Hahnemann’s
View of Allopathy
As Seen in the Prefaces and Introduction to the Organon.
by Peter Morrell
Vase – Portugal – 2004 –
Peter Morrell
Hahnemann’s View of Allopathy
As Seen in the Prefaces and Introduction to the
Organon
Probably the greatest turning point in Hahnemann’s
life occurred when he finally settled in Torgau [25 miles north of his
home town of Meissen, also on the River Elbe] in 1804; for it was only
then that he began writing down in detail every medical issue that had
troubled his whirlwind travels of the previous 15 years. Perhaps in his
wandering, Hahnemann resembles Paracelsus, who “thought he could
learn more medicine by travelling and observing than from any
library.” [French, 148]
In 1804, with “this restless inclination for
travelling,” [Haehl, vol. 1, 47] finally expended, he settled
in Torgau, “for seven whole years,” [Haehl, vol. 1, 72]
and began to write a series of important essays, commencing with the Fragmenta
de viribus in 1805. All “his chief works were produced in
the Torgau period,” [Haehl, vol. 1, 74] within which every
detail of his new system was taking shape: “the Wander-years…and
Torgau with its literary results, until now, with a name well-known in
all Germany, with a new and superior system of medicine to his
credit.” [Bradford] “He remained at Torgau until 1811,
when he went to Leipzig.” [Bradford] “It was during his
residence at Torgau that Hahnemann gave to the world his great book…”Organon
of Rational Healing,” published in Dresden, by Arnold, in
1810.” [Bradford]
It was while residing in Torgau, 1804-11, and into a
series of essays, that he poured all his newly acquired knowledge about
a true system of healing; writings well seasoned also with his unending,
vitriolic, and detailed attacks upon the ideas and methods of the old
school. The length of these venomous attacks, unfolding throughout his
long life, reveals the emotional intensity of his sense of betrayal by
allopathic methods; this enriches our understanding of the man. In
Torgau, Hahnemann had, through his detailed and exhaustive studies,
finally laid out a systematic and point-by-point demolition of every
element in ancient and medieval medicine.
Hahnemann clearly describes how he came by his views
and why he so thoroughly denounced the ancient allopathic medical art.
The long journey of approaching homeopathy began with a departure from
allopathy. As “I advanced from truth to truth…the more my
conclusions…confirmed [that] the old edifice… [was] only maintained
by opinions,” [Organon, xvii] and was indeed a product
“of fantasy, and of arbitrary speculation, the mother of pernicious
illusion and of absolute nullity.” [Organon, xiv] He considers
allopathy as “merely developed out of the heads, the
self-deception and the caprice of its professors,” [Organon,
xiv] and had not “been derived from nature,” [Organon,
xiv] like homeopathy had, that is a system rooted in observations and
experiments, rather than speculative subtleties. In other words, it had
been made rather than found.
He therefore derides allopathy as “merely a
product of speculative subtlety, arbitrary maxims, traditional practices
and capricious deductions drawn from ambiguous premises,” [Organon,
xiv] and though “it may reckon its age by thousands of years,
and be decorated with the charters of all kings and emperors of the
earth,” [Organon, xiv] and though “it has been
practised for these 2500 years by millions of physicians, many of whom
were earnest high-minded men,” [Organon, xiv] yet it is and has
been nothing more than a vast deceit upon suffering humanity, a pretence
that promises much but delivers only failures. Hahnemann felt that
allopathy “spoke unto us smooth things, prophecy deceits,”
[Isaiah 30, 15] that “betrays instead of serving.”
[Burke] He had seen “many a promise sworn by royal lips, and
broken,” [Whitman] which had left him feeling “betrayed
by what is false.” [Meredith] He had become “beware of
them…their promises, enticements, oaths, tokens, and all these engines
of lust,” [Shakespeare] for it was the repeated demolition of
his false hopes that had destroyed all his respect for and faith in such
a medical system and that had made him into such an embittered and
unhappy wanderer.
