Quackery Unmasked/Chapter XIII
CHAPTER XIII.
CONCLUDING REMARKS UPON HOMŒOPATHY.
After twenty years of drowsy incubation, Hahnemann brought forth his Homœopathy. Wholly wrapped up in his own nebulous sphere, he seemed to see, and hear, and know, nothing but this darling idea. Like an enchantress, this greeted his earliest thoughts in the morning, and gilded his latest dreams by night. Absorbed in his own fanciful speculations, he became heedless of all the world beside, and with the ardor of a fanatic strove to gain converts to his new scheme. But year after year passed, whilst he made but little progress. The Germans, although a visionary and enthusiastic people, had nevertheless too much common sense to embrace such glaring absurdities. He met with so little success in his own country, that, after nearly twenty years spent in writing, and teaching, he had made but meagre progress, and found himself surrounded only by a handful of followers.
During that twenty years whilst Hahnemann was brooding over his hallucination, the true science of medicine was making rapid advances, and every year and every month witnessed important discoveries and improvements. Hahnemann, riveted to his vision of infinitesimals, looked with painful chagrin upon his pitiful success, and resolved to shake off the dust of his feet and abandon his own country in hopeless disgust. France was chosen as his place of refuge; and accordingly, about the year 1820, he bade a final farewell to the land of his nativity, the graves of his ancestors and his own Alma Mater, and took up his abode in Paris. Here he found a more congenial field. This versatile and enthusiastic people have ever been ready for a change—ever ready to give up whatever is old for anything that is new. Celebrated as they are the world over for their chivalry and prowess, they are nevertheless the most unstable of all people. Their civil, religious and social institutions are always either changing or preparing to change. At the time of Hahnemann's debut in Paris, France seemed to be enjoying a moment of calm though fearful repose. Napoleon had been driven into exile, but the spirit of revolutions had not been subdued. Although the storm had ceased to rage without; yet everywhere, within, her civil and social institutions had been thrown into confusion by the tremendous concussions to which she had been subjected. The face of society was wholly unsettled, and every institution shook, and quivered, like some frail bark upon the tremulous bosom of a troubled ocean. This was in all respects a most favorable spot for the introduction of Homœopathy. Here Hahnemann made his stand, unpacked his bundles, and began to publish his new scheme; and, like some wandering gipsy, soon drew around him many who gazed and wondered, and some who believed or pretended to believe.
When we consider the vacillating and enthusiastic temperament of the people, and the state of the public mind in France at that time, we wonder not that so many, but that so few, embraced the new doctrine. When we see this same people in a single day renounce all their religious institutions, profane, despoil and plunder their own consecrated churches, and abolish the Sabbath and its worship—when we see the highest of the clergy publicly lay aside their robes, doff their mitres and cast away their crosiers, crosses, and rings, and most solemnly abjure that religion which they and their fathers for many generations had observed and kept—when we behold the Bible burnt by the common hangman, and temples dedicated to the goddess of Reason, and hear the public annunciation that there is no other God to be worshipped—and again, when we see this same people publicly dethrone their goddess of Reason and place a harlot in her stead—when we see an ignorant peasant girl spring from obscurity to command their armies and dictate the coronation of their King—and again, when we see the masses who but yesterday kissed her garments and strewed her way with flowers, burn this same innocent female at the stake for no other crime than holding the same principles for which they had worshipped her—when we behold a raging faction hurrying its victims to the guillotine, and while yet the ponderous blade is dripping with blood, we see the victors become the victims, and the merciless engine go on with its work of death and mingle the blood of contending parties in the same pool—when we hear the populace cry Vive le Roi one day, and Vive l'Empereur the next—and when we consider, too, that the unthinking masses often neither understand what they reject nor what they embrace—when, I say, we see and consider all these things, we cannot be surprised that among these same masses individuals should be found who were ready to relinquish the proper system of rational medicine, and embrace the vagaries of Homœopathy. The early disciples of Hahnemann were not such men as Bichat, Dupuytren, Yelpeau and Ricord; but men of slender attainments, whose standing and qualifications did not entitle them to much eminence in the profession, but whose vanity and ambition could find full scope in Homœopathy—men who chose rather to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Hahnemann was sixty-five years old when he arrived in France. Forty-five years had elapsed since he heard his last medical lecture. During almost half a century his mind had been wholly abstracted from the regular profession. He had been engaged in a great variety of pursuits, and had wandered far and wide, in the wild fields of the fairies, without gathering either fruits or flowers. He had never been engaged in the practice of medicine, and at that advanced period of his life, if he retained any traces of his youthful acquirements, they were at least half a century old. So far as his medical knowledge was concerned, he was like a man who had been incarcerated in a dungeon during the preceding half century. Since his exile from the profession, it had undergone the most rapid and important improvements. Chemistry had become almost an entire new science. The theories of Haller and Van Swieten, which were taught Hahnemann, had long been exploded. Practical medicine had undergone an entire reformation, and every year, month and day, witnessed continual improvements in the science and art of medicine. And as Hahnemann never studied medicine after this time, it is very certain that up to the day of his death he remained profoundly ignorant of all that truly pertained to it as a science.
