Quackery Unmasked/Chapter III
CHAPTER III.
HOMŒOPATHY. CARBONATE OF LIME—ITS USES. ONLY ONE ARTICLE TO BE USED AT A TIME. PROVINGS, HOMŒOPATHIC ARGUMENTS, ETC.
Calcarea Carbonica—Common Chalk.—This is an important homœopathic remedy. The dose is one decillionth of a grain, and the effects last fifty days. The following are the affections in which it is employed, as laid down in Jahr's Manual, Vol. I., pages 119, 120.
"Indications derived from the ensemble of symptoms: For persons of a plethoric or lymphatic constitution, with a disposition to Menorrhagia, cold in the head, and diarrhœa; or else for individuals of a weak, sickly constitution. Sufferings caused by a chill in the water: Different affections of children and of women who have copious catamenia: Evil effects from lifting a weight; Suffering arising from abuse of cinchona; Sufferings of drunkards: Gouty nodosities and other arthritic complaints: St. Vitus' dance?; Epileptic convulsions (after the action of cuprum); Hysterical spasms; Obesity in young persons; Physical and nervous weakness in consequence of masturbation; Muscular weakness, difficulty of learning to walk, atrophy and other sufferings of scrofulous children; Tumefaction and suppuration of the glands; Caries, softening, curvature, and other affections of the? bones; Rickety affections; Spontaneous dislocations; Arthrocace?; Polypus; Encysted tumors; Chronic eruptions; Scabby and humid tetters;: Scrofulous eruptions; Fistulous ulcers; Warts; Chronic urticaria. Intermittent fevers, and fatal consequences from the suppression of those fevers by cinchona; Slow fevers; Melancholy; Hypochondria and hysteria; Delirium tremens; Drunkenness; Megrim; Cephalalgia from chilly or after injury from lifting; Fatigue of the head, in consequence of intellectual labor; Scaldhead; Falling off of the hair, also in parturient women, or caused by severe acute diseases; Fontanels of children, remaining open too long; Ophthalmia, even that arising from the introduction of a foreign substance, or in scrofulous persons, or in new-born infants; Blepharophthalmia; Spots, ulcers, and obscuration in the cornea; Fungus hæmatodes of the eye?; Amblyopia; Lachrymal fistula; Hæmorrhage of the eyes?; Otitis?; Purulent otorrhœa, also that proceeding from caries in the auditory organs; Polypus in the ear; hardness of hearing, also that caused by suppression of an intermittent fever by cinchona; Parotitis; Scrofulous swelling of the nose; Nasal polypus: Anosmia; Cancer in the nose?; Coryza, with slow establishment of the catarrhal flux; Coryza and chronic obstruction of the nose; Prosopalgia; Tetters and other facial eruptions: Crusta lactea; Odontalgia, also that of pregnant women, or of those who have too copious catamenia; Difficult dentition in children, with convulsions; Fistulous ulcers in the gums; Ranula; Amagdalytis and other phlegmonous anginas; Goitre; Anorexia; Dyspepsia, vomitings, sourness, pyrosis, and other gastric affections; Induration and other diseases of the liver; Taenia; Colic; Abdominal spasms: Scrofulous buboes; Obstinate constipation; Diarrhœa of scrofulous children, or else during dentition; Diarrhœa of phthisical persons; Chronic disposition to evacuate often in the day: Verminous affections; Hæmorrhoidal suffering? and bad consequence of the suppression of the hæmorrhoidal flux; Catarrh of the bladder; Hematuria?; Polypus of the bladder: Urinary calculus; Weakness of the genital functions, dysmenorrhœa, and amenorrhœa of plethoric persons; Leucorrhœa; Metrorrhagia; Chlorosis; Sterility; Abortion; Cutting pains, too long continued after accouchement; Weakness, falling out of the hair, and other complaints of parturient women; Odontalgia of pregnant women; Milk fever; Excoriation of the breasts; Galactorrhoea or agalactia; Ophthalmia, muscular weakness and acidity in nurses; Chronic laryngitis with ulceration; Chronic catarrh and blenorrhœa of the lungs; Phthisical symptoms (tuberculous phthisis); Curvature of the spine: Coxalgia; Spontaneous dislocation; Gout in the hands and in the feet, &c. &c."
