CHAPTER XIV.

Objection, Homœopathy will not do in ACUTE cases.-Testimony of Dr. Forbes, of Mr. Wilde.-Results of the treatment of cholera.-Absurdity of the objection.-Abuse of homaopathy.-Objection, No science in homœopathy.-Objection, Failing in the old system practice homœopathy is embraced.

CHAP. XIV.

Another objection against homœopathy is, That it may do well in CHRONIC cases, but in ACUTE cases it is solemn trifling.

This objection is founded only on conceit. It grows out of an unenlightened self-esteem. It rests entirely upon the complacently assumed syllogism—

Acute diseases require medicines to be given in large doses: In homoeopathic treatment, medicines are given in infinitesimal doses: Therefore homoeopathic treatment cannot cure acute diseases. In this syllogism the main proposition is assumed, and yet how numerous are the parties, who think themselves shrewd philosophers when they put forth this assumption as a reality.

These utterers are men of no mental training; they are men who have not recognized the majesty of facts. The select men of the profession are less conceited. Dr. Forbes writes thus:

"The tables of Dr. Fleischmann, physician to the homoeopathic hospital at Vienna, substantiate this momentous fact, that all our ordinary curable diseases are cured in a fair proportion under the homœopathic treatment. Not merely do we see thus cured all the lighter diseases, whether acute or chronic, which most men know to be readily susceptible of cure under every variety of treatment, and under no treatment at all; but even all the severer and more dangerous diseases, which most physicians,

of whatever school, have been accustomed to consider as not only CHAP.XIV. needing the interposition of art to assist nature in bringing them to a favourable and speedy termination, but demanding the employment of prompt and strong measures, to prevent a fatal issue in a considerable proportion of cases. No candid physician, looking at Dr. Fleischmann's report, will hesitate to acknowledge that the results there set forth would have been considered by him as satisfactory, if they had occurred in his own practice. The amount of deaths in the fevers and eruptive diseases is certainly below the ordinary proportion. In all such cases, however, experienced physicians have been long aware that the results as to mortality are nearly the same under all varieties of allopathic treatment. It would not surprise them, therefore, that a treatment like that of homoeopathy, which they regard as perfectly negative, should be FULLY AS SUCCESSFUL AS But the results presented to us in the severer internal inflammations are certainly not such as most practical physicians would have expected to be obtained, under the exclusive administration of medicine, in a thousandth, a millionth, or a billionth part of a grain."

THEIR OWN.

In addition to this testimony of Dr. Forbes is the testimony of another, who had seen the homœopathic hospital at Vienna. Mr. Wilde thus writes, in his work entitled, "Austria, its Literary, Scientific, and Medical Institutions, and Guide to the Hospitals and Sanatory Establishments of Vienna :”—

'And although I neither advocate that doctrine [homœopathy], nor slander its supporters, I deem it but the part of truth and justice to lay the following statement before my readers. One of the cleanest and best regulated hospitals in the town is managed on the homœopathic plan. The following circumstances led to its erection :-The rapid spread of this mode of treatment in Austria, and the patronage it received from many noble and influential individuals in that country, attracted the attention of the government in that country several years ago, who, with their characteristic jealousy of innovation, then issued an order forbidding it to be practised. As, however, this had not the effect of suppressing it, but as it seemed rather to gain strength from the legal disabilities under which it thus laboured, it was determined in 1828, to test its efficacy in the military hospital of the

CHAP. XIV. Josephinum. With this view, a commission was nominated, consisting of twelve professors, all of whom, it is but fair to observe, were strenuously opposed to the homeopathic doctrine. Dr. Marrenzeller, a veteran homoeopathist, and a contemporary of Hahnemann, was appointed as the physician, and two members of the commission always attended him during his visit, and at the expiration of every ten days, reported the progress of the cases under his charge. The only part of the report published is that of Drs. Jager and Zang. It contains a very brief outline of the cases and their treatment, and expresses the surprise of these eminent professors at the happy issue of some of them. The commission, however, as a body, came to the conclusion, that from results obtained from their investigations, it was impossible to declare either for or against homœopathy. One of the twelve, however, subsequently stated his conviction of the efficacy of the system from these trials, and has since remained an open adherent of it."-P. 271. Mr. Wilde adds—

