Time flies! When I last wrote a lecture on the aphorisms, I had
promised the next lecture the following month. I knew my lecture
was overdue, but when I started writing today, it struck me that
nearly seven months have passed since then! But better late than
never!
I would like to begin this lecture by summarizing what we studied
in our previous lecture that discussed aphorisms 19 to 25. In
those aphorisms we discussed the curative power of medicine and
how to ascertain it. In summary, we had discussed:
-
Disease is an altered state of health. So the
curative power of a medicine must lie in its power to alter
the 'altered state of health'.
-
The curative power of medicines can only be
ascertained by experience, by testing them on healthy human
beings.
-
Since the effect of a medicinal substance on
the healthy human body is manifest only in the form of symptoms,
this ability to alter the healthy state of a human being, must
be the curative property of the medicines too.
-
Medicines can alter the human state in two
ways - by producing similar or opposite symptoms.
-
Experience has shown that medicine do not give
curative results in chronic diseases, if they produce opposite
symptoms.
-
Symptoms when suppressed by allopathic treatment,
after an initial phase of amelioration, rebound more strongly.
-
Therefore we can affect a cure only by giving
a medicine which produces the most similar symptoms (artificial
disease) when given to a healthy individual.
-
The greater the similarity in symptom picture
and dose, the more radical and permanent is the cure.
After elaborating on what is the curative property of our medicines
and how to ascertain it, Hahnemann moves on to explain why the similar
remedy is able to affect a cure. Let's read what he has said:
§ 26
This depends on the following homoeopathic
law of nature which was sometimes, indeed, vaguely surmised but
not hitherto fully recognized, and to which is due every real
cure that has ever taken place:
A weaker dynamic affection is permanently
extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the
latter (whilst differing in kind) is very similar to the former
in its manifestations.1
So he says that the similar remedy is able to cure the patient
because in nature too it has been observed that a weaker disease
is automatically removed if the patient contracts a similar but
stronger disease. He calls this phenomenon - The Homeopathic
Law of Nature or The Nature's Law of Cure. The conditions
for this law to become applicable are:
1. Both the affections should be dynamic in nature.
2. They both should be similar in their manifestations.
3. But they should differ in kind.
4. The later one should be stronger than the former one.
Here it is necessary to understand what is meant by 'dynamic
in nature' and 'differing in kind'. A dynamic affection
is one, which primarily starts as a derangement of the vital force
or a disturbance in the thermodynamic equilibrium of our body. Sickness
arising from injury or accidents may need allopathic or antipathic
intervention. Take this statement with a pinch of salt. It does
not mean that homeopathic remedies will not work in ailments arising
from injuries. They will often do but in many cases non-homeopathic
primary intervention may be required. Nothing wrong with that! Even
Hahnemann has clearly written in the Organon that sometimes surgery
and antipathic measures are required to save the life of a person.
Hahnemann has qualified the need for similarity with 'whilst
differing in kind' to differentiate Homeopathy from Isopathy.
In isopathy the substance that produces an ailment is said to cure
it too. It is the use of 'same' influence and not 'similar'. Homeopathy
is based on the similarity of the dynamic affect and the symptoms.
Hahnemann has written at length about the difference between Isopathy
and Homeopathy in the introduction of Organon of Medicine. At one
point he has given a very interesting example about this difference:
So, to give another example from physical
action, the injury resulting from a blow on the forehead with
a hard substance (a painful lump) is soon diminished in pain and
swelling by pressing on the spot for a considerable time with
the ball of the thumb strongly at first, and then gradually less
forcibly, homoeopathically but not by an equally hard blow with
an equally hard body, which would increase the evil isopathically.
This is a mechanical example to give a broad understanding of
the concept. He has basically qualified his expression to stress
on the fact that the effect of the medicine should be similar to
the effect of the disease but it should be derived from a different
source. Only then it will work according to the Nature's Law
of Cure.
Now two questions need further explanation:
1. Why the two dynamic influences need to be similar?
2. Why the later one has to be stronger?
I have already answered the first question in part and we will
discuss both these questions in detail when we study aphorism 44
to 46.
So in aphorism 26, he is basically saying that homeopathic medicines
are able to cure because they work the way nature works. But does
it really happen in nature? Where are the examples? I'll come to
that soon but let us first read the footnote to this aphorism:
1 Thus are cured both physical affections
and moral maladies. How is it that in the early dawn the brilliant
Jupiter vanishes from the gaze of the beholder? By a stronger
very similar power acting on his optic nerve, the brightness of
approaching day! - In situations replete with foetid odors, wherewith
is it usual to soothe effectually the offended olfactory nerves?
