Organon of Medicine
By Dr Samuel Hahnemann , Paris, February, 1842Translated by R. E. Dudgeon March 1893 5th Ed
Sixth Edition by Dr William Boericke Boston, September 1921
Some small edits by G.White,( g ), Brisbane, Dec.1999 - Mullumbimby 2004
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The physician's high and only mission is to
restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.1
1. His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by interweaving speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essential nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases originate in the invisible interior of the organism, (whereon so many physicians have hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time); nor is it to attempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract modes of expression, which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant - whilst sick humanity sighs in vain for aid. Of such learned reveries (to which we the name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who call themselves physicians should at length cease to deceive suffering mankind with mere talk, and to start acting instead, for once, that is, to really to help and cure.
The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principle.
If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease ( knowledge of disease, indication ), if he clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine ( knowledge of medical powers ), and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient, so that the recovery must ensue - to adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him ( choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated ), as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose ), and the proper period for repeating the dose: - if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent: then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing art .
He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.
5 Basic Postulates
Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the particulars of the most probable exciting cause of the acute disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its fundamental cause, which is generally due to a chronic miasm. In these investigations, the ascertainable physical constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function, etc., are to be taken into consideration.
The unprejudiced observer - well aware of the
futility of transcendental speculations which can receive no
confirmation from experience - be his powers of penetration ever so
great, takes note of nothing in every individual disease, except
the changes in the health of the body and of the mind ( morbid
phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived
externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices
only the deviations from the former healthy state of the now diseased
individual, which are felt by the patient himself,
remarked by those around him and observed by the physician. All these
perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent,
that is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait
of the diease.1
1. * I know not , therefore,how it was possible for physicians at the sickbed to allow themselves to suppose that, without most carefully attending to the symptoms and being guided by them in the treatment, they ought to seek and could discover, only in the hidden and unknown interior, what there was to be cured in the disease, arrogantly and ludicrously pretending that they could, without paying much attention to the symptoms, discover the alteration that had occurred in the invisible interior, and set it to rights with (unknown!) medicines, and that such a procedure as this could alone be called radical and rational treatment.
Is not then, that which is cognizable by the
senses in disease though the phenomena it displays,
the disease itself in the eyes of the physician, since he never can see
the spiritual being that produces the disease, the vital
force? Nor is it necessary that he should see it , but only
that he should ascertain its morbid actions, in order
that he may thereby be enabled to cure the disease. What else
will the
old school search for in the hidden interior to the organism, as a
prima causa morbi, whilst
they reject as a object of cure and contemptuously despise the
sensible and manifest representation to the disease the symptoms,
that so plainly address themselves to us? What else
do they wish to cure in diseases, but these? ** The
physician whose researches are directed towards the hidden relations in
the interior of the organism, may daily err; but the homoeopathist who
grasps with requisite
carefulness the whole group of symptoms, possesses a sure guide; and if
he succeeds in removing the whole group of symptoms he has likewise
most assuredly destroyed the internal, hidden cause of the
disease" (Rau, op. cit., p. 103 )**
** This sub foot note is entirely omitted in
the Sixth Edition.
7 Basic Postulates, totality of symptoms
Now in a disease, from which no manifest exciting or
maintaining cause ( causa occasionalis ) has to be removed,1
we can
perceive nothing but the morbid symptoms. Therefore it must
(regard being had to
the possibility of a miasm, and attention being paid to the accessory
circumstances,(5) be the symptoms alone, which the
disease
demands and
points to the remedy suited to relieve it. And, moreover,
the totality of these its symptoms, of this outwardly
reflected picture of the internal essence of the disease, that
is, of the affection of the vital force, which must be the
principal, or
the sole means, whereby the disease can make known what remedy it
requires. This is the only thing that can determine the
choice of the most appropriate remedy, and thus, in a word, the
totality 2 of the symptoms must be the principal,
indeed the only
thing the physician has to take note of in every case of disease
and to remove by means of his art, in order that it shall
be cured and transformed into health.
1. It is not necessary to say that every intelligent physician would first remove this where it exists; the indisposition thereupon generally ceases spontaneously. He will remove from the room strong-smelling flowers, which have a tendency to cause syncope and hysterical sufferings; extract from the cornea the foreign body that excites inflammation of the eye; loosen the over tight bandage on a wounded limb that threatens to cause mortification, and apply a more suitable one; lay bare and put a ligature on the wounded artery that produces fainting; endeavour to promote the expulsion by vomiting of belladonna berries, &c., that may have been swallowed; extract foreign substances that may have got into the orifices of the body ( the nose , gullet, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina ); crush the vesical calculus; open the anus of the imperforate anus of the new born infant, & c.
2. In all times, the old school physicians, not knowing how else to give relief, have sought to combat and if possible to suppress by medicines, here and there, a single symptom from among a number in diseases--a one-sided procedure, which, under the name of symptomatic treatment, has justly excited universal contempt, because by it, not only was nothing gained, by much harm was inflicted. A single one of the symptoms present, is no more the disease itself, than a single foot is the man himself. This procedure was so much the more reprehensible, that such a single symptom was only treated by an antagonistic remedy (therefore only in an enantiopatic and palliative manner), whereby, after a slight alleviation, it was subsequently only rendered all the worse.
It is not conceivable, nor can it be proved by any experience
in the world, that, after removal of all the symptoms of the
disease and of the entire collection of the perceptible phenomena,
there should or could remain anything else besides
health, or that the morbid alteration in the interior could
remain uneradicated. 1
1. When a patient has been cured of his disease
by a
true physician, in such a manner that no trace of the disease, no
morbid symptom, remains, and all the signs of health have permanently
returned, how can anyone, without offering an insult to
common sense, affirm that in such an individual the whole bodily
disease still remains in the interior? And yet the chief of the old
school, Hufland , asserts this in the following words:" Homoeopathy
can remove the symptoms, but the disease remains."( Vide Homoopathie
,p 27,1,19 ). This he maintains partly from mortification at the
progress made by Homoeopathy to the benefit of mankind, partly
because he still holds thoroughly material notions respecting
disease, which he is still unable to regard as a state of being of the
organism wherein it is dynamically alerted by the morbidly deranged
vital force, as an altered state of health, but he views
the disease as a something material, which after the cure is
completed, may still remain lurking in some corner on the interior
of the body, in order some day during the most vigorous health, to
burst forth at its pleasure with its material presence! No wonder that
it could only produce a system of therapeutics,
which is only occupied with scouring out the
poor patient.
In the healthy condition of man, the spirit-like vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our indwelling, reason - gifted spirit can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purpose of our existence.
(Spirit;Geist in Gr = spirit not mind. See Sankaran 1991 p. 23 col 2)g.
10 The Concept of the Vital
Energy
The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no self - preservation, it derives all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital principle ) which animates the material organism in health and in disease.
In the Sixth Edition the word 'force' is replaced by 'principle'
11 The Concept of the Vital Energy
When a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual, self acting (automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by the dynamic 1 influence upon it, of a morbific agent inimical to life. It is only this vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the irregular processes, which we call disease. Because this power, is invisible, and only cognizable by it's effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician, i.e., by morbid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known.2
1. Matera peccans!
2. A long foot note appears in the Sixth Edition, as
follows:
[What is dymanic influence, --dynamic power?
Our earth, by virtue of a hidden invisiable energy, carries the moon
around her
in twenty-eight days and several hours, and the moon alternately, in
definite fixed hours (deducting certain
differences, which occur with the full and the new moon) raises our
nothern seas to flood tide and agian correspondingly lowers
them to ebb. Apparently this takes place not through material
agencies, nor through mechanical contrivances, such as are used for
products of human labor; and so we see numerous other events
about us as results of the action of one substance on another substance
without being able to reconize a sensible, connection
between cause and effect. Only the cultured, practised in
comparison and deduction, can form for himself a kind of supra-sensual
idea, sufficient to keep all that is material
or mechanical in his thoughts away from such
concepts. We call such effects dynamic, virtual, that is, such as
result from absoulte, specific, pure energy and action of the one
substance upon the other substance.
For instance, the dynamic effect of the
sick-making influences upon healthy man as well as the dynamic energy
of the medicines upon the principle of life, in the restoration of
health,
is nothing else than infection and so not in anyway material,
not in
any way mechical. Just as the energy of a
magnet attracting a peice of iron or steel is not material, not
mechanical. One sees that the piece of iron is attracted by one
pole of the magnet, but how it is done is not seen. This
invisible energy
of the magnet does not require mechanical (material) auxiliary means,
hook or leaver, to attract the iron. The magnet draws to itself
and upon the piece of iron or upon a steel needle by means of a purely
immaterial, invisible, conceptual, inherent energy, ie.,
dynamically, and communicates to the steel needle the magnetic
energy equally invisibly (dynamically). The steel needle
magnetises other steel needles with the same
magnetic property, (dynamically), with which it had been endowed
previously by the magnetic rod, just as a child with smallpox or
measles, communicates to a near, untouched healthy child in
an invisible manner (dynamically) the small-pox or measles, that is,
it infects at a distance without anything material from the
infective child going or capable of going to the one to be infected. A
purely specific, spirit-like influence communicates to the near
child smallpox or measles, in the same way as the magnet communicated
to the near needle the magnetic property.
In a similar way, the effect of
medicines upon living man is to be juged. Substances, which are
used as medicines, are medicines only in so far as they possess each
its own specific energy to alter the well-being of man through
dynamic conceptual influence, by means of the living sensory
fibre, upon the conceptual controling principle of life. The
medicinal
property of those material substance which we call medicines proper,
relates only to their energy to call out alterations in the well being
of animal
life. Only upon on this conceptual pronciple of life, depends
their
medicinal health-altering, conceptual (dynamic) influence. Just
as the
nearness of a magnetic pole can communicate only magnetic energy to the
steel (namely, by a kind of infection) but cannot communicate
other properties (for instance, more hardness or ductility,
etc), thus every special medicinal substance alters through a
kind of infection, that well-being of man, in a
peculiar manner exclusively its own and not in a
manner peculiar to another medicine as certainly as the nearness of the
child ill with small-pox will communicate to a healthy child only
small-pox and not measles. These medicines act
upon our well-being wholly without communication of material parts of
the medicinal substancees, thus dynamically , as if
through infection.
Far more healing energy is expressed in a case in
point by the smallest dose of the best dynamised
medicines, in which there can be, according to calculation, only so
little of material substance that its minuteness connot be
thought of or conceived by the best arithmetical mind, than by
large doses of the same medicines in substance. That smallest
dose can there-for contain, almost entirely, only the pure,
freely developed, conceptual medicinal energy, and brings about only
dynamiclally such great effects which can never be
reached by the crude medicinal substance itself taken in
large doses.
