HAHNEMANN AS SCIENTIST (Homeopathy)

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HAHNEMANN AS SCIENTIST

by Peter Morrell

 

 

This article concerns itself with to what extent Hahnemann was

scientific. If we define science in its broadest sense as the desire

to break things down, scrutinise and analyse, then we can easily see

that the 18th century was a very scientific century and in no subject

more so than in chemistry. But was Hahnemann scientific?

 

Hahnemann lived during some of the greatest advances in chemistry,

during which literally hundreds of natural minerals were successfully

analysed and purified into their constituent elements and compounds.

 

 

Joseph Priestley

(1733-1804)

 

 

For example, during Hahnemann's lifetime: Black (1755), Cavendish

(1766) and Priestley (1770) did fundamental work on gases; Priestley

(1774), Lavoisier (1772) and Scheele (1768-73) worked on combustion;

Priestley, Cavendish and Lavoisier established the composition of

water (1781-5); Priestley did further fundamental work on combustion

in 1775; Volta was splitting gases using electric sparks in 1776; de

Morveau & Lavoisier began to analyse substances into elements in

1782; Henry (1803) and Davey (1806) did work on the solubility of

gases in liquids; Proust (1789), Dalton (1803) and Richter (1792)

investigated the quantitative laws of physical chemistry; Avogadro

(1811), Dalton (1803) and Berzelius (1811) did fundamental work on

atomic theory and atomic weights; and Faraday (1833) published his

laws of electrolysis. (mainly from Cook (1981) p41-2).More detail

follows.

 

1649 Carbon, Sulphur, Antimony and Arsenic were well known

1669 Phosphorus discovered by the German alchemist Brand

1750 Cobalt and Nickel discovered

1755 Magnesium shown to be an element by Joseph Black (1728-99)

1756 CO} discovered by Joseph Black

1766 Hydrogen discovered by Henry Cavendish (1731-1810)

1771 Fluorine discovered by Carl Scheele (1742-86)

1772 Nitrogen isolated by the Scot Daniel Rutherford (1749-1819)

1772 Oxygen discovered by Scheele

1774 Manganese discovered by the Swede Gahn (1745-1818)

1774 Chlorine discovered by Scheele

1774 Oxygen discovered by Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)

1777 Sulphur shown to be an element

1781 Cavendish showed water to be a compound

1783 Baryta, Oxygen, Prussic acid and Glycerine isolated by Scheele

1785 water proved to be made of gases

1803 Dalton discovers atoms have different weights

1807 Sodium and Potassium isolated by Humphrey Davy (1778-1829)

1808 Davy isolates Calcium, Magnesium, Boron, Barium and Strontium

1808 The Atomic Table devised by John Dalton (1766-1844)

1810 Davy coins the term `element'

1811 Iodine discovered by the Frenchman Courtois (1777-1838)

1813-14 Berzelius published atomic symbols

1818 Table of Atomic weights published by the Swede Berzelius (1779-

1848)

1825 Aluminium discovered by Hans Oersted (1777-1851)

1827 Aluminium isolated by Friedrich Wohler (1800-82)

1828 Wohler isolates Beryllium, Calcium carbide and Acetylene

1828 Wohler synthesises Urea from ammonium cyanate

1833 Electrolysis of water by Michael Faraday (1791-1867)

1869 Periodic Table published by Dmitri Mendeleyev (1834-1907)

 

 

Christian Friedrich Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

 

These were obviously developments that Hahnemann could not have

failed to know about and indeed, was thoroughly excited about. It is

clear from many of his asides, that he regarded chemistry as the most

important science. Like Paracelsus before him, he was mad about

metals, minerals and acids.

 

Did all this scientific progress have any effect on Hahnemann's

approach to homoeopathic pharmacy and materia medica? I hope to show

that it did have profound effects and that Hahnemann, like his

contemporaries, became swept along with a tide of chemical

purification and analysis. However, Ialso hope to show that Hahnemann

had several other reasons for adopting this approach, which were more

social and presentational than therapeutic.

 

Reading some of Hahnemann's greatest works, like Chronic Diseases,

the Materia Medica Pura, the Pharmaceutical Lexicon or the Lesser

Writings, one is presented repeatedly with very detailed chemical

instructions on how to purify the ingredients and remedies and how to

rid them of anycontaminants.

