult must be the general adoption of Homoeopathy, partly because it will teach them to respect the scientific character of the first and greatest of provers, and partly, because it will show them, by evidences of their own, that the remedies we use are homceopathic, or correspond, in their effects on healthy persons, to the phenomena of the diseases in which they are successfully employed. As yet the archives of the old methods are singularly deficient in information of the kind referred to; indeed, what does exist in them would de- serve to be called contemptible, were it not ludicrous; for no- thing is contemptible that can give even a little innocent amusement. Notwithstanding this defect, however, new me- dicines have been added to the old lists, and old medicines have become employed in new ways, and with occasionally better success, in ordinary practice, within the last twenty or thirty years. But the explanation of this is to be found in these very provings of Hahnemann and his followers, which those who thus profit by them affect to despise. Medicines get into good repute, through the practitioners of Homoeo- pathy, for the treatment of various common disorders, and forthwith their virtues are quietly appropriated or re-disco- vered by the allopathic party, and their operation explained by some absurd or fanciful theory, and thus having cap and bells clapped upon them to conceal their true character, they are promoted (heartily ashamed of the honour) to the rank of orthodox drugs. Aconite, belladonna, nux vomica, arnica, 128 HOMOEOPATHY REASONED OUT. are familiar instances of this indirect progress of ordinary medicine. One consoling reflection, however, is, that they won't be found very obedient to their strange masters, until they appropriate also the rules which the medicines have been taught to follow by Him who bestowed them on the world. To proceed with our history, however: it is obvious that Allopathy and Antipathy affording Hahnemann no hope of advancing therapeutics to a respectable and useful position, he was shut up to Homoeopathy, as the only remaining way that could be conceived for the employment of drugs, the only method that promised to give full effect to all the phenomena of medicinal provings on healthy persons. Conceiving, first, that medicines effected cures of disease " by means of this power of theirs to alter the healthy body," and by this only, —it follows, as a logical sequence, that since they cannot thus cure antipathically or allopathically, they must do so homoeo- pathically; or in his own words, " it follows that the medicine among whose symptoms those characteristics of a given case of disease occur in the most complete manner, must most cer- tainly have the power of curing that disease," if there is any meaning whatever in the multiplicity of effects which medi- cines can produce on the healthy frame, by the express ap- pointment of the "wisest and most beneficent of beings." And thus was the idea of the homoeopathic law reasoned out, before a single testing experiment was made. The first ex- periment, as we have seen, was made with cinchona bark, and the illustration it affords of the homoeopathic action of medicines will be discussed in the sequel. In 1792, Hahnemann, at the request of the reigning Duke of Saxe-Gotha, took charge of an asylum for the insane in Geor- genthal, in the Thuringian Forest. " A cure," says Dr. Dud- geon, "that he made in this institution, of the Hanoverian mi- nister Klockenbring, who had been rendered insane by a satire Hahnemann's treatment of the insane. 129 of Kotzebue's, created, we are told, some sensation; and, from the account he published in 1796 of this case, we find that he was one of the earliest, if not the very first advocate for that system of treatment of the insane by mildness instead of coercion, which has become all but universal. ' I never allow any insane person,' he writes, ' to be punished by blows or other painful corporeal inflictions, since there can be no pu- nishment where there is no sense of responsibility, and since such patients cannot be improved, but must be rendered worse, by such rough treatment.' May we not then justly claim for Hahnemann the honour of being the first who ad- vocated and practised the moral treatment of the insane ? At all events, he may divide this honour with Pinel, for we find that towards the end of this same year 1792, when Hahne- mann was applying his principle of moral treatment to prac- tice, Pinel made his first experiment of unchaining the maniacs in the Bicetre." He did not remain long in his new charge; and we have traces of his temporary residence with his family in several places between 1792 and 1795, in which latter year he re- moved to Konigslutter, where he remained practising his profession till 1799. Several new productions of his pen appeared during this period, including his Friend of Health, a popular miscellany, devoted chiefly to Hygiene; his Phar- maceutical Lexicon; his Essay on a New Principle for ascer- taining the Remedial Powers of Medicinal Substances; and others on the absurdity of complex prescriptions and regimen, and on the treatment of fevers and periodical diseases. The Essay on a New Principle, tfc, was published in 1796, in his friend Hufeland's Journal, and is the first of his remarkable publications on Homoeopathy. It may be read still with profit by the earnest inquirer into the methods by which physicians have endeavoured to improve their art. The true functions of chemistry and botany, in subserving the ends of 130 methodical experiments recommended. practical medicine, are lucidly explained, and the limits point- ed out with admirable judgment, beyond which they cannot go; while the importance of experiment with drugs is power- fully enforced. Having shown the narrow compass of the advantages to be derived from the two preceding methods, he continues: "Nothing remains for us but experiment on the human body. But what kind of experiment? Accidental or Methodical ? The humiliating confession must be made, that most of the virtues of medicinal bodies were discovered by accidental, empirical experience, by chance; often first ob- served by non-medical persons.* Bold, often over-bold, phy- sicians then gradually make trial of them. "I have no intention of denying the high value of this mode of discovering medicinal powers—it speaks for itself. But in it there is nothing for us to do; chance excludes all method, all voluntary action. Sad is the thought that the noblest, the most indispensable of arts is built upon accident, which always pre-supposes the endangering of many human lives. Will the chance of such discoveries suffice to perfect the healing art, to supply its numerous desiderata? .... Sadly we look forward into future ages, when a peculiar re- medy for this particular form of disease, for this particular circumstance, may, perhaps, be discovered by chance, as was bark for pure intermittent fever, or mercury for syphilitic disorders..... " When I talk of the methodical discovery of the medicinal powers still required by us, I do not refer to those empirical trials usually made in hospitals, where, in a difficult, often not accurately noted case, in which those already known do no good, recourse is had to some drug, hitherto either untried altogether, or untried in this particular affection, which drug is fixed upon either from caprice and blind fancy, or from * See examples in the sequel,—Chapter on "Homoeopathic Law." A NEW PRINCIPLE FOR DISCOVERING REMEDIES. 131 some obscure notion, for which the experimenter can give no plausible reason either to himself or others. Such empirical chance trials are, to call them by the mildest appellation, but foolish risks, if not something worse." These remarks are not less applicable to the ordinary practice in our own day than they were in his. * The greater part of the essay is devoted to an exposition of the principle according to which, as he conceived, remedies that are homoeopathic to the disease produce their effects, and to the notice of such instances as were then known of the pathogenetic action of medicines, and the homoeopathic suitableness of this or that drug to various corresponding conditions of disease. For examples of the effects produced by drugs on healthy persons, he was even at this early pe- riod indebted in some measure to his own observation, show- ing how soon after his first perception of the homoeopathic law he began to accumulate those stores with which he after- wards enriched scientific medicine. Among the medicines whose actions on healthy persons he had already made some progress in discovering, were chamomilla, arnica, millefolium, asthusa, belladonna, hyoscyamus, nux vomica, digitalis, ledum, palustre, arsenic, and camphor. He occasionally illustrates, besides, their homoeopathic action as remedies, by particular instances of cure; and of the other medicines which he ad- verts to, he either tells how they had been useful on account of their homoeopathic virtues in the hands of other phy- sicians, or employed with advantage by himself on the homoeo- pathic principle, from particulars concerning their action on healthy persons obtained from the ineidental notices of au- thors ; or he predicts from the same data that they will be found useful in certain disorders to which they seemed homoeopathically suited. Learned researches, and experi- mental labours such as these, giving from year to year con- clusions soberly drawn from premises carefully determined, 132 PROGRESSIVE RESEARCHES OF HAHNEMANN. and doctrines enlarging and becoming more definite as the observation of facts extended and became more precise, are not the