The Genius of the Homoeopathic Healing Art-Samuel Hahnemann
1 2 3
Translated by Dr. A D Lippe Part II
Finally, we appeal to experiment (experience),
in order ti determine what artificially sick-making powers (observed
of medicines) should be applied successfully against certain natural
diseases. We ask:-
1.Whether they be such medicines as are capable of producing on
the healthy organism different (allopathic) changes from
those observed in the disease to be healed.
2.Or such medicines as are capable of producing on the healthy
organism opposite (enanthiopathic, antipathic) changes to
those observed in the disease to be healed.
3.Or, whether we can expect restoration to health (cure) with
the greatest certainty, and in the most permanent manner, by such
medicines as are capable of producing on the healthy similar (homoeopathic)
changes to those observed in the natural disease (there are only
these three modes of administering medicines possible); experience
most emphatically and indubitably decides for the last.
It is even self-evident that medicines acting
heterogeneously and allopathically, capable of producing different
symptoms on the healthy organism to those then observed in the
disease to be cured, are in the very nature of things incapable of
being suitable to the cure, and cannot cure. Their effects
consequently must be injurious; otherwise every disease would be
cured by means of any imaginable, ever so differently acting,
medicine, quickly, safely, and permanently. Whereas each medicine
possesses effects differing from all other medicines; and so each
disease causes on the human organism, under the eternal laws of
nature, different and varying ailments and sufferings; this in
itself would demonstrate a contradiction (contradictionem in
adjecto), and would by itself demonstrate the impossibility of a
beneficial result. Furthermore, each demonstrated change can only be
produced by a cause especially belonging to it, but not per quam
libet causam. And experience proves it daily that the common
practice of prescribing for the cure of the sick a compound of
medicines, the powers (effects) of each of these unknown, causes a
variety of effects, but the least of all – a cure.
The second method of curing (treating
diseases with medicines, is the application of means (a medicine
acting as a palliative) changing and altering the observed disorder
(disease, or the most prominent symptom of it) enanthiopathically,
antipathically or contrarily. Such an application cannot, as is
easily perceived, work a durable cure of the disease, because the
disorder is sure to return again, and that in an aggravated form.
This is the way it occurs:- It is a marvelous process of nature
which orders that organic living bodies are not governed by the same
laws by which inorganic substances of (inanimate) physical nature
are governed. They do not accept the impressions passively, like the
latter; do not follow, like them, external impressions, but they
resist and endeavour to oppose these impressions by contraries.
(Foot-note-6)
The living human body can be influenced at
first by physical forces; but this impression is not as permanent
and lasting as that which is produced on inorganic bodies – (and
so it would necessarily be if the medicinal powers, acting by
contraries on the disease, could produce a lasting and permanent
relief). More than that, the human organism strives toproduce the reverse condition through antagonism against the
effects of the forces brought to bear upon it from without.
(Foot-note-7) For instance, a hand which has been held long enough
in ice-water does not remain cold; nor does the hand only show the
warmth of the surrounding atmosphere when taken out of the
ice-water, which would be the effect on a stone (an inorganic body);
neither does it return to the warmth of the body, - by no means, -
for the colder the water was, and longer the hand has been kept in
it, and thereby affected the healthy skin, the hotter and more
inflamed will it become afterwards.
It cannot be otherwise than thus, that a
symptom which yields to a remedy which acts contrarily on the
disease does so but for a short time; (Foot-note-9) and it is bound
to yield again, very soon, to the predominating antagonism of the
living organism, which causes a contrary; that is, a contrary
condition to the one which the palliative has created deceptively
for a short time only (a condition corresponding with the original
evil) – in fact, a true addition to the returning unextinguished
original disease, the original disease in an aggravated form. The
disorder is always and surely aggravated, as soon as the palliative
(the contrary and enanthiopathic acting remedy) has exhausted
its effects. (Foot-note-10)
In chronic diseases, the true test-stone of the
genuine healing-art, we perceive the pernicious effects of
contrary-acting (palliative) medicines in a high degree; inasmuch as
a repetition necessary to cause an illusive effect (a sudden passing
appearance of relief), implies a larger and increasingly larger
dose, frequently endangering the life of the sick, and not
infrequently causing death.
There remains, therefore, but a third method of
administering medicines as a sure mode of relief and cure, and this
is the application of a remedy which is capable of causing on the
healthy organism an affection (an artificial diseased condition)
which is similar, very similar, to the present case of sickness.
It is easy to prove, as has been seen in
innumerable cases, and also by those who followed my teachings, by
daily experience (foot-note-11) as well as by reasoning, that this
method of administering medicine constitutes the most complete, the
best, and only mode of cure.
It will, therefore, not be a difficult task to
comprehend by what natural laws the only suitable homoeopathic
healing-art is and must be governed.
