Hahnemann = H. (1755–1843)

https://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/hahnemann-and-leonardo-da-vinci-observation-experiment-experience/

 

Vergleich: Siehe: Organon Hahnemann (Farokh Master) + Geschichten + Hahnemann Anhang eigene Mitteln + Goethe und Hahnemann

Organon. Aphorismen + Aetherische Öle + Hahnemann's Final Methods.+ Miasmen Anhang Kritik (Roland Methner) + Mitteln + Einnahme +

Eight Themes of Hahnemann Seen Through Haehl + Hahnemann and Cholera

 

Ewald Stöteler: „Hahnemann verstehen“

 

[Robert Müntz]

Die Technik des Graftens - Übertragung von Arzneimittelwirkungen

 

[Wiet van Helmond]

From the very beginning, gems have been used in homeopathy. Hahnemann did the following gemstone provings: Cinnabar, Orpiment, Witherite (= Bar-c.), Ant-c.,

Ars-s-r (= Realgar), Cupr-c. (= Malachite), Ambra g.

 

[Allyson McQuinn]

Here’s 5 basic principles (paraphrased for easier understanding) that Dr. Hahnemann fully understood back in the early 1800’s:

1. Once you remove the chronic disease, on the sound basis of like cures like without causing the individual harm, the living principle of the human being will restore

basic functioning as was intended before the onset of the engenderment.

2. Laws of nature are based on science and are wholly designed to address both physical ailments as well as mental emotional schisms. All diseases can be traced back

to a thought or wrong belief.

3. To treat the symptoms, you must fully apprehend the functional root causal relationship between psyche and soma. As Rudolf Steiner states, “As above, so below,”

another dynamic, functional scientist.

4. Your body is a dynamic, brilliant work of 5,000 regulating hormones and chemicals and thoughts too. The physician needs to know what principle will address

what aspect of disease including regimen (law of opposites), medicine (law of similars) or Anthroposophic/Orgonomy (realm of beliefs/thwarted desires).

For example, you may just need more water and less carbs to correct your anxiety and you need a trained, discerning functional physician who can help you to make

the right call.

5. Health is not just an absence of symptoms. It is a dynamic orchestration of feelings, functions and sensations.

Dr. Hahnemann illustrated it thus in his “Organon of the Medical Art” as, “Aphorism 9:

 

[Robert Ellis Dudgeon]

Similarities Between Hahnemann and Paracelsus    

Presented by Peter Morrell

On the Theory and Practice of Homeopathy, 1853, pp. 9-18

The next name of importance as an authority in the medical art whom we find distinctly enunciating the principle of homeopathy, is the author who wrote under the pseudonyme of Basil Valentine, a Benedictine monk it is believed, who lived about the year 1410, in the convent of St. Peter at Erfurt. His words are "Likes must be cured

by means of their likes, and not by their contraries, as heat by heat. Cold by cold, shooting by shooting; for one heat attracts the other to itself, one cold the other, as the magnet does the iron. Hence, prickly simples can remove diseases whose characteristic is prickly pains; and poisonous minerals can cure and destroy symptoms of poisoning when they are brought to bear upon them. And although sometimes a chill may be removed and suppressed, still I say, as a philosopher and one experienced in nature's ways, that the similar must be fitted with its similar, whereby it will be removed radically and thoroughly, if I am a proper physician and understand medicine. He who does not attend to this is no true physician, and cannot boast of his knowledge of medicine, because he is unable to distinguish betwixt cold and warm, betwixt dry and humid,

for knowledge and experience, together with a fundamental observation of nature, constitute the perfect physician." (De Microcosmo.)

Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus = von HOHENHEIM PARACELSUS (1493-1541)

     Theophrastus von Hohenheim, commonly known by the name of Paracelsus who flourished in the 16th century, was a reformer of much the same character as Hahnemann, and though his doctrines never obtained for him the same number of followers as Hahnemann has, and though the school he founded soon perished and disappeared and his name was only remembered as that of a great charlatan, this was not owing to the unsoundness of the therapeutic doctrines he enunciated, which scarcely differed from many of those of Hahnemann; but the ephemeral character of his school was owing to the want of an express foundation for his therapeutic maxims in that great and signal merit

of his modern rival, pure experimentation, or the proving of medicines on the healthy. I say an express foundation; for though, as I shall presently show, Paracelsus alludes to, he scarcely insists on the necessity of, pure physiological experimentation, giving no directions how it is to be carried out, and leaving its necessity rather to be inferred than enjoined. With a vigour equal to that of Hahnemann, he attacked the absurd methods of treatment prevalent in his time, for he saw as clearly as Hahnemann the defects of the ancient system, which, however, his assaults failed to overthrow; for the accusations he brings against the physicians of his age might be repeated of those of the present day, and were in fact re-echoed by our modern reformer. I may give a specimen of the mode in which he ridiculed the practice of the day, whereby you may judge of the resemblance betwixt his writings and those of Hahnemann.

     "Suppose," says he, "the case of a patient sick of a fever, which ran a course of twelve weeks and then ended; there are two kinds of physicians to treat it, the false and

the true. The false one deliberately, and at his ease, sets about physicking; he dawdles away much time with his syrups and his laxatives, his purgatives and gruel, his barley-water, his juleps, and such-like rubbish. He goes to work slowly - takes his time to it - gives an occasional clyster to pass the time pleasantly, and creeps along at his ease, and cajoles the patient with his soft words until the disease has reached its termination and then he attributes the spontaneous cessation of the fever to the influence of his art.

