Homoeopathy

 
It is impossible to divine the internal essential nature of diseases and the changes they effect in the hidden parts of the body, and it is absurd to frame a system of treatment on such hypothetical surmises and assumptions : it is impossible to divine toe medicinal properties of remedies from any chemical hypotheses or from their smell, colour, or taste, and it is absurd to attempt, from such hypothetical surmises and assumptions, to apply to the treatment of diseases these substances, which are so hurtful when wrongly administered. And even were such practice ever so customary and ever so generally in use, were it even the only one in vogue for thousands of years, it would nevertheless continue to be a senseless and pernicious practice to found on empty surmises our idea of the morbid condition of the anterior, and to attempt to combat this with equally imaginary properties of medicines.
 [H2] Appreciable, distinctly appreciable to our senses must that be, which is to be removed in each disease in order to transform it into health, and right clearly must each remedy express what it can positively cure, if medical art is to be a wanton game of hazard with human life, and to commence to be the sure deliverer from diseases.
 [H2] I shall show what there is undeniably curable in diseases, and how the curative properties of medicines are to be distinctly perceived and employed for curative purposes.
 [H2] *    *    *    *
 [H2] What life is can only be known empirically from its phenomena and manifestations, but no conception of it can be formed by any meta-physical speculations à priori; what life is, in its actual essential nature, can never be ascertained or even guessed at, by mortals.
 [H2] To the explanation of human life, as also its two-fold conditions, health and disease, the principles by which we explain other phenomena are quite inapplicable. With nought in the world can we compare it save with itself alone; neither with a piece of clockwork, nor with a hydraulic machine, nor with chemical processes, not with decompositions and recompositions of gases, nor yet with a galvanic battery, in short with nothing destitute of life. Human life is in no respect regulated by purely physical laws, which only obtain among inorganic substances. The material substances of which the human organism is composed no longer follow, in this vital combination, the laws to which material substances in the inanimate condition are subject; they are regulated by the laws peculiar to vitality alone, they are themselves animated and vitalized just as the whole system is animated and vitalized. Here a nameless fundamental power reigns omnipotent, which abrogates all the tendency of the component parts of the body to obey the laws of gravitation, of momentum, of the vis inertiae, of fermentation, of putrefaction, and c., and brings them under the wonderful laws of life alone, -in other words, maintains them in the condition of sensibility and activity necessary to the preservation of the living whole, a condition almost spiritually dynamic.
 [H2] Now, as the condition of the organism and its health depend solely on the health of the life which animates it, in like manner it follows that the altered health, which we term disease, consists in a condition altered originally only in its vital sensibilities and functions, irrespective of all chemical or mechanical considerations; in short it must consist in a dynamically altered condition, a changed mode of being, whereby a change in the properties of the material component parts of the body is afterwards effected, which is a necessary consequence of the morbidly altered condition of the living whole in every individual case.
 [H2] Moreover, the influence of morbific injurious agencies, which for the most part excite from without the various maladies in us, is generally so invisible and so immaterial, * that it is impossible that it can immediately either mechanically disturb or derange the component parts of our body in their form and substance, or infuse any pernicious acrid fluid into our blood-vessels whereby the mass of our humours can be chemically altered and depraved - an inadmissible, quite unprovable, gross invention of mechanical minds. The exciting causes of disease rather act by means of their essential properties on the state of our life (on our health), only in a dynamic, very similar to a spiritual, manner; and inasmuch as they first derange the organs of the higher rank and of the vital force, there occurs from this state of derangement, from this dynamic alteration of the living whole, an altered sensation (uneasiness, pains) and an altered activity (abnormal functions) of each individual organ and of all of them collectively, whereby there must also of necessity secondarily occur alteration of the juices in our vessels and secretion of abnormal matters, the inevitable consequence of the altered vital character, which now differs from the healthy state.
