resº
-≡≡
º№
§§§§§ſae~§§§§§
£& ！！！！！ſae£<;:º（'，··§§§
∞∞∞ √∞-~--~§§§∞∞∞
§**************-· �§§§
∞ſae, §§
§§§§


º X2-
#1 3rºW #
#TTTTTTTTTº Fº \ iſſº
[T] - jº | T1:. | | | rº C-
| LIBRARYºº
"JEa
f
ºf : /
it tº -
*\
tº Nº|| ||.
* V …”
E. - : a 3-
; : A Nº. 5: . . . "E
º w # . * E
§ # , º, . §:
E. §§ ſ º-
tº º sº , . . . FE
ɺ HE
º- -. * \ . . U →
Eºº. . . . E
#3 Nº #
fºr SNA. A lºss º
E. Hº - N - || Nº === - a #
ÉÉ; Nºsº ºf
#AzºëSES:==-&ºsºft
º e as - ‘. . . . […]
É Enº ºvº.º.º.º. º.º. ººz & Jºº. 7 E
E: E QE
E: E HE
E E
-- E- º
Ed E ºr #E
-- º sº
I. - I -
E S 3.3 gº-
º HE
E E
ÉÉ HE
C-3 º
E: E #
E E
[−.
| Hºi H. H
† º:
r
.* I.
- ; -
T H E GIFT OF
Theta Kappa Psi
iii.


































#44/5 ,6:3
// / 51:
&
?|×
·ſ
{{ſ^~>
ae
ſ'`\→ ·


ORGANON
OF

MEDIC INE
BY
SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
*-*-*-*
Awde Sapere.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FIFTH EDITION.
BY
R. E. DUDGEON, M. D.
HAHNEMANN PUBLISHING CO.,
PUBLISHERS,
CHICAGO,
1896.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
In this new edition of my translation of the ORGANON I
have completely revised the text, in order to make it a still
more exact reproduction of the original. In the Appendix I
have given all the more important variations of the previous
editions. I have also indicated the corresponding views as set
forth in the Essay on a New Principle and the Medicine of
Eacperience, both of which essays may be regarded as the
precursors of the ORGANON. I have added Halinemann's later
opinions on several subjects treated of in this work. In the
growth of such a complex thing as a new system of medicine,
it was inevitable that there should be considerable alterations
and improvements effected in the course of forty-eight years,
the time occupied by Hahnemann in the elaboration of his
novel doctrine and practice. His first idea of the homoeopathic
rule of practice occurred to him while translating Cullen's
Materia Medica in 1790. The Essay on a New Principle, in
which he propounded the homoeopathic therapeutic rule, as yet
believed by him to be of only “partial application,” viz. to
some chronic diseases, was published in 1796. Nine years
after this, viz. in 1805, in the Medicine of Eagerience, he
enunciated the rule with no such limitations of its applicability.
This essay contains much of what we find in the first and later
editions of the ORGANON. The first edition of this latter work
appeared in 1810. The second edition, differing very consid-
erably from the first, was published in 1819. The third
edition, which hardly differed at all from the previous one,
appeared in 1824. The fourth edition, which offers some
important variations from the text of its immediate predecessor
(chiefly determined by the new theory of chronic diseases),
IV TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
bears the date of 1829. The fifth and last edition, published
in 1833, contains several novelties, such as the theories of the
‘‘vital force” and “the dynamization of medicines.” In
previous editions, Hahnemann had in several places spoken
rather slightingly of the vital force and its influence on the
production and cure of disease, but these expressions are
either eliminated or greatly modified in the last edition, and
the ‘‘vital force” occupies quite a different and a much more
important position in regard to disease, its cause and cure.
The doctrine of dynamization of medicines by the pharmaceuti-
cal processes peculiar to homoeopathy, which had only been
hinted at in previous editions, is in this edition distinctly
stated. The directions as to the repetition of the dose are
also different from those in previous editions. These two
last-named points are still further modified in Hahnemann's
later work on Chronic Diseases (1838), as will be seen by the
quotations I have made from that work.
Thus while the body of this work contains the ORGANON
precisely as it appears in the last edition, the Appendix gives a
detailed history of the origin, growth and progress of the
homoeopathic system of medicine in the mind of its author.
I have not presumed to criticise the views or statements of
the author. His denunciations of the practice of the old school,
though quite deserved when he wrote, are not applicable to the
present condition of allopathic medicine. It is beyond all
question that it was mainly owing to the treatment and
practice of Hahnemann and his disciples that the disastrous
methods in vogue for centuries previous to and far into his
time have been abandoned. It remains, however, doubtful if
the allopathic methods of the present day have any greater
claim to scientific character or success than those they have
superseded. Were Hahnemann alive now we can easily imagine
how he would have inveighed against the old school-medicine of
the present day. The tonic, stimulant, anti-pyretic and nar-
cotic practice of modern medicine is as far removed from the
scientific simplicity of homoeopathy as were the venesections,
blisters, cauteries, purgatives and mercurializations against
which Hahnemann waged successful war. Hahnemann's vig-
orous protest against the dominant medicine of his day is
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. V
useful as showing the negative good effects of homoeopathy,
for almost all the irrational practices he denounced have been
abandoned; it remains for his followers to exhibit its positive
effects in the victory of rational and scientific medicine.
I am indebted to Dr. Richard Hughes for several emenda-
tions of my first translation, whereby the author's meaning
has been rendered more exact and clearer; also for some
rectifications of Hahnemann's quotations and for the idea of a
comparative table or concordance of the aphorisms in the
several editions, which he gave in the British Journal of
Homoeopathy, vol. xxxix.
The references in the text to the notes in the Appendix are
indicated by the sign “(a),” and some needful explanatory
notes are enclosed in square brackets, or divided from the text
by a line. The latter are confined to the quotations in the
Appendix.
R. E. DUDGEON.
LONDON, March. 1893.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
According to the testimony of all ages, no occupation is
more unanimously declared to be a conjectural art than medi-
cine; consequently none has less right to refuse a searching
enquiry as to whether it is well founded than it, on which
man's health, his most precious possession on earth, depends.
I consider that it redounds to my honor that I am the only
one in recent times who has subjected it to a serious, honest
investigation, and has communicated to the world the results
of his convictions in writings published, some with, some
without my name.
In this investigation I found the way to the truth, but I had
to tread it alone, very far from the common highway of
medical routine. The farther I advanced from truth to truth,
the more my conclusions (none of which I accepted unless
confirmed by experience) led me away from the old edifice,
which, being built up of opinions, was only maintained by
opinions.
The results of my convictions are set forth in this book.
It remains to be seen whether physicians, who mean to act
honestly by their conscience and by their fellow-creatures,
will continue to stick to the pernicious tissue of conjectures
and caprice, or can open their eyes to the salutary truth.
I must warn the reader that indolence, love of ease and
obstinacy preclude effective service at the altar of truth, and
only freedom from prejudice and untiring zeal qualify for the
most sacred of all human occupations, the practice of the true
system of medicine. The physician who enters on his work in
this spirit becomes directly assimilated to the Divine Creator
of the world, whose human creatures he helps to preserve, and
whose approval renders him thrice blessed.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
Physicians are my brethren; I have nothing against them
personally. The medical art is my subject.
I have to enquire whether medicine as hitherto taught has,
in all its parts, been merely developed out of the heads, the
self-deception and the caprice of its professors, or whether it
has been derived from nature.
If it be merely a product of speculative subtlety, arbitrary
maxims, traditional practices and capricious deductions drawn
from ambiguous premises, it is and remains a nullity, though
it may reckon its age by thousands of years, and be decorated
with the charters of all the kings and emperors of the earth.
The true healing art is in its nature a pure science of exper-
ience, and can and must rest on clear facts and on the sensible
phenomena pertaining to their sphere of action, for all the
subjects it has to deal with are clearly and satisfactorily cog-
nizable by the senses through experience. Knowledge of the
disease to be treated, knowledge of the effects of the medicines,
and how the ascertained effects of the medicines are to be em
ployed for the removal of diseases, all this, experience alone
teaches adequately. Its subjects can only be derived from
pure experiences and observations, and it dares not take a
single step out of the sphere of pure well-observed experience
and experiment, if it would avoid becoming a nullity, a farce.
But that the whole art of medicine as hitherto practiced,
though it has been, for want of something better, practiced
for these 2500 years by millions of physicians, many of whom
were earnest high-minded men, is yet, in every respect an ex-
tremely stupid, useless and thoroughly null affair, is proved
by the following few incontrovertible considerations.
Unaided reason can know nothing of itself (a priori), can
Wiii IPREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
evolve out of itself alone no conception of the nature of things,
of cause and effect; every one of its conclusions about the
actual must always be based on sensible perceptions, facts and
experiences if it would elicit the truth. If in its operations it
should deviate by a single step from the guidance of percep-
tion, it would lose itself in the illimitable region of phantasy
and of arbitrary speculation, the mother of pernicious illusion
and of absolute nullity.
In the pure sciences of experience, in physics, chemistry and
medicine, merely speculative reason can consequently have no
voice; there, when it acts alone, it degenerates into empty
Speculation and phantasy, and produces only hazardous hypo-
theses, which in millions of instances are, and by their verv
nature must be, self-deception and falsehood.
Such has hitherto been the splendid juggling of so-called
theoretical medicine, in which a priori conceptions and specu-
lative subtleties raised a number of proud schools, which only
showed what each of their founders had dreamed about things
which could not be known, and which were of no use for the
cure of diseases.
Out of these sublime systems, soaring far beyond all exper-
ience, medical practice could obtain nothing available for
actual treatment. So it pursued its course confidently at the
patient's bedside in accord with the traditional prescriptions of
its books telling how physicians had hitherto treated, and in
conformity with the methods of its practical authorities, un-
concerned, like them, about the teachings of nature-guided
experience, unconcerned about the true reasons for its treat-
ment, and quite content with the key to easy practice—the
prescription book. sº
A healthy, unprejudiced, conscientious examination of this
confused business shows plainly that what has hitherto gone
by the name of “the art of medicine” was merely a pseudo-
scientific fabrication, remodelled from time to time to meet
the prevailing fashion in medical systems, like Gellert's hat in
the fable, but, as regards the treatment of disease, ever the
same blind, pernicious method.
A healing art conformable to nature and experience did not
exist. Everything in traditional medicine was the outcome of
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ix
art and imagination, having no foundation in experience, but
pranked out in the habiliaments of probability.
The object of cure (the disease) was manufactured to order
by pathology. It was arbitrarily settled what diseases, how
many and what forms and kinds there should be. Just think!
The whole range of diseases, produced in innumerable and
always unforeseeable variety by infinite Nature in human beings
exposed to thousands of different conditions, the pathologist
cuts down so ruthlessly that a mere handful of cut and dry
forms is the result!
The wiseacres defined diseases a priori, and attributed to
them transcendental substrata not warranted by experience
(how could plain pure experience ever sanction such fantastic
dreams?); no! they pretended to possess an insight into the
inner nature of things and the invisible vital processes, which
no mortal can have.
Now, in order to decide on something positive with regard
to the instruments of cure, the powers of the different medi-
cines in the materia medica were inferred from their physical,
chemical and other irrelevant qualities, also from their odor,
taste and external aspect, but chiefly from impure experiences
at the sick bed, where, in the tumult of the morbid symptoms,
only mixtures of medicines were prescribed for imperfectly
described cases of disease. Just think! the dynamic spiritual
power of altering man's health hidden in the invisible interior
of medicines, and never manifested purely and truly in any
other way than by their effects on the healthy human body,
was arbitrarily ascribed to them, without interrogating the
medicines themselves in this only admissible way of pure ea:peri-
ment, and listening to their response when so questioned!
Then therapeutics taught how to apply the medicines, whose
qualities had been thus inferred, ascribed or imagined, to the
supposed fundamental cause or to single symptoms of disease,
in conformity with the rule contraria contrariis of the hypo-
thesis-framer Galen, and in direct opposition to nature; and
this doctrine was held to be more than sufficiently established
if eminent authorities could be adduced in support of it.
All these unnatural human doctrines, after being connected
together by all sorts of illogical false deductions, were then
X PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
welded into scholastic forms by the noble art that devotes
itself to division, subdivision and tabulation, and lo! the
manufactured article, the art of medicine, was ready for use,_
a thing the most opposed to nature and experience it is possi
ble to conceive, a structure built up entirely of the opinions of
various kinds furnished by thousands of differently constituted
minds. In all its parts this edifice is a pure nullity, a pitiable
self-deception, eminently fitted to imperil human life by its
methods of treatment, blindly counter to the end proposed,
incessantly ridiculed by the wisest men of all ages, and labor-
ing under the curse of not being what it professes to be, and
not being able to perform what it promises.
Sober, unprejudiced reflection, on the other hand, can easily
convince us that to hold correct views about every case of
disease we have to cure, to obtain an accurate knowledge of
the true powers of medicines, to employ them on a plan
adapted to each morbid condition and to administer them in
proper dose, -in a word, the complete true healing art, can
never be the work of self-satisfied ratiocination and illusory
opinions, but that the requisites for this, the materials as well
as the rules for its exercise, are only to be discovered by due
attention to nature by means of our senses, by careful honest
observations and by experiments conducted with all possible
purity, and in no other way; and, rejecting every falsifying
admixture of arbitrary dicta, must be faithfully sought in this
the only way commensurate to the high value of precious
human life.
It remains to be seen if by my conscientious labors in this
way the true healing art has been found.
DR. SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
LEIPZIG, end of the year 1818.
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
In the five years since the publication of the Second Edition,
the truth of the homoeopathic healing art has found so much
acceptance from physicians far and near, that it can no longer
be obscured, still less extinguished, by abusive writings, of
which, however, there is no lack. I rejoice at the benefit it
has already conferred on humanity, and look forward with
intense pleasure to the not distant time when, though I shall
be no longer here below, a future generation of mankind will
do justice to this gift of a gracious God, and will thankfully
avail themselves of the blessed means He has provided for the
alleviation of their bodily and mental sufferings.
A great help to the spread of the good cause in foreign
lands is won by the good French translation of the last edition,
recently brought out at great sacrifice, by that genuine philan-
thropist, my learned friend, Baron von Brunnow.” He has
enriched it with a preface which gives an exposition of the
homoeopathic healing art and its history, and at the same time
serves as an introduction to the study of the work itself.
In this third edition I have not refrained from making any
alterations and emendations suggested by increased knowledge
and necessitated by further experience. S. H.
KöTHEN ; Easter, 1824.
* Orgamon de l'art guérir; traduit de l'original allemand du Dr. Samuel Hahne-
mann, Conseiller de Son Altesse Sérénissime le Duc d’Anhalt-Köthen, par
Erneste George de Brunnow; a Dresde, chez Arnold, libraire-éditeur, 1824.
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION.
Were that nature whose self-help in diseases is believed by
physicians of the traditional School to be the incomparable
healing art, a close imitation of which should be the physician's
highest aim, great Nature herself, i. e. the voice in ineffable
wisdom of the great Artificer of the infinite universe, we should
then feel constrained to be guided by this infallible voice,
though we might be puzzled to understand why we physicians
should, with our artificial interference by medicines, disturb
or injuriously aggravate these presumably incomparable opera-
tions of nature's self-help in diseases (vis medicatria); but this
is far from being the case! That nature, whose self-help was
alleged by the traditional school of medicine to be the incom-
parable healing art and the only thing worth imitating, is
merely the individual nature of the organic man, is nothing
but the instinctive, irrational, unreasoning vital force subject
to the organic laws of our body, which is ordained by the
Creator to maintain the functions and sensations of the
organism in marvellously perfect condition so long as the man
continues in good health, but was not intended nor adapted
for the restoration in the best manner of deranged or lost
health. For should our vital force have its integrity impaired
by injurious influences from without, then this force strives
instinctively and automatically to free itself from the adventi-
tious derangement (disease) by revolutionary processes; but
these very efforts are themselves disease; they are a second
different malady substituted for the original one. The vital
force, I say, produces, in accordance with the laws of the
constitution of the organism to which it is a subject, a disease
of a different sort, intended to expel the disease by which it
was attacked, which it strives to accomplish by pain, metas-
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. xiii
tases and so forth, but mainly by evacuations and the sacrifice
of much of the fluid and solid constituents of the body, with
difficult, often dubious, injurious, frequently even disastrous
results.
Were it not that men in all ages were aware of this imper-
fection, and the not infrequent inadequacy of these blind efforts
of the instinctive unreasoning vital force in its attempts at
self-help in diseases, they would not have longed so much nor
so zealously striven to assist the suffering vital force, so pow-
erless to help itself efficiently, by the employment of better
remedial means in order to terminate the morbid process in a
more speedy and sure manner, thereby restoring the wished-for
health as speedily as possible, –in a word, they would not
have exerted themselves to discover a healing art.
But as what has hitherto been termed “healing art” was a
mere (imperfect) imitation of those unhelpful, useless, not in-
frequently injurious efforts and operations of the instinctive,
unreasoning vital force (misnamed nature) when left to itself
in disease, it will, I think, be conceded that before me the true
healing art was not discovered.
But that homoeopathy is this healing art, which had hitherto
been sought for in vain, its fundamental principles teach, its
performances prove.
SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
KöTHEN, January, 1829.
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
In order to give a general notion of the treatment of diseases
pursued by the old school of medicine (allopathy), I may ob-
serve that it presupposes the existence sometimes of excess of
blood (plethora—which is never present), sometimes of morbid
matters and acridities; hence it taps off the life's blood and
exerts itself either to clear away the imaginary disease-matter
or to conduct it elsewhere (by emetics, purgatives, sialogogues,
diaphoretics, diuretics, drawing plasters, setons, issues, &c.),
in the vain belief that the disease will thereby be weakened
and materially eradicated; in place of which, the patient's suf-
ferings are thereby increased, and by such and other painful
appliances the forces and nutritious juices indispensable to the
curative process are abstracted from the organism. It assails
the body with large doses of powerful medicines, often re-
peated in rapid succession for a long time, whose long-enduring,
not infrequently frightful effects, it knows not, and which it,
purposely, it would almost seem, makes unrecognizable by its
commingling of several such unknown substances in one pre-
scription, and by their long-continued employment it develops
in the body new and often ineradicable medicinal diseases.
Whenever it can, too, it employs, in order to keep in favor
with its patient," remedies that immediately suppress and hide
the morbid symptoms by opposition (contraria contrariis) for a
short time (palliatives), but that leave the disposition to these
symptoms (the disease itself) strengthened and aggravated. It
considers affections on the exterior of the body as purely local
and existing there independently, and vainly supposes that it.
1 For the same object the experienced allopath delights to invent a fixed
name, by preference a Greek one, for the malady, in order to make the
patient believe that he has long known this disease as an old acquaintance,
and hence is the fittest person to cure it.
PRIEFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. XV
has cured them when it has driven them away by means of
external remedies, so that the internal affection is thereby
compelled to break out on a nobler and more important part.
When it knows not what else to do for the disease which will
not yield or which grows worse, the old school of medicine
undertakes to change it into something else, it knows not what,
by means of an alterative, –for example, by the life-under-
mining calomel, corrosive sublimate and other mercurial pre-
parations in large doses.
To render, (through ignorance) if not fatal, at all events
incurable, the vast majority (1%) of all diseases, namely,
those of a chronic character, by continually weakening and
tormenting the debilitated patient, already suffering without
that from his disease, and by adding new destructive drug
diseases, this clearly seems to be the unhallowed main business
of the old school of medicine (allopathy)—and a very easy
business it is when once one has become an adept in this
pernicious practice, and is sufficiently insensible to the stings
of conscience!
And yet for all these mischievous operations the ordinary
physician of the old school can assign his reasons, which,
however, rest only on foregone conclusions of his books and
teachers, and on the authority of this or that distinguished
physician of the old school. Even the most opposite and the
most senseless modes of treatment find there their defence,
their authority—let their disastrous effects speak ever so loudly
against them. It is only under the old physician who has
been at last gradually convinced, after many years of misdeeds,
of the mischievous nature of his so-called art, and who no
longer treats even the severest diseases with anything stronger
than plantain water mixed with strawberry syrup (i. e. with
nothing), that the smallest number are injured and die.
This non-healing art, which for many centuries has been
firmly established in full possession of the power to dispose of
the life and death of patients according to its own good will
and pleasure, and in that period has shortened the lives of ten
times as many human beings as the most destructive wars, and
rendered many millions of patients more diseased and wretched
than they were originally—this allopathy, I shall first expose
XVI PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.
somewhat more minutely before teaching in detail its exact
opposite, the newly discovered true healing art.
As regards the latter (homoeopathy) it is quite otherwise. It
can easily convince every reflecting person that the diseases of
man are not caused by any substance, any acridity, that is to
say, any disease-matter, but that they are solely spirit-like
(dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital
force) that animates the human body. Homoeopathy knows
that a cure can only take place by the reaction of the vital
force against the rightly chosen remedy that has been ingested,
and that the cure will be certain and rapid in proportion to the
strength with which the vital force still prevails in the patient.
Hence Homoeopathy avoids everything in the slightest degree
enfeebling," and as much as possible every excitation of pain,
for pain also diminishes the strength, and hence it employs for
the cure oNLY those medicines whose effects in altering and
deranging (dynamically) the health it knows accurately, and
from these it selects one whose pathogenetic power (its medi-
cinal disease) is capable of removing the natural disease in
question by similarity (similia similibus), and this it administers
to the patient in simple form, but in rare and minute doses (so
small that, without occasioning pain or weakening, they just
suffice to remove the natural malady by means of the reacting
energy of the vital force), with this result: that without weak-
ening, injuring or torturing him in the very least, the natural
disease is extinguished, and the patient, even whilst he is
getting better, gains in strength and thus is cured—an appar-
ently easy but actually troublesome and difficult business, and
one requiring much thought, but which restores the patient
without suffering in a short time to perfect health, –and thus
it is a salutary and blessed business.
Thus homoeopathy is a perfectly simple system of medicine,
remaining always fixed in its principles as in its practice,
which, like the doctrine whereon it is based, if rightly appre-
1 Homoeopathy sheds not a drop of blood, administers no emetics, purga-
tives, laxatives or diaphoretics, drives off no external affection by external
means, prescribes no warm baths or medicated clysters, applies no Spanish
flies or mustard plasters, no Setons, no issues, excites no ptyalism, burns not
with moxa, or red-hot iron to the very bone, and so forth, but gives with its
own hand its own preparations of simple uncompounded medicines, which it
is accurately acquainted with, never subdues pain by opium, &c.
PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. xvii
hended will be found to be so exclusive (and only in that way
serviceable), that as the doctrine must be accepted in its purity,
So it must be purely practiced, and all backward straying to
the pernicious routine of the old school (whose opposite it is,
as day to night) is totally inadmissible, otherwise it ceases to
deserve the honorable name of homoeopathy.
That some misguided physicians who would wish to be con-
sidered homoeopathists, engraft some, to them more familiar,
allopathic malpractices upon their nominally homoeopathic
treatment, is owing to ignorance of the doctrine, laziness, con-
tempt for suffering humanity, and ridiculous conceit; and,
besides showing unpardonable negligence in searching for the
best homoeopathic specific for each case of disease, has often a
base love of gain and other sordid motives for its spring—and
for its result? that they cannot cure all important and serious
diseases (which pure and careful homoeopathy can), and that
they send many of their patients to that place whence no one
returns, whilst the friends console themselves with the reflec-
tion that everything (including every hurtful allopathic pro-
cess!) has been done for the departed.
SAMUEL HAHNEMANN.
RöTHEN, March 28th, 1833.
1 I am therefore sorry that I once gave the advice, Savoring of allopathy.
to apply to the back in psoric diseases a resinous plaster to cause itching,
and to employ the finest electrical sparks in paralytic affections. For as
both these appliances have seldom proved of service, and have furnished
the mongrel homoeopathists with an excuse for their allopathic transgres-
sions, I am grieved I should ever have proposed them, and I hereby solemnly
retract them—for this reason also, that, since then, our homoeopathic system
has advanced so near to perfection that they are mow no longer required.
CONTENTS,"
INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
Review of the therapeutics, allopathy and palliative treat-
ment, that have hitherto been practiced in the old school
of medicine tº s º tº * - g-º ſº l
Non-medical persons have also found the treatment on the prin-
ciple of similarity of action to be the only efficacious mode 37
NOTE.—Isopathy º- tº- sº tº ſº * gº 37
Even some physicians of an earlier period suspected that this
was the most excellent mode of treatment º - 40
TEXT OF THE ORGANON. tº 42
3 1,
3
2. The sole mission of the physician is to cure rapidly, gently,
permanently.
NOTE.-Not to construct theoretical systems, nor to attempt
to explain phenomena.
4. He must investigate what is to be cured in diseases and
know what is curative in the various medicines, in order
to be able to adapt the latter to the former, and must also
understand how to preserve the health of human beings.
. Attention to exciting and fundamental causes and other cir-
cumstances, as helps to cure.
. For the physician, the disease consists only of the totality of
its symptoms.
NOTE.—The old school’s futile attempts to discover the essen-
tial nature of disease (prima causa).
. Whilst paying attention to those circumstances (4 5) the phy-
sician needs only to remove the totality of the symptoms
in order to cure the disease.
NOTE 1.-The cause that manifestly produces and maintains
the disease should be removed. - s
NOTE 2. —The symptomatic palliative mode of treatment di-
rected toward a single symptom is to be rejected.
. If all the symptoms be eradicated, the disease is always cured
internally also.
NOTE.-This is stupidly denied by the old school.
. During health a spiritual power (autocracy, vital force) ani-
mates the organism and keeps it in harmonious order,
XX CONTENTS.
Ž 10. Without this animating, spirit-like power the organism is
dead.
11. In disease, the vital force only is primarily morbidly de-
ranged, and expresses its sufferings (the internal change)
by abnormal sensations and functions of the organism.
NOTE.-It is unnecessary for the Cure to know how the vital
force produces the symptoms.
12. By the disappearance of the totality of the symptoms by the
cure, the affection of the vital force, that is to say, the
whole internal and external morbid state is also removed.
13. To regard those diseases that are not surgical as a peculiar
distinct thing residing in the human frame is an absurdity
which has rendered allopathy so pernicious.
14. Everything of a morbid nature that is curable makes itself
known to the physician by disease-symptoms.
15. The affection of the diseased vival force and the disease
symptoms thereby produced constitute an inseparable
whole—they are one and the same.
16. It is only by the spiritual influences of morbific noxae that our
spirit-like vital force can become ill; and in like manner,
only by the spirit-like (dynamic) operation of medicines
that it can be again restored to health.
17. The practitioner, therefore, only needs to take away the
totality of the disease signs, and he has removed the entire
disease.
NOTES 1 and 2.-Illustrative examples.
18. The totality of the symptoms is the only indication, the only
guide to the selection of a remedy.
19. The alteration of the state of the health in diseases (the dis-
ease symptoms) cannot be cured by the medicines otherwise,
than in so far as the latter have the power of also produc-
ing alterations in man's health.
20. This power of medicines to alter the state of the health can
only be ascertained by their effects on (healthy) persons.
21. The morbid symptoms that medicines produce in healthy in-
dividuals are the only thing wherefrom we can learn their
disease-curing power.
22. If experience should show that by medicines that possess
similar symptoms to the disease the latter would be most
certainly and permanently cured, we must select for the
cure, medicines with similar symptoms; but should it show
that the disease is most certainly and permanently cured
by opposite medicinal symptoms, we must choose for the
cure medicines with opposite symptoms.
NOTE.-The employment of medicines whose symptoms have no
actual (pathologizal) relation to the symptoms of the disease, but
which act on the body in a different manner, is the allopathic
method, which is to be rejected.
CONTENTS. xxi
ź 23. By opposite medicinal symptoms (antipathic treatment) persist-
ing disease-symptoms are not cured.
24, 25. The other remaining method of treatment, the homoeo-
pathic, by means of medicines with similar symptoms, is the
only one that experience shows to be always salutary.
26. This is dependent on the therapeutic law of nature that a
weaker dynamic affection in the living organism is per-
manently extinguished by one that is very similar to and
stronger than it, only differing from it in kind.
NOTE.-This applies both to physical affections and moral mala-
dies.
27. The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on the
symptoms they have similar to the disease.
28, 29. Attempt to explain this therapeutic law of nature.
NOTE.-Illustration of it.
30—33. The human body is much more disposed to let its state
of health be altered by medicinal forces than by natural
disease.
34, 35. The correctness of the homoeopathic therapeutic law is
shown in the want of success attending every unhomoeo-
pathic treatment of a long-standing disease, and in this
also, that two natural diseases meeting together in the
body, if they be dissimilar to each other, do not remove or
cure one another.
36. I. The older disease existing in the body, if it be equally
strong or stronger, keeps away from the patient a new dis-
similar disease.
37. Thus, under unhomoeopathic treatment that is not violent,
chronic diseases remain as they were.
38. II. Or a new, stronger disease, attacking an individual al-
ready ill, suppresses only, as long as it lasts, the old dis-
ease that is dissimilar to it, already present in the body,
but never removes it.
39. It is just in this way that violent treatment with allopathic
drugs does not cure a chronic disease, but suppresses it only
as long as the action of the powerful medicines, which are
unable to excite any symptoms similar to the disease, lasts;
after that, the chronic disease makes its appearance as bad
or worse than before.
40. III. Or the new disease, after having long acted on the body,
joins the old one that is dissimilar to it, and thence arises a
double (complex) disease: neither of these two dissimilar
diseases removes the other.
41. Much more frequently than in the course of nature, an arti-
ficial disease caused by the long-continued employment of
powerful, inappropriate (allopathic) medicine in ordinary
practice, associates itself with the old natural disease,
xxii CONTENTS.
which is dissimilar to (and therefore not curable by) the for-
mer, and the chronic patient now becomes doubly diseased.
& 42. These diseases that thus complicate one another take, on ac-
count of their dissimilarity, each the place in the organism
suited for it.
43, 44. But quite otherwise is it on the accession of a stronger
disease to a pre-existing One similar to it; in that case the
latter will be removed and cured by the former.
45. Explanation of this phenomenon.
46. Instances of chronic diseases being cured by the accidental
accession of another similar but stronger disease.
47–49. In cases where diseases come together in the course of
nature, it is only one that displays similar symptoms that
can remove and bure the other, a dissimilar disease can
never do this; this should teach the physician what kind
of medicines he can certainly cure with, namely, with ho-
moeopathic ones alone.
50. Nature has but few diseases to send to the homoeopathic re-
lief of other diseases, and these its remedial agents are ac-
companied by many inconveniences. -
51. On the other hand, the physician has innumerable remedial
agents, possessing great advantages Over those.
52. From what takes place in nature, the physician may learn
never to treat diseases with other than homoeopathically
selected medicines, whereby he will be able to cure them,
which he never could do with heterogeneous (allopathic)
remedies, that never cure, but only injure the patient.
53, 54. There are but three possible modes of employing medi-
cines against diseases:
1. The homoeopathic, which alone is efficacious.
55. 2. The allopathic, or heteropathic;
56. 3. The antipathic (enantiopathic), or palliative.
NOTE.-Remarks on isopathy, as it is termed.
57. The method of treatment in which a remedy which displays
an opposite action (contraria contrariis) is prescribed for a
single symptom of the disease. Examples.
58. This antipathic procedure is not defective merely because it
is directed against a single symptom of the disease only,
but also because in persisting ailments, after it produces a
short apparent amelioration, real aggravation ensues.
NoTE.—Testimonies of authors to the truth of this.
59. Injurious effects of some antipathic modes of treatment.
60. Increasing the dose at every repetition of a palliative never
cures a chronic affection, but does still more harm.
61. Whence physicians ought to have inferred the utility of an
opposite and only good mode of treatment, to wit, the ho-
moeopathic.
CONTENTS. . xxiii
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
70.
71.
72.
73.
74.
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
80,
82.
The reason of the injurious nature of the palliative, and of
the sole efficacy of the homoeopathic employment of medi-
cines •
Depends upon the difference between the primary action
that takes place under the influence of every medicine, and
the reaction or secondary action subsequently effected by
the living organism (the vital force).
Explanation of the primary and secondary actions.
Examples of both.
From the smallest homoeopathic doses of medicine employed
in treatment, the secondary action of the vital force merely
shows itself in the restoration of the balance of health.
These truths explain the salutary character of the homoeo-
pathic treatment, as also the perversity of the antipathic
(palliative) method.
