The Principles of Homeopathy. – Peter Morrell

Main

The
Principles of Homeopathy.

by Peter Morrell

My hand – 2005
– Peter Morrell

The Principles of Homeopathy.

Hahnemann’s Essay
on a New Principle, “was the successful attempt of a man
buried alive to force his way out into the open air.”
[Gumpert, 86]

“Then came the
hypothesis—drugs cure disease by causing lesser diseases which the
organism can effectively overcome—which is to say, ‘similia
similibus curantur’ or ‘like cures like’.

”
[Cameron, 29]

In his Essay On a
New Principle, Hahnemann “does not yet talk about diminishing
the dose, but insists on the necessity of administering but one
medicine at a time…in all these discoveries Hahnemann was guided by
experience, to which he trusted solely.” [Dudgeon, 1853,
49-50]

One of “homeopathy’s
prime principles…in a nutshell…is that drugs increase in potency
with their dilution.” [Cameron, 30]

The “principle
of the infinitesimal dose [is]…an outrage to human reason,”
[Forbes, 17 and Nicholls, 121]

The vital force is a
“spiritual principle…that rules with unbounded sway.”
[Organon, Aph 9]

Lists of his publications [Ameke, 145-7] suggest a
definite progression or time-line: 1783 – the move to single drugs;
1788 – the adoption of medical similars; 1790 – the 1st proving and
hence holism/case totality; 1798 – the first systematic use of ever
smaller doses; 1829 – the miasm theory. Each of these points
represents a permanent and irreversible shift in his view and approach,
and they comprise the exact sequence of events from which homeopathy, as
a complete medical system, emerged.

This essay explores the core principles of
homeopathy, guided and amplified by and embellished with a plethora of
quotes from reputable sources.

Hahnemann as Medical Philosopher

People seem to easily run away with the
unsubstantiated notion that Hahnemann was just a rebel, a pioneer, a
revolutionary deviant, an iconoclast and a medical reformer. And they
seem far less able to grasp his main aspirations in life. It is true
that in due course he became all those things, but these labels, like
medals so easily pinned upon his chest, do not clearly reveal or
accurately describe who he was and what he sought, which indeed remains
completely obscured beneath these secondary aspects about him. His main
aim was to establish, for once and for all, the truth about medicine. He
was thus not primarily a reformer at all, but a medical philosopher, a
person very centrally grounded in trying to define what medicine is,
what it is not, what sickness is and what truly cures sickness: which
methods are curative and which are not—and why!

Hahnemann identifies the problem with all prior
medical systems as not being “in consonance with nature and
experience; they were mere theoretical webs, woven by cunning intellects
out of pretended consequences.” [Organon, 1] Such a medical art
“pluming itself on its antiquity imagines itself to possess a
scientific character,” [Organon, 2] when it plainly doesn’t.
But “like all other Empirics before him, therefore, Hahnemann
insists that therapeutic theory arises out of therapeutic practice.
Practice is always prior to theory.” [Coulter, II, 351]
Hahnemann “was committed with all his mind to the observational
method…he rejected in its entirety the clap-trap of medieval
traditions and he made out an eloquent case for the pharmacological
experimental method.” [Cameron, 32] He despised “the
splendid juggling of so-called theoretical medicine, in which a priori
conceptions and speculative subtleties raised a number of proud
schools…the art of medicine, was merely a pseudo-scientific
fabrication, remodelled from time to time to meet the prevailing
fashion.” [Preface to the 2nd Organon, xv]

As far as Hahnemann was concerned, “physiology…looked
only through the spectacles of hypothetical conceits, gross mechanical
explanations, and pretensions to systems…little has been added…what
are we to think of a science, the operations of which are founded upon
perhapses and blind chance?” [Hahnemann, 1805, in Lesser
Writings, 423-6] Like Paracelsus before him, he was “driven to
innovation by dissatisfaction with the limitations of conventional
medicine.” [van Haselen, 121-2] The process is therefore akin
to “Paracelsus and van Helmont building their systems
impertinently amid the ruins of the Galenic.” [French, 211] He
condemned “speculative refinements, arbitrary axioms…dogmatic
assumptions…[and the] magnificent conjuring games of so-called
theoretical medicine.” [Ameke, 134] The uncurative allopathic
approach he condemned merely leads to ‘symptom chasing’ palliation and
medical dependency: “the champions of this clumsy doctrine of
morbific matters ought to be ashamed that they have so inconsiderately
overlooked and failed to appreciate the spiritual nature of life, and
the spiritual dynamic power of the exciting causes of diseases.”
[Organon, 9]

This is a perspective we always have to consider
about him; as formerly Francis Bacon in his Novum Organum Scientiarum
revealed the psychological and cultural mindset as possible sources of
errors in science: “homœopathy was the logical and legitimate
offspring of the Inductive Philosophy and Method of Aristotle and Lord
Bacon.” [Close, 15] It was “founded and developed into
a scientific system by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843) under the principles
of the Inductive Method of Science as developed by Lord Bacon.”
[Close, 16-17] Hahnemann “seems to have been most influenced by
the inductive philosophy of Lord Bacon.” [Close, Ch. 3] “Hahnemann
began to blaze his way, guided by the compass of logic encased in the
inductive method of Bacon.” [Close, Ch. 16]

Likewise, Hahnemann revealed the errors inherent to
the inconsistent medical ideas of his time, while searching for a sound
and factually-based grounding for medical practice. He “detaches
himself entirely from his contemporaries by his conception of the nature
of disease.” [Haehl, I, 291] Nonsense, “is his
description of the materia peccans, which was then generally accepted as
the cause of disease.” [Haehl, I, 291] He dismissed “mechanical
or chemical alterations of the material substance of the body,”
[Haehl, I, 291] as being the cause of disease, which he did not believe
to be “dependent on a material morbific substance…[but
resulting from] merely spirit-like [conceptual] dynamic derangements of
the life.” [Haehl, I, 291] It is this “morbidly
affected vital energy alone [that] produces disease.” [Haehl,
I, 291] He “strenuously…rejected and fought against the
theories of disease origin and diagnosis, as known in his time.”
[Haehl, I, 290] He “had to do with a confused babble of
inferences and unproveable assertions.” [Haehl, I, 290] He
dismissed “the crass materialism” [Haehl, I, 290] of
his day, and “became disillusioned and dissatisfied with current
medical practice. He…began experiments, later called ‘provings’,
on himself and other healthy individuals.” [Flinn, 425-7]

Disease “is not to him, as to contemporary
therapy, an agent distinct from the living whole, from the organism, and
from the life-giving dynamis—a being, inwardly concealed however
finely conceived.” [Haehl, I, 291] Diseases, he declares, “are
not mechanical or chemical alterations of the material substance of the
body and they are not dependent upon a material morbific substance. They
are merely spirit-like [conceptual] dynamic derangements of the
life;” [Haehl, I, 291] “the morbidly affected vital
energy alone produces diseases.” [Aph 12, in Haehl, I, 291]
Hahnemann rejected the view of such figures as Sydenham that “diseases
were specific entities,” [Porter, 1998, 230]; who cited “mistletoe
growing on trees, he emphasised how disease was independent of the
sufferer.” [Porter, 1998, 230] For Hahnemann, this was merely
false and misleading theorising. As with Paracelsus, Hahnemann took the
view that “each individuum was wholly peculiar and…[that]
there were as many diseases as patients.” [McLean, 170]

He dismisses all prior medicine as “an
utterly irrational and useless art.” [Ameke, 134] He exhorts
that “facts and experience must be at the root of all
revelations of truth.” [Ameke, 134] He regarded the medicine of
his day as having “evolved out of physicians’ heads, out of
illusion and caprice,” [Ameke, 134] and of comprising “an
infinite kingdom of fantasy and of arbitrary assumptions, the parent of
disastrous delusion and of absolute nothingness.” [Ameke, 134]
What Hahnemann terms “…’experience’ is equivalent to
investigation; ‘sciences of experience’ are the same as what are now
called the ‘inductive sciences’…or ’empiricism’…” [Ameke,
133] This refers to where Hahnemann says things like “true
medicine is from its very nature a pure science of experience,”
[Ameke, 134] that medicine “should rest only upon pure facts,”
[Ameke, 134] and that medicine should be rooted in “pure
experience and observation…and not venture a single step beyond the
sphere of pure, carefully observed experience and experiment.”
[Ameke, 134] Hahnemann was, “in all essentials, a flawless
experimenter.” [Introduction to the 2nd Organon, xxiv]

These empirical methods are those “in the
early days of homeopathy, Hahnemann undoubtedly employed,”
[Cooper, Feb 1893, 66] for it is indeed axiomatic that “all
great improvements in science are made by men who throw off the trammels
of previous teachings and begin by a complete and radical overhauling of
the entire subject.” [Cooper, 1894, 389] Hahnemann was an “exponent
of the empirical…therapeutic method…in which symptoms and signs of
the curative effort of the dynamis…must be interpreted as positive or
beneficial phenomena.” [van Haselen, 123] “The era of
scientific medical experimentation begins with Hahnemann and nobody
else. Scientific to the core, Hahnemann experimented scientifically for
scientific observation…” [ibid., xxvii] “The true
healing art is in its nature a pure science of experience, and can and
must rest upon clear facts and on the sensible phenomena pertaining to
their sphere of action.’ and that it ‘…dares not take a single step
out of the sphere of pure, well-observed experience and experiment, if
it would avoid becoming a nullity, a farce.” [Preface to 2nd
Organon, xiv]

Like Harvey, Hahnemann professed to learn “not
from books…not from the tenets of Philosophers, but from the fabric of
Nature.” [Porter, 215] A good example of Paracelsus’
qualification as a radical empiricist, like Hahnemann, is when he “thought
he could learn more medicine by travelling and observing than from any
library,” [French, 148] which is certainly a sentiment
reminiscent of Edward Bach’s travels in the English countryside, or
the very peripatetic life of Hahnemann in his ‘wandering years.’
Knowing that “we owe almost all our knowledge of the pure
healing forces of nature to the unembellished lore of the common man,”
[Gumpert, 24] so Hahnemann “cast tradition aside, and had
recourse only to the medicines he had learned, tested and confirmed.”
[Gumpert, 67] In his construction of homeopathy, Hahnemann gives “pure
experiment, careful observation and accurate experience alone,”
[Gumpert, 144] as the sole determining factors, the sole forces that
shaped his new system.

Hahnemann demanded that medicine become more
empirical, and roots itself more fully in genuine observations. Medicine
as a practical pursuit was largely dominated by an “apparent
symptomatic and therapeutic chaos,” [Risse, 146] which is a
world of “sometimes baffling bedside appearances.”
[Risse, 146] For Hahnemann, in their “dealings with the
sick…the objects of experience,” [Risse, 152] clinicians
should work solely with “the empirical peculiarities of each
individual case through observations at the bedside,” [Risse,
152] and dispense entirely with spurious and half-baked theories of
disease. Medical knowledge should be more firmly rooted in this
empirical sickness data and should therefore be very largely “based
on bedside experience.” [Risse, 152] This is clearly at
variance with “formal, abstract thought,” [Risse, 152]
or “metaphysical speculations,” [Risse, 152] and
illustrates quite well the natural gulf that exists between medicine and
philosophy.

