THE true scope of medical science is the healing of the sick, the relief of human misery. Tried by this test, there was no real medical science in the world until it was evolved from the law-similia similibus curantur. Before this all was blind experiment, all disorder and confusion, and to the pages of disease were added the tortures of the damned. Disease was regarded as some evil spirit which had possessed the body. Some infarct, which bad lodged in the bowels and must be driven out by purging or let out by the lancet.
The wildest and most absurd definitions were given, e.g., an infarct was defined by Kampf, in 1726, as an unnatural condition of the bloodvessels, which are plugged in various places by ill concocted, variously degenerated, fluid bereft inspissated, viscid, bilious polypus and coagulated blood. Heinreeh Speffens, who, in Oken’s periodical, 1822, is put on a level with Aristotle, Goethe, and Humboat, thus defines hearing. It is the identity of the inorganic of the organization and its internal being, consequently identity of the nervous and osseous systems. Hunger is internal tension of the assimilation under the influence of the mass opposed external.-Ameke’s History of Homoeopathy. .
In 1803 physiological chemistry taught that blood consisted of nine ingredients: odoriferous matter, fibrinous parts, albumen, sulphur, gelatine, iron, potash, soda, and water. The medical history of the times down to the date of Samuel Hahnemann’s appearance upon the field of action is a whirling of theories, one following upon the other with astonishing rapidity.
Stoll taught that disease was caused by gastric impurities, bilious conditions, and intestinal obstructions; therefore, vomit and purge was his watchword.
Brown that asthenia and asthenia caused all disease, and “allay irritation” was his war cry. The antiphlogistic treatment contended for supremacy, but, whatever theory was uppermost, poor old humanity was blistered and bled and salivated and purged with intent to drive out some unseen, unknown evil thing which was supposed to be its enemy.
All experiments of the actions of drugs were made upon the sick. Drugs were compounded in mixtures of from eight to fifty remedies, as that it was impossible to separate the action of one drug from the other or from the symptoms of the disease. In this absence of law and order, in this extremity of the human race, the phenomenon which always appears at such a crisis was repeated. A man was raised up who was equal to the emergency, Samuel Hahnemann. He established a system of perfect law and order.
The fact that the poisonous effect of drugs can be used as the determining indication for their selection in the treatment of disease was dimly seen by the ancients, but Hahnemann seized upon the fact and dragged it into the light of perfect day. He demonstrated that it was the foundation rock of medical science; that it was a fixed and perfect law which never can be altered or improved, though its methods of application may be almost endless. Upon this rock he built a Materia Medica.
He was no common man who, in the error of his age, could see so clearly. It is true he partook somewhat of the color of his times, but illumined the age with a wondrous light. He adopted an entirely new method of determining the curative power of drugs, viz, proving then upon healthy organisms,-the method now approved of and practiced by all scientists.
He discovered that certain remedies had specific action upon certain tissues and curative action in certain diseases. As a chemist, he far surpassed the age in which he lived. He discovered a test for metals which has stood the test of time, and is used in every laboratory in the world to-day. He discovered several new products, among then the black oxide of Mer., our Mer.sol. He was the first physician in the world to advocate single remedies and small doses, to regard diet and hygiene as important in the treatment of the sick. Was not this a legacy to medical science? Was not this the birth of medical science?.
My second proposition is that there has been no progress in the therapeutics of the dominant school since the glorious truth of Homoeopathy burst upon the world, except as it has been developed upon Hahnemannian principles or stolen outright from our system without credit being given.
It is quite possible to set the world agog with some wonderful discovery, as did Brown-Sequard’s Elixir of life, and yet contribute nothing to medical progress, because it is soon proven to be not only worthless but harmful. All the so-called scientific discoveries, as Brown Sequard’s Elixir, the oral-tar compounds, and the late Dr. Hammond’s vital energizer, may be classed among the harmful discoveries, and therefore have no weight in the argument. Hahnemann built the tramway upon which all great lines of thought have been projected in both the Allopathic School and our own, Rokitansky, Virchow, Klebs, and Koch are indebted to him for the principle upon which they elaborated their thought.
Hahnemann had discovered, as before mentioned, that certain remedies has a specific action upon certain organs and tissues, as Digitalis upon the heart.
And it was upon this basis that Virchow wrought out his localization theory. Hahnemann anticipated the germ theory when he discovered the essential germ cause of cholera. Koch even wrought in the self-same methods as Hahnemann. He tested the poisonous matter upon healthy organisms, then diluting the poison infinitesimally, he tested it upon diseased organisms, differing only in the method of administration, using injection aided by the mechanical improvement of his day.
The most recent discoveries of Koch regarding the blood of diphtheria and typhoid containing elements which are curative in each of the diseases referred to show that the gleaner is going on in the fields already harvested by our school. Hering had proved the worth of Tuberculinum when Koch was in pinafores. He also advocated the use of Hydrophobin sixty years before Pasteur rediscovered it, also Psorinum.
Homoeopaths have enriched medical science by proving drugs of commerce, which were before considered inert, to be capable of curing disease. They have antedated the use of the diseased products of the human body as curative agents. And another most wonderful development entirely due to Homoeopaths is the demonstration of the fact that various animal viruses will heal the sick. This was never dreamed of by the Allopathic School, and they have not yet stolen these remedies, to my knowledge.
This enables the homoeopath to wield incalculable vantage over them in a treatment of all malignant diseases, as typhoid fever, diphtheria, erysipelas, etc. The animal viruses, as Apis, Crotalus, Lachesis, Naja, Tarentula, Theridion, Bufones, etc., have proven of untold relief to human misery, and are entirely due to the heroic provings of Homoeopathis. Constantine Hering enriched medical science by his labors along this line.
Hering, like of Hahnemann’s followers, was a very learned man. He was a wonderful naturalist. The collection which he made at Surinam is preserved with great care in the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.
There are numbers of individual remedies which owe their use entirely to Homoeopaths, and are now used by Allopaths, no credit being given for their use, as Aconite, Pulsatilla, Rhus tox., Mercurius, Glonoine, Hepar sulphur, etc. Many of these remedies are recommended in their text-books-Ringer, Shoemaker and Phillips with long paragraphs of Homoeopathic indications so plain that you would suppose you were reading Hughes or Arndt.
These indications have been garbled from our literature with the most impudent kind of plagiarism, viz., Chamomilla is recommended by Ringer in summer diarrhoea of children, characterized by green, many-colored stools, Podophyllum in bilious morning diarrhoea. Dr. Aulde, of Philadelphia, recommends Rhus tox, in rheumatism in doses of one part to ten, but expresses diffidence in giving his carnation concerning a remedy so altogether new, notwithstanding it was carefully proven by Hahnemann, as every Homoeopath well knows.
They give Rhus tox. for rheumatism, Pulsatilla for dysmenorrhoea, and Aconite for fever, but do not differentiate between these remedies and adopt the one which fits the individual case. Therefore, while they acknowledge the propriety of proving drugs upon the healthy, use our remedies and our dose. (Their medicine cases are full of semi-potentized triturate tablets and pilules.) They are not making the progress they would seem to be making, because they are not using these remedies homoeopathically but empirically. These facts are too well known to this Convention for me to enlarge upon the subject.
In the face of the most unjust opposition and cruel persecution known in the annals of history, we have forced the dominant school to reform its methods and adopt a gentler and more humane system, and have won to our belief such a majority of the power and intelligence of the laity that should the earth open to-day and swallow up every Homoeopath, public opinion would protect the world from the barbarism of the past.