But the true physician proceeds to work in a different manner. The natural course of the disease he divides into twelve parts, and his work is limited to one part and a half."

     "That man is a physician," he goes on to say, "who knows how to render aid, and to drive out the disease by force; for as certainly as the axe applied to the trunk of the

tree fells it to the ground, so certainly does the medicine overcome the disease. If I am unable to do this, then I acknowledge readily that in this case I am no more a physician than you are."

     Some of his contemporaries, however, were not so ready to admit themselves to be no physicians, though they could not cure; for an amusing anecdote is related of

Sylvius, who, having an epidemic fever to treat, was so unsuccessful, that two-thirds of the respectable people of the town died. But this worthy was far from acknowledging that he was no physician in this instance; on the contrary, he wrote a very long and learned treatise on the disease, in which he alleges that his art was of the very best and his remedies the most appropriate, but that God had denied his blessing to them, in order to punish the ladies and gentlemen of the place for their sins. A most pious and satisfactory reason for the great mortality, we all must admit.

Hahnemann classified all the methods of treatment under three heads:

1.  enantiopathic = "opposites treating opposites",

2.  allopathic,

3.  homeopathic.

Paracelsus divided doctors into five classes, under the names of

1. naturales,

2. Specifici,

3. Characterales,

4. Spirituales,

5. Fideles.

1st class corresponded to Hahnemann's enantiopathic,

2nd class more closely resembled the homeopathic;

Paracelsus differed from Hahnemann in this, that whereas the latter denies that the enantiopathic and allopathic cure at all, Paracelsus says that each sect is capable of curing

all diseases, and an educated physician may choose whichever he likes.

     With the apothecaries Paracelsus was, like Hahnemann, on very bad terms. As in the case of the modern reformer, Paracelsus was first attacked by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, and he returned their persecution by withering sarcasm and contemptuous depreciation. The great ground of complaint on the part of the worthy fraternity was, that Paracelsus did not write long and complex prescriptions, but contented himself chiefly with simples, which brought no grist to the apothecaries' mill.

     "So shamefully do they make up the medicines," he exclaims, "that it is only by a special interposition of Providence that they do not do more harm; and at the same time

 so extravagantly do they charge for them, and so much do they cry up their trash, that I do not believe any persons can be met with who are greater adepts in lying."

That the apothecaries of our own country were not much better about that period, or a little later, is evident from the expression of Walter Charleton, physician to King Charles II, who says of them, "Perfida ingratissimaque impostorum gens, aegrorurn pernicies, rei medicae calamitas et Libitinae presides."

     "The apothecaries," continues Paracelsus, "are so false and dishonest, that they lead the know-nothing doctors by the nose. If they say, 'This is so and so,' Dr. Wiseacre says, 'Yes, Master Apothecary, that is true.' Thus one fool cheats the other: Apothecary quid-pro-quo gives Dr. Wiseacre merdam pro balsamo; God help the poor patients that come under their hands!"

     Hahnemann himself had not a greater horror of hypothesis in medicine than Paracelsus.

     "The physician," he says, "should be educated in the school of nature, not in that of speculation. Nature is wise (sichtig), but speculation is invisible. The seen makes the physician, the unseen makes none; the seen gives the truth, the unseen nought."

     To the theorising adherents of Galen, he cries: "You are poets, and you carry your poetry into your I medicine." He calls those authors who indulge in their subtle theorising; "doctors of writing, but not of the healing art." He ridicules the idea of learning diseases or their treatment in books. "That physician," he says, "is but a poor creature, who would look to paper books alone for aid."

     Paracelsus rails in good set terms at the compounding of several medicines in one prescription, and he exposes the folly of composite recipes with a vigour, logic, and satirical humour not inferior to that displayed by Hahnemann.

     Like Hahnemann, he laughs at the notion of attempting to reduce all diseases to a certain number of classes and genera. "You imagine you have invented receipts for

all the different fevers. You limit the number of fevers to seventy and wot not that there are five times seventy." how like Hahnemann, who says (Organon, §73, note), "the old school has fixed on a certain number of names of fever, beyond which mighty nature dare not produce any others, so that they may treat those diseases according to some fixed method.''

     How like the commencement of Hahnemann's Introduction to Arsenic is this passage of Paracelsus: "What is there of God's creation that is not furnished with some

great quality that may tend to the weal of mankind?" And yet he truly remarks, many things, if used rightly, are beneficial; if the reverse, poisonous. "Where is a purgative,

in all your books that is not a poison, that will not cause death or injury, if attention be not paid to the dose in which it is given. You know that quicksilver is nothing but a poison, and daily experience proves it to be so; and yet it is your custom to smear your patients with it thicker than the cobbler smears his leather with grease. You fumigate with its cinnabar, you wash with its sublimate; and you are displeased that it should be said it is a poison, which it is and this poison you throw into human beings alleging

all good; that it is corrected by white bad, as though it were no poison."

