Contents
Studies in the Philosophy of Healing
and others writing including The study of materia medica and taking the case
C. M. BOGER
VITAL ENERGY
A thorough understanding of the subject of energy is a necessary
foundation for the study of homoeopathic philosophy, if the student is to understand the
principles upon which the practice of Hahnemannian homoeopathy is based.Energy, as we understand it, is of a three-fold form, spiritual,
dynamic and physical. In practical application we think of the source of energy as being a
thing upon which we can draw. We draw upon spiritual energy, upon dynamic energy, upon
physical energy. Because we speak of three forms of energy we do not mean that they are
essentially different. They are not. The different forms shade insensibly into each other.
Energy is a store-house of vitality which exists in all nature and it shall be our special
effort to so train you that you may avail yourselves of the power which we call energy.In homoeopathy we are more particularly concerned with dynamic energy.
This dynamic energy Hahnemann called the dynamis, the spirit-like, vital force, animating
the material body. In the human body we have present all three forms of energy, the
physical in the tissues, the dynamic in the brain and nervous system, and the spiritual in
the mind. This dynamis of the human organism interpenetrates each and every physical
tissue of the body, it does not sit apart and superintend the actions of the tissues and
organs. It is the thing, the power, the force, upon which we depend for reaction. This
brings up down to the practicality of taking advantage of this dynamic energy in our
homoeopathic prescribing. All energy, in its essence, consists of action and reaction, and
this action and reaction are equal and opposite.DISEASE
Now we come to the practical application. Disease, as we ordinarily
understand it, originates in a disturbance of this dynamic energy. The harmony under which
the vital, dynamic energy usually operates becomes disturbed. Its pace, its rhythm, its
rate of vibration become changed in on way or another, and this disturbance reflects
itself outwardly by means of symptoms. The appearance of the external symptoms is a
manifestation of the internal storm. In speaking of these external manifestations, we are
not speaking of symptoms of arteries, or muscles, or of mind, but rather of universal
symptoms shown in every part of the body, for the sick patient shows distress as a unit,
and not as separate, single discrete changes or actions. Let us look upon disease as a
unit of action moving in a certain direction, destined though it be. We must remain within
the rhythm peculiar to our own vital force. That rhythm is normally paced between certain
limits and when these are overstepped, heightened beyond the normal or lowered under it,
we have sickness. Thus sickness is a disturbance of the rhythm of the vital force, either
increasing or lowering it, and such sickness is manifested by external symptoms.In drawing upon this store-house of dynamic force within us we are also
calling upon another force which acts almost synchronously with the disturbed vital force
of the human body. If the pace were exactly synchronous there would be no effect. Its acts
by modifying the disturbing force by changing the rhythm. For example, in the case of a
runaway train an engine is not sent in the opposite direction (allopathy) but in the same
direction, following it. This engine of force acting in the same direction (homoeopathy)
changes the speed (pace) and rhythm of the runaway and checks the train (disease).Symptoms show themselves in just the order above outlined, mental,
dynamic, physical, but not every patient shows all symptoms in all three classes. One
patient may show symptoms in the mental sphere, another in the dynamic sphere, and yet
another in the physical sphere. Every patient will show some symptoms from all three
spheres if careful search is made for them, but the symptoms shown will be more
prominently marked in some one particular sphere.RESTORATION OF ORDER
Disorder or disturbance of the dynamis is called sickness, illness,
disease, not at ease. This not being at ease presupposes some disturbance somewhere, which
disturbance originates in the dynamic force of the body and restoration to order
presupposes restoration of the normal dynamic action first and the physical afterwards.
The dynamis of the body is resilient, just as rubber ball pressed in on one place bulges
in another. Distress, disease, injury of any part of the body shows in some other part.
Allopathy attributes this to the reflexes. This disorder is disharmony, and to restore
harmony a similar acting force must be applied. Such similar forces are of various kinds
but the most similar and the best known at the present day is the potentized homoeopathic
remedy. How do we know this ? We know it because the potentized drug when given to a well
person, one without disorder, produces symptoms of disorder in the dynamis, and these
symptoms represent distress, disturbance, picturing disease of one kind or another. We
know it because the similar potentized remedy, administered to a sick person, tends to
establish equilibrium and brings about a smoothness of action, a restoration to orderly
action in the sick person. This constitutes the only logical and philosophical explanation
of our homoeopathic remedies ever expounded. Even that great philosopher, Emerson,
recognised this to be true and whenever it was necessary called only a homoeopathic
physician.The symptoms of disorder, due to many causes, produce an innumerable
array of variations. Therefore remedies to be used to restore harmony in disorder must
display in their manifestations this same plasticity. They must, in their nature, be
capable of having same power of making numberless combinations of symptoms so that we may
be able to fit them more or less approximately to any picture, whatsoever may arise.