It is not the corporeal atoms of these highly dynamized medicines, nor their physical or mathemtical sufraces (with which the higher energies of the dynamized medicines are being interpreted but vainly, as still sufficiently material) that the medicinal energy is found. More likely, there lies invisible in the moistened globule of in its solution, an unveiled, liberated, specific, medicinal force contained in the medicinal substance which acts dynamically by contact with the living animal fibre upon the whole organism ( without communicating to it anything material however highly attenuated) and acts more strongly the more free and more immaterial the energy has become through the dynamization.
Is it the so utterly impossible for our age celebrated for its wealth in clear thinkers to think of dynamic energy as something non-corporeal, since we see daily phenomena which cannot be explained in any other manner? If one looks upon something nauseaus and becomes inclined to vommit, did a material emetic come into his stomach, which compels him to this anti-peritaltic movement? Was it not solely the dynamic effect of the nauseating aspect upon his imagination? And if one raises his arm, does it occur through a material visable instrument? a lever? Is it not solely the conceptual dynamic energy of his will which raises it?]
12 The Concept of the Vital Energy
It is the morbidly affected vital energy* alone that produces diseases. 1 The morbid phenomena perceptible to our senses, expresses all the internal changes, that is to say, the whole morbid derangement of the internal dynamis. In effect, they reveal the whole disease. Consequently, the disappearance under treatment of all the morbid phenomena and of all the morbid alterations, that differ from the healthy vital operations, certainly indicates and necessarily implies the restoration of the integrity of the vital force and, therefore, the recovered health of the whole organism.
*In the Sixth
Edition
the word 'force' is replaced by 'energy'.
1. How the force causes the ognism to display morbid phenomena, that is, how it produces disease, would be of no practical utiliy for the physcian to know, and therefore it will forever remain concealed from him. Only what it is necessary for him to know of the disease and what is fully sufficient for enabling him to cure it, has the Lord of life revealed to his senses.
13 The Concept of the Vital Energy
Therefore disease ( that does not come within the province of manual surgery) considered as it is by the allopathists as a thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and its animating vital force, and hidden in the interior, be it ever so subtle a character, is an absurdity, which could only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, has for thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mischievous (non - healing) art.
14 The Concept of the Vital Energy
There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is curable and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable, which does not make itself known to the accurately observing physicians by means of morbid signs and symptoms - an arrangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of human life.
15 The Concept of the Vital Energy
The affection of the morbidly deranged, spirit - like dynamis (vital force) that animates our body in the invisible interior, and the totality of the outwardly cognizable symptoms produced by it in the organism and representing the existing malady, constitute a whole; they are one and the same. The organism is indeed the material instrument of the life, but it is not conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and regulating vital force ['regulating dynamis' in the Sixth Edition] (just as the vital force is not conceivable without the organism), consequently the two together constitute a unity, although in thought, our mind separates this unity into two distinct conceptions for the sake of ['easy comprehension. ' in the Sixth Edition] facilitating the comprehension of it.
16 The Concept of the Vital Energy
Our vital force, as a spirit like dynamis, cannot be attacked and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the harmonious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic) way, and in like manner, all such morbid disorganisation (diseases) cannot be removed from it by the physician in any way other than by the spirit-like (dynamic,* virtual) alterative powers of the serviceable medicines acting upon our spirit-like vital force, which perceives them through the medium of the sentient faculty of the nerves everywhere present in the organism, so that it is only by their dynamic action on the vital force that remedies are able to re-establish and do actually re-establish health and vital harmony, after the changes in the health of the patient cognizable by our senses (the totality of the symptoms) have revealed the disease to the carefully observing and investigating physician as fully as was requisite in order to enable him to cure it.
* One short foot note appears in the Sixth
Edition
as follows.
[Most severe disease mybe produced by suficient
disturbance of the vital force through the imagination and
also cured by the same means.]
17 The Concept of the Vital Energy
Now, since in the cure effected by the removal of the whole of the perceptible signs and symptoms of the disease, the internal alteration of the vital principle*, to which the disease is due - consequently the whole of the disease -, is at the same time removed,1 it follows that the physician has only to remove the whole of the symptoms in order, at the same time, to abrogate and annihilate the internal change, that is to say, the morbid derangement of the vital force - consequently the totality of the disease, the disease itself . 2 And when the disease is annihilated the health is restored, and this is the highest, the sole aim of the physician who knows the true object of his mission, which consists not in learned sounding prating, but in giving aid to the sick
* In the Sixth edition the word
'force' is repleced by 'principle'.
1. A warning dream, a superstitious fancy, or a
solemn prediction that death would occur at a certain day or at a
certain hour, has not infrequently produced all the signs of
commencing and increasing disease, of a approaching death and death
itself at the hour announced, which could not happen without the
simultaneous production of the inward change (corresponding to
the state observed externally); and hence in such case the marbid
signs indicative of approaching death have
frequently been dissipated by an identical cause, by some cunning
decption or persuasion to a belief in the
contrary, and health suddenly restored, which could not have happened
without the removal, by means of this moral remedy, to the internal and
external morbid change that threatened death.
2. It is only thus that God, the Presever
of mankind, could reveal His wisdom and goodness in reference to the
cure of the diseases ot which man is liable here
below, by showing to the physician what he had to remove in disease in
orderto annihilate them and thus re-establish health . By
what would we think of His wisdom and goodness if
He had shrouded in mysterious obscurity that which was to be cured in
disases ( as is asserted by the dominant school
of medicine, which affects to posses a supernatural insight into the
inner nature of things), and shut it up in
the hidden interior, and thus renderded it impossible
for man to know the malady accurately, and consequnetly
impossible for him to cure it?
18 The Concept of the Vital Force
From this indubitable truth, that besides the totality of the
symptoms and conditions, nothing can by any means be discovered in
disease wherewith they could express their need of aid, it follows
undeniably that the
sum of all the symptoms* with consideration of the accompanying
modalities, ( 5
) in each individual case of disease must be the sole indication, the
sole guide to direct us in the choice of a remedy.
Now, as diseases are nothing more than alterations in the state of health of the healthy individual, which express themselves by morbid signs, and the cure is also only possible by a change to the healthy condition of the state of health of the diseased individual , it is very evident that medicines could never cure disease if they did not possess the power of altering man's state of health, which depends on sensations and functions. Indeed, that their curative power must be owing solely to this power they possess of altering man's state of health.
This spirit-like power to alter man's state of health
(and hence to cure diseases) which lies hidden in the inner nature of
medicines can in itself* never be discovered
by us by a mere effort of reason; it is only by
experience of the phenomena it displays when acting on the
state of health of man that we can become clearly cognizant
of it.
[*in the Sixth Edition]
21 Medicines
Now, as it is undeniable that the curative principle in medicines is not in itself perceptible, and as in pure experiments with medicines conducted by the most accurate observers, nothing can be observed that can constitute them medicines or remedies except that power of causing distinct alterations in the state of health of the human body, and in particular that of the healthy individual, and of exciting in him various definite morbid symptoms. So it follows that when medicines act as remedies, they can only bring their curative property into play by means of this their power of altering man's state of health by the production of peculiar symptoms; and that, therefore, we have only to rely on the morbid phenomena, which the medicines produce in the healthy body as the sole possible revelation of their indwelling curative power, in order to learn what disease-producing power, and at the same time what disease-curing power, each individual medicine possesses.
But as nothing is to be observed in diseases that must be removed in order to change them into health besides the totality of their signs and symptoms, and likewise medicines can show nothing curative besides their tendency to produce morbid symptoms in healthy persons and to remove them in diseased persons; it follows, on the one hand, that medicines only become remedies and capable of annihilating disease, because the medicinal substance, by exciting certain effects and symptoms, that is to say, by producing a certain artificial morbid state, removes and abrogates the symptoms already present, to wit, the natural morbid state we wish to cure. On the other hand, it follows that, for the totality of the symptoms of the disease to be cured, a medicine must be sought, which ( according as experience shall prove, whether the morbid symptoms are most readily, certainly, and permanently removed and changed into health by similar or opposite medicinal symptoms 1 ) has a tendency* to produce similar or opposite symptoms.
*['proved to have the greatest tendency' in the Sixth Edition ]
1. The other possible mode of employing medicines for diseases besides these two (the allopathic method), in which medicines are given, whose symptoms have no direct pathological relation to the morbid state, consequently are neither similar nor opposite, but quite heterogeneous to the symptoms of the disease,* is,as shown above, in the Indroduction (Review of the therapeutics, allopathy and palliative treatment that have hitherto been parcticed itn the old school of medicine),merely an imperfect and injurious imitation of the exremely imperfect efforts of the unintelligent, merely instinctive vital force, which, when made ill by noxious agents, strives to save itself at whatever sacrifice by the production and continuance of morbid irritation in the organism -- an imitation, consequently, of the crude vital force which was implanted in our organism in orger to preserve our life in health, in the most beautiful harmony;but when deranged by disease, was so constituted as to admit of being again changed to health (homoeopathically) by the intelligent physician, but not to cure itself, for which the little power it possesses is so far form being a pattern to be copied, that all the changesand symptoms it produces in the (morbidly deranged) organism are just the disease itself. Buy this injudiciouus system of therapeutics of the old school of medicine can no more be passed by unnoticed that can history omit to record the thousands of years of oppression to which mankind has been subjected under the irrational, despotic Governments.
*The remaining portion of this footnote has entirely been re-written in the Sixth Edition as follows:
[This proceedure plays, as I have shown eleswhere, an
irresponsible murderous game with the life of the patient by means of
dangerous, violent medicines, whose action is unknown and which are
chosen on mere conjuctures and given in large
and frequent doses.Again, by means of painful operations, intended
to lead the disease to other regions and taking
the strength and vital juices of the patient, through evacuations
above and below, sweat or salivation, but especially through
squandering the irreplaceable blood, as is done by the reigning routine
practice, used blindly and relentlessly, usually with the
pretext that the physician should imitate and further the sick
nature in its efforts to help itself, without considering how
irrational it is, to imitate and further these very imperfect, mostly
inappropriate efforts of the instinctive unintelligent vital energy
which is implanted in our organism, so long as it is healthy to carry
on life in harmonious development,, but not to heal itself in disease.
For, were it possessed of such a model
ability, it would never have allowed the oganism to get sick.
When made ill by noxions agents, our life principle cannnot do
anything else than expresss its depression caused by disturbance of the
regularity of its life, by symptoms, by means of which the
itelligent physician is asked for aid.If this is not given, it
strives to save by increasing the ailment, especially through
violent exacuation, no matter what this entails, often with the
largest sacrifices or destruction of life itself.
For purposes of cure, the morbidly depressed vital energy
possesses so little abilty worth of imitation, since all changes
and symptoms produced by it, in the organism, are the disease
itself. What intelligent physician would want to imitate it,
with the intention to heal, if he did not thereby sacrifice his
patient?]
All pure experience, however, and all accurate research convince us that persistent symptoms of disease are far from being removed and annihilated by opposite symptoms of medicines ( as in the antipathic, allopathic or palliative method ), that, on the contrary, after transient, apparent alleviation, they break forth again, only with increased intensity, and become manifestly aggravated (see 58-62 and 69 ).
