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HAHNEMANN'S DEFENCE
OF THE
Organon of Rational Medicine
AKD OF
HIS PEEVIOUS HOMCEOPATHIC WOEKS AGAINST
THE ATTACKS OF
PROFESSOR HECKER.
An Explanatory Commentary on the Homeopathic System.
TRANSLATED BY
K. E. DUDGEON, M.D.
1 J ~' J ■
Est inierdam ita perspicua Veritas, ut earn infirmare nulla res possit, tamen est adhibenda
irJerdum vis veyatftii, yi irl^,di^r^l—JCiCuiiO P20> QuiiJTO.
^ , -■ , > > ' J ) ^ 3 -■ 3 :^ J ) ^ J ^
PHILADELPHIA :
BOERICKE & TAPEL.
1896.
M^i^jL/,/rf4
7
0-
Copyrighted, 1896,
BY
BOERICKE & TAFEL.
, • »•« e
» 9 • • •
e«e 8 « e®»
•••••• • (
INTRODUCTION BY TRANSLATOR.
This work, which has not hitherto heen translated and
has hardly excited the amount of interest it merits, though
professedly written by Hahnemann's son Friedrich is evi-
dently the work of the much more competent father, as
proved not only by the style and by the learning it dis-
plays, but also conclusively, I would say, by Hahnemann's
letter to the publisher Arnold, the original of which I have
before me, and of which a translation will be found below.
Hahnemann's reason for making his son rather than
himself appear as the author, may have been that he had
expressed a resolution not to answer any of the criticisms
that might be published respecting his novel doctrine.
But the attacks of Professor Hecker, of Dresden, one of
the most renowned authorities in medicine then existing,
repeated from time to time during^nearly fifteen years,
and becoming ever more rancorous and calumnious as
Hahnemann's system was slowly evolved and disclosed
in his published works, beginning with the Essay on a New
Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs (pub-
lished in 1796), through jEsculapius in the Balance, The
Medicine of Experience, Fragmenta de Viribus Medicamentorum
Positivis (all these published in 1805), On the Value of the
Speculative Systems of Medicine (1808), and other less im-
4 INTRODUCTION BY TRANSLATOR.
portant works, down to the Organon of Rational Medicin^
(1810), exasperated Hahnemann to such a degree that he
thought his great truth ran the risk of being overwhelmed
unless an adequate reply were made to the criticisms that
had accumulated to such a great extent on his laborious
investigations and conscientious conclusions. As he
probably felt too much contempt for his assailants to enter
the lists against them in person, he resorted to the familiar
device of emplo^dng another's name to endorse his opin-
ions. Having at that time few or no adherents, he was
limited in his choice of a literary representative to his own
son Friedrich, at that time aged 24, a student of medicine
preparing for examination in order to take his degree,
and therefore fully employed on his own affairs, with no
leisure to write such an elaborate defence of his father's
system, were he capable of doing it, which I much doubt.
As the publication of this masterly attack on an illustri-
ous professor of the old school in Friedrich 's name might
have interfered with his chances of obtaining his degree,
Hahnemann is careful to impress on his publisher, Arnold,
that the book when printed was not to be on sale until after
Friedrich had taken his degree, when it would be beyond
the power of any professors or examiners to harm him.
This work is more especially interesting to all Hahne-
mann's disciples and admirers, as it is the only one in
which he defends his teaching from the attacks of his op-
ponents. From the titlef it would seem that it is a defence
* In the subsequent editions ''rational " was omitted.
t The title of the original is : ' ' Friedrich Hahnemann^, d€s Sohnes,
INTRODUCTION BY TRANSLATOR. 5
of the Organon only, but the reader will find that it is also
a reply to the adverse criticisms on all his previous ho-
moeopathic works. In short, it is a complete answer to
all the objections made to his teaching, and it even carries
the war into the enemy's territory, and delivers many
doughty blows to the " scientific medicine '' of the period.
The style, like that of other of Hahnemann's works is
rather involved and parenthetical, but this is owing to
Hahnemann's scrupulous desire to make his meaning
as precise and unmistakable as possible. The language is
in some cases rather more forcible than we are now ac-
customed to in controversial writing, but this seems to
have been a characteristic of the times, and that of Hahne-
mann's chief opponent, Professor Hecker, is certainly
more distinguished for its fortiter in re than for its suaviter
in modo. Hahnemann seems to have had a great admira-
tion for Luther's style, which he sometimes approaches
in the energy of his expressions.
I have not attempted to smooth the little asperities of
diction in this work. My chief business has been to give
as faithful a translation as possible, to alter the references
to Hahnemann himself from the third to the first person.
and to add a few explanatory notes, which are distin-
guished by being enclosed in rectangular brackets.
Widerlegung der Anfdlle Hecker' s auf das Organon der rationeUen JTeil-
kunde. Ein erlduternder Kommentar zur homoopalhischen Heillehre." The
literal translation of which is : ^^ Friedrich Hahnemann's [the son) Re-
futation of Hecker'' s attacks on the Organon of Rational Medicine. An ex-
planatory Commentary on the Homceopathic medical doctrine.^'
6 introduction by translator.
Letter from Hahnemann to the Publisher.
My Dear Mr. Arnold: I wish you had read Hecker's abusive article
against me ; you would then think the Refutation is only too modest.
You cannot wish that no reply should have been made by my son to
these shameful accusations. In such cases every author is the best
judge of what answer he should make. You then returned the MS.,
in order that some alterations should be made' (who was it that
marked these passages ? Was it you or was it Koeber ? If the lat-
ter, he must have already read the MS., and have considered the
remainder faultless !) Look now, though the author did not con-
sider it necessary, yet to please you he altered and modified those
passages. You could not desire more nor did you ask more. And
when this is done, and yet your censor does not allow the MS. to
pass, it is not the author's fault that it is not printed, and that you
should have made no preparation for printing it, as the censure was
not justified.
Moreover, no censor can refuse to allow the printing of a defensive
work in which the assailed is repulsed with actual libels (which is
not the case in this MS. ) ; for libels of private persons concern not
the censor, but the author. If there are libels in the book, it is not
the censor nor yet .the publisher,' but only the author who can be
legally prosecuted. Consequently, what Mr. Roeber has written
under the title is a sham pretext for his refusal. The true reason,
can be nothing else than the plaitf truths told of the medical art in
the work. If insults could prevent the printing of a book, then
Hecker's abusive work would never have passed the censors. But
we must take into consideration the underhand, backbiting, sneaking
ways for which Dresden is distinguished.
The truths of universal utility respecting the medical art contained
in this book, and which constitute its chief value, Avould assuredly
excite the opposition of the Leipzic professors, especially when they
learn that its publication has been refused in Dresden. The plain
truth it contains would only bring upon my son annoyance from his
INTRODUCTION BY TRANSLATOR. 7.
teachers, under whom he must still remain for a short time, and hj
whom he will soon have to pass the examination for his degree. As
yet, none of the professors have seen the 2IS., though they will hear of it.
The hest plan would be to have the MS. printed in some small
place where there does not exist any great prejudice in favor of the
traditional medicine, out of which there is no salvation ; where such
(truthful) denials of its claims would not be thought so much of, or
where the official doctor, if there is one and he is inclined to be
nasty, may be bribed to keep quiet with a few thalers.
If you will adopt this plan, and assure me that copies of the book
shall not be issued until my son has taken his degree, which he will
do as soon as possible, then the MS. of the Mefutation is still at your
service, and then you shall get the Materia Medica also.
If it had been secretly printed in Dresden without the veto of the
Holy Inquisition, then my son would have already got his degree
before any particular notice had been taken of it in Leipzic. But
now that so much fuss has been made about the thing in Leipzic,
there is no other way to manage it but that which I have suggested.
Nor can a single word more of the MS. be altered.
It is incredible that charges of heresy and the spirit of persecution
could find a footing even in scientific matters, and display their tyr-
anny ; but it is so, as we see in this -case-
But shall such a miserable charge of heresy prevent the most salu-
tary truths being said and printed ? Freedom of action and liberty of
the press must prevail when grand new truths are to be communicated to
the world. What could Luther have done with his splendid ideas if
he had not been able to get them printed, if he could not have sent his
outspoken solid 'truths hot from his heart to the press of his dear,
courageous friend, the publisher and printer, Hans Luft, with all the
hard words and abusive expressions he deemed useful for his purpose.
Then everything that was necessary was printed, and it was only so,
and in no other way, that the salutary Eeformation could be effected.
It is, of course, not necessary for me, like Luther, to abuse the Pope
and call him an ass in my writings, but I and my son must be able to
8 INTRODUCTION BY TRANSLATOR.
say wholesome truths in order to bring about the much-needed reform
in medicine. Hans Luft was almost as indispensable an instrument
of the Reformation as Luther himself. I, too, require for the good
cause as warm, as cordial a friend of the truth for my publisher as
Luft was for Luther. But if I experience such great resistance, I
cannot advance another step.
It is just the same with the Materia Medica. If the enemies of the
truth are not either silenced or convinced and instructed by this
defensive work, the Materia Medica must prove valueless. The public
can make no use of it if the malicious objections of Hecker and his
associates are not clearly shown to be the opposite of well-founded.
If Hecker and opponents of his stamp remain unrefuted, I cannot
with honor go on with the works of instruction I am engaged in, and
the Organon too will be no longer esteemed. No one could believe
the effect such mendacious representations have on the public.
If the Refutation does not appear, it will be thought that these
slanderous accusations against me and my Organon were unrefutable,
and I would be as it were excommunicated. No one would listen to
what I say, even should I say the most salutary things. The preju-
diced statements and miserable accusations of this more than spiteful
man must be utterly smashed up, before I can continue my teaching
work.
This is the state of the matter. It is for you to determine whether
you can interest yourself sufficiently for the truth and the good cause
as to remain my publisher. See if you can carry out my present
wishes. Yours with esteem.
Dr. Hahnemann.
April 24th. [1811]
I have just heard from Leipzic that pressure is to be put upon my
son to withdraw his work. I beg Mr. Voight to write immediately
and tell Magister Schubert that the MS. business is already settled,
and that he should leave mv son alone.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON, ETC.
My confidence in my countrymen makes me think that
no honor-loving German can have read Hecker's 1 09 page
long abusive articles against me (Annalen der gesammten
Medicin,'^ July and September, 1810), without intense in-
dignation ; a feeling akin to that which the public mani-
fested towards Klotz for having in his Literaturbriefen, be-
spattered the immortal Lessing and other distinguished
men with his filthy venom.
Nature may have required at least half a century to
produce in civilized countries a man who could take a
heart-felt pleasure in attacking conspicuous merit and dis-
playing towards it an animosity of the fiercest and bitter-
est character. Klotz and Hecker will always remain a
remarkable manifestation of nature, as rare as it is defi-
* [The full title of the periodical is '' Annalen der gesammten Medicin
als Wissensehaft und als Kunst, zur JBeurtheilung ihrer neusten Ei'findungen,
Theorien, Systeme und Heilmethoden, von August Friederich Hecker."
Anglice: ^^ Annals of all Medicine as Science and as Art, for judging of its
newest discoveries, theones, systems, and methods of cure, by August Friederich
Seeker.'^ A most ambitious and comprehensive title, but apparently
the enterprise did not meet with the success anticipated, for the peri-
odical expired after an existence of only two years. ]
10 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
cient in human charity. For fifteen years Hecker has
been chiefly occupied in girding at my name, as may be
seen in the yellow periodical he formerly edited and in
other critical journals. I took no notice of these attacks
as I considered them of no importance, indeed absolutely
futile. But my silence was asserted by Hecker to prove
that his arguments were irrefutable, and he became em-
boldened to write this last abusive paper (in the An-
nalen mentioned above), a genuine reflex of his real char-
acter ! '
I did not at first think this long tirade worth the trouble
of answering, and resolved to continue to pursue my in-
vestigations. without wasting time on this outburst of
Heckerism ; but I thought that, if I made no reply, Hecker
might fancy that his futile objections and dogmatic asser-
tions were of importance, as he has already scornfully as-
serted (p. 35) ; so as I am thoroughly convinced by expe-
rience of the value of my medical doctrines, I made up
my mind to provide this slanderous article with a little
commentarius perpetuus, in order to wake up Hecker out of
his fool's paradise and to enlighten the public as to the
true character of his performance.
In order to attack the subject on all points, Hecker
brings before his judgment-seat some articles on the
homoeopathic method I wrote six years ago, with the ob-
ject of discovering something to find fault with in these
older writings.
To begin with, he asserts (p. 31) : " As, hitherto, in these
days of uncertainty, of controversy, of contradictions and
of frequent changes o^ opinion, no Organon of Medicine
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 11
has proceeded from the rest of the profession,* so Hahne-
mann's Organon of Rational Medicine cannot be an Or-
ganon." This is just as well reasoned as if one were to
say, as the theories respecting the movements of the celes-
tial bodies from Ptolerny to Tycho Brahe are so inconse-
quent and contradictory, so the discovery of Copernicus
cannot be the true doctrine.
He first criticises my Fragmenta de viribus medicamento-
rum positivis, published six years ago (Leipzic, 1805).
This gives him a lot to do and causes him to offend fre-
quently against truth and honesty.
At p. 36 he makes a very silly objection to '' the com-
pleteness of the Index," which is a great boon to any one
using the Fragmenta.
Farther (p. .37) -he complains: "It is an abominable
calumny when Hahnemann says in the Preface to the
Fragmenta, that no physician has ever troubled himself
about the effects of medicine on the healthy, and that, as
a rule, physicians have not thought that a knowledge of
the instruments of their art was necessary." Any one
who reads this preface. will see that I do not say what
Hecker alleges, but this is what I do say : " No physician
has held it to be his chief duty to obtain the most perfect
knowledge of his instruments. "t Rather a difference be-
tween "mosipe^/ed" and " some."
* A charming picture Hecker here draws of the medical science of
'himself and colleagues.
f Instrumentorum artis suae habere notitiam guam maxime perfectamj
primum medici esse officium, nemo putat.
12 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
Medical men, and at their head Hecker himself, have
certainly endeavored to obtain some knowledge of the
medicines. But how far did the search after this knowl-
edge go ? Besides the natural history of the medicinal
substance, the materia medica was derived from the blind
usus in morhis^ and consisted partly of the domestic reme-
dies of country-folk (who only employed simples, whereas
the physician used only complex prescriptions) partly of
some favorite medicines to which the physician arbitrarily
ascribed the cure of his cases — though they were always
given mixed up with a lot of others — partly of medicines
whose remedial virtues were rashly deduced from their
supposed chemical constituents, partly of drugs to which
imaginary virtues were ascribed from some chimerical and
^ The medicines in their materia medica are said by these phy-
sicians to be absolutely wholesome and positively and entirely curative.
Every one who introduced a drug asserted that whenever he adminis-
tered it he saw only good effects, it always cured ; almost every one
protests that in his hands it never did any harm or caused untoward
symptoms, even when it did not do good (a manifest falsehood, as
every medicine that does not do good always does harm). Others ob-
served from some medicines given in large quantities occasionally
obvious symptoms ; but these they regarded as altogether mischievous,
so they added what they call corrigentia to the prescription in order to
deprive them of their bad qualities. But if the medicine is the suita-
ble one there are no bad symptoms to be combated during the treat-
ment. [Organon, U 130, 131), [5th Edit. U 154, 155]. One sees
from this how far they are from recognizing in the untoward symp-
toms and the disagreeable sensations caused by medicines their true
and sole remedial power. In their morbific effects the curative power
of medicine is to be sought and found.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 18
vague analogies, partly of remedies copied from untrust-
worthy books.
How far must the official materia medica be from con-
taining a perfect account of the true effects of the instru-
ments of cure ?
In the preface to the Fragmenta it is not stated, as
Hecker alleges, that '' no physician has hitherto troubled
himself about the effects of medicine on the healthy." In
order to saddle me with this assertion, Hecker omits these
words : " What effects the medicines produce of them-
selves, i.e., what alterations they bring about in the
healthy body in order to ascertain for ivhat diseases they are
all appropriate, no physician as far as I know, has ever
made this his object; "* the whole passage which is printed
in conspicuous type, '* in order to ascertain,'''' etc., is
omitted and by this omission the sentence acquires quite
another meaning, which appears to him more suited for
his censure.
What does the reader think of this conduct of Hecker ?
Is it commendable to corrupt the text of a book under re-
view?
In this passage I say plainly : " no doctor, as Jar as I
know, has sought to ascertain the curative tendencies of medi-
cines from their effects on the healthy body,''' and this is per-
fectly true. But I never said, " physicians have never
recorded any effects of medicines."t This they have cer-
* Quid enim medicamina per se efficiant, ed est, quid in sano cor-
pore mutent, perscrutari, ut inde pateat, quibus in universum morbis conve-
niant, nemo hucdum medicorum, quantum scio curavit.
t According to Hecker they did concern themselves with ' ' the effects
14 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
tainly done and I have reproduced their observations as
completely as possible in the Fragmenta, but they did
this either unintentionally, and their records were only
apropos of something else (quasi aliud agendo), or they
had merely what is called " toxicology " in their mind,
and imagined that in the phenomena they observed they
only displayed the absolute hurtfulness of these medicinal
substances, or exhibited these ghastly pictures of observa-
tions in order to show how skilfully they cured such poi-
sonings, or how impossible it was to save the poisoned
patients. They never represent these symptoms as effects
of the medicines that might be utilized for remedial pur-
poses, as eradicators of disease, or as capable of being
used for the cure of diseases. These physicians never
gave such substances purposely to healthy persons in
order to ascertain their effects as indications for their use
in the cure of disease. No physician, before me, ever
tested the medicines on the healthy human body with the
view of searching for and discovering their true, pure,
positive curative powers in their morbific effects. This is
what I stated in that passage of the preface to the Frag-
menta. Who is there who can deny its truth ?
At p. 43, Hecker wonders why I give the peculiar ef-
fects of medicinal substances without mentioning the
dose in which each was given. Just as if quality could
of medicines on the healthy." But this I deny, they did not concern
themselves at all, and made no trials of medicines on the healthy, not
even for the purpose of giving a mere historical account of them ; if
we except W. Alexander alone, who regarded the effects of camphor
and saltpetre merely as noxious.
DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON. 15
be altered by quantity, just as if the faculty of a me-
dicinal substance to act dynamically or spiritually could
be changed by mere aggregation or subdivision !
The dose in experiments of this sort may be very va-
rious, and this was so in my trials ; and yet the resulting
effects were the same in kind and even in degree, accord-
ing as the constitutions of the subjects were more or less
excitable and susceptible to the medicine. To fix the
dose in each case beforehand would have been a useless
procedure. But that the doses in trials of this sort must
not be too small, and how large they must be as a rule,
this is plainly enough said in the Organon (§ 103*) which
Hecker alleges he has read.
Sitting in his study he delivers himself theoretically
thus (p. 44) : " The phenomena and effects we observe
after the ingestion of medicines do not depend solely on
their action, but also on the various conditions of each
individual, such as age, sex, mode of living, habits, tem-
peraments, weather, and especially on the degree and na-
ture of his health or disease, on the strength, duration
or other mode of employing the medicinal substance,
and, above all, on the influences bearing on the diseased
organism." What a lot of absurd contradictions are con-
tained in these few lines we shall presently see.
Hecker continues : " Owing to the infinite variety of
* [This paragraph directs that the proper dose to be taken in the
proving of medicines is what is usually given in ordinary medicine in
diseases. He repeats this paragraph in the three following editions ;
but in the fifth edition he recommends (|128) as best for proving pur-
poses globules of the 30th dilution.]
16 DEFENCE OF THE OKGANON.
these numerous conditions, notwithstanding identity of
action, the effects of each medicine employed may be ex-
tremely various, often, indeed, opposite."
So the effects of the medicines administered are unde-
cided and dissimilar, of those medicinal forces which are
indescribably superior in strength to the influences of all
non-medicinal external agents in human life, even to dis-
eases themselves! and this is produced by the ordinary
conditions of life ! These are what in every case main-
tain human beings in such an undecided wavering con-
dition of health that medicines are unable to produce in
them ,any fixed positive effects ! What a clever idea !
How can a single human being on God's earth remain in
good health if the perturbing influence of the numerous
conditions in ordinary life are as enormous as the ingeni-
ous * Dr. Hecker here represents them ? For, if the
healthy body is so continuously, so powerfully, so inevi-
tably deranged by all ,the ordinary external things
around us, as Hecker piteously asserts, then the healthy
bodj'' can never be healthy but always deplorably ill^a
true contradictio in adjecto. It is well for us that the
healthfulness of human beings is not influenced by this
scholastic demonstration, but that people are wont to
* His excellent intentions are conspicuous ; he would like that the
subjects chosen for the trials of medicine should be such as could be
affected in their health by every little variety- of external things,
should be sick persons, in fact, so that the trials might be of doubtful
character. Excellent man ! The pity of it is that his whole dem-
onstration is futile, and he is caught in his own trap.
DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON. 17
remain as a rule in good health* under the multifarious
conditions of modes of living, of age, of sex, of habits, of
temperaments, of weather, in spite of Court-counsellor
Hecker. These healthy persons who continue to be
healthy amid all the conditions and external things just
alluded to will, forsooth, just on account of these influ-
ences f which are as a rule harmless to them, display
* Man has so much innate health-sustaining vital principle that
the exciting causes of disease mentioned in the Organon ( | 59 note [y.
my last translation, the 6th edition, app. p. 265] ) can only make him
ill when they act on him in an extreme manner, i.e., for a long time,
in great strength, or in large numbers. But as the organism cannot
be induced to become diseased by the ordinary influences to which it
is exposed in daily life, it follows undeniably that the action on the
body of medicines which have a much greater power over the state
of health of human beings than diseases, as they are able to overcome
the latter must also be infinitely freer from all influences of the or-
dinary daily conditions of life, consequently all effects of medicines
on the healthy body must be extremely constant, determinable and
reliable. Who can deny this ?
t Among these influences which are supposed to have made my
experiments uncertain, and to which I am supposed to pay no atten-
tion (p. 45), Hecker includes diseases, and yet he must have read in
the preface that the provings in the Fragmenta were made on persons
in the best possible health. This insinuation of Hecker' s is, there-
fore, a pure invention. For, in the inconsiderable number of symp-
toms observed by me in the trials purposely made by me on persons
affected with some external malady, this circumstance has always
been expressly mentioned. Just imagine ! Healthy persons, and
yet, according to Hecker, influenced by disease ! Such contradic-
tions could only occur in Hecker' s insanabik caput. But perhaps
Hecker is acquainted with diseases of a peculiar kind, not cognizable
2
18 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANO^'.
nothing but variable, undecided dissimilar effects from
every medicinal substance they take ! What does the
reader say to this contradiction?