Disease in nature is plastic, for all or any disease shows a multiplicity of action which
can not be foretold. Therefore the remedies must be pliable and admit of endless
variations in their combinations. Under certain conditions it may be possible to foretell
the type of symptoms in disease but this is not the general rule. For example, in a
certain locality, a certain time or season, measles break out, and this particular
epidemic is of the haemorrhagic type. This epidemic responds well to a certain remedy, the
so called genus epidemicus. Later, influenza, typhoid or some other epidemic follows.
These also are very apt to show haemorrhagic symptoms, and the remedy which fitted the
original haemorrhagic measles epidemic will very likely be the remedy for these other
disease also. Homoeopathy gets away from the fixed, moulded form, it is adaptable,
pliable, it must be so or it would have died long ago.The remedy must be adapted to the patient, not the patient to the
remedy. In taking your case and hunting through your repertories and materia medicas don’t
make the mistake of getting a remedy too firmly fixed in your mind or you court disaster.
No remedy is a fixed thing. It is capable of producing many different kind of action in
different people. For instance, in one person it produces liver disturbances, in another
cutaneous, and in yet another mental. All the same remedy, but variations of its action.
This is plainly shown in our provings. In partially proven remedies only one side of a
remedy action may appear, as a disturbance in the digestive tract, while in the fully
proven remedies one sees the multiplicity of symptoms, the innumerable variations. When
the partially proven remedies are better known they too will show the same plasticity, the
same adaptability.The restoration of order presumes that the patient has been brought
back to health. This may be spontaneous or induced. After the surgeon has done his best
for a patient he may send him to a sanatorium or health resort to recuperate with the help
of his own natural power. This is spontaneous recuperation, and is but a shadow of what
can be done by unleashing the vital, dynamic power within the system to bring about the
orderly reaction and restore health. Whether the action is orderly or is disorderly,
enters as a large factor into our final prognosis of the case. A case with a disorderly
reaction is one which zigzags back and forth or one which progresses well then stops and
shows no action whatever, or one which repeatedly shows an array of entirely new symptoms.
In such a case it is unwise to try to find a new remedy to fit the new conditions
(provided you are sure the remedy chosen was the correct one) without convincing yourself
first, that this new array of symptoms is but a reversal of or a new array of old symptoms
shown formerly. In such a case it is best to step up the potency. Say the 200th had been
used, step it up to the 210th or 215th. Then wait for another pause in the progress of the
case and continue waiting for the possible arrival of an entirely new symptom picture. A
new symptom picture will most probably be fundamentally different from any seen before. It
is not necessary to wait indefinitely because the patient has stopped progress and is
doing nothing. This “do nothing” is in itself a symptom. In such a case think of
the “do nothing” remedies, Op., Phos ac., Psor. or Sulph. Take it slowly, one
step at a time, stepping up the potency a little each time, don’t skip too many steps at a
time in this stepping up process.It is readily seen that such a system of treating disease constitutes
an orderly and logical method. It does not consist in throwing together a great mass of
heterogeneous observations, as is done by the old school. It is, as Hahnemann has said,
the quickest, most gentle, most reliable and safest manner of obliterating disease and
restoring health to the sick.On striving to again stabilize disordered vital action a just estimate
of the energy available, as well as what things must, of necessity, be overcome, can not
be dispensed with. Right here let me warn you strongly against allowing your great
enthusiasm for pure homoeopathy to get the better of your judgement. This is a dangerous
rock for a beginner or for the poorly informed. May you safely sail between this Scylla
and that Charybdis. Just how for we may venture with the sole aid of the remedy will
always remain a moot question because our potencies are continually surprising us by doing
the seemingly impossible, now aborting a dangerous case of capillary bronchitis, then
extruding some foreign body, a piece of dead bone, etc. You can never definitely determine
its power, but you should be able to realize when it is exhausted and its further
application futile. In this connection allow me to call your attention to a wonderful
attestation of this truth of homoeopathic dynamics as applied to the sick. When the simillimum
has about exhausted its action and the patient, like a stream at low water mark, is
beginning to slowly come back, then, if the friends unwisely become impatient and call in
a materialist with his crude drugs, the end will come with a crash. One of my patients, a
businessman, desperately ill with dropsy, was slowly brought back by the indicated remedy
and was up and at his work for many months. Following a serious business depression he
again became very hill. This time he responded slowly but was showing progress, being up
and about the house, when some relative, dissatisfied with his progress, called in an
allopath. The third morning after this he dropped dead. I feel that this was probably due
to the administration of digitalis in the crude form and that it probably would not have
happened under the continued homoeopathic remedy.Again let me say that this system of therapeutics is the quickest, most
gentle, the most reliable and the safest way to turn disorder into order and sickness into
health.