Initially, he looked for the most simple,
comprehensible and trusted principles in medicine, easy to apply, and
without any speculative intrusion or unnecessary recourse to the opinion
of so-called “authorities,” whose validity he questioned.
Therefore, at the start of his career, we find him juggling with medical
ideas, straying from the main path of medical practice, certainly, but
experimenting and tinkering about with the medicine he had been given
and taught. The reason for all this activity is fairly clear—it is
self-explanatory: he was far from happy with the medicine he had been
given, first, because it did not cure sickness as it claimed, and second
because it often proved very harmful to patients.

Thus, at this very early stage, his confidence in
using the Galenic ‘bleed and purge’ approach diminished sharply. He
soon became very circumspect and inordinately cautious about using such
a blunt and dangerous instrument on sick people; he was sufficiently
cautious in fact, to abandon medical practice completely for several
years, for fear of harming many patients. We can see his high
deontological and moral conception: “primum non nocere”
was such an important thing for him that he was disposed to leave
medical practice in conditions that could be harmful for his patients.
He never was a person of half–way truths.

This then accurately describes Hahnemann’s primary
motivation: to establish carefully and with some certainty what medical
truths really are; to distinguish between cure as opposed to the
suppression or mere palliation of symptoms; to establish the core
principles of medicine. There is a deeper Hahnemann who lies underneath
all those superficial labels. Hahnemann might be said to have scored his
first big hits as a rebel, “the Luther of medicine,”
[McLean, 78] and as a dangerous iconoclast.

Of course it is perfectly true that Hahnemann was an
iconoclast and he did become a major medical rebel and reformer, “a
physician at war with the medical practices of his time,”
[Brieger, 241] but we must remember that this was a secondary, not a
primary aspect, as it flowed from his situation of being the one who had
found the truth, and nobody wanted to listen to it. Hahnemann is often
regarded as something of a “medical Luther.” [Temkin,
16; Osler] Medical empiricists like Paracelsus, and Hahnemann were “rejecting
sterile rationalism,” [McLean, 27] in favour of personal
experiment. Paracelsus was referred to as “the Luther of
medicine,” [McLean, 78] primarily because he represented a
troublemaking tendency, “an anti-authoritarian stance and
insisted…on the importance of inner revelation or ‘lumen naturae.’”
[McLean, 78] This knowledge-creating power he respected far more, as a
fertile and reliable beacon of hope and revelation, than the thunderous
hair-splitting rationalism of philosophers and textbooks. He also held
that true knowledge of medicine “was not to be acquired from
authority, but existed in the natural objects themselves.”
[French, 149]

His whole being rebelled utterly against the use of
medical contraries, which he felt run entirely counter to the efforts of
Nature: “it is improper to treat constipation with purgatives,
the excited circulation of hysterical, cachectic and hypochondriacal
patients by venesection, acid eructations by alkalies, chronic pains by
Opium, etc.” [Ameke, 105] Once he had realised the terrible
state of medicine, rooted, as it was, in mixed drugs, and strong doses
employed through contraries, and that all so-called cures were actually
suppressions that never held any prospect of cure but simply generated
more sickness, then what else could he do found a superior method, a
superior system? He had no alternative as a man of conscience but to
follow the path he did, even though that rendered him a rebel and
heretic.

This background provides us with an accurate and
insightful model with which to understand most of the events of his
early professional life and the many twists and turns of his medical
career. What this account reveals and places at centre stage is
Hahnemann’s abiding concern with what works and what doesn’t and why,
leading him on a trail to experiments with drugs and endless tinkering
with different doses, always devised to substantiate this and invalidate
that. Therefore, his early concern lay in a long-winded and methodical
process of distilling valid therapeutic maxims from the medical
literature, using case histories that illustrate points, for example,
about single or mixed drugs, large or small doses, similars or
contraries, dose repetition and what “a disease” actually
consists of as compared with “a sick person.”

In every case, he adopted a meticulous thorough-going
process of amassing case histories and examples, from which he could
distil clear medical principles, leading in turn to the experiments
which confirmed or denied each point he wished to investigate. Only by
proceeding in this slow and methodical manner was he eventually able to
decide, for example, in favour of single drugs, similars and small
doses. So, the real life of Hahnemann—our seeing him for what he
really was—supplies an illustration of a man who was primarily a
medical philosopher, a dauntless searcher for medical truth and one who
regarded the truth above all else as worth searching for relentlessly,
resolutely and tenaciously: aude sapere. This gives a more
accurate view of him than the idea that he was simply a medical rebel
and reformer.

In some respects Hahnemann resembles Galileo: “…’the
leitmotiv of Galileo’s work as I see it was his passionate opposition to
belief based on authority.‘…” [Einstein quoted by
Pietschmann, 156-7] Even though “Hahnemann was…a great
experimental scientist…he observed and collected his observations
until gradually a pattern showed itself…[yet] observation alone is not
sufficient, it must be coupled with right relating,” [Brieger,
241] yet the idea that he was primarily an empiricist and
experimental scientist a la Bacon is only a partial truth. He
certainly employed inductive methods, but they were always employed to
establish some truth, not blindly, pursued as an end in itself, or just
because he enjoyed experiments. One struggles hard to find a single
example of any experiment he undertook just for the sake of it. Ideas
and truths in medicine were thus easily the most important aspects of
the man and his mission, not experimental science per se. He was not an
empiric per se, but it was an empiricism tempered by and tethered to a
specific mission.

Health & Disease

Commencing any assessment of the principles of
homeopathy one has to consider the notions of health and disease, not
only because they are central to medicine in general, but also because
the concepts of health and disease in homeopathy are different from
these concepts as they exist in common usage in allopathic medicine.
Therefore, it is quite an imperative task to explore and discuss at the
outset the specific meanings of these concepts as they exist in
homeopathy.

For the homeopath, the state we call health is that
natural and dynamic attunement of the whole organism in a harmonious
state of smoothly coordinated functioning and balance. Health is thus by
definition the state of the whole organism, the whole person, mind, body
and spirit, and is not simply the absence of sickness symptoms. By
contrast, disease is depicted as any state of disharmony and imbalance
in the person manifested by signs and symptoms of disorder, imbalance
and malfunction, some coarse or gross and others fine and subtle, some
physical, some mental. Sickness is again a state or condition of the
whole person and should never be conceived of as being confined solely
to certain localised symptoms or to a specific cluster of symptoms that
have been given a specific name [so-called disease label] or which are
conceived of as an invading entity [named disease] that can, for
example, affect whole populations in much the same way. These are
entirely allopathic notions, rejected by homeopaths. He dismisses as
irrelevant “the name of the disease, sought after so blatantly
by his contemporaries.” [Haehl, I, 299] He “despises
every useless name of a disease.” [Haehl, I, 299]

Homeopathy eschews broad disease labels, but treats
each individual as a unique case of sickness. It regards that there are
as many diseases as there are patients. It therefore resists any
temptation to clump together cases of a similar type or give them a name
or treat them with the same drug, such as has become the standard
practice in allopathic medicine.

One ineradicable problem with all taxonomic schemes
is that to some degree it is “a system of idealised entities…fictions
compounded out of observed uniformities…concepts and categories…conditioned
by human aims.” [Berlin, 1997, 301] Because all such systems
are “a set of formulas, of imaginary entities and mathematical
relationships,” [Berlin, 1997, 302] so to the same degree it is
always in part a false and abstract system imposed upon raw reality
itself, an “artificial construction of our intellect,”
[Berlin, 1997, 302] that is not so much found but made. In reality, “nature
is not a perfect machine, nor an exquisite organism, nor a rational
system,” [Berlin, 1997, 302] it is rather “a savage
jungle: science is the art of dealing with it as best we can.”
[Berlin, 1997, 302]

By overlooking “that the disease
classification is man-made…they assume…that disease entities somehow
have an independent existence,” [Wulff et al, 82] which of
course they do not. They are human constructs with no more reality than
pipe dreams. The “disease classification is still largely a
mixture of disease entities defined in anatomical, physiological and
microbiological terms,” [Wulff et al, 77] which is indeed “a
man-made classification of individual patients.” [Wulff et al,
77] True and natural disease “classifications are not arbitrary
but must be moulded on reality as it is.” [Wulff et al, 88]
Thus far, these do not exist.

Sickness in homeopathy is always individualised and
idiosyncratic and never a pooled entity based on averages of large
numbers of people, a population, as is the regular practice in
allopathic medicine. Likewise, in homeopathy there can only be one
person with one disease and each person presents a unique combination of
symptoms; they do not have several diseases residing in the same person.
Everything wrong with one person comprises their ‘disease.’ In
homeopathy, there are no ‘diseases’ as such, but just ‘sick persons’
as individuals. In homeopathy, it is not valid to consider disease as
external to the patient, or driven by external events, but as resident
within the individual and driven mostly by internal processes. This
might seem a hairs-splitting difference, but it proves to be both a
subtle and also a pivotally insightful distinction between homeopathy
and allopathy. It is clear from this why Hahnemann dismissed the very
idea of classifying broad categories of so-called ‘diseases,’ and the
disease entity model, as ridiculous, unnatural and arbitrarily
fabricated human constructs, deriving from a fundamentally false
perception of the human organism in health and in sickness.

The body is a dynamic structure constantly being made
and being demolished; it is in constant motion just to stand still. It
never stops creating and destroying itself at the same time. This means
it has a balance of construction activity and destruction activity going
on all at the same time. Cells are dying and new cells are being made
all the time. Catabolism and anabolism balance each other but are in
constant motion. This also gives an insight into the incredible
complexity of the organism but also the smoothly coordinated operation
of its processes.

Single Drugs

The single drug was really the first emerging axiom
of homeopathy. In many respects, Hahnemann’s conviction in the use of
single drugs sprang independently and with deeper and more impassioned
conviction as compared with all other axioms of homeopathy. He strove
even from a very early stage in his medical career to simplify the
complex medicine of his day, and was inspired always to obtain
simplicity in his treatment of the sick.

“A single simple remedy is always calculated to
produce the most beneficial effects without any additional means…it is
never requisite to mix two of them together

.” [Hahnemann, 1805,
469] “An equally important reason for prescribing only the
single remedy was that all the provings were of single substances – not
of mixtures.” [Coulter, II, 391] “…we must only give one
single simple substance at a time.” [Hahnemann, 1805, 469] “Hahnemann
insisted that only one remedy be given at a time and continually
belaboured his allopathic colleagues for their multi–ingredient
prescriptions…” [Coulter, II, 390] “Then let
us…agree to give but one single, simple remedy at a time, for every
single disease…” [Hahnemann, 1797, 320]

One key aspect of this impulse is his simple,
possibly naive, notion that the drugs in use in his day were far too
complex mixtures for them to bring any predictable benefit to the sick
patient. He maintained that no true knowledge of the effects of drugs
existed, that it was all based on hearsay, on tradition and speculation.
Therefore, it followed from the critical approach he adopted that he
decided that any true understanding of the nature and action of drugs
should be based upon single drugs first and that the data so generated
must be obtained PRIOR to their use on sick persons, rather than the
reverse situation, which had pertained for centuries in a completely
corrupt and unquestioned tradition. Drugs were simply used in mixtures
and in a somewhat entrenched rote manner as based upon unquestioned and
centuries-old formulas. This approach he detested, and rejected
passionately, as a major obstacle to medical advance.