NOTE.—Cases in which the antipathic employment of medicines
is alone admissible.
How is the efficacy of the homoeopathic system proved by
these truths? ---
How is the hurtfulness of the antipathic treatment proved
by these truths?
NOTE 1.-Opposite sensations do not neutralize each other in the
human SensOrium; they are not, therefore, like opposite sub-
stances in chemistry.
NOTE 2.-Illustrative example.
Short summary of the homoeopathic system of medicine.
The three points necessary for curing: (1) the investigation
of the disease; (2) the investigation of the effects of the
medicines; and (3) their appropriate employment.
General survey of diseases—acute chronic.
Acute diseases that attack single individuals, sporadic, epi-
demic, acute miasms.
The worst kinds of chronic diseases are those produced by
the unskillfulness of allopathic physicians.
These are the most incurable.
It is only when the vital force is still sufficiently powerful,
that the injury can then be repaired. often only after a long
time, if the original disease be at the same time homoeo-
pathically eradicated.
Diseases inappropriately named chronic.
Chronic diseases proper; they all arise from chronic miasms.
Syphilis and sycosis.
81. Psora: it is the mother of all true chronic diseases except
the syphilitic and sycotic.
NOTE.-Names of diseases in the ordinary pathology.
Among the more specific remedies discovered for these
chronic miasms, especially for psora, the selection of those
xxiv. CONTENTS.
for the cure of each individual case of chronic disease is to
be conducted all the more carefully.
# 83. Requisites for apprehending the picture of the disease.
84–99. Instructions to the physician for investigating and trac-
ing the picture of the disease.
100–102. Investigation of the epidemic diseases in particular.
103. In like manner must the fundamental cause of (non-syphilitic)
chronic diseases be investigated and the great entire pic-
ture of psora be displayed.
104. Utility of noting down in writing the picture of the dis-
ease, for the purpose of curing, and in the progress of the
treatment.
NOTE.—How the old school physicians go about the investigation
Of the morbid state.
105–114. Preliminaries to be attended to in investigating the
pure effects of medicines on healthy individuals. Primary
action. Secondary action.
115. Alternating actions of medicines.
116, 117. Idiosyncrasies.
118, 119. The action of every medicine differs from that of every
other.
NOTE.-There can be no such things as surrogates.
120. Every medicine, therefore, must be carefully proved to as-
certain the peculiarity of its special effects.
121–140. Mode of proceeding when we make trial of them on
other persons. 8.
141. The experiments of the healthy physician with medicines
upon himself are the best.
142. The investigation of the pure effects of medicines in diseases
is difficult.
143–145. Only from such investigations of the pure effects of
medicines on healthy persons can a real materia medica, be
formed. sº
146. The most appropriate therapeutic employment of medicines
known in their pure effects.
147. The medicine most homoeopathically corresponding is the
most suitable, is the specific remedy.
148. Explanation of how a homoeopathic cure is probably effected.
149. The homoeopathic cure of a disease that has occurred quickly
is quickly effected; that of chronic diseases, however, de-
mands proportionally more time.
NOTE.-Difference betwixt pure homoeopathists and the mon-
grel Sect.
150. Slight ailments.
151. Important diseases have a number of symptoms.
152. For those with numerous striking symptoms a homoeopathic
remedy can be more certainly found.
CONTENTS. XXV
3 153. What kind of symptoms ought one chiefly to attend to in the
choice of a remedy?
154. A remedy as homoeopathic as it is possible to be cures with-
out much disturbance.
155. Cause of the freedom from disturbance of such cures.
156. Cause of the slight exceptions to this.
157–160. The medicinal disease very similar, but somewhat su-
perior in strength, to the original disease, termed also
homoeopathic aggravation.
161. In chronic (psoric) diseases the homoeopathic aggravations
from (antipsoric) homoeopathic medicines occur during a
period of several days, from time to time.
162—171. Rules for treatment when the supply of known medi-
cines is too small to allow a perfect homoeopathic remedy
to be discovered.
I72–184. Rules for the treatment of diseases with too few symp-
toms: one-sided diseases. e
185–203, Treatment of diseases with local symptoms; their ex-
ternal treatment is always injurious.
204, 205. All chronic affections and diseases properly so called
(that are not merely produced and maintained by a bad
mode of living) must be cured only from within, by the
homoeopathic medicines appropriate for the miasm that lies
at their root.
206. Preliminary investigation of the miasm that lies at their
root, of the simple miasm or its complications with a second
(or even with a third).
207. Inquiry into the treatments previously employed.
208, 209. The other preliminary inquiries necessary for the ap-
prehension of the morbid picture of the chronic disease.
210—230. Treatment of the so-called mental or emotional dis-
€8, S6S.
231, 232. The intermittent and alternating diseases.
233, 234. The periodical intermittent diseases.
235–244. The intermittent fevers.
245—251. Mode of using the remedies.
NOTE.-Repetition of the doses.
252—256. Signs of commencing improvement.
257, 258. False predilection for favorite remedies and unjustifi-
able aversion to other medicines.
259—261. Regimen in chronic diseases.
NOTE.-Injurious things in the habits of life.
262, 263. Diet in acute diseases.
264—266. Selection of the most energetic, most genuine med-
icines.
NOTE.-Change affected in Some substances in their preparation
for food.
xxvi CONTENTS.
ź 267. Preparation of the most powerful and must durable forms
of medicines from plants that can be obtained fresh.
268. Dry vegetable substances.
NOTE.-Preparation of powders so that they shall keep.
269–271. The mode of preparing crude medicinal substances pe-
culiar to homoeopathy, so as to develop their curative pow-
ers to the utmost.
272—274. Only one single, simple medicine should be given to the
patient at one time.
275–287. Strength of the doses for homoeopathic use—how it
may be increased or diminished. Their dynamization.
288—292. What parts of the body are more or less susceptible
to the influence of the medicines?
NOTE.-Advantages of the olfaction of highly potentized medi-
cines over every other method of taking them.
293, 294. Animal magnetism (mesmerism). Its positive and
negative employment.
INTRO DUCTION."
Review of the therapeutics, allopathy(0) and palliative treatment
that have hitherto been practiced in the old school of
medicine.
As long as men have existed they have been liable, individu-
ally or collectively, to diseases from physical or moral causes.
In a rude state of nature but few remedial agents were required,
as the simple mode of living admitted of but few diseases; with
the civilization of mankind in the state, on the contrary, the
occasions of diseases and the necessity for medical aid increased
in equal proportion. But ever since that time (soon after
Hippocrates, therefore, for 2500 years) men have occupied
themselves with the treatment of the ever increasing multipli-
city of diseases, who, led astray by their vanity, sought by
reasoning and guessing to excogitate the mode of furnishing
this aid. Innumerable and dissimilar ideas respecting the na-
ture of diseases and their remedies sprang from so many dis-
similar brains, and the theoretical views these gave rise to they
called systems, each of which was at variance with the rest and
self-contradictory. Each of these subtile expositions at first
threw the readers into stupefied amazement at the incomprehen-
sible wisdom contained in it, and attracted to the system-
monger a number of followers, who re-echoed his unnatural
sophistry, to none of whom, however, was it of the slightest
use in enabling them to cure better, until a new system, often
diametrically opposed to the first, thrust that aside, and in its
turn gained a short-lived renown. None of them, however,
was in consonance with nature and experience; they were mere
theoretical webs, woven by cunning intellects out of pretended
1
2 INTRODUCTION.
consequences, which could not be made use of in practice, in
the treatment at the sick-bed, on account of their excessive
subtilty and repugnance to nature, and only served for empty
disputations.
Simultaneously, but quite independent of all these theories,
there sprung up a mode of treatment with mixtures of unknown
medicinal substances for forms of disease arbitrarily set up,
and directed toward some material object completely at vari-
ance with nature and experience, hence, as may be supposed,
with a bad result—such is old medicine, allopathy as it is
termed. (a)
Without disparaging the services which many physicians
have rendered to the Sciences auxiliary to medicine, to natural
philosophy and chemistry, to natural history in its various
branches, and to that of man in particular, to anthropology,
physiology and anatomy, &c., I shall occupy myself here with
the practical part of medicine only, with the healing art itself,
in order to show how it is that diseases have hitherto been so
imperfectly treated. Far beneath my notice is that mechanical
routine of treating precious human life according to the pre-
scription manuals, the continual publication of which shows,
alas! how frequently they are still used. I pass it by unnoticed,
as a despicable practice of the lowest class of ordinary practi.
tioners. I speak merely of the medical art as hitherto practiced,
which, pluming itself on its antiquity, imagines itself to possess
a scientific character.
The partisans of the old school of medicine flattered them-
selves that they could justly claim for it alone the title of
“rational medicine,” because they alone sought for and strove
to remove the cause of disease, and followed the method em-
ployed by nature in diseases.
Tolle causam/ they cried incessantly. But they went no
further than this empty exclamation. They only fancied that
they could discover the cause of disease; they did not discover
it, however, as it is not perceptible and not discoverable. For as
far the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual)
origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore
not perceptible to the senses; so they exerted themselves to im-
agine one, and from a survey of the parts of the normal, in-
INTRODUCTION. 3
animate human body (anatomy), compared with the visible
changes of the same internal parts in persons who had died of
diseases (pathological anatomy), as also from what they could
deduce from a comparison of the phenomena and functions
in healthy life (physiology) with their endless alterations in
the innumerable morbid states (pathology, semeiotics), to draw
conclusions relative to the invisible process whereby the changes
which take place in the inward being of man in diseases are
effected—a dim picture of the imagination, which theoretical
medicine regarded as its prima causa morbi; and thus it was
at one and the same time the proacimate cause of the disease,
and the internal essence of the disease, the disease itself—al-
though, as sound human reason teaches us, the cause of a
thing or of an event, can never be at the same time the thing
or the event itself. How could they then, without deceiving
themselves, consider this imperceptible internal essence as the
object to be treated, and prescribe for it medicines whose cura-
tive powers were likewise generally unknown to them, and
even give several such unknown medicines mixed together in
what are termed prescriptions?
But this sublime problem, the discovery, namely, a priori,
of an internal invisible cause of disease, resolved itself, at
least with the more astute physicians of the old school, into a
1 It would have been much more consonant with sound human reason and
with the nature of things, had they, in order to be able to cure a disease.
regarded the originating cause as the causa morbi, and endeavored to dis-
cover that, and thus been enabled successfully to employ the mode of treat-
ment which had shown itself useful in maladies having the same exciting
cause, in those also of a similar origin, as, for example, the same mercury is
efficacious in an ulcer of the glans after impure coitus, as in all previous
venereal chancres—if, I say, they had discovered the exciting cause of all
other (non-venereal) chronic diseases to be an infection at one period or an-
Other with the itch miasm (psora), and had found for all these a common
method of treatment, regard being had for the peculiarities of each indi-
vidual case, whereby all and each of these chronic diseases might have been
cured, then might they with justice have boasted that in the treatment of
chronic diseases they had in view the only (tw/tilalile and useful cantwit mor-
borum chronicorum (mon venereorum), and with this as a basis they might have
treated such diseases with the best results. But during these many centuries
they were unable to cure the millions of chromic diseases, because they knew
not their origin in the psoric miasm (which was first discovered and after-
wards provided with a suitable plan of treatment by homoeopathy), and yet
they vaunted that they alone kept in view the prima cauxa of these diseases
in their treatment, and that they alone treated rationally, although they
had not the slightest conception of the only useful knowledge of their psoric
origin and consequently they bungled the treatment of all chronic diseases!
4 INTRODUCTION.
search, under the guidance of the symptoms it is true, for what
might be supposed to be the probable general character of the
case of disease before them; whether it was spasm, or debility,
or paralysis, or fever, or inflammation, or induration, or ob-
struction of this or that part, or excess of blood (plethora),
deficiency or excess of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen or nitrogen
in the juices, exaltation or depression of the functions of the
arterial, venous or capillary system, change in the relative
proportion of the factors of sensibility, irritability or reproduc-
tion?—conjectures that have been dignified by the followers of
the old school with the title of causal indication, and considered
to be the only possible rationality in medicine; but which were
assumptions, too fallacious and hypothetical to prove of any
practical utility—incapable, even had they been well grounded,
of indicating the most appropriate remedy for a case of disease;
flattering, indeed, to the vanity of the learned theorist, but
usually leading astray when used as guides to practice, and
wherein there was evidenced more of ostentation than of an
earnest search for the curative indication.
And how often has it happened that, for example, spasm or
paralysis seemed to be in one part of the organism, while in
another part inflammation was apparently present!
Or, on the other hand, whence are the certain remedies for
each of these pretended general characters to be derived?
Those that would certainly be of benefit could be none other
than the specific medicines, that is, those whose action is
homogeneous” to the morbid irritation; whose employment,
however, is denounced and forbidden” by the old school as
highly injurious, because observation has shown that in conse-
quence of the receptivity for homogeneous irritation being so
I Every physician who treats disease according to such general characters,
however he may affect to claim the name of homoeopathist. is and ever will
remain in fact a generalising allopath, for without the most minute indi-
vidualisation, homoeopathy is not conceivable.(d)
2 Now termed homoeopathic.
3 “Where experience showed the curative power of homoeopathically
acting remedies, whose mode of action could not be explained, the difficulty
was avoided by calling them specific, and further investigation was stifled by
this actually unmeaning word. The hornogeneous excitant remedies, the
specific (homoeopathic) medicines, lowever, had long previously been pro-
hibited as of very injurious influence.”—Rau, On the Value of the Homoeo-
pathic Method of Treatment, Heidelberg, 1824, pp. 101, 102.
INTRODUCTION. 5
highly increased in diseases, such medicines in the usual large
doses are dangerous to life. The old school never dreamt of
smaller, and of extremely small doses. Accordingly no at-
tempt was made to cure, in the direct (the most natural) way,
by means of homogeneous, specific medicines; nor could it be
done, as the effects of most of medicines were, and continued to
remain, unknown, and even had they been known it would
have been impossible to hit on the right medicine with such
generalising views as were entertained.
However, perceiving that it was more consistent with reason
to seek for another path, a straight one if possible, rather than
to take circuitous courses, the old school of medicine believed
it might cure diseases in a direct manner, a) by the removal of
the (imaginary) material cause of the disease—for to physicians
of the ordinary school, while investigating and forming a
judgment upon a disease, and not less while seeking for the
curative indication, it was next to impossible to divest them-
selves of these materialistic ideas, and to regard the nature of
the spiritual-corporeal organism as such a highly potentialised
entity, that its sensational and functional vital changes, which
are called diseases, must be produced and effected chiefly, if
not solely, by dynamic (spiritual(g)) influences, and could not
be effected in any other way.
The old school regarded all those matters which were altered
by the disease, those abnormal matters that occurred in con-
gestions, as well as those that were excreted, as disease-
producers, or at least on account of their supposed reacting
power, as disease-maintainers, and this latter notion prevails
to this day.
Hence they dreamed of effecting causal cures by endeavor-
ing to remove these imaginary and presumed material causes
of the disease. Hence their assiduous evacuation of the bile
by vomiting in bilious fevers; their emetics in cases of so-
called stomach derangements;” their diligent purging away of
1 The estimable Hofrath Dr. Rau (loc. cit., p. 176). at a time when not per-
fectly conversant with homoeopathy, but firmly convinced of the dynamic
cause of these fevers, cured them Without employing any evacuating remedy,
by means of one or two small doses of homoeopathic remedies, two very re-
markable cases of which he relates in his book.
2 In a case of sudden derangement of the stomach, with constant disgust-
ing eructations with the taste of the vitiated food. generally accompanied
6 INTRODUCTION,
the mucus, the lumbrici and the ascarides in children who are
pale-faced and who suffer from ravenous appetite, bellyache,
by depression of spirits, cold hands and feet, &c., the ordinary physician has
hitherto been in the habit of attacking only the degenerated contents of the
Stomach; a powerful emetic should clean it out completely. This object was
generally attained by tartar emetic, with Or without ipecacuanha. Does the
patient, however, immediately after this become well, brisk and cheerful?
Oh no! Such a derangement of the stomach is usually of dynamic origin,
caused by mental disturbance (grief, fright, vexation), a chill, over-exertion
Of the mind or body immediately after eating, often after even a moderate
meal. Those two remedies are not suitable for removing this dynamic de-
rangement, and just as little is the revolutionary vomiting they produce.
Moreover, tartar emetic and ipecacuanha, from their other peculiar patho-
genetic powers, prove of further injury to the patient’s health, and derange
the biliary secretions; so that if the patient be not very robust, he must feel
ill for several days from the effects of this pretended causal treatment, not-
withstanding all this violent expulsion of the whole contents of the stomach.
If the patient, however, in place of taking such violent and always(q) hurt-
ful evacuant drugs, smell only a single time at a globule the size of a mus-
tard seed, moistened with highly diluted pulsatilla juice, whereby the de-
rangement of his health in general and of his stomach in particular will
certainly be removed, in two hours he is quite Well; and if the eructation
recur once more, it consists of tasteless and inodorous air; the contents of
the stomach cease to be vitiated, and at the next meal he has regained his
full usual appetite; he is quite well and lively. This is true causal medica-
tion; the former is only an imaginary One and has an injurious effect on
the patient.
Even a stomach Overloaded with indigestible food never requires a medi-
cinal emetic. In such a case nature is competent to rid herself of the excess
in the best way through the Oesophagus, by means of nausea, Sickness and
spontaneous vomiting, assisted, it may be, by mechanical irritation of the
palate and fauces, and by this means the accessory medicinal effects of the
emetic drugs are avoided; a small quantity Of coffee expedites the passage
downwards of what remains in the Stomach.
But if, after excessive overloading of the stomach, the irritability of the
Stomach is not sufficient to promote Spontaneous vomiting, or is lost alto-
gether, so that the tendency thereto is extinguished, while there are at the
same time great pains in the epigastrium, in Such a paralyzed State of the
stomach, an emetic medicine would only have the effect of producing a
dangerous or fatal inflammation of the intestines; whereas a small quantity
of strong infusion of coffee, frequently administered, would dynamically
exalt the sunken irritability Of the stomach, and put it in a Condition to
expel its contents, be they ever so great, either upwards or downwards. So
here also the pretended causal treatment is Out of place.
Even the acrid gastric acid, to eructations of which patients with chronic
diseases are not infrequently subject, may be today violently evacuated
by means of an emetic, with great suffering, and yet all in vain, for tomor-
row or some days later it is replaced by similar acrid gastric acid, and then
usually in larger quantities; whereas it goes away by itself when its dyna-
mic cause is removed by a very small dose of a high dilution of 8wlphuric acid,
or still better, if it is of frequent recurrence, by the employment of minutest
doses of antipsoric remedies corresponding in similarity to the rest of the
symptoms also. And of a similar character are many of the pretended
causal cures of the old-school physicians, whose main effort it is, by means of
tedious operations, troublesome to themselves and injurious to their pa-
tients, to clear away the material product of the dynamic derangement;
whereas if they perceived the dynamic Source of the affection, and annihi-
INTRODUCTION. 7
and enlarged abdomen; their venesections in cases of haemor-
rhage;” and more especially all their varieties of blood-
lettings,” their main remedy in inflammations, which they
now, following the example of a well-known bloodthirsty
Parisian physician (as a flock of sheep follow the bell-wether
even into the butcher's slaughter-house), imagine to encounter
in almost every morbidly affected part of the body, and feel
lated it and its products homoeopathically, they would thereby effect a
rational Cure.
1 Conditions dependent solely on a psoric taint, and easily curable by mild
(dynamic) antipsoric remedies without emetics or purgatives.
* Notwithstanding that almost all morbid haemorrhages depend on a
dynamic derangement of the vital force (state of health), yet the old-school
physicians consider their cause to be excess of blood, and cannot refrain
from bleeding in Order to draw off the supposed superabundance of this
vital fluid; the palpable evil consequences of which procedure, however.
Such as prostration of the strength, and the tendency, or actual transition.
to the typhoid state they ascribe to the malignancy of the disease, which
they are them, often unable to overcome—in fine, they imagine, even when the
patient does not recover, that their treatment has been in conformity with
their axiom, causam tolle, and that, according to their mode of speaking,
they have done everything in their power for the patient, let the result be
what it may.
8 Although there probably never was a drop of blood too much in the living
human body, yet the old-school practitioners consider an imaginary excess
of blood as the main material cause of all haemorrhages and inflammations,
which they must remove and drain off by venesections, cupping and leeches.
This they hold to be a rational mode of treatment. Causal medication. In
general inflammatory fevers, in acute pleurisy. they even regard the coagul-
lable lymph in the blood—the buffy coat, as it is termed—as the materta,
peccans, which they endeavor to get rid of, if possible, by repeated venesec-
tions, notwithstanding that this coat often becomes more consistent and
thicker at every repetition of the bloodletting. They thus often bleed the pa-
tient nearly to death, when the inflammatory fever will not subside, in
order to remove this buffy coat, or the imaginary plethora, without suspect-
ing that the inflammatory blood is only the product of the acute fever, of
the morbid, immaterial (dynamic) inflammatory irritation, and that the
latter is the sole cause of the great disturbance in the vascular System, and
may be removed by the Smallest dose of a homogeneous (homoeopathic) medi-
cine, as, for instance, by a small globule of the decillion-fold potentization of
aconite juice, with abstinence from vegetable acids, so that the most violent
pleuritic fever, with all its alarming concomitants, is changed into health
and cured, without the least abstraction of blood and without any antiphl gistic
remedy, in a few—at the most in twenty-four—hours (a small quantity of blood
drawn from a vein by way of experiment then shows no traces of buffy coat);
whereas another patient similarly affected, and treated on the rational
principles of the o'd school, if, after repeated bleedings, with great difficulty
and unspeakable sufferings he escape for the nonce with life, he often has
still many months to drag through before he can Support his emaciated
body on his legs, if in the mean time (as often happens from such maltreat-
ment) he be not carried off by typhoid fever, leucophlegmasia or pulmonary
phthisis.
Anyone who has felt the tranquil pulse of a man an hour before the occur-
rence of the rigor that always precedes an attack of acute pleurisy, will not
be able to restrain his amazement if told two hours later, after the hot stage
8 INTRODUCTION.
themselves bound to remove by the application of often a fatal
number of leeches. (a) They believe that by so doing they obey
the true causal indications, and treat disease in a rational
manner. The adherents of the old school, moreover, believe
that by putting a ligature on polypi, by cutting out, or artifi-
cially exciting suppuration by means of local irritants in, indo-
lent glandular swellings, by enucleating encysted tumors
(steatoma and meliceria) by their operations for aneurism and
lachrymal and anal fistula, by removing with the knife scirrhus
tumors of the breast, by amputating a limb affected with
necrosis, &c., they cure the patient radically, and that their
treatment is directed against the cause of the disease; and
they also think, when they employ their repellent remedies,
dry up old running ulcers in the legs with astringent applica-
tions of oxide of lead, copper or zinc (aided always by the
simultaneous administration of purgatives, which merely de-
bilitate, but have no effect on the fundamental dyscrasia), cau-
has commenced, that the enormous plethora present urgently requires re-
peated venesections, and will naturally inquire by what magic power could
the pounds of blood that must now be drawn off have been conjured into
the blood-vessels Of this man within these two hours, which but two hours
previously he had felt beating in such a tranquil manner? Not a single
drachm more of blood can now be circulating in those vessels than existed
when he was in good health, nor yet two hours ago!
Accordingly the allopathic physician with his venesections draws from
the patient laboring under acute fever no oppressive superabundance of
blood, as that cannot possibly be present; he Only robs him of what is indis-
pensable to life and recovery, the normal quantity of blood and consequently
of strength—a great loss which no physician’s power can replace!—and yet
ho vainly imagines that he has conducted the treatment in conformity to
his (misunderstood) axiom, causam tolle; whereas it is impossible that the
causa morbă in this case can be an excess of blood, which is not present; but
the sole true causa morbi was a morbid, dynamical, inflammatory irritation
of the circulating system, as is proved by the rapid and permanent cure of
this and every similar case of general inflammatory fever by one or two in-
conceivably minute doses of a comite juice, which removes | Such an irritation
homoeopathically.
The Old School errs equally in the treatment of local inflammation with
the topical bloodlettings, more especially with the quantities of leeches
which are now applied according to the maniacal principles of Broussais.
The palliative amelioration that at first ensues from the treatment is far
from being crowned by a rapid and perfect cure; on the contrary, the weak
and ailing state of the parts thus treated (frequently also of the whole body),
which always remains, sufficiently shows the error that is committed in at-
tributing the local inflammation to a local plethora, and how Sad are the
consequences of such abstractions of blood; whereas this purely dynamic,
apparently local, inflammatory irritation, can be rapidly and permanently
removed by an equally small dose of aconite, Or, according to circumstances,
of belladonna, and the whole disease annihilated and cured, Without such
unjustifiable shedding of blood.
INTRODUCTION. 9
terize chancres, destroy condylomata locally, drive off itch from
the skin with ointment of Sulphur, oxide of lead, mercury or
zinc, suppress ophthalmiae with solutions of lead or zinc, and
drive away tearing pains from the limbs by means of Opodeldoc,
hartshorn liniment or fumigations with cinnabar or amber; in
every case they think they have removed the affection, con-
quered the disease, and pursued a rational treatment directed
towards the cause. But what is the result? The metastatic
affections that sooner or later, but inevitably appear, caused
by this mode of treatment (but which they pretend are entirely
new diseases), which are always worse than the original malady,
sufficiently prove their error, and might and should open their
eyes to the deeper-seated, immaterial nature of the disease,
and its dynamic (spiritual) origin, which can only be removed
by dynamic means.
A favorite idea of the ordinary school of medicine, until re-
cent (would that I could not say the most recent!) times, was
that of morbific matters (and acridities) in diseases, excessively
subtile though they might be thought to be, which must be ex-
pelled from the blood-vessels and lymphatics, through the
exhalents, skin, urinary apparatus or salivary glands, through
the tracheal and bronchial glands in the form of expectoration,
from the stomach and bowels by vomiting and purging, in
order that the body might be freed from the material cause
that produced the disease, and a radical causal treatment(q)
be thus carried out. (a)
By cutting holes in the diseased body, which were converted
into chronic ulcers kept up for years by the introduction of
foreign substances (issues, setons), they sought to draw off the
materia peccans from the (always only dynamically) diseased
body, just as one lets a dirty fluid run out of a barrel through
the tap-hole. By means only of perpetual fly-blisters and the
application of mezereum, they thought to draw away the bad
humors and to cleanse the diseased body from all morbific
matters—but they only weakened it, so as generally to render
it incurable, by all these senseless unnatural processes. (d)
I admit that it was more convenient for the weakness of hu-
manity to assume that, in the diseases they were called on to
cure, there existed some morbific material of which the mind
10 INTRODUCTION.
might form a conception (more particularly as the patients
readily lent themselves to such a notion), because in that case
the practitioner had nothing further to care about than to pro-
cure a good supply of remedies for purifying the blood and
humors, exciting the diuresis and diaphoresis, promoting ex-
pectoration, and scouring out the stomach and bowels. Hence,
in all the works on Materia Medica, from Dioscorides down to
the latest books on this subject, there is almost nothing said
about the special peculiar action of individual medicines; but,
besides an account of their supposed utility in various nosologi-
cal names of diseases, it is merely stated whether they are
diuretic, diaphoretic, expectorant or emmenagogue, and more
particularly whether they produce evacuation of the stomach
and bowels upwards or downwards; because all the aspirations
and efforts of the practitioner have ever been chiefly directed
to cause the expulsion of a material morbific matter, and of
sundry (fictitious) acridities, which it was imagined were the
cause of diseases.
These were, however, all idle dreams, unfounded assump-
tions and hypotheses, cunningly devised for the convenience
of therapeutics, as it was expected the easiest way of perform-
ing a cure would be to remove the material morbific matters
(si modo essent!).
But the essential nature of diseases and their cure will not
adapt themselves to such fantasies, nor to the convenience of
medical men; to humor such stupid baseless hypotheses dis-
eases will not cease to be (spiritual) dynamic derangements of
our spirit-like vital principle in sensations and functions, that
is to say, immaterial derangements of our state of health.
The causes of our maladies cannot be material, since the
least foreign material substance," however mild it may appear
to us, if introduced into our blood-vessels, is promptly ejected
by the vital force, as though it were a poison; or when this
does not happen, death ensues. If even the minutest splinter
penetrates à sensitive part of our organism, the vital principle
1 Life was endangered by injecting a little pure water into a vein. (Vide
Mullen, quoted by Birch in the History of the Royal Society.)
Atmospheric air injected into the blood-vessels caused death. (Wide J. H.
Voigt, Magazin für dem meuesten Zustand der Naturkwºnde, i, iii, p. 25.)
Even the mildest fluids introduced into the veins endangered life. (Vide
Autenrieth. Physiºlogie, ii., § 784.)
INTRODUCTION. 11
everywhere present in our body never rests until it is removed
by pain, fever, suppuration or gangrene. And can it be sup-
posed that in a case of cutaneous disease of twenty years'
standing, for instance, this indefatigably active vital principle
will quietly endure the presence of such an injurious, foreign,
material exanthematous substance, such as a herpetic, scroful-
ous, a gouty acridity, &c., in the fluids of the body? Did
any noSologist ever see with corporeal eyes such a morbific
matter, to warrant him in speaking so confidently about it, and
in founding a system of medical treatment upon it? Has any
one ever succeeded in displaying to view the matter of gout or
the poison of scrofula?
Even when the application of a material substance to the
skin, or to a wound, has propagated diseases by infection, who
can prove (what is so often maintained in works on pathology)
that some material portion of this substance has penetrated
into our fluids or been absorbed?" The most careful and
prompt washing of the genitals does not protect the system
from infection with the venereal chancrous disease. The
slightest breath of air emanating from the body of a person
affected with smallpox will suffice to produce this horrible dis-
ease in a healthy child.
What ponderable quantity of material substance could have
been absorbed into the fluids, in order to develop, in the first
of these instances, a tedious dyscrasia (syphilis), which when
uncured is only extinguished with the remotest period of life,
with death; in the last, a disease (smallpox) accompanied by
almost general suppuration,” and often rapidly fatal? In these
1 A girl in Glasgow, eight years of age. having been bit by a mad dog, the
surgeon immediately cut the piece clean out, and yet thirty-six days afterwards
she was seized with hayrophobia, which killed her in two days. (Med. Com-
ment. of Edinb., Dec. 2, vol. ii, 1793.)
2 In order to account for the large quantity of putrid excrementitious mat-
ter and foetid discharge often met with in diseases, and to be able to represent
them as the material substance that excites and keeps up disease–although,
when infection occurs, nothing perceptible in the shape of miasm, nothing
material, could have penetrated into the body—recourse was had to the
hypothesis, that the matter of infection, be it ever SO minute, acts in the body
like a ferment, bringing the fluids into a like state of corruption. and thus
changing them into a similar morbific ferment which constantly increases
with the disease and keeps it up. But by what all-potent and all-wise puri-
fying draughts will you purge and cleanse the human fluids from this ever
reproductive ferment, from this mass of imaginary morbific matter, and that
so perfectly, that there shall not remain a particle of such morbific ferment,
12 INTRODUCTION.
and all similar cases is it possible to entertain the idea of a
material morbific matter being introduced into the blood? A
letter written in the sick-room at a great distance has often
communicated the same contagious disease to the person who
read it. In this instance, can the notion of a matérial morbific
matter having penetrated into the fluids be admitted? But
what need is there of all such proofs? How often has it hap-
pened that an irritating word has brought on a dangerous
bilious fever ; a superstitious prediction of death has caused
the fatal catastrophe at the very time announced; the abrupt
communication of sad or excessively joyful news has occasioned
sudden death? In these cases, where is the material morbific
principle that entered in substance into the body, there to pro-
duce and keep up the disease, and without the material expul-
sion and ejection of which a radical cure were impossible?
The champions of this clumsy doctrine of morbific matters
ought to be ashamed that they have so inconsiderately over-
looked and failed to appreciate the spiritual nature of life, and
the spiritual dynamic power of the exciting causes of dis-
eases, (a) and that they have thereby degraded themselves into
mere scavenger-doctors, who, in their efforts to expel from the
diseased body morbific matters that never existed, in place of
curing, destroy life.
Are, then, the foul, often disgusting excretions which occur
in diseases the actual matter that produces and keeps them
up? Are they not rather always eaccretory products of the
disease itself, that is, of the life which is only dynamically de-
ranged and disordered?
