The principles and Art of Cure by Homśopathy
by HERBERT A. ROBERTS, M.D.
Presented byCHAPTER VII
OUR REMEDIES: WHY THEY ACTIn our thesis that homśopathy is
fundamental, that it is scientific and that it is based on natural law, we have quoted
findings from other branches of pure science that have been so uniform and constant as to
definitely point the way toward under-lying laws. These, to recapitulate briefly, were
toward underlying laws. These, to recapitulate briefly, were from astronomy, mathematics and
biology, and have been compared with the closely similar findings of the action of drugs and
their application (1) in states of health to produce, artificially, conditions simulating
disease, or (2) to restore diseased states to the normal balance of health.Let us consider once more some of our
deductions set forth in former chapters on “Vital Energy in its Universal
Application.” That we may have it before us for examination in comparing our deductions
from other branches of scientific investigation with our study of the natural laws
underlying the principles adapted for use in the science of healing known as homśopathy, we
shall quote from these chapter:These substances (capable of being raised
by potentization) are derived from three kingdoms, mineral, vegetable and animal. We
cannot definitely say that the mineral substances in themselves possess vital energy, but
they are fragments of that which composes the planet, Earth, and that planet either
possesses some form of vital energy in itself or is susceptible to being activated by
vital energy to such an extent that it performs its appointed movements according to the
law; and we can use these minerals, by proper preparation, in the form of vital energy,
not to perpetuate life but to influence it on all three planes of body, mind and spirit,
that the vital energy of the individual may be thereby guarded against decay and death…We recognize the presence of vital energy
in vegetable growth, for it is evidenced in growth and development on the plant, according
to the natural law of development…We comprehend most easily the animation,
the presence of vital energy, in the animal kingdom…It is quite within the province of the homśopathic
physician, especially if he believes that homśopathy is based on the fundamental principles
underlying all elemental construction and development, to attempt to understand something of
the basis of the elements with which he has to deal, both in states of sickness and in
health. This implies a knowledge of drugs, not only their action but their derivation, and
this not in superficial terms, but in terms of basis derivation and inter-relation with
universal construction. This deals with physics in a very definite way, and in a much
deeper, more constructive and significant way than we usually consider.In his little book, “Science and the New Civilization,” Millikan gives us some
valuable hints in his chapter on “Available Energy” His statement in this chapter
is that:All knowledge that helps towards an
understanding of the nature of the universe of which we are a part is useful, for we need
very much more of it than we now have, or shall have for centuries to come, to enable us
to direct our energies towards wise, effective living instead of wasting them on beating
tom-toms, inventing perpetual motion machines, or chasing either physical or social
rainbows.If it be wise for the average person to
direct their energies towards and understanding of things about them, how much more is it
the province of him who is entrusted with the care of others through the use of drugs, built
up and potentized out of the elements!Let us consider further some of Dr.
Millikan’s statements in this chapter, and their bearing on our specialty.It is interesting and a very important
fact from the practical viewpoint, too, that more than ninety five per cent of this
universe, so far as we can now see, is made up of a very few elements.
First
. The
spectroscopy of the heavens shows the enormous prevalence everywhere of hydrogen, but
hydrogen is merely the primordial positive and negative electrons tied together, or in
process of being so tied.
Second
. The
spectroscopy of the heavens also shows that helium is an exceptionally abundant, and
widely distributed, element, even though, because of its lightness and inability to
combine with anything, even with itself, the earth has not retained much of it.
Significant is it, however, that the alpha particle given off by all the heavy radioactive
elements is nothing but helium, so that it must have a certain prevalence even on earth in
the structure of the heavier elements.
Third
. Dr. I.
S. Bowen, at the California Institute, solved, with consummate skill, the half-century-old
riddle of “nebulium,” and has shown that the substance, abundant throughout the
heavens, giving rise to these mysterious spectral lines, is mainly oxygen and nitrogen.
But oxygen alone constitutes 55 per cent of the earth’s crust, and about the same
proportion of meteorites. Oxygen and nitrogen, then, which for our present purpose will be
treated as one element, since they have nearly the same atomic weight and will be
henceforth listed under the name of the stronger brother, constitute the third
extraordinarily abundant element and it is to be noted that there are no abundant elements
at all between helium and oxygen. Carbon has a certain minor nitrogen and oxygen it may
here be treated as merely a feeble satellite to oxygen.