In this instance Hecker's pruritis contradicendi drives
him to make assertions, as every sensible person must
see, from which, without his knowledge and will, it is
demonstrated " that medicines can have no positive effects
whatever. ^^ If, then, medicines cannot possibly have any
positive, reliable effects, even on healthy persons, but only
variable, diverse and even opposite effects, does not the
wisdom of Doctor and Professor Hecker perceive how
undecided and unreliable must be the effects of medicines
in diseases whose number and whose perturbing effects
on the body are so enormously large? In diseases which,
unlike the multifarious influences of daily life that leave
the person well, are, on the contrary, wont to make him
ill, as our Court-counsellor knows.
If medicines are universally addicted to show nothing
but undecided, always diverse, unreliable effects on human
beings, even healthy ones, then it must be impossible to
trust to the effects of medicines in diseases !
Patients besides being exposed to most of the external
influences Hecker thinks so much of, to which the healthy
also are subject, are, according to him, liable to many
more alterations than the healthy. Consequently the
by any external signs nor perceptible by the individual himself or
by those about him by any symptom, nor presenting anything mani-
fest to the senses, and which leave the man well in all respects. IS'o
one knows what contradictory things can be dreamed of by a-priori
seers !
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 19
effects of medicines on patients must naturally be much
less precise and reliable, indeed so undeterminable, so un-
reliable and perverse, that it were impossible to imagine
an intentional cure of diseases by medicines ! So fare-
well to the whole lot of books on materia medica, good-
bye to the numerous treatises on therapeutics and practi-
cal medicine of all sorts which have hitherto been founded
on the reliability of the effects of medicines !
What use is there now for professors of therapeutics and
clinical medicine ? For there is no longer a possibility of
an art of medicine !
Bent on confuting me, Hecker does not see what a blow
he gives to the cracked gothic building of his patched-up
medical system by this lovely demonstration of his, by
which he only meant to show up the fallacy of the obser-
vations of medicinal symptoms in my Fragmenta !
Capital ! By insisting on the deceitful character of all
medicinal effects on the healthy and diseased body,
Hecker clearly demonstrates the impossibility of any
medical art and reduces the medical profession to utter
nullity. Does Hecker think to escape this dilemma, by
taking for granted (pp. 44, 45), an internal action of medi-
cines that always remains the same notwithstanding all
varieties of outward effects? This will not help him, as
he cannot see that hypothetical internal action. No one
can have any knowledge of the action of medicines on the
human body except what the consequences of their em-
ployment, that is to say, the symptoms observed from
them reveal. This is what I have termed the action-ten-
dency of the medicines, which constantly strives to mani-
20 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
fest itself in the human body, but which cannot reveal
itself in trials on the healthy otherwise than by phenomena
cognizable by the senses. In this case these express (if
all strong, noxious influences from without are avoided)
the true action of the medicine on the organism so purely
and clearly that these effects may be unhesitatingly called
the pure actions of the medicines ; and a collection of
such pure effects constitutes the sum of the action-ten-
dency of the medicinal substance administered as per-
fectly as is required by mortals for enabling them to cure
diseases. Such a collection of the pure efl'ects of medi-
cines is the external revelation of the action-tendency of a
medicinal substance.
But not every healthy person can at one and the same
time undergo all the morbid states which the medicine
tends to produce,* because the power of life to maintain
health strives, as a rule, to prevent this, and thus it is that
moderate doses of medicine allow the manifestation of
one set of morbid states in one person, another in another,
according to the susceptibility of each.
But the conditions under which this or that symptom
of this or that medicine is wont to appear by preference,
the ordinary circumstances of life— age, sex, ordinary
weather, evening, morning, night, open air, falling asleep,
sleeping, waking, eating, drinking, lying, standing, etc.,
are so harmless and so incapable of altering the original
* Which are always brought into operation in the homoeopathic
employment in diseases by the rapid cure of all the symptoms of its
sphere of action.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 21
medicinal symptoms in healthy persons, that they may be
regarded merely as external conditions appertaining to
the production of the symptoms, but the phenomena thus
observed are in complete accord with the true action of
the medicine, seeing that a more accurate knowledge of
the latter is not conceivable and is not attainable by man.
From these facts it is an infallible, manifest truth that
medicines develop positive, invariable actions and effects in the
healthy human body.
This is also seen in the medicinal symptoms observed
by other physicians in the Fragmenta. There it is re-
markable how many of the effects of the same medicine
in various observers correspond, though none of them
knew what had taken place in the others, in a word how
every medicine produces identical effects in ordinarily
healthy persons !
The articles on belladonna, hyoscyamus and stramonium
may serve as examples,
Hecker can no more argue away these observations than
he can mine. He asserts further (p. 45) : " Hahnemann
has observed from chamomilla the most wonderful symp-
toms, resembling those of the most powerful poisonous
plants, but other physicians have seen nothing of the
sort." It is a melancholy fact that Hecker and his col-
leagues know next to nothing of the effects of this power-
ful plant, in fact they could not observe any, as they only
employed it casually as a domestic medicine in the form
of a tea or clyster in between their administration of many
other drugs mingled together in complex prescriptions, so that
they could not see its characteristic effects. Thus its pe-
22 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
culiar effects were generally hindered and destroyed by
the antidotal action of the many other drugs administered
at the same time. They would not take notice of anything
relating to chamomilla, because they regarded it as an un-
important thing, a mere accessory, a domestic remedy
unworthy the attention of learned professors of medicine.
This was the charming way they have hitherto taken in
order to arrive at truth !
But in order to say something against me, Hecker goes
beyond his previous assertions and transgresses the canons
of honest controversy : '' In the Fragmenta,^^ he says,
" symptoms like those of the most powerful vegetable
poisons are ascribed to chamomilla.
But the most powerful so-called vegetable poisons kill
in large doses. Have I ever said that of chamomilla f His
exaggerations thus become untruths !
" The symptoms Hahnemann has given of the medi-
cines under observation," according to Hecker, " vary in
unimportant particulars, are often contradictory and con-
trary to one another — cold, heat, loss of sensibility, pains,
etc." Does he then not approve of medicines causing
first cold, afterwards heat, of others causing mingled heat
and cold, others loss of sensibility followed by particular
kinds of pain, etc., then all he has to do as Court-coun-
sellor and Professor is to command that henceforth me-
dicinal substances should not presume to act thus, and
doubtless they will obey him. And whereas the exciting
causes of intermittent fevers have hitherto presumed to
cause such contradictory and opposite phenomena as cold
and heat, insensibility and pains, are. Dr. Hecker will not
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANOX. 23
have them acting in this manner — and so they must
henceforth cease to do so.
Hecker complains (p. 46) that "cAamomiZZa and bella-
donna, according to the Fragmenta, have produced almost
all the symptoms known to pathology." What a pov-
erty of symptoms must pathology be afflicted with, if
they are all contained in the symptoms of chamomilla and
belladonna 1 Who can fail to perceive the exaggeration
and untruth of this assertion ? And how can he repre-
sent the works on pathology as containing all the morbid
symptoms occurring in nature? Pathological treatises
are human handiwork, but infinite nature makes diseases
without asking pathologists uf what symptoms they shall
be composed.
He says further : " It must strike one as strange that
phj'-sicians have noticed few or none of the effects Hah-
nemann has recorded of the commonest medicines which
are in daily use, and which have become ordinary domes-
tic medicines, such as camphor and chamomilla^ Who
can fail to perceive that people have become so habitu-
ated to these medicinal substances by their daily use as
ordinary domestic remedies, that they are almost incapa-
ble of exciting any striking effects? Must that appear
strange to any man whose business it ought to be to re-
flect? It is something quite different that strikes me as
strange, namely, how is it possible that Hecker and his
like can, while they are giving complex mixtures of other
medicines, allow such manifestly medicinal substances as
camphor and chamomilla to be taken indiscriminately, as
though they were of no consequence (Hecker calls them
contemptuously " commonest medicines ") ; how can they
24 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
prescribe them daily as if good for everything, and per-
mit them to be used as universal domestic remedies, and
yet call themselves rational physicians.
Whilst giving such hotch-potch mixtures of many other
medicines, it is impossible to observe anything of the pure
effects either of coffee or of chamomilla or of camphor. By
so doing, these very learned gentlemen do not see the
wood for the trees. Is that wonderful ? We cannot ac-
tually say that God has afflicted them with blindness ;
they obscure their own vision with their coarse routine
employment of complex mixtures.
Let any one read in the Fragmenta what dangerous, vio-
lent symptoms those most trustworthy men, Friedrich Hoff-
mann, Cullen and W. Alexander observed from camphor
given by itself, and what Ortel says about it in his Med.
pr. Beoh., and he will wonder how Hecker can assert that
" physicians have known few or none of the effects of cam-
phor which Hahnemann has recorded." By suppressing
what is good and true in this manner, and by menda-
ciously offering to the public enough of what is bad, it
is possible to represent white as black, and to spread
abroad such an intentional confusion of ideas, such ob-
scurity, that no reader can know how to distinguish truth
from falsehood and deception. It is in this glorious way
that Hecker poses as a benefactor of the world !
Similar exaggerations and falsehoods occur further on
(pp. 46, 47). " Hahnemann," he says, " lets chamomilla
do horrible things, severe rigor, blindness " (in the Frag-
menta it stands " along with chilliness, dimness of sight ") ;
" insanity " (the Fragmenta has only symptoms expressing
dizziness, distraction, and some deceptions of the senses) ;
DEEFNCE OF THE ORGANON. 25
" convulsions and somnolence " (the Fragmenta has this
symptom : " In the morning a fever attended by sopor,
and some twitching in the limbs "). How any honorable
man can indulge in such exaggerations I am at a loss to
understand.
Hecker continues : " Many of the symptoms could not
possibly have occurred ; of several medicines it is said
that they cause rheumatic or arthritic pains, but rheuma-
tism and arthritis are definite, peculiar forms of disease,
which certainly cannot be caused by any medicine in the
world." Verily, very learned, as if spoken ex cathedra!
But who ever said that 'the pro vers had the ordinary
rheumatism of the nosological works, or common gout,
or even, that they had anything of the sort? They only
likened the pains they felt to the rheumatic and gouty
kinds of pain ; it would not have been right for the author
to substitute other words than those they used to express
their sensations. Here, then, we have another Heckerian
perversion.
So it is, also, with the symptoms described by Hecker
as " scrupulous " (or, as he elsewhere calls them " micro-
logical "). Thus, he says, he has counted above a hun-
dred different pains in the proving of chamomilla, and gets
very angry about it.* This is a palpable falsehood, for
chamomilla has but few peculiar pains ; but they occur in
various parts of the body and under certain specified
conditions. If any one will look into the Fragmenta, he
will be able to appreciate Hecker's love of truth ! He
* Because he feels that all his life he has been misusing it in an
empirical way, just as the old wives do.
26 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
says, that I assert that " chamomilla causes the lower lip
to split down through the middle." The expression is,
" lahii infer iaris medium rhagade fissum,''^ w^hich may be
translated "the lower lip gets a crack in the middle."
Admire the beauty and faithfulness of Court-counsellor
Hecker's translation !
A symptom of cinchona : " obturatio auris interna,^^ re-
ferring to a kind of dullness of hearing, as though some-
thing lay upon the ear internally, is thus given by Hecker
(p. 38) : " Cinchona bark produces in the very first hour
an internal stopping up of the ear." God knows w^hat
sort of a cork or plug he was thinking of!
He says further on (p. 48) : " Valerian is credited with
having caused a synochus in healthy persons, w^hich, how-
ever, is palpably false, for synochus, as is well known, is
a definite (?) form of disease of peculiar character, and as
this medicine is so frequently employed, a valerian syno-
chus must surely have been observed by some other medi-
cal men."
Very learnedly spoken from the symbolical books of
the ars conjecturalis, out of which there is no salvation !
So then, dear nature must not any longer develop in the
children of man an enormous number of different acute
fevers ; Hecker and his set won't have it ; they have only
described in their works one single synochus with pecu-
liar, unalterable characteristics! Every one describes a
different one,* and infinite nature has to be guided ac-
cordingly !
■^ Every nosologist has only one single synochus, but each perceives
and describes a different one according to the peculiarity of his mind.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 27
It has often been remarked, and with much truth, that
the failure of Hecker and his like to see a thing is no
proof that the thing does not exist. Who among them
has ever given valerian by itself for a disease without pre-
scribing several other medicines a short time before, a
short time afterwards, or at the same time? Who among
them has ever given valerian experimentally to healthy
persons? What pure effects of it can these gentlemen
have observed ? Of course, none at all. What title then
have they to contradict facts which they have never had
an opportunity of observing?
Hecker continues : " Most of the medicines here treated
of produce in the provers states of unconsciousness, som-
nolence, delirium and so forth " (not true !), " and so it is
incomprehensible how they could give such precise mi-
crological descriptions of their sensations." Is it stated
in the Fragmenta that the unconscious, the somnolent, the
delirious, observed and recorded their own condition and
those other symptoms which followed or preceded those
states? What absurdity !
No one could believe how deficient in honesty Hecker
is ; how well he understands how to distort the most ob-
vious facts, to turn white into black, and to throw dust
into the reader's eyes, if one did not read all this in his
own words.
But now comes (pp. 48, 49) the best bit of all out of the
innermost depths of his heart. His words are : " Hahne-
mann has made the most and the most exact experiments
on his own person The body and mind of a man
who has instituted those trials on himself must infallibly
28 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
be soon disordered to such a degree that he can no longer
be regarded as a healthy person, and his capacity for making
accurate and unprejudiced observations must be seriously
impaired, often completely lost^
Insinuations of this sort are undeserving of notice.
' The reader will therefore excuse me from saying anything
more about them. Every man endowed with proper
feeling will appreciate their malice and will feel a pitying
contempt for a man who could demean himself by such
base conduct.
In connection with the above, Hecker quotes the worst
symptoms in the whole of the Fragmenta, and pretends that
I produced them on mj^self! "With amazement," he
says, '* one reads here the description of the frightful suf-
ferings, the anxiety, the pains, the sad hypochondriacal
dispositions, the mental imbecilities, the delusions, the
furious deliria, the comas, the convulsions and many
other sufferings endured by Hahnemann in his own per-
son." The reader of the Fragmenta will be astonished to
find that neither in that work nor anywhere else do I say that
these horrible things occurred to me. And, moreover, the
worst of the symptoms detailed by Hecker, the furious
deliria^ are taken by him from the observations of others,
from a certain Kramer (^Frag., p. 249) and a certain Hoyer
{Frag., p. 34), and ascribed to me. I never included in
the Fragmenta " furious deliria " among the symptoms ob-
served by me ! Far less that I was affected in that way.
I leave the reader to qualify as it deserves such a perver-
sion of the truth.
In no part of the Fragmenta have I given the names of
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 29
the persons on whom I made the trials. The most severe
symptoms were observed in persons who by accident or
from ignorance had swallowed too large a quantity of the
medicine, and who were excitable and sensitive. Those
taken from the records of the symptoms observed by
other physicians were generally much more violent than
those observed by myself. I never subjected myself or
others to such dangerous consequences of large doses of
medicine. Those who know me are well aware that I am
incapable of doing such a thing, and that I can only feel
contempt for such calumnious statements. To be abused
by such an one as Hecker, is the greatest compliment he
could pay me. How could any person of intelligence
assert that those observations in the Fragmenta, which
were conducted with the most obvious care and circum-
stantiality, which demanded the most acute judgment and
the most circumspect and watchful mind, were observed
and recorded by a person suffering from coma or affected
with furious delirium ?
Surely this is enough to show the intelligent, impartial
reader that Hecker's judgment was perverted by passion-
ate prejudice.
Towards the end of p. 49, he insists " that Hahnemann
should have defined the kind of health enjoyed by those
(healthy persons) on whom the trials were made, and
have mentioned all the various degrees of health they
presented at every trial ;" and he goes on making simi-
lar impossible and ridiculous propositions which, though
they are unnecessary and absurd, are so easy to make on
paper.
30 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
As no created being can penetrate into the interior of
men or things, so we can only ascertain what health is
by the teachings of experience — more we cannot ascer-
tain. I was guided by sound reason and common sense
in selecting healthy subjects, and I chose those who would
be generally considered health}?- for my experiments re-
specting the action of medicines, and in this way I did all
that it was in the power of man to do. For this there
was no need of scholastic divisions and subdivisions,
which the sensible reader will willingly leave to dogmatic
writers of books, who, as a rule, labor under a lack of
sound common sense.
Moreover the very great " susceptibility of human beings
to the action of medicine " (which Hecker at p. 50 assigns
as a reason for denying the constant character of medi-
cinal symptoms) can, in such trials, reveal nothing but
what lies in the nature of the action of the medicinal sub-
stance ; it can alter nothing in the essential quality of the
medicine ; it can only cause the phenomena to be more
striking, more distinct and stronger.
Where I have described the effects of a medicine on a
person affected with an external malady, which was very
rarely the case, I was careful, as I have already said, to
mention this circumstance on every occasion; all the other
phenomena were observed on subjects as healthy as jdos-
sible, and, as is stated in the Organon (§§ 103, 104, 105 [5th
edit., §§ 121, 125, 126]), under external conditions as
similar as possible.
In order to say something disparaging about such trials
of medicines on healthy persons, which, however, is neither
m
DEFENCE OF THE ORGTANON. 31
appropriate nor to the point, Hecker adds (p. 50) : " If
we take a number of healthy persons and give them coffee,
wine, brandy, etc., which belong to the most ordinary
articles of diet " (does not Ilecker know that the effects of
those things we partake of daily must be most indistinct
and unnoticeable, as the action of what we have taken a
short time before is not over when a new portion of it is
swallowed, and that the daily and continued habit of using
it, obliterates all striking effects ? Who gave him the sage
advice to offer the impure and indistinct results of habit-
ual articles of diet as a test and refutation of m}^ pure
trials with unaccustomed medicines?), "in various quan-
tities and strength and under various internal and external
conditions " (this is just the exact opposite of the condi-
tions under which I conducted my trials, they were made
and taught to be made under regulated external conditions as
nearly as possible identical; the search after internal invisible
conditions in healthy subjects for such trials I leave to
superfine geniuses), " what a great variety of effects would
be produced !" This is a supposition and a conjecture
evolved at the desk ; Hecker has never put to the proof
or made trials of anything of the sort^ his mind is satu-
rated with book-scribbling and verbosity. And w^ould it
be wonderful or would it prove anything against my trials
if a great variety of effects had been produced, seeing
that Hecker would have these substances administered
" under very dissimilar internal and external conditions " —
which is just what I deprecated? Who asked him to do
this ? He only wished to cause confusion by making a
totally inappropriate comparison in order to damage my
experiments.
32 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
" How much greater," continues Heeker, " must the
difficulties be of obtaining reliable results, when unaccus-
tomed powerful drugs are administered to persons of vari-
ous peculiarities of constitution under multifarious ex-
ternal conditions ?"
How would it be if the}^ were administered in circum-
stances as nearly identical as possible, as directed in the
Organon (§§ 102-105 [5th edit., §§ 124-127]), and as was
done by me ? Were these remarks devised by Heeker
with any other object than to divert the attention of the
reader from the true point of view ?
And how directly at variance with experience* is this
statement : " that unaccustomed drugs are less capable of
developing distinct, striking and precise effects than such
as are taken daily and habitually !" The exact contrary
is the case ! A person who drinks coffee for the first time
will, as every sensible man knows, manifest more distinct,
striking and precise symptoms than one almost constantly
swilling coffee, and thus gradually becoming habituated to
it ! How utterly unfounded his assertion ! The exact con-
trary of what he excogitates and hatches in his study
takes place in nature If
At p. 51 and in many other places of his diatribe he
* Experience and scribbling are two very different things ! Works
of experience, such as my Fragmenta and Organon of Rational Medicine
can only, if at all, be confirmed or refuted by fresh, honest experi-
ments. It is ridiculous, and more than ridiculous, to combat careful
real experience by tirades ex cathedra and captious verbosity.
t ' ' They become owls, which see only in the darkness of their
dreams, but become blind in the light of experience, and are unable
to perceive that which is brightest." — Bacon.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 33
makes it a criaie that I have given a full and accurate de-
scription of the symptoms ; sneers continually at it, and
calls it " anxious micrology and scrupulosity, which with-
out being of the slightest advantage " (as he understands
the word), "only confuses the subject and often runs off
into ridiculous trifles.' '
If this trick should succeed in sneering away all the
symptoms given in full detail and wdth all their special
peculiarities, he would certainly have given the good cause
a severe blow. For were he able to take away all those
symptoms so carefully and truthfully observed, so signi-
ficant and so characteristic of the special tendency of each
individual medicine, there would remain nothing but the
symptoms of little or no significance only indicated by
single words, such as: Heat, cold, restless sleep, somno-
lence, anorexia, discomfort, etc., which I allowed to stand
provisionally in the hope of being able to characterize
them more exactly in the case'of each medicine, but with-
out attaching any value to them (vide Organon of Rational
Medicine § 129 [5th edit., § 153]), seeing that they are,
as I have said, only vague and indefinite. It would be
much more convenient for Hecker and his associates to
know only such vague medicinal symptoms expressed by
single words, and hardly even so much, as they do not
care to know anything about the cases of disease they
have to treat than just such vague generalities, in order
that they may get quickly through their work ; what is
still awanting to force the pace, to wit, to give the cases
pathological names, that Hecker and company can speed-
ily evolve out of their own heads, so as to enable them to
finish their business in a minute or two.
3
34 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
It was not thus that old Father Hippocrates went to
work ; in his incomparable histories of cases of epidemic
diseases * he records with the most minute detail almost
only special, often very special, s^^mptoms of the disease
he observed. In this, as he felt, lay the peculiar, the
distinctive features of each case of disease.
