The dynamic element of
the remedy.
By Henry Clay Allen
Presented by Sylvain Cazalet
Dr Henry
Clay Allen
(1836-1909)
If apologies were
useful or helpful I should apologize in advance for an attempt to throw
any light on the long debated question. Potency. But the acceptance of similia as a natural law in therapeutics has
had a slow growth. Is it any wonder then that the dynamics of the remedy
should still be an unsolved problem ?Hippocrates, Von
Haller, Anderson of Edinburgh and others had glimpses of the law of
Similars before the time of Hahnemann. Others saw the star of similia on the Eastern horizon, but to
Hahnemann was left the Herculean task of its practical development.Franklin first proved
that electricity could be brought to the earth by means of a good
conductor, but it was left to Morse to apply it in the telegraph and to
Edison to utilize it in the telephone and the mechanical arts. He
occupies the same position in the scientific application of electricity
that Von Haller and others do to the Law of Similars.In 1771, forty years
before Hahnemann published the first edition of the Organon, Von Haller wrote, in the Swiss
Pharmacopœia :
Dr
Albrecht von Haller“In the first
place the remedy is to be tried on the healthy body, without any foreign
substances mixed with it. A small dose is to be taken and attention is
to be directed to every effect produced by it ; e. g. on the pulse or temperature, the
respiration and secretions. Having obtained these obvious phenomena in
health, you may then pass on to experiment on the body in the state of
disease.”But Hahnemann is very
careful to give full credit to Von Haller, for he adds in a
foot-note :“No single
physician, as far as I know, during the previous 2500 years thought of
this so natural, so absolutely necessary and only genuine mode of
tasting medicines for their pure and peculiar effects in altering the
health of men, except the great and immortal Albrecht Von Haller. He
alone, besides myself, saw the necessity of this.”As Franklin’s
experiments with the kite proved a hint to other workers in electricity
in the mechanic arts, this statement of Von Haller may have been a hint
to Hahnemann, for he adds the following pregnant words :“But no one, not a
single physician attended to or followed up this invaluable hint.”It was left to
Hahnemann to not only announce a new system in therapeutics based on a
natural law, but to begin drug provings on the healthy and thus build a
new Materia Medica. To this indefatigable worker and accurate observer
it was left to make drug provings the chief business of a life, and to
this we are indebted for practical Homœopathy.Every member of this
association believes more or less firmly in the Law of Similars, and, in
a more or less scientific and accurate method, attempts to apply its
wonderful possibilities in the cure of the sick. These various methods
of application, more or less correct, depend upon our knowledge of the
law, of the Materia Medica and of the philosophy of its application in
therapeutics. But, while we have-thanks to Hahnemann’s labors -a
practical law in therapeutics, up to date there has been no law
discovered or formulated for the dynamic strength of the dose, the
dynamic of the remedy.Thus far, this question
had remained an individual one for each member to solve according to his
knowledge, and this very largely has been based upon clinical
experience. Has the time not arrived when every energy of the profession
should be directed to the perfecting of our own science ? Why not
endeavor to find some rule approaching a law in practice on this
question of dose, often so vital to the best interests of the
patient ? We have here a vulnerable point in our armor ; let
us attempt to mend it. Why not improve our system of practice instead of
running after the “false gods” of empirical
therapeutics ? Hahnemann demonstrated that we have a natural law in
therapeutics as unfailing and universal as the law of gravitation or
chemical affinity. I appeal to members to strive to find, and to
recognize when we do find a rule of action or a law of application for
the dynamic strength of the remedy.Among the first
paragraphs of the Organon Hahnemann
lays down the broad dividing line between the homœopathic system of
therapeutics and all others, in his recognition of the dynamic,
spirit-like vitality or life force of the organism. He tells us that it
is in this life power, this invisible principle we are to look for the
disturbing agent in sickness. It is dynamic, not material.In 9 he says :
“In the healthy
condition of man, the vital force or dynamic that animates the material
body, rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts or the
organism in harmonious operation ; in other words health.”Again in 10 he
says :“A body without
the vital force is capable of no sensation, no function, no
self-preservation, it derives all sensations and performs all the
functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being, which when
removed leaves us the cadaver.”In 11 he says :
“When a person
falls ill it is only this spiritual, dynamic force every-where present
that is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence upon it of a morbid
agent inimical to life.”In 12 he affirms :
“It is the
morbidly affected vital force alone that produces diseases ; the
morbid phenomena which we perceive express at the same time all the
internal changes the whole morbid derangement of the internal
dynamic ; in a world, the whole disease ; and the removal of
these alternations in health, these derangement’s, which we call
symptoms, restores health to the whole organism.It is this power or
organic force when healthy that protect us against all diseases :
la grippe, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlatina, small pox, coughs, colds,
consumption, etc. The susceptibility to elements to disease producing
agents-depends upon a lowered vitality, or weakened dynamic or life
force, and it is the first and-highest duty of the physician to employ
such means as will increase the strength of this.This is a simple
common-sense system of maintaining health, dynamic resisting power and
restoring health, and is advocated by physicians of all schools.This places the system
of Hahnemann upon a different basis from that of all others. The homœopath
is dealing with the dynamic effects of deranged vitality which we call
disease. Physicians of all other schools of practice may be dealing with
the same, but they attempt to control dynamic derangement by mechanical
or material means. The system of Hahnemann is based upon dynamics both
as to cause and cure. All other systems of medicine are based upon
mechanics in their attempt to afford relief.Faith has no place in
science. Confidence is a plant of slow growth, and is the result of
experimental knowledge, laboratory, pathogenetic and clinical. The homœopath
should know, not simply believe.Our colleagues of other
schools have confidence in their laboratory experiments, but none
whatever in therapeutics ; largely for the reason given above, that
they attempt to treat dynamic derangements by crude drugs or mechanical
methods, and the nearer we approach their methods in practice the nearer
will our results approximate theirs. The more advanced allopaths are
using the simple remedy our liberal homœopaths are using the
combination tablets. Is union of the schools imminent ?Every homœopath need
not be told that Belladonna never can cure a Nux vomica case ; the
symptom picture are so totally different. There is no such thing in our
practice as substitution. And we believe the same thing is true in
regard to the dynamic strength of our remedial agents.
