“A CRITICAL STUDY OF RICHARD HUGHES VIEWS ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY AND ITS CLINICAL UTILITY” by DR G. KARTHIKEYAN Dissertation Submitted to Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Karnataka, Bangalore In partial fulfillment of The requirements for the degree of Doctor of Medicine in Organon of Medicine & Homoeopathic philosophy Under the guidance of DR. SHIVA PRASAD K. BSc., B.H.M.S., MD(Hom) Professor Head of the Department of Organon of Medicine and Homoeopathic Philosophy. Father Muller Homoeopathic Medical College Deralakatte, Mangalore, 2011
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“A CRITICAL STUDY OF RICHARD HUGHES VIEWS
ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY AND ITS
CLINICAL UTILITY”
by
DR G. KARTHIKEYAN
Dissertation Submitted to
Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Karnataka, Bangalore
In partial fulfillment of
The requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Medicine in
Organon of Medicine & Homoeopathic philosophy
Under the guidance of
DR. SHIVA PRASAD K. BSc., B.H.M.S., MD(Hom)
Professor
Head of the Department of Organon of Medicine and
Homoeopathic Philosophy.
Father Muller Homoeopathic Medical College
Deralakatte, Mangalore,
2011
ii
Certificate by the guide
This is to certify that the dissertation entitled “A CRITICAL STUDY
OF RICHARD HUGHES VIEWS ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ITS CLINICAL UTILITY”. is a bonafide research work done by
DR G.KARTHIKEYAN under my guidance and supervision during the
year 2008 – 2011, in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award
of the degree of “DOCTOR OF MEDICINE” (ORGANON OF
MEDICINE & HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY)
I have satisfied myself regarding the authenticity of his
observations noted in this dissertation and it conforms to the standards of
Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Karnataka, Bangalore. It has
not been submitted (partial or full) for the award of any other Degree or
Diploma.
Date: GUIDE
Place: Mangalore
DR SHIVA PRASAD K. BSc., B.H.M.S., MD(Hom)
Professor,
Head of the Department of Organon of
Medicine and Homoeopathic Philosophy,
Father Muller Homoeopathic Medical
College and Hospital
Deralakatte, Mangalore.
iii
Declaration by the candidate
I hereby declare that this dissertation entitled “A CRITICAL STUDY
OF RICHARD HUGHES VIEWS ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ITS CLINICAL UTILITY” is a bonafide and genuine research work carried
out by me, under the guidance of DR SHIVA PRASAD K. Head of
Department of Organon of medicine and Homoeopathic philosophy, during
the year 2008–2011, in partial fulfillment of requirement for the award of
DOCTOR OF MEDICINE (Organon Of Medicine & Homoeopathic
Philosophy) .
I have not previously submitted this work (partial or full) to any
other university for the award of any other Degree or Diploma.
Date:
Place: Mangalore DR G. KARTHIKEYAN
iv
Endorsement by the HOD, Principal/ Head of the Institution
This is to certify that the dissertation entitled “A CRITICAL STUDY
OF RICHARD HUGHES VIEWS ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY AND
ITS CLINICAL UTILITY” is a bonafide research work carried out by
DR G. KARTHIKEYAN under the guidance and supervision of
DR SHIVA PRASAD K. during the year 2008 – 2011, in partial
fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of “DOCTOR
OF MEDICINE” (ORGANON OF MEDICINE & HOMOEOPATHIC
PHILOSOPHY) .
We have satisfied regarding the authenticity of his observations
noted in this dissertation and it conforms to the standards of Rajiv Gandhi
University of Health Sciences, Karnataka, Bangalore. It has not been
submitted (partial or full) for the award of any other Degree or Diploma.
HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT PRINCIPAL
DR SHIVAPRASAD. K DR SRINATH RAO Bsc. , B.H.M.S. , MD(Hom) MD (Hom)
Professor, HOD HOD of Materia Medica
of Organon of Medicine and Fr. Muller Homoeopathic
Homoeopathic philosophy, Medical College,
Fr. Muller Homoeopathic Medical Deralakatte, Mangalore.
College, Deralakatte, Mangalore
Date: Date:
Place: Mangalore Place: Mangalore
v
COPYRIGHT
Declaration by the Candidate
I hereby declare that the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health
Sciences, Karnataka, Bangalore shall have the rights to preserve, use
and disseminate this dissertation / thesis in print or electronic format for
Essentially, it came down to a straight choice between signatures and provings:
'There is, afterall, an important difference between the selection of a medicine on
the basis of its ability to reproduce, in a healthy person, the symptom complex manifested
in a patient, and the selection of a medicine on the basis of some physical resemblance
between it and the organ affected...' [Nicholls, 1988, p.8]
Thus having dealt with three out of the four, we have now narrowed down our
search into the origin of homoeopathy to a single question, which concerns his discovery
of the law of similars. This also forms the basis for the name 'homoeopathy' a word
carefully chosen by 'Hahnemann the linguist' to most accurately portray the central, most
essential and most dominant feature of his system: the use of drugs based upon similia
similibus rather than upon the ancient Galenic principle of contraria contrariis, which
forms, then as now, the basis for allopathy: cure by opposites, using mixed drugs in high
doses and selected upon the basis of signatures and trial and error rather than provings.
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Regarding mixed drugs, Hahnemann's instinct left him in no doubt:
'Sophistical whimsicalities were pressed into the service...from these ancient times
came the unhappy idea, that if sufficient number of drugs were mixed in the receipt, it
could scarcely fail to contain the one capable of triumphing over the enemy of health...'
[Aesculapius in the Balance, 1805, in Lesser Writings, p.420-1]
Hahnemann's scornful view of Galen is also painfully apparent:
'But not long after them came Claudius Galen...the torch and trumpet of general
therapeutics, a man more desirous of inventing a subtle system than of consulting
experience. Disdaining to learn the powers of medicines by instituting experiments, he
gave the bad example of generalizing and framing hypotheses.' [On The Helleborism of
the Ancients, 1812, in Lesser Writings, p.592]
The law of similars was mentioned by Hippocrates [Lesser Writings, p.460] and
occasionally by other medical writers in history, but it seems never to have been regarded
as a dominant healing principle.
'In the Hippocratic text 'Of The Places In Man', probably written around 350 BC,
the writer holds that the general therapeutic rule is 'contraria contrariis curentur' but
notes 'Another type is the following: through the similar the disease develops and
through the employment of the similar the disease is healed'.' [In Nicholls, 1988, p.16]
It was revived for a brief time by Paracelsus before it sank back into obscurity.
Thus it does seem exceptional that Hahnemann stumbled upon it and elevated it into the
central principle of his new homoeopathic system. Therefore, in order to understand the
origin of this most central aspect of homoeopathy we need to more clearly delineate his
method of working. It is notoriously difficult to accurately recreate the situation of a
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long-dead person, let alone their thinking and the evolution of an idea, but we must at
least try.
Though it is true to say that Hahnemann in the 1780s was 'groping in the dark'
nevertheless we are right in saying that it was a partially illuminated darkness. It seems
that there are certain things he had already ruled out of his search, and certain things he
had already ruled in. For instance, he had more or less ruled out all the four central pillars
of Old Physick: signatures, large doses, mixed drugs and contraries, which he at least
suspected of being bogus. Once he had clearly identified these four principles [which
happened around 1783], then from that point forwards, we might conclude that he
conceived their opposite principles, at the outset, to be worth investigating more
thoroughly: i.e. provings, small doses, single drugs and similars.
Well, it is a neat idea, but the known facts simply do not support the notion. If he
had conceived a four-fold grand system early on, based simply upon some principles the
exact opposite to those of allopathy, then we could surely expect to find him reducing his
doses and conducting provings much earlier than he did? His first proving is likely to
have been conducted in 1790 and he did not reduce doses significantly and in truly
potentised form until 1799.
'In his early years of practice Hahnemann used doses comparable to those of his
colleagues: 5-50 grams of Antimony, 20-70 grams of Jalap Root…his 1796 Essay
mentions 'moderate' doses. In 1799 he first announced the principle of the infinitesimal
dose, and after 1800 his dose sizes were gradually reduced…' [Coulter, p.400]
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'We cannot fail to be struck by the sudden transition from the massive doses he
prescribed in 1798 to the unheard-of minuteness of his doses only one year later, and we
can but guess the causes for this abrupt transition.' [Dudgeon, 1853, pp.395-6]
He was still using material doses as late as 1798. That is 8 years after his
Cinchona bark proving and thus at least two elements of homoeopathy [the proving and
small doses], could not have been formulated at an early stage [even in his mind] in some
grand plan in the 1780s. It clearly does not seem to suggest, therefore, a system
formulated in one piece at an early stage in response to an early rejection of allopathy's
four principles.
'[After the first proving] Hahnemann waited some time before giving vent to these
ideas… 'The Essay on a New Principle'...did not appear until 1796. And a further
fourteen years passed before the first edition of 'The Organon' appeared...' [Nicholls,
p.10]
Rather, it seems to signify a piecemeal approach, a slow elaboration, probably
derived from 'groping in the dark', great uncertainty and a surprisingly slow evolution in
his thinking and experimentation. It suggests that his ideas meandered around somewhat,
and also that the first proving of 1790 might not have been such a great illumination to
him as is commonly supposed by us now looking back. If he had nurtured a grand plan
preconceived at an early stage, then why did he wait so long and delay his experiments?
