HOMOEOPATHY, a system of medical practice, introduced by Samuel Hahnemann into Germany in the end of last century, and having, in the present day, adherents in most European countries. The homeopathic system was reduced by its founder to a very simple expression, or elementary therapeutic law, similia similibus curentur—i.e., let like things be treated by like. In other words, it is asserted that a disease, having certain external manifestations or symptoms, is to be treated by the administration of a remedy, or a succession of remedies, which have the power of originating similar symptoms in the healthy body. The name Homeopathy (from the two Greek words ὁμοίος, like, and πάθος, a morbid state, or perhaps from the compound word ὁμοιοπάθεια, a similarity of feeling), is expressive of this relation between the effects of the remedy and those of the disease for which it is presumed to be a cure. Hahnemann was fond of contrasting the simplicity of the homeopathic system with the complexity of the prevailing medical doctrines, which, he alleged, instead of following the indications of nature by regarding disease as a collection of symptoms, was engaged in a fruitless search into its proximate or essential causes; remedies being administered, not from their bearing any relation to the evident symptoms, but from a presumed power over the hidden causes of disease. The system so characterized, Hahnemann termed allopathy, or allopathy (from ἀλλοίος, different, and πάθος). He admitted also another possible therapeutic system, viz., Antipathy (from ἀντί, opposed to, and πάθος), comprising those cases in which a remedy was selected on account of its producing in the healthy body symptoms of a kind opposed to those of the disease. Of this method, Hahnemann professed to find numerous examples in the practice of medicine in all ages. He even found it laid down as a rule (contraria contrariis curentur) in some of the Hippocratic writings, and constantly refers to it as an established method
against which he protested as fallacious, ineffective, or, at best, only palliative. Homeopathy, according to Hahnemann, is not merely a more certain or more effective method of cure than either of these competing systems; it is, on the contrary, the only method by which disease ever has been, or ever can be, truly eradicated by art. It is in theory a universal as well as an exclusive method; and all the other principles on which medical men have from time immemorial been accustomed to act in the treatment of disease stand condemned by its acceptance.
It would be easy to show that with Hahnemann himself the homeopathic theory was expressly set forth as waging an internecine war with all previous medical doctrine. The vilification of ancient and contemporary medicine as a system or a science, and the almost equally unlimited condemnation of its results as an art, form in fact the key to his doctrine, the corner-stone of his system. Medicine is to him a "fatal art," which has never, except by accident, rendered a service to suffering humanity. It can be continuously practised only by those whose conscience is seared, and whose mental discrimination is destroyed by long-continued persistence in mischief; in all others, it reduces itself to the administration of placebos without efficacy, and of which the best that can be said is that they do little harm. But it was inconsistent with the justice and mercy of Divine Providence to leave mankind in this miserable plight. The discovery of a sure and simple way of treating all diseases must be possible, if God is a beneficent being, and not a ruthless tyrant. Now, there are only three possible ways of using remedies. For, firstly, all that we know of diseases, and of remedial agents, is founded on a knowledge of their palpable effects or symptoms; and, secondly, the symptoms of the remedy (its effects upon the sound body) must be either similar to (similia similibus), or opposite to (contraria contrariis), or different altogether from, those of the disease. Of the systems founded on these data, the last two alone have been hitherto tried; and multiplied experience having proved that allopathy and antipathy are equally erroneous and equally destructive, homeopathy follows as an inevitable consequence; and was thus, in fact, as Dr. Henderson says, reasoned out by Hahnemann "before a single testing experiment had been tried."
We carefully avoid exaggerating, though undoubtedly we greatly condense, the argument of Hahnemann, as it appears in several of his works, when we thus state it. Were we to enter on what might be called the metaphysics of his system, we should greatly exceed our limits; still more so were we to devote any space to the consideration of individual instances, or to the quotation of individual passages. It must be apparent to any intelligent reader, that the system blocked out above is that of a fanatic, not of a severe inquirer into nature; that it begins and ends in assumptions, of which it is difficult to say whether the first or the last be the more extravagant. It is surely not too much to suppose, in opposition to Hahnemann, that an art which has existed, and has been accumulating the elements, at least, of science, in the experience of several thousand years; which has laboured assiduously wherever there has been sickness and suffering, with certainly not less of disinterested feeling, and certainly not more of wickedness or of stupidity among its professors, than falls to the common lot of humanity in almost all professions and callings—that such an art may have had some little foundation in truth, some glimpses of principle, some insight into the laws which regulate the human frame in health and disease. Equally certain is it that these principles and laws have not been asserted (like those from which Hahnemann endeavours to deduce his philosophy) to be final and universal. If the choice be only between "allopathy" or "antipathy" and "homeopathy," as Hahnemann asserts, we feel little disposition to pronounce any comparative opinion; but we place ourselves
Homœopathy. readily on the side of limited but reasonable knowledge, and experience tried by ages, against extravagant credulity and bombastic self-assertion.
