Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/802

 784: HOMCEOPATHY much attention, or assumed the definite form of an important law in medical science. Hah- nemann at the age of 35 occupied a prominent position as a scholar and chemist. While translating (1790) into German Cullen's "Ma- teria Medica," the passage in which Cullen de- scribes the action of cinchona bark excited his curiosity as to how this substance acted in curing ague. By way of experiment he took four drams of it in different doses, being at the time in perfect health. In a few days he experienced all the symptoms of ague. Was this ague, he inquired, the result of the action of the cinchona, or did it arise from the usual causes of the disease? There were two ways of testing this matter. One was to ex- amine collections of reported cures, in order to ascertain whether among them any notice was to be found of instances in which the remedy employed was known to possess the property of exciting symptoms in the healthy similar to those which it cured in the sick. The other was to ascertain by experiment what was the effect of medicinal substances when taken by those in health, and then to administer them to those who were ill, and whose illness presented symptoms similar to those caused by these substances. The result of his historical researches is given in the "Introduction to the Organon of Medicine." He collected from an immense variety of sources testimony in regard to the twofold action of more than 30 medicinal substances ; and one set of authorities proved the power of a certain drug to produce symptoms similar to those reported by other authors to have been cured by the very same means. Medical works in the present time are full of similar illustrations. For example, in the "Cyclopoo- dia of Practical Medicine," edited by Forbes, Tweedy, and Connolly, we read, under the head of Fever : " Arsenical solution is the anti-periodic medicine on which, next to qui- nine, most reliance may be placed." One of the recognized authorities on the subject of ague is Dr. Boudin, who, after quoting a simi- lar experience by M. Biot, says: "For my part, I saw an intermittent quotidian fever supervene, which I was obliged to combat with quinine, in a patient to whom I had given for ichthyosis about five grains of arsenic in twelve days." This occurred when there was no ague in the place. Thus, on the one hand, we have arsenic producing the disease, and on the other curing it. Dr. Copland, editor of the "Dictionary of Practical Medicine," says: " Ipecac is one of the best remedies that can be resorted to for asthma;" and Dr. Pereira, the author of the great work on materia medica, says : " In asthma benefit is obtained from ipe- cac in small and repeated doses." Sir John Forbes, one of the most distinguished physicians of his time, says: " Practitioners of experience, without subscribing to the doctrine of homoe- opathy, will certainly think more favorably of ipecac on account of its peculiar tendency to induce fits of asthma in the predisposed." This direct antidote to asthma is known to cause asthmatic attacks in many persons. " How singular," says Dr. Marshall Hall, " that ipecac taken into the bronchia should excite asthma." " If I remain in a room," says Mr. Roberts of Dudley, " where the preparation of ipecac is going on, I am sure to have a regu- lar attack of asthma." Sulphur cures peculiar forms of eruptive diseases ; and all frequenters of the baths of sulphurous waters are acquaint- ed with its effects in producing similar erup- tions. Laennec, the discoverer of the stetho- scope, says of tartar emetic : " From its use we sometimes find patients, doomed to almost certain death, out of all danger after the lapse of a few hours, without having experienced any evacuation or change but the rapid and progressive amelioration of the disease." Dr. Williams, a celebrated medical author, says: "Next to blood-letting tartar emetic is the most powerful remedy we can employ for the cure of acute pulmonary inflammation." Tar- tar emetic, according to these writers, and very general experience, cures pulmonary in- flammation. The great French physiologist Magendie made this drug the subject of special experiment. After describing other changes it produced in animals which he poisoned with it, he says: "It acts specifically in inflaming the lungs." M. Pelletrier, who has written the best monograph on this drug, says: "Its effect on the respiratory organs is to produce difficulty of breathing in dogs ; the lungs were found hepatized. One would imagine that, ad- mitting its action in man to be similar, far from being useful, its administration would be particularly pernicious in the treatment of pneumonia." For several years Hahnemann seemed to be groping among specifics before he discovered the key to their successful adminis- tration. Medicines were given at first in massive doses, which, notwithstanding they generally cured the patient, sometimes pro- duced fearful aggravations. At length, after a long course of experiment, the idea became firmly established in his rnind that the organ- ism through disease became exceedingly sus- ceptible to the action of a drug given in ac- cordance with the law of similia, and whose action was that of a direct specific on the dis- eased part. In 1799 an unusually fatal epi- demic of scarlet fever prevailed at Konigs] ut- ter. Hahnemann, guided by the law of similia, selected belladonna as the appropriate remedy, administering it in minute doses ; the curative effect was marked and decided. In 1801 his experiments with belladonna in scarlet fever were published at Gotha, and created much interest and no little opposition in Germa- ny. In the same year he published a reply to the objections raised against his statements on the ground that so small a dose must be pow- erless, in which he says: "To the ordinary practitioner it is incredible that a person when sick is violently affected by a millionth part of