Surely he would have pursued quickly, and with vigour, a systematic investigation much
earlier than he actually did? That certainly characterised his general approach to most
matters.
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The fact that he did not do that but meandered around for at least 8 years, quite
strongly implies that he was no nearer conceiving homoeopathy as a full system at an
early stage. Thus it seems clear that homoeopathy as a full system was not hit upon in one
go, but that its four main tenets were unravelled quite slowly and haphazardly in a
gradual and piecemeal fashion.
As well as not knowing precisely which principle of homoeopathy he came to
solidly embrace at what time or in what sequence, nor do we know in what order
Hahnemann definitely relinquished the 4 dogmas of Old Physick. We can merely guess
these things from what he said at various stages. But we do know that he detested high
doses of drugs from an early stage [see quote below from Lesser Writings, pp.747-9], and
that he railed against mixed drugs in general:
'I have no hesitation in asserting that whenever two medicines are mingled
together, they almost never produce each its own action on the system, but one almost
always different from the action of both separately - an intermediate action, a neutral
action, - if I may be allowed to borrow the expression from chemical language.' [Are the
Obstacles to Certainty and Simplicity in Practical Medicine Insurmountable?, 1797, in
Lesser Writings, p.320]
Afterall, these facts comprised the main reasons that he abandoned allopathic
practice [on his move to Dresden in the Fall of 1784; see Cook, pp.46-7 and Bradford,
p.36] in the first place. He also bemoaned, from an early stage, the use of signatures as
'an absurd and fabulous folly':
'I shall spare the ordinary school the humiliation of reminding them of the folly of
those ancient physicians who, determining the medicinal powers of crude drugs from
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their signature, that is from their colour and form...but I shall refrain from taunting the
physicians of the present day with these absurdities, although traces of them are met with
in the most modern treatises on materia medica.' [Examination of the Sources of the
Common Materia Medica, 1817, in Lesser Writings, p.670]
'...the mere suppositions of our superstitious forefathers, who had childishly
enough asserted certain medicinal substances to be the remedies of certain diseases,
merely on account of some external resemblance of those medicines with
some...[signature], or whose efficacy rested only on the authority of old women's tales, or
was deduced from certain properties that had no essential connexion with their fabulous
medicinal powers...' [On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine, 1808, in
Lesser Writings, p.502]
All this therefore probably implies that he begrudgingly tolerated the contraria
principle much longer than most homeopaths today would care to imagine, i.e. for
virtually all the 1780s. Finally, we can add that in the same period of time [1782-99] he
published numerous papers on Chemistry and Medicine in the journals, and translated
into German over twenty large medical texts from English, French, Latin and Italian, plus
a growing number of original essays on homoeopathy. Thus he had other reasons to be
seeming to make such slow progress.
Once he had completely abandoned mixed drugs and signatures then he was
forced to contemplate how to determine what the action of a single drug is upon the
healthy organism. This forms the central and most pivotal event in the development of
homoeopathy, in my view, as it shows a major turning point in his thinking. We can now
focus on this central problem. At that point in his knowledge Hahnemann must have
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found himself gazing at several rivers of thought converging before him. As we pointed
out above, in order to determine the action of a single drug you either have to follow
tradition and signatures or you do what? What other means is there to find out except by
giving it to the sick? Thus he faced two choices: give the drug to the sick or to the
healthy. He was averse to the former, as it proves so hard to distinguish the symptom
elements of the illness from the effects caused by the drug.
'The dispute as to whether the brooklime [Anagallis arvensis] and the bark of
Misletoe [Viscum album] possess great curative virtues or none at all, would immediately
be settled, if it were tried on the healthy whether large doses produce bad effects, and an
artificial disease similar to that in which they have been hitherto empirically used.' [Essay
On a New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Powers of Drugs, 1796, in Lesser
Writings, pp.269-70]
Another stream of ideas flowed from his deep interest in poisons, which reveal the
effects of drugs upon the healthy. For example, his publications: On Arsenical Poisoning,
1786; The Complete Mode of Preparing The Soluble Mercury, 1790; On The Best
Method of Preventing Salivation and The Destructive Effects of Mercury, 1791; What
Are Poisons? What are Medicines?, 1806.
'All other substances which excite antagonistic irritability and artificial fever
check intermittent fever, if administered shortly after the attack...all bitter plants excite,
in large doses, some artifical fever, however small, and thus occasionally drive away
intermittent fever by themselves.'[Bradford, p.49]
'Hahnemann very carefully argues the question of the new law; he adduces many
results of poisonings by drugs, gives his experiences in the uses of medicines...and
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records the symptoms that certain medicines produced on himself and others.' [Bradford,
p.58]
If the effects of poisons on the healthy can be delineated in such detail, then why
not the effects of any drug at all? Thus at least two forces were pushing him in the same
direction towards the first proving. Yet another important event also pushed him along
the same path: the side-effects of high doses, especially of mercurials for Syphilis became
a central problem of his early practice. He knew that Mercury could cure Syphilis. He
had a mercury preparation named after him [Mercurius solubilis Hahnemannii] which
also shows how much interest he took in the treatment of that condition.
It is at this point also that the work of the English surgeon, John Hunter [1728-
93], becomes an important influence upon Hahnemann. Coulter suggests [p.356-7] that
Hahnemann gained some insights into the tenet: 'what will cause can cure' from reading
Hunter's work on the Mercurial treatment of Syphilis:
'This new approach [i.e. the proving]…was inspired by the writings of the
profoundly original and pathbreaking Scottish physician, John Hunter [1728-1793].'
[Coulter, p.356]
Hunter had worked on venereal diseases and later published texts on that subject
[e.g. A Treatise on the Venereal Disease, Longmans, London, 1837]. Hahnemann
referenced Hunter's work in his early work on Syphilis published in 1786 [Instructions
for Surgeons on Venereal Diseases, Leipzig, 1789; see Cook, p.51; Gumpert, p.58]:
'Although the translation of Cullen's treatise appears to have been a crucial
turning point in Hahnemann's thought, he was neither the first to have suggested the
simile - as he admitted - nor was its presence entirely absent from his own thinking prior
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to 1790. John Hunter's essay, 'Treatise on the Venereal Diseases', in which he observed
the effects of venereal inoculation, seems to have been influential. Certainly, Hunter's
work is mentioned by Hahnemann in his own publication of 1789, 'Instructions for
Surgeons'...and indications of the subsequent direction of Hahnemann's ideas, realised in
the 'New Principle' essay of 1796, may be found here.
One of the most immediate precursors of Hahnemann was Anton von Stoerck
[1731-1803] who, in the late 1760s, suggested the treatment of diseases with poisons
according to the principle of similars....since Hahnemann had studied medicine under
Joseph von Quarin at Vienna, who in turn had studied under von Stoerck, one of the
more proximate sources of Hahnemann's thinking is perhaps indicated here.' [Nicholls,
1988, p.12; see also Bradford, p.50]
'…the parallels between the two works are striking. To Hunter is thus due a share
of the credit for Hahnemann's discovery of the drug proving.' [Coulter, p.356]
The important line of Hahnemann's reasoning here must be teased right out into
the open, as it reveals quite clearly how the observations he made were suggestive of
what later became elevated into important homoeopathic principles.
He knew that Mercury can cause as many symptoms as it can cure and that the
higher the dose the more aggravated are the symptoms it produces. This taught him the
curious and sensitive relationship between toxic and therapeutic action. Thus we can
safely conclude from this the line of reasoning which must have trickled through
Hahnemann's mind when observing such events. He must have realised that crude doses
in general are bad because they produce unwanted aggravations and iatrogenic diseases
[side-effects]:
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'The mischievous effects of...overloading them with strong unknown drugs, will be
perfectly obvious...every medicine is a disease-creating substance, consequently every
powerful medicine taken day after day...will make healthy persons ill...long-continued
doses of strong allopathic medicines...[leads to] the establishment of permanent
alterations of our organisms...that is not capable of being cured and removed by any
human art...for which there is and can be no remedy on earth, no antidote, no restorative
medicines in nature.' [Allopathy: A Word of Warning To All Sick Persons, 1831, in
Lesser Writings, pp.747-9]
Yet he also knew that Mercury in small doses could greatly improve or even cure
Syphilis. Thus he must have conceived from such observations the thought that the most
similar medicine [what he called a 'specific' but not meaning the same as a specific in
medicine] has a special and unique power.