 

Examples include, in Chronic Diseases, pp186-7 re Alumina, p231 re

Ammon carb, p392 re Baryta carb, p558-9 re Causticum, p762 re Hepar

sulph, p783 re Iodium, p805 re Kali carb, p943 re Mag mur, p970-71 re

Manganum, p1012 re Mur ac, p1116 re Nitri ac, p1273 re Phos ac, p1301

re Platina, p1397 re Silicea, p1542 re Zincum; in Preface to

`Venereal Diseases' pp1-7 of LesserWritings, ibid re various

mercurial preparations for syphilis, in pp106-116 of Lesser Writings;

general instructions in Chronic Diseases pp145-152.

 

Why did Hahnemann go to such lengths to keep his remedies pure?

 

When you look at the history of remedies that Hahnemann studied,

proved and brought into use, it is clear that he was doing 2 things:

 

he was aware of the natural unrefined minerals and plant mixtures,

but by and large, he avoided their use and kept their inclusion in

his materia medica to a strict minimum;

he strived - like his contemporaries - to use isolated and purified

compounds and elements wherever possible.

I am not necessarily suggesting that Hahnemann consciously decided to

act in this way, though he may have done. Certainly this is of

interest to us today. Judging from the rest of that century, it would

be remarkable had he not been excited by chemicals. In any case, he

left scant indications as to whyhe chose the remedies he did or his

mode of preparing them. Many require little explanation in any case,

as they had been in use for centuries. Examples here include

Digitalis, Mercury, Sulphur, Phosphorus, Arsenic, Belladonna and

Aconite. What is curious, however, is that he so often optednot to

use the natural unrefined minerals, but preferred instead to use

mostly purified substances. The care and detail with which he then

describes the preparation of his remedies is quite exhaustive. He

gives the strong impression that the reader MUST follow these

instructions in order to produce an exact copy of the remedy he

describes, and that no other impure alternative will do.

 

For example, in the case of Calc carb he uses oyster shell. This is

very curious. Why did he choose oystershell when you consider that

Meissen is over 235 miles (380km) from the sea? Why did he not use

limestone, eggshells, chalk, snailshells or calcite, which would be

much more commmon inhis own area and basically identical chemically?

And why did he call it Calc carb and not Calc ostrea? Further

examples include the use of Hepar sulph and Causticum, which must

rank as two of the weirdest remedies ever devised. He would have got

basically the same product using sulphurous limestone or

metamorphosed marble for hepar sulph and slaked woodash for

Causticum. Likewise he could have used pure sand instead of flint for

Silica, seasalt instead of purified sodium chloride for Natrum mur,

burned kelp for Iodum, etc.

 

For example, is there any major difference in medicinal properties

between Ferrum metallicum and Iron oxide as rust? Or between Seasalt

and Natrum mur? The list goes on. Were all these possible remedies

separately and meticulously proved and Hahnemann chose the best?

Extremely unlikely. Itwould have taken years just to choose one final

remedy. He did not have the time or manpower required for this. And

probably not the inclination.

 

We can also go on to ask why he used so many minerals at all, while

ignoring so many medicinal plants? Was he biased in his choice? Did

he dislike the `impurity' of plants compared with pure minerals like

Kali bich? Or was he by inclination just more of a chemist than a

botanist? Where on earth did he get the ideas for using so many of

these remedies from? In many cases, thesesubstances had never been

used in medicine before, so it was not just a case of refining our

knowledge of already existent drugs. In the Chronic Diseases, for

example, of the 48 drugs listed, 35 are minerals, 12 from plants and

one from an animal source (Sepia). Thus over 70% are of mineral

origin.

 

The same goes for the plants. Why did he use the berries of Hawthorn

and not the bark or flowers, the root of Arnica and Aconite instead

of the whole plant, the spores of Lycopodium instead of the whole

herb? The list is endless. Certainly, some hints and hunches came

from herbalism as it was known experientially that certain portions

of the plant were more poisonous or medicinally potent. Yet this is

not holistic is it? It is scientific to suppose that the best

medicinal power exists only in one part such as the root or the berry

and only thinly dispersed (if at all) throughout the rest of the

plant. We know today about active ingredients and alkaloids which are

more concentrated in one portion of the plant, but they didn't know

this in the 1790's. Hahnemann, as a good chemist, probably had a

hunch that this was the case. Yet no explanation has ever been

offered as to why he chose the remedies he chose and their very

precise methods of preparation.

 

Why did he not use the perfectly natural (`impure') remedies and

choose instead weird concoctions, the preparation of which demanded

great knowledge of and skill in chemistry?