There remains, therefore, no other mode of employing medicines in diseases that promises to be of service besides the homeopathic, by means of which we seek, for the totality of the symptoms of the case of disease, a medicine, which among all medicines (whose pathogenic effects are known from having been tested in healthy individuals) has the power and the tendency to produce an artificial morbid state, most similar to that of the case of disease in question.
25(a) The Principle of Similars
Now, however, in all careful trials, pure experience,1
the sole
and infallible oracle of the healing art, teaches us that a
medicine, which in its action on the healthy human body, has
demonstrated its power of producing the greatest number of
symptoms similar to those observable in the case of disease under
treatment, does also, in doses of suitable potency and attenuation,
rapidly, radically and permanently remove the totality of the symptoms
of this morbid state, that is to say ( 6 -
16 ), the whole disease present, and change it into health; and
that all medicines cure, without exception, those diseases
whose symptoms most nearly resemble their own, and leave none of them
uncured.
1. I do not mean the sort of experience of which the ordinary practitioners of the old school boast, after they have for years worked away with a lot of complex prescriptions on a number of diseases which they never carefully investigated, but which , faithuful to the tenets of their school , they considered as already described in works of systematic pathology,and dreamed that they could detect in them some other hypothetical internal abnormality.They always saw something in them, but knew not what they saw, and they got results, from the complex forces acting on an unknown object, that no human being by only a God could have unravelled--results from which nothing can be learned, no experienc gained. Fifty years experience of this sort, is like fifty years of looking into a kaleidoscope filled with unknown coloured objects, and perpetually turning round;thousands of ever-changing figures and no accounting for them!
26(a) The Principle of Similars
This depends on the following homeopathic law of nature,
which
was sometimes, vaguely surmised but not hitherto fully
recognized, and to which is due every real cure that has ever
taken place:
A weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished in the living
organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differing
in kind) is very similar to the former in its manifestations.1
1. Thus are cured both physical affections and moral maladies. How is it that in the early dawn, the brilliant Jupiter vanishes from the gaze of the beholder? By a stronger very similar power acting on his optic nerve, the brightness of approaching day! In situations replete with fetid odours, wherewith it is usual to soothe effectually the offended olfactory nerves? With snuff that affects the sense of smell in a similar but stronger manner! No music, no sugared cake, which acts on the nerves of other senses, can cure this olfactory disgust. How does the soldier cunningly stifle the piteous cries of him who runs the gauntlet from the ears of the compassionate bystanders? By the shrill notes of the fife commingled with the roll of the noisy drum! And the distant roar of the enemy's cannon that inspires his army with fear? By the loud boom of the big drum! For neither the one nor the other would the distribution of a brilliant piece of uniform nor a reprimand to the regiment suffice.
- In a like manner, mourning and sorrow will be effaced from the mind by the account of another and still greater cause for sorrow happening to another, even though it be a mere fiction. The injurious consequences of too great joy will be removed by drinking coffee, which produces an excessively joyous state of mind. Nations like the Germans, who have for centuries been gradually sinking deeper and deeper into soulless apathy and degrading serfdom, must first be trodden still deeper in the dust by the Western Conqueror, until their situation became intolerable; their mean opinion of themselves was thereby overstrained and removed; they again became alive to their dignity as men, and then, for the first time, they raised their heads as Germans.
27(a) The Principle of Similars
The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in strength ( 12 - 26 ), so that each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) in the most similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger than the disease.
As this natural law of cure manifests itself in every pure experiment and every true observation in the world, the fact is consequently established; it matters little what may be scientific explanation of how it takes place ; and I do not attach much importance to the attempts made to explain it. But the following view seems to commend itself as the most probable one, as it is founded on premises derived from experience.
As every disease (not strictly belonging to the domain of
surgery) depends only on a peculiar morbid derangement of our vital
force in sensations and functions, when a homeopathic cure of
the vital force deranged by natural disease is accomplished
by the administration of a medicinal agent selected on account of an
accurate similarity of symptoms, a somewhat
stronger, similar, artificial morbid affection is brought into contact
with and, as it were, pushed into the place of the
weaker, similar, natural morbid irritation, against which the
instinctive vital force, now merely (though in a
stronger degree) medicinally diseased, is then compelled to
direct an increased amount of energy, but, on account of the shorter
duration of the action1 of the medicinal agent that now
morbidly
affects it, the vital force soon overcomes this, and as it was in the
first instance relieved from the natural morbid affection, so it is
now at last freed from the substituted artificial (medicinal) one, and
hence is enable again to carry on healthily the vital operations of the
organism. This highly probable explanation of the process rests on the
following axioms.
1. In short duration of the action of the artificial morbific forces, which we term medcines, makes it possible that, although they are stronger than the natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the vital force than can the weaker natural diseases, which solely in consequence of the longer, generally lifelong, duration of their action (psora, syphilis, sycosis) can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone, until the physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent that produces a disease very similar, but stronger, to wit a homoeopathic medicine, which when taken (or smelt), is, as is were, forced upon the unintelligent, instinctive vital force, and substituted in the palce of the former natural morbid affection by which means the vital force then remains merely medicinally ill, but only for a short time, because the action of the medicine (the time in which the medicinal diseses excited by it runs its course) does not last long. The cures of disease of many years duration (46), by the occurence of smallpox and measles (both of which run a course of only a few weeks), are processes of a similar character.
29 How it Works, is entirely re - written in the Sixth Edition, as follows
[As every disease (not entirely surgical) consists only in a
special, morbid, dynamic alteration of our vital energy (of the
principle of life) manifested in sensation and motion, so in
every homeopathic cure this principle of life dynamically altered
by natural disease is seized through the administration of
medicinal potency selected exactly according to symptom -
similarity by a somewhat stronger, similar artificial disease -
manifestation. By this the feeling of the natural (weaker) dynamic
disease - manifestation ceases and disappears. This disease -
manifestation no longer exists for the principle of life which is
now occupied and governed merely by the stronger, artificial
disease - manifestation. This artificial disease - manifestation has
soon spent its force and leaves the patient free from disease,
cured. The dynamis, thus freed, can now continue to carry life on in
health. This most highly probable process rests upon the
following proposition.]
The human body appears to admit of being much more powerfully affected in its health by medicines (partly because we have the regulation of the dose in our own power) than by natural morbid stimuli - for natural diseases are cured and overcome by suitable medicines.*
*The same footnote as section 29 ( a) only omitting the portion 'which, when taken (or smelt)..... does not last long' is noted in the Sixth Edition.
The inimical forces, partly psychical, partly physical, to
which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed
morbific noxious agents, do not possess the power of morbidly
deranging the health of man unconditionally;1but we are made ill by
them only when our organism is sufficiently disposed and susceptible to
attack of the morbific cause that may be present, and
to be altered in its health, deranged and made to undergo
abnormal sensations and functions - hence they do not produce disease
in every one nor at all times.
1. When I call disease a derangement of man's
state
of health , I am far from wishing thereby to give a hyperphysical
explanation of the internal nature of diseases generally, or of any
case of disease in particular. It is only intended by this
expression to intimate, what it can be proved
diseases are not and cannot be, that they are not mechanical or
chemical alterations of the material substance of the body, and not
dependent on a material morbific substance, but that they are merely
spiritual dynamic derangement's of the life.
( We now know of course that chemical toxins do definitely
exist.g.)
But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific agents which we term medicines. Every real medicine, namely, acts at all times, under all circumstances, on every living human being, and produces in him its peculiar symptoms (distinctly perceptible, if the dose be large enough), so that evidently every living human organism is liable to be affected, and, as it were, inoculated with the medicinal disease at all times, and absolutely ( unconditionally ), which, as before said, is by no means the case with the natural diseases.
In accordance with this fact, it is undeniably shown by all experience 1 that the living organism is much more disposed and has a greater liability to be acted upon, and to have its health deranged by medicinal powers, than by morbific noxious agents and infectious miasms, or, in other words, that the morbific noxious agents possess a power of morbidly deranging man's health that is subordinate and conditional, often very conditional; whilst medicinal agents have an absolute unconditional power, greatly superior to the former.
1. A striking fact in corroboration of this is , that whislt previously to the year 1801, when the smooth scarlatina of Sydenham still occasionally prevailed epidemically among children, it attacked without exception all childern who had escaped it in a former epidemic; in a similar epidemic which I witnessed in Konigslutter, on the contrary, all the childern who took in time a very samll dose of belladonna remained unaffected by this highly infectious infantile disease. If medicines can protect from a disease that is raging around, they must possess a vastly superior power of affecting our vital force.
The greater strength of the artificial disease producable by medicines is, however, not the sole cause of their power to cure natural disease. In order that they may effect a cure, it is before all things requisite that they should be capable of producing in the human body an artificial disease as similar as possible to the disease to be cured [which, with somewhat increased power, transforms to a very similar morbid state the instinctive life principle, which in itself is incapable of any reflection or act of memory. It not only obscures, but extinguishes and thereby annihilates the derangement caused by the natural disease, in the Sixth Edition] in order, by means of this similarity, conjoined with its somewhat greater strength, to substitute themselves for the natural morbid affection, and thereby deprive the latter of all influence upon the vital force. This is no true, that no previously existing disease can be cured, even by Nature herself, by the accession of a new dissimilardisease, be it ever so strong, and just as little can it be cured by medical treatment with drugs which are incapable of producing asimilarmorbid condition in the healthy body.
In order to illustrate this, we shall consider in three different cases, what happens in nature when two dissimilar natural diseases meet in one person. Also to be considered are the results of the ordinary medical treatment of diseases with unsuitable allopathic drugs, which are incapable of producing an artificial morbid condition similar to the disease to be cured, whereby it will appear that even Nature herself is unable to remove a dissimilar disease already present, by one that is unhomoeopathic, even though it be stronger, and just as little is the unhomoeopathic employment of even the strongest medicines ever capable of curing any disease whatsoever. (edited by g )
I. If the two dissimilar diseases meeting together in the human being be of equal strength, or still more if the older one be the stronger, the new disease will be repelled by the old one from the body and not allowed to affect it. A patient suffering from a severe chronic disease will not be infected by a moderate autumnal dysentery or other epidemic disease. The plague of the Levant, according to Larry, does not break out where scurvy is prevalent, and persons suffering from eczema are not infected by it. Rachitis, Jenner alleges, prevents vaccination from taking effect. Those suffering from pulmonary consumption are not liable to be attacked by epidemic fevers of a not very violent character, according to Von Hildenbrand.
(Rachitis= inflamtion of the spine = Rickets.)
So, also under ordinary medical treatment, an old chronic disease remains uncured and unaltered if it is treated according to the common allopathic method, that is to say, with medicines that are incapable of producing in healthy individuals a state of health similar to the disease, even though the treatment should last for years and is of not too violent character. This is daily witnessed in practice and therefore it is unnecessary to give any illustrative examples.