     The Galenic maxim, contraria contrariis, finds no favour with Paracelsus. "A contrariis curantur"," he says, "that is, hot removes cold and so forth - that is false and was never true in medicine; but arcanum and disease, these are contraria. Arcanum is health, and disease is the opposite of health: these two drive away one another; these are

the contraries that remove one another."

     In another place, he says something similar: "Contraria non curantur contrariis"; like belongs to like, not cold against heat, not heat against cold. That were indeed a wild arrangement if we had to seek our safety in opposites.

Paracelsus's writings

     Again: "This," says he, "is true, that he who will employ cold for heat, moisture for dryness, does not understand the nature of disease." (Paramirum, p.68)

     The homeopathic principle is still more completely set forth in his treatise, Von der Astronomey. He there says: "The nature of the arcana is, that they shall go directly against the properties or the enemy, as one combatant goes against another. Nature wills it that in the combat stratagem shall be employed agonist stratagem, etc., and

this is the natural case with all things on earth; in medicine also, the same rule prevails. The physician should let this be an example to him, As two foes go out to the

combat, who are both cold or both hot, and who attack one another both with the same weapon: as the victory is, so also is it in the human body; the two combatants seek

their aid from the same mother, that is, from the same power."

     Still more distinctly, he enunciates our principle in these words: "What makes jaundice that also cures jaundice and all its species. In like manner, the medicine that shall

cure paralysis must proceed from that which causes it; and in this way we practise according to the method of cure by arcana." (Archidoxis, vol iii, pt.v. p.18)

     Paracelsus's system, as far as we can learn it from his works, was a rude homeopathy, an attempt to discover specifics for the various diseases to which man is liable but

it was not equal in value to Hahnemann's system, for an uncertainty almost as great as that of the old system attended it. He believed that in nature there existed a remedy

for every disease. The physician, from the external Symptoms, was to judge of the organ diseased, and for the cure of the disease he has to select that medicine which experience had shown him exerted a specific influence on the organ affected. He would not have us speak of rheumatism, catarrh, coryza, etc., but of morbus terebinthinus, morbus Sileris montani, morbus heleborinus, etc; according as the malady presented the character of one or other of these medicines, that is to say, affected the organs one

of them had an affinity for.

     This is, as I said, a rude homeopathy, but a homeopathy that did not sufficiently consider the character, but only the seat of the affection; and moreover a homeopathy

that wanted the sure foundation of experiment on the healthy as the means of ascertaining the sphere of action of the remedies, but that trusted almost entirely to a laborious and empirical testing of the medicines on the sick - a source of Materia Medica which Hahnemann has shown to be sufficiently untrustworthy. Still, I would not say that Paracelsus was destitute of all knowledge of the pathogenetic effects of medicines, or that he entirely neglected this source for ascertaining the virtues of drugs; for some passages of his works would go far to prove the contrary to be the case. Thus the passage I have just quoted, "what makes jaundice that cures jaundice," presupposes an acquaintance with what will cause the disease; and we find more evidence of this in other parts of his works. Thus he writes: "When antimony is ingested it causes a dry cough much shooting pain in the sides and headache, great hardness of the stools, much ulceration of the spleen hot blood, it makes roughness and itching, dries up and increases

the jaundice." Alkali causes oppression of the breathing, and foetid smell from the mouth, causes much koder. [whatever that may be] to be ejected, causes much heartburn, griping, and tearing in the bowels, dries up, renders the urine acrid, produces pollutions, also blood from the anus," etc. Such pathogenetic knowledge, however, is too vague and indefinite to have been of much use in practice; but it shows that Paracelsus was in the right direction, though he wanted the courage or perseverance to subject all his agents to the test of pure physiological experiment, and generally trusted to ascertaining their properties by trying them on the sick; a source be it remarked, en passant, which Hahnemann largely availed himself of, though, as I have just stated, he himself exposed its fallaciousness. Paracelsus resembles Hahnemann in still another point, that he recognised the primary and secondary actions of medicines.

     Speaking of vitriol, he says:

    Eisenvitriol in der Stofffärberei (Eisenbeizen, Indigoküpe), zur Herstellung verschiedener Farbstoffe (z.B. Berliner Blau zur Schwarzfärbung von Leder), zur Herstellung von Tinte (Eisengallustinte) und zur Desinfektion;

    Kupfervitriol zur Desinfektion, zur Holzimprägnierung, zur Konservierung von Tierhäuten als Balgen bis zur Verarbeitung zu Leder und in der Taxidermie, zur Beizung

von Getreidesaat, zur Bekämpfung von Pflanzenkrankheiten (Bordeauxbrühe im Weinbau), zur Unkrautbekämpfung, zur Herstellung von Mineralfarben und organischen Farbstoffen und als Brechmittel;

    Zinkvitriol in der Kattundruckerei.

    "As surely as it relaxes in its first period, so surely does it constrict in its second period," etc.

     Paracelsus's system was eminently a system of specific medicine, and in many points his therapeutic rule resembles that of Hahnemann, and occasionally he makes use of

a truly homeopathic phrase. Thus he says, "likes must be driven out (or cured) by likes;" but the meaning of this, in the Paracelsian sense, generally comes to this, that the disease of the brain, the heart, the liver, etc., must be expelled by that medicine which represents the brain, the heart, or the liver, in consequence of its specific action on one

of these organs.