 

It is my contention that in part he did this to appeal to the spirit

of his times. He wanted, perhaps, to flex his chemistry muscles and

reveal to others that in an age of great chemists he was also an

expert chemist and that by using these newly purified and isolated

drugs he was, like them, eschewing what he and his contemporaries saw

as the irrational and unscientific mumbo-jumbo of medieval science -

viz, unpurified and unpredictable drugs. It may be the same reason

why he so forcefully derided and rejected polypharmacy la herbalism

and insisted on the use of separate herbs. Why should herbs be used

separately? There is no overriding theoretical reason why they

shouldn't be used in combinations. Perhaps it was just part of the

puritanism and analysis of the times. Maybe also some of this was

macho pride on Hahnmeann's part.

 

We know that later, through the use of provings, he was to gain a

sounder and more rational justification for his preference for

individually used drugs, never to be used in combinations. To us

today this all seems so logical, but at that time it was a

revolutionary concept. One could, of course, find another reason why

Hahnemann wanted to deride the errors of his medical forebears. It

was very much in his interest to keep his new therapy `squeaky clean'

and to present it to his contemporaries as totally new, modern,

scientific and rational, with totally new chemically pure remedies,

selected objectively through the use of provings. Were the provings

that objectiveanyway?

 

He had a strong and justifiable desire to break away from the `old

wives tales' and disorder of herbal lore. He had a yen for scientific

accuracy, which comes over very clearly in his writings on pharmacy.

He also wanted to present homoeopathy as forward-thrusting and the

new medicine of the future. He seems to have devised the accurate

system of a potentisation scale - in part - as a way of breaking away

from the vagueness and sloppiness of medieval `bucket chemistry' and

recipe pharmacy, which he so detested. His claims for homoeopathy

emphasise very clearly that it is new, modern, scientific, rational,

futuristic and accurate, based upon the `new gods' of skill,

accuracy, measurement, reason and scholarship. It is difficult not to

conclude that all of this was at least in part designed to appeal to

his contemporaries, who he fervently wished would take up homoeopathy.

 

 

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

 

Perhaps he also wanted to dissociate himself from his greatest enemy:

Paracelsus. The truth is, of course, that Hahnemann was a second

Paracelsus, but he felt he had to hide this fact. Both mercilessly

derided their contemporaries, rejected the medicine in which they

were trained, usedsmall doses and emphasised the law of similars.

Both also made extensive use of minerals, acids and metals. Both also

obtained brief university teaching posts, but got sacked after

abusing their position, `indoctrinating' their students, castigating

the medical system of the day and teaching heretical forms of

medicine. How similar to each other can you get? And both were

thoroughly castigated by their orthodox brethren. Their biggest

difference is that Hahnemann used purified drugs, while Paracelsus

tended to use unrefined natural products. Likewise, Paracelsus loved

Alchemy, astrology andmysticism, while Hahnemann appears to have

loathed all three. Paracelsus was a real problem for Hahnemann about

whom he must have thought a great deal: how to shake himself free?

Yet he never mentions him in all his writings. One reason is obvious:

guilt by association, which had to be avoidedat all costs.

 

 

 

Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim - Paracelsus (1493-

1541)

 

Perhaps he decided pretty early on that the only mud that would stick

to him was that of plagiarism and that homoeopathy might be seen as

just a rehashed form of Paracelsan medicine. And to an informed

historian, this is a very valid claim, and almost impossible to

refute. One way, however, to rebut the claim was not to use natural

minerals, but rather to use refined ones, not to use mixtures of

herbs, but to use them separately, and to minimise any fanciful or

spiritual overtones, mystical formulae or astrological symbolism,

thus keeping to the spirit of his contemporary scientists. In this

way he was sure to give homoeopathy a clean start and to successfully

dissociate it from medieval medicine in general and Paracelsan

medicine in particular.

 

The point here, of course, is that Hahnemann was far more widely read

than any other doctor of his day. He knew medical history intimately.

Indeed, some of his works contain references in Greek, Latin and

Arabic from authors before the Christian era (eg. On the Helleborism

of the Ancients, Lesser Writings, Jain Edition, pp 569-617). He

translated works from English, French, Spanish, and Italian, as well

as Latin, Greek and Arabic. His linguistic skills were truly

astonishing. Of course he knew about Paracelsus, but he kept quiet.

It cannot be a coincidence that he put people off the trail leading

to Paracelsus by never even mentioning him. The two systems of

therapy are unmistakably similar. It is amazing that he is never

mentioned. Indeed, many of the metals, acids and minerals in use in

18th century medicine, and later proved by Hahnemann, were actually

introduced into medicine originally by Paracelsus, including mercury,

arsenic, sulphur, tin, lead, gold, iron, copper and salt.

 

Hahnemann also needed to break away from the past because he

genuinely be lieved much of it was nonsense, dead-wood that had

dogged medicine for too long. He derided the apothecaries for

routinely and unquestioningly making up their mixtures from their old

formularies without ever really knowing whether they killed or cured.