But the ever-ready prescription writers of the Hecker-
ian stamp know a vast deal better than the wise Hip-
pocrates (whose name is constantly in their mouths,
whilst in their acts they dishonor and deny him !) ; all
they need to do is to ask the patient a couple of ques-
tions and feel his pulse gracefully, in order to be able at
once to prescribe a lot of medicines mixed together, of
whose special action they know nothing definite, and do
not care to know anything true or definite. What a con-
trast does this superficial, bungling practice present to
the careful, true, detailed observations of Hippocrates
which Hecker must scoff at as anxiously micrological,
over-scrupulous and ridiculous trifling, seeing that he
finds fault with me for recording the medicinal symp-
toms with similar minuteness. If nature presents the
symptoms of diseases with such circumstantiality as
Hippocrates testifies by his records of cases of disease,
it would be wrong to overlook the special symptoms of
medicines corresponding to those of diseases, as these
must be investigated in the homoeopathic treatment.
The minute, special symptoms of each individual
medicinal substance, by which it is characterized and
* Let any one read the 42 histories of cases of disease in the 1st
and 2d books of The Epidemics.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 35
differentiated from other medicines, are observable just
because they must be observed, and precisely because
they are as useful and necessary to enable us to effect a
definite, certain and rapid cure, as is a detailed knowl-
edge of the disease symptoms in each individual case.
With equal minuteness and scrupulosity, observations
in objects of natural history are conducted; e.g. , in the
description of every single species of plants, and yet they
are of no, or of comparatively little, use to humanity.
Every joint of the antennse of the rarest and most use-
less insects is described and counted ; the tiniest worms
are dissected and the peculiarities of their intestines
noted; minerals are scrupulously described in all their
infinite varieties of composition down to the minutest
deviations and in all their properties cognizable by the
senses. And quite right, too ! the properties and varie-
ties of natural bodies and natural phenomena, enor-
mously numerous though they be, exist in order that we
may observe them.
And in the matter that is of the greatest importance to
humanity, in the observation of every case of disease we
have to treat, and in the search for the observable effects
of every medicine we have to employ as our remedial
instrument, in this alone shall the most unpardonable
negligence and superficiality be commendable? Does
that deserve the name of rational medicine, of wisdom,
of love of truth, of conscientiousness? It is just the
opposite.
At p. 52 Hecker does not seem to know what he wants,
so involved he becomes in inconsequence and untruth-
36 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
fulness. He asks : " What are the efifects of medicines
to be used against the symptoms of disease? What,
among so many others, are the phenomena in disease
which we are to oppose by remedies that cause similar
phenomena? " " These two main questions Hahnemann
has not satisfactorily answered in his book, but, on the
contrary, has increased the difl&culty of answering them."
As regards the first question, it is answered, as well as
was possible for a single honest observer, in the Frag-
menta, which records the effects of a number of simple
medicines tested on the healthy body. Having just criti-
cized this book (the Fragmenta), which contains these
medicinal symptoms, Hecker now asks about the effects
and symptoms of medicines that are to be opposed to the
symptoms of disease. What answer should be given
him ? Has he failed to understand that, according to
the homoeopathic doctrine, the medicines causing the most
similar possible symptoms are to be employed against the
symptoms of disease? Will he now understand?
The second main question (which is purely clinical
and therapeutical) : " To what symptoms of disease are
we to adapt the medicinal symptoms?" Hecker ad-
dresses to the Fragmenta, which only contains materia
medica, and consequently is naturally not calculated to
answer questions of a clinical kind — an odd blunder for
a professor to make. Or is it, perhaps, merely a piece of
chicanery on his part? He himself gives the answer to
this question, a few pages farther on (p. 58), from my
Medicine of Experience, and still more explicitly is it given
in the Organon (§§ 129, 130 [5th Edit., §§ 154, 155]). But
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 37
here, at p. 52, he pretends that he knows nothing about
it, and that the question was never answered by me. He
has either got some one to transcribe the passages from
the Medicine of Experience and Organon, without having
read the works himself, or he tries to throw dust in the
readers' eyes — a proceeding that is both dishonorable and
calumnious. There is no third explanation.
What follows: "The medicines" down to "identical
effects," I have already several times refuted. It is a
common trick of Hecker's to give frequent rechauffes of
his fictitious accusations, so that it may appear as though
his objections were numerous and that they were all new.
But a passage at p. 52 is too palpably untrue to be left
unnoticed. He asserts : " What Hahnemann observed
from aconite, hyoscyamus, nux vomica, stramonium and so on
is identical " (I would specially direct attention to iden-
tical) " with what he saw from arnica, camphor, chamomilla,
cinchona and others ; so that there is a wonderful corres-
pondence among the different articles." He must imagine
that none of his readers has the Fragmenta before him,
and that of those who have, none understand Latin;
otherwise, he would not so confidently utter such a palp-
able falsehood, to wit, that the symptoms of all these
medicines are almost identical. On the previous page
(p. 51) he finds fault with the too special and micrologi-
cal difference of the symptoms of the several medicines
(which implies the greatest variety), and here, on the
very next page, he asserts that they are all the same ;
that nine medicines have identical symptoms. What is
one to think of such conduct? But immediately after-
38 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
wards his reason for devising this figment becomes mani-
fest : " Almost all the 27 medicines," he says, '' whose
effects Hahnemann has described caused pains, spasms,
chill, etc. Would it be a matter of indifference which we
gave when the patients complained of pains, spasms,
chill, etc ? " Here he would make the reader believe that
the symptoms of the medicines in the Fragmenta consisted
of single vague words like chill, pain and so forth, that I
would make use of these vague, indefinite, single-word
morbid symptoms — chill, pain, etc. — for the treatment;
and yet Hecker, as regards the first, shortly before com-
plained of the exact opposite, namely, the excessive spe-
cialty and micrology of the symptoms in the Fragmenta;
and, as regards the second, he himself quoted literally
the exact opposite (pp. 58 and 65) from my Medicine of
Experience.^
And how distinctly and carefully is this subject ex-
plained in the Organon (§§ 129, 130 [5th Edit., §§ 153,
154] ) !
All this he purposely withholds in order to deceive the
public. To do this he makes use of expressions (p.- 55)
which are as confused as they are unjust, disgraceful and
revolting : " The patients complain of many and various
things; which of all these are we first to seize upon in
order to give a medicine for them ?" And further on :
" Which symptom and which medicine are we to attend to
* Namely, that in tlie treatment of every disease, whenever possi-
ble, the whole group of disease-symptoms must be covered by a group
of symptoms of the medicine selected as similar as possible and, above
all, of a special character.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANOX. 39
in order to carry out a plan of treatment?" And again :
" Anything we may arbitrarily select will, according to
Hahnemann's assertions, be always right and in accord-
ance with his principle, if among the list of effects a medi-
cine j)roduces in the healthy state, we should find only one
symptom^'' (the reader should observe Hecker says em-
phatically " only one symptom ") " that is similar to any one
symptom of the disease we wish to cure."
It is impossible to imagine more shameless accusations
and calumnies than these of Hecker ! He himself (at p.
65) quotes from the Medicine of Experience the passage that
convicts him of falsehood : ''The cure must be effected
by the employment of a medicine which is capable of
causing as fully as possible all the symptoms the disease
presents, or at least the largest number and the most in-
tense, or at least the most peculiar, and in the same order."
These words Hecker quotes (p. 65} from the Medicine of
Experiences"^ and is not ashamed to falsely accuse me of
* He had the Organon also before him, as he calls his article a
review of the Organon. In this Organon, among other things, are the
following words which convict him of mendacity (§129 [5th Edit., |
153]) : "In this search for a homoeopathic specific remedy, that is to
say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the natural dis-
ease with the list of symptoms of known medicines, in order to find
among them an artificial morbific agent corresponding by similarity
to the disease to be cured, the more striking, singular, characteristic signs
of the former are chiefly to be kept in view ; for it is more particu-
larly these that very similar ones in the list of symptoms of the remedy
sought for must correspond to, in order to constitute it the most suit-
able for effecting the cure. The more general symptoms, anorexia, weak-
ness, discomfort, disturbed sleep, etc., dennand much less attention when
40 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
teaching the exact contrary (p. 53j, as though I were like
himself and his school, who, after hearing two or three,
or even one word from the patient, are quite ready to
write a prescription suggested hy their own caprice.
Wait a little ! The victory of my doctrine will soon,
God willing, put a stop to the pernicious work of Hecker
and Company, with their arbitrary manufacture of com-
plex prescriptions, which is such an easy task for them !
To impose on the public knowingly, especially in a mat-
ter so essential to the welfare of humanity, is worse than
high treason.
All the complicated array of questions Hecker launches
at p. 53 are distinctly and completely answered in the
Organon of Rational Medicine. But in this place, in order
to throw dust in the reader's eyes, he tries to make believe
that I have never answered them. What does the honor-
loving reader think of that ?
He next (p. 54) cites long passages from the Medicine of
Experience^ published six years ago, and, when the subject
is the sure and rapid cure by the homoeopathic method,
he exclaims : " Pneumonia, typhus, intermittent fever are
immediately cured without going through their accus-
of that general character, and when they cannot be more particularly
described." Further, | 130 [5th Edit., | 154]: "If the antitype
constructed from the list of symptoms of the most suitable medicine
contain those characteristic symptoms which are to be met with in the
disease to be cured, in the greatest number and in the greatest similarity,
this medicine is the most appropriate, the specific remedy for this
morbid state." And just the opposite of this Hecker falsely palms off
on the unsuspecting public. Hie niger est, hunc tu Germane caveto !
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 41
tomed course and their crises." Certainly, when the treat-
ment is conducted in the way I direct ! But a man who,
without putting to the test of experience the thing he finds
fault with, consults only his own prejudices and the blind
guidance of his ars conjecturalis, cannot believe this, be-
cause he has never seen such cures efi'ected ; he will not
believe because he has resolved not to give up his routine
treatment and his old leaven, nor allow himself to be con-
vinced or convince himself. Had he honestly and un-
prejudicedly treated diseases according to my method or
witnessed such treatment, and had he not resolved of set
purpose to shut his eyes to the result, he would speak
quite differently ; but he endeavors, by means of arbi-
trary additions, omissions and detractions to upset the
firmly grounded truth, and thus seeks to hinder the ac-
ceptance of the good. But the truth cannot be suppressed
by such miserable logomachies ; it is firmly fixed, and
eternal, like the Godhead itself.
Go on treating diseases in your contradictory, empirical,
routine way, to the accompaniment of magniloquent a-
priori phrases from your therapeutic manuals 1 We do
not grudge you the pleasure of seeing the many varieties
of typhus, synochus, and synocha and other artificially
constructed kinds of diseases run their course just as they
please under your treatment, and linger on through con-
valescence for another quarter of a year and longer, suf-
fering all the time from pains and aches caused by your
elegant complex prescriptions : but allow me to pity your
patients suffering from acute diseases who may be sub-
jected to your treatment, and those affected by chronic
42 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
maladies who may be made worse and brought down to
the depths of despair by the pernicious practices of your
blind empiricism. In intermittent fevers you are heartily
welcome to the perspirations and red sediment in the
urine (p. 55) you deem essential as the precursors of your
so-called cure. We do not envy you these things ; hom-
oeopathy needs them not.
At p. 57 Hecker defends the plan of giving diseases par-
ticular names. But he confounds the application of
names for the general with the employment of names for
the individual denomination of diseases. The latter only
is improper, as it creates a mischievous confusion. I may
very well say: "In this month acute pleurisy was rife.'^
This as a general observation ; but, of a particular patient,
I cannot say : " He has the pleurisy," because there is not
one single kind only of this affection. These and other
dissimilar diseases differ vastly from one another ; all that
we can say of such a patient is that he has a pleuritic dis-
ease or a kind of pleurisy. All these innumerably dif-
ferent kinds, all cases of disease must be examined indi-
vidually and treated medically individually, often very
differently, each according to its peculiarities. They can-
not therefore have the common name of " the pleurisy ;"
this would only lead to one general mode of treatment,
and that is what these fixed names have hitherto done.
This has all been distinctly set forth in the Organon and
an}^ one who does not understand it, either will not un-
derstand it, or has not read the works he criticizes, or is too
stupid to understand them.
" The careful investigation and accurate differentiation
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 43
of the symptoms," about which Hecker is, further on, so
angry (sneering at them as " microscopical," and " anx-
ious ") and about which lie was previously so often out of
temper, is certainly not convenient for those superficial,
easy-going practitioners whose sole object is to make the
greatest number of professional visits in the shortest time,
and not to do the most good to their patients.
Accordingly, he complains (p. 59) : " Pity 'tis, that for
such a long art " (the homoeopathic system) " the days are
too short ! " '' What Hahnemann here enjoins is such an
arduous and tedious business " (what a philanthropic re-
mark!) "that a practitioner only moderately busy could
not find time for it."
Indeed ! How unused our Hecker must be to the per-
formance of good deeds, that he considers the treatment
of his fellow-creatures in the manner most conducive to
their cure as such an arduous and tedious business ! The
ordinary man would find a noisy tippling party, a lewd
conversation, an intrigue, or the gaming table, much less
tedious than the art of saving men's lives, from which the
saviour often gains nothing but heavenly peace of mind,
a sensation unknown to the physician who suffers from
hardness of heart.
For the writing of egotistical articles of no earthly value
Hecker has lots of time, but to devote half an hour to a
patient, and by doing so to procure for him the greatest
of blessings, health, he has no time, for this the days are all
too short?
It is precisely in the ordinary routine treatment, which
looks so rapid because it makes men's and horses' feet
44 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
move so quickly, that so much precious time is wasted.
Every case requires a number of days or weeks, even if
only one short visit or perhaps several are paid every
day ; whereas, a similar disease, if treated according to my
method, needs in general not a fifth, often not a tenth of
that length of attendance, although the practitioner does
not walk, ride, or drive at such a furious pace. Hence a
much greater number of patients can be treated in a year by
my method, as each requires the services of his medical
attendant for such a short time.
Now (pp. 59, 60) Hecker begins to maunder at great
length over the maxim : " That in the investigation of
every case of disease we ought to take note of the most
constant, the most striking, the most singular, uncommon
symptoms, which furnish the characteristic, the distin-
guishing, the individual features of the case of disease,"
and he attempts to combat this with the dogmatic asser-
tions of the symbolic books of the ars conjecturalis, which
are constantly changing. But as the symbolic books of
the ars conjecturalis are of no value, and on account of their
endless contradictory assertions (every writer asserts some-
thing different without any reason) possess no authority
whatever, his whole argument is futile.
At p. 62 Hecker alleges : " A much larger number of
observations, as all* physicians know (?), may be adduced
■^ When Hecker asserts anything untenable, he usually refers to
others as his authority — "others" and "all physicians" are alleged
to have said it, and even to have seen it ! He employs this trick ad
nauseam. Just as though the numerous respectable and truth-loving
physicians, still existing in Germany, had made themselves accom-
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 45
where two or more diseases existed alongside of one an-
other, and neither removed the other." Whv does he not
produce them ? Why does he not give the names of the
observers ? so that the reader may be able to judge whether
any one of them was the equal, as to honesty and observ-
ing power, of Ontyd and John Hunter, who are on my
side. Hecker can mention no reliable authorities who have
made 'pure observations of this kind.^
At p. 63 he attempts to deny one of the facts given by
me, the truth of which any one can ascertain for him-
self. If words, empty words, mere denial, could do away
with facts, that would be a fine thing for Hecker, who only
deals in words.
According to p. 64, " mercurial remedies, salt water,
soap, baths, and cleanliness in general, can cure the itch
(of wool-workers) as well as sulphur. ^^
Strictly speaking, this is utterly false ! But, if we do
not consider it so strictly, but as a specimen of the loose
way in which Hecker and his allies talk about diseases
and their cure, we see that, by means of the remedies sub-
plices of his perversions, deceptions, sophisms, falsehoods, and calum-
nies ! He stands alone with his henchmen ! Moreover, the confir-
mation or refutation of true doctrines is not to be settled by majority
of votes.
* That two diseases can coexist separately in one body, [for any length
of time, and thus (as a proof of their separate coexistence in the
body) be separately curable ; no single instance of this can be cited^;
this is rather what happens — when one does not remove the other,
they coalesce after a short time to form a tertiwn quid, a new interme-
diate disease.
46 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
stituted for sulphur with so much levity, a more or less
considerable portion of the eruption disappears from the
skin (generally only for a short time) ; but, what will sub-
sequently happen, and what may be the consequences to
the patient's health of this purely local, one-sided, and
quackish treatment, is no concern of this kind of treat-
ment.
The rubbish he writes (p. 66) : " that the treatment
recommended in the Organon constitutes a therapeutic
"method of an extremely indeterminate character and de-
void of all fixed rational grounds," is quite ridiculous. A
therapeutic method, in perfect accord with the principles
I have taught, which selects according to infallible grounds
a specific remedy, accurately suited in every respect,
Hecker declares to be arbitrary and empirical !
On the other hand, the medical science of Hecker and
his followers, which is compounded of opposite and in-
compatible parts, the doctrine (consisting of theoretical
lists of diseases and of methods* of treatment of a merely
general character, in which a heap of heterogeneous dis-
eases are included under one common name, and are
directed to be treated in squadrons, all alike, with medi-
cines to which imaginary virtues have been arbitrarily
ascribed), and the practice, in which the scholastic doctrine
cannot be made use of in the actual disease by any one,
not even by the author himself (with the exception of
* Sumano capiti cerdcem pictoreguinam
Jungere si velit .....
Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amid f
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 47
some theoretical scraps of it employed for the sake of osten-
tation), in which, in imitation of the shepherds and old
wives, they hlindly physic and quack the patients by
promptly and arbitrarily writing a prescription either out
of their own heads, or taken from some prescription-man-
ual which furnishes a fitting shadow to the borrowed
glimmer of light afforded by some text-books of thera-
peutics. In this kind of practice there is much irrational
quid pro quo in the way of making use of surrogates. This
kind of medical science, so senseless, so groundless in doc-
trine and practice, so prejudicial to the patient, is, by
Hecker, called the only genuine and rational, the real
manna from heaven ! What does the unprejudiced reader
think of it?
Further on (p. 66) Hecker repeats his mendacious ac^
cusation : " Hahnemann teaches that only vague single
symptoms like vomiting, pains, spasms, must be com-
bated by medicines that cause vomiting, pains, spasms,
etc." I teach and I do precisely the contrary, as I have
already stated. It is this same routine treatment of single,
general symptoms, which express nothing definite, that
physicians of Hecker's stamp will have to give up when
they adopt a more carefully distinguishing treatment, that
investigates the special characteristics of diseases and
medicines. To shift the burden of his own sins on to
others' shoulders is a mean trick.
When I distinguish between the primary and secondary
actions of the medicines, and show that the latter are the
opposite of the former, in strict conformity with experi-
ence— though this fact was never noticed by others before
48 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
it was pointed out by me — Hecker exclaims (p. 67) ;
" Who can fail to perceive that it is a question here of
possible consequences occurring sooner or later ?" Who,
I may remark, can fail to perceive that Hecker' s omnis-
cience knows nothing about the subject, does not under-
stand it? Or is his object merely to introduce an inten-
tional confusion of ideas ?
At p. 68, Hecker, in order to set up from the ordinary
practice something in rivalry with the grand, definite,
prompt, sure, homoeopathic therapeutics, says : " We can
certainly suppress many diseases on their first appear-
ance " (homoeopathic treatment does not suppi^ess them, as
the ordinary practitioner does when he can, she cures and
extinguishes them), " for instance, the typhus " (just as
though there were but one single typhus of unvarying
character !) " by wine, by emetics, by aspersion with cold
water, and other violent, unusual " (so it is is only the
violent and unusual remedies, what may be called horse-
medicines, that cure. Hear him ! The rational and
radical, splendid, Heckerian method of treatment con-
sists of such a wretched, crude empiricism !) " impressions
that produce a revolution in the organism " (which of all
these different impressions and remedies is the most ap-
propriate for each particular case, that differs from every
other ? Are they all the same and their effects identical?
This is as like the blind empiricism of the uneducated
herbalist and the advertising quack, as one egg is like
another !) " the intermittent fever ^' (oh ! indeed the inter-
mittent fever ; so there is only one intermittent fever, in-
stead of the innumerable different kinds which nature
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 49
produces to spite the generalizing routinist!) ''by very
many and different febrifuges." (I should like to know
what constitutes the difference among these febrifuges ?
Where is it distinctly defined in your text-books, so that
we may know to which of the innumerable kinds of in-
termittent fever each of your many and different febri-
fuges is suitable? Can the works on materia medica of
Hecker or his allies give us, besides the name and natural
history of medicines, the very smallest definite informa-
tion regarding the special remedial tendencies or the dif-
ferentiating, the characteristic properties ascertained by
experience of the action of each of their medicines, so as
to enable us to select the most appropriate remedy for
each case, and cure it with certainty ; and not, as is gen-
erally done by you, be compelled to go blindly and at
random from one febrifuge to another ? Miserable prac-
tice, in which no one can ascertain which of the many
febrifuges he ought to choose for any particular case in
order to cure it with certainty, but must arbitrarily catch
at whatever comes into his hand ! Pitiable darkness !)
Although it is distinctly taught in the Organon of
Rational Medicine, and is obvious to every sensible person ,
that dissimilar diseases ought not to be treated all in the
same manner, notwithstanding that they bear the same
name (bestowed on them by men), and that these dis-
eases, notwithstanding that the pathology of the schools
gives them a definite name, are anything but identical,
indeed there is not one single case which does not differ
from another in important points, yet Hecker (p. 69), (for
diseases, every case of which differs and is often very un-
OO DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
like the others) " for angina polyposa, for pneumonia,
for internal inflammations, for typhus or synochus, for
podagra, for dysentery, for apoplexy, etc., for each of these
names of diseases, has a remedy which is invariably
helpful.''
Here we see the bias towards old wives' practice, the
irresistible tendency to blind empiricism which still pos-
sesses the minds of those who think themselves so wise !
Away with such empirical practice which is led by a mere
nosological name !
Every case of disease must be investigated singly and indi-
vidually and the apiwopriate remedy found for it in particular .
