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 16^th 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.

1^st class corresponded to Hahnemann's enantiopathic,

2^nd 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 16^th 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.

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

2^nd 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.

[Rudi Verspoor]

Heilkunst refers to the comprehensive system of healthcare principles developed by the German medical reformer, Dr. Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (1755-1843), more commonly known for having founded homeopathy, the best-known part of his system. “Heilkunst” is from the German word meaning, literally, “the art (kunst) of making whole (heilen).”

Hahnemann’s system of healthcare is based on the understanding of disease as dynamic (energetic) in nature and origin, rather than material or physical.

Heilkunst encompasses three realms:

1. therapeutic regimen (the restoration of balance – homeostasis),

2. internal medicine proper (the removal of disease – palingenesis), and

3. therapeutic education (the establishment of a healthy mind through means other than regimenal measures or medicines).

Heilkunst contains a complex disease classification (nosology), a systematic method of preparation of medicines (pharmacopeia), and a comprehensive database of remedial substances (materia medica).

The epistemological foundation of Heilkunst derives from a significant stream of Western thought going back to Greek thought, mostly the pre-Socratic thinkers, but starts more formally in modern times with Sir Francis Bacon.

It then picks up various contributors to German Idealism, such as Schelling and Hegel as well as the approach to the investigation of nature developed by Goethe. On the English side, we have the works of Drs. Hunter, Brown and Saumarez, and the extensive and intensive mind of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

More recently, expansions of the original contributions to Heilkunst have been made by the medical teachings of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophical medicine, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich, founder of orgonomic medicine (orgonomy).

In essence, Heilkunst, as conceived by its founder, constitutes a structured method for the evaluation (anamnesis), understanding (diagnosis), treatment (therapeutics) and management of disease and illness in a given individual, at all levels – body, mind, soul and spirit.

Heilkunst and Homeopathy

Until recently, Dr. Hahnemann’s teachings had been restricted to only one aspect, homeopathy. Because of this, the term homeopathy has come to have two meanings: one,

to refer specifically to the use of a medicine based on a match between the symptoms of a disease in a patient and similar symptoms produced by the medicine in a healthy person (known as “provings”); and, two, to refer generally to Hahnemann’s works and teachings as a whole.

Homeopathy is the specific approach developed by Dr. Hahnemann to deal with a certain type of disease, a “pathic” disease. In this approach, the physician takes the symptoms of a given disease in a patient as constituting the image of the disease itself, and then seeks to find a medicine that has been shown to produce a similar disease image (called an “artificial disease”) in a healthy person. Hence he coined the term, from the two Greek words, “homoios” (similar) and “pathos” (suffering or symptoms).

Dr. Hahnemann’s work and treatment approaches, however, went beyond homeopathy. When he formally presented the set of principles for his radical revision of Western medicine, he entitled the treatise, Organon der Heilkunst. It encompasses diet, nutrition, psychotherapy, energy manipulation and detoxification, as well as several approaches to treating disease, including, but not limited to, homeopathic prescribing. His first work after his abandonment of the prevailing medical approach, A Friend of Health, covered hygiene, diet and nutrition, and mental health. His next significant work, a long essay in 1796, laid down the basic principles of Heilkunst, included in which, but

not restricted to, was the homeopathic approach.

The term Organon has Greek and Latin roots and means “a set of principles for use in scientific or philosophical investigation.” It goes back to the Greek philosopher, Aristotle (used by his students to refer to the full set of his works on logic) and Sir Francis Bacon (Novum Organum), who wrote in Latin.

The term Heilkunst is a German term that is difficult to translate. There is no direct equivalent in English. It literally means “the art of rendering a being whole,” derived from the two German words “heil” and “kunst.”

“Heil” has a dual meaning in German, one related to health (compare the Old English, hale, as in “hale and hearty”), and one involving a greeting (as in the English “hail fellow, well met”), although both are related, not to mention heil as in heil-ig (holy) and Heil-and (savior).

In its health context, it includes two concepts rendered separately in English – cure and healing. Thus, while it is often translated as “medicine,” this does not really capture

the richness of the German term. “Kunst” is also often rendered as “art,” but the concept of art in German is somewhat different from that in English.