With such false and materialistic views concerning the origin
and essential nature of diseases, it was certainly not to be
wondered at that in all ages the main endeavor of the most
which, according to this hypothesis, must ever again, as at first, transform
and corrupt the fluids to new morbific matter? Were that so it would evi-
dently be impossible to cure these diseases in your way !—See how all hypo-
theses, be they ever so ingeniously framed, lead to the most palpable absurd—
ities when they are not founded on truth !—The most deeply rooted syphilis
may be cured, after the removal of the psora with which it is often compli-
cated, by one or two small doses of the decillion fold diluted and potentized
solution of mercury, whereby the general syphilitic taint of the fluids is for
ever (dynamically) annihilated and removed. .
I Were this the case, the most inveterate coryza should be certainly and
rapidly cured by merely blowing and wiping the nose carefully.
INTRODUCTION. 13
obscure, as well as of the most distinguished practitioners,
and even of the inventors of the sublimest medical systems,
was always only to separate and expel an imaginary morbific
matter, and the indication most frequently laid down was to
break up and put in motion this morbific matter, to effect its
expulsion by Salivation, expectoration, diaphoresis and diuresis;
to purify the blood from (acridities and impurities) morbific
matters, which never eacisted, by means of the intelligence of
sundry obedient decoctions of roots and plants; to draw off
mechanically the imaginary matter of disease by Setons, by
issues, by portions of the skin kept open and discharging by
means of perpetual blisters or mezereum bark, but chiefly to
expel and purge away the materia peccans, or the injurious
matters as they were termed, through the intestines, by means
of laxative and purgative medicines, which, in order to give
them a more profound meaning and a more prepossessing ap-
pearance, were fondly denominated dissolvents and mild aperi-
ents—all so many arrangements for the expulsion of inimical
morbific matters, which never could be, and never were instru-
mental in the production and maintenance of the diseases of
the human organism, animated as it is by a spiritual principle
—of diseases which never were anything else than spiritual
dynamic derangements of the life altered in its sensations and
functions. (a) -
Let it be granted now, what cannot be doubted, that no dis-
eases—if they do not result from the introduction of perfectly
indigestible or otherwise injurious substances into the stomach,
or into other orifices or cavities of the body, or from foreign
bodies penetrating the skin, &c.—that no disease, in a word,
is caused by any material substance, but that every one is only
and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the
health; how injudicious, in that case, must not a method of
treatment directed towards the expulsion of that imaginary
1 There is a semblance of necessity in the expulsion by purgatives of worms.
in so-called vermicular diseases. But even this semblance is false. A few
lumbrici may be found in some children; in many there exists ascarides. But
the presence of these is always dependent on a general taint of the constitu-
tion (the psoric), joined to an unhealthy mode of living. Let the latter be
improved, and the former cured homoeopathically, which is most easily
effected at this age, and none of the worms remain, and children cured in
this manner are never troubled with them more; whereas after mere purga-
tives, even when combined with cina, seeds, they soon reappear in quantities.
14 INTRODUCTION.
material substance appear to every rational man, since no
good, but only monstrous harm, can result from its employ-
ment in the principal diseases of mankind, namely, those of a
chronic character!
In short, the degenerated substances and impurities that ap-
pear in diseases are, undeniably, nothing more than products
of the disease of the abnormally deranged organism, which
are expelled by the latter, often violently enough—often much
too violently—without requiring the aid of the evacuating art,
and fresh products are always developed as long as it labors
under that disease. These matters the true physician regards
as actual symptoms of the disease, and they aid him to dis-
cover the nature of the disease, and to form an accurate por-
“But, the tapeworm,” methinks I hear some one exclaim. “every effort
should be made to expel that monster, which was created for the torment of
mankind.”
Yes, sometimes it is expelled; but at the cost of what after-sufferings, and
with what danger to life! I should not like to have on my conscience the
deaths of so many hundreds of human beings as have fallen sacrifices to the
horribly violent purgatives directed against the tapeworm, or the many years
of indisposition of those who have escaped being purged to death. And how
often does it happen that after all this health-and-life-destroying purgative
treatment, frequently continued for Several years, the animal is not expelled,
or if so, that it is again produced'
What if there is not the slightest necessity for all these violent, cruel and
dangerous efforts to expel and kill the worm?
The various species of tapeworm are only found along with the psoric taint,
and always disappear when that is cured. But even before the cure is ac-
complished, they live—the patient enjoying tolerable health the while—not
exactly in the intestines, but in the residue of the food, the excrement of the
bowels, as in their proper element, quite quietly, and without causing the
least disturbance, and find in the excrement what Suffices for their nourish-
ment; they then do not touch the walls of the intestine, and are perfectly
harmless. But if the patient happen to be affected with an acute disease of
any kind, then the contents of the bowels become intolerable to the animal;
it twists about, comes in contact with, and irritates the sensitive walls of the
intestines, causing a peculiar kind of spasmodic Colic, which increases mate-
rially the sufferings of the patient. (So also the foetus of the womb becomes
restless, turns about and kicks, only when the mother is ill; but when she is
well, it swims quietly in its proper fluid without causing her any suffering).
It is worthy of remark, that the morbid symptoms of patients suffering
from tapeworm are generally of such a kind, that they are rapidly relieved
(homoeopathically) by the smallest dose of tincture of male-ferm root; so that
the ill-health of the patient, which causes this parasitic animal to be restless,
is thereby for the time removed; the tapeworm then feels at ease, and lives on
quietly in the excrement of the bowels, without particularly distressing the
patient or his intestines, until the antipsoric treatment is so far advanced
that the worm. after the eradication of the psora, finds the contents of the
bowels no longer suitable for its support, and therefore spontaneously dis-
appears for ever from the now cured patient, without the least purgative
medicine.(4)
INTRODUCTION. 15
trait of it, so as to enable him to cure it with a similar medi-
cinal morbific agent. (o)
But the more modern adherents of the old school do not
wish it to be supposed, that in their treatment they aim at the
expulsion of material morbific substances. They allege that
their multifarious evacuant processes are a mode of treatment
by derivation, wherein they follow the example of nature
which, in her efforts to assist the diseased organism, resolves
fever by perspiration and diuresis, pleurisy by epistaxis, sweat
and mucous expectoration—other diseases by vomiting, diar-
rhoea and bleeding from the anus, articular pains by suppura-
ting ulcers on the legs, cynanche tonsillaris by salivation, &c.,
or removes them by metastases and abscesses which she de-
velops in parts at a distance from the seat of the disease.
Hence they thought the best thing to do was to imitate na-
ture, by also going to work in the treatment of most diseases
in a circuitous manner like the diseased vital force when left
to itself, and thus in an indirect manner," by means of stronger
heterogeneous irritants applied to organs remote from the seat
of disease, and totally dissimilar to the affected tissues, they
produced evacuations, and generally kept them up, in order to
draw, as it were, the disease thither.
This derivation, as it is called, was and continues to be one
of the principal modes of treatment of the old school of medi-
cine.
In this imitation of the self-aiding operation of nature, as
some call it, they endeavored to excite, by force, new symp-
toms in the tissues that are least diseased and best able to bear
the medicinal disease, which should draw away” the primary
disease under the semblance of crises and under the form of
excretions, in order to admit of a gradual lysis by the curative
powers of nature.”
1 In place of extinguishing the disease rapidly, without exhaustion of the
strength and without going about the bush, with homogeneous, dynamic
medicinal agents acting directly on the diseased points of the organism, as
homoeopathy does.
? Just as if anything immaterial could be drawn away ! So that here too
was the notion of a substance and a morbific matter, excessively subtile
though it might be supposed to be! (q)
3. It is only the slighter acute diseases that tend, when the natural period
of their course has expired, to terminate quietly in resolution, as it is called,
with or without the employment of not very aggressive allopathic remedies:
16 INTRODUCTION.
This they accomplished by means of diaphoretic and diuretic
remedies, blood-lettings, setons and issues, but chiefly by
irritant drugs to cause evacuation of the alimentary canal,
sometimes upwards by means of emetics, sometimes (and this
was the favorite plan) downwards by means of purgatives,
which were termed aperient and dissolvent * remedies.
To assist this derivative method they employed the allied
treatment by counter-irritants, woolen garments to the bare
skin, foot-baths, nauseants, inflicting on the stomach and
bowels the pangs of hunger (the hunger treatment), substances
to cause pain, inflammation, and suppuration in near or dis-
tant parts, as the application of horseradish, mustard plasters,
cantharides blisters, mezereum, Setons, issues, tartar-emetic
Ointment, moxa, actual cautery, acupuncture, &c.; here also
following the example of crude unassisted nature, which en-
deavors to free herself from the dynamic disease (in the case
of a chronic disease, unavailingly) by exciting pain in distant
parts of the body, by metastases and abscesses, by eruptions
and suppurating ulcers.
It was evidently no rational principle, but merely imitation,
with the view of making practice easy, that seduced the old
school into those unhelpful and injurious indirect modes of
treatment, the derivative as well as the counter-irritant; that
led them to this inefficacious, debilitating and hurtful practice
of apparently ameliorating diseases for a short time, or re-
moving them in such a manner that another and a worse dis-
ease was roused up to occupy the place of the first. Such a
destructive plan cannot certainly be termed curing.
They merely followed the example of crude instinctive na-
ture in her efforts, which are barely” successful even in the
the vital force, having regained its powers. then gradually substitutes the
normal condition for the derangement of the health that has now ceased to
exist. But in severe acute and in chronic diseases which constitute by far the
greater portion of all human ailments, crude nature and the old school are
equally powerless; in these, neither the vital force, with its self-aiding fac-
ulty, nor allopathy in imitation of it, can effect a lysis, but at the most a mere
temporary truce, during which the enemy fortifies himself, in order, sooner
or later, to recommence the attack with still greater violence.
1 An expression which likewise betrays that they imagined and presup-
posed a morbific substance, which had to be dissolved and expelled.
2 In the ordinary school of medicine, the efforts made by nature for the re-
lief of the organism in diseases where no medicine was given, were regarded
as models of treatment worthy of imitation. But this was a great error. The
INTRODUCTION. 17
slighter cases of acute disease; they merely imitated the un-
reasoning life-preserving power when left to itself in diseases,
which, entirely dependent as it is upon the organic laws of the
body, is only capable of acting in conformity with these laws,
and is not guided by reason and reflection—they copied na-
pitiable and highly imperfect efforts of the vital force to relieve itself in acute
diseases is a spectacle that should excite our compassion, and command the
aid of all the powers of our rational mind, to terminate the self-inflicted tor-
ture by a real cure. If nature is unable to cure homoeopathically a disease
already existing in the organism, by the production of another fresh malady
similar to it (§§ 43–46), which very rarely lies in her power (§ 50), and if to the
organism alone is left the task of overcoming, by its own forces and without
external aid, a disease newly contracted (in cases of chronic miasms its power
of resistance is quite inefficacious), we then witness naught but painful. often
dangerous, efforts of nature to save the individual at whatever cost, which
often terminate in extinction of the earthly existence, in death.
Little as we mortals know of the operations that take place in the interior
economy in health—which must be hidden from us as certainly as they are
patent to the eye of the all-seeing Creator and Preserver of his creatures—
just as little can we perceive the operations that go on in the interior in dis-
turbed conditions of life, in diseases. The internal operations in diseases aro
manifested only by the visible changes, the sufferings and t're symptoms,
whereby alone our life betrays the inward disturbance; s ) that in no given
case can we ascertain which of the morbid symptoms are caused by the
primary action of the morbific agent, which by the reaction of the vital force
for its own relief. Both are inextricably mixed up together before our eyes,
and only present to us an outwardly reflected picture of the entire internal
malady, for the fruitless efforts of unassisted vitality to terminate the suffer-
ings are themselves sufferings of the whole organism. Hence. ( ven i:1 those
evacuations termed crises, which nature generally produces at the terrmina-
tion of diseases which run a rapid course, there is frequently more of suffer-
ing than of efficacious relief.
What the vital force does in these so-called crises, and how it does it, re-
mains a mystery to us, like all the internal Operations Of the Organic vital
economy. One thing, however, is certain: that in all these efforts more or
less of the affected parts are 8acrificed and destroyed in order to save the rest.
These self-aiding operations of the vital force for the removal of an acute
disease, performed only in obedience to the laws of organic life and not
guided by the reflection of an intellect, are mostly but a species of allopathy;
in Örder to relieve the primarily affected organ by a crisis, an increased, often
violent, activity is excited in the excretory organs, to draw away the disease
from the former to the latter; there ensue vomitings, purgings, diuresis,
diaphoresis, aboesses, &c., in order, by this irritation of distant parts. to effect
a sort of derivation from the primarily diseased parts, and the dynamically
affected nervous power seems to unload itself in the material product.
It is only by the destruction and sacrifice of a portion of the organism itself
that unaided nature can save the patient in acute diseases, and, if death do
not ensue, restore, though only slowly and imperfectly, the harmony of life—
health.
The great weakness of the parts which had been exposed to the disease,
and even of the whole body, the emaciation, &c., remaining after spontane-
ous cures, are convincing proofs of this.
In short, the whole operation of the self-aiding power of the Organism when
attacked by diseases displays to the observer nothing but Suffering—nothing
that he could or ought to imitate if he wishes to cure disease in a truly
artistic manner. 2
18 INTRODUCTION.
ture, which cannot, like an intelligent surgeon, bring together
the gaping lips of a wound and by their union effect a cure;
which knows not how to straighten and adjust the broken ends
of a bone lying far apart and exuding much (often an excess
of) new osseous matter; which cannot put a ligature on a
wounded artery, but in its energy causes the patient to bleed
to death; which does not understand how to replace a dislo-
cated shoulder, but by the swelling it occasions round about it
soon presents an obstacle to reduction; which, in order to re-
move a foreign body from the cornea, destroys the whole eye
by suppuration; which, with all its efforts, can only liberate a
strangulated hernia by gangrene of the bowel and death; and
which, by the metaschematisms it produces in dynamic dis-
eases, often renders them much worse than they were origin-
ally. But more, this irrational vital force receives into our
body, without hesitation, the greatest plagues of our terrestrial
existence, the spark that kindles the countless diseases be-
neath which tortured mankind has groaned for hundreds and
thousands of years, the chronic miasms—psora, syphilis, syco-
sis—not one of which can it diminish in the slightest degree,
far less expel single-handed from the organism; on the con-
trary, it allows them to rankle therein, until, often after a long
life of misery, death at last closes the eyes of the sufferer.
In such an important affair as that of healing, which de-
mands so much intelligence, reflection and judgment, how
could the old school, which arrogates to itself the title of
rational, choose as its best instructor, as its guide to be blindly
followed, the unintelligent vital force, inconsiderately copy its
indirect and revolutionary operations in diseases, imagining
these to be the mon plus ultra, the best conceivable, when that
greatest gift of God, reflective reason and unfettered judgment,
was given us to enable us infinitely to surpass it in salutary
help to suffering humanity?
When the old school practitioners, thoughtlessly imitating
the crude, senseless, automatic vital energy, with their counter-
irritant and derivative methods of treatment—by far their most
usual plans—attack innocent parts and organs of the body,
either inflicting on them excruciating pains, or, as is most fre-
quently done, compelling them to perform evacuations, where-
INTRODUCTION. 19
by strength and fluids are wasted, their object is to direct the
morbid vital action in the primarily affected parts away to
those artificially attacked, and thus to effect the cure of the
natural disease indirectly, by the production of a disease, much
greater in intensity and of quite a different kind, in the healthy
parts of the body, consequently by a circuitous way, at the
cost of much loss of strength, and usually of great sufferings
to the patient."
The disease, if it be acute, and consequently naturally of
but short duration, may certainly disappear, even during these
heterogeneous attacks on distant and dissimilar parts—but it
is not cured. There is nothing that can merit the honorable
name of cure in this revolutionary treatment, which has no
direct, immediate, pathological relation to the tissues primarily
affected. Often, indeed, without these serious attacks on the
rest of the organism, would the acute disease have ceased of
itself, sooner most likely, with fewer subsequent sufferings and
less sacrifice of strength. But neither the mode of operation
of the crude natural forces, nor the allopathic copy of that, can
for a moment be compared to the dynamic (homoeopathic)
treatment, which sustains the strength, while it extinguishes
the disease in a direct and rapid manner.
In far the greatest number of cases of disease, however—I
mean those of a chronic nature—these perturbing, debilitating,
indirect modes of treatment of the old school are scarcely ever
of the slightest use. They suspend, for a few days only, some
troublesome symptom or other, which, however, returns when
the system has become accustomed to the distant irritation,
and the disease recurs worse than before, because by the an-
1 Daily experience shows the sad effects of this manoeuvre in chronic dis-
eases. Anything but a cure is (ffected. Who would ever call that a victory if,
in place of attacking the enemy in front in a hand-to-hand fight, and by his
destruction terminating at Once his hostile assaults, we should, in a cowardly
manner and behind his back, lay an embargo on everything, cut off his sup-
plies, burn down everything for a great way round him? By so doing we
would at length deprive him of all courage to resist, but our object is not
gained, the enemy is far from being destroyed,—he is still there, and when he
can again procure provisions and Supplies, he once more rears his head, more
exasperated than before—the enemy, I repeat, is far from being destroyed,
but the poor innocent country is so completely ruined that it will be long be-
fore it can recover itself. In like manner acts allopathy in chronic diseases,
when, by its indirect attacks on innocent parts at a distance from the seat of
the disease, instead of effecting a cure, it destroys the organism. Such is the
result of its hurtful operations!
20 INTRODUCTION.
tagonistic pains' and the injudicious evacuations, the vital powers
have been depressed.
Whilst most physicians of the old school, imitating in a
general manner the efforts of crude, unaided nature for its own
relief, carried out in their practice these derivations of merely
hypothetical utility, just as they judged expedient (guided by
some imaginary indication); others, aiming at a higher object,
undertook designedly to promote the efforts of the vital force to aid
‘tself by evacuations and antagonistic metastases, as seen in dis-
eases, and by way of lending it a helping hand, to increase still
more these derivations and evacuations; and they believed
that by this hurtful procedure they were acting duce natura,
and might justly claim the title of ministri naturae.
As the evacuations effected by the natural powers of the
patient in chronic diseases are not infrequently the precursors
of alleviations—though only of a temporary character—of
troublesome symptoms, violent pains, paralyses, spasms, &c.,
so the old school imagined these derivations to be the true way
of curing diseases, and endeavored to promote, maintain and
even increase such evacuations. But they did not perceive
that all these evacuations and excretions (pseudo-crises) pro-
duced by nature when left to herself were, in chronic diseases,
only palliative, transient alleviations, which, far from con-
tributing to a real cure, on the contrary, rather aggravated the
original, internal dyscrasia, by the waste of strength and juices
they occasioned. No one ever saw a chronic patient recover
his health permanently by such efforts of crude nature, nor
any chronic disease cured by such evacuations effected by the
organism.” On the contrary, in such cases the original dys-
crasia is always perceptibly aggravated, after alleviations,
whose duration always becomes shorter and shorter; the bad
attacks recur more frequently and more severely in spite of
the continuation of the evacuations. In like manner, on the
1 What good results have ever ensued from those foetid artificial ulcers, so
much in vogue, called issues? If even during the first week or two, whilst
they still cause pain, they appear Somewhat to check by antagonism a.
chronic disease, yet by and by, when the body has become accustomed to the
pain, they have no other effect than that of weakening the patient and giving
still greater scope to the chronic affection. Or does anyone imagine, in this
nineteenth century, that they serve as an Outlot for the escape of the materia
peccans? It almost appears as if this were the case!
2 Equally inefficacious are those produced artificially.
INTRODUCTION. 21
occurrence of symptoms excited by an internal chronic affec-
tion that threaten to destroy life, when nature, left to its own
resources, cannot help herself in any other way than by the
production of external local symptoms, in order to avert the
danger from parts indispensable to life and direct it to tissues
of less vital importance (metastasis), these operations of the
energetic but unintelligent, unreasoning and improvident vital
force conduce to anything but genuine relief or recovery; they
only silence in a palliative manner, for a short time, the dan-
gerous internal affection, at the cost of a large portion of the
humors and of the strength, without diminishing the original
disease by a hair's breadth; they can, at the most, only retard
the fatal termination which is inevitable without true hom-
oeopathic treatment.
The allopathy of the old school not only greatly over-rated
these efforts of the crude automatic power of nature, but com-
pletely misjudged them, falsely considered them to be truly
curative, and endeavored to increase and promote them, vainly
imagining that thereby they might perhaps succeed in annihi-
lating and radically curing the whole disease. When, in
chronic diseases, the vital force seemed to silence this or that
troublesome symptom of the internal affection by the produc-
tion, for example, of some humid cutaneous eruption, then the
servant of the crude power of nature (minister naturae) applied
to the discharging surface a cantharides plaster or an exutory
(mezereum), in order, duce natura, to draw still more moisture
from the skin, and thus to promote and to assist nature's object—
the cure (by the removal of the morbific matter from the body?);
but when the effect of the remedy was too violent, the eczema
already of long standing, and the system too irritable, he in-
creased the external affection to a great degree without the
slightest advantage to the original disease, and aggravated the
pains, which deprived the patient of sleep and depressed his
strength (and sometimes even developed a malignant febrile
erysipelas); or if the effect upon the local affection (still recent,
perhaps) was of a milder character, he thereby repelled from
its seat, by a species of ill-applied external homoeopathy, the
local symptoms which had been established by nature on the
skin for the relief of the internal disease, thus renewing the
22 INTRODUCTION.
more dangerous internal malady, and by this repulsion of the
local symptom compelling the vital force to effect a transfer-
ence of a worse form of morbid action to other and more im-
portant parts; the patient became affected with dangerous oph-
thalmia, or deafness, or spasms of the stomach, or epileptic
convulsions, or attacks of asthma or apoplexy, or mental de-
rangement, &c., in place of the repelled local disease."
When the diseased natural force propelled blood into the
veins of the rectum or anus (blind haemorrhoids), the minister
naturae, under the same delusive idea of assisting the vital
force in its curative efforts, applied leeches, often in large
numbers, in order to give an outlet to the blood there—with
but brief, often scarcely noteworthy, relief, but thereby weak-
ening the body and occasioning still greater congestions in
those parts, without the slightest diminution of the original
disease.
In almost all cases in which the diseased vital force endeav-
ored to subdue the violence of a dangerous internal malady
by evacuating blood by means of vomiting, coughing, &c., the
old school physician, duce matura, made haste to assist these
supposed salutary efforts of nature, and performed a copious
venesection, which was invariably productive of injurious con-
sequences and palpable weakening of the body.
In cases of frequently occurring chronic nausea, he produced,
with the view of furthering the intentions of nature, copious
evacuations of the stomach, by means of powerful emetics—
never with a good result, often with bad, not infrequently dan-
gerous and even fatal consequences.
The vital force, in order to relieve the internal malady,
sometimes produces indolent enlargements of the external
glands, and he thinks to forward the intentions of nature, in
his assumed character of her servant, when, by the use of all
sorts of heating embrocations and plasters, he causes them to
inflame, so that, when the abscess is ripe, he may incise it and
let out the bad morbific matter (?). Experience has shown,
hundreds of times, that lasting evil almost invariably results
from such a plan.
1 Natural effects of the repulsion of these local symptoms—effects that are
often regarded by the allopathic physician as fresh diseases of quite a differ-
ent kind.
INTRODUCTION. 23.
And having often noticed slight amelioration of the severe
symptoms of chronic diseases to result from spontaneous night
sweats or frequent liquid stools, he imagines himself bound to
obey these hints of nature (duce natura), and to promote them,
by instituting and maintaining a complete course of sweating
treatment or by the employment of so-called gentle laxatives
for years, in order to promote and increase these efforts of
nature (of the vital force of the unintelligent organism), which
he thinks tend to the cure of the whole chronic affection, and
thus to free the patient more speedily and certainly from his
disease (the matter of his disease?).
But he thereby always produces quite the contrary result:
aggravation of the original disease. *
In conformity with this preconceived but unfounded idea,
the old School physician goes on thus promoting the efforts of
the diseased vital force and increasing those derivations and
evacuations in the patient which never lead to the desired end,
but are always disastrous, without being aware that all the
local affections, evacuations, and seemingly derivative efforts,
set up and continued by the unintelligent vital force when left
to its own resources, for the relief of the original chronic dis-
ease, are actually the disease itself, the phenomena of the
whole disease, for the totality of which, properly speaking, the
only efficacious remedy, and the one, moreover, that will act
1 In direct opposition to this treatment, the old school not infrequently in-
dulged themselves in the very reverse of this: thus, when the efforts of the
vital force for the relief of the internal disease by evacuations and the pro-
duction of local symptoms on the exterior of the body became troublesome,
they capriciously suppressed them by their repercwtients and repellents; they
subdued chronic pains, sleeplessness and diarrhoea of long standing by doses
of opium pushed to a dangerous extent; vomitings by effervescent saline
draughts; foetid perspiration of the feet by cold footbaths and astringent
applications; eruptions on the skin' by preparations of lead and zinc; they
checked uterine haemorrhage by injections of vinegar; colliquative perspira–
tion by alum; nocturnal seminal emissions by the free use of camphor; fre-
quent attacks of flushes of heat in the body and face by nitre, vegetable acids
and sulphuric acid; bleeding of the nose by plugging the nostrils with dossils
of lint soaked in alcohol or astringent fluids; they dried up discharging ulcers
on the legs, established by the vital power for the relief of great internal suf-
fering, with the oxides of lead and zinc, &c., with what sad results experience
has shown in thousands of cases.
With tongue and with pen the old school physician brags that he is a rational
practitioner, and that he investigates the cause of the disease so as always to
make radical cures; but behold, his treatment is directed, in these cases,
against a single symptom only, and always with injurious consequences to
his patient.(?)
24 INTRODUCTION.
in the most direct manner, is a homoeopathic medicine, chosen
on account of its similarity of action.
As everything that crude nature does to relieve itself in
diseases, in those of an acute, but especially those of a chronic
kind, is extremely imperfect and even actual disease, it may
easily be conceived that the promotion by artificial means of
this imperfection and disease must do still more harm; at
least, it cannot improve the efforts of nature for its own relief,
even in acute diseases, because medical art is not in a condition
to follow the hidden paths by which the vital force effects its
crises, but attempts to produce them from without, by violent
means, which are still less beneficial than what the instinctive
vital force left to its own resources does, but on the other
hand are more perturbing and debilitating. For even the in-
complete amelioration resulting from the natural derivations
and crises cannot be obtained in a similar manner by allopathy;
with all its endeavors it cannot procure anything like even that
pitiful relief the vital force left to itself is able to afford.
It has been attempted to produce, by means of scarifying
instruments, a bleeding at the nose, in imitation of that some-
times occurring naturally, in order to mitigate, for example,
the attacks of a chronic headache. By this means a large
quantity of blood could be made to flow from the nostrils and
weaken the patient, but the relief afforded was either nil, or
much less than the instinctive vital force would procure at an-
other time, when, of its own accord, it would cause but a few
drops to flow.
A so-called critical perspiration or diarrhoea, produced by
the ever active vital force after a sudden indisposition, excited
by anger, fright, a sprain or a chill, will be much more suc-
cessful, at least for the time, in relieving the acute disease,
than all the sudorific or purgative drugs in the pharmacopoeia,
which only make the patient worse, as daily experience shows.
But the vital force, which of itself can only act according to
the physical constitution of our organism, and is not guided by
reason, knowledge and reflection, was not given to man to be
regarded as the best possible curative agent to restore those
lamentable deviations from health to the normal condition, and
still less that physicians should slavishly imitate its imperfect
INTRODUCTION. 25
morbid efforts (to free itself from disease), and that with oper.
ations incontestably more inappropriate and severe than its
own, and thereby conveniently spare themselves the expendi-
ture of reasoning, reflection and judgment requisite for the
discovery and for the practice of the noblest of human arts—
the true healing art—while they allege their bad copy of the
spontaneous efforts of doubtful utility made by the crude
natural force for its relief, to be the healing art, the rational
healing art!
What sensible man would imitate the efforts of the organism
for its own preservation? These efforts are in reality the dis-
ease itself, and the morbidly affected vital force is the pro-
ducer of the visible disease! It must, therefore, necessarily
follow that all artificial imitation, and likewise the suppression
of these efforts, must either increase the disease or render it
dangerous by their suppression, and both of these allopathy
does; these are its pernicious operations which it alleges to be
the healing art, the rational healing art!(a)
No! that exquisite power innate in the human being, designed
to direct in the most perfect manner the operations of life
while it is in health, equally present in all parts of the organ-
ism, in the fibres of sensibility as well as in those of irrita-
bility, the unwearying spring of all the normal natural func-
tions of the body, was not created for the purpose of affording
itself aid in diseases, not for the purpose of exercising a heal-
ing artworthy of imitation. No! the true healing art is that re-
flective work, the attribute of the higher powers of human intel-
lect, of unfettered judgment and of reason selecting and deter-
mining on principle in order to effect an alteration in the instinct-
tive, irrational and unintelligent, but emergetic automatic vital
force, when it has been diverted by disease into abnormal action,
and by means of a similar affection developed by a homoeopathi-
cally chosen remedy, to eaccite in it a medicinal disease somewhat
greater in degree, so that the natural morbid affection can no
longer act upon the vital force, which thus, freed from the natural
disease, has now only the similar, somewhat stronger, medicinal
morbid affection to contend with, against which it now directs its
whole energy and which it soon overpowers, whereby the vital
force is liberated and enabled to return to the normal standard
26 INTRODUCTION.
of health and to its proper function, “the maintenance of the life
and health of the organism,” without having suffered, during this
change, any painful or debilitating attacks. Homoeopathy
teaches us how to effect this.
Under the methods of treatment of the old school I have
just detailed, no small number of patients certainly got rid of
their diseases, but not of those of a chronic (non-venereal)
character; only such as were acute and unattended with danger;
and even these they were only freed from by such circuitous
and tedious ways, and often so incompletely, that the results
of the treatment could never be termed cures effected by a
gentle art. Acute diseases of a not very dangerous kind were,
by venesections or suppression of one of the chief symptoms
through the instrumentality of an enantiopathic palliative
remedy (contraria contrariis), kept under, or by means of
counter-irritant and derivative (antagonistic and revulsive)
remedies, applied to other than the diseased spots, suspended,
until the natural time for the duration of the short malady had
expired. These methods were, consequently, indirect, and at-
tended with loss of strength and humors, so much so that in
patients so treated the greatest and most important measures
for the complete removal of the disease and for the restoration
of the lost strength and humors remained to be performed by
Nature herself—by the life-preserving power which, besides the
removal of the natural acute disease, had also to combat the
effects of improper treatment, and thus it was able, in cases
unattended by danger, gradually to restore the normal relation
of the functions by means of its own energy, but often in a
tedious, imperfect and painful manner.
It remains a very doubtful question whether the natural pro-
cess of recovery in acute diseases is really at all shortened or
facilitated by this interference of the old school, as the latter
cannot act otherwise than the vital force, namely, indirectly;
but its derivative and counter-irritant treatment is much more
injurious and much more debilitating.
The old school has yet another method of treatment, which
is termed the stimulating and strengthening system' (by eaccitantia
* It is, properly speaking, enantiopathic, and I shall again refer to it in the
text of the Organom ($ 59).
INTRODUCTION.
2.
7
nervina, tonica, confortantia, roborantia). It is astonishing
how it can boast of this method. º
Has it ever succeeded in removing the physical weakness so
often engendered and kept up or increased by a chronic disease
with its prescriptions of etheric Rhine-wine or fiery Tokay?
The strength gradually sank under this treatment, and all the
lower, the greater the quantity of wine the patient was per-
suaded to drink, because the source of the weakness, the
chronic disease, was not cured by it, because artificial
stimulation is followed by relaxation in the reaction of the vital
force.
Or did its cinchona bark, or its amara, so misunderstood, so
multifarious in their modes of action, and productive of quite
different kinds of injury, give strength in these frequently oc-
curring cases? Did not these vegetable substances, said to be
tonic and strengthening under all circumstances, as also the
preparations of iron, often add to the old disease new sufferings,
by virtue of their peculiar pathogenetic effects, without reliev-
ing the weakness proceeding from an unknown disease of long
standing?
Has any one ever succeeded in diminishing in the very least
the duration of the incipient paralysis of an arm or a leg, so
often arising from a chronic dyscrasia, by means of the so-
called unguenta nervina, or any other spirituous or balsamic
embrocations, without curing the dyscrasia itself. Or haye
electric or galvanic shocks ever been attended with any other
result in such cases, than a gradually increasing, and finally
absolute, paralysis, and extinction of all muscular and nervous
irritability in the affected limbs?"