II. Or the new dissimilar disease is the stronger . In this case the disease under which the patient originally laboured, being the weaker, will be kept back and suspended by the accession of the stronger one, until the latter shall have run its course or has been cured, and then the old one reappears uncured. Two children affected with a kind of epilepsy remained free from epileptic attacks after the infection with ringworm ( tinea ) but as soon as the eruption on the head was gone the epilepsy returned just as before, as Tulpius 1 observed.
The itch, as Schopf 2 saw, disappeared on the occurrence of the scurvy, but after the cure of the latter, it again broke out. So also, the pulmonary phthisis remained stationary when the patient was attacked by a violent typhus, but went on again after the latter had run its course.3
If mania occurs in a consumptive patient, the phthisis with all its symptoms is removed by the former; but if that go off, the phthisis returns immediately and proves fatal.4
When measles and smallpox are prevalent at the same time, and
both attack the same child, the measles that had already broken out
is generally checked by the smallpox that came somewhat later; nor
does the measles resume its course until after the cure of the
smallpox; but it not infrequently happens that the inoculated
with smallpox is suspended for four days by the supervention of
the measles, as observed by Manget.5 After the
desquamation of
measles, the smallpox completes its course. Even when the
inoculation of the smallpox had taken effect for six days, and the
measles then broke out, the inflammation of the inoculation
remained stationary and the smallpox did not ensue until the
measles had completed its regular course of seven days.6
In an epidemic of measles, that disease attacked many individuals on the fourth or fifth day after the inoculation with smallpox and prevented the development of the smallpox until it had completed its own course, whereupon the smallpox appeared and proceeded regularly to its termination.7
The true, smooth, erysipelatous - looking scarlatina of
Sydenham,8 with sore throat, was checked on the fourth day
by the
eruption of cow - pox, which ran its regular course, and not until
it was ended, did the scarlatina again establish itself. On
another
occasion, as both diseases seem to be of equal
strength, the cow - pox was suspended on the eighth day by the
supervention of the true, smooth scarlatina of Sydenham, and the
red areola of the former disappeared until the scarlatina was
gone, wherein the cow - pox immediately resumed its course, and
went on its regular termination.9 The measles suspended the
cow
- pox; on the eighth day, when the cow - pox had nearly
attained its climax. Then the measles broke outand the cow - pox now
remained stationary, and did not resume and complete its
course until the desquamation of the measles had taken place,
so that on the sixteenth day it presented the appearance it would
otherwisehave shown on the tenth day. As Kortum observed.10
Even after the measles had broken out the cow - pox inoculation took
effect, but did not run its course until these measles had
disappeared, as Kortum likewise witnessed.11
I myself saw the mumps ( angina parotidea ) immediately disappear
when the cow - pox inoculation had taken effect and had nearly attained
its height; it was not until the complete termination of
the cow - pox and the disappearance of its red areola, that this
febrile tumefaction of the parotid and submaxillary glands, which is
caused by a peculiar miasm, reappeared and ran its regular course of
seven days.
And thus it is with all dissimilar disease; the stronger suspends the
weaker (when they do not complicate one another, which is seldom the
case with acute disease), but they never cure one another.
1 Obs., lib i, obs. 8
2 In Hufeland's Journal, xv, 2
3 Chevalier, in Hufelands's Nuesten Annalen der franzosichen
Heilkunde, ii . pa. 192.
4 Mania phthisi superveniens eam cum onnibus suis phoenomenis
auffert, verum nox redit phithisis et occitit, abeunte
mania. Reil Menorab., fsac. iii, v, p. 171.
5 In the Einb. Med. Comment., pt. i.
6 John Hunter, On the Venereal Disease, p.5
7 Rainey, in the Edinb. Med.comment., iii, p. 480
8 Very accurately described by Withering and Plenciz, but differing
greatly from the purpura (or Roodvonk),
which is often erroneously denominated scarlet fever.It is only of
late years that the two, which were originally very
differentdiseases. have come to resemble each other in their
symptoms.
9 Jenner, in Medicinische Annalen, August, 1800, p. 747
10 In Hufeland's Journal der praktischen Arzeneikunde, xx, 3,
p. 50.
11 Loc, cit. (in the same place as 10)
Now the adherents of the ordinary school of medicine saw all this for so many centuries. They saw that Nature herself cannot cure any disease by the accession of another, be it ever so strong, if the new disease is dissimilar to that already present in the body. What shall we think of them, that they nevertheless went on treating chronic disease with allopathic remedies, namely, with medicines and prescriptions capable of producing God knows what morbid state, -- almost invariably, however, one dissimilar to the disease to be cured? And even though physicians did not hitherto observe nature attentively, the miserable results of their treatment should have taught them that they were pursuing an inappropriate, a false path. Did they not perceive when they employed, as was their custom, aggressive allopathic treatment in a chronic disease, that they thereby only created an artificial disease dissimilar to the original one? This dissimilar artificial disease, as long as it was kept up, merely held in abeyance, merely suppressed, merely suspended the original disease, which latter, however, always returned, and must return, as soon as the diminished strength of the patient no longer admitted of a continuance of the allopathic attacks on the life?
Thus the itch exanthema certainly disappears very soon from the skin, under the employment of violent purgatives, frequently repeated; but when the patient can no longer stand the artificial ( dissimilar ) disease of the bowels, and can no more take purgatives, then either the cutaneous eruption breaks out as before, or the internal psora displays itself in some bad symptom, and the patient, in addition to his undiminished original disease, has to endure the misery of a painful ruined digestion and impaired strength to boot.
So, also, when the ordinary physicians keeps up artificial ulceration's of the skin and issues on the exterior of the body, with the view of thereby eradicating a chronic disease, they can NEVER cure them by that means, as such artificial cutaneous ulcers are quite alien and allopathic to the internal affection; but inasmuch as the irritation produced by several tissues is at least sometimes a stronger ( dissimilar ) disease than the indwelling malady, the latter is thereby sometimes silenced and suspended for a week or two. But it is only suspended , and that for a very short time, while the patient's powers are gradually worn out.
Epilepsy, suppressed for many years by means of issues, invariably recurred, and in an aggravated form, when they were allowed to heal up, as Pechlin1 and others testify. But purgatives for itch, and issues for epilepsy, cannot be more heterogeneous, more dissimilar deranging agents - cannot be more allopathic, more exhausting modes of treatment - than are the customary prescriptions, composed of unknown ingredients, used in ordinary practice for the other nameless, innumerable forms of disease. These likewise do nothing but debilitate, and only suppress or suspend the malady for a short time without being able to cure it, and when used for a long time always add a new morbid state to the old disease.
1. Obs. phys. med., lib. ii. obs. 30.
(Issue= A suppurating sore maintained by a foreign body in
the tissue to act as a counter-irritant. g)
III. Or the new disease,
after having long acted on the
organism, at length joins the old
one that is dissimilar to it ,
and forms with it a complex
disease, so that each of them
occupies a particular locality in the organism, namely, the
organs peculiarly adapted for it, and, as it were, only the place
specially belonging to it, while it leaves the rest to the other
disease that is dissimilar to it.
Thus a syphilitic patient may become psoric, and vice versa. As two
diseases dissimilar to each other, they cannot remove, cannot cure
one another .
At first the venereal symptoms are kept in abeyance and suspended when
the psoric eruption begins to appear; in course of time, however (as
the syphilis is at least as strong as the psora), the two join
together,1 that is, each involves only those parts of the
organism, which are most adapted for it, and the patient is thereby
rendered more diseased and more difficult to cure.
When two dissimilar acute infectious diseases meet, such as, for example, smallpox and measles, the one usually suspends the other, as has been before observed; yet there have also been severe epidemics of this kind, where, in rare cases, two dissimilar acute diseases occurred simultaneously in one and the same body, and for a short time combined, as it were, with each other.
There was epidemic, in which smallpox and measles were prevalent
at the same time. Among three hundred cases (in which these
diseases avoided or suspended one another, and measles attacked
patients twenty days after the smallpox broke out, the smallpox,
however, from seventeen to eighteen days after the
appearance of the measles, so that the first disease had
previously completed its regular course) there was yet one single case
in which P. Russell2 met with both these dissimilar diseases
in one
person at the same time. Rainey3 witnessed the
simultaneous occurrence of smallpox and measles in two girls. J.
Maurice,4 in his whole practice, only observed two such
cases.
Similar cases are to be found in Ettmuller's5 works, and in
the
writings of a few others.
Zencker 6 saw cow - pox run its regular course along with
measles and
along with purpura.
The cow - pox went on its course undisturbed during a mercurial
treatment for syphilis, as Jenner saw.
1. From careful experiments and cures of
complex diseases of this kind, I am now firmly convinced, that no real
amalgamation of the two takes place, but
that in such cases the one exists in the organism besides the other
only, each in the parts that are adapted for it, and their cure will be
completely effected by a judicious alternation of the best
mercurial preparation, with the remedies specific for the psora, each
given in the most suitable dose and form.
2. Vide Transactions of a Society for the
Improvement of Med. and Chir. Knowledge, ii.
3. In Edinb Med. Comment., iii, p. 480.
4. In Med. and Phys. Journ., 1805.
5. Opera, ii p. i., cap. 10.
6. In Hufeland's Journal xvii.
Much more frequent than the natural diseases associating with and complicating one another, in the same body, are the morbid complications resulting from the art of the ordinary practitioner, which this inappropriate medical treatment (the allopathic method) is apt to produce, by the long - continued employment of unsuitable drugs. To the natural disease, which it is proposed to cure, there are then added, by the constant repetition of the unsuitable medical agent, the new and often very tedious, morbid conditions, ['corresponding to the nature of this agent' 6th Edition] which might be anticipated from the peculiar powers of that drug. These gradually coalesce with and complicate the chronic malady, which is dissimilar to them, (that they were unable to cure by similarity of action, that is, homeopathically) adding to the old disease a new, dissimilar, artificial malady of a chronic nature, and thus giving the patient a double in place of a single disease, that is to say, rendering him much worse and more difficult to cure, and often quite incurable. Many of the cases, for which is advice asked in medical journals, and in the records of other cases in medical writings, attest the truth of this.
Of a similar character, are the frequent cases, in which the venereal chancrous disease, complicated especially with psora, or with dyscrasia of condylomatous gonorrhea, is not cured by long continued or frequently repeated treatment, with large doses of unsuitable mercurial preparations, but assumes its place in the organism beside the chronic mercurial affection1 that has been in the meantime gradually developed, and thus along with it often forms a hideous monster of complicated disease (under the general name of masked venereal disease), which then, when not quite incurable, can only be transformed into health with the greatest difficulty.
1. For mercury, besides the morbid symptoms which by virtue of similarity can cure the venereal disease homoeopathically, has among its effects many other unlike those of syphilis, [for instance, swelling and uncerations of bones' in the Sixth Edition] which, if it be employed in large doses, cause new maladies and commit great ravages in the body, especially when complicated with psora, as is so frequently the case.