Fourth
. Ninety
five per cent of the weight of all meteorites consists of oxygen (54 per cent.), magnesium
(13 per cent.), silicon (15 per cent.), and iron (13 per cent.), while 76 per cent of the
earth’s crust is composed of the three elements, oxygen (55 per cent.), silicon (16 per
cent.), and aluminum (5 per cent), no other element rising over 2 per cent. Iron
constitutes 1.5 per cent of the crust, but it is supposed to be very largely represented
in the interior. Because of the closeness of their atomic weights, magnesium, aluminum and
silicon (24, 27, 28) may, for our present purpose, be regarded as a single element and
given the name of the strongest brother, silicon. There are then no abundant elements
whatever between oxygen and silicon, nor between silicon and iron (atomic weight 56), and
from an engineering standpoint the universe may
be said to be made up of the primordial positive and negative electrons, and of four
elements built out of them, namely, helium, oxygen, silicon and iron.Mankind, if he is here a billion years
hence, will be satisfying his main needs, as he satisfies them now, with the four
elements, hydrogen, oxygen, silicon and iron, i. e. with water, air, earth and Fe, where
the last symbol stands for iron rather than for fire, which was the fourth constituent of
the world of thee ancients.To comprehend the action of our remedies it
is well to look somewhat to the sources from which our remedies are derived and to weight
their possible activity in their natural state.We regard the sources of drugs as lying in
three distinct groups-animal, vegetable, and mineral; or we may make two classifications and
say living and non-living.Sir J. C. Bose in his Plant Autographs and Their Revelations, writes:
Do not the two sets of records of the
living and non-living tell us of some property of matter common and persistent? Do they
not show us that the same kind of molecular upset on stimulation occurs on both the
inorganic and the living-that the physiological is closely connected with the
physical-that there is no abrupt break, but a uniform march of law? The dust particle and
the earth, the plant and the animal, are all sensitive. Thus, with an enlarged cosmic
sense, we may regard the million orbs that thread their path through space, as something
akin to organisms, having a definite history of their past and an evolutionary progress
for their future.And again:
In pursuing investigation on the border
region of physics and physiology, I was amazed to find boundary lines vanishing and points
of contact emerge between the realms of the Living and Non-living. Metals are found to
respond to stimuli; they are subject to fatigue, stimulated by certain drugs and
“killed” by poisons.For the purpose of convenience, however, we
may divide drugs or substances from which homśopathic medications are prepared, into the
three classes of animal, vegetable, and mineral (or elements).We expect to find the highest form of
living activity in animals. We have been taught to expect strong reaction to the various
forms of defence of individual species of animal life. Thus, we find the venom of snakes has
a deep action on other forms of animal life. We deduce that even when venom is prepared in
minute reaction on animal life. Sir J. C. Bose has verified this in his experiments with the
action of cobra venom (Naja) on animals and plants. He
found that in doses of 0.5 c.c. of solution of venom, one part in a thousand, when injected
into the vein of a fish the heart stopped beating in twelve minutes. This action was
automatically recorded on delicate instruments. The same experiments was next applied to the
plant, a solution of one per cent being used. A great depression was first recorded, then
the pulse-beat came to a permanent stop, then came wilting and decomposition.It is hardly necessary to go into the data
available for further proofs of the activity of snake venoms; our homśopathic provings
preceded by many years the acknowledgment of the allopathic school that venoms in minute
doses were exceedingly efficacious in many serious conditions, especially those showing
great derangement of the vascular and nervous systems.The forms of defence, such as spider
venoms, sepia, stings of bees and insects, and many other natural weapons, have been found
effective in causing and treating bodily discomforts may not be denied by those who have
observed their action.Thus we may pass on to a consideration of
plant life as a source from which we may expect to derive useful remedies. We expect, and
find, great reaction from all those growths which manifest, in their natural states, the
power of protection through defence by poisonous properties. Thus we find all members of the
Rhus family exceedingly active, both in their crude
state and in potentized form, affecting strongly the human organism in countless ways.The list of plants that strongly affect the
human organism ranges through all forms, from the forms that approach the animal development
in their power of capturing and devouring insects, such as the Drosera
and Sarracenia purpurea, to the lowliest and hardiest
growths, such as Sticta pulmonaria, and is almost
endless. To do more than glance at the long list of possibilities that open to the homśopathic
physician through this source would be a task far too long for one chapter. We may take
ourselves at once to the observation of those substances that may be most truly said to be