 [H2] These abnormal matters that show themselves in diseases are consequently merely products of the disease itself, which, as long as the malady retains its present character, must of necessity be secreted, and thus constitute a portion of the morbid signs (symptoms); they are merely affects, and therefore manifestations of the existing internal ill-health, and they do certainly not react (although they often contain the infecting principle for other, healthy individuals) upon the diseased body that produced them, as disease-exciting or maintaining substances, that is, as material morbific causes, * just as a person cannot infect other parts of his own body at the same time with the virus from his own chancre or with the gonorrhoeal matter from his own urethra, or increase his disease therewith, or as a viper cannot inflict on itself a fatal bite with its own poison.
 [H2] Hence it is obvious that diseases excited by the dynamic and virtual influence of morbific injurious agents can be originally only dynamical derangements (caused almost solely by a spiritual process) of the vital character of our organism.
 [H2] We readily perceive that these dynamic derangements of the vital character of our organism which we term diseases, since they are nothing else than altered sensations and functions, can also express themselves by nothing but by an aggregate of symptoms, and only as such are they cognisable to our observing powers.
 [H2] Now, as in a profession of such importance to human life as medicine is, nothing but the state of the diseased body plainly cognisable by our perceptive faculties can be recognised as the object to be cured, and ought to guide our steps (to choose conjectures and undemonstrable hypotheses as our guide here would be dangerous folly, nay crime and treason against humanity), it follows, that since diseases, as dynamic derangements of the vital character, express themselves solely by alterations of the sensations and functions of our organism, that is, solely by an aggregate of cognisable symptoms, this alone can be the object of treatment in every case of disease. For on the removal of all morbid symptoms nothing remains but health.
 [H2] Now, because diseases are only dynamic derangements of our health and vital character, they cannot be removed by man otherwise than by means of agents and powers which also are capable of producing dynamical derangements of the human health, that is to say, diseases are cured virtually and dynamically by medicines. +
 [H2] These active substances and powers (medicines) which we have at our service effect the cure of diseases by means of the same dynamic power of altering the actual state of health, by means of the same power of deranging the vital character of our organism in respect of its sensations and functions, by which they are able to affect also the healthy individual, to produce in him dynamic changes and certain morbid symptoms, the knowledge of which, as we shall see, affords us the most trustworthy information concerning the morbid states that can be most certainly cured by each particular medicine. Hence nothing in the world can accomplish a cure, no substance, no power can effect a change in the human organism of such a character as that the disease shall yield to it, except an agent capable of absolutely (dynamically) deranging the human health, consequently also of morbidly altering its healthy state. *
 [H2] On the other hand, however, there is also no agent, no power in nature capable of morbidly affecting the healthy individual, which does not at the same time possess the faculty of curing certain morbid states.
 [H2] Now, as the power of curing diseases, as also of morbidly affecting the healthy, is met with in inseparable combination in all medicines, and as both these properties evidently spring from one and the same source, namely, from their power of dynamically deranging human health, and as it is hence impossible that they can act according to a different inherent natural law in the sick to that according to which they act on the healthy; it follows that it must be the same power of the medicine that cures the disease in the sick as produces the morbid symptoms in the healthy. +
 [H2] Hence also we shall find that the curative power of medicines, and that which each of them is able to effect in diseases, expresses itself in no other mode in the world so surely and palpably, and cannot be ascertained by us by any purer and more perfect manner than by the morbid phenomena and symptoms (the kinds of artificial diseases) which the medicines develop in healthy individuals. For if we only have before us records of the peculiar (artificial) morbid symptoms produced by the various medicines on healthy individuals, we only require a series of pure experiments to decide what medicinal symptoms will always rapidly and permanently cure and remove certain symptoms of disease, in order to know, in every case beforehand, which of all the different medicines known and thoroughly tested as to their peculiar symptoms must be the most certain remedy in every case of disease. ++
 [H2] If then we ask experience what artificial diseases (observed to be produced by medicines) can be beneficially employed against certain natural morbid states; if we ask it whether the change to health (cure) may be expected to ensue most certainly and in the most permanent manner :
 [H2] 1, by the use of such medicines as are capable of producing in the healthy body a different (alloeopathic) affection from that exhibited by the disease to be cured,
 [H2] 2, or by the employment of such as are capable of exciting in the healthy individual an opposite (enantiopathic, antipathic) state to that of the case to be cured,
 [H2] 3, or by the administration of such medicines as can cause a similar (homoeopathic) state to the natural disease before us (for these are the only three possible modes of employing them), experience speaks indubitably for the last method.