By contrast, consider homeopathy: “every one
of its conclusions about the actual must always be based on sensible
perceptions, facts and experiences… [for, it does not] deviate by a
single step from the guidance of perception.” [Organon, xiv]
Precisely because allopathy is not founded in such real world
observations and experiences, such empirical roots, so “it
degenerates into empty speculation and phantasy, and produces only
hazardous hypotheses…[which] by their very nature…[comprise]
self-deception and falsehood.” [Organon, xiv] Such is what
Hahnemann describes as “the splendid juggling of so-called
theoretical medicine…[rooted in] a priori conceptions and speculative
subtleties…which were of no use for the cure of diseases.”
[Organon, xv]
Hahnemann states that for centuries, allopathy had
gone about its business blithely “unconcerned…about the
teachings of nature-guided experience,” [Organon, xv] instead
always professing to remain in strict “conformity with the
methods of its practical authorities…[and] traditional prescriptions,”
[Organon, xv] but all the while oblivious or contemptuous of
experiments, of how drugs really work and what gentle, true and lasting
cure might really mean. Hahnemann boldly proposes that any “healthy,
unprejudiced, conscientious examination,” [Organon, xv] of this
matter reveals that allopathy has all along been “merely a
pseudo-scientific fabrication, remodelled from time to time to meet the
prevailing fashion,” [Organon, xv] even though it remained
essentially “the same blind pernicious method,” [Organon,
xv] all along.
Disease Labels
One woeful aspect of the old school that Hahnemann
bitterly condemns, was its insistence on “arbitrarily settling
what diseases, how many and what forms and kinds there should be,”
[Organon, xv] being blithely ignorant, he contends, of “the
unforeseeable variety by infinite Nature in human beings…[which] the
pathologist cuts down…to a mere handful of cut and dry forms.”
[Organon, xv] Such “wiseacres define diseases a priori and
attributed to them transcendental substrata not warranted by experience.”
[Organon, xv] By contrast, for Hahnemann, like Paracelsus before him, “each
individuum was wholly peculiar and…[for him] there were as many
diseases as patients.” [McLean, 170]
Here Hahnemann touches upon a valid point. The
purpose of any classification scheme is “to name reliably and
conveniently,” [Bullock and Trombley, 858-9] but this
inevitably also involves “a degree of resemblance that unites
members,” [Bullock and Trombley, 858] of the same category or
group, such that members of the same category “are united by a
basic similarity or ground plan.” [Bullock and Trombley, 858]
Obviously, some members of a group “are united by a somewhat
closer degree of similarity,” [Bullock and Trombley, 858] than
others. Inevitably, also, any system of classification imposes
restrictions, concerns the [real or imagined] relationships between
different classes and categories and subtly shapes our perception of
reality to suit its own purposes.
Inevitably, any taxonomic scheme to some degree is
therefore “a system of idealised entities…fictions compounded
out of observed uniformities…concepts and categories…conditioned by
human aims.” [Berlin, 301] Because all such systems are “a
set of formulas, of imaginary entities and mathematical
relationships,” [Berlin, 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, 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, 302] it is rather “a savage jungle:
science is the art of dealing with it as best we can.” [Berlin,
302] No truly natural system of disease classification exists, and may
never be possible.
By overlooking “that the disease
classification is man-made…[allopaths] 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 do not exist. It is this
apparently hair-splitting point of the arbitrariness of disease
classification that Hahnemann had seized upon.
Homeopathy does not respect the use of 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, and
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 long been the
standard practice in allopathic medicine.
Other Errors
Allopaths also “pretended to possess an
insight into the inner nature of things and the invisible vital
processes, which no mortal can have.” [Organon, xv] By
contrast, Hahnemann insists that each case of sickness must be treated
on its peculiar own individual merits, rather than upon the basis of
some humanly-created system.
Hahnemann makes it very clear that he believed
allopathy to “have been merely developed out of the heads, the
self-deception and the caprice of its professors.” [Organon,
xiv] By contrast, he asserts that the true “powers of the
different medicines in the materia medica,” [Organon, xv] can
only be reliably determined by testing “their effects on the
healthy human body,” [Organon, xv] and never “from
their physical, chemical or other irrelevant qualities…their odour,
taste and external aspect…from impure experiences at the sick bed…[in]
the tumult of morbid symptoms…[or in] mixtures of medicines…prescribed
for imperfectly described cases of disease.” [Organon, xv] Here
Hahnemann identifies the essence of the allopathic habit of erroneously
deducing medicinal actions from guesswork or from their clinical use in
the sick.