He rebelled most forcefully and at the earliest stage
in his career against the apothecaries and their wonderful mixtures,
which Hahnemann declared to be a bogus profession peddling dangerous
mixtures that nobody knew the true therapeutic actions of. He was
outraged by and rebelled against the whole tradition and privileges of
the apothecaries, who he accused of being fools and of enjoying a wholly
corrupt and cosy, parasitic relationship with the equally foolish
physicians. He never lost his passionate opposition towards apothecaries
and what he saw as their vile and murderous trade. He gave them no
quarter and was unrelenting in the venom and bile he unleashed on them
even to the end of his long life.

Therefore, in this manner, the first aspect of
homeopathy to be truly enunciated was that of single drugs, because it
was the first and most powerful conviction that Hahnemann had formulated
from his very unhappy engagement with Galenic medicine: “homeopathy
is more closely related to the medicine of Hippocrates and of Paracelsus
than to that of Galen…and [thus] has much in common with two
ideographic periods.” [Guttentag, 1178] “Galen’s
dogmatisation of the doctrines of Hippocrates had been a sacrosanct,
unassailable property of humanity,” [Gumpert, 14]

He became deeply and intuitively convinced that mixed
drugs were fundamentally wrong and that single drugs alone spelled the
true path for a sane and rational medicine. He condemned the allopathic
use of unrecognisable mixtures of drugs by the “commingling of
several such unknown substances in one prescription.” [Organon,
xxviii] the therapeutic effects of which were inevitably unknown. He “was
a most passionate opponent of mixed doses that contained a large number
of ingredients.” [Gumpert, 96] Hahnemann “was the first
to raise his voice against the compounding of prescriptions, holding
that the effects of compounds on disease could never be known
precisely.” [Coulter, II, 335] Then “let us…agree to
give but one single, simple remedy at a time, for every single disease.”
[Hahnemann, 1797, Lesser Writings, 320] He condemned the “employment
of the many-mixed, this pell-mell administration of several substances
at once…these hotchpotch doses.” [Lesser Writings, 1808, 498]
He was very “outspoken in his contempt for every mixture of
medicines,” [Haehl, I, 308] revealing his “rejection of
compound medicines.” [Haehl, I, 308] On this point he never
deviated during his long life and was disposed on only the slightest
provocation to pour tremendous scorn on the pharmacy of his day.

How true this is even in our day too! But the simple
apothecary is now replaced by huge pharmaceutical enterprises, a billion
dollar affair and an immense political, media and social influence. So,
in principle here is a serious problem Hahnemann put for the first
time…WHO is managing health, the doctor or the big-pharma business?

One later reason for single drug use was also his
theory about the vital force. The homeopathic remedy doesn’t act
directly but by intermediary action and reaction of Vital Force of the
patient. As diseases are viewed as “dynamic derangements,” so
a single drug at once is to restore in a unique and coherent way the
action and direction of the Vital Force. More than one remedy would
create confusion, like an army conducted by more than one commander,
which, at the same time tries to act on more than one front spreading
and so diluting its forces. However, we have to mention that, for a
short period of his life H was attracted by Aegidi to the idea of two
simultaneous remedies, but he abandoned the idea because he was
convinced by Boeninnghausen and others that accepting two drugs at a
time could re-open the Pandora’s box of polypharmacy, which was not a
suitable option.

On the other hand, the “single drug”
principle doesn’t mean that he did not sometimes use remedies in
alternation or in short succession. The change in the aspect of Vital
Force—the image of the sickness—demands a change of remedy. On the
other hand, as he stated in the 4th Organon, the remedy must be
left for enough time to act.

Similars

Similars and single drugs really emerged together in
Hahnemann’s scathing analysis of allopathy. It is hard to separate
them even for convenience. The law of similars was first formulated by
Hahnemann through a prolonged literature search which then inspired
trial and error, and experiments, gradually revealing to him, and
convincing him of, the superiority of similars as a medical maxim over
contraries, which was the central axiom of Galenic medicine in which he
had formally been trained.

“One should apply in the disease to be
healed…that remedy which is able to stimulate another artificially
produced disease, as similar as possible; and the former will be healed—similia
similibus—likes with likes

.” [Haehl, I, 66] “The
primary characteristic of homeopathic medicine was the law of similia…”
[Rothstein, 165-6] “Hahnemann called the ‘law of similars’ a
‘law of nature’ discovered ‘by the observation of nature and my own
experience.” [Defence of the Organon, 1896, USA, 76, in Coulter,
II, 362] “Then came the hypothesis—drugs cure disease by
causing lesser diseases which the organism can effectively overcome—which
is to say, ‘similia similibus curantur’ or ‘like cures like’.”
[Cameron, 29] There occurred to him an “association of ideas
that led him to suppose that he could cure fever with fever, instead of
by the brutal current method of the evacuation of ‘pernicious juices.”
[Gumpert, 68] When he published his Essay on a New Principle in 1796, “this
work was the successful attempt of a man buried alive to force his way
out into the open air.” [Gumpert, 86] Similars was indeed “the
doctrine which was to redeem him from the medical nihilism of despair.”
[Gumpert, 104]

“Hahnemann considered the production of his
‘mercurial fever’ necessary for the cure of syphilis

;” [Ameke,
103] “a kind of artificial fever must be produced by
Ipecacuanha, in order to cure certain forms of intermittent fever.”
[Ameke, 104] He held “the view that in insidious fevers from
unknown causes in which the vital force is sluggish, a new,
strengthening and efficacious fever must be excited.”
[Ameke, 104] He “remarks that the mercurial disease resembled
that of syphilis.” [Ameke, 104] “By choosing a remedy
for a given natural disease that is capable of producing a very similar
artificial disease, we shall be able to cure the most severe diseases.”
[Ameke, 107]

Because Hahnemann was in a state of profound
dissatisfaction with Galenic medicine, so he had in effect been rendered
deeply sceptical of the therapeutic legitimacy of its core maxims, viz:
mixed drugs in strong dose based on contraries, and its main therapeutic
method: bleed and purge. This fact must naturally and inevitably have
inclined him sympathetically towards consideration of the potential
usefulness of the opposite maxims to Galenism: small doses of single
drugs, employed through the more Hippocratic notion of similars.

Hahnemann instinctively detested the use of strong
doses of mixed drugs so much in vogue at that time: “the
prolonged use of violent, heroic drugs in strong, increasing doses, the
abuse of calomel, corrosive sublimate, mercurial ointment, nitrate of
silver, iodine and its ointments, opium, valerian, cinchona bark and
quinine, foxglove, Prussic acid, sulphur and sulphuric acid, perennial
purgatives, bloodletting in torrents, leeches, fontanels, setons, etc.”
[Hahnemann, Organon, v.74] It is interesting, if not ironic, that many
of these drugs whose over-use he condemns were the first to be proved
and incorporated into the homeopathic materia medica!

Therefore, as he set out on his quest for medical
enlightenment, it is fair to say that he was already naturally
predisposed against the Galenic maxims and leaning more towards those
which duly became the core maxims of homeopathy. This was the situation
he naturally found himself in even before he set out on his search. Yet,
even in spite of this statement of the situation, we must dismiss
immediately any notion that he had a predetermined vision of what
homeopathy was, before he independently validated each separate axiom of
it, and which simply unfolded for him quickly under its own momentum.

This is an incorrect view of the facts. In reality,
he still took a very long time to independently verify, through
observation and careful experiments, each separate strand of what
eventually became homeopathy. He chose to very thoroughly test and
validate each axiom over a period from roughly around 1783 to 1801,
starting with similars and single drugs and ending with small doses.
Such a slow process of unfoldment clearly does not support the notion
that he merely followed a simple, predetermined plan, and such a notion
must therefore be dismissed out of hand at the start.

Hahnemann had noticed, “a drug imposes its
own disease on the patient and wipes out the natural disease.”
[Wheeler, 1944, 170] He observed that “the symptoms of Mercury
poisoning were very like those of secondary syphilis. That was noticed
by John Hunter long before Hahnemann.” [Wheeler, 1944, 170] A
similar notion flows from the observation that “the children who
did best on tartar emetic in pneumonia were those who had as well
gastro-enteritis, i.e. presented more symptoms similar to those of the
remedy.” [Wheeler, 1944, 170] Homeopathy then “is
exclusively the science and art of the investigation and application of
the similia similibus curentur phenomenon.” [Guttentag, 1176]

Similars should also be profound not superficial.
This means that the similarities between drug and patient must be deeper
and more extensive than just a few broad symptoms. It is also clear from
this account that Hahnemann did not construct a theory of medicine first
and then find facts to support it, as has been claimed in some less
informed quarters [e.g. “Hahnemann had cast homeopathy in
substantially the same eighteenth century mold that had given shape to
the systems of Cullen, Brown and Rush.” Warner, 1986, 52-3] On
the contrary, he distilled each axiom separately and directly from an
extensive body of medical literature, from cases, from observation and
experience, and thus from considerable reflection upon a large corpus of
evidence. Such an approach is certainly an inductive approach a la
Bacon, but it was based initially upon a deep dissatisfaction with the
medicine of his day, which inspired his search, rather than upon a pure
devotion to the methods of experimental science per se as defined by
Bacon and Galileo, for example.

Similars must cover specifics and generals,
modalities and rare or peculiar symptoms as well as the ideas presented
above. This is what Hahnemann discovered. It is not simply a similarity
confined to a few symptoms here and there. In other words, some broad
and general similarity between patient and drug does not at all form a
sufficient basis for a prescription. A much deeper, more detailed,
individualised, specific and idiosyncratic level of similarity is
required for a “true fit” to be seen to exist between patient
and drug. Partial similarity will improve or palliate temporarily, but
not cure. The best and most detailed similarity is always correct and
curative.

There is a however another corollary of similars that
needs some amplification. Similars necessarily embraces case totality
both in the drug picture and in the patient. This means that there must
exist a deep similarity or resonance between the case in total, as a
whole, and the drug picture of the most suitable remedy. Similars
does not therefore simply mean the similarity that might exist between a
few specific symptoms here and there or based upon some arbitrarily
defined named disease entity.

All these points illustrate quite well the
interconnectedness of homeopathic ideas as forming a general continuum
or whole system of tightly cohesive ideas and notions, which blend
neatly into each other. It is a coherent and holistic system and it is
thus difficult to separate any one aspect of it and isolate it from all
the rest to which it is intimately related and connected.