He was the first to see a polarity principle operating in relation to dosage. Thus
for Merc and Syph, for Bell and Scarlet fever and also for Cinchona and Malaria. This
revealed that the specific drug [i.e. the most similar or homoeopathic to the patient] has a
very special power over its similar disease [patient]. Small doses cure while large doses
aggravate. What he next had to do was to experiment with crude doses of ANY drug to
see what they could produce in the healthy. Poisons are special, and stand out from all
other drugs, by virtue of their strong power to produce symptoms. Indeed, the 'power to
produce symptoms' can in fact be regarded as the guiding aphorism which led
Hahnemann ['torch and trumpet'] to the realisation that poisons held an important key to
solving his central problem about similars and the action of the single drug. It is this very
axiom which I think must have droned through Hahnemann's mind continuously like a
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loud mantra. Again we see, all roads led him to the proving, i.e. experiments with mild
self-poisonings. The purpose? His purpose was to settle for once and all, unequivocally
and without the use of signatures, what the therapeutic action of a single drug is.
But to deliberately write him off as merely yet another 'system-builder' in
medicine is to woefully misapprehend the man, and his work:
'After all, Hahnemann had cast homoeopathy in substantially the same eighteenth
century mold that had given shape to the systems of Cullen, Brown and
Rush...homoeopathy offered an unambiguous example of extreme rationalism informing a
dogmatic system of practice with dire consequences.'[Warner, pp.52-3]
'Thus Hahnemann reduced most conditions to the itch and most treatments to the
like cures like theory and the high dilution formulas, somewhat as Dr. Still would later
reduce all pathologic processes to spinal conditions and all therapeutic practice to spinal
manipulations.' [Shryock, 1966, p.171]
That he thoroughly detested medical systems of ideas and speculations is very
apparent in all his writings:
'There was now the influence of the stars, now that of evil spirits and witchcraft;
anon came the alchymist with his salt, sulphur and mercury; anon Silvius, with his acids,
biles and mucus...our system-builders delighted in these metaphysical heights, where it
was so easy to win territory; for in the boundless region of speculation every one
becomes a ruler who can most effectually elevate himself beyond the domain of the
senses.' [Aesculapius in the Balance, 1805, in Lesser Writings, p.421-2]
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He also edged closer to settling the question of dosage. All this work also
explained to him the fundamental nature of what similar really means. And also in this he
found the primary and secondary or 'biphasic action' of drugs too:
' ..close inspection of the action of medicinal substances on the healthy led to a
major discovery – the biphasic action of drugs.' [Coulter, p.363; see also Nicholls, p.78]
Thus we can begin to see that all of this research and experimentation in the
1780s and 90s led him to contemplate and grapple with all these profound and unresolved
aspects of medicine. He could also address the problem of the similarity between a drug
and its disease. The fact that Bell and Scarlet fever and Merc and Syph resonated with
each other so well and so profoundly allowed him to see that the law of similars as
formulated by the doctrine of signatures, though imperfect, was perhaps closer to the
truth afterall and capable of being forged into an infinitely more precise and workable
therapeutic weapon against disease than contraries ever could. In some manner therefore
he must have sensed the superiority of the law of similars. Arguably, it was only through
his deep and sustained contemplation of the notion of similars and poisonings which led
him finally to his 'home port' of the proving technique.
Indeed, in the period in question, Hahnemann seems to have been pretty well
assailed on all sides by many difficult and unresolved medical problems at the same time
as to make his task so much more difficult, and this, probably explains the relatively slow
pace of his progress between 1782 and 1799. Like a military commander besieged and
fighting on several active fronts at the same time he could only devote a small amount of
his time, energy and intelligence to any one problem at a time. In short, this meant that he
was flooded out with too many questions to solve to allow him the time to disentangle
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them quickly into some kind of meaningful framework. It really is a testament to his
inventive genius that he did settle all these complex problems in less than two decades.
Only when we today contemplate the vast size of the homoeopathic materia medica, our
relatively detailed and exhaustive knowledge of each drug and all the information in the
Organon about drug actions, can we fully appreciate the staggering achievement of
Hahnemann.
At that early stage he had no materia medica at all, worthy of that name, and stood
at the base of what would soon become one of mountainous proportions. For example,
how was he to know that the symptom phenomena he had observed with Cinchona,
Mercury and Belladonna also applied to all other drugs? He had no way of knowing if the
production of symptoms in the healthy was a principle applying to all drugs. Only after
he had proved tens of drugs was he able, confidently and unambiguously, to declare that
the proving seemingly was a universal and immutable principle. Very gradually he solved
all these complex, profound and mutually entangled problems, to create an entirely new
medical system founded solely upon experimentation and sound principles - the very
things which eighteenth century allopathy was woefully devoid of, being in fact a mass of
warring factions:
'Physiology...looked only through the spectacles of hypothetical conceits, gross
mechanical explanations, and pretensions to systems...little has been added...what are we
to think of a science, the operations of which are founded upon perhapses and blind
chance?' [Aesculapius In the Balance, 1805, in Lesser Writings, pp.423-6]
'...because they placed the essence of the medical art, and their own chief pride,
in explaining much even of the inexplicable...this was the first and great delusion they
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practised upon themselves and on the world. This was the unhappy conceit which, from
Galen's time down to our own, made the medical art a stage for the display of the most
fantastic, often most self-contradictory, hypotheses, explanations, demonstrations,
conjectures, dogmas, and systems, whose evil consequences are not to be overlooked...'
[On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine, 1808, in Lesser Writings, pp.489-
90]
Thus all these considerations reinforce the impression we have made regarding
the remarkable nature of Hahnemann's achievement. What is remarkable about him is
that in the same period of time he managed to identify and distance himself from the 4
fundamental principles of Old Physick, to formulate and develop the principles of
homoeopathy, to investigate the primary and secondary actions of poisons and drugs and
to investigate the polarity principle of dosage [see Coulter, pp.363-7]. He thoroughly
tested and established all of these four aspects of his search. And he did all these things
entirely on his own. He was the only person to do this. Only through thoroughly
immersing himself in all of that could he confidently emerge from it at the end both with
a full practical system of therapy in his hands that worked as well as one which rested
upon a firm bedrock of clear principles. Homoeopathy as a working system was the child
of his practical experimentation, while the Organon sprang into life from his investigation
of the theoretical principles of medicine in general, both of which he had researched
pretty exhaustively between 1782 and 1799. The fact that he had read so widely of other
medical writers and translated so many important texts into German, demonstrate the
seriousness and great learning he brought to his task:
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'Let it be borne in mind that he was a thoroughly well-posted physician, skilled
both in theory and practice, better read in the various notions of the medical books of the
time than most of his fellows.' [Bradford, p.35]
He tried to show us that Hahnemann’s method fulfils these requirements that his
way of regarding disease and drug action is eminently philosophical, that his direction to
treat likes with likes results logically from a true induction from the facts of the matter
and his reduction of dose follows as a necessary corollary thereto. But it remains a
method still and noting more and not Hahnemannian but Homoeopath.10
THE ORGANON
1. The organon was first issued in 1810. A second edition appeared in 1819; a third in
1824: a fourth in 1829; and a fifth and last in 1833. Each of these is described as
“augmented” (2nd), “Improved” (3rd), on both “augmented and improved” (4th and 5th);
and in truth all save the third, show considerable changes as compared with their
immediate predecessors. It is quite impossible to form an adequate estimate, either of the
work or of its author, without some knowledge of the changes it has undergone in its
successive stages, without this, neither for can critics are never weary of ridiculing as one
of the fundamental principles of Homoeopathy, first appeared in the fourth edition, i.e., in
1829. Theory of the dyanmization of medicines – i.e. in 1829. Theory of the actual
increase of power obtained by attenuation, when accompanied by maturation or
succession is hardly propounded, when accompanied by trituration on sucessussion – is
hardly propounded until the fifth edition. Again, there is the doctrine of a “vital force”, as
the source of all the phenonuna of life, as the sphere in which disease begins and
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medicines act. This has been regarded by Many of Hahnemanns followers as an essential
part of his philosophy. “Voki donc” enelaims M leon Simon.
But the earliest mention of this conception occurs in the fourth edition; and the
full statement of it with which we are familiar in the fifth (§ 9-16) appears there for the
first time)11.
2. The “Organon” is Hahnemann’s experition and vindication of his therapeutic method.
It had been preceded by a number of essays in HUFELAND’S JOURNAL – the leading
Medical organ of the time, in Germany, of these the most noteworthy were “on a new
principle for ascertaining the curative powers of Drugs” (1792). “Are the obstacles to
certainty and simplicity in practical medicine insurmountable? (1797); and “the medicine
of experience” (1806) the time seemed now to have come when there should be published
separately a fully account of the new departure he was advocating; and hence the
“organon” of 1810.
