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Homeopathy Articles |
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| Hpathy Ezine - October,
2008 |
Precursor to the Organon:
Hahnemann’s Occasional Writings
Part V - The Medicine of Experience (1805)
- Rudi Verspoor FHCH, HD(RHom.),
DMH |
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In this work, Hahnemann identifies the divine nature of the
human mind and its ability to discern the curative powers of
nature. He sees that the divine design was "to bring to
unlimited perfection our whole being, as also our corporeal
frame and the cure of its diseases." (Lesser Writings,
p. 438) He states clearly that man must not imitate nature in
its efforts to get rid of disease, as these methods are crude
and ineffective.
The great Instructor of mankind
did not intend that we should go to work in the same manner
as nature...
I am therefore astonished that
the art of medicine has so seldom raised itself above a servile
imitation of these crude processes...Never, never was it possible
to compel these spontaneous endeavours of the organism by
artificial means (the very notion implies a contradiction),
never was it the Creator's will that we should do so."
(Lesser Writings, p.435-437)
The object of medicine and the
knowledge of the physician:
Medicine is a science of experience;
its object is to eradicate diseases by means of remedies.
The knowledge of diseases, the
knowledge of remedies, and the knowledge of their employment,
constitute medicine.(Lesser Writings, p. 439)
The Creator permitted diseases, but he also 'revealed' to man
a 'distinct mode' to know these diseases, plus the curative
properties of medicines. This knowledge is not to be found in
discovering invisible internal changes in the organism in disease
or in searching for proximate causes (e.g., the person is sick
because their liver is inflamed). We must seek, however, the
exciting cause, even if this may be hidden in most diseases.
We observe a few diseases that
always arise from one and the same cause, e.g., the miasmatic
maladies; hydrophobia, the venereal disease, the plague of
the Levant, yellow fever, smallpox, cow-pox, the measles and
some others, which bear upon them the distinctive mark of
always remaining diseases of a peculiar character; and, because
they arise from a contagious principle that always remains
the same, they also always retain the same character and pursue
the same course, excepting as regards some accidental circumstances,
which however do not alter their essential character.
These few diseases, at all events
those first mentioned (the miasmatic), we may therefore term
specific, and when necessary bestow upon them distinctive
appellations.
If a remedy has been discovered
for one of these, it will always be able to cure it, for such
a disease always remains essentially identical in its manifestations
(the representatives of its internal nature) and in its
cause. (Lesser Writings, p. 440)
All the other innumerable diseases
exhibit such a difference in their phenomena that we may safely
assert that they arise from a combination of several dissimilar
causes (varying in number and differing in history and intensity).
Hence it happens that with the
exception of those few diseases that are always the same [tonic],
all others are dissimilar [pathic], and innumerable,
and so different that each of them occurs scarcely more than
once in the world, and each case of disease that presents
itself must be regarded (and treated) as an individual malady
that never before occurred in the same manner, and under the
same circumstances as in the case before us, and will never
again happen precisely in the same way! (Lesser Writings,
p.441-442)
The problem then is essentially those diseases of variable
nature, those individual diseases, which cannot be discovered
by means of speculation or examinations of the organism in disease,
but only through the symptoms. Thus, this type of disease is
identified in name only through the remedy that will cure it,
in contrast to those few constant diseases that can be given
a distinctive name, such as measles.
The internal essential nature of
every malady, of every individual [versus typical] case of
disease, as far as is necessary for us to know it, for the
purpose of curing it, expresses itself by the symptoms, as
they present themselves to the investigations of the true
observer in their whole extent, connection and succession.
When the physician has discovered
all the observable symptoms of the disease that exist, he
has discovered the disease itself [that is, the individual
disease or the constant disease for which no remedy has yet
been discovered clinically], he has attained the complete
conception of it requisite to enable him to effect a cure.
(Lesser Writings, p.443)
Regimen is necessary to prevent a relapse where there are predisposing
or exciting causes, both of a physical and of a moral nature.
Instruction is given in how to take the symptoms of the patient.
Two dissimilar diseases cannot
remove each other, but two similar ones cannot occupy the
same organism and the stronger annihilates the weaker. Medicines
are stronger (being artificial diseases) than the natural
disease.
Equally astonishing is the truth
that there is no medicinal substance which, when employed
in a curative manner, is weaker than the disease for which
it is adapted, no morbid irritation for which the medicinal
irritation of a positive and extremely analogous nature is
not more than a match.(Lesser Writings, p. 455)
Dual nature of medicine in its action: initial action, here
termed the "positive primary effect", and counter-action,
"opposite (negative) symptoms constituting this secondary
effect".
Thus, to the abnormal irritation
present in the body, another morbid irritation as similar
to it as possible (by means of the medicine that acts in this
case positively with its primary symptoms) is opposed in such
a degree that the latter preponderates over the former, and
(as two abnormal irritations cannot exist beside each
other in the human body, and these are two irritations of
the same kind) the complete extinction and annihilation of
the former is effected by the latter. (Lesser Writings, p.
454)
The new, artificial disease now expires "in a shorter
time than any natural disease."
The duration of the initial (direct) action, the primary medicinal
symptoms, is "the first few hours, which are the duration
allotted by nature."
The remedy produces, in the first few hours, a ....
...kind of slight [homeopathic]
aggravation (this seldom lasts so long as three hours), which
the patient imagines to be an increase of his disease, but
which is nothing more than the primary symptoms of the medicine,
which are somewhat superior in intensity to the disease, and
which ought to resemble the original malady so closely as
to deceive the patient himself in the first hour, until the
recovery that ensues after a few hours teaches him his mistake.
(Lesser Writings, p. 455)
Too large doses of the remedy will produce a greater disease
than already present.
The sensitivity or receptivity of the body to medicine (medicinal
irritations) is increased remarkably in disease. What would
not affect a healthy person can have strong effects in disease.
The Medicine of Experience represents the culmination
of this period of Hahnemann's searching for a new system of
medicine (1790-1805). Five years later we see the emergence
of that seminal document, the aphoristic Organon der Heilkunst,
whose seeds lay in the earlier occasional writings. He had developed,
by this time, sufficient certainty of insight and experience
that he could present his discoveries in the form of a formal
argument, highly structured and legalistic, as if presenting
his submission to the high court of truth and wisdom.
# # #
Rudi Verspoor is Dean and Chair Department
of Philosophy, Hahnemann College for Heilkunst, Ottawa. He
has written extensively on homeopathy and created the only
college in the world offering a full program of study in Hahnemann's
complete medical system, Heilkunst. More details on studying
Heilkunst can be obtained from www.homeopathy.com.
Rudi founded the National Association of Trained Homeopaths
(NUPATH) in Canada, as well as the Canadian/International
Heilkunst Association (C/IHA). He has advised the Canadian
government on healthcare issues, made presentations to various
federal and provincial governments on homeopathy, and has
written for various journals as well as lectured around the
world.
His publications include: Homeopathy Renewed, A Sequential
Approach to the Treatment of Chronic Illness (with Patty Smith);
A Time for Healing; Homeopathy Re-examined: Beyond the Classical
Paradigm (with Steven Decker); The Dynamic Legacy: Hahnemann
from Homeopathy to Heilkunst (with Steven Decker)
The website at www.heilkunst.com
has more articles and resources about Heilkunst.
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