The writings of Hahnemann are, for the most part, violent and outrageous polemics, not always without plausibility, against the systems which he caricatures under the names of allopathy and antipathy, followed or accompanied by statements of an equally extravagant kind in favour of the law "similia similibus curentur," which he everywhere treats as a pure and unadulterated truth, admitting neither of qualification nor of question. The practitioners who act upon an uncertain or imperfect apprehension of this truth, and who attempt, in any degree, to reconcile their practice with the traditional doctrines of the art, Hahnemann treats with a contempt and dislike to which even his dislike of allopathy itself is obliged to yield. This "bastard homœopathy" is, in his view, as discreditable as it is dangerous. Those who practise it are in no sense homœopathists, and are deserving of the strongest condemnation. It is a crime against homœopathy to give even the semblance of an allopathic remedy; and Hahnemann does not hesitate to confess that he has on this account given up the use of some of those simple palliatives, whose value he had attested by his own experience before he embraced homœopathy, but whose use he considered as being at once superseded by the new system, and inconsistent with its principles.
A system like this must of course be tried as a whole. It must stand or fall by its own tests. If true, it demands nothing less than that all previous systems shall give way to it. But, on the other hand, if it errs in one point, it is guilty of all. Hence the question between the homœopathists and their opponents cannot be settled by an array of instances on the one hand, or an array of authorities on the other. A thousand instances of like curing like will not prove the law universal in the face of half a dozen opposing facts. But all the authorities in the world will not disprove homœopathy, unless they can succeed in establishing a system or a fact which is at variance with it.
Tried by this simple issue, the strength and the weakness of homœopathy (or at least of Hahnemann's homœopathy) are at once apparent. Its strength lies in the confessed inability of ordinary medicine to oppose to it any system as simple, and apparently as complete, as its own; its weakness, in the total insufficiency of its alleged instances to support the enormity of the postulate. To the mind which must at all hazards have a complete and universal system, it may be conceded that homœopathy is no worse than any other, and, in connection with its ordinary practice of infinitesimal doses, less hurtful than many systems. But to the mind which regards all systems as subject to the rigid criticism of facts homœopathy must ever appear one of the most unfounded and monstrous of delusions.
In saying that "like cures like" Hahnemann uses a form of expression which (especially in Latin) bears a very respectable resemblance to the enunciation of a great natural law. But examine that expression, and, still better, try it by instances. What is "like," and what unlike? Polonius thought that Hamlet's cloud was like a camel, a weasel, and a whale, in turn; it was probably as like the one as the other. One man sees a likeness between certain members of a family; another cannot see it; a third sees it at one time, and fails at another. In one sense all men are more or less alike; in another infinitely varied and dissimilar. In the region of ideas, the poet and the wit equally see resemblances which duller minds fail to appreciate. The naturalist discovers likeness in those objects which to the ordinary sense are the most dissimilar; while flowers and minerals, birds and fishes—so like that the common eye cannot distinguish them from each other, or can distinguish them only with effort and by dint of instruction—are found to be placed far apart among the genera and species of the care-
ful and analytic observer. In short, no feature of objects is more liable to be differently appreciated from different points of view, and by different minds, than precisely this one of external resemblance.
The force of this argument, in its application to the homœopathic law, is all the greater that Hahnemann does not admit identity between the symptoms of the disease and the effects of the remedy as constituting a reason for its therapeutic employment. On the contrary, identity is destructive of the alleged homœopathic action, which is found to exist only in connection with great similarity. But it may well be asked if absolute identity be not, in such a case, merely the greatest possible amount of similarity.
