The influence of homœopathy on general medicine since the death of Hahnemann / by R.E. Dudgeon.

  • Robert Ellis Dudgeon
Date:
1874
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of homœopathy on general medicine since the death of Hahnemann / by R.E. Dudgeon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    diseases, bleeding was the sheet-anchor of one set, tartar- emetic the sheet-anchor of another, calomel the sheet-anchor of a third, purgatives, sudorifics, vesicants, diuretics, the sheet-anchors of as many other sets. Other diseases had an equal or greater number of sheet-anchors. How such destructive processes ever came to be called <f sheet- anchors it would be hard to tell; or why (( anchors ” at “ torpedoes55 seems a more appropriate name for them, as they were designed to blow the disease to bits— but they just as often sent the patient to the bottom. TV ith faith so strong and so universal in these perturb¬ ing methods—which, moreover, harmonized with the gross humoial pathology of the day—it can scarcely be won¬ dered at that the general body of practitioners received with incredulity the allegations of their brethren who had investigated Hahnemann’s system, relative to the curative powers of medicines which exerted no disturbing influence on the patient s system, which drew off no fluids and ex¬ cited no irritation of healthy parts. Impossible, they believed, to cure a disease without evacuating the materies morbi. If patients were alleged to be cured by such a preposterous method—one of three things-—either the doctor had made an erroneous diagnosis, or he had given secretly some heroic remedy, or he had deliberately stated what was false.. Thus, practitioners of homoeopathy were credited by their orthodox brethren with being fools or knaves, or both. J 9 There is a great deal to be said in excuse for this atti¬ tude of the ordinary medical man towards Hahnemann’s system and its practitioners in the early days of homoeo¬ pathy j foi, after all, there is a great deal of human nature I in doctors j and, touch their beliefs, or, as some would say, their prejudices, and they will behave pretty much as their non-medical fellow-creatures will do under similar circumstances. Now, in those days, the orthodox doctor had a belief. His credo might be formulated something in this fashion : “ I believe in the remedial powers of bleeding, purging, puking, salivating and sweating.” He had, as we know, no foundation for his belief—no evi¬ dence—only tradition; but we know that beliefs are not less stubbornly held because unsupported by evidence. His belief was time-honoured, traditional, extending up through the great lights of the profession—Cullen, Boer- haave, Sydenham, Avicenna, Celsus, Galen, Hippocrates,
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