CHAPTER X.
HOMŒOPATHIC THEOLOGY.
If any one were asked to point out the greatest or the least of the absurdities of Homœopathy, he would be unable to do either—if its theological speculations are not the greatest, it is difficult to believe them to be the least. This part of the scheme is not probably so generally understood in the United States as in Great Britain, as no direct pecuniary value is attached to it in this country. It is nevertheless no trifling part of the whole plan, although it might be hardly safe to lay it before the public without ample documentary evidence to sustain it.
Hahnemann and his early associates, besides aiming to overthrow everything that was true in medicine, sought also to connect Homœopathy with Theology. After twelve years of laborious investigation, Hahnemann informs us that he made the important discovery that the greatest portion of all the ills that flesh is heir to, arises from one single affection, and that also all actual sin and positive delinquencies are produced solely by that same bodily disease, and that disease is nothing more nor less than Psora, or the common Itch. In his Organon, page 183, he says, "This thousand-headed monster of disease does, after the completion of the internal infection of the whole organism, announce by a peculiar cutaneous eruption, sometimes consisting only of a few vesicles accompanied by an intolerable voluptuous tickling, itching, and a peculiar odor, the monstrous internal chronic miasm—the Psora—the only fundamental cause and producer of all the other numerous, I may say, innumerable, forms of disease, which under the names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, mania, melancholia, imbecility, madness, epilepsy, convulsions of all sorts, softening of the bones, rachitis, scholiosis and lyphosis, caries, cancer, fungus hæmatodes, malignant organic growths, gout, hæmorrhoids, jaundice, cyanosis, dropsy, amenorrhœa, hæmorrhage from the stomach, nose, lungs, bladder, and womb, of asthma and ulceration of the lungs, of impotence and barrenness, of megrim, deafness, cataract, amaurosis, urinary calculus, paralysis, defects of the senses, and pains of thousands of kinds which figure in systematic works on pathology, as peculiar independent diseases."
At a homœopathic school which was established for a time at Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, of which a Dr. Mure was president, every candidate for graduation was required to make confession of his faith in Homœopathy, and then to take a most solemn oath to abide by the principles taught by Hahnemann. The oath concludes as follows: "And this I swear in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." After this, the president addressed the graduates in the following words: "In the name of Hahnemann, discoverer of Homœopathy, from whom I have received the mission, and the power, and with the assistance of my coadjutors the disciples of that messenger from Heaven, I now declare you fit to exercise the new art, acknowledge you as my colleagues, and as professors of pure Homœopathy." [See British Journal of Homœopathy for 1849, page 537.]
By this highly imposing ceremony, that institution solemnly declared Hahnemann to be a "messenger from Heaven." The same doctrine has been taught by other of his disciples both in this country and in Europe. He is spoken of as "the new Evangelist" "the most inspired of discoverers." A writer in an English journal, called the "Family Herald," for November, 1850, says—"Religion itself has undergone a spiritual revolution since the date of Hahnemann's discovery."
A few years ago a clergyman of the church of England, the Rev. Thomas R. Everest, Rector of Wickwar, in Gloucestershire, preached a sermon in aid of a homœopathic hospital. This sermon, as might be expected, was replete with homœopathic theology as well as medicine. This reverend divine declared that the Itch, as Hahnemann had discovered, was a moral, as well as a physical malady. He finds it so represented in Scripture, and argues that the solemn command of Christ to his disciples, to "cleanse the lepers," (Matt. x. 8), was actually a command to cure the Itch.