He gave his treatise this name because, there can be little doubt, have had
Aristotle in memory, whose various treatises on logic were summed up under the
common little “organon”, logic the art of reasoning – is the INSTRUMENT of research
and discovery; Hahnemann designed his method as one which should use for the
discovery of the best remedies for diseases. But the example immediately before his
mind, and through whom he was probably led to Aristotle, must have been Bacon. The
second treatise of the “Instauration Majra” of the English chancellor is entitled “Novum
organism”, it was the setting forth of a new mode of reasoning, which in scientific
research should supersede that of Aristotle and lead to developments of knowledge
hitherto unattained. That Hahnemann should aspire to do such work for medicine as was
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done for science in general by Bacon has been scouted by his enemies, and even
deprecated by his friends, as presumption, and yet no comparision could better illustrate
the real position of the man both in its strength and in its weakness. If he erred as to
special points of pathology, and even of practice, we must remember that Bacon was a
doubtful acceptor of the Copernican Astronomy and ridiculed Harvey’s doctrine of the
circulation, while he saw no difficulty in the transmutation of metals on the other side,
how truly Baconian is the whole spirit and aim of the “organon” I like his great exemplar,
Halenemann sought to recall men from the spinning of facts, like him, he set up the
practical - which in this case is the healing of disease – as the proper aim of medical
philosophy not seeking in knowledge a terrace, for a wandering and variable mind to
walk up and down with a feier prospect, but rather accounting it” a rich store house for
the glory of the creatoa, and THE FEUEF of MAN’S ESTATE”
Hahnemann first called his work “organon of the Rational Medical Science !
(HEILKUNDE); but from the second edition onwards the little was changed to “organon
of the Healing Art” (HEILKUNST) – the “rational being here, and in all other places of
its occurance, either dropped or replaced by “true” or genuine” (WAHRE). Why this
alteration? The elimination of the term “rational” has been supposed to “imply that his
followers were required to accept his doctrines as though they were the revelations of a
new Gospel, to be received as such, and not to be subjected to rational criticism
3. On the title page of his first edition, Hahnemann placed a motto from the prect Gellert,
which has been rendered into English thus.
“The truth we mortals need
us bless to make and keep
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the all – wise slightly covered O’er
But did not bury deep”
This was replaced in subsequent edition by the words “Aude Sapere”, but it
continued to denote the profound conviction and motive inspiration of Hahnemann’s
mind. It was the same though as that which he expressed in the “Medicine of Experience”
“As the wise and beneficent creater has permitted those innumerable states of the human
body differing from health, which we team diseases. He must at the same time have
revealed to us a distinct mode whereby we may obtain a knowledge of diseases that shall
suffice to enable us to employ the remedies. Capable of subduring them, He must have
shown to us an equally distinct mode whereby we may discover in medicines those
properties that render them suitable for the cure of diseases.
If we were going through the introduction in detail, there woruld be many points
on which criticism and correction would be necessary, but the general soundness of its
attitude must be sufficient for us to day. It bears to the body of the work the same relation
as bacon’s “Deaugmentin” to his “Novum Organism” and the treatise on “Ancient
Medicine” to the “Sphorism” of Hippocrates.
5. We come now to the “organon” proper. It consist of a series of aphorism in its latest
form 294 in number, to which are appended numerous and often lengthy notes. This is a
form of composition eminently suggestive and stimulating. It is endeared to many of us
by coleridge’s “Aids to Reflection”, but Hahnemann must have taken it from “Novum
organism” Perhaps also with a recollection of the father of medicine which derives its
name there from.
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While each aphorism is complete in itself and might be made the text of medical
discourse, the work they collectively constitute has a definite outline and structure which
remains unchanged through the successive editions, and is as evident in the first as in the
last.
The three desiderata of physician, these are
1st the knowledge of the morbid state which supplies the indication
2nd the knowledge of medicinal powers – which gives the instrument
3rd the knowledge how to choose and administer the remedy – which is the thing
indicated.
The first part of the organon (down to § 70) treats of these points doctrinally, by
way of argument; second practically, in way of argument; second practically, in the form
of precept. The summing up of the doctrinal portion is contained in § 71.
In § 71, Hahnemann propounds the practical questions, which in the remainder of
the treatise he seeks to answer, thus.
1. How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary to be known in order to cure
the disease?
2. How is he to gain a knowledge of the instruments adapted for the cure of the
natural disease – the pathogenetic powers of medicines?
3. What is the must suitable method of employing these artificial morbific agents
(Medicines) for the cure of natural disease.
In reply to the first question, he gives rules for the examination of the patient; to
the second, for the moving of medicines upon the healthy to the third, for the
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determination of similarity, the choice and repetition of the dose, the preparations of
drugs, the diet and regimen to the observed, and so forth10.
THE KNOWLEDGE OF DISEASE
In dealing with three elements of the method of Hahnemann the aspect it takes of
disease are
a) The mode in which it ascertains drug action
b) The principle on which it fits the one to the other
c) And the two elements of comparison i.e.
• Effects of drugs on the healthy body
• Clinical features of the disease
Disease
Etiology and pathology are uncertain but signs and symptoms never change from
the time of Syderham, Hippocrates.
So Hahnemann took those features as the disease basic of method. He rejected the
pathology absolutely for the therapeutic purposes. Only “TOTALITY OF THE
SYMPTOM” is to the therapeutist, the disease. Is this position tenable? No if we were
dealing with an object of science it is uncertain that symptamatology would be an
insufficient basis for our knowledge.
“Infectious Diseases” In Zeimssen’s Cyclopedia same symptoms can be given by
two diseases so knowledge of pathology is must.
- Uses of knowledge of disease / pathology – knowledge of morbid state is
needed for prognosis.
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- For the general management of the patient
- For estimating the influence of treatment.
All this time we have been dealing with general principles: but us look at special
forms of disease, and see whether or not the Hahnemann mode of regarding them is
sufficient for their treatment12.
1. The FEVERS constitute a group which plays a large part in daily practice. They are
maladies in which morbid increase of temperature exists prior or out of proportion to
any local inflammation which may be present. The theory of this state is still a moot
one. According to some pathologist it depends upon excessive heat production,
according to other upon deficient heat radiation, while yet another class believe that
both factors operate at one time or another in the process. But whatever be the geneim
of fever, it remains a positive fact, a clinical entity, with which we have to deal. Upon
the Homoeopathic principles we have to treat it with drugs capable of producing
fever. How they do so, we may not know, but our ignorance of the process matters
little if we are sure about the result, “An infinitesimal quality of Atropia – a mere
atom,” writes Dr. John Herely” as soon as it enters the blood, originates an action
which is closely allied to, if it be not identical with, that which induces the circulatory
and nervous phenomena accompanying Enteric or they pus fever. This is to be a fact
from Hahnemann’s proving of Belladonna, yet minute quantities of Atropia became
in our hands trusted remedies for these very fevers.
2. After fevers, the most important group of disease consists of the
INFLAMMATIONS. To the pathology of this morbid process many pages are
devoted at the commencement of very treatise on medicine on surgery. Whether, after
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all that has been written, we know much about it in its essence, may well be doubted,
but even if we do, of what avail is our knowledge for treatment – at any rate for
medicinal treatment?. The old phenomenal signs, DOLOR, CALOR, RUBOR,
TUMOR, still for all practical purposes constitute INFLAMMATION, when
externally manifested and when it is internal, and so invisible, the facts which lead us
to infer its presence and seat are no less of the symptomatic order. To treat
inflammation homoeopathically, it is only necessary to find a drug capable of setting
it up, at the same spot, and in the same manner, as evidenced by the symptoms.
3. The NEUROSES, of which in the third place Hughes speak, are still – as Libermeister
says symptomatic groups. Their unity is one neither of cause nor of lesion, it is
clinical only. It is of much interest to know what is the seat and process of the
epileptic paroxysm, but our choice of anti – epileptic remedies must be determined
mainly by the power they have of inducing similar paroxysm in the healthy subject,
explain it or not as we can. In like manner is it with cholera and tetanus and hysteria,
no conceivable knowledge we can gain as to their intimate nature would make us
better able to fit Homoeopathic remedies to them than we should be, if we possessed
their symptomatic analogues in drugs.
It thus appears that of the three elements which exist in all knowledge –
phenomena, laws and causes, it is the first which for positive therapeutic action chiefly
concerns us in disease. Not that the other two are worthless to us, even for this end our
laws here are classification – the recognition in morbid states and genera, species and
varieties analogous to those of animated nature. These enable us to form groups of
remedies associated with them, instead of having to wander through the whole materia
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medica for each prescription. They also give continuity to medicinal treatment, without
which the USUS IN MORBIS were of no avail. Hahnemann led the way here, by
constantly insisting on the existence of fixed and definite types of disease, to which
standing remedies should be applied and by giving us group of “Antipsorics”. I fear,
however, that he must be considered as having rejected all enquiries into causes – I mean
proximate causes, the noumena of the phenomena – in this sphere. In so doing we need
not follow him. His ground for taking symptoms as the element of parallelism between
disease and drug action was that they only were surely known in his day this was true,
and his selection of them was must prudent. But to maintain that they alone were
knowable us unwarrantably to bar the progress of science. His stricter followers have
acted on the DICTUM, and have looked askance on the positive pathology of the present
day, with its physical diagnosis and post – mortem confirmations. They have always been
a decade or more behind hand in their recognition of such distinction as those between
typhus and typhoid, between chancre and chancroid and in their use of such means as
auscultation and thermometry. Now this is altogether wrong. An inference from
symptoms if sure is as good a basis for treatment as symptom themselves. This sureness
is assumed in the prognosis given and the general management instituted.
