History of Homœopathy : Its Origin ; Its Conflicts.by Wilhelm Ameke, M. D.
Presented by Dr Robert Séror.
Part II : Opposition to Homœopathy.
Recent attacks on homoeopathy.
The allopaths assert that the Emperor declared that his soldiers were too dear to him for him to abandon them any longer to the murderous homoeopathic treatment (Rosenberg, l.c.).
Simon[Antihomöop. Archiv, 1834, Vol. I., H. 2., p. 125.] is still more minutely acquainted with the details :
The homoeopath sent his patients, when they were dying, into the allopathic division of the hospital, and so lessened his number of deaths.
This story came to the ears of the Confessor of his Majesty the Emperor, either through having seen the records of the homoeopathic department, or simply by crediting the current reports.
So much is certain, that the Emperor, after an interview with him, gave commands to put an end to the homeopathic experiments. [Simon goes on true to his principle of personally attacking his opponents : ]
With regard toMarenzeller, he is a man without scientific training, and even without ordinary cultivation. He cannot write two lines of German correctly … He maintained that women should be delivered on all fours like beasts.
Homoeopathy too successful, must be suppressed.
Simonoffers no proofs for this assertion. We will only mention that Dr. Marenzeller, body-physician of the Archduke John of Austria, was a highly cultivated man, who was quite abreast of the science of his day, and enjoyed a great reputation with the intellectual classes, who constituted the bulk of his practice, and for that reason. attracted the whole fury of the opponents of homoeopathy, Marenzeller, born in 1765, was originally, when he occupied the post of Privat docent, lecturer on anatomy and surgical operations in the general hospital of Vienna.
In1788 he went through the Turkish campaign as regimental surgeon, and was nominated staff physician to the Italian hospitals in 1813. [Allg. hom. Zeit . Vol. XLIX., p. 54.]
He was the first in the Austrian States who openly espousedHahnemann's system — to do this no little courage was required.
In1854 he died in Vienna, aged 89 years, and was in full medical activity up to a year before his death. With regard to the un-justifiable attacks of the allopathic opponents, it is not superfluous to quote a letter of King Frederick William IV. to Marenzeller, dated Charlottenburg, January 3rd, 1842 :
I am grateful to you for the confidence with which you, in your letter of October14th, recommend the homeopathic method to my protection, and I attach no small value to the recommendation of this important subject by a man who, like you, has practised homoeopathy with success through a whole generation. I shall willingly continue, as I have begun, to give the system every help that might aid in its development.
I have already sanctioned the erection of a homoeopathic hospital, and have promised the necessary funds from the State Treasury, and I intend to permit homoeopathic practitioners to dispense medicines themselves under certain conditions, and negociations are still going on on this point.[Allg. Leipz.. Zeitg., No. 21, 1842, p. 299. Allg. hom. Zeitg. : , Vol. XXI., p. 224 (see below about the hospital here alluded to). ]
Stieglitz[L.c., p. 191.] says in 1835, of the trials of Marenzeller :
What hindered the publication of these trials is veiled in obscurity. [Any impartial reader can easily understand it.] Only this is clear, that, in consequence of these trials, the practice of homeopathy was forbidden in the Austrian States.
It is well known that nine years previously, in1819, the practice of homoeopathy was forbidden in the Austrian States, and that at the instigation of the same Dr. Stifft, who was President of the Commission at these trials, the same Stifft, who was so great an advocate of "scientific" bleeding. The wording of the prohibition was as follows :
In consequence of the decision of the Court of Chancery, his Majesty orders that the practice of Dr.Hahnemann's system of homoeopathy is to be universally and strictly forbidden. [Governmental decree of 2nd November, 1819, No. 49665. Allg. hom. Zeitg., Vol. XX., p. 271.]
Stieglitz[L. c., p. 196.] also quotes the account by Mühry, in Casper's Wochenschrift for 1835, on the homoeopathic experiments made by Andral and Bailly in the Pitié.
According to this account no single individual had been cured in five months. This is too much even for the " great critic "Stieglitz.
He thinks some at least must have been cured by the healing power of nature[For a masterly exposure of Andral's pretended homoeopathic experiments, see Brit. jour. of Hom., Vol. I I., p. 119.]
Munk[L.c., p. 53.] says of these experiments : " Andral treated 130-140 patients according to homoeopathic principles, and in the presence of homoeopaths, but without any result."
In1828 trials were instituted at Naples. The homoeopaths [Rosenberg, l.c. ; also All. hom. Zeitg., Vol. XXIII., p. 18 ; also. Vol. XXXIII., p. 310.] ascribe the victory to themselves, and date from that time the spread of homoeopathy in Italy.
The allopaths[Munk, L. c., p. 107.] state that homoeopathy was defeated. The result was this : of sixty patients, fifty-two were perfectly cured and six improved — two died. These trials caused great excitement in Naples.
The allopaths had spread the report that there were numbers of dead and dying in the homoeopathic establishment, so that the King of Naples sent the Crown Prince to make investigations.
Trials of Homoeopathy allowed under the management of its enemies.
He found none either dead or dying. He there upon exclaimed : " Then those whom I see here must have risen from the dead.[Allg. Hom. Zeitg., Vol. XXXIII, p. 305 ]
Prof.Ronchi, of Naples, accused Hahnemann of being mad, [Kleinert, Repertorium der ges. med. J., 1833, VII., 141. ] and in the beginning of the year 1830 the allopaths declared homoeopathy in Naples to be dead. As a matter of fact it is spreading there up to the present time.
Further trials were instituted by the homoeopaths,Tessier in Paris and Chargé in Marseilles. According to the allopaths, the results were unfavourable, while the homoeopaths asserted the contrary with regard to the first.
In the case ofChargé the trial related to the homoeopathic treatment of cholera in the beginning of 1850. One ward for patients was assigned to him in the Hotel Dieu in Marseille, and according to previous agreement, patients were sent to him by the allopaths. The allopathic hospital doctors sent him (as was to be expected) the most hopeless cases. [Allg. hom. Zeitg., LI., p. 63.]
Docteur Alexandre Dominique Chargé (1810-1890)
The trial lasted three days. Patients were treated for seventeen days in the Hotel Dieu at Lyon by a homoeopath, Dr.Gueyard (when ?) and, according to Munk, [L.c., p. 108.] the result was unfavourable. Nothing on this subject is mentioned in homoeopathic literature.
In1835 some cases of itch were treated homoeopathically in Stuttgart — fiasco of the homoeopaths.
At the time of the cholera in1831, the Leipzic homoeopaths petitioned the town council to hand over to them one of the cholera hospitals which were to be established, in order that they might treat patients gratuitously in it.
An answer was given through the municipal physicianClarus, that their petition would be granted under the following conditions : — " The patients to be received shall be examined by Clarus before admission, and the entrance certificate be signed by him. The homeopathic medicines are to be taken from an ordinary apothecary's shop."
The homoeopaths replied thatClarus and other allopaths were free to visit the hospital at any time, but that the question of the admission of patients ought not to lie with Clarus (who was known as a fanatical opponent), because otherwise no patient would be admitted into the hospital unless he were half dead.
The medicines should be prepared and administered under proper control, but they could not agree to the dispensing of the medicines by the apothecaries. The town council, influenced byClarus, would not consent to this. [The documents alluded to will be found in Cholera, Homöopathik u. Medicinalbehörde, by the Leipzic Homeopathic Society, Leipzic, 1831.]
The homeopathic physician, Dr.Stern, practised in Miskoltz, in Hungary. He had previously written a pamphlet against homoeopathy, [Allg. hom Zeitg., Vol. LVL, p. 159.] but owing to a peculiar coincidence of circumstances, Saul had become a Paul.
There are many examples of similar conversions in the history of homoeopathy. He wanted now to prove publicly that the results of allopathy were excelled by those of the new method, and applied to the vice-president of the province for permission to treat gratuitously for one year in a special locality the numerous prisoners.
This was granted, and the prisoners were allowed to choose whether they would be treated homeopathically or allopathically. A lively agitation against this both by word of mouth and by means of the press, on the part of the adherents of the old school, was the result, but the desired effect was not produced.
Homoeopathy was delusion, quackery, &c., and a Dr.Fleischer complained of the ingratitude shown, after the many years' services of the allopathic doctors.
But the permission was maintained. The homoeopath began his labours in1844 ; the fatal results prophesied did not occur, and at the end of the year, out of 99 patients, not only had none died, but the cures effected had been more rapid than had ever been observed under allopathic treatment.
Besides various external chronic maladies, gastric and other fevers, inflammation of the lungs and pleura constituted a large proportion of the diseases treated.
Homoeopathy declines impossible conditions and is condemned.
The agitation of the allopaths grew ; they called meetings and councils, for this horrible homoeopath had dared to propose a continuance of his treatment.
At last, after three months, his opponents gained their object, and a command was issued from the royal Government to put an end to the further homoeopathic treatment of the prisoners, because the hospital had been established without the permission of the Government, and, therefore illegally, and because the homoeopathic method — " from its very nature " — was not suited for many kinds of diseases.
Any one who would like to have the pleasure of admiring the noble conduct of the allopaths in this contest will be able to do so in theAllgemeine homoopathische Zeitung. [Vol. XXIX., p. 97.]
In1840, two rooms in the Elizabeth Hospital, in Berlin, were given up to a homoeopath for homoeopathic treatment, from which he withdrew after some time on grounds that had nothing to do with the question of the results of homoeopathy.
In consequence of representations on the part of six homoeopathic practitioners of Berlin, a ministerial rescript of the10 th September, 1841, was issued to the effect that permission was given for the establishment of a homoeopathic hospital with twelve beds for three years at the cost of the State, with the condition that the admission of patients should only take place through a commission named by the Government.
The six homeopaths were called upon to propose a suitable physician. The choice fell upon Dr.Melicher.
The hospital was never started.Melicher declared at a later date that he himself was chiefly to blame for this, because three years (with twelve beds) was too short a time to decide so important a question, and because, according to all experience, no impartiality could be expected from allopathic judges. [Allg. hom. Zeitg., Vol. XXXIII., p. 179.]
Why were the allopathic advisers so anxious that admission should take place only through them ? Why did it not suffice that they should always have free access to the wards of the hospital ?
These are the trials of homoeopathy at the sick bed, of which its opponents assert that the results were more un-favourable than under allopathic treatment, and that the impotence of homoeopathy was fully proved by them.
Considering the hostile disposition prevailing, we might have expected that the allopaths would never admit the superiority of homeopathy over the old privileged system "resting on the experience of centuries."
" Homeopathy was not able to assert its preponderance over other methods in the case of cholera," the anonymous writer of theWonders of Homoeopathy declares in 1833 (p. 47).
Simonwrites in 1834 : [Antihom. Archiv, 1., p. 19.] — "The new method of treatment furnished no more favourable results in Russia than the old."
In No.11 of the Beobachtungen bair. Aerate caber die Cholera, 1832, Dr. W. Sander declares " that homoeopathy had obtained worse results than the treatment by bleeding and emetics."
Prof.Hasper, the great advocate of " energetic bleedings" in cholera, states in 1832 : — " Those cases in which the homeopathic method was used proved most rapidly fatal. " [Hufeland's Jour., Vol. LXXIII., St. 4, p. 113.]
Other critics, likeStieglitz, &c., expressed themselves thus : — " The results of the homeopathic method were precisely the same as those of dietetic treatment."
But as the same critics declared the methods of bleeding, &c., to be more beneficial than the dietetic method, the judgment was really this : — Allopathy has obtained more favourable results than homoeopathy in the treatment of pneumonia, pleurisy, measles, scarlet fever, gastric fevers, typhus, dysentery, cholera, &c.
Since the blood-thirst of the allopaths and their partiality for emetics and purgatives has abated, no State trials of homeopathic treatment have been undertaken.
Candid allopathic admission.
Now-a-days, even the allopaths would own that the then" rational " treatment yielded worse results than unassisted nature. Let us put on one side all conclusions as to the positive results of homoeopathy. What follows from these facts ?
The statement of the allopaths that homoeopathy was unsuccessful in these trials and obtained no more favourable results than allopathic treatment is manifestly untrue.
Allopathy has shown itself an extremely partial judge in this matter, and its judgment is therefore valueless in matters relating to homoeopathy. Again, in numerous passages the allopaths have expressed the self-evident opinion that to judge of a method of treatment in one single disease, several hundred cases are insufficient.
In order to judge of homoeopathy, some hundred cases of more than a hundred different kinds of diseases sufficed to make the desirable fact clear that homoeopathy was ineffective.
What says Dr.Fischer, of Dresden ? [Op. cit., p. 84.]
" When we read an account of homoeopathic successes, we always wish that it may not be true." This characterises the allopathic mode of looking at things up to the present day.
A very characteristic light is thrown on the tactics of the allopaths in a pamphlet by an Englishman, Dr.Horner, entitled, Reasons for Adopting the Rational System of Medicine.
He had previously been president of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association at Brighton, consisting of several hundred members. In a meeting over which he presided a resolution was passed, that henceforth no homoeopath was worthy of belonging to this great association.
Six years laterHorner, from an opponent, had become an adherent of homoeopathy. He had only made himself practically acquainted with homoeopathy after that resolution had been passed. Gradually he was convinced, by striking proofs, of the superiority of the system, and was the first to suffer from this resolution of the Association.
Hornerwas the oldest physician of the Hull hospital, and he held it as his duty to treat his hospital patients homoeopathically. He was forced to give up his position. This event caused a great commotion, and 90,000 copies of his pamphlet were spread through England in a few months.
Strike ! but don't hear.
In this pamphlet Dr.Horner gives an account of the manner in which the statistics of the homoeopathic treatment of the cholera at the London Homoeopathic Hospital in 1854 were burked by the commission of allopathic medical men appointed by Government to inquire into the results of the different modes of treatment pursued in the London Hospitals, the London Homoeopathic Hospital being one of those specially set aside for cholera patients, and put under the supervision of an allopathic inspector, who testified to the severity of the cases received and the excellent results obtained, which were very much superior to those obtained under allopathic treatment in any other hospital in London. [A more detailed account of this iniquitous transaction will be found at p. 248, note.]
The historianLeupoldt, who was certainly not favourable to homoeopathy, wrote very sensibly in the year 1863 :
" What is still required is to enter more fully and more positively into the question of homoeopathy, and at first less theoretically than experimentally." This respected historian admits, also, that homoeopathy had not been sufficiently tested on the only decisive ground, that of practical observation, up to the year1863. But after 1863 no practical trials were undertaken. [What feelings and views the opponents have respecting homoeopathy is well shown by an incident that lately took place in England. Major Vaughan Morgan offered St. George's Hospital in London a sum of £ 5000 if a ward in the hospital should be devoted for five years to the homoeopathic treatment of patients, in order to make a fair trial of the efficacy or otherwise of the system of Hahnemann. The offer was refused, and Morgan repeated his offer to other hospitals, with the like result. — Allg. hom Ztg., Vol. CVII., p. 111.]
