Hahnemann’s
Chronic Diseases : A Foreword.
By Constantine Hering, M. D.
Presented by Francis Treuherz
& Sylvain CazaletThe following article has,
been kindly furnished by Dr Constantine Hering of Philadelphia, in
German.
The Editor is responsible for the translation
Hahnemann’s work on
chronic diseases may be considered a continuation of his Organon ;
the medicines which will follow the present volume may therefore be
considered a continuation of his Materia Medica Pura. As the principles
and rules of general therapeutics have been developed in the Organon, so
does Hahnemann develop, in the present treatise, the principles and
rules which ought too prevail in the treatment of chronic diseases,
whose name is “legion”. In the Materia Medica Pura Hahnemann
describes to us the symptoms which the general remedies that he tried
upon healthy persons are capable of producing ; the present
treatise, on the contrary, will be succeeded by an account of those
remedies which Hahnemann especially employed in the treatment of chronic
diseases, and which he therefore called “anti-psorics”. In the
Organon, Hahnemann tries to establish the fact that the principle
“similia similibus curentur” is the supreme rule in every true
method of cure, and he shows how this rule is to be followed in the
treatment of disease ; whereas in his treatise on the chronic
diseases, which is based upon the Organon and does in the least, modify
or alter its teachings, Hahnemann shows that as most chronic disease
originate in a common source and are related amongst each other, a
special class of remedies designated by Hahnemann as
“anti-psoric” should be used in the treatment of those
diseases. The common source of most chronic diseases, according to
Hahnemann, is psora.The shallow opponents
of homœopathy – and we never had any other – pounced upon the theory of
the psoric miasm with a view of attacking it with their hollow and
unmeaning sarcasms. Taking psora to
be identical with itch, they sneeringly pretended that according to
Hahnemann’s doctrine the itch was the primitive evil, and that this
doctrine was akin to the doctrine of the original sin recognised by the
Christian faith.** [
Editor’s
Note : I beg pardon of my distinguished
and learned friend for annexing a few remarks to this passage. In
doing so I merely anticipate what I intend to express more fully on
this subject some other occasion.As it would be absurd
for a philosophical Christian to reject the doctrine of original sin,
so it is absurd for any one who professes to have a clear perception
of homœopathy to reject the doctrine of hereditary morbific miasm.
Both these doctrines must stand and fall together, and, as truth is
one and indivisible, they both hold and illustrate each other. If we
admit with Rousseau that everything which leaves the hand of God is
perfectly holy, then the first created man must have been perfectly
pure, and must have appeared in the image and likeness of his maker.
It seems to me absurd to suppose that something perfectly pure can, of
itself, by its own free and orderly development produce things impure
and evil. We do not know how far God permitted anadaptation to evil
to co-exist in the first man together with an adaptation to goodness.
But we certainly know that the evil fruits must be the result of evil
forces. In a certain moment man or God through man, permitted the
adaptation to evil to prevail in his nature ; and instantaneously
the forces of evil, be they called serpent, devil, or otherwise,
invaded man’s nature, engrafted themselves upon it, and have up to
this moment perpetuated their existence in it. This is, relatively
speaking, a fall, although this fall, having been the first necessary
phase of human development, may, in reality, be considered a progress.
Man’s destiny consists in reuniting himself again with the Divine Life
through the universal expansion of all the faculties of his soul, and
the realisation of all the celestial harmonies the germs of which God
had deposited in his nature and towards the construction of which
science and art will furnish him the means. The principle of division,
or dissolution, which man had suffered to be introduced into his
spiritual nature, must necessarily have embodied itself in a
corresponding principle in the material organism. It is this principle
which Hahnemann calls Psora. In proportion as man’s spiritual nature becomes developed
and purified, this psoric miasm will be diminished, and will finally
be completely removed from the life of humanity. This complete
physical regeneration of human nature will necessarily be attended
with great changes in all the external relations of man, education,
mode of labouring, living. etc. etc.The principle of
division or dissolution existing in the human organism as an
established. and constituted fact does not preclude the possibility of
this organism being invaded by acute miasms. The psoric principle
marks the general adaptation to evil, recognised and inherently
received by the human organism ; acute diseases are violent and
sudden invasions of the organism by the forces of evil – which I have
named subversive forces in my preface. Those sudden invasions could
never have taken place without man having first admitted the psoric
principle to be constitutional in his organism.]With the same impudence
with which they had, on former occasions, asserted, that Hahnemann
rejects all pathology in his Organon, they now asserted that he himself
advanced a pathological hypothesis, and “that the truth which it
contained was not new, nor the new truth.”Equitable judges will
not fail to recognise in this treatise on chronic diseases the same
carefulness of study and observation which the great author of homœopathy
has shown in all his other writings. Hahnemann had no other object in
view except to cure. All the energies of his great soul were directed to
this one end. His object was not to over throw pathology, although the
pathology of his time has been set aside as heap of foolish
speculations, and has been replaced by other systems that may perhaps
suffer the same fate in fifty years ; he merely contended against
the foolish and. presumptuous applications of pathological hypothesis to
the treatment of disease. He rejected and overthrew the foolish belief
which had been driven like a rusty nail into the minds of the profession
and, by their instrumentality, into the minds of the people, that the
remedies should be given against a name, against an imaginary disease,
and that the name of this imaginary disease indicated the remedy. Up to
this day, physicians have been engaged in accrediting that superstition.
