234 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XVII. No. 429 



Let us now inquire what Has been accomplished for medical 

 sjience by the elaborate provings of the homoeopaths; for the 

 raison d' etre of a proving has not been explicitly given in the 

 preceding pages. Hippocrates, Hahnemann, and Sydenham hy- 

 pothecated, and finally taught, that the proving or testing of 

 medicines upon the healthy would show the exact curative power 

 of each remedy in disease. This doctrine was formulated by 

 Hippocrates in the aphorism or axiom similia similibits curentur 

 (" cure by similars "). Jenner by vaccination, and Pasteur and 

 Koch by their inoculations, have more recently illustrated the 

 effects, under this hypothesis, of a limited class of remedies; but 

 to Hahnemann and his successors alone, with their elaborate sys- 

 tem of full descriptive provings of nearly every known medicinal 

 agent, is due the gradual establishment of a law educed from the 

 original working hypothesis of Hippocrates. 



That the law of similars cannot be explained a priori (i.e., 

 upon any material or mechanical grounds) is, to my mind, at 

 once to be admitted before we can accept it as a fundamental 

 principle or starting-point, exactly like that of electricity or chem- 

 ical force. The law is, that disease is cured by an influence simi- 

 lar to that which produces it. However daring the first assump- 

 tion of this law of similars, it has now passed through the stages 

 recorded in the history of every established science; i.e., it has 

 been submitted to induction, deduction, and verification. 



Mere observation of instances is not inductive, and does not 

 lead to science until, through the study of instances, we rise to 

 fixed law. With such a law, prophecy or deduction must be pos- 

 sible; and the accuracy of this prophecy or verification will be a 

 fresh test of the original law. The homceopathic law, being tested 

 in reference both to normal and the diseased conditions of the 

 human body, has the logical advantage of a double verification, 

 and may thus be said to be rediscovered every day in the practice 

 and provings of each homceopathic physician." 



It is, then, law, not luck, which has enabled the homoeopaths 

 to reach their very consistent results. Their remedies in common 

 use are an emphatic demonstration of the practical value of the 

 law of sunilars: such as mercurius, which causes eruptions, sali- 

 vation, and diarrhoea, and is undeniably curative in these forms 

 of disease; quinine, which, causing ague symptoms, relieves 

 them; nitroglycerine, whicli removes the form of congestive 

 headache inevitably produced by it in a healthy person. And if 

 the imperfected discovery of Koch be, indeed, a conspicuous and 

 brilliant blossom of medical science, it is the startling fact that 

 this law of similars plucked the flower long ago, and, aided by its 

 accessory of safe dilution or attenuation, has made intelligent use 

 of its discovery. 



To confine our attention to testimony bearing directly on the 

 treatment of tuberculous disease. The proving of tuberculinum 

 shows, as its primary effect, evidence of a deposit of tubercle at 

 the base of the brain. Severe and unbearable headaches are a 

 prominent symptom, with local congestion, delirium, and insanity; 

 more remotely and as later manifestations, cough, purulent sputa, 

 and diarrhoea. The remedy tuberculinum has been for years 

 helpfully given in meningitis, hereditary and inveterate head- 

 aches, hectic fever, night sweats, cough with tuberculous expec- 

 toration, and all early stages of phthisical disease. 



It would thus appear, that, in those first stages of consumption 

 which alone are claimed to be curable by the injection of Koch's 

 fluid, the homoeopaths have made safe yet effective use of the 

 same materia morbi as Koch's." Instead of protection by boiling, 

 cultivation, etc., a high attenuation has been efficient.^ This 

 attenuation, made chiefly by means of dilute alcohol, is claimed 

 to accomplish something beyond the mere subdivision of material. 



1 '•Science presents itself as exact and verified knowledge; . . . if observa- 

 tion and verification cannot dertjunstrate the real existence of the genus, phi- 

 losophy itself, in any sane sense of the word, is annihilated '' (Dr. F. E. AblDOt, 

 The New Ideal, May, 1880). 



= See New Organon, July, 1879, pp. 3J2, 439, 449; Dr. Swan's Morbific Prod- 

 ucts, 18S6; Burnett's New Cures, 1885 to 1890; J. A. Biegler s Report; C. 

 Hering's Guiding Symptoms, vol. x. (now in press). 