Nature herself permits, as has been stated, in some cases, the simultaneous occurrence of two (indeed, of three) natural disease in one and the same body. This complication, however, it must be remarked, happens only in the case of two dissimilar diseases, which according to the eternal laws of nature do not remove, do not annihilate and cannot cure one another, but, as it seems, both (or all three) remain, as it were, separate in the organism, and each takes possession of the parts and systems peculiarly appropriate to it, which, on account of the want of resemblance of these maladies to each other, can very well happen without disparagement to the unity of life.
Totally different, however, is the result when two similar diseases meet together in the organism, that is to say, when to the disease already present a stronger similar one is added. In such cases we see how a cure can be effected by the operations of nature, and we get a lesson as to how man ought to cure.
Two Similar diseases can neither (as is asserted of dissimilar
disease in I) repel one another,
nor ( as has
been shown of dissimilar disease in II ) suspend
one another, so that the
old one shall return after the new one has run its course; and just as
little can two similar
diseases (as has been demonstrated in III respecting dissimilar
affections) exist beside each other in the same organism, or together
form a double complex
disease.
No! Two diseases, differing it is true, in kind1 but
very
similar in their phenomena and effects, and in the sufferings and
symptoms they severally produce, invariably annihilate one another
whenever they meet together in the organism; the stronger
disease namely, annihilates the weaker, and that for this simple
reason, because the stronger morbific power when it invades the
system, by reason of its similarity of action involves
precisely the same parts of the organism that were previously affected
by the weaker morbid irritation, which, consequently, can no longer
act on these parts, but is extinguished, or (in other words),
the new similar but stronger morbific potency controls the
feelings of the patient and hence the life principle on account of
its peculiarity, can no longer feel the weaker similar which becomes
extinguished - exists no longer - for it was never anything material,
but a dynamic - spirit - like - (conceptual) affection. The life
principle henceforth is affected only and this but temporarily by
the new, similar but stronger morbific potency.
1. See above 26. note.
Many examples might be adduced of disease which, in the course
of nature, have been homeopathically cured by other diseases presenting
similar symptoms, were it not necessary, as our object
is to speak about something determinate and indubitable, to confine our
attention solely to those (few) disease which are invariably
the same, arise from a fixed miasm, and hence merit a distinct
id.
Among these the smallpox, so dreaded on account of the great number of
its serious symptoms, occupies a prominent position, and
it has removed and cured a number of maladies with similar
symptoms.
How frequently does smallpox produce violent ophthalmia, sometimes
even causing blindness! And see! By its inoculation Dezoteux1
cured
a chronic ophthalmia permanently, and Leroy2 another.
An amaurosis of two years' duration, consequent on suppressed
scald head, was perfectly cured by it, according to Klein.3
How often does smallpox cause deafness and dyspnea! And both these
chronic diseases it removed on reaching its acme, as J. Fr. Closs4
observed.
Swelling of the testicle, even of a very severe character, is a frequent symptom of smallpox, and on this account is was enabled, as Klein5 observed, to cure, by virtue of similarity, a large hard swelling of the left testicle, consequent on a bruise. And another observer 6 saw a similar swelling of the testicle cured by it.
Among the troublesome symptoms of smallpox is a dysenteric
state of the bowels; and it subdued, as Fr. Wendt 7
observed, a
case of dysentery, as a similar morbific agent.
Smallpox coming on after vaccination, as well on account of its greater strength as its great similarity, at once removes entirely the cow - pox homeopathically, and does not permit it to come to maturity; but, on the other hand, the cow - pox when near maturity does, on account of its great similarity, homeopathically diminish very much the supervening smallpox and make it much milder, as Muhry8 and many others testify.
The inoculated cow-pox, whose lymph, besides the protective matter,contains the contagion of a general cutaneous eruption of another nature,consisting of usually small, dry (rarely large, pustular) pimples, resting on a small red areola, frequently conjoined with round red cutaneous spots and often accompanied by the most violent itching, which rash appears in not a few children several days before , more frequently, however,afterthe red areola of the cow - pock, and goes off in a few days, leaving behind small, red, hard spots on the skin; - the inoculated cow - pox, I say, after it has taken, cures perfectly and permanently, in a homeopathic manner, by the similarity of this accessory miasm, analogous cutaneous eruptions of children, often of very long standing and of a very troublesome character, as a number of observers assert.9
The cow - pox, a peculiar symptom of which is to cause tumefaction
of the arm,10 cured, after it broke out, a swollen half -
paralyzed
arm. 11
The fever accompanying cow - pox, which occurs at the time of the
production of the red areola, cured homeopathically intermittent
fever in two individuals, as the younger Hardege12 reports,
confirming what J. Hunter13 had already observed, that two
fever
(similar disease) cannot co-exist in the same body.14
Themeaslesbear a strong resemblance in the character of its fever and cough to the whooping - cough, and hence it was that Bosquillon15 noticed, in an epidemic where both these affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles remained free from whooping - cough during that epidemic. They would all have been protected from, and rendered incapable of being infected by, the whooping cough in that and all subsequent epidemics, by the measles, if the whooping - cough were not a disease that has only a partial similarity to the measles, that is to say, if it had also a cutaneous eruption similar to what the latter possesses. As it is, however, the measles can but preserve a large number from whooping - cough homeopathically, and that only in the epidemic prevailing at the time.
If, however, themeaslescome in contact with a disease resembling it in its chief symptom, the eruption, it can indisputably remove, and effect a homeopathic cure of the latter. Thus a chronic herpetic eruption was entirely and permanently (homeopathically) cured16 by the breaking out of the measles, as Kortum17 observed. An excessively burning miliary rash on the face, neck, and arms, that had lasted six years, and was aggravated by every change of weather, on the invasion of measles assumed the form of a swelling of the surface of the skin; after the measles had run its course the exanthema was cured, and returned no more.18
1. Traite de linoculation. p. 189.
2. Heilkunde fur Mutter, p. 384.
3. Interpres Clinicus, p. 293.
4. Neue Heilart der Kinderpocken, Ulm, 1769. p.68; and Specim.,
obs. No 18.
5. Op. cit.
6. Nov. Act. Natu cur., vol. i. obs. 22
7. Nachricht von dem Krankeninstitut zu Exlangen, 1783
8. Wilian, Uber die Kuhpockenimpfung, aus dem Engl., mit
Zusatzen G.P. Muhry.
9. Especially Calvier, Hurel and Desmorneaux, in the Bulletin des
sciences medicales, publie' par les membres du comite
central dela Soc. de Medecine du Department de l' Eure, 1801; also in
the Journal de medecine contnue, vol. xv, p, 206.
10. Balhorn, in Hufeland's Journal, 10, ii.
11. Stevenson, in Duncan's Annals of Medicine, lust. 2 vol. i,
pt. 2, No. 9.
12. In Hufeland's Journal, xxiii.
13. On the Veneral Disease, p. 4.
14. The exapmles adduce in this place, in the former ecitions of the
Organon except the last, of chronic maladies cured by the
itch, can , according to the discoveries and explanations I
had given in the first part of my book on Chornic Diseaes, be
looked upon as only in a certain degree homoeopathic cures.Thegreat
maladies which thereby disappeared (suffocative asthma of many years
standing and pulmonary phthisis) were themselves
originally of psoric origin, widely spread, life-threatening symptoms
of an ancient psora that had been fully developed in the interior of
the system, which was again transformed into the simple form of the
primitive itch disease by the cutaneous eruption resulting from the
new infection (as always happens in such cases) , whereby
the old malady and the dangerous symptoms were made to
disappear.Such a transformation into the primitive form is
therefore only to be considered as a homoeopathic healer of
these extensive symptoms of highly developed ancient psora, in
so far as the new infection puts the patient in a
much more favourable condition to be cured of the whole psora by
antipsoric medicines.
15.Cullens Elements of Practical Medicine, pt. 2 i, ch. vii.
16. Or at least that symptom was removed.
17. In Hufeland's Journal, xx, 3, p. 50.
18. Rau, Ueber d. Werth des nom. Heilv., Heidelb., 1824, p. 85.
Nothing could teach the physician in a plainer and more convincing manner than the above what kind of artificial morbific agent (medicine) he ought to choose in order to cure in a sure, rapid and permanent manner, conformably with the process that takes place in nature.
Neither in the course of nature, as we see from all the above examples, nor by the physician's art, can an existing affection or malady in any one instance be removed by a dissimilar morbific agent, be it ever so strong, butsolely by one that is similar in symptoms and is somewhat stronger , according to eternal, irrevocable laws of nature, which have not hitherto been recognized.
We should have been able to meet with many more real, natural homeopathic cures of this kind if, on the one hand, the attention of observers had been more directed to them, and, on the other hand, if nature had not been so deficient in helpful homeopathic diseases.
Mighty Nature herself has, as we see, at her command, as instruments for effecting homeopathic cures, little besides the miasmatic diseases of constant character, (the itch) measles and smallpox,1 morbific agents which,2 as remedies, are either more dangerous to life and more to be dreaded than the disease they are to cure, they themselves require curing, in order to be eradicated in their turn - both circumstances that make their employment, as homeopathic remedies, difficult, uncertain and dangerous. And how few diseases are there to which man is subject that find their similar remedy in smallpox, measles or itch! Hence, in the course of nature, very few maladies can be cured by these uncertain and hazardous homeopathic remedies, and the cure by their instrumentality is also attended with danger and much difficulty, for this reason that the doses of these morbific powers cannot be diminished according to circumstances, as doses of medicine can; but the patient afflicted with an analogous malady of long standing must be subjected to the entire dangerous and tedious disease, to the entire disease of smallpox, measles (or itch), which in its turn has to be cured. And yet, as is seen, we can point to some striking homeopathic cures effected by this lucky concurrence, all so many incontrovertible proofs of the great, the sole therapeutic law of nature that obtains in them:Cure by symptoms similarity !
1.And the exanthematous contagious principle present
in
the
cow-pox lymph.
2.Namely , smallpox and measles.
This therapeutic law is rendered obvious to all intelligent minds
by these instances, and they are amply sufficient for this end.
But, on the other hand, see what advantages man has over crude Nature
in her happy - go - lucky operations. How many thousands
more of homeopathic morbific agents has not man at his disposal for the
relief of his suffering fellow - creatures in the medicinal substances
universally distributed throughout creation! In them he
has producers of disease of all possible varieties of action, for
all the innumerable, for all conceivable and inconceivable
natural diseases, to which they can render homeopathic aid -
morbific agents (medicinal substances), whose power, when their
remedial employment is completed, being overcome by the vital
force, disappears spontaneously without requiring a second course
of treatment for its extirpation, like the itch - artificial
morbific agents, which the physician can attenuate, subdivide and
potentize almost to an infinite extent, and the dose of which he can
diminish to such a degree that they shall remain only slightly
stronger than the similar natural disease they are employed to
cure; so that in this incomparable method of cure, there is no
necessity for any violent attack upon the organism for the eradication
of even an inveterate disease of old standing; the
cure by this method takes place by only a gentle, imperceptible
and yet often rapid transition from the tormenting natural
disease to the desired state of permanent health.
