Why older schools of medicine reject homoeopathy. By Constantine Hering, M. D.

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Why older
schools of medicine reject homœopathy.
By Constantine Hering, M. D.
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet

Hahnemann’s earliest
work on materia medica (1805) was entitled Fragmenta,
de viribus medicamentorum positive is sine in sano corpore humano
observatis.

A criticism of this
work is to be found in the Edinburgh Medical
and Surgical Journal of 1809, vol. 5.

The criticism is
evidently written by a well-meaning and well-informed scientific
physician of the Old School. It begins with the erroneous statement :
“This work enjoys a very high reputation in its native
country.” No doubt the critic’s remark refers to the author, not to
the book. He further says :

We agree perfectly with
Dr. Hahnemann as to the importance of the study which he strongly
recommends, but we will not allow that it has been so absolutely
neglected as he supposes or represents it to be. Every monographer and
compiler has noticed the positive as well as the relative effects (of
drugs).

By this we perceive
that the critic did not understand in the least Hahnemann’s strict
inductive method of experimentation. Positive effects were never before
taken notice of in the way Hahnemann observed them. Effects of drugs
were never purely observed. That is, according to the old and
acknowledged use of the word pure (rein), meaning free from guessing,
free from application, free from deductive conclusions-simply inductive.
Hahnemann was the first, among all observers in medicine, who was
strictly inductive in his method of experimentation.

That the inductive
method of reasoning was introduced by the so-called Lord Bacon, is a
widely spread error. Bacon may have made use of the term but himself had
not an idea of its true meaning. This was given sufficient proof both by
Draper of New York, and by Liebig in Germany. All of the great
discoveries of his age, based on induction. Bacon denied in his works.
Harvey, the greatest physiologist of the new era, he sheeringly dubbed a
“sawbones”, and rejected the doctrine of the circulation of
the blood. Bacon even published a formula for making gold !

Our critic further
states :

He sincerely regrets
that by the injudicious manner in which Hahnemann had arranged, or
rather had neglected to arrange, his facts he had rendered his labors as
useless as could possibly be conceived. Had he given us merely his notes
of a few of the roost satisfactory experiments on each substance, we
could have drawn our own conclusions from them ? We could have had
the raw material, which we might have dressed so as to suit our purpose.

The critic is honest
though evidently very ignorant of the strict inductive method of
reasoning. The particular thing that Hahnemann did not wish was to
“draw conclusions” or to “dress up material to suit a
purpose”. Hahnemann desired no conclusions excepting such as would
further the healing of the sick through the greatest similarity of
genuine symptoms between the drug and the patient.

Still laboring under a
complete misapprehension of the facts, our critic continues as
follows :

Dr J. E. Stapf

Our author, with
infinite labor to himself, and inconceivable want of judgement (!) has
worked and worked amongst it until the materials collected with much
care, are rendered useless and incapable of being turned to any purpose
even in the hands of the most expert workman.

Knowing, as we do, that
all that Hahnemann worked for was the healing of the sick, we must
conclude that if he had not been capable to do this successfully he
would not have been able to make a living for himself and family between
the years of 1790 and 1805. After the Fragmenta
was published, he, with an increasing practice, was enabled to cure
Arnold, a prominent publisher, who offered to print his Organon
and his Materia Medica. Nor would he
have been able to cope successfully with the murderous war typhus of
1813, after which triumph he obtained his first sincere follower and
disciple, Ernst Stapf, who brought into the ranks his friend the elder
Gross. Thousands of converts, with the love of healing in their souls,
followed to spread his doctrines throughout the world.

Dr Gustav W. Gross

It is pitiful to read
what our clever opponent, the critic, writes in continuation :

Hahnemann has not
selected what was most valuable, nor arranged it according to a
judicious plan, he had not given merely results but frittered them down
to atoms, not even worth the name of fragments. He has neglected to
mention the circumstances under which the effects were produced-the
effects lose half their value, he has still further reduced their value
by ridiculous minuteness.

One need but examine
the index to find that Hahnemann mentioned modalities
never before sufficiently esteemed to be noticed by physicians or
pathologists.

Other objections
equally unfounded follow. There are mentioned dosage age of subject
doubts if the effects were attributable to the drug or were such as
might appear from taking a glass of water or doing anything or nothing
at all, it might have been simply imaginary.

Any, or all of these
puerile objections are refuted by the duty inductive manner in which
Hahnemann describes his very first proving and by every subsequent step
in his investigations ; as also by the elimination of material
found useless in the experience brought by the years of practice that
followed.

It is cheap to doubt.
With results in practice that over-whelmingly sustain the truth, and the
fact that every drug sufficiently proved and tried has acquired a
certain characteristic image, which
all of our well proved and tried remedies have obtained all superficial
doubts must dwindle away.

How miserable and mean
it appears to us, in our time, to have the same objections made to the
works of the master repeated almost verbatim !
How puerile to make objections, whether in good faith or in ignorance,
to the methods of Hahnemann conducted according to the strictest
inductive method of reasoning, governed by facts and pure observation on
the prover as well as on the sick I It must be that there is a woeful
lack of courage, or a want of love for healing, or of thinking it too
much trouble, that disposes men to “draw conclusions” or to
“dress up the material to suit their purpose”. The
too-much-trouble principle is perhaps the worst of all, since by it
failures to cure are blamed on homœopathy.

So much for England and
its Scotch critic. In Germany the method of Hahnemann was treated much
worse, when new. The same treatment was accorded to other prominent men.
Lambert, a philosopher and mathematician of the highest rank, was
neglected and forgotten. Kant, a very talented man, became the fashion
as in our age the crinoline and high heels with women.

It may be mentioned as
a strange coincidence, that a certain Brown, a former student of Cullen,
put his older master into the shade by inventing a so-called new system
of medicine.

Source :

Homœopathic Recorder, Sept.
1936. (An unpublished paper selected from the Hering Collection of
manuscripts by Calvin B. Knerr, M. D.)

Copyright © Sylvain
Cazalet 2001

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