The year is 1834. Hahnemann is still living in his « retirement« from Köthen. He has only just met Marie Mélanie d’Hervilly and probably has no idea that he is about to embark on a new chapter of his life with her, in France! In this country that is at once so close and yet so far away, where homeopathy is still almost in its infancy. Only a handful of French-speaking doctors who had associated with Hahnemann in Köthen, or corresponded with him and studied his books thoroughly, were familiar with homeopathy and able to practise it successfully. Otherwise, what is known about it? As evidenced by the rare mentions of it in the press of the time, here and there homeopathy is referred to only in reports from abroad, its name and the minuscule doses are used to employ dubious and more or less ironic figures of speech, or as a comparison in relation to all sorts of things. Sometimes, too, its successes were disputed. And already it was being mocked to the point of being labelled quackery, so much so that the sheer inconceivability of it all, having clearly been reached, made some people’s hair stand on end.
Amidst the rumours and the confusion that seemed to surround homeopathy at the time, a few conscientious – or simply curious – columnists had the good sense to present their readers with an account of what reliable information they could gather regarding this new approach to treating patients. Consequently, one had to read Hahnemann (and one still must!), at least in French*, to understand what it was really all about and to gain, at the very least, a proper overview of homeopathy before presenting the subject, and then to critique it subsequently if necessary. What is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to an ox.
With this in mind, we wished to present to you one of these rare, non-controversial texts, found in the most important newspaper of the time, looking beyond its appeal as a literary curiosity. Whilst, as a popular science article, it is not without its inaccuracies or clumsiness (see the notes), it nevertheless constitutes a fairly faithful and comprehensive summary of Hahnemann’s seminal work. The key principles of the homeopathic method are, at last, set out in sequence, which is of educational interest to the average reader of our century, who is rather accustomed to encountering in the media the same old, crude triad: similarity, « infinitesimal« and « wholeness« . We’ll leave you to discover (or rediscover) them step by step, in the hope that some of the lesser-known ones might strike a chord with you **. Finally, it is worth noting that the author, who was acutely aware of the devastating effects of the medicine of his time, concludes on an optimistic and progressive personal note.
Enjoy the read.
* Although, it should be noted, Jourdan’s 1834 French translation of the fifth Organon – which was not always accurate – did not necessarily help commentators of the time.
** For further information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-59Fs326Ng
SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL OF HOMEOPATHIC MEDICINEŒOPATIC
published in « Le Constitutionnel, a newspaper covering business, politics and literature », issue 294, 21 October 1834, pp. 1–3
https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k655064c/f1.item
https://www.retronews.fr/journal/le-constitutionnel/21-oct-1834/22/478593/1
proofreading, revisions, additions and notes by Athelas, September 2019
We need to discuss a new system1,2 of medicine. When I say ‘new’, let us be clear: for, beyond the Rhine, where it first emerged some thirty years ago, it has set almost all the rigid, medical minds of the Germans in a flurry, leading them to produce volumes both for and against it that would fill the Royal Library; but as it has, for some time now, found its way amongst us, and presents itself with promises that are highly enticing to all patients eager to be cured, we must not turn it away without first getting to know it. And who knows whether, after giving it the initial welcome due to a newcomer, we might not grant it a place among us? We have, after all, welcomed the nebulous philosophy imported from the same regions by Mr Cousin. I am not saying that homeopathic medicine is nonsense—God forbid; I have read, seen and heard too much about medical theories to cry foul at this latest arrival, which, after all, is every bit as good as its predecessors. Besides, so much the better for it: if it is nonsense, it stands an unbeatable chance of success.3 ; for our poor human race is doomed to repeat, all too often, in the words of Saint Augustine: I believe because it is absurd4. In any case, I must tell you straight away that homeopathic medicine makes a clean break from all the theories, whatever they may be, that preceded it, and that it is committed to curing all curable illnesses within a few hours5, without a convalescence period, and effectively. Here’s to the success of homeopathic medicine, if it lives up to its promises! So farewell, then, to the ‘humourist’ doctors [both literally and figuratively, editor’s note] who had declared that all illnesses stemmed from peccant, acidic, alkaline, bilious, etc., and that these humours had to be expelled by emetics, purgatives, sudorifics and diuretics! Farewell to the ‘solidists’6 who, maintaining that all disease lies essentially in the solid parts of our body, hold that the alteration of the humours is merely the result of the alteration of the organs, and that it is therefore necessary to weaken or stimulate, constrict or relax! Farewell to the alchemist doctors who saw the human body as nothing but stills and crucibles, and to those who regarded it merely as a hydraulic machine! Farewell to doctors who insist on bloodletting at every turn, and to those who insist on never practising it, as well as to those who seek to cure you—and even grant you immortality—by injecting fresh blood into your veins! Farewell to Sangrado, Purgon and Diafoirus, and long live homeopathy!7 !
