Homeopathy & Revolution in Medicine
Hahnemann did not spend all his powers in fighting the abuses of his time...
THE THREE FOLD-WORK
Part II of The Revolution in Medicine
Being the seventh Hahnemannian oration delivered October 5th 1886, at the London Homeopathic Hospital by John H. Clarke M.D. Physician to the London Homeopathic Hospital; Lecturer on Materia Medica to the L.L.H Medical School.1
Dr. John Henry Clarke (1853-1931) passed on to the Great Beyond on Tuesday, November 24, 1931, after a life of extraordinary devotion and usefulness to Homoeopathy. His memory will live on imperishable in every quarter of the globe through his written words, he gave to the world of Homeopathy the greatest and most valuably indispensable work written since the days of Hahnemann - the Dictionary of Materia Medica.2
The Revolution in Medicine
I. Darkness and Dawn
II. The Three-Fold Work
Cleansing the Augean stable
Constructive and Defensive
Unexpected Allies
III. The Revolution and the Man
IV. Our Inheritance
The prominent Samuel Hahnemann memorial in Scott’s Circle, Washington DC3 is the only monument dedicated to an M.D.4
CLEANSING THE AUGEAN STABLE
Hahnemann's work was of a threefold kind.
He had first to clear his ground of the rubbish of ages, taking care to preserve everything of value that lay concealed among the heaps;
He had to build a new edifice on the ground he cleared;
And all the time he had to defend his work and himself against the attacks of his numberless foes, the blind lovers of darkness, the pharisaic sticklers of the old order, right or wrong.
For, as there were those in the days of Plato who would rather be in error with him than be right with any less authority; and as, in Harvey's time, almost all his professional brethren declared that they would rather be wrong with Galen than be "circulators" with Harvey;
So at the beginning of this boasted Nineteenth Century of ours-and I fear not at the beginning alone-the medical profession were almost unanimous in preferring to slay with Galen secundum artem-according to the most approved rules of their art-than to heal with the revolutionary Hahnemann.
And verily they did slay secundum artem, as we shall presently see.
The one measure most relied on by the physicians of Hahnemann's time in their endeavours to combat disease was blood-letting.
Next in importance to this came the administration of complex mixtures, the prescriptions for which were regarded as in themselves works of art to be compiled as carefully as a sonnet, almost as much for the admiration of awe-struck apothecaries as for any possible good the compounds might do to the patients.
Hahnemann's keen eye soon perceived the folly and the wrong of both of these fashionable measures.
In 1791, just when the idea of homoeopathy had taken possession of his mind, we find him writing of blistering and bleeding in this philosophical strain:
"It is the common delusion that the sores produced by vesicating agents only remove the morbid fluids.
When we consider that the mass of the blood of during its circulation is of uniform composition throughout, that the exhalents of the blood vessels give off no great variety of matter under otherwise identical conditions;
No rational physiological will be able to conceive how a vesicating agent can select, collect and remove only the injurious part of the humours.
In fact the blister under the plaster is only filled with a part of the common blood when it is drawn from a vein.
But according to the insane idea at these short-sighted doctors, venesection, too, draws off the bed blood only, and continued purging only evacuates the depraved humours.
It is terrible to contemplate the mischief which these universally held foolish ideas have caused."
In the following year, 1792, Hahnemann's sentiments on this question brought him for the first time into open conflict with his professional brethren.
He alone of all men had the courage to criticize publicly the medical treatment of the Emperor Leopold II. of Austria, who died secundum artem, in this way.
"The monarch was on the 28th of February attacked with Rheumatic Fever", this is the report of Lagusius, the Physician in Ordinary to the Emperor, with a running commentary (in the brackets) by Hahnemann:
and a chest affection [which of the numerous chest affections, very few of which are able to stand bleeding? Let us note that he does not say pleurisy, which he would have done to excuse the copious venesections if he had been convinced that it was this affection.]
and we immediately tried to mitigate the violence of the malady by bleeding and other needful remedies [Germany-Europe-has a right to ask: which?].