 [H2] But it is moreover self-evident that medicines which act heterogeneously and alloeopathically, which tend to develop in the healthy subject different symptoms from those presented by the disease to be cured, from the every nature of things can never be suitable and efficacious in this case, but they must act awry, otherwise all diseases must necessarily be cured in a rapid, certain and permanent manner by all medicine, however different. Now, as every medicine possesses an action different from that of every other, and as, according to eternal natural laws, every disease causes a derangement of the human health different from that caused by all other diseases, this proposition contains an innate contraction (contradictionem in adjecto), and is self-demonstrative of the impossibility of a good result, since every given change can only be effected by an adequate cause, but not per quamlibet causam. And daily experience also proves that the ordinary practice or prescribing complex recipes containing a variety of unknown medicines in diseases, does indeed do many things, but very rarely cures.
 [H2] The second mode of treating diseases by medicines is the employment of an agent capable of altering the existing derangement of the health (the disease, or most prominent morbid symptom) in an enantiopathic, antipathic, or contrary manner (the palliative employment of a medicine). Such an employment, as will be readily seen, cannot effect a permanent cure of the disease, because the malady must soon afterwards recur, and that in an aggravated degree. The process that takes place is as follow : - According to a wonderful provision of nature, organized living beings are not regulated by the laws of unorganized (dead) physical matter, they do not receive the influence of external agents, like the latter, in a passive manner, but strive to oppose a contrary action of them. *
 [H2] The living human body does indeed allow itself to be in the first instance changed by the action of physical agents; but this change is not in it as in inorganic substances, permanent (- as it ought necessarily to be if the medicinal agent acting in a contrary manner to the disease should have a permanent effect, and be of durable benefit -) : on the contrary, the living human organism strives to develop by antagonism * the exact opposite of the affection first produced in it from without, -as for instance, a hand kept long enough in ice-cold water, after being withdrawn does not remain cold, nor merely assume the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere, as a stone (dead) ball would do, or even resume the temperature of the rest of the body, no! the colder the water of the bath was, and the longer it acted on the healthy skin of the hand, the more inflamed and hotter does the latter afterwards become.
 [H2] Therefore it cannot but happen that a medicine having an action opposite to the symptoms of the disease, will reverse the morbid symptoms for but a very short time, + but must soon give place to the antagonism inherent in the living body, which produces an opposite state, that is to say, a state the direct contrary of that transient delusive state of the health effected by the palliative (and corresponding to the original malady), which constitutes an actual addition to the now recurring, uneradicated, original affection, and is consequently an increased degree of the original disease. And thus the malady is always certainly aggravated after the palliative - the medicine that acts in an opposite and enantiopathic manner - has exhausted its action. ++
 [H2] In chronic diseases, -the true touch-stone of a genuine healing art, -the injurious character of the antagonistically-acting (palliative) remedy often displays itself in a high degree, since from its repeated exhibition in order that it should merely produce its delusive effect (a very transient semblance of health) it must be administered in larger and ever larger doses, which are often productive of serious danger to life, or even of actual death. §
 [H2] There remains, therefore, only a third mode of employing medicines in order to effect a really beneficial result, to wit, by employing in every case such an one as tends to excite of itself an artificial, morbid affection in the organism similar (homoeopathic), best if very similar, to the actual case of disease.