Did not the renowned eaccitantia and aphrodisiaca, ambergris,
lacerta scincus, cantharides tincture, truffles, cardamoms, cin-
namon and vanilla invariably bring about complete impotence
when used for the purpose of restoring the gradually declining
sexual power (which always depended on an unobserved chronic
miasm)?
1 Those affected with hardness of hearing were relieved by moderate shocks
from the voltaic pile of the apothecary of Jever only for a few hours—these
moderate shocks Soon lost their power. In order to produce the same result
he had to make them stronger; until these stronger shocks had no effect; the
very strongest would then at first excite the patients' hearing for a short time,
but at length left them quite deaf.
28 INTRODUCTION.
How can credit be taken for the production of a stimulation
and invigoration of but a few hours duration, when the result
that must follow and which is permanent—according to the
laws of all palliative action—is a directly opposite state, the
rendering of the disease incurable?
The little good that the eaccitantia and roborantia did for re-
covery from acute diseases (treated according to the old method)
was a thousand times outweighed by their ill effects in chronic
maladies.
When physicians of the old school do not know what to do
in a chronic disease, they treat it blindly with their so-called
alterative remedies (alterantia); among which the horrible mer-
curialia (calomel, corrosive sublimate and mercurial ointment)
Occupy the foremost place—which they allow to act in such
large quantities and for so long a time on the diseased body (in
non-venereal diseases!) that at last the health is by their de-
structive effects completely undermined. They thus certainly
produce great alterations, but invariably such as are not bene-
ficial, and they always utterly ruin the health by their improper
administration of this excessively injurious metal.
When they prescribe, in large doses, cinchona bark (which,
as a homoeopathic febrifuge, is only specific in true marsh ague,
uncomplicated with psora), for all epidemic intermittent fevers,
which are often distributed over large tracts of country, the old
school practitioners palpably manifest their stupidity, for these
diseases assume a different character almost every year and
hence demand for their cure, almost always, a different homoeo-
pathic remedy, by means of one or a few very small doses of
which they may always be radically cured in a few days.
Now, because these epidemic fevers have periodical attacks
(typus) and the adherents of the old school see nothing in all
intermittent fevers but their typus [periodicity], and neither
know nor care to know any other febrifuge but cinchona, these
routine practitioners imagine, if they can but suppress the
typus of the epidemic intermittent fever with enormous doses
of cinchona and its costly alkaloid, quinine (an event which
the unintelligent, but, in this instance, more sensible vital force
endeavors to prevent often for months), that they have cured
this epidemic ague. But the deluded patient, after such a
INTRODUCTION. 29
suppression of the periodicity (typus) of his fever, invariably
becomes worse than he was during the fever itself: with sallow
complexion, dyspnoea, constriction in the hypochondria, disor-
dered bowels, unhealthy appetite, broken sleep, feeble and
desponding, often with great swelling of the legs, of the abdo-
men and even of the face and hands, he creeps out of the
hospital, dismissed as cured, and long years of homoeopathic
treatment are not infrequently required, merely to rescue from
death, let alone to cure and restore to health, such a profoundly
injured (cured?), artificially cachectic patient.
The old school is happy when it can convert the dull stupor
that occurs in typhus fevers, by means of valerian, which in
this case acts antipathically, into a kind of liveliness of a few
hours’ duration; but as this does not continue, and to force a
repetition of the animation ever increasing doses of valerian
are requisite, it is not long before the largest doses cease to
have the desired effect. But as this palliative is only stimulant
in its primary action, in its after effects the vital force is para-
lyzed, and such a patient is certain of a speedy death from this
rational treatment of the old school; none can escape. And
yet the adherents of this routine art could not perceive that
by these proceedings they most certainly killed their patients;
they ascribed the death to the malignancy of the disease.
A palliative of a still more horrible character for chronic
patients is the digitalis purpurea, with which the old school
practitioners imagine they do such excellent service, when, by
means of it, they compel the quick, irritated pulse in chronic
diseases (purely symptomatic () to become slower. True it is
that this dreadful remedy, which is in such cases employed
enantiopathically, strikingly diminishes the frequency of the
quick, irritated pulse, and greatly reduces the number of the
arterial pulsations, for a few hours, after the first dose; but
the pulse soon becomes more rapid than before. In order
again to diminish in some degree its frequency the dose is in-
creased, and it has the effect, but for a still shorter period,
until even these and still larger palliative doses cease to reduce
the pulse, which at length, in the secondary action of the fox-
glove which can no longer be restrained, becomes much more
rapid than it was before the use of this drug, —it then becomes
30 INTRODUCTION.
wncountable; sleep, appetite and strength are lost—death is
imminent; not one of the patients so treated escapes alive, unless
to be a prey to incurable insanity!"(a)
Such was the treatment pursued by the allopathist. The
patients, therefore, were obliged to yield to the sad necessity,
because they could obtain no better aid from other allopathists,
who had gained their knowledge from the same deceitful
books.
As the fundamental cause of chronic (non-venereal) diseases,
together with the remedies for them, remained unknown to
these practitioners, who vainly boasted of their causal medica-
tion of their diagnosis being directed to the investigation of
the genesis of diseases; how could they hope to cure the im-
mense numbers of chronic diseases by their indirect treatments,
which were but hurtful imitations of the unintelligent vital
force for its own relief, that never were intended to be models
for practice?
The presumed character of the affection they regarded as the
cause of the disease, and hence they directed their pretended
causal treatment against spasm, inflammation (plethora),
fever, general and partial debility, mucus, putridity, obstruc-
tions, &c., which they thought to remove by means of their
antispasmodic, antiphlogistic, tonic, stimulant, antiseptic, dis-
solvent, resolvent, derivative, evacuant, antagonistic remedies
(of which they only possessed a superficial knowledge).
But from such general indications really serviceable medi-
cines could not be discovered, most assuredly not in the materia
medica of the old school, which, as I have elsewhere shown,”
is founded mainly on conjecture and false deductions ab usu in
morbis, mixed up with falsehood and fraud.
With equal rashness they attacked those still more hypo-
1 And yet Hufeland, the chief of this old school (v. Homöopathie, p. 22), ex-
tols with much satisfaction the employment of digitalis in such cases, in
these words: “None will deny” (experience invariably does so!) “that too
great rapidity of the circulation can be removed (?) by digitalis.” Permanent-
ly removed? and by a heroic enantiopathic remedy? Poor Hufeland!
? Which Hufeland in his pamphlet, Die Homöopathie, p. 20, makes a futile
attempt to appropriate for his old pseudo-art. For since, as is well known,
previous to the appearance of my book (Chronic Diseases), the 2500-years-old
allopathy knew nothing about the Source of most chronic diseases (psora),
must it not have attributed a false source (genesis) to such maladies? (?)
8 See essay in the first volume of the Materia Medica Pura (English edit.),
“Sources of the Common Materia, Medica.”
INTRODUCTION. 31
thetical so-called indications—deficiency or excess of oxygen,
nitrogen, carbon, or hydrogen in the fluids, exaltation or
diminution of the irritability, sensibility and reproduction, de-
rangements of the arterial, venous and capillary systems,
asthenia, &c., without knowing a single remedy for effecting
objects so visionary. All this was pure ostentation. It was a
mode of treatment that did no good to the patients.
But all semblance of appropriate treatment of diseases was
completely lost by a practice, introduced in the earliest times,
and even made into a rule: I mean the mixture in a prescription
of various medicinal substances, whose real action was, almost
without an exception, unknown, and which, without any one
exception, invariably differed so much among each other. One
medicine (the sphere of whose medicinal effects was unknown)
was placed foremost, as the principal remedy (basis), and was
designed to subdue what the physician deemed the chief char-
acter of the disease; to this was added some other drug (equally
unknown as regards the sphere of its medicinal action) for the
removal of some accessory symptom, or to strengthen the
action of the first (adjuvans); and besides these, yet another
(likewise unknown as to the sphere of its medicinal powers), a
pretended corrective remedy (corrigens); these were all mixed
together (boiled, infused)—and along with them, some medicinal
syrup, or distilled medicinal water, also with different proper-
ties, would be included in the formula, and it was supposed that
each of the ingredients of this mixture would perform, in the
diseased body, the part alloted to it by the prescriber's imagin-
ation, without suffering itself to be disturbed or led astray by
the other things mixed up along with it; which, however, could
not in reason be expected. One ingredient suspended wholly
or partially the action of another, or communicated to it and
to the others a mode of action and operation not anticipated
nor conjecturable, so that it was impossible the expected effect
could be obtained; there frequently occurred a new morbid de-
rangement, which, from the incomprehensible changes imparted
to substances by their admixture, was not and could not have
been foreseen, which escaped observation amid the tumultuous
symptoms of the disease, and which became permanent from a
lengthened employment of the prescription—accordingly an
32 INTRODUCTION.
artificial disease was added to and complicated the original
disease, causing an aggravation of the latter—or if the pre-
scription were not often repeated, but superseded by one or
more new prescriptions, composed of other ingredients, given
in rapid succession, then the very least that could happen was
a further depression of the strength, for the substances adminis-
tered in that way neither had, nor could have had, any direct
pathological relation to the original malady, but only attacked,
in a useless and injurious manner, parts that were least impli-
cated in the disease.
The mixture of several medicines, even if the effects of each
single medicine on the human body were accurately known
(—the prescription writer, however, often knows not the
thousandth part of their effects—), the association, in one pre-
scription, of several such ingredients, I repeat, many of which
are themselves of a very compound nature, and the peculiar
action of any one of which is as good as unknown, although in
reality it always differs greatly from that of the others, and
the administration of this incomprehensible mixture to the
patient in large and frequently repeated doses, in order there-
with to obtain some purposed, certain, curative effect, is a piece
of folly repugnant to every reflecting and unprejudiced person."
1 The absurdity of medical mixtures was perceived even by adherents of
the old School of medicine, although they still continued to follow this
slovenly plan in their own practice, contrary to their own convictions. Thus
Marcus Herz (in Hufeland's Jowrmal, ii. p. 33) reveals the pricks of his con-
science in the following words: “When we wish to remove the inflammatory
state, we do not employ either nitre or sal-ammoniac Or vegetable acids alone,
but we usually mix Several, and often but too many, So-called antiphlogistics
together, or give them in the same case in close succession. If we have to
combat putridity, we are not, content to look for the attainment of our ob-
ject from the administration of large doses of one of the known antiseptic
medicines, such as cinchona bark, mineral acids, arnica, Serpentaria, &c.,
alone; we prefer associating several of them together, and count upon their
community of action; or from our uncertainty as to whose action is the
most suitable for the case in question, we throw together a number of differ-
ent substances, and almost leave it to chance to effect the end we have in
view, by means of one of them. Thus' we seldom excite perspiration, purify
the blood (?), overcome obstructions (?), promote expectoration, Or even
evacuate the primae viae, by a single remedy; our prescriptions for these ob-
jects are always composite, almost never simple and pure, consequently neither
are Our Observations in reference to the actions of each individual 8wbstanee Com-
tained in them. To be sure, we learnedly institute certain grades of rank
among the remedies in our formulas; on the One to which we particularly
commission the action, we confer the title of base (basis), the Others we call
helpers, supporters (adjuvantia), correctives (corrigentia), &c. But this classi-
fication is evidently almost entirely arbitrary. The helpers and supporters
INTRODUCTION. 33
The result naturally belies every expectation that had been
formed. There certainly ensue charºns and results, but none
of an appropriate character, none be icial—all injurious, de-
structivel
I should like to see any one who ld call the pur-blind in-
roads of such prescriptions on the d sed human body a cure!
It is only by guiding what still remains of the vital principle
in the patient to the proper performance of its functions, by means
of a suitable medicine, that a cure can be expected, but not by
enervating the body to death, secundum artem; and yet the old
school knows not what else to do with patients suffering from
chronic diseases, than to attack the sufferers with drugs that
do nothing but torture them, waste their strength and fluids,
and shorten their lives! Can it be said to save whilst it de-
stroys? Does it deserve any other name than that of a mis-
chievious [non-healing] art? It acts, lege artis, in the most in-
appropriate manner, and it does (it would seem almost purpose-
ly) &AXoſa, that is to say, the very opposite of what it
should do. Can it be commended? Can it be any longer
tolerated?
In recent times the old school practitioners have quite sur-
passed themselves in their cruelty towards their sick fellow-
creatures, and in the unsuitableness of their operations, as
every unprejudiced observer must admit, and as even physicians
of their own school have been forced, by the pricks of their con-
science (like Kruger Hansen), to confess before the world.
It was high time for the wise and benevolent Creator and
Preserver of mankind to put a stop to these abominations, to
command a cessation of these tortures, and to reveal a healing
have just as much part in the whole action as the chief ingredient, although,
from Want Of a standard Of measurement, we are unable to determine the
degree of their participation in the result. In like manner the influence of
the correctives on the powers of the other ingredients cannot be quite indiffer-
ent; they must increase or diminish them, or give them quite another di-
rection; and hence we must always regard the salutary (?) change which we
effect, by means of such a prescription, as the result of all its ingredients
collectively. and we can mever obtain from its action a pure earperience of the in-
dividual efficacy of any single ingredient of which it is composed. In fact, our
knowledge of what is essential to be known respecting all our remedies, as also re-
specting the perhaps hundred-fold relationships among each other into which they
enter when combined, is far too little to be relied upon to enable w8 to tell with cer–
tainty the degree and entent of the action of a substance, &eemingly ever so wrim-
portant, when introduced into the human body in combination with other
8wbstancéS.”
3
34 INTRODUCTION.
art the very opposite of all this, which should not waste the
vital juices and powers by emetics, perennial scourings out of
the bowels, warm baths, diaphoretics or salivation; nor shed
the life's blood, nor torment and weaken with painful appli-
ances; nor, in place of curing patients, suffering from diseases,
render them incurable by the addition of new, chronic medicinal
maladies by means of the prolonged use of wrong, powerful
medicines of unknown properties; nor yoke the horse behind
the cart, by giving strong palliatives, according to the old
favorite axiom, contraria contrariis curentury nor, in short, in
place of lending the patient aid, to guide him in the way to
death, as is done by the merciless routine practitioner; but
which, on the contrary, should spare the patient's strength as
much as possible, and should, rapidly and mildly, effect an
unalloyed and permanent cure, and restore to health by means
of smallest doses of few simple medicines carefully selected
according to their proved effects, by the only therapeutic law
conformable to nature: similia similibus curentur. It was high
time that He should permit the discovery of homoeopathy. (a)
By observation, reflection and experience, I discovered that,
contrary to the old allopathic method, the true, the proper, the
best mode of treatment is contained in the maxim:(d) To cure
mildly, rapidly, certainly, and permanently, choose, in every
case of disease, a medicine which can itself produce an affection
similar (Śpotov rá60s) to that sought to be cured!
Hitherto no one has ever taught this homoeopathic mode of
cure, no one has carried it out in practice. But if the truth is
only to be found in this method, as I can prove it to be, we
might expect that, even though it remained unperceived for
thousands of years, distinct traces of it would yet be discov-
ered in every age."
And such is the fact. In all ages, the patients who have
been really, rapidly, permanently and obviously cured by medi-
cines, and who did not merely recover by some fortuitous cir-
cumstance, or by the acute disease having run its allotted
course, or by the powers of the system having, in the course
1 For the truth is co-eternal with the all-wise, benevolent Deity. It may
long escape the Observation of man, until the time foreordained by Provi-
dence arrives, when its rays shall irresistibly break through the clouds of
prejudice and usher in the dawn' of a day which shall shine with a bright
and inextinguishable light for the weal of the human race.
INTRODUCTION. 35
of time, gradually attained the preponderance, under allopathic
and antagonistic treatment—for being cured in a direct manner
differs vastly from recovering in an indirect manner—such
patients have been cured solely (although without the knowl-
edge of the physician) by means of a (homoeopathic) medicine
which possessed the power of producing a similar morbid state.
Even in real cures by means of mixtures of medicines—
which were excessively rare—it will be found that the remedy
whose action predominated was always of a homoeopathic
character.
But this is observed much more strikingly in cases where
physicians sometimes effected a rapid cure with one simple
medicinal substance, contrary to the usual custom, that ad-
mitted of none but mixtures of medicines in the form of a
prescription. There we see, to our astonishment, that this
always occurred by means of a medicine that is itself capable
of producing an affection similar to the case of disease, al-
though the physicians themselves knew not what they were
doing, and acted in forgetfulness of the contrary doctrines of
their own school. They prescribed a medicine the very reverse
of that which they should have employed according to the
traditional therapeutics, and it was only in consequence of so
doing that the patients were rapidly cured. (a)
If we deduct the cases in which the specific rem-
edy for a disease of never varying character has
been made known to physicians of the ordinary School
(not by their own investigation, but) by the empirical
practice of the common people, wherewith they are ena-
bled to effect a direct cure, as for instance, of the venereal
chancrous disease with mercury; of the morbid state resulting
from contusions with arnica; of marsh ague with cincluona
bark; of recent cases of itch with flowers of sulphur, &c.—if
we deduct these, we find, that without almost any exception,
all the other treatment of the old school physician, in chronic
diseases, consists in debilitating, teasing and tormenting the
already afflicted patient, to the aggravation of his disease and
to his destruction, with a great display of dignified gravity on
the part of the doctor, and at a ruinous expense to the pa-
tient. (a)
36 INTRODUCTION.
Blind experience sometimes led them to a homoeopathic
mode of treatment," and yet they did not perceive the law of
nature in obedience to which cures so effected did and must
€InSUlé.
Hence it is highly important, for the weal of mankind, to
ascertain what really took place in these eactremely rare but sin-
gularly salutary treatments. The answer we obtain to this
question is of the utmost significance. They were never per-
formed in any other manner than by means of medicines of
homoeopathic power, that is to say, capable of producing a
disease similar to the morbid state sought to be cured; the
cures were effected rapidly and permanently by medicines, the
1 Thus they imagined they could drive out through the skin the sudatory
matter which they believed to stagnate there after a chill, if they gave the
patient to drink, during the cold stage of the catarrhal fever, an infusion of
elder flowers, which is capable of removing such a fever and curing the
patient by its peculiar similarity of action (homoeopathically), and this it
does most promptly and effectually, Without causing perspiration, if but a
small quantity of this infusion, and nothing else, be taken. To hard, acute
swellings, in which the excessive violence of the inflammation prevents their
suppuration and causes intolerable pains, they apply very warm poultices,
frequently renewed, and behold! the inflammation and the pains diminish
rapidly, while the abscess is rapidly formed. as is known by the yellowish
Shining elevation and the perceptible softening. In this case they imagine
that the hardness has been softened by the moisture of the poultice, whereas
it is chiefly by the greater heat of the poultice that the excess of inflamma-
tion has been homoeopathically subdued, and the rapid suppuration been
enabled to take place.—Why do they employ with benefit in many ophthal-
miae St. Yve’s salve, the chief ingredients of which is red oxide of mercury,
which can produce inflammation of the eyes, if anything can? Is it hard to
see that they here act homoeopathically?—Or why should a little parsley
juice produce such evident relief in those cases (by no means rare), where
there are anxious, often ineffectual, efforts to urinate, in little children, and
in ordinary gonorrhoea, which is well known by the very painful, frequent
and almost ineffectual attempts to make Water, if the fresh juice of this
plant had not the power of causing, in healthy persons, a painful, almost
fruitless, urging to urinate, consequently cures homoeopathically? With
the pimpernel root, which causes great secretion of mucus in the bronchia.
and fauces, they successfully combated the so-called mucous angina—and
quelled some kinds of metrorrhagia with the leaves of savine, which can
itself cause metrorrhagia, without perceiving the homoeopathic curative
law. In cases of constipation from incarcerated hernia, and in ileus many
medical men found the Constipating opium, in Small doses, to be the most
excellent and certain remedy without having the most distant idea of the
homoeopathic therapeutic law exemplified in this case. They cured non-
venereal ulcers of the fauces with small doses of mercury, which is homoeo-
pathic to such states—stopped some diarrhoeas with small doses of the pur-
gative rhubarb—cured hydrophobia, with belladonna, that causes a similar
affection, and removed, as if by magic, the dangerous comatose state in
acute fevers with a small dose of the heating, Stupefying Opium; and yet
they abuse homoeopathy, and persecute it with a fury that can only arise
from the stings of an evil conscience in a heart incapable of improvement.
INTRODUCTION. 37
medical prescribers of which made use of them as it were by
accident, and even in opposition to the doctrines of all pre-
vious systems and therapeutics (often without rightly knowing
what they were doing and why they did it), and thus, against
their will, they practically confirmed the necessity of the only
therapeutic law consonant to nature, that of homoeopathy—a
therapeutic law, which, despite the many facts and innumer-
able hints that pointed to it, no physicians of past epochs have
exerted themselves to discover, blinded as they all have been
by medical prejudices.
For even the domestic practice of the non-medical classes of
the community endowed with sound observant faculties has
many times proved this mode of treatment to be the surest,
the most radical and the least fallacious in practice.
In recent cases of frost-bitten limbs frozen sauer kraut is
applied or frictions of snow are used."
1 It is on such examples of domestic practice that Mr. M. Lux founds his
so-called mode of cure by identwals and idem, which he calls Isopathy, which
some eccentric-minded persons have already adopted as the mon, plus ultra
of a therapeutic method, without knowing how they could carry it out.
But if we examine these instances attentively we find that they do not
bear Out these viewS.
The purely physical powers differ in the nature of their action on the
living organism from those of a dynamic medicinal kind.
Heat or cold of the air that surrounds us, or of the water, or of our food
and drink, occasion (a8 heat and cold) of themselves no absolute injury to a
healthy body; heat and cold are in their alternations essential to the main-
tenance of healthy life, Consequently they are not of themselves medicine.
Heat and cold, therefore, act as curative agents in affections of the body,
not by virtue of their essential nature (not, therefore, as cold and heat per
se, not as things hurtful in themselves, as are the drugs, rhubarb, china, &c.,
even in the smallest doses), but only by virtue of their greater or smaller
quantity, that is, according to their degrees of temperature, just as (to take
an example from purely physical powers) a great weight of lead will bruise
my hand painfully, not by virtue of its essential nature as lead, for a thin
plate of lead would not bruise me. but in consequence of its quantity and
massive weight.
If... then, cold or heat be serviceable in bodily ailments like frost-bites or
burns, they are so solely on account of their degree of temperature, just as
they only inflict injury on the healthy body by their extreme degrees of
temperature.
Thus we find in these examples of successful domestic practice, that it is
not the prolonged application of the degree of cold in which the limb was
frozen that restores it is pathically (it would thereby be rendered quite life-
less and dead), but a degree Of cold that Only approximates to that (ſ. moeo-
pathy), and which gradually rises to a comfortable temperature, as frozen
sauer kraut laid upon the frost-bitten hand in the temperature of the room
soon melts, gradually growing warmer from 32° or 33° (Fahr.) to the tempera-
ture of the room, supposing that to be only 55°, and thus the limb is recovered
by physical homoeopathy. In like manner, a hand scalded with boiling
38 INTRODUCTION.
The experienced cook holds his hand, which he has scalded,
at a certain distance from the fire, and does not heed the in-
crease of pain that takes place at first, as he knows from ex-
perience that he can thereby in a very short time, often in a
few minutes, convert the burnt part into healthy painless skin."
Other intelligent non-medical persons, as, for example,
the manufacturers of lacquered ware, apply to a part scalded
with the hot varnish a substance that causes a similar burning
Water would not be cured iSOpathically by the application of boiling water,
but only by a somewhat lower temperature, as, for example, by holding it in
a vessel containing a fluid heated to 160°, which becomes every minute less
hot, and finally descends to the temperature of the room, whereupon the
scalded part is restored by homoeopathy. Water in the act of freezing cannot
draw out the frost isopathically from potatoes and apples, but this is effected
by water only near the freezing-point.
So, to give another example from physical action, the injury resulting
from a blow on the forehead with a hard substance (a painful lump) is soon
diminished in pain and Swelling by pressing on the Spot for a considerable
time with the ball of the thumb, strongly at first, and then gradually less
forcibly, homoeopathically, but not by an equally hard blow With an equally
hard body, which would increase the evil isopathically.
The examples Of Cures by isopathy given in the book alluded to—muscular
contractions in human beings and Spinal paralysis in a dog, which had been
caused by a chill, being rapidly cured by cold bathing—these events are
falsely explained by isopathy. What are called sufferings from a chill are
only nominally connected with cold, and often arise, in the bodies of those
predisposed to them, even from a draught of wind which was not at all cold.
Moreover, the manifold effects of a cold bath on the living organism, in
health and in disease, cannot be reduced to such a simple formula, as to
warrant the construction of a system of such pretensions! That serpents’
bites, as is there stated, are most certainly cured by portions of the serpents,
must remain a mere fable of a former age, until such an improbable asser-
tion is authenticated by indubitable observations and experience, which it
certainly never Will be. That, in fine, the saliva of a mad dog given to a
patient laboring under hydrophobia (in Russia), is 8aid to have cured him
—that “is said” would not seduce any conscientious physician to imitate such
a hazardous experiment, or to Construct a so-called isopathic system, so
dangerous and so highly improbable in its extended application, as has been
done (not by the modest author of the pannphlet entitled The Isopathy of
Contagioms, Leipzic: Kollmann), but by its eccentric supporters, especially
Dr. Gross (V. Allg, h0m. Ztg., ii, p. 72), who vaunts this isopathy (a qualia
dequalibus) as the Only proper therapeutic rule, and sees nothing in the
similia similibus but an indifferent substitute for it; ungratefully enough,
as he is entirely indebted to the simulia similibus for all his fame and
fortune. (a) A"
1 So also Fernelius (Therap., lib. vi., cap. 20) considers that the best remedy
for a burnt part is to bring it near the fire, whereby the pain is removed.
John Hunter (On the Blood, Inflammaliun, &c., p. 218) mentions the great
injury that results from treating burns with cold water, and gives a decided
preference to approaching them to the fire, guided in this, not by the tra-
ditional medical doctrines which (contraria contra iis) prescribe cooling things
for inflammation. but by experience, which teaches that the application of
a similar heat (similia &imilibus) is the most salutary.
INTRODUCTION. 39
sensation, such as strong heated spirits of wine," or oil of
turpentine,” and by that means cure themselves in the course
of a few hours, whereas cooling salves, as they are well aware,
1 Sydenham (Opera, p. 271 [edit. Syd. Soc., p. 601]) says that 8pirits of wine,
repeatedly applied, is preferable to all other remedies in burns. Benjamin
Bell, too (System of Surgery, 3rd edit., 1789), acknowledges that experience
Shows that homoeopathic remedies only are efficacious. He says: “One of
the best applications to every burn of this kind is strong brandy or any
Other ardent spirit; it seems to induce a momentary additional pain (see
below, § 157), but this soon subsides, and is succeeded by an agreeable sooth-
ing Sensation. It proves most effectual when the parts can be kept im-
mersed in it; but where this cannot be done, they should be kept constantly
moist with pieces of old linen soaked in spirits.” To this I may add that
warm, and indeed very warm, alcohol is much more rapidly and much more
certainly efficacious, for it is much more homoeopathic than when not heated. And
all experience confirms this in a most astonishing manner.
° Edward Kentish, having to treat the workers in coal pits, who were so
often dreadfully burnt by the explosion of fire-damp, applied heated oil of
turpentine or alcohol, as the best remedy in the most extensive and severest
burns (Second E88ay on Burns, London, 1798). No treatment can be more
homoeopathic than this, nor is any more efficacious.
The estimable and experienced Heister (Institut. Chirurg., Tom. i., p. 33)
confirms this from his own observation and extols the application of turpen-
tine oil, of alcohol and of very hot poultices for this end, as hot as ever they
Can be borne.
But the amazing Superiority of the application to burns of these remedies,
which possess the power of exciting burning sensation and heat (and are
consequently homoeopathic), over palliative refrigerant remedies, is most
incontestably shown by pure experimentation, in which the two opposite
methods of treatment are employed for the sake of comparison, in burns of
equal intensity in the same body.
Thus Benjamin Bell (Kühn's Phys. Med. Journ., Leipzic, 1801, Jun., p. 428),
in the case of a lady who had Scalded both arms, caused one to be covered
with oil of turpentime, and made her plunge the other into cold water. In half
an hour the first arm was well, but the other continued to be painful for six
hours longer; when it was withdrawn one instant from the water she ex-
perienced much greater pain in it, and it required a much longer time than the
first for its cure
John Anderson (Kentish, op. cit., p. 43) treated in a similar manner a lady
who had scalded herself with boiling grease. “The face which was very red
and scalded and excessively painful was, a few minutes after the accident,
covered with oil of twrpentime; her arm she had, of her own accord, plunged
into cold water, with which she desired to treat it for Some hours. In the
course of seven hours her face looked much better, and the pain was relieved.
She had frequently renewed the cold water for the arm, but whenever she
withdrew it she complained of much pain, and, in truth, the inflammation
in it had increased. The following morning I found that she had had during
the night great pain in the arm; the inflammation had extended above the
elbow; several large blisters had risen, and thick eschars had formed on the
arm and hand; a warm poultice was then applied. The face was completely
free from pain, but emollient applications had to be used for the arm for a
fortnight longer, before it was cured.”
Who can fail to perceive in this instance the infinite superiority of the (homoeo-
pathic) treatment by means of remedies of similar action. over the wretched treat-
ment by opposite.8 (contraria contrariis) of the antiquated ordinary 8chool of
†medicine/
40 INTRODUCTION.
would not effect a cure in as many months, and cold water"
would make matters worse. ,
The old experienced reaper, although he may not be in the
habit of drinking brandy, will not touch cold water (contraria
contrariis) when he has worked himself into a violent feverish
state in the heat of the sun—he knows the danger of such a
proceeding—but he takes a small quantity of a heating liquor,
a mouthful of brandy; experience, the teacher of truth, has
convinced him of the great superiority and efficacy of this
homoeopathic procedure, whereby his heat and fatigue are
speedily removed.”(a)
There have occasionally been physicians who vaguely sur-
mised that medicines cure analogous morbid states by the
power they possess of producing analogous morbid symptoms.”
Thus the author of the book: "repi réirov rôv kär’ &v-
6porov,” which is among the writings attributed to Hippoc-
rates, has the following remarkable words: Suð rà èuota vodoros
yiveral, Kai 8tà tê špota trpoor pepôpeva èk voorečvrov i yuaívovrat, L
8wo to épéew épteros raiſerai.(*)
Later physicians have also felt and expressed the truth of
the homoeopathic method of cure. Thus, for instance,
Boulduc” perceived that the purgative property of rhubarb was
the cause of its power to allay diarrhoea.
Detharding"(a) guessed that the infusion of senna leaves
relieved colic in adults by virtue of its analogous action in
causing colic in healthy persons.
1 John Hunter (loc. cit.) is not singular in asserting the great injury done
by treating burns with cold water. W. Fabricius of Hilden, also (De Com-
bw8tionibus libellus, Basil. 1607, cap. 5, p. 11), alleges that cold applications in
burns are highly injurious and productive of the most serious consequences;
inflammation, #Suppuration and sometimes mortification are caused by
them.
2 Zimmerman (Ueber die Erfahrwmg, ii, p. 318) informs us that the inhabi-
tants of hot Countries act in the same manner, with the best results, and
that, after being very much heated, they swallow a Small quantity of Some
spirituous liquor.
8 I do not bring forward the following passages from authors who had a
presentiment of homoeopathy as proofs in Support of this doctrine, which is
firmly established by its own intrinsic merits, but in order to avoid the im-
putation of having suppressed these foreshadowings with the view of claim-
ing for myself the priority of the idea.
4 Basil. Froben., 1538, p. 72.
5 Mémoires de l’ Académie Royale, 1710.
6 Eph Nat. Cur., cent. x, obs. 76.
INTRODUCTION. 41
Bertholon' confesses that in diseases electricity diminishes
and removes pain very similar to that which itself produces.
Thoury” testifies that positive electricity possesses the power
of quickening the pulse, but when that is already morbidly
accelerated it diminishes its frequency.
Won Stoerkº makes the following suggestion: “If stra-
monium disorders the mind and produces mania in healthy
persons, ought we not to try if in cases of insanity it cannot
restore reason by producing a revolution in the ideas?”
