It is impossible to guess at the internal nature of diseases, and as what is secretly changed by nature in the organism, and it is folly to attempt to base the cure of them on such guess-work and such propositions; it is impossible to divine the healing-power of medicines according to a chemical hypothesis or from their colours, smell, or taste; and it is folly to use these substances (so pernicious when abused) for the cure of diseases based on such hypotheses and such propositions. And had such a course been ever so much in vogue and been generally introduced; had it been for thousands of years the only, and ever so much admired, course, it would nevertheless remain an irrational and pernicious method thus to be guided by empty guess-work; to fable about the diseased conditions of the internal organism, and to combat them with fictitious virtues of medicines. In order that we may change disease into health it must be laid open to our senses what is discernibly – clearly discernibly – removable from every disease, and clearly must each medicine express what it can cure with certainty, before it may be applied to the cure of diseases; then the medical art will cease to be a lottery in human life,  and will then become a certain means of rescuing men from disease.

I will now show what we discern as indubitably curable in diseases; how the curative virtues of medicines can become clearly perceivable, and how then they can be applied for the cure of the sick.

What life is can only be empirically discerned by its manifestations and appearances; but it can never be explained, a priori, through metaphysical speculations; what life is, in itself and in its internal essence, can never be comprehended by mortals, and cannot be explained by conjectures.

The life of man, as well as his twofold condition (health and sickness), can never be demonstrated in a manner usual in demonstrating other objects according to definite principles; it cannot be compared with anything else in this world but with itself; it cannot be compared with a wheelwork, with a hydraulic machine, with chemical processes, with decomposition or formation of gases, with a galvanic battery, nor with anything inorganic. Life is in no respect controlled by any physical laws, which govern only inorganic substances.  The material substances composing the human organism are not governed in their living composition by the same laws to which inorganic substances are subjected, but they follow solely laws peculiar to their vitality; they themselves are animated and vivified, just as the whole organism is animated and vivified. Here reigns a nameless all-powerful fundamental force which suspends all forces of the constituents of the body inclined to follow the laws of pressure, collision, depression, fermentation, and decomposition; and only this force guides and governs by the wonderful laws of life; that is to say, it maintains the necessary conditions for the preservation of the living whole in sensation and action, and that in an almost spiritual dynamic condition.

As the organism in its normal condition depends only on the state of its vitality, it follows that the changed condition which we call sickness must likewise depend not on the operation of physical or chemical principles, but on originally changed vital sensations  and actions; that is to say, a dynamically changed state of man – a changed existence – through which eventually the material constituent parts of the body become altered in their character as is rendered necessary in each individual case through the changed conditions of the living organism.

Further, the noxious influences which, as a general rule, create in us from without the various sicknesses, are generally so invisible and immaterial* (Foot-note-1) that it is impossible for them to change or disturb the form and structure of the components of our body mechanically, nor can they bring into the circulation pernicious or acrid fluids whereby all our blood would be chemically changed or vitiated; an inadmissible crude speculation of material brains which can in no way be proved. The causes producing disease affect, by virtue of their qualifications, the conditions of our life (our state of health) simply in a dynamic (similar to a spiritual) manner; and while at first the higher organs and vital forces become disturbed, there arises through this dynamic alteration of the whole living condition (discomfort, pain) a changed activity (abnormal function of single or all organs; this necessarily causes secondarily a change of all the fluids in the circulation, and also the secretion of abnormal matter; and this is an inevitable result of that changed condition which is at variance with a state of health.

These abnormal substances appearing in diseases are therefore only products of the disease itself, and as long as the sickness retains its established (present) character, they will necessarily continue to be secreted, and thereby form a part of the signs of the sickness (symptoms); they are only effects, and, therefore, demonstrations of the present internal sickness, and re-act (Foot-note-2) on the whole diseased body (while they frequently contain the germs of disease affecting other healthy persons) which produced them, not  at all as disease-sustaining or creating matter, not as the material cause of disease. It is just as impossible for a person to infect his body or augment his disease with the poison of his own chancre, or with the gonorrhoeic secretion from his own urethra, as it is for a viper to inflict upon itself with its own poison a dangerous or deadly sting.