It encompasses the idea of a rational approach to knowledge that is grounded in, but goes beyond the sense-based world, and uses a form of knowing that goes beyond intellectual knowing (“wissen” in German, hence the German term for science in English is “wissenschaft”), to a deeper knowing involving more intuitive capacities (“kennen” in German).

Again, English has only one word, know, where German has the two. English can only capture the distinction in the inflection and context of the word: “Do you know that man?” “Yes, I’ve known him for several years, but I don’t really feel that I know him.”

The term “Heilkunst” then is properly used to refer to the complete system of medicine developed by Dr. Hahnemann, and the term “homeopathy” refers more narrowly to one of the uses of medicines according to the law of similars, done on the basis of matching the symptoms of a disease in a patient to a similar symptom picture produced by a medicine in a healthy person (known as a “proving”), mentioned above.

The Discovery of Heilkunst

Although the elements of Heilkunst are derived largely from the writings and teachings of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, their discovery and elaboration had to wait for more recent times. Part of the reason was the necessary emphasis that Dr. Hahnemann himself placed on homeopathy in his writings.

It was a new, yet complicated approach to the application of the ancient law of cure known as the law of similars, one that required significant elaboration, so it is perhaps not surprising that this element received the most attention in quantitative terms in his works and from his followers.

Part of the problem can be laid at the door of poor translations, so that until recently, there was significant distortion in English translations, and many of the foundational concepts were effectively eliminated or obscured.

German and English form a certain polarity; where German has one term, such as heilen, English has two (cure and healing), and where English has only one, such as knowing, German has two (wissen and kennen).

Where Dr. Hahnemann used various precise terms in German to refer to a key element of his approach to medicine, namely the concept of a living power at the root of life, health and disease, this concept and its epistemological basis was little understood, if at all, by translators.

Thus, the various terms in German involving this living power (Lebensprincip, Lebenskraft, (and its polarization into Erhaltungskraft and Erzeugungskraft) Lebensenergie, Dynamis, Kraftwesen) were conflated into one English term – “vital force” – on the mistaken notion that all of this referred in some way to the theory prevalent in the 19th Century of a vital force that directed the activities of the physical body (vitalism). This conflation hid deeper insights to be found in Dr. Hahnemann’s works.

Translation problems cannot be the problem when it comes to German-speakers working with the original German writings. The deeper and more important reason lay in the fact that until recently, no one had understood the broader philosophical context within which Hahnemann was working and writing. This context is critical to being able to understand the complexity of his system and its driving principles.

What is unique to Hahnemann is not the law of similars. This concept had been known to medicine for centuries prior. It is not the idea of testing medicines on healthy persons (provings), as this had been suggested earlier, though not carried out as systematically as by Dr. Hahnemann.

It is in the understanding of the polar nature of life, and in particular in the understanding of the supersensible forces in sense objects as well as of the independent life of the wmind above nature.

These are the ideas that came to life in the cultural and philosophical developments of Europe known as Romanticism, German Idealism and aspects of English Associational Psychology, what Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a prime figure in this cultural development, termed “the Dynamic System of Thought.”

Hahnemann, though practically oriented, worked within and was an integral part of this system. The key to unlocking the other aspects of Hahnemann’s system, and also placing homeopathy properly within that system, lay in the understanding of this broader philosophical and theoretical context.

It was not until recently that a scholar who had dedicated his life to studying this system of thought applied himself to Hahnemann’s works. The result was the first translation of Hahnemann’s main works, the Organon of Heilkunst and the Chronic Diseases, that revealed what lay in his system beyond homeopathy.

Steven Decker, of Santa Barbara, California, also created the first translation wherein the reader can follow the thought process of the translator word by word to the final rendition, but also one in electronic form that allows the researcher to search on the same term in English and its various German counterparts, or to see how the same German term can be variously translated into English.

The Principles of Heilkunst

At the very start of the Organon of Heilkunst, Hahnemann states that any valid medical system needs to be founded on “clearly realizable principles,” (Aphorism 2) that is, on principles grounded both in nature and reason. Immediately thereafter, in Aphorism 3, he states that such a system must provide three things:

1. the basis for an accurate identification of disease or imbalance (diagnosis based on a clear categorization of disease, or nosology);

2. a comprehensive classification of remedial agents, identifying the potential therapeutic action of each (materia medica, or pharmacopeia); and

3. the basis for matching the diagnosis with the curative agent (therapeutics).

