Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson.

  • Henderson, William, 1810-1872.
Date:
1846
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to John Forbes ... on his article entitled 'Homœopathy, allopathy, and young physic' contained in the number [XLI] of the [British and Foreign Medical] Review for January, 1846 / by William Henderson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/78 (page 43)
    If what I have said of the existing state of Homoeopathy shall convince you or your readers that, in giving Hahne- mannism—that is, the theories, hypotheses, and practices, without exception or modification, of the founder of the sys- tem—as the Homoeopathy of the present day, you have made a great mistake ; it may be replied that you have, at least, beat Hahnemann out of the field, and, to that extent, have accomplished the purpose of your review. This would be a mistake, however, quite as glaring as the other. For anything that you have said to controvert his principles and practices, they stand just where they were before you en- gaged in the conflict. Not an argument, or the shadow of an argument, appears in your paper that touches a single position of Hahnemann. Ilahnemannism might, in every particular, be received as truth itself, if no more could be adduced against it than is contained in your attack upon it. In proof of which assertion, I shall briefly notice the manner in which you think you dispose of one or two of its precepts and doctrines, in addition to those I have already con- sidered. After detailing the manner in which Hahnemann recom- mended the medicines to be prepared for use, the triturations and scrapings of the dry preparations, and the shakings of the liquid attenuations, you say, “ altogether, it must be admit- ted, that the whole complexion of the thing bears a much closer resemblance to what we have heard or seen of magical ceremonies and the tricks of conjurors, demonstrations for ef- fect, and to produce an impression, than to any operation of a scientific or bond fide character,”—a sentence which you justify, because, “ in the first place, it is manifestly impossible for any human being, during the course of a long life, much less in the course of a few years, to have performed a suffi- cient number of experiments, or made a sufficient number of comparative trials, to enable him to state, with any degree of certainty, that these particular manipulations, and none others, were the exact and exclusive means to produce the de- sired effect. * * * In the second place, it certainly has a very suspicious look of a foregone conclusion, rather than of a legitimate deduction from facts, that all the scrapings and rubbings to which each remedy is subjected, in each sin- gle state of its transmigration, should occupy exactly one hour, and not one minute more or less.” P. 238. In reply to all this I remark, first,that Hahnemann nowhere alleges that he had been led to adopt the six minutes’ friction