Provings, Poisonings and Signatures

Having decided that only single drugs were to be
employed in a sane and rational medicine, the next task Hahnemann
encountered was how to decide what healing properties any drug actually
contains hidden within it, and how this information might be obtained.
Dismissing at the outset such ideas as the doctrine of signatures, the
answer to this problem came to him from consideration of the effects of
poisons, in which he had had a long interest and fascination.

In turn, the law of similars springs first from
Hahnemann’s studies of poisonings and second from his proving
experiments. Another stream of ideas flowed from his deep interest in
poisons, which reveal the effects of drugs upon the healthy. For
example, his publications: On Arsenical Poisoning, 1786; The Complete
Mode of Preparing The Soluble Mercury, 1790; On The Best Method of
Preventing Salivation and The Destructive Effects of Mercury, 1791; What
Are Poisons? What are Medicines? 1806. There seems little doubt that
these studies formed an important prelude to his provings, which are
afterall merely mild forms of self-poisoning for experimental purposes.
He therefore decided that the only way to accurately determine the
detailed ‘sphere of action’ of any single drug was to take some yourself
in small doses and accurately explore and record how it can temporarily
derange one’s own health.

Heuristically, he found that yes indeed, all drugs
are ‘poisons’ that can more or less derange health and induce artificial
illness states. The provings were partly inspired by accounts of
accidental poisonings—thereby opening up an entirely new pathway to
therapeutic knowledge. This meant that many previously “highly
poisonous substances,” [Ameke, 131] could now be safely brought
into use as harmless healing agents. They could indeed be “converted
into…powerful remedial agents in the hands of a skilful
physician.” [Ameke, 131] Hahnemann felt that “medicines
become poisons simply by imperfect use; in themselves no medicines are
poisonous.” [Haehl, I, 75] “He zealously occupied
himself…with the collection of cases of poisoning.” [Ameke,
101] His view was that “those substances which we term medicines
are unnatural irritants…[that] disturb the health of our body…and
excite disagreeable sensations.” [Ameke, 101] “Within
the infant rind of this small flower Poison hath residence and medicine
power.” [Shakespeare] “Day after day, he tested
medicines on himself and others. He collected histories of cases of
poisoning. His purpose was to establish a physiological doctrine of
medical remedies, free from all suppositions, and based solely on
experiments.” [Gumpert, 92] “Hahnemann very carefully
argues the question of the new law; he adduces many results of
poisonings by drugs, gives his experiences in the uses of
medicines…and records the symptoms that certain medicines produced on
himself and others.” [Bradford, 58]

The proving was just the start. “Hahnemann
having, by his simple and rational experiment with Cinchona bark in
1790, conclusively established the great therapeutic law, that to cure
diseases medicines must be used which possess the power of exciting
similar diseases, at once perceived that the whole edifice of the old
Materia Medica must be rebuilt from the very foundation, as that Materia
Medica furnished nothing positive regarding the [true] pathogenetic
actions of drugs.” [Dudgeon, 176] Clearly also, “Hahnemann’s
dose reduction made possible the systematic use of poisons in medicine.
While this had been recommended by von Stoerck and others, it could not
be practised as long as large doses were considered necessary…the
homeopathic pharmacopoeia later used dozens of the most powerful
poisons: Belladonna, Aconite, Arsenic, Strychnine, Rattlesnake.”
[Coulter, II, 403-4]

Provings and poisonings reveal Hahnemann’s abiding
interest in drugs and their actions and his Pharmaceutical Lexicon
was in many respects the forerunner of his Materia Medica Pura,
and it is this deep interest in drugs and their effects that reveals and
explains the basis of his enormous respect for Albrecht van Haller. What
Hahnemann did with this interest was to explore the primary and
secondary effects of drugs and poisons—that is where it took him—and
from there he went on to observe and distil great principles about the
actions of single drugs on healthy people and in turn on the sick. These
can all be found in great detail in the Organon.

Homeopathy uses provings of single drugs to determine
their precise sphere of action; these provings have been conducted upon
healthy human volunteers, and do not employ animal experiments, for
example: “his great endeavour was to found a physiological
materia medica.” [Ameke, 101] Hahnemann “neatly and
conscientiously assembled and numbered his observations of the symptoms
excited in himself and his children by the most varied of medicines.”
[Gumpert, 114] There followed “a period of twenty years during
which Hahnemann worked prodigiously to accumulate data in support of his
‘law of similar’ as it came to be called. An immense Materia Medica
was compiled, and he conducted continuous experiments on himself, his
friends and those of his colleagues who were curious and willing.”
[Cameron, 29]

The proving can be said to arise at the point of
convergence of Hahnemann’s detailed knowledge of sickness, poisons and
drugs and his uncompromising desire to ground medicine solely in
empiricism, that is, observation and experiment. He reserved his
greatest respect for “a science of pure experience…knowledge
of the disease to be treated and the actions of drugs.” [Ameke,
134] These, he insists can only be deduced “from pure experience
and observation.” [Ameke, 134] The proving idea mirrors exactly
the incredible information Hahnemann had unearthed in the literature of
cases of poisonings, but in provings this is expressed in a muted and
more subtle form.

By ingesting a small dose of a substance over a few
days one can begin to gain great insights into the nature of a drug,
because what is revealed in the proving is the drug’s sphere of action
within the body, what organs and systems it affects [resonates with]
most strongly and what subtle impacts it has on likes and dislikes,
modalities, sleep, dreams and mental states. When compiled together,
this information translates into the drug picture [therapeutic image] of
the drug in question as recorded in the materia medica. In many
respects, this image represents the inner essence of that substance. And
it is here perhaps that we can see a subtle connection between the
proving and poisoning with the more ancient doctrine of signatures. “According
to the doctrine of signatures, widely believed in many cultures,
features in the appearance of a plant indicate its utility,”
[Steiner, 26] Hahnemann “definitely rejected [the law of
signatures]…in his Materia Medica Pura we read under Chelidonium…’the
ancients imagined that the yellow colour of the juice of this plant was
an indication (signature) of its utility in bilious diseases…the
importance of human health does not admit of any such uncertain
directions for the of medicines. It would be criminal frivolity to rest
contented with such guesswork at the bedside of the sick.’’
[Hahnemann quoted in Hobhouse, 1933, 137-8]

“Paracelsus was also a firm believer in the
doctrine of signatures, and in illustration of it explained every single
part of St. John’s Wort [Hypericum perforatum] in terms of this belief
“…the holes in the leaves mean that this herb helps all inner and
outer orifices of the skin…the blooms rot in the form of blood, a sign
that it is good for wounds and should be used where flesh has to be
treated.”

[Griggs, 50]

Arguably, it shows an underlying essence of the
substance common to both and which might also be intuitively realised
from observation and deep reflection as well as from actual provings.
This also connects homeopathy with the various Flower Essence remedies
now in quite widespread use.

We can also say that Hahnemann was a pioneer of the
“medicine based on fact” or “evidence based
medicine.” Hahnemann’s primary aim or ambition was to base
medicine solely on solid ground, on facts and therefore he had
toxicology and provings as pillars to build a solid data-base of all
actions of substances on man.

Toxicology and the so called “side-effects”
of drugs represent the involuntary, accidental, uncontrolled side of
this topic, and reveal the gross and lesional aspect of the effects a
substance can induce. Provings are the voluntary, controlled, conscious
and experimental side, and so to say, the more subtle physiological and
psychological side of the same phenomenon. Another point that came from
provings is the idea of some specific reactions of individual nature,
coming from susceptibility and sensitivity of individuals. From these
arise the later notion of “sensible typologies,” which denote
a complex description of the most reactive individuals to some remedies.

Not only in the case of the provings of drugs, but
also with regard to the detailed study of medical similars, there has
probably never been in the entire history of the world a single person
who has studied the effects of drugs on the human subject more
thoroughly than Samuel Hahnemann. In provings and in poisonings,
Hahnemann’s pioneering work noted—dissected in detail—both the
primary and secondary effects of drugs, and in studying the cures of the
past he was able to show that the secondary effects usually mirror the
primary and are often curative responses initiated by the vital force,
opposite in their nature to the primary effect of the drug on the human
system. Nowhere else in the medical literature, outside of his writings,
has this information been studied and tabulated in such detail. Nor
anywhere else has this data been slowly distilled to engender core
therapeutic principles of such awesome predictive power.

Case Totality

This can be seen to derive in part from having no
concept of a disease entity acting as the cause of a sickness. It comes
from having no disease label and it also springs naturally from the
provings, from observation in clinical practice and is thus primarily an
empirical idea. It also derives from the conceptual meeting point of his
translation work and the provings. It is important to understand why.

While working on translations, Hahnemann found and
collected numerous references to specific drugs for specific symptoms,
ailments or specific disease labels, and to examples of the effects of
poisonings. What exactly did this material mean to him and how did it
affect his thinking? Once he came to prove a drug [e.g. Cinchona in
1790], he then saw its effects really comprised a case totality rather
than a specific for a named disease or group of symptoms. In other
words, in proving a drug he found its action was not to create specific
symptom clusters, but to impact more broadly on all mental and physical
aspects of organism functioning, and thus creating an image of totality
rather than merely being confined to a narrow range of specific actions.
Therefore, there was a certain disparity between the references he found
to the use of drugs, as found in the literature, which tended to be
specific, and their actual effects in the provings. This disparity must
have changed his views, probably radically.

His findings therefore meant that in similia such
proved drugs were suitable to be employed not for quite narrow specific
groups of symptoms [= named diseases], but only for a broader case
totality. Then in using these proven drugs in clinical practice, via
similia, he accidentally encountered the incredible sensitivity a
patient manifests towards their specific similimum. Therefore, he also
saw that any new ‘medicine of specifics,’ could not conceivably be a
medicine of a specific drug fro a specific disease label, as he had
probably imagined, but for a specific drug profile delicately matched
and appropriate for a specific individual patient, as a holistic entity.
The distinction between these two categories might seem subtle and
thunderously hair-splitting, but in reality it is a crucially
significant difference, that was to cast asunder the allopathic from the
homeopathic systems. This distinction in fact creates a wide gulf
between the two both at the conceptual level and at the practical level.
Hahnemann saw that there would henceforth be no possibility, no option
ever to treat a small group of localised symptoms with homeopathy; it
would be case totality or nothing.

Basically, what Hahnemann showed is that all cases of
what we term ‘disease’ are ‘totalities’ of symptoms or totalities of
health disorder and NOT named diseases as conceived in allopathic
practice. He could see the wider picture of each individual case rather
than the narrowly fragmented view that naturally follows from the named
diseases approach to the sick person. They are different ways of seeing
the sick person and hence quite different ways of looking at the very
nature of sickness. One is fragmentary and concerned with parts, and the
other is holistic and concerned with wholes.

