The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-10-11 00:00:00

THE lIONICEPATHIC SYSTEM OF MEDICINE.

We copy the following humorous, but, we believe, accurate
description of the doctrines and practice of this new school of
medicine, from our able contemporary, the Manchester Courier:
"To build up an universal system of medicine upon a simple
proposition : to make it plain to the patient by what means and
in what manner his cure may be effected ; to change the vague
and obscure terms of art into a catalogue of distinct and intelli-
ble symptoms; and, last, not least, to convert the odious opera-
tion of taking physic into the.simple and not inelegant diversion
of swallowing a few tiny pellets of tinctured sugar—to the utter
extinction of all draughts, pills, and boluses, and extreme dis-
grace and discomfort of apothecaries—these ate the dashing in-
novations on the therapeutic art essayed by Dr. Hahnemann;
and this is the character of that doctrine of Honteppathic, which,
for the last twenty. years, has caused no little sensation among
our Teutonic neighbours, though its very name has as yet
scarcely penetrated into our insular regions. In this dispeptic
land, where almost every work, however contemptible, upon the
interesting topics of disease, diet, and digestion, obtains its hour
of popularity, and where the German language and literature
are now generally studied, we have found-no notice of a subject
so likely, it should seem, to excite attention, except in a few
slight and superficial observations by Dr. Granville, entombed
amid the heavier masses of his journal. Be the doctrines of
Hahnemann, therefore, true as they are pleasing, or false as
they are startling by their novelty, it is time that they should
be made known to the British public,- and submitted to the keen
and sagacious criticism of our own medical school.
The fundamental principle of Honicepathic is expressed in
its name. It is, according to Dr. Granville, " the art of heal-
ing founded on resemblances;" or, more plainly, it seeks to es-
t4lish as an universal truth the preposition, that every disease
incurable by such medicines as would produce i❑ a healthy per-
son symptoms similar to those which characterise the given
disease.

Opposed, then, to the ancient dogma of the palliative method
contraria contrariig, the " observation, reflection, and expe-
rience" of Elahnemann have led him to pronounce the oracular
decree, similia similibus curantur, that is, let one nail drive out
another; or, in the language of the poet,—

" Tut ! man, one fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish ;
Turn giddy, and be help by backward turning ;
One desperate grief cures With another's languish
Take thou some new infection to thy eye,
And the rank poison of the old wilt die!'
Lines which plainly evince that Shakspeare, who was so many
things without suspecting it, was, among the rest, a Homce-
path ist !
It is upon the foregoing propositioni, true or false, that
Hahnemann grounds his division of the healing art into three
branches. .First stands the Hotnospathic, the " only proper
method," imitating nature in her most scientific mood; then
the idiopathic or hutropathic, hitherto the commonest method,
which hopes to cure disease by exciting dissimilar affection;
listly, the antipathetic or enantiopathetic, (the pulliutice, ) which
meets a disorder in the teeth, opposes contrary to contrary,
gives for a season a seeming relief, but ends by making matters
worse. It is a proof of Hahu-nemann's celebrity that he has
made these learned appellations current over great part of the
continent. There, the dispensers of health and longevity are
now Hmucepaths or Allopaths.
Out of the main theorem of Hoincepathie proceeds two corol-
laries, which have excited as much discussion as the great prin-
ciple itself. The fist is, that disease is nothing but an aggre-
gate of symptoms; and that therefore, in the treatment of dis-
ease, the physician's sole business is to extinguish the symptoms,
since this will necessarily infer the extinction of their cause.
It is true that ce“ante ("aura tollitur ePctus, but the reverse of
this adage is held by Hahnemann to be equally true. He and
his disciples,-though skilled in the facts of pathology, reject the
customary names, whether popular or scientific; they profess
to know nutniug about _ _

All feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,

but only about the component pains and debilities which these
and all other varieties of sickness are made up. A genuine
hoineepath does not ask you whether you have a fever, or a
cold, or a fit of gout or of rheumatism; but he makes curious in-
quiries as to the state of your skin, your head, your joints, or
your principal toe. Nay, he does not understand what you
mean by a head-ache, or ear-ache, or stomach-ache; but he
must learn in what part of the head, in which of the ears, in
what corner of the stomach uneasiness prevails; and whether it
be a throbbing or a boring pain, a gnawing, or a pricking, a
rending, or a griping paiu. For, since by symptoms alone his
practice is guided, he must have at least full cognizance of
these, pursuing them through all the categories of how, where,
where, and, with an inquisitive minuteness that defies the com-
petition of common inediciners. Two closely-printed pages of
the organon dictate the heads under which these inquiries
ought to be conducted, and still leave an undefined 4-c. to be
filled up by the sagacity of the practitioner.
The second corollary from the great homeopathic principle is
attained through something like the former process of ratiocina-
tion. Since, in the treatment of a disease medicines calculated
to produce similar effects are alone to be used, these medicines
will have to work upon au organization already predisposed to
be affected by them; and the power of medicine being at any
rate more energetic than that of natural sickness, a very small
quantity of medicine must be adequate to act upon an organiza-
tion thus prepared. The slightest aggravation of the disease by
medical means will constitute an artificial malady powerful
enough to controul and suppress the natural one; and the more
slight this artificial malady. the more easily will it, in its turn,
give way to the vital principle. The necessity of small doses is
thus plausibly deducted ; but the practical shape which this con-
clusion takes is the most startling part of the whole Hahnemau-
nic system, and that which will assuredly give the rudest shock
to the reader's credulity. Proceeding step by step in his reduc-
tions, Dr. Halineman has at length brought down his doses to
an exiguity unheard of, and seemingly incredible. The mil-
lionth' part of a grain of many substances is an ordinary dose;
but the reduction proceeds to the billionth, trillionth, nay to the
decillionth portion of a grain ! By describing the mode of pre-
paration, we shall give a clearer idea of these marvellous pres-
criptions. Supposing the medicineto belong to the mineral
kingdom, one grain of it, it possible in a pulverized, form, is
mixed with 99 grains of sugar of milk, by rubbing them toge-
ther in a 'glass or stone mortar for the space of an hour. Of this
mixture one grain is, in like manner, taken and compounded by
another rubbing of an hour's duration, with 99 grains of sugar
of milk, so that each grain of this second composition only con-
tains one ten-thousandth part of the original grain of medicine.
A third tituration will bring the proportion down to one mil-
lionth, a sixth to one billionth, and a ninth to one trillionth part,
and so on, if it be expedient to carry the reduction farther. In
the preparation of mercury, one grain of pure running quick-
silver is reduced in this manner to the millionth degree; a sin-
gle grain of the powder thus obtained is then dissolved in 99
drops ofdiluted spirits of wine; one drop of this solution is again
shaken together with 99 drops of the vinous spirit, and another
repetition of this process having reduced the mixture to the bil-
lionth degree, a few sugar pellets, of the size of poppy-seeds, are
moistened with this liquid, whereof two or three constitute a dose !
In expressing medicine from a plant, one drop of the extracted
juice is mixed and reduced in the same manner with repeated
quantities of the spirits of wine, until the proper degree of at-
tenuation is achieved. For administering all kinds of homeo-
pathic medicine, the sugar pellets are the favourite medium. A
more agreeable mode of physicing was certainly never devised;
nor one more sure to relieve the specific drug, suitable for a
given case, from the admixture of heterogeneous elements. But
the deglutition of even these miute particles is not esteemed al-
ways necessary; in the use of the loadstone, it is by touch alone
that the medicinal effect is sought to be produced. In more
than one instance Dr. Hahneinann prescribes merely to smell
the phial in which the pellets are inclosed ; nay, by some hints
that he drops here and there, he seems to believe that certain
drugs may be taken as adepts read music, at sight !

Though we should abstract from this doctrine of infinitesimal
doses the last-mentioned excess or its extravagance, there would
still remain enough, in all conscience, to dilate the eyes of the
greediest lovers of the wonderful. It is against this part of his
system that Dr. Flahnemann's opponents have directed the
thickest shafts of their ridicule, as well as of their more serious
arguments. Thus the facetious Ludwig Wilhelm Sachs, a
professor in the University of Konigsburg, seeks to demon-
strate the nullity of the small doses, by comparing them with a
flea set to draw the load of four horses; though to this "base
comparison" it might well be answered by a Homcepath, that
the flea which should bear an analogy to his thrice-pounded
and well-shaken preparation, could be no common flea; and
that, if it were so, the weight removeable by such an agent
could be no proper loSrthen for a team. Another ingenious ad-
versary suggests, that if the decillionth part of a grain have any
efficacy, an ounce of medicine thrown into the Lake of Geneva
would 'tie sufficient to physic all the Calvanists of Switzerland.
But to this it has been thought worth while gravely to reply,
first, that there is no real analogy between the terms of this
fanciful proportion; and secondly, that the body of liquid
contained iu the lake of Geneva could not possibly, even by
one of its own violent storms, be shaken into such perfect com-
mixture with the medicinal ingredient as the conditions of a
Homcepathic prescription require. Further, the self-contra-
dictions of Huhnemann under this head are arrayed by Dr.
Sachs against him. It seems, that in 1797, Dr. Hahnemann
talked and wrote of the marvellous effects of ignatia amara in an
epidemic fever among children, when he gave from one-half
to two-thirds of a grain to infants between one and three years
of age, and from two to three grains to children between seven
and ten years, repeating his doses every twelve hours; now a
trillionth, a quadrillionth, or even a smaller portion of a grain,
is deemed by him a sufficient dose; so that the inhabitants of a
whole solar system might be cured with what he formerly gave
to a suckling. So. in cases of influenza, the ILthneniann of
former days was wont to administer from thirty to forty grains
of camphor every twenty-four hours, and did nut fail of curing
once in a hundred instances; whereas, according to his pre-
sent practice, a new universe would need to be created for the
consumption of such a dose."
Such is the system of Homcepathic, of which Madame
Malihran's physician is a disciple. Can any one wonder that
she did not recover?