He saw them as colluding with doctors in a form of medicine that was

totally irrational, ineffective and corrupt. And he says so

repeatedly.

 

Thus we can conclude that Hahnemann was much like his contemporaries

in being very concerned with purifying natural products, plants and

minerals, rather than using them in their natural state. Hahnemann

clearly believed that great skill in chemistry was essential for the

production of a rationalmateria medica. It is my contention that he

went too far in the direction of his contemporaries, being also

driven on by his own abiding obsession with chemistry and thus

effectively ignored many excellent herbal remedies and natural

minerals that he might easily have proved and brought into arational

homoeopathic materia medica.

 

Some of our Anthroposophical brethren might even feel that he `threw

out the baby with the bathwater', though that may be slightly

overtstating the position. I also feel he relied too heavily on

chemicals and too little on plants. The numerical facts of his

materia medica confirm this view. As I have said, the reasons for

this were largely the `tide of the times'. As I said at the

beginning, Hahnemann was scientific, in an analytical sense. Some

might feel he was too scientific for his own good. On the other hand

he was a curious mixture of less rational elements, derived mainly

from his avid interest in medical history, his translation work and

his encyclopaedic knowledge of drugs and chemistry.

 

Though Hahnemann seems to have `swam with the tide' of his

contemporaries, through his strong interest in chemistry, he then

went off at a surprisingly new angle and adopted two completely

original ideas, which to an extent, went against that tide. These

were the proving and, derived from it, the concept of holism, both of

the drug picture or remedy and of the disease - and therefore by

implication of the person. Provings were first described in his Essay

On a New Principle (1796) (pp249-303 of Lesser Writings). By proving

medicines on the healthy - a concept so profound and revolutionary

even today that it is still decades ahead of current medical

thinking - Hahnemannestablished that a very complex image of symptoms

is produced. He then confirmed - through clinical practice - that a

truly curative system of medicine based upon parts, illness names,

large doses and polypharmacy was completely unworkable (ie.

uncurative). And this for two reasons:

 

that natural and drug-induced illnesses (and therefore people) are

multisymptomatic and

that drugs must be tested and clinically used individually rather

than in mixtures.

He then built up a materia medica based entirely on these principles.

The method of operation was to be similars and small doses. Once he

had proved for himself the total ineffectiveness of large doses, many

remedies, opposites and using disease-labels, he was left only with

the opposites ofthem all: viz - small doses, single remedy, similars

and holism rather than parts (person not disease).

 

Hahnemann got his critique of allopathy from two primary sources: his

own dismal attempts at allopathic practice and translation work,

which revealed to him hundreds of cures from the past that had been

attained using specific drugs, often through using the law of

similars.

 

The result of this on his part was doubt, confusion and hesitation.

Rather than practise, he chose to live on his translation work. This

was a sensible choice as it allowed more time for his research and

held him back from the chaos and confusion, let alone the emotional

drain that bad practiceengendered in him. Two out of many possible

quotes well illustrate this point:

 

" After I had discovered the weakness and errors of my teachers and

books, I sank into a state of sorrowful indignation, which had nearly

altogether disgusted me with the study of medicine. " opening lines of

Aesculapius in the Balance (1805) in Lesser Writings p410, Jain

Edition

 

" For 18 years I have departed from the beaten track of medicine. It

was painful to me to grope in the dark, guided only by our books in

the treatment of the sick...In an 8 years' practice, pursued with

conscientious attention, I had learned the delusive nature of the

ordinary methods of treatment... " from Letter upon the Necessity of a

Regeneration of Medicine, (1808) in Lesser Writings pp511-3, Jain

Edition.

 

Yet the demands of his growing family forced him to continue

searching for a rational and effective system of therapy.

 

" ...serious diseases occurred... endangered the lives of my

children... caused my conscience to reproach me still more loudly,

that I had no means on which I could rely for affording them relief. "

ibid p512

 

It is little wonder therefore, that, inspired by his loathing for

dismal and ineffective allopathy, Hahnemann took consolation in

chemistry, which drew him closer and closer to the rationalising of

mainly mineral remedies for use in his materia medica, the isolation

and purification of active ingredients, and, somewhat ironically,

down the very road that a century later (via the mainly German

chemical industry) would lead straight to antibiotics,

tranquillisers, analgesics and the other `magic bullets' of modern

allopathy! As we have seen, his development of the proving and the

practical and therapeutic necessity of holism - derived from it -

proved to be his and homoeopathy's saviour.

 

 

http://www.homeoint.org/morrell/articles/pm_scien.htm