Surely no intelligent physician, after these examples as clear as daylight, can still go on in the old ordinary system of medicine, attacking the body, as has hitherto been done, in its least diseased parts with (allopathic) medicines that have no direct pathological (homeopathic) relation to the disease to be cured, with purgatives, counter - irritants, derivatives, etc., 1 and thus at a sacrifice of the patient's strength, inducing a morbid state quite heterogeneous and dissimilar to the original one, to the ruin of his constitution, by large doses of mixtures of medicines generally of unknown qualities, the employment of which can have no other result, as is demonstrated by the eternal laws of nature in the above and all other cases in the world in which a dissimilar disease is added to the other in the human organism, for acure is never thereby effected in disease, but an aggravation is the invariable consequence, - therefore it can have no other result than that either (because, according to the process of nature described in I, the older disease in the body repels the dissimilar one wherewith the patient is assailed) the natural disease remains as it was, under mild allopathic treatment, be it ever so long continued, the patient being thereby weakened; or (because, according to the process of nature described in II, the new and stronger disease merely obscures and suspends for a short time the original weakerdissimilar one), by the violent attack on the body with strong allopathic drugs, the original disease seems to yield for a time, to return in at least all its former strength; or (because, according to the process of nature described in III, two dissimilar diseases, when both are of a chronic character and of equal strength, take up a position when beside one another in the organism and complicate each other) in those cases in which the physician employs for a long time morbific agents opposite and dissimilar to the natural chronic disease and allopathic medicines in large doses, such allopathic treatment, without ever being able to remove and to cure the original (dissimilar) chronic disease, only develops new artificial diseases beside it; and, as daily experience shows, only renders the patient much worse and more incurable than before.
* Sections 52 to 56 are wholly re-written in the Sixth Edition.
1.Vide supra in the Indroduction: A Review to the Therapeutics, &c. , and my book, Die Alloopathie, ein Wort Der Warnung fur Kranke jeder Art, Leipzig, bei Baumgartner (a.k.a. Allopathy: a word of Waring to all Sick Persons 1831; Translated in Hahnemann's Lesser Writings, pp736)
52 Philosophy in the Sixth Edition, Methods of Cure as follows:
['There are but two principle methods of cure: the one based only on accurate observation of nature, on careful experimentation and pure experience, the homeopathic (before we never intentionally used) and a second, which does not do this, the heteropathic or allopathic. Each opposes the other, and only he who does not know either can hold the delusion that they can ever approach each other or even become united, or to make himself so ridiculous as to practice at one time homeopathically at another allopathically, according to the pleasure of the patient; a practice which may be called criminal treason against divine homeopathy. ']
53(a) Philosophy Homeopathic Method, in the Fifth Edition
True, mild cures take place, as we see, only in a homeopathic way - a way which, as we have also shown above (7 - 25) in a different manner, by experience and deductions, is also the true and only one whereby diseases may be most surely, rapidly and permanently extinguished by art; for this mode of cure is founded on an eternal, infallible law of nature.
53 Philosophy in the Sixth Edition, Homeopathic Method as follows:
['The true mild cures take place only according to the
homeopathic method, which, as we have found (7-25) by
experience and deduction, is unquestionably the proper one by
which through art the quickest, most certain and most permanent
cures are obtained since this healing art rests upon an eternal
infallible law of nature.
The pure homeopathic healing art is the only correct method, the one
possible to human art, the straightest way to cure, as certain as
that there is but one straight line between two given points'.]
54 Philosophy Homeopathic Method(a) in the Fifth Edition
This, the homeopathic way, must, moreover, as observed above (43-49) be the only proper one, because, of the three
possible modes of employing medicines in diseases, it is the only
direct way to a mild, sure, permanent cure without doing injury in
another direction, and without weakening the patient. The pure
homeopathic mode of cure is the only proper way, the only direct way,
the only way possible to human skill, as certainly as only one straight
line can be drawn betwixt two given points.
54 Philosophy in the Sixth Edition, Homeopathic Method as follows:
['The allopathic method of treatment utilized many things
against disease, but usually only improper ones (alloea) and ruled
for ages in different forms called systems. Every one of these,
following each other from time to time and differing greatly each
from the other, honoured itself with the id of Rational Medicine.1
Every builder of such a system cherished the haughty estimation of
himself that he was able to penetrate into the inner nature of life
of the healthy as well as of the sick and clearly to recognize
it and accordingly gave the prescription for which noxious
matter (matera peccans g.) 2 should be banished from the
sick man,
and how to banish it, in order to restore him to health, all this
according to empty assumptions and arbitrary suppositions without
honestly questioning nature and listening without prejudice to the
voice of experience. Diseases were held to be conditions
that reappeared pretty much in the same manner. Most systems gave,
therefore, names to their imagined disease pictures and classified
them, every system differently. To medicines were
ascribed actions which were supposed to cure these abnormal
conditions. (Hence the numerous text books on Materia
Medica.)]
1. As if in the establishment of a science, based only
on
observation of nature and pure experiment and experience idle
speculation and scholastic vaporings could have a place.
2. Up to the most recent times what is curable in sickness was
supposed to be a material that had to be removed since no one
could conceive of a dynamic effect (11 note) of
morbific agencies, such as medicines exercise upon the life of
the animal organism.
3. To fill the measure of self infatuation to overflowing here
were mixed (very learnedly) constantly more, indeed, many
differednt medicines in so-called prescriptions to be
administered in frequent and large doses and thereby the precious,
easily-destroyed human life was endagered in the hands of these
perverted ones.Especially so with seton, venesection, emetics,
purgatives, plasetes, fontanelles and cauterization.
55 Philosophy The Second Method, Allopathic
The second mode of employing medicines in diseases, the allopathic or heteropathic, which, without any pathological relation to what is actually diseased in the body, attacks the parts most exempt from the disease, in order to draw away the disease through them and thus to expel it, as is imagined, has hitherto been the most general method. I have treated of it above in the Indroduction, 1 and shall not dwell longer on it.
1. Review of therapeautics, &c.
55 Philosophy in the Sixth Edition, as follow:
['Soon, however, the public became convinced that the sufferings of the sick increased and heightened with the Indroduction of every one of these systems and methods of cure if followed exactly. Long ago these allopathic physicians would have been left had it not been for the palliative relief obtained at times from empirically discovered remedies whose almost instantaneous flattering action is apparent to the patient and this to some extent served to keep up their credit. ']
56 Philosophy Fifth Edition The Third
Method,
Antipathic.
The third and only remaining method1 of employing medicines in diseases, which besides the other two just alluded to, is the only other possible one, is the antipathic (allopathic) or palliative method, wherewith the physician could hitherto appear to be most useful, and hoped most certainly to gain his patient's confidence by deluding him with momentary amelioration. But I shall now proceed to show how ineffectual and how injurious this third and sole remaining way was, in diseases of a not very rapid course. It is certainly the only one of the modes of treatment adopted by the allopaths that had any manifest relation to a portion of the sufferings caused by the natural disease; but what kind of relation? Of a truth the very one (the exact contrary of the right one) that ought most to be avoided if we would not delude and make a mockery of the patient affected with a chronic disease.**
1. A fourth* mode of employing medicines in diseases
has
been attempted to be created by means of Isopathy,as it is called--
that is to say, a method of curing a given disease by the same
contagious principle that produces it.But even granting this could be
done, which would certainly be a most valuable
discovery, yet after all, seenig that the virus is given
to the patient highly potentized, and thereby,consequently, to a
certain degree, in an altered contition, the cure
is effected only by opposing a simillimum to a
simillimum.**
*In the Sixth Edition, the word 'fourth' is replaced by 'third'.
**This foot-note has been re-written and extended in the Sixth Edition .
56 Philosophy in the Sixth Edition, as follow:
['By means of this palliative (antipathic, allopathic) method, introduced according to Galen's teaching " Contraria contrariis" for seventeen centuries, the physicians hitherto could hope to win confidence while they deluded with almost instantaneous amelioration. But how fundamentally unhelpful and hurtful this method of treatment is (in diseases not running a rapid course) we shall see in what follows. It is certainly the only one of the modes of treatment adopted by the allopaths that had any manifest relation to a portion of the sufferings caused by the natural disease; but what kind of relation? Of a truth the very one (the exact contrary of the right one) that ought carefully to be avoided if we would not delude and make a mockery of the patient affected with a chronic disease'. 1 ]
1. ['A third mode of employing medicines in diseases has been attempted to be created by means of Isopathy, as it is called --that is to say, a method of curing a given disease by the same contagious principle that produces it. But even granting this could be done, yet, after all , seeing that the virus is given to the patient highly potentised, and consequently, in an altered condition, the cure is effected only by opposing a simillimum to a simillimum.
To attempt to cure by means of the very same morbific potency (per Idem)(with the same) contradicts all normal human understanding and hence all experience. Those who first brought Isopathy to notice, probably thought of the benefit which mankind recieved form cowpox vaccination by which the vaccinated individual is protected against future smallpox infection and as it were cured in advance. But both, cowpox and smallpox are only similar and in no way the same disease. In many respects they differ, namely in the more rapid course and mildness on cowpox and especially in this, that it never contagious to man by mere nearness. Universal vaccination put an end to all epidemics of that deadly fearful smallpox to such an extent that the present generation does no longer possess a clear conception of the former frightful smallpox plague.
Moreover, in this way, undoubtedly, certain diseases peculiar to animals may give us remedies and medicinal potencies for very similar important human diseases and thus happily enlarge our stock of homoeopathic remedies.
But to use a human morbific matter (a Psorin taken form the itch in man)as a remedy for the same human itch or for evils arisen thereform is going to far. Nothing can result form this but trouble and aggravation of the disease.]In order to carry into practice this antipathic method, the ordinary physician gives, for a single troublesome symptom from among the many other symptoms of the disease which he passes by unheeded, a medicine concerning which it is known that it produces the exact opposite of the morbid symptom sought to be subdued, from which, agreeably to the fifteen - centuries - old traditional rule of the antiquated medical school ( contraria contrariis) he can expect the speediest (palliative) relief. He gives large doses of opium for pains of all sorts, because this drug soon benumbs the sensibility, and administers the same remedy for diarrhoea's, because it speedily puts a stop to the peristaltic motion of the intestinal canal and makes it insensible; and also for sleeplessness, because opium rapidly produces a stupefied, comatose sleep; he gives purgatives when the patient has suffered long from constipation and costiveness; he causes the burnt hand to be plunged into cold water, which, from its low degree of temperature, seems instantaneously to remove the burning pain, as if by magic; he puts the patient who complains of chilliness and deficiency of vital heat into warm baths, which warm him immediately; he makes him who is suffering from prolonged debility drink wine, whereby he is instantly enlivened and refreshed; and in like manner he employs other opposite (antipathic) remedial means, but he has very few besides those just mentioned, as it is only of very few substances that some peculiar (primary) action is known to the ordinary medical school.