The first unmistakable natural law is, that the
living organism is comparatively much more easily affected by
medicine than by natural diseases. Many sick-making causes
affect us every day, every hour of the day, but they are not able to
disturb the equilibrium of our condition, the healthy are not made
sick; the activity of our life-preserving principle within us
generally resists the most of them, and the individual remains well.If external noxious influences, increased to a high degree,
affect us, and if we expose ourselves to them too much, then we
sicken, and only to any great degree if our organism, just at that
time, shows a weak side (a predisposition), which makes us more
liable to be affected by the present (simple or complex) cause of
the disease. Did the inimical, partly psychical, partly physical
forces of nature, called noxious disease-influences, have unlimited
power to affect and change our condition, then nobody would be well.
Inasmuch as they are found everywhere, everybody would be sick, and
would not even have a conception what health is. But, as in general,
diseases are only the exception to the condition of men; and as it
is necessary that a combination of so many and various circumstances
and conditions – partly by the disease-causing forces, partly by
the condition of the individual to be made sick – must exist
before a disease really follows the effects of the sick-making
forces, it becomes evident that man is not easily affected by these
noxious influences; that they do not necessarily make him sick, and
that the organism can only be affected by them under certain
predisposing influences.
Quite different are the relations of the
artificial dynamic forces, which call medicines. Every true medicine
affects every living organic body under all
circumstances, at all times, and causes on it its
characteristic symptoms (clearly enough perceivable through the
senses, provided the dose is large enough), so that it becomes
obvious that each and every living human organism must become
thoroughly affected and seemingly infected by the medicinal disease;
this, as is well know, is not the case with natural diseases
(Foot-note 12).
Foot-note-6: As simple, as true, and as natural
as this proposition is, - and therefore it would seem as if it
should have been made the fundamental means of ascertaining the
curative powers of medicines, - it is evident that, in fact, up to
this time this proposition has not been approached even distantly.
During these thousands of years, and as far as the history of
medicine is know, not one person conceived, a priori, the source of
ascertaining in so natural a manner the healing properties of
medicines before they were applied for the cure of the sick. For
hundreds of years, up to the present time, it was surmised that the
curative powers of medicines could only be ascertained by the
effects they produced on disease (ab usu in morbis). It was
attempted to ascertain them in cases in which a certain medicine
(and then most frequently a compound of different medicinal
substances) has been beneficial in a named given case of disease. It
is impossible to learn from the curative effect of a single
medicinal substance, even (which often happened) in an accurately
described case of disease, in what case of disease this remedy might
again become curative; because (with the exception of diseases
caused by fixed miasms, small-pox, measles, lues, the itch, etc., or
those consequent on the same disturbing element, as the gout) all
other cases of diseases are single cases, that is, they appear under
varying and different symptom-combinations, have never appeared in
just the samemanner;
it is on that account that we can not draw the conclusion that the
same remedy will also cure another (different) case. The forcible
combination of such cases of disease (which nature produces in her
wisdom in such an endless variety) under certain named forms, as is
done arbitrarily by Pathology, is leading to continuous illusions,
and a temptation to a mistaking of various conditions one with
another – human guess-work without any reality. Equally seductive
and inadmissible, although from times immemorial introduced, is the
establishment of general (curative) effects, based on occasional
results in diseases, which the Material Medical does when, for
instance, in some cases of diseases occasionally during the use of
(generally compounded) medicines, increased urinary secretions,
perspiration, appearance of the menstruation, cessation of
convulsions, a kind of sleep, or expectoration appeared; the
medicine (which among the rest was honoured with being charged with
this effect) was credited with possessing the virtue of being
diuretic or sudorific, or capable of restoring menstration, or
anti-spasmodic, or soporific, or expectorant, thereby committing a fallacium
causae by confounding the terms with and of. But there was
likewise drawn a wrong conclusion, a particulari ad universale,
in contravention of all the laws of reason, even changing the
conditional into the unconditional. Because that which is not
capable of causing, in every case of disease, an increase of urinary
secretions, or perspiration, or menstruation, or sleep; which can
not allay, in all cases, convulsions, or loosen the cough, cannot,
without violating common sense, be pronounced unconditionally and
absolutely diuretic or sudorific, or emmenagogue, or soporific, or
anti-spasmodic, or expectorant. Furthermore, it is impossible that a
medicine in these compound phenomena of our conditions, in such
multiplied combinations of a variety of symptoms as are the nameless
varieties of the diseases of men, can possibly reveal its original
medicinal effects, and that which we expect to know with certainty
of the sick-making, sensation-changing properties.