Whence should otherwise spring the desire which so many patients
manifest, of inquiring into the name of the disease, as if a knowledge
of that name were sufficient to discover the true remedy against the
disease ? Many patients are disconsolate when the doctor cannot
tell them what the matter is with them. Do we gain anything by being
able to say that the disease is a rheumatism, dyspepsia,
liver-complaint ? Does it avail the patient any to be able to
repeat his doctor’s ipse dixit
“that he is billions, nervous, etc.” Do these words mean
anything definite ? Are there yet physicians foolish enough to
believe that their speculative explanations mean anything ? Does
not every body acknowledge that they are mere ignes
fatui flitting to and fro upon the quagmire of the old
decayed systems of pathology ?Assuredly, a physician
of modern date, who has not remained altogether ignorant, would be
ashamed of assuring his patients, with the air of a deep thinker, that
one has a disease of spine, another consumption, a third a uterine
affection. Every tyro in pathology knows that all this means nothing
definite, and that it is only to very ignorant persons that such
assertions, can be given as science. Every tyro knows that the question
is, to find out what are the symptoms and the nature of that disease of
the spine or the uterus. It is moreover known that this more precise
knowledge is necessary as respects prognosis, and for the purpose of
regulating the mode of life of the patient ; but it is also settled
that to know merely the variety, to which the disease belongs, is not
sufficient to cure it. All the successful and celebrated practitioners
of the old school have been such as have constantly modified and
individualised the treatment of disease. This is all that Hahnemann has
tried to accomplish ; with this difference, that he has
individualised every case of disease with much more precision than any
of the older physicians had done. Hahnemann had courage enough at once
to face the contradictions which constantly existed between practice and
theory ; he declared that the speculative knowledge of physicians
was merely learned dust which they were in the habit of throwing into
the people’s eyes for the purpose of blinding them and inducing them to
consider the ignorance of the doctors and the insufficiency of their
knowledge as something respectable. Hahnemann dared to lay down this
maxim : that, in treating disease, he had nothing to do with its
name.Hahnemann teaches that
the remedies should be chosen according to the symptoms of the patient.
The physician should be governed by what is certain and safe, not by
that which is more or less uncertain and unsafe, and which is changed
according to fashion. Both in the Organon and in his treatise on the
chronic diseases, Hahnemann insists upon the remedies being chosen in
accordance with the symptoms.It is not an easy
matter to choose a remedy according to symptoms. This may be inferred
from the manner in which tyros in homœopathy, and physicians in the old
school who came over to us, go to work. They constantly rely upon names,
giving a certain remedy in scarlet fever, because someone else had found
it useful ; or a certain remedy in pulmonary inflammation, because
it had been successfully exhibited upon a former occasion ; whereas
Hahnemann teaches that because a remedy has helped before this is no
reason why it should help again in a similar disease. The symptoms and
not the name are to point out the remedy.This is also the case
in chronic diseases. In the treatment of chronic diseases, Hahnemann has
been taught by experience to give preference to anti-psoric remedies.
This preference is not theoretical, and is constantly subordinate to the
general principle.Hahnemann has never
said that the principal constituents of mountains, which are the most
important materials in nature -the metals, for instance- are the most
important remedies for the cure of most universal diseases. However, he
has pointed out the oxides or salts of ammonium, potassium, sodium,
calcium, aluminium, magnesium as the most important anti-psoric
remedies. Hahnemann has said nowhere that the most important metalloids
constitute the most important remedial agents, although he has
introduced sulphur, phosphorus, silicea, chlorine and iodine, in one
form or another, as anti-psoric remedies. In selecting a remedy
Hahnemann has never been guided by theories, but always by experience.