     Thus he says: "Heart to heart, lung to lung, spleen to spleen - not cow's spleen, not swine's brain to man's brain, but the brain that is external brain to man's internal brain."

     The next sentence I have to quote explains this meaning more thoroughly. "The medicinal herbs are organs; this is a heart, that a liver, this other a spleen. That every heart is visible to the eye as a heart I will not say, but it is a power and a virtue equivalent to the heart."

     Another point of resemblance betwixt Paracelsus and Hahnemann is observable in the great partiality shown by both for extremely minute doses. In his book “On the Causes and Origin of Lues Gallica” (lib. v. p.11), Paracelsus compares the medicinal power of the drug to fire." As a single spark can ignite a great heap of wood, indeed, can set a whole forest in flames, in like manner can a very small dose of medicine overpower a great disease. And," he proceeds, "just as this spark has no weight, so the medicine given, however small may be its weight, should suffice to effect its action." How like this is to Hahnemann: "The dose of the homeopathically selected remedy can never be prepared so small that it shall not be stronger than the natural disease, that it shall not suffice to cure it." (Organon, § cclxxix.)

     The following passage shows that Paracelsus anticipated Hahnemann in the employment of medicines by olfaction. Speaking of specifics, he says: " They have many rare powers, and they are very numerous; there is, for instance, the Specificum odoriferum, which cures diseases when the patients are unable to swallow the medicine, as in apoplexy and epilepsy." (Parac. Op., vol. iii. pt. vi. p.70. Basel, 1589)

     I shall close my quotations from Paracelsus by a passage, which shows that, like Hahnemann, he considered the medicinal power as something spiritual, and inseparable from the material medicine - in idea, at least, if not in fact: the medicine lies in the spirit and not in the substance (or body), for body and spirit are two different things."

     I have - said enough to show you the great analogy, the very striking resemblance betwixt Hahnemann's and Paracelsus's doctrines. I could not quote to you all the passages that are strikingly analogous to many in Hahnemann’s works, but what I have adduced will have enabled you to judge of this great likeness for yourselves. It is impossible at this moment to say if Hahnemann was acquainted with Paracelsus's writings. From his extensive familiarity with the writings of medical authors, both ancient and modern, I should hardly suppose that he had not read the works of one so world-renowned as Paracelsus; but then not a syllable occurs in all his works regarding this wonderful and most original writer and thinker. The resemblance of some passages in the Organon and in the minor writings of Hahnemann, to some parts of Paracelsus's works is so very striking, that it is difficult to believe that Hahnemann did not take them from Paracelsus; and yet had he done so, would he not have acknowledged the fact? It may be, after all, that the resemblance is purely accidental; and that his ideas that seem borrowed are just those that must necessarily occur to one who, like Paracelsus, had shaken himself free from the trammels of an antiquated and false system, and had set himself to study nature with his own eyes, unblinded by the distorting spectacles of the schools.

 

Oswald Croll's Basilica chymica (1609)

     One of the immediate followers of Paracelsus, Oswald Croll, who has been accepted by Sprengel and others as a good exponent of Paracelsus's system, seems to have but ill understood his master's maxims when he says, "Cerebrum suillum phreniticis prodest; ideo etiam ii, qui memoriam amiserant, cum juvamento miscuntur cerebro poreitio cuin myristica et cinnamomo aromatisato"

for, as I showed you just now, Paracelsus distinctly says, "not swine’s brain to man's brain.'' The idea of Croll, however, is a further proof of the notion of a necessary analogy between disease and remedy.

     Johannes Agricola, who flourished shortly after Paracelsus, after accusing his contemporaries of their inability to cure cancer, lupus, fistula, or leprosy, says:

Johannes Agricola Palatinus (1589-1643)

     But if the subject be viewed in the proper light, it must be confessed that a concealed poison is at the root of such disease, and thus poison must be of an arsenical character; this poison must therefore be expelled by means of the same or a similar poison." He used arsenic for the cure of these diseases. Here, then, is another testimony to the homeopathic principle; for I do not imagine Agricola, in stating that the poison on which Cancer, lupus, etc., depended was of an arsenical in character, meant to say that it was actually arsenic, but only that it was analogous to arsenic in its effects, and, on the homeopathic principle, arsenic was its proper curative agent. He goes on to observe, "If a realgar disease is present, it must be cured with a realgaric remedy, and with none other." That is to say; as I conceive it if we have a case of disease before us resembling the pathogenetic effects of realgar, we must treat it with that substance, and with none other, - a distinct declaration of the homeopathic principle.

 

[Peter Morrell]

The next name of importance as an authority in the medical art whom we find distinctly enunciating the principle of homeopathy, is the author who wrote under the pseudonyme of Basil Valentine,

a Benedictine monk it is believed, who lived about the year 1410, in the convent of St. Peter at Erfurt. His words are "Likes must be cured by means of their likes, not by their contraries, as heat by heat. Cold by cold, shooting by shooting; for one heat attracts the other to itself, one cold the other, as the magnet does the iron. Hence, prickly simples can remove diseases whose characteristic is prickly pains; and poisonous minerals can cure and destroy symptoms of poisoning when they are brought to bear upon them. And although sometimes a chill may be removed and suppressed, still

I say, as a philosopher and one experienced in nature's ways, that the similar must be fitted with its similar, whereby it will be removed radically and thoroughly, if I am a proper physician and understand medicine. He who does not attend to this is no true physician, cannot boast of his knowledge of medicine, because he is unable to distinguish between cold and warm, between dry and humid, for knowledge and experience, together with a fundamental observation of nature, constitute the perfect physician“. (De Microcosmo.)      

Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim = P.

Theophrastus von Hohenheim, commonly known by the name of Paracelsus who flourished in the 16th century, was a reformer of much the same character as H., though his doctrines never obtained  the same number of followers as H. has, though the school he founded soon perished and disappeared, his name was only remembered as that of a great charlatan, this was not owing to the unsoundness of the therapeutic doctrines he enunciated, which scarcely differed from many of those of H.; but the ephemeral character of his school was owing to the want of an express foundation for his therapeutic maxims in that great and signal merit of his modern rival, pure experimentation, or the proving of medicines on the healthy. I say an express foundation; for though, as I shall presently show, P. alludes to, he scarcely insists on the necessity of, pure physiological experimentation, giving no directions how it is to be carried out, leaving its necessity rather to be inferred

than enjoined. With a vigour equal to that of H., he attacked the absurd methods of treatment prevalent in his time, for he saw as clearly as H. the defects of the ancient system, which, however,

his assaults failed to overthrow; for the accusations he brings against the physicians of his age might be repeated of those of the present day, were in fact re-echoed by our modern reformer.

I may give a specimen of the mode in which he ridiculed the practice of the day, whereby you may judge of the resemblance between his writings and those of H. "Suppose“, he says, "the case

of a patient sick of a fever, which ran a course of 12 weeks and then ended; there are 2 kinds of physicians to treat it, the false and the true. The false one deliberately, at his ease, sets about physicking; he dawdles away much time with his syrups and his laxatives, his purgatives and gruel, his barley-water, his juleps, such-like rubbish. He goes to work slowly -takes his time to it- gives

an occasional clyster to pass the time pleasantly, creeps along at his ease, cajoles the patient with his soft words until the disease has reached its termination, then he attributes the spontaneous cessation of the fever to the influence of his art. But the true physician proceeds to work in a different manner. The natural course of the disease he divides into 12 parts, his work is limited to one part and a half". "That man is a physician“, he goes on to say, "who knows how to render aid, to drive out the disease by force; for as certainly as the axe applied to the trunk of the tree fells it to

the ground, so certainly does the medicine overcome the disease. If I am unable to do this, then I acknowledge readily that in this case I am no more a physician than you are". Some of his contemporaries, however, were not so ready to admit themselves to be no physicians, though they could not cure; for an amusing anecdote is related of Sylvius, who, having an epidemic fever to treat, was so unsuccessful, that two-thirds of the respectable people of the town died. But this worthy was far from acknowledging that he was no physician in this instance; on the contrary, he wrote a very long and learned treatise on the disease, in which he alleges that his art was of the very best, his remedies the most appropriate, but that God had denied his blessing to them, in order to punish the ladies and gentlemen of the place for their sins. A most pious and satisfactory reason for the great mortality, we all must admit.

H., we know, classified all the methods of treatment under 3 heads, enantiopathic, allopathic, homeopathic.

P. divided doctors into 5 classes: Naturales, Specifici, Characterales, Spirituales, Fideles.

1st class Naturales: corresponded to H.'s enantiopathic,

2nd Specifici: more closely resembled the homeopathic; but P. differed from H. in this, that whereas the latter denies that the enantiopathic and allopathic cure at all, P. says that each sect is capable of curing all diseases, an educated physician may choose whichever he likes.

With the apothecaries P. was, like H., on very bad terms. As in the case of H., P. was first attacked by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, he returned their persecution by withering sarcasm and contemptuous depreciation. The great ground of complaint on the part of the worthy fraternity was, that P. did not write long and complex prescriptions, but contented himself chiefly with simples, which brought no grist to the apothecaries' mill. "So shamefully do they make up the medicines“, he exclaims, "that it is only by a special interposition of Providence that they do not do more harm; and at the same time so extravagantly do they charge for them, so much do they cry up their trash, that I do not believe any persons can be met with who are greater adepts in lying". That the apothecaries of our own country were not much better about that period, or a little later, is evident from the expression of Walter Charleton, physician to King Charles II, who says of them, "Perfida ingratissimaque impostorum gens, aegrorurn pernicies, rei medicae calamitas et Libitinae presides“. "The apothecaries“, continues P., "are so false and dishonest, that they lead the know-nothing doctors by the nose. If they say, 'This is so and so', Dr. Wiseacre says, 'Yes, Master Apothecary, that is true.' Thus one fool cheats the other: Apothecary quid-pro-quo gives Dr. Wiseacre merdam

pro balsamo; God help the poor patients that come under their hands!". H. himself had not a greater horror of hypothesis in medicine than P. "The physician“, he says, "should be educated in the school of nature, not in that of speculation. Nature is wise (sichtig), but speculation is invisible. The seen makes the physician, the unseen makes none; the seen gives the truth, the unseen nought“.           To the theorising adherents of Galen, he cries: "You are poets, you carry your poetry into your I medicine“. He calls those authors who indulge in their subtle theorising; "doctors of writing, but not

of the healing art“. He ridicules the idea of learning diseases or their treatment in books. "That physician“, he says, "is but a poor creature, who would look to paper books alone for aid“.