"Whatever the opponents of this system may put forward against it, I am bound to say, and I am far from being a homoopathic practitioner, that the cases I saw treated by it in the Vienna hospital were fully as acute and virulent as those which have come under my observation elsewhere; and the statistics show that the mortality is much less than in the other hospitals of that city. Knoly, the Austrian protomedicus, has published those for 1838, which exhibit a mortality of but five or six per cent.; while three similar institutions on the allopathic plan, enumerated before it in the same tables, show a mortality as high as from eight to ten per cent."-P. 277.

The best means of testing a system of medical treatment is that afforded by the existence of an epidemic disease of marked character and highly destructive in its effects. Such a disease has been presented twice to the European world in the course of the last fifteen years; it is Asiatic cholera.

Dr. Quin has published, in a treatise on Asiatic cholera, the results of the allopathic and homoeopathic treatment of a given number of patients. In reference to the homoeopathic treatment of 1073 patients attacked, 998 were cured, and 95 died. This large number shows the efficacy of homoeopathic treatment in an acute disease like cholera.

From the magistrates of Tichnowitz, where Dr. Quin treated CHAP. XIV. the cholera, the following return has been obtained :

The facts in connexion with this subject are exhibited more

fully in the following tabular statement:

Cholera patients treated at Wishney Wolotschock in Russia :—

The fruits of an experience on a far more extended scale than that presented by Dr. Quin, has been afforded during the present prevalence of the epidemic. In Great Britain the success of the homœopathic treatment has been marked. In Cincinnati and New York the homoeopathic physicians have established the power of homeopathic treatment in this disease.t And no doubt exists that when the facts in connexion with the treatment of cholera are collected, the evidence in favour of homoopathy will indeed be strong.

* Extracted from the Journal of Health and Disease and Monthly Journal of Homoeopathy, vol. III., p. 145.

For further particulars, see the Journal of Health and Disease and Monthly Journal of Homeopathy, vol. V., p. 111.

CHAP.XIV.

This doctrine of incurability of acute diseases is daily overturned by the results of experience. Indeed, the existence of homœopathic practitioners sufficiently establishes this. A homœopathic practitioner could not, as such, exist any length of time, unless his means were powerful for the cure of acute diseases: at least, to suppose otherwise, would be to suppose an improbability. It would be to suppose that homeopathists have such a peculiar power, inherent in them, that none of the families they attend are ever subject to acute disease; it would be to suppose, that the very fact of having a homœopathic practitioner as the medical guide of a family, is quite sufficient to drive acute diseases from the doors. If this were the case, it would be well worth attention, whether it would not be a matter of good policy to have a homoeopathic practitioner, merely for the purpose of warding off acute attacks. This magical power must be possessed, or else, the practice of families must be to have two practitioners, a homœopathic for chronic diseases, and an allopathic for acute diseases. Is it so? The allopathist

knows too well that this is not the case.

In fact, if homœopathists had the vindictiveness of their opponents, they could bring numberless cases of acute diseases, where the allopathic practitioner's services have been dispensed with as being destructive, and the homœopathic practitioner having been called in, lives have been saved which had been deemed lost.

They could bring forward cases, where, from fear of offending an old friend, an allopathic practitioner, the patients have had his visit, have received his medicines, have thrown them away, and seeking the advice of a homoeopathic practitioner, took the homoeopathic medicine; have been benefitted; the benefits have been noted by the allopathist as gratifying results of his treatment, whereas the treatment has not been his at all, and the patients have had the painful, but humiliating conviction, that the benefit resulted from that which he would, if asked his opinion, denounce as a fraud, as an absurdity, as a delusion.*

There is hardly an

*The writer has collected an immense mass of such cases. allopathic practitioner of any standing in London, but cases can, if need be, be brought forward, which either were deemed incurable, or were getting so much