Hahnemann declares that the true actions of medicines
reside in their “dynamic spiritual power of altering man’s
health.” [Organon, xv] Such is a power “hidden in the
invisible interior of medicines,” [Organon, xv] which cannot be
reliably plumbed or discerned from considering any aspects of their
external appearances—an ancient approach [doctrine of signatures] that
he very roundly condemns. Indeed, as Hahnemann explains, what had been
described about medicines had very largely been “inferred,
ascribed, or imagined…in conformity with…[certain rules] and in
direct opposition to nature.” [Organon, xvi]
Hahnemann here criticises the entrenched rules of
Galenic medicine, which impose their own form of order upon the natural
world instead of deriving themselves from observation of nature itself.
Such comprised “unnatural human doctrines…[and] illogical
false deductions…welded into scholastic forms…as opposed to nature
and experience as it is possible to conceive, a structure built up
entirely of…opinions…an edifice of pure nullity, a pitiable
self-deception, eminently fitted to imperil human life by its methods of
treatment.” [Organon, xvi] Being unnatural, so the doctrines of
ancient medicine were human, that is constructed—made and not
found.
As Hahnemann says, allopathy was ever “labouring
under the curse of not being what it professes to be, and not being able
to perform what it promises,” [Organon, xvi] patients. When
Hahnemann invokes “sober, unprejudiced reflection,”
[Organon, xvi] he contends that this would surely lead us to “accurate
knowledge of the true powers of medicines…the proper dose…a complete
true healing art…[compiled through] careful honest observations and
experiments.” [Organon, xvi] In his view, it is only by
pursuing such a policy that a true and reliable system of medicine can
be established, one that rejects “every falsifying admixture of
arbitrary data.” [Organon, xvi]
Vital Self-healing Powers
Hahnemann also invokes “nature’s self-help
in diseases [vis medicatrix],” [Organon, xviii] that is “the
instinctive, irrational, unreasoning vital force…ordained by the
Creator to maintain functions and sensations of the organism in
marvellously perfect condition.” [Organon, xviii] Not only does
he thereby clearly establish homeopathy as relying upon a vitalistic
basis in nature’s healing power [Kent calls the vital force the vice-regent
of the soul], but also, in the words ‘instinctive, irrational and
unreasoning,’ Hahnemann identifies the chief difference between the
vital force and the qualities of the conscious mind, which is powered by
the opposing qualities—will-power, rationality and the power of
reason. Such comments remain powerfully insightful two centuries later.
Because natural therapists regard all healing as
either truly curative self-healing or suppression, then by their own
definition, any ‘healing’ by non-innate vital powers tends
automatically to be dismissed as merely a suppression. For example, when
John Foley says, “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. When he further
contends that “drugs, if anything, interfere with that innate
ability to heal from within,” [Foley] and that mere “covering
up symptoms with pharmaceuticals has done little,” [Foley] then
he inclines towards the claim of homeopaths that drugs in crude doses do
not cure but delay healing and complicate disease by suppressing
symptoms.
Blood-letting, etc
Turning our attention to some of Hahnemann’s more
detailed rebuttals and condemnations of the ideas and practices of the
old school of medicine, it is clear that most if not all of these
criticisms, are rooted in his own honest but failed attempts to obtain
good therapeutic results employing the very system he is discussing and
in which he had been trained. Other comments derive from his reading
material during his literary pursuits [1783-1806 approx] in which he
encountered numerous physician anecdotes depicting examples similar to
his own dismally uncurative experiences. A host of other more
illuminating observations concerning single drugs inspired him to devise
his own experiments with single drugs for similar conditions and in the
provings, which were partly inspired by accounts of accidental
poisonings—thereby opening up an entirely new therapeutic pathway. In
essence, he speaks authoritatively as an ‘insider’ critical of the
methods of a system he himself was trained in and which he found to be
consistently ineffective. Equally, he is also a serious student of the
history of therapeutics and thus he is well aware of the minutiae of all
previous medical doctrines and methods. It is into such a context that
we must locate the ensuing comments.
Hahnemann states that allopathy often “presupposes
the existence of excess of blood [plethora—which is never present]
sometimes of morbid matters and acridities; hence it taps off the life’s
blood and exerts itself either to clear away the imaginary
disease-matter, or to conduct it elsewhere [by emetics, purgatives,
sialogogues, diaphoretics, diuretics, etc] in the vain belief that the
disease will thereby be weakened and materially eradicated.”