But a Danish army physician, of the name of Stahl, * has
expressed his conviction on this point in the most unequivocal
terms. “The rule generally acted on in medicine,” says he,
“to treat by means of oppositely acting remedies (contraria
contrariis) is quite false and the reverse of what ought to be;
I am, on the contrary, convinced that diseases will yield to,
and be cured by, remedies that produce a similar affection
(similia similibus),-burns by exposure to the fire, frost-bitten
limbs by the application of snow and the coldest water, in-
flammation and bruises by distilled spirits’; and in like manner
I have treated a tendency to acidity of the stomach by a very
small dose of sulphuric acid with the most successful result,
in cases where a number of absorbent remedies had been
fruitlessly employed.”
How near was the great truth sometimes of being appre-
hended! But it was dismissed with a mere passing thought,
and thus the indispensable change of the antiquated medical
treatment of disease, of the improper therapeutic system
hitherto in vogue, into a real, true, and certain healing art,
remained to be accomplished in our own times.
1 Medicin. Electrisitat., ii, pp. 15 and 282.
2 M&moire lu & l’ Académie de Caen.
8 Libell. de Stram., p. 8.
4 In Jo. Hammelii, Commentatio de Arthritide tam tartarea, quam scorbutica,
sew podagra et 8Corbuto, Budingae, 1738, viii, pp. 40–42.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE.")
3 1. (a)
The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick
to health, to cure, as it is termed.”
$ 2.
The highest ideal of a cure is rapid, gentle and permanent
restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the
disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and
most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles, (d)
Ž 3.
If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in
diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease
(knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly perceives what
1 His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by inter-
weaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essen-
tial nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases Originate
in the invisible interior of the Organism (whereon so many physicians have
hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time); nor is it to at—
tempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases
and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped
in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which
should sound very learned in Order to astonish the ignorant—whilst sick
humanity sighs in vain for aid. Of such learned reveries (to which the
name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are
instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who
call themselves physicians should at length cease to deceive suffering man-
kind with mere talk, and begin now, instead, for once to act, that is, really
to help and to cure.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 43
is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual
medicine, (knowledge of medicinal powers), and if he knows
how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is
curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubt-
edly morbid in the patient, so that recovery must ensue—to
adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine
most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case
before him (choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated), as also
in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it
required (proper dose), and the proper period for repeating the
dose;—if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each
case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration
may be permanent: then he understands how to treat judiciously
and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing
art. (a)
§ 4.
He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things
that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove
them from persons in health. (a)
3 5.
Useful to the physician in assisting him to cure are the
particulars of the most probable eacciting cause of the acute
disease, as also the most significant points in the whole history
of the chronic disease, to enable him to discover its funda-
mental cause, which is generally due to a chronic miasm. In
these investigations, the ascertainable physicial 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 func-
tion, &c., are to be taken into consideration. (a)
§ 6.
The unprejudiced observer—well aware of the futility of
transcendental speculations which can receive no confirmation
from experience—be his powers of penetration ever so great,
takes note of nothing in every individual disease, except the
changes in the health of the body and of the mind (morbid
phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived ex-
ternally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only
44 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
the deviations from the former healthy state of the now dis-
eased individual, which are felt by the patient himself,
remarked by those around him and observed by the physician.
All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole
extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceiv-
able portrait of the disease. **)
§ 7.
Now, as in a disease, from which no manifest exciting or
maintaining cause (causa occasionalis) has to be removed,” we
can perceive nothing but the morbid symptoms, it must
(regard being had to the possibility of a miasm, and attention
paid to the accessory circumstances, & 5) be the symptoms
alone by which the disease demands and points to the remedy
suited to relieve it—and, moreover, the totality of these its
symptoms, of this outwardly reflected picture of the internal
1 I know not, therefore, how it was possible for physicians at the sick—bed
to allow themselves to suppose that, without most carefully attending to
the symptoms and being guided by them in the treatment, they Ought to
seek and could discover, only in the hidden and unknown interior, what
there was to be cured in the disease, arrogantly and ludicrously pretending
that they could, without paying much attention to the symptoms, discover
the alteration that had occurred in the invisible interior, and set it to rights
with (unknown () medicines, and that such a procedure as this could alone
be called radical and rational treatment.
Is not, then, that which is cognizable by the senses in diseases through the
phenomena, it displays, the disease itself in the eyes of the physician, since
he never can see the spiritual being that produces the disease, the vital
force? nor is it necessary that he should see it, but only that he should as-
certain its morbid actions, in order that he may thereby be enabled to cure
the disease. What else will the Old School Search for in the hidden interior
of the Organism, as a prima causa mºrbi, whilst they reject as an object of
cure and contemptuously despise the sensible and manifest representation
of the disease, the symptoms, that so plainly address themselves to us?
What else do they wish to cure in diseases, but these?”
? It is not necessary to say that every intelligent physician would first
remove this where it exists; the indisposition thereupon generally ceases
spontaneously. He will remove from the room strong-smelling flowers,
which have a tendency to cause syncope and hysterical sufferings; extract
from the cornea, the foreign body that excites inflammation of the eye;
loosen the Over-tight bandage on a wounded limb that threatens to cause
mortification, and apply a more suitable one, lay bare and put a ligature On
the wounded artery that produces fainting; endeavor to promote the ex-
pulsion by vomiting of belladonna berries, &c.. that may have been swal-
* “The physician whose researches are directed towards, the hidden rela-
tions in the interior of the organism, may daily err; but the homoeopathist
who grasps with requisite carefulness the whole group of §º. poS-
sesses a sure guide; and if he succeed in removing the Whole #º Of
Symptoms, he has likewise most assuredly destroyed the internal, hidden
Cause of the disease.” (RAU, op. cit., p. 103).
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. £6)
* -º
essence of the disease, that is, of the affection of the vital
force, (a) must be the principal, or the sole means, whereby
the disease can make known what remedy it requires—the
only thing that can determine the choice of the most appro-
priate remedy—and thus, in a word, the totality" of the
symptoms must be the principal, indeed the only thing the
physician has to take note of in every case of disease and to
remove by means of his art, in order that it shall be cured and
transformed into health. (d)
3 8.
It is not conceivable, nor can it be proved by any experience
in the world, that, after removal of all the symptoms of the
disease and of the entire collection of the perceptible pheno-
mena, there should or could remain anything else besides
health, or that the morbid alteration in the interior could
remain uneradicated.”
lowed; extract foreign substances that may have got into the orifices of the
body (the nose, gullet, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina); Crush the vesical
calculus; open the imperforate anus of the new-born infant, &c.
1 In all times, the old school physicians, not knowing how else to give re-
lief, have sought to combat and if possible to suppress by medicines, here
and there, a single symptom from among a number in diseases—a one-8ided
procedure, which, under the name of symptomatic treatment, has justly excited
universal contempt, because by it, not Only was nothing gained, but much
harm was inflicted. A single One of the symptoms present is no more the
disease itself than a single foot is the man himself. This procedure was so
much the more reprehensible, that such a single Symptom was only treated
by an antagonistic remedy (therefore only in an enantiopathic and pallia-
tive manner), whereby, after a slight alleviation, it was subsequently only
rendered all the worse.
2 (2) When a patient has been cured of his disease by a true physician, in
such a manner that no trace of the disease, no morbid' symptom, remains,
and all the signs of health have permanently returned, how can anyone,
without offering an insult to common sense, affirm that in Such an individual
the whole bodily disease still remains in the interior? And yet the chief of
the old school. Hufeland, asserts this in the following words: ‘‘Homoeo-
pathy can remove the symptoms, but the disease remains.” (Vide Homöo-
pathie, p. 27, 1.19). This he maintains partly from mortification at the prog-
ress made by homoeopathy to the benefit of mankind, partly because he still
holds thoroughly material motions respecting disease, which he is still
unable to regard as a state of being of the organism wherein it is dynami-
cally altered by the morbidly deranged vital force, as an altered state of
health, but he views the disease as a 80mething material, which, after the
cure is completed, may still remain lurking in some corner in the interior of
the body, in order, some day during the most vigorous health, to burst forth
at its pleasure with its material presence | So dreadful is still the blindness
of the old pathology | No wonder that it could only produce a system of
therapeutics which is solely occupied with scouring out the poor patient.
16 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
3 9, (a)
In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force
(autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body
(organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the
parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital opera-
tion, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our
indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living,
healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.
3 10.
The material organism, without the vital force, is capable
of no sensation, no function, no self-preservation; it derives
all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by
means of the immaterial being (the vital force) which animates
the material organism in health and in disease.
3 11.
When a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual, self-acting
(automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism,
that is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence upon it of
a morbific agent inimical to life; it is only the vital force,
deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the
organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the
irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power
invisible in itself, and only cognizable by its effects on the
organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by
the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of
those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the
observer and physician, that is, by morbid symptoms, and in
no other way can it make itself known.
Ž 12.
It is the morbidly affected vital force alone that produces
diseases,” so that the morbid phenomena perceptible to our
1 It is dead, and now only subject to the power of the external physical
world; it decays, and is again resolved into its chemical constituents.
* How the vital force causes the organism to display morbid phenomena,
that is, how it produces disease, it would be of no practical utility to the
physician to know, and therefore it will forever remain concealed from
him; only what it is necessary for him to know of the disease and what is
fully sufficient for enabling him to cure it, has the Lord of life revealed to
his senses.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 47
senses express at the same time all the internal change, that
is to say, the whole morbid derangement of the internal
dynamis; in a word, they reveal the whole disease; conse-
quently, also, the disappearance under treatment of all the
morbid phenomena and of all the morbid alterations that differ
from the healthy vital operations, certainly effects and neces-
sarily implies the restoration of the integrity of the vital force
and, therefore, the recovered health of the whole organism.
& 13.
Therefore disease (that does not come within the province of
manual surgery) considered, as it is by the allopathists, as a
thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and
its animating vital force, and hidden in the interior, be it of
ever so subtile a character, is an absurdity, that could only be
imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, and has for
thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine
all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mis-
chievous [non-healing] art.
# 14.
There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is
curable and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable
which does not make itself known to the accurately observing
physician by means of morbid signs and symptoms—an ar-
rangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of
the all-wise Preserver of human life.
3 15.
The affection of the morbidly deranged, spirit-like dynamis
(vital force) that animates our body in the invisible interior,
and the totality of the outwardly cognizable symptoms pro-
duced by it in the organism and representing the existing
malady, constitute a whole; they are one and the same. The
organism is indeed the material instrument of the life, but it
is not conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the
instinctively perceiving and regulating vital force (just as the
vital force is not conceivable without the organism), conse-
quently the two together constitute a unity, although in
thought our mind separates this unity into two distinct con-
ceptions for the sake of facilitating the comprehension of it.
48 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
§ 16.
Our vital force, as a spirit-like dynamis, cannot be attacked
and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism
caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the har-
monious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic)
way, and in like manner, all such morbid derangements
(diseases) cannot be removed from it by the physician in any
other way than by the spirit-like (dynamic, virtual) alterative
powers of the serviceable medicines acting upon our spirit-like
vital force, which perceives them through the medium of the
sentient faculty of the nerves everywhere present in the or-
ganism, so that it is only by their dynamic action on the vital
force that remedies are able to re-establish and do actually re-
establish health and vital harmony, after the changes in the
health of the patient cognizable by our senses (the totality of
the symptoms) have revealed the disease to the carefully
observing and investigating physician as fully as was requisite
in order to enable him to cure it.
ź 17.
Now, as in the cure effected by the removal of the whole of
the perceptible signs and symptoms of the disease the internal
alteration of the vital force to which the disease is due—con-
sequently the whole of the disease—is at the same time
removed,” it follows that the physician has only to remove the
whole of the symptoms in order, at the same time, to abrogate
and annihilate the internal change, that is to say, the morbid
derangement of the vital force—consequently the totality of
the disease, the disease itself.” But when the disease is an-
1 A warning dream, a superStitious fancy, or a Solemn prediction that
death would occur at a certain day or at a certain hour, has not unfrequent-
ly produced all the signs of commencing and increasing disease, of approach-
ing death and death itself at the hour announced, which could not happen
without the simultaneous production of the inward change (corresponding
to the state observed externally); and hence in such cases all the morbid
signs indicative of approaching death have frequently been dissipated by an
identical cause, by Some cunning deception Or persuasion to a belief in the
contrary, and health suddenly restored, which could not have happened
without the removal, by means of this moral remedy, of the internal and
external morbid change that threatened death.
2 It is only thus that God, the Preserver of mankind, could reveal His
wisdom and goodness in reference to the cure of the diseases to which man
is liable here below, by showing to the physician what he had to remove in
diseases in order to annihilate them and thus re-establish health. But what
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 49
nihilated the health is restored, and this is the highest, the
sole aim of the physician who knows the true object of his
mission, which consists not in learned-sounding prating, but in
giving aid to the sick. (a)
Ž 18.
From this indubitable truth, that, besides the totality of the
symptoms, nothing can by any means be discovered in diseases
wherewith they could express their need of aid, it follows
undeniably that the sum of all the symptoms in each individual
case of disease must be the sole indication, the sole guide to
direct us in the choice of a remedy.
Ž 19.
Now, as diseases are nothing more than alterations in the
state of health of the healthy individual which express them-
selves by morbid signs, and the cure is also only possible by a
change to the healthy condition of the state of health of the
diseased individual, it is very evident that medicines could
never cure diseases if they did not possess the power of
altering man's state of health which depends on sensations and
functions; indeed, that their curative power must be owing
solely to this power they possess of altering man's state of
health.
ź 20. (a)
This spirit-like power to alter man's state of health (and
hence to cure diseases) which lies hidden in the inner nature
of medicines can never be discovered by us by a mere effort of
reason; it is only by experience of the phenomena it displays
when acting on the state of health of man that we can become
clearly cognizant of it.
Ž 21.
Now, as it is undeniable that the curative principle in
medicines is not in itself perceptible, and as in pure experi-
ments with medicines conducted by the most accurate ob-
servers, nothing can be observed that can constitute them
would we think of His wisdom and goodness if He had shrouded in mysteri-
ous obscurity that which was to be cured in diseases (as is asserted by the
dominant school of medicine, which affects to possess a supernatural in-
sight into the inner nature of things), and shut it up in the hidden interior,
and thus rendered it impossible for man to know the malady accurately,
consequently impossible for him to cure it? 4
A6) ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
medicines or remedies except that power of causing distinct
alterations in the state of health of the human body, and
particularly in that of the healthy individual, and of exciting
in him various definite morbid symptoms; so it follows that
when medicines act as remedies, they can only bring their
curative property into play by means of this their power of
altering man's state of health by the production of peculiar
symptoms; and that, therefore, we have only to rely on the
morbid phenomena which the medicines produce in the healthy
body as the sole possible revelation of their indwelling curative
power, in order to learn what disease-producing power, and
at the same time what disease-curing power, each individual
medicine possesses.
ź 22.
But as nothing is to be observed in diseases that must be
removed in order to change them into health besides the
totality of their signs and symptoms, and likewise medicines
can show nothing curative besides their tendency to produce
morbid symptoms in healthy persons(a) and to remove them in
diseased persons; it follows, on the one hand, that medicines
only become remedies and capable of annihilating diseases,
because the medicinal substance, by exciting certain effects
and symptoms, that is to say, by producing a certain artificial
morbid state, removes and abrogates the symptoms already
present, to-wit, the natural morbid state we wish to cure. On
the other hand, it follows that, for the totality of the symp-
toms of the disease to be cured, a medicine must be sought
which (according as experience shall prove whether the morbid
symptoms are most readily, certainly, and permanently re-
moved and changed into health by similar or opposite medicinal
symptoms") has a tendency to produce similar or opposite
symptoms.
1 The other possible mode of employing medicines for diseases besides
these two (the allopathic method), in which medicines are given, whose symp-
toms have no direct pathological relation to the morbid State, consequently
are neither similar nor opposite, but quite heterogeneous to the symptoms
of the disease, is, as I have shown above, in the Introduction (Review of the
therapeutics, allopathy and palliative treatment that have hitherto been prac-
ticed in the old school of medictme), merely an imperfect and injurious imitation of
the eactremely imperfect efforts of the unintelligent, merely instinctive vital force,
which, when made ill by moa;ious agents, strives to 8d've itself at whatever 8acrifice
by the production and continuance of morbid irritation in the organism—an
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 51
Ž 23.
All pure experience, however, and all accurate research
convince us that persistent symptoms of disease are far from
being removed and annihilated by opposite symptoms of medi-
cines (as in the antipathic, enantiopathic or palliative method),
that, on the contrary, after transient, apparent alleviation,
they break forth again, only with increased intensity, and
become manifestly aggravated (see 4% 58–62 and 69).
# 24.
There remains, therefore, no other mode of employing
medicines in diseases that promises to be of service besides
the homoeopathic, by means of which we seek, for the totality
of the symptoms of the case of disease, a medicine which
among all medicines (whose pathogenetic effects are known
from having been tested in healthy individuals) has the power
and tendency to produce an artificial morbid state most similar
to that of the case of disease in question.
ź 25. (a)
Now, however, in all careful trials, pure experience,” the
sole and infallible oracle of the healing art, teaches us that
imitation, consequently, of the crude vital force which was implanted in our
organism in order to preserve our life in health, in the most beautiful har-
mony; but when deranged by disease, was so constituted as to admit of
being again changed to health (homoeopathically) by the intelligent physi-
cian, but not to cure itself, for which the little power it possesses is so far
from being a pattern to be copied, that all the changes and symptoms it
produces in the (morbidly deranged) organism are just the disease itself.
But this injudicious system of therapeutics of the Old School of medicine
can no more be passed by unnoticed than can history omit to record the
thousands of years of Oppression to which mankind has been subjected
under the irrational, despotic Governments.
1 I do not mean that sort of experience of which the ordinary practitioners
of the old school boast, after they have for years worked away with a lot of
complex prescriptions on a number of diseases which they never carefully
investigated, but which, faithful to the tenets of their school, they consid-
ered as already described in works of systematic pathology, and dreamed
that they could detect in them some imaginary morbific matter, or ascribed
to them some other hypothetical internal abnormality. They always saw
Something in them, but knew not what it was they saw, and they got results,
from the complex forces acting on an unknown object, that no human being
but only a God could have unravelled—results from which nothing can be
learned, no experience gained. Fifty years' experience of this sort is like
fifty years of looking into a kaleidoscope filled with unknown colored ob-
jects, and perpetually turning round; thousands of ever-changing figures
and no accounting for them |
52 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
actually that medicine which, in its action on the healthy
human body, has demonstrated its power of producing the
greatest number of symptoms similar to those observable in
the case of disease under treatment, does also, in doses of
suitable potency and attenuation, rapidly, radically and per-
manently remove the totality of the symptoms of this morbid
state, that is to say (8% 6—16), the whole disease present, and
change it into health; and that all medicines cure, without
exception, those diseases whose symptoms most nearly re-
semble their own, and leave none of them uncured.
ź 26. (a)
This depends on the following homoeopathic law of nature
which was sometimes, indeed, vaguely surmised but not
hitherto fully recognized, and to which is due every real cure
that has ever taken place.
A weaker dynamic affection is permanently eactinguished in
the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differ-
tng in kind) is very similar to the former in its manifestations."
ź 27. (a)
The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on
their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in
1 Thus are cured both physical affections and moral maladies.(6) How is
it that in the early dawn the brilliant Jupiter vanishes from the gaze of the
beholder? By a stronger very similar power acting On his Optic nerve, the
brightness of approaching day !–In situations replete with foetid odors,
where with is it usual to sooth effectually the Offended olfactory nerves?
With snuff, that affects the sense of smell in a similar but stronger manner!
No music, no sugared cake, which act on the nerves of other senses, can cure
this olfactory disgust. How does the soldier cunningly stifle the piteous
cries of him who runs the gauntlet from the ears of the compassionate by-
standers? By the shrill notes of the fife commingled with the roll of the
noisy drum! And the distant roar of the enemy's cannon that inspires his
army with fear? By the loud boom of the big drum! For neither the one
nor the other would the distribution of a brilliant piece of uniform nor a,
reprimand to the regiment suffice.—In like manner, mourning and Sorrow
will be effaced from the mind by the account of another and still greater
cause for sorrow happening to another, even though it be a mere fiction.
The injurious consequences of too great joy will be removed by drinking
coffee, which produces an excessively joyous state of mind. Nations like
the Germans, who have for centuries been gradually sinking deeper and
deeper in soulless apathy and degrading serfdom, must first be trodden still
deeper in the dust by the Western Conqueror, until their situation became
intolerable; their mean opinion of themselves was thereby Overstrained and
removed; they again became alive to their dignity as men, and then, for the
first time, they raised their heads as Germans.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 53
strength (8% 12–26), so that each individual case of disease
is most Surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated
and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the
human system) in the most similar and complete manner the
totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger
than the disease.
Ž 28.
As this natural law of cure manifests itself in every pure
experiment and every true observation in the world, the fact
is consequently established; it matters little what may be the
scientific explanation of how it takes place; and I do not
attach much importance to the attempts made to explain it.
But the following view seems to commend itself as the most
probable one, as it is founded on premises derived from ex-
perienced. (a)
ź 29. (a)
As every disease (not strictly belonging to the domain of sur-
gery) depends only on a peculiar morbid derangement of our
vital force in sensations and functions, when a homoeopathic cure
of the vital force deranged by natural disease is accomplished
by the administration of a medicinal agent selected on account
of an accurate similarity of symptoms, a somewhat stronger,
similar, artificial morbid affection is brought into contact with
and, as it were, pushed into the place of the weaker, similar,
natural morbid irritation, against which the instinctive vital
force, now merely (though in a stronger degree) medicinally
diseased, is then compelled to direct an increased amount of
energy, but, on account of the shorter duration of the action' of
1 The short duration of the action of the artificial morbific forces, which
we term medicines, makes it possible that, although they are stronger than
the natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the
vital force than can the weaker natural diseases, which, solely in conse—
quence of the longer, generally lifelong, duration of their action (psora,
syphilis, sycosis), can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone,
until the physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent
that produces a disease yery similar, but stronger, to-wit, a homoeopathic
medicine, which, when taken (or smelt), is, as it were, forced upon the unin-
telligent, instinctive vital force, and substituted in the place of the former
natural morbid affection, by which means the vital force then remains
merely medicinally ill, but only for a short time, because the action of the
medicine (the time in which the medicinal disease excited by it runs its
Course) does not last long. The cures of diseases of many years’ duration
(§ 46). by the occurrence of smallpox and measles (both of which run a course
of only a few weeks), are processes of a similar character. (a)
54 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
the medicinal agent that now morbidly affects it, the vital force
soon overcomes this, and as it was in the first instance relieved
from the natural morbid affection, so it is now at last freed from
the substituted artificial (medicinal) one, and hence is enabled
again to carry on healthily the vital operations of the organ-
tsm. (a) This highly probable explanation of the process rests
on the following axioms.
Ž 30.
The human body appears to admit of being much more
powerfully affected in its health by medicines (partly because
we have the regulation of the dose in our own power) than by
natural morbid stimuli—for natural diseases are cured and
overcome by suitable medicines.
Ž 31.
The inimical forces, partly psychical, partly physical, to
which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed
morbific noxious agents, do not possess the power of morbidly
deranging the health of man unconditionally;' but we are
made ill by them only when our organism is sufficiently dis-
posed and susceptible to the attack of the morbific cause that
may be present, and to be altered in its health, deranged and
made to undergo abnormal sensations and functions—hence
they do not produce disease in every one nor at all times.
Ž 32.
But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific agents
which we term medicines. Every real medicine, namely, acts
at all times, under all circumstances, on every living human
being, and produces in him its peculiar symptoms (distinctly
perceptible, if the dose be large enough), so that evidently
every living human organism is liable to be affected, and, as it
were, inoculated with the medicinal disease at all times, and
1 When I call disease a derangement of man’s state of health, I am far from
wishing thereby to give a hyperphysical explanation of the internal nature
of diseases generally, or of any case of disease in particular. It is Only in-
tended by this expression to intimate, what it can be proved diseases are
not and cannot be, that they are not mechanical or chemical alterations of
the material substance of the body, and not dependent on a material mor-
bific substance, but that they are merely Spiritual dynamic derangements
Of the life.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 55
absolutely (unconditionally), which, as before said, is by no
means the case with the natural disease.
ź 33.
In accordance with this fact, it is undeniably shown by all
experience" that the living human organism is much more
disposed and has a greater liability to be acted on, and to
have its health deranged by medicinal powers, than by mor-
bific noxious agents and infectious miasms, or, in other words,
that the morbific moa;ious agents possess a power of morbidly
deranging man's health that is subordinate and conditional, often
very conditional, whilst medicinal agents have an absolute un-
conditional power, greatly superior to the former.
# 34.
The greater strength of the artificial diseases producible by
medicines is, however, not the sole cause of their power to
cure natural diseases. In order that they may effect a cure,
it is before all things requisite that they should be capable of
producing in the human body an artificial disease as similar as
possible to the disease to be cured, in order, by means of this
similarity, conjoined with its somewhat greater strength, to
substitute themselves for the natural morbid affection, and
thereby deprive the latter of all influence upon the vital force.
This is so true, that no previously existing disease can be
cured, even by Nature herself, by the accession of a new
dissimilar disease, be it ever so strong, and just as little can
it be cured by medical treatment with drugs which are in-
capable of producing a similar morbid condition in the healthy
body.
Ž 35.
In order to illustrate this, we shall consider in three different
1 A striking fact in corroboration of this is, that whilst previously to the
year 1801, when the smooth scarlatina of Sydenham still occasionally pre-
vailed epidemically among children, it attacked without exception all
children who had escaped it in a former epidemic; in a similar epidemic
which I witnessed in Königslutter, on the contrary, all the children who
took in time a very small dose of belladonna, remained unaffected by this
highly infectious infantile disease. If medicines can protect from a disease
that is raging around, they must possess a vastly Superior power of affecting
Our vital force.
56 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
cases, as well what happens in nature when two dissimilar
natural diseases meet together in one person, as also the result
of the ordinary medical treatment of diseases with unsuit-
able allopathic drugs, which are incapable of producing an
artificial morbid condition similar to the disease to be cured,
whereby it will appear that even Nature herself is unable to
remove a dissimilar disease already present by one that is un-
homoeopathic, even though it be stronger, and just as little is
the unhomoeopathic employment of even the strongest medi-
cines ever capable of curing any disease whatsoever.
Ž 36.
I. If the two dissimilar diseases meeting together in the
human being be of equal strength, or still more if the older
one be the stronger, the new disease will be repelled by the old
one from the body and not allowed to affect it. A patient
suffering from a severe chronic disease will not be infected by
a moderate autumnal dysentery or other epidemic disease.
The plague of the Levant, according to Larry," does not break
out where scurvy is prevalent, and persons suffering from
eczema are not infected by it. Rachitis, Jenner alleges, pre-
vents vaccination from taking effect. Those suffering from
pulmonary consumption are not liable to be attacked by
epidemic fevers of a not very violent character, according to
Von Hildenbrand.
Ž 37.
So, also, under ordinary medical treatment, an old chronic
disease remains uncured and unaltered if it is treated accord-
ing to the common allopathic method, that is to say, with
medicines that are incapable of producing in healthy individuals
a state of health similar to the disease, even though the treat-
ment should last for years and is not of too violent character.
This is daily witnessed in practice, it is therefore unnecessary
to give any illustrative examples.
ź 38.00)
II. Or the new dissimilar disease is the stronger. In this
1 “Mémoires et Observations,” in the Description de l’Egypte, tom. i.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 57
case the disease under which the patient originally labored,
being the weaker, will be kept back and suspended by the
accession of the stronger one, until the latter shall have run its
course or been cured, and then the old one reappears uncured.
Two children affected with a kind of epilepsy remained free
from epileptic attacks after infection with ringworm (tinea);
but as soon as the eruption on the head was gone the epilepsy
returned just as before, as Tulpius' observed. The itch, as
Schopf & saw, disappeared on the occurrence of the scurvy, but
after the cure of the latter it again broke out. So also the
pulmonary phthisis remained stationary when the patient was
attacked by a violent typhus, but went on again after the
latter had run its course.” If mania occur in a consumptive
patient, the phthisis with all its symptoms is removed by the
former; but if that go off, the phthisis returns immediately
and proves fatal.” When measles and smallpox are prevalent
at the same time, and both attack the same child, the measles
that had already broken out is generally checked by the small-
pox that came somewhat later; nor does the measles resume its
course until after the cure of the smallpox; but it not infre-
quently happens that the inoculated smallpox is suspended for
four days by the supervention of the measles, as observed by
Manget," after the desguamation of which the smallpox com-
pletes its course. Even when the inoculation of the smallpox
had taken effect for six days, and the measles then broke out,
the inflammation of the inoculation remained stationary and
the smallpox did not ensue until the measles had completed
its regular course of seven days." In an epidemic of measles,
that disease attacked many individuals on the fourth or fifth
day after the inoculation of smallpox and prevented the de-
velopment of the smallpox until it had completed its own
course, whereupon the smallpox appeared and proceeded
1 Obs... lub. i, Obs. 8.
2 In Hufeland’8 Journal, xv, 2.
3 Chevalier, in Hufeland's Newesten Annalem der französischen Heilkunde, ii,
p. 192.
4 Mania, phthisi superveniens eam cum Omnibus Suis phaenomenis auffert,
verum mox redit phthisis et Occidit, abeunte mania. Reil, Memorab., fasc.
iii, V, p. 171.
5 In the Edumb. Med. Comment.. pt. i, 1.
6 John Hunter, On the Venereal Disease, p. 5.
58 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
regularly to its termination." The true, smooth, erysipelatous-
looking scarlatina of Sydenham,” with sore throat, was checked
on the fourth day by the eruption of cow-pox, which ran its
regular course, and not till it was ended did the scarlatina
again establish itself; but on another occasion, as both dis-
eases seem to be of equal strength, the cow-pox was suspended
on the eighth day by the supervention of the true, smooth
scarlatina of Sydenham, and the red areola of the former
disappeared until the scarlatina was gone, whereon the cow-
pox immediately resumed its course, and went on to its
regular termination.” The measles suspended the cow-pox; on
the eighth day, when the cow-pox had nearly attained its
climax, the measles broke out; the cow-pox now remained
stationary, and did not resume and complete its course until
the desquamation of the measles had taken place, so that on
the sixteenth day it presented the appearance it otherwise
would have shown on the tenth day, as Kortum observed.”
Even after the measles had broken out the cow-pox inocula-
tion took effect, but did not run its course until the measles
had disappeared, as Kortum likewise witnessed.” *
I myself saw the mumps (angina parotidea) immediately
disappear when the cow-pox inoculation had taken effect and
had nearly attained its height; it was not until the complete
termination of the cow-pox and the disappearance of its red
areola that this febrile tumefaction of the parotid and sub-
maxillary glands, that is caused by a peculiar miasm, reap-
peared and ran its regular course of seven days.
And thus it is with all dissimilar diseases; the stronger sus-
pends the weaker (when they do not complicate one another
which is seldom the case with acute diseases), but they never
cure one another.
Now the adherents of the ordinary school of medicine saw
1 Rainey, in the Edinb. Med. Comment., iii. p. 480.
* Very accurately described by Withering and Plenciz, but differing
greatly from the purpura (or Roodvonk), which is often erroneously de-
nominated Scarlet fever. It is only of late years that the two, which were
originally very different diseases, have come to resemble each other in their
Symptoms.
3 Jenner, in Medicinische Annalem, August, 1800, p. 747.
4 In Hufeland's Journal der praktischen Arzemeikunde, xx, 3, p. 50.
5 LOC. Cit.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 59
Ž 39. (a)
all this for so many centuries; they saw that Nature herself
cannot cure any disease by the accession of another, be it ever
so strong, if the new disease be dissimilar to that already
present in the body. What shall we think of them, that they
nevertheless went on treating chronic diseases with allopathic
remedies, namely, with medicines and prescriptions capable of
producing God knows what morbid state—almost invariably,
however, one dissimilar to the disease to be cured? And even
though physicians did not hitherto observe nature attentively,
the miserable results of their treatment should have taught
them that they were pursuing an inappropriate, a false path.