Foot-note-7: The green juice of the plant
obtained by expressing, no longer an animated organic substance, if
spread on linen, soon fades under the rays of the sun, and is
destroyed; while the plant bleaching in a cellar for want of
daylight soon regains its green colour when exposed to the same rays
of the sun. A root which has been dug up, and has been dried, will
soon become entirely decomposed and destroyed if laid in warm and
moist earth; while a fresh root laid in the same earth will forth
hopeful sprouts. The foaming fresh beer, while in full fermentation,
will soon be changed, when bottled, into vinegar, if exposed to a
heat of 96 degrees (Fahrenheit). But in the healthy human stomach
the same degree of heat will check the fermentation and soon change
it into a mild nutriment. Half putrid, already badly-smelling game,
and other meats when eaten by healthy persons produce the least
smelling evacuations (excrements); while the bark of Cinchona
Officinalis, which possesses the property of checking putrefaction
in inanimate animal substances, is affected by the healthy intestine
in a contrary manner, so as to cause very offensive flatus.
Carbonate of lime destroys all acids in inorganic substances; but
when taken into the healthy stomach, is apt to putrefaction with
certainty by Tannin, healthy ulcers of the living man, if frequently
treated with Tannin, become impure, green, and putrid. A hand bathed
in warm water becomes afterwards colder than the hand which was not
bathed; and proportionately colder the warmer the water used for
bathing was.
Foot-note-8: This is a law of nature according
to which the administration of each medicine causes, at first,
certain dynamic changes and abnormal symptoms in the living human
body (primary effects of medicines), but afterwards, by means
of a peculiar antagonism (which in many cases might be termed an
effort of self-preservation), it causes a condition entirely the
opposite of the first effect (secondary symptoms); for
instance, narcotic substances produce primarily insensibility, and
secondarily painfulness.
Foot-note-9: Just as a scalded hand remains
cold and painless not much longer than while it is held in cold
water; it afterwards burns and pains much more
Foot-note-10: Thus the pain in a scaled hand
subsides suddenly, but only for a few minutes, by applying cold
water; but afterwards the inflammation and pain become much worse
than before (the inflammation, as a secondary effect of the cold
water, is an addition to the original inflammation caused by the
scalding which the cold water is unable to remove). The painful
fullness in the abdomen caused by constipation seems to disappear,
as if by magic, after the administration of a purgative; but as
early as the next day this painful fullness and tension of the
abdomen returns with the constipation, and increases the following
days, becoming worse than it was before. The stupor-like sleep after
opium causes a much greater sleeplessness the following night. It
becomes evident that this secondary condition constitutes a true
aggravation, and is shown by the fact that if the palliative is to
be repeated (for instance, opium for habitual sleeplessness or
chronic diarrhoea), it must be administered in increased doses, as
against an aggravated disease, if even then it can be forced to
produce, but for a short time, its seeming palliation.
Foot-note-11: We will mention only a few
every-day experiences. The burning pain which boiling water causes
on the skin is cured by the cook’s holding the burned hand near
the fire, or by uninterruptedly moistening it with heated alcohol
(or turpentine), which causes a still more intense burning
sensation. This specific treatment has been followed by varnishers
and similar artisans, and has been found reliable. The burning pain
caused by these strong and heated spirits remains only for a few
minutes, while the organism is homoeopathically relieved of the
inflammation caused by the burn. The destruction of the skin is soon
repaired by the formation of a thin cuticle, through which no more
alcohol penetrates. In this manner a burn is cured in a few hours by
the remedy causing a similar burning pain (by highly heated alcohol
or heated oil of turpentine); but if such a burn is treated by
cooling palliatives or with ointments, a malignant ulceration
follows, which is apt to last many weeks, and even months, causing
much suffering. Professional dancers know from long experience that
they are momentarily very much refreshed by drinking very cold
water, and by taking off their clothing when extremely heated from
dancing; but they know also that afterwards they will surely have to
suffer from severe, often fatal, diseases. Wisdom has taught such
extremely heated persons, without allowing themselves to go into the
cool air or remove their clothing, to take a drink which is also
heating, either punch or hot tea with arrack or brandy; and under
its effects, while slowly walking up and down the room, they are
very soon relieved of the hot fever caused by dancing. So even the
old and experienced mower never takes any other drink to cool
himself from the excessive thirst of labour under a hot sun than a
glass of whisky; in an hour’s time he is relieved from thirst and
heat, and feels well. An experienced person will not expose a frozen
limb to the fire, or to a hot stove, or put it in hot water, in
order to restore it; covering it with snow, or rubbing it with
ice-water, is the well-known homoeopathic remedy for it. The
disorders caused by excessive joy (the fantastic mirth, the
trembling restlessness, the excessive motion , the palpitation of
the heart, the sleeplessness) are soon and permanently removed by
coffee, which causes a similar ailment in those not used to take it.There thus exist many daily confirmations of the great truth,
that men are relieved from long-lasting sufferings by other
short-lasting evils, by a process of nature. Nations, for centuries
fallen into apathy and slavishness, elevated their spirits, began to
feel the dignity of men, and became again free men, after they had
been crushed to the dust by the western tyrants.
Foot-note-12: Even the plague-like diseases do
not necessarily infect every person; and other diseases leave many
more persons unaffected, even if they expose themselves to the
changes of the weather, the seasons of the year, and many other
pernicious influences. 1
2 3