Hahnemann took the view “that physicians
assess not only the cause of the illness, but all aspects of the
patient,” [Porter, 172] As with Hegel’s philosophy, the “central
thought is, then, that only the whole is real; the partial fact is only
an abstraction, which needs to be brought into connection with the whole
in order to gain validity. ‘The bud disappears in the bursting forth of
the blossom, and it may be said that the one is contradicted by the
other; by the fruit, again, the blossom is declared to be a false
existence in the plant, and the fruit is judged to be its truth in the
place of the flower…” [Rogers; 409] He believed that “the
disease is reflected in the totality of the symptoms,” [Haehl,
I, 292] Hahnemann “was very conscious of the danger,”
[Guttentag, 1187] of focusing too narrowly on “one symptom
rather than of the whole symptom complex.” [Guttentag, 1187] “not
only a single symptom or a single chain of symptoms must be
removed,” [Guttentag, 1187] one must remove “the
totality of symptoms.” [Guttentag, 1187] For “the whole
clinical picture guides the homeopath toward the proper drug…[one that
can] produce a similar sum total of signs and symptoms,”
[Guttentag, 1187] this is the similimum. Homeopathy “prefers to
explore rather than to explain. It emphasises exhaustiveness in
observation and stresses the significance of phenomena in terms of the
organism as a whole,” [Guttentag, 1176-7] rather than a
fragmented view of its parts. It seeks to describe rather than explain.
It “considers the single patient as indivisible and unique…as
not accessible to the method of measuring,” [Guttentag, 1177]
so beloved of the allopaths.

Case totality principle (“Inbegriff des
Symptome“) comes also as a direct consequence of the ‘totality
of actions’ of remedies as revealed from provings. The differential
diagnosis in homeopathy is not based on theoretical nosologic
“standards” but on real symptoms, sometime not in a direct
connection with the basic affection, that reflects the individual and
specific reactional patterns. Because these patterns are external,
observable symptoms that reflect in their turn the subtle and
unobservable mis-attunement (Unstimmung) of the vital principle.
Such semiological notions as modalities, localities, sensations, etc,
have all to be carefully observed because they are the expression of the
individual vital force reactions. One remarkable point in Hahnemann’s
perspective that comes from this is the principle of coherence: disease
is not a mere mix of symptoms, but a coherent reaction of the vital
force as a consequence of its inner perturbation, of its ‘functional
turbulence’ that we call sickness.

Homeopathy looks for the totality of the case because
it has significance from the therapeutic point of view. In allopathy, to
collect all the symptoms has no real therapeutic meaning; it collects
symptoms to eliminate them afterwards because the only symptoms it
considers are the common ones, the “disease symptoms.” On the
contrary, in homeopathy even the most minor and peculiar symptoms are
potentially of greatest importance; they reveal the individuality with
its peculiar determination.

Idiosyncrasy individualise

In his work with single drugs Hahnemann soon
discovered that the process of matching a drug and a patient requires
much greater subtlety and skill than is imagined. In particular this
includes the idiosyncratic element of individuality and the rare and
peculiar symptoms. Idiosyncrasies reflect also the fact that, from a
reactional point of view, humans are not a tabula rasa, they come
with inherited traits, they acquire others during the events of life in
such a way that every individual is highly personalized and unique. This
view stands in the starkest contrast to allopathic view of health and
sickness viewed as they are solely through the filter of averages. Propria
and communia, what is idiosyncratic and unique to an individual
case, and what is common to all cases of a ‘disease;’ this connects
with concomitants and ancillary drugs used in the medieval approach.

The inability of scientific medicine to individualise
induces a focus not upon “the common symptoms [communia]…”
[Coulter, II, 249] those common to many people [the communia]—as in
allopathic medicine—but a focus upon “the symptoms peculiar to
the individual,” [Coulter, II, 250] case [the propria
symptoms]. The latter are much “more reliable criteria…for
distinguishing one patient from another,” [Coulter, II, 250]
and in most cases “the patient’s habits and mode of life were
the most important of the propria.” [Coulter, II, 250] In
ancient medicine “they separated the propria from communia with
the aim of coming as close as possible to the idiosyncrasy of the
patient.” [Coulter, II, 250] It is “that which
distinguishes him from all similar patients,” [Coulter, II,
251] and which distinguishes this “patient from all others of
his class. Each sick person is unique in his sickness, and the sickness
is unknowable in its essence.” [Coulter, II, 251] By relying on
“propria over communia they incorporated into their method
precisely the characteristics which distinguish the individual patient
from all others like him.” [Coulter, II, 498] Allopathy is more
properly rooted in an impulse “to note the number of
similarities in the behaviour of objects and to construct propositions…”
[Berlin, 1996, 21] By contrast, homeopathy is rooted in an opposite
principle “to bring out what is specific, unique, in a given
character or series of events…respects in which it differs from
everything…[and] conveys the unique pattern of experience.”
[Berlin, 1996, 22]

All homeopaths become cognisant of “the large
amount of individualisation demanded by Hahnemann.” [Haehl, I,
92] Osler when he said that “it is much more important to know
what sort of patient has a disease than what sort of disease a patient
has.” [Maizes & Caspi] Therefore, we can say that Hahnemann
makes a clear and wide deviation from all previous medical systems by
insisting that disease is an individual phenomenon and that medicine
must primarily base its rational and truly curative treatments upon the
unique aspects of each case and not upon the aggregated ‘common
symptoms.’ For clearly, what he is saying is that the true nature of
any case of sickness lies primarily and fundamentally in its unique
individuality and not in the symptoms common across many various cases
of a similar type.

Idiosyncrasies form a common basis for the most
peculiar symptoms coming from provings and those coming from sick
persons. The same principle reveals a mirror-like situation: the most
sensitive or susceptible individuals will reveal the most peculiar
symptoms in provings, but the most peculiar symptoms in disease are
signs that the individual is highly sensitive to a substance.

An interesting rapport between idiosyncrasy,
individuality and wholeness is the main core of Hahnemann’s
consideration: idiosyncrasy individualise, disrupt the uniformity of
reactions, the persons, healthy (in provings) or ill (in therapeutics)
are different. But as long
as one consider the totality, individuality expresses itself as a
wholeness, such that the person is never cut into pieces and all his/her
parts remain integrated in a more
comprehensive understanding, or fully rounded picture. This is a
recuperation of the phenomenological view about humans and therefore
homeopathy has less to do with the abstract notion of MAN, but with the
more concrete individual man “as such.”

Allopathy, ever since the days of Sydenham, makes the
exact opposite claim, and all its treatments are based solidly upon the
notion of pooled data, averages, l’homme moyenne and what is common to
each so-called “disease entity,” a concept Hahnemann derided
as a ludicrous and quite arbitrary human construct, something unnatural,
made and not found. Therefore, in this topic we begin to see one of the
very strongest contrasts between the conceptual views of the allopaths
and homeopaths.

Small Doses

The small doses of homeopathy were the last axiom and
were entirely arrived at empirically through the desire to reduce
[alleviate, and avoid] the impact that doses of the most similar remedy
can have upon the patient. One of “homeopathy’s prime
principles…in a nutshell…that drugs increase in potency with their
dilution.” [Cameron, 30] Here we have to emphasise the high
moral and deontological aspiration of homeopathy, which completely
considers as valuable the Hippocratic principle of “primum non
nocere“. This is part of the basis of the small dose: a small
dose that can induce healing, does the least harm. Hahnemann found that
the most similar drug had a uniquely powerful [often astonishing]
ability to elicit strong reactions in the patient and for this reason
could elicit aggravations of symptoms.

Hahnemann “advocated ever more definitely the
administration of small doses.” [Gumpert, 96] “It is in
his little work on Scarlet Fever, published in 1801, that we have the
first forebodings of an unusual mode of preparing the medicines…the
dose of Opium there recommended…is very small compared with the
ordinary dose…the object of this dilution was to diminish the power of
the medicine chiefly…for patients of very tranquil disposition.”
[Dudgeon, 338] “Hahnemann…perplexed by the aggravations
resulting from ordinary doses, seeking to find a dose so small that it
would not endanger life and desiring to accurately measure his degree of
dilution so that he might repeat or retrace his steps, invented or
adopted the centesimal scale…” [Close, 218] “His
discovery of the principle of potentisation came about gradually as he
experimented in the reduction of his doses, in order to arrive at a
point where severe aggravations would not occur. Gradually, by
experience, he learned that the latent powers of drugs were released or
developed by trituration, dilution and succussion.” [Close,
190] “Hahnemann’s final views and practice in regard to the
dose were arrived at gradually, through long years of careful experiment
and observation.” [Close, 189] “A hint of his growing
conviction that remedies should be prescribed in high dilution was given
in..(an article)..published in 1788.” [Cook, 51] “Hahnemann’s
dose reduction made possible the systematic use of poisons in medicine.
While this had been recommended by von Stoerck and others, it could not
be practised as long as large doses were considered necessary…the
homeopathic pharmacopoeia later used dozens of the most powerful
poisons: Belladonna, Aconite, Arsenic, Strychnine, Rattlesnake.”
[Coulter, II, 403-4] “In the Organon, however, he stated that
trituration and succussion release the ‘spirit-like power’ of the
medicine – which is compatible with his assumption that medicines act
through their spiritual [geistlich] or dynamic impact upon the
organism.” [Coulter, II, 403] “His discovery of the
principle of potentisation came about gradually as he experimented in
the reduction of his doses, in order to arrive at a point where severe
aggravations would not occur. Gradually, by experience, he learned that
the latent powers of drugs were released or developed by trituration,
dilution and succussion.” [Close, 190]

He was alarmed and amazed to observe the great
sensitivity a patient shows towards even small doses of the most
homeopathic remedy for their case. Ever smaller doses were conceived by
him for the pragmatic purpose of alleviating or avoiding these bad
reactions evoked in patients by the most similar remedy. Already
naturally inclined in the direction of adopting much smaller doses than
his medical peers [e.g. Mercury], he was thus inspired to find ways of
reducing dosage progressively and also in a mathematically precise way.
This is how and why he first entered the field of dose reduction. The
tiny doses of homeopathy can also be said to reveal a link to the more
metaphysical ideas like vital force and miasms because they all partake
of a subtle and non-molecular dynamic.

In his later views, the dose reduction is a problem
of attunement between the subtlety of the target (vital force) and the
subtlety of the means [the potentised drug]. Both vital force and
potentised remedies are dynamic “spirit-like” entities and to
use the second to correct the ailments of the first might be said to
proceed as a natural consequence of his spiritualistic view. Actually,
the diluted and potentised remedies of homeopathy are the greatest
problem of its acceptance by the scientific world, because many of the
remedies used are beyond the Avogadro number or, so to say,
“ultra-molecular,” beyond the limit a molecular and
materialistic paradigm can conceive. The fact that, however, they are
therapeutically efficient opens a great problematic field about this
paradigm itself, and creates a deep tension between homeopathy and
conventional science.