All the more zealously were all possible means resorted to in order to represent homoeopathy as the work of a cunning impostor — a " so-called method of treatment " destitute of all solidity — as an exaggerated mysticism to be placed in the same category as cures by sympathy and moonshine.
Justice denied by literary journals.
The combatants of1830 had laid the foundations for this. During the first decades, Hahnemann's services of former times were still recognised and remembered with gratitude. A work which, like those of the present day, had treated Hahnemann's labours with scorn, would then have appeared to every reader to bear the stamp of unbridled party hatred.
Gradually the effects of thecalumniare audacter began to work on the general public, the memory of the former services of the founder of homoeopathy was effaced, and the road was left clear. In the colleges and in medical writings nothing but scorn and ridicule was poured on him ; while young medical men were systematically imbued with the strongest repugnance to homoeopathy.
The political and literary papers naturally sided with the majority. Here was a welcome and undisturbed arena for the activity of the allopaths ; there was no fear of rejoinders nor of the refutation of the wildest assertions ; for, with but few unimportant exceptions, all these organs refused to insert any correction of the most downright falsehoods, even the setting right of historical perversions and the simple rectification of facts. TheGartenlaube distinguished itself most in this line.
Any doctor who expressed a favourable opinion of homoeopathy was at once looked on as a heretic ; anyone who practised it was a pariah, was expelled from professional association, and persecuted with relentless hatred.
It made no difference whether he had formerly given ample evidence of earnest endeavours after truth or whether his character was blameless — he was a heretic, and as such he was branded and under a moral ban. Why ?
Because his scientific views differed from those of the allopaths. The same is the case to-day. Men in distinguished positions who dared to defend publicly what they recognised as truth, were persecuted in every possible way. If its opponents were so firmly convinced of the folly of homoeopathy, publicity was the best weapon with which to combat it.
Fate of Rapp and Henderson.
Imposture shuns the light. If homoeopathy was to be honourably attacked, if the allopaths felt themselves firm in the saddle, why should a man who defended it publicly be tabooed ?
W.Rapp, Professor of Clinical Medicine in Tubingen, at the melancholy period of universal therapeutic decay — at the time of prevalent nihilism — began to study the works of those men who did not despair of medical art or exclaim with Professor Dietl : " In knowledge, not in action, lies our power," but who, like Hahnemann, held firm to the conviction, " There is an art of healing."
Rappfound the heretic Hahnemann had brought into the light of day much that was good and useful, though occasionally in a rather crude form, and he was man enough to assert publicly his convictions. The results might have been anticipated. The Ministry was soon induced to order him to abandon clinical instruction and to content himself with lecturing on theoretical subjects ; but, on the other hand, they did not omit to express a high opinion of Rapp's " excellent qualities in all other particulars, and his scientific zeal."
Rapp, under these circumstances, sent in his resignation (1854), and was transferred to Rottweil as chief medical officer, with a suitable pension, his title and rank being left him. The number of Rapp's auditors was greater than that of his predecessor, Wunderlich.
The latter had, in the last six terms,99 students attending his theoretical lectures ; Rapp in the same length of time (from the summer of 1851 to the winter of 1854) had 145 scholars.
Wunderlich's clinical instruction was attended during that period by191, Rapp's by 228 students. Rapp is now physician in ordinary to the King of Wirtemberg.
A few years before, ProfessorHenderson, who had won for himself a great name in the scientific world, and who was listened to by a numerous audience, was forced to resign his clinical professorship in the Edinburgh University for the same reason.
Altogether, the contest was carried on in Great Britain with great bitterness on the part of the allopaths. In1851 the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, as well as the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, determined not to confer the degree of doctor on any candidate who did not pledge himself solemnly never, during his whole life, to practise homeopathy.
The Wonders of Homoeopathy discounted by Karsch.
Every allopathic medical man was turned out of the medical societies who dared to consult with a homoeopath, and this practice was carried out with great strictness.[See All. hom. Zeitg., Vol. LIV., p. 80, and Vol. LXV., p. 32.]
The same course was pursued in France[ Ib., Vol. XLIII., p. 140, and Vol. XLVI., p. 364.] and the other " civilised" countries. Similar attacks were everywhere repeated, and their violence was in proportion to the degree in which homoeopathy had spread — just as in Germany.
So the allopaths did, and still do their work both by word of mouth and by writing. In order to judge of their present mode of combating homoeopathy, I shall here give an account of the works of some living combatants.
The Wonders of Homeopathy expounded to all friends of truth and especially to the governments, by one who knows them,Prof. Dr. Karsch of Munster ; Sondershausen, 1862.
Karschstates and proves to his readers the following : Hahnemann had some knowledge, but he was unable to earn a livelihood for himself and his family ; in despair he gave himself up to charlatanry and founded homeopathy, in which he himself did not believe.
Karschproves this thus : Hahnemann and the homoeopaths say that Hahnemann departed from the ordinary course since 1790.
Karschrelates some cases in which Hahnemann ordered strong doses after 1790, and gave utterance occasionally to traditional views. "Therefore" Hahnemann was himself not convinced of his homoeopathic principles — " they were all fables," " wretched lies," " swagger," &c. It was the same with the psora — the theory of which was propounded by Hahnemann contrary to his own convictions.
The whole system of homeopathy was thus the pro-duct of a cunning charlatan, driven to despair by want — promulgated against his better knowledge, and only with the object of enriching himself at the expense of foolish mankind. The homoeopathic doctors had the same object.
Karschhad set himself a difficult task. To read Hahnemann's writings — to witness his earnestness, his industry in working and in observing, and then to assert and try to prove from these very writings, that he himself was not persuaded of the truth of his teaching — required truly, besides other qualities, a degree of effrontery at which one cannot fail to be astonished.
If we were to follow the author sentence by sentence, and examine his work, the most patient reader might well lose patience. Here are some few specimens ofKarsch's style :
He speaks (p.66) of Hahnemann's attack on the doctors of the Emperor Leopold (compare above p. 88) and states that Hahnemann had no sufficient knowledge of their treatment, and in spite of this had attacked it ; "he, who properly speaking, had hardly ever treated a patient himself." [See above, p. 74, 75, and p. 153.]
Karschvery prudently keeps silence as to the four bleedings — which, in the Emperor's weak state, was just the essential point, and preferred to confine himself to praising the imperial doctors as "highly esteemed and distinguished practitioners."
He also mentions Dr.Stöller — but calls him Stölter. Curiously enough he is also called Stölter in the Wonders of Homoeopathy of 1833, p. 5. Karsch does not here mention the source, but is well acquainted with the book, and has even borrowed the title. But that work lays stress on the bleeding ; bleeding was then still scientific, and its rejection a great fault of Hahnemann's, which in itself sufficed to lower him in the eyes of readers, so that it was not necessary first to call the Emperor's doctors "distinguished and highly-esteemed practitioners."
Karschcould not disparage Hahnemann on the ground of his blaming the bleeding ; he had to act differently, so he preferred to call those doctors " distinguished " practitioners, but would have been filled with horror if they had appeared four times at his bedside with the bandage and lancet for bleeding.
PAGES 60, 61: — The author shows the same skill in mentioning the case of Leischke (comp. above p. 225), of whom he states that under homoeopathic treatment he lost his life" by neglect of proper treatment."
Denial of all merit, chemical or medical, to Hahnemann.
As this neglected treatment which the allopaths thought ought to have been had recourse to in the case of a patient suffering from chronic lung disease consisted in bleeding, &c., it could not be mentioned, and would not have suited his purpose, soKarsch says nothing about it.
Hahnemannwrote in a letter to Hufeland that at one time, about 1790, he despaired of the medical art, and nearly gave up its practice. Karsch mentions this and says, p. 43 :
" This is contradicted by a statement ofHahnemann's which he made after he professed to have despaired of medicine," and he quotes the passage from Hahnemann's Alte Schaden, &c., in which the latter speaks of the favourable results he had obtained, and boasts of them.
This was in1784. Karsch, however, ascribes this work to the year 1794. Only by this means could he use Hahnemann's statement for his own purposes. Now Karsch had this treatise in his hands, for he quotes it verbatim, and gives reference to the page.
Hahnemann, in this work, is speaking of a limited class of diseases, and not of the medical art in general. After Karsch has performed this feat, he exclaims on the ground of this proof of Hahnemann's mendacity : " Oh ! you potentising homoeopaths ! What in reality is there in your potencies ? Where is your scrupulous conscientiousness, your vaunted modesty ? Where is the proof of your bold assertions ?"
In such a mode of conducting a controversy, it is hardly necessary to mention thatKarsch gives a very unfavourable opinion of the work, and (p. 42) calls it " quite worthless" (comp. Professor Baldinger's opinion, above, p. 64).
He speaks thus ofHahnemann's work on Arsenic (p. 24). " Hahnemann also wrote a work on arsenical poisoning, in which he strongly recommends what had already been suggested as an antidote by Navier (Antidotes to Arsenic, Greifswald, 1782, p. 65), viz., soapsuds — a pound of soap rubbed and beaten up with four pounds of boiling water, boiled for two minutes, and taken by cupfuls within two hours."
This is allKarsch says about this work. He directs the attention of the reader to the soapsuds, describes in detail [its preparation by beating it up and boiling, &c., as if this were the chief contents of the work. He does not make a single allusion to the principal subject on which the whole work turns.
He does not omit to ascribe even the soap to another ; he namesNavier, and indicates the pas-sage where the latter speaks of the soap, as if he, Karsch had discovered this, though Hahnemann had already given the source Karsch quotes (Arsenikvergiftung, p. 98), and has certainly made no attempt to pass off as his own Navier's recommendation of soap as an antidote.
Karschhas recourse to a similar manoeuvre with regard to merc. solub., p. 26. He mentions that an oxide of mercury had been known before Hahnemann, and quotes two authors in proof of this as against Hahnemann. But Hahnemann himself quotes these two authors ; but this Karsch does not mention.
He does indeed own, when appealed to by a homoeopath, thatHahnemann was a man full of information and an excellent chemist, but he represents his labours in such a distorted light — in some respects, indeed quite incorrectly — and abridges them in such a way that the reader gets quite a false idea of Hahnemann's merits. In the same manner he either does not or will not understand the value of his " wine test."
Karschproves with his wonted dexterity that Hahnemann administered mixtures contrary to his own doctrines. As is known, Hahnemann treated the lunatic Klockenbring in 1792.
He relates incidentally that, to his great surprise, the lunatic wrote out a prescription for mania, and that in the most suitable form and in proper dose ; it begins R. Sem. Daturae, gran. ii. " What a pity," exclaimsKarsch, " that we do not know the other valuable ingredients."
In this manner, from this remark ofHahnemann's on the prescription of a madman, a proof is furnished that Hahnemann, contrary to his principles, administered mixtures, and that his treatment of this case could not have been homeopathic. Nothing is proved by the mad-man's prescription. Hahnemann does not say that he himself gave the prescription.
That the treatment ofKlockenbring was not homoeopathic, is made clear from the 25 grains of tartar emetic which Hahnemann gave him.
Hahnemann no Homoeopath !
If a homoeopath should allege that this treatment was homoeopathic, he would only show his ignorance of the history of homoeopathy, nothing more.
Then follows the second and last proof ofHahnemann's practice of giving mixtures of drugs. In 1797 he, according to the Biographisches Denkmal, translated anonymously the System of Veterinary Medicine of an Englishman, Taplin.
Karschdescribes the introductory remarks, which treat of "new improvements" and old and faulty methods of treatment. In the book itself there are some long prescriptions.
Karschthereupon exclaims : " How could Hahnemann publicly laud such a thoroughly unhomoeopathic work, containing such composite prescriptions, as a new method of treatment ? He was no homoeopath ! " This sounds well, but Karsch omits to add that the introductory remarks are not by Hahnemann, but by Taplin that Hahnemann, therefore, commends nothing in the whole book, does not make even a single note, but simply translates. It is by such devices that Karsch proves that Hahnemann's opposition to the mixing of drugs was contrary both to his conviction and his practice.
Further onKarsch thus instructs his readers : " When homoeopaths represent the great Hufeland as an admirer of Hahnemann, they forget to remark that Hufeland published a special treatise in 1831, called Homoeopathy, Berlin, Reimer, 8, 44 p., in which he expresses his opinion that the new in it is not good, the good is not new, and that it must be looked upon as the grave of science."
This exhaustsKarsch's criticism of this book. With this compare above p. 192, 196, or, still better, read Hufeland's own pamphlet, [Translated in Brit. Journ. of Hom., Vol. XVI., p. 197.] in order to learn the allopathic mode of con-ducting the controversy.
In describingHahnemann's character, we saw how beautiful his idea of family life was, and what love he felt for his wife and his children. Of the former he always speaks with respect and veneration, although Brunnow alludes to her imperious ways.
IfHahnemann, in spite of this, thought always of her with love, it proves his noble character, and is in itself worthy of praise. Karsch makes an attempt to disparage his adversary by sneering at his wife.
Referring toBrunnow's remarks he says, p. 108 :
A change in the character of FrauHahnemann might have been brought about by their improved circumstances. Upstarts often become vain, proud and arrogant. Hahnemann himself speaks with the greatest respect of his wife. In his autobiography, composed at Leipzic in 1991, he says : — " Four daughters and a son, together with my wife, form the spice of my life." Mustard and cayenne pepper are certainly spices !
These are the characteristics of a man who is called upon to give advice to the State in the matter of homoeopathy, as well as in other things, and to assist in the education of youth.
The light of Medical Science.
In the year1876, Prof. Jürgensen, of Tubingen, came to the front. [Die wissenscitaftliche Heilkunde u. ihre Widersacher. Sammlung klin. Vorträge, No. 106, pp. 879 — 916.]
Theodor von Jürgensen (1840-1907)
He begins thus :
Knowledge is power, it is no longer necessary to tremble on approaching the sick bed.... during the last decades the art of medicine has borne fruit under the light of science.
In1826 — exactly fifty years previously — Mückisch, also a physician of a large hospital, wrote thus :
The sublime science of medicine has, during the19th century, reached a degree of perfection which enables it to protect the life of generations, and save them from premature death by the innumerable kinds of diseases.
AndMückisch bled copiously, even in the case of children, and used emetics and purgatives as if it was a question of sweeping a chimney.
Jürgensengives quinine in cases of inflammation of the lungs to the amount of 1 1/4 drachms and more, and chloral hydrate to the extent of 2 drachms ; he even threatens to increase the dose of quinine if the fever is obstinate.