[Organon, xxviii] He here refers to the predominantly humour-expelling
measures employed for hundreds of years. It also employs in
unrecognisable mixtures by the “commingling of several such
unknown substances in one prescription.” [Organon, xxviii] Here
he refers to its ingrained and longstanding polypharmacy habit, which he
deplores. Its remedies tend to “suppress and hide the morbid
symptoms by opposition [contraria contrariis] for a short time
[palliatives].” [Organon, xxviii] Hahnemann is here referring
to the non-holistic pursuit of local symptoms the eradication of which
is not a true cure but merely a suppression.
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] Here Hahnemann means that it conceives each sickness both as a
local affair and as a real entity independent of the sufferer. He
deplores such conception of ‘driving symptoms away’ as ridiculous
and misleading, as it tends to the treatment of parts rather than the
whole person. 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] It is indeed a “most
senseless mode of treatment…[and a] mischievous so-called art.”
[Organon, xxix] After 1828, Hahnemann uses the miasm theory to explain
the transmission of such maltreatments, suppressions and inheritable ‘disease
residues’ in the human system, but here, in 1805-11, he mainly
denigrates humour-expelling measures as fine examples of the harmful,
uncurative and absurd practices allopaths routinely employ.
By contrast, Hahnemann portrays homeopathy as a
gentle and curative therapy that “can easily convince every
reflecting person that the diseases of man are not caused by any
substance, any acridity…disease matter, but that they are solely
spirit-like [dynamic] derangements of the spirit-like power [the vital
force] that animates the human body.” [Organon, xxix]
Homeopathy therefore “avoids everything in the slightest degree
enfeebling…[and] employs for the cure only those medicines whose
effects…[are] capable of removing the natural disease…by similarity.”
[Organon, xxix] In this point, Hahnemann makes clear the harmless nature
of homeopathy and its core principle of similia, hinting also at the
hidden maxim of provings, because a homeopathic medicine must be able to
cause in the healthy what it can cure in the sick.
Then he plays another trump card: homeopathy works “to
remove the natural malady by means of the reacting energy of the vital
force.” [Organon, xxii] The drug merely acts to stimulate the
body’s innate self-healing energies. This is very neat footwork on
Hahnemann’s part and creates an impressively seamless web of connected
argument. This means that “without weakening, injuring or
torturing him…the natural disease is extinguished.” [Organon,
xxii] That it means no purging, no emetics, no mercurials and no
bleeding, indicates the radical nature of Hahnemann’s break with the
medical past. The remedy thus acts by stimulating and rousing into
activity “the blind efforts of the instinctive, unreasoning
vital force,” [Organon, xviii] and such a gentle and harmless
system stands in the starkest possible contrast to “the
pernicious routine of the old school.” [Organon, xxii]
Allopathy is demonstrably “the most opposite
and the most senseless modes of treatment,” [Organon, xxix]
what he also calls “mischievous,” [Organon, xxix] and “a
pernicious practice,” [Organon, xxix] for the reasons he also
gives, primarily its harmful effects on the patient and its suppressive,
complexifying impact upon diseases of all kinds. According to Hahnemann,
ancient physicians were far too easily “led astray by their
vanity…[and] sought by reasoning and guessing to excogitate the mode
of furnishing,” [Organon, 1] an effective mode of treatment.
However, as far as Hahnemann was concerned, these “system-mongerers,”
[Organon, 1] were doomed to fail in that endeavour and delivered only
harm to their patients, not cures. They did this by using complex
mixtures of drugs in doses too strong and suppressing sickness by ‘driving
symptoms away’ rather than curing the patient.
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] a title which he clearly
feels it does not deserve because, engrossed in its own theories, it has
consistently turned its back on nature and the very empiricism that are
the hallmarks of any authentic science. By contrast, he claims, it is
homeopathy—the only legitimate medical progeny of science and
empiricism—that truly deserves such a title.
Essence of Disease?