"The taint (says he) is, as Scripture has hinted, and investigation has within these few years shown, the parent of all these chronic tendencies, these cachexias, these scrofulas, these atrophies, this sterility, this atony, this gout, this rheumatism, this phthisis, this hereditary insanity with all its hydra heads and multiform shapes and shades, dark passions, furious lusts, stubborn obstinacies, scowling tempers, suicidal manias, gloomy revenges, gnawing jealousies, fretfulness, ill-humor; in short, all the various aberrations of mind, and reluctance to bear patiently the burdens which the Lord lays on man. All these chronic tendencies to disorder do combine and interlace with the natural corruption, the taint derived from Adam; and who, save God alone, shall say where one begins, and the other ends? The tendency to disorder of the functions aggravates the tendency to sin. The chronic taint in the constitution increases the chronic proneness to sin which Adam left us. The physical leprosy of the flesh unites with the moral leprosy of the soul. It is this combination of the two, aided often by stimuli, and almost always by large doses of violent inappropriate medicines antecedently given (medicines which a child may put into the constitution, but which ten men could not get out of it again), which festers in your jails, rots in your hulks, seethes in your lanes and alleys, and bubbles up in crime, madness, and eccentricity all over your land. This it is which makes your atheist on the one hand, your bigot on the other. This it is which feeds the flame of folly everywhere all over the earth, placed Simon on his pillar, sent the world on crusades, lights the Suttee:—nay, why travel eastward! which here, in this our own land, gave disciples to Johanna Southcote, creates Mormons,—peoples Agapemone, begets holy jackets and bleeding pictures,—and confounds God's reasonable heritage with crime—guilt—lust—passion—disease—distress—lunacy—folly—idoey."—P. 39 of Mr. Everest's Sermon.
Mr. Everest proceeds to say, "Irreligion is the daughter of internal disorder, but the old system of medicine was of no use or value as an aid to conversions." "The homœopathic treatment," he says, "will eradicate that prime cause of irreligion, and then the holy and saving truths of the Gospel will be admitted into the heart, and never fail to influence the life." He appeals to the "fathers and mothers," "the religious body of this land [England], and the governors of God's heritage, monarchs, parliaments, and magistrates," to enforce this all-important duty — not merely "when people are sick, but before, that, by a continuous homœopathic treatment, begun in childhood, we may hope to anticipate disorders, to restore harmony, to combat the internal psoric tendencies, and to procure a patient hearing and kindly reception of spiritual ministrations." "When the old system" he continues, "shall have quite vanished from the earth, and the new one, Homœopathy, shall be established, then, for the first time, will the Gospel of the Kingdom of Grace be preached as Jesus ordered it to be preached, and received as God intended it to be received."
Here, then, we see that this English clergyman makes a most solemn appeal to all who have ability or authority to enforce this very important duty. It is enjoined upon them to commence the homœopathic medication in childhood, to employ it in health, and persist in its use until the inherent psoric taint which the human race have inherited from Adam is thoroughly eradicated.
This reverend clergyman did not himself prescribe the particular means by which this moral renovation is to be effected. It is to be done by homœopathic medication, but the particulars are left to the faculty. For the best means to be used for this purpose, we are indebted to Dr. Mure, of whom I have before spoken as president of the homœopathic school at Rio de Janeiro. In a work of his, called " Pathogenesie," he devotes twelve pages to the consideration of this subject, and announces, as he says, "with a feeling of inward satisfaction," that he has discovered a new and grand specific for hereditary psora. He proceeds to say, "It is unnecessary to describe at length this remedy, the animal being sufficiently known, viz., Pediculus Capitis, or human louse." This animal is to be dynamized with sugar of milk, and administered in the form of small white powders, or used in fluid attenuations as the practitioner may prefer.
The astounding absurdity of this scheme is without a parallel, and we scarcely know whether it most deserves censure or ridicule. Such a plan probably never before entered into the thoughts of any sane man. If ever the sublime and ridiculous meet, it is in this homœopathic phantasm. The discovery that the innate moral taint which it is supposed the human race have derived from their first progenitors, may be wholly eradicated by the use of lice tea, is the exclusive property of pure Homœopathy. It should be recorded in capitals in the archives of that wonderful science, and published to all the world for the benefit of mankind: and it is to be hoped that no one who adopts that system will neglect this most essential part of the practice.