And yet observations are recorded in allopathic literature which show that from a few scruples of quinine, blindness and deafness and destructive processes in the cavity of the drum of the ear and in the labyrinth, and that even from ½ to1 ¼ drachms of chloral hydrate, great danger to life, were " the fruit of medicine in the light of science."
Glorification of Allopathy.
" The course of the development of therapeutics gives sure signs that much will be obtainable by our grandsons that was denied to us." It is to be feared that our grandsons will rejectJurgensen's legacy in the same way that they have already partially rejected that of Mückisch.
" If the doctor has to be told what homoeopathy is," saysJurgensen, " if he knows nothing more than that it consists in giving infinitely small doses, he will hardly be a match for those laymen who are acquainted with Hahnemann's system. This is not the place to say what would be the consequence.
A doctor's reputation will certainly not be in-creased by such ignorance, nor will his position be better assured." In order to remedy this evil,Jürgensen gives necessary instruction on the subject. According to him, homoeopathy has done nothing either for the development of medicine or for its practice — it is sheer nonsense. It has done no good, it does no good, and will never do anything for the advantage of science.
Its destination is to be uprooted like thistles from the field of science.
In order to enliven his readers, he quotes certain pas-sages fromHahnemann which appear to him peculiarly harsh, and exclaims : " Now, I ask, is it possible to live under the same roof with these people ? Oh no ! science does not permit it."
As the allopaths find a peculiar pleasure in refuting certain absurdities and theories ofHahnemann by the aid of our present knowledge, we must repeat that Hahnemann considered his theoretical explanations of no importance for his therapeutic rule. He says : "I can only vouch for the what, not for the how."
Hahnemann's earliest adherents did not accept these errors and these theories.
Thus C.Hering writes : [Archiv. f. d. hom. Heilkunde, Vol. XVI., H. 3, p. 92.]
Pr. Constantine Hering (1880-1880)
" I am universally regarded as a disciple and an adherent ofHahnemann, and I am willing to declare that I belong to those who adhere to him most faithfully and pay the most enthusiastic homage to his greatness, but I affirm also that from the time of my first acquaintance with homoeopathy (1821) up to the present day (1837) I have never accepted a single one of the theories in the Organon as they are there given."
Disparagement of Homoeopathy.
Jurgensenhas been set right from various quarters, by Huber [Audiatur et altera pars, Vienna, 1877. ] among others. We mention the following in order to show the characteristics of the allopathic strategy.
J. uses certain expressions of a homoeopathic non-professional in order to blacken homoeopathy, without adding that the homoeopathic doctors themselves most strongly object to such conceptions of a doctor's knowledge.
Jurgenseninforms his friends of the following " truth." " It has been laid to Hahnemann's credit that he first drew attention to the necessity of testing the effects of medicines on healthy subjects ; according to his own statement this honour belonged to Albrecht von Haller."
What ignorance or distortion of facts is contained in this sentence ! This one sentence gives a sufficient answer to the question : What objects hadJurgensen in view in this article ? Were they honourable or worthy ones ?
Doctor Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777)
The so-calledisopathy originated fifty years ago ; the majority of homoeopaths never occupied themselves with it.
Only a voice here and there was raised in its favour. They pointed to cow-pox inoculation, which was introduced and generally practised by allopaths, as an illustration of isopathic treatment.
Jurgensennaturally represents this "isopathy" in a most unfavourable light, and adds that it had been " recently" introduced.
This word "recently" shows the object which this treatise was intended to serve. For forty years the few homoeopathic doctors, who at first defended " isopathy," have been silent on the subject.
Such accusations are "simple descriptions derived from the authentic sources " — soJurgensen wishes his readers to believe. [L. c., p. 880.]
Hahnemann a mesmerising impostor.
A single allopathic doctor practises in his vaccinations, more isopathy than all the homoeopathic doctors put together during the last fifty years, that is to say since " isopathy" was first introduced.
Jurgensenproves from the report of the Homoeopathic Hospital at Pesth that the results of homoeopathy show no therapeutic advantages, but he omits the results of the treatment of typhus fever fully given in this report. This shows the results were very different from what they are represented to be by Jurgensen.
In hisTreatment of Pneumonia, [Sammlung klin. Vorträge v. Volkmann, No 45, p. 345. ] 400 cases of pneumonia are not enough for him to determine the suitable therapeutics of it, and here 306 cases of pneumonia, 68 of typhus, &c., suffice to enable him to judge of the power of homoeopathic treatment.
Jurgensenskims through the Organon, and finds near its end a few casual remarks on mesmerism, by Hahnemann. Charming ! Something can be made of this ! Let us hang the mantle of animal magnetism on Hahnemann's shoulders.
Let us represent mesmerism to be a gross imposture ! Now we have settled the mysticHahnemann !
However good HerrJurgensen’s intentions may have been, and however much he may deserve the praise accorded him by the allopaths, he is very unfortunate on this point.
In1876, mesmerism was still mysticism, nonsense, idiocy, and the like.
Jurgensencould therefore still say emphatically, " The laws of nature do not apply to the magnetic condition." A year before Virchow [Heilkräfte des Organismus, p. 10.] called it "a false doctrine."
Three years later the Danish " Magnetiser"Hansen hit upon the unfortunate idea of making a professional tour through Germany.
German medical professors took to imitating the magnetic arts, and what was worse, they obtained successful results, wrote many books on the subject, and recommended magnetism in the medical journals as a remedy ; and what was worst of all, the reality of mesmerism was fully recognised at the first Medical Congress at Wiesbaden, without encountering any opposition, and its therapeutic value was discussed — andJurgensen was present, and listened and — kept silence.
History of medical mesmerism.
Jürgensencould not know that while he was attacking Hahnemann's mesmerism, Hansen was packing his portmanteau.
Friedrich Anton Mesmer (1733-1815)
But, putting the surprising successes obtained byHansen on one side, there was hardly a doctor in Hahnemann's time who has written so many medical works as he, who so seldom alluded to the curative powers of mesmerism as Hahnemann did.
Hahnemannseldom prescribed its use, and that he himself practised it has not been proved, and is very unlikely.
But yet mesmerism wasscientific in Hahnemann's time, notwithstanding the absurdities connected with it.
Several periodicals devoted to animal magnetism, were published, e.g., theMagnetisches Magazin fiir Niederdeutschland, Bremen, 1787 and 1788 (not unfavourably reviewed in the Medicin. Journal, by Professor Baldinger), then the Archiv fiir Magnetismus and Somnambulismus, by Hofrath Prof. Böckmann of Carlsruhe ; Strasburg, 1787 and 1788.
ProfessorsEschenmayer, Kieser and Nasse issued the Archiv fiir thier. Magnetismus, Leipzig, 1817— 1824 ; and Professor Wolfart of the Berlin Faculty, edited the Jahrbücher für den Lebensmagnetismus, Leipzig, 1818 — 1822.
Alex. v.Humboldt wrote : [Verssuche über die gereizte Muskelfaser, Posen and Berlin, 1797, Vol. I., p. 225.] :
" I would here remind you of the possibility of the so-called magnetic cures, in which the mere approach of the hand produces warmth and stimulation of the exposed parts of the body…… It is certainly easier to deny facts than to investigate them or to refute them by counter-experiments."
Lichtenstädt, Treviranus, G. H. Schubert, Nees v. Esenbeck, Olbers, Ennemoser and others recognised the existence of these inexplicable phenomena.
In the medical journals of1785 — 1835, there are numerous articles on the " excellent effect of animal magnetism," in "violent convulsive diseases," in "hardness of hearing," in " mental diseases," and of " the disastrous results of its misuse," which were also admitted at Wiesbaden in 1882.
Illustrious medical advocates of animal magnetism.
ProfessorPuchelt expressed himself thus, in , the year 1819, on the subject of animal magnetism : [Hufeland's Journ., 1819, Vol. XLIX., St. 6, p. 10.]
Now that theMesmer -Wolfart magnetic medicine [Wolfart was sent by the Prussian Government to Mesmer in order to form at the actual source a judgment on the subject in question] is kept with-in bounds by Kieser's School of Magnetism, and since the employment of magnetism has been confined to particular cases both by Kieser and by the majority of doctors who attribute any importance to magnetism at all, and among these we must reckon all who are not entirely blinded to natural phenomena by the dust of book learning, and who have not, owing to their exclusive chemical labours, lost all interest in the manifestations of life, and as such views point to a connexion of magnetic medicine with scientific medicine, we shall say no more about it here.
In Austria the use of magnetism was forbidden.[Horn's Archiv f. Hurl. Erfahrungen, 1808, p. 1021.]
In Berlin magnetism was included in the course of study of the university. Prof.Wolfart gave lectures " On mesmerism and the curative indications of animal-magnetism. [Hufeland's Journ., 1819, St. 1, p. 118.]
Prof. Ph. v.Walter even raised animal magnetism to a principle of the materia medica, and held that the efficacy of all medicines depended on an animal-magnetic action. " The art of healing is a continual magnetic process," he writes. "
In this consists the magic of the healing art and the hidden power of drugs. A relation must exist between the doctor and his patient of the same kind as that which is efficacious in animal-magnetism."[Ephemeriden der Heilkunde, von Adalb. Fr. Markus, Bamberg and Würzburg, 1812, Vol. IV., H. 3, p. 193.]
In1834 Hufeland, that " honest seeker after truth," pronounced his final judgment on mesmerism, [Hufeland's Journ., Vol. LXXIX., St. 1, p. 44.] and mentioned that the French government called upon the Medical Faculty in Paris, in 1780, to pronounce upon the question of magnetism, and that they rejected it as a deception.
In1831 a report of this same Faculty appeared which was favourable to magnetism, and thus maintained the exact contrary to what the scientific men had previously clone.
Hufelandrelates that in 1784 he opposed it out of ignorance. For fifty years he had closely investigated the subject, and had arrived at the following conclusions :
(1.) Magnetism is a fact. (2.) The magnetic state can be produced at will on suitable subjects by the influence of another living individual. (3.) Certain morbid affections depending on the nervous system can be cured by such magnetic influence.
He adds, in conclusion :
I shall never forget whatGoethe once said to me on this subject : — " I have never occupied myself with magnetism ; it contains too many mouse-holes and mouse-traps."
It is said to have beenKant who first ranked the supporters of magnetism in the category of impostors, and this was also done by Pfaff, of Kiel.
Rudolphi, the Berlin physiologist, had " the courage," as the allopaths of his time assure us, to denominate the so-called animal-magnetism an imposture, and since that time this "courage" became scientific, and Jürgensen naturally displayed it.
Even a superficial examination of German homoeopathic literature would have shownJürgensen that mesmerism occupied a much smaller space in it — both relatively and absolutely — than in allopathic writings.
We, of course, allude to medical literature only. The homoeopathic doctor mentioned byJürgensen , B. Hirschel, in 1840, publicly op-posed. the abuses of magnetism. Schmidt's Jahrbücher [Vol. XXXII, p. 375.] contains the following remarks on his work :
The author is animated by the scientific spirit ; he possesses the critical faculty, scientific knowledge, thoughtfulness, and love of truth. He opposes folly. We give him the most friendly welcome.
ThatHahnemann, in 1796, first introduced his special mode of treatment to medical circles that he wrote his two other works on the subject for medical men, and addressed his Organon, as is especially shown in the first edition, to the profession only, is well known, and is proved by the circumstance that this work was reviewed in medical journals exclusively.
The controversialJürgensen , however, makes this statement : " Hahnemann, from the beginning, did not appeal to the medical profession only."
Patients made to suffer not to think.
This assertion certainly better serves the object of his article. He then continues with regard to non professionals :
A high degree of culture is necessary to enable a person to acknowledge his incapacity to express an opinion where the expert says it is his duty to do so. Most people are not capable of such self-knowledge and self-control.
One great hindrance to the reception of homoeopathy was its rejection of bleeding. Many of the lay public whose attention had been called byHahnemann to its injurious consequences, became convinced of the hurtful character of this practice, and kept the doctors who practised it at a distance, while the representatives of science were still insisting on the necessity of blood-letting in " inflammatory" and other diseases.
According toJürgensen these non-professionals ought to have possessed enough " self-control " to submit tamely to allow their blood to be scientifically shed by the professionals.
In another place,Jürgensen expressly says that in cases of pneumonia, bleeding ought not to be resorted to in order to allay fever, and that such a proceeding would be the " act of a weak man whom fate had made a doctor for the punishment of his fellow-creatures. [Volkmann's Sammlung kl. Vortr., No. 45, P. 336.]
According toJürgensen , then, the allopathic professors and doctors of Hahnemann's and of more recent times, were men whom fate had made doctors for the punishment of their fellow-creatures, and the lay public of that period ought to have possessed enough " self-control " to have resigned themselves unhesitatingly to the judgment of these instruments of an evil fate.
The majority showed this " self-control " even to their own destruction, and it is these whomJürgensen commends, patients such as he himself desires, who sacrifice their own opinions on the altar of "science."
History of the Water-cure.
Jürgensenis favourable to hydropathic treatment. The lay public appears to have played no passive part in the development of this treatment. The hydropathic system was not thought much of when the non-medical Professor Oertel, of Ansbach, in the Allgemein. Anzeig. d. Deutschen, in 1826, [See Nos. 287 and 289.] declared himself strongly in favour of it, and from that time onwards for many years he continued to call the attention of suffering mankind to "the benefits to be derived from the use of God's gift — cold water."
What medical journal of that time did so much for the spread of the water-cure as this periodical, edited by a non-professional ?
Both friend and foe used its columns to ventilate their opinions, and allopathic doctors were not wanting who warned the public of the dangers attending water-treatment, e.g., in hemorrhoids and gout, since inflammation of the brain and phthisis were likely to ensue from its employment.[See 1830, No. 63, p. 801, and many other places. ]
Oertelwas undaunted, he answered every attack, and won many laymen over to his treatment, and they were indefatigable in publishing its results, whether favourable or unfavourable.
By this means a wholesome pressure was brought to bear on the doctors.Oertel, indeed, gave his opinions pretty freely about " medical men," but always kept within parliamentary bounds.
Of his treatises, he recommended among others,Newest Water Treatment, with Musical Accompaniment. Nürnberg, Campe. He led his readers, not by force, but gently on the wings of music into the kingdom of the water nymphs.
He certainly worked too much in one groove, and shared the fate of most doctors who, from seeing that a certain remedy has good effects in some cases, immediately proceed to generalise and employ it for a great number of diseases.
Oertelnaturally recommended cold water as a remedy for the approaching cholera, and at a later period exclaimed, "Victoria ! cold water has conquered the cholera !"
Certainly he did obtain better results than the allopaths.