If, in estimating the value of this mode of employing medicines, we should even pass over the circumstance that it isan extremely faulty symptomatic treatment(v. note to 7 ), wherein the practitioner devotes his attention in a merely one - sided manner to a single symptom, consequently to only a small part of the whole, whereby relief for the totality of the disease, which is what the patient desires, cannot evidently be expected, - we must, on the other hand, demand of experience if, in one single case where such antipathic employment of medicine was made use of in a chronic or persisting affection, after the transient amelioration there did not ensue an increased aggravation of the symptom which was subdued at first in a palliative manner, an aggravation, indeed, of the whole disease? And every attentive observer will agree that, after such short antipathic amelioration, aggravation follows inevery case without exception , although the ordinary physician is in the habit of giving his patient another explanation of this subsequent aggravation, and ascribes it to malignancy of the original disease, now for the first time showing itself, or to the occurrence of quite a new disease.1
1. Little as physicians have hitherto been in the habit of observing accurately, the aggravation that so certainly follows such palliative treatment could not altogether escape their notice. A striking example of this is to be found in J.H. Schulze's Diss, qua corpoishmani monentanearum alterationum specimina qu¾dam expenduntur,Hal¾, 1741, 28.Wills bears testimony of something similar (Pharm, rat 7, cap, i, p, 298) :"Opiata dolores atrocissimos plerumque sedant atque indolentiam-procurant, eamque-aliquandiu et pro stato quodam tempore continuant, quo spatio elapso dolores mox recrudescunt et brevi ad solitam ferociam augentur"And alos a page 295:"Exactis opii viribus illico redeunt tormina, nec atrocitatem suam remittunt, nisi dum ab eodem pharmaco rursus incantuntur." In like manner J. Hunter (On the Venereal Disease, p. 13) says that wine and cordials given to the wead increase the action wihout giving real strength, and the powers of the body are afterwards sunk porportionally as they have been raised, by which nothing can be gained, but a great deal can be lost.
Important symptoms of persistent diseases have never yet been treated with such palliative, antagonistic remedies, without the opposite state, a relapse -- indeed, a palpable aggravation of the malady, occurring a few hours afterwards.
For a persistent tendency to sleepiness during the day the physician prescribed coffee, whose primary action is to enliven; and when it had exhausted its action the day - somnolence increased.
For frequent waking at night he gave in the evening, without heeding the other symptoms of the disease, opium, which by virtue of its primary action produced the same night (stupefied, dull) sleep, but the subsequent nights were still more sleepless than before.
To chronic diarrhoea's he opposed, without regarding the other morbid signs, the same opium, whose primary action is to constipate the bowels, and after a transient stoppage of the diarrhoea it subsequently became all the worse; - violent and frequently recurring pains of all kinds he could suppress with opium for but a short time; they then always returned in greater, often intolerable severity, or some much worse affection came in their stead.
For nocturnal cough of long standing the ordinary physician knew no better than to administer opium, whose primary action is to suppress every irritation; the cough would then perhaps cease the first night, but during the subsequent nights it would be still more severe, and if it were again and again suppressed by this palliative in increased doses, fever and nocturnal perspiration were added to the disease.
Weakness of the bladder, with consequent retention of urine, was sought to be conquered by the antipathic work of cantharides to stimulate the urinary passages whereby evacuation of the urine was certainly at first effected but thereafter the bladder becomes less capable of stimulation and less able to contract, and paralysis of the bladder is imminent.
With large doses of purgative drugs and laxative salts, which excite the bowels to frequent evacuation, it was sought to remove a chronic tendency to constipation, but in the secondary action the bowels became still more confined.
The ordinary physician seeks to remove chronic debility by the administration of wine, which, however, stimulates only in its primary action, and hence the forces sink all the lower in the secondary its primary action, and hence the forces sink all the lower in the secondary action.
By bitter substances and heating condiments he tries to strengthen and warm the chronically weak and cold stomach, but in the secondary action of these palliatives, which are stimulating in their primary action only, the stomach becomes yet more inactive.
Long standing deficiency of vital heat and chilly disposition ought surely to yield to prescriptions of warm baths, but still more weak, cold, and chilly do the patients subsequently become.
Severely burnt parts feel instantaneous alleviation from the application of cold water, but the burning pain afterwards increases to an incredible degree, and the inflammation spreads and rises to a still greater height.1
By means of the sternutatory remedies that provoke a secretion of mucus,coryza with stoppage of the nose of long standing, is sought to be removed,but it escapes observation that the disease is aggravated all the more by these antagonistic remedies (in their secondary action), and the nose becomes still more stopped.
By electricity and galvanism, with in their primary action greatly stimulate muscular action, chronically weak and almost paralytic limbs were soon excited to more active movements, but the consequence (the secondary action) was complete deadening of all muscular irritability and complete paralysis.
By venesections it was attempted to remove chronic determination of blood to the head, but they were always followed by greater congestion.
Ordinary medical practitioners know nothing better with which to
treat the paralytic torpor of the corporeal and mental organs,
conjoined with unconsciousness, which prevails in many kinds of
typhus, than with large doses of valerian, because this is one of
the most powerful medicinal agents for causing animation and
increasing the motor faculty; in their ignorance, however, they
knew not that this action is only a primary action, and that the
organism, after that is passed, most certainly falls back, in the
secondary (antagonistic) action, into still greater stupor and
immobility, that is to say, into paralysis of the mental and
corporeal organs (and death); they did not see, that the very diseases
they supplied most plentifully with valerian, which is in such
cases an opposite acting, antipathic remedy, most infallibly terminated
fatally.
The old school physician rejoices 2 that he is able to reduce for
several hours the velocity of the small rapid pulse in cachectic
patients with the very first dose of uncombined purple foxglove
(which in itsprimaryaction makes the pulse slower); its rapidity,
however, soon returns; repeated, and now increased doses effect an ever
smaller diminution of its rapidity, and at length none at
all - indeed - in thesecondaryaction the pulse becomes
uncountable; sleep, appetite and strength depart, and a speedy death
isinvariablythe result, or else insanity ensues.
How often, in one word, the disease is aggravated, or something
even worse is effected by the secondary action of such
antagonistic (antipathic) remedies, the old school with its false
theories does not perceive, but experience teaches it in a
terrible manner.
1.Vide Indroduction, p. 28.
2.Vide Hufeland, in his pamphlet, Die Homoopathie, p. 20.
If these ill - effects are produced, as may very naturally be expected from the antipathic employment of medicines, the ordinary physician imagines he can get over the difficulty by giving, at each renewed aggravation, a stronger dose of the remedy, whereby an equally transient suppression* is effected; and as there then is a still greater necessity for giving ever - increasing quantities of the palliative there ensues either another more serious disease or frequently even danger to life and death itself, butnever a cureof a disease of considerable or of long standing.
*A long foot-note is added in the Sixth Edition, as follows:
[' All usual palliatives given for the
suffering of the sick have (as is seen here) as after-effects an
increase of the same suffering and the older physicians had to
repeat them in ever stronger doses in order to achieve a similar
modification, which however, was never permanent and never
sufficient to prevent an increased recurrence of the ailment. But
Brousseau, who twenty-five years before contended against the
senseless mixing of different drugs in prescription and
thereby ending its reign in France, (for which mankind is grateful
to him) introduced his so-called physiological system (without
taking note of the homoeopathic method then already established), a
method of treatment, while effectively lessening and permanently
preventing the return of all the sufferings, was applicable to all
diseases of mankind; a thing that the palliatives then in use were not
capable of affecting.
Being able to heal disease with mild innocent remedies and thus
establish health, Brousseau found the easier way to quiet
the sufferings of patients more and more at the cost of their
life and at last to extinguish life wholly - a method of
treatment that, alas, seemed sufficient to his contemporaries. In the
degree that the patient retains his strength will his ailments be
apparent and the more intensely will he feel
his pains. He moans and groans and cries out and calls for help more
and more vociferously so that the physician cannot come
any too soon to give relief. Brousseau needed only to depress the
vital force, to lessen it more and more and behold, the more
frequently the patient was bled, the more
leeches and cupping glasses sucked out the vital fluid (for the
innocent irreplaceable blood was according to him responsible for
almost all ailments). In the same proportion the
patient lost strength to feel pain or to express his aggravated
condition by violent complaint and gestures. The patient appears more
quiet in proportion as he grows weaker, the bystanders rejoice
in his apparent improvement, ready to return to the same measures on
the renewal of his sufferings - be they spasms, suffocation,
fears or pain, for they had so beautifully quieted him before and
gave promise of further ease. In disease of long duration and when
the patient retained some strength, he was deprived of food, put on
a hunger diet, in order to depress life so much more
successfully and inhibit the restless states. The debilitated
patient feels unable to protest against further similar measures of
blood-letting leeches, vesication, warm baths and so forth to refuse
their employment. That death must follow such frequently repeated
reduction and exhaustion of the vital energy is not
noticed by the patient, already robbed of all
consciousness, and the relatives, blinded by the improvements even of
the last sufferings of the patient by means of blood letting and warm
baths, cannot understand and are surprised when the patient quietly
slips away.
But God knows the patient on his bed of sickness was not
treated with violence, for the prick of a small lancet is not really
painful and the gum Arabic solution (Eau de
Gourme, almost the only medicine that Brousseau used) was mild in taste
and without apparent action - the bite of the leeches insignificant and
the blood letting by the physician done quietly while the luke warm
baths could only soothe, hence the disease from
the very start must have been fatal, so that the patient,
notwithstanding all efforts of the physician, had to leave the
earth. In this way the relatives, and especially the heirs
of the dear departed, consoled themselves.
The physicians in Europe and elsewhere accepted this convenient
treatment of all disease according to a single rule, since it
saved them from all further thinking (the most laborious of all
work under the sun). They only had to take care to
assuage the pangs of conscience and console themselves that they
were not the originators of this system and this method of
treatment, that all the other thousands of Brousseauists did the
same and that possibly everything would cease with death
anyway as was taught by their master. In this way many thousand
physicians were miserably misled to shed (with cold
heart) the warm blood of their patients that were capable of
cure and thereby rob millions of men gradually of their life,
according to Brousseau's method, more than fell on
Napoleon's battlefields. Was it perhaps necessary by the
disposition of God for that system of Brousseau which destroyed
medically the life of curable patients to precede homoeopathy in
order to open the eyes of the world to the only true science and
art of medicine, homoeopathy, in which curable patients find
health and new life when this most difficult of all arts is practised
by an indefatigable discriminating physician in
a pure and conscientious manner? ]
Had physician been capable of reflecting on the sad results of the antagonistic employment of medicines, they had long since discovered the grand truth, THAT THE TRUE RADICAL HEALING ART MUST BE FOUND IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF SUCH AN ANTIPATHIC TREATMENT OF THE SYMPTOMS OF DISEASE; they would have become convinced, that as a medicinal action antagonistic to the symptoms of the disease (an antipathically employed medicine) is followed by only transient relief, and after that is passed, by invariable aggravation, the converse of that procedure, the homeopathic employment of medicinesaccording to similarity of symptoms, must effect a permanent and perfect cure, if at the same time the opposite of their large doses, the most minute doses, are exhibited. But neither the obvious aggravation that ensued from their antipathic treatment, nor the fact that no physician ever effected a permanent cure of disease of considerable or of long standing unless some homeopathic medicinal agent was accidentally a chief ingredient in his prescription, nor yet the circumstances that all the rapid and perfect cures that nature ever performed (46 ), were always effected by the supervention upon the old disease of one of asimilar character, ever taught them, during such a long series of centuries, this truth, the knowledge of which can alone conduce to the benefit of the sick.