characteristics of deceit, but the sure evidences of sincerity and a love of truth. . In the essay on which I am now commenting, with the exceptions of the modest but firm announcement of his belief that medicines cure diseases by virtue of their power to excite similar diseases on healthy persons, and of the illustrations of that truth contained in books and furnished by his own experience, there is nothing advanced by Hahnemann that can be regarded as peculiar to Homoeopathy as it now exists. There is no singularity in the manner of preparing the medicines for use, or in the doses in which they should be given; no evidence of a predeter- mination to start far away from his brethren in the profession, and to strike out a solitary path to fortune for himself; but much, on the contrary, that proves him to have been less in- tent on his individual fame, than on the clear discerning and propagation of important truths, and much that shows his desire that others should be partakers of all the knowledge and skill he himself possessed. Homoeopathy, in its details, was to him, as it is at this day to his followers, & progressive science, for whose application to practice, while a very great deal was done by him in the course of the fifty years that he devoted his rare energy and genius to the study of it, much has been left for his successors to accomplish; and not, as its shallow adversaries suppose, a sudden contrivance that shot up into a mushroom maturity from the heated brain of an en- thusiast, or the profligate heart of a charlatan. One obvious inference from Hahnemann's views of the cu- rative action of medicines was, that they should not be jum- bled together in mixtures, pills, and boluses, whereof each, according to the custom of the old school, was made to con- tain several or many drugs, but that they should be given in the simplest form. This rule carried into practice, of course MEDICINES NOT TO BE MIXED. 133 rendered the art of the apothecary, as it then existed, alto- gether useless to him, and he was under the necessity of pre- paring and dispensing his own medicines. The apothecaries of Konigslutter were, therefore, easily incited by the physi- cians of the place, who had grown speedily jealous of the rising fame of their colleague, to bring an action against him for interfering with their privileges; for in Germany at that time the druggists were secured by law in the exclusive right of compounding physic. Hahnemann defended him- self by the plea, that while they had indeed the sole right of compounding medicines according to the prescriptions of the physicians, every man, according to the spirit of the law, was at liberty to give, as he did, gratuitously, uncompounded drugs, which alone he employed. This reasonable argument was unheeded, he was prohibited dispensing his medicines, and thus his practice was of course forbidden at the same time.* In 1799, the last year of his residence at Konigslutter, he first conceived the idea that belladonna was a preventive of certain forms of scarlet fever. During the prevalence of an epidemic of that disease, he'employed belladonna as a re- medy for the first stage of the malady, in consequence of the similarity of some of the effects it produces to the early symptoms of scarlet fever. In a family of four children, * On Hahnemann's rule of giving only a single medicine at a time, Dr. Simpson makes some choice remarks, indicative, as usual, of the greatest ignorance of the subject he writes about. Opium, says he, contains twenty- one ingredients, and yet homoeopaths prescribe opium, while they pretend to give medicines singly. Opium, we reply, is a single medicine, because it has not been artificially compounded, and because it has been proved just as nature gives it; and proving bestows unity in the sense of showing what this natural compound can do, as distinguished from other natural compounds. Proving is the essence of singleness in Homoeopathy: so that if opium, arsenic, and mercury, mixed together, were proved upon the healthy body, this arti- ficial compound would thenceforth be a single medicine. 134 BELLADONNA AS A PREVENTIVE one was taking belladonna for some affection of the finger joints, when the epidemic disease invaded the household; and Hahnemann, having observed that she escaped while the others were seized with the malady, suspected that her ex- emption might depend on the influence of the drug she was taking. He had soon numerous opportunities of testing the correctness of his suspicion, by giving the medicine to many who were yet unaffected by the disease, in families which had others of its members ill with it, and the results satisfied him that belladonna had a protective power such as he had sus- pected. As it is of great importance that medical men should form a right opinion regarding the justice of this con- clusion of Hahnemann, I shall lay before the reader the di- rections originally laid down by the discoverer of the pro- phylactic, and a summary of the experience which we pos- • sess on the subject at the present day. I say we, as including both sides of the profession; for it is not a little amusing, after all the abuse they heap upon homoeopathic physicians for using a teaspoonful of castor oil, to find the allopathic practitioners making no scruple whatever to appropriate Hahnemann's discovery of the protective power of belladon- na! So early as 1810, some allopathic practitioners in Leip- sic "complacently recommended the employment of bella- donna as a prophylactic for scarlet fever, as if they had just made the discovery," and without even adverting to the claims of the true discoverer, who was then practising in the same town. In 1826, Hufeland, the most celebrated of the allopathic physicians of his day in Germany,wrote an article in his journal on the Prophylactic power of Belladonna in Scarlet Fever, in which he honestly assigns the merit of the discovery to Hahnemann, and is said to have collected an overwhelming mass of testimony in its favour. Hahnemann did not publish on the subject till 1801, as he appears to have been very solicitous that there should be experience OF SCARLET FEVER. 135 ample enough to prevent the possibility of mistake, and to determine the concurrent circumstances which were ne- cessary to ensure the successful employment, of the medicine, or the obstacles that might frustrate the attempt to render it of service. In the interval he appears to have furnished supplies of his prophylactic to a number of practitioners, in order that it might be tested by others as well as himself, and this he did originally without informing them of the name of the drug: and yet when he published his pamphlet on the Cure and Prevention of Scarlet Fever, eleven years after he first began his experiments on the subject, he re- marks in the preface,—"Up to this period it is impossible that the corroboration of my assertion could be complete,"— a circumstance which he ascribes, in part, to the fact, that the medicine occasionally "fell into the hands of some who had neither the ability nor the good will to administer its solution in an appropriate manner," " to the hurry and inac- curacy of young doctors of the present day," and to the "little dependence to be placed on our private patients" in carrying instructions into effect. These, and other obstacles, have to this day left the question undecided in the estima- tion of many, and have led some to the hasty conclusion that belladonna has no power of protecting from scarlet fever. Among the most effectual means by which this last opinion may be at any time established to the satisfaction of the ex- perimenter, is the unconscious using of another drug instead of belladonna; and that this has been the case with some cannot be doubted, for I learn from a gentleman of much experience in drugs, and who was some years ago assistant to the Professor of Materia Medica, that a collector of plants for the apothecaries having brought him a supply of dulca- mara instead of belladonna, assured him, on being shown his mistake, that he was accustomed to regard the former (which is known by the name of woody nightshade) as belladonna 136 bayle's evidences in (or deadly nightshade,) and that he had lately supplied one of the principal shops with a large stock of the one article instead of the other, and without any objection on the part of the druggist! How far this may account for the unfa- vourable results of some unpublished experiments in Edin- burgh, I do not know; but it is curious, in connexion with the anecdote I have related, that this should as yet be the only city in which experiments made in an hospital for chil- dren have furnished results said to be opposed to the claims put forward on behalf of belladonna.* Before adverting to the experiments made in Edinburgh, I shall adduce, from an article by M. Bayle,f a distinguished allopathic authority, the principal testimonies that have ap- peared on the subject in Germany. "At the end of the last century, Hahnemann, having re- marked that belladonna, taken in small doses, gave rise to a reddish eruption analogous to that of scarlatina, predicted that belladonna would be a prophylactic to this disease, accord- ing to the homoeopathic principle that diseases are cured by medicines, the effects of which upon the organism are similar to the symptoms of those diseases. " Notwithstanding some facts which seemed to confirm this hypothesis, it was only about 1812 that several physicians made methodic trials to confirm this point. But since that period to the time I now write, more than twenty-five prac- titioners have been occupied in establishing the preservative properties of belladonna against scarlatina. The epidemics of this disease having been frequent in the north of Europe, and often more fatal than the small-pox, the authors who * I advert here to the unpublished experiments of Dr. Andrew AVood, ad- verted to by Dr. Simpson. We demand outspoken facts, details, not hole-and- corner whisperings. f Bibliotheque Therapeutique, t. ii. p. 583, et seq.: 1830. FAVOUR OF BELLADONNA. 