Why should it not be also for purposes of drug selection? By proceeding upon it
we secure another route to the SIMILE we desiderate, we use symptoms to reach it,
because they are its most certain expression, but if it can be otherwise attained, the
alternative access may often be useful10.
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THE KNOWLEDGE OF MEDICINES
The knowledge of medicine is the tools of the healing art, as disease is the
material on which it works? What are medicines? I do not know that any better definition
of them can be given than that which was forts by Hahnemann in 1805, in the preface to
his “Fragmenta de Viribus Medicamentorum Positivis” his own difference with him
would be that I should place the corollary foremost and define a medicine as a substance
which has the power of changing sickness in to health and therefore – on the principle,
“Nil prodest quod non loedit idem of altering health into sickness.
On what ground is any substance to be reckoned a medicine? And how is it to be
ascertained what are the morbid condition and process it can favourably modify? There
are but few ways by which to arrive at such conclusions.
- Empirical – Pseudo – rational
- Rational – True – rational
In the suggestion of 1796 and the examination of the source of the common
Materia medica of 1817 Hahnemann has fully considered the empirical and pseudo
rational ways of arriving at the knowledge of medicines, and has proved the wanting.
1. Many perhaps most, of the ordinary remedial uses of drugs, have been stumbled upon
by chance. It has generally been stumbled upon by chance. It has generally been the
“common man” (as Hahnemann calls him) Sometimes even the still lower brute that
has discovered them and the professional healer has taken the hint and adopted the
practice. After his manner has been gained bark as a remedy for ague, burnt sponge
for Goitre, Arnica for the effects of falls and strains, Graphites for tetters, sulphur for
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the itch not less empirically though among the practitioners of medicine, has arises
the use of mercury and Iodide of potash in syphilis etc.
Now it would be the height of unwisdom to neglect information from this
source. A remedy is a remedy, however comes at, and whether conforming or not to
any laws of action we may suppose to prevail.
2. There are certain pseudo – rational modes of discovering remedies which have
brought undeserved slight on those truly bearing the name. Such is the doctrine of
“signatures”, and much of the iatro – mechanical and iatro – chemical theory of
former and later times. When a real medicine has been gained by these means – as
chelidonium in disorders of the liver and muriatic acid in low fevers – it has been by
coincidence, not from induction. The result is practically empirical. The truly rational
method is that which infers the place and the power of a drug in disease from its
behavior in health. Every such substance, on being introduced into the animal
organism, causes certain disturbances, certain changes, each has its proper series of
effects each selects certain organs and tissues, or certain tracts and regions of the
body, and there sets up phenomena of a definite kind.
The organisms on which the effects of drugs can be ascertained are those of the
drugs, can be ascertained are those of the lower animals and of man.
1. There was a time when the corpus vile of mites was thought the only ground on
which FIET EXPERIMENTUM, and even now it plays by far the largest part in the
pharmacological research of the profession at large. If this were sound practice,
Hahnemann would be somewhat discredited; for he, recognizing that it was available,
deliberately rejected it. But have his arguments against its adequacy ever been
answered?10,12
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SIMILIA SIMILIBUS
The two elements contained in the maxim simila similibus curentur – the
phenomena and sensations of disease and of drug – action respectively. It now becomes
our task to see how we are to put the SIMILIA together so as to curare by their means.
1. Drugs, being material substances, must if introduced in sufficient quantity into the
body, act MECHANICALLY, by their bulk and weight, and so forth. Such properties of
theirs have found little use in medicine – the swallowing of crude mercury to overcome
instestinal obstruction, of alive oil to detach Biliary calculi, being the only familiar
instances. Whatever its value – and the latter practice seems effective and is certainly
harmless – it has noting to do with out present subject; SIMILIA SIMILIBUS has no
application here.
2. Drugs, when taken from the mineral kingdom have CHEMICAL properties, and they
exert these within the organism as they do outside it, with such modification as the higher
laws of life there regining impose upon their action. An alkali will mentralise an Acid in
the stomach as in a test-tube, and so may give immediate relief of heartburn. A solvent of
wric acid such as the Boro-citvate of Magnesia seems, and piperatin is reputed, to be –
will act thus upon it in the kidney almost as well as in the apparatus of the laboratory.
These are examples of the chemical action of medicines.
3. We are thus shut up, for the sphere of Homoeopathic action, to the third and last kind
of drug – energy, which may be called DYNAMIC from its analogy with the forces of
Nature generally VITAL From its manifestation only in the presence of life. It is the
reaction which drug-stimuli excite in living matter. But even here we must recognize a
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limitation vital action which is exclusively topical does not necessarily, or even
ordinarily, conform to the law of similar. It may do so.
The local application of nitrate of silver in inflammations of skin and mucous
membrane, which traussean cited as the cardinal example of the great therapeutic
principle of substitution which at present rules supreme in medical practice – this is
obviously an illustration of SIMILIA SIMILIBUS as the same writer admits.
But if we follow up our topical agents, we shall find the relation of similarity to
fail us. The action of Armica in easing the pain and promoting the resolution of
contusions is a dynamic one; but no such condition can be induced by applying Arnica to
a healthy part. Calendula is a vulnerary by no chemical or mechanical properties it
possesses; it cannot act otherwise than vitally; yet it has no power of causing wounds on
the unbroken skin. And conversely, it does not follow that because the fumes of osmium
set up eczema on the parts exposed to them, that metal taken internally will act upon
idiopathic eczema as eg: srsemic. The later inflames the kin, however introduced into the
system it is therefore constitutionally Homoeopathic to Dermatitis, while the other is only
locally so.
Dynamic action, to be available according to the law of similar, must thus not be
topical only. It must further be exerted on the living matter of the patients self, and not on
that of guests to which he is against his will playing the part of host. It is not by
Homoeopathic action that Sulphur ointment cures the Itch, for its influence is exerted on
the Acarus Scabiei rather than on the skin that parasite irritates. The same statement may
be made as to the living creatures which infest the intestines.
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Santonine kills the round worm, filix mas the Taemia, by dynamic toxic power
directly exerted; the practice is as rational as that which we follow scabies, but there is
nothing in it which lends itself to the rule SIMILIA SIMILIBUS.
It is nevertheless, within this sphere that the method finds its place, it is
dynamically acting drugs influencing living matter which is neither parasitic nor
adventitious and doing this constitutionally and not merely topically, which can become
Homoeopathic remedies. From their list we reach these, ordinarily, by the rule “let likes
be treated by likes”. The similarity here required is, as we have seen, to be found in the
pathogenetic effects of drugs of drugs as compared with the phenomena of disease. To
establish it, therefore, a collection of such of these effects as had been hitherto observed,
and a systemic eliciting and recording of fresh ones, was necessary. This task was
initiated by Hahnemann, and has been continued by his followers, in the manner I have
already described from the four large volumes of his “materia medica pura” and “chronic
disease” and the similar number complementary thereto of the “cyclopaedia of drug
pathogenesy.
We have got, then our dynamic constitutionally, acting drugs; we have the record
of their effects of this kind in health. There are Hahnemann has pointed out, three modes
and three only, in which such application can be made.
• Having ascertained that a given substance has the power of exciting any bodily
function you give it in disease of other parts when you think such excitation desirable.
Thus you administer diuretic in Hydrothorax and pragmatics in apoplexy. It is not
kidney or bowels are inert and require rising to their normal activity, but it is that we
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think an exaggeration of their ordinary function likely to benefit the water – logged
pleura, or the congested brain.
Here there is no relationship between the physiological effects of the drug and
the phenomena of disease. They are foreign, the one to the other; we may fairly cell
the practice so exemplified Alloeo (or) Allo-pathic.
• The same discovery having been made, you apply your knowledge in dealing with
opposite conditions of such functions themselves. They give diuretic in Ischuria and
your purgative in constipation, and they administer paralyzing agent for spasm and
anaesthetic for pain. Here we are acting directly on the part affected and the
symptoms of drug and disease admit of true comparison. The relation between them
is expressed by the ancient formula. “CONTRARIA CONTRARIS” The practice is
enantio or Antipathic.
• But there is yet a third alternative still acting upon the part affected, you may give
your drug in morbid states thereof similar instead of opposite to its physiological
effects. You may administer your diuretic in polyuria, your cathartic in Diarrhoea:
you may treat mania with stramomium and tetanus with strychnia. If you do so, you
are, as Sir Thomas Watson recognized in regard of the later pick of practice, acting”
according to the Hahnemanic doctrine – SIMILIA SIMILIBUS CURANTUR – a
doctrine much older, however than Hahnemann” SIMILIA SIMILIBUS”
By cognate reason it is easy to show the superiority of the third or
Homoeopathic method. Like the Antipathic, it acts directly on the affected parts,
leaving healthy regions unharmed; but this last end it is more certain to secure, from
the non – perturbing dosage which answers its purpose. It is thus gentle in its manner,
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opening the closed door of the disease body, not by smashing the lock with a
crowbar, but by finding the proper key. Homoeopathic treatment, moreover, is
complete, it does not, like its rival, employ bits of physiological action, but opposes
wholes to wholes, tracking – by its investigation of the totality of symptoms – the
malady in its entire evolution and so reaching it in root as well as in branches.