But on what this pernicious result of the palliative, antipathic treatment and the efficacy of the reverse, the homeopathic treatment, depend, is explained by the following facts, deduced from manifold observations, which no one before me perceived, though they are so very palpable and so very evident, and are of such infinite importance to the healing art.
Every agent that acts upon the vitality, and every medicine, deranges more or less the vital force, which causes a certain alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or a shorter period. This is termed primary action. Although a product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly, it is principally due to the former power. To this action our vital force endeavours to oppose its own energy. This resistant action is a property, indeed an automatic reaction of our life - preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action or counteraction.
Primary and Secondary action
See Kunzli's translation.
During the primary action of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) on our healthy body, as seen in the following examples, our vital force seems to conduct itself merely in a passive (receptive) mannerand appears, so to say, compelled to allow the impressions of the artificial power, acting from without to to take place in it, thereby altering its state of health; it then, however, appears to rouse itself again, and to develop:-
a. The exact opposite condition of health ( counteraction, secondary
action ) to this effect ( primary action ), produced
upon it, if there be such an opposite and that in as great a
degree as was the effect ( primary action ) to the artificial
morbific or medicinal agent on it, and proportionate to
its own energy;
- or:-
b. If there is not in nature a state exactly the opposite of
the primary action, it appears to endeavour to indifferentiate itself,
that is, to make its superior power available in the
extinction of the change wrought in it from without (by the
medicine), in the place of which it substitutes its normal state ( secondary
action, curative action ).
Examples of (A) are familiar to all. A hand bathed in hot water is at first much warmer than the other hand that has not been so treated (primary action); but when it is withdrawn from the hot water and again thoroughly dried, it becomes in a short time cold, and at length much colder than the other (secondary action). A person heated by violent exercise (primary action) is afterwards affected with chilliness and shivering (secondary action). To one who was yesterday heated by drinking much wine (primary action), to - day every breath of air feels too cold (counteraction of the organism, secondary action). An arm that has been kept long in very cold water is at first much paler and colder (primary action) than the other; but removed from the cold water and dried, it subsequently becomes not only warmer than the other, but even hot, red and inflamed (secondary action, reaction of the vital force), Excessive vivacity follows the use of strong coffee (primary action), but sluggishness and drowsiness remain for a long time afterwards (reaction, secondary action), if this be not always again removed for a short time by imbibing fresh supplies of coffee (palliative). After the profound stupefied sleep caused by opium (primary action), the following night will be all the more sleepless (reaction, secondary action). After the constipation produced by opium (primary action), diarrhoea ensues (secondary action); and after purgation with medicines that irritate the bowels, constipation of several days' duration ensues (secondary action). And in like manner it always happens, after the primary action of a medicine that produces in large doses a great change in the health of a healthy person, that its exact opposite, when, as has been observed, there is actually such a thing, is produced in the secondary action by our vital force.
An obvious antagonistic secondary action, however, is, as may readily be conceived, not to be noticed from the action of quite minute homeopathic doses of the deranging agents on the healthy body. A small dose of every one of them certainly produces a primary action that is perceptible to a sufficiently attentive; but the living organism employs against it only so much reaction (secondary action) as is necessary for the restoration of the normal condition.
These incontrovertible truths, which spontaneously offer
themselves to our notice and experience, explain to us the
beneficial action that takes place under homeopathic treatment; while,
on the other hand, they demonstrate the perversity of the
antipathic and palliative treatment of diseases with
antagonistically acting medicines.1
1. Only in the most urgent cases where danger to life
and
imminent death allow no time for the action of a homoeopathic remedy
- not hours, sometimes not even quater-hours and scarcely minutes - in
sudden accidents occuring to previously healthy individuals -
eg , in asphyxia and suspended animation from lightning, from
suffocation, freezing ,drowning, and the like,
--is it admissible and judicious, at all events as a preliminary
measure, to stimulate the irritability and sensiblity(the
physical life) with a palliative, as for instance, with gentle
electrical shocks, with clysters of strong coffee, with a
stimulating odour, gradual application of heat, etc. When this
stimulation is effected, the play of the vital organs again goes
on in tets former healthy manner, for there is here no disease*
to be removed, but merely an obstruction and suppression to the healthy
vital force. To this category belong various antidotes to
sudden poisonings:- alkalies for mineral acids, hepar sulphuris for
metallic poisons, coffee and camphor (and ipecacuanha )for
poisoning by opium, etc.
It does not follow that a homoeopathic medicine has been ill
selected for a case of disease because some of the medicinal
symptoms are only antipathic to some of the less
important and minor symptoms of the disease;if only the others,
the stronger, well marked (characteristic), and peculiar symptoms
of the disease are covered and matched by the same medicine with
similarity of symptoms -- that is to say, overpowered, destroyed and
extinguished;the few opposite symptoms also disappear of themselves
after the expiry of the term of action of the medicament, without
retarding the cure in the least.
* And yet the nwo sect that mixes the two
systems appeals (though in vain) to this observation, in order that
they may have an excuse for encountering everywhere such exceptions to
the general rule in diseases, and to justify their convenient
employment of allopathic palliatives, and of other injurious allopathic
trash besides, soley for the sake of sparing themselves the trouble of
seeking for the suitable homoeopathic remedy
for each case of disease [and thus conviently appear as homoeopathic
physicians without being such, in the Sixth Edition] I might
also say for the sake of sparing themselves the trouble of bieng
homoeopathic physicians, and yet wishing to appear as such. But
their performances are on a par with the system they pursue; they
are nothing to boast of [they are corrupting in
the Sixth Edition ].
Inhomeopathiccures they show us that from the uncommonly small doses of medicine ( 275 - 287) required in this method of treatment, which are just sufficient, by the similarity of their symptoms, to overpower and remove the similar nature disease, ['and remove from the sensation of the life principle the similar natural disease' in the Sixth Edition] there certainly remains, after the destruction of the latter, at first a certain amount of medicinal disease alone in the organism, but, on account of the extraordinary minuteness of the dose, it is so transient, so slight, and disappears so rapidly of its own accord, that the vital force has no need to employ, against this small artificial derangement of its health, any more considerable reaction than will suffice to elevate its present state of health up to the healthy point - that is, than will suffice to effect complete recovery, for which after the extinction of the previous morbid derangement but little effort is required ( 64 B).
In the antipathic (palliative) mode of treatment, however
precisely the reverse of this takes place. The medicinal symptom which
the physician opposes to the disease symptom (for example, the
insensibility and stupefaction caused by opium in its primary action to
acute pain) is certainly not alien, not allopathic of
the latter; there is a manifest relation of the medicinal symptom
to the disease symptom, but it is the reverse of what
should be. What is here intended, is that the annihilation of the
disease
symptom, shall be effected by an opposite medicinal symptom, which is
nevertheless impossible.
No doubt the antipathically chosen medicine touches precisely the same diseased point in the organism as the homeopathic medicine, chosen on account of the similar affection it produces; but the former covers the opposite symptom of the disease only as an opposite, and makes it unobservable to our life principle for a short time only, so that in the first period of the action of the antagonistic palliative, the vital force perceives nothing disagreeable from either of the two (neither from the disease symptom nor from the medicinal symptom), as they seem both to have mutually removed and dynamically neutralized one another as it were (for example, the stupefying power of opium does this to the pain). In the first minutes the vital force feels quite well, and perceives neither the stupefaction of the opium nor the pain of the disease.
But as the antagonistic medicinal symptom cannot (as in the
homeopathic treatment) occupy the place of the morbid derangement
present in the organism [ 'in the sensation of the life principle' in
the Sixth Edition] as asimilar, stronger (artificial) disease,
and cannot, therefore, like a homeopathic
medicine, affect the vital force with a similar artificial
disease, so as to be able to step into the place of the original
natural morbid derangement, the palliative medicine must, as a thing
totally differing from, and the opposite of the disease derangement,
leave the latter uneradicated; it
renders it, as before said, by a semblance of dynamic neutralization,1
at first unfelt by the vital force, but, like every medicinal
disease, it is soon spontaneously extinguished, and not only leaves
the disease behind, just as it was, but compels the vital force (as
it must, like all palliatives, be given in large doses in order to
effect the apparent removal) to produce an opposite condition
( 63, 64) to this palliative medicine,
the
reverse of the medicinal action, consequently the analogue of
the still present, undestroyed, natural morbid derangement, which
is necessarily strengthened and increased 2 by this
addition
(reaction against the palliative) produced by the vital force. The
disease symptom(this single part of the disease) consequently
becomes worse after the term of the action of the palliative has
expired; worse in proportion to the magnitude of the dose of the
palliative . Accordingly (to keep to the same example) the larger the
dose of opium given to allay the pain, so much the more does the pain
increase beyond its original intensity as soon as the opium has
exhausted its action.3
1. In the living human being no permanent neutralization of contrary or antagonistic sensations can take place, as happens with substances of opposite qualities in the chemical laboratory, where, for instance, sulphuric acid and potash unite to form a perfectly different substance, a neutral salt, which is now no longer either acid or alkali, and is not decomposed even by heat. Such amalgamations and thorough combinations, which form something permanently neutral and indifferent do not, as has been said, ever take place, with respect to dynamic impressions of an antagonistic nature in our sensific apparatus. Only a semblance of neutralization and mutual removal occurs in such cases at first, but the antagonistic sensations do not permanently remove one another. The tears of the mourner will be dried for but a short time by a laughable play; the jokes are, however, soon forgotten, and his tears then flow still more abundantly than before.
2. Plain as this proposition is, it has been misunderstood, and in opposition to it some have asserted Òthat the palliative in its secondary action, would then be similar to the disease present, must be capable of curing just as well as a homoeopathic medicine does by its primary action. But they did not reflect that the secondary action is not a product of the medicine, but invariably of the antagonistically acting vital force of the organism; that therefore this secondary action resulting from the vital force on the employment of a palliative is a state similar to the symptoms of the disease which the palliative left uneradicated, and which the reaction of the vital force against the palliative consequently increased still more.
3. As when in a dark dungeon, where the prisoner could with difficulty recognize objects close to him, alcohol is suddenly lighted, everything is instantly illuminated in a most consolatory manner to the unhappy wretch; but when it is extinguished, the brighter the flame was previously the blacker is the night which now envelopes him, and renders everything about him much more difficult to be seen than before.