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1.2.
Homeopathic Fundamentals
Up one level
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 purchaseing
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.