5 Attenuations thus far made by the French experimenters have been un- 

 satisfactory, both on account of the uncertain strength of the dilutions, and 

 also by reason of changes of quality wrought by cultivation of the original 

 material. The writer is aware of Koch's statement that the albuminoid 

 principle of parataloid is insoluble in alcohol. The simple dilution of the 

 latter avoids this difficulty, chiefly by checking its coagulative effect. 



The irritant particles are mechanically detached, while the 

 curative principle is separated and developed. The degree of 

 attenuation used always ranged as high as a so-called thirtieth 

 potency. After Darwin"s statement of the minuteness of the 

 spores of drosera capable of producing their characteristic action, 

 the efficiency of a potency or attenuation does not to many per- 

 sons seem improbable; and we will leave, for the present, the 

 mathematics so frequently discussed. 



It will readily be seen, however, that treatment by nosodes 

 might soon degenerate into an enthusiastic, thoughtless, and em- 

 pirical use of these remedies, to the exclusion of others, if the 

 inference were drawn that each microbic disease could be annihi- 

 lated by its own potentized product; and it has naturally been 

 found impossible to remove, by the administration of its nosode 

 alone, the whole ultimate disturbance, in the form of secondary 

 symptoms, sequences, and diseases of distant parts of the body. 

 Indeed, other remedies might, even from the beginning of treat- 

 ment, be more serviceable than these. Thus, in faithful treat- 

 ment, it is sought to accomplish an end far more subtle than the 

 mechanical removal of bacilli. Holding them to be merely para- 

 sites, among which may exist many forms not inimical to health, 

 but even fulfilling protective service in the body, the homoeopath 

 does not consider it essential that its bacillus be seen in the atom 

 of diseased material which he prepares for medicinal use (the 

 bacillus would almost necessarily be there, for each characteristic 

 parasite is the carrier of the disease in which it dwells) ; but it is 

 the deadly material ' in which the microbe-parasite feeds which 

 alone is desired for proving, finally for prophylaxis and therapeu- 

 tic use." 



The ancient school attacks the new, having known but little of 

 its large work ; but the time has gone by for dismissing without 

 a hearing such claims as led Wilson, the anatomist, to employ 

 homoBopathy for himself, and Sir Sidney Ringer to incorporate, 

 verbatim, large sections of its materia medica in his authoritative 

 work. 



These are the stars in the firmament of homoeopathy, — men of 

 affairs, men of business, scholars, warriors, poets, statesmen, 

 whose practical wisdom has moulded the destinies of the world, — 

 Sir William Hamilton, Archbishop Whateley, Carl Wilhelm Sie- 

 mans, Lord Lyndhurst, Augustus de Morgan, Secretary Seward, 

 Lord Lytton, Charles Reade, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Parker, 

 Helen Jackson, Miss Phelps, Balzac, Gambetta, D'Israeli, Bis- 

 marck. 



Instead of such awkward use of its weapons that the force 

 powerful enough to combat the disease must destroy also the in- 

 valid, homoeopathy, die milde macht, has quietly employed its 

 methods, " strong enough," a^ Wendell Phillips once remarked to 

 the writer, "to wait until its accumulating facts would speak for 

 themselves." C. F. Nichols. 



Boston, April 15. 



Iroquoian Etymologies. 



I WISH to make a correction. In my article (Science, April 17, 

 1891), instead of the word latikoivanM, on p. 219, second column, 

 at the end of the first paragraph, read ratikowaneil's. This error 

 was perhaps due to an oversight of the copyist in transcribing 

 with a typewriter from my script notes, and overlooked in re- 

 vision. J. N. B. He-witt. 



Washington, D.C., April 19. 



BOOK-REVIEWS. 



Poiver through Repose. By Annie Patson Call. Boston, Rob- 

 erts. 16°. $1. 

 The tone and object of this book are thoroughly good. The 

 warning tbat it sounds is similar to that which Dr. Weir Mitchell 

 so earnestly voiced in his " Wear and Tear." We are wearing 

 and tearing too much and too fast. We are losing the faculty of 



1 The bacillus not only maintains its own parasitic life in the body, but 

 appears itself to manufacture, or subverts the nutrient function to produce 

 various toxic substances which are poisonous, though separated from the ba- 

 cillus (see Popular Science News, March, 1891, p. 43, quoted from Edinburgh 

 Medical journal). 



- See Swan's Nosodes; Burnett's New Cures. 