Writings

The foundational writings of Heilkunst are the following main works: Organon der Heilkunst, Chronische Krankheiten (Chronic Diseases), and a collection of articles, Gesammelte kleine Schriften (Collected Smaller Writings, very misleadingly translated in English as The Lesser Writings).

The Organon der Heilkunst is the formal treatise created by Hahnemann to expound his discoveries, but it is supported by and linked to his other significant works, both initially and throughout his life. It is also the most difficult title to translate into English (see above).

Philosophical Context of Heilkunst

The fundamental basis of Heilkunst is found in its “dynamic” view of disease, which places it in what Samuel Taylor Coleridge termed “the Dynamic System of Thought”

in Western philosophy. his system or stream of thought in Western philosophy is not well known. It’s origins can be seen in Bacon’s efforts to rid the mind of various “idols” or delusions to which it was prey in order that it could be used as a fit and proper scientific instrument for a systematic and methodical inquiry into nature, both mother nature and human nature; not just the outer appearances (natura naturata), but also the inner, living content (natura naturans) (see in particular the Novum Organon included in Bacon’s Great Instauration).

It is next to be found in the stream of German philosophy termed German Idealism, which sought to penetrate the veil between nature’s outer form and inner content using those aspects of mind beyond the intellect (Verstand).

Where English has only one word for the concepts mind and thinking, German has several, reflecting that the act of thinking and consciousness involve the whole of man, not just the brain (see for example, modern research on the second “brain,” the extensive neural system found in the gut).

The main figures in German Idealism are Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, followed by I.M. Fichte, Troxler, Deinhardt, Scchlege, Planck, Preuss, Grimm and Hamerling, to name

a few. Later figures, and ones that came after Hahnemann’s time are those involved in the development of phenomenology, such as Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and Gadamer.

The significant scientific writings of Wolfang von Goethe from 1780 to 1830 set the basis for an inquiry into natural phenomena that was based on a form of cognitive participation using other aspects of mind than the intellect.

These efforts, and those of the German Idealists and Romanticists, to get at the “Spirit and the Wesen in nature” (the supersensible aspects of matter) were expanded on and developed further by Rudolf Steiner, the founder of anthroposophical medicine, which he saw as an extension of Heilkunst.

At the same time, the work of Dr Wilhelm Reich into the dynamics of sexuality led him to a deeper understanding of the nature of the generative power discovered by

Dr. Hahnemann, and provided a means of understanding the sub-sensible or elemental aspects of nature.

All of this has been advanced in terms of insights and better integration by a lifelong student of this Dynamic System of Thought, Steven Decker. As noted above, his studies allowed him to translate the Organon and the Chronic Diseases and to reveal aspects of Hahnemann’s discoveries that had been previously hidden by misunderstanding and ignorance about the context within which Hahnemann lived and worked, and about his predecessors and also his heirs.

Foundational Concepts and Principles

Dynamic Nature of Disease

Dr. Hahnemann’s research led him to reject the prevailing notion of his day, and still a dominant one to this day, that disease is something material, that is, that science and medical science must concern itself with sense-data. This is based in the Western philosophical tradition from Descartes, Hume, and Hartley to the influential works of Immanuel Kant in the 18^th Century.

In this view, if there is a skin lesion, then the problem is to be found in the skin itself or in some chemical imbalance, or hormonal dysfunction or blood disorder, for example. Treatment is then directed at the offending material cause (materia peccans).

At the same time, Hahnemann rejected the vitalist tradition that derived its idea from medieval medicine, such as the works of Paracelsus and Von Helmont, positing an abstract notion of some “vital force” not grounded in any natural observed reality that was above the material realm and directing it.

Disease was seen here as an imbalance in a person’s life that could be corrected by natural measures or spiritual means, an approach that is at the base of much of the natural health field today.

Hahnemann’s research led him to the conclusion that health and disease involve an interaction between the dynamic element of a human being, which suffuses, but is not identical with, the physical body, and the inner essence of various external factors, whether nutritional or inimical, traumatic (physical or emotional) or microbial, psychical

or somatic.