The basis of these small doses was empirical, that is
to say, they were arrived at through experience and trial and error; the
doses were arrived at by Hahnemann in an attempt both to progressively
reduce the toxic action of the drugs, but also to retain the therapeutic
action; the result was smaller and smaller doses. “no poison,
however strong or powerful, the billionth or decillionth of which would
in the least degree affect a man or harm a fly,” [Simpson, 11]

In his ‘Essay On a New Principle’ of 1796, Hahnemann “does
not yet talk about diminishing the dose, but insists on the necessity of
administering but one medicine at a time…in all these discoveries
Hahnemann was guided by experience, to which he trusted solely.”
[Dudgeon, 49-50] The small drugs homeopathy employs are produced in a
unique way by shaking and diluting in a serial manner in dilute ethanol;
the chemical and physical basis of this method—in terms of modern
scientific conception—remains a mystery, but was also arrived at
empirically, by trial and error. This potentisation method somehow
imprints the essence, or energy pattern, of the plant, mineral or animal
drug upon the dilution medium, which can then be transferred to lactose
pills. “We cannot fail to be struck by the sudden transition
from the massive doses he prescribed in 1798 to the unheard of
minuteness of his doses only one year later, and we can but guess the
causes for this abrupt transition.” [Dudgeon, 395 6] “Hahnemann’s
idea at first was simply to reduce the “strength” or material
mass of his drug, but his passion for accuracy led him to adopt a scale,
that he might always be sure of the degree of reduction and establish a
standard for comparison.” [Close, 216] The “principle
of the infinitesimal dose [is]…an outrage to human reason,”
[Forbes, 17 and Nicholls, 121] and “the doctrines of
potentiation and the infinitesimal dose has always been the central
point of attack upon homeopathy by its enemies.” [Close, 215] “In
the United States, regular physicians…found Hahnemann’s theories
absurd and incredible. Reasoning that no one in his right mind could
believe such arrant nonsense, they concluded that homeopaths must be
either knaves or fools.” [Blake, 86] “His discovery of
the principle of potentisation came about gradually as he experimented
in the reduction of his doses, in order to arrive at a point where
severe aggravations would not occur. Gradually, by experience, he
learned that the latent powers of drugs were released or developed by
trituration, dilution and succussion.” [Close, 190]

Suppression

This crucial concept is mostly derived from empirical
observation and experience with cases, especially when taking into
account longitudinal case studies [through time] which show that
suppressed foot sweats can lead to asthma, for example, or suppressed
skin rashes, etc can lead to respiratory conditions [tonsil or sinus
troubles]. Any set of symptoms removed by a crude drug can be regarded
as a form of suppression.

As with chronic miasmata, the conceptual model of
suppression probably first arose in Hahnemann’s mind from his
extensive knowledge of venerology, where, for example, the suppressed
chancre of syphilis leads to further secondary morbid manifestations or
morbid alternations; likewise with the suppressed gleet of gonorrhoea.
The main problem of this principle is a well balanced primary treatment
of the acute diseases. As long as the primary conditions are treated in
their natural extensor, as a condition that regards the whole organism
itself, then treatment leads to cure. Suppression only arises when the
disease is not treated in its whole extent, and instead of treating the
complete condition, some local symptoms alone are
treated. In this way, the named symptoms are excluded from their
deeper context, the disease remains hidden in the interior and develops
stronger and deeper forms. Hence, whenever the treatment is aimed at
parts, mere symptoms, superficial physiological or pathological
manifestation, it is suppressive. This doesn’t mean that homeopathy
doesn’t treat acute or partial conditions, but its aim is to treat the
integrity, the causes and the profound layers.

Hahnemann took the view that chemical drugs “suppress
and hide the morbid symptoms by opposition [contraria contrariis] for a
short time [palliatives].” [Organon, xxviii] Old school
medicine considers disease as being “purely local and existing
there independently, and vainly supposes that it has cured them when it
has [merely] driven them away.” [Organon, xxviii] Allopathy
turns one disease into another [metastasis] and makes a bad situation
even worse by using “corrosive sublimate and other mercurial
preparations in large doses,” [Organon, xxix] thereby “continually
weakening and tormenting the debilitated patient.”
[Organon, xxix] Hahnemann regarded this approach as indeed a “most
senseless mode of treatment…[and a] mischievous so-called art.”
[Organon, xxix] Homeopaths have always regarded drug-induced changes in
cases as fundamentally uncurative acts: any “removal of the
tangible products of disease…does not cure the disease, but does the
patient a positive injury.” [Close, 73] As Close then adds, “the
suppressed case always goes bad,” [Close, 75] to which Kent
adds: “all prescriptions that change the image of a case cause
suppression.” [Kent, 661] Suppression or palliation of disease “is
the removal of the external symptoms of disease by external, mechanical,
chemical or topical treatment; or by means of powerful drugs, given
internally in massive doses, which have a direct physiological or toxic
effect but no true therapeutic or curative action.” [Close, 75-
76] Kent exhorts: “The healthier the patient becomes the more
likelihood there is for an eruption upon the skin. The vital energies
must be sufficient for this. A cure progresses from within
outward.” [Kent, Aphorism 442]

In the example of a skin disease being treated by
lotions and creams externally applied, the symptoms are removed from the
skin, and the condition alleviated or palliated, but the deeper internal
cause of the malady is still present and its true focus is then moved
inwards away from the skin. As Hahnemann discovered, and later
homeopaths confirmed, the true cure of a skin disease, like any other,
lies within, by correcting the deranged vital force, and cannot be cured
with material doses of any drug. A view of disease as a “dynamic
derangement of the life force,” [see Close, 37-8, 74]

Suppression “or palliation of disease, is the
removal of the symptoms of disease by external, mechanical, chemical or
topical treatment; or by means of powerful drugs, given internally in
massive doses, which have a direct physiological or toxic effect but no
true therapeutic or curative action. The suppressed case always goes
bad… the abscess and fistula, act as if they were the vent or exhaust
of the disease, affording temporary safety to vital organs. Close the
exhaust and an explosion follows.” [Close, 74-5] However, “the
mere removal of the tangible products of disease by mechanical means as
in the case of tumors, or of the external visible signs of disease by
topical applications as in the case of eruptions and discharges, not
only does not cure the disease, but does the patient a positive injury
and renders the case inveterate or more difficult to cure…to the death
of the patient from metastasis and the complications which result from
such treatments. Disease is only cured by the internally administered
similar medicine…” [Close, 73] As an example, “some
chronic disease of the liver, kidneys, spleen or lungs [can] be traced
back to an initial attack of malarial fever checked by massive doses of
quinine or arsenic. The patient has ‘never been well since’…”
[Close, 120]

Once this pattern had first been seen and identified,
and then became an expected pattern, so it was then found all over the
place. Hahnemann soon realized that all changes brought to a case by
crude drugs are in fact suppressions because they do not lead to true
cure but only to temporary relief followed by relapse, or followed some
months later by another disease of a more interior and more serious
character or of a more intractable kind. Thus, the idea of suppression
goes back to the beginning of homeopathy because it reveals a
fundamental problem Hahnemann had identified with Galenic medicine that
just removes symptoms [palliates] and then regards that as a cure, when
in fact, as he showed, it is merely a suppression. Symptoms are removed
or suppressed inwards, but the actual invisible cause of the disease [in
the vital dynamism] is still present and dynamically active. It has by
no means been cured, but has been forced inwards and upwards to a more
sinister and intractable layer of organism functioning.

Hahnemann thus realised later in life that
suppression is the very thing which he had instinctively disliked and
rebelled against so ferociously in his early days, when he criticised
the Galenic ‘purge and bleed’ methods as being both “fundamentally
uncurative and harmful” to patients. He realised that his critique
showed so-called allopathic cures as merely suppressions of symptoms
that only engender first temporary relief, palliation, then relapse and
ultimately no deep cure, but just new and more sinister ‘diseases’
breaking out in their train. That is a perfect description of what
suppression means and it is precisely the same as the blistering
critique of allopathy he launched with such passion at the start of his
career.

Direction of Cure

This again is a largely empirical concept derived
from close study of cases under homeopathic treatment. Such observations
reveal that cures simply tend to move the site of disorder from the
inside outwards and from above downwards, and from centre to the
periphery. This is called the direction of cure or Hering’s Law. It is
not really a law as such, but rather a vague principle that is often
found to work out in practice. It also connects with the concept of
suppression, of which it is the opposite. While suppression is
uncurative and inward-moving, so direction of cure is curative and
outward-moving.

C. Hering.

Often called Hering’s Law or direction of cure,
“cure takes place in a definite orderly manner and
direction…normal vital processes, cellular, organic and systemic,
begin at the center and proceed outwardly…life is a centrifugal force,
radiating, externalizing, …’from above downward’. In the same sense
disease is a centripetal force, opposing, obstructing, penetrating
toward the center and tending to disorganization… the progression of
all chronic diseases is from the surface toward the center; from less
important to more important organs – ‘from below upward’. Curative
medicine reinforces the life force, reverses the morbid process and
annihilates disease. Symptoms disappear from above downwards, from
within outward and in the reverse order of their appearance. When a
patient with an obscure rheumatic endocarditis, for example, begins to
have signs and symptoms of acute arthritis soon after taking the
homeopathic remedy and is relieved of his chest sufferings, we know that
cure has commenced.” [Close, 132]

The idea of direction of cure probably became also
more precise at the time Hahnemann studied chronic disease more closely,
because he observed that chronic diseases are more liable to stem from
suppressions and the restoration involves a reverse process. In acute
eruptive febrile and infectious disease (such as scarlet fever, measles,
rubella, etc.) it is a well known fact that the stronger the exanthema,
the less are the consequences and the faster is the convalescence. In
chronic diseases, as long as the morbid manifestations are inflammatory,
the progression towards affecting the deeper layers, inner organs and
the immune systems is less grave.

The direction of cure presumes a hierarchy or layers
of different degrees of importance on what regards the inner
organisation of man. The core, the most important are deeper, higher and
central. Deeper are not only the physical inner organs but also the
genetic and inherited aspects. In chronic diseases, deepest are the
miasmatic layers, the inherited or acquired miasms that manifest as
morbid pre-dispositions. Higher and central are considered not merely in
a physical sense but in a hierarchical order of importance for the
definition of the individuality. Hence, psyche, or the mental symptoms
are higher and more central to the physical ones; a disease that evolves
with an amelioration of psyche even with the aggravation of some
physical manifestation is therefore regarded as following a good
direction of restoration.

From the practical point of view, without
understanding the basic idea of restoration (Lat. restauratio =
to rebuild, to give back, to repair), the directions of cure applied
literally can represent a trap. For example, a lower back pain
developing as a sciatic neuralgia with progression down towards the toes
(from upward downwards) seems superficially to conform to this principle
but in fact is an aggravation of the condition. The progression toward
periphery or downwards in this case is usually a consequence of the
progression of the disease from a simple contracture to an affectation,
inflammation or protrusion of the intervertebral discs: so, in spite the
disease have progressed from upward–downward, centre-periphery, it is
an aggravation because the disease progressed towards deeper layers of
physical and physiological organisation: the muscles are less deep and
less important then the skeleton.