This is the problem I have solved and solve daily in my
practice. Among ten cases on which the ordinary physi-
cian bestows the common name of " pneumonia," and
attaches much importance to this name, there is perhaps
not one which exactly corresponds to any of the other
cases, consequent!}" it will not yield to the same medicine,
cannot have the same remedy. This the ordinary pa-
thology, which deals in obscure generalities, never per-
ceives. Diseases, which appear to have only some distant
resemblance to one another, are instantly and inconsider-
ately held to be identical, and unconcernedly treated all
in the same way. And this is called rational medicine !
A little further on in the same page (69) come the
already refuted mendacious allegations against the ho-
moeopathic method, which are unconnected and inconse-
quent— frivolous misunderstandings and idle talk.
What Hecker says (pp. 71-73) about the smallness of
the doses of homoeopathic] remedies is also nothing but a
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 51
misunderstanding. A child reading the Organon would
comprehend it better. To solid experience he opposes
empty words.
Among other things Hecker informs the reader (pp.72,
73) : " Physicians have given one and several grains of
powerful medicines dail}- to healthy and sick persons, and
have often failed to perceive the production of any effects
appreciable by the senses.' ' It is palpably untrue that phy-
sicians have hitherto given or seen given to healthy persons
even single grains of powerful medicines either daily or
quarter-yearly. And in diseases ? What may they there
have seen ? seeing that the effects of the medicines are
mixed up with the symptoms of the diseases, and besides
a single, simple, medicinal substance was hardly ever exhibited
alone, not even in disease, but in combination with several
other drugs. Under such circumstances what could they
have seen or observed ? Why nothing at all ! What's
the object of this silly talk?
And so Hecker goes on, at p. 74, where in reply to my
remark supported by experience — that medicines applied
externally, act upon the body even through the skin, and
that powdered cinchona bark laid upon the abdomen has
cured ague, etc. — he delivers this tirade : " It is well
known how little these assertions agree with the experi-
ence of other physicians." A bad shot this of the illustri-
ous Court-counsellor and Professor ! Other physicians
have actually had such experiences. It is only too well
known, although your self-sufficiency knows nothing
about it, that, e.g., powdered cinchona bark merely applied
externally did this, as Pye (Meo. Obs. luqu., IL, p. 245),
52 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
and the Schlesischen okonomisclien Nachrichten (VI., p. 304),
testify. And as regards the action of emetics on the in-
ternal organism through the skin, which Hecker also
denies, the physicians have certainly not observed the
power of ipecacuanha to cause vomiting from its external
application, but only owing to the trifling circumstance
that they never tried it. But Benjamin Hutchinson (Memoirs
of the Med. Soc, V.), observed several cases in which the
rubbing in of tartar emetic externally was followed by
long continued nausea and vomiting.
But facts are a trifle to a man who considers empty
words to be the chief merit of a physician, and his own
unfounded assertions oracular deliverances.
In the September number of his charming Annals
Hecker continues his labors, and criticizes an essay of
mine which appeared some years ago in Hufeland's Jour-
nal (^Illustrations of the Homoeopathic Use of Medicines in
Ordinary Practice), which was republished, with altera-
tions and additions, in the Introduction to the Organon.^
The aim of this essay is to show that here and there
cures were made by other physicians of a homoeopathic
character like that taught by me ; that is, by medicines
which, according to the observations of other physicians,
whose names are given, had the property of producing
similar symptoms. I may here admit that among the
hundreds of cases there recorded there may very likely
be a few which might not be absolutely pure observations,
* [In the first four editions of the Organon. It is omitted in the
fifth edition.]
DEFEXCE OF THE ORGANON. 53
because it was not the intention of their authors to fur-
nish such instances. Still, the majority of the cases here
collected are testimonies in favor of the homoeopathic
method of a very striking character. We shall see what
the objections to the cases which Hecker makes such a
to do about are worth. He makes as much fuss over
them as a hen when she has laid an egg, even when it is
a yolkJess one. He assumes such important airs over his
so-called objections as if the welfare of the commonwealth
depended on them.
But the homoeopathic principle will remain everlast-
ingly inexpungable, even though a few of the cures by
other physicians adduced as instances of homoeopathic
treatment had not occurred, or even if the whole lot of
them had never taken place. What does it matter to my
system whether one or several hundreds of such acciden-
tal homoeopathic cures by ancient or modern physicians
can be authenticated or not, seeing that they were not
cases treated intentionally on homoeopathic principles,
and in the crude form in which they are presented they
cannot be regarded as examples of the homoeopathic
method worthy of imitation, and were never recommended
by me as such.
I might therefore pass over this subject as of no conse-
quence to the main question, and leave unnoticed all that
Hecker, with a great show of learning, has to say against
some of them, while omitting all mention of the other impor-
tant cases, were it not that he is guilty of gross exaggera-
tion and inaccuracies in his account of them and makes
them the occasion of a great outpouring of his scorn.
54 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
Hecker commences in an exceedingly disparaging tone
which every honorable man must treat with merited con-
tempt. His abusive language deserves no notice except
a shrug of the shoulders ! Of such flowers of rhetoric
Hecker is professor publicus ordinarms. No one will envy
him this title.
As regards his mercantile speculations at p. 194, one
need only remember what a heap of books Hecker him-
self has published in 1810, of which none display any
originality, and all of which are destitute of intrinsic
value. His high and might}^ dogmatism is the principal
thing in them.
Further on in the same page he quotes a passage from
my earlier essay, from which one sees that his excess of
envy and hatred deprives him of all sense ; " And if here
and there some sage" (I alluded to Hippocrates, Dethard-
ing, Boulduc, Bertholon and others, vide Introduction to
Organon, p. xlviii. [5th Edit., p. 45]) ^' ventured in a mild
way to 023pose the ordinary practice, and to propose
similia similibus instead, their protest was not attended
to." Here Hecker inserts my name in brackets after
"here and there some sage." A very sorry joke. "Here
and there some sage " cannot possibly refer to one single
man ; it necessarily implies several. It is the height of
absurdity even for Hecker to imagine that the words
" here and there some sage " apply to me ; one can only
conclude that his passion for sneering has deprived the
poor man of his understanding. Moreover, it is not at
all the case that I have opposed " in a rnild loay " the per-
nicious system of medication taught and practiced by
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 55
Hecker and his set. When I have denounced it, I have
done so in the most vigorous language, so as to make
their ears tingle, in order, if possible, to rouse them out
of their routine lethargy.
When Hecker, in this article, asserts that the distinc-
tion of the two utterly different — indeed, absolutely oppo-
site— therapeutic principles : contraria contrariis and simi-
lia similibus is all moonshine, he only shows his incapacity
to see the thing correctly, or that he will not see it with
open eyes. What he says to the contrary is the worth-
less private opinion of an ignoramus.
At p. 195, in a note, he congratulates me that I have
daily and hourly experience of the successful results of
the homoeopathic method, which were unknown to the
physicians of several unenlightened thousands of years.
As what I say of the success of my practice is literally
true, I accept the compliment with thanks.
But as Hecker knows nothing but routine treatment,
and refrains from making trial of the better way on ac-
count of his incredible over-estimation of himself, of his
prejudices in favor of tradition, and of his love of scho-
lastic subtleties, he must forego the pleasure of being
such a successful practitioner.
At p. 197 Hecker appears in all his glory. The obser-
vations of the symptoms of medicines collected with
great labor from medical works, and the homoeopathic
cures by means of the corresponding medicines by other
medical writers, as far as can be deduced from their
statements, he calls " histories of cures raked together."
It is generally supposed that only what lies in a heap can
56 DEFENCE OF THE OEGAXON.
be raked together — like the undigested rubbish which
Hecker has lying around him, and which he only needs
to rake together and distribute among a number of books
and articles in order to satisfy his mercantile specula-
tions, not in order to benefit humanity.
These remarkable data in the Introduction to the Orga-
non (and the Illustrations) — every one who reads them can
form his own judgment of them — Hecker calls them
" paltry stuff," and laughs and sneers at them, and yet
they are facts related by physicians, any one of whom is
of more value and is more trustworthy than Hecker and
all his crew together.
In order to upset facts by contemptuous words, he first
tries his inventive powers : " It is very likely that Dimer-
brock, after being deprived of his pipe of tobacco, when
he again took to it was cured of his vertigo, nausea and
anxiety, but it was not the power of tobacco that did this."
This is the way Hecker perverts the facts of history by
mendacious suppositions and invented circumstances!
Because Zacutus is several times quoted as one of my
authorities, Hecker draws the conclusion (p. 198) : " That
Hahnemann thinks a great deal of this man." It is only
a Hecker that could make such inferences. I have never
said a word in praise of Zacutus, though it is very likely
he may have been more trustworthy than Hecker, who
is an adept only in perverting facts.
At p. 199 he says . " A fright has certainly more often
caused convulsions in a much greater number of persons
than tobacco ; has it also ever cured the epilepsy ? " Most
certainly, I reply, in certain cases, when discreetly used.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON". 57
Every one at all versed in the history of medicine is
familiar with the celebrated cures of many young persons
in the Haarlem poor-house affected with epilepsy, by the
mere fright caused by their being threatened with the
application of a red-hot iron. These cures redound to
the honor of Boerhaave, and are recorded by his nephew,
Abraham Kaaw. Only our Court-counsellor and Profes-
sor Hecker knows nothing about them.
The power of anise-seed oil to allay colic is dismissed by
Hecker (p. 199) with the usual syncretism of the routine
practitioner : " It is all one whether Ave give oil of cedar,
cinnamon, cloves, anise or fennel; gum arabic does the same."
To the philosophical physician they are all the same, how-
ever much they may differ in their nature and action !
He lowers himself to the level of the most ordinary practi-
tioner.
Thereupon he makes a terribly long uproar on the sub-
ject, filling two pages ; he asserts that Forest did not ob-
serve that anise oil caused colic, as I stated ; he quotes long
Latin extracts and makes a dreadful fuss about it. If I
have rendered Forest's expressions somewhat stronger
than I ought to have done (although Forest certainly in-
tended to convey that meaning by his " quo quidem [anise
oil taken in wine] dolor e l_colico'] magis exacerbato "), it was
surely not worth making such a noise about. I may
make Hecker a present of the whole passage referring to
anise oil, it is not an experimentum crucis. Hecker must
leave unrefuted the hundred other far more important
facts relating to the homoeopathic action of medicines.
As regards these far more striking examples, so convinc-
58 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
ing to every unprejudiced mind, Hecker has nothing to
say, so he only girds at the trifling examples, ut nodum in
scirpo quaerat. A wretched kind of labor !
After quoting (p. 202) a portion of the passages in the
Illustrations relating to arsenic (but prudently omitting its
important property connected with angina pectoris) he
accuses me of telling gross falsehoods ! He says : " Knape,
whom Hahnemann adduces as an authority for certain
symptoms of arsenic^ has taken these symptoms from law
reports and says so openl}'." What a monstrous crime it
was of me to give Knape as my authority when he only
quoted these symptoms ! Do such facts lose all trust-
worthiness when an honest man takes them from law re-
ports,^ and thus makes himself responsible for the cor-
rectness of the transcription ? Under what other (short)
name could I have adduced these extracts? It is evi-
dent that Hecker is resolved only to find fault, and so he
makes a great fuss over unimportant things, partly be-
cause he cannot make any serious objection to my citation
of these examples, partly in order to distract the reader's
attention from the appreciation of the great truths set
forth in the text.
At p. 203 Hecker — to whom we owe no observations
relative to the effects of simple medicinal substances, but
* Hecker makes a remark which casts a shir on Knape' s good
name: *'In this loose way Hahnemann selects his authorities." Is
the authority of the law reports quoted by Knape a loosely chosen,
inadmissible authority? In this disdainful manner does Hecker
speak of honorable persons and important matters ! What does the
reader think of that?
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 59
only a lot of petulant, worthless words about them — makes
as though he knew positively that " arsenic only causes an
inflammation that rapidly passes into sphacelus.'^ If
only he would forbear to pose as though his knowledge
were the non plus ultra, of all knowledge ! Habita teacm et
noris, qiiam sit tibi curta suppellex I Arsenic produces many
other effects of which Hecker, as we see here, does not
know a syllable.
The somewhat superstitious notions entertained by the
ancients with regard to the mode of action of the magnetic
plaster^ were long known to me. But that, notwithstand-
ing the vain delusions respecting the mode of action of
medicines which the physicians of ancient and modern
times held, they made some cures by means of the homoe-
opathic power of medicines, all unconsciously and even
in direct contradiction to their dogmas, it was the object
of my collection of examples to show. They are calcu-
lated to teach that the medicines did not act in conformity
with the manifold indications imagined by the physi-
cians, but according to the homoeopathic principle, when
they effected rapid and permanent recovery. I have en-
deavored to show what they accomplished with the medi-
cines, not how they explained their action. Is Hecker able
to see this, or is it rather the case that he will not see it?
After this (p. 204) he declaims in great style and with
a great display of learning and numerous quotations but
only — de lana caprina. The thing that excites him is this ;
some physicians, Slevogt, Molitor and Zacutus found
arsenic, which has the power of producing a kind of dys-
entery, useful in some kinds of bloody flux. On this
60 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
Hecker raises a tremendous outcry and seeks to prove
*' that Zacutus asserts no analogous action from the in-
ternal use of arsenic^ But he is quite wrong, the passage
quoted by Hecker himself (p. 206) proves that Zacutus
employed arsenic (sulphuret or not sulphuret has nothing
to do with the matter) as a lavement for this purpose.
Does not Hecker know that enemata act as internal reme-
dies on the whole organism ? What on earth do I care
for Zacutus's superstitious emplo3^ment of the emerald?
" As regards intermittent fever," continues our omnis-
cient Hecker, " it may be mentioned that a hundred
things can cause fever, which certainly do not cure the in-
termittent fever,* and that, on the other hand, it is cura-
ble by just as many things which have no power to cause
fever." Both these assertions are untrue and an unwar-
ranted allegation of a man who does not know anything
like a hundred things that can cause fever and only as-
severates at random that they can certainly cure the inter-
mittent fever (just as though there were but one kind of
intermittent fever !). His " certainly " is the outcome of
his lofty ^aorbq e(pa \ Hecker has said it ! he contents him-
self with a simple denial instead of proofs. What are the
* It is only a perversion of the truth to say that the homoeopathic
doctrine teaches that any drug which causes any kind of fever, qu(E-
quce sit, must be able to cure intermittent fever. No ! it is not any
kind of fever or even any kind of intermittent fever that a medicine
must be capable of causing, but it must be able to cause a very similar
kind of intermittent fever in order to cure a similar kind of intermit-
tent fever. That only is homoeopathy ! Can Hecker not or will he
not understand this much ?
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 61
drugs that have no power to cause fever and which have
yet the power to cure intermittent fever ? Is it enough
that Hecker makes such silly assertions at random, with-
out reflecting that he cannot prove an iota of them ? It is
evident that his assertions are on a par with his knowl-
edge ; but with what assumption, with what arrogance he
speaks so impudently about things which he does not in
the least understand, and for the elucidation of which many
years and numerous honest observers (not of Hecker' s
kind) are required.
The property oi jalap to allay griping and restlessness
Hecker will not admit (p. 208) for this reason " because
magnesia, which causes neither griping nor restlessness,
also almost always " (" almost always," what a fine practical
definite expression!) "allays griping and restlessness."
Hecker does not know that magnesia does not " almost
always " allay griping and restlessness, but only when
morbid acidity in the jprimse vise is the cause of this ail-
ment. It is thus not a homoeopathic but a purely chemi-
cal remedy. No sensible educated and honest man would
think there was any analogy between a purely chemical
remedy, as magnesia is in this case (for the allaying of such
an ailment a large dose is required in order to neutralize
the acids in the primas vise) and a remedy like ja^op which
acts only in a dynamic and virtual manner in removing
griping and restlessness, seeing that only a minute parti-
cle of the latter when employed for this purpose is needed,
if its other medicinal symptoms correspond with the case.
Hecker fabricated this parallel evidently because he did
not understand the Organon, or because he deliberately
62 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
intended to create a confusion of ideas. What a gross
perversion of argument: to adduce the qualities of a
merely chemical remedy to refute the homoeopathic action
of a merely dynamically acting medicine ! Does Hecker
imagine that the falsity of his analogy will escape obser-
vation ?
Further on Hecker says : " Hahnemann had first to
arise to teach us a method of cure in such conformity
with nature." What a paltry sneer! Must not every-
thing that is to have a commencement be first broached
by some one? How otherwise could a new better method
of cure originate? Does not Hecker understand that?
If the truth were of benefit to the world, it must be
brought to light by some one, whether he bear my name
or another's ; but what has that to do with the subject?
" Many burning acrid things besides clematis,^' continues
Hecker, ''cause eruptions and cure none, and, on the
other hand, many eruptions are cured by things that
never cause any." If the welfare of mankind can be
promoted by unfounded assertions, then we must con-
fess that the salvation of the world depends on Hecker.
But, God be praised ! it depends on quite the opposite.
Where are the many burning acrid things, whose internal
use (for it is only a question of this) causes eruptions
without their being able to cure such ? Let Hecker tell
us their names if he would avoid the imputation of mak-
ing mendacious allegations ! And, again, what are the
things which heal eruptions quickly and permanently by
being administered internally (for there is no question
here of their external employment ; that may be left to
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 63
routinists unconcerned about the consequences of their
treatment), but which never cause such eruptions ? What
does the reader think of such an irrational style of argu-
ment ?
It remains eternally true that medicinal substances which
are capable of producing certain eruptions (for their num-
ber is enormous) by their internal administration, can
and must cure similar eruptions when given only inter-
nally. More than this is not needed to establish the
truth of the homoeopathic law of cure according to na-
ture. What only smarts and erodes the skin when ap-
plied externally is quite another thing, and does not
belong to the present subject.
Notwithstanding all Hecker's asseverations (p. 209)
Marcus's cure of an inflammation of the tongue in 48
hours by mercury shows that in this case mercury acted
homoeopathically. All the tergiversations, all the im-
probable and untrue general statements made by Hecker
are of no avail against the truth. It is perfectly plain
that he only will not admit the truth, although it is of no
earthly consequence whether he does so or not.
At p. 210 Hecker denies flatly that '' Amelung cured a
kind of ulcerative pulmonary disease by means of lead^
It is insolent injustice and presumption to seek to deny
facts which cannot be j^roved to be unfounded by contra-
dictory facts. The expression employed by Hecker,
" Lead has never cured a real ulcerative pulmonary dis-
ease," merely displays his pathological prepossessions.
Just as though, besides that rarer kind of ulcerative pul-
monary disease which has hitherto been deemed incura-
64 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
ble, there were not other and many other kinds of actual
suppuration of the lungs with very diverse symptoms !
Who can deny that Amelung cured one of the latter?
" A kind of ulcerative pulmonary disease Amelung
cured " were the words I used,^
The ophthalmia from rose-water observed by Echtius
and Ledelius is thus dismissed by Hecker (p. 210) :
" These were a couple of old superstitious historians.'^
How paltry ! What has age to do with trustworthiness ?
Superstitious ! Along with superstition (in explaining
the causes of the symptoms), which is common enough
among modern physicians, may there not be perfect hon-
esty in recording what was observed ? It is evident that
Hecker despises everything except his own infallible ego ;
but he seems not to be aware how despicable he is in
so doing. Ledelius was assuredly no common, short-
sighted, dishonest observer.
And where are the many persons whom Hecker would
produce who have bathed their healthy eyes with rose-
water v^iihowi m]wi:j '^ What kind of gift of observation
had they? Where are their trials and observations re-
corded ?
Hecker goes on : " Hahnemann says that euphrasia-
water inflames the eyes ; which is not true." But I never
said that the observers Lobelius, Bonnet and Simon Pauli
saw ophthalmia result from the use of aqua euphrasias.
How can Hecker tell such untruths ? It was the internal
use of the expressed juice and the powder of this plant
■^ [This case is omitted in the later editions of the Organon. ]
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 65
that, according to the experience of these physicians,
caused a kind of ophthalmia. In this manner does
Hecker pervert my words by his own fabrications ! And
as regards its remedial power we have (among others) the
testimony that among the Icelanders the internal use of
the expressed juice of this plant is in great repute for a
kind of painful ophthalmia. Everything modern is not
deserving of commendation ; everything antiquated and
gone out of use does not merit contempt !
Farther on, at p. 211, Hecker makes a liberal use of the
words " impudence " and " falsehood," which may very
appropriately be applied to himself. " Cough from a
chill," he says, " goes off spontaneously and is curable by
infusions of plants and tisanes of many kinds." Fine
empiricism ! Infusions of plants of various kinds, quid-
quid in mentem venerit! Has Hecker never met with
coughs from a chill which remained uncured notwith-
standing all such routine infusions ? If he has not, his
practical experience cannot be great. Vicat says that he
cured a boy nine years old of a cough caused by a chill
with dulcamara (Mat. Med., I., addit. p. 366).
I ought to have mentioned the name of De Haen as
voucher for the power of dulcamara to cause convidsions
and delirium, and for its efficacy, in smaller doses, to cure
homoeopathically similar convulsions and delirium. By mis-
chance this physician's name was mentioned in connec-
tion with "sufferings from a chill." Hecker's denuncia-
tion, consequent on this omission gives me the opportunity
to supply this omitted illustration of homoeopathy !
In order to invalidate Carrere's statement " that dulca-
5
66 ' DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
niara produces affections from a chill," which I have
cited, Hecker disparages this physician and calls him " a
stiff humoral pathologist." Just as though Carrere's
mode of explaining the phenomena had anything to do
with the matter ! We are only concerned w4th what he
observed, but not with his explanation of it. The best ob-
server may be a humoral pathologist or a solidar patholo-
gist or anything else ; what has that to do with the au-
thenticity of his observations? Cannot Hecker see the
distinction ?
Hecker next gives a long extract from Carrere, in which
there is no mention of the sufferings from a chill in con-
nection with dulcamara, in order to show that Carrere does
not mention sufferings from a chill. But he omits the
passages where Carrere really speaks of them, e.g., where,
after a slight exposure to cold damp air when taking dul-
camara, there came a trembling of the hands and paresis,
of the tongue (Carrere in Starke's edition, p. 122),
twitching movements of the lips and eyes {ibid., p. 145),
compared with what Carrere and Starke adduce at p. 249.