Here, then, are one hundred and twenty-five diseases or conditions, some acute and some chronic, differing as far as possible in their etiology and pathology, all to be cured or relieved by the decillionth of a grain of chalk. Carbonate of lime is one of the most abundant natural productions, and is found in a great variety of conditions. In its solid state it forms a considerable part of the crust of the globe, and in solution it is found to exist to some extent in almost all water. The best wells and purest springs hold more or less of it in solution; it is even sometimes discovered in rain water. He who created the elements, and provided for man his food and drink, saw fit, for wise purposes, to mingle carbonate of lime in nearly every thing which we swallow. The sick man swallows it in every glass of water, and in quantities much larger than Hahnemann directed. And would it not be the height of folly to attempt to cure a patient by giving him a decillionth of a grain of the article, once in six or eight hours, when every spoonful of water that he swallows contains more than a thousand such doses, and when he has taken the same article every day of his life? Certainly, we should think that he had taken it long enough to cure him of any disease that such an article was capable of curing. Nay, more; unless the disease existed in embryo, he could never have it at all, because he has used the medicine as a prophylactic from his earliest infancy, therefore he cannot possibly have any disease that carbonate of lime in such doses will cure.
There is another consideration connected with this article. Hahnemann directs that only one single, simple medicine shall be given at a time. In his Organon, pages 319 and 320, he says: "In no case is it requisite to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time." Further, he says: "It is impossible to foresee how two or more medicinal substances might, when compounded, obstruct and alter each other's action in the human body." He further says: "Some Homœopathists have made the experiment, in cases where they deemed one remedy suitable for one portion of the symptoms of a case of disease, and a second for another portion, of administering both remedies at once, or almost at once; but I earnestly deprecate such hazardous experiments, that can never be necessary."
Now what shall be done? Nearly every homœopathic remedy is a compound, and consists of two or more elementary substances. But if you had a simple elementary substance, how could you administer it by itself alone? Say, for instance (which is not a fact), that aconite is a simple elementary substance, and you wish to give the patient one drop of the thirtieth attenuation of this drug in a spoonful of water—you give the patient aconite and carbonate of lime at the same time, and the quantity of lime in the spoonful of water exceeds the quantity of aconite more than a million of times. Give whatever medicine you will, in the purest common water, and you are giving it in conjunction with carbonate of lime. If you were using ordinary doses of medicine, the inconsiderable quantity of lime in common water would not be a matter of any consideration; but if such infinitesimals act at all, they may be incompatible and counteract each other.
Hahnemann was the most inconsistent of mortals—he was not only inconsistent with reason and facts, and with every principle of philosophy and common sense, but also often strangely inconsistent with himself. At one time he declares that large doses have little or no effect upon the system, because they have not been potentized by attenuation and dynamization. and at another time he says that all allopathic quantities of substances which may be used as homoœpathic medicines are poisonous, and injurious in proportion to the quantity used. He who created the world and peopled it with living beings, wisely and benevolently fitted everything to their use. Accordingly he spread over the whole habitable globe, two substances, which were constantly required for human sustenance. These are carbonate of lime and common salt. The one seasons our drink, and the other our food. We swallow both in the first act of deglutition, and continue to use them to the last hour of life. The Most High, when he had finished the work of creation, pronounced it all very good. But Hahnemann discovered that this declaration was untrue—he has discovered that these articles, taken in such large quantities, are poisonous, and tend to ruin the system and destroy life. In his Organon, page 55, he says: a It was high time for the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of mankind to put a stop to this abomination, and to command a cessation of these tortures." And again he adds, "It was high time that He should permit the discovery of Homœopathy." And what are the remedies which this beatific discovery have brought to light? They consist in giving the same articles, in infinitesimal doses, to cure or obviate the effects of these large poisonous allopathic quantities. Can a man who asserts that two and two make ten, be sane? or can a man who publishes such astounding absurdities, be in his right mind?
In Hahnemann's French edition of his Materia Medica, no less than thirty-five pages are occupied in describing the effects of one millionth of a grain of charcoal. It may be asked; How did Hahnemann ascertain that such numerous, such remarkable, and such contradictory effects were produced by such infinitesimal doses of an article, which, up to his time, had been considered nearly or quite inert? He and his followers tell us that these facts have been ascertained by observations and experience. It may be proper, therefore, to examine the process by which these and other discoveries of the kind have been made.