non-living, yet which must enter largely into the composition of the living, and that
encompass us.Even more deeply acting than the venoms, we
find the mineral and chemical elements. Plant life, through its power of simplifying these
substances readily, form the closest relationship to the mineral kingdom, for here the
elements are often absorbed and made available for ingestion them even more active. Thus we
see the reasons for Pulsatilla’s strong action on the
human economy. Dr. Underhill tells us that Pulsatilla is
one of the most effective chemical laboratories known, assimilating the mineral content and
elements in the soil and rebuilding it into a most deep-acting and complicated influence
upon the human organism.The most cursory glance at the chemical
elements of our most common plant remedies must reveal how deeply bound these are to the
chemical elements of light weight-far below the atomic weight of those known to be
radioactive-and these may be classed as those written of by Millikan (to quote again from
the same source we have quoted above):…
For the great majority of the elements, such as constitute the bulk of our
world, are in their state of maximum stability already. They can
only be broken apart by working upon them, or by supplying energy to them. Man can
probably learn to disintegrate them, but he will always do it “by the sweat of his
brow.”But having thus disposed of the process
of atomic disintegration, and found it completely wanting as a source of available energy,
since the radioactive elements are necessarily negligible in quantity, let us next see
what there is to be learned about the process ofatom-building as a source of energy.
Millikan goes on:
… The recent experimental work on
cosmic rays, have just thrown a flood of light on the process going on in this universe in
which we live. For first Dr. Cameron and I have recently found three definite cosmic ray
bands, or frequencies, of penetrating powers, or ray-energies, respectively, about twelve,
fifty and one hundred times the maximum possible energies that are, or can be, obtained
from any radioactive, that is, any disintegrating process. The highest frequency band has
so enormous a penetrating power that it passes through more than 200 feet of water or
eighteen feet of lead before becoming completely absorbed, while two or three inches of
lead absorbs the hardest gamma rays. This discovery of a banded structure in cosmic rays
shows that these rays are not produced, as are X-rays, by the impact upon the atoms of
matter of electrons that have acquired large velocities by falling through powerful
electric fields, as we earlier suggested the fields necessary to produce frequencies as
high as those of the highest observed cosmic rays are equivalent to 216,000,000 volts-but
thatthey are rather produced by definite and
continually recurring atomic transformations involving very much grater energy-chances
than any occurring in radioactive processes.
Taking Einstein’s equation and Aston’s
curve as a guide there are no possible atomic transformations capable of yielding rays of
the enormous penetrating power observed by us, except those corresponding to the building
up or creation of the abundant elements like helium, oxygen, silicon, and iron out of
hydrogen, or possibly in the case of the last two elements out of helium… We have arrived at pretty definite evidence that the observed cosmic rays are the signals broadcast throughout the heavens
of the births of the common elements out of positive and negative electrons.Thus we find that in the birth of, say, two
of our common earth elements, iron and silicon, we find tremendous powers liberated in the
heavens. (For convenience Millikan in this article speaks of magnesium and aluminum as
coincident with silicon, because of their close atomic weights.) We all know their
effectiveness when energy is released by long trituration and powerful succussion. Chemical
analysis of some of our common plant remedies reveals the presence of one or more of these
common earth elements, assimilated, broken into a form that supplies life-energy to the
plant. We find in a cursory examination of Lycopodium clavatum
that has a powerful effect upon animal tissue and animal energy when its powers are released
by reducing it to the form of the homśopathic potency-consider, I say, its profound effect
after its assimilation by the plant, its energies there partially released for effective
reaction, and that in turn undergoing a further breaking up and disintegration by the
processes of trituration and potentization.The history of the Lycopodiaceć
may be of still further interest in giving us the reason for its effectiveness. Among the
old forms of life-those forms which have existed longest upon the earth-we find the mosses,
and of these this family is a hardy member. It is probably one of the oldest living forms of
earthy plant life (that is, dependent both upon soil and water). It has persisted past all
changes in circumstances and conditions, and probably has changed its form less to meet
changing conditions than almost any other form of life except possibly the Equisetum, another of the early surviving forms. This tenacity of
life, adapting itself to circumstances without conforming, bespeaks a tenacity of energy
that, when released, must powerfully effect that which it touches.
