Hahnemann possessed unusual linguistic at tainments, which gave him access to the pub lications not only of Germany, but of Eng land, France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Greece and Arabia. Not only was he a scholar in the field of letters, but he was also a practical expert in chemistry, pharmacy and industrial technology. He made many discoveries in in dustrial chemistry and introduced scores of im provements in the details of manufacturing chemical products. At the period of his ear liest responsible connection with medicine "there was," says Rapou, "complete anarchy in the domain of therapeutics." Hahnemann, unwill ing to trust the lives of his patients to the tender mercies of this conglomeration of as sumptions, adopted the use . of the class of remedies known as specifics, whose effects were easily ascertainable, though their modus oper andi was altogether unknown. Homceopathy was not an invention, like some of the "sys tems" of medicine that preceded it; neither was it a sudden discovery. It was an evolution, its development extending over the time from 1790 to 1835, a period of 45 years. The earlier portion of the process is described by Brad ford, who in speaking of its beginning says: nA'e now come to the translation of a very im portant book (Cullen's (Materia from which must be dated the discovery of the Law of Similars. He was translating for the book sellers and publishers of Leipzig, and it is not likely that he selected the books which he was to translate. Dr. Cullen was an authority on the subject of the materia medica of his day. an experienced lecturer, a talented chemist and a brilliant and popular teacher in Edinburgh. Naturally, the Germans wished to learn of his new and peculiar theories regarding disease, as well as to obtain the use of his Medica,) which at this time was a standard work.
• "Hahnemann was the most accomplished translator of medical works of the time, and what more natural than that the task should be given to him. Cullen published the first edition of this book, in London, in 1773. Another edi tion was issued in 1789, in two volumes, and it was this edition that Hahnemann used in his translation. In this book, Volume II, Cullen devotes about 20 pages to Cortex peristnany (Peruvian Bark), gives its therapeutical uses in the treatment of intermittent and remittent fevers, advises its use to prevent the chill, and gives minute directions for the safest period of the disease in which to use it. Hahnemann was impressed with the use of this drug, with which he, as a physician, had before been familiar. Something in the manner in which Cullen wrote decided Hahnemann to experi ment with it upon himself and to in what effect it would have upon a person an perfect health. The result of this experiment will be given in Hahnemann's own words. In the translation of William Cullen's 'Materia Med ics' (Leipzig 1790, page 108 of Vol. II), ap pears the following foot-note by Hahnemann: 'By combining the strongest bitters and the strongest astringents, one can obtain a com pound which, in small doses, possesses much more of both these properties than the bark, and yet no specific for fever will ever come of such a compound. This the author, (Cullen) ought to have accounted for. This perhaps will not
be so easily discovered for explaining to us their action in the absence of the Cinchona principle.
"'I took, by way of experiment, twice a clay, four drachms of good China. My feet, finger ends, etc., at first became cold; I grew languid and drowsy; then my heart began to palpitate and my pulse grew hard and small; intolerable anxiety; trembling (but without cold rigor); prostration throughout all my limbs; then pul sation in my head, redness of my cheeks, thirst, and in short, all those symptoms which are characteristic of intermittent fever, made their appearance, one after the other, yet without the peculiar, chilly, shivering rigor.
"'Briefly, even those symptoms which are of regular occurrence and especially characteristic — the stupidity of mind, the kind of rigidity in all the limbs, but above all, the numb, dis agreeable sensation which seems to have its seat in the periosteum, over every bone in the body — all these made their appearance. This paroxysm lasted two or three hours each time, and recurred if I repeated this dose, not other wise; I discontinued it and was in health." "The next note in the German translation is as follows: 'Had he (Cullen) found in bark traces of a power to excite an artificial antagonistic fever, he certainly would not have persisted so obstinately in his mode of ex planation.'" ('Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann' by T. L. Bradford, M.D., pp. 35-37).
These experiments seemed to show that Peruvian bark is capable of producing in the healthy human organism a series of symptoms quite closely resembling those of that peculiar form of fever which it is known to cure. In stead, however, of solving any questions in the mind of Hahnemann it only served to suggest several others. Does Peruvian bark then pro duce the same symptoms that it specifically cures? If so, is this power peculiar to Peru vian bark, or is it to be discovered in other drugs? And do all drugs possess the power to cause symptoms similar to those they cure? To obtain light upon these questions occupied his efforts during the six years between the translation of Cullen's 'Materia Medica' and the publication of the 'Essay' above mentioned. To quote from a writer in the British Homxo pathsc World (1875, p. 234) : "Drug after drug, specific after specific, was tested on himself and on healthy friends with one unvarying result— each remedy of recognized specific power ex cited a spurious disease resembling that for which it was considered specific. But many more symptoms than those diagnostic of any one disease resulted from almost every medicine, and aroused a hope in the experimenter's mind of specifically treating a greater number of dis eases than had ever been so treated before. Besides discovering many valuable phenomena undreamt of, he verified his discoveries and observations by ransacking the volumes of re corded experiments in materia medica and the whole history of poisoning.° The members of his family and his personal and professional friends aided iii the work of experimentation, and tests of each medicine were made with different doses, and on many different persons, all the work being conducted under his own supervision.