P. rails in good set terms at the compounding of several medicines in one prescription, he exposes the folly of composite recipes with a vigour, logic, satirical humour not inferior to that displayed by H. Like H., he laughs at the notion of attempting to reduce all diseases to a certain number of classes and genera. "You imagine you have invented receipts for all the different fevers. You limit the number of fevers to 70 and wot not that there are 5x seventy“. how like H., who says (Organon, §73, note), "the old school has fixed on a certain number of names on fever, beyond which mighty nature dare not produce any others, so that they may treat those diseases according to some fixed method''.

How like the commencement of H.'s Introduction to Arsenic is this passage of P.: "What is there of God's creation that is not furnished with some great quality that may tend to the weal of mankind?" And yet he truly remarks, many things, if used rightly, are beneficial; if the reverse, poisonous. "Where is a purgative, in all your books that is not a poison, that will not cause death or injury, if attention be not paid to the dose in which it is given. You know that quicksilver is nothing but a poison, daily experience proves it to be so; and yet it is your custom to smear your patients with it thicker than the cobbler smears his leather with grease. You fumigate with its cinnabar, you wash with its sublimate; and you are displeased that it should be said it is a poison, which it is; and this poison you throw into human beings alleging all good; that it is corrected by white bad, as though it were no poison“. The Galenic maxim, contraria contrariis, finds no favour with P. "A contrariis curantur", he says, "that is, hot removes cold and so forth - that is false and was never true in medicine; but arcanum and disease, these are contraria. Arcanum is health, disease is the opposite of health: these two drive away one another; these are the contraries that remove one another“.  In another place, he says something similar: "Contraria non curantur contrariis"; like belongs to like, not cold against heat, not heat against cold. That were indeed a wild arrangement if we had to seek our safety in opposites.     

Again: "This“, he says, "is true, that he who will employ cold for heat, moisture for dryness, does not understand the nature of disease“. (Paramirum, p.68)          

The homeopathic principle is still more completely set forth in his treatise, „Von der Astronomey“.

He there says: "The nature of the arcana is, that they shall go directly against the properties or the enemy, as one combatant goes against another. Nature wills it that in the combat stratagem shall be employed agonist stratagem, etc., this is the natural case with all things on earth; in medicine also, the same rule prevails. The physician should let this be an example to him, As two foes go out to the combat, who are both cold or both hot, who attack one another both with the same weapon: as the victory is, so also is it in the human body; the two combatants seek their aid from the same mother, that is, from the same power“. Still more distinctly, he enunciates our principle in these words: "What makes jaundice that also cures jaundice and all its species. In like manner, the medicine that shall cure paralysis must proceed from that which causes it; and in this way we practise according to the method of cure by arcana“. (Archidoxis, vol iii, pt.v. p.18)          

P.'s system, as far as we can learn it from his works, was a rude homeopathy, an attempt to discover specifics for the various diseases to which man is liable but it was not equal in value to H.'s system, for an uncertainty almost as great as that of the old system attended it. He believed that in nature there existed a remedy for every disease. The physician, from the external Symptoms, was to judge of the organ diseased, for the cure of the disease he has to select that medicine which experience had shown him exerted a specific influence on the organ affected. He would not have us speak of rheumatism, catarrh, coryza, etc., but of morbus terebinthinus, morbus Sileris montani, morbus heleborinus, etc; according as the malady presented the character of one or other of these medicines, that is to say, affected the organs one of them had an affinity for. This is, as I said, a rude homeopathy, but a homeopathy that did not sufficiently consider the character, but only the seat of the affection; and moreover a homeopathy that wanted the sure foundation of experiment on the healthy as the means of ascertaining the sphere of action of the remedies, but that trusted almost entirely to a laborious and empirical testing of the medicines on the sick - a source of Materia Medica which H. has shown to be sufficiently untrustworthy. Still, I would not say that P. was destitute of all knowledge of the pathogenetic effects of medicines, or that he entirely neglected this source for ascertaining the virtues of drugs; for some passages of his works would go far to prove the contrary to be the case. Thus the passage I have just quoted, "what makes jaundice that cures jaundice“, presupposes an acquaintance with what will cause the disease; and we find more evidence of this in other parts of his works. Thus he writes: "When antimony is ingested it causes a dry cough much shooting pain in the sides and headache, great hardness of the stools, much ulceration of the spleen hot blood, it makes roughness and itching, dries up and increases the jaundice“. Alkali causes oppression of the breathing, foetid smell from the mouth, causes much koder. [whatever that may be] to be ejected, causes much heartburn, griping, tearing in the bowels, dries up, renders the urine acrid, produces pollutions, also blood from the anus“, etc. Such pathogenetic knowledge, however, is too vague and indefinite to have been of much use in practice; but it shows that P. was in the r. direction, though he wanted the courage or perseverance to subject all his agents to the test of pure physiological experiment, generally trusted to ascertaining their properties by trying them on the sick; a source be it remarked, en passant, which H. largely availed himself of, though, as I have just stated, he himself exposed its fallaciousness.