So what exactly is homeopathy? This word is derived from two Greek words meaning ‘similar disease’, because its fundamental principle is to administer, in order to cure any given illness, a remedy which, when given to a healthy person, produces effects similar or as close as possible to those of the illness being treated. In other words, homeopathic medicine has as its guiding principle like cures like, in contrast to ancient medicine, which treated illnesses with remedies that were their opposites, contraria curantur by contrarias.
Hahnemann, the leader of this new school, was led to accept this fundamental principle of his system whilst seeking to explain the febrifuge properties of cinchona, as he was dissatisfied with the unfounded hypotheses put forward on this subject. He carried out a number of trials with this substance on himself. He was greatly astonished when he observed that cinchona produced in healthy individuals an intermittent fever very similar to that which this medicine most often cures, and that it also induced a number of very varied symptoms to which no attention had ever been paid. Struck by this observation, the author wondered whether cinchona’s febrifuge properties might not depend on its ability to induce, in healthy individuals, a condition similar to intermittent fever, and whether this well-established fact might not hold true for other substances capable of producing conditions similar to those they cure. With incredible patience, he devoted himself to these trials for many years, using himself as the subject of his experiments. Deprivations of every kind, a strict regime, daily suffering caused by the ingestion of medicines, many of which were active poisons—he subjected himself to all of this in order to discover the law he sought so ardently.
Every medicinal substance was studied down to the finest details of its effects on the human body. As he carried out this work, he soon realised that medicines known as ‘specific’8 owed their efficacy to their homeopathic action. Thus, mercury cures syphilitic conditions because, in a healthy individual, mercury produces symptoms that bear the closest resemblance to those of syphilis; the smallpox virus9 protects against smallpox by inducing symptoms whose resemblance to those of that disease no one would dispute; belladonna cures scarlet fever because this substance produces effects that are analogous or more or less similar. Opium cures lead colic or painters’ colic because it causes constipation similar to that seen in lead colic. Cantharides are regarded as the true specific remedy for rabies, because observation has revealed that this medicine [Cantharis] gives rise, in healthy humans, to the most consistent symptoms of rabies, namely, difficulty in swallowing and a horror of water. Homeopathic doctors also pride themselves on curing cholera morbus at least nine times out of ten through the use of copper or white hellebore, because these substances produce effects that closely resemble those of cholera. Finally, there is no disease, however serious it may be, which does not have in nature an analogous remedy of certain efficacy. One can immediately appreciate the immense amount of research a doctor will have to undertake to reach the point where he can say: given a set of pathological symptoms, which substance produces analogous or similar ones, since it is that substance alone which can cure the disease?
According to Hahnemann’s system, it is never necessary for the doctor to enquire into the cause of diseases, as this cause is unknown to us. However, although we cannot know it, we do know that it is closely linked to the symptoms: and we can easily assess these symptoms and make them disappear by artificially inducing analogous symptoms. How, indeed, does the smallpox vaccine protect the body against infection with smallpox, if not by substituent a remedy with a very similar action, and therefore capable of ruling out any influence of the same nature? And the same applies to mercury for syphilis, cinchona for intermittent fevers, pasque flower for whooping cough, and so on. It is not easy to conceive that by adding a condition similar or analogous to one that already exists, the latter would be made to disappear, or that at the very least the artificial condition would not remain in place of the one it has driven out. The sum of two or more units cannot possibly be zero. However, if the results were as claimed, we would have to accept them and leave our reasoning as it stands: we do not decide; we merely set out the facts.
The physician, says Hahnemann, has nothing else to cure in diseases but the patient’s suffering and the disturbances to the regular rhythm, which are perceptible to the senses; that is to say, the totality or the mass of symptoms through which the disease indicates the remedies best suited to provide relief; all the internal causes that might be attributed to it, and all the hidden characteristics that one might wish to ascribe to it, are nothing but vain fantasies.
The condition of the body that we call ‘illness’ can only be transformed into a state of health by inducing a condition in the body through the use of medicines. The curative power of these medicines lies solely in the change they bring about in a person’s condition, that is to say, in the specific production of pathological symptoms. Experiments carried out on healthy subjects are the best and most reliable means available for recognising this power. Any experiment attempted on a sick individual would be absurd, pointless and unscientific.
