Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

1809.
In 1809, in Portugal during the Peninsular War at the hospital at
Elvas, army surgeon Hamilton and two colleagues made an
experiment;
‘It had been so arranged, that this number was admitted,
alternately, in such a manner that each of us had one third of the
whole. The sick were indiscriminately received, and were attended
as nearly as possible with the same care and accommodated with
the same comforts. One third of the whole were soldiers of the 61st
Regiment, the remainder of my own (the 42nd) Regiment. Neither Mr
Anderson nor I ever once employed the lancet. He lost two, I four
cases; whilst out of the other third [treated with bloodletting by the
third surgeon] thirty five patients died.’ (Hamilton, 1816; Milne and
Chalmers, 2002).
1810 Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), the originator of homoeopathy,
provided the adverse effects of drugs in healthy persons to support
his theory that ‘similia similibus curantur’ ‘like cures like’. Since they
were healthy they were probably victims of accidental poisoning,
although one cannot rule out early experiments in clinical
pharmacology. The problem with accidental poisoning is the difficulty
in establishing which herb was the cause. There is evidence to
suggest that some of the symptoms that Hahnemann ascribes to
Hyoscyamus were probably due to some other herb. The old
mnemonic ‘Red as a beet, dry as a bone, blind as a bat, mad as a
hatter (or wet hen), and hot as hare (origin unknown)’ for the adverse
effects of henbane or belladonna suggests that the symptoms:
contracted pupils, paleness of face, ptyalism, great collection of
saliva, cold feet, chilliness and shivering all over for half an hour,
long-continued chilliness were due to another herb.
Hyoscyamus Niger: quoting from 42 ‘old-school authorities’ or
sources gives 582 reports of symptoms.
Hellebore Niger: 12 sources and 288 reports of symptoms
Mercury: 31 sources and 1450 reports of symptoms
Most of the sources were German and not easily obtainable.
In ‘The Organon de l’art de Guérir’ [The system of principles for
philosophic or scientific investigations; an instrument for acquiring
knowledge of the art of curing] (1824) he says concerning proving
drugs that the size of the dose must be such that of normal practice
or customary for the prescriber in his recipes (In ‘Materia Medica
Pura’ he uses the phrase: ‘The smallest possible quantity of