 [H2] That this mode of employing medicines is and must of necessity be the only best method, can easily be proved by reasoning, as it has also already been confirmed both by innumerable experiences of physicians who practise according to my doctrines, and by daily experience. *
 [H2] It will, therefore, not be difficult to perceive what are the laws of nature according to which the only appropriate cure of diseases, the homoeopathic, takes place, and must necessarily take place.
 [H2] The first of these unmistakable laws of nature is : the susceptibility of the living organism for natural diseases is incomparably less than it is for medicines.
 [H2] A multitude of disease-exciting causes act daily and hourly upon us, but they are incapable of deranging the equilibrium of the health, or of making the healthy sick; the activity of the life-sustaining power within us usually withstands the most of them, the individual remains healthy. It is only when these external inimical agencies assail us in a very aggravated degree, and we are especially exposed to their influence, that we get ill, but even then we only become seriously ill when our organism has a particularly impressionable, weak side (predisposition), that makes it more disposed to be affected by the (simple or compound) morbific cause in question, and to be deranged in its health.
 [H2] If the inimical agents in nature that are partly physical and partly physical, which are termed morbific noxae, possessed an unconditional power of deranging the human health, they would, as they are universally distributed, not leave any one in good health; every one would be ill, and we should never be able to obtain an idea of health. But as, taken on the whole, diseases are only exceptional states of the human health, and it is necessary that such a number of circumstances and conditions, both as regards the morbific agents and the individual to be affected with disease, should conjoin before a disease is produced by its exciting causes, it follows, that the individual is so little liable to be affected by such noxae, that they can never unconditionally make him ill, and that the human organism is capable of being deranged to disease by them only by means of a particular predisposition.
 [H2] But it is far otherwise with the artificial dynamic agents which we term medicines. For every true medicine acts at all times, under all circumstances, on every living, animated body, and excites in it the symptoms peculiar to it (even in a way perceptible to the senses if the dose be large enough) so that evidently every living human organism must always and inevitably be affected by the medicinal disease and, as it were, infected, which, as is well known, is not the case with respect to natural diseases. *
 [H2] All experience proves incontestably, that the human body is much more apt and disposed to be affected by medicinal agents and to have its health deranged by them, than by the morbific noxae and contagious miasms, or, what is the same thing, that the medicinal agents possess an absolute power of deranging human health, whereas the morbific agents possess only a very conditional power, vastly inferior to the former.
 [H2] To this circumstance it is owing that medicines are able to cure diseases at all (that is to say, we see, that the morbid affection may be eradicated from the diseased organism, if the latter be subjected to the appropriate alteration by means of medicine); but in order that the cure should take place, the second natural law should also be fulfilled, to wit, a stronger dynamic affection permanently extinguishes the weaker in the living organism, provided the former be similar in kind to the latter; for the dynamic alteration of the health to be anticipated from the medicine should, as I think I have proved, neither differ in kind from or be alloeopathic to the morbid derangement, in order that, as happens in the ordinary mode of practice, a still greater derangement may not ensue; nor should it be opposite to it, in order that a merely palliative delusive amelioration may not ensue, to be followed by an inevitable aggravation of the original malady; but the medicine must have been proved by observations to possess the tendency to develop of itself a state of health similar to the disease (be able to excite similar symptoms in the healthy body), in order to be a remedy of permanent efficacy.
 [H2] Now, as the dynamic affections of the organism (caused by disease or by medicine) are only cognisable by the phenomena of altered function and altered sensation, and consequently the similarity of its dynamic affections to one another can only express themselves by similarity of symptoms; but as the organism (as being much more liable to be deranged by medicine than by disease) must yield more to the medicinal affection, that is to say, must be more disposed to allow itself to be influenced and deranged by medicine than by the similar natural morbid affection, it follows undeniably, that it will be freed from the natural morbid affection if we allow a medicine to act on it, which, while differing * in its nature from the disease, resembles it very closely in the symptoms it causes, that is to say, is homoeopathic; for the organism, as a living, individual unity, cannot receive two similar dynamic affections at the same time, without the weaker yielding to the stronger similar one; consequently, as it is more disposed to be more strongly affected by the one (the medicinal affection), the other, similar, weaker one (the natural morbid affection) must necessarily give way; and the organism is therefore cured of its disease.