In France, the old man soon found himself surrounded by a set of flatterers, who, like the fox in the fable, commended the singing, in the hope of being benefited by it. Hahnemann was never a genius, or endowed with strong reasoning powers. The axiom upon which he built his Homœopathy did not originate with him, but the proverbs that "like cures like," and that "part strengthens part," were ancient by-words, brought down from the dark ages, and which science had long exploded. Nor did the use of sugar placeboes originate with him; but this also is a part of the scheme of Asclepiades, a most arrant quack, who lived before the Christian era. Hahnemann wrote much, and, like a superannuated fanatic, repeated for the thousandth time his illusory phantoms. The labors of his whole life form a mass of chaff, in which no grains can be found worth preserving. The disciples of Hahnemann adopted the Organon for their guide, just as the followers of Joe Smith adopt the Mormon Bible. Having at length attained to an extreme old age, and surrounded by a few mendacious fawning disciples, he died in Paris, in 1843, being eighty-eight years of age.
Hahnemann had not been long in Paris before a crowd of aspirants gathered around him, anxious to borrow his thunder. Medical writings, based upon Hahnemann's written and oral teachings, soon made their appearance. So anxious were the new converts to be first in the race, that in a short time quite a large number of homœopathic works had been written in the French language. Many of these were soon translated into other languages, and in a short time the advocates of this new scheme, book in hand, ransacked all Europe. Everywhere all learned and competent judges rejected it as a tissue of ridiculous absurdities; yet the ignorant and unthinking were sometimes made to believe, and men of indifferent attainments, itching for notoriety, often became its advocates.
At length Europe became sparsely dotted over with messengers of the prophet; everywhere its introduction and trial was urged with a zeal deserving a better cause: but whenever and wherever it was fairly examined and tested, it always failed. Its advocates repeated their efforts, and always, when the truth was known, with the same results. But as the cry of victory in martial conflicts often promotes that result, so the advocates of Homœopathy took the hint and set up their universal boastings. Accidental circumstances in some instances, and frauds in others, sometimes seemed to confirm their reports and give the scheme a temporary reputation. Thousands tried it because it was so easy and so pleasant, and all those who had little or no faith in any medical treatment preferred it on that account. But in spite of all these advantages, everywhere throughout Europe it is declining and passing away. The masses have become tired of the sickening monotony, and spurn the worthless thing, and sovereigns and nobles are pronouncing their denunciations against it. In Europe the battle is wholly lost, and nothing can save it from certain and speedy extinction. Its forlorn hopes may linger for a time in certain locations, but "mene tekel" is everywhere written upon it. Their books are all written, and their translations are all made. Henceforth Laurie, Jahr, Possart, Hering and their associates, will have little more to do than to settle their accounts with the great farce and sink beneath the waves of returning reason.
In the United States the subject is newer, and therefore not quite so nearly worn out. In some locations it is yet quite new; many are curious to see the wonder and try it themselves, and many of its advocates still expect to reap golden harvests from it. But its brief day of glory here will also soon pass away; the clouds that are gathering over the eastern horizon will soon cover the west and spread an eternal pall over this strange delusion. Indeed, it would have come to a final end in the United States long ago, if homœopathic practitioners had continued true to the principles laid down by Hahnemann, and used nothing but pure attenuations. This inevitable result was so apparent, that all their sagacious practitioners resorted to the dishonest use of active medicines under the guise of Homœopathy. This is their last resort; and as soon as this fraud is sufficiently exposed, Homœopathy will become a hissing and a by-word. Like all other delusions, it succeeds better in some communities than in others. It makes little or no progress among men of learning and talents—where reason and not fashion is the guiding star; but is often seen in all its mushroom glory where, the vain and fickle-minded give direction to public opinion, and its success is always in an inverse ratio to the sterling talents and sound sense of the community where it is found. Homœopathy is a moral epidemic, and like others of a physical nature it began in the east and took its course westward towards the setting sun; and when its last flickering rays of twilight shall sink beneath the horizon, we may safely predict for it a long and undisturbed repose.