With snuff, that affects the sense of smell in a similar but stronger
manner! No music, no sugared cake, which act on the nerves of
other senses, can cure this olfactory disgust. How does the soldier
cunningly stifle the piteous cries of him who runs the gauntlet
from the ears of the compassionate bystanders? By the shrill notes
of the fife commingled with the roll of the noisy drum! And the
distant roar of the enemy’s cannon that inspires his army
with fear? By the loud boom of the big drum! For neither the one
nor the other would the distribution of a brilliant piece of uniform
nor a reprimand to the regiment suffice. In like manner, mourning
and sorrow will be effaced from the mind by the account of another
and still greater cause for sorrow happening to another, even
though it be a mere fiction. The injurious consequences of too
great joy will be removed by drinking coffee, which produces an
excessive joyous state of mind. Nations like the Germans, who
have for centuries been gradually sinking deeper and deeper in
soulless apathy and degrading serfdom, must first be trodden still
deeper in the dust by the Western Conqueror, until their situation
became intolerable; their mean opinion of themselves was thereby
over-strained and removed; they again became alive to their dignity
as men, and then, for the first time, they raised their heads
as Germans.
In this footnote Hahnemann has tried to explain the concept of
how a strong similar affection overshadows or annihilates a weaker
similar affection. He has given examples of bright Jupiter disappearing
when the sun shines and how a strong snuff makes the bad odours
in surrounding atmosphere disappear. One may argue that although
Jupiter is not visible when the sun shines, it is still there. Similarly,
you cannot perceive the bad odour when you take a snuff, but the
odour is still there. Yes, I agree! These are not perfect examples.
These are just similes to make one understand the concept in a very
basic and simple way. Hahnemann probably did it knowingly because
it is easy to understand a more complex similar relationship among
diseases, if one understands the basic concepts of similarity and
how 'strength' plays a role in perception. The actual examples of
the homeopathic law of nature are given in aphorism 46 of the Organon
of Medicine:
§ 46
Many examples might be adduced of disease
which, in the course of nature, have been homoeopathically cured
by other diseases presenting similar symptoms, were it not necessary,
as our object is to speak about something determinate and indubitable,
to confine our attention solely to those (few) disease which are
invariably the same, arise from a fixed miasm, and hence merit
a distinct name.
Among these the smallpox, so dreaded on
account of the great number of its serious symptoms, occupies
a prominent position, and it has removed and cured a number of
maladies with similar symptoms. How frequently does smallpox produce
violent ophthalmia, sometimes even causing blindness! And see!
By its inoculation Dezoteux1 cured a chronic ophthalmia permanently,
and Leroy2 another. An amaurosis of two years' duration, consequent
on suppressed scald head, was perfectly cured by it, according
to Klein.3 How often does smallpox cause deafness and dyspnoea!
And both these chronic diseases it removed on reaching its acme,
as J. Fr. Closs4 observed.
Swelling of the testicle, even of a very
severe character, is a frequent symptom of small-pox, and on this
account it was enabled, as Klein5 observed, to cure, by virtue
of similarity, a large hard swelling of the left testicle, consequently
on a bruise. And another observer6 saw a similar swelling of the
testicle cured by it. Among the troublesome symptoms of small-pox
is a dysenteric state of the bowels; and it subdued, as Fr. Wendt7
observed, a case of dysentery, as a similar morbific agent.
Smallpox coming on after vaccination, as
well on account of its greater strength as its great similarity,
at once removes entirely the cow-pox homoeopathically, and does
not permit it to come to maturity; but, on the other hand, the
cow-pox when near maturity does, on account of its great similarity,
homoeopathically diminish very much the supervening smallpox and
make it much milder8, as Muhry9 and many others testify.
The inoculated cow-pox, whose lymph, besides
the protective matter, contains the contagion of a general cutaneous
eruption of another nature, consisting of usually small, dry (rarely
large, pustular) pimples, resting on a small red areola, frequently
conjoined with round red cutaneous spots and often accompanied
by the most violent itching, which rash appears in not a few children
several days before, more frequently, however, after the red areola
of the cow-pock, and goes off in a few days, leaving behind small,
red, hard spots on the skin; - the inoculated cow-pox, I say,
after it has taken, cures perfectly and permanently, in a homoeopathic
manner, by the similarity of this accessory miasm, analogous cutaneous
eruptions of children, often of very long standing and of a very
troublesome character, as a number of observers assert.10
The cow-pox, a peculiar symptom of which
is to cause tumefaction of the arm11, cured, after it broke out,
a swollen half-paralyzed arm.12 The fever accompanying cow-pox,
which occurs at the time of the production of the red areola,
cured homoeopathically intermittent fever in two individuals,
as the younger Hardege13 reports, confirming what J. Hunter14
had already observed, that two fevers (similar diseases) cannot
co-exist in the same body.