Did they not perceive when they employed, as was their
custom, an aggressive allopathic treatment in a chronic dis-
ease, that thereby they only created an artificial disease
dissimilar to the original one, which, as long as it was kept
up, merely held in abeyance, merely suppressed, merely sus-
pended the original disease, which latter, however, always
returned, and must return, as soon as the diminished strength
of the patient no longer admitted of a continuance of the
allopathic attacks on the life? Thus the itch exanthema
certainly disappears very soon from the skin under the em-
ployment of violent purgatives, frequently repeated; but when
the patient can no longer stand the factitious (dissimilar)
disease of the bowels, and can take no more purgatives, then
either the cutaneous eruption breaks out as before, or the
internal psora displays itself in some bad symptom, and the
patient, in addition to his undiminished original disease, has
to endure the misery of a painful ruined digestion and im-
paired strength to boot. So, also, when the ordinary physicians
keep up artificial ulcerations of the skin and issues on the
exterior of the body, with the view of thereby eradicating a
chronic disease, they cań NEVER attain their object by so doing,
they can NEVER cure them by that means, as such artificial
cutaneous ulcers are quite alien and allopathic to the internal
affection; but inasmuch as the irritation produced by several
issues is at least sometimes a stronger (dissimilar) disease than
the indwelling malady, the latter is thereby sometimes silenced
and suspended for a week or two. But it is only suspended,
60 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
and that for a very short time, whilst the patient's powers are
gradually worn out. Epilepsy, suppressed for many years by
means of issues, invariably recurred, and in an aggravated
form, when they were allowed to heal up, as Pechlin' and
others testify. But purgatives for itch, and issues for
epilepsy, cannot be more heterogeneous, more dissimilar
deranging agents—cannot be more allopathic, more exhausting
modes of treatment—than are the customary prescriptions,
composed of unknown ingredients, used in ordinary practice for
the other nameless, innumerable forms of disease. These
likewise do nothing but debilitate, and only suppress or sus-
pend the malady for a short time without being able to cure
it, and when used for a long time always add a new morbid
state to the old disease.
Ž 40.
III. Or the new disease, after having long acted on the
Organism, at length joins the old one that is dissimilar to it,
and forms with it a complea, disease, so that each of them
Occupies a particular locality in the organism, namely, the
Organs peculiarly adapted for it, and, as it were, only the
place specially belonging to it, whilst it leaves the rest to the
other disease that is dissimilar to it. Thus a syphilitic patient
may become psoric, and vice versa. As two diseases dissimilar
to each other, they cannot remove, cannot cure one another. At
first the venereal symptoms are kept in abeyance and sus-
pended when the psoric eruption begins to appear; in course
of time, however (as the syphilis is at least as strong as the
psora), the two join together,” that is, each involves those
parts of the organism only which are most adapted for it, and
the patient is thereby rendered more diseased and more diffi
cult to cure.
When two dissimilar acute infectious diseases meet, as, for
example, smallpox and measles, the one usually suspends the
1 Obs. phys. Tmed., lib. ii. Obs. 30.
* From careful experiments and cures of complex diseases of this kind, I
am now firmly convinced that no real amalgamation of the two takes place,
but that in such cases the one exists in the organism beside the other only,
each in the parts that are adapted for it, and their cure will be completely
effected by a judicious alternation of the best mercurial preparation, with
the remedies specific for the psora, each given in the most suitable dose and
form. *
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 61
other, as has been before observed; yet there have also been
severe epidemics of this kind, where, in rare cases, two dis-
similar acute diseases occurred simultaneously in one and the
same body, and for a short time combined, as it were, with
each other. During an epidemic, in which smallpox and
measles were prevalent at the same time, among three hundred
cases (in which these diseases avoided or suspended one an-
other, and the measles attacked patients twenty days after
the smallpox broke out, the smallpox, however, from seven-
teen to eighteen days after the appearance of the measles, so
that the first disease had previously completed its regular
course) there was yet one single case in which P. Russell' met
with both these similiar diseases in one person at the same
time. Rainey” witnessed the simultaneous occurrence of
smallpox and measles in two girls. J. Maurice,” in his whole
practice, only observed two such cases. Similar cases are to
be found in Ettmuller’sº works, and in the writings of a few
others.
Zencker" saw cow-pox run its regular course along with
measles and along with purpura.
The cow-pox went on its course undisturbed during a
mercurial treatment for syphilis, as Jenner saw.
& 41.
Much more frequent than the natural diseases associating
with and complicating one another in the same body are the
morbid complications resulting from the art of the ordinary
practitioner, which the inappropriate medical treatment (the
allopathic method) is apt to produce by the long-continued
employment of unsuitable drugs. To the natural disease,
which it is proposed to cure, there are then added, by the
constant repetition of the unsuitable medicinal agent, the new,
often very tedious, morbid conditions which might be antici-
pated from the peculiar powers of the drug; these gradually
coalesce with and complicate the chronic malady which is
1 Wide Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Med. and Chir.
Knowledge, ii.
2 In the Edinb. Med Comment., iii, p. 480.
3 In Med. and Phys. Journ... 1805.
* Opera, ii, p. i., cap. 10.
5 In Hufeland’s Journal, xvii.
62 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
dissimilar to them (which they were unable to cure by similarity
of action, that is, homoeopathically), adding to the old disease
a new, dissimilar, artificial malady of a chronic nature, and
thus give the patient a double in place of a single disease,
that is to say, render him much worse and more difficult to
cure, often quite uncurable. Many of the cases for which
advice is asked in medical journals, as also the records of
other cases in medical writings, attest the truth of this. Of a
similar character are the frequent cases in which the venereal
chancrous disease, complicated especially with psora or with
the dyscrasia of condylomatous gonorrhoea, is not cured by
long-continued or frequently repeated treatment with large
doses of unsuitable mercurial preparations, but assumes its
place in the organism beside the chronic mercurial affection 1
that has been in the meantime gradually developed, and thus
along with it often forms a hideous monster of complicated
disease (under the general name of masked venereal disease),
which then, when not quite incurable, can only be transformed
into health with the greatest difficulty.
# 42.
Nature herself permits, as has been stated, in some cases,
the simultaneous occurrence of two (indeed, of three) natural
diseases in one and the same body. This complication, how-
ever, it must be remarked, happens only in the case of two
dissimilar diseases, which according to the eternal laws of
nature do not remove, do not annihilate and cannot cure one
another, but, as it seems, both (or all three) remain, as it
were, separate in the organism, and each takes possession of
the parts and systems peculiarly appropriate to it, which, on
account of the want of resemblance of these maladies to each
other, can very well happen without disparagement to the
unity of life.
ź 43. (a)
Totally different, however, is the result when two similar
diseases meet together in the organism, that is to say, when
* For mercury, besides the morbid symptoms which by virtue of similarity
can Cure the venereal disease homoeopathically, has among its effects many
Others unlike those of syphilis, which, if it be employed in large doses,
CauSe new maladies and commit great ravages in the body, especially when
complicated with psora, as is so frequently the case.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 63
to the disease already present, a stronger similar one is added.
In such cases we see how a cure can be effected by the opera-
tions of nature, and we get a lesson as to how man ought to
Cllre.
% 44.
Two diseases similar to each other can neither (as is asserted
of dissimilar diseases in I) repel one another, nor (as has been
shown of dissimilar diseases in II) suspend one another, so
that the old one shall return after the new one has run its
course; and just as little can two similar diseases (as has
been demonstrated in III respecting dissimilar affections) eacist
beside each other in the same organism, or together form a
double complex disease. \
§ 45.
No! two diseases, differing, it is true, in kind," but very
similar in their phenomena and effects and in the sufferings
and symptoms they severally produce, invariably annihilate
one another whenever they meet together in the organism; the
stronger disease, namely, annihilates the weaker, and that for
this simple reason, because the stronger morbific power when
it invades the system, by reason of its similarity of action in-
volves precisely the same parts of the organism that were
previously affected by the weaker morbid irritation, which,
consequently, can no longer act on these parts, but is extin-
guished;” or (in other words) because, whenever the vital
force, deranged by the primary disease, is more strongly
attacked by the new, very similar, but stronger dynamic
morbific power, it therefore now remains affected by the latter
alone, whereby the original, similar but weaker disease must,
as a mere dynamic power without material substratum, cease
to exercise any further morbid influence on the vital force,
consequently it must cease to exist.
\ # 46.
Many examples might be adduced of diseases which, in the
course of nature, have been homoeopathically cured by other
1 Wide supra, § 26, note.
2 Just as the image of a lamp's flame is rapidly overpowered and effaced
from our retina by the stronger Sunbeam impinging on the eye.
64 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
diseases presenting similar symptoms, were it not necessary,
as our object is to speak about something determinate and in-
dubitable, to confine our attention solely to those (few) diseases
which are invariably the same, arise from a fixed miasm, and
hence merit a distinct name.
Among these the smallpox, so dreaded on account of the
great number of its serious symptoms, occupies a prominent
position, and it has removed and cured a number of maladies
with similar symptoms.
How frequently does smallpox produce violent ophthalmia,
sometimes even causing blindness! And see! by its inocula-
tion, Dezoteux' cured a chronic ophthalmia permanently, and
Leroy” another.
An amaurosis of two years’ duration, consequent on sup-
pressed scald-head, was perfectly cured by it, according to
Klein. 3
How often does smallpox cause deafness and dyspnoeal
And , both these chronic diseases it removed on reaching its
acme, as J. Fr. Clossº observed.
Swelling of the testicle, even of a very severe character, is
a frequent symptom of smallpox, and on this account it was
enabled, as Klein” observed, to cure, by virtue of similarity, a
large hard swelling of the left testicle, consequent on a bruise.
And another observer" saw a similar swelling of the testicle
cured by it.
Among the troublesome symptoms of smallpox is a dysen-
teric state of the bowels; and it subdued, as Fr. Wendt’ ob-
served, a case of dysentery, as a similar morbific agent.
Smallpox coming on after vaccination, as well on account of
its greater strength as its great similarity, at once removes
entirely the cow-pox homoeopathically, and does not permit it
to come to maturity; but, on the other hand, the cow-pox
when near maturity does, on account of its great similarity,
homoeopathically diminish very much the supervening small-
1 Traité de l’inoculation, p. 189.
2 Heilkunde für Mütter, p. 384.
3 Interpres clinicus, p. 293.
4 Neue Heilart der Kinderpocken, Ulm, 1769, p. 68; and Specim., obs. No. 18
5 Op. cit.
6 Nov. Act. Nat. cur., vol. i., obs. 22.
7 Nachricht von dem Kramkaminstitutzw. Erlangem, 1783.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 65
pox and make it much milder, as Muhry and many others
testify.
The inoculated cow-poa, whose lymph, besides the protective
matter, contains the contagion of a general cutaneous eruption
of another nature, consisting of usually small, dry (rarely
large, pustular) pimples, resting on a small red areola, fre-
quently conjoined with round red cutaneous spots and often
accompanied by the most violent itching, which rash appears
in not a few children several days before, more frequently,
however, after the red areola of the cow-pox, and goes off in
a few days, leaving behind small, red, hard spots on the skin;
—the inoculated cow-pox, I say, after it has taken, cures
perfectly and permanently, in a homoeopathic manner, by the
similarity of this accessory miasm, analogous cutaneous erup-
tions of children, often of very long standing and of a very
troublesome character, as a number of observers assert.”
The cow-pox, a peculiar symptom of which is to cause
tumefaction of the arm,” cured, after it broke out, a swollen
half-paralyzed arm. *
The fever accompanying cow-pox, which occurs at the time
of the production of the red areola, cured homoeopathically
intermittent fever in two individuals, as the younger Hardege”
reports, confirming what J. Hunter" had already observed,
that two fevers (similar diseases) cannot co-exist in the same
body.”
1 Willan. Ueber die Kuhpockenimpfung, aw8 dem Engl., mit Zusātzen von G. P.
Mühry, Göttingen, 1808.
2 Especially Clavier, Hurel and Desormeaux, in the Bulletin des 8Ciences
médicales, publié parles membres du comité central de la Soc. de Médecine dw
Departement de l'Eure, 1808; also in the Journal de médecine continue, vol. xv, p.
206.
8 Balhorn, in Hufeland's Journal, 10, ii.
4 Stevenson, in Duncan’s Ammals of Medicine, lustr. 2, vol. i. pt. 2, No. 9.
5 In Hufeland’s Journal, xxiii.
6 On the Venereal Dised 86, p. 4.
7. The examples adduced in this place, in the former editions of the Or--
gamon except the last, of chronic maladies cured by the itch,(*) can, accord-
ing to the discoveries and explanations I have given in the first part of my
book on Chronic Diseases, be looked upon as only in a certain degree homoeo-
pathic cures. The great maladies which thereby disappeared (suffocative
asthma of many years’ standing and pulmonary phthisis) wore themselves
originally of psoric origin. widely spread, life-threatening symptoms of an
ancient psora, that had been fully developed in the interior of the system.
which was again transformed into the simple form of the primitive itch dis--
ease by the cutaneous eruption resulting from the new infection (as always .
5
.#56 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
The measles bears a strong resemblance in the character of
its fever and cough to the whooping-cough, and hence it was
that Bosquillon' noticed, in an epidemic where both these
affections prevailed, that many children who then took measles
remained free from whooping-cough during that epidemic.
They would all have been protected from, and rendered in-
capable of being infected by, the whooping-cough in that and
all subsequent epidemics, by the measles, if the whooping-
cough were not a disease that has only a partial similarity to
the measles, that is to say, if it had also a cutaneous eruption
similar to what the latter possesses. As it is, however, the
measles can but preserve a large number from whooping-cough
homoeopathically, and that only in the epidemic prevailing at
the time.
If, however, the measles come in contact with a disease re-
sembling it in its chief symptom, the eruption, it can indis-
putably remove, and effect a homoeopathic cure of the latter.
Thus a chronic herpetic eruption was entirely and permanently
(homoeopathically) cured” by the breaking out of the measles,
as Kortum” observed. An excessively burning miliary rash
on the face, neck and arms, that had lasted six years, and
was aggravated by every change of weather, on the invasion
of measles assumed the form of a swelling of the surface of
the skin; after the measles had run its course the exanthem
was cured, and returned no more.”
3 47. (a)
Nothing could teach the physician in a plainer and more
convincing manner than the above, what kind of artificial
morbific agent (medicine) he ought to choose in order to cure
in a sure, rapid and permanent manner, conformably with the
process that takes place in nature.
happens in such cases), whereby the old malady and the dangerous Symp-
toms were made to disappear. Such a transformation into the primitive
form is therefore only to be considered as a homoeopathic healer of these
extensive symptoms of highly developed ancient psora, in So far as the new
infection puts the patient in a much more favorable condition to be cured
, of the whole psora, by anti-psoric medicines.
1 Cullen’s Elements of Practical Medicine, pt. 2, i, 3, ch. vii.
2 Or at least that symptom was removed.
3 In Hufeland's Journal. xx, 3, p. 50.
4 Rau, Ueber d. Werth des hom. Heilv., Heidelb., 1824, p. 85.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 67
% 48.
Neither in the course of nature, as we see from all the above
examples, nor by the physician's art, can an existing affection
or malady in any one instance be removed by a dissimilar
morbific agent, be it ever so strong, but solely by one that is
similar in symptoms and is somewhat stronger, according to
eternal, irrevocable laws of nature, which have not hitherto
been recognized.
% 49.
We should have been able to meet with many more real
natural homoeopathic cures of this kind if, on the one hand,
the attention of observers had been more directed to them, and,
on the other hand, if nature had not been so deficient in help-
ful homoeopathic diseases.
ź 50.
Mighty Nature herself has, as we see, at her command, as
instruments for effecting homoeopathic cures, little besides the
miasmatic diseases of constant character, (the itch,) measles
and smallpox," morbific agents which,” as remedies, are either
more dangerous to life and more to be dreaded than the dis-
ease they are to cure, or of such a kind (like the itch) that,
after they have effected the cure, they themselves require
curing, in order to be eradicated in their turn—both circum-
stances that make their employment, as homoeopathic remedies,
difficult, uncertain and dangerous. And how few diseases are
there to which man is subject that find their similar remedy in
smallpox, measles or itch! Hence, in the course of nature,
very few maladies can be cured by these uncertain and hazard-
ous homoeopathic remedies, and the cure by their instrumen-
tality is also attended with danger and much difficulty, for this
reason that the doses of these morbific powers cannot be
diminished according to circumstances, as doses of medicine
can; but th patient afflicted with an analogous malady of long
standing m ° subjected to the entire dangerous and tedious
disease, to the “e disease of smallpox, measles (or itch),
1 And the exanthematous contagious principle present in the cow-pox
lymph.
2 Namely, smallpox and measles.
68 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
which in its turn has to be cured. And yet, as is seen, we
can point to some striking homoeopathic cures effected by this
lucky concurrence, all so many incontrovertible proofs of the
great, the sole therapeutic law of nature that obtains in them:
Cure by symptom similarity!
& 51.
This therapeutic law is rendered obvious to all intelligent
minds by these instances, and they are amply sufficient for this
end. But, on the other hand, see what advantages man has
over crude Nature in her happy-go-lucky Operations. How
many thousands more of homoeopathic morbific agents has not
man at his disposal for the relief of his suffering fellow-
creatures in the medicinal substances universally distributed
throughout creation! In them he has producers of disease of
all possible varieties of action, for all the innumerable, for all
conceivable and inconceivable matural diseases, to which they
can render homoeopathic aid—morbific agents (medicinal sub-
stances), whose power, when their remedial employment is
completed, being overcome by the vital force, disappears
spontaneously without requiring a second course of treatment
for its extirpation, like the itch—artificial morbific agents,
which the physician can attenuate, subdivide and potentize
almost to an infinite extent, and the dose of which he can
diminish to such a degree that they shall remain only slightly
stronger than the similar natural disease they are employed to
cure; so that, in this incomparable method of cure, there is no
necessity for any violent attack upon the organism for the
eradication of even an inveterate disease of old standing; the
cure by this method takes place by only a gentle, impercepti-
ble and yet often rapid transition from the tormenting natural
disease to the desired state of permanent health.
Ž 52.
Surely no intelligent physician, after these examples as clear
as daylight, can still go on in the old ordinary system of
medicine, attacking the body, as has hitherto been done, in
its least diseased parts with (allopathic) medicines that have
no direct pathological (homoeopathic) relation to the disease to
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 69
be cured, with purgatives, counter-irritants, derivatives, &c.,"
and thus at a sacrifice of the patient's strength, inducing a
morbid state quite heterogeneous and dissimilar to the original
one, to the ruin of his constitution, by large doses of mixtures
of medicines generally of unknown qualities, the employment
of which can have no other result, as is demonstrated by the
eternal laws of nature in the above and all other cases in the
world in which a dissimilar disease is added to the other in
the human organism, for a cure is never thereby effected in
diseases, but an aggravation is the invariable consequence,—
therefore it can have no other result than that either (because,
according to the process of nature described in I, the older
disease in the body repels the dissimilar one wherewith the
patient is assailed) the natural disease remains as it was, under
mild allopathic treatment, be it ever so long continued, the
patient being thereby weakened; or (because, according to the
process of nature described in II, the new and stronger dis-
ease merely obscures and suspends for a short time the original
weaker dissimilar one), by the violent attack on the body with
strong allopathic drugs, the original disease seems to yield for
a time, to return in at least all its former strength; or (because,
according to the process of nature described in III, two dis-
similar diseases, when both are of a chronic character and of
equal strength, take up a position beside one another in the
organism and complicate each other) in those cases in which
the physician employs for a long time morbific agents opposite
and dissimilar to the natural chronic disease and allopathic
medicines in large doses, such allopathic treatment, without
ever being able to remove and to cure the original (dissimilar)
chronic disease, only develops new artificial diseases beside it;
and, as daily experience shows, only renders the patient much
worse and more incurable than before. (q)
3 53. (a)
True, mild cures take place, as we see, only in a homoeo-
pathic way—a way which, as we have also shown above
(% 7–25) in a different manner, by experience and deductions,
* Vide supra in the Introduction: A Review of the Therapeutics, &c., and
my book, Die Allóopathie, ein Wort der Warnwng für Kranke jeder Art, Leipzig,
bei Baumgårtner [translated in Hahnem imm's Jesser Writings].
70 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
is also the true and the only one whereby diseases may be
most Surely, rapidly and permanently extinguished by art; for
this mode of cure is founded on an eternal, infallible law of
nature.
Ž 54. (a)
This, the homoeopathic way, must, moreover, as observed
above (% 43–49) be the only proper one, because, of the
three possible modes of employing medicines in diseases, it is
the only direct way to a mild, sure, permanent cure without
doing injury in another direction, and without weakening the
patient. The pure homoeopathic mode of cure is the only
proper way, the only direct way, the only way possible to
human skill, as certainly as only one straight line can be
drawn betwixt two given points.
% 55,
The second mode of employing medicines in diseases, the
allopathic or heteropathic, which, without any pathological
relation to what is actually diseased in the body, attacks the
parts most exempt from the disease, in order to draw away
the disease through them and thus to expel it, as is imagined,
has hitherto been the most general method. I have treated
of it above in the Introduction," and shall not dwell longer
On it.
% 56.
The third and only remaining method” of employing medi-
cines in diseases, which, besides the other two just alluded to,
is the only other possible one, is the antipathic (enantiopathic)
or palliative method, wherewith the physician could hitherto
appear to be most useful, and hoped most certainly to gain
his patient's confidence by deluding him with momentary
amelioration. But I shall now proceed to show how ineffica-
1 Review of the Therapeutics &c.
2 A fourth mode of employing medicines in diseases has been attempted to
be created by means of 1sopathy, as it is called—that is to Say.. a method of
curing a given disease by the same contagious principle that produces it.
But even granting this could be done, which would certainly be a most
valuable discovery, yet, after all, seeing that the virus is given to the pa-
tient highly potentized, and thereby, consequently, to a certain degree in
an altered condition, the cure is effected only by Opposing a simillinum.
to a simillimum. (9)
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 7I
cious and how injurious this third and sole remaining way was,
in diseases of a not very rapid cour: e. (a) It is certainly the
only one of the modes of treatment adopted by the allopaths
that had any manifest relation to a portion of the sufferings
caused by the natural disease; but what kind of relation? Of
a truth the very one (the exact contrary of the right one) that
ought most to be avoided if we would not delude and make a
mockery of the patient affected with a chronic disease.
3 57.
In order to carry into practice this antipathic method, the
ordinary physician gives, for a single troublesome symptom
from among the many other symptoms of the disease which
he passes by unheeded, a medicine concerning which it is
known that it produces the exact opposite of the morbid
symptom sought to be subdued, from which, agreeably to the
fifteen-centuries-old traditional rule of the antiquated medical
school (contraria contrariis) he can expect the speediest (palli-
ative) relief. He gives large doses of opium for pains of all
sorts, because this drug soon benumbs the sensibility, and
administers the same remedy for diarrhoeas, because it speedily
puts a stop to the peristaltic motion of the intestinal canal and
makes it insensible; and also for sleeplessness, because opium,
rapidly produces a stupefied, comatose sleep; he gives purga-
tives when the patient has suffered long from constipation and
costiveness; he causes the burnt hand to be plunged into cold
water, which, from its low degree of temperature, seems in-
stantaneously to remove the burning pain, as if by magic; he
puts the patient who complains of chilliness and deficiency of
vital heat into warm baths, which warm him immediately; he
makes him who is suffering from prolonged debility drink
wine, whereby he is instantly enlivened and refreshed; and in
like manner he employs other opposite (antipathic) remedial
means, but he has very few besides those just mentioned, as it,
is only of very few substances that some peculiar (primary)
action is known to the ordinary medical school.
§ 58.
If, in estimating the value of this mode of employing medi-
72 ORGANON OF MEDICINE,
cines, we should even pass over the circumstance that it is an
eactremely faulty symptomatic treatment (v. note to 47), wherein
the practitioner devotes his attention in a merely one-sided
manner to a single symptom, consequently to only a small part
of the whole, whereby relief for the totality of the disease,
which is what the patient desires, cannot evidently be ex-
pected,—we must, on the other hand, demand of experience
if, in one single case where such antipathic employment of
medicine was made use of in a chronic or persisting affection,
after the transient amelioration there did not ensue an in-
creased aggravation of the symptom which was subdued at
first in a palliative manner, an aggravation, indeed, of the
whole disease? And every attentive observer will agree that,
after such short antipathic amelioration, aggravation follows
in every case without eacception, although the ordinary physician
is in the habit of giving his patient another explanation of this
subsequent aggravation, and ascribes it to malignancy of the
Original disease, now for the first time showing itself, or to
the occurrence of quite a new disease.”
# 59.
Important symptoms of persistent diseases have never yet
been treated with such palliative, antagonistic remedies, with-
out the opposite state, a relapse—indeed, a palpable aggrava-
tion of the malady—occurring a few hours afterwards. For a
persistent tendency to sleepiness during the day the physician
prescribed coffee, whose primary action is to enliven; and when
it had exhausted its action the day-somnolence increased;—
1 J_ittle as physicians have hitherto been in the babit of observing accu-
rately. the aggravation that so certainly follows such palliative treatment
could not altogether escape their notice. A striking example Of this is to be
found in J. H. Schulze's Diss. Qwa corporis humani momentamearum alter a-
tionum specimima quaedam facpendumtur, Halae, 1741, § 28. Willis bears to stimony
to something similar (Pharm. rat., § 7, cap. i., p. 298: “Opiata dolores atro-
, cissimos plerumque Sedant at que indolentiam — procurant, eamque—
-aliquamdiu et pro stato Cuodam tempore Continuant, quo spatio elapso
dolores mox recrudescunt et brevi ad solitam ferociam augentur.” And
also at page 295: “Exactis opii viribus illico redeunt tormina, mec atrocita-
tem suam remittunt, nisi dubm ab eoderm pharmaco rursus incantuntur.”
In like manner J. Hunter (On the Ven-real Disease, p. 13) says that wine and
<cordials given to the weak increase the action without giving real strength,
and the powers of the body are afterwards sunk proportionally as they have
been raised, by which nothing can be gained, but a great deal may be lost.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 73
for frequent waking at night he gave in the evening, without
heeding the other symptoms of the disease, opium, which by
virtue of its primary action produced the same night (stupefied,
dull) sleep, but the subsequent nights were still more sleepless
than before;—to chronic diarrhoeas he opposed, without re-
garding the other morbid signs, the same opium, whose primary
action is to constipate the bowels, and after a transient stop-
page of the diarrhoea it subsequently became all the worse;—
violent and frequently recurring pains of all kinds he could
suppress with opium for but a short time; they then always
returned in greater, often intolerable severity, or some much
worse affection came in their stead. For nocturnal cough of
long standing the ordinary physician knew no better than to
administer opium, whose primary action is to suppress every
irritation; the cough would then perhaps cease the first night,
but during the subsequent nights it would be still more severe,
and if it were again and again suppressed by this palliative in
increased doses, fever and nocturnal perspiration were added
to the disease;—weakness of the bladder, with consequent
retention of urine, was sought to be conquered by the anti-
pathic power of cantharides to stimulate the urinary passages,
whereby evacuation of the urine was certainly at first effected,
but thereafter the bladder becomes less capable of stimulation
and less able to contract, and paralysis of the bladder is im-
minent;-with large doses of purgative drugs and laxative
salts, which excite the bowels to frequent evacuation, it was
sought to remove a chronic tendency to constipation, but in
the secondary action the bowels became still more confined;—
the ordinary physician seeks to remove chronic debility by the
administration of wine, which, however, stimulates only in its
primary action, and hence the forces sink all the lower in the
secondary action;–by bitter substances and heating condi-
ments he tries to strengthen and warm the chronically weak
and cold stomach, but in the secondary action of these palli-
atives, which are stimulating in their primary action only, the
stomach becomes yet more inactive;—long-standing deficiency
of vital heat and chilly disposition ought surely to yield to
prescriptions of warm baths, but still more weak, cold, and
chilly do the patients subsequently become;—severely burnt
74 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
parts feel instantaneous alleviation from the application of
cold water, but the burning pain afterwards increases to an
increditable degree, and the inflammation spreads and rises to
a still greater height;"—by means of the sternutatory remedies
that provoke a secretion of mucus, coryza with stoppage of
the nose of long standing is sought to be removed, but it
escapes observation that the disease is aggravated all the more
by these antagonistic remedies (in their secondary action), and
the nose becomes still more stopped;—by electricity and gal-
vanism, which in their primary action greatly stimulate
muscular action, chronically weak and almost paralytic limbs
were soon excited to more active movements, but the conse-
quence (the secondary action) was complete deadening of all
muscular irritability and complete paralysis;–by venesections
it was attempted to remove chronic determination of blood to
the head, but they were always followed by greater congestion;
—ordinary medical practitioners know nothing better with
which to treat the paralytic torpor of the corporeal and mental
organs, conjoined with unconsciousness, which prevails in
many kinds of typhus, than with large doses of valerian, be-
cause this is one of the most powerful medicinal agents for
causing animation and increasing the motor faculty; in their
ignorance, however, they knew not that this action is only a
primary action, and that the organism, after that is passed,
most certainly falls back, in the secondary (antagonistic)
action, into still greater stupor and immobility, that is to say,
into paralysis of the mental and corporeal organs (and death);
they did not see, that the very diseases they supplied most
plentifully with valerian, which is in such cases an oppositely
acting, antipathic remedy, most infallibly terminated fatally
The old school physician rejoices” that he is able to reduce for
several hours the velocity of the small rapid pulse in cachectic
patients with the very first dose of uncombined purple fox-
glove (which in its primary action makes the pulse slower); its
rapidity, however, soon returns; repeated, and now increased
doses effect an ever smaller diminution of its rapidity, and at
length none at all—indeed—in the secondary action the pulse
1 Vide Introduction, p. 43.
2 Vide Hufeland, in his pamphlet, Die Homöopathie, p. 20. (9)
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 75
becomes uncountable; sleep, appetite and strength depart, and
a speedy death is invariably the result, or else insanity ensues.
How often, in one word, the disease is aggravated, or some-
thing even worse is effected by the secondary action of such
antagonistic (antipathic) remedies, the old school with its false
theories does not perceive, but experience teaches it in a ter-
rible manner.
# 60.
If these ill effects are produced, as may very naturally be
expected from the antipathic employment of medicines, the
ordinary physician imagines he can get over the difficulty by
giving, at each renewed aggravation, a stronger dose of the
remedy, whereby an equally transient suppression is effected;
and as there then is a still greater necessity for giving ever-
increasing quantities of the palliative, there ensues either an-
other more serious disease or frequently even danger to life
and death itself, but never a cure of a disease of considerable
or of long standing.
& 61.
Had physicians been capable of reflecting on the sad results
of the antagonistic employment of medicines, they had long since
discovered the grand truth, THAT THE TRUE RADICAL HEALING
ART MUST BE FOUND IN THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF SUCH AN ANTI-
PATHIC TREATMENT OF THE SYMPTOM'S OF DISEASE; they would
have become convinced, that as a medicinal action antagonistic
to the symptoms of the disease (an antipathically employed
medicine) is followed by only transient relief, and after that
is passed, by invariable aggravation, the converse of that
procedure, the homoepathic employment of medicines according
to similarity of symptoms, must effect a permanent and per-
fect cure, if at the same time the opposite of their large doses,
the most minute doses, are exhibited. But neither the ob-
vious aggravation that ensued from their antipathic treatment,
nor the fact that no physician ever effected a permanent cure
of diseases of considerable or of long standing unless some
homoeopathic medicinal agent was accidentally a chief ingred-
ient in his prescription, nor yet the circumstances that all the
rapid and perfect cures that nature ever performed (§ 46), were
76 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
always affected by the supervention upon the old disease of
one of a similar character, ever taught them, during such a
long series of centuries, this truth, the knowledge of which
can alone conduce to the benefit of the sick.
& 62.
But on what this pernicious result of the palliative, anti-
pathic treatment and the efficacy of the reverse, the homoeo-
pathic treatment, depend, is explained by the following facts,
deduced from manifold observations, which no one before me
perceived, though they are so very palpable and so very
evident, and are of such infinite importance to the healing art.
& 63.
Every agent that acts upon the vitality, every medicine,
deranges more or less the vital force, and causes a certain
alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or a
shorter period. This is termed primary action. Although a
product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly, it is
principally due to the former power. To its action our vital
force endeavors to oppose its own energy. This resistent
action is a property, is indeed an automatic action of our life-
preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action
or counteraction.