But Hecker finds it more suitable for his plan of contra-
dicting me to quietly leave out all that properly belongs
to the subject. What does the reader think of such con-
duct? The remainder of his drivel, at p. 213, is so silly
that it deserves no notice.
After quoting what I have said about the remedial
power of sqidll in pleurisy, he exclaims (p. 214) that it is
untrue. " No system," he says, " has recommended the
exclusive employment of relaxing sedative remedies for
the cure of pleurisy, as Hahnemann alleges, but irritating
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 67
things have always been employed in this disease." So
much the worse if the traditional rational medical art
acted so inconsistently as to employ the most relaxing
remedies, such as frequent blood-letting, along with irritat-
ing substances. But such was not the case. In recent
times, in addition to squill, physicians have prescribed for
pleurisy nothing but such things as I have indicated. Tis-
sot says in his Anleitung^f. d. L. V., § 95: "Venesection,
emollient and attenuating drinks, fumigations, enemata,
decoctions of squill, emollient poultices are the true reme-
dies." And what further testimony do we require when
Hecker himself (pp. 234 and 238) says : " We cure in the
most positive manner inflammations and pneumonia by
means of venesection." Is there anything in the world
more relaxing for human beings than repeated venesec-
tions ? And are not the other prescriptions of physicians
in this disease of a relaxing and debilitating character?
Is not this method of treatment in exact contradiction to
that extremely irritant internal remedy, squill ? And yet
such distinguished practitioners as Tissot, De Haen, Prin-
gle and Sarcone (with whom I was not first made ac-
quainted through Murray) employed squill in inflamma-
tory pleurisy ; a treatment in direct contravention of the
dogmatic relaxing system ! Evidently because, notwith-
standing all the injunctions of the dogmatism that di-
rected the employment of relaxing remedies, they were
convinced by its success of the utility of squill, and openly
confessed the services rendered to them by it in this dis-
ease, and so (as I stated in the passage in question) paid
homage to truth in defiance of the system !
68 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
Where then is the untruthfulness in this account of the
undoubted facts? But Hecker perverts them and says
(p. 214) : " It never occurred to these physicians to pay
homage to the truth by saying that squill cures pleurisy
homoeopathically." Did I ascribe to Sarcone, Pringle and
De Haen homoeopathic views in their treatment by squill
when I said they freely confessed the benefit they saw
from squill ? It is only a Hecker who could condescend
to such deceptions ! The examples given in the Illustra-
tions (and in the Introduction to the Organon) were all
given to show that physicians effected cures, with similarly
acting medicines, which were homoeopathic ; but without
their being aware of it. How then can Hecker falsely state
that I attribute to De Haen, Pringle and Sarcone homoeo-
pathic views in their treatment by squill f
I say : " J. C. Wagner observed a kind of pleurisy pro-
duced by squill.''^ Hecker says this is a falsehood, and in-
vents all sorts of views that W^agner's expressions may
have conveyed. " He wanted to ascribe the death of the
patient to a surgeon," and, ''besides squill, many other
medicines were administered." The facts of the case are
these ; Wagner had been, for some days, giving a woman,
aged 50, affected with dropsy and dyspnoea, a powder con-
taining four grains of squill, eight grains of nitrate of pot-
ash and a scruple of asclepias vincetoxicum, without any
other medicine. But as this powder only acted pallia-
tively as a diuretic, and as, after several days without
medicine, the dyspnoea increased, he gave her again one
evening the same powder. Violent vomiting, great rest-
lessness ensued, and a rheumatic pain in the arm, which
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 69
she had formerly suffered from, began to increase and ex-
tend to the pectoral muscles, for which she got diaphoretic
waters and a fixed bezoard remedy ;* but the following
morning she got a violent attack of false pleurisy. (J. C.
Wagner, Ohserv., § 2.)
Any one can perceive, without my help, that in the
evening, soon after taking the squill powder (for asclepias
mncetoxicum in the dry state has very little effect), the
pleurisy was commencing, and was neither prevented nor
produced by the diaphoretic waters or the fixed bezoard
remedy. Was I wrong in attributing the effect (pleurisy)
to the four grainsf of squill f Did I attempt to deceive
the reader?
The allegation of several physicians who say they have
seen a kind of phthisis cured by the tin in the antihecticum
Foterii, Hecker meets as follows (p. 215) : " Antihecticum
Poterii, as is well known, contains no ^m." A bad shot,
Professor Hecker ! Poterius himself describes its mode
of preparation (in Opera, edit, a Fried. Hoffmann, p. 297),
from which it is seen that it consists of two parts of tin
and one part of regulus of antimony, deflagrated with one-
third part of saltpetre. When his followers, Stahl, Teich-
meyer and the Brandenburg Dispensatory altered the for-
mula, they retained the tin as the chief ingredient of the
* [Probably sulphur et of antimony.^
t Four grains of powdered sguUl for a dose (an extremely large quan-
tity, as every one who knows anything about the subject will admit)
our Hecker considers -a ven/ srna^/ dosef How little he cares for the
life of his patients ! For a reward, he should be allowed to take four
grains of squill powder !
70 DEFENCE OF THE ORGJANON.
antihecticum. What does the reader now think of the
ignorant assertion of Hecker: '^Antihecticum Poterii, as is
well known, contains no tin f " And yet he is a renowned
professor !
I say : '' Stahl observed a kind of phthisis caused by
(the antihecticum) tin^ On this Hecker remarks : " Stahl
did not observe true phthisis caused by ^m." Hecker
says this as confidently as though he had been present,
and as though the assurance of the honorable Stahl
{Mater. Med., Cap. 6, p. 83) : "It is certain that persons who
have been using the antihectiatm have fallen victims to
phthisis" was of no value in his eyes. It was not my
business to find out what kind of phthisis this was.
In bis comments on the excerpt from Werlhoff (p. 216)
Hecker goes far astray ; it does not prove what he wants.
No one can tell the exact time when a gonorrhoea ceases
to be inflammatory. Enough ! Oantharis has cured gon-
orrhoea, and it can also cause gonorrhoea. That suffices
to show the complete homoeopathicity of its action, and
this is all I intended to do in this passage in the Illus-
trations.
In persons accustomed to drink tea every day the pri-
mary action of this beverage, to which they have become
habituated cannot be observed with precision, more espe-
cially by the over-busy practitioner. " What can one
single case prove ? " says Hecker (p. 217). I give not one
case only, but two, in which pains in the stomach were
caused by drinking tea. Chinese tea is a medicinal plant;
who can deny that? And as such it must produce in
sensitive healthy persons unaccustomed to its use, disa-
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 71
greeable medicinal symptoms, even though all physi-
cians had hitherto been so careless as not to notice them ;
but that is not the case. Several physicians have observed
them, and others have seen cures by it of homoeopathi-
cally corresponding symptoms. Nothing more need be
said on this subject."^ Moreover, it is not true "that all
convulsions occurring before the outbreak of small-pox
rapidly disappear on the development of the eruption,"
as Hecker asserts.
At p. 217 Hecker quotes from Geofiroy two secondary
effects of the immoderate, long-continued use of ^ea— dia-
betes and emaciation— and asks "if tea will cure these
diseases?" It is evident from this that he has not un-
derstood the teachings of the Organon, otherwise he
would not require diseases to be homoeopathically cured
by the secondary effects of a medicinal substance. He is
ignorant of that on which he pretends to sit in judgment.
Further, it is not true what Hecker so impudently
asserts : " That any fine dust of any acrid substance, as
also mineral vapors, cause just the same medicinal symp-
toms as those attributed by Geoffrey to ipecacuanha
dust." Let him mention any reliable observations to
this effect; for that his ipse dixit is worth not more than
the babble of a child is well known to every one. More-
over, ipecacuanha dust, as its extremely mild taste and
smell show, is neither acrid nor corrosive, as Hecker' s art
of perverting facts would make it out to be. The power
* [This paragraph about tea is only met with in the first edition of
the Organon; it will be found in my translation, p. 215, note.]
72 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
of ipecacuanha dust to cause haemorrhage, Hecker imag-
ines I took from Murray's Apparatus Medicaminum. A
bad shot! Murray mentions it in the third part of his
Practical Library: "During the pulverizing of ipecacu-
anha,^^ he there says, "it has been observed by various
authors that those standing near have been affected with
dyspnoea, epistaxis and haemoptysis." Not only those
engaged in pulverizing the drug, but even persons in the
vicinity ! In addition to Murray, not only did Geoflfroy
observe epistaxis and haemoptysis, but also Lemery
{Traite univ. d. dr., p. 438) saw the former symptom from
ipecacuanha dust.
At p. 219 Hecker gives all sorts of theoretical reasons,
out of his own head, against the power of arnica to pro-
duce symptoms similar to those experience (much more
valuable than Hecker' s experience in his study) has
shown to occur in the whole organism after blows and
bruises. " It is not true," says Hecker, " that arnica
causes such symptoms." It is impossible to imagine
an3"thing more arrogant, seeing that De Meza, Vicat,
Crichton, Collin, Aaskow, Stoll and Joh. Chr. Lange act-
ually witnessed the accidents caused by arnica, whereby
this plant is enabled to remove homoeopathically the
similar general ill-feeling of the organism ^ incident to
contusions, and so put nature in a position to restore to
* "Do all persons injured by contusions," asks Hecker, like a
little inexperienced boy, " get these symptoms ? " "Yes," I reply ;
" experience would teach him, were he able to observe with an un-
prejudiced and calm mind, that all persons severely injured in this
way suffer more or less from the symptoms I have mentioned."
DEFENCE OF THE OROANON. 73
the normal state the congestions and weaknesses of the
locally injured part. Thus, arnica cures homoeopathically
the contusion-disease, and so, indirectly, the contusion
itself. Hecker's unfounded doubts and his contemptu-
ous sneers are equally futile.
These, then, are the insignificant objections Heck^
makes to this collection of examples from the writings of
the physicians, called Illustrations, by which I show that
diseases have often been cured by medicines which, ac-
cording to the observations of other physicians, are capable
of producing similar symptoms, manifestly on the homoe-
opathic principle, which however they were not aware of.
I purposely refrained from mixing up with them any of
my own experiences. Every unprejudiced person will
only see here, that the medicines, even in the hands of
those who did not know their positive action, efi'ected
these cures according to the eternal inexpungable law of
homoeopathy (similia similibus). To the poioer of medicines
to cause similar symptoms is owing their cure of similarly dis-
posed diseases. But how much more frequently and thor-
oughly must the cure be efi'ected, when we know the
medicines accurately with respect to all their positive
efi'ects.
Hecker cannot do anything to the detriment of this
truth. The authors quoted by him, chiefly for the sake of
ostentation, prove nothing satisfactory to his love of con-
tradiction. He can only nibble away in an impotent
manner at a few of my examples; but the remainder, the
strongest ones, of striking homoeopathic cures, in this col-
lection, he must leave untouched. Even though I had
74 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
never collected them and had not put them in the Intro-
duction to the Organon, the homoeopathic doctrine still
remains an unassailable truth, and all the prejudices of
Hecker and his adherents will become antiquated and
consigned to oblivion.
After Hecker has done his best to upset some of my ex-
amples of homoeopathic cures, he commences, at p. 220^
to draw a sort of deduction from his previous argument.
Nothing less will serve him than " to show the pernicious
influence which the homoeopathic doctrine must have on
practical medicine, should it ever become the prevailing
method."
How is it possible that a traditional true practical medi-
cine, if there be such a thing, could ever suffer damage
from the private opinion of a single man like myself? If
the so-called medical art of Hecker and his allies were
well founded, or were its doctrines and maxims not con-
tradictory, not the product of imagination, were it, on the
contrary, in conformity with nature and consequently
transmutable into salutary operation at the bedside of the
sick, what would it have to fear from a little book of not
many pages like my Organon f Hecker would not make
such a stubborn fight if he did not feel deeply the weight
of the homoeopathic doctrine, if he did not feel that his
so-called true practical medical art, that monster of irra-
tional quackery with unknown, dangerous medicines in
complex mixtures (mors in olla), enveloped in a specious
dust-cloud of self-contradictory a-priori conjectures, would
be overthrown and annihilated by my self-consistent and
enlightened therapeutic doctrine Avhich is in conformity
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 75
with nature and experience. It is only by the might of
its inherent truth that this doctrine will win the convic-
tion of the whole medical world. I contribute nothing to
this result except a clear statement of it ; I have no politi-
cal influence, no converting weapons ; I am not at the
head of any powerful faction. If my doctrine convinces
medical men and weans them from the senseless and flagi-
tious ways of routine practice garnished with a-priori
speculations, and converts them to the salutary way of
simple natural practice, it will only be owing to the om-
nipotence of truth. This commands the applause of every
reflecting, honest, unprejudiced physician who endeavors
to promote the welfare of his fellow-creatures, and all the
tribe of Hecker can do nothing to its detriment, with all
their fury and raving. Opinionum commenta delet dies, na-
tursejudicia confirmat.
It is useless to vilify, as Hecker does, the teachings of
the Organon, whereby patients can be certainly, rapidly^
and easily cured on distinctly appreciable principles, as I
could convince any one by practical demonstrations at
the sick bed. It is not the incontrovertible truth, but only
he himself that loses by his abuse and ranting, if he still has
anything to lose.
Further on Hecker attacks the respectable authors of
the articles in the Philosophical Transactions, the Commer-
dum Literarium Noricum, and the Acta Nature Curiosorumy
whence I have taken some of my examples. " The most
despicable historians of past times," he says, " who ac-
cumulated observations in Decuria and Centuria and
registered therein documents that exhibit their ignorance,
V6 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
their childish superstition and their credulity, were good
enough evidence for Hahnemann, whose conclusions are
based on their utterances." My conclusions were based
only on observation of nature and on my own experience,
not on these records. My doctrine was long previously
formed and laid before the public in the Medicine of Ex-
perience (the precursor of the Organon)^ before I sought
for its corroboration from these records, which show that
others had often cured diseases in a similar manner. But
as regards the collections of those older learned societies
which Hecker so shamelessly disparages, I may remark
that they would always have been highly appreciated by
every age which practices and honors honesty and experience.
The collections in question modestly kept within the
limits of experience, and real love of the art and respect
for humanity influenced the authors fraternally to com-
municate their observations to the world honestly and
truthfully. Their age was much less under the spell of
superstition, than ours under that of hyperphysical hocus-
pocus, their and our theories and explanations are dangled
in the leading-strings of the prevalent systems ; but their
observations, for which only sound sense and honesty are
required, were, like those of honorable, rational, truth-
telling men, true and genuine. I wish that now-a-days
observations wxre universally as faithful and honest ! I
wish Hecker had at least a portion of the honesty of those
observers !
" That the subjects on whom the observations from
these writings were made were almost all sick," as Hecker
says (p. 220) is false ; by far the largest number of those
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 77
who furnished the observations of positive medicinal
symptoms recorded by other physicians and appended to
my own observations in the Fragmenta were in good
health. But the small remaining portion of observations
made on patients has a certain value. One must be con-
tented with what has been transmitted to us from former
times, as not even so much can be expected from our own
times, so poor are they in simple observation of nature ;
for Hecker and his set find it more to their interest to
deluge us with hyperphysical speculations, bold asser-
tions, empty conjectures, subtle sophisms and illusory
demonstrations in their systematic works and periodicals.
One cannot tell whether Hecker, at p. 221, is speaking
of my doctrine or of the collection of examples of homoe-
opathic cures in the Introduction to the Organon^ so con-
fusedly are things mixed up with one another. I do not
found my doctrine on this collection of examples ; it was
excogitated before this was made; the collection only
serves to illustrate, in an accessory manner, the homoeopa-
thic cures obtained, though only accidentally, by others.
Here Hecker repeats his contemptuous sneer at the " pun-
gent snuff," namely the ipecacuanha dust, which is so mild
and tasteless on the tongue. A miserable attempt at wit
destitute of truth !
At p. 221, Hecker after talking big about " the old es-
tablished principles," which he ludicrously enough credits
his ars conjecturalis with possessing, returns to his exqui-
site statement " that medicines cannot cause on healthy
or sick persons any definite, but only infinitely various
effects," which, if it were true, would, as I have shown
78 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
above, prevent the possibility of any medical art, so idi-
otic it is.
I know not what sly enemy has tempted Hecker all at
once, at p. 222, to deploy his little army of medicines and
to cause it to march in platoons before our eyes. "The
volatile, stimulating, antispasmodic, narcotic remedies/'
he says, " whose special influence on the sensibility is so
well marked, are our most important remedies in the so-
called nervous diseases " (divine generalization, what an
easy business for us thou makest medical treatment),
^' and in sufficiently large doses, they cause symptoms
which testify to that special influence on the sensibility."
(Well now, that is an important conclusion of our pro-
fessor ! On the sensibility, that is, the feeling, medicines
act! How far we have advanced in these enlightened
times !) " With emetics and purgatives, with salines, with
bitter substances, etc., we cure many diseases of the ab-
dominal intestines" (When, during the employment of
complex mixtures of medicines of these and other kinds,
the ailments at length disappear in course of time, then a
physician of Hecker' s stamp says he has cured them ; but
what the precise nature of the case was, and which of the
drugs in many complicated mixtures has been of use, or
whether any one among them did good, and whether all
were not rather hindrances to the spontaneous recovery,
no one can conscientiously say), "and every tiro knows the
morbid phenomena which all these things are capable of
producing in those intestines." (Not at all ! Not even a
professor like Hecker, knows the effect of a single one of
these substances, let alone of all of them ; moreover, ac-
DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON. 79
cording to this Hecker, no medicine has any definite con-
stant effect. How does this chime in with the assertion
that every tiro knows the effects of all medicines? Can
the contradictory process of blowing hot and cold from
the same mouth be carried farther ?) " with the diuretic
remedies " (is there even one single trustworthy diuretic
remedy, except it corresponds homoeopathically to the
greater number of the symptoms of the disease ?) " we are
able" (would to God this were not a vain boast!) "to
combat many diseases of the urinary passages," (and,
owing to their neglect to differentiate the cases of disease
and the medicines and their ignorance of the powers of
the medicines, often to make neiv diseases, especially of the
urinary passages!) "but these remedies also by many
symptoms manifest their specific influence on those pass-
ages." Who among those physicians of the Hecker sort,
who confound all things, who mix everything together
quid pro quo in one mess and hurry over their visits to
their patients' bedsides, ever takes the trouble to become
acquainted with these specific influences and effects of
every single medicinal substance, and learns to apply
them to the advantage of therapeutics ? Any commotion
they may excite in the body when given in such hotch-
potch mixtures can teach us nothing about the peculiar
properties of each individual drug. Hecker scorns this
knowledge as we have seen, and detests the system which
possesses this knowledge.
The silly examples Hecker brings forward (p. 223) in
support of his objections are : " Opium cannot cure ver-
tigo because it can cause it, for experience shows that it
80 DEFENCE or THE ORGANON.
does not cure many cases of vertigo and that this affec-
tion " (just as though there were but one and not innum-
erable different kinds of vertigo !) " on the other hand
ceases* after taking things which never cause vertigo."
*' Because ipecacuanha causes vomiting we cannot oh that
account say that it can also cure vomiting, because many
things allay vomiting which have never caused it." "We
cannot say that cantharis cures gonorrhoea, because gonor-
rhoea has follow^ed its administration, seeing that in most
cases it is most readily removed only by remedies which
are incapable of causing gonorrhoea " (it may be sup-
pressed by them, or it may cease in the course of time.)t
"How little we can be guided by single symptoms in
medical practice, has been already said."
Why then does Hecker always return to the quackish
idea of treating one symptom of a disease with a medicine
that contains this one symptom, seeing that the irrational
and futile character of the single-symptom treatment is so
* When an affection at length ceases in course of time after the ad-
ministration of a multitude of unsuitable remedies, that is mere
quackery. It must be removed quickly and permanently if the remedy
be the suitable one, and then it may be called a cure and not sponta-
neous cessation. If he knows any cases of vertigo, vomiting and gon-
orrhcea which have been cured rapidly and permanently and without
any ill consequences by remedies which were never able to cause simi-
lar affections he must name the credible witnesses and observations, if
he would not be convicted of untruthfulness !
t With the well-known simple bread pills, it ceases sometimes in
from five to six weeks, that is to say, ichen it vjould have spontaneously
taken its departure in the course of time. Is that a cure ?
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 81
obvious? (Vide Organon of Rational Medicine, § 10, 2d
note [5th edit., § 7, 2d note] where the despicable charac-
ter of such improper treatment — attacking a single symp-
tom of the disease — is pointed out). Indeed Hecker him-
self, at p. 65, quotes passages from the Medicine of Experi-
ence, in which I will not allow that there can be a real
perfect cure unless the greatest possible quantity of all the
disease-symptoms (the complex of symptoms) is covered
by a medicine which contains these symptoms, or at least
many of them, and especially the most striking and singu-
lar of them. How then can Hecker here again, without
at the same time paying attention to the rest of the dis-
ease-symptoms (as common sense and my method en-
join), drive away vertigo with opium, vomiting with ipecac-
uanha, and that vague symptom gonorrhoea with can-
tharis, or make as though my s^^stem considered such
miserable one-sidedness as good and commendable?
These are falsehoods and the exact contrary of what I
have taught ! What does the reader think of such con-
duct ?
Only what can extinguish as far as possible the whole
group of the disease-symptoms is the true remedy ; this
only should be employed. That is what I teach in the
Organon (§ 130. [§ 154 of the 5th edit.]. Any one who
imputes it to me that I advise every sort of vertigo to be
treated with opium, every kind of vomiting with ipecacu-
anha, and every kind of gonorrhoea with cantharis, without
ascertaining if the morbid symptoms accompanying the
vertigo are also contained in opium, if the phenomena of
the affection accompanjnng the vomiting are represented
82 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
among the other medicinal symptoms of ipecacuanha, or if
the kind of gonorrhoea he has to treat and the sensations
and other symptoms accompanying it are also among the
array of symptoms which cantharis can cause, acts grossly
contrary to my teaching.
What follows, on pp. 223 and 224, where Hecker refers
me to the reproduction— irritability — and sensibility view
{inaipplicable in practice) is idle a-priori rubbish of which
I make him a present. If the ancients had been able to
do anything judicious for the benefit of their patients
with the functiones naturales, vitales and animales, and if the
slightest success in the treatment of a single case of dis-
ease could have been expected from these general views,
then the ancients like their modern successors would have
been able to rely upon them with advantage in practice.