The measles bear a strong resemblance in
the character of its fever and cough to the whooping-cough, and
hence it was that Bosquillon15 noticed, in an epidemic where both
these affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles
remained free from whooping-cough during that epidemic. They would
all have been protected from, and rendered incapable of being
infected by, the whooping-cough in that and all subsequent epidemics,
by the measles, if the whooping-cough were not a disease that
has only a partial similarity to the measles, that is to say,
if it had also a cutaneous eruption similar to what the latter
possesses. As it is, however, the measles can but preserve a large
number from whooping-cough homoeopathically, and that only in
the epidemic prevailing at the time.
If, however, the measles come in contact
with a disease resembling it in its chief symptom, the eruption,
it can indisputably remove, and effect a homoeopathic cure of
the latter. Thus a chronic herpetic eruption was entirely and
permanently (homoeopathically) cured16 by the breaking out of
the measles, as Kortum17 observed. An excessively burning miliary
rash on the face, neck, and arms, that had lasted six years, and
was aggravated by every change of weather, on the invasion of
measles assumed the form of a swelling of the surface of the skin;
after the measles had run its course the exanthema was cured,
and returned no more.18
So you can see why Hahnemann was so confident about his findings.
He had excellent knowledge of many historical medical texts and
he was able to relate the cures seen in nature with the phenomena
related to the similarity of symptoms that he had observed through
provings. We do not see such examples in nature very often because
there are very few diseases in nature that have very similar symptomatology.
Then it would be highly coincidental that two diseases that are
similar, meet in an individual at the same time and the later one
is stronger too! Also, the examples given by Hahnemann are historical
(smallpox doesn't even exist today!) and very difficult to verify
during our times. Are you aware of any such modern day examples?
If yes, please share them with me at editor@hpathy.com
While nature has shown us the way, it has its limitations too.
Apart from the rarity of natural similar cures taking place, the
natural phenomena also has many drawbacks. In a natural display
of this law, the later disease might remove the former disease,
but that disease can be more dangerous than the former one. The
body cannot regulate the later disease for its benefit. It has to
just wait for it to go. And that is where homeopathic medicines
fill the void. We can produce similar artificial states and we can
regulate their strength through manipulation of dose. Plus, the
second dynamic disease also passes away more swiftly, without causing
any pathological abnormalities. So we put into use the gift of nature
more effectively than nature itself!
Hahnemann has also mentioned in this aphorism that this law of
nature was known to many people before him, but it was not given
a formal shape and was not put into practice systematically. Hahnemann
has given many examples of the historical 'awareness' of simila
in the introduction to his Organon of Medicine.
After stating that nature also cures by the law of similia, Hahnemann
reasserts in aphorism 27 that the curative power of medicines depends
solely on their ability to produce similar, but stronger symptoms
and by giving such a remedy in a case, the disease is removed permanently,
rapidly and totally - the ideal cure!
§ 27
The curative power of medicines, therefore,
depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior
to it in strength (§ 12 - 26), so that each individual case
of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently
annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing
(in the human system) in the most similar and complete manner
the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger
than the disease.
The one thing that needs some attention here, are the words 'each
individual case of disease'. Once again Hahnemann stresses
on the individualization of the case. Mere similarity with the common
symptoms of a nosological disease entity will not suffice. The medicine
must cover the individualizing characteristic symptoms of the case.
Only then it will work as a similar remedy. This again prompts me
to warn the young students that they should not prescribe on the
basis of therapeutic affinity blindly. The books on homeopathic
therapeutics should be used as a filter to find the simillimum and
not as a definite guide for remedy selection. The remedy for an
individual case might not even be listed among the therapeutics
of the disease that the patient is suffering from. You should learn
NOT to prescribe Arnica for every injury
and Rhus-tox for every muscle ache. Learn to individualize.
The case quizzes put up by Elaine Lewis in each issue of Homeopathy
4 Everyone, are a great exercise for the young minds to hone
their individualization skills. I would encourage all young students
to visit the online archives of Homeopathy 4 Everyone and
try to solve Elaine's case quiz every month. Once you have done
your work on a case quiz, you can read the answer in the next issue
of Homeopathy 4 Everyone. It would prove to be a great
learning experience for you.
So this is what Hahnemann has said about Nature's Law of Cure
and how it relates to the homeopathic principle of Simila Similbus
Curantur. In our next lecture we will discuss how the weaker
dynamic affection is replaced by the stronger one, and why we are
more susceptible to the action of medicines when we are sick.
----------------------------------------
Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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