When Hahnemann astutely argues, because “by
far the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic [spiritual] origin
and dynamic [spiritual] in nature…[therefore] their cause is…not
perceptible to the senses,” [Organon, 2] he means that sickness
is always a dynamic [spiritual] derangement of the life-force. This is a
central theme, which he emphasises by repeating endlessly throughout the
Organon and several other essays. It therefore logically follows from
this position that true cure could not be material or perceptible
either, but must also be dynamic [spiritual] in nature; Hahnemann
demands that the cure should correspond to the cause. Yet, when
Hahnemann then examines allopathy, he finds no confirmation of this
view.
Allopathy has always maintained that it can “draw
conclusions relative to the invisible process whereby the changes which
take place in the inward being of man in diseases,” [Organon,
2] can be perceived and utilised in therapy. Furthermore, they have
never deviated from the employment of material drugs to address dynamic
diseases—a mismatch Hahnemann is eager to pounce on. They therefore
proposed that “the internal essence of the disease, the disease
itself,” [Organon, 2] could be understood and defined. However,
in Hahnemann’s view such a contention regarding “this
imperceptible internal essence,” [Organon, 2] was a delusion, a
fabrication springing from a fevered imagination on the part of
allopathic physicians: “a bogus prospectus, the child of an
overactive imagination, like designs for a perpetual motion machine.”
[Berlin, 1979, 110] Hahnemann makes it very clear that he regards any
alleged ‘internal essence’ of disease to be a fiction, a fantasy.
Nevertheless, as Hahnemann points out, enormous
effort has been invested by old school physicians concerning “an
internal invisible cause of disease…conjectures that have been
dignified by the followers of the old school with the title of causal
indication, and considered to be the only possible rationality in
medicine.” [Organon, 3] Hahnemann impatiently dismisses such
ideas as preposterous “assumptions, too fallacious and
hypothetical to prove of any practical utility…flattering…to the
vanity of the learned theorist, but usually leading astray when used as
guides to practice.” [Organon, 3] It would be difficult to
imagine a more robust dismissal of the very idea.
Hahnemann proposes that old school physicians had
indeed based their whole system upon the removal of these imagined
causes of sickness, and this is why he even considers this matter worthy
of comment. He states that “the old school of medicine believe
it might cure diseases in a direct manner by the removal of the
[imaginary] material cause of disease,” [Organon, 4] and as he
further states, they found it “next to impossible to divest
themselves of these materialistic ideas.” [Organon, 4] One
reason Hahnemann focuses on this topic is that he trained in the old
school methods himself and has studied it in depth. He feels this makes
him qualified to criticise it. Having failed to produce cures using
those methods, he advises against them. He therefore concludes that
those “functional vital changes, which are called diseases, must
be produced and effected chiefly, if not solely, by dynamic [spiritual]
influences and could not be effected in any other way.” [Organon,
4] This is a pretty clear and unambiguous statement of Hahnemann
defending homeopathy against any materialistic conception of disease
cause and cure. He identifies very clearly his own view of the nature of
homeopathy and of disease—both being dynamic in character, rather than
chemical, bacterial, molecular or genetic.
When Hahnemann uses the words ‘direct manner’ he
amplifies the meaning of this phrase in a footnote to the main text by
saying the use of “violent, always hurtful evacuant drugs.”
[Organon, 4] He clearly wishes to sharply contrast such brutal and
uncurative measures against the simple, harmless and curative measures
employed in homeopathy. So as to clarify and extend his meaning, he also
adds that in some cases a “dynamic origin” of a disease can
mean “caused by mental disturbance [grief, fright, and
vexation], a chill, and over-exertion of the mind or body.”
[Organon, 4]
Condemning Specific Practices
and Ideas
While Hahnemann is at pains to condemn old school
medicine in its entirety, he also singles out certain practices for
specific condemnation, such as “all their varieties of
blood-lettings…inflammations, etc.” [Organon, 5] Allopaths,
he says, “cannot refrain from bleeding in order to draw off the
supposed super-abundance of this vital fluid…[in spite of] prostration
of the strength,” [Organon, 5] of the patient. In doing so, “they
imagine…that their treatment has been in conformity with their axiom…[and
that] they have done everything in their power for the patient.”