It is well known to the man of science that nothing is so apt to mislead the mind as the tracing of analogies. Yet the whole basis of the law, similia similibus curentur, is nothing but a series of analogies so vague, and sometimes so preposterous, that in any department of natural history they would be rejected as unworthy the name of science. The truth of this assertion will be admitted by almost any man (not being a professed homœopathist), who will examine the assertions recorded in regard to only a few articles of the homœopathic materia medica. But as our limits forbid this inquiry, it may suffice for the present to mention that a large proportion of Hahnemann's instances of the homœopathic law are adduced from the writings of physicians who not only were unaware of the resemblance between the symptoms of the remedy and those of the disease, but, according to Hahnemann, prescribed those very remedies upon the antipathic or allopathic principle. Were it true (as it is not) that ordinary medical practice was founded on either of these alleged principles, there would be little or no difficulty in defending one or both of them by a reference to the very same remedies and the very same diseases as are adduced by Hahnemann to prove the homœopathic law. But in placing his so-called therapeutic law upon a basis of mere analogy, Hahnemann has scarcely betrayed a greater misconception of true science than he has of medical history, in ascribing to his opponents a practice founded on "allopathy" or "antipathy,"—names as entirely unknown to medical science as "homœopathy" itself.
It may safely be alleged that the favour shown to homœopathy as a system by a certain portion of the public depends much more on the supposed success of its practice than upon the validity of the evidence adduced in support of its law. Homœopathy is embraced, not as a philosophical truth, but as a method of dealing with the minor ills which flesh is heir to, certainly much more agreeable, and presumed to be not less safe, than that of ordinary physic.
This idea is not entirely without foundation, if ordinary physic be conceived to be nothing else but a succession of bleedings, purgings, and blisterings. That medical resources have often been abused, and that a large amount of suffering and inconvenience, if not of disease and death, have sprung from the too active use of remedies having acknowledged power both for good and for evil, no one will be disposed to deny. The employment of infinitesimal or very minute doses by the homœopathist has undoubtedly tended to make that system the natural refuge of those who have suffered from the nimia diligentia medici. And as a very considerable portion of diseases require little else than dietetic and hygienic means for their cure, when cure is possible, even the pure homœopathist does not always fail so notoriously as to discredit his system. Many diseases, besides, are well known to be self-curative; as the most ancient and celebrated of the Greeks has expressed it, "Our natures are the physicians of our diseases." And in those cases which plainly require the assistance of active remedies there are now-a-days few homœopathists who are not found willing to cast aside their system so far as to employ at least the simpler and safer varieties of active drugs after a
fashion confessedly not homœopathic. With such practitioners, homœopathy, with its infinitesimal doses, qualified by the administration of active drugs in cases of emergency, becomes merely ordinary practice reduced to the minimum of activity; and, as such, may be a much better practice than the opposite extreme. But, on the other hand, such "bastard homœopathy" would, as we have seen above, have been most severely condemned by Hahnemann. It is, in fact, homœopathy in nothing but the name.
The doctrine, or rather the practice, of infinitesimal doses, is undoubtedly one of the most curious aspects of homœopathy, as it is one of the most singular phases of human opinion in matters medical. The ordinary and universal persuasion that remedial substances act upon the system in something like a direct proportion to the quantity in which they are introduced into it, is not indeed opposed by Hahnemann, so far as the physiological effects of these substances are concerned. It is not denied that one hundred grains of arsenic, for instance, are more likely to kill than the hundredth part of one grain. But it is maintained that the powers of remedies over disease are so distinct from all their physiological, and, indeed, all their material properties, as not to be subject to the same conditions of increase and diminution. The curative property of a remedy is, according to Hahnemann, developed in a much higher degree by an inconceivably minute than by a palpable dose. The latter, indeed, interferes directly with the cure; because the symptoms developed by the remedy, being similar to those of the disease, invariably tend to its aggravation in a degree corresponding with the amount of the dose and its homœopathicity. It was, indeed, this constant aggravation of the disease under homœopathic remedies which first led Hahnemann to reduce his doses to impalpable quantities as an indispensable condition of safety in their use. So bigoted was he to his system that he did not see even in this contradictory result of his own experience an argument against his alleged universal law!