Equisetum hymenale
contains
silicon (in the form of oxide) and magnesium; in analysis the amount of silicon may run from
7.5 per cent to 41.2 per cent. If at their birth these elements register such tremendous
energy as the cosmic waves reveal, what effectiveness must we expect when it has been
assimilated, broken down, first in plant life and then by trituration and potentization even
in minute quantities?When animal, vegetable or mineral
substances are potentized they are rendered more potent because of the breaking up,
disintegration of thin atomic relationships, that place them in a form where they act
directly upon the dynamic force of the individual. That is, in their disintegration their
energy is liberated by releasing the radioactive power. Through the radioactivity exerting
itself upon the vital energy of the individual the potency is made effective.Thus we are forced to recognize different
forms of energy-the discharge of different energies or rays-from what we have considered as
inanimate metals and elements. We find that they respond energetically in much the same way
as plants and animals; not alone in their simple states do we find this response, but again
and again as they are assimilated, broken down and rebuilt in different forms of life, from
the simple assimilation and complicated rebuilding of the plant to the profound reaction on
all living substance when they are in potentized form.We recognize that elements having high
atomic weights are radioactive; they give off, spontaneously, rays of different velocity and
penetrating power, and in their radioactivity, their dissemination of energy, they are
themselves changed. Einstein expresses this change when he says: “The change of mass
equals the change of energy. As they vary energy vanishes with the mass and so they are
equal.”
Mass
, in this sense, does not
mean bulk, as we commonly think of it. It is rather the sum total which gives off energy in
some form is a part. As in mathematics, that which remains after subtraction is not as great
as before. One cannot go on subtracting without coming to the end of that from which we
should subtract.Thus we see that uranium, or thorium, after
having discharged its rays for a long period, is so changed that we recognize it as radium.
Radium, in turn, after exhausting a certain degree of its radioactive powers, becomes lead.
For instance, we know that uranium, being the heaviest element, would be number 92 in the
scale of atomic numbers, with an atomic weight of 238.14. Thorium, number 90, has an atomic
weight of 232.12 and is so similar in some phases of its nature to uranium that it is also a
source of radium; it stands in the atomic scale as 88 with an atomic weight of 225.97. Lead
has an atomic umber of 82 with an atomic weight of 207.22. The differing atomic weights of
these substances demonstrate Einstein’s statement regarding the change of mass equaling the
change in energy.We have spoken before of homśopathy in its relation to fundamental laws, and this chapter
is an attempt to set forth further deductions on that basis.Thus we comprehend that every step toward
understanding of the working of the natural laws brings us to a clearer vision of a few
basic cosmic laws, fundamentally few in number but with a multiplicity of manifestations.
The laws governing homśopathy are seemingly not closely associated with laws governing
other forms of “pure science,” yet the knowledge is borne in upon us that this is
one manifestation of that which is basic; it differs only in its manifestation and not in
its essence. We must teach ourselves to discriminate between the multiple manifestations (or
applications of the law) through differing forms-as they appear to casual observation-and
their essences, which are so closely similar as to lead us to question if they be not
fundamentally identical.Sir J. C. Bose, from whose invaluable
records we have quoted from time to time, quotes from ancient Hindu philosophy a throbbing,
vital truth to which every thoughtful homśopathic physician can subscribe and that he must
heed:THEY WHO SEE BUT ONE, IN ALL THE CHANGING
MANIFOLDNESS OF THIS UNIVERSE, UNTO THEM BELONGS ETERNAL TRUTH-UNTO NONE ELSE, UNTO NONE
ELSE.
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The principles and Art of Cure by Homoeopathy by HERBERT A. ROBERTS, M.D.
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