137 have been occupied in verifying this point in therapeutics belong all to this part of the world. "The following is a r6sume of the different trials:— "In 1812, a fatal epidemic reigned in the district of Hil- schenbach, in the duchy of Berg; 8 persons died of it, 22 were ill. Schenk administered belladonna to 525 persons; 522 were preserved. The three who were attacked were a mo- ther and her two children, who had only taken the medicine four times. "Hufeland and Rhodius gave perfect immunity to all the individuals to whom they had administered this substance, in several very violent epidemics.....Muhrbeck, at Dem- min, (Western Pomerania,) obtained the same success during seven years, in which he had frequent opportunities of having recourse to this treatment.... Gumpert, physician at Posen, preserved his 4 children and 20 families, amounting to about 80 individuals; 2 persons were, however, attacked. In one the belladonna had only been used some days; in the other, the disease declared itself in the second week. Gumpert (senior) prevented the introduction of the epidemic into se- veral villages, by administering the medicine continuously at the proper time. He remarked that in those where the epi- demic had already appeared, the employment of this substance rendered the scarlatina very mild. In the district where he practises, the public have as much confidence in it as in vac- cination, and the local authorities are ordered to furnish gratis this medicine. "In the very fatal epidemics of 1817, 1818, and 1819, Brendt, physician at Custrin, made use of two preparations of belladonna. With one he preserved all the subjects: with the other he obtained the following results:—out of 195, 14 were attacked, and 181 preserved. The eruption was very slight among the small number of those who contracted the disease. One of the authors, whose observations are the best 10 138 GERMAN EXPERIMENTS calculated to prove the prophylactic efficacy of belladonna, is Dr. Dusterberg of Warbourg. In three consecutive epi- demics, this practitioner preserved from contagion all the in- dividuals who made use of the remedy, although they were allowed to visit and keep company with the sick. He there- fore regards this practice as certain a prophylactic as vaccina- tion. To be more certain of his results, Dusterberg made a still more conclusive experiment; he chose, in each family submitted to the prophylactic treatment, a child who had not taken belladonna: all the children thus excepted were attacked by the contagion. Dusterberg adds, it is true, that several other children, who had only used the medicine for four or five days, were also attacked, but so feebly that the only trace of the scarlatina was the subsequent desquamation..... In 1820, during the course of a very fatal scarlatina, Behr, phy- sician at Bernbourg, gave the specific to 47 individuals; among these, 41 escaped the contagion, and 6 were attacked, but in an almost insensible manner.....Twenty-three children, out of 84, were attacked with scarlatina in the Military Foundling Hospital of Halle, in Tyrol. Zeuch, physician to the establishment, gave belladonna to the 61 re- maining; all were preserved, with the exception of one; and meanwhile the epidemic continued to rage in the environs of the hospital.....Kunstmann found belladonna always efficacious, with the exception of one case; he, however, re- mained in doubt upon the subject, until the following trial confirmed his belief: he administered the remedy to 70 chil- dren of the Institution of Frederick, of which he is physician; 3 were attacked, 67 preserved. One other child, who had not been submitted to the trial was violently attacked....."* The whole number of persons who were submitted to the * For the whole of Bayle's article on the subject, the English reader is re- ferred to Dr. Black's Principles and Practice of Homoeopathy. IN FAVOUR OF BELLADONNA. 139 preservative action of belladonna by the physicians referred to by Bayle amounted to 2027, and of these 78 were attacked with scarlet fever, while 1948 escaped in fhe several epidemics. He adds, "All authors, however, are not partisans of bella- donna. Lehmann asserts that this medicine had no preserva- tive virtue in the epidemic of 1825, at Torgo. According to Barth, two other physicians, Raminski and Tuffel, have also pronounced against it. We cannot justly appreciate the value of the opinion of these authors, because it is supported by no facts, and the disease has not been described. Could it not be possible that the affection treated by these practi- tioners was not the true scarlet fever, but rather the purple miliary fever, from which belladonna, according to Hahne- mann, affords no immunity?" I come now, then, to the Edinburgh experiments; and I ask, first, if the alleged unsuccessful trial of belladona in George Watson's Hospital, in 1851, was conducted according to the method prescribed by Hahnemann as that which was the best calculated to secure the preservative influence of the medicine? I am quite sure that the conductor of the trial, Mr. Benjamin Bell, made his experiments in perfectly good faith; for I believe, and I am glad to have an opportu- nity of saying so, that a more honourable and excellent man does not exist. But in so important a discussion as this he will, I am persuaded, pardon me for asking if he made him- self acquainted, before he began his researches, with Hahne- mann's instructions as to the proper dose, and the proper in- terval that should elapse between the successive repetitions of it? If he did not, why try the medicine at all: since there was no other discoverer of the alleged preventive power of belladonna than that same Hahnemann who also says that the dose ought to be very small, and ought not to be repeated above once in two or three days? I find on referring to Mr. 140 EXPERIMENTS OF MR. BELL. Bell's paper on the subject,* the following statement re- garding the administration of the dose, and its effects:— " Upon the appearance of a second case of scarlet fever [in the hospital.—W. H.] the fifth part of a grain of the extract was given, morning and evening, to each of the boys. The dose was found, in a few days, to be too large, from the di- lated state of the pupil and impaired vision which it occa- sioned in several instances. It was accordingly diminished," &c.—But how much? Not, certainly, to such an amount as not to injure the health of the boys; for it is added in another paragraph, " a large proportion of the boys who took the bel- ladonna seemed to have more or less furring of the tongue, impairment of appetite, and other evidences of slight indis- position,"—Hahnemann having fifty years previously strongly represented to those who would make use of the preventive, that it must, in order to be a preventive, be given in ex- tremely minute doses, so as not to injure the health. His in- structions are, to give of a solution of belladonna nearly cor- responding with the third dilution of his scale of potencies, a drop or two for every year of the person's age who is un- dergoing the prophylaxis, and not to repeat the dose, as a general rule, above once in 72 hours. His reason for giving such small doses may have been that the object to be attained is to produce as nearly as possible, and in the feeblest degree, a state of the system similar to that which precedes the very earliest period of pure scarlet fever, for which alone bella- donna is a homoeopathic cure after the disease has fairly be- gun. Of course, prior to the outbreak of symptoms of disease there must be latent preparatory processes going.on; and so there must be also similar, latent, preparatory processes be- fore the first effects of a drug, that produces corresponding * Monthly Journal of Medical Science, 1S-51. HIS ERROR IN CONDUCTING THEM. 141 symptoms, become apparent. The belladonna, therefore, is to be given in such quantity as will meet the poison of scarlet fever at the very threshold, and keep it at bay. Large doses of the drug, by producing the ulterior effects of belladonna, abandon the vantage ground occupied by the smaller, and leave an entrance open to the contagious poison. The amount of injurious influence on the health of the hospital boys must have been considerable when the extract of belladonna was continued in very sensible doses for three months, at the end of which period it was that the last case of the fever occurred. Mr. Bell makes the following very sensible remarks on the subject; and it is surprising that the view he expresses did not induce him to reduce the dose below the injurious degree, or to suspect that he had not used the medicine properly:— "We cannot divest ourselves of the impression, that the con- tinued use of a narcotic, for weeks together, even in small doses, {how small?] must be prejudicial to health, and that thus, while failing to defend the individual against infection, it may render him less able to cope with the disease when it really comes." Having noticed the error into which Mr. Bell has fallen regarding the proper manner of conducting the experiment, it must be obvious that the preventive method discovered by Hahnemann was not tried in this instance; nay, it would ap- pear, on the contrary, that a large proportion of the boys were thrown into a state of