P. resembles H. in still another point, that he recognised the primary and secondary actions of medicines.          

Speaking of vitriol, he says: "As surely as it relaxes in its first period, so surely does it constrict in its second period“, etc. P.'s system was eminently a system of specific medicine, in many points his therapeutic rule resembles that of H., occasionally he makes use of a truly homeopathic phrase. Thus he says, "likes must be driven out (or cured) by likes;" but the meaning of this, in the Paracelsian sense, generally comes to this, that the disease of the brain, the heart, the liver, etc., must be expelled by that medicine which represents the brain, the heart, or the liver, in consequence of its specific action on one of these organs. Thus he says: "Heart to heart, lung to lung, spleen to spleen - not cow's spleen, not swine's brain to man's brain, but the brain that is external brain to man's internal brain“.          

The next sentence I have to quote explains this meaning more thoroughly. "The medicinal herbs are organs; this is a heart, that a liver, this other a spleen. That every heart is visible to the eye as a heart I will not say, but it is a power and a virtue equivalent to the heart“.

Another point of resemblance between P. and H. is observable in the great partiality shown by both for extremely minute doses. In his book On the Causes and Origin of Lues Gallica (lib. v. p.11),

P. compares the medicinal power of the drug to fire“. As a single spark can ignite a great heap of wood, indeed, can set a whole forest in flames, in like manner can a very small dose of medicine overpower a great disease. „And“, he proceeds, "just as this spark has no weight, so the medicine given, however small may be its weight, should suffice to effect its action“. How like this is to H.: "The dose of the homeopathically selected remedy can never be prepared so small that it shall not be stronger than the natural disease, that it shall not suffice to cure it“. (Organon, § cclxxix.)

The following passage shows that P. anticipated H. in the employment of medicines by olfaction. Speaking of specifics, he says: " They have many rare powers, they are very numerous; there is, for instance, the Specificum odoriferum, which cures diseases when the patients are unable to swallow the medicine, as in apoplexy and epilepsy“. (Parac. Op., vol. iii. pt. vi. p.70. Basel, 1589)          

I shall close my quotations from P. by a passage, which shows that, like H., he considered the medicinal power as something spiritual, inseparable from the material medicine - in idea, at least, if not in fact: the medicine lies in the spirit and not in the substance (or body), for body and spirit are two different things“.           I have - said enough to show you the great analogy, the very striking resemblance between H.'s and P.'s doctrines. I could not quote to you all the passages that are strikingly analogous to many in H.'s works, but what I have adduced will have enabled you to judge of this great likeness for yourselves. It is impossible at this moment to say if H. was acquainted with P.'s writings. From his extensive familiarity with the writings of medical authors, both ancient and modern, I should hardly suppose that he had not read the works of one so world-renowned as P.; but then not a syllable occurs in all his works regarding this wonderful and most original writer and thinker. The resemblance of some passages in the Organon and in the minor writings of H., to some parts of P.'s works is so very striking, that it is difficult to believe that H. did not take them from P.; and yet had he done

so, would he not have acknowledged the fact? It may be, after all, that the resemblance is purely accidental; and that his ideas that seem borrowed are just those that must necessarily occur to one who, like P., had shaken himself free from the trammels of an antiquated and false system, had set himself to study nature with his own eyes, unblinded by the distorting spectacles of the schools.      Oswald Croll's Basilica chymica (1609) = one of the immediate followers of P., Oswald Croll, who has been accepted by Sprengel and others as a good exponent of P.'s system, seems to have but ill understood his master's maxims when he says, "Cerebrum suillum phreniticis prodest; ideo etiam ii, qui memoriam amiserant, cum juvamento miscuntur cerebro poreitio cuin myristica et cinnamomo aromatisato" for, as I showed you just now, P. distinctly says,

"not swine's brain to man's brain''. The idea of Croll, however, is a further proof of the notion of a necessary analogy between disease and remedy.          

Johannes Agricola Palatinus, who flourished shortly after P., after accusing his contemporaries of their inability to cure cancer, lupus, fistula, or leprosy, says: But if the subject be viewed in the proper light, it must be confessed that a concealed poison is at the root of such disease, thus poison must be of an arsenical character; this poison must therefore be expelled by means of the same or a similar poison“. He used arsenic for the cure of these diseases. Here, then, is another testimony to the homeopathic principle; for I do not imagine Agricola, in stating that the poison on which Cancer, lupus, etc., depended was of an arsenical in character, meant to say that it was actually arsenic, but only that it was analogous to arsenic in its effects,, on the homeopathic principle, arsenic was its proper curative agent. He goes on to observe, "If a realgar disease is present, it must be cured with a realgaric remedy, with none other“. That is to say; as I conceive it if we have a case of disease before us resembling the pathogenetic effects of realgar, we must treat it with that substance, with none other, - a distinct declaration of the homeopathic principle. for I do not imagine Agricola, in stating that the poison on which Cancer, lupus, etc., depended was of an arsenical in character, meant to say that it was actually arsenic, but only that it was analogous to arsenic in its effects, and, on the homeopathic principle, arsenic was its proper curative agent. He goes on to observe, "If a realgar disease is present, it must be cured with a realgaric remedy, and with none other." That is to say; as I conceive it if we have a case of disease before us resembling the pathogenetic effects of realgar, we must treat it with that substance, and with none other, - a distinct declaration of the homeopathic principle.  

