Appreciate you on the eve of Hahnemann’s birthday for your great pains-taking work in promoting and propagationg Homeo across the globe.

You mentioned in this article – “Hahnemann has used the term ‘miasm’ in both senses at different places. Maybe he was himself a bit confused. On one hand he was talking about the spiritual vital force and its dynamic derangement as the cause of all disease, on the other hand he was well aware that there was something material (contagion) in acute diseases .” ……..

It is not the Hahnemann who is confused about the relationship between acute and chronic infections, dynamic vital force and susceptibilty in defining the miasms, but it is the writers and homeopaths due to issues in translating CD/ORG from Germany and our lacking objectivity. Hahnemann is basically a vitalist and empiricist with objective observation without prejudice. He is not a religious idealist like Kent who says misams are originated in mind. So, Hahnemann brought harmonious balance between dynamic vitalism and materialist pathogenesis of miasmic diseases. Here, Hahnemann seems to be very clear. This can be seen in below quotes apart from the excellent quotes you gave from CD.

§ 16 says vital force is affected by EXTERNAL inimical forces (materials like microorganism, foreign chemical allopathic drug, vaccination and non materials like emotional shock etc)

“Our vital force, as a spirit-like dynamis, cannot be attacked and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the harmonious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic) way…..”

§ 31 says Susceptibility is PRECONDITION for dynamic derangement of Votal Force -

” The inimical forces, partly psychical, partly physical, to which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed morbific noxious agents, DO NOT possess the power of morbidly deranging the health of man UNCONDITIONALLY1; but we are made ill by them only when our organism is sufficiently disposed and SUSCEPTIBLE to attack of the morbific cause that may be present, and to be altered in its health, deranged and made to undergo abnormal sensations and functions – hence they do not produce disease in every one nor at all times”.

CD Page 75 Each miasm creates its own susceptibility ..

“Epidemic intermittent fevers probably never seize a man who is free from psora, so that wherever there is a susceptibility to them, it is to be accounted a symptom of psora.”

CD Page 72 Miasm increases the susceptibility ….

“Increasing susceptibility to colds, either of the WHOLE BODY (often even from repeatedly wetting the hands, now with warm water, then with cold, as in washing clothes), or only susceptibility of certain PARTS OF THE BODY, of the head, the neck, the chest, the abdomen, the feet, etc., often in a moderate or slight draught, or after slightly moistening these parts; [4] even from being in a cooler room, in a rainy atmosphere, or with a low barometer.”

Regards
Naga
valivetin@yahoo.com

Thank you for your kind feedback. Such feedback is what keeps us going month after month.

This article was published in 2009 but was actually written much before that. I think I need to update it and add Grant’s work too.

I really look forward to reading your essay.

Thanks a ton once again,
Manish

Firstly let me say how indebted I feel to you and all the other editorial staff of this ezine: the professional calibre of your publication, and it’s variety, breadth and depth, and its service re. bringing homeopaths into awareness of each other and what’s going on in the field is brilliant. I read it head to toe every month.

More specifically, thanks so much for this article. You have saved me a great deal of laboring (not that being forced to go back to the originals isn’t always the best way to go about things, but your essay so succincty puts what my reading of various books threw up for me: AND, by the way, what a delight!to discover Ghatak’s book (translated by Banerjee)which I have had sitting on my shelves for 17 years without opening: my mum was in Bombay in 1993 and bought so many books for me from Jain, that they threw it in as a freebie).

I am currently re-writing an essay I wrote for myself on Grant Bentley’s and Sankaran’s use of miasms to ‘diagnose’/'see’ patients.

I was a student of Grant’s for a year, way back in 1995 (but was mostly trained by Mischa Norland in his correspondence course, and clinical training was at the Sydney School of Homeopathic Medicine. I use a combination of Mischa’s and Sankaran’s approach in my case taking/analysis). This past weekend I went to one of Grant’s Facial Analysis seminars where he talked quite a bit about his Soul and Survival material/thinking on miasms.

Which has prompted me to go back to my essay and expand it. (Grant, in my opinion, is shooting himself in the foot by making certain pronouncements about Hahnemann – due, in my opinion, to willfull picking and choosing of what Hahnemann said on the miasms. As I know Grant quite well, I know it is not because he is careless or can’t read properly. I might write him a letter.) Anyway, it has helped my essay enormously to have your article to refer to.

When I’ve finished my essay, I might send it to you: it might interest other homeopaths.

Yours Sincerely,

Genevieve Ahearne