For the law of action and Re-action which makes the secondary effects of
Antipathic palliatives injurious have operates beneficially.
He had already cited from the organon, the three further points – the safety of
the method, the superiority in KIND of the remedies it educes, and the success which
it has uniformly displayed when fairly contrasted with traditional medication.
The Antipathic and the Homoeopathic modes of applying the pathogenetic
effects of drugs to the treatment of disease have this advantage in common over the
Allopathic that they act directly on the affected parts and avoid disturbing those that
are healthy. But then, of the two, the Homoeopathic use commends itself to us by its
greater gentleness. The Antipathic drug has to oppose the morbid process that is
going on.
In Alleopathic and Antipathic medication alike they have to induce the
physiological action of drugs – that is, you employ them as poisons. In the
Homoeopathic we convert them into medicines. “Their whole physiological action”
as our lamented Drydale used to say” is absorbed into their therapeutics”. They need
no large quantities; and here come in one characteristic feature of Homoeopathy – the
smallness of its dosage.
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• But Homoeopathy has further claims than such negative ones as these. Its remedies
are inoffensive; they are non – perturbative, they are liable to do no injury from too
liberal or long – continued use, but they are also positive agents, of a kind which
forms, they highest DSIDERATA of medicine. Homoeopathy is specific medication
and SIMILA SIMILIBUS is an instrument for the discovery of specific – not for
types of disease merely, but for each individual case. Hahnemann claimed this place
for his method, simply “specific” and even after he had began in that year to use the
term Homoeopathic.
There could only be one challenge to this inference the appeal to facts. If in spite
of its pleasantness and harmlessness and of the theoretic promise of the remedies it
employs, homoeopathy had failed to hold its own in actual practice, we should have to
keep silence about it, and at the best wait for a brighter day.
The conclusion arrived at is that homoeopathic remedies are, from their nature,
from their negative advantages, and from the comparative results obtained with them, the
best that can be employed and such as should always be resorted to when practicable10.
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THE SELECTION OF SIMILAR REMEDY
That likes should – wherever practicable – be treated by likes and that the
elements of the comparison should ordinarily be the clinical features of diseases and the
symptoms produced by drugs in the healthy – these points have now been established can
be used as it would seem we could proceed at once to select our remedies.
It might have appeared to Hahnemann at first at the problem was thus simple. Put
in the fourth edition of the ‘organon’ (1829) he introduced a paragraph which recognized
the necessity for wider considerations. It is that numbered 85 in the fifth edition, which is
the one we have in our hands as translated by Dr. Dudgeon. i.e “useful to the physician
in assisting him to cure, are the particular of the most probable exciting cause of an acute
disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history of a chronic disease, to
enable him to discover its fundamental cause, which generally depends on a chronic
miasm. In these investigations, the apparent physicals on a chronic miasm. In these
investigations, the apparent physicals on a chromic miasm. In these investigations, the
apparent physical constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his
moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and
domestic relations, his age, sexual functions etc to be taken into consideration.
There are, we will deserve, two distinct points made in this aphorism. The first is
that the causes of disease, predisposing and exciting are to be taken into account, not
merely that they may be removed where possible, but as guides to the selection of the
remedy. Thus, in choosing between Nux Vomica and pulsatilla in a case of dyspepsia, the
sex, temperament and disposition of the patient, as also the kind of food which most
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disagrees, go for something in including the balance; in prescribing for rheumatic pains,
we think of Aconite or Bryonia if dry cold, of Rhustox has been the enciting causes. If a
morbid condition is traceable to a fit of anger, we are thereby inclined to give chamomilla
for it, if to a fright Aconite or opium: if to long, continued depressing emotions,
phosphoric acid.
For complaints giving origin is an injury, Arnica is always useful, not only
immediately upon its reception, but long afterwards.
But Hahnemann speaks further of ascertaining the ‘fundamental cause’ of chronic
disease, which (he says) is generally a “chronic miasm” referring to his doctrine of the
origin of a large proportion of such disease in syphilis, sycosis or psora. This we have
discussed already as one of Hahnemann’s theories.
This question now is, why it is useful to have this causation known? Hahnemann
again shall speak for himself. In a note to §80 of the fifth edition of the ‘organon’.
How much greater cause is there now for rejoicing that the desired goal has been
so much more nearly attained in as much as the recently discovered and for more specific
Homoeopathic remedies for chronic affections resulting from psora (properly termed
antipsorics) and the special instructions for their preparation and employment, have been
published; and from among them the true physician can now select for his creative agents
those whose medicinal symptoms corresponds in the most similar manner to the chronic
disease he has to cure and thus from the employment of (Antipsorics) medicines more
suitable to this miasm.
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Now this is obviously bringing pathology to the aid odsymptomatology and
supplies another instances of its usefulness. Nor does is stand alone in Hahnemann’s
writings.
He ever recognized that there were certain number of disease of fixed type
acquiring this by origination from a specific cause; and to these he appropriated one or
more specific remedies, as always applicable and usually indispensable10.
Reference in Support of this statement
Hahenemann’s earliest and fullest utterance on the subject may be read in his
“Medicine of Experience” (1806) we observe, “he there writes, “a few disease that
always arise from one and the same cause Ex: the miasmatic remedies- Hydrophobia, the
venereal disease, the plague, yellow fever, small pose etc. Which bear upon them the
distinctive mark of always remaining disease of a peculiar character; and because they
arise from a contagious principle that always remains the same in character and pursue
the same course, excepting some accidental concomitant circumstances.
Another class of specific disease recognized by him here are the epidemic fevers.
There are not indeed to be referred to known types and treated accordingly, for each
epidemic has features of its own. However, it is the product of a single cause and all
instances of it are amenable to one and the same specific remedy, which is to be reached
by a study of the phenomena of several cases carried on untill the symptom totality of the
epidemic is reached and its similimum found (§73,100-102,235-242)11.
According to Hughes the most recent nosologists have attempted to do this; their
genera should be what I call the peculiar characteristics of each disease, their species the
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accidental circumstances, “later, in the” organon’, Hahnemann took a faster view of what
is specific and generic in disease.
Thus the “general symptoms”, which are characteristic of all fevers, should surely
be classed as generic; these marked and special symptoms”, which characterize the
particular epidemic under observation, as “specific”. We shall thus have another category
left, answering to the “varieties” of natural history; and in this we can place the
“accidental circumstances” of Hahnemann’s previous description, which are the
peculiarities due to the individual Idiosyncrasy.
Similarity between disease and drug action should thus be generic, specific and
individual.
1. Generic: Similarity is that expressed in the saying “NIL PROEST QUOD NON
LOEDIT IDEM” and “MAGIS VENENUM, MAGIS REMEDIUM”. To make
his case simile of drug action at all, a person must be ill ; on the other side of h e
be ill his remedy must be one capable of causing illness in the healthy, and the
more seriously ill he is, the more potent should be the poison with which he is
treated these are broad generalities, but they are the basis of Homoeopathy and
surer one from such breadth. If his illness is febrile, his remedy must be pyreto-
genetic; if the one be an inflammation, the other must be an irritant.
2. Specific similarity: (it use the word now it in its scientific not its medicinal
sense) implies the existence of species. These in natural history, means forms
capable of reproducing their kind; and such we have in the infectious diseases.
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The specific morbid states cannot be convinced of as having been fresh creations,
full blown at first and ever since the same. In this way the predispositions defines
of which Tessier speaks have been established resulting, under the action of
common causes, in fined forms of disease. In this way specific viruses,
themselves the seed of fresh disease of he same kind, have been slowly distilled in
the alembic of the organism, till they have become what they are
1. The first requisite for specific similarity is that the drug shall have the same seat
of action as the disease. Had already shown how provision is made for their
necessity in the rule that the totality of symptom is to be covered.
• Identity of seat is half the battle ; only half it is true, but to the have conquered so
far is fair promise of entire victory, and the promise is often fulfilled.
• The “Seat of disease contemplated by Dr. Sharp is, as his name for the method
implies, an ORGAN, but he is careful to postulate that the skin shall for such
purposes be accounted an organ. It is really a tissue and this leads us to see that
action upon the tissue involved in the disease is sufficient for specific similarity,
though there be no correspondence in the localization.
2. Seat of action is of such value in endeavour after specific similarity; but kind of
action is of no less importance by this he mean something more than was spoken
among the elements of generic similarity, viz that the pathological process shall
be the same – fever, inflammation, ulceration and so forth.
To reach the most suitable remedies for the qualities of morbid processes is no
easy task. It requires symptomatic comparison, pathological inference, analogy and
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clinical experience. In the superiority of colchicum in gouty inflammation to the bryonia
or pulsatella, the arthritis would otherwise demand, is an instance in point.
3. Another features of specific similarity is that modification of disease which its
originating cause impress upon it. It differs according as it is of physical or mental
origin and these classes have to be further sub-divided in rheumatism arising from
dry cold is one thing, from damp cold another.