In1830, among others, a doctor calls attention in the Allgem. Anz. d. Deist. [No. 314, P. 4203.] to the danger from the approaching cholera. He recalls the circumstance that hospital fever had only been checked when Professor Markus introduced bleeding as a prophylactic for it ; the same means ought to be used to protect against cholera.
How the authors of Hydropathy were treated by the Medical Profession.
It is difficult to say how many laymen followed this professional advice with the needful " self-knowledge." It can, however, be proved thatOertel, who advocated the use of water instead of bleeding, had great influence.
This layman spread the knowledge of the hydropathic treatment through the widest circles by his knowledge, energy and perseverance, at a time when few doctors employed this treatment.
Oertelhimself willingly admits that the merit of having placed the hydropathic treatment on a scientific basis belongs to Dr. I. S. Hahn, of Schweidnitz [L.c., 1832, No. 338, p. 4425, and other places.] (died 1773), and published a fifth edition of his work, [Ilmenau, 1833, and Nürnburg, 1834.] of which four editions had been issued during the author's life [Unterricht von Krafft und Würckung, des frischen Wassers in die Leiber der Menschen, 4 th enlarged edition, Breslau and Leipzig, 1754, 290 pp., with a frontispiece and thirty-five cases "from his own experience and that of two other medici," and a letter from a foreign divine," in which a number of successful results are related which this clergyman had from the employment of cold water ; and also how a medicus, who lived in the same place as the clergyman, opposed him, and warned patients against him, p. 271. In the preface it is mentioned that Dr. Schwerdtner, of Jauer, and Hahn's father supported him energetically, "in spite of all the calumnies and opposition of many prejudiced colleagues and of others who dreaded the injury likely to accrue to the medical profession."] — the first in 1738.
With the exception of this physician (whose father and brother had also rendered consider-able services),Oertel claims the merit of having up to that time been most successful in his advocacy of the cold water cure.
He is right. History contains traces and suggestions of many things which only become common property after the lapse of many centuries.
The merit consists in the introduction of the method — and of this merit a large share is due toOertel. This is the case in a still greater degree with the peasant Priessnitz in Austrian Silesia, who, soon after Oertel, practised the cold water cure with still greater energy.
We must ascribe the introduction of hydropathic establishments to Priessnitz, and how this man was persecuted by the profession ! He had not, asJurgensen says, " the high degree of culture necessary to enable him to admit his own incapacity to express an opinion when the professional says it is his duty to do so."
We should like to hear an answer to the question : "What doctor ever did so much for the introduction of hydropathic treatment as the non-professionalsOertel and Priessnitz ?"
Both certainly committed gross mistakes, especiallyPriessnitz, although " scientific " doctors are not behind them in the harm they have done in other ways.
Jürgensen, indeed, gives quite a different account of the historical development of the hydropathic system. [Klinische Studien über die Behandlung des Abdominaltyphus mittelst des kalten Wassers, Leipzig, 1866, p. 13.]
" Unfortunately this interest was only transitory. People forgot, or wished to forget.
This may have been caused by the influence ofPriessnitz, Oertel, and other hydropaths."
Jürgensenwould wish to prove that the Salamanca professors would have discovered America much sooner if Columbus had not stood in their way.
In order to avoid misunderstandings we may at once state that we do not wish to defend the indiscriminate use of cold water in fevers as is now common, nor indeed its excessive systematic employment.
What professor, medical counsellor or medical excellency introduced medical gymnastics ? It was the Swedish fencing-master, Ling (1776 — 1839).
Per Henrik Ling (1776-1839)
The Turko-Roman and Russian baths did not originate in the universities, but they were introduced by laymen.
The "Female Medical Rubbers" have certainly done, and still do, a good deal of harm, but no one doubts that they have occasionally done more good than many a professor decorated with stars and crosses.
That "science" has changed the German word "Streichen" into the French word "Massage," alters facts no more than the word "hypnotism " affects the existence of magnetism, which was likewise kept afloat by laymen.
The psora theory a common article of Allopathic medical faith.
If all the old doctors had held the same opinions asJürgensen he would not now possess the universal remedy — quinine ; and mercury, secale, opium, sarsaparilla, ipecacuanha, &c., would not have been introduced at all, or, at any rate, not so soon into the pharmacopoeia. Conceit is a bad companion in the region of therapeutics. We shall not be misunderstood.
It is a constant reproach made by his opponents for the last seventy years againstHahnemann and the homoeopaths, that they addressed themselves to the lay public. If they had been polite, they ought to have retired modestly when the professors repelled them. Let us put on one side the positive work accomplished by homoeopathy, and look only at the question of bleeding.
Jürgensenestablished, in 1872, the injuriousness of venesection as a febrifuge in inflammation of the lungs. Let us suppose that Jürgensen had made and published this discovery in 1772 ; the professors would have repelled him, called him " unscientific," given him all sorts of names, and repeatedly prosecuted him before the tribunals, because he did not bleed like his accusers.
What wouldJürgensen have done ? We imagine that he would also have addressed the lay public and called upon them to judge his cause ; for there was no other way open if one had sufficient energy to fight for the good cause.
The author takes so great a pleasure in the " psora," the "itch-miasm " ofHahnemann, that we cannot help rejoicing along with him ; but at the same time, the question again arises : why did Jürgensen pass over in silence the itch theories then in vogue ? It would not in any case have been superfluous if Jürgensen, by giving an account of the views then prevailing, had given his readers a historical basis by which to judge Hahnemann's doctrine.
It would also have been only fair if he had mentioned that even in the first years after the publication of this theory, no homoeopath recognised the itch as such a fundamental malady. If we transport individuals from the time in which they lived, we can prove that Hannibal was a bad general, because he did not attack Rome after the battle of Cannae with48 pounders.
But this is the mode of warfare pursued by the allopaths. Whatever goodHahnemann accomplished was borrowed from some one else, and whatever errors of the time in which he lived are shared by him, are attributed to him alone, and judged according to the standard of our present knowledge. It gives us an instructive glimpse into the allopathic arsenal if, in contrast to the attack of this professor, we look at what some of Hahnemann's earlier opponents say on the subject of psora.
Wedekind, 1825, l.c., p. 87 :
"I can willingly credit Herr Hahnemann that phthisis and asthma may be derived from the itch."
Hufeland, 1831, Homoeopathy (p. 32) : " The physician at last discovers that a hidden scabies or syphilis lies at the root."
Wonders of Homoeopathy,1833, p. 69 :
" It was well known to all medical men that suppressed itch is very frequently followed by chronic diseases, andHahnemann need not have covered thirteen pages with quotations from old authors in order to prove this, but his avarice drove him to do this in order to increase his honorarium."
Schmidt'sJahrbücher, 1834 : [Vol. I., p. 393.] "Did not Autenrieth propound a modified psora theory not long before Hahnemann ?"
Lesser, 1835 l.c., p. 334 :
"The truth of the matter is that an inveterate and incautiously suppressed itch has at all times caused after-diseases, and not unfrequently death. But this has long been known to every intelligent physician."
Eisenmann, the well-known adherent of the natural historical school, writes in his Prüfung der Homöopathie, Erlangen, 1836, p. 24 :
"A celebrated German physician stated, long beforeHahnemann borrowed the psora theory from him, that very many chronic diseases — but not six-eighths of them, as Hahnemann asserts — are produced by badly treated and suppressed itch."
We saw above that it was asserted in two medical journals thatHahnemann borrowed his system from Hippocrates "all except the psora theory." These journals were edited by professors of high repute. Now Eisenmann comes forward and cruelly deprives Hahnemann of this last shred — psora.
Eisenmannwas one of the most esteemed allopaths of his time, so that Hahnemann is not only entirely annihilated, but reduced to nothing.
Folly and wealth the main supports of Homoeopathy.
Jürgensenwas followed in 1881 by a like-minded colleague called Köppe, who, among other things, confided to his readers that Hahnemann, in 1796, " was hardly known as a physician."
He says, on p.41 : "Soon medical men began to occupy themselves with homoeopathy," and gives many other equally valuable pieces of information.
Köppesurmised with justice that Jürgensen had probably written his treatise on an unlucky day, when he was irritated by the perusal of some homoeopathic works which had fallen into his hands, and had observed that a knowledge of the subject was not necessary to constitute him an accepted champion with his brethren of the faith.
Häser[Geschichte der Medicin, 1881, II., 802.] declares : " That many of the opponents of homoeopathy in this controversy did not disdain to employ the most despicable weapons, such as the notorious Fickel."
Köppemakes use of Fickel [Fickel was an unprincipled rogue who published a number of pretended provings and cures. His cheat was soon detected by the homoeopaths.] in many ways with evident pleasure.
Jürgensenwas refuted from two quarters, [Sorge, Zeitsch. des Berliner Vereins hom. Aerzte, 1881, and Mayntzer, Die Homöopathie and Allopathie, Leipzig, 1882.] an honour which must certainly have been the greatest surprise to himself, but which was due to the fact that he received great praise from the allopaths, who did not blame his mode of conducting the controversy in the very least.
Meanwhile Prof.Liebreich, of Berlin, opposed homoeopathy publicly in a tone which, for his own sake, he ought not to have adopted.
He declared that a combination of folly and wealth formed the mass of the homoeopathic clientele, but probably for the moment forgot the homoeopathic dispensary in Berlin, superintended by eight doctors, and which was attended by destitute patients, and in such increasing numbers that the doctors were not able to give advice to all those who sought their help.
The journals show that in the period from1878 to 1883, i.e., in five years 24,000 patients were treated in more than 120,000 consultations.
Our readers can imagine the daily, mean and irritating attacks delivered by the allopaths in their intercourse with the public, at meetings and in political and other papers, &c.
We may just mention here that recently in Berlin, dissertations for the doctor's degree were written against homeopathy. When we add that they are dedicated to the professors, the reader will know their contents before-hand.
It would be unfair to call the authors to account. No one is responsible for the instruction he has received, and it is a rare exception to find a young doctor free from a blind faith in authorities on leaving the university. Most doctors never escape from the domination of authority.
A Historian as a champion of Allopathy.
If a historian ofHaser's reputation lends himself to party purposes it is a striking proof how deeply the opponents of homeopathy were imbued with hatred of it. Häser deals with homoeopathy in 11 pages.
He says ofHahnemann : "After the conclusion of his studies." What studies ? He does not mention any, but, on the contrary, throws doubt on their existence by the following statement : — " The University of Erlangen conferred on him a doctor's degree in absentia."
This method of belittlingHahnemann is new, and peculiar to this historian. He cites as his authority for Hahnemann's life, Ein biographisches Denkmal and Karsch.
ButKarsch, who is also an eminent man, says nothing about " absentia," and we read in the Biographisches Denkmal, p. 5, that Hahnemann attended the lectures of four professors in Erlangen, defended his thesis on the 10 th of August, 1779, and thereupon received his doctor's degree. This is also related in Karsch's book, quoted by Haser, p. 21.
Haserappears as a most reckless partizan.
A medical historian disdains to stick to truth.
He demeans himself, e.g., to attack the second FrauHahnemann, "who generally appeared in masculine attire, attended lectures on anatomy, &c." This " etc.," in its connexion, can only mean that she was a worthless person, and he implies that it was an immoral act of Hahnemann's to marry her in his 80 th year !
What were the real circumstances ?
Marie Mélanie d'Hervilly-Gohier (1800-1880)
Marie Mélanie d'Hervilly-Gohier(1800-1880) came in 1834, in her 35 th year, from Paris to Cöthen, in order to consult Hahnemann. According to report, she performed this journey in masculine attire, perhaps for the sake of greater security, or for some reason which may interest female gossips, but not a man. She attended lectures on anatomy. Why ?
She was the daughter of a painter, and herself an artist of unusual talent.
There still exists a large portrait in oils ofHahnemann, executed by herself, which, both in conception and execution, shows the artist's hand, and is, in the judgment of men who knew Hahnemann personally, the best portrait of him existing. [An engraving of this portrait may be seen in Dudgeon's translation of the Organon.]
Painting made by Mélanie.
Häserdoes not allude to the fact that Mélanie was an artist, although this is stated in the Biographisches Denkmal, which he expressly gives as his authority, and of which he says that " it is distinguished by its efforts to be impartial."
But there is still more to be read in this biography. Several letters are given from her and fromHahnemann to the members of his family who remained in Germany.
We see from these what a happy domestic lifeHahnemann led in Paris ; with what affection he thought of his relations in his dear old home, to whom, at this same wife's request, he left his whole fortune, with the exception of a small sum ; we read, not without emotion, how she wrote cheerfully to his family :
" He is as blooming as a rose, and as merry as a young bird." Again, her husband is full of praise of her faithful care : " You yourselves could not take better care of me." " She will soon write to you herself in German, for she can do anything she wishes to the letters of the Parisian homoeopaths describe, with satisfaction, the devotion ofHahnemann's wife to the man who was so highly honoured by all.
The bookHäser uses as an authority contains all this and much more, but yet he sees fit to throw imputations on the family life of the founder of homoeopathy in a historical work. Surely the private life of any individual ought to be sacred, and above all, where, as in this case, his nearest relations are still alive.
That he contemnsFickel's weapons is certainly, under these circumstances, to be reckoned to his credit. But we cannot be surprised when he writes : "Vanity and the desire of gain were the cause of Hahnemann's course of action." What accuracy of description of homoeopathy is to be expected from a man who says such things ?
Kurt Joachim Polykarp Sprengel (1766-1833)
KurtSprengel acted on other principles when he wrote his Versuch eiuer pragmatisschen Geschichte der Heilkunde, that gigantic work, the product of thirty-six years of unwearied industry, which is still unfinished.
He was guided by the principle professed byThucydides, "to create a treasure and a possession for all times, and not merely to gain applause in the present time."
KurtSprengel wished to make Lucian's words his rule :
" Remember that you should not write in order to be praised and honoured by your contemporaries, but fix your eye on future ages. Expect from these the reward of your labour, that it may be said of you : He was a man of unfettered intellect, and of courage in speech and in writing, free from flattery or slavish feelings, a man by whom truth was prized beyond everything."
A certain Dr. JohannesRigler delivered a discourse on homoeopathy in October, 1880, before the West Berlin Medical Society. According to him no piece of quackery " is more significant and lamentable " than this system of treatment.
The statements of HerrRigler "met with the complete approbation of all the members present." We will quote some of these statements. "
If the facts are against my theory, so much the worse for the facts.
Hahnemannfirst promulgated his wonderful system in the Organon, published in Dresden in 1810."
With a refinement of cunning,Hahnemann, from the very first, denied the competence of medical men to judge of his system, and appealed to the impartial judgment of the lay public.
