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In order better to
comprehend the lessons to follow in the Course, it is timely here to
introduce a brief outline of Homeopathic Philosophy.
All systems of prescribing have been based upon
original hypotheses, clinical observations, philosophical conclusions, and
scientific experiments. Aesculapius and other fathers of the healing art
dealt with the hypothetical and philosophical, with just a little clinical
observation. As the sciences developed, medicine lagged behind because of the
lack of accurate research and the ever-present personal opinions of the
theorizing physicians. The vagaries of early prescribing were as fallacious
as were the concepts of anatomy, physiology and pathology.
Instruments of precision such as the
polariscope, ultramicroscope, electrocardiograph, manometer, and
spectroscope, were not at Hahnemann s command. Yet he gave us by hypothesis,
clinical observations and reasoning, many of the fundamentals of medicine
which are now being proposed and confirmed by modern science.
Hahnemann, by scientific experimentation on
living human beings, repeatediy substantiated the Law of Similars. For nearly
a century and a half this Law has been constantly confirmed by scientific
clinical observation. And more recently, modern research laboratories are
giving us confirmation of the scientific soundness of the action of minute
doses and their dynamic action.
Colloidal chemistry gives us definite figures
within the limitations of the ultramicroscope. Gold, for instance, can be
detected in the 25th decimal trituration, that is 1/(10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
Radium in the 60th decimal trituration has demonstrated its radioactivity by
affecting sensitive photographic plates sufficiently to produce distinct
radiographs. Add thirty-five ciphers to the above fraction and you will have
a mathematical expression of the degree of subdivision to which this
substance was divided and yet identified by experiment. This radiograph can
scarcely be ascribed to the chemical action of the infinitesimal amount of
elemental radium present in the trituration used; but may be accounted for by
the force or power or dynamis of its immeasurably minute emanations.
The extensive experiments of Dr. August Bier of
Berlin University proved the three cardinal requisites of a homeopathic
prescription.
1. The single remedy (given alone).
2. The similar remedy (Similia Similibus
Curentur).
3. The minimum dose (the smallest amount
necessary to produce curative action).
Dr. Bier explains the above by saying that
(a) all of the cells of the body are not sick;
(b) the finely subdivided remedy goes past the
healthy cells because they have no attraction for it;
(c) the sick cells have less resistance and are
more responsive to stimuli. The minimum dose affects these hypersensitive
sick cells and stimulates them to reaction. The similar remedy induces normal
reaction. If the remedy is dissimilar its action is not curative.
(d) only single remedies produce guiding
indications for the similar remedy. Iron (Ferrum) produces definite symptoms.
Phosphorus produces a different group. Phosphate of iron (Ferrum phos.)
produces symptoms of both iron and phosphorus but in addition has a
distinctive action not found in either of its components. The characteristic
symptoms produced by Ferrum phos. mark it as a distinctive single remedy.
* * *
The Hahnemannian concept is that disease
primarily is a disturbance in the vital force or guiding energy which governs
and regulates all the organs and parts of the body. In health this vital
force maintains normal growth and coordination of all organic functions.
When, from some disease-producing cause, this force becomes disturbed,
sickness or disharmony of function results. The causes of disturbance may be
infections, injuries, exposure, climatic conditions, violent emotions, errors
in diet, or others.
How are symptoms produced? A symptom is a
deviation from the normal. It is produced in exactly the same manner as a
normal phenomenon, but is the result of a stimulus that is the product of
dysfunction of some of the body's parts. For instance, failure to menstruate
is a sign or symptom of pregnancy. It also may be caused by old age, disease
or fright. Haemoptysis may be a symptom of pulmonary tuberculosis but is by
no means always of tuberculosis origin.
Objective and subjective signs and symptoms are
alike of physical origin. All symptoms are efferent responses, voluntary or
involuntary, or efferent impulses registering in nervous centers.
Bien etre and malaise are expressions of
physical conditions. Prodromes are symptoms just as much as are eruptions,
fevers, or discharges. Apprehensiveness, melancholy, tearfulness, loquacity,
suspicions, delirium, delusions, fears, emotions, hysteria, propensities, and
even tedium vitae are symptoms -- deviations from the normal.
Symptoms and signs are by no means always
pathognomonic of certain diseases. A patient with more than one disease may
have symptoms not clearly identified with any one of them.
Someone has said, "All that a doctor can
find out about his patient, by all the means at his command, is often
insufficient to make a clear diagnosis." It is a fact that our best
diagnosticians are incorrect in more than 50% of their diagnoses. Even
laboratory findings cannot always be relied upon. Correct logical reasoning
must always prevail.
Some signs and symptoms (departures from the
normal in function, appearance, sensation or behavior) are characteristic of
certain definite diseases, while others cannot be ascribed to any definite
disease or pathological process.