He concluded that this “living principle” or “living power” (Lebensprincip or Dynamis) is the key to understanding and treating disease and sickness. Since the Dynamis mobilizes the physical body, the physical body cannot become sick unless the Dynamis is first disturbed. The symptoms of abnormal function at the level of the psyche and soma are then the result of this disturbance.

The cause of sickness must be sought beyond the material or sense-world. Sickness ultimately is supersensible in nature, or to borrow from Aristotle’s students, metaphysical (beyond the material or sense-based realm). The physical body simply reflects the derangements at the supersensible or dynamic level.

While Hahnemann understood the role of infectious agents (well before modern microbiology), the real agent of disease was not, in his view, the physical carrier (microbe),

but the energetic or dynamic element in that agent that was able to act on the living or dynamic element of the human organism.

Hahnemann was convinced that he had placed his new system of medicine on the firm foundation of natural law and principle. This then provided for the rational ordering

of therapeutics, on a basis which is empirical, but not materialistic, because it is grounded in nature and in principles derived from natural law.

Without this foundation, any system of medicine for Hahnemann was without principle (allopathic) and had the potential to cause great harm because it relieved by suppressing symptoms, but did not remove the underlying cause.

For example, if a person has a headache and takes an anti-inflammatory, the pain may be reduced or even removed, but the cause of the headache is not addressed.

For Hahnemann, the result of a disease process (inflammation) can never be the cause of itself, a basic principle of logic. Anti-inflammatory drugs are then suppressive of the symptom, not curative.

Dual Nature of Disease

Hahnemann further discovered a distinction between disease and disorders due to imbalance. This is based on his discovery of the dual nature of the living principle or Dynamis. Disease he considered to be a dynamic impingement on the generative side of the Dynamis; imbalance is a disturbance of the sustentive power (what traditionally was termed the vis medicatrix naturae or inner healer).

The generative power (Erzeugungskraft) is that power responsible for cell division, fertilization of the egg, and the creation of new ideas. Proper generative function is palingenesis. The sustentive power (Erhaltungskraft) is the power that maintains homeostasis, keeping things in balance.

Because of this dual nature of the Dynamis, there is a distinction in the disease process between the initial action (Erstwirkung) of the disease agent, which involves an impingement on the generative power of the Dynamis, and the reaction or counteraction (Gegenwirkung, Nachwirkung) of the sustentive side, much as in physics where each action produces a counter-action.

Thus, the initial action of disease is seldom felt, much like the initial moment of conception, as we can see in the initial infection of typical infectious diseases (chickenpox). This is followed by a prodromal period wherein the sustentive power readies to react and restore balance due to the initial action of the disease agent. The counteraction of

the sustentive power produces the various symptoms we associate with disease (fever, rash, discharges, etc.).

Dual Nature of the Remedial Process

The dual nature of the disease process has a counterpart in the dual nature of the remedial (Heil) process, also as between the initial action of the medicine, which destroys

the disease lodged in the generative power, and the counter action of the sustentive power to restore balance again, which now succeeds as the disease has been destroyed.

This polarity also provides a distinction between the concepts of cure and healing. Cure involves the removal of disease (curative action or lysis) by use of the right medicine acting on the generative power of the Dynamis (all medicines being such by virtue of their power to so act).

Healing is the restoration of balance (homeostasis) by the sustentive power side of the Dynamis following the removal of disease, and also often involves various symptoms known as the healing reaction or crisis.

The Two Laws of Treatment

Hahnemann’s research and experiments had led him to rediscover the ancient principle of cure, called the “law of similars” (similia similibus). This law, known to the Egyptians and Greeks, stated that a disease could only be cured by a medicine that could cause that same disease in a healthy person.

The problem in the past had been one of dose; crude doses used according to the law of similars were dangerous, and because of that this method had been largely abandoned by Hahnemann’s day in favor of the law of opposites (contraria contrarius), or for simply using regimenal measures to support the natural healing power.

If the principle of similars, which Hahnemann concluded was grounded in natural law, is curative, then using medicines on the basis of the law of opposites is suppressive.