4. Another useful point of comparison between disease and drug action is the
character of the pains and other sensations present. There is a reason why one
should complain of burning pain, another of tearing, of growing and so forth, use
we may not be able to explain it, but the kind of sensation present characteristics
the suffering of the drug which causes it. The burning pain of Arsenic is a good
example the more so because it is at present inexplicable. It has bee thought to
depend on mucous membrane being the seat of its action; but this cannot hold
good of its neuralgia, where it no less obtains.
5. Lastly of concomitance, that is the coincidence of two or more marked symptoms
in the pathogenesis of drug and in the phenomena of a disease. Its value rests on
the mathematical law of combination or as it is technically called permutations.
Then if three distinctive symptoms of a case can be found to have been excited by
a medicine, there is already considerable likelihood of its acting on the same parts
and in the same manner; and that the adds in its favour increase rapidly as the
points of analogy are multiplied.
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Seat of action, then, in organ or kind of action in diathesis or other quality in
causative modification in character of sensations, and in concomitance and sequence of
symptoms these are the main elements of specific similarity.
3. Individual Similarity: We have considered some of the elements which go to make
up generic and specific likeness and have now to see what can further be done by way of
making the similarity individual. That it should so be, if possible must be evident. Even
the essential, typical disease affect each subject in his own way, so that he presents a
variety of species and that which is distinctive in him must be taken into account.
Individualisation is as import in therapeutics as it confessedly is in education.
1. To almost every medicine of importance in homoeopathic practice has been assigned,
as it has become well known, a type of patient to whom it is suited. Eg. Bryonia
corresponds to brunettes of bilious tendencies and choleric temper, with firm flesh;
arsenic to worn and exhausted constitution; nux vomica to vigorous persons of dry
habits and tense fibre, addicted, it may be to “ high thinking” but not to “ plain
living”.
2. The mental and moral state of the patient is often a feature of his general
temperament, but it may also supervene in the course of his existing malady. It is a
matter on which Hahnemann always laid much stress.
“In all cases of disease” he wrote in the “organon” ( aph – 210 ), “That we are called
onto cure, the state of the patients” disposition is to be especially noted, along with
the totality of the symptoms, if we would trace an accurate picture of the disease, in
order to be able therefrom to treat it homoeopathically with success.
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This holds good to such an extent, that the state of the disposition of the patient often
chiefly determines the selection of the homoeopathic remedy.
3. Condition of aggravation and amelioration have always played a large part in
homoeopathic therapeutics and as there must be cause for them, it would be wrong to
ignore them, it is certainly of account of bryonia aggravated by motion, those of rhus
tox (at any rate after the first ) relieved by it; and here it may plansibly be suggested
that the difference depends on the more acute and inflammatory, like character of the
former. The increase of the head pains of belladonna on lying down and of those of
spigelia on stooping, the aggravation of lachesis after sleep, and the ameliorations of
nux vomica from the same cause.
4. The side of the body which is affected may be thought a thing of no moment some
when unilateral organs are concerned. Sometimes, indeed the determination of the
malady thereto may be thus accounted for, as when we find right supraorbital pain
associated with herpetic disorders, and calling for chelidonium, while on the left side
it is often traceable to the stomach and is relieved by kali bichromicum.
5. The time of day at which symptoms occur or undergo aggravation is made no small
account of by many homoeopathic practitioners. The pulsatilla in the evening were
early noted by Hahnemann, and we have since come to fix those of lycopodium for
4 p.m. Dr. Dunham here conducts his inidvidualisation by means of a single peculiar
symptom one of those of which we shall have here after to speak under the title of
“characteristic”.
This is ideal homoeopathy and should always be aimed at, but a very little
experience will show that it is always attainable. The deficiency may be either on the side
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of specific qualities or on that of individual features, or it may be on both. Clinical
experience will here often come to our aid, but if we homoeopathize it all, we must do it
by way of individualization by itself or by that of generalisation by itself.
Administration of similar remedy:
After obtaining the similar remedy, and have only to consider how to administer
it, as we divided its elements of similarity into generic, specific and individual, so let us
say that it should be administered, as a rule, singly, rarely, constitutionally and minutely.
The first there of these points will occupy our attention today.
Hahnemann, very early to entertain a strong aversion to the polypharmacy so
prevalent in his day. In the essay of 1791 are the obstacles to simplicity and certainity in
practical medicine, in surmount table? One of his points was the impossibility of
obtaining definite results unless remedies were given singly, and of his own practice at
this time he writer “Dare I confess that for many years I have never prescribed anything
but a single at once, and have never repeated the dose until the action of the former one
had ceased; a venesection alone, a purgative alone and always a simple, never a
compound, remedy and never a second until I had got a clear notion of the operation of
the first?”
In contrast to polypharmacy, homoeopathy has like its founder “dared to confers”
that the single remedy has always been the rule in its hand when we say “single, it must
of course be understood that we do not exclude the use of chemical compounds like that
of salts or of vegetables products, as opium, which analysis may find of complex
constitution. If we know their physiological action as simples then as simples they can be
employed. This matter of alteration requires some further treatment here. In the organon,
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Hahnemann from the first deprecated it, on the ground of the possible interference of the
two drugs one with another. In the last edition he disallows it on another ground. If he
waiter (δ169, 170) “on the first examination of a disease and he first select ion of a
medicine, we should find that the totality of the symptoms of the disease would not be
sufficiently covered by the disease elements of a single medicine – owing to the sufficient
member of known medicines, but that two medicines content for the preference in point
of appropriateness, one of which is more homoeopathically suitable for one part, the
other for another part of the symptoms of the disease, it is not advisable, after the
employment of the more suitable of the two medicines to administer the other without
fresh examination, for the medicine that seemed to be the next best might not, under the
change of circumstances that has in the mean time taken place, be suitable for the rest of
the symptoms that then remain, in which case consequently, a more appropriate.
Homoeopathic remedy must be selected in place of the second medicine, for the set of
symptoms as they appear on a new inspection10.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HOMOEOPATHY:
• Is a method
• Reached by inductive generalization
• Tested by deductive verification
• Let likes be treated by likes
In homoeopathy similarly acting remedies were used but they are with in the
system of antipathy and allopathy? Ie primary action and secondary action.
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The 1st sage of the drug action into the 2nd stage, of the disease, there by filling up
a want, and not over powering an scatted diseased action by a still greater action.
• Drug selection – similar
• Drug action – contraria
Criticism of Richard Hughes:
Through out its history homoeopathy has been characterized by tow divergent
trends. Some homoeopaths such as Richard Hughes were confined to build bridges to
orthodox medicine and were reluctant to accept the nurse extreme homoeopathic
doctrines of vitalism, miasms and ultra high potencies and others, such as Constantine
Hering and James Tyler Kent, accepted these ideas enthusiastically and ignored
conventional medicine or rejected it out right. Richard Hughes criticizes
• Vital force
• Psora theory
• Drug dynamization10
Vital force: § 9
First of this hypothesis is vital force has been source of all the phenomena of life
and sphere in which disease begins and medicines acts. He early more over, employed the
turn “dynamic” to denote the sphere in which true disease took its origin and those effects
of drugs which require vitality for their production disease has it “Material morbid” and
organic changes; but all these may be Hahnemann would have it always were secondary
products and effects the primary derangement being invisible and intangible manifest
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only in altered sensations and functions. Drugs again produce many of them chemical and
mechanical effects but this might occur in the dead as in the living body.
Had he gone no further all would be well? it is easy to read into his language the
present, protoplasmic doctrine of life, while the frequent commencement of disease in
molecular rat her than molar changes and the dynamic as distinct form the mechanical
and the chemical action of drugs, are recognized by all. But in this later years
Hahnemann advanced from this thoroughly tenable position into one for less easy to
maintain. He adopted the view that vitality was a force analogue t o the physical
agencies so called, wit h out which the material organism would lack sensation and
energizes it doing life and leaves it at death this “vital force” (LEBENSKKAFT) which
primarily deranged in illness and on which morbific potencies both natural and medicinal
act through the sensory nerves. Its behavior under medicinal influence is ingeniously
imagined and elaborately described. δ-127 and in 5th edition of the organon it is
frequently mentioned as the action as suffer where previously another had been content to
speak of the organism.
Now Hahnemann can hardly be thought the worse of for entertaining this view,
since in some form a other, it was almost universally prevalent in his day. If the advice of
the present pope has been taken, It is still the teaching of all roman catholic itself derived
from Aristotle recent science is to regard the organism as no monarchy, wherein some
archaens lives and rules, but as a republic in which every part is equally republic in which
every part is equally alive and independently active, the unity of the whole being secured
only by the common circulation and the universal telegraphic system of nerves. It is
unfortunate. Therefore, that Hahnemann should have committed himself and his work to
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another conception, either a neither may be wholly true, but one would have been glad if
the “organon” had kept itself clear of such questions. And had occupied only the solid
ground of observation and experiment11.