# 64.
During the primary action of the artificial morbific agents
(medicines) on our healthy body, our vital force seems to con-
duct itself merely in a passive (receptive) manner, and appears,
so to say, compelled to permit the impressions of the artificial
power acting from without to take place in it and thereby alter
its state of health; it then, however, appears to rouse itself
again, as it were, and to develop (A) the exact opposite condi-
tion of health (counteraction, secondary action) to this effect
(primary action) produced upon it, if there be such an opposite,
and that in as great a degree as was the effect (primary action)
of the artificial morbific or medicinal agent on it, and propor-
tionate to its own energy;-or (B) if there be not in nature a
state exactly the opposite of the primary action, it appears to
endeavor to indifferentiate itself, that is, to make its superior
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 77
power available in the extinction of the change wrought in it
from without (by the medicine), in the place of which it sub-
stitutes its normal state (secondary action, curative action).
§ 65.
Examples of (A) are familiar to all. A hand bathed in hot
water is at first much warmer than the other hand that has not
been so treated (primary action); but when it is withdrawn
from the hot water and again thoroughly dried, it becomes in
a short time cold, and at length much colder than the other
(secondary action). A person heated by violent exercise
(primary action) is afterwards affected with chilliness and
shivering (secondary action). To one who was yesterday
heated by drinking much wine (primary action), today every
breath of air feels too cold (counteraction of the organism,
secondary action). An arm that has been kept long in very
cold water is at first much paler and colder (primary action)
than the other; but removed from the cold water and dried, it
subsequently becomes not only warmer than the other, but
even hot, red and inflamed (secondary action, reaction of the
vital force). Excessive vivacity follows the use of strong
coffee (primary action), but sluggishness and drowsiness re-
main for a long time afterwards (reaction, secondary action),
if this be not always again removed for a short time by im-
bibing fresh supplies of coffee (palliative). After the profound
stupefied sleep caused by opium (primary action), the following
night will be all the more sleepless (reaction, secondary action).
After the constipation produced by opium (primary action),
diarrhoea ensues (secondary action); and after purgation with
medicines that irritate the bowels, constipation of several days'
duration ensues (secondary action). And in like manner it
always happens, after the primary action of a medicine that
produces in large doses a great change in the health of a
healthy person, that its exact opposite, when, as has been
observed, there is actually such a thing, is produced in the
secondary action by our vital force.
§ 66.
An obvious antagonistic secondary action, however, is, as
may readily be conceived, not to be noticed from the action
78 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
of quite minute homoeopathic doses of the deranging agents
on the healthy body. A small dose of every one of them
certainly produces a primary action that is perceptible to a
sufficiently attentive observer; but the living organism employs
against it only so much reaction (secondary action) as is neces-
sary for the restoration of the normal condition.
3 67.
These incontrovertible truths, which spontaneously offer
themselves to our notice in nature and experience, explain to
us the beneficial action that takes place under homoeopathic
treatment; whilst, on the other hand, they demonstrate the
perversity of the antipathic and palliative treatment of dis-
eases with antagonistically acting medicines."
3 68.
In homaropathic cures they show us that from the uncom-
! Only in the most urgent cases, where danger to life and imminent death
allow no time for the action of a homoeopathic remedy—not hours, some-
times not even quarter-hours, and Scarcely minutes—in sudden accidents
occurring to previously healthy individuals—for example, in asphyxia, and
suspended animation from lightning, from Suffocation, freezing, drowning,
&c.—it is admissible and judicious, at all events as a preliminary measure,
to stimulate the irritability and sensibility (the physical life) with a pallia-
tive, as, for instance, with gentle electrical shocks, with clysters of strong
coffee, with a stimulating odor, gradual application of heat, &c. When this
stimulation is effected, the play of the vital organs again goes on in its
former healthy manner, for there is here no disease” to be removed, but
merely an obstruction and Suppression of the healthy vital force. To this
category belong various antidotes to sudden poisonings: alkalies for min-
eral acids, hepar Sulphuris for metallic poisons, coffee and camphor (and
ipecacuanha) for poisoning by Opium, &c.
It does not follow that a homoeopathic medicine has been ill selected for a
case of disease because some of the medicinal symptoms are only antipathic
to some of the less important and minor symptoms of the disease; if only
the others, the stronger. Well-marked (characteristic), and peculiar symp-
toms of the disease are covered and matched by the same medicine with
similarity of symptoms—that is to say, overpowered, destroyed and extin-
guished; the few opposite symptoms also disappear of themselves after the
expiry of the term of action of the medicament, without retarding the cure
in the least.
* And yet the new sect that mixes the two systems appeals (though in
vain) to this observation, in order that they may have an excuse for en-
countering everywhere such exceptions to the general rule in diseases, and
to justify their convenient employment of allopathic palliatives, and of
Other injurious allopathic trash besides, solely for the sake of sparing them-
selves the trouble of seeking for the suitable homoeopathic remedy for each
case of disease—I might almost say for the sake of sparing themselves the
trouble of being homoeopathic physicians, and yet wishing to appear as
such. But their performances are on a par with the system they pursue:
they are nothing to boast of.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 79
monly small doses of medicines (% 275–287) required in this
method of treatment, which are just sufficient, by the similarity
of their symptoms, to overpower and remove the similar
natural disease, there certainly remains, after the destruction
of the latter, at first a certain amount of medicinal disease
alone in the organism, but, on account of the extraordinary
minuteness of the dose, it is so transient, so slight, and dis-
appears so rapidly of its own accord, that the vital force has
no need to employ. against this small artificial derangement of
its health, any more considerable reaction than will suffice to
elevate its present state of health up to the healthy point—
that is, than will suffice to effect complete recovery, for
which, after the extinction of the previous morbid derange-
ment, but little effort is required (§ 64, B).
& 69.
In the antipathic (palliative) mode of treatment, however,
precisely the reverse of this takes place. The medicinal symp-
tom which the physician opposes to the disease symptom (for
example, the insensibility and stupefaction caused by opium
in its primary action to acute pain) is certainly not alien, not
allopathic to the latter; there is a manifest relation of the
medicinal symptom to the disease symptom, but it is the
reverse of what should be; it is here intended that the annihi-
lation of the disease symptom shall be effected by an opposite
medicinal symptom, which is impossible. No doubt the anti.
pathically chosen medicine touches precisely the same diseased
point in the organism as the homoeopathic medicine chosen on
account of the similar affection it produces; but the former
covers the opposite symptom of the disease only as an opposite,
and makes it unobservable for a short time only, so that in
the first period of the action of the antagonistic palliative the
vital force perceives nothing disagreeable from either of the
two (neither from the disease symptom nor from the medicinal
symptom), as they seem both to have mutually removed and
dynamically neutralized one another as it were (for example,
the stupefying power of opium does this to the pain). In the
first minutes the vital force feels quite well, and perceives
neither the stupefaction of the opium nor the pain of the
*
80 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
disease. But as the antagonistic medicinal symptom cannot
(as in the homoeopathic treatment) occupy the place of the
morbid derangement present in the organism as a similar,
stronger (artificial) disease, and cannot, therefore, like a
homoeopathic medicine, affect the vital force with a similar
artificial disease, so as to be able to step into the place of the
original natural morbid derangement, the palliative medicine
must, as a thing totally differing from, and the opposite of the
disease derangement, leave the latter uneradicated; it renders
it, as before said, by a semblance of dynamic neutralization,"
at first unfelt by the vital force, but, like every medicinal dis-
ease, it is soon spontaneously extinguished, and not only
leaves the disease behind, just as it was, but compels the vital
force (as it must, like all palliatives, be given in large doses
in order to effect the apparent removal) to produce an opposite
condition (4% 63, 64) to this palliative medicine, the reverse of
the medicinal action, consequently the analogue of the still
present, undestroyed, natural morbid derangement, which is
necessarily strengthened and increased” by this addition (re-
action against the palliative) produced by the vital force. The
disease symptom (this single part of the disease) consequently
becomes worse after the term of the action of the palliative has
expired; worse in proportion to the magnitude of the dose of the
palliative. Accordingly (to keep to the same example) the
1 In the living human being no permanent neutralization of contrary or
antagonistic sensations can take place, as happens with Substances of op-
posite qualities in the chemical laboratory, where, for instance, Sulphuric
acid and potash unite to form a perfectly different substance, a neutral salt,
which is now no longer either acid or alkali, and is not decomposed even by
heat. Such amalgamations and thorough combinations to form something
permanently neutral and indifferent do not, as has been said, ever take
place with respect to dynamic impressions of an antagonistic nature in our
sensific apparatus. Only a semblance of neutralization and mutual removal
occurs in such cases at first, but the antagonistic Sensations do not perma-
nently remove one another. The tears of the mourner will be dried for but
a short time by a laughable play; the jokes are, however, soon forgotten,
and his tears then flow still more abundantly than before.
2 Plain as this proposition is, it has been misunderstood, and in opposition
to it some have asserted “that the palliative in its Secondary action, which
would then be similar to the disease present, must be capable of curing just
as well as a homoeopathic medicine does by its primary action.” But they
did not reflect that the Secondary action is not a product of the medicine,
but invariably of the antagonistically acting vital force of the organism;
that therefore this secondary action resulting from the vital force on the
employment of a palliative is a State similar to the Symptoms Of the disease
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 81
larger the dose of opium given to allay the pain, so much the
more does the pain increase beyond its original intensity as
soon as the opium has exhausted its action."
ź 70.
From what has been already adduced we cannot fail to draw
the following inferences:
That everything of a really morbid character and which
ought to be cured that the physician can discover in
diseases, consist solely of the sufferings of the pa-
tient, and the sensible alterations in his health, in a
word, solely of the totality of the 'symptoms, by
means of which the disease demands the medicine
requisite for its relief; whilst, on the other hand,
every internal cause attributed to it, every occult.
Quality or imaginary material morbific principle, is
nothing but an idle dream;
That this derangement of the state of health, which we
term disease, can only be converted into health by
another revolution effected in the state of health by
means of medicines, whose sole curative power, con-
sequently, can only consist in altering man's state of
health—that is to say, in a peculiar excitation of
morbid symptoms, and is learned with most distinct-
ness and purity by testing them on the healthy body;
That, according to all experience, a natural disease can
never be cured by medicines that possess the power
of producing in the healthy individual an alien mor-
bid state (dissimilar morbid symptoms) differing from
that of the disease to be cured (never, therefore, by
an allopathic mode of treatment), and that even in
nature no cure ever takes place in which an inherent
disease is removed, annihilated and cured by the ad-
which the palliative left uneradicated, and which the reaction of the vital
force against the palliative consequently increased still more.
* As when in a dark dungeon, where the prisoner could with difficulty rec-
Ognize objects close to him, alcohol is suddenly lighted, everything is in-
stantly illuminated in a most consolatory manner to the unhappy wretch;
but when it is extinguished, the brighter the flame was previously, the
blacker is the night which now envelops him, and renders everything about
him much more difficult to be seen than before. 6
.82 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
dition of another disease dissimilar to it, be the new
one ever so strong;
That, moreover, all experience proves that, by means
of medicines which have a tendency to produce in
the healthy individual an artificial morbid symptom,
antagonistic to the single symptom of disease sought
to be cured, the cure of a long-standing affection will
never be effected, but merely a very transient allevi-
ation, always followed by its aggravation; and that,
in a word, this antipathic and merely palliative treat-
ment in long-standing diseases of a serious character
is absolutely inefficacious;
That, however, the third and only other possible mode
of treatment (the homoeopathic), in which there is
employed for the totality of the symptoms of a
natural disease a medicine capable of producing the
most similar symptoms possible in the healthy in-
dividual, given in suitable dose, is the only efficacious
remedial method whereby diseases, which are purely
dynamic deranging irritations of the vital force, are
overpowered, and being thus easily, perfectly, and
permanently extinguished, must necessarily cease to
exist—and for this mode of procedure we have the
example of unfettered Nature herself, when to an old
disease there is added a new one similar to the first,
whereby the old one is rapidly and for ever annihi-
lated and cured.
% 71.
As it is now no longer a matter of doubt that the diseases
- of mankind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms, and
may be annihilated and transformed into health by medicinal
substances, but only by such as are capable of artificially pro-
ducing similar morbid symptoms (and such is the process in all
genuine cures), hence the operation of curing is comprised in
, the three following points:
I. How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary
to be known in order to cure the disease?
II. How is he to gain a knowledge of the instruments
GRGANON OF MEDICINE. 83
adapted for the cure of the natural disease, the
pathogenetic powers of the medicines?
III. What is the most suitable method of employing
these artificial morbific agents (medicines) for the
cure of natural diseases?
Ż 72. (a)
With respect to the first point, the following will serve as a
general preliminary view. The diseases to which man is liable
are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally deranged
Vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more
or less quickly, but always in a moderate time—these are
termed acute diseases;–or they are diseases of such a character
that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings, dynamically
derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner,
and cause it gradually to deviate from the healthy condition,
in such a way that the automatic life energy, called vital force,
whose office is to preserve the health, only opposes to them at
the commencement and during their progress imperfect, un-
suitable, useless resistanée, but is unable of itself to extinguish
them, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and) itself
to be ever more and more abnormally deranged, until at
length the organism is destroyed; these are termed chronic
diseases. They are caused by infection with a chronic miasm.
% 73.
As regards acute diseases, they are either of such a kind as
attack human beings individually, the eacciting cause being in-
jurious influences to which they were particularly exposed.
Excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical
impressions, chills, over-heatings, dissipation, strains, &c., or
psychical irritations, mental emotions, and the like, are excit-
ing causes of such acute febrile affections; in reality, however,
they are generally only a transient explosion of latent psora,
which spontaneously returns to its dormant state if the acute
diseases were not of too violent a character and were soon
quelled. Or they are of such a kind as attack several persons
at the same time, here and there (sporadically), by means of
meteoric or telluric influences and injurious agents, the sus-
84 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
ceptibility for being morbidly affected by which is possessed
by only a few persons at one time. Allied to these are those
diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar
sufferings from the same cause (epidemically); these diseases
generally become infectious (contagious) when they prevail
among thickly congregated masses of human beings. Thence
arise fevers,” in each instance of a peculiar nature, and, be-
cause the cases of disease have an identical origin, they set up
in all those they affect an identical morbid process, which
when left to itself terminates in a moderate period of time in
death or recovery. The calamities of war, inundations and
famine are not infrequently their exciting causes and producers
—sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms which recur in the
same manner (hence known by some traditional name), which
either attack persons but once in a lifetime, as the smallpox,
measles, whooping-cough, the ancient smooth, bright red
Scarlet fever” of Sydenham, the mumps, &c., or such as recur
frequently in pretty much the same manner, the plague of the
Levant, the yellow fever of the sea-coast, the Asiatic cholera,
&c.
3 74. (a)
Among chronic diseases we must still, alas! reckon those so
commonly met with, artificially produced in allopathic treat-
ment by the prolonged use of violent heroic medicines in large
and increasing doses, by the abuse of calomel, corrosive sub-
limate, mercurial ointment, nitrate of silver, iodine and its
ointments, opium, Valerian, cinchona bark and quinine, fox-
1 The homoeopathic physician, who does not entertain the foregone COn-
clusions devised by the ordinary school (who have fixed upon a few names of
such fevers, besides which mighty nature dare not produce any others, SO as
to admit of their treating these diseases according to some fixed method),
does not acknowledge the names gaol fever, bilious fever, typhus fever,
putrid fever, nervous fever or mucous fever, but treats them each according
to their several peculiarities.
2 Subsequently to the year 1801 a kind of purpura miliaris (roodvonk). which
came from the West, was by physicians confounded with the Scarlet fever,
notwithstanding that they exhibited totally different symptoms, that the
latter found its prophylactic and curative remedy in belladonna, the former
in aconite, and that the former was generally merely sporadic, while the
latter was invariably epidemic. Of late years it seems as if the two occas-
ionally joined to form an eruptive fever of a peculiar kind, for which neither
the one nor yet the other remedy, alone, will be found to be exactly homoeo-
pathic.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 85
glove, prussic acid, sulphur and sulphuric acid, perennial
purgatives, venesections, leeches, issues, setons, &c., whereby
the vital force is sometimes weakened to an unmerciful extent,
sometimes, if it do not succumb, gradually abnormally de-
ranged (by each substance in a peculiar manner) in such a way
that, in order to maintain life against these inimical and de-
structive attacks, it must produce a revolution in the organism,
and either deprive some part of its irritability or sensibility, or
exalt these to an excessive degree, cause dilatation or con-
traction, relaxation or induration or even total destruction of
certain parts, and develop faulty organic alterations here and
there in the interior or the exterior,” (cripple the body inter-
nally or externally) in order to preserve the organism from
complete destruction of life by the ever-renewed, hostile as-
saults of such destructive forces.
3 75.
These inroads on human health effected by the allopathic
non-healing art (more particularly in recent times) are of all
chronic diseases the most deplorable, the most incurable; and
I regret to add that it is apparently impossible to discover or
to hit upon any remedies for their cure when they have reached
any considerable height.
3 76.
Only for natural diseases has the beneficent Deity granted
us, in Homoeopathy, the means of affording relief; but those
devastations and maimings of the human organism exteriorly
and interiorly, effected by years, frequently, of the unsparing
exercise of a false art, with its hurtful drugs and treatment,
must be remedied by the vital force itself (appropriate aid being
given for the eradication of any chronic miasm that may
happen to be lurking in the background), if it have not already
been too much weakened by such mischievous acts, and can
! If the patient at length succumbs, the practicer of Such a treatment is in
the habit of pointing out to the sorrowing relatives, at the post-mortem ex-
amination, these internal organic disfigurements, which are due to his
pseudo-art, but which he artfully maintains to be the Original incurable
disease (see my book, Die Allóopathve. ein Wort der Warmung an Eramke jeder
Art. Leipzig. bei Baumgårtner [translated in Lesser Writings]). Those de-
ceitful records, the illustrated works on pathological anatomy, exhibit the
products of such lamentable bungling.
86 OBGANON OF MEDICINE.
devote several years to this huge operation undisturbed. A
human healing art, for the restoration to the normal state of
those innumerable abnormal conditions so often produced by
the allopathic non-healing art, there is not and cannot be.
ź 77.
Those diseases are appropriately named chronic, which
persons incur who expose themselves continually to avoidable
noxious influences, who are in the habit of indulging in in-
jurious liquors or aliments, are addicted to dissipation of many
kinds which undermine the health, who undergo prolonged
abstinence from things that are necessary for the support of
life, who reside in unhealthy localities, especially marshy dis-
tricts, who are housed in cellars or other confined dwellings,
who are deprived of exercise or of open air, who ruin their
health by over-exertion of body or mind, who live in a con-
stant state of worry, &c. These states of ill-health, which
persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously, pro-
vided no chronic miasm lurks in the body, under an improved
mode of living, and they cannot be called chronic diseases.
ź 78.
The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a
chronic miasm, which when left to themselves and unchecked
by the employment of those remedies that are specific for
them, always go on increasing and growing worse, notwith-
standing the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment
the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated suffer-
ings. These are the most numerous and greatest scourges of
the human race; for the most robust constitution, the best
regulated mode of living and the most vigorous energy of the
vital force are insufficient for their eradication.
ź 79.
Hitherto syphilis alone has been to some extent known as
such a chronic miasmatic disease, which when uncured ceases
only with the termination of life. Sycosis (the condylomatous
disease), equally ineradicable by the vital force without proper
medicinal treatment, was not recognized as a chronic miasmatic
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 87
disease of a peculiar character, which it nevertheless undoubt-
edly is, and physicians imagined they had cured it when they
had destroyed the growths upon the skin, but the persisting
dyscrasia occasioned by it escaped their observation.
3. 80.
Incalculably greater and more important than the two.
chronic miasms just named, however, is the chronic miasm of
psora, which, whilst those two reveal their specific internal
dyscrasia, the one by the venereal chancre, the other by the
cauliflower-like growths, does also, after the completion of the
internal infection of the whole organism, announce by a pe-
culiar cutaneous eruption, sometimes consisting only of a few
vesicles accompanied by intolerable voluptuous tickling itching
(and a peculiar odor), the monstrous internal cluonic miasm—
the psora, the only real fundamental cause and producer of all
the other numerous, I may say innumerable, forms of disease,”
which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypo-
chondriasis, mania, melancholia, imbecility, madness, epilepsy"
and convulsions of all sorts, softening of the bones (rachitis),
scoliosis and cyphosis, caries, cancer, fungus hæmatoides,
1 I spent twelve years in investigating the source of this incredibly large
number Of Chronic affections, in ascertaining and collecting certain proofs
of this great truth, which had remained unknown to all former or contem-
porary observers, and in discovering at the same time the principal (anti-
psoric) remedies, which collectively are noairly a match for this thousand-
headed monster of disease in all its different developments and forms. I
have published my observations on this subject in the book entitled The
Chronic Distases (4 vols., Dresden, Arnold. [2nd edit., Düsseldorf, Schaub.]).
Before I had obtained this knowledge I could only teach how to treat the
whole number of chronic diseases as isolated. individual maladies, with
those medicinal substances whose pure effects had been tested on healthy
persons up to that period, so that every case of chronic disease was treated
by my disciples according to the group of symptoms it presented, just like-
an idiopathic disease, and it was often so far cured that sick mankind re--
joiced at the extensive remedial treasures already amassed by the new
healing art. How much greater cause is there now for rejoicing that theo
desired goal has been so much more nearly attained, inasmuch as the re--
cently discovered and far more specific homoeopathic remedies for chronicº
affections arising from psora (properly termed antipsoric remedies) and the
special instructions for their preparation and employment have been pub-
lished; and from among them the true physician can now Select for his.
curative agents those whose medicinal symptoms correspond in the most-
similar (homoeopathic) manner to the chronic disease he has to cure; and
thus, by the employment of (antipsoric) medicines more suitable for this:
miasm, he is enabled to render more essential service and almost invariably
to effect perfect cures. -
88 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
neoplasms, gout, haemorrhoids, jaundice, cyanosis, dropsy,
amenorrhoea, hæmorrhage from the stomach, nose, lungs,
bladder and womb, of asthma and ulceration of the lungs, of
impotence and barrenness, of megrim, deafness, cataract,
amaurosis, urinary calculus, paralysis, defects of the senses
and pains of thousands of kinds, &c., figure in systematic
works on pathology as peculiar, independent diseases.
Ž 81.
The fact that this extremely ancient infecting agent has
gradually passed, in some hundreds of generations, through
many millions of human organisms and has thus attained an
incredible development, renders it in some measure conceivable
how it can now display such innumerable morbid forms in the
great family of mankind, particularly when we consider what
a number of circumstances' contribute to the production of
these great varieties of chronic diseases (secondary symptoms
of psora), besides the indescribable diversity of men in respect
of their congenital corporeal constitutions, so that it is no
wonder if such a variety of injurious agencies, acting from
within and from without and sometimes continually, on such a
variety of organisms permeated with the psoric miasm, should
produce an innumerable variety of defects, injuries, derange-
ments and sufferings, which have hitherto been treated of in
the old pathological works,” under a number of special names,
as diseases of an independent character.
1 Some of these causes that exercise a modifying influence on the transfor-
mation of psora, into chronic diseases manifestly depend sometimes on the
climate and the peculiar physical character of the place of abode, sometimes
on the very great varieties in the physical and mental training of youth,
both of which may have been neglected, delayed or carried to excess, or on
their abuse in the business or conditions of life, in the matter of diet and
regimen, passions, manners, habits and customs of various kinds.
2 How many improper, ambiguous names do not these works contain, un-
der each of which are included excessively different morbid conditions,
which often resemble each other in one single symptom only, as ague,
jaundice, dropsy, consumption, leucorrhoea, haemorrhoids, rheumatism, apople.cy,
convulsions, hysteria, hypochondriasis, mi lancholia, mania, quimsy, palsy. &c.,
which are represented as diseases of a fixed and unvarying character, and
are treated, on account of their name, according to a determinate plan?
How can the bestowal of such a name justify an identical medical treat-
ment? And if the treatment is not always to be the same, why make use of
an identical name which postulates an identity of treatment? “Nihil same in
artem medicam pestiferum magis unquam irrepsit malum, quam generalia
quaedam nomina morbis imponere iisque a ptare velle generalem quandam
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 89
% 82.
Although, by the discovery of that great source of chronic
diseases, as also by the discovery of the specific homoeopathic
remedies for the psora, medicine has advanced some steps
nearer to a knowledge of the nature of the majority of dis-
eases it has to cure, yet, for settling the indication in each
medicinam,” says Huxham, a man as clear-sighted as he was estimable on
account of his conscientiousness (Op. phys. med., tom. i.). And in like man-
ner Fritze laments (Annalem, i, p. 80) “that essentially different diseases are
designated by the same name.” Even those epidemic diseases, which un-
doubtedly may be propagated in every 86 parate epidemic by a peculiar Con-
tagious principle which remains unknown to us, are designated, in the old
school of medicine, by particular names, just as if they were well-known
fixed diseases that invariably recurred under the same form, as hospital
fever, gaol fever, camp fever, putrid fever, bilious fever, nervous ſever, mucous
fever, although each epidemic of such roving fevers exhibits itself at every
Occurrence as another, a mew disease. Such as it has never before appeared in
exactly the same form, differing very much, in every instance, in its course,
as well as in many of its most Striking Symptoms and its whole appearance.
Each is so far dissimilar to all previous epidemics, whatever names they
may bear, that it would be a dereliction of all logical accuracy in our ideas
of things were we to give to these maladies, that differ so much among
themselves, one of those names we meet with in pathological writings, and
treat them all medicinally in conformity with this misused name. The
candid Sydenham alone perceived this, when he (Obs. med., cap. ii, De morb.
epid.) insists upon the necessity of not considering any epidemic disease as
having occurred before and treating it in the same way as another, since all
that occur Successively, be they ever SO numerous, differ from one another:
“Nihil quicquam (OpinOr,) animum universa? qual patet medicinae pomoeria,
perlustrantem, tanta admiratione percellet, quam discolor illa et sui plane
dissimilis morborum Epidemicorum facies; non tam qua varias ejusdem
anni tempestates, quam qual discrepantes diverSorum ab in vicem annorum
constitutiones referunt, ab iisque dependent. Quae tam aperta, praedictorum
morborum diversitas tum propriis ac Sibi peculiaribus symptomatis, tum
etiam medendi ratione, quam hi ab illis disparem prorsus sibi vendicant,
satis illucescit. Ex quibus constat morbus hosce, ut ut externa quadan tenus
specie, et symptomatis a liquot utrisque pariter Supervenientibus, convenire
paulo incautionibus videantur, re tamen ipsa (si bene adverteris animum,)
alienas admodum esse indolis, et distare ut abra lupinis.”(“)
From all this it is clear that these useless and misused names of diseases
ought to have no influeuce on the practice of the true physician, who knows
that he has to judge of and to cure diseases, not according to the similarity
of the name of a single One Of their symptoms, but according to the totality
of the signs of the individual state of each particular patient, whose affec-
tion it is his duty carefully to investigate, but neyer to give a hypothetical
guess at it.
If, however, it is deemed necessary Sometimes to make use of names of
diseases, in Order, when talking about a patient to ordinary persons, to ren-
der ourselves intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ them as col-
lective names, and tell them. e. g. the patient has a kind of St. Vitus’ dance.
a kind of dropsy, a kind of typhus, at kind of ague; but (in order to do away
once for all with the mistaken notions these names give rise to) we should
never say he has the St. Vitus’ dance, the typhus, the dropsy, the ague, as
there are certainly no diseases of these and similar names of fixed, un vary-
ing character.
w
90 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
case of chronic (psoric) disease he is called on to cure, the
duty of a careful apprehension of its ascertainable symptoms
and characteristics is as indispensable for the homoeopathic
physician as it was before that discovery, as no real cure of
this or of other diseases can take place without a strict par-
ticular treatment (individualization) of each case of disease—
only that in this investigation some difference is to be made
when the affection is an acute and rapidly developed disease,
and when it is a chronic one; seeing that, in acute disease, the
chief symptoms strike us and become evident to the senses
more quickly, and hence much less time is requisite for tracing
the picture of the disease and much fewer questions are re-
quired to be asked," as almost everything is self-evident, than
in a chronic disease which has been gradually progressing for
several years, in which the symptoms are much more difficult
to be ascertained.
ź 83. (a)
This individualizing eacamination of a case of disease, for
which I shall only give in this place general directions, of
which the practitioner will bear in mind only what is applicable
for each individual case, demands of the physician nothing
but freedom from prejudice and sound senses, attention in
observing and fidelity in tracing the picture of the disease.
& 84.
The patient details the history of his sufferings; those about
him tell what they have heard him complain of, how he has
behaved and what they have noticed in him; the physician
sees, hears, and remarks by his other senses what there is of
an altered or unusual character about him. He writes down
accurately all that the patient and his friends have told him
in the very expressions used by them. Keeping silence him-
self he allows them to say all they have to say, and refrains
from interrupting them” unless they wander off to other mat-
1 Hence the following directions for investigating the symptoms are only
partially applicable for acute diseases.
2 Every interruption breaks the train of thought of the narrators, and all
they would have said at first does not again occur to them in precisely the
same manner after that,
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 91
ters. The physician advises them at the beginning of the
examination to speak slowly, in order that he may take down
in writing the important parts of what the speakers say.
ź 85.
He begins a fresh line with every new circumstance men-
tioned by the patient or his friends, so that the symptoms
shall be all ranged separately one below the other. He can
thus add to any one, that may at first have been related in too
vague a manner, but subsequently more explicitly detailed.
ź 86.
When the narrators have finished what they would say of
their own accord, the physician then reverts to each particular
symptom and elicits more precise information respecting it in
the following manner: he reads over the symptoms as they
were related to him one by one, and about each of them he
inquires for further particulars: e. g. at what period did this
symptom occur? Was it previous to taking the medicine he
had hitherto been using? Whilst taking the medicine? Or
only some days after leaving off the medicine? What kind of
pain, what sensation exactly, was it that occurred on this spot?
Where was the precise spot? Did the pain occur in fits and
by itself, at various times? Or was it continued, without in-
termission? How long did it last? At what time of the day
or night, and in what position of the body was it worst, or
ceased entirely? What was the exact nature of this or that
event or circumstance mentioned—discribed in plain words?
% 87.
And thus the physician obtains more precise information
respecting each particular detail, but without ever framing his
questions so as to suggest the answer to the patient,” So that
he shall only have to answer yes or no; else he will be misled
to answer in the affirmative or negative something untrue, half
true, or not strictly correct, either from indolence or in order
1 For instance, the physician should not ask, Was not this Or that circum-
stance present? He should never be guilty of making such suggestions,
which tend to seduce the patient into giving a false answer and a false ac-
Count Of his Symptoms.
92 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
to please his interrogator, from which a false picture of the
disease and an unsuitable mode of treatment must result.
% 88.
If in these voluntary details nothing has been mentioned
respecting several parts or functions of the body or his mental
state, the physician asks what more can be told in regard to
these parts and these functions, or the state of his disposition
or mind; but in doing this he only makes use of general ex-
pressions, in order that his informants may be obliged to enter
into special details concerning them.
ź 89.
When the patient (for it is on him we have chiefly to rely
for a description of his sensations, except in the case of
feigned diseases) has by these details, given of his own accord
and in answer to inquiries, furnished the requisite information
and traced a tolerably perfect picture of the disease, the
physician is at liberty and obliged (if he feels he has not
yet gained all the information he needs) to ask more precise,
more special questions.”
1 For example, what is the character of his stools? How does he pass his
water? How is it with his day and night sleep? What is the state of his dis-
position, his humor, his memory? How about the thirst? What sort of taste
has he in his mouth? What kinds of food and drink are most relished? What
are most repugnant to him? Has each its full natural taste, or some other
unnatural taste? How does he feel after eating or drinking? Has he any-
thing to tell about the head, the limbs, or the abdomen?
2 For example, how often are his bowels moved? What is the exact char-
acter of the stools? Did the Whitish evacuation consist of mucus or faces?
Had he or had he not pains during the evacuation? What was their exact
character, and where were they seated? What did the patient vomit? Is
the bad taste in the mouth putrid, or bitter, or sour, or what? before or after
eating, or during the repast? At what period of the day was it worst? What
is the taste of what is eructated? Does the urine only become turbid on
standing, or is it turbid when first discharged? What is its color when first
emitted? Of what color is the sediment? How does he behave during sleep?
Does he whine, moan. talk or cry out in his sleep? Does he start during
sleep? Does he snore during inspiration, or during expiration? Does he lie
only on his back, or on which side? Does he cover himself well up, or can
he not bear the clothes on him? Does he easily awake, or does he sleep too
soundly? How does he feel immediately after waking from sleep? How
often does this or that symptom occur? what is the cause that produces it
each time it occurs? does it come on whilst sitting, lying, standing, or when
in motion? only when fasting, or in the morning, or only in the evening, or
only after meal, or when does it usually appear? When did the rigor come
on? was it merely a chilly sensation, or was he actually cold at the same
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 93
Ž 90.