On the 29th the fever increased [later the bleeding! and yet] three more venesections were effected, whereupon some [other reports say distinctly-no] improvement followed, but the ensuing night was very restless and weakened the monarch [just think! it was the night and not the four bleedings which so weakened the monarch, and Herr Lagusius was able to assert this positively] who on the 1st of March began to vomit with violent retching and threw up all he took [nevertheless his doctors left him, so that no one was present at his death, and indeed after this, one of them pronounced him out of danger]. At 3.30 in the afternoon he expired, while vomiting, in the presence of the Empress."*
Commenting on the case elsewhere Hahnemann said:
"His physician, Lagusius, observed high fever and swelling of the abdomen early on February 28th; he combated the malady by venesection, and as this produced no amelioration, three more venesections were performed without relief.
Science must ask why a second venesection was ordered when the first had produced no amelioration.
How could he order a third;
And, good Heavens! how a fourth, when there had been no amelioration after the preceding ones?
How could he slay the vital fluid four times in twenty-four hours, always without relief, from a debilitated man who had been worn out by anxiety of mind and long continued diarrhoea?
Science is aghast!"
But bleeding was not to be abolished at one blow.
Hahnemann strove against the practice with all his might and for years the neglect of bleeding continued to be the chief sin of homoeopathy in the eyes and mouths of its opponents.
But except in the practice of Hahnemann and his followers bleeding continued to be the favourite method of treatment;
And it was only when the immeasurably and incontestably superior statistics of homoeopathic over the ordinary treatment emboldened some practitioners of the unreformed faith to leave their patients without any medical treatment at all that they began to perceive the truth of Hahnemann's teaching-that bleeding was slaying.
When they left their patients to Nature their death-rate fell in an amazing way, though it still remained distinctly higher than that of homoeopathists.
It is now the fashion to describe the discontinuance of blood-letting to certain experiments on animals performed by Marshall Hall.
This is a very pretty story, and quite good enough for those who wish to believe anything rather then the truth of their indebtedness to Hahnemann;
But the wise know well that great reforms are not brought about in that way.
Another ingenious device for robbing Hahnemann of his credit due is the theory advanced by some that diseases have changed their type since his time, and that the Sangrado bleeders of the past were quite right in their bleedings, and that Hahnemann was quite wrong in denouncing them.
This is another pretty story;
But the race of blood-letters is not yet entirely extinct, and the results the modern Sangrados have to show bear a striking resemblance to those of their fore-runners, notwithstanding the supposed "change of type" in disease.
Witness the case of Count Cavour.
On May 29th, 1861, Cavour was taken ill, in the midst of his parliamentary duties, with chills, followed, after some hours, by pains in the bowels and vomiting.
He was bled the same night, and again the next day both morning and evening.
On the 1st of June he was again twice bled.
On the 2nd of June the wound in the arm re-opened during on effort, and further bleeding took plant.
On his doctors attempting to bleed him again (this time at the request of Cavour himself, who thought that nothing else could relieve him of his sufferings, which were really the result of the bleedings he had already been subjected to) no blood would flow.
Quinine was then given. Cavour asked that it might be given in pills, instead of in solution, because he knew from experience that the solution would make him vomit.
The doctors would not consent to this and violent sickness ensued.
The next day he was cupped and blistered, but the blisters could not be made to rise.
King Victor Emmanuel, who visited the minister proposed to his doctors that the should open a vein in his neck.
This proposal they were about to take into consideration, when they were saved further trouble by the death of the patient.
Cavour died suffering from unquenchable thirst.
It may fairly be said that Cavour resisted the treatment he received better than the Emperor Leopold, although the illness of the latter occurred before the supposed "change of type" of disease had been discovered.
The proposal of Victor Emmanuel to still further deplete the already bloodless man met with a singular nemesis when some years later, within the memory of us all, he himself perished-secundum-artem-of his sanguinary doctors.
These historic examples will serve to show how firmly rooted in the medical mind was the idea that blood-letting was a necessary thing, an how much courage it demanded on Hahnemann's part to depart from the received tradition.