Heilkunst does include the application of the law of opposites, but within the proper jurisdiction which involves the healing function of the sustentive power in diet, nutrition, lifestyle, energy work, psychotherapy, drainage, detoxification, etc.

There are several applications of the law of similar resonance, one of which is based on the overt symptom picture (totality of characteristic symptoms) of the patient, which is matched to the symptom picture or image produced by a given medical agent in a healthy person, to which Hahnemann gave the name homeopathy.

Another is to make a remedy from the causal disease agent, either through a characteristic discharge, such as tubercular sputum (Tuberculinum), known as a nosode, or by isolating the disease agent itself, such as by using a dynamized and potentized form of cortisone to remove an iatrogenic disease caused by that drug. This is known as an isode.

Practitioners in Hahnemann’s time developed the use of nosodes, which are homeopathic dilutions of the disease agent made from an excretion of a person suffering the disease in question, of which Hahnemann approved. Rabies nosode, for example, is made by potentizing the saliva of a rabid dog. This provides a ready and effective means

of finding a curative medicine for a new disease not yet identified.

The appropriate substance to treat a disease is one which induces a similar disease state in a healthy person. Heilkunst uses a vast range of isodes, that is, those made from

all manner of disease agents (drugs, poisons, chemicals, vaccinations, etc.,) related to the pathogenic and iatrogenic disease jurisdictions.

Degrees of Similitude

What symptoms are associated with various substances is determined by provings, in which the researcher imbibes the remedy and records all physical, mental, emotional

and modal symptoms experienced. A homeopathic repertory is a listing of remedies by symptom, used to determine the most appropriate medicine for a given disease.

The appropriate application of a medicine can also be determined from clinical experience based on the knowledge of the applicable principle governing a disease jurisdiction.

Disease Classification

Since the cause of disease is not material, but lies in a disturbance of the dynamic or energetic level of our being, the diagnosis must address itself to this level. Hahnemann developed an extensive classification of disease.

1^st H. distinguished between those diseases that are idiopathic, that is, self-standing, autonomous and not dependent on other diseases, and those that are secondary and derivative of a prior disease. The self-standing or idiopathic diseases have a constant nature, that is, they always show up the same, such as the classic infectious diseases (measles, typhoid, cholera, yellow fever, etc.) and are termed “tonic” (Stimm-based disease in German) diseases in Heilkunst.

They are addressed by means of the homotonic principle, that is, by means of remedies that are specific to a given disease. An example would be Apis mellifica for the homogenic disease from a bee sting.

2^nd derivative diseases are variable in nature. That is, it depends on the nature of the interaction between the tonic disease and the patient as to which new diseases are spun off. These Hahnemann termed “pathic” diseases. They are addressed by means of the homeopathic principle.

Second, Hahnemann distinguished disease according to temporality. There were diseases that were acute and those that were of long duration (distinction by quantity of time) and diseases that were of a self-limiting nature versus those of a chronic nature (distinction by quality of time).

Thus, measles would be an acute disease of a self-limiting nature, whereas malaria would fall in the category of a chronic disease, but if the person just contracted it and was suffering symptoms, it would be acute, and if the patient had been suffering for several years from periodic flare-ups, it would be of long-duration.

He also distinguished between the various layers of pathic diseases and the different jurisdictions of the tonic diseases. Within the tonic disease realm, he identified several: those based on a certain disease “irritation,” such as mental, emotional and physical traumas (homogenic); on improperly prescribed medicines (iatrogenic); infectious agents (pathogenic); and finally diseases caused by various false beliefs that cause us to act in ways against our overall health (ideogenic).

Hahnemann’s nosology also encompasses the spirit, soul, mind and body of man, providing a basis for assessing the impact of disease on the various levels of our being. It further includes the different elements of disease, from symptoms that are pluralized (plurific) in nature (changes in feelings, functions and sensations that the patient reports) and those that are unific in nature and require the participation and discernment of the practitioner, such as “the Feeling,” (das Gefühl) or “the Impression” (das Eindruck) of the disease.

In the area of acute diseases, Hahnemann distinguished those that were simply flare-ups of underlying chronic diseases, from true acutes, and here he distinguished between epidemic and sporadic on the one hand, and acute versus chronic miasms on the other. A miasm is a disease of constant nature, the term meaning “a noxious influence” in the medical terminology of his time.