impaired health, which probably made them more susceptible of the power of the contagion than if they had been let alone. We are not informed how many of the cases of scarlet fever that occurred after the bel- ladonna was given happened among those who had furred tongue, and impaired appetite, from the abuse of the drug; and we are of course, therefore, left to conjecture how far those whose constitutions were less susceptible of the injuri- 142 DR. NEWBIGGING S SUCCESS. ous action of the belladona were protected by it from the disease. In the whole circumstances, however, taken in con- nexion with the experience of Hahnemann and his followers, we have a right to infer that, where the belladonna did not injure the health, but a very small proportion of cases of scarlet fever occurred, as in the numerous experiments I have quoted from Bayle's work; and that the less favourable re- sults of Mr. Bell's experiments than of the latter are to be ascribed, in all probability, to the excessive quantity of bel- ladonna that was given. This conclusion appears to be coun- tenanced, further, by the previous experiments of Dr. Patrick Newbigging, another practitioner of the allopathic school, whose upright and gentlemanly character is a guarantee of the fidelity of his statements. After having had 22 cases of scarlet fever among 91 children, in George Watson's Hospital, in 1849, he began to give the belladonna, and though his doses were much the same as those with which Mr. Bell com- menced, he ceased administering it after " more than five weeks" had elapsed, and thus did not continue it half the time that Mr. Bell had done before the last of his cases oc- curred. Dr. Newbigging had only three new cases of the disease among the 69 remaining children who had not yet had the fever when he began to give the medicine: and these three happened within four days from the first employment of the prophylactic. All Mr. Bell's new cases occurred du- ring the last two months of his employment of the drug while the disease was still in the house; he continued, indeed, to use it a month longer, but the cases that continued suscep- tible, or had been made more susceptible of the action of the contagion, seem to have been exhausted in the two previous months. It is not unlikely, considering these facts, that, had Dr. Newbigging continued to give his preparation of bella- dona for six weeks longer, some more cases of scarlet fever SCARLET FEVER IN DONALDSON'S HOSPITAL. 143 would have occurred, as the drug began to tell injuriously on the health. As it happened, there were none after the first four days of its employment; and one reason of this may be, that his extract of belladonna was not so powerful as Mr. Bell's, for he says nothing whatever of injurious con- sequences having occurred, but concludes his interesting ob- servations in the following manner:—Previously to his ex- periments, he says, he had no faith in the prophylactic, not- withstanding " the report made at the Orphan Hospital of Langendorf, in Prussia, in a family of 160 individuals, where belladonna having been administered, immediately on the occurrence of the epidemic, only two took the disease." But, he continues, " I should now consider it my duty to lose no time in making use of this medicine on the first appearance of this disease, and I would strongly recommend the same plan of practice to those of the profession who are connected with similar educational institutions." That some of Mr. Bell's boys were protected by the bella- donna, notwithstanding its excessive employment, will imme- diately appear to be in the highest degree probable, if not certain; and there is no inconsistency between this supposi- tion and the other,—that those who were made ill by the drug were probably rendered more liable to the disease. The former conjecture is founded on a comparison of the propor- tion of cases of scarlet fever that occurred during Mr. Bell's experiments in George Watson's Hospital, with the propor- tion that occurred under Dr. J. D. Gillespie in James Donald- son's Hospital, where no belladonna was given. Dr. Simpson (I need not always repeat "as usual") shows profound and really astonishing ignorance on the whole of this subject. With the facts I have already noticed staring him in the face, and with the essay of Dr. Gillespie, and the others I have re- ferred to, published in the Journal of which he is himself one 144 GREAT AMOUNT OF SCARLET FEVER of the conductors,—he utters this singularly erroneous sen- tence:—"We possess no positive evidence in favour of its protective influence; and we know it has entirely failed when tried under the most favourable circumstances; " and then he goes on to specify Mr. Bell's experiments as those which were made in these most favourable circumstances; conceiving that the number of his cases of scarlet fever after the employment of belladonna, was "a large proportion to be attacked in a single epidemic in such an hospital," putting preventives out of view. Among the boys under Mr. Bell's charge there were 57 who had not had scarlet fever previously, and, in the fol- lowing summary, I exclude from consideration all who had had the disease before:—Of the 57,22 took scarlet fever after the use of belladonna had been begun, or at the rate of 38 per cent. Among Dr. Gillespie's hospital children 100 had not had scarlet fever previously to the epidemic to which his observations relate, and of these 52 took the disease, no bella- donna having been used, or 52 per cent. But this is not all. Dr. Gillespie observes that, besides those which were in- cluded under one form or another of fully developed scarlet fever, there occurred "a number of milder cases, probably caused by the same contagion, but where the symptoms were not sufficiently marked to warrant their being ranked among any of the ordinarily received classes of the disease." This is a statement of much importance, especially when it is con- sidered that the epidemic in Donaldson's Hospital was of al- most unexampled mildness. Supposing that 7 or 8 cases of sickness, not included among the 52 of ordinary scarlet fever, were, notwithstanding, "caused by the same conta- gion," we shall thus have 60 per cent, of the children affected by the fever poison, and we are entitled to conclude that, had the epidemic been of the usual severity, the number of decided cases would have been considerably greater than it WHEN NO BELLADONNA WAS USED. 145 appears to have been. But neither is this all; for there were peculiarities in the circumstances of Donaldson's Hos- pital at the time this epidemic occurred, and there are in that institution, besides, certain arrangements which are at all times singularly favourable to obstructing the progress of contagious diseases among its inmates. It possesses accommo- dation, we are told, for 300 residents, but at the time of the epidemic it contained only 123 children, and 26 adults. Spacious apartments, such as this hospital possesses, thinly inhabited, afforded most unusual facilities for dispersing contagious effluvia, or diluting them to a degree which must deprive them of the power of acting on persons who are but little disposed to be affected by them; and some of the chil- dren, we are bound to conclude, from what we know of the advantages of fresh air and good ventilation, must have es- caped the disease for that reason. Added to all these im- portant circumstances, there was still another most unfavour- able to the diffusion of the disease, thus described by Dr. Gillespie:—"The accommodation for the sick in Donaldson's Hospital cannot be too highly commended. It reflects much credit on the governors who suggested, and on the architect who planned the arrangements. The whole of the upper story of the back of the building is appropriated to that pur- pose, being farthest removed from the various dormitories and class-rooms. All access to it is completely prevented, save by two stair-cases, one for the boys, the other for the girls, the doors at the foot of which can be kept locked if necessary." It was for this reason partly that Dr. Gillespie did not employ belladonna, for he says, " had belladonna been administered, the experiment would not have been de- cisive without allowing the healthy children to mingle freely with the infected; but as great facilities were afforded for keeping them entirely separate, such a procedure would not 146 NEGLECT OF HAHNEMANN'S INSTRUCTIONS. have been warrantable." According to this very sensible view, therefore, some of the children must have been pre- served from the disease in Donaldson's Hospital, with its great facilities for preventing the spread of contagious mala- dies, who would have been affected with scarlet fever in other institutions not so wisely constructed. The plain in- ference from all that has been said is surely this, that, at the very least, double the proportion of cases of the fever would have occurred in Donaldson's Hospital, where no belladonna was used, that occurred in George Watson's, where belladon- na was used, were it not for the much inferior virulence of the fever-poison, for the very much larger space the children had to occupy, and for the very complete arrangements for the separation of the sick,—advantages which are declared to have been enjoyed by the former institution. Nor let it be forgotten, in estimating the value of the prophylactic, that George Watson's Hospital had the smaller per centage of fever cases, notwithstanding that the medicine was adminis- tered in doses that are admitted to have impaired the health of a considerable proportion of the children,—not in the man- ner recommended by the experience of Hahnemann, but in a manner which he expressly warns the physician to avoid. I think, then, it will be admitted by every reader capable of thinking rationally, and of speaking candidly, that we have a very good case indeed in favour of our belladonna; and that not the weakest part of it is founded on what Dr. Simpson calls very justly, though without seeing to what his superlative is really applicable, " Mr. Bell's excellent paper in the Monthly Journal of Medical Science for August 1851." And the reader will perhaps do us, of the despised party, the justice to think that we don't, after all, neglect " Medical Science" so very much as our conceited opponents would have him to believe, and that we know, at least as well as HAHNEMANN AND JENNER. 