Probably there has never been a principle or precept in medicine that has been more definitely attached to a school than that of the small dose to homoeopathy. That it has a foundation in fact is, of course, self-evident, yet its importance-and this is coming to be more definitely understood of late-has been greatly overrated. When the small dose came into being even the centesimal doses of Hahnemann, the third, sixth, fifteenth, eighteenth, thirtieth, etc., were infinitesimal indeed as compared with the massive doses of the times. Hence it was inevitable that the dose question should be a factor to be conjured with. It accordingly was not only the chief point of difference to the uninformed between the two prevailing schools, but the finely drawn lines of high and low potencies, soon became paramount, and for long seemed to threaten the very life of the school.
With the leaning of many adherents of the lower more material potencies to the methods and practices of the regular schools, whatever of vitality there is at the present time is more and more found to be vested in the Hahnemannian or high potency wing. Veering, as they mainly do, to the old school, the remainder are content to leave the moot question of potencies alone (if as yet unanswerable) and the followers of Hahnemann are again finding themselves more united and of a more liberal mind toward the potency question, and more willing to meet on the common ground of homoeopathy as a still vigorous reaction against a good deal in the regular school that is narrow, bigoted and sectarian. In other words, the whole question is at the present time not: Are you a high or a low potentist; but, Are you a homoeopathist at all?.
This is silently being answered in the affirmative by a minority group in the American Institute of Homoeopathy, in our state societies, and we are glad to say with unanimity in this association.
Let us see what reaction was made by Hahnemann to the high potencies of Korsakoff? Hahnemann makes the following statements: “Remarks on the extreme attenuation of Homoeopathic Medicines,” in the form of postscripts to Korsakoffs paper in the Archive. f. Hom. Heilk.
In this paper the author states that he has diluted medicines up to the 180th, 1000th and 1500th attenuations, and that he found them even in this degree of dilution quiet efficacious. He states that possibly the material division of the medicinal substance attains its limits (at) the third or sixth dilution, and that the subsequent attenuations obtain their medicinal properties by a kind of infection or communication of the medicinal power, after the manner of contagious diseases, to the non-medicinal vehicle; and in corroboration of this notion he relates several experiments, in which he says he communicated medicinal properties to large amounts of unmedicated globules by shaking them up with one dry medicated globule. He likewise remarks that by diluting medicines highly, and by employing such infected globules, the force of the primary action of the medicines, or their tendency to produce homoeopathic aggravations declines whilst the reaction of the organism, or the curative action of the medicine, continually increases.
Hahnemann then states that Korsakoffs observations corroborate his own:
1. That the development of the powers of medicinal substances by the process peculiar to homoeopathy, may be assumed to be almost illimitable. 2. That the higher their dynamization (dematerialization) is carried, the more penetrating and rapid does their operation become; 3. That, however, their effects pass off so much the more speedily.
This letter is altogether too lengthy to reproduce here. He concludes that the thing must stop somewhere-that it cannot go on indefinitely, else we shall have no normal standard of dosage. He therefore recommends the thirtieth potency as the highest of such attenuation.
“Who can say that in the millionth or billionth development the small particles of the medicinal substances have arrived at the state of atoms not susceptible of further division of whose nature we can form not the slightest conception? For if the living organism shows an even stronger reaction to the more highly dynamized attenuation . . . there can be no standard for measuring the degree of the reaction of the vital force against it. The communication or infection appears to take place by means of the power which perpetually spreading around, like an exhalation or emanation from such bodies, even though they are dry, just like those globules the size of a mustard seed that had previously been moistened with a fluid medicine which we employ for the cure of patients by olfaction.
A globule of this kind, e.g., of staphisagria X, which in the course of twenty years, had been smelt several hundreds of times after opening the bottle.. Promises at this hour medicinal power of equal strength as at first, which could not be the case did it not continually exhale its medicinal powers in an inexhaustible manner”.
These remarks of the venerable master of homoeopathy, incredible as they must have seemed even to those who had followed him in the developmental aspects of the new system, are not the less incredible to the modern investigator.
In recent years, however, we have seen the wonder-making experiments with radium, which to the student of modernism are now readily acceptable facts of science. In fact, such scientists as Prof. J. J. Thompson and Prof. Rutherford, have already predicted that the time is not far distant when the dream of the alchemists- the transmutation of metals-may become an accomplished fact.