He chose his remedies agreeably to the symptoms which they had produced
upon healthy persons, looking at the same time to their remedial values
having been tested by practice. This is the reason why the general views
which have been expressed just now did not prevent him from admitting as
chief anti-psorics, borax and ammonium carbonicum, anacardium and clematis.Why, it may be asked,
has a great number of homœopathic physicians, neither recognised
Hahnemann’s theory of psora, nor the specific character of the
anti-psoric remedies ? Why have some even gone so far as to set the
theory sneeringly aside, and to decry the anti-psorics as less
trustworthy than the other remedies ?For the same reason
that the astronomical discoveries of our Herschel are doubted by people
who have no faith in the discoverer, and are, not able to verify his
discoveries. To do this, knowledge, instruments, talent, care,
perseverance, opportunities, and many other things are required. Not one
of all these requisites can be found with those who are mere dabblers in
practice, scribbling authors opposing their own opinions and
imaginations to facts and observation.– Or, for the same
reason that Ehrenberg’s discoveries cannot be appreciated by those who
have either no microscope ; or who have one which is not good, or
who, have a microscope without understanding the difficult art of using
it ; or else who know how to use it, but do not use it with same
exactness and carefulness as Ehrenberg, who discovered in the chalk dust
of visiting cards the shells of new species of animals, by simply making
the cards transparent by means of the oil of turpentine.– Or lastly, for the
simple reason that physicians find it more easy to write something for
print, than to observe nature ; that is more easy to impress upon
people than to cure the sick, and because the greater number of
physicians is affected with the delusion that things which they do not
see do not exist.If such physicians
succeed in effecting a cure they are at once ready to boast of their
exploits, whereas the cure was due to Hahnemann’s doctrine, to the
remedies which he has discovered, to the researches of other physicians,
to their instructions or example, or to so-called chance. But if they do
not succeed they impute their failure to anything but themselves :
it is homœopathy, that is deficient ; this or that rule is not
correct ; the materia medica is at fault ; or if something in
Hahnemann’s system does not suit them, they are prone to say that they
have never seen this or that, that they cannot agree with it. And in
talking in this way, they really imagine they have said something
against the matter itself.Upon the same ground
that Hahnemann carefully distinguished from the disease the symptoms
which owed their existence to dietetic transgressions, or to medicinal
aggravations ; upon the same grounds that he acknowledged as
standing and independent diseases the acute miasms, known as purpura,
measles, scarlatina, small pox, whooping cough, etc., or that he
distinguished the venereal miasm into syphilis
and sycosis, we may afterwards, if
experience should demand it, subdivide psora
into several species and varieties. This is no objection to Hahnemann’s
theory. Hahnemann has taken the first great step without denying the
faculty of progressive development inherent in his system. But let
improvements be made in such a way as to become useful, not prejudicial
to the patients. We ought to raise our superstructure upon Hahnemanns
own ground, in the direction which he has first imparted to his
doctrine.Although it, matters
little what opinions the respective disciples of Hahnemann hold
relatively to the theory of psora. I
will nevertheless communicate a short extract from my essay “Guide,
to the Progressive Development of Homœopathy”As acute diseases
terminate in an eruption upon the skin, which divides, dries up, and
then passes off, so it is with many chronic diseases. All diseases
diminish in intensity, improve, and are cured by the internal organism
freeing itself from them little by little ; the internal disease
approaches more and more to the external tissues, until it finally
arrives at the skin.Every homœopathic
physician must have observed that the improvement in pain takes place
from above downward ; and in diseases, from within outward. This
is the reason why chronic diseases, if they are thoroughly cured,
always terminate in some cutaneous eruption. Which differs according
to the different constitutions of the patients. This cutaneous
eruption may be even perceived when a cure is impossible, and even
when the remedies have been improperly chosen. The skin being the
outermost surface of the body, it receives upon itself the extreme
termination of the disease. This cutaneous eruption is not a mere
morbid secretion having been chemically separated from the internal
organism in the form of a gas, a liquid, or a solid ; it is the
whole of the morbid action which is pressed from within outward, and
it is characteristic of a thorough and really curative treatment. The
morbid action of the internal organism may continue either entirely,
or more or less in spite of this cutaneous eruption. Nevertheless,
this eruption always is a favourable symptom ; it alleviates the
sufferings of the patient, and generally prevents a more dangerous
affection.The thorough cure for
a widely ramified chronic disease in the organism is indicated by the
most important organs being first relieved, the affection passes off
in the order in which the organs had been effected, the more important
being relieved first, the less important next, and, the, skin last.Even the superficial
observer will not fail in recognising this law of order. An
improvement which takes place in a different order can never be relied
upon. A fit of hysteria may terminate in a flow of urine ; other
fits say either terminate in. the same way, or in hæmorrhage ;
the next succeeding fit shows how little the affection had been cured.