But this they could not do. Nothing salutary could be
expected from these generalities ; they were nothing but
idle theoretical flourishes designed to impart a rational
veneering to this nugatory routine practice.
Then Hecker asks : " Mercury causes salivation, does it
therefore cure salivation ? ' ' Certainly it does ; and why
should it not cure it when it actually does ? In what inge-
nious hyperphysical non-natural manner, will he explain
this fact, if it does occur, so that the explanation may be
oi practical use ? For all our medical explanations should
aim at nothing more earnestly, should promote nothing
more immediately than true practical healing ; they
should not be mere frivolous scholastic trifling. When
I see that every remedy only relieves quickly a disease
whose symptoms are to be found in similarity among its
DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON. 83
own symptoms, does not that reveal a fair prospect for the
certain rational cure of other diseases? Can there he a
better founded explanation than that which in its application is
actually always crowned by the desired result ?
At. p. 224 (in No. 3) Hecker again makes merry over
the collection of examples of homoeopathic cures by other
physicians. But this mixture of frivolity, perversion,
folly and calumny does not deserve an answer, as his
paltry objections have already been sufficiently disposed
of above. From this collection of examples no one can
be taught to cure; they are obviously not intended for
such a purpose. This collection is merely an illustration
of homoeopathic cures performed accidentally by other
physicians, without their knowledge, nothing more ; they
cannot in their crude form serve as models and were not
meant to do so. What then is the object of all Hecker 's
despicable, miserable tirades ? They miss the mark en-
tirely. Even though the whole collection of examples
had never been printed, the homoeopathic system would
still remain firmly established, and every honest man who
gives it a trial can easily convince himself by experience
of its infinite superiority to every other method of treat-
ment hitherto employed.
At p. 225, Hecker gives us a bit more of his mind when
he says : " But who can recognize and distinguish every
definite kind of disease ? " To which I reply : Any one
who takes cognizance of the symptoms of each case of
disease {Organon, § 62-71 [§ 84-i^2 of 5th Edit.]) And
the probable excitiug cause (§ 72, 73 [5th Edit., § 93, 94])
recognizes and distinguishes them. Cannot Hecker read ?
84 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
Why does he pretend to be so stupid ? It is written as
plainly as possible.
*' Who," continues Hecker, " can immediately perceive in
every kind of disease, to what specific remedy and to what
dose of it it will yield on the spot ? " I reply : I never
said this should be immediately perceived in the patient;
but he who holds it should be the physician's object to
indulge in theoretical generalisations and the quickest
possible treatment of patients, would certainly prefer to
perceive immediately by looking at the patient's nose
what kind of a disease he has, without the trouble of in-
vestigating minutely all the circumstances of the case and
without carefully selecting from among the medicines at
his command that one whose symptoms have the greatest
similarity to the ascertained symptoms of the disease.
But nature which imparted to us the capacity for accurate
investigation, and our conscience, do not make it so easy
for us as " immediately perceive " implies ! The high vo-
cation of the physician and his conscience will not permit
him to be and to remain a mere routinist.
" When will Hahnemann," says Hecker, '' give us an
accurate characteristic description of the hundred kinds
of intermittent fever, each of which must- be cured by a
special remedy ? " I reply : Where have I ever said that
the infinite number of diseases must be first described
before the}^ have ever affected human beings ? Evidently
Hecker has neither read nor understood the Organon,
otherwise he never would have asked such a question.
It would be an absurd undertaking to endeavor to de-
scribe all jDossible diseases which inexhaustible nature
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 85
has ever produced or may in future produce in human
beings. It is only the disease actually present that the
physician has to investigate, i.e., to take cognizance of and
to distinguish by means of its symptoms (as the Organon,
§62-73 [§83-94, 5th Edit.], teaches) ; it is only for the
disease actually present that he has to select the remedy
on homoeopathic principles (v. Organon, §125 to the end
[5th Ed., § 146 to the end] ) ; he does not require to do
anything more. When, then, he knows how to investi-
gate every single case of disease that turns up during his
practical career and to cure it with the most appropriate
(homoeopathic) medicines according to the infallible prin-
ciples of homoeopathy, is he not thus the most perfect,
most rational, most helpful practitioner of the art of
medicine ? What more is needed ?
Hecker next asks (pp. 225 and 226) : "When will Hah-
nemann give a precise description of the one particular
kind of rabies which belladonna will certainly cure? " An-
swer: A physician never has to treat either rabies in
genere nor a species of it whose exact character has been
fixed beforehand. It is only the actual case of rabies he
is called to treat, that he requires to investigate accurately
in all its conditions and symptoms, in order then to as-
certain if the group of symptoms present corresponds in
the greatest possible similarity with a group in the patho-
genesis of belladonna. If the case is not represented in
the belladonna sj^mptoms in the completest and most
similar manner possible, and if its symptoms are con-
tained in greater similarity among the medicinal symp-
toms of stramonium, or of hyoscyamus, etc., then the one
86 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
that proves to be the most homoeopathically similar is
also the most eflS-cacions ; and, if the medicine selected in
this manner is in its primary symptoms very like those
of the case of rabies the physician can say beforehand
that this can, this must cure. Cases of rabies that occur
in practice may differ greatly from one another and yet
all find in the pathogenesis of one or other of these plants
their greatest possible similar, their remedy, in fact. Of
what use would it be (even if it were practicable) to de-
scribe these possible cases of rabies beforehand, seeing
that the physician must always specially investigate the
case that comes under his treatment ? Does not Hecker
see this ?
What Hecker says further on this subject shows either
that he has not read the Organon or that he does not un-
derstand it or will not understand it. He does not de-
serve any confutation. He who honestly practices accord-
ing to the homoeopathic doctrine will be convinced by
experience that it is the true, the only method that is
beneficial, and will perceive how futile and paltry are the
perversions and petulances which Hecker's poverty of
mind tries to pass off for witty objections. Hecker will
remain sticking in his old mud ; there let him lie !
After expectorating a lot of vulgarities (p. 226) he re-
turns to his joke which he imagines is so witty, but which
is simply disgusting : " Had the Preserver of mankind
given us a plain and simple hint in the nose-bleeding
that pungent snuff can cause, that we should employ this
same snuff in bleeding from the uterus," etc. What sen-
sible and truth-loving man can call the extremely mild
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 87
ipecacuanha powder that has hardly any taste or smell a
'^ pungent snuff!" Is this falsehood meant for a joke?
Not only epistaxis but (what he here purposely avoids
mentioning) haemoptysis also has been seen to follow the
inhalation at a considerable distance of the dust of this
powder, which cannot have any acrid property so mild
and tasteless it is, as has been before observed; this
proves that ipecacuanha possesses the power to cause
hsemorrhages, and that it may also cause uterine haemor-
rhage, though the observations hitherto made do not go
so far. That collection of examples which still remains a
thorn in Hecker's eye is, as has often been said, merely
an illustration of homoeopathic cures unconsciously per-
formed, but not an instruction as to how similar cures
should be effected.
With similar exemplary honesty and impartiality —
Hecker's cardinal virtues — our man now goes on to attack
the Organon of Rational Medicine. For a refutation of the
adverse criticism of my earlier writings which Hecker
formerly made in his yellow Journal, and which I did not
think it worth while to answer, I hope he will find in this
little book enough to satisfy him ; if not, there is plenty
more at his service. My system of therapeutics can only
be appreciated by persons of sound understanding but not
by such as are afflicted with perversity and depravity of
head and heart.
At pp. 228, 229, Hecker boasts, in a note, of his treat-
ment of a child affected with caries ; "A simpler treat-
ment it is impossible to imagine."* So then, several
* What was the object of the repeated doses of jalap, when he was
88 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
medicines given simultaneoush^ and successively, and yet
nothing but mercury was of use ; is that the simplest treat-
ment imaginable? How far is such a man from the better
wa}^ ! Just hear what he says soon afterwards : " No
competent medical man would employ mercury in caries,
because it causes caries," thus we see plainly that he did
not know and regard the only remedy for his case of caries
(mercury) as the only medicine indicated, consequently
that he here made a homoeopathic cure unwittingly and
involuntarily, just like the other physicians mentioned
in the Illustrations. Aheat cum cseteris !
Mercury does not only cause caries in slow poisoning by
the metal; it may cause it very rapidly (Michaelis in
Hufeland's Journal) in its primary action. On the other
hand the caries caused by coffee occurs only in the second-
ary action of this vegetable substance : it only comes on
after long continued use of co/ee, just as is the case with
the caries resulting from the long continued administra-
tion of conium maculatum, and just as small-pox leaves be-
hind it chronic induration of glands and caries in its
secondary, and never causes it in its primary (acute)
stage. When Hecker imagines that I include coffee among
the homoeopathic remedies for caries, he confounds pri-
mary and secondary actions. In all eternity no chronic
certain that the right remedy was either the golden sulphide of anti-
mony or mercw^f What was the use of the antimony if jalap alone, or
if mercmnf alone were the proper medicine ? and if the latter alone
could and must cure, why then the antimony and the frequent doses of
jalap f and besides these, why were the ulcers dusted with cantharides,
if the internal remedies could and must effect a cure ? And aarain,
why the myn^h spread over the ulcers ?
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 89
disease, like caries, will be cured by secondary actions ;
medicines do not come under the category of homoeopa-
thic remedies by virtue of their secondary actions. Will
Hecker at length comprehend, or does he not wish to do
so?
Hecker's vague denunciation of the Organon (pp. 229,
230) cannot influence any impartial, thinking reader.
These will perceive that my therapeutic doctrine is a con-
sistent, self-contained whole, which calls to its aid no hy-
perphysical speculations^ takes its maxims only from na-
ture and experience, and teaches every one how he,
without allowing his head to be puzzled by the figments
of Hecker and his adherents, can certainly, easily,
quickly and permanently cure every case of disease on
readily comprehensible j)rinciples and sure indications.
The Heckers cry out only because they are embarrassed ;
they cry out because they dislike the daylight that reveals them
in alt their nakedness.
At p. 230 again (for the fourth or fifth time, because he
does not know what else to attack) Hecker alludes to
ipecacManha as a remedy for metrorrhagia, but he fails to
perceive that the cures of haemorrhage by this substance
are not taught in the Illustrations, he fails to perceive
that, because experience has not yet shown that ipeca-
cuanha has caused metrorrhagia, it does not follow that it
is incapable of doing so. In short, he does not and will
not perceive.
He then proceeds : " From the circumstance that mer-
cury can cause caries, is it quite plain to see that it must
cure caries?" Hecker does not see it, certainly, but that
90 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
is because he will not see it. He perceives that if he ad-
mits the truth of homoeopathy his whole sj^stematic house
of cards must tumble down. But poor house of cards,
thou art alread}^ overthrown without his admission I
Though Hecker does not, every sensible and unprejudiced
person sees that if mercury can cause caries in its primary
action, as it actually does, it would be extremely unnatural
to refer its specific curative power in non-mercurial caries
to anything else than to the law of homoeopathy ; just as
every other medicine in the world cures only just those
maladies and none other besides those it can cause in
similarity in its primary action. I should have thought
that when we see all bodies fall towards the centre of the
earth it were not sinful to ascribe their falling to the
power of gravitation and to make an advantageous em-
ployment of this law of nature in human life. What do
you think, professor ? Does your logic go so far ?
At p. 231 Hecker accuses me of " sophistry and igno-
rance in the domain of real pathology.'^'' Hecker cannot
know that sophistry implies perversions of words and
false deductions from illusory premises (of which Hook-
er's whole life and work is composed), if he would call by
that name the pure common-sense and the straight con-
clusions derived directly from nature and experience,
without any admixture of speculative artifice or a-priori
foolery, contained in the Organon. One must needs laugh
when the lazy fellow calls the diligent worker a loafer.
Now, as regards my supposed " ignorance of real path-
ology." As every text-book of pathology and every aca-
demic teacher of pathology has a different pathology, one
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 91
of which is only distinguished from another by the
greater absurdity of its hypotheses, while all allow to
nature only a definite number and form of diseases^
which she must only produce in the manner each author
conceives according to his own imaginary hyperphysical
conjectures, and as all these conjectures differ from those
of every other pathological author, we may reasonably
ask where among all these products of the brain is the
only saving, true, real pathology to be found ?
The statement in the Organon, "that we know absolutely
nothing of diseases but their symptoms," is incontrovert-
ibly true, though Hecker here denies it. Any one who
denies this — be it Hecker or who it may be — let him tell
us what we know definitely of diseases besides their
symptoms ? Nothing besides can be named to us except
the conjectures of the schools, which, however, on account
of their everlasting variations in the head of every teacher^
cannot be held to be anything like definite by any person of
sound understanding {qui non nisi intra limites exiperientise
sapit). If no one can contradict this, and if no one can
allege that diseases have anything else definitely cogniza-
ble but their symptoms (if any one knows otherwise, let
him tell us ! And why does not Hecker tell us if anything
else definitely cognizable is to be found in diseases?), it
follows naturally that in the investigation and treatment
of diseases we have only their symptoms to go by. And
''as we cannot discover in the action of medicines
anything definitely cognizable besides their symptoms '^
(let any one come forward who can mention anything
else definitely cognizable that refers with certainty to
92 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
their remedial power ! But we cannot admit more con-
jectures not borne out by experience !), it follows, as we
have no diflB.culty in perceiving, that the curability of
diseases depends on the symptoms of medicines ascer-
tained by experiment. Who can deny the validity of
these conclusions ?
Hecker says (p. 231) : " Hahnemann lays less stress in
the Organon than in his previous writings on single symp-
toms and on the selection of the remedy according to
these." Let him refer us to any writing or any passage
in which I have said that single symptoms should be our
guide in the cure of diseases. Even in my first essay,
published fifteen years ago, On a New Principle, I said
nothing of the kind, but even then I insisted on giving a
remedy which had the tendency to cause in the healthy
body an artificial disease of the greatest possible similar-
ity. What is the, object of these perversions and fig-
ments of Hecker's? What does the unprejudiced reader
think of them ?
At p. 232, when quoting the statement in the Organon :
*' That the physician only has to remove the totality of
the symptoms in order to cure, along with them at the
same time, the alterations in the interior ; therefore the
totality of the disease — in fact, the disease itself," Hecker
makes this inappropriate objection : " One cannot remove
the totality of the symptoms of hunger, but hunger itself,
and decidedly not homoeopathically by things that cause
hunger." One could not have believed that a professor
in the most enlightened city in the world could have con-
sidered that attribute of good health, normal hunger, as
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 93
a disease to be cured by medicines. Can such silly ideas
be termed real objections or refutations? or are they
specimens of Hecker's wisdom ? That morbid hunger^
bulimia, cannot be removed by bread and meat, but
only by a homoeopathic medicine, which, in addition to
its correspondence with the other symptoms, has a ten-
dency to cause bulimia especially, is perfectly true, not-
withstanding that Hecker knows nothing about it.
At p. 233 he refers to " fundamental medical doctrines
which are attempted to be refuted by the teachings of the
Organony Where are such doctrines to be found, seeing
that every teacher invents a different system ? Why does
he not say what they are, instead of wasting paper in this
periodical with such a lot of empty babblement? Hecker,
at p. 234, talks about the well-grounded knowledge we
possess of the nature of diseases and the mode of action
of remedies." Very good ! But where is this to be
found? whereon is it based? I am familiar with a hun-
dren different views respecting diseases, constructed ex
theoria et hypothesi by as many pathologists, and ten to
twenty different modes of arbitrarily applying the powers
of medicine — also determined ex theoria et presmntione —
to theoretically constructed classes, orders and species of
diseases, each differing from the others. Where, then, is
the boasted " well-grounded knowledge of the nature of
diseases and the mode of action of remedies ? " Let him
name them and cover us with confusion !
" It would," he continues, " be to degrade our science
(?) ; it would be to reduce it to the level of the crassest
empiricism " (everything that is not complicated with
94 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
hypothetical trash and transcendental rubbish Hecker
and his allies call " crass empiricism ! " If it could be
settled by contemptuous words, they would soon effect
their purpose !), " of the commonest domestic practice "
(my deeply-pondered Organon, written not without a ripe
study of nature, not without the maturest consideration,
in which the instructions for treatment are only given in
general formulas; in which no particular directions —
such as : " China is good for fever," etc. — are laid down ;
in which, on the contrary, the nature of every individual
case of disease coming under treatment, and of the rem-
edy to be selected for it among all known medicines, with
due consideration of all observable conditions, is insisted
on — this, forsooth, must lead to the commonest domestic
practice ! Can the reader imagine anything more calum-
nious, anything more absurd?). " If we are to reject that
knowledge (the ''well-grounded knowledge" he means,
which nobody knows), "and to impose such narrow
limits" (all is too simple for you in the Organon, too
little inflated by theoretical speculation, too uncompli-
cated !) " that we must be confined to a mere observation
of symptoms, and our choice and prescription of medi-
cines must be regulated solely by symptoms."
I confess with regret that the Creator, so far from having
hid the cognition of every case of disease we have to treat
in transcendental and learned poetical hypotheses, has so
prosaically placed it in the careful observation of the mor-
bid manifestations (symptoms) ! I regret deeply that such
an investigation of every case of disease according to the
symptoms, for which only attention, sound sense and
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 95
scrupulous fidelity are required, is with its artless sim-
plicity so extremely repugnant to the minds of Hecker
and his adherents, accustomed as they are to over-learned
artificialities. I am sorry that the plastered-up ruins of
their systems, made up of stolen maxims, are shattered
to fragments by the mighty force of the new-born truth !
I regret that the plain eff'ect of my medical doctrine, so
innocent of scholastic subtleties, aids human beings to
recover their health in a straightforward manner ; but I
am powerless against simplicity and mighty force of this
beneficent truth, and I humbly beg pardon, as Galileo did
for the earth moving round the sun !
" We need only," continues Hecker in his boasting
manner, " recall to mind the following, among countless
similar facts, in order to show how enormously superior
our rational medicine " (in the professorial chair ! but
God have mercy on the poor patients !) " is to the Hahne-
mannian empiricism and its shallow symptom-observa-
tion." It is true, it is provoking, that the all- wise and
benevolent Sustainer of mankind has deigned to permit
his human children to obtain a knowledge of every single
disease by such shallow symptom-observation. Hence
my empiricism ! whereby I am enabled to select the best
remedy for any given case of disease according to fixed
infallible principles, and to cure it more quickly, more
easily, more certainly and more permanently than was
hitherto possible. Naughty experience (iinretpia) \
In order to confute the homoeopathic therapeutic doc-
trine, Hecker, with marvellous acuteness, adds (pp. 234,
235) : " Venesection never causes redness, heat, swelling
96 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
and pain ; never the complex of symptoms of any inflam-
mation ; never anything similar to the phenomena of
pneumonia, and yet we cure it therewith in the most decisive
manner (?), we can explain these cures in a perfectly satis-
factory manner." The explanation, Dr. Hecker, is really
the main thing with you ; and the more involved it is, the
more it is spun out of the remotest regions of hypothesis
and transcendentalism, the more learned, consequently
the more satisfactory does it seem to you. But the ex-
planation— this hobby-horse of yours which goes stumb-
ling over the graves of well-filled cemeteries — we will
make you a present of it ; but first we should like to see
pneumonia cured by venesection. When has it ever been
cured by venesection only ? Were not other things em-
ployed at the same time ? if so, how can the cure be as-
scribed to venesection only? (Rational medicine a la
Hecker can do this !) There is no properly authenticated
record extant of a pure serious case of pneumonia having
been cured by venesection only ! Let Hecker refer us ta
one if he can ! And if the removal of the most promi-
nent affection of the lungs and the heat of the body is
obtained by this merely depressing operation, by this ab-
straction of the blood, which only diminishes the vital
powers, the patient is not thereby restored to health — as-
suredly is not cured. The effect of such a great loss of
blood is to make a peculiar serious chronic disease, and
one cannot boast of a cure, seeing that the result of the ab-
straction of a great quantit}" of blood is only to substitute
for a natural disease another artificial one. But this is
what they call curing, rational curing. Where does the
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 97
rational come in in this badly conceived and pernicious
procedure? Is there the slightest rational reason for the
abstraction of blood when there is no real superfluity of
blood in the body ? Or is perhaps pneumonia produced
only by a general plethora of blood, is the essential nature
of pneumonia merely an excess of healthy blood, so that
this excess can and must be reduced in a rational manner
by its direct diminution ? Nothing of the sort I This then
is the precious rational medicine of which a court coun-
sellor and professor is so immensely proud ! You are wel-
come to your explanation of the cure of a severe pneumo-
nia, the possibility of which exists only in your own imagina-
tion^ for there is not a single pure case on record in which,
by means of your (ever so lavish) prodigality of the pre-
cious vital fluid by venesection, this disease has been trans-
muted into health with striking rapidity, before the special
natural relief (crisis) appeared, and which is able to dis-
pense with this assistance.
" The same may be said," he continues (p. 255), " of the
vegetable acids and neutral salts " (no matter which of
them!); "they cure inflammations though they have
never caused any." It would be something for Hecker
and his school to be proud of if they could quickly cure
and change into health even the majority of inflamma-
tions by means of venesection, vegetable acids and neutral
salts. But that is by no means the case ! They sometimes
go ofi" during the employment of these par-empirical reme-
dies (prescribed without adequate reason) in nearly the
same time as they would have taken to disappear without
medicines ; or rather somewhat later, so that the palliative
98 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
character of the treatment adds about as much to the dura-
tion of the malady as it takes from its severity. But many
inflammations are not cured by them, either by venesec-
tion or by vegetable acids or by neutral salts, without the
(rational?) practitioners being aware why those remedies
did no good (otherwise they would not have employed
them). This then is what is called real, incomparable,
rational medicine !