[Organon, 5] It is this “imaginary excess of blood,”
[Organon, 5] which they regard as “the main material cause of
all haemorrhages and inflammations.” [Organon, 5] Based on such
assumptions, they thus regard blood-letting as an entirely rational form
of treatment that the patient needs. Therefore, as Hahnemann insists, it
is this theoretical a priori assumption that drives their desire to
remove blood from their patients “by repeated venesection…[and]
thus often bleed the patient nearly to death,” [Organon, 5] in
the name of a theory of disease cause that is so obviously bogus.
Hahnemann consistently depicts the old school mode of
treatment as rendering the patient “worse than the original
malady,” [Organon, 6] and he feels this fact alone “ought
to open their eyes to the deeper-seated, immaterial nature of the
disease, and its dynamic [spirit-like] origin, which can only be removed
by [an equally] dynamic means.” [Organon, 6-7] As an example of
its false and harmful treatments, Hahnemann gives the dominating idea of
“morbific matters and acridities,” [Organon, 7] which
inspires heroic [vigorous] attempts to expel them “through the
exhalents, skin, urinary apparatus or salivary glands, through the
tracheal and bronchial glands in the form of expectoration, from the
stomach and bowels by vomiting and purging, in order that the body might
be freed from the material cause,” [Organon, 7] of sickness.
Hahnemann consistently depicts such ideas as
misguided and such doomed methods as both damaging and uncurative.
Hahnemann smears such measures as akin to an attempt to let “a
dirty fluid run out of a barrel through the tap-hole,”
[Organon, 7] in order to expel “bad humours and to cleanse the
diseased body from all morbific matters.” [Organon, 7] Hence
the myriad old school remedies designed for “purifying the blood
and humours, exciting diuresis and diaphoresis, promoting expectoration,
and scouring out the stomach and bowels.” [Organon, 7] Not only
does Hahnemann depict these methods as futile, but he pours scorn on the
ideas that drive them—which he summarises as a dominating belief in
the material causes of all sickness, and which he denounces as absurd
fantasy not rooted in careful observation or sound reflection.
However, as Hahnemann repeatedly contends, these are “all
idle dreams, unfounded assumptions and hypotheses, cunningly devised…to
remove the material morbific matters.” [Organon, 7] Such are
indeed “stupid baseless hypotheses,” [Organon, 7] not
even in accord with observation, and especially when one considers that
disease is in truth a “spiritual, dynamic derangement of our
spirit-like vital principle in sensation and function…[or] immaterial
derangements of our state of health.” [Organon, 7-8] Hahnemann
goes on, “the causes of our maladies cannot be material,”
[Organon, 8] because “the vital principle everywhere present in
our body never rests until,” [Organon, 8] the merest splinter
is expelled from it “by pain, fever, suppuration or gangrene.”
[Organon, 8]
Thus, all sickness is a mere dynamic, that is, an
immaterial, derangement of the vital force. The very “idea of a
material morbific matter,” [Organon, 8] is a preposterous
notion, in his view. Hahnemann states that “the champions of
this clumsy doctrine of morbific matters…[have utterly] failed to
appreciate the spiritual nature of life and the spiritual dynamic power
of the exciting causes of diseases.” [Organon, 9] Such are
indeed, “false and materialistic views concerning the origin and
essential nature of diseases,” [Organon, 9] that Hahnemann
unflinchingly condemns outright. Hahnemann would say that even if such
morbific matters are present in the organism, they are merely ancillary
phenomena of the disease process and should not lead one to view them as
causes. Indeed, he is right to suggest that such an “absurdity…could
only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp,” [Organon,
Aph 13] or even conceive such a hypothesis.
Hahnemann says, “the foul, often disgusting
excretions which occur in disease…are excretory products of the
disease itself,” [Organon, 9] and should not be seen as causes
of the disease. Those doctors who seek to “purge away the
materia pecans…through the intestines by means of laxative and
purgative medicines,” [Organon, 9] have “degraded
themselves into mere scavenger-doctors,” [Organon, 9] by
pursuing this absurd line of medical thinking and its attendant
non-curative practices. Hahnemann continues at length in this vain,
saying that “no disease…is caused by any material substance…but…is
only a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the health,”
[Organon, 10] and thus any “method of treatment directed towards
the expulsion of that imaginary material substance,” [Organon,
10] is damaging, and always inflicts “monstrous harm,”
[Organon, 10] on the patient. Yet, he acknowledges that this very
approach “was and continues to be one of the principal modes of
treatment of the old school of medicine.” [Organon, 11]
Thus, we can clearly see in these passages that
although Hahnemann freely acknowledges the existence of material
excretions associated with some types of disease, yet he refuses to draw
the allopathic conclusion that such an association is causal or that the
material aspects of a sickness are the root cause of the symptoms
observed. Kent famously repeats exactly the same line of argument
concerning bacteria and molecular aspects of disease. Both insist that
the true causes are more deeply rooted, and are quite invisible aspects
of organism functioning, viz, the derangements of the vital force.