We have already seen that exactly the reverse was the case. He published his first exposition of his method in Hufeland'sJournal ; his first drug provings were published in Latin, and in the Organon (1st ed., p. 104) he recommends this Latin work to those who wished to test his principles. And on the strength of this falsehood is founded the accusation of Hahnemann's "refined cunning."
The medical profession could do nothing but ignore with silent indignation this disgusting monstrosity.
What is the opinion of the hostile but unimpassionedKruger-Hansen ?
Hahnemannthereby excited a very bitter opposition ; he was placed under an interdict, he would have been imprisoned, banished, or even crucified or burnt, like some wise men of old, if only there had been an inquisition in existence.
Further : " It is strange that the majority of allopaths should have attacked homoeopathy so fiercely, and looked upon every homoeopath as an enemy.[Die Homöopathie und Allopathic auf der Waage, Güstrow und Rostock, 1833, p. 11.]
The same author writes thus of the homoeopathic practitioners :
I have often had occasion to enter into literary relations with the most zealous defenders of his doctrines ; and I feel myself bound to state that I have been surprised by the friendly courtesy with which I have been met [Krüger-Hansen attacked homoeopathy vehemently, but confined himself to the subject], and I shall always be very grateful to them.[Heil und Unheilmaximen der Leibwalter, Quedlenburg und Leipzig, 1840, p. 22.]
It is incomprehensible howHahnemann found it possible to test thus his hundreds of remedies. Besides the manifest absurdity involved, we see here the most palpable and shameless falsehood. And here, as usual, one lie led to another.
Sorgepoints out the absolute falsehood of this statement, by showing that all the medicines proved by Hahnemann and his earliest disciples, during a period of more than forty years, amounted only to ninety-five. Hahnemann only proved a part of these, as he clearly states in his Fragmenta de Viribus, Materia Medica Pura and Chronic Diseases.
Numerous assistants helped him, for a period of twenty-eight years, in proving the other remedies. NeitherHahnemann, nor any of his adherents, ever stated that he had proved hundreds of remedies. Here, then, an absolute untruth is attributed to the founder of Homoeopathy, and on the ground of this untruth he is accused of " palpable and shameless falsehood." And notice this — all the allopathic doctors present gave their "entire approbation" to Rigler's statements.
Chief among them was the Geheimer Ober-Medicinalrath Dr.Bardeleben, Professor and Teacher at the Royal University of Berlin.
Further, the lecturer proceeds to state thatHahnemann used the poisonous toad (rana bufo) for medicinal purposes. This, again, is an unmitigated falsehood. Sixteen years after Hahnemann's death, an allopath, Vulpian, first made experiments with the poison of the toad, and it was only after this mentioned in homoeopathic periodicals. [Zeitsch. d. Vereins hom. Aerzte Oesterr., 1859, Vol. II., No. 7, und Allg. hom. Zeitg., 1860, Vol. LX., Monatsbl., No. 1 and 2.]
AfterRigler had given this piece of information to the society which placed implicit reliance on his words, he added the following remarks :
Unfortunately, the excellentHahnemann has never revealed why he hit upon the toad and sentenced it to the torture in order that it might be incorporated into the homoeopathic materia medica. According to a Tyrolese superstition, toads are unfortunate souls who are condemned to wander about the earth in this form and do penance for their sins. It is possible that by the decree of a cruel fate homoeopathy came into the world solely to crown the penance of these poor creatures by a fresh martyrdom. Or did Hahnemann accept as literal truth the words of the poet, "the toad, ugly and venemous, wears yet a precious jewel in its head." But enough of this folly !
Let us realize the situation. A doctor undertakes to deliver a lecture before an assembly of doctors whose president was an appointed teacher at a university.
Rigler's "light of truth" proved to be the darkness of falsehood.
He entitles his lecture :Against homoeopathy and homoeopaths and their present position in the State.
In this he is guilty of the most barefaced falsehoods, and this with " the complete assent of all members of the society present."
Not a single voice is raised against it ; on the contrary, they are so enraptured by this lecture that they determine unanimously, without any opposition whatever, to print it and disseminate it as widely as possible, which was done.
When the other allopaths became acquainted with this curious lecture, not a single voice among the whole allopathic body was raised against it, and several other medical societies applied to the West Berlin Society before whom this precious discourse had been delivered, praying them to take suitable steps to suppress the mischievous homoeopathy.
Meanwhile, a homoeopathic physician[Sorge, Für die Homöopathie, Berlin, 1880.] called attention to the monstrous statements contained in Rigler's discourse, and care was taken that this refutation, founded on facts, should be brought before Bardeleben, Rigler and Co.
In judging the motives of the opponents of homoeopathy it is important to notice that, in spite of this, no attempt was made to correct even the most glaring misstatements.
On the contrary, an appeal was made to State authority for assistance in the contest.Rigler had, at that very meeting of the West Berlin Medical Society, " with the complete assent of all the members of the society present," expressed the wish that the apothecaries should be forbidden to " disfigure their shops " by inscribing over them " Homoeopathic and Allopathic Pharmacy."
The following resolutions were passed : The permission to dispense their own medicines by homoeopathic practitioners, which has existed hitherto, " to the great injury of the reputation and dignity of medicine," should be withdrawn. Besides this, no medicines prepared homoeopathically were to be kept in stock in the apothecaries' shops. Fine resolutions certainly, and going direct to the point !
Riglercontinued his labours, and wrote a book in 1882, entitled : Homoeopathy and its importance to the general welfare.
In the preface he writes :
Ignorance of the true nature and tendencies of the subject has allowed views to prevail with regard to homoeopathy, both with the public generally and in the law-making circles, which are not consonant with facts, and can only have an injurious effect on the State and on society. Let us, therefore, try to present the life and work of the founder of homeopathy, and the development and spirit of his discovery in thelight of truth.
He relies on the " in every respect, excellent little work ofKarsch," with which we are already acquainted. " Karsch has rendered a great service by this work, which may be pronounced a model of its kind." Rigler has, however, added his own services to those of Karsch, and has gone beyond him in many respects.
What troubleKarsch took to convict Hahnemann of the crime of using mixtures of drugs ! Rigler simplifies the process and writes, p. 25 : " For the rest, he treated his patients according to the traditional methods with mixtures of drugs." And to prove this he quotes certain passages from Hufeland's Journal, in which mixtures of drugs are not even alluded to. Karsch at least tried to appear as though he appreciated Hahnemann's talents. Rigler can detect nothing in him but " acuteness and a certain literary capacity."
He callsHahnemann's attack on the four bleedings which shortened the Emperor Leopold's life, the " most in-famous accusation."
We should expect from what we have seen of his adroitness that he would cunningly suppress the question of blood-letting and only speak of " treatment," and we are not disappointed.
If onlyHahnemann had more frequently repeated such " infamous accusations," if he had only attacked this destructive practice with still greater power and influence than he possessed,. much unhappiness would have been spared.
There would also have been no shedding of the precious blood " to the extent of causing the most profound syncope," by means of which, aided by the " evacuating method," the life's thread of the ever memorable Queen Louisa was prematurely cut.
In order to criticize impartially do not read the author's book.
Riglerthus writes of Hahnemann's first wife : " Hahnemann's noble companion of his professional life, as he calls the 'scolding Xantippe' whom he had the happiness to call his wife."
He tries to place his second wife in as unfavourable a light as possible, retails some completely apocryphal miserable gossip, and represents her as being eighteen instead of thirty-five years of age, which certainly suits his purpose better, but he gives no authority for this statement.
And the homoeopathic practitioners ?
PAGE67 : — " The whole lot of them exceed even their master in infamy and cunning," is what he says of Hahnemann's first adherents. Griesselich, he asserts, "called his opponents ` dogs,' and challenged them to mortal combat."
Where doesGriesselich say anything of this sort ? Rigler takes refuge behind Stürmer, who was of his own way of thinking ; Stürmer does not give his authority for the statement. Griesselich was staff-surgeon-general in the Baden army, and in that capacity was a favourite with his subordinates.
That would surely have been impossible if he had really acted in this vulgar manner.
Words such as the following arc ascribed to the homoeopaths, p.59 :
"Affinitatsamelioration, Indifferenzirungsblandität, Participialeinschachtelungsmethode," &c.
Where in the world are such terms to be found ? Why is no reference given ? We cannot remember having read anything of this kind. And if some blockhead did ever write such nonsense, what right has he to lay it at the door of the whole homoeopathic community ?
In his description of the homoeopathic practitioners,Rigler alludes several times to the Sanitätsrath Dr. B. Hirschel (p. 33 and 75).
Dr.Hirschel has played a considerable part in the history of homoeopathy. He sought to harmonise homoeopathy with university medicine, and he also opposed Hahnemann's extreme dilution of medicines.
He founded and edited for twenty years theZeitsckrift für Homöopathische Klinik ; it ceased to appear not long after his death in 1873.
Anyone who is" thoroughly " acquainted with the history of homoeopathy must be aware of these facts.
Riglerthus addresses Hirschel in the year 1882, i.e., nine years after his death :
" I can assure this esteemed author, with whose literary productions I have unfortunately been forced to occupy myself, that I have with very great self-denial acquired the most thorough knowledge of homoeopathy and its historical development." In his ignorance and excitement he does not even leave the dead at rest.
With regard toHirschel's literary productions, we have already (p. 335) heard the opinion expressed by an allopath on one of his works.
Dr Bernhard Hirschel (1815-1874)
He is, besides, the author of theHistory of Medicine, Vienna, 1862, two editions, and of the History of Brown's System, which is thus reviewed in Janus, a journal devoted to the history of medicine (1846, I., p. 87 1)
The author's plan of writing the history of the medical systems of recent times can only be welcomed — especially when it is carried out with such great industry, such careful study of authorities, and, as a rule, with such clear judgment as is here displayed. The author is already known to us by various historical works.... I repeat that this work is a valuable contribution to the special history of Medical systems.... We can only wish for the continuation of this under-taking.
Riglerhas been " unfortunately obliged to occupy himself with Hirschel's literary productions."
In order to convict allHahnemann's adherents of a want of earnest conviction, he mentions the sad case of a " homoeopathic" doctor, who recommends medicines in allopathic doses, and adds that Hirschel recommended emetics for croup.
He of course suppresses the fact thatHirschel is speaking of very exceptional cases, and that the great majority of homoeopathic practitioners disapprove of this part of Hirschel's practice, as may be seen in all homoeopathic works, and in the treatment of homoeopathists. Besides, what is proved by such individual cases ?
An allopath is now practising in Berlin who draws two pounds of blood from consumptive patients at one sitting, and who in five months deprived some of these wretched creatures of eleven pounds of blood, and brought about their speedy death.
Rigler's "Mirror of Truth" proves to be a distorting glass.
It is undoubtedly true that Professors of Medicine have committed the most glaring mistakes both in diagnosis and treatment that would have been disgraceful to tiros in medicine.
What would the allopaths say if such individual cases were used as proof against the whole old school profession ? And we might confront them with many such cases. If homoeopaths are such wretched quacks and impostors, how is it possible that their number increases all over the world from year to year ? How, indeed, can we explain the existence of a homoeopathic literature, counting as it does its thousands of volumes ?
At present four medical homoeopathic journals appear in Germany ; of these, theAllgemeine homöop. Zeitung has been published regularly since 1832.
This is the oldest of all the surviving medical journals in Germany ; one sheet of print appears every week, and there are now107 complete volumes, which all testify to the earnest conviction of homoeopaths ; not to mention the numerous other periodicals and treatises. [That homoeopathy has its disreputable parasites is true, and is much regretted by its adherents. But they are no more able to pre-vent this than the allopaths are to hinder the shepherds, old wives and such like, from dabbling in physic. If we consider that every homoeopathic practitioner in Europe, without exception, was previously an allopath, that in Germany there are as yet no public schools for homoeopathy, that every homoeopath is his own teacher and must gradually emancipate himself from the crude allopathic therapeutics he has been taught at college, then it must be admitted that the number of pseudo-homoeopaths is very small.]
Such facts certainly deserved to be mentioned, especially in a treatise in which, asRigler expressly affirms, p. 45, "The mirror of pure and unvarnished truth is held up to the reader."
Riglerappends to his book three pages with the names of works, all of which he has not however read — as for example the works of Bahr, Kafka, Sorge, &c., which are important for judging of the convictions and earnest study of the homoeopaths, and to the contents of which he does not so much as allude, or even mention their authors' names in the text. In this way the author might have given a list
of works referred to by him twenty times as long.
Usually authors only mention those books which have really been consulted by them, and the contents of which they have utilised for their own work.Rigler is an exception to this rule — an author who goes to work in a truly original manner. This mode of procedure produced the effect which might be expected from it.
TheHamburger Nachrichten writes : "Rigler has used for his purpose the whole literature for and against homoeopathy — the titles are cited in the appendix."
ThePharmaceutischte Zeitung (1882, No. 35) declares that : " Rigler, in writing his work, has made use of the whole existing homoeopathic literature." His readers imagine, and they are pardonable in doing so by Rigler's way of going to work, that he had studied the whole literature in question carefully, and was giving the result of his arduous studies in his " Mirror of Truth."
After this investigation ofRigler's knowledge and his motives in writing this book, we will allow him to give us an account of the origin of homoeopathy and the characteristics of Hahnemann. This account is most delightful.
We seeHahnemann wandering about the country with a wife and eight children. He is seeking a livelihood for himself and his family. He has vainly tried to earn his bread by chemistry and literature. At last dire necessity urges him into crime ; he becomes a wretched impostor and charlatan. He is actuated by the vulgarest avarice ; stay ! he has hit upon a plan. He determines to call homoeopathy into life !
As a beginning, there appeared inHufeland's Journal, in 1796, an article by Hahnemann which, however, as Rigler discovers with the assistance of Karsch, "was taken, though without acknowledgment, from Cullen's work and from other sources, a matter to which we will afterwards return."
Besides that,Hahnemann wrote : Aesculapius in the Balance, The Medicine of Experience, and De Viribus Medicamentorum, &c.
These three works form the groundwork of homoeopathy.
How to write the biography of an inconvenient hero.
" The only task now left to the inventor,"Rigler continues (p. 32), quoting Karsch's words, " was to spread abroad his doctrine in order to pose as a reformer and, if possible, as a new Messiah of medicine.
If he should be successful in this he had gained his end, and he did succeed, ` for it is not only children who can be fed with fairy tales.' — Lessing,Nathan, III., 6."
Hahnemann's pharmacology is the " most fabulous ever presented to mankind." " The ideas proper to a lunatic asylum, which the most shameless of the shameless has dared to throw in the face of common sense ; he has tried to palm off his frivolous rubbish on mankind, and, alas ! even this most insipid absurdity has found friends and supporters."