Based on all the known facts, it is impossible to cure a disease using medicines which, in themselves, have the ability to induce an artificial condition or symptoms in healthy people opposites. This form of medicine, based on the principle of opposites, therefore never brings about a cure. Nature itself never brings about a cure in which one disease is eradicated by another disease superimposed upon it, however severe that new condition may be.
All the evidence also points to the fact that a medicine capable of causing a pathological symptom in a healthy person opposite when applied to the illness it is intended to cure, produces only temporary relief in a long-standing condition; it never brings about a cure and always allows the illness to recur, after a certain time, in a more severe form than before. The curative method using opposites and is purely palliative; it is therefore entirely contrary to the aim we set ourselves in cases of illness of any significance. The true method—the only one to which one can still resort—is the homeopathic method, which employs, against the totality of a disease’s symptoms, a remedy capable of inducing, in a healthy individual, symptoms as similar as possible to those observed in the patient. It is the only method that is truly beneficial, the one that always eradicates diseases or disturbances in the body’s functions in a simple, complete and rapid manner. Nature itself sets us an example; in this respect, when a new disease, similar to an existing one, is introduced, it cures the condition promptly and permanently.
Under no circumstances is it necessary to use more than one single remedy at a time. The true physician (meaning a homeopath) finds in unmixed remedies everything he could wish for, that is to say, artificial morbific potencies [i.e. those capable of causing disease] which, through their homeopathic faculty, completely cure natural diseases; and as it is a very wise principle never to seek to achieve with several remedies what can be accomplished with a single one, it will never occur to him to prescribe anything other than a single simple remedy at a time. Nor is he unaware that a single remedy, when administered for an illness whose totality of symptoms perfectly matches those produced by the remedy, cures it completely.
However, the selection of a remedy for a particular case of illness is based not only on its perfect similarity to the symptoms, but also on the minute dose in which it is administered. If too high a dose of a remedy is administered—even one that is entirely homeopathic—it will inevitably harm the patient, even though the medicinal substance is beneficial by its very nature; for the resulting effect is too strong, and is felt all the more keenly because, by virtue of its homeopathic nature, the remedy acts precisely on those parts of the body which have already been most affected by the natural disease. Increasing the dose itself causes all the more harm to the patient the more homeopathic the remedy is, and a high dose of such a remedy will do more harm than a dose of an opposite or dissimilar substance, for then the artificial disease—which is very similar to the natural disease and which the remedy has stimulated in the most afflicted parts of the body—goes so far as to cause harm, whereas, had it remained within proper limits, it would have brought about a gentle, easy and certain cure.
The question now is: what is the most appropriate degree of dilution to ensure that the beneficial effects we wish to produce are characterised by both certainty and gentleness, that is to say, to what degree the dose of the homeopathic remedy must be reduced for a given case of illness, in order to achieve the best possible cure. The solution to this problem cannot be found through theoretical conjecture. All conceivable subtleties would be of no use, and it is clear that it is only through pure experimentation and precise observations that one can achieve the desired result. Now, these experiments establish that, when the illness is not clearly due to a profound alteration of a major organ, and when care is taken to remove any foreign medicinal influence from the patient, the dose10 The potency of a homeopathic remedy can never be so low as to render it less potent than the natural disease it is capable of extinguishing and curing, provided that it retains the energy necessary to provoke, immediately after being taken, symptoms that are slightly more intense than those of the disease itself. It would be absurd to cite as an objection the high doses used in conventional medical practice, where medicines are not directed at the affected parts themselves, but only at those parts not affected by the disease. This principle, firmly established by experience, serves as a rule for diluting the dose of all homeopathic remedies, without exception, to such an extent that, once introduced into the body, they produce only an almost imperceptible increase. What, then, does it matter if the dilution goes so far as to seem impossible to conventional doctors? Empty rhetoric must give way to infallible experience.
But how is it possible that a medicine reduced to one-millionth, one-trillionth or one-decillionth of a grain could have the slightest effect on the animal’s constitution? For homeopathic doctors use only doses reduced to this degree of dilution. To this, they say, the facts provide the answer.
One might think that, by speaking of one-billionth or one-decillionth of a grain, we are making a joke to ridicule homeopathy. Not at all; we are being entirely serious, and it is in accordance with the teachings of the leading figures of this school themselves that we express ourselves in this way. Here, moreover, is one of the methods by which they arrive at this atomic division; Hahnemann recommends mixing the active juice of plants in specific proportions with alcohol, which preserves them in their pure state, or pulverising the dry substances with powdered milk sugar, a substance that is obviously neutral and suitable for use as an excipient. Thus, one drop of plant juice, thoroughly mixed with 99 parts of alcohol, yields a preparation in which each drop contains one-hundredth of a drop of the medicine. One of these drops, when mixed again with 99 parts of alcohol, reduces the concentration to one ten-thousandth, and so on down to one millionth, one billionth, and so forth.