Dr Samuel
Arthur JonesDr. S. A. Jones, in
“The Grounds of a Homœopaths Faith” says :“If I were asked
to state what chiefly distinguished the homœopathic physician from his
older brother in the science and art of medicine, I should at once reply :
“not the law of cure, not the infinitesimal dose, not the
Hahnemannian hypothesis of chronic diseases, none of these ; but
simply this, his fixed faith in the efficiency of drugs.”This fixed faith, this
confidence, depends upon knowledge ; knowledge of the correctness
of the pathogenesis of our remedies, a knowledge gained in the cure of
the sick from their accurate use under the law.The dynamic must be
individualized as well as the remedy. The 1st, 3rd, 6th or 12th potency
can only cure, quickly and, safely, a similar dynamic in the patient,
and vice-versa, the 200 or 1,000 may cure or fail to cure on account of
its want of dynamic similarity.Now in Sec. 16
Hahnemann gives us the nearest approach to a working law of dose that
has yet appeared in our school.He says :
Our vital force, as a
spirit-like dynamic, cannot be attached 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
dynamic way, and in like manner in all such morbid derangements cannot
be removed from it by the physician in any other way than by the dynamic
curative powers of medicines.Perhaps by reading
between the lines we may observe the true meaning of Hahnemann, where he
says that our rule of action for the selection of the dynamic strength
of the remedy must be the dynamic strength of the patient. The crude
drug has a dynamic force and has cured many cases to which it is similar
in symptoms and similar to the dynamic strength of the patient, but it
is not the fault of the drug if it fails to cure, only that it is not in
dynamic harmony. This harmony of dynamic strength runs through every
line and every gamut in the natural scale of life.We say one man is
strong and vigorous, or is possessed of a phenomenal vitality of mind or
body that enables him or her to undertake or accomplish what seems
almost impossible, some super human task, perhaps ; while on the
other hand we say the man or woman may be weak both mentally and
physically- We recognize this vital or dynamic difference in the
examination of patients, in the anamnesis, but how often do we overlook
it entirely in the adaptation of the dynamic strength of the remedy to
what we assume to be the dynamic strength of the patient. There are
different planes of dynamic strength and a susceptibility in the
healthy, and these same planes become far more pronounced and more
puzzling factor in the sick.Some men or women,
endowed with the accurate observation of Hahnemann or the inventive
genius of the American mind, will yet discover the secret of the
dynamics of the dose, and perhaps out of the discovery formulate a law.
It is apparently not more difficult to solve than the method
accidentally discovered by Hahnemann of potentising a remedy, of
obtaining the dynamic power from a drug which is practically inert in
its crude form. Hipp’s Chromoscope, by which the dynamic difference
between the 3rd, 6th, 12th or stronger powers could be readily
distinguished in a healthy sensitive person, may, in future, in some
way, be adapted to the needs of the sick.What great advance has
been made in our science of therapeutics either in accuracy or ready
selection of the remedy since the death of the Master in 1843 ?
What vital progress in the philosophy, the science or the art has been
added since the last edition of the Organon ?
Neither the science nor the art can be perfected along the empirical
line of Allopathy, for that is outside the realm of law. As members of
the profession we are daily adding our mite to improvements in surgery,
gynecology, in fact every department of medicine, except therapeutics.
It is true we-are continually adding new remedies and verifying old
ones, but not an advance has been made in the question of dose.H. C. Allen, M. D.,
Chicago.
Source :
I. H. A. Transactions, 1906.
Copyright © Sylvain
Cazalet 2001