PAGE45 : We say, then, Hahnemann has no importance for scientific medicine, or possesses only this negative interest, that he was the founder of a well-organized system of quackery, which he decked out with the tinsel of sham learning in order to dazzle mankind.
He invented a pretended system of medicine, based on ridiculous hypotheses and ingenious lies, which makes it possible for any one who is sufficiently devoid of all critical sense to earn for himself without trouble, if not external advantages, at least the reputation of a benefactor of suffering mankind.
This is his work, which immortalizes him. The unclean spirit of pride and calumny was the foundation on which he erected, under the influence of "external necessity and avarice, a temple of deceit and falsehood such as history offers no other example of. By this meansHahnemann, with insolent hand, injured not only science, but also the entire system of culture ; and everyone who cares for the progress of the human intellect, everyone who is interested in the triumph of truth and in the welfare of mankind, must tight with us against this demon who has covered our age with disgrace.
In order that the desired effect may be indelibly impressed on the reader, these charges are recapitulated on p.46, and he is invited "to look through them again."
With ever-increasing vehemence the reader is repeatedly assured thatHahnemann invented homoeopathy from the basest and most sordid motives. This would seem enough to dispose of Hahnemann. But he has not been sufficiently condemned :
PAGE47 : If the well-read Hahnemann omitted to state whence he derived this science, and even impudently laid claim to originality, history here again convicts him of falsehood. The central idea of homoeopathy is not derived from Hahnemann, but from Theophrastus Bombastes Paracelsus.
Riglerhas discovered this, and he raises the veil with an unsparing hand. Schultz is his witness, and he appeals to his work (comp. above, p. 300).
Riglerwrites his name without a "t."
It is the sameSchultz who afterwards called himself " Schultz-Schultzenstein," and under this name wrote, among other works, the book, Life — Health — Disease — Cure (2nd edition, Basle, 1873).
In this he proves, on page187, that the cellular theory is not German, but French in origin, and that " those are utterly mistaken who look upon it as the outcome of German industry."
It was first enunciated by the French flower painter,Turpin — Schultz discovered this, too — and "his doctrine was repeated by Schleiden, Schwann, and others ….. Turpin's part has only been played over again in Germany."
PAGE289 : He pronounces his opinion that medicine in Germany is " a scientific electuary, comprised of cells and tissue changes."
Certain people, then, had better keep on good terms withRigler. Were he to seek for the truth about them he might pass them before him in the same " mirror of truth " which he has been cruel enough to direct against Hahnemann.
Hahnemann's merits are once more clearly, plainly, and comprehensively represented :
"Hahnemann strove to break through the necessary limits of science ; to change medicine into child's play by means of lies and absurdities ; to weaken and to libel both German physicians and the whole medical art ; to represent the sources of medical knowledge as worthless and objectionable ; and, finally, to introduce the disgraceful traffic in secret remedies into the practice of medicine.
In order to carry out the travesty to the end,Hahnemann did not omit to call attention to the beauty and worth of the German language, but, nevertheless, we miss these painfully in his writings, and encounter all sorts of crudities and the most unheard-of barbarisms."
Stieglitz(l.c. p. 89) had admitted that " Hahnemann was master of the art of writing clearly, decidedly and power-fully."
Stieglitzwas, therefore, mistaken.
The following is the solemn conclusion of this remarkable chapter :
Notwithstanding all this, posterity erected a bronze statue toHahnemann, the vilest of quacks and impostors, in the very centre of Germany, "in grateful recognition of his immortal teaching and of his invaluable services to medicine." And a German town suffers this disgrace ! Where is the German love of truth, the German sense of right and feeling of shame ? Awake ! throw this false idol down from its beggarly throne, and save culture from further destruction !
It is (according toRigler) only because of their love of gain, and their desire to plunder their confiding patients, that the homoeopaths insist on themselves dispensing their medicines. His remarks do not suffice to refute the strong arguments in favour of all doctors, allopathic or homoeopathic, dispensing their own medicines — surely a self-evident right — which Sorge brings forward in the pamphlet we have already mentioned.
Riglerdoes not allude to this — does not even mention it in his " complete literature " of homoeopathy. At the end of his book Rigler, quite unexpectedly, makes a sensible proposal.
The homoeopaths should be allowed to dispense themselves those remedies which are found to contain no medicine discoverable by chemical analysis, taste, smell or colour (i.e., perhaps beyond the3rd or 4th decimal, or beyond the 2nd centesimal dilution) ; [Certain substances can even be detected by chemistry in the 1/2 000 000 th and by spectral analysis in the proportion of 1 to 1,000,000,000.] but if they wish to give stronger doses, as 1 in 10, they should prescribe these "in the regular way."
WhenHahnemann was prohibited from dispensing his medicines, he addressed a representation to the authorities at Leipzic, in which he pointed aut the inconsequence involved in this prohibition :
A glimmer of sense.
I only use doses that are so small that they are imperceptible to the senses and to chemical analysis. The extreme minuteness of the doses of simple medicinal substances in this new system removes all possible suspicion of any injury from the size of a dose of medicine administered to the patient. The beneficial effect and great curative power of such small doses depends upon their mode of selection for the appropriate cases of disease, Which is peculiar to homeopathy, of which ordinary medicine knows nothing.
The apothecary, unable to 'understand this, ridicules the idea of doses so small that they cannot be detected either by the senses or by the best chemical analysis. If the apothecary, jealous as he is of the new system, can find neither medicine nor poison in the remedies of the true homoeopathic practitioner that could be injurious, surely the State need alarm itself less about the remedies given by homoeopathy than about the trade of the apothecary, who unhesitatingly sells the very same remedies to anybody — in a million times greater amount — only limited by the prohibition to sell arsenic, corrosive sublimate, opium and a few other substances to strangers.
Riglerdiscusses this representation of Hahnemann (p. 38) and indicates the source correctly, but without quoting verbatim. Hahnemann's words are only given to the reader either distorted or out of their proper connexion, otherwise Hahnemann might not appear in the desired light, and so Rigler would not have been able to add (at least, not with-out losing all claim to be believed even by the most good-natured reader) the following remark :
" The authorities did not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by such sophistries and cunning devices." Are the sophistries and cunning devices to be found inHahnemann or in the united apothecaries and allopaths ?
Rigler(p. 144) makes exactly the same proposal which had been made by Hahnemann, under the delusion that he is thereby annihilating homoeopathy.
He calls sophistry and cunning in one place what he himself suggests in another. If such a proposal were to receive the force of law it would be of great service to homoeopathy. For what was the object of the numerous petitions of the homoeopaths ? What is even now one of their most ardent wishes ?
The carrying out ofRigler's proposal. What was it that drove Hahnemann from his home in Leipzic, with his wife and children, when an old man ? The lack of such an arrangement has exposed, and still exposes, the homoeopaths to numerous intrigues and chicaneries.
But the majority of combatants do not agree withRigler on this point. They see further into the matter, and will not consent to such a proposal. They will look on with pleasure while Rigler decries and abuses homoeopathy, but beyond that they will not follow him.
"No case — abuse opposite counsel."
He lays about him with such blind impetuosity that his blows fall on his own adherents and, with the phlebotomizingSimon, he exclaims : " The world is given over to folly," quite forgetting that the world still adheres to allopathy.
To show the spirit with whichRigler's work is imbued, we quote some of the epithets which he bestows on Hahnemann and the homoeopaths :
Hahnemann— p. 25 : " Dealer in secret remedies," "charlatan of the basest kind" — p. 27 : "medical vagabond," " adventurer " — p. 28 : " liar," " cheat," " pickpocket," " braggart " — p. 34 : " the old rat-catcher " — p. 35 : "sly and unprincipled liar and deceiver " — p. 36 : "the most shameless of the shameless" — p. 40 : "grand master of lying " — p. 42 : " prince of lies" — p. 52 : "the most miserable of all charlatans and impostors," "false idol on a beggar's throne" — p. 57 : "this pitiable wretch " — p. 64 : "arch-father of lies."
Homoeopathy— p. 16 : " castle on the sand " — p. 38 : " deception " — p. 41 : " absurdity, lies " — p. 45 : " a pretended system founded on the most absurd hypotheses and cleverly invented lies," " a fabric of deceit and lies " — p. 46 : " a demon that is a disgrace to our century " — p. 47 : " charlatanry " — p. 51 : " child's play made up of lies and folly " — p. 54 : "tissue of absurdity and lies" — p. 59 : "miserable trash and nonsense" — p. 19 : " this pest was introduced into Russia, &c." — p. 70 : "refuge for rogues and charlatans " — p. 75 : " flagitious game," "impudent, miserable crime " — p. 84 : " fool's play," " the dunghill of homoeopathic practice " — p. 85 : " repulsive and absurd rubbish " — p. 86 : " miserable filth of the most pitiable superstition."
Certainly an out-spoken writer !
He thus speaks of lay homoeopathy —p. 99 : " the height of homoeopathic harmfulness in all its viciousness " — p. 100 : "shameful deception " — p. 102 : "this wild absurdity," "deception," " superstition," " system of lies," " the invasion by the pest of a region hitherto free " — p. 109 : " madness " — p. 133 : " castle on the sand " — 146 : " homoeopathic imposture," " charlatanry, destructive nonsense," " lies " — p. 150 : "dishonour of the medical profession," " disgrace of the age."
Homoeopathic practitioners are —p. 61 : " traitors to science " — p. 67 : " the whole lot transcends the master in infamy and trickery " — p. 70 : "fools, rogues, charlatans, lunatics, mountebanks " — p. 75 : "we should have no mercy on Hahnemann and his adherents — they are a disgrace to truth and science ; no words are too strong to designate their shamelessness " — p. 78 : " there are patients who lack common sense, and there are doctors who are homoeopaths" — p. 16 : " they drag the science of medicine through the dirty mud of the most pitiful superstition."
How not to write history.
We only give here a few specimens ofRigler's fluency.
If we wished to exhaust this topic it would be necessary to reproduce half ofRigler's treatise.
" Remembering theridendo dicere verum, I have taken infinite pains to avoid all bitterness and harshness," says Rigler in his preface.
We might suppose that a book of this kind, made up of misrepresentations and expressions of personal ill-feeling, larded with falsehoods, deserves no respect.
If a Frenchman were to undertake to describe Germany and German life, and were to do it thus : Endless, desolate, barren tracts ex-tend over the whole country. The climate is always severe, cold and rainy, and oats is the only grain that ripens. The whole nation suffers from want, and barely subsists on the remains of the milliards stolen from us.
Their food consists chiefly of oat cakes and potatoes, of which they consume incredible quantities, so that their bodies are swollen out like frogs. Their national drink, beer, contributes to this deformity, and gives their noses a potato shape and a red hue. Their brain is constantly muddled by their unlimited consumption of this brown alcoholic fluid, which increases their natural rude and awkward behaviour.
Their houses are wretched huts, ornamented only with clocks stolen from us, which, however, often change their owners, because the Germans are unable to overcome their propensity to confoundmeum and tuum.
Lying and deception prevail to such an extent among the whole nation, from the highest to the lowest, that it is almost impossible to find any one whom one can trust.
(In illustration, he would relate a quantity of utterly unfounded facts, and distort the words of the Germans themselves).
The whole allopathic school delights to honour its champion.
If any one dares to speak French in the street, all eyes are at once directed on him, and he meets with hostile and furious glances. The most important towns are Berlin, Spandau, Kassel, and Breslau.
Berlin is situated in Brandenburg, Spandau in Pomerania, Breslau in the East, and Kassel is the capital of Westphalia. This is the true condition of Germany, presented to us in the mirror of pure and unvarnished truth.
Should we consider it worth while to refute such a Frenchman ? We should be astonished at such impudent distortion of the facts. We should almost compassionate the ignorance and want of good taste of the readers who should approve of it ; and we should remark, with satisfaction, that such absurdities could never be perpetrated in Germany.
Just so is it withRigler. He is only worth noticing (and this is our only reason for having dwelt on him so long) because the allopathic criticism of his book has given us a convenient means for forming a judgment of allopathic knowledge and opinion with regard to homoeopathy.
The reception of his book by the allopaths is, therefore, interesting and important, as it shows us what the allopaths consider the proper mode of combating homoeopathy. We are met with this remarkable fact The whole body of allopaths is in full concurrence withRigler's treatise, and not a single voice is raised to express the very least dissent from him.
Rigler'sbook and Rigler's conduct were most favourably noticed by all allopathic reviewers. Rigler was even praised to the skies for his conduct of the contest.
Here are some specimens from among the mass of criticisms, of which some even surpassed theirRigler in virulence ; they all express their great satisfaction with the book — a sufficient proof of their knowledge and of the spirit that animated them.
TheBerliner klin. Wochenschrift, 1882, p. 338, writes :
"Dr.Rigler, who is well known as one of the most energetic opponents of the homoeopathic delusion, draws, in this work, from authentic homoeopathic sources, viz., the works of Hahnemann and his disciples, a picture of the inept absurdities which this monstrosity, begotten of filth and milk-sugar, has produced."
"We must express our thanks to the author who has taken the trouble to work his way through the wilderness of materials, and has presented his sum-total in a form which makes its perusal a real pleasure, in spite of a melancholy feeling it cannot fail to inspire. We recommend it to be circulated as widely as possible, and hope it may open the eyes of the public on the subject of the ‘like-sufferers,' as HerrRigler translates the word homoeopath, and their false doctrine."
Deutsche medicinische Wochenschrift.
TheDeutsche medicinische Wochenschrift, 1882, p. 565, begins :
" It would be a sad sign of the times if a work such asRigler's were now, as happened in the days of Bleekrode, Gmelin and Stieglitz, to serve the purpose of inaugurating a struggle of reason against the superstition and folly of those dabblers in medicine who call themselves homoeopaths."
The days ofBleekrode ! The struggle of reason against superstition and folly ! Who was Bleekrode ? How and when did he attack the "superstition " and " folly " of homoeopathy ?
Bleekrodewrote : Commentat. medic. inaugur., pars prior, sistens Palaeolog. reg. therap. Similia Similibus curantur ; Groningae , 1835.
The attempt was made in this work to represent thesimilia similibus as an old principle known even to the ancient Jews. The Bible and the Talmud were examined ; the old Chaldaeans and AEthiopians were appealed to ; then came Hippocrates and the Greeks, Galen and the Middle Ages. With regard to Paracelsus, he says, p. 102, after having spoken of similia similibus and the small doses :
Si vero ad Paracelsum spectes, plane hisce contraria inveniemus. Paracelsus enim arte sua signata, anatomica et magica, in medicaminum vim inquirebat, licet nonnullis in casibus ejusmodi remedia laudaverit, uti arsenicum [this is the only remedy, according to this indication, which Bleekrode mentions in connexion with Paracelsus, comp., p.89] cujus vis medicatrix ipsi innotuit symptomatum similitudine, quae ex actione in sanum hominein sequuntur.