Hahnemann wrote a separate book on his discoveries of the chronic miasms, and therein also distinguished these from the chronic diseases that were spun-off from these chronic miasms. The chronic miasms are tonic diseases, and the chronic diseases are pathic in nature.

Posology

From the very beginning of his new system, Hahnemann came to the conclusion that medicines, to the extent that they can affect the human being, must be able to act dynamically and that their power to act as medicine lay in this dynamic effect. He also was conscious of the serious negative effects of the crude drugs of his day and finally of the problem in using crude doses and the law of similars.

All of this motivated him to seek to dilute the crude nature of medicines and to seek that level at which the negative effects of the medicine was minimal or nil, while still preserving a therapeutic (positive, curative) effect.

Hahnemann initially used doses that are akin to the current doses for drugs (milligrams and micrograms). However, he continued to dilute the medicines using a method based on the new decimal measurements. He systematically diluted on the scale of 1/100, or 1 unit of the crude matter (mother tinctures, bark, minerals, etc.) to 99 parts of water/alcohol mixture.

The first dilution he called a 1C. Then he would take one unit of the 1C solution and add another 99 units of water/alcohol, and call this a 2C. Each of these levels represented a certain strength of potency of the dynamic essence of the medicine. (Thus, the 1C is known as a 1C potency, the 2C as a 2C potency, and so on.)

In the process of dilution, he shook the vial strongly, sometimes with impact, sometimes with a downward motion (succussion). As he increased the dilution, he noted that the therapeutic effect increased rather than decreased.

Being a noted chemist, he knew about the limits set by Loschmidt’s Number (or Avogadro’s Constant as it is generally known in English); based on his system of dilution, the centesimal scale, this limit would be reached after the 12th serial dilution. However, in keeping with his insights regarding the dynamic action, he continued beyond this limit, finding that the higher dilutions increased in therapeutic power, and he came to refer to them as potencies.

The use of medicines in highly diluted doses is the most overtly controversial aspect of Dr. Hahnemann’s new system of medicine, but it is not essential to the application of the law of similars: the key to the law of similars is a similar resonance between medicine and disease, not whether the medicine is potentised or not.

While medicines prepared according to Dr. Hahnemann’s rules are often referred to as “homeopathic medicines,” it is their application in an actual case against disease, not their dilution or potency level, that makes them “homeopathic,” or “isotonic” or “homotonic,” as the case may be, depending on the degree of similitude involved.

Hahnemann also developed, towards the end of his career, a new potency scale (a dilution of 1:50,000) which is often termed the LM scale, but is more properly called the Q scale. This scale is less well-known and developed as it has only come to light in the last 50 years. Research on the appropriate application of each of these two potency scales, as well as the D or X scale, is ongoing.

One Remedy Per Disease

A fundamental principle of Heilkunst is that there can only be one remedy for a given disease state.

Hahnemann discovered that a person could have more than one disease at a time, each of which might be contributing to the overall symptom picture of the patient.

Hahnemann clearly set out, right from the beginning of his new system of medicine, that the practitioner should first seek to treat the diseases of a constant nature, as these can more readily be identified in most cases by cause (e.g., Arnica for contusion disease), and since they are fixed in nature, they are always treated with the same medicine, thus simplifying treatment. The homeopathic approach to the remaining pathic diseases could then more easily be used.

It was possible for there to be more than one disease at a time in the human organism, this also opened the possibility of the prescribing of more than one remedy at a time to the patient. Out of this understanding, and from his knowledge of the dual nature of disease, Hahnemann, through his own work with intercurrent and alternating remedies and the experiments of a close pupil, Dr. Karl Aegidi, used and worked with dual remedy prescribing.

Initially (1833-36) he gave two medicines in the same solution (simultaneity of ingestion), but due to political pressures and misunderstandings switched to the use of two medicines within the duration of action of the other (simultaneity of action).