" No one has ever heard," continues Hecker, " that the
array of symptoms constituting an inflammation of the
liver has been caused by mercury ; but this inflammation
wall be quite certainly " (in every case ?) " cured by this
metal." How is it possible that Hecker could ever have
heard of such medicinal symptoms of mercury/, seeing that
he and his authorities prefer to argue (it is easier !) than
to institute experiments and observations of this kind,
and that the true observers of former times are abused
and rejected by him as " most miserable historians?" And
is it impossible that a medicine, that mercury should have
a tendency to cause a certain disease, notwithstanding
that hitherto nothing was known, at least not to Hecker,
of this its positive medical action ? Will its cure of a
similar malady be therefore less homoeopathic because
there had been no experience of this tendency, or because
Hecker had never heard of it ? But what he does not
know (^quantum est) thank God ! others know.
When Hecker proceeds to deny all credibility to my
observations of medicinal symptoms, we need only re-
member that it is Hecker that does this ; nothing more
need be said.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 99
" We " (other rational physicians) Hecker brags, " cure
definite forms of fever by definite remedies." Would to
God that were not untrue ! How often does your so-called
rational method fail to cure intermittent fever ? Or, there
occurs after the suppression of the periodicity of the fever
a chronic febrile state, a kind of cachex}^, which is worse
than the intermittent fever was. Can that be called curing,
in other words, restoring health ? If what you call ra-
tional medicine has reasons for all it does (for not other-
wise can it claim to be called rational), how ill founded
must your reason be in cases where you have employed
cinchona without effect, or with bad effects, as often, very
often, happens ! The other fever remedies, every one of them ,
you prescribe without knowing which of them is suitable
for this, which for that case, and will certainly do good ;
so you give first one, then another, quidquid in buccam
venit; and you never give one single medicine in one dis-
ease, but always in combination with one or several other
drugs — and this you call your rational medicine, and so
boldly impose on people that you can care definite forms
of fever with definite remedies. God forgive you the false-
hoods and the martyrdom your so-called rational medi-
cine inflicts on suffering humanity !
" Cinchona bark and similar (?) medicines," says Hecker,
" have never produced in any human being a relaxed,
weakly constitution or a bronchial phthisis, and yet these
morbid states are certainly cured b}^ those remedies."
The peculiar kind of exhaustion and sinking of the vital
power (with accessory circumstances) which cinchona re-
moves, it can cause primarily in a high degree (see Frag-
100 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
menta). Other morbid weaknesses, not corresponding to
it in similarity, cinchona cannot remove. Just as little can
cinchona cure all kinds of cases of bronchial phthisis that
occur in practice, i.e., change them into health ; and it can-
not be decreed at the desk that cinchona must cure. Or,
will he perhaps shelter himself behind the remedies said
to be similar to cinchona ? Why does he not name them,
if he has anything definite to say about them ?
" No girl in the world," he goes on to say, " has yet
been afifected with chlorosis and amenorrhcea by iron,^^
He speaks of things as he understands them. What efforts
has he made, in all his life, to ascertain what kind of de-
fective menstruation iron can produce ? Moreover, what
iron contributes, as a chemical remedy in such cases, to the
increase of the necessary quantity of iron in the blood,
is an altogether different question, which has nothing to
do with the subject of homoeopathic cure by similarly
acting medicines.
" Has any one ever heard of mustard baths and mustard
plasters causing delirium ?" he continues, " but we can at
once remove delirium by the judicious employment of
these remedies." These generalizers, Hecker and his
allies, are very fond of the word "judicious " which they
never precisely define, and they shelter themselves behind
it, though the manoeuvre does not impose upon others.
Whether the warm baths in which the mustard is the least
powerful constituent, or mustard plasters, by the external
pain they cause, can always and at once remove delirium,
and cure this single symptom permanently, without at the
same time eradicating the disease itself — this question I
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. lOl
will leave to be answered by the single-symptom doctors
and their colleagues the barbers, shepherds, bath-women,
farriers, etc., who also delight to call themselves "rational
practitioners." It is easy to understand that delirium
may be temporarily suspended* when another external
disease of a very painful character has been produced on
the patient by mustard ! The power of warm water to re-
move mere heat of the body is homoeopathy.
But now comes (pp. 235, 236) the crowning example of
Hecker's judicial power. " As long as the world has ex-
isted," he says, " mercury has never caused syphilis, nor
mercury and sulphur true itch, but millions have been
cured of the diseases mentioned by these remedies." If
this masterly attack is directed against the homoeopathic
system I am sorry that the Professor understands so little
Greek that he fails to perceive what is the meaning of
homoeopathic. According to the Organon, natural diseases
are extinguished and cured by other similar artificial dis-
eases ; perhaps the Professor will now at last understand
that similar is different from identical. The cure cannot be
tautopathic but homoeopathic. Did it ever enter into the im-
agination of any one to say : v&nereal infection may be
caused by mercury and true syphilis got just as in a brothel ?
Could such nonsense enter into the head of any one ?
It is only the same stupidity that can believe that sid-
phur can cause real itch. One is ashamed to refute such
* This is nothing more than temporary suspension of one affection
by another dissimiliar one (see Organon of Bxitional Medicine, |g 22, 24,
2% 27, and note to 271 [5th edit., U 40, 38] ) a cure it is not.
102 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
self-evident absurdities. But that sulphur can cause an
eruption that closely resembles the itch of workers in wool
is shown every day by the effects of sulphur baths ; and
that mercury produces affections and sufferings which are
very like those of syphilis may be seen in the observations
of myself and other physicians *
The following Heckerian questions require no answer —
for if experiences are adduced, he denies them ex theoria
and pro lubitu and abuses the observers, who are much
more honorable than himself, and that is for him the end
of the matter. What can we do with such a man, who
has made up his mind beforehand not to be taught, not
to be convinced of the better way ?
I leave it to the single-symptom doctors to tell how
often haemorrhages have been permanently quelled by alum
which acts more chemically (Organon, § 271, 2d note)t
* ["Every practical physician knows that mercury may and does
give rise to a train of symptoms bearing some analogy to those of sec-
ondary syphilis. Thus after the use of mercury, a patient may be
attacked with feverishness, pains in the bones, nodes, sore throat and
an eruption to which the name of mercurial eczema has been given.
Here you perceive we have a remarkable analogy between the dis-
eases produced by mercury and syphilis. Mercury when exhibited im-
properly may produce all the affections I have enumerated, and, in
addition to these, caries of the bones." (Grave's Clinical Lectures on
the Practice of Medicine,'' vol. ii., p. 521). A beautiful corroboration
of Hahnemann's observations by a renowned physician of the Old
School, published in 1843, the year of Hahnemann's death !]
t [This note several times referred to is replaced in the subsequent
editions of the Organon by the note to § 67 (5th Edit). The reader
may feel an interest in seeing what Hahnemann originally wrote on the
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANOX. 103
than dynaiDically, by means of its astringent effects
throughout the whole organism. For the first onset in a
suddenly occurring case such non-homoeopathic remedies
may be useful ; but that is all. Considerable haemor-
rhages from an internal cause can never be permanently
subdued by alum.
According to Hecker, "tincture of cinnamon has cured
innumerable cases of uterine haemorrhage." Bosh ! How
many uterine haemorrhages has not so-called rational
medicine fruitlessly striven to cure with tincture of cinna-
mon f^ and yet it had rational grounds for such treatment,
which was a failure ? How well-founded, how rational
employment of non-homoeopatliic remedies. ''In addition to Homoe-
opathic treatment, the rational physician will very seldom find occa-
sion to employ that revolutionizing method, remedies for producing
evacuations upwards and downwards, except when quite indigestible
or very hurtful foreign substances have got into the stomach or
bowels. , But besides this the employment of some undynamic reme-
dies is sometimes required. Such are fatty substances, which as it
were mechanically or physically loosen the connection and closeness
of the fibres-tannin which solidifies the living as it does the dead fibre-
wood charcoal, which diminishes the bad smell of unhealthy places in
the living body, just as it takes it away from lifeless things. Chalk,
alkalies, soap and sulphur which are capable of chemically decompo-
sing, neutralizing and rendering innocuous the acrid acids and metal-
lic salts in or upon the human body, and acids and alkalies which have
the power of dissolving the various kinds of calculi in the bladder — so
also the physically destructive cautery, the chemical decomposing re-
agents of many kinds — not to mention here the merely depressing,
seldom rationally employable venesection, leeches, etc."]
* See the complaints on this subject in HufelancVs, Jaurnal.
104 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
must not such grounds be ? Old-wife quackery, single-
symptom bungling it is and not rational medicine, to en-
deavor to combat a single symptom like haemorrhage from
the uterus with a medicine, about w^hbse other effects
(often quite unsuited for the remaining portion of the
hsemorrhagic disease) our modern ^sculapius cares noth-
ing and knows nothing, but (like the bath-women) that it
sometimes quells uterine haemorrhage ! Oh, rational medi-
cine, thou paragon of all medical wdsdom !
If, as soon as they chanced to become aware that cinna-
mon, to which no medicinal powers were credited and
which was onl}^ used to flavor food on account of its
pleasant taste, sometimes checked menorrhagia, they had
carefully sought to ascertain its other primary symptoms,
we should now be able to decide beforehand in a rational
manner the cases in w^hich it can and must always be use-
ful, and those in which it can not. But the Heckerian
" rational medicine " with its " old approved fundamental
principles " must continue blindly to administer cinnamon
in uterine haemorrhages, and try whether or not it will do
good and, like the shepherd quack,-" calmly await the
good or evil event !" '
" When " he continues, " did any one suffer the array
of symptoms of dysentery from taking ipecacuanha, gum
arabic, camphor, opium, etc. ? But we can often and at
once cure dysentery ivhen ive understand " (see above the
word "judicious " which like this qualification, provides
a back-door retreat !) " how to employ each of these reme-
dies in the right place and in the right manner." Does
he desire that dysenteric symptoms should be caused by
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 105
all these remedies together or by each separately ? I have
not had the advantage of trying them all together or
mixed up in one prescription. But if the homoeopathic
medicinal symptoms of each separately should be desired,
I would like first to be shown a severe dysentery that was
cured by ipecacuanha alone. It would even be difficult to
find a daugerous case of autumnal dysentery which was
cured by opium alone, although moderately severe cases
(which among the rustic population often pass ofi* without
any medicine) are not infrequently cured by it, because
it is almost the only known medicine, which in its primary
action causes obstinate constipation, consequently it may
in some cases cure homceopathically a disease like dysen-
tery, one of whose chief symptoms is retention of the
faeces, provided the accessory symptoms are at the same
time not unlike the other symptoms of opium.
On camphor and gum arable I will not waste a word, nor
do I even ask to be shown a severe or moderate case of
dysentery cured by them. No doubt a physician who
employs all sorts of things at once, and gives a second or
a third before the first has exhausted its action, may end
by believing that gum arabic cures dysentery.
But one word more ! The so-called rational medicine
makes use of all four and has its sagacious views concern-
ing each ! Ipecacuanha is to remove, God knows what,
morbid inflammatory matter from the stomach, give, God
knows what, shock, allay, God knows what, spasm ; gum
arabic plasters over and protects the bowels from the acrid
morbid stuff; opium is to numb the dysenteric pains and
because a large, often excessively large dose of it is re-
106 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
quired for this purpose, camphor is needed to mitigate the
disastrous effects of the overdose of opium. A dysentery-
is thus often partially and single-syniptomatically rather
lamely removed in accordance with imaginary indica-
tions. Were it not that the opium in this case is a par-
tially homoeopathic remedy, the treatment would not be
of any use.
He continues : " No one has ever yet got lead colic from
fatty oils, castor^ oil, opium, etc., but many have been cured
by these remedies." How can substances that are not
lead cause lead colic ? The very term implies that a lead
colic is a colic caused by lead. Who expects that medi-
' cines which cure lead colic should cause primary lead
colic? If they could do this, that is, if they were lead,
they must, as identical disease-producers, aggravate the
malady ! That would be to treat the disease tautopathi-
cally, to aggravate it, but not to cure it homoeopathi-
cally. Cannot Hecker understand that much? What
does the reader think of it? In order to cure this colic
homoeopathically what we for the most part only re-
quire is a remedy which in its primary action can cause a
similar obstinate constipation ; such a remedy is opium.
The physically and mechanically lubricating oil (Organon,
§ 271, note 2), does not belong to the dynamically-acting
remedies in these cases, and contributes little to their
cure.
' After Hecker has adduced these examples, the value of
which the reader now knows, he thinks he can trium-
phantly operate against the Organon of Rational Medicine.
But he is mistaken ! What is really of use in medical
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 107
practice, if it be not merely a mechanical or chemical al-
terant (see Organon, § 271, note 2), acts d3mamically and
virtually, and always homceopathically, whether Hecker
and his allies see this or not.
Hecker has here collected in carefully considered exam-
ples almost all that old physic can, by hook and by crook,
rake together of so-called sure remedies, discovered by acci-
dent; but the homoeopathic art can purposely discover
vastly more than these trifles, remedies appropriate for
every special case, if she have before her the positive
effects of several medicines, from which she can select a
similar artificial disease-force, a suitable remedy for the
disease-symptoms present in each case.
The remedies for special cases mentioned by Hecker are
for the most part medicines whose positive effects have
already appeared in the Pragmenta, and their curative
power is distinctly homoeopathic. But it is not the mil-
lionth part of what homoeopathic medicine, according to
my teaching, can daily and hourly discover, luithout wait-
ing, as heretofore, for aaddent.
It smacks strongly of the school that Hecker boasts of
the few examples he brings forward: '''that they removea
the causes of the diseases, thus manifesting their great su-
periority over Hahnemann's method."
Folly upon folly ! What a-priori cause of itch does
sulphur remove when it cures the itch of wool- workers ?
What cause of syphilis does mercury remove when it cures
syphilis? What cause of dysentery or what cause of
lead-colic does opium remove when it cures one or other
of these diseases? Did you see these causes of disease
108 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
with your own eyes that you dangle them before ours in
such a material form ? Or are they not rather change-
lings and abortions of your imagination? The cause
of the disease is in most cases merely an empty scholastic
term ; all the speculative hypotheses about it are useless
for the discovery of the appropriate remedy. It is quite
obvious that these diseases are homoeopathically cured
by these remedies if, after their administration, health
speedily followed, as every unprejudiced person must see.
The remainder of what Hecker says there (pp. 236, 237)
are mere general theoretical views, which, in concrete
cases, never guide to or point out the true, most suitable
remedy. They are only pleasant delusions of the help-
less imaginative art hitherto in vogue, which serve to
invest the empirical routine practice of Hecker and his
school with the appearance of rational — folly.
At p. 237 he repeats the objection he had so often made
before : " Medicines do not cure symptoms because they
make symptoms; the physician can never be justified,
on rational principles, in opposing a medicine to a dis-
ease merely because, under such and such circumstances,
it can cause symptoms which have a similarity to the
symptoms of the disease to be cured."
This shallow objection has already been often disposed
of. What obstinacy should prevent us crediting to reme-
dies, which really remove diseased states similar to those
they are capable of producing in the health}^ body, that
they effect this cure by similarity of action, seeing that
no other reason for their remedial power is apparent?
And when, as daily and hourly experience teaches us,
DEFENCE OF THE OEGANON. 109
every medicine selected in conformity with the greatest
similarity of its positive symptoms to the disease-symp-
toms always and in every case effects a rapid and perma-
nent cure, more rapid and more permanent than any
other medicine chosen from any other indication in the
world ; what should prevent us assuming, with the great-
est, almost mathematical, certainty that the most excel-
lent, surest and most evident cure-indication is symptom-
similarity (the homoeopathic) ? What should prevent us
regarding this reason for our choice, universally applica-
ble with precision, always providing us with sure help, as
the most rational and the most in conformity with na-
ture? seeing that the ordinary treatment can offer as
nothing instead of it, even distantly resembling it in appli-
cability or rationality, i.e., no hint for the choice of a
suitable remedy either congenial to the sound, unadul-
terated understanding or successful in its results, but
relegates us, on the one hand, to the patchwork figments
of the hyperphysical scholastic of its systems, and, on the
other hand, to routine practice and to the customary
blind way of going to work at the sick-bed, where the un-
fortunate patients are deluged with a hotchpotch of mul-
tifarious drugs, which the prescriber has selected, not ac-
cording to their inner true worth, not according to their
positive action ascertained by experience, but according
to the fictions of the materia medica, according to acci-
dental discoveries of common folk's practice, according
to vague analogy, but often only according to purblind
authority, and of which the result, when successful, is
precarious and accidental, in most cases palliative, and
110 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
an exchange of one evil for another, but in many cases
simply lamentable !
I can hear without envy the glorifications the routine
practitioners arrogate to themselves, as I am conscious of
more assured foundations for my simple and infinitely
surer cures.
I may mention Hecker's allegation (p. 239) "that by
accepting Hahnemann's teaching one would run the risk
of prescribing ipecacuanha for vomiting and mercury for
salivation.'-^ What risk! I am astonished! If the
retching, not caused by an overloaded stomach, is often,
and oftener by any other remedies, indeed in almost every
case (when the morbid symptoms do not contraindicate
it) really most appropriately and most surely allayed and
removed by a particle of ipecacuanha^ what risk is run in
this case ? What does the reader think of the ridiculous
threat of a risk run by the sure, permanent cure of retch-
ing by a minimum dose of ipecacuanha f
What if the (rare) non-mercurial salivation be really
always when the other symptoms correspond, cured by a
minute quantity of a mercurial preparation ? Are we to
regard this as a misfortune ? Seeing that ordinary medi-
cal art can often do nothing for it, as it does not treat dis-
ease homoeopathically ? What say you, noble friend of
humanity ? It would probably be more agreeable to you,
that diseases were left uncured, that patients should die,
provided homoeopathy had not the credit of curing them.
■^ This appears to me like saying : If one follows good examples
one may run the risk of becoming a good man.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. Ill
A glaring instance of falsification, which Hecker per-
mits himself to make in order to make it appear that I
say inconsequent things in direct contradiction to my
doctrine, will be found at p. 239. After quoting § 59*
from the Organon from these words : " What diversity "
to the words " in any imaginable respect," wherein it is
stated "that diseases cannot be defined in a book or a pa-
thological work, as they are caused by such a variety of
concurring external and internal causes, never to be met
together again, that an exact reproduction of them is not
to be thought of ^^^—Sind he ought now to have quoted in
its entirety § 60, which is the continuation of the argu-
ment, to the effect that " every bodily and mental malady
has probably occurred in the world only one single time,
and will perhaps never again occur in the world exactly
the same " — he falsifies this passage, and, to carry out his
unlaudable purpose, he interpolates the following gloss
which I had not thought of, and not a word of which is
to be found in the Organon : " Just as different must also
necessarily be the effects of the medicines,^^ so that every case
of disease ''^ and of cure'''' has probably occurred only one
single time in the world, and will never again occur ex-
actly the same. These words in italics are a pure inven-
tion of his own in order to make me seem to contradict
myself, and to say that I believe, like Hecker, that medi-
* [There is nothing corresponding to |^ 59 and 60 in the 5th edi-
tion. Both paragraphs will be found in the Appendix to my last
translation of the Organon, pp. 265, 266. ]
t This is not a literal quotation of the paragraph in question ; it
may be regarded as a paraphrase of the original.
112 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
cines, owing to the influence of external circumstances,
cannot produce corresponding identical symptoms either
in health or in disease ; and, on the strength of this his
falsification of the words of the Organon, he sneers mali-
ciously at me thus : '' Hahnemann forgets here that from
these assertions of his a very unfavorable conclusion must
be formed with respect to his doctrine."
I appeal to my honest German countrymen ! Does a
man deserve the honor of the name of a German, or that
of an honorable man who falsifies the text of a book he
reviews with interpolated untruthful statements subver-
sive of the teaching of the author, in order, by this unfair
trick, to set this teaching in an unfavorable light ?
At p. 240, Hecker says : " According to the teaching
of the Organon, that diseases differ so much that they can
hardly occur more than one single time in the world, it
follows that the list of homoeopathic cures in the Illustra-
tions (and in the Introduction to the Organon) were also
singular in their kind, and hence that neither the treat-
ment nor the remedies can be again imitated." They cer-
tainly should not be imitated without consideration, nor
could they be ; the list is not given with any such inten-
tion. It ought only to teach us that other physicians
effected cures in conformity wdth the symptom-similarity
of the remedies employed, but they are not put forward
for imitation as models of treatment. A rational physi-
cian must, w^hen treating every new case, be guided by the
totality of the symptoms present, in order that a perfect
and rational cure (i.e., precisely in accordance with
observable circumstances) may be obtained.
DEFENCE OP THE ORGANOK. 113
Further on Hecker maunders about things that have
no apparent connection with one another. The truth is
that the concurrence frequently of a number of injurious
external things develops certain diseases in the human
body, and that, if we were acquainted with the nature of
each of the causes of disease here accumulated, we should
be able to perceive that only this and no other disease
could result from them. The effect must be as certain
and definite here as in other cases, the effect of every
cause remains the same. Just as invariable and definite
is the efi'ect on each individual one of the artificial mor-
bific forces we term medicines, and they develop definite
morbid symptoms as certainly as, in obedience to eternal
laws, every effect of a cause must remain the same. It
is a palpable falsehood to say that in other places I have
denied this maxim. Why does he not point out the
places ? What does the reader think of such inventions
of Hecker ?
According to the same unalterable law, according to
which a disease must result from its producing causes, the
definite symptoms of a medicine on the healthy body must
make their appearance, and, in virtue of these its peculiar
definite symptoms, it cures the disease consisting of simi-
lar symptoms.
In all his idle talk (p. 241) there prevails a monstrous
misunderstanding ; he will not understand me and does
not understand himself. In § 60 of the Organon the sub-
ject is only the frequent production and development of dis-
eases from the conflux of several (simultaneous or succes-
sive) exciting causes ; it is not said that diseases already
114 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
developed undergo alteration from every trifling external
agency. When once they are formed, the abnormal state
(the disease present) is much too strong, too firmly seated
in the body to admit of trifling external agencies causing
any considerable alteration. The fully formed and active
disease runs its course according to its essential nature, as
a complete whole.
