A correct and adequate conception of homoeopathy, of the difficulties necessarily en countered in its propagation and establishment, and of the place it holds and the influence it exerts in the development of therapeutics can be obtained only through knowledge of the conditions of general medicine down to the close of the 18th century. It is essential, there fore, that reference be made to certain points in the progress of medical history from its be ginnings, to and including the period of the investigations that resulted in the discovery of homoeopathy as a general therapeutic principle. This reference does not need to embrace all the departments of medical science,— anatomy, physiology, pathology, etc.— but the department relating to treatment, or therapeutics only. It is requisite for us to know and appreciate the mental conception upon which the °art of heal ing* was established prior to the advent of homoeopathy as a system of medical practice.
The earliest efforts of men to alleviate the sufferings caused by illness and mechanical in jury were chiefly instinctive. Water, moist earth, the fleshy portions of plants and other cooling substances were employed by men, as well as by the lower animals, to mitigate the pairs, heat and discomfort of local inflammation; and other simple expedients were instinctively re sorted to for various disordered conditions. In time the number and variety of known reme dial agents, as well as the diseases for which they were used, must have been rapidly ex tended by experience. And thus began the `empirical method" of treatment — the natural second step in the progress of medicine. In efficient as were these modes of treatment, they were far more rational than most of those that occupy the pages of medical history for many succeeding centuries. These later methods were based, not on observation and experience, but upon pure assumptions having, as John Stuart Mill expresses it, "no limitations other than those of the imagination.* (The construction of medical theories, or philosophical explana tions of observed facts, was a still later de velopment). Among the large number of these ancient hypotheses are the following: (1) That disease is a punishment sent by some malevo lent deity; (2) that it is due to the influence of a comet, a planetary conjunction, an earth quake or some other celestial or terrestrial phenomenon; (3) that it is caused by ab normal preponderance of some one of the four elements (fire, air, earth and water) of which the human body was said to be composed;(4) that it originates in a disturbance of the bodily states of heat, coldness, moisture and dryness; (5) that it arises from disproportion in the four humors which supply the organism — blood mucus, black bile and yellow bile; (6) i that it is produced by a materia peccans, or offending matter, which must needs be ex pelled; (7) that the body contains multitudes of "invisible pores" through which circulate infinitesimally minute atoms or corpuscles, and that disease has its cause in obstruction or re laxation of these pores; (8) that disease is based upon three possible states of the organ ism —°stuctum,* alaxum* or "mixtum"— which must be treated with laxatives, astringents or a combination of both, as might be needed, etc.
All these hypotheses, and many others, arose prior to the close of the 2d century A.D. Their absurdity is not more grotesque than that other hypothesis which underlies each and all of them, namely, that a knowledge of the cause or nature of disease necessarily indicates the means and method of its cure; a view not held at present by any homoeopathic or other scien tific physician. The period between the 2d century and the 15th presents little record of therapeutic art; but with the invention of the printing press came a stronger impetus to all forms of research, medical included. Since that time increasing knowledge of anatomy, chemistry, bacteriology and physiology has led to the elaboration of therapeutic theories based upon certain facts relating to these natural sciences. The advances in anatomy had sug gested a mechanical basis for therapeutics ; pneu matics, friction of fluids in vessels, the diam eters, curvatures and angles of blood-vessels were brought forward to explain the phenomena of disease and to suggest measures for its cure. Physiology and chemistry brought out a re newal of the ancient doctrine of "four ele ments" and the substitution of the three ialchymistic symbols" represented by mercury. salt and sulphur, whose union is health and their separation disease. The author of this doctrine, Paracelsus, also ascribed to the "vital force" not only power, but also the intelligence, to resist disease and to provide for its cure. About the middle of the 18th century, or near the time at which the discovery of the general principle of similars was made, physiological hypotheses became largely identified with thera peutics; and the same might be said of chemical theories. Health and disease were the results of a contention between the acids and the al kalis. Haller held to the view that disease was due to change in the "irritability" of the tissues. Cullen revived an old doctrine that disease was caused by "spasm" and °atoll? and required to be treated in accordance with that view. Brown, the rival of Cullen, con cluded that diseases were either ustheruc* or "asthenic," and required asthenic, or sthenic medication, as the case might be. Before the close of the 18th centurry the medical profes sion had acquired knowledge of a number of drugs possessed of "specific * properties for the cure of particular diseased conditions; among them were Peruvian bark for intermittent and other malarial fevers, mercury for syphilitic diseases, sulphur for itch, etc. These specifics exerted their curative effects by virtue of prop erties not at all understood at that time, and but imperfectly known a century later. 'these specific cures were limited to comparatively few diseases. For the treatment of the conditions with which the medical practitioner is contend ing daily which constitutes almost his entire duty, he depended on nothing but fallacious assumptions and hypotheses. Such was the condition of the medical art at the time Hahne mann began his independent researches in ther apeutics.