A number of individuals, say twenty, more or less, have been selected, and to each has been given a homœopathic dose of charcoal or any other article to be tried. Each individual is told that the medicine is expected to produce marked effects upon him, and is requested carefully to note down all his symptoms and feelings. Every physical, intellectual and moral phenomenon that occurs in any such individual, after he swallows the attenuation, is considered as the positive effect of the medicine. If his face is flushed, the medicine has produced it—if he is inclined to sleep, the medicine has produced it—if he dreams, it is the medicine—if he is cold, it is the medicine—if he is warm, it is the medicine—if he is timid, it is the medicine—if he is courageous, it is the medicine—if his head, or eyes, or ears, or teeth, or limbs, ache, or if he laughs, or cries, or whatever else takes place in his person or feelings, it has been produced by the medicine. These are homœopathic Provings, and by such means they ascertain by experience that the decillionth of a grain of chalk will "make the hair fall out"—produce "pressure in the eyes, polypus in the ear, redness of the nose, yellowness of the complexion, eruptions on the lips, toothache, dry tongue, aversion to smoking, desire for wine, swelling of the stomach palpitation of the heart, ulcers of the legs and swelling of the feet," with a hundred other symptoms. Now suppose that, instead of the chalk, a few drops of pure cold water had been given to each of the twenty men in question, and they had been watched, and their symptoms noted, as in the other case—it might be shown, by the same kind of experience, that five drops of water did actually produce effects equally numerous and equally important.
Now this is the kind of testimony by which Homœopathy is supported—ridiculous in its character, unreasonable in its nature, and directly contradicted by all reliable experience. But whenever we attempt to show its absurdity and falsity, we are met by its advocates with certain stereotyped arguments which they appear to consider unanswerable. They tell us that the authors of great discoveries have always been opposed and persecuted, and point us to Copernicus, Galileo, Herschel and Newton; and because these men met with opposition when they first announced those discoveries which subsequent observations verified, they infer that Homœopathy must be true because it meets with opposition. Now it must be a very poor case that is obliged to resort to so flimsy an argument for its support. It shows at once the want of tangible evidence, when it rests its support upon such a futile abstraction. The cases referred to are in no respect parallel. Hahnemann was no more like Galileo, than like Alexander or Caesar. He made no discoveries of any kind—his similia similibus curantur being, as we have already seen, an old exploded maxim, and he himself assures us that this idea had been acted upon for many centuries. He revived this absurdity, which had become nearly or quite exploded, and made it the basis of his whole scheme. But if the cases were parallel, the process of reasoning would be altogether untenable, for it can never be supposed that every man who meets with opposition is in the right, nor that opposition is any evidence whatever of the truth of any scheme that an individual may set up. This course of reasoning would make almost everything that is false appear true, and every truth a falsehood. The Alcoran and the Mormon Bible would each be proved true by the same course of reasoning. Their own argument, properly considered, goes to prove the falsity of their doctrine. The opposition to Galileo arose from a superstitious priesthood, which was wholly ignorant of the principles of astronomy, and looked upon his announcement as a heresy which impugned the authority of the Scriptures. Ignorance and superstition alone opposed him. As fast as astronomers became acquainted with his principles, they were satisfied of their truth. His early disciples did not, like Hahnemann's, consist of the ignorant, and the credulous, but they were the most learned philosophers and astronomers of Greece, men who had devoted their lives to the study of that science. The very reverse of this has been the case with Hahnemannism: all the medical savants throughout the world rejected it as soon as they became acquainted with its principles; and if I am told that many people believe it now, I answer that many also believe in Ann Lee and Joe Smith.
Another homœopathic argument upon which its advocates appear to place great reliance, is founded on analogy. When we dispute their provings of great effects from little causes, or no causes at all, we are told that such things, though strange, are nevertheless true, and confirmed by analogous cases. They say, see how very little poison is capable of killing a strong animal—how little virus will produce the smallpox. They ask us to weigh malaria and measure miasma. If there was any force in this argument, we might show, by the same kind of reasoning, that a spider might spin a ship's cable, an ant overturn a mountain, and the smallest insect drink up the ocean. These men forget that the science and art of medicine should be governed and conducted by the same reason and common sense that are employed in every other department of business. They fly off in a tangent to the wild fields of fancy, without taking account of their own position. It is true that a single spark may explode a whole magazine, and a single match may inflame the most stately mansion; and if Homœopathy were true, a few drops of water (which all acknowledge is the right remedy) would be sufficient to quench the conflagration.
It is not true that homœopathic quantities of poison kill, nor that homœopathic attenuations of variolous matter will produce smallpox. If Homœopathy were true, the poison of the rattlesnake would be made stronger by dilution, and one millionth of a drop, commingled with the waters of all the oceans, would make the whole so strong that a single drop of that attenuation, either swallowed or smelt of, would produce instant death. If Homœopathy were true, the drop of virus, which may produce the vaccine disease, should be attenuated by being mingled with a quantity of fluid sufficient to fill the orbit of the farthest planet, and its power to produce the disease would not be diminished but increased. Homœopathic arguments never take effect, except upon feeble intellects; they are so attenuated as to produce no sensible effects upon any sound minds.