The same applies to powdered substances thoroughly mixed with the same proportional quantities of milk sugar, taking a grain as the unit of measurement. If, for example, a person is suffering from scarlet fever, the homeopathic doctor, knowing that belladonna produces effects quite similar to those of this illness, will choose belladonna to cure it, but will not administer a grain, nor half a grain, nor one-hundredth of a grain. How much, then? A decillion, that is, one decillionth of a grain, no more and no less.11.
If this division infinitesimal If this has alarmed you and sown doubt in your mind, rest assured that we have not yet had our final say. No doubt you will find it hard to believe that a serious illness can be cured – in a matter of hours, no less, and without any convalescence – by means of one decillionth of a grain of a medicinal substance. But I must inform you that, according to Hahnemann, medicines administered in such extraordinarily small doses acquire a prodigious healing power [which has the property of curing], depending on whether they have been subjected to a greater or lesser number of prolonged rubbing or shaking processes. Thus, when you have shaken one-millionth of a grain of opium once in a bottle, it will have less potency than if it had been shaken twice, three times, and so on.
There are even substances such as charcoal, silica, the club moss, etc., regarded as inert in their raw state, which, through friction, acquire a most pronounced healing property, and can only be administered in the smallest of doses, provided the symptoms they produce in a healthy individual correspond closely to those present in the patient to be cured. And if you were sceptical enough to doubt a fact so often observed by homeopathic doctors, you should remember that a crystal plate in an electric machine, which in its natural state does not emit any electricity, develops a very large quantity of it within a few moments when rubbed between cushions, giving rise to the most extraordinary phenomena12. The effect of friction, in both these circumstances, is no more surprising in one than in the other. If this explanation does not satisfy you, it is because you are hard to convince, although I am well aware that you might retort that the discharge of electricity ceases to occur when the plate is at rest, and that the same ought to be true of homeopathic doses once they have ceased to be shaken and have been left to rest for a long time.
Given that it is important, in the practice of homeopathic medicine, for doses to be very small, it is clear that anything in patients’ diet or lifestyle that might exert any medicinal influence whatsoever must be excluded, so that the effect of such minute doses is not neutralised or disrupted by any foreign agent. Thus, says Hahnemann, one should avoid coffee, tea and beer—which contain plant substances unsuitable for the patient—as well as liqueurs prepared with medicinal herbs, spiced chocolate, perfumes and fragrances of all kinds, toothpaste preparations, whether powdered or liquid, containing medicinal substances; scented sachets; strongly seasoned dishes; flavoured pastries and ice creams; vegetables consisting of medicinal herbs or roots; cheese made from aged meats, the meat and fat of pork, goose and duck, and veal from animals that are too young. All these things exert an incidental medicinal effect and must be carefully kept away from the patient. One must also guard against the excessive indulgence in all culinary pleasures, even sugar and salt13; one must avoid alcoholic drinks, excessively warm rooms, a sedentary lifestyle, passive exercise involving horses and carriages, breastfeeding, sleeping after dinner, and poor hygiene; one should avoid the causes of anger, grief and vexation; gambling taken to the point of obsession; strenuous mental work; staying in marshy regions; and living in places where the air is not well ventilated. All these influences must, as far as possible, be avoided or removed if recovery is to proceed unhindered, or indeed if it is to be possible at all.
In summary, therefore, a doctor practising homeopathy must focus on five main points, namely: 1° to study carefully and thoroughly all the symptoms, without exception, of the illness he wishes to cure, without concerning himself with the causes of the illness itself; 2° to seek out the substance in nature which, when taken in isolation, produces in a healthy individual the symptoms that most closely resemble those of the disease he wishes to treat, bearing in mind that, for every given disease, there exists a medicinal substance that is analogous to and appropriate for its cure; 3° to administer the remedies in extremely low doses; 4° to enhance the action of the remedies through rubbing; 5° to remove from the patient anything that might hinder the action of the homeopathic remedy, this precaution being essential, failing which no effect will be achieved. And this is the new system that is set to overturn the ancient edifice built upon the experience of past centuries. It is likely, however, that not everything in homeopathic doctrine should be rejected; it may even be an indispensable link in the chain of successive progress and refinement in science. By investigating the effects that medicines, in their simplest form, produce on healthy individuals, the homeopathic method paves the way for the precise determination of the fundamental properties of remedies, and despite the chaos that prevails to a greater or lesser extent in all modern pharmacologies, it offers hope that order and simplicity may soon be brought to this branch of medicine. Through the detailed and sometimes meticulous observation of symptoms, it directs doctors’ attention towards the refinement of that aspect of the art of healing which consists in recognising diseases and distinguishing them from one another. The administration of homeopathic remedies in very small doses prevents the reckless and unnecessary use of high-dose medicines, as these have for some time been prescribed abusively by many doctors, albeit in different ways. It also serves to curb the excessive practice of artificial bloodletting, which is ordered on the assumption that an inflammatory state is present in almost all diseases.