As Hahnemann contends, the only thing achieved “by
means of diaphoretic and diuretic remedies, blood-lettings, setons, and
issues…irritant drugs to cause evacuation of the alimentary
canal,” [Organon, 12] is the expulsion of excretory products
[morbific substances] admittedly associated with sickness, but not the
causes of it. Even though this may transiently alleviate the suffering
of the patient [the value of which Hahnemann remains very sceptical
about] it still does not remove the underlying cause: the derangement in
the vital force, which Hahnemann contends as being the true or root
cause. Therefore, Hahnemann can see no sense in employing such
palliative half-measures, which in any case are often harmful and were
relied on to excess.
Vital Force
Turning next to the vital force itself, Hahnemann
makes some illuminating comments on this important topic. He refers to “this
irrational vital force,” [Organon, 13] and also the “unintelligent
vital force,” [Organon, 13] indicating its automatic and
non-reasoning aspects. He also refers to “crude, senseless,
automatic vital energy,” [Organon, 13-14] and as “crude
unaided nature,” [Organon, 15] to indicate how limited he
thinks are its curative actions when left solely to its own devices. Yet
“the old school, which arrogates to itself the title of
rational,” [Organon, 13] has little or nothing to say about the
innate self-healing powers in the cure of disease. He considers it
peculiar that the very aspect of life which homeopathic drugs seek to
assist, stimulate and rouse into greater activity—the vital force—the
old school remains resolutely silent about. This again reflects
Hahnemann’s repeated contention that it is a blindly materialistic
form of medicine that fails, unlike homeopathy, to acknowledge and
utilise the spiritual nature of life and medical healing.
Hahnemann states that when left to itself, “the
self-aiding operations of the vital force,” [Organon, 13] are
manifestly incapable of curing sickness. As he says, “the
energetic but unintelligent, unreasoning and improvident vital force…[is
incapable of creating] genuine relief or recovery,” [Organon,
15] for many types of acute or chronic disorders. As far as he can
judge, Hahnemann states that the old school has ignored or misjudged “the
efforts of the crude automatic power of nature,” [Organon, 15]
that is the vital force. Instead of observing and learning how to
enhance its power or enlist its help, they have largely ignored it. As
far as Hahnemann is concerned, every treatment the old school can muster
is one that damages the vital force, fails to cure sickness, harms the
patient and thus makes a bad situation even worse. Their drugs do not
cure, but merely shift symptoms around and harm the patient, while ever
diminishing the innate healing powers as well. In Hahnemann’s view,
this situation is a travesty of the title of doctor and of the once
noble art of medicine.
Hahnemann says the “perturbing, debilitating,
indirect modes of treatment of the old school are scarcely ever of the
slightest use.” [Organon, 14] They merely “suspend for
a few days, some troublesome symptom or other…which…returns [in due
course]…worse than before.” [Organon, 14] They “silence
in a palliative manner for a short time,” [Organon, 15] some
forms of sickness. Experience has shown, Hahnemann declares, “that
lasting evil almost invariably results from a such a plan.”
[Organon, 16] In any case, as Hahnemann says, the vital force “is
not guided by reason, knowledge and reflection,” [Organon, 18]
and cannot heal sickness unaided and alone. Therefore, the injudicious
tactic of imitating her course—as allopaths do—is of no avail
whatsoever. Hahnemann then continues with numerous detailed examples of
sickness and how badly they always fare under regular allopathic
treatment and the disastrous after-effects of such damaging treatments.
He then leaves his readers in little doubt of his opinion of “the
materia medica of the old school…founded mainly on conjecture and
false deductions…mixed up with falsehood and fraud.”