PAGE123, et seq., it is mentioned that Fr. Hoffmann and Albrecht von Haller expressed themselves in favour of the testing of medicines without, however, carrying out the practice.
The prophets brought out to curse ungratefully proceed to bless.
Page 125 :Ira inter multos Greding, Ludwig, Storck, [We have seen that Hahnemann cites these authors.] ideo laudabant narcoticorum in neurosibus, mania, paralysi, &c., usum, quia haec a sano consumta ipsum iisdem morbis aegrum redderi solent.
Etiam specificorum indicatio inde deprompta fuit, quia remedia haec sanis in eodem organorum systemate morbum excitant. Ita cantharidum usum laudarunt in organorum uropoëticorum morbis, quia haec organa hisce eadem ratione aegrescunt. Aloe et sulphur hemorrhoidibus laborantibus porrigebantur, quia in organa abdominalia vires suas exserunt.
Plura hujusmodi exempla addi possunt, etiam fusius ab Hahnemanno indicata.
Multa etiam exstant exempla remediorum adhibitorum, de quibus non dubitandum est, quin a sanis consumta eandem symptomatum seriem produxissent, quae morbum determinavit ; sed haec a posteriori ita visa sunt sese habere, quippe quae empyrica ratione vel periculi faciendi causa tentata sunt.
AfterBleekrode has briefly sketched the history of the origin of homoeopathy he gives his opinion, founded on observations at the sick bed, and often quotes the illustrious Hufeland and Kopp (the clarissimus vir), whose standpoint he adopts : p. 143 :
Eadem quippe regula similia similibus curantur, quae hujus systematis est fundamentum, aliquando probabiliter Methodus Therapeutica Medicinm Rationalis erit, quemadmodum nostra aetate nonnulli jam praesagire inceperunt.
He then seeks to determine the limits of the use of homoeopathy. He does not doubt the efficacy ofHahnemann's remedies, but blames, with justice, his fondness for systematising and other things which had been condemned by Hahnemann's adherents ten years before.
He thus gives his opinion ofHahnemann :
Vir celeberrimus et acutissimus, qui semper magna cum sagacitate in literis versatus et praeterera de arte chemica optime meritus.
These are the " days of aBleekrode !" and such his attack on " superstition and folly."
Stieglitzand Gmelin certainly rejected homoeopathy. We have seen that Stieglitz said in 1835 that homoeopathy would soon die out, and its adherents would return to allopathy, in thankful remembrance of the services it renders (the bleedings, emetics, and purgatives of those days).
We know, too, how a homoeopathic physician came to occupyStieglitz's position as physician in ordinary to the King of Hanover, and that the king assured him by letter that the results of homoeopathic treatment had been more favourable than the results of his former physician's treatment.
Gmelinreproached the homoeopaths severely for rejecting bleeding and emetics. He admitted, however, the worth of much of the system, e.g., the proving of medicines, and pointed out the defects of the old system in this respect.
The placing together of the names ofBleekrode, Stieglitz and Gmelin, as is done here, gives (from reasons that excite the amusement of any one acquainted with their writings) another proof of the absolute ignorance of the allopaths, and astonishes one at the positiveness with which they speak of a matter, the existence of which is, indeed, in the highest degree unpleasant and disagreeable for them, but as to the nature and history of which they are either grossly ignorant or deceived.
It is a remarkable coincidence, that inHaser's History (1881, p. 797), the same three names are placed together. We need only throw a glance at this page and the chapter on " the criticism of Hahnemann's doctrine," and these same three names meet our eyes.
Gmelinis one of the few opponents who own that homoeopathy has been attacked with base weapons. [L. c., p. 247.]
It would hardly, then, have been superfluous if the writer in this periodical, who speaks with the assumption of superior knowledge, had shown that he possessed at least a superficial acquaintance with the works to which he refers.
The sameDeutsche medicin. Wochenschrift continues :
— Every one, be he an adherent or an opponent of homoeopathy, knows what a cut-purse principle incorporated itself in the person of the inventor of homeopathy, the adventurer who neglected no means of gaining a practice ; every one knows and abhors the tricks by means of which this kind of quacks seek to maintain their ground.... To this subject belongs, besides the damning biography of the arch-impostor, the critical contribution to the sincerity of the conviction of the more recent homoeopathic practitioners [which we have discussed above], which shows how they endeavour, in their wretched stammering way, to profit by the pathological discoveries of medicine, and how they treat the fools who fall into their hands non-homoeopathically if they desire it.
Surely now the State will put down that horrid homeopathy !
The reviewer reaches a high pitch of excitement, such as no adherent of a system protected by the State and supported by the majority would fall into if he were convinced that he was waging a just war with fair weapons.
The accusation that the homoeopaths treat their patients allopathically if they wish it, is as old as homoeopathy, and would, if it were true, easily prove the quackery of the whole business. For this reason it is constantly repeated. Occasionally accusations such as these are publicly made, but they have repeatedly been shown to be groundless.
The term " charlatan " would certainly be indelibly stamped on a medical man who acted thus.
With regard to the strength of conviction of the homoeopathic practitioners, we refer these gentlemen to their champion,Gmelin, who says, l.c. p. 246 :
" Homoeopathic physicians are enthusiasts…. Its disciples would lay down their lives in defence of the new doctrine."
Every one who has to do with homoeopathic practitioners becomes more and more firmly persuaded of the unshakable strength of their convictions, and sees that they have a pleasure in exercising their profession such as the allopaths for a long time have ceased to possess.
This paper thus alludes to the liberty possessed by the homoeopaths to dispense their own medicines ; this right was conceded to them in Prussia, subject to a State examination which, with all the rights appertaining to it, is open to every medical man :
The struggle to acquire the right of dispensing medicine by homoeopathic practitioners forms a page in the history of Prussia which will excite in our posterity a feeling like that with which we read of the making of gold, of werewolves and of the trials of witches — a feeling made up of incredulous wonder and a sense of indignant shame.
It is then emphatically asserted that it is the duty of the State " not to expose its citizens to be injured by the homoeopathic fraud, not to allow them to become the prey of this mode of treatment or permit the flagrant piracy of dispensing their medicines by practitioners. Many thanks are due toRigler.... greatest care.... purity of language... calmness in carrying out his train of thought, &c....
If he tries to make this odious theme somewhat more enjoyable to himself and his readers by the use of strong language and sarcasms, who will seriously blame him ?"
This periodical suggests to the Prussian government that " if it would only read this concluding chapter we should not have long to wait for an alteration of this condition," i.e., dispensing of medicines. " This monograph [Rigler's] is a contribution to the re-organisation of the laws relating to medicine."
If, on the one hand, it is impossible to preserve one's gravity whenRigler, with his glaring perversions of truth, is represented as the " re-organiser of the laws relating to medicine ; " on the other hand, we can hardly understand how such a work can be recommended to a Government which ought to consist of calm and impartial men, as the material from which its decisions are to be formed.
It is the work of a man who had been convicted and punished for publishing about his homoeopathic colleagues the most glaring falsehoods suggested by personal irritation and party feeling, and who, instead of confessing the injustice of his charges, repeats and exaggerates his former misstatements in this very work.
Another medical journal expresses the following opinion ofKoppe's and Rigler's works :
The appearance of these two works is eminently well-timed. The first of the two points out clearly and calmly the absence of scientific method in the system ; the second [Rigler] draws' his sharp sword against falsehood with the fire of just indignation. We can give this praise to both works, that they are characterised by historical truthfulness and scientific treatment of a subject which suggests so much that is absurd and ridiculous that it would appear to be very difficult, satyram non scribere. In his chapter on liberty of dispensing medicines, Dr. Rigler throws much light on the disadvantageous effects of Hahnemann's system on the public welfare.
The organ of the united German medical societies, theAerztliches Vereintsblatt fiir Deutschland expresses (1882, p. 118) the opinion that : —
Rigler'shistorico-critical treatise will occupy a prominent position among the works which have hitherto been written on homoeopathy and the homoeopaths. The first part — Samuel Hahnemann — a biographical sketch — deals a blow at the constitution of homoeopathy from which its Coryphaei will find it difficult to recover. He proves that the Divine gift of homoeopathy was an invention brought about by the pressure of necessity and perfected by speculation. This is historic truth, related by Rigler in a manner at once so cutting and yet so pleasant that this one chapter gives permanent value to the whole work.
A trap to catch allopaths.
After having lauded this work in all its parts, the allopaths are informed " thatRigler has furnished material which will enable physicians to become thoroughly acquainted with the subject, and thus to put themselves in a position to contribute towards the final settling of this question.
Riglerconcludes with an energetic appeal to physicians to rouse them-selves and manfully combat this mischievous system," as if the allopaths had hitherto looked on quietly and in childish innocence at the inconvenient spread of homoeopathy. [In 1881, Rigler was fined heavily for calumniating the homoeopaths, and the Editors of the Wochenschrift and Vereintsblatt were also fined for publishing Rigler's calumnies, which may perhaps account for the extreme bitterness of these champions of " scientific " and " rational " medicines in 1882. — [ED.]
If a homoeopath had wished to prove to the world how profound was the ignorance of the allopaths on the subject ofHahnemann and his doctrines, he could not have set about it more skillfully than Rigler has done.
He has involuntarily laid a snare for allopathy. One allopath after another has eagerly entered the net, and a number of political papers have joyfully followed suit — a fact worth noting. Out of the large draught of fishes inRigler's net we call attention to two remarkable specimens.
One is the organ of the apothecaries, the central organ for the trade and scientific interests of pharmacy, thePharmaceutischte Zeitung. [1883. Nos. 38, 41, 42, 45 and 49.]
The satisfaction of the apothecaries withRigler's work appears still greater than that of the doctors. With much joy their central organ gives long extracts, quoting conscientiously all Rigler's strong expressions, and praises them greatly. These extracts are continued through five numbers, each occupying several columns.
The mood of the apothecaries becomes so cheerful that a satirical poem onHahnemann, written at the beginning of this century, is re-published in No. 45, and in number No. 49 the following skit is reproduced :
Oh that I were a homoeopath ! Would that I could believe inHahnemann's theory ! But I cannot. I will at once state why. I have read a great deal about homoeopathy, and I find that though the theory is good, the practice is bad. One day I was suffering from diarrhoea. Well, I said to myself, here is a good opportunity for testing homoeopathy. What is the cause of my illness ? Sour plums. Then sour plums ought to cure me. They nearly killed me.
I cannot believe in the like-by-like system. If I did I would erect a monument in the middle of a town like a drinking fountain ; round it I would place basins with pipes leading to a reservoir, and above every basin I would write the words, " Stranger, let your tears fall here." When the reservoir was filled with tears I would evaporate them to dryness and would dissolve every grain of the salt thus obtained in a gallon of water, and would put the solution in a-drachm phials, and sell it as " Dolorin, a cure for every grief," at a high price. Every homoeopath is invited to make use of this idea. I have not yet taken out a patent for it.
The reference toRigler's book is accompanied by the following remarks :
The fact, apparently, is incontrovertibly established byRigler that both Hahnemann and the other heads of the school were gross charlatans. About the year 1830, homoeopathy had been almost completely abandoned by the German doctors, but the aristocracy and the clergy took it up. The science of pharmacy was degraded by granting the right of dispensing to homoeopathic doctors. The wild desire for freedom of dispensing was the war cry of Hahnemann's adherents.
Dispensing by the practitioner became a wretched trade, which, however, had advantages both direct and indirect, and on that account, therefore solely from love of gain, was firmly adhered to.Hahnemann amassed heaps of gold and lived in great luxury. Is it to be wondered at if, under such circumstances, homoeopathy finds enthusiastic adherents, both among doctors and non-professionals. The history of homoeopathy forces on the philosopher the sad reflection that every speculation on the folly of mankind, if undertaken with the necessary boldness, has the prospect of material success and imitation.
If the apothecaries write and print such views for a large circle of readers, we can safely infer by what spirit they are animated towards homoeopathy, even if other more tangible proofs did not come under our notice every day. By such criticisms they show us with how much confidence homoeopathic doctors can prescribe homoeopathic medicines from allopathic drug-stores.
We persecute homoeopathy because our own system is indefensible.
Another catch ofRigler's is the Wiener medicin. Wochenschrift.
According to this (1882, p. 1199), the allopaths "ought to be heartily grateful to Rigler for expending so much labour and care on the study of so worthless a subject." Homoeopathy is " a speculation on the credulity, the superstition and the stupidity of a large portion of mankind," and does not require any knowledge from its adherents. "
This is the reason of the popularity of homoeopathy with its medical adherents." The grossest misrepresentations ofRigler in his descriptions of Hahnemann and homoeopathy are extracted, and the opinion is expressed that Rigler's condemnation is the result of a thorough study of homoeopathic literature.
With regard to the "ease with which a knowledge of homoeopathy is acquired" as opposed to allopathy, which is, as this journal believes, or at all events asserts, the chief reason of its attractiveness, the writer seems to forget that the homoeopaths have to follow the same course of study, to pass the same examinations as the allopaths, and that, in order to obtain the right of dispensing medicines, they have besides to pass an examination in chemistry, in pharmacy and in homoeopathic therapeutics ; that the homoeopaths have to learn much more than the allopaths, and that therefore the knowledge of therapeutics possessed by every true homoeopath exceeds that of the allopaths. But setting all this aside, the time required for mastering allopathic therapeutics is only a fraction of that required for homoeopathic therapeutics.
Quinine in fever ; morphia, chloral-hydrate in pain or sleeplessness ; iron in chlorosis ; salicylic acid in rheumatism of every kind, &c. ; these can be taught in a very short time to any non-professional.
Neither is it difficult to master the ordinary mode of mixing medicines. The task of the homoeopathic doctor is not so easy ; he has to choose in individual cases among a much larger number of remedies, and must be more accurately acquainted with the effects of medicines and their employment ; this requires a peculiar, diligent and uninterrupted study and careful note-taking.
Anyone lacking zeal in this particular can never be a good homoeopath, though no one can prevent him calling himself a "homoeopath."
Only an earnest and assiduous student can become a good homeopathic therapeutist who will never resort to the allopathic custom of giving quinine as a remedy for fever or even for ague, who treats scrofulous inflammation of the eye only by internal remedies prepared homoeopathically, and who in diphtheria never employs external medicines, &c., &c., but who in all cases gives medicines only in homeopathic doses, and with all this obtains results which enable him to contemplate allopathic persecutions with the tranquility of a good conscience.