147 some who rate themselves very highly indeed, how to bring truth somewhat triumphantly out of the clutches of those who would smother it if they could. That belladonna always protects from scarlet fever, or will protect from all forms of it, neither the discoverer of its powers nor any of his followers have ever asserted. And in this respect Hah- nemann has the advantage of Jenner, who would allow no possibility of an exception to the universality and the per- manence of the protective power of vaccination against small-pox; and congratulates his country "and society at large on their beholding in the mild form of the cow-pox an antidote that is capable of extirpating from the earth a dis- ease which is every hour devouring its victims." No one now entertains either of these opinions of Jenner, yet no one abuses him or contemns his discovery, because he held extravagant notions on the subject. He is not called quack and cheat, because small-pox occurs pretty often after vacci- nation, and is still common where vaccination is even ren- dered imperative by law. So far was Hahnemann from asserting that belladonna was always a preventive of scarlet fever, that he expressly states that he is not aware if his preservative would have the power of averting attacks of a particular form of the disease which distinguished some of the epidemics of 1800. He thought these were different from the pure scarlet fever, which alone he regarded as capable of being prevented by belladonna. Some of his disciples appear to have overlooked this fact; and among them Dr. Elb, who is specified by Dr. Simpson as one of the "more rational homoeopathic physicians" who have,according to him, "given up the idea" that belladonna is a prophylactic against the disease. Dr. Elb, however, says nothing of the kind. He gives some account of an epidemic of extraordinary virulence, or of a "malignant character," 148 DR. ELB MISREPRESENTED and not therefore of the nature of the ordinary or " true scarlet fever." Death occurred, he says, in most cases on the third day, in rarer cases as early as the first; and of his whole experience of the powers of belladonna he makes a statement which proves that in that epidemic the grounds he had for forming an opinion were not extensive. He speaks only of " cases having come before him," how many he does not say, in which the children who had taken belladonna had remained unaffected, while "just as often" others took the disease in an unmitigated form, who had been taking belladonna for several weeks previously. The "just as often" goes no fur- ther, of course, than the instances of escape, and these, for aught we know, may have been very few; so that the whole experiment is inconclusive, as to the power of belladonna having been ineffectual even against a type of the malady, for the averting of which we have no right to suppose that Hahnemann himself would have believed it adequate. Nor does he utter a single expression to warrant the assertion of Dr. Simpson, that he had given up the idea of belladonna being capable of protecting against scarlet fever of the more ordinary kind. If Dr. Simpson believes Dr. Elb to be one of " the more rational homoeopathic physicians," whose mere belief, expressed in vague general terms, and without the de- tails which alone ought to give weight to an opinion on medi- cal subjects, is so authoritative with him as he pretends, is he prepared to accept as equally authoritative the assurances of the same person, that he found calcarea, in one of the gravest forms of the disease, fulfil his expectations "in the most bril- liant manner," because as Dr. Elb avers, "of all the children to whom I gave calcarea I did not lose one:" or his high esti- mate of the utility of zinc in another very dangerous form of the malady, "the effect of which," he says, "exceeded my expectation; for not alone in isolated cases, but in all where BY DR. SIMPSON. 149 I employed zinc, I had the happiness to save the apparently dying child?" These allegations are from the same, "ra- tional " homoeopathic physician who made the other regard- ing the belladonna, and we have precisely the same amount of proof in reference to the former as to the latter, and the mere authority that is good for the one is equally good for the other. ( 150 ) CHAPTER III. Hahnemann settles in Leipsic in 1810—Poverty and abuse the attendants on his devotion to medical reform—His numerous Essays on Homoeopathy, and on speculative systems in medicine,"&c.—Publication of the Organon in 1810—Small-pox and vaccination as illustrations of homoeopathicity among diseases—Dr. Simpson's gross misrepresentations of Hahnemann on this subject—Dr. Miihry and Dr. Willan—The substantial accuracy of Hahne- mann's statements regarding small-pox—Remarkable errors of Dr. Simpson —Measles and hooping-cough—Dr. Simpson charges Hahnemann with false- hood—Proofs that the charge is untrue—Publication of the Pure Materia Medica, &c.—Persecutions at Leipsic—Hahnemann obliged to leave it in 1821—Residence at Coethen—Publication of his Chronic diseases—The Psoric doctrine shown to be an allopathic doctrine—The ^cA-doctrine not a doctrine of Hahnemann at all—The Psoric doctrine substantially correct—Proofs from Willan, Budd, &c, &c. — Removal to Paris in 1835; his death in 1843. Return we now to Hahnemann, who has no doubt been waiting all this time with such impatience as immortals feel at the tardy movements of those who are still cumbered with their load of clay. Driven from Konigslutter, as we have seen, by the jealousy of his brethren, he journeyed with his family to several places in succession, and found a resting- place in Leipsic in 1810, where he remained till 1821. In the course of his eleven years of a somewhat unsettled life, he found time for the composition of some of his finest essays; for his mind appears never to have reposed in idleness, or to have been discouraged in its onward search after truth by the many hardships he had to encounter. It is but justice to one of the brightest and bravest beings that ever adorned our profession, to ask the reader to pause and to reflect on the HAHNEMANN'S DESERTS AND LOT. 151 circumstances of Hahnemann's lot and occupations at this period of his life. Many suppose that he was cheered on the path he took, if not by the plaudits of his professional contem- poraries, at least by the abundant offerings of a public grate- ful for real or fancied benefits. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In 1803, at the mature age of forty-eight, Hahne- mann who was styled by Hufeland* in 1801, "one of the most distinguished of German physicians," was without a fixed residence, and in absolute poverty. For years he had been spending his strength in seeking to improve his profession rather than his circumstances. With talents and knowledge that could not fail to have enriched him, had riches been his aim, in the trodden path of medical routine, he deliberately preferred the contempt, oppression, and privations which dog- ged him year after year in the course which he believed to be that of truth and duty. Writing in 1828, he says of himself and his labours, " I have paid no regard either to ingratitude or persecutions in the course of my life, which, although toil- some, has not been without satisfaction on account of the grandeur of the end which I had in view." How many of his modern detractors would have taken the like course at the call of conscience, under the like discouragements and sacri- fices? Among the works which he published in the period re- ferred to, I cannot regard that on The Effects of Coffee as a favourable specimen of his lucubrations. No doubt he ap- pears to have drawn his conclusions on the subject from the abuse of that substance; an abuse which is probably seldom practised among us; yet making every allowance on this point, it is surprising that he should have thought coffee ca- pable of producing so many serious chronic disorders as he has ascribed to it. One only apology can be found for him, * See his Journal, vol. v. 1801. 