Yet as strange as it may seem, let it not be supposed that Dr. Mure stands alone in this matter; his practice is in perfect accordance with a fixed principle of Homoeopathy, which is everywhere recognized. "Similia similibus curantar" is their law of cure. Dr. Hering recommended the swallowing of the 30th attenuation of bugs to cure bug bites; Dr. Rummell and others gave the attenuated virus of the smallpox for the cure of that disease; and Hahnemann believed that all medicinal substances produced emotional or moral affections of some sort. According to Jahr's Manual, which is the backbone of Homœopathy, every article used in medicine, even in decillionth doses, produces some peculiar moral symptoms. Sulphur produces "despair of eternal salvation"; pulsatilla produces "continual praying"; gold taken internally produces "excessive scruples of conscience"; colocynth produces a "want of all religious feeling"; and aconite an "irresistible desire to swear and blaspheme." (See Jahr's Manual, Paris edit.)
In the British Journal of Homœopathy, published in 1849, Hahnemann is styled the "indefatigable apostle of Homœopathy"; the system is declared to be "not a science merely, but also, for those who comprehend it, a sublime devotion, a form of religion, a rainbow of divine union, holding out to mankind the promise of speedy regeneration." This speedy regeneration, as we have seen, was to be effected, not by moral means, but by the internal administration of the pediculus capitis, or human louse, which, taken in decillionth doses, Dr. Mure assures us will effectually eradicate that innate corruption which has been suffered to run in the blood of a11 the descendants of Adam.
Having examined a specimen of Hahnemann's theology, we will next take a view of his pathology. As we have before stated, Hahnemann informs us in his Organon, page 183, that he labored twelve years in searching for the first or original cause of chronic diseases, and finally ascertained it to be a hereditary taint, or, to use his own language, "a monstrous internal miasm—the psora." This "internal miasm," he supposed, was an invisible poison which corrupted the blood of all the human race. When it manifested itself in the genuine type, it was psora, or itch. But this same itch miasm, as he called it, appeared in other forms. In one case it was scrofula, in another it was rheumatism, in another it was asthma, in another it was epilepsy, and in another it was consumption. So that nearly all chronic diseases, as Hahnemann supposed, were only so many different forms in which this itch poison operated and showed itself, and therefore were in reality only so many varieties of itch. They were all precisely of the same nature, and arose from the same identical cause, viz., the "monstrous internal miasm."
Now let us see how this doctrine compares with the present state of medical science. Psora or itch has been ascertained to be a local disease, which never arises from any constitutional affection, but is produced by a minute insect called acarus scabiei, which burrows in the derma, beneath the cuticle, and produces the irritation, itching and eruption which characterize that disorder. This little parasitic animal often passes from one person to another by personal contact, or in some article of clothing, and is the sole and only cause of psora or itch. In order to cure the itch, therefore, this animal must be destroyed, and this is effected by topical applications alone. When this is done, the patient is cured. Hahnemann spent twelve of the best years of his life in searching for the common cause of chronic diseases, and the fruit of all that labor was nothing but the absurd and ridiculous idea of a hereditary itch miasm, and ocular demonstration shows that to be utterly false. He and his disciples gloried in this discovery; it laid a foundation for their pathology and therapeutics in all, or nearly all, chronic diseases. But it was of vastly more importance in a religious point of view. They made it the foundation of a system of theology; it showed them, as they thought, the true source of all moral disorders, and pointed out the remedy by medication. The British Journal of Homœopathy says that this is "that discovery which forms the most beautiful gem in the immortal crown of Hahnemann." But, alas for Hahnemann, and alas for Homœopathy! the discovery of the little acarus scabiei overthrew at the same time all their proud systems both in medicine and theology, and buried, in contemptible oblivion, "the most beautiful gem in that immortal crown." He and his disciples toiled and labored for twelve long years to find the common source of all the numerous streams and rivulets of human ills, and when they had arrived at the supposed goal, and gazed in delirious exultation upon the mystic fountain, the chimera vanished and left them in total darkness.