When one says, from the concurrence of several acids
and alkalies and earths there occurs a great variety of
neutral salts, this does not mean that there occurs at one
time this and at another that neutral salt from a certain
acid and a certain alkaline basis. No ! There occurs only
a definite and always identical neutral salt out of a certain
acid neutralized by a certain alkali. Even when three or
more acids unite at the same time with several alkalies
and some earths, the effect, the neutral saline substance,
is always of definite identical character ; and, as long as
nature lasts, nothing else will result from these same acids
and these same alkaline bases. Quite as definite and ever
identical must certain diseases result from the conflux of
certain (even several) exciting causes if the latter can meet
together in equal number and equal strength and encounter
the same bodily constitution. Identical effects must have
identical causes and vice versa. Certain injurious forces
must produce certain diseases, and a certain medicine must
excite certain definite symptoms ; the ordinary external
things of every-day occurrence and the common condi-
tions of life cannot cause any considerable alteration. But
our Hecker is unable to perceive this.
Hecker then adds : " With the degree of certainty of
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 115
the effect with which we* combat pneumonia with a ven-
esection in the right place" (see above the word "judi-
cious " and the term " when we understand "), ''give iron
for chlorosis, in short the same may be said of all the
methods of treatment mentioned above " (at p. 235, where
these empirical single symptomatic treatments have been
duly appreciated by me), " we shall never require to treat
homoeopathically according to symptoms only." How
does Hecker know that, since he has never (honestly and
impartially) carried out the homoeopathic treatment ?
Will mere empty words suffice to secure the rejection of
such grand truths, which never disappoint, which have
been corroborated innumerable times by experience ?
And how often do you not give iron in chlorosis without
benefit ! because you know not the reasons for its employ-
ment and cannot judge whether the symptoms of the
chlorosis under your care, which you neglect to investi-
gate as beneath your dignity, can or cannot be homoeo-
pathically covered by the symptoms of iron, which you
also think yourself too grand to investigate. Were you
guided by the teaching of nature, you could never (as you
so often do) prescribe iron in one of the chloroses (they
vary greatly) without the desired result. But^as things
are, your single-symptom treatment remains vain, irra-
tional practice.
Just the same is it, as above observed, with the irra-
tional bloodletting in pneumonia. For want of reasons in
conformity with nature (when is bloodletting absolutely
* Hecker and his associates.
116 DEFENCE OF THE OKGANON.
required, when not?) you can never change pneumonia
rapidly into health with bloodletting alone. Therefore
you need not boast of your impotent irrational art, of
which you are proud because you are ignorant of the bet-
ter way !
At p. 242 Hecker gives another example whereby he
thinks he will upset homoeopathy. " Set forth the symp-
toms of nymphomania, or of poisoning by cantharides,^
no one would find in this list of symptoms a rational suf-
ficient ground forgiving camphor, which never causes those
diseases, but as experience shows cures them with cer-
tainty." Camphor cannot cause these very same diseases,
though it be given to cure them, otherwise there would be
a tautopathic aggravation and not a homoeopathic cure.
But in regard to the commonest kind of nymphomania,
besides other symptoms corresponding to those frequently
met with in this disease; the camp/io?'-symptoms observed
by others (Fragmenta, p. 54, S. 9, 10) and that observed
by myself (p. 49) are quite sufficient homoeopathic symp-
toms for the chief symptom of ordinary nymphomania.
For the most frequent sufferings caused by cantharides,
these will be found in the Fragmenta (jp. 50, S. 13, 14, 15,
16, 17, and p. 52, S. (4) 5), without mentioning other
* Which of you compiles an accurate list of the symptoms of either
of these diseases? One or two manifestations of nymphomania and
not much more than the mention of pain on passing the bloody or
bloodless urine in poisoning by cantharides, is generally enough for
you, as you are kept from all precise investigation of symptoms by
fashionable levity and ignorance of the importance of accurate semi-
ology.
DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON. 117
common symptoms of cantharid es-'poisoniug ; symptoms
very similar to which occur in the pathogenesis of cam-
phor. Hecker might have discovered this for himself
were it not that he purposely shuts his eyes. Why then
the unfounded doubt when the truth is so patent?
At pp. 243 and 244, Hecker again discourses about
" blind caprice in homoeopathic treatment," without
knowing what he is at. But with his routine practice
(whose so-called sure remedies have been discovered in
quite an irrational way by accident or in the rude treat-
ment of the common people, and cannot be added to by
the medical faculty without a like fresh accidental dis-
covery) he cannot perform with certainty a thousandth
part of what the homoeopathic method daily effects in
all cases of disease on principles patent to every one !
" There are," he perorates (p. 244) '" in nature no per-
fectly homoeopathic medicines which cause the forms of
disease which they are to cure, quite exactly, with perfect
completeness of the symptoms, which they, as Hahne-
mann says, quite cover, as two equal triangles must cover
one another." Hecker here seeks to delude the reader with
the idea that I had insisted on this perfect covering of dis-
ease-symptoms, bymedicine-symptoms,andthathewas the
first to detect this want of completeness. A cunning device !
But see, the opposite of this is the truth ; Hecker has no.t
the slightest experience of all those things. In the Organon
(§ 131, note [5th Edit., § 156]) I distinctly stated this want
of perfect homoeopathy (like the imperfections of all,
even the best human inventions), and in precisely the
same words as Hecker, in a dishonest manner, pretends
118 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
are his own idea : " It is next to impossible that medicine
and disease should cover one another symptomatically as
exactly as two triangles with equal sides and equal angles."
Those are my words, and he seeks to overthrow me with
this very statement, just as though he were the first to dis-
cover this imperfection. What does the reader think of
Hecker's conduct?
How perfect or imperfect homoeopathic medicines may
be is not a subject that Hecker knows anything about, for
he has never occupied himself with it. No one could
know more about it than myself, and I had the candor
to confess it. The acknowledgment of the defects of hu-
man things, in other respects very perfect, does credit to
him who makes it. It is the fate of mortal man to remain
imperfect here below, and his works share this imperfec-
tion, however nearly they may approach perfection. Such
is the will of the all- wise Creator. It is honorable in man
to admit this. In our case, these small imperfections de-
tract nothing from the value of the homoeopathic treat-
ment, as they are inherent in the thing itself, because ho-
moeopathy can only make use of a similarity of the symp-
toms, but not of complete concordance and identity. " This
(in good cases) inconsiderable aberration," I have said^
" is more than adequately compensated for by the energy
of the living organism, and restoration of health goes for-
ward."*
Upon the subject, taken from the more recondite part
of the homoeopathic system, of the rare, partial cure of
* [This statement is slightly expanded in the 5th edit., § 156.]
DEFENCE OF THE OKGANON. 119
chronic maladies, Hecker is not entitled to say a word, as
he only knows this system by name (and hardly even
that, as we saw above). It (from § 133 onwards [5th Edit,
§ 162 et seq.J) only concerns the case where, among the
limited number of medicines yet known as regards their
positive symptoms, sometimes a homoeopathic remedy,
in every respect perfect, cannot be met with. For
such a case it is not the system hut the ivant of provers of
medicines that is to blame. How could one single man
have observed alone all the positive symptoms of all medi-
cines?* Moreover, this kind of treatment is seldom re-
quired.
It is, therefore, as unreasonable as it is ridiculous^ when
Hecker, who never does anything for the truth in medi-
cine, but only utters vain words at random, turns up his
nose at things he does not understand, and knows nothing
about experimentally. The whole page (244) is full of
proofs of this.
I mention {Organon, § 146 [oth Edit., § 172]) the very
rare but difficult cases where the disease has too few symp-
toms. On this, the renowned Hecker, who is self-satisfac-
tion incarnate, says (p. 245) : " Rational medicine, as hith-
erto practised will generally easily dispose of these dis-
eases." Well, that is what I call an easy way of settling
the matter ! The routine practice of Hecker and his as-
* [At that time only the Fragnienta, containing a few imperfectly
proved medicines had been published, but the following year the
Materia Medica Pura began to appear, which added greatly to the re-
sources of homoeopathic practitioners, and Hahnemann was no longer
left to conduct the provings unaided. ]
120 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
sociates easily disposes of these, as it does of all diseases ;
but how? so that the consequences of their treatment
often last for years (see Hufeland on dispensary and hos-
pital practice in his Journal^ 1810), if death does not make
an end of this easy disposal, or some mineral bath pre-
scribed at random.
This, as we have said, very rare kind of diseases, with
ver}'' few symptoms, Hecker cannot get over. His noble,
rational routine practice regards all diseases as almost
without symptoms ; two or three questions are asked, the
tongue inspected, the pulse felt — nothing ! — a complex,
facile prescription is rapidl}^ written, and the doctor takes
his leave in order to get quickly away to make more pro-
fessional visits. How do these practitioners know what
and how many, or how few symptoms the disease they
thus treat has? Indeed, they tell us quite openly that
they do not care for the symptoms (i.e., the observable dis-
ease), and do not wish to know anything about them. It
would have been better that Hecker had not laid bare here
his partie honteuse.
One must only know that the noble, rational medicine
of Hecker and his friends always seeks to refer mentally
the disease under treatment to some general compartment
of their pathological system — such is their favorite method
of generalizing— wdthout taking much pains to ascertain
the symptoms. But in the treatment itself, where none
of the little known so-called specific remedies discovered
by accident and directed towards a single symptom, such
as cinchona in intermittent fever, iron in chlorosis, cinna-
mon in uterine hemorrhages, etc., are applicable, and no
DEFENCE OE THE ORGANON. 121
palliative, like opium, for pains and sleeplessness, purga-
tives in constipation, etc., can be administered, they fall
back on their favorite general method. This favorite "gen-
eral method " (as Ilecker himself confesses in his book
On Nervous Fever, 1808) " can only promote a cure by
removing all injurious influences and by bringing the
powers and functions of the body to, and maintaining
them at, such a height that the disease can, under favor-
able circumstances of the patient and his surroundings —
which, however, are no ivay dependent on us — take at least a
favorable course. Here we add and subtract " (is that
nothing of a partial character ?) " in whole and part, and
calmly await the good or evil issue." This is what
Hecker himself says of his treatment. Can we consider
this treatment of all diseases devised on one identical
plan, and according to general indications, never suscep-
tible of even tolerable certainty, in which good luck con-
tributes most to an}^ favorable result, as other than an
extremely unsatisfactory, inefficient proceeding, consist-
ing solely in trying, which blindly goes for diseases (of
unknown nature and never sj^ecially considered in all
their manifestations) with medicines (with whose special
actions the practitioner is unacquainted, and which are
often mixed together in one prescription), and calmly
awaits the good or evil issue ? What conscientious man
could remain calm while rendering such a negation of
help that has no better support than good luck and his
own impotence and ignorance ?
Who can consider this sort of practice as wise, as the
nan plus idtra of careful treatment of all the very various
122 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
diseases? Who can be so lost to all sense of shame as to
pretend that such scandalous bungling is " rational medi-
cine^^ on "o/cZ approved principles,^'' and employ every effort
to suppress the obviously better method ?
Besides that " calmly awaiting the good or evil issue '^
so characteristic of the whole Hecker fraternity, who
value human life no higher than an empty nut, all the
rest is but vain empty flourish. Diseases are not ciphers
nor geometrical dimensions, to which we can add and
from which we can subtract. This very phrase, shows,
by its unsuitability as applied to all that can be called
cure, what blind mistakes must ensue through such ten-
tative employment of .medicines ! " The Junctions and
powers of the body " can never be brought in diseases to a
higher degree or maintained there, without the disease itself
being diminished or extinguished ! To attempt to
strengthen the powers, without removing the disease that
causes the weakness, is a nonsensical endeavor. The
patient can never be strengthened so long as he remains
sick. The cure alone strengthens him. But the above
Heckerian confession shows that in his practice he does
not propose to remove the disease, cannot indeed remove
it, and yet he proposes to strengthen the patient. This is
the way mankind is gulled !
To the passages in the Orgaaon (§ 174, note) in which I
show convincingly and irrefragably " that symptoms of
syphilis must always follow the merely local suppression
or destruction of the chancre, since the chancre is only a
symptom of the general venereal disease already present,
and ought to be cured by internal treatment only, if we
DEFENCE OF THE OEGANON. 123
wish the patient to be certainly safe from syphilis.''
Hecker opposes the horrible assertion " that symptoms
of syphilis never break out when the chancre has been
early enough treated with approjjriate " (see above the
back-door terms ^^ judicious " — " ivhen rightly understood " —
" in the right place,'" etc.) " caustic remedies." So that local,
early cauterization of the chancre constitutes his rational
treatment ! What God has revealed to the dear Professor
what point of time may be termed early enough for the per-
formance of the hazardous operation? And who has
shown by irrefragable proofs that a chancre cauterized
away ever so early cannot and is not followed by syph-
ilis ? Are we to place reliance on such dangerous maxims
of routine practice, when all careful and conscientious
experience declares the exact contrary ? Good God ! how
fearfully Thou visitest with blindness those who think
themselves so wise ! Let Hecker bring forward, truth-
fully, only one single case from his practice, in which a
chancre treated solely by local cauterization was not fol-
lowed by syphilitic symptoms ! Ordy one single case I
Yes, if the doctor by mercilessly attributing the break-
ing out of syphilitic symptoms, often after many months,
to a new infection his patient must undoubtedly have in-
curred, can silence his conscience by this false accusation,
and so endeavor to conceal his own shame by unjust re-
proaches, this may pass muster with the world ; but how
will it pass with God, and with his own conscience, which
if not now, will some time or other prick him? If Hecker
had only a moderate practice in venereal disease and did
not entertain us with discursive statistical tables about
124 DEFENCE OF THE ORaANON.
possible gonorrhoea (he is a great hand at statistical tables)
he must have already done a great deal of harm in secret
with his treatment of chancre by local cauterization onl}".
God forbid that his recommendation of the mere local
cauterization of the chancre should come to the ears of the
ordinary practitioner, for this would lead to an increase of
this abomination on children and children's children to a
much greater extent than previously under the barbers !
I refrain from expressing my feelings about this im-
perilling of mankind and only say : Every chancre may
be cured, without the aid of external remedies and with-
out salivation, merely by internal treatment with the most
powerful yet mildest anti-syphilitic mercurial prepara-
rations, by all who deserve the name of rational and con-
scientious medical practitioners. A few days suffice to
effect such a cure. This is the only proper and safe mode
of treatment of this kind of disease, which I have prac-
ticed extensively for thirty years, with the most perfectly
satisfactory results. I have never treated a chancre lo-
cally but I have never witnessed anything but a perma-
nent cure.
In conclusion (p. 252) Hecker brings forward the sub-
ject of wine, in order, if possible, to give the coup de grace
to all kind of confidence in the medicinal symptoms and
consequently to homoeopathy, because he feels that his
previous maunderings, distinguished chiefly by falsehoods
and perversions, have failed to accomplish his object of
undermining the Organon.
In your uncivil attack, dear Hecker, fifteen years ago
in your acrimonious yellow [Journal, pt. xxii., p. 75, on
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 125
the first fruit of my impartial investigations, the so-called
New Principle tvine Was already the chief war-horse you
then rode. You have since then (July number of Anna-
len, p. 50) charged with it against all my other writings
on the homoeopathic therapeutic method ; and now you
labor to spur it, lame as it is, once more against the Or-
ganon. This ivine you now bring up again as an experi-
mentum crucis, in order, if possible, to set the crown on
your long hollow argument. " Wine, like opium, causes
on the healthy quite undefinable, dissimilar effects ; " this
is Hecker's important objection. ' We will see what truth
there is in this statement. First, we must know what
there is in the manifestations of the action of other dy-
namic medicines that is applicable to wine. Now, on this
the Organon (§ 110*) says : " All the symptoms belonging
to a medicine do not appear in one prover, nor yet do all
appear at once or on the same day, but some principally
on one person, others on another, and so" (and thus the
uniform definite totality of the symptoms of a medicine is
developed) "that perhaps in a fourth or tenth prover
some or many of the symptoms which had been noticed
in the second, sixth or seventh prover may appear ; nor
will they appear precisely at the same hour." This state-
ment is carried out further in § lll.f
It is on account of this peculiarity of all dynamic
* [There is no aphorism identical with this in the 5th Edit. In the
appendix to my translation (at p. 273) the original aphorism of the
1st Edit, will be found.]
t [035, 5th Edit.]
126 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
medicines (which is referable to the different suscepti-
bility of the provers to one or other of the many me-
dicinal symptoms at various periods) that wine cannot
produce, among a certain number of drinkers, simultane-
ously, identical emotional effects, identical mental mani-
festations, identical functional operations.
If, as a general rule, the most frequent effect of wine
consists in quickened circulation, increased warmth of
the body, increased activity of all the functions of the or-
ganism and merry pictures of the imagination, which,
when they become increased by excess of gradually
stronger doses of wine, amount to a kind of mental con-
fusion, termed intoxication and drunkenness, and, if the
flow of blood to the head becomes excessive, pass into a
stupefying, snoring sleep ; one cannot expect that all this
should occur in every votary of the bottle, because, as be-
fore said, all cannot at the same time have the same dis-
position to develop identical symptoms, and some of the
many effects of wine are not observed in drinkers who en-
joy perfect health of body and mind.
A person who indulges in wine at a late hour, when dis-
posed to sleep, must naturally become more lively from a
moderate quantity of ivine, owing to its effect in exciting
the circulation.
A person who, before drinking wine, has, owing to some
excitement, become a loquacious merrymaker, will be
homceopathically cured of his eccentricity by a moderate
quantity of ivine and soon become serious and quiet, and,
if this condition be increased by a larger quantity, he
will become morose.
DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON. 127
Just as those who indulge in the dail}^ use of opium, on
account of the blunting effect of habit to this exciting
remedy, do not observe some of the primary symptoms
of opium, such as excitement, so we must expect that a
person who drinks ivine every day will not experience
from a moderate quantity its exciting action on the circu-
lation and the great merriment to such an extent as
would one less accustomed to drink tdne, for to-day's por-
tion must first palliatively remove the after-effects of the
wine taken yesterday, to wit, drowsiness, laziness, disincli-
nation for work, deficient heat of blood, stupid feeling in
the head, and thus only can it first bring him into the
normal state of the ordinary man who drinks no wine.
In this case naturally no primary symptoms are observa-
ble, since the power of to-day's moderate allowance of
wi7ie has, as stated, been expended medicinally.
But if we see weak sensitive children, or other delicate
feeble persons who are unused to ivine, suddenly swallow
a large quantity of ivine, we must not expect in such a
case that the ordinary wine symptoms will occur in them
in their natural order. There ensues (Organon, § 113
[5th edit., § 137]) the same as we find with all other dy-
namic medicines : " When excessively large doses are
used there occurs at the same time not only a number of
secondary effects among the symptoms, but the primary
effects also come on (often mixed with these) in such hur-
ried confusion and impetuosity," etc. In such a delicate
person unused to drink wine, the sudden ingestion of an
excessive quantity of ivine causes many of the secondary
effects of this medicinal liquor to appear from the very
128 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANON.
commencement in reverse order ; he becomes cold, weeps,
loses his intelligence, becomes anxious, weak, vomits, etc.
From such a sudden excess of ivine in a very delicate un-
accustomed person we cannot expect a normal succession
of the primary symptoms of wine, just as we cannot expect
to see the primary symptoms of opium in their proper
order in a person unaccustomed to take opium, who has
poisoned himself with a drachm-dose of opium powder;
in such a person there occurs no heat, no increased ac-
tivity, no intoxication, etc., but like the forerunners of
death, the secondary action — icy coldness, cold sweat,
paralysis of the senses and muscles, anxiety, convul-
sions, etc.
And so it is in nature with all sudden excessive quanti-
ties ; all the symptoms which Kitter, in accord with many
other physicists, observed in human beings, from the em-
ployment of one or other pole of a moderate voltaic pile,
occurred in primary contrary order from his enormous
too strong pile. Are then, on that account, the symptoms
from moderate galvanism, from moderate doses of opium,
from moderate quantities of ivine not definite and reliable
when observed in healthy persons placed in favorable
external circumstances? Yes, they are, to the accurate
and careful observer.
Moreover, a drinking bout can never be regarded as a
pure proving of the effects of wine, because the persons
taking part in it, in all other respects are not living accord-
ing to any dietetic rules. One drinker has a despotic, ill-
natured overseer, another has been unfortunate in gam-
bling for high stakes, another is engaged in an amorous
DEFENCE OE THE ORGANON. 129
intrigue, a fourth is suffering from jealousy, a fifth is
laboring under mortified vanity, a sixth and seventh have
previously indulged in unwholesome food or liqueurs.
How can all these accessory circumstances, which power-
fully affect the health, leave the proving pure?
Besides, how seriously cannot even a small quantity of
wine, by its chemical decomposition in a stomach with a
great tendency to acidity, by the rapid development of
acid, derange the whole man in his emotional disposition,
give him headache, vomiting and other ailments, which
are not and cannot be the peculiar symptoms of wine I
What an enormous difference is there not to be found
among the drinks which are called wine, from the sour
country liquor, which cannot make a man happy or
cheerful, to the genuine ambrosial Johannisberger — from
the red Naumburger, doctored so as to pass for Burgundy,
to the genuine Oeil de Perdrix — from the Malaga adulter-
ated with arrack to Imperial Tokay !
Are all these liquors the same sort of wine f can any
sensible person expect the same effects from them ? Are
the phenomena observable in a lot of wine drinkers who
are subject to no dietetic regularity in their living, and no
moderation in their external conditions, to be regarded as
pure provings of the real effects of genuine wine by
healthy persons not under the influence of foreign medici-
nal forces ?
The ordinary routine practitioner pays as slight regard
to these sources of inevitable alteration of the effects of
mne-drinking (or of the daily use of opium) as he does to
the many other things in the medical art demanding con-
130 DEFENCE OF THE ORGANUN.
sideration and attention. But the fault lies not in the in-
definite and variable symptoms of wine or of the other
dynamic medicines, but in himself.
It is infinitely easier to contradict than to investigate,
infinitely easier to sneer at truths and to present them in
a repulsive light by misrepresentations and falsifications
than to devote one's whole life, as I have done and con-
tinue to do, to the laborious and conscientious search for
truth by faithful observation of the nature of things in the
most careful trials, and the unprejudiced application of
their results to the welfare of humanity.
Note. — The portrait of Hahnemann in this work is
from a mezzotint engraving of the picture by W. G. E.
Hering, painted from sittings given to him in Paris a year
or two before Hahnemann's death. It is the best portrait
taken of the great Reformer of Medicine, and is considered
by those who knew the original in his latter days to be an
excellent likeness.
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