152 ALLOPATHIC CLAIMS TO THE ITCH-DOCTRINE. and I think it is an apology of some weight. How was he to account, in the state of medical science of that day, for the origin and the obstinacy of many constitutional diseases? Some abuse, some contamination of the living substance; from one source or another, there must be; and he was ap- parently shut up to the conclusion, that it was to be found either in the excessive comsumption of this foreign drug, for (drug it is,) or in the taint derived from psora, the sup- posed constitutional evils of which were undoubted in his time; nay, were acknowledged in what was "an old medical dog- ma " before Hahnemann was born. Our modern unlearned, with the Professor of Midwifery in their van, seem never to have heard of the psoric doctrine of chronic diseases but in connexion with the speculations of Hahnemann. It is never- theless an allopathic doctrine, that existed, and was enter- tained by the most eminent allopathic physicians, long before he saw the light; and not only so, but he was even slow of accepting it, and preferred the nicer, if not the wiser, hypo- thesis regarding the abuse of coffee, to account for much that his predecessors had ascribed to the itch. I shall in the se- quel adduce the allopathic claims to this once favourite hy- pothesis. Strikingly in contrast with this hasty production are his two tracts, JEsculapius in the Balance, and The Medicine of Experience, published in 1805 and 1806. They contain a still further, development of his own views, and masterly criticisms of'the pedantic fooleries and inevitable evils of the common practice. I know no works in medicine of their antiquity for a moment to be compared with them for acute observation and just reasoning, and none of any age that de- serve better to be thoughtfully perused by the really earnest physician. The latter of these two essays was the last of his communications to the ordinary medical press; it appeared in Hufeland's Journal, the principal organ of the medical SMALL-POX AND COW-POX. 153 public of that day in Germany. His writings had now brought on him so much abuse and persecution from the fol- lowers of the old methods, that Hahnemann withdrew from this time forward both from their periodicals and their so- ciety. In 1808 and 1809, he wrote several papers for a magazine of general literature and science, and among them were his admirable treatise On the Value of the Speculative Systems in Medicine, and his beautiful Letter to Hufeland, "whom," says Dr. Dudgeon, "he never ceased to love and esteem, though in every respect he was a much greater man and finer character than the Nestor of German medicine, as Hufeland was called." In 1810 he published the first edition of his Organon of Medicine, which contained a fuller exposition of his doctrines than any of his previous writings, and in its last edition is to be regarded as expressing his maturest conclusions on the art and science of Homoeopathy. As I propose to discuss the homoeopathic law, the provings, and the doses, in a separate part of this work, I leave them untouched in this place; and stop for a moment or two to notice only one point, which cannot be so easily introduced elsewhere. Hahnemann, in his endeavour to illustrate the homoeopathicity of means of cure to the diseases cured, cites from the relations apparently subsisting in some instances between two successive diseases, —the one of which was followed by the permanent removal of that which had pre-existed,—examples which he thought might be regarded of one disease curing another homoeopa- thically, that is, because of its similarity to that other. Among these examples he gives the case of small-pox in its relation to cow-pox, which he thus describes:—"Small-pox coming on after vaccination, as well on account of its greater strength as its great similarity, immediately removes entirely the cow-pox homoeopathically, and does not permit it to come to maturity; but, on the other hand, the cow-pox when near 11 154 dr. Simpson's misrepresentations maturity does, on account of its great similarity, homoeopa- thically diminish very much the supervening small-pox, and make it much milder, as Miihry {in Robert Willan on Vaccina- tion) and many others testify." I have put the latter half of the quotation in italics, because it contains a different propo- sition from that contained in the other half,—a proposition which is now universally admitted as generally true, and the only proposition given by Hahnemann on the authority of "Miihry (in R. Willan on Vaccination) and many others." Dr. Simpson, in order to make an occasion for attacking Hahnemann's veracity and learning, arrests the attention of his readers on that part of the quotation which asserts what nobody questions. Thus he says, " And, first, let me observe, that, in the above paragraph, Hahnemann refers as his autho- rity to Miihry in ' Dr. Willan on Vaccination.' In the cele- brated work of Willan, to which Hahnemann refers, I do not find the name of Dr.Miihry."* When I had read thus far, I was instantly reminded of the celebrated fable of the frog and the ox; in which it is related that the former, (Rana ob- stetricians ?) swelling herself out, in order to rival the en- vied magnitude of the other, burst herself in the effort. Dr. Simpson collapses under a similar catastrophe; for Hahne- mann referred to Muhry's translation of Willan, which exists under the following title, "Willan iiber die Kuhpocken Imp- fang, aus dcm Englischen, mit Zusatzen, (with additions,) von G. F. Miihry." So much for the authority of Muhry's Willan, on a point respecting which all are now agreed. Next, for the other half of the paragraph from Hahnemann. Dr. * He adds in a note, that possibly Muhry's name may occur in some French or German translation of Willan. But that his remark in the text is intended to raise a suspicion of Hahnemann's honesty, I have reason to conclude, for Dr. Simpson has employed it in private with that view, as I have been informed by one to whom he made that use of it. He cannot, then, complain of the exposure given above. OF HAHNEMANN AND WILLAN. 155 Simpson accuses Hahnemann of perverting the "facts and deductions" of Willan, while he professes to be giving them as they occur in Willan's work. At p. 158, Dr. Simpson's words are—" The very authority, Dr. Willan, to whose work Hahnemann unscrupulously refers his credulous readers in support of his views, gives facts and conclusions most flatly and avowedly contradictory of these very views." Now, in reply to this disgraceful accusation, the reader will observe, first, that Hahnemann never refers to Willan at all, but only to " Miihry and many others," and even their authority he ad- duces in support of quite another proposition than that con- tained in the former half of the paragraph. In the second place, the English edition of Willan's work does actually contain statements, which, so far from being "flatly and avowedly contradictory " of Hahnemann's views, are decidedly in favour of them, though Hahnemann does not advert to Willan's statements on the subject, but speaks apparently of experience of his own, which Willan's observations tend to confirm. Thus, on the very same page of Willan's work from which Dr. Simpson quotes what he supposes will serve his purpose, but which has no bearing whatever on the point at issue, Dr. Willan says, " The variolous and vaccine fluids, in- oculated about the same time, do restrain the action of each other on the human body, so that, in some cases, the vaccine vesicle is smaller than usual, and has a very slow progress; in other cases, the areola is scarcely perceptible; while, in others, it is large but premature!" showing, beyond all ques- tion, that the cow-pox was to a great extent superseded; or, as Hahnemann averred, is not permitted " to come to matu- rity," as cow-pox does when unchecked. The " immediately " of Hahnemann, supposing it to be a correct translation, of course cannot have been meant to be taken literally. Some time must elapse before the small-pox can produce its modi- fying influence on the cow-pox, though it may immediately 156 CASES BY WILLAN WHICH begin to do so. So far, then, as Willan's remark goes, it is thoroughly favourable to the tenor of Hahnemann's argu- ment; and, no doubt, had Hahnemann been referring to Willan's authority, and not to what he had seen himself or learnt from another, (possibly Dr. Miihry,) he would not have made more use of Willan's experience than was justified by Willan's expressions, even had he been capable of such dis- honesty, for the translation by Miihry had placed it in the hands of all his contemporaries. The well-known cases re- ported by Willan, in which small-pox pustules rose within the border of vaccine vesicles, the vaccine having preceded the variolous disease, are still more in favour of Hahne- mann's views. The best example of this occurrence is men- tioned in Willan's Reports on the Diseases of London. He says, "In an adult female, at the Inoculation Hospital, the casual small-pox appeared six days after the vaccine disease had been inoculated, the two variolous pustules arose within the circumference of the vaccine pock: when these were maturated, fluid taken from them on the point of a lancet, and inoculated into another person, produced the regular small-pox: at the same time, fluid taken from the vaccine pock, at a little distance from the supervening (small-pox) pustules, gave the vaccine disease in its genuine form, with- out any eruption." (P. 315.) Alluding to the drawing of a similar case, as given in Willan's work on Vaccination, Dr. Simpson says, " It represents not only the small-pox unable to overcome and annihilate (as it homoeopathically ought to do) the cow-pox upon the same individual, but it shows it to be unable to do so even when the small-pox pustule is de- veloped in the very same portion of skin as the cow-pox pus- tule." P. 156.) Now, what actually happened in these cases? Why, just this express confirmation of Hahnemann's doctrine, that the stronger poison, invading a portion of skin previously occupied by the vaccine disease, did destroy the vaccine dis- confirm Hahnemann's doctrine. 