 [H2] Let it not be imagined that the living organism, if a new similar affection be communicated to it when diseased by a dose of homoeopathic medicine, will be thereby more seriously deranged, that is, burdened with an addition to its sufferings, just as a leaden plate already pressed upon by an iron weight is still more severely squeezed by placing a stone in addition upon it; or as a piece of copper heated by friction must become still hotter by pouring on it water at a more elevated temperature. No, our living organism does not behave passively, it is not subject to the laws that govern dead matter; it reacts by vital antagonism, so as to surrender itself as an individual living whole to its morbid derangement, and to allow this to be extinguished within it, when a stronger affection of a similar kind, produced in it by homoeopathic medicine, takes possession of it.
 [H2] Such a spiritually reaching being is our living, human organism which with automatic power expels from itself a weaker derangement (disease), whenever the stronger power of the homoeopathic medicine produces in it another but very similar affection; or in other words, which, on account of the unity of its life, cannot suffer at the same time from two similar general derangements, but must discard the primary dynamic affection (disease), whenever it is acted on by a second dynamic power (medicine), more capable of deranging it, that has a great resemblance to the former in its power of affecting the health (its symptoms). Something similar takes place in the human mind. +
 [H2] But as the human organism even in health is more capable of being affected by medicine than by disease, as I have shown above, so when it is diseased, it is beyond comparison more affectable by homoeopathic medicine than by any other (whether alloeopathic or enantiopathic) and indeed it is affectable in the hightest degree; since, as it is already disposed and excited by the disease to certain symptoms, it must now be more susceptible of the altering influence of similar symptoms (by the homoeopathic medicine) -just as similar mental affections render the mind much more sensitive to similar emotions - hence only the smallest dose of them is necessary and useful for their cure, that is, for altering the diseased organism into the similar medicinal disease; and a greater one is not necessary on this account also, because the spiritual power of the medicine does not in this instance accomplish its object by means of quantity, but by potentiality and quality (dynamic fitness, homoeopathy), -and a greater dose is not useful, but on the contrary injurious, because whilst the larger dose, on the one hand, does not dynamically overpower the morbid affection more certainly than the smallest dose of the most appropriate medicine, on the other hand it imposes a complex medicinal disease in its place, which is always a malady, though it passes off after a certain time.
 [H2] Hence the organism will be powerfully affected and taken possession of the power of even a very small dose of a medicinal substance, which by its tendency to excite similar symptoms, can outweigh and extinguish the totality of the symptoms of the disease; it becomes, as I have said, free from the morbid affection at the very instant that it is taken possession of by the medicinal affection, by which it is immeasurably more liable to be altered.
 [H2] Now, as medicinal agents do of themselves, even in larger doses, only keep the healthy organism for a few days under their influence, it will readily be conceived that a small dose, and in acute diseases a very small dose of them (as it ought evidently to be in homoeopathic treatment), can only affect the system for a short time; the smallest doses, indeed, in acute diseases, only for a few hours; and then the medicinal affection substituted for the disease passes unobservedly and very rapidly into pure health.
 [H2] In the permanent cure of diseases by medicines in living organisms nature seems never to act otherwise than in accordance with these her manifest laws, and then indeed she acts, if we may use the expression, with mathematical certainty. There is no case of adynamic disease in the world (excepting the death struggle, old age, if it can be considered a disease, and the destruction of some indispensable viscus or member), whose symptoms can be met with in great similarity among the positive effects of a medicine, which will not be rapidly and permanently cured by this medicine. The diseased individual can be freed from his malady, in no more easy, rapid, certain, reliable and permanent manner, by any conceivable mode of treatment, * than by means of the homoeopathic medicine in small doses.
                                                                               Dr.Samuel Hahnemann