His attitude on this question caused him to be denounced as a murderer-for denying his patients the "benefits" of blood-letting !
Throughout the medical world, and cost him the friendship of some of the ablest physicians of the day who had previously been on terms of the closest intimacy with him.
Hahnemann early emancipated himself from the dominion of the complex prescription: but it cost even him a severe struggle.
It was considered then the highest mark of proficiency to combine a large number of ingredients in the same prescription arranging them artistically under the imposing names of basis of principal, adjuvans, corrigens, dirigens and the rest,-which were supposed to "assist," "correct" and "direct" the action of the ingredient in chief.
When Hahnemann had the courage to prescribe only one thing at a time, he could not help feeling a little ashamed of the mean opinion the apothecaries were sure to form of him, the apothecaries who made up the prescription being paid in proportion to their length.
The opinion of the apothecaries with regard to Hahnemann did not improve with time.
In 1797, the year following that in which his epoch making "Essay on a New Principal" was published, Hahnemann contributed another notable paper to Hufeland's Journal, entitled,
‘‘Are the Obstacles to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine insurmountable?’’
In this article he delivers himself as follows:
"Who knows whether the adjuvans or the corrigens may not act as basis in the complex prescription, or whether the excipiens does not give an entirely different action to the whole?
Does the chief ingredient, if it be the right one, require an adjuvans?
Does not the idea that it requires assistance reflect severely on its suitability, or should a dirigens also be necessary?
I thought I would complete the motley list, and thereby satisfy the requirement of the schools.
The more complex our prescriptions are the darker is the condition of therapeutics…
How can we complain of the obscurity of our art when we ourselves render it obscure and intricate?"
In the same year in which he first publicly attacked blood-letting, 1792, Hahnemann shewed his courage in departing from the evil traditions of the profession in another matter of great importance.
In his day, and long after his day, it was the custom to treat lunatics as if they had been wild beasts.
Hahnemann protested against the wickedness of this practice, and his cure of the Hanoverian Chancellor Klockenbring by gentle means is a matter of European history.
"I never allow an insane person," says Hahnemann, "to be punished either by blows or any other kind of corporal chastisement, because there is no punishment where there is no responsibility, and because these sufferers deserve only pity and are always rendered worse by such rough treatment and never improve."
After his complete cure, Klockenbring, "often with tears in his years," shewed Hahnemann "the marks of the blows and stripes his former keepers had employed to keep him in order."
Thus Hahnemann anticipated another of the improvements in medical practice fondly imagined to be a discovery of recent years and credited to Englishmen.
All honour to the English doctors for the work they did, and the reform they brought about; but the originality is not theirs -it belongs to Hahnemann.
CONSTRUCTIVE AND DEFENSIVE
Hahnemann did not spend all his powers in fighting the abuses of his time.
All the while, he was assiduously working out his idea, testing the action of medicines on his own healthy body, and building up his system on the solid ground of his observed results.
In the year, 1810, he had so far perfected his system that he was able to publish his celebrated Organon, in which he set forth in detail what he had briefly sketched in his Essay on a New Principle, fourteen years before.
In the following year he applied to the Universally of Leipzig for permission to teach medicine under its authority.
The Senate of the University we not very well disposed to entertain his request, but they said that if he would write a thesis, and defend it before them, his request should be granted.
Hahnemann readily complied, sending in his Helleborism of the Ancients, a work of such extreme merit that his censors could not find in it a single, fault, and granted him the licence to teach forthwith.
For eight years he continued thus to each and to practise, aided now by an enthusiastic band of disciples, and supported by a large section of the public.
But there was a growing feeling of jealousy among his professional brethren, and the apothecaries came to like him less and less.
For Hahnemann had discovered that besides the great advantage there was in giving only one drug at a time-a very grave sin of itself in an apothecary's eye-there was no need to give a poisonous does of even that one drug in order to obtain its curative effects.
This was altogether too much for the equanimity of the apothecaries.
Their craft was in danger.
One medicine at a time, and not much of that !
How was a poor apothecary to live?