Finally, homeopathy, by prescribing that patients adhere to the strictest possible diet, draws doctors’ attention to one of the most crucial aspects of the treatment of chronic diseases.
Notes:
1- The author, or the typesetter, uses both spellings – ‘homœopatique’ and ‘homœopathique’ – interchangeably. During transcription, the former was retained only in the article’s title for the sake of the anecdote.
2- The Sixth Organon completes homeopathy as a remarkably coherent system of medicine, whose principles and rules are closely interlinked and based on facts thathave been gathered and examined through experience and observation in order to arrive at conclusions free from conjecture or arbitrariness. But in more practical terms, it can be said that Hahnemann, by teaching these principles progressively in a logical order throughout the paragraphs of the Organon, establishes a truly reasoned approach to therapy, enabling the practitioner to achieve the goal (recovery) by the most appropriate means. In this respect, homeopathy is a genuine method.
3- This quip by the author is, of course, no longer valid; absurdity, as he suggests, is not a recipe for success, or at least not for lasting success. Several theoretical systems of medicine – including eclectic, empirical and dogmatic approaches, amongst others – were already co-existing when homeopathy came onto the scene, and, of course, none of them survived. Yet all of them contained just as much absurdity as homeopathy is supposed to contain at first glance. But let us state this loud and clear: it survived not because it did no harm, but because its popular successes during epidemics and the support of a significant portion of the aristocracy (who had easier access to medical care and were able to make comparisons) ensured that word of its practical effectiveness spread.
4- It is difficult here to know whether, by using the word ‘success’, the author means that homeopathy, paradoxically, is likely to trigger a possible placebo effect given the ‘absurd’ context ’ (in the end, I have no choice but to believe in it; indeed, I even want to believe in it because it is so strange, appealing, etc., and in doing so I put myself in a more favourable position?), or whether he means that homeopathy is likely to thrive. Be that as it may, for a homeopath, homeopathy is by no means absurd, or at least the clinical results they observe when using it correctly lead them to believe so, because it can be tested experimentally.
5- The author’s personal interpretation: Hahnemann never mentioned ‘a few hours’. These are the first positive effects that appear in response to taking the homeopathic remedy, often a few hours later, sometimes sooner, sometimes later.
6- For a definition of the word «solidist», see, for example: https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/solidiste
7- Fictional doctors and characters from famous works of literature (The Imaginary Invalid, and The Story of Gil Blas) in which medicine in the late 17th centurye early 18th centurye The century is being mocked.
8- It is important to bear in mind the over-generalisation the author makes here, perhaps for the sake of convenience. Hahnemann says that remedies can become specific to a morbid condition, or specific to a form of disease; he does not say that for every named disease there is a specific remedy. Belladonna has never cured all cases of scarlet fever – that would be too simple.
9- The author refers to the vaccine virus prepared for smallpox vaccination. For a historical overview and a critique of Jenner’s method and its conceptual links with homeopathy, see: https://planete-homeopathie.org/vaccination-obligatoire/
10- In this context, ‘the dose’ refers to the quantity of medicine to be taken, whilst ‘the necessary energy’ refers to the potentisation.
11- The quantity of medicine to be administered, as well as the potency to be chosen, naturally depends on each individual case. One might assume that the author simply wishes to make a point by asserting that such a small quantity remains constant.
12- This is a Hauksbee machine. Understanding of electrical phenomena in 1834 was very limited, which no doubt explains the author’s hasty enthusiasm in seeing an analogy between the two processes. Almost two hundred years later, the uncertainty inherent in current hypotheses explaining the mechanism of action of homeopathic dilutions does not prevent homeopaths from continuing to be thrilled time and again by what are sometimes spectacular cures.
13- All these points are clearly set out in paragraph §260 of the Sixth Organon. They must be considered in the light of patients’ dietary habits in the 19the. The hygiene guidelines we follow today will no doubt need to be updated. 🙂