Chronic Miasms

In the light of difficulties treating more complex cases, Hahnemann undertook further research and developed his theory of chronic miasms, which are diseases of a fixed nature of the pathogenic type (originally infectious, but also inherited) which give rise to all the (secondary) chronic diseases, which are pathic in nature. Hahnemann identified three chronic miasms: syphilis, sycosis, and psora, and there is evidence that he also discerned a fourth that is now termed tuberculosis.

Dr. Elmiger of Lausanne, Switzerland uncovered a specific sequence to these miasms, which confirms and extends what Hahnemann himself wrote and taught, and which he termed the Law of Succession of Forces. This allows for a more effective and systematic treatment of various disease conditions that have an inherited component, even when that component is latent or not readily recognizable in the symptoms of the patient. Recent research has uncovered several more chronic miasms that also fit into the Law of Succession of Forces.

Direction Of Cure

Hahnemann also gave indications as to when the practitioner could tell that the disease had been cured by the similar medicine and healing was underway (the complete process termed “heilen” or remediation). Constantine Hering, often called the “Father of Homeopathy” in the US, further developed these guidelines, which are often referred to as “Hering’s Law, or Principles”:

• from more vital to less vital organs

• in the case of pain, from above down

• in the same direction as the natural disease process

This was later amended by James Tyler Kent who noticed that when disease was suppressed or several groups of symptoms (diseases) developed in a patient over time, the remedial process proceeded in the reverse order of the emergence.

This provides the basis for the sequential treatment of traumatic disease states, from most recent back through time to conception, followed by the sequential treatment of

the chronic miasms. The pathic diseases, existing in layers, are dealt with as they arise at various stages along the way.

If some symptoms become worse almost immediately after taking a similar medicine, this represents an apparent worsening of the natural disease, but is really an exacerbation due to the adding of the symptoms of the similar medicine to those of the original disease in the patient.

This so-called “homeopathic aggravation” is of short duration and generally only found in acute diseases. There is also a later worsening of some symptoms, and even a return of old symptoms, essentially in chronic, complex cases, which Hahnemann called the “counteraction” and which is often referred to as the healing reaction.

The “homeopathic exacerbation” involves the initial action of the curative medicine affecting the generative power of the Living Principle or Dynamis. The “healing reaction” involves the counteraction of the sustentive power of the Living Principle against the medicine (artificial disease).

The Law of Similars and of Opposites

Western Medicine recognized, even into Hahnemann’s time, two natural laws of therapeutics. The law of opposites (contraria contrarius) involves the restoration of balance

or homeostasis, and is applied in diet, nutrition, supplements, various energy healing modalities, psychotherapy, and generally the entire range of the natural health field.

The law of similars (similia similibus) involves the annihilation of disease states using a medicine that has a similar resonance or disease effect to that of the disease in the patient. Because of the power of this law to harm the patient if the dose was not correct, it was largely abandoned and replaced by the approach set out by Hippocrates

(Let food be your medicine), involving the law of opposites, on which the modern natural health movement is based, albeit unconsciously.

The genius of Dr. Hahnemann was to discover a way to attenuate the dose so that it could be rendered harmless as to chemical side effects, what is often referred to as dynamization or potentization. Dynamization refers to the use of the dynamic aspect of a substance, while potentisation refers to the increase in strength of the dynamic or energetic action.

Because the prevailing system of medicine prescribed substances or therapies without any conscious knowledge or application of one or other of these two natural laws of remediation, Hahnemann termed it “allopathic,” meaning that it was without any principle of application grounded in natural law.

Because of the use of these two laws, Heilkunst holds that there are two great realms of medicine: medicine proper, which is the application of the law of similars, and therapeutic regimen, which is the proper application of the law of opposites. There is also a third realm, that of therapeutic education, which involves the expansion of human consciousness through the destruction of false beliefs that Hahnemann termed the “highest diseases.”

Later research by Wilhelm Reich was able to uncover the full extent of disturbances connected with the generative power in man, thus rationally expanding on what Hahnemann had discovered empirically. The principle underlying tonic remedies was taken to new heights by Rudolf Steiner in his lectures on medicine.

Sources:

Note: Most of the older texts are only available as reprints from Indian publishers. All of the texts should be available at the two main on-line bookstores: Minimum Price Books (www.minimum.com) and Homeopathic Educational Services (www.homeopathic.com).

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