157 ease over so much of the surface as the small-pox pustules required for their development; for within the border of the vaccine disease a spot or spots occurred where vaccine mat- ter was no longer produced, but only the small-pox matter; which is the plainest confirmation that can be of Hahnemann's dogma, in reference to homoeopathic diseases, that "the stronger morbific potency, when it appears, does, on account of its similarity of action, involve exactly the same parts of the organism that were hitherto affected by the weaker mor- bid irritation, which consequently can no longer influence the system, but is extinguished." This passage is actually given by Dr. Simpson, in connexion with the preceding cases, to show how absurd were Hahnemann's doctrines, and yet it is positively the only rational inference that can be drawn from these very cases. And he adds, "In tl?e instance to which I refer, the small-pox, or stronger morbific power, as Hahnemann declares it to be, did not extinguish the weaker morbific power of the cow-pox, even though situated on the same structure, and though developed in identically and pre- cisely the same limited spot of skin as the (vaccine) disease," &c. Now, what can any one say to this precious sentence, but that it displays the most extraordinary obtuseness or the grossest perversity? The two diseases did not occupy iden- tically and precisely the same spot of the skin, for the small- pox took a portion of it from the pre-existing cow-pox, and obviously because it was the stronger morbific power, for if it was the weaker it could not! While it is quite true that small-pox does not always mate- rially interfere with the progress of the vaccine disease, for reasons which are as yet inexplicable in some cases, yet it is certain that it does so often enough to justify Hahnemann in adducing the relation between these two affections as illus- trations of the homoeopathic law among diseases. Even were he as entirely wrong, as he is manifestly right, in this and most of the other instances he mentions of homoeopathicity be- 158 dr. Simpson's misrepresentation tween diseases, the error would be of no earthly consequence, in the estimation of those entitled to give an opinion, to his doctrine of homoeopathicity between remedies and the dis- eases they cure; for the latter can be tested at pleasure by experiment, and has been tested by millions of experiments, which have left not a shadow of doubt as to its truth in the minds of those who have honestly set about the inquiry. The next instance on which Dr. Simpson condescends, as an evidence of Hahnemann's absurdity and falsehood, (for he does not mince matters in accusing the venerable dead,) is that of measles and hooping-cough. Now, granting that Hahnemann was wrong in supposing that measles, in the ex- perience of Bosquillon, proved a protection against hooping- cough, the error is not worth a straw as an objection to Homoeopathy- "The measles," says he, "bears a strong re- semblance in the character of its fever and cough to the hooping-cough, and hence it was that Bosquillon noticed, in an epidemic where both these affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles remained free from hooping- cough during that epidemic. They would all have been pro- tected from, and rendered incapable of, being infected by the hooping-cough, in that and all subsequent epidemics, by the measles, if the hooping-cough were not a disease that has only a partial similarity to the measles," &c.—(Organon, p. 1500. Upon this passage Dr. Simpson makes the following commentary:—"Hahnemann adduces as his authority for the truth of his assertion, the evidence of a distinguished French physician, Bosquillon, the translator of the works of Cullen. Unfortunately, however, for Hahnemann's veracity, the au- thor he thus refers to as his authority in the matter, (exactly as in the preceding case of Willan,) does not state what Hahnemann alleges he states."—(P. 160.) He next quotes the passage from Bosquillon to which Hahnemann refers, and which is to the following effect:—Having said that epi- REGARDING MEASLES AND HOOPING-COUGH. 159 demies of measles often precede hooping-cough, he continues, —"From this one might suppose that it has, like the matter of measles, a particular attraction for the mucous glands, and that the two maladies have some affinity. They are, however, independent of each other, and the contagion is different; for many persons have been seen who have been attacked with measles, to escape the hooping-cough, and others to ac- quire this last, although they have formerly had the measles; which proves that the generation of the morbific matter is different in the two diseases." Now, I should like to know what there is in Hahnemann's reference to this passage that deserves the monstrous imputation of falsehood. Bosquillon says that he saw many persons who took measles escape hooping- cough, and Hahnemann says nothing more on Bosquillon's authority than " that Bosquillon noticed, in an epidemic where both these affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles remained free from hooping-cough during that epidemic," which is precisely what Bosquillon says of epi- demics he is supposed to be referring to as having been ob- served by himself. Bosquillon gives no explanation of the exemptions from hooping-cough, after measles, to which he alludes, and Hahnemann never says that he does. The ex- planation is Hahnemann's, the alleged facts are Bosquillon's; and the former, right or wrong, regarded these facts as ex- plicable by the partial similarity between measles and hoop- ing-cough; while he asserts, moreover, just as Bosquillon does, that though many escape hooping-cough who have had mea- sles, others do not, a circumstance which he accounts for on his own principles, without any reference to Bosquillon's opinions at all! And yet, without a shadow of excuse, he is deliberately accused of falsehood. If there be falsehood, and I leave the reader to settle that point to his own satis- faction, it certainly does not lie with Hahnemann. The minor point however remains, namely, whether mea- 160 ADDITIONAL MISREPRESENTATIONS. sles does or does not protect any persons, for any time, from hooping-cough. Of course Dr. Simpson, " and many a nurse," know, what everybody knows, that hooping-cough occurs after measles, and sometimes along with it. That is not the ques- tion; Hahnemann says nothing at variance with that uni- versal experience, but everything that is in harmony with it. The real question is,—Does measles prevent hooping-cough from occurring in any considerable number of cases during the same epidemic season ? That is what Hahnemann answers in the affirmative; and I venture to say, that neither Dr. Simpson, nor any nurse in Christendom, is prepared to prove that he is in error! I do not maintain that Hahnemann is right, for I do not know that he is; but, on the other hand, Dr. Simpson, and the nurses, cannot informedly maintain the reverse, for they don't know that he is wrong! After this lengthened exposure of a very extraordinary degree of artful misrepresentation on the part of the "Tenets," the reader will not be surprised to learn that, in the addenda to so peculiar a strain, the same spirit of cunning detraction and distortion keeps up a running accompaniment of " false notes." I can give but a single example. Hahnemann, among the illustrations of the homoeopathic law to be found among diseases in their action on one another, mentions oph- thalmia (inflamed eyes) as very liable to occur in the course of small-pox; and therefore it is, says he that Dezoteux and Leroy cured cases of chronio ophthalmia by the inoculation of small-pox. A very fair conclusion, as I think. Dr. Simpson, in reference to this and many similar instances, without tell- ing his readers the real and special grounds of Hahnemann's view of the reason that such cures followed the small-pox, adduces the local diseases that were thus cured, with a sneer at their similarity to small-pox. It was not to the eruption of small-pox that they were ever compared, but to the fre- quent accompaniments to the eruption, which the same poison Hahnemann's return to leipsic. 161 was capable of producing. But I must stop here, though I could fill a volume with exposures of the calumnies and mis- representations which occur on every page of the medical apocrypha. "With a wide-spread reputation," says the biographer of Hahnemann, "he now re-entered Leipsic, where a crowd of patients and admirers flocked around him, and the flood-tide of fortune seemed at length to set in towards him. Professor Hecker of Berlin wrote, in 1810, a violent diatribe against the Organon, which displays more wrath and untempered hostility than wit or good-breeding, and was replied to in a masterly style by young Frederick Hahnemann, who under- took the defence of his father; for the latter treated all at- tacks, whether on his character or his works, with silent con- tempt; though it could not be said he viewed them with in- difference, for there is every reason to believe that the poi- soned shafts of envy and calumny rankled in his soul, and communicated acerbity to a disposition that was naturally overflowing with love to his fellow-men. Hecker's attack was the signal for numerous others of the same nature, written with greater or less ability, and with more or less fairness; but it would be wearisome to recapitulate even the titles of the articles and pamphlets that issued from the press, intended by their authors to crush the presumptuous innovator." They had not that effect, however, either on him or his system, for He who rules the raging of the sea, and prescribes its bounde, equally governs the wrath of man, and curbs it with His fiat, "thus far, no farther shalt thou go." Hahnemann, then, steadily held on his course; and in 1811 published the first volume of his Pure Materia Medica, which contained the re- sults of the provings or experiments he had made on himself and his friends, with a number of medicines, together with the symptoms he had gathered