Anyone who acts otherwise, either has no right to the name of homoeopath, or is still in a transition state, or has prematurely brought his studies to an end, a condition of affairs which is largely due to the want of homoeopathic hospitals and teachers. Even salicylic acid in cases of rheumatic arthritis and mercury in appreciable quantities in syphilis can be replaced byHahnemann's preparations, and better results will be obtained, with a complete absence of injurious after effects.
If we have often had occasion to notice that the most bitter opponents of homoeopathy were those whose therapeutic treatment was least successful at the sick bed, and who were the least confident of their power to cure, this periodical, which joyfully, gratefully, and " with all its heart " adoptsRigler's misstatements, furnishes a further proof of our assertion.
This sameWiener medic. Wochenblatt, while under precisely the same editorship, expresses the following views on allopathic therapeutics : — [1867, No. 54, p. 631.]
What is praised by one is ridiculed by another. What one doctor dares not give in small doses is given by another in large doses, and what is praised by one as something new is considered by another as not being worthy of being rescued from oblivion. The favourite remedy of one is morphia ; another treats three-fourths of his patients with quinine ; a third expects favourable results from purgatives ; a fourth from the healing power of nature ; a fifth from water ; one blesses, another curses mercury. In a short period of time the treatment by mercurial inunction flourished, was set aside, and then came into repute again ; it was looked upon as buried, funeral orations were pronounced over it, and then it was disinterred, and lately its praises have again been sung by enthusiastic admirers. And such things happen within a few decades in the self-same " school," under the sway of the same infallible therapeutic despot, girded with the sword of triumphant science.
A too candid friend.
Further on, this same periodical, which has always persecuted all who thought differently from itself, gives the following criticism of its own allopathic materia medica.[1872, No. 44, p. 1113.]
Above all we must here allude to that gross fraud which the high priests of science impose on their disciples, although neither they nor the majority of medical men believe in it. I mean the fables of the so-called pharmacodynamics, of the materia medica.
This newer pharmacology, which is taught at the Universities, and about which large volumes are written which students are obliged to learn almost by heart, belongs, in virtue of at least nine-tenths of its contents, to the region of fables and fairy tales, and is a survival of the old belief in magic.
The numerous announcements of newly-discovered remedies which, in all the journals, are recommended by the apothecaries and provided with testimonials as to their infallibity by doctors, show that pains are being taken to extend the empire of magic and superstition.
Let us briefly recapitulate the history of the opposition offered to homoeopathy.
WhenHahnemann first introduced his method of treatment to notice, he was well known throughout all Germany and abroad as an excellent chemist.
The pharmaceutists honoured in him a zealous promoter of the apothecaries' art, and when the names of the most illustrious in this branch were mentioned,Hahnemann's was not omitted. He enjoyed a high reputation as a scholar, and was regarded by the medical profession as one of the most esteemed representatives of their art, to whom they owed many important contributions tending to perfect the science, as was frequently and unreservedly admitted.
By his lively, impetuous temperament, by his desire to remedy acknowledged evils, and by his vast schemes for overthrowing the whole system of medicine and building it up anew on the foundation of his principles, which he held with the whole strength of his conviction, he was involved in a life and death struggle with almost the whole medical world.
Hahnemann’s reform a revolution.
He attacked medicine on its weakest sides, and declared without circumlocution on every occasion that he considered the treatment of its practitioners more dangerous than the disease itself. The old school felt that the foundations of their therapeutics were shaken, and sought to maintain them by every possible means.
They had to justify the greater part of what had been their medical practice hitherto in order to maintain their reputation, and to answer this cardinal question, whether their labours had tended to preserve and lengthen men's lives or to destroy them. The strife was bitter, as must be the case when the ground on which the attacked party stands is insecure.
Many medical men, however, looked uponHahnemann's attacks on the wretched system of treatment according to all sorts of illusory theories, on the irrational bleeding, on the violent purgatives, on the complex prescriptions, as being partially, at least, well founded.
Several among them approved of his earnest attempts to obtain a firm, natural-historical basis for medical treatment, and to banish conjecture, superstition and speculation from medicine by simple prescriptions, by strict individualisation, by careful attention to the preparation of medicines, by the proving of medicines on the healthy organism, by their use according to fixed principles, and by the most careful observations taken at the sick bed.
This recognition of his merits is expressed and thankfully acknowledged in many places, butHahnemann is constantly exhorted not to set up this method as the universal and only true system.
But he remained unmoved in his own opinions, and thus became one-sided in his views, and was guilty of errors which laid him open to the attacks of his opponents.
A great hindrance in the way of an understanding being arrived at was the practice of bleeding, which the opponents ofHahnemann clung to as an article of religious faith.
Similia similibus — tit for tat.
His rejection of bleeding exposedHahnemann to the most bitter attacks and the most reckless accusations.
The class of his opponents favourable to bleeding has now almost disappeared, but the slanders and abuse which they hurled in blind fury against their dangerous enemy have remained, have been inherited and added to by a subsequent race of opponents.
At first all his opponents spoke in high terms ofHahnemann's previous services ; but at the end of the second and beginning of the third decade of this century, works appeared containing no allusions to his previous services, and dwelling on the weak points of his doctrines all the more forcibly.
His mode of preparing medicines, arrived at after long and laborious investigations, served as a butt for ridicule, and was eagerly employed to convict him of folly.
None of his bitterest opponents dared at first to termHahnemann a charlatan. They still preserved a certain amount of decency, and recognised the psychological impossibility that a man who had during twenty years given such obvious proofs of unflagging industry, of an earnest striving after truth, who enjoyed the friendship of the most highly esteemed men, could suddenly turn into a vulgar charlatan, and employ himself during forty years and more of his life in basely deceiving his suffering fellow-creatures who had sought his aid in their distress.
This class of his opponents was at least logical, and said that his mind had become enfeebled.
Gradually, however,Hahnemann's previous services were consigned to oblivion, and now it was sought, by perversions and misrepresentations, to represent him as an impostor, a charlatan and a swindler. His adherents met with the same fate.
" I have repaid him with full measure for his attacks on the profession ; and if he has not lost all sense of truth, he must own that I have, at least in this respect, fully grasped the sense of hissimilia similibus curentur, and have treated him according to true homoeopathic principles," exclaims one ardent opponent of Hahnemann and defender of bleeding, [Even in threatened phthisis.] with a sense of gratified vengeance. [Simon, Geist der Hom., Hamburg, 1833, p. 8.]
Éteignons les lumières.
The apothecaries, who feared danger to their very existence from homoeopathy, lent their zealous support to the allopaths, and assiduously characterised homoeopathy as a " fraud." But this did not hinder them from attempting to bring homoeopathy within the sphere of their privileges.
The great advance in the medical auxiliary sciences by the physiological school, which apparently intensified the current that ran counter to the homoeopathic tendency, now took place, and gave rise to the idea that homoeopathy was a hindrance to the physiological development of medicine.
Professors at the universities who occupied themselves with homoeopathy were turned out, and young doctors were imbued with a hatred of everything connected with homoeopathy. Its opponents employed all the organs devoted to the interests of the majority in order to represent homoeopathy as mere folly and imposture.
The homoeopaths busied themselves with the development of their system, but yet found time to reply in numerous works, wherein they set forth the real character of their therapeutics, but they omitted to furnish a history of the development of homoeopathy, nor did they care to refute the gross misrepresentations which were propagated in ever increasing numbers, until they, in course of time, grew to the most monstrous dimensions.
It can be incontrovertibly proved that every opponent has been guilty of misrepresentation or error — of ignorance and mendacity — in his representation of homoeopathy. There is no exception to this.
Hahnemannand the homoeopaths were generally attacked with passionate recklessness, and the object of their opponents was gained by making homoeopathy appear to be a farrago of rubbish.
It is only accidentally that every now and then a physician gets a glimpse of the true nature of homeopathy, and he is astonished to perceive the obstructions which the allopaths, in their blind infatuation, have opposed to truth.
Allumons les feux.
If he, then, recognises the gross error of the opponents of homoeopathy ; if he seeks to ascertain the real essence of the system if he grasps its truth, and if he possesses the energy to defend it publicly, he is furiously persecuted on all sides, and is driven out of the medical body and avoided like a plague stricken creature, and that quite regardless of the evidence he may have given of honest striving after truth ; he has committed a mortal crime and is condemned off-hand.[A few words respecting the allopathic efforts to stifle and put down homeopathy in other countries besides Germany, may be permitted here.
In Great Britain, various medical men of greater or less eminence in the old school have written books and articles in journals against it.
The most conspicuous of these polemical authors are Sir J. Y.Simpson, Sir J. Forbes, Sir B. Brodie, Dr. C. J. B. Williams, Dr. Bristowe, Dr. Bushnan and Dr. Routh.
Simpson'swork is elaborate and unfair ; Forbes's first article in his Medical Review is ostensibly judicial and moderate in tone.
He there says : " Whoever examines the homoeopathic doctrines as enounced and expounded in the original writings ofHahnemann and by many of his followers, must admit, not only that the system is an ingenious one, but that it professes to be based on a most formidable array of facts and experiments, and that these are woven into a complete code of doctrine with singular dexterity and much apparent fairness."
Eleven years later, inNature and Art in Disease (p. 250), Forbes speaks of homeopathy as "a system utterly false and despicable" ; the violent attacks made upon him by his allopathic brethren on ac-count of his first article, may perhaps have had something to do with this remarkable change of opinion.
Dr.Bristowe's address on homeopathy at the meeting of the British Medical Association, in 1881, is written in a calm and judicial spirit, and displays the unique quality of speaking of the adherents of Hahnemann's system as though they were entitled to professional courtesy, and might be considered to be honest as well as well-educated men.
The writings ofWilliams and Brodie show that their authors know nothing about the system they attacked.
Bushnan'swork attempts to unite the conflicting parts of quasi-candid examination and unreasoning abuse.
Routh'swork is an attack on homeopathic statistics, which he proves by elaborate tables to be infinitely superior in the results obtained to those of the allopaths, but which he concludes must be false chiefly, as it seems to me, because they do show this superiority.
His argument is like this : Homeopathy is false. Allopathy is true. A false system must be less successful in the treatment of disease than a true one. These statistics show a much greater success in the treatment of disease in homeopathic than in allopathic hospitals, "argal" the homeopathic statistics must be cooked.
The warfare against homeopathy in this country was not con-fined to literature. The power of the majority was exerted against the heterodox minority in other ways.Black was refused the fellow-ship of the Edinburgh College of Physicians ; Henderson was forced to resign his Clinical Professorship ; Horner and Reith were turned out of their hospitals ; coroner's inquests (presided over by allopathic medical coroners) were used oppressively against homoeopathic practitioners ; Colleges and Universities fulminated anathemas against any of their members who should practise the hated system.
Candidates were rejected by examiners if they would not abjure homeopathy. Societies expelled homeopathic members, and even their own allopathic members who met homoeopathists professionally. Articles against homeopathy were frequent in the medical periodicals, but no reply was allowed, nor would these periodicals admit any advertisement of a work on homeopathy unless it was against it, and they even refused to advertise a work of any sort written by a homoeopathist.
Every place and post of honour and emolument was withheld from homoeopathists. In short, the whole hostile armoury that was used against homoeopathy in Germany was employed against it here with the exception of the apothecaries' weapon, for no law exists in Britain preventing a medical man giving his own medicines, or if such law is on the statute book, it has long been obsolete.
In the United States of America, the bigoted practitioners of the old school bound themselves together in an Association, whose chief object was to "boycott " the homoeopaths. They formed a "code of ethics " for this purpose.
Under this code, the Massachusetts homoeopaths were expelled from the State Society ; an allopathic physician of New York was expelled from his society for purchasing goods at a homoeopathic drug-store ; another physician was expelled for assisting a homoeopathic practitioner in a difficult labour case, said homoeopathic practitioner being his own wife ; Dr.Bliss, a Washington allopath, was excommunicated for serving on a Board of Health with a homoeopath ; Dr. Cox was expelled for consulting with the excommunicated Dr. Bliss ; Dr. Van Valzah was dismissed from his lectureship in Jefferson Medical College for trying to save his life with homoeopathic medicine after his allopathic physicians had given him up.
The existence of this Association, whose bond of union is hatred of homoeopathy, has produced complications and difficulties in connexion with the projected International Medical Congress, whereat the allopaths throughout the world, who promised themselves a delightful holiday trip to Washington, are grieving, and the homoeopaths everywhere are laughing.
A British medical periodical(The Medical Times) remonstrates with this American Association for their treatment of the homoeopaths, which reminds us of Satan reproving sin.
In France the old school does not seem to have the same opportunities for exercising oppression on their reforming brethren enjoyed by their colleagues in Germany, England and America, but when a chance occurs we find it as zealously seized on as we could desire.
Thus, on the4th January, 1856, the Anatomical Society of Paris expelled, on account of homoeopathic publications, Drs. J. P. Tessier, Gabalda, Fredault and Jousset, and in the same resolution of expulsion, in order to add insult to injury, this high-minded society included the name of a member who had just been condemned by the tribunals for some infamous crime.
In all the behaviour of the partizans of the old school towards their colleagues of the homoeopathic school, what strikes us most is the total absence of that courtesy and forbearance that should characterize the controversies of members of a liberal and learned profession, and which is to be found in their disputes and discussions about other subjects.
On what other points of medical opinion would the partizans of one side consider it decent or becoming to call their opponents impostors, swindlers, quacks and liars, to expel them from their societies, to refuse all professional intercourse with them, to defraud them of their diplomas, to bar them from defending their views in the periodicals, to harass them with coroner's inquests ? And yet all these things have been done by medical men to colleagues of equal social rank and education, only because these colleagues held other views on the selection and administration of medicine in disease.
It is a curious and unprecedented fact that though the school of traditional, and, as it likes to call itself, " rational " medicine, assailed homoeopathy with a bitterness and rancour that has no parallel in the mode of its reception of other systems and other opinions, it has at the same time gradually abandoned almost all the methods of treatment whichHahnemann denounced, and which it declared to be essential, indispensable, " sheet-anchors," and so forth. Where are now its lancets, leeches, cupping-glasses, setons, issues, actual cauteries, blisters, emetics and mercurial salivation ?
Thanks toHahnemann, the school of traditional medicine has now abandoned its traditional methods, and may say with Sganarelle :
" Cela était autrefois ainsi ; mais nous avons changé tout cela, et nous faisons maintenant in mEdecine d'une mCthode toute nouvelle."
Any one who should bleed now asHahnemann's opponents bled and persecuted him for not doing the like, would be denounced as a dangerous lunatic by that organ of allopathic physic which still retains the name of the instrument of bleeding — The Lancet. — [E D.]
Owing to such a remarkable state of affairs, we are impelled to investigate the therapeutics taught in our universities, and see if it is really such a crime to be discontented with the present system and to look for something better.
Copyright © Robert Séror 2006.