02/14/2025
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, epidemics of diphtheria typically carried a mortality rate between 30 and 50 percent. It was the leading cause of death in children during the first part of the twentieth century.
This children’s disease was characterized by a severe sore throat and often the formation of a membrane across the larynx that caused suffocation. Several children in the same family often died in the course of an epidemic.
In the winter of 1860, during an epidemic of malignant diphtheria, Drs. Adolph Lippe, Constantine Hering, and Gustavus Reichhelm treated close to 300 cases of diphtheria without a single loss, while the fatality under allopathic treatment was more than 50 percent.
After the epidemic, on June 7, 1860, Dr. Hering reported before the American Institute of Homœopathy, “The epidemic diphtheria commenced in Philadelphia, December last, and increases slowly in number and violence during the following three months, and I have not seen any more during the last six weeks...I have had during this time about 50 to 60 cases with marked symptoms of diphtheria, in one case, I succeeded in obtaining the membrane for microscopic examination, which I add herewith. I had about the same number of light cases.
All recovered within seven days, except a few of so called scrofulous diathesis, which required more time. The time it took to effect a cure, I consider one of the most important items in statistic tables, as I remember that since I have learned to give doses higher and higher, the duration of acute cases has been shortened. … Every single dose of any of the medicines, even in the worst cases, I allowed about 24 hours to act before I decided to make a change. The lowest potency given was the 200 Jenichen. Generally I used them higher, giving always in every repetition a higher degree.” In 1865, Dr. Lippe added, “Since 1860, many a time and oft have the two surviving physicians [Hering and Lippe] … prescribed for the dreaded disease with the same happy results under the guidance of the Hahnemannian light.”