Many symptoms are often met with, such as
"worse before a storm"; "relieved by warmth";
"aggravated by motion"; "better in damp cold weather";
"fear of death"; "worse from the least draught or cool
air"; "better lying on affected side"; "cannot bear the
smell or sight of food". These are definite symptoms resulting from some
abnormal functional condition and not necessarily from pathology.
Even when unable to interpret these and other
like phenomena in terms of definite disease, should we disregard them? No
more than we should disregard pathognomonic symptoms in the making of a
diagnosis. Each change from the usual and normal in function, appearance or
sensation of the patient comes from a cause whether we are able to determine
and define it or not. The causative factor may be an individual
characteristic of the patient. Later, you will find that symptoms
unattributable to definite pathology are most often the determining factors
in selecting the homeopathic remedy.
The fact that the homeopath takes cognizance of
symptoms per se, whether indicative of any known disease or not, enables him
to correct the condition before definite disease results; and still more
important, he is able to combat new diseases that have never been heard of
before. For instance, ear abscess is prevented by removing the congestion and
inflammation that lead to it. Pneumonia if taken in its inception may
sometimes be aborted. Influenza, or the epidemic later called "flu"
which created such havoc among the soldiers in the United States camps and in
the army overseas, was treated symptomatically with surprising success by the
homeopathic physicians while others were absolutely impotent because they did
not know what caused the infection nor did anyone understand the pathology.
Therapeutic nihilism (the travesty of medicine)
originated with that group of pathologists (not practicing physicians) who
sought to identify every disorder and disease with definite anatomical
changes. They led clinicians to study disease only in this relation. The fact
is that anatomical changes are resuits of disease and not the disease process
itself. Disturbed physiology always precedes pathology but does not always
produce it. Therefore, symptoms present themselves, before and during, as
well as after the formation of pathological end-products or tissue changes.
The homeopathic prescriber utilizes all signs and symptoms but recognizes
their relative importance.
Hahnemann was the first to systematize symptoms
and call attention to their importance in treatment as well as in diagnosis.
He proved that each drug invariably produced its own peculiar and
characteristic group of symptoms when administered to healthy persons. These
characteristic symptoms he called guiding symptoms because they guide to the
selection of the homeopathic remedy.
* * *
The body cells, guided in their activities
by physiochemical force (dynamis, or to use Claude Bernard's term,
irritabilite) constitute a superstructure, the human organism; Vital
phenomena are dynamic and the actions of the human organism should be
regarded not from a standpoint of structure but of physiological processes.
The healthy human body is like a marvelously
regulated, energized, highly speciaiized electrical machine. This body gets
sick, or parts of it may get sick, affecting the entire composite whole.
What is the thing within the bodily tissues
that responds to remedial treatment? How does the remedy act? What occurs to
restore normality of tissue-substance and function?
Let us confine ourselves to the consideration
of the question more particularly at hand, "How do homeopathic remedies
act?"
It is clearly demonstrated that specialized
organ cells, hepatic or renal for example, display definite selectivity.
Poisons, drugs and remedies do not all affect the same tissues; for example,
arsenic, strychnine, ergot, pituitrin. Normal physiological function of all
the twenty-five trillion body cells in harmonious, coordinated rhythm, means
health. To bring this about there must be intimate interchange of messages
among the different parts, even among the cells of distinct organs and parts.
That interchange of "body
intelligence" occurs needs no argument. That it is both chemical and
electrical (nervous) is admitted. Perhaps the present marvelous development
of radio will enhance your vision of cellular intercommunication.
Cells are stimulated to activity by capillary
circulation of the blood, dissolved electrolites, hydrolysis, changes in PH
and colloidal interface activity. The balance of all these may be influenced
by a potentized drug.
The actual generation of cellular and bodily
energy by chemical changes, all based on oxygenation, must be given its
proper but not too important place in our consideration, for there is
something else in life beyond chemical reactions. The corpse still retains
the chemical constituents of the body; but without the maintenance and
direction of that elemental life force, the corpse chemistry is one of morbid
processes and quite different from that of the ovum, the mulberry mass, the
fetus, the growing child, the adult, the senile, or the dying.
That elemental vital force; that something
which activates alike the composite body and the individual cell and makes
the living, changing, functioning body different from a dead man, we refer to
as the dynamis.
This dynamis or its counterpart is manifest in
the lower animals, the fowls, the fish, and in the vegetable kingdom. Some
hold with good reason that something analogous to it must obtain in the
mineral kingdom as well.
We must deal, in the healing art, with forces
as well as with materials; with behaviors as well as with pathology; with
signs and symptoms as well as with their causes.
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