HOMOEOPATHY.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 224, 24 September 1867, Page 2

HOMOEOPATHY.

To the Editor op the Nelson Evening Mail.

Sir — After a five years' period of quiescence, the medical Vesuvius has broken out into a fresh eruption, and for the last week or two has been pouring forth volumes of fire and fume over the heads of the medical heretics (yclept hdmceopathists) who infest the land. I can readily understand that it must be excessively provoking to the orthodox medical mind to Jfind that a heresy which has been so often denounced and contraverted, a foe that has been so confidently reckoned amongst the slain, has the perversity to consider itself alive and well; the profession, after braving the obnoxious system so often, may well complain with Macbeth —

The times have been That when the brains were out the 'thing' would die, And there an end; but now they rise again !

By his discovery of homoeopathy, old Hahnemann has discomposed the present generation of doctors, even more than Harvey did his contemporaries by discovering the circulation of the blood. Homoeopathy is the thorn in the side of physic — the bad shilling that is always turning up; it is to the 'rational' school of medicine 'what Ireland is to the British, and the * irrepressible negro' to the American statesman, equally fruitless to touch or to let alone; it is the bete noire of medicine; a nightmare that cannot be shaken off, though voted an illusion; a ghost which intrudes at every medical banquet; a very Dinotherium (Anglice Dreadful Beast), uncomfortable to look at even though it be called nothing better than a 'fossil.'

The state of chronic uneasiness which homoeopathy causes in the bosom of the profession reveals itself in periodical at-

tempts to write it down; this is of frequent occurrence in England and it is therefore not surprising that it should also take place here from time to time.

As ' S. A. C has used the case of Dr Fischer of Auckland, as a peg on which to hang his remarks on homoeopathy, I wish to say that he is mistaken if he considers that gentleman an uneducated practitioner — he is an intelligent and wellread man; he studied at the University of Berlin, which is perhaps the first, or at all events, in the very first line of European schools of medicine, and practised his profession for several years in England, and for the last fourteen years in this colony. I cannot affirm that the diploma he obtained at Berlin was that of a full degree; I have been credibly informed that it is the same as that held hy the late deservedly respected Dr Thebing. I would go quite as far as ' S. A. C in keeping up the standard for admission to registration, but it would surely be the height of injustice to refuse the one or have refused the other the privilege of registration, seeing they had come to New Zealand when no such Act was in force; for it is a maxim in all legislation that disabling clauses shall have no retrospective application.

'S. A. C has been dealt with in so masterly a manner by 'J. G.' in the Examiner, that little remains for me to add. But allow me space for a few remarks.

' S. A. C while sitting quiet under the stinging charge laid against him by 'J. G. f in his last letter, resents with much show of disgust the appellation 'allopathic' applied to his school of mediciue, and which he fancies is a nickname; like the applewoman, with whom O'Connell had an altercation, and who stood a sound rating with tolerable composure, but flew into a passion when he called her a ' parallelogram.' The word is quite an innocent word, in which lurks no abuse, or inuendo; it is simply used to designate those who are not homoeopaths, -Jit has been freely adopted by many eminent (and less fastidious) physicians of the old school.

Now as to our practice, every qualified practitioner has a right to use any of the remedies known to mankind, in the manner he deems fittest to benefit his patients; accordingly homceopathists occasionally use the ordinary drugs ; they make no secret of it, and they concede the same liberty to others. But while protesting against being under any kind of bondage, I must add that every one who has made.himself acquainted with the homoeopathic Materia Medica, and thus qualified himself to practice according to that law of cure, will find that in the vast majority of cases he will succeed better in that way than in any other. And though no sectarian, he rightly abides by the name of ' homoeopathist ' because it is descriptive of the main principle of his practice, and that on which he chiefly relies. Allopathic practitioners, on the other hand, are shut out by their prejudices from availing themselves of the assistance they would derive in many cases from remedies used according to the rule of similars.

With respect to doses (which, as has been already explained in your columns, has no connection whatever with the homoeopathic law ' similia similibus curantur), a very great diversity obtains. Hahnemann in his later years used higher dilutions than most of his disciples do; but of course the homoeopathic body is no more fettered by his opinions, greatly as they honor his genius, than the Lutheran church is by the tenets of Luther on special points. The most appropriate dose of such and such medicines in such and such diseases is very much still a subject of debate. The Manchester practitioners are as a body noted as 'low dilutionists,' i.e. they give larger doses than is common among us, but they have a perfect right to their own opinions. Were this a fitting place, I could adduce reasons for concluding that some complaints require almost undiluted medicines, while others receive much more benefit when the properties of the remedies have been 'developed' by trituration and dilution to what, prior to experiment, would certainly appear aa absurd degree of attenuation.

'S. A. C claims for his school the exclusive possession of rationality, and if incessant repetition of the word were of the nature of argument he mast be allowed to have proved his point, even to the extent of showing that the very drugs of allopathy are endowed with reason, for he more than once speaks of ' rational medicines.' This is going a step further than Van Helmont, who taught that a rational though rather testy goblin had his abode in the stomach, and that the whole art of medicine consisted in keeping him in good humor.

But seriously, what is this 'rational' medicine, and how long has it been so? Reason does not contradict itself, but one practitioner of so-called rational medicine proverbially differsfrom another. I remember watching the treatment of fever at a celebrated school of medicine, where three fever wards were under the care of three physicians: in the first the rule was to bleed, in the second to purge, in the third to give wine freely. Now one plan alone of the three. could be rational; then what ofthe other two?

I gladly admit however that the ordinary practice of medicine is more rational than it was. When Hahnemann commenced his series o. earnest efforts to reform medical practice, he inveighed chiefly agaiust four things, which, he said, were, contrary to reason: bloodletting; large doses of medicine, which the patient found harder to withstand than the disease itself; complex prescriptions, in which one drug contended with another; and the administration of medicines to the Sick

without ascertaining their effects on the healthy tody. Much as he was reviled at the time, he lived to see physicians abandon to a great extent the tbree irrational practices first mentioned; and were he in life now, he would find that here and there they are beginning to acknowledge he was right as to the fourth. But if it be rational to follow in the wake of a great thinker, shall we deny reason to him who led the way? Homoeopathy is spreading every year, and now reckons several thousand educated practitioners :on her muster-roll. I forget how many times •S. A. C. says itis 'almost extinct,' or words to that effect; but were he to do so a hundred times it would not alter the case; and everyone can see that, were it going out, the allopaths would not be so often in the field to display their prowess against it. I am, &c, F. W. I. Nelson, Sept. 18th, 1867. [This letter must terminate the discussion of this subject in our columns, which has already far exceeded the limits which our space enables us to devote to correspondence. — Ed. E.M.]

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