from the records of poisoning by the same substances. At this time he meditated founding 162 testimony to Hahnemann's learning. a college and an hospital, with the view of training young physicians to the practice of Homoeopathy; but failing of the means, he satisfied himself of the more attainable object of giving a course of lectures on the new science. In order to qualify himself legally for this purpose, he had to comply with a regulation of the Faculty of Medicine, which required a thesis to be written and defended by those who aspired to lecture on medical subjects. He chose for the theme of his essay, The Helleborism of the Ancients. The thesis was written in Latin, and contains an elaborate medico-historical dissertation on the employment of white hellebore, by the ancient Greeks and Romans; in the course of which, by many learned references, he proves the identity of their plant with our veratrum album, and details its various effects and uses as recorded by the Greek and Roman writers of antiquity. I have the authority of one of the ripest scholars of this country for stating, that this thesis is remarkable for the dis- play of "extensive reading in the ancient authors, and not only those more immediately connected with his own profes- sional pursuits, but also in the classical writers of antiquity;" and, intimate as the gentleman to whom I refer is with some of the most learned physicians of Europe, he adds, " I know very few medical men possessed of the same amount of learn- ing." His was no mere lexicon learning, which enables the really ignorant or half-educated to acquire among the vulgar the fame of erudition in Greek or in Hebrew, when they barely know the alphabet of either; but the learning of the hard student and the man of genius, for Hahnemann, as Dr. Forbes justly admits, "was a man of genius and a scholar." I should like to be present when the medical-faculty of St. Andrew's or Aberdeen gets such a thesis to criticise from some despised follower of Hahnemann; as I should like to have been, were it not for the present penalty of old age that the enjoyment would have demanded, when Hahnemann de- HE awes a medical faculty. 163 fended his thesis before the faculty of Leipsic. " This thesis," says Dr. Dudgeon, "he defended on June the 26th, 1812, and it drew from his adversaries an unwilling acknowledgment of his learning and genius, and from the impartial and worthy Dean of the Faculty a strong expression of admiration. When a candidate defends his thesis, he has what are called opponents among the examiners, who dispute the various opinions broached in the thesis; but the most of Hahnemann's opponents were so polite as to confess they were entirely of his way of thinking, while a few who wished to say some- thing for form's sake, merely expressed their dissent from some of Hahnemann's philological views. This trial, which his enemies had fain hoped would end in the exposure of his ignorance of the shallow charlatan, proved incontestably the superiority of Hahnemann over his opponents, even on their own territory, and was a brilliant inauguration of the lectures which he forthwith commenced to deliver to a circle of ad- miring students and gray-headed old doctors, whom the fame of his doctrines and his learning attracted round him." From among the numerous disciples who now resorted to him for instruction, he chose some to assist him in his labour of ac- quiring a knowledge of the powers which medicine possesses of altering the health of the human body, for the use of his prospective publications on the Materia Medica. While re- siding at Leipsic, from 1810 to 1821, he gave various valua- ble essays to the world, besides a second edition of the Or- ganon, and five more volumes of medicinal provings. The jealousy of the allopathic physicians of Leipsic did not remain very long in abeyance, and they gave expression to their feelings in the same magnanimous way as their col- leagues had done at Konigslutter and other places. The apothecaries, as usual, were made the instruments of their persecution, but the arrival among them of the celebrated Austrian Field-Marshal, Prince Schwarzenberg, who went to 164 PERSECUTION AT LEIPSIC. Leipsic in order to place himself under the medical care of Hahnemann, his life having been despaired of by the prac- titioners of the old school, interrupted for a time the pro- gress of their designs. Their chagrin at the improvement which the prince's health experienced for a time may be as easily conceived as their subsequent satisfaction when he died, of the organic disease which even Hahnemann could not remedy. So inevitable an event was, of course, as in similar cir- cumstances it still is, the signal for a general outcry of pre- tended indignation against the new practice; and the apothe- caries, taking advantage of the impression industriously pro- pagated among their ignorant fellow-citizens, that Hahne- mann's method had hastened if it did not actually cause the death of the illustrious patient, had now little difficulty in procuring an injunction against his dispensing his own medi- cines. "Hahnemann could not write prescriptions for his medicines seeing that the privileged apothecaries did not keep them, and could not be trusted with their preparation, as they were his bitterest foes. His practice was therefore gone, and though he was urgently, advised to dispense his medi- cines secretly, yet he had too great a respect for the authori- ty of the law to act contrary to the verdict of those whose business it was to enforce it, even though he believed that they had misinterpreted its spirit; nothing was left for him, therefore, but to quit Leipsic, a town which was now en- deared to him by many pleasing associations connected with the spread and development of his great reform; and his fatherland, Saxony, now offered no place where the most il- lustrious of its sons could live in peace. Under these dis- couraging circumstances, the reigning Prince of Anhalt Ccethen, who was an ardent admirer of the system, offered Hahnemann an asylum in the tiny capital of his tiny domi- nions, and accordingly to Ccethen Hahnemann proceeded in RETREAT TO COSTHEN. 165 1821. It must have been with a heavy heart that he left Leipsic, the goal of his youth's ambition and the scene of his manhood's triumphs. It must have cost him a pang to leave that dear fatherland which he loved with that longing ar- dour that the Swiss bears to his Alps. To exchange the busy commercial and literary capital of northern Germany for the lifeless and dismal little town of a petty principality was but a sorry exchange indeed. . . . Though Leipsic has now the honour of containing his bronze effigies, and though Leipsic's magistrates and municipal authorities joined in the inauguration of Hahnemann's monument in 1851, this will hardly suffice to efface the stain of bigotry and intole- rance that attaches to the town and its authorities by their expulsion of the greatest of Leipsic's citizens in 1821.* At Ccethen he remained till 1835, leading a life of still greater retirement and devotion to study, than that by which he had been always distinguished. He seldom left his house except to visit his patron when he required his services: the many patients who repaired to Ccethen, in order to receive his advice, visited him at his own residence; and his only walks were in his garden, which, he used to observe, "though very narrow was infinitely high." During his sojourn in this place of refuge he published three successive editions of the Organon, as well as a second and a third of his Materia Me- dica, and numerous articles in the literary journal formerly adverted to. In 1828 one of his most celebrated works, Chronic Diseases, their Peculiar Nature and Homozopathic Treatment, made its appearance. In this publication he gave forth his opinions on the ancient doctrine of psora, as a con- stitutional taint to which a vast variety of the most important, chiefly chronic, diseases owed their existence. So far was he from claiming the credit of being the originator of this pa- * Dr. Dudgeon's Biographical Sketch. 166 THE PSORIC HYPOTHESIS thological doctrine, that he adduces, in support of his own de- cision in its favour, nearly a hundred allopathic authorities, his predecessors, as having more or less explicitly declared their conviction of its truth, or given examples in illustration of it. It is ignorantly sneered at by Dr. Simpson, and the many who take up the cuckoo-cry of derision against everything that Hahnemann taught, as the itch-doctrine of the homoeo- pathists, whereas it is neither an itch-doctrine in a candid and intelligent sense, nor is it a peculiarly homoeopathic doctrine. "I call it psora," says Hahnemann, "with the view of giving it a general designation; "* and that he did not regard it as synonymous with, or limited in its meaning to, the itch, every one knows who has perused his treatise on the subject. One sentence of his is sufficient of itself to settle this point, and to leave those who have so industriously misrepresented his opinions utterly without excuse. " I am persuaded that not only are the majority of the innumerable skin diseases which have been described and distinguished by Willan, but also almost all the pseudo-organizations, &c, &c, with few excep- tions, merely the products of the multiform psora." (P. 13.) Like Milton invoking Urania, Hahnemann might say, in reference to the psoric hypothesis: "The meaning, not the name, I call;" and the meaning he plainly and expressly an- nounced was this, that the majority of chronic diseases that appear as palsies, asthmas, dyspepsias, consumptions, head- aches, epilepsies, vertigoes, &c,