The extent of these infinitesimal dilutions is such as to be inconceivable by the human intellect; they can only be expressed in the technical abbreviations of the arithmetician, and even then are with difficulty carried in the memory. Thus in the thirtieth dilution one grain of the resulting liquid contains one decillionth of a grain of the remedy, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000th part of the whole. If one entire grain of medicine were thus diluted, it may be shown, by accurate mathematical computation, that the quantity of fluid required for the purpose would form an ocean one hundred and forty billion times as large as our whole planetary system; or if a solid substance were used, so that a single globule might contain a decillionth of a grain of the remedy, the original grain thus diluted with inert matter would be equal in weight to "one hundred and forty billion spherical masses extending from limit to limit of Neptune's orbit," or to "many hundred spheres, each with a semidiameter or radius extending from the earth to the nearest fixed star." With which calculations from Dr Simpson's work on homœopathy, revised and corrected as they are by Professor Kelland, we trust our readers will be satisfied. Yet the homœopathic dilutions recommended by some of the more modern homœopathists far exceed the thirtieth in minuteness; and Hahnemann himself often recommended the simple smelling (olfaction) of a globule diluted as above!
Hahnemann was born in 1755, at Meissen, on the Elbe, near Dresden. His father was a painter on porcelain; and his early education, as well as his medical studies, were pursued under considerable pecuniary pressure. He began thus early the occupation which for a long time afterwards was one of his chief sources of emolument, viz., translating from the English. He graduated at Erlangen in 1779, and soon after this he commenced practice and married. He
did not at first succeed in gaining public confidence; and Homonyms indeed, for a good many years before the great arcanum was discovered he had almost no actual practice, and occupied himself chiefly with translations, and with chemistry, of which latter science he made some useful and profitable applications. He himself said, years afterwards, that he had retired from practice from conscientious motives, finding that he could not reconcile the responsibilities of medicine with his scepticism as to the remedies in use. It is rather inconsistent with this view of the matter, however, that he was busily engaged in propagating with his pen those very therapeutical doctrines which he thought it a sin to apply in practice. He was still translating very largely, and in 1790 was engaged on Cullen's Materia Medica, which had appeared in England the previous year. During that previous year, too, he had written his original work On Syphilis, and on the Mercurius Solubilis Hahnemannii, a work which presents no trace of scepticism, but, on the contrary, an all-devouring faith in the drugs then in use. It was from Cullen's Materia Medica that he obtained the suggestion as to the homœopathic use of Peruvian bark. After some temporary engagements he removed to Königslutter to begin practice in 1795. He continued as before to be a copious writer, and in 1796 produced his first attempt to expound the homœopathic law. In 1799 his practice of dispensing his own medicines brought him into collision with the apothecaries of the place, who managed to bring the laws to bear on a method of practice so much opposed to their vested interests as tradesmen. The consequence was that Hahnemann left Königslutter, and that the unjust restrictions to which his practice had been subjected produced the usual fruit of persecution—sympathy and notoriety, both for the man and for the doctrines, which he now began to put forward with a bolder front than hitherto. From Königslutter he went to several places in succession, and ended by settling in Leipzig in 1810. In this year he published the Organon der Heil-Kunst; and in the next a volume on Materia Medica, containing numerous "provings" of drugs on himself and on others. The completion of this work occupied him till 1821. He became at Leipzig a successful practitioner, and left it only in consequence of a persecution like that to which he was subjected at Königslutter. He next went to Anhalt-Coethen, where the reigning prince was one of his warm partizans. He remained here, occupied with practice and with his pen, till 1835, when, at the age of eighty, he married a second time, or rather was married and carried off to Paris by an enthusiastic young lady, Mlle. Mélanie d'Hervilly, who was anxious to secure for the French capital the benefits of homœopathy and the person of its founder. He died at Paris on the 2d July 1843, having engaged in a large practice during the eight years he resided there, in which he was assisted by his wife and daughter. Madame Hahnemann continued to practise homœopathy after the death of her husband, notwithstanding an attempt in the French courts of law to restrain her as an unlicensed practitioner; on which occasion she received the powerful support, in the Chamber of Deputies, of M. Montalembert, who argued, in a speech of great eloquence and power, against restrictions on medical practice. (w. t. g.)