In chronic diseases, the restoration (or direction of
cure) principle regards the successive layer of affections. The proper
cure makes a reverse order development of symptoms, the most recent
suppressed symptom can eventually manifest first and the more profound
ones come later. Hence, this hierarchical underground order of the human
being does not manifest itself only in space terms but also
diachronically, in time. Deeper, higher, more central, are also older,
inherited or closer to the individual definition.

Vital Force

The vital force in homeopathy plays the same role as
the vis medicatrix naturae [the innate self-healing powers] of
ancient medicine or archeus, or animus of Stahl or archeus
of Paracelsus and van Helmont. He actually he denies this, by saying
that the vis medicatrix alone is not capable of
accomplishing the aim of cure and no cure without homeopathy is
possible. It is a metaphysical concept designed to explain numerous
observations of how the organism functions both in health and in
sickness. It is necessarily conceived as an abstract, unproven,
intangible entity that coordinates the body processes and directs bodily
events. It is an immaterial entity that stands behind and beneath the
chemistry or the cells and directs their activity invisibly just like
the conductor of an orchestra. In health, it smoothly coordinates all
activities of the organism. In sickness, it ever strives to correct
imbalances. Even “Galen recognised, in agreement with
Hippocrates, a natural healing power inherent in the body.”
[Haehl, I, 283-4] Ancient physicians generally always took the view of
medicine as one of “supporting the patient and trusting the
healing power of nature,” [Porter, 260] This “life-force
dominated all corporeal processes…[and was] a health-defending
property,” [Porter, 208] often termed the innate self-healing
powers or “natural healing powers of the body,”
[Gevitz, 1637]

Hahnemann starts, “with the conception of
Life as a real or substantial entitative power or principle…the
Dynamis and the Life Force. This is Hahnemann’s greatest discovery, and
the absolute bedrock of his system.” [Close, 30-31] Even Sir
John Forbes [1787-1861], consulting physician to Queen Victoria,
1841-61, “accepted the homeopathic cures as the result of the
Vis medicatrix naturae…the less the physician does, the better chance
the patient has of recovering.” [Rothstein, 243] Such innate
self-healing powers, “the self-rectifying powers of the vis
medicatrix;” [Simpson, 82] the “natural sanative powers
of the constitution,” [Simpson, 81] “the curative
powers of nature,” [Simpson, 88] and “the vital dynamism,”
[Simpson, 23] are valid forces at work in every one of us and the
enhancement of those powers is the primary task of all natural healing.

The organism not a static but a truly dynamic
structure permeated by, ruled over and coordinated by the nurturing and
sustentative vital power: “the organism is indeed the material
instrument of life, but it is not conceivable without the animation
imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and regulating vital
force.” [Organon, Aph. 15] Hahnemann believed in the innate “self-healing
energy in the patient,” [van Haselen, 123] what he called the “self-regulating
vital force, the vis medicatrix naturae.” [van Haselen, 123]
And for example, even a modern allopath has stated, “only that
nerve energy that runs through you and controls every function and
autonomic process of your being every second of your life is capable of
healing you. No drugs of doctors can do that. We can only facilitate it,”
[Foley] then he clearly echoes the vitalist views of homeopathy and
acupuncture.

Hahnemann had essentially the same views on the
natural healing powers as an illustrious band of physicians before him.
According to Haehl, these include Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, Stahl,
and the Montpellier School [Haehl, I, 282-6]. Although he believed in
the vital force and built homeopathy very much around that concept,
he regarded allopathy as using it only in a “crude, unseeing,
unintelligent, unreasoned,” [Haehl, I, 287] way, whose methods were
not truly enhancing of the vital powers, but in fact depleted them. “Hahnemann’s
theory and ideas about vital force and natural healing power…place him
close to others, e.g. the striking agreement of his views with Sydenham
about natural healing power, with the basic ideas of Stahl’s animism,
and with the thought processes of Bordeu and Barthez in their vitalism.”
[Haehl, I, 289] They were clinicians prominent in the Montpellier School
of France.

Barthez – Montpellier.

Hippocrates conceived of the vital force as “an
inborn power regulating…the functions of the organs and the correct
relative mixture of the humours.” [Haehl, I, 283] By the same
token, “illness is a disturbance of the healthy
equilibrium.” [Haehl, I, 283] Galen “agreed with
Hippocrates on a natural healing power inherent in the body,”
[Haehl, I, 283-4] but made many confusing remarks as well. Stahl’s
view was that the symptoms of “diseases were simply the efforts
of the organism…to restore the equilibrium of health.”
[Haehl, I, 284] Even in the Montpellier school, illness was seen as “an
affection of the life power and is expressed by disturbances…[it is] a
reaction of the life power.” [Haehl, I, 285] It is roughly in
keeping with the views of Hippocrates, Stahl and the Montpellier school,
but not with those of Brown or Galen, Boerhaave or Hoffmann, where the
effects of the vital force are not always highly regarded or assisted or
regarded as curative, or in which therapy tends to run against the
natural efforts of the vital force by use of contraries.

The vital force is a “spiritual principle…that
rules with unbounded sway.” [Organon, Aph 9] or what might also
be called “a spiritual medicinal power,” [Simpson, 141]
“Hahnemann minimises the healing power of nature,”
[Guttentag, 1175] but “he describes its effects as nowhere to be
imitated and as rarely sufficient.” [Guttentag, 1175]
Post-Hahnemannian homeopathy “still holds the same respectful
view of the healing power of nature as in 1836.” [Guttentag,
1175] Most homeopaths have reiterated the view that the healing power of
nature is supreme.

J. T. Kent.

Kent says that “there is no cell or tissue so
small that it does not keep its soul and life force in it,”
[Kent, 670] and he expresses the view that “the vital force
dominates, rules and coordinates the human body.” [Kent, 677]
Also, that the vital force “is again dominated by still another
higher substance which is the Soul.” [Kent, 677] In his
conception of the organism, “the vital force holds all in
harmony, keeps everything in order when in health.” [Kent, 677]
In this view, “that which we call disease is but a change in the
vital force expressed by the totality of the symptoms.” [Kent,
661] Therefore, “the inner nature of the remedy corresponds with
the inner nature of the disease.” [Kent, 685] Disease being a
dynamic imbalance, so any “dynamic wrongs are corrected from the
interior by dynamic agencies.” [Kent, 643] Thus, “Man
cannot be cured or be made sick except by some substance as ethereal in
quality as the vital force.” [Kent, 644] Kent wisely called the
vital force the “vice-regent of the soul,” [Kent, 660]
and it does seem to correspond to the concept of the unconscious or
subconscious mind that regulates all the bodily processes through the
involuntary nervous system, and the endocrine organs and keeps the
breathing and blood going etc. Because of its immaterial nature, the
vital force bonds with various other key concepts in homeopathy, such as
the small doses and the miasms. Though it is an abstract and
insubstantial entity, its reality and truth is confirmed through the
powerful logic of its usefulness as a concept underpinning so many
aspects of homeopathy.

Entelechy

The vital force stakes another primary claim for a
unique status within the conceptual core of homeopathy in that the
remedies of homeopathy do not directly impact upon or cure the alleged
‘disease,’ but impact primarily upon the vital force, the innate vital
powers, the vital dynamism that controls the organism, and solely
through whose dominion and sovereign powers sickness is either created
or annulled. Therefore, sickness is removed indirectly rather than
directly, not at the local level, but at the level of the whole
organism. The sickness itself is conceived as under the control of the
vital force, not of itself. It is conceived primarily as an internal
matter, not an external one. Accesses to sickness is thus always
indirect and only achieved via the holistic powers of the vital force
itself, which pervades the entire organism.

Homeopathy treats “the person and not the
disease.” [Shaw, 6] It truly is the ‘innate healing power’.
We should always “remember that it is our duty to help nature as
far as possible do her job.” [Bodman, 225] Medicine involves an
attempt “to restore health…an attempt to restore balance,”
[Wheeler, 1947, 1] for true “health is simply the balanced life.”
[Wheeler, 1947, 4] Homeopathy “is no religion, no sect, no fad,
no humbug…remedies do not act directly on disease; they merely
stimulate the vital reactions of the patient, and this causes him to
cure himself.” [Weir, 200-201] Regarding the remedy, we need to
remember, “that the reaction it sets up in the organism is a
reaction which goes on working to the ultimate dispersion of the
infirmity.” [Cooper, Jan 1893; 14] Reliance upon the “natural
healing power leads to interpretation of symptoms as signs of the body’s
struggle against disease,” [Coulter, II, 456] and thus symptoms
are seen “as beneficial—being the signs of the struggle of the
vital force against disease.” [Coulter, II, 487]

He also condemns any medical system that searches out
and respects only “the mechanical origin of diseases…[and]
which derives diseases from the original form of the parts.”
[Ameke, 95] However, Hahnemann—like Bach, Paracelsus and Bailey—regarded
sickness as due to “a morbid derangement of the internal
dynamis,” [Hahnemann, 1810, Aph. 12] and an affection of the “morbidly
deranged spirit-like dynamis.” [Hahnemann, 1810, Aph.15] He
regarded “symptoms…[as] the expression of the vital force
untuned.” [Handley, 66] He also states that “diseases
obviously are not and cannot be mechanical or chemical changes in the
material substance of the body…but are an exclusively dynamic, spirit
like untunement of life.” [Hahnemann, 1810, Aph.31] Hahnemann
expresses his own sentiments in the Organon [Aphorisms 11 [9, 10], 15
and 16]: “let it be granted now…that no disease…is caused by
any material substance, but that every one is only and always a
peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the health.”
[Hahnemann, Organon, Aphorisms 11 [9, 10], 15 and 16] Such is certainly
a view of disease as a “dynamic derangement of the life force.”
[Close, 37-8, 74]

Remedies “contain a non-material healing
energy.” [van Haselen, 123] They mobilise the “self-healing
vital force,” [van Haselen, 123] which is recognised as the
source of all natural healing. Homeopathic “remedies do not act
directly on disease; they merely stimulate the vital reactions of the
patient, and this causes him to cure himself.” [Weir, 200-201]
They lead to “stimulation of a person’s self-healing strengths.”
[Franz, 32] Homeopaths thus conceive that “homeopathic remedies
and Bach essences act as a catalyst,” [Franz, 32] to stimulate
innate self-healing processes, using “natural healing substances.”
[Richardson, 174] Paracelsus believed that “attenuation would
release from the crude matter the inner ‘arcanum,’ the essential
curative virtue.” [Richardson, 174] They further held that “the
overall archeus or vital force and the archeus of each organ could be
healed by a corresponding archeus of a medicinally prepared plant or
mineral.” [Richardson, 174]

Hahnemann “is in tune with Paracelsus’ and
van Helmont’s concept of the archeus.” [Richardson, 176]
According to them “the dynamis of the corresponding natural life
form, medicinally activated by potentisation…restores the individual
human dynamis to health…[and represents] the highest immaterial or
spiritual extraction of medicines.” [Richardson, 176] Kent’s
view that potentised remedies contain “purely energetic
medicinal powers imprinted on the water/alcohol medium during
preparation,” [Richardson, 176] is entirely consistent with the
views of Hahnemann and Bach, and they would probably all further agree
with him that such remedies resonate “profoundly with the soul,
mind and will.” [Richardson, 176]

Again we see the strong connection to case totality
[holism] and to the general inadequacy of the concept of a localised
disease. In popular parlance, the remedy stimulates the vital force to
cure the disease and the remedy merely stimulates the vital force, whose
powers pervade the entire organism; it does not of itself cure ‘the
disease’ directly, it stimulates the body to heal itself. The vital
force can be seen to be a very cohesive and unifying principle that
permeates the whole of homeopathy, linking together many otherwise
disparate concepts. What we see then is a medicine “based more
upon quality and not a quantity.” [Barnard, 301]

Miasms

The miasm is a metaphysical concept to try and
explain cumulative observations of case histories of sickness within
families. As an idea it probably derives from Hahnemann’s studies of
venereal diseases, most especially Syphilis, which does have this
character of a miasm that is acquired, then goes dormant and then
springs out later in various hideous forms as well as being passed on to
children as predictable [patterned] inherited syndromes of sickness.
When viewed more metaphysically the miasms are defects carried in the
vital force that cause sickness by deviations from its perfect and
harmonious control. Miasms might be termed ‘internalised relics’ or
stains of big diseases that are left in the vital force and which steal
its natural self-healing power.