Of this magic element radium, about which we hear so much, there is said to be but three ounces, or thereabout, in the known world; yet think of the concentration of this small amount. It must represent, tons upon tons of the various crude ores from which it is extracted. In fact, so unstable is this element that certain of its rays are, so far as is known, inexhaustible. Dr. Stillman Bailey, of Chicago, has said of radium that.
“This energy is constantly being evolved-it is a ceaseless flow measured alike by years and centuries. Its one-time mystery has been mastered by a group of scientists who have laterally formulated a new chemistry-a new mineralogy and have disclosed to a part of the world the meaning of the molecule, the atom, the ion and the electron and if the term fits the ultra infinitesimal proton.
The radioactive substances evolve a perennial supply of energy from year to year without stimulus and without exhausting and yet the whole part is still so mysterious because the physical senses are so obtuse. . . . Radium alone has the property of imparting to other substances with which it comes in contact, the making of all such substances to a degree of radioactivity. . . . The emanation of radium gives three times as much energy as the radium from which it was derived, although the actual amount of matter in the emanation is practically imperceptible, and altogether invisible.”
Kent States in his “Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy” that “Everything in the universe has its aura or atmosphere. Every star and planet has an atmosphere. Every star and planet has an atmosphere. The suns atmosphere is its light and heat. (It has been suggested that the sun owes its heat to the amount of radium which it contains.) Every human being has his atmosphere or aura; every animal has its atmosphere or aura. This aura is present in all entities.”
It is a fact probably known to all of you that the late Dr. Walter J. Kilner, formerly electrician of St. Thomas Hospital in London, claimed to have demonstrated this aura or human emanation and made such demonstration visible through the use of a dye called dicyanin.
He states in his book, entitled, “The Human Atmosphere”, that this aura is not only visible by the aid of screens, but it varies in health and disease and these variations can be made use of in the diagnosis of such conditions as malignancy, epilepsy, pregnancy and the like. He states, furthermore, that while its ……….. exact nature is unknown, its behavior suggests that it is not unlike in many respects the magic cloud, the emanations from the poles of a galvanic cell, from the magnet, and is not unlike radioactivity.
He cites the previous experiments of Reichenbach with fifty or more sensitives, who could detect the emanations from crystals, magnets, etc., the so-called odic force which the latter claimed was emitted from all living bodies and from certain crystalline and metallic bodies as well.
It is a well-known phenomenon that certain insects, such as the firefly, are phosphorescent, hence self-illuminating in the dark; and but recently in the experiments now being conducted by the expedition of the “Arcturus”, in search of the fabled Sargasso Sea, certain forms of fish have been photographed by their own luminosity.
In a paper read before the International Homoeopathic Council at Barcelona last year, by Dr. Auiceto Surial, “Homoeopathic Dynamization v. Science,” the author would give us to understand that from the standpoint of science there are three distinct periods in the different potencies. First, the chemical or atomic mode of action; second, an electrical mode; and lastly, a vibratory. These three periods may in all probability be commensurate with potencies up to the twenty-sixth decimal.
Benjamin Collins Woodbury was born August 13, 1882, at Patten, Maine. He was the son of Dr. Benjamin Collins, a homeopathic physician, and Matidle Albina (Knowles). He attended Patten Academy and received his M.D. from Boston University Medical School in 1906. Following graduation Dr. Woodbury began his practice in Lewiston and Winthrop, Maine, and in 1907 moved to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he practiced for the next nine years. Dr. Woodbury married Miss Gertrude Fancis O'Neill of Boston at Eliot, Maine on June 18, 1915.
In March, 1919, Dr. Woodbury left the Islands and located in San Francisco where he practiced for two years and then returned to the East and established a practice in Boston. He was a trustee and a member of the staff of the Hahnemann Hospital, Boston, and in 1947 was elected president if the International Hahnemann Institute, Washington, D.C. He also gave many lectures on homeopathy at Boston University and at postgraduate sessions of the American foundation of Homeopathy.
Dr. Woodbury died on January 22, 1948, in Boston at the age of 65.
The doctor was the author of "Materia Medica for Nurses", published in 1922 and of many articles in medical journals in England, India, and the United States. Dr. Woodbury was also a writer of plays and poetry.