CLARKE JH, Homoeopathy Explained - Classical Homeopathy Online

In this connection I may refer to Darwin’s researches with the fly-catching plant,
Drosera, or Sun-dew. Darwin found that solutions of certain salts of ammonia stimulated
the glands of the tentacles and caused the latter to turn inwards. He made this solution
more and more dilute, but still the plant was able to detect the presence of the salt.
Darwin was almost frightened by his results. Writing to Donders he says :
“The 1 - 4,000,000th of a grain absorbed by a gland clearly makes the tentacle which
bears the gland become inflected; and I am fully convinced that 1 - 20,000,000th of a
grain of the crystallised salt (i.e. , containing about one-third of its weight of water of
crystallisation) does the same. Now I am quite unhappy at the thought of having to
publish such a statement.” 1
Poor Darwin! Where would homoeopathy have been if Hahnemann had been so different
about publishing proved but unpalatable facts? And Darwin, it should be remembered,
was once under the care of a homoeopath, the late Dr. Gully, the father of the present
Speaker of the House of Commons, and derived much benefit from his treatment.
The world is moving rapidly, and since the above-named observations on the power of
the infinitesimal were made, they have been eclipsed and illuminated by the astounding
discoveries in relation to radio-activity. These were well summed up by Dr. Burford in
his address as President of the British Homoeopathic Congress of 1904. Dr. Burford’s
authority is the well-known work on Radium by Professor Rutherford, who has shown
that “these radio-active bodies are continually forming in their own interstices a product,
which in the case of radium is many thousand times more active than radium itself;
which, moreover, induces the same radio-activity in all bodies exposed for some time to
it, and which, to the extent of 1/20000th of its original potency, remains a new and
permanent property of the acquiring body. These processes are above and beyond the
cognisance and scope of the most refined chemical methods. Here is a demonstration : A
tube out of which a perfectly invisible emanation from radium, and possessing absolutely
no weight, has been emptied, is next washed out with an acid; this is evaporated, leaving
a radio-active residue more potent in some respects than radium itself, requiring 200
years to decay to half value. Moreover, in rooms where radium has been exposed to the
air, an invisible radio-activity, perfectly undetectable by the balance or the spectroscope,
is produced on the walls of the apartment, persisting even though the radium has been
removed for some time.”
“Now”, says Dr. Burford, “facts parallel to these, but where the human body, in certain
defined states of disease, acted with similar susceptibility to the electroscope in the
former instance, were observed by Hahnemann a century ago, and have been confirmed
by innumerable observations since. That matter too attenuated to be obvious to the test of
the balance, or of chemical reaction, or of spectroscopic analysis should yet be detected
by a suitably sensitive instrument, that of diseased protoplasmic condition; that initiation
of new conditions may be effected in a responsive state by inconsiderable material
agencies, and bearing absolutely no relation in point of quantity to the effects produced;
that transmission of specific qualities through a series of indifferent media may be
effected, leaving the ultimate product still potent to act; that media thus used for
transmission retain permanently their new character; and that a specific and definite
parallelism controls the interaction of remedy and organisms – these facts, I say been
known to homoeopaths since Hahnemann, and may be verified by any competent
observer who cares to take the trouble.”