PSORA THEORY:
This is far two large a subject if for justice to be done it here, a certain proportion
of the affections so characterized were traceable to veneral infection syphilitic (or)
sycotic it (gonorrheal) an it seemed to him that the remaining govern – eights must have
some analogous “miasmatic” origin. In the medical literature of his day he found
numerous observations of he superventions of such disease upon the suppressing of
cutaneous eruption of such diseases among which scabies then very prevalent held a
prominent place. In this last he had found the miasm he wanted it resembled syphilis in
its communication by contact, its stage of incubation, and its local development.
While it was for more general. He there upon propounded it as together with the
other contagious skin affections, the tinea etc, which he regarded as varieties of it the
source of the non specific chronic diseases, understood as defined.
Now It is easy for us, knowing what we know (or suppose we know) about its to
make merry over this theory of Hahnemann’s but to condemn or ridicule him for it, is a
gross anachronism.
Learned physicians of his time, knew all about it, and had in 1792 written upon it,
he nevertheless, in 1816, described scabies as specific miasmatic disorder, forming itself
in the organism after contagion (as syphilis toes) and announcing by the itch vesicle its
complete development within it was thus regarded t hat the propounded it as the origin of
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so much chronic disease we understanding it better, must refuse it such a place, but when
we look beneath the surface of his doctrine, we find it far from being bound up with his
view of scabies12.
DRUG DYNAMIZATION:
Theory of drug dynamization is a subject quite distinct forms that of infinitesimal
dosage. We have seen that Hahnemann was led to adopt and defined the later on grounds
whose legitimacy all must admit, what eve they may think of their validity,
Hahnemann’s dynamization in the light later science must be held untenable, but to this
day we have nothing to put in its place and eve if we had, we should not less honor the
philosopher who perceived the necessity of the explanation, who brought to light the
hitherto unknown phenomena and set us to work at giving a scientific account of them.
I must advice you to reject the preparations, not so much upon the grounds of
science and reason as upon those of pharmacy. They are simple impossibilities. It has
been calculated that to make the millionth potency of a single medicine according to
Hahnemann’s instructions would require 2,000 gallons of alcohol and would occupy
more than a year in the process which is practically impossible10.
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REPERTORIAL APPROACH
REPERTORY TO THE CYCLOPEDIA OF DRUG PATHOGENECITY
OUTLINE OF SCHEMA – RESPIRATORY ORGANS
Nose
External
Inflammation
Sensations
Swellings
Internal
Pains
Catarrah
Coryza
Dryness
Epistaxis
Inflammation
Sensations
Sneezing
Soreness
Throbbing
Smell
Anosmia
Hyperosmia
Illusomy
Perverted
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Larynx and Trachea
Pains
Burning
Cough
Inflammation
Irritation
Laryngismus
Mucus In
Paralysis
Roughness
Sensations
Swelling
Voice Hoarse
Lost
Sudden
Weak
Other Alterations
Brhonchi and Lungs
Asthma
Breath, Altered
Bronchitis
Bronchorrhoea
Catarrh
Congestion (of Lungs)
Constriction (of Chest)
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Emphysema (of Lungs)
Expectoration
Haemoptysis
Edema (of Lung)
Oppressions
Pain
Paralysis (of Lungs)
Pneumonia
Sensations
Respiration, Difficult
Interrupted
Irregular
Laboured
Noisy
Painful
Paralyzed
Quickened
Retarded
Short
Sighing
Suspended
P.M. Pneumonia
Chest Walls
Pains
Sensations
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Spasm
Swelling
Tenderness
Pleura
Diaphragm
Generalities
Adiposis
Attacks
Bones
Cachexia
Cancer
Carbuncle
Cyanosis
Dropsy, Serous Sacs
Surface
Emphysems (Cutaneous)
Erethism
Gangrene
Glands
Hysteria
Jaundice
Joints
Modalities
Muscles
Neurits, Peripheral
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Pthisis
Prostration
Restlessness
Scrofula
Sedation
Status Pituitosus
Steatosis
Stiffness
Stimulation
Typhoid Conditions
Wasting
Weakness
Weariness13
Table 2: Difference between Hahnemannian and Hughesian concepts
Hahnemannian Hughesian • Added other medicines to Sycosis &
Syphilis acc.to stages of pathology • First person attempted to modify the
terms miasm or psora as morbid diathesis
• Attempted to update pathology in homoeopathy according to his study and experience
• Confidence in oneself & Boldness to tell what he practiced and hence not a blind follower of Hahnemann so that became a true disciple.
• It was a materialistic study and hence superficial and confused
• It is a partial study as many things in chronic diseases regarding suppression, direction of cure, anamnesis, constitution and temperament etc. were not highlighted
• Did not made attempts to explain miasms in depth and criticize it on pathological (allopathy) basis and terms used in that time.
• Not willing to commit himself in saying Hahnemann had fore visions.
• Inability to realize higher potencies and their good effect in chronic diseases
• Diluting the concept of Individualization
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Materials & Methods
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MATERIALS AND METHODS
This work includes cases which were selected keeping in mind the need to
highlight the Richard Hughes view on Homoeopathic Philosophy and its practical utility.
For a Successful achievement of aims and objectives of the case, study should be in a
systemic way.
The materials used for the study were
1. Standardized Case Record (SCR)
2. Master Chart
SCR:
Cases were recorded in the standardized case record, as well as I.P.D charts.
Information obtained in an ordinary and sequential manner like chief complaint, history
of chief complaints past history, family history, physical attributes, life space
investigations with derivation of intellectual emotional status with reactions and
examinations findings which enable to arrive at therapeutic problem definition and
resolution.
INCLUSION CRITERIA
1. Samples of both sex and all ages
2. Suffering from chronic disease of the respiratory system
3. Had continued Homoeopathic treatment for at least more than 3 months
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EXCLUSION CRITERIA
1. Dropped out (or) those cases which have not regularly attending for follow-up
2. Paediatric cases were not taken up for the study
METHODOLOGY
Cases were selected randomly from the Fr. Muller Homoeopathic Medical
College Hospital Out Patient Department.
• A minimum of 30 cases will be selected randomly as per the inclusion criteria and
will be followed for a minimum period of 3 months to 1 year of duration.
• Every case will be worked out with Hughesian philosophy
• Each case will be evaluated after the treatment
• The Group of patients selected was from both sexes and all ages.
• A total of 30 patients presented with respiratory disorders were included for this
study.
• Diagnosis was based on the clinical presentation and examination findings and
investigations.
• The name, age sex, religion and detailed history of each patient were recorded in
SCR considering age of onset, duration of complaints, peculiar sensation and
modalities, details of any previous treatment, family history.
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• All the patients were examined in detail for the presenting complaints sequence
and prodrome of the episode, any associated complaints like, Diabetes mellitus,
Rheumatic fever, IHD, Osteoarthritis, Cerebrovascular accidents etc.
• A through systemic examination was done in each case
• References from materia medica and repertories of Richard Hughes were done.
• Follow up criteria were made for every case
• Potency selection and repetition of medicines varied according to the need of the
case
In this study the patient’s who were treated in Fr. Muller Homoeopathic Medical
College, OPD were taken for the study, where I used Richard Hughes principles and his
philosophy to find out the similimum.
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Results
98
RESULTS
30 patients who were treated in Fr. Muller Homoeopathic Medical College
Hospital out patient Department with respiratory disorders were taken for the study.
These cases were subjected to statistical study and their analysis is as follows.
Table 3: Distribution of cases According to Gender
Sex No. of Cases Percentage
Male 11 36.6%
Female 19 63.3%
The incidence of male : female ratio for respiratory disorder in out patient
department for the 30 cases was 11(36.6%) males and 19(63.3%) females.
Figure 3: Distribution of cases According to Gender
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Table 4: Distribution of cases According to the Age group
Age Male Percentage Female Percentage Total
15-25 2 6.6% 2 6.6% 4
25-35 2 6.6% 2 6.6% 4
35-45 3 10% 2 6.6% 5
45-55 1 3.3% 2 6.6% 3
55-65 5 16.6% 4 13.3% 9
65-75 2 6.6% 3 10% 5
In this 30case study the maximum prevalence of respiratory disorder, 9 cases
were noted in the age group between 55-65 yrs in that 5 cases were belonging to male
category (16.6%), and 4 cases were belonging to female category (13.3%), 5 cases each
were noted in the age groups between 35-45yrs and 65-75yrs in that 3 cases (10%) were
belonging to male category 2 cases (6.6%) were belonging to female category similarly, 2
cases (6.6%) belonging to male and 3 cases belonging to female category respectively, 4
cases (13.3%) were noted in the age groups between 15-25yrs, 25-35 yrs in that 2 cases
(6.6%) were males and 2 cases (6.6%) were females. 3 cases (10%) was noted in the age
group between 45-55 yrs in that 1 case (3.3%) belonging to male and 2 cases (6.6%)
belonging to female category
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Figure 4: Distribution of cases According to the Age group
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Table 5 : Distribution of cases According to Diagnosis
29. MR. S Dsouza 62 yrs, M Married Naringana Reg. No. 17734 Date : 31/5/10
B.A. Mental State - Reserved family
oriented - Responsible Thermal State – Hot Characteristics - Dry cough Dysponea Wheezing Modalities < Night < climbing stairs3 < 2 am – 4 am < Exertion Hot weather