On the principal of securing the greatest good to the greatest number apothecaries being many and Hahnemann only one-they determined to extinguish Hahnemann.
There was a law in Germany forbidding a physician to make up his own prescriptions.
This proved an admirable opportunity for the boycotting proclivities of the trade.
They refused in a body to dispense any prescription of Hahnemann's and when he dispensed his own medicines, even though he made no charge for them, they put the law in force against him, and so procured his benishment from Leipzig in the year, 1819.
He was then in the sixty-fifth year of his age.
After long and painful wanderings from state to state, he at last found an asylum in the little town of Coethen, under the egis of the friendly Duke of Anhalt.
UNEXPECTED ALLIES
When Hahnemann went into exile he left behind him enthusiastic disciples to carry on his work and develop his system.
Hahnemann might be exiled, but homoeopathy was not extinguished.
And homoeopathy had allies little reckoned on by its foes.
Epidemics in their courses fought for homoeopathy.
Contagious fevers which swept off the patients of the old school doctors spared those of Hahnemann and his followers.
Perhaps the most potent ally homoeopathy has ever possessed has been the dreaded cholera.
It is often said that homoeopathy is all very well for children, and for mild diseases in adults; but no stretch of allopathic ingenuity can make of cholera a mild disease, or a disease peculiar to children.
Yet is remains on the testimony of their own witnesses-allopathic doctors appointed under Government authority and prejudiced against the system of Hahnemann-that wherever homoeopathy and allopathy have been tried in epidemics of cholera side by side, the results of the homoeopathic treatment have proved immeasurably superior to those of the allopathic.
This is a fact which it remains for our opponents to explain; they cannot explain it away.
Hahnemann; ere he left Leipsig, had already made his work's foundation sure, and had rendered impregnable the house of his fame.
Thirty-three years had passed over his head since we first his at Dresden.
The storm of the French revolution had burst and had passed.
Napoleon had had his day and had fallen from his high estate.
Amidst all the political turmoil of his time, and the storms of his own life,
Hahnemann had accomplished a work which was destined to bring about a revolution fraught with the happiest consequences not to Europe only,
But to the whole civilized world.
To be continued…
(P.S this article contains the following cover image ‘Hahnemann unit of the Student Army Training Corps in 1918, including students still in training at the end of World War I (classes 1919–1922) on the steps of the Broad Street college building.’
Photo courtesy Legacy Center Archives, Drexel College of Medicine, Pennsylvania.5
‘In contrast to frequent claims, the available Meta Analyses of homoeopathy in placebo-controlled randomised trials for any indication show significant positive effects beyond placebo. Compared to other medical interventions, the quality of evidence for efficacy of homoeopathy was similar or higher than for 90% of interventions across medicine. Accordingly, the efficacy evidence from placebo-controlled randomised trials provides no justification for regulatory or political actions against homoeopathy in health-care systems.’6
Clarke J, 1886. The Revolution in Medicine. London; Keene and Ashwell. University of Michigan, Homeopathic Library. Available from: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/002088509
Woods F. The Homoeopathic World, January 1932. Available from: http://homeoint.org/seror/biograph/clarke.htm
https://www.goethe.de/ins/us/en/kul/sup/deu/was/hsm.html
“Samuel Hahnemann Memorial,” DC Historic Sites, accessed May 29, 2024. Available from: https://historicsites.dcpreservation.org/items/show/270.
Falcone, A. An Exhibit Epitaph Honoring 171 Years of Hahnemann History. Drexel University News, Philadelphia. Available from: https://drexel.edu/news/archive/2019/november/an-exhibit-epitaph-honoring-171-years-of-hahnemann-history
Hamre HJ, Glockmann A, von Ammon K, Riley DS, Kiene H. Efficacy of homoeopathic treatment: Systematic review of meta-analyses of randomised placebo-controlled homoeopathy trials for any indication. Systematic Rev. 2023 Oct 7;12(1):191. https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-023-02313-2#Abs1
a fascinating article, thank you!
Thank you for sharing this illuminating piece of our history! If only it weren’t so obviously relevant to our struggles 200 years later!