 

[Hahnemann]

Die Paragraphen über Heilungshindernisse in Hahnemanns Organon VI. Auflage Samuel Hahnemann

§ 252

Fände man aber beim Gebrauche der übrigen Arzneien, daß in der chronischen Krankheit die bestens homöopathisch gewählte Arznei, in der angemessenen (kleinsten) Gabe, die Besserung nicht förderte, so ist dieß ein gewisses Zeichen, daß die, die Krankheit unterhaltende Ursache noch fortwährt, und dass sich in der Lebensordnung des Kranken oder in seinen Umgebungen ein Umstand befindet, welcher abgeschaltet werden muß, wenn die Heilung dauerhaft zu Stande kommen soll.

§ 255

Dennoch wird man auch bei diesen zur Ueberzeugung hierüber gelangen, wenn man jedes, im Krankheitsbilde aufgezeichnete Symptom einzeln mit ihnen durchgeht und sie außer diesen, über keine neuen, vorher ungewöhnlichen Beschwerden klagen können, auch keines der alten Zufälle sich verschlimmert hat. Dann muß, bei schon beobachteter Besserung des Gemüthes und Geistes, die Arznei auch durchaus wesentliche Minderung der Krankheit hervorgebracht haben, oder, wenn jetzt noch die Zeit dazu zu kurz gewesen wäre, bald hervorbringen. Zögert nun, im Fall der Angemessenheit des Heilmittels, die sichtbare Besserung doch zu lange, so liegt es entweder am unrechten Verhalten des Kranken oder an andern, die Besserung hindernden Umständen.

§ 260

Für chronisch Kranke ist daher die sorgfältige Aufsuchung solcher Hindernisse der Heilung um so nöthiger, da ihre Krankheit durch dergleichen Schädlichkeiten und andere krankhaft wirkende, oft unerkannte Fehler in der Lebensordnung gewöhnlich verschlimmert worden war.

Anm.: Kaffee, feiner chinesischer und anderer Kräuterthee; Biere mit arzneilichen, für den Zustand des Kranken unangemessenen Gewächssubstanzen angemacht, sogenannte feine, mit arzneilichen Gewürzen bereitete Liqueure, alle Arten Punsch, gewürzte Schokolade, Riechwasser und Parfümerien mancher Art, stark duftende Blumen im Zimmer, aus Arzneien zusammengesetzte Zahnpulver und Zahnspiritus, Riechkißchen, hochgewürzte Speisen und Saucen, gewürztes Backwerk und Gefrornes mit arzneilichen Stoffen, z.B. Kaffee, Vanille u.s.w. bereitet, rohe, arzneiliche Kräuter auf Suppen, Gemüße von Kräutern, Wurzeln und Keim-Stengeln (wie Spargel mit langen, grünen Spitzen), Hopfenkeime und alle Vegetabilien, welche Arzneikraft besitzen, Sellerie, Petersilie, Sauerampfer, Dragun, alle Zwiebel-Arten, u.s.w.; alter Käse und Thierspeisen, welche faulicht sind, (Fleisch und Fett von Schweinen, Enten und Gänsen oder allzu junges Kalbfleisch und saure Speisen; Salate aller Art), welche arzneiliche Nebenwirkungen haben, sind eben so sehr von Kranken dieser Art zu entfernen als jedes Uebermaß, selbst das des Zuckers und Kochsalzes, so wie geistige, nicht mit viel Wasser verdünnte Getränke; Stubenhitze, schafwollene Haut-Bekleidung,

sitzende Lebensart in eingesperrter Stuben-Luft oder öftere, bloß negative Bewegung (durch Reiten, Fahren, Schaukeln), übermäßiges Kind-Säugen, langer Mittagsschlaf im Liegen (in Betten), Lesen in waagerechter Lage, Nachtleben, Unreinlichkeit, unnatürliche Wohllust, Entnervung durch Lesen schlüpfriger Schriften, Onanism oder, sei es aus Aberglauben, sei es um Kinder-Erzeugung in der Ehe zu verhüten, unvollkommner, oder ganz unterdrückter Beischlaf; Gegenstände des Zornes, des Grames, des Aergernisses, leidenschaftliches Spiel, übertriebene Anstrengung des Geistes und Körpers, vorzüglich gleich nach der Mahlzeit; sumpfige Wohngegend und dumpfige Zimmer; karges Darbenu.s.w. Alle diese Dinge müssen möglichst vermieden oder entfernt werden, wenn die Heilung nicht gehindert oder gar unmöglich gemacht werden soll. Einige meiner Nachahmer scheinen durch Verbieten noch weit mehrer, ziemlich gleichgültiger Dinge die Diät des Kranken unnöthig zu erschweren, was nicht zu billigen ist.

§ 261

Die, beim Arzneigebrauche in chronischen Krankheiten zweckmäßigste Lebensordnung, beruht auf Entfernung solcher Genesungs-Hindernisse und dem Zusatze des hie und da nöthigen Gegentheils: unschuldige Aufheiterung des Geistes und Gemüths, active Bewegung in freier Luft, fast bei jeder Art von Witterung (tägliches Spazierengehen, kleine Arbeiten mit den Armen), angemessene, nahrhafte, unarzneiliche Speisen und Getränke u.s.w.

 

 

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