Therefore it is obvious that the diseases of mankind caused through the influence of a dynamic (morbid) noxiousness can originally be but dynamic changes (caused almost only in a spiritual manner) of the life-character of our organism.

We perceive easily hat these dynamic disorders of the life-character of our organism, which we call disease, inasmuch as they are nothing else but changes in sensations and actions, express themselves only through an aggregate of symptoms, and are recognized only as such by our powers of perception. As the work of healing is such an important one to human life, and as our steps must be guided only by our perception of the condition of the sick body (to be guided by conjectures and improbable hypothesis would be a dangerous folly, yes, even a crime against mankind), it is obvious that diseases, as dynamic disorders of our organism, express themselves only through changes in sensations and actions of the organism, that is, only through an aggregate of perceptible symptoms; therefore they alone must be the object to be healed in every case of illness. If all the symptoms of the disease are removed, nothing but health remains. For the reason that diseases are nothing but dynamic disorders of the condition and character of our organism, they cannot possibly be cured by mankind in any other way than through potencies and forces which are equally able to produce dynamic changes in the condition of man; that is, diseases are cured virtually and dynamically by medicines.

These efficacious substances and powers (medicines), which are at our command, effect the cure of diseases through the same dynamic changes of the present condition; through the same changes in the character of the organism in the sensations and actions as they would in the healthy man; changing him dynamically, and producing in him certain sickness and characteristic symptoms, the knowledge of which, as we shall show, gives us the reliable indication of the diseased condition which can be most surely cured by each particular medicine. Therefore nothing in the world can produce any cure, no substance, no force can effect any such change in the human organism as to make the disease yield; nothing except a power capable of changing dynamically the condition of man, and therefore a power capable also of changing the healthy condition into a sick one. (Foot-note-3).

On the other hand, there is no agent, no power in nature, capable of affecting healthy persons, which does not at the same time possess the capacity of curing certain diseased conditions. But as the power of curing disease, as well as the power of affecting healthy persons, is found inseparable in all medicines, and as both active powers derive their origin from the same source, that is, from their capacity to change dynamically the condition of man, and as they, therefore, cannot possibly follow different inherent laws of nature in sick persons than in healthy ones, it follows that it must be identically the same power of the medicine which cures the disease in sick persons and possesses sick-making properties in healthy ones. (Foot-note-4)

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Foot-note-1: Rare exceptions are some surgical conditions and complaints arising from indigestible or foreign substances occasionally coming into the alimentary canal. 

Foot-note-2: Expulsion and mechanical removal of these abnormal substances, impurities and excrescences, cannot cure the origin of the disease itself, as little as a coryza can be shortened or cured by possibly frequent and perfect blowing of the nose. The coryza does not continue any longer than its stipulated time, if the nose were not cleaned at all by blowing it.

Foot-note-3:-  Not by means of ostensibly dissolving or mechanically resolving, evacuating, properties of medicinal substances, nor by means of expelling (blood-purifying and secretion-improving) imaginary productions of disease, nor by means of antiseptics (only acting on and useful to purify dead matter), nor through chemical and physical forces of any kind imaginable, in such manner as they affect inorganic material substances; nor in the manner in which the medical schools have always erroneously imagined and dreamt.

The more modern schools have begun to consider diseases in some measure dynamic changes, and to a certain degree they have tried to combat them through dynamic means; but they do not perceive the sensitive, irritable, reproductive forces (dimensions) of life, so endless and perpetually changeable in modo et qualitate, and do not look on the innumerable and changing symptoms of diseases (thoses endless and only, by us, by reflex discernible internal changes) as the only reliable object to be healed, which they really are; and as they only accept hypothetically an abnormal increase or decrease of their dimensions quoad uantitatem, and as they ascribe arbitrarily to the medicines used by them for the cure this one-sided power to increase or decrease, and bring these dimensions to a normal condition, and thereby profess to cure, they have nothing but illusions before them – illusions of the object to be healed (the indication), an illusion as to the action of drugs (indicate).

Foot-note-4: Therefore none, as, for instance, merely nutritive substances.

Foot-note-5: The different result in both of these cases depends solely on the difference of the object to be changed.

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