The disease may take a different turn, it may change its form and, in
this new form, it say be less troublesome ; but the general state
of the organism, will suffer in consequence, of this transformation.Hence it is that
Hahnemann inculcates with so such care the important rule to attend to
the moral symptoms, and to judge of the degree of homœopathic
adaptation, existing between the remedy and the disease, by the
improvement which takes place in the moral condition, and the general
well-being of the patient.The law of order
which we have, pointed out above accounts for the numerous cutaneous
eruptions consequent upon homœopathic treatment, even where they
never had been before ; it accounts for the obstinacy with which
many kinds of herpes and ulcers remain upon the skin, whereas others
are dissipated like snow. Those which remain do remain because the
internal disease is yet existing. This law of order also accounts for
the insufficiency of violent sweats, when the internal disease is not
yet disposed to leave its hiding place. It lastly accounts for one
cutaneous affection being substituted for another.This transformation
of the internal affection of such parts of the organism, as are
essential to important functions, to a cutaneous affection a
transformation which is entirely, different from the violent change
affected by mwans of Authenreith’s ointment, ammonium, croton oil,
cantharides, mustard, etc. – is chiefly affected by the anti-psoric
remedies.Other remedies, may
sometimes effect, that transformation, even the use of water, change
of climate, of occupation, etc. ; but it is more safely more
mildly and more thoroughly effected by anti-psoric remedies.This latter is
altogether an individual opinion others may have differents opinions
relative to the same subject ; this needs not prevent us from
aiming all of us at the same end, side by side, in perfect harmony.But alas ! the
rules which the experienced founder of homœopathy lays down in the
subsequent work with so much emphasis are not always practised, and
therefore cannot be appreciated. Many oppose them ; cures which
otherwise might be speedy and certain are delayed ; much injury is
being done by the wiseacres, who intrude themselves into our literature
and mix with it as chaff with the wheat. In all this we may console
ourselves with the expectation that also in the history of Science there
will be those great days of harvest, when the tares shall be gathered in
bundles and thrown into the fire.It is the duty of all
of us to go farther in the theory and practice of Homœopathy than
Hahnemann has done. We ought to seek the truth which is before us and
forsake the errors of the past. But woe unto him who, on that account,
should personally attack the author of our doctrine ; he will
burden himself with infamy. Hahnemann was a great servant, inquirer and
discoverer ; he was as true a man, without falsity, candid and open
as a child, and inspired with pure benevolence and with a holy zeal for
science.When at last the fatal
hour had struck for the sublime old man who had preserved his vigour
almost to his last moments, then it was that the heart of his consort
who had made his last years the brightest of his life was on the point
of breaking. Many of us, seeing those who are dearest to us engaged in
the death-struggle, would exclaim why should’st thou suffer so
much ! So too exclaimed Hahnemann’s consort : “Why
should’st thou who hast alleviated so much suffering suffer in thy last
hour ? This is unjust. Providence should have allotted to thee a
painless death.”Then he raised his
voice as he had often done when he exhorted his disciples to hold fast
to the great principles of homœopathy. “Why should I have been
thus extinguished ? Each of us should here attend to the duties
which God has imposed upon him. Although men may distinguish a more or
less, yet no one has any merit. God owes nothing to me, I to him
all.”With these words he
took leave of the world, of his friends, and his foes. And here we take
leave of you, reader, whether our friend or our opponent.To him who believes
that there may yet be truths which he does not know and which he desires
to know, will be pointed out such paths as will lead him to the light he
needs. If he who has sincere benevolence and wishes to work for the
benefit of all be considered by Providence a fit instrument for the
accomplishment of the divine will, he will be called upon to fulfil his
mission and will be led to truth evermore.It is the spirit of
Truth that tries to unite us all ; but the father of Lies keeps us
separate and divided.Constantine Hering
Philadelphia, April 22, 1845Source: Samuel Hahnemann –The
Chronic Diseases, their Specific Nature and Homoeopathic Treatment,
Volume 1 Theoretical part: Dr Hering’s Preface, translated from the
German edition of 1828 by Charles Hempel, published by William Radde of
New York in 1845 and omitted from later translations until now. (Collection of Francis Treuherz).This has been
reprinted in Chronic Diseases by Samuel Hahnemann (translated by August
Tafel in 1896) – Homoeopathic Book Service – Asia Publishing Sittngbourne – UK
1998Francis Treuherz : site & email
Copyright © Sylvain
Cazalet 2004