[Organon, 22] Many of its drugs are “themselves of a very
compound nature and the peculiar action of any one of which is as good
as unknown.” [Organon, 23] What possible good, he then asks,
can flow from administering such unknown and dangerous concoctions?
Commentary
It is very interesting to consider what Hahnemann
chooses to condemn in ancient medicine, and why. He condemns it
fundamentally for having no sound rationale founded in experiments and
observational studies, and for being significantly based upon opinions
and traditional authorities: it was made rather than found.
Having already provided a solid rebuttal of allopathy in his essays of
1804-11, what he provides in the Prefaces and Introduction of the
Organon, is a brief summary of those previous detailed essays. What of
course he also provides is the practical basis of his critique—mostly
in footnotes to the main text—numerous detailed examples of how old
school methods have never worked and why, but just suppressed sicknesses
of all types by using violent and damaging methods.
Against such outrages he then sharply contrasts the
simplicity, gentleness, good sense and efficacy of his homeopathic
system, which he emphatically defends as one primarily rooted in good
experiments, practical experience and careful, detailed observations of
the way the organism really functions, and the way medicines influence
its functioning. He stoutly portrays homeopathy as having precisely
those good features that allopathy lacks.
In another sense, although Hahnemann condemns the old
school for lacking a sound rationale and of possessing brutal methods,
he fails to explain how and why it had arrived at such a sorry state of
affairs, being left with only such brutal methods and being bereft of an
impressive rationale. He oddly fails to give reasons for what is
relevant to his own argument. He is very keen to portray the superiority
of homeopathy over allopathy [a] because it works; [b] because it is
gentle and harmless; [c] because it has a rationale consistent with
various experiments and observations; [d] because it is free of blind
devotion to authority and traditions and the amassed opinions of vain
fools. He reminds us that it is precisely the opposite of old school
medicine and he never tires of reminding us of this simple fact—it is
the reverse side of the coin and a system utterly incompatible in every
possible way with the old school both in its methods and in its
theoretical infrastructure.
In a sense, the basis of Hahnemann’s critique is
ill-founded; one wonders at times whether he most despises the old
school’s lack of rationale, its brutal methods or its heavy reliance
on tradition. It is uncertain whether it is the methods, the lack of
rationale or the reliance on authority that Hahnemann rails against with
the greatest passion. Sometimes it seems he rails against them most
because they comprise [in his view undeserved] a tradition and respected
authority rather than the irrational brutality of its methods after
c.1650, which was due to the abandonment of Galenic ideas and a
rejection of tradition rather than because anything better had been
found. Once Galenic and Aristotelian theory had been progressively
discredited by such figures as Galileo, Vesalius and Harvey, doctors
tended to gradually abandon the methods based on such theories, even
though they had found nothing new or certain to replace the old. This
transition happened broadly over the period 1650-1800.
Seemingly, within Hahnemann’s rational and very
persuasive critique, also hides a smouldering bitterness on his own
part, an emotional resentment for old school methods. Hahnemann’s
final view of allopathy is well summarised in the words of the Polish
poet Milosz: “Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of
truth/ Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality,” in
that he did indeed regard it as a ‘tree of falsehood,’ but as far as
Hahnemann was concerned any ‘grain of truth’ in allopathy was
non-existent and it held reality entirely in contempt.
He appears emotional because he was hurt and betrayed
by such a useless system, in the early years of his career, and which
had acquired a monopolistic grip on all medical education. This frames
Hahnemann—who was originally a most diligent medical practitioner, who
the systemic failure of allopathy rendered into a deliberately
rebellious upstart—a revolutionary, and thoroughly deserving the
title, like Paracelsus before him, of being a “medical Luther,”
[Temkin, 16; Osler] as others had dubbed him. Like Paracelsus before
him, Hahnemann was “driven to innovation by dissatisfaction with
the limitations of conventional medicine.” [van Haselen, 121-2]
Paracelsus was referred to as “the Luther of medicine,”
[McLean, 78] primarily because he represented a troublemaking tendency,
adopting “an anti-authoritarian stance.” [McLean, 78]
It is perfectly true that “no physician since Paracelsus had
dared to expose with such frankness and boldness the miserable condition
of the medical treatment of the period…[and] that requires a thorough
reform from top to bottom.” [Ameke, 98]
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