From “frequent observations, Hahnemann had
discovered that chronic maladies…had some connection with a previous
outbreak of Psora.” [Haehl, I, 138] This ‘miasm theory’
stirred up great controversy among his followers, and seems to have
instinctively elicited much more ridicule than it did praise. To
Hahnemann, Psora was “a disease or disposition to disease,
hereditary from generation to generation for thousands of years, and…the
fostering soil for every possible diseased condition.” [Haehl,
I, 144] The theory “did not receive unanimous support from his
followers, even after Hahnemann’s death.” [Haehl, I, 150] The
notion of Psora has many facets; for example, “seven-eighths of
all the chronic maladies prevalent are ascribed by Hahnemann to
Psora…” [Haehl, I, 142] He did not confine its meaning solely
to Scabies; “Psora…was widely known in Hahnemann’s time, as
the general term for a whole series of skin troubles of the most varied
kinds…” [Haehl, I, 143]

Yet, the miasm theory undoubtedly is an attempt to
reach into “the deeper fundamentals of disease.”
[Haehl, I, 137] Many called psora, “this thousand-headed monster.”
[Haehl, I, 145] Chronic symptoms are regarded by homeopaths as “symptoms
of the underlying miasmatic malady.” [Haehl, I, 145] Hahnemann’s
“idea of Psora coincides to a large extent with that of
inherited predisposition to disease.” [Haehl, I, 151] The
initial “starting point for the main ideas [of miasms]…was the
observation that certain chronic diseases…could be alleviated by
homeopathic remedies, but not completely cured.” [Haehl, I,
138] To Hahnemann, “psora is a disease or disposition,
hereditary from generation to generation for thousands of years.”
[Haehl, I, 144] It “can be observed in the most variable forms
imaginable.” [Haehl, I, 145] Psora as a miasm, therefore,
becomes “the fostering soil for every possible diseased
condition.” [Haehl, I, 144] The miasm theory can be seen as the
logical extension of the vital force concept, and as bringing the vital
force to its ultimate point.

Sources

Wilhelm Ameke, History
of Homoeopathy: Its Origins, its Conflicts, with a note on University
Medicine, (translated by A. Drysdale, edited by R E Dudgeon), London: E
Gould & Sons, 1885

Julian Barnard, Bach
Flower Remedies, Form and Function, Hereford: Flower Remedy Programme,
2002

Isaiah Berlin, The
Sense of Reality – Studies in Ideas and Their History, London: Pimlico,
1996

Isaiah Berlin, Against
the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas, London: Pimlico, 1997

John B Blake,
Homeopathy in American History, Trans. Stud. Coll. Phys., Philadelphia,
Series 5, vol. 3, 1981, 83-92

Frank Bodman, Sir John
Weir Obituary, Brit. Homeo. Jnl 60.1, 1971, 224-228

Thomas L Bradford, The
Life and Letters of Hahnemann, Jain, 1895

Charles S Cameron,
Homeopathy in Retrospect, Trans. Stud. Coll. Phys. Philadelphia., 27,
1959, 28-33

Johanna Brieger,
Methodological Obstacles In Homeopathic Research, BHJ 50, 1961, 239-45

Stuart Close, The
genius of Homeopathy: Lectures and Essays on Homeopathic Philosophy,
Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel, 1924

Trevor M Cook, Samuel
Hahnemann, the Founder of Homeopathy, Wellingborough: Thorsons, 1981

Robert T Cooper,
Calcarea carbonica – a Warning, Homeopathic World, 2 Jan 1893, 11-15

R T Cooper, One Dose –
One Value, Homeopathic World, Feb 1 1893, 64-68

R T Cooper, Some
Results of Single Doses, Homeopathic World, Sept 1 1894, 389-393

Harris L Coulter,
Divided Legacy, A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, Washington:
Wehawken Books, 1973, 3 volumes

Robert E Dudgeon,
1853, Lectures on the Theory and Practice of Homeopathy, London, 1853,
Jain reprint, India

Albert Einstein,
Preface to Galileo’s Dialogue of the Two Principal World Systems, German
edition, 1952

Lewis B Flinn,
Homeopathic Influences in the Delaware Community A Retrospective
Reassessment, Del. Med. Jnl., 48:7, July 1976, 418-428

John S Foley, Drugs
never cured a thing, BMJ e-letter, 14 June 2003

http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7388/518/c#33299

Sir John Forbes,
Homeopathy, Allopathy and Young Physic, London, 1846, Forbes was
physician to Queen Victoria, 1840-61

Angelika Franz,
Bach-Blüten und Homöopathie, Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung,
240-1, 1995, 28-34 [with English translation]

Roger French, Medicine
before Science: the Business of Medicine from the Middle Ages to the
Enlightenment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Norman Gevitz, (Ed),
Other Healers, Unorthodox Medicine in America, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ. Press, 1990

Norman Gevitz,
Sectarian Medicine, Jnl Amer. Med. Assoc., 257, 1987, 1636-40

Barbara Griggs, Green
Pharmacy A History of Herbal Medicine, London: Jill Norman &
Hobhouse, 1981

Martin Gumpert,
Hahnemann – The Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel, New York: L B
Fischer Publ. Corp., translated from the German by Claude W Sykes, 1945

O E Guttentag, Trends
toward Homeopathy Present and Past, Bull Hist Med, 8.8, 1940, 1172-1193

Richard Haehl, Samuel
Hahnemann His Life and Works, 2 volumes, 1922, India: Jain

Samuel Hahnemann, The
Medicine of Experience, in Lesser Writings, 1805

Samuel Hahnemann,
1805, Aesculapius in the Balance, 1805, in Lesser Writings,

p.421-2 [Hahnemann’s
Lesser Writings, 1851, Edited by R E Dudgeon, London, Jain reprint]

Samuel Hahnemann, On
the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine, 1808, in Lesser
Writings, 489-90

Samuel Hahnemann,
Observations On The Three Current Methods Of Treatment, From Hufeland’s
Journal of Practical Medicine, vol. xi, pt. 4. 1809

Samuel Hahnemann,
Organon of Medicine, 1810, translated and edited by W G Boericke & R
E Dudgeon, Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel, 1922

Samuel Hahnemann, Are
the Obstacles to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine
Insurmountable? 1797, in Lesser Writings, 320

Samuel Hahnemann, The
Chronic Diseases-their Peculiar Nature and their Homeopathic Cure.
“Die chronischen Krankheit…” Die chronischen Krankheiten
ihre eigenthümliche Natur und homöopathische Heilung; Dresden,
Leipzig: Arnold, 1828

Rima Handley, In
Search of the Later Hahnemann, Beaconsfield: Beaconsfield Books, 1997

James T Kent, New
Remedies, Clinical Cases, Lesser Writings, Aphorisms and Precepts,
Chicago: Ehrhart & Karl, 1925

/seror/articles/aphorism.htm

Ian McLean, Logic
Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: the Case of Learned Medicine,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002

V Maizes and O Caspi,
The principles and challenges of integrative medicine, West J Med Sept
1999 171: 148-149

http://www.ewjm.com/content/vol171/issue3/

Phillip A Nicholls,
Homeopathy and the Medical Profession, London: Croom Helm, 1988

William Osler, The
Evolution of Modern Medicine, 1913

http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/Books/osler/

Herbert Pietschmann,
Medicine – A Discipline between Art & Science, BHJ 72.3, July 1983,
155-61

Roy Porter, The
Greatest Benefit to Mankind A Medical History of Humanity, New York:
Norton, 1998

Cornelia
Richardson-Boedler, Doctrine of Signatures: a Historical, Philosophical
and Scientific View [I], BHJ 88, 1999, 172-177

Cornelia
Richardson-Boedler, Doctrine of Signatures: a Historical, Philosophical
and Scientific View [II], BHJ 89, 2000, 26-28

Guenter B Risse, Kant,
Schelling and the early search for a philosophical science of medicine
in Germany, Jnl of the History of Medicine 27, 1972, 145-158

Arthur K Rogers, A
Student’s History of Philosophy, New York: Macmillan, 1960

William G Rothstein,
American Physicians in the 19th Century from Sects to Science,
Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972

William Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 3

Non Shaw, Bach Flower
Remedies a Step-by-Step Guide, Shaftsbury: Element Books, 1998

Sir James Young
Simpson, Homeopathy: its Tenets and Tendencies, Theoretical,
Theological, and Therapeutical, 3rd ed., Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox;
London: Simpkin, Marshall, 1853

R P Steiner, Folk
Medicine, American Chemical Society, Washington, 1986

Owsei Temkin, An Essay
on the Usefulness of Medical History for Medicine, Bull. Hist. Med.
19.1, 1946, 9-47

R A van Haselen, The
Relationship Between homeopathy and the Dr Bach System of Flower
Remedies: a Critical Appraisal, BHJ 88, 1999, 121-127

John Harley Warner,
The Therapeutic Perspective Medical Practice, Knowledge and Identity in
America 1820-1885, Harvard Univ. Press, USA, 1986

Sir John Weir, The
Hahnemann Convalescent Home, Bournemouth, BHJ 20, 1931, 200-201

Charles E Wheeler,
Reflections & Recollections, Brit. Homeo. Jnl, 33, 1944, 170-171

Charles E Wheeler
Obituary, Brit. Homeo. Jnl 37.1, April 1947, 1-11

H. Wulff, A. Pedersen,
R. Rosenberg, Philosophy of Medicine, an Introduction, London: Blackwell
Scientific Publications, 1986

Main