When the physician has finished writing down these particu-
lars, he then makes a note of what he himself observes in the
patient," and ascertains how much of that was peculiar to the
patient in his healthy state.
ź 91.
The symptoms and feelings of the patient during a previous
course of medicine do not furnish the pure picture of the dis-
ease; but, on the other hand, those symptoms and ailments
which he suffered from before the use of the medicines, or after
they had been discontinued for several days, give the true funda-
mental idea of the original form of the disease, and these
especially the physician must take note of. When the disease
is of a chronic character, and the patient has been taking
medicine up to the time he is seen, the physician may with
advantage leave him some days quite without medicine, or in
the meantime administer something of an unmedicinal nature
and defer to a subsequent period the more precise scrutiny of
the morbid symptoms, in order to be able to grasp in their
time? if so, in what parts? Or while feeling chilly, was he actually warm to
the touch? was it merely a Sensation of cold, without Shivering? was he hot,
without redness of the face? What parts of him were hot to the touch? Or did
he complain of heat without being hot to the touch? How long did the
chilliness last? how long the hot stage? When did the hirst come on—dur-
ing the cold stage? during the heat? or previous to it? or subsequently to it?
How great was the thirst, and what was the beverage desired? When did
the sweat come on—at the beginning or the end of the heat? or how many
hours after the heat? when asleep Or when awake? How great was the
sweat? was it warm or cold? On what parts? how did it smell? What does he
complain of before or during the cold stage? what during the hot stage?
what after it? what during Or after the Sweating stage? &c.
1 For example, how the patient behaved during the visit—whether he was
morose, quarrelsome, hasty, lachrymose, anxious, despairing or sad, or hope-
ful, calm, &c. Whether he was in a drowsy State or in any way dull of com—
prehension; whether he spoke hoarsely, or in a low tone, or incoherently,
or how otherwise did he talk? what was the color of his face and eyes, and of
his skin generally? what degree of liveliness and power was there in his ex-
pression and eyes? what was the state of his tongue, his breathing, the smell
from his mouth, and his hearing? were his pupils dilated or contracted? how
rapidly and to what extent did they alter in the dark and in the light? what
was the character of the pulse? what the condition of the abdomen? how
moist or hot, how cold or dry to the touch, Was the skin of this or that part,
or generally? whether he lay with head thrown back, with mouth half or
wholly open, with the arms placed above the head. On his back, or in what
other position? what effort did he make to raise himself? and anything else
in him that may strike the physician as being remarkable.
94 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
purity the permanent uncontaminated symptoms of the old
affection and to form a faithful picture of the disease.
3 92.
But if it be a disease of a rapid course, and if its serious
character admit of no delay, the physician must content him-
self with observing the morbid condition, altered though it
may be by medicines, if he cannot ascertain what symptoms
were present before the employment of the medicines, –in
order that he may at least form a just apprehension of the
complete picture of the disease in its actual condition, that is
to say, of the conjoint malady formed by the medicinal and
original diseases, which from the use of inappropriate drugs is
generally more serious and dangerous than was the original
disease, and hence demands prompt and efficient aid; and by
thus tracing out the complete picture of the disease he will be
enabled to combat it with a suitable homoeopathic remedy, so
that the patient shall not fall a sacrifice to the injurious drugs
he has swallowed.
3 93.
If the disease have been brought on a short time or, in the
case of a chronic affection, a considerable time previously, by
some obvious cause, then the patient—or his friends when
questioned privately—will mention it either spontaneously or
when carefully interrogated.”
3 94.
While inquiring into the state of chronic diseases, the par-
ticular circumstances of the patient with regard to his ordinary
occupations, his usual mode of living and diet, his domestic
1 Any causes of a disgraceful character, which the patient or his friends
do not like to confeSS, at least not volunfarily, the physician must endeavor
to olicit by skilfully framing his questions, or by private information. To
these belong poisoning or attempted Suicide, Onanism, indulgence in ordin-
ary or unnatural debauchery, excesses in wine, cordials, punch and other
ardent beverages, or coffee,_over-indulgence in eating generally, or in some
particular food of a hurtful character, infection with venereal disease or
itch, unfortunate love, jealousy, domestic infelicity, worry, grief on ac-
count of some family misfortune, ill-usage, balked revenge, injured pride,
embarrassment of a pecuniary nature, Superstitious fear, hunger.—or an
imperfection in the private parts, a rupture, a prolapsus, and SO forth.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 95
situation, and so forth, must be well considered and scrutinized,
to ascertain what there is in them that may tend to produce or
to maintain disease, in order that by their removal the recovery
may be promoted."
ź 95.
In chronic diseases the investigation of the signs of disease
above mentioned, and of all others, must be pursued as care-
fully and circumstantially as possible, and the most minute
peculiarities must be attended to, partly because in these
diseases they are the most characteristic and least resemble
those of acute diseases, and if a cure is to be effected they
cannot be too accurately noted; partly because the patients
become so used to their long sufferings that they pay little or
no heed to the lesser accessory symptoms, which are often
very pregnant with meaning (characteristics)—often very useful
in determining the choice of the remedy—and regard them
almost as a necessary part of their condition, almost as health,
the real feeling of which they have well-nigh forgotten
in their sometimes fifteen or twenty years of suffering, and
they can scarcely bring themselves to believe that these acces-
sory symptoms, these greater or lesser deviations from the
healthy state, can have any connection with their principal
malady.
3 96.
Besides this, patients themselves differ so much in their
dispositions, that some, especially the so-called hypochondriacs
and other persons of great sensitiveness and impatient of suf-
fering, portray their symptoms in too vivid colors and, in
1 In chronic diseases of females it is specially necessary to pay attention
to pregnancy, Sterility, Sexual desire, accouchements, miscarriages, suck-
ling. and the state of the menstrual discharge. With respect to the last-
named more particularly, We Should not neglect to ascertain if it recurs at
too short intervals, or is delayed beyond the proper time, how many days it
lasts, whether its flow is continuous Or interrupted, what is its general
quantity, how dark is its color, whether there is leucorrhoea (whites) before
its appearances or after its termination, but especially by what bodily and
mental ailments, wbat Sensations and pains, it is preceded, accompanied or
followed; if there is leucorrhoea. What is its nature, what sensations attend
its flow, in what quantity it is, and what are the conditions and occasions
under which it occurs?
96 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
order to induce the physician to give them relief, describe
their ailments in exaggerated expressions."
ź 97.
Other individuals of an opposite character, however, partly
from indolence, partly from false modesty, partly from a kind
of mildness of disposition or weakness of mind, refrain from
mentioning a number of their symptoms, describe them in
vague terms, or allege some of them to be of no consequence.
Ž 98.
Now, as certainly as we should listen particularly to the
patient's description of his sufferings and sensations, and
attach credence especially to his own expressions wherewith he
endeavors to make us understand his ailments—because in the
mouths of his friends and attendants they are usually altered
and erroneously stated,—so certainly, on the other hand, in
all diseases, but especially in the chronic ones, the investiga-
tion of the true, complete picture and its peculiarities demand
especial circumspection, tact, knowledge of human nature,
caution in conducting the inquiry and patience in an eminent
degree.
ź 99.
On the whole, the investigation of acute diseases, or of such
as have existed but a short time, is much the easiest for the
physician, because all the phenomena and deviations from the
health that has been but recently lost are still fresh in the
memory of the patient and his friends, still continue to be
novel and striking. The physician certainly requires to know
everything in such cases also; but he has much less to inquire
into; they are for the most part spontaneously detailed to him.
1 A pure fabrication of symptoms and sufferings will never be met with in
hypochondriacs, even in the most impatient of them—a comparison of the
sufferings they complain of at yarious times when the physician gives them
nothing at all, or something quite unmedicinal, proves this plainly;-but we
must deduct something from their exaggeration, at all events ascribe the
strong character of their expressions to their excessive Sensibility, in which
case this very exaggeration of their expressions when talking of their ail-
ments becomes of itself an important symptom in the list of features of
which the portrait of the disease is composed. The case is different with
insane persons and rascally feigners of disease.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 97
& 100.
In investigating the totality of the symptoms of epidemic
and sporadic diseases it is quite immaterial whether or no
something similar has ever appeared in the world before under
the same or any other name. The novelty or peculiarity of a
disease of that kind makes no difference either in the mode of
examining or of treating it, as the physician must any way
regard the pure picture of every prevailing disease as if it
were something new and unknown, and investigate it thor-
oughly for itself, if he desire to practice medicine in a real
and radical manner, never substituting conjecture for actual
observation, never taking for granted that the case of disease
before him is already wholly or partially known, but always
carefully examining it in all its phases; and this mode of pro-
cedure is all the more requisite in such cases, as a careful
examination will show that every prevailing disease is in
many respects a phenomenon of a unique character, differing
vastly from all previous epidemics, to which certain names
have been falsely applied—with the exception of those epi-
demics resulting from a contagious principle that always
remain the same, such as smallpox, measles, &c.
§ 101.
It may easily happen that in the first case of an epidemic
disease that presents itself to the physician's notice he does
not at once obtain a knowledge of its complete picture, as it is
only by a close observation of several cases of every such
collective disease that he can become Conversant with the
totality of its signs and symptoms. The carefully observing
physician can, however, from the examination of even the first
and second patients, often arrive so nearly at a knowledge of
the true state as to have in his mind a characteristic portrait
of it, and even to succeed in finding a suitable, homoeopathic-
ally adapted remedy for it.
& 102.
In the course of writing down the symptoms of several
cases of this kind the sketch of the disease picture becomes
7
ºS ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
ever more and more complete, not more spun out and verbose,
but more significant (more characteristic), and including more
of the peculiarities of this collective disease; on the one hand,
£he general symptom (e. g. loss of appetite, sleeplessness, &c.)
become precisely defined as to their peculiarities; and on the
other, the more marked and special symptoms which are
peculiar to but few diseases and of rarer occurrence, at least
in the same combination, become prominent and constitute
what is characteristic of this malady." All those affected
with the disease prevailing at a given time have certainly con-
tracted it from one and the same source and hence are suffering
from the same disease; but the whole extent of such an epi-
demic disease and the totality of its symptoms (the knowledge
whereof, which is essential for enabling us to choose the most
suitable homoeopathic remedy for this array of symptoms, is
obtained by a complete survey of the morbid picture) cannot
be iearned from one single patient, but is only to be perfectly
deduced (abstracted) and ascertained from the sufferings of
several patients of different constitutions.
ź 103. (a)
In the same manner as has here been taught relative to the
repidemic diseases, which are generally of an acute character,
the miasmatic chronic maladies, which, as I have shown,
always remain the same in their essential nature, especially
the psora, must be investigated as the whole sphere of their
symptoms, in a much more minute manner than has ever been
done before, for in them also one patient only exhibits a por-
tion of their symptoms, a second, a third, and so on, present
some other symptoms, which also are but a (dissevered, as it
were) portion of the totality of the symptoms which constitute
the entire extent of this malady, so that the whole array of
the symptoms belonging to such a miasmatic, chronic disease,
and especially to the psora, can only be ascertained from the
sobservation of very many single patients affected with such a
1 The physician who has already, in the first cases, been able to choose a
"remedy approximating to the homoeopathic Specific, will, from the subse-
quent cases, be enabled either to verify the suitableness of the medicine
schosen, or to discover a more appropriate, the most appropriate homoeo-
jpathic remedy.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 99
chronic disease, and without a complete survey and collective
picture of these symptoms the medicines capable of curing the
whole malady homoeopathically (to-wit, the antipsorics) cannot
be discovered; and these medicines are, at the same time, the
true remedies of the several patients suffering from such
chronic affections.
3 104.
When the totality of the symptoms that specially mark and
distinguish the case of disease or, in other words, when the
picture of the disease, whatever be its kind, is once accurately
sketched,” the most difficult part of the task is accomplished.
The physician has then the picture of the disease, especially if
it be a chronic one, always before him to guide him in his
treatment; he can investigate it in all its parts and can pick
out the characteristic symptoms, in order to oppose to these,
that is to say, to the whole malady itself, a very similar
artificial morbific force, in the shape of a homoeopathically
chosen medicinal substance, selected from the lists of symp-
toms of all the medicines whose pure effects have been as-
certained. And when, during the treatment, he wishes to
ascertain what has been the effect of the medicine, and what
1 The old school physician gave himself very little trouble in this matter
in his mode of treatment. He would not listen to any minute detail of all
the circumstances of his case by the patient; indeed, he frequently cut him
short in his relation of his sufferings, in order that he might not be delayed
in the rapid writing of his prescription, composed of a variety of ingredients
unknown to him in their true effects. NO allopathic physician, as has been
said, sought to learn all the minute circumstances of the patient's case, and
Still less did he make a mote in writing of th’ m. On Seeing the patient again
several days afterwards, he recollected nothing concerning the few details
he had heard at the first visit (having in the meantime seen so many other
patients laboring under different affections); he had allowed everything to
go in at One ear and out at the other. At Subsequent visits he only asked a
few general questions, went through the ceremony of feeling the pulse at
the wrist, looked at the tongue, and at the same moment wrote another pre-
scription, on equally irrational principles, or ordered the first one to be con-
tinued (in considerable quantities several times a day), and, with a graceful
bow, he hurried off to the fiftieth or sixtieth patient he had to visit, in this
thoughtness way, in the course of that forenoon. The profession which of
all others requires actually the most reflection, a conscientious, careful ex-
amination of the state of each individual patient and a special treatment
founded thereon, was conducted in this manner by persons who called
themselves physicians, rational practitioners. The result, as might naturally
be expected, was almost invariably bad; and yet patients had to go to them
for advice, partly because there were none better to be had, partly for fash-
ion's sake.
100 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
change has taken place in the patient's state, at this fresh ex-
amination of the patient he only needs to strike out of the list
of the symptoms noted down at the first visit those that have
become ameliorated, to mark what still remains, and add any
new symptoms that may have supervened.
& 105.
The second point of the business of a true physician relates
to acquiring a knowledge of the instruments intended for the cure
of the natural diseases, investigating the pathogenetic power of
the medicines, in order, when called on to cure, to be able to
Select from among them one, from the list of whose symptoms
an artificial disease may be constructed, as similar as possible
to the totality of the principal symptoms of the natural disease
sought to be cured.
Ž 106.
The whole pathogenetic effects of the several medicines must
be known; that is to say, all the morbid symptoms and alter-
ations in the health, that each of them is specially capable of
developing in the healthy individual must first have been ob-
served as far as possible, before we can hope to be able to find
among them, and to select, suitable homoeopathic remedies for
most of the natural diseases.
Ž 107.
If, in order to ascertain this, medicines be given to sick
persons only, even though they be administered singly and
alone, then little or nothing precise is seen of their pure effects,
as those peculiar alterations of the health to be expected from
the medicines are mixed up with the symptoms of the disease,
and can seldom be distinctly observed.
3 108.
There is, therefore, no other possible way in which the
peculiar effects of medicines on the health of individuals can
be accurately ascertained—there is no sure, no more natural
way of accomplishing this object, than to administer the sev-
eral medicines experimentally, in moderate doses, to healthy
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 101
persons, in order to ascertain what changes, symptoms and
signs of their influence each individually produces on the
health of the body and of the mind; that is to say, what dis-
ease elements they are able and tend to produce," since, as has
been demonstrated (3% 24–27), all the curative powers of
medicines lies in this power they possess of changing the state
of man's health, and is revealed by observation of the latter.
ź 109.
I was the first that opened up this path, which I have pur-
sued with a perseverance that could only arise and be kept up
by a perfect conviction of the great truth, fraught with such
blessings to humanity, that it is only by the homoeopathic
employment of medicines” that the certain cure of human
maladies is possible.”
1 Not One Single physician, as far as I know, during the previous two thou-
'sand five hundred years, thought of this so natural. So absolutely necessary
and Only genuine mode of testing medicines for their pure and peculiar
effects in deranging the health of man, in order to learn what morbid state
each medicine is capable of curing, except the great and immortal Albrecht
von Haller. He alone, besides myself, saw the necessity of this (vide the
Preface to the Pharm teopoeia Helvet . Basil, 1771, fol., p. 12): Nempe primum
in corpore sanſ) medela ten tanda est. Kine peregrin a wlla, miscela; odoreque et,
Sapore ejus exploratis, exigua, illius dosis ingerenda et ad omnes, quae inde
contingunt, affectiones, quis pulsus, qui calor, quae respiratio, quaenam ex-
•cretiones, attendendum. In dead ducturm phaenomenorum. in Sano obviorum,
transeas ad experimenta, in corpore a groto,” &c. But 710 one. not a single
physician, attended to or followed up this invaluable hint.
? It is impossible that there can be another true, best method of curing
dynamic diseases (i e all diseases not strictly surgical) besides homoeo-
pathy. just as it is impossible to draw more than One Straight line betwixt,
two given points. He who imagines that there are other modes of curing
diseases besides it could not have appreciated homoeopathy fundamentally
nor practiced it with sufficient care, nor could he ever have seen or read
cases of properly performed homoeopathic cures; nor, on the other hand,
could he have discerned the baselessness of all allopathic modes of treating
diseases and their bad or even dreadful effects, if, with such lax indifference,
he places the only true healing art on an equality with those hurtful
methods of treatment, or alleges the latter to be auxiliaries to homoeopathy
which it could not do without! My true, conscientious followers, the pure
homoeopathists, with their Guccessful, almost never-failing treatment,
might teach these persons pettor. (9)
3 The first fruits of these labºrſ, as perfect as they could be at that time, I
recorded in the Fragmenta de 7)iribus medicamentorum positivis, Sive in Samo
corpore humano observatis, pts. i. ii, Lipsiae, 8, 1805, ap. J. A. Barth; the more
mature fruits in the Reine Arzneimittellehre, I Th., dritte Ausg.; II Th.,
‘dritte Ausg., 1833; III Th., zweite Ausg., 1825; IV Th., zw. Ausg., 1825; V Th.
zw. Ausg., 1826; VI Th., zw. Ausg., 1827 [English translation, Materia Medical
Pura, vols. i and iij; and in the second, third and fourth parts of Die chron-
i8Chen Krankheiten, 1828, 1830, Dresden bei Arnold [2nd edit., with a fifth part.
I)üsseldorf bei Schaub, 1835, 1839].
102 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
§ 110.
I saw, moreover, that the morbid lesions which previous
authors had observed to result from medicinal substances when
taken into the stomach of healthy persons, either in large doses
given by mistake or in order to produce death in themselves
or others, or under other circumstances, accorded very much
with my own observations when experimenting with the same
substances on myself and other healthy individuals. These
authors give details of what occurred as histories of poisoning
and as proofs of the pernicious effects of these powerful sub-
stances, chiefly in order to warn others from their use; partly
also for the sake of exalting their own skill, when, under the
use of the remedies they employed to combat these dangerous
accidents, health gradually returned; but partly also, when
the persons so effected died under their treatment, in order to
seek their own justification in the dangerous character of these
substances, which they then termed poisons. None of these
observers ever dreamed that the symptoms they recorded
merely as proofs of the noxious and poisonous character of
these substances were sure revelations of the power of these
drugs to extinguish curatively similar symptoms occurring in
natural diseases, that these their pathogenetic phenomena
were intimations of their homoeopathic curative action, and
that the only possible way to ascertain their medicinal powers
is to observe those changes of health medicines are capable of
producing in the healthy organism; for the pure, peculiar
powers of medicines available for the cure of disease are to be
learned neither by any ingenious a priori speculations, nor by
the smell, taste or appearance of the drugs, nor by their
chemical analysis, nor yet by the employment of several of
them at one time in a mixture (prescription) in diseases; it
was never suspected that these histories of medicinal diseases.
would one day furnish the first rudiments of the true, pure
materia medica, which from the earliest times until now has
consisted solely of false conjectures and fictions of the im-
agination—that is to say, did not exist at all."
1 See what I have said on this subject in the “Examination of the Sources
of the Ordinary Materia Medica.” prefixed to the third part of my Reime.
Arznetmittellehre [translated in the Mat, rud Medica Pura, vol. iil.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 103.
3 111.
The agreement of my observations on the pure effects of
medicines with these older ones—although they were recorded
without reference to any therapeutic object,-and the very
concordance of these accounts with others of the same kind by
different authors, must easily convince us that medicinal sub-
stances act in the morbid changes they produce in the healthy
human body according to fiaced, eternal laws of nature, and
by virtue of these are enabled to produce certain, reliable
disease symptoms, each according to its own peculiar character.
3 112. (a)
In those older descriptions of the often dangerous effects of
medicines ingested in excessively large doses we notice certain
states that were produced, not at the commencement, but
towards the termination of these sad events, and which were
of an exactly opposite nature to those that first appeared.
These symptoms, the very reverse of the primary action (463).
or proper action of the medicines on the vital force, are the
reaction of the vital force of the organism, its secondary action
(% 62–67), of which, however, there is seldom or hardly ever
the least trace from experiments with moderate doses on
healthy bodies, and from small doses none whatever. In the
homoeopathic curative operation the living organism reacts
from these only so much as is requisite to raise the health.
again to the normal healthy state (§ 67).
3 113.
The only exceptions to this are the narcotic medicines. As
they, in their primary action, take away sometimes the sensi-
bility and sensation, sometimes the irritability, it frequently
happens that in their secondary action, even from moderate
experimental doses on healthy bodies, an increased sensibility
(and a greater irritability) is observable.
ź 114.
With the exception of these narcotic substances, in experi-
ments with moderate doses of medicine of healthy bodies, we
observe only their primary action, i. e. those symptoms where-
104 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
with the medicine deranges the health of the human being and
develops in him a morbid state of longer or shorter duration.
3 115.
Among these symptoms, there occur in the case of some
medicines not a few which are partially, or under certain con-
ditions, directly opposite to other symptoms that have pre-
viously or subsequently appeared, but which are not therefore
to be regarded as actual secondary action or the mere reaction
of the vital force, but which only represent the alternating
state of the various paroxysms of the primary action; they
are termed alternating actions.
3 116.
Some symptoms are produced by the medicines more fre-
quently—that is to say, in many individuals, others more
rarely or in few persons, some only in very few healthy bodies.
3 117. (a)
To the latter category belong the so-called idiosyncrasies, by
which are meant peculiar corporeal constitutions which, al-
though otherwise healthy, possess a disposition to be brought
into a more or less morbid state by certain things which seem
to produce no impression and no change in many other in-
dividuals.” But this inability to make an impression on every
one is only apparent. For as two things are required for the
production of these as well as all other morbid alterations in
the health of man—to-wit, the inherent power of the influenc-
ing substance, and the capability of the vital force that
animates the organism to be influenced by it—the obvious de-
rangements of health in the so-called idiosyncrasies cannot be
laid to the account of these peculiar constitutions alone, but
they must be also ascribed to these things that produce them,
in which must lie the power of making the same impressions
on all human bodies, yet in such a manner that but a small
number of healthy constitutions have a tendency to allow
1 Some few persons are apt to faint from the Smell of roses, and to fall into
many other morbid, and sometimes dangerous states from partaking of
mussels. Crabs or the roe of the barbel, from touching the leaves of some
kinds of sumach, &c.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 105
themselves to be brought into such an obvious morbid con-
dition by them. That these agents do actually make this
impression on every healthy body is shown by this, that when
employed as remedies they render effectual homoeopathic
service' to all sick persons for morbid symptoms similar to
those they seem to be only capable of producing in so-called
idiosyncratic individuals.
3 118.
Every medicine exhibits peculiar actions on the human
frame, which are not produced in exactly the same manner by
any other medicinal substance of a different kind.”
3 119.
As certainly as every species of plant differs in its external
form, mode of life and growth, in its taste and smell from
every other species and genus of plant, as certainly as every
mineral and salt differs from all others, in its external as well
as its internal physical and chemical properties (which alone
should have sufficed to prevent any confounding of one with
another), so certainly do they all differ and diverge among
themselves in their pathogenetic—consequently also in their
therapeutic—effects.” Each of these substances produces al-
terations in the health of human beings in a peculiar, different,
1 Thus the Princess Maria Porphyrogenita restored her brother, the Em-
peror Alexius, who suffered from faintings, by sprinkling him with rose
water (to rav påöwov atóAayua) in the presence of his aunt Eudoxia (Hist byz.
Aleacias, lib. xv, p. 503, ed. Posser); and Horstius (Oper., iii, p. 59) saw great
benefit from rose vinegar in cases of Syncope.(“)
2 This fact was also perceived by the estimable A. v. Haller, who says
(Preface to his Hist. Stirp. helv.): “Latet immensa virium diversitas in iis
ipsis plantis, quarum facies externas dudum novimus, animas quasi et quod-
cunque caelestius habent, nondum perspeximus.”
3 Anyone who has a thorough knowledge of, and can appreciate the re-
markable difference of effects on tho health of man of every single substance
from those of every other, will readily porceive that among them there can
be, in a medicinal point of view, no equivalent remedies whatever, no
surrogates. Only those who do not know the pure, positive effects of the
different medicines can be so foolish as to try to persuade us that one can
serve in the stead of the other, and can in the same disease prove just as
serviceable as the Other. Thus do ignorant children confound the most
essentially different things, because they scarcely know their external ap-
pearances, far less their real value, their true importance and their very
dissimilar inherent properties.
106 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
yet determinate manner, so as to preclude the possibility of
confounding one with the other."(q)
%. 120.
Therefore medicines, on which depend man's life and death,
disease and health, must be thoroughly and most carefully
distinguished from one another, and for this purpose tested by
careful, pure experiments on the healthy body for the purpose
of ascertaining their powers and real effects, in order to obtain
an accurate knowledge of them, and to enable us to avoid any
mistake in their employment in diseases, for it is only by
correct selection of them that the greatest of all earthly bless-
ings, the health of the body and of the mind, can be rapidly
and permanently restored.
Ž 121.
In proving medicines to ascertain their effects on the healthy
body, it must be borne in mind that the strong, heroic sub-
stances, as they are termed, are liable even in small doses to
produce changes in the health even of robust persons. Those
of milder power must be given for these experiments in more
! If this be pure truth, as it undoubtedly is, then no physician who would
not be regarded as devoid of reason, and who would not act contrary to the
dictates of his conscience, the sole arbiter of real worth, can employ in the
treatment of diseases any medicinal Substance but One with Whose real
significance he is thoroughly and perfectly conversant, i. e. whose positive
action on the health of healthy individuals he has so accurately tested that
he knows for certain that it is capable of producing a yery similar morbid
state, more similar than any other medicine with which he is perfectly ac-
quainted, to that presented by the case of disease he intends to cure by
means of it; for, as has been shown above, neither man, nor mighty Nature
herself, can effect a perfect, rapid and permanent cure otherwise than with
a homoeopathic remedy. Henceforth no true physician can abstain from
making such experiments, in Order to obtain this most necessary and only
knowledge of the medicines that are essential to cure, this knowledge which
has hitherto been neglected by the physicians in all ages. In all former
ages—posterity will scarcely believe it—physicians have hitherto contented
themselves with blindly prescribing for diseases medicines whose value was
unknown, and which had never been tested relative to their highly important,
very various, pure, dynamic action on the health of man; and, moreover,
they mingled several of these unknown medicines that differed so vastly
among each other in One formula, and left it to chance to determine what
effect should thereby be produced on the patient. This is just as if a. mad-
man should force his Way into the workshop of an artisan, seize upon hand-
fuls of very different tools, with the use of all of which he is quite wrºacquainted, in
order, as he imagines, to Work at the objects of art he sees around him. I
need hardly remark that these would be destroyed, I may say utterly
ruined, by his SenseleSS Operations.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 107
considerable quantities; in order to observe the action of the
very weakest, however, the subjects of experiment should be
persons free from disease, and who are delicate, irritable and
sensitive.
Ž 122.
In these experiments—on which depends the exactitude of
the whole medical art, and the weal of all future generations
of mankind—no other medicines should be employed except
such as are perfectly well known, and of whose purity, genu-
ineness and energy we are thoroughly assured.
ź 123.
Each of these medicines must be taken in a perfectly simple,
unadulterated form; the indigenous plants in the form of
freshly expressed juice, mixed with a little alcohol to prevent
it spoiling; exotic vegetable substances, however, in the form
of powder, or tincture prepared with alcohol when they were
in the fresh state, and afterwards mingled with a certain pro-
portion of water; salts and gums, however, should be dissolved
in water just before being taken. If the plant can only be
procured in its dry state, and if its powers are naturally weak,
in that case there may be used for the experiment an infusion
of it, made by cutting the herb into small pieces and pouring
boiling water on it, so as to extract its medicinal parts; im-
mediately after its preparation it must be swallowed whilst
still warm, as all expressed vegetable juices and all aqueous
infusions of herbs, without the addition of spirit, pass rapidly
into fermentation and decomposition, whereby all their medic-
inal properties are lost.
ź 124.
For these experiments every medicinal substance must be
employed quite alone and perfectly pure, without the admix-
ture of any foreign substance, and without taking anything
else of a medicinal nature the same day, nor yet on the sub-
sequent days, nor during all the time we wish to observe the
effects of the medicine. (a)
3 125.
During all the time the experiment lasts the diet must be
108 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
strictly regulated; it should be as much as possible destitute
of spices, of a purely nutritious and simple character, green
vegetables,' roots, and all salads and herb soups (which, even
when most carefully prepared, possess some disturbing medi-
cinal qualities) should be avoided. The drinks are to be
those usually partaken of, as little stimulating as possible.”
ź 126.
The person who is proving the medicine must during the
whole time of the experiment avoid all over-exertion of mind
and body, all sorts of dissipation and disturbing passions; he
should have no urgent business to detract his attention; he
must devote himself to careful self-observation and not be
disturbed whilst so engaged; his body must be in what is for
him a good state of health, and he must possess a sufficient
amount of intelligence to be able to express and describe his
sensations in accurate terms. (6)
ź 127. (a)
The medicines must be tested on both males and females, in
order also to reveal the alterations of the health they produce
in the sexual sphere.
Ž 128. (a)
The most recent observations have shown that medicinal
substances, when taken in their crude state by the experimenter
for the purpose of testing their peculiar effects, do not exhibit
nearly the full amount of the powers that lie hidden in them
which they do when they are taken for the same object in high
dilutions potentized by proper trituration and succession, by
which simple operations the powers which in their crude state
lay hidden and, as it were, dormant, are developed and roused
into activity to an incredible extent. In this manner we now
find it best to investigate the medicinal powers even of such
substances as are deemed weak, and the plan we adopt is to
1 Young green peas. green French beans and in all cases carrots are allow-
able, as the least medicinal vegetables.
2 The subject of experiment must either be not in the habit of taking pure
wine, brandy, coffee or tea, or he must have totally abstained for a consid—
erable time previously from the use of these injurious beverages, some of
which are stimulating, others medicinal.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 109
give to the experimenter, on an empty stomach, daily from
four to six very small globules of the thirtieth potentized
dilution of such a substance, moistened with a little water, and
let him continue this for several days.
Ž 129.
If the effects that result from such a dose are but slight, a
few more globules may be taken daily, until they become more
distinct and stronger and the alterations of the health more
conspicuous; for all persons are not affected by a medicine in
an equally great degree; on the contrary, there is a vast variety
in this respect, so that sometimes an apparently weak indi-
vidual may be scarcely at all affected by moderate doses of
a medicine known to be of a powerful character, whilst he is
strongly enough acted on by some others of a much weaker
kind. And, on the other hand, there are very robust persons
who experience very considerable morbid symptoms from an
apparently mild medicine, and only slighter symptoms from
stronger drugs. Now, as this cannot be known beforehand, it
is advisable to commence in every instance with a small dose
of the drug and, where suitable and requisite, to increase the
dose more and more from day to day.(a)
Ž 130.
If, at the very commencement, the first dose administered
shall have been sufficiently strong, this advantage is gained,
that the experimenter learns the order of succession of the
symptoms and can note down accurately the period at which
each occurs, which is very useful in leading to a knowledge of
the genius of the medicine, for then the order of the primary
actions, as also that of the alternating actions, is observed in
the most unambiguous manner. A very moderate dose even,
often suffices for the experiment, provided only the experi-
menter is endowed with sufficiently delicate sensitiveness, and
is very attentive to his sensations. The duration of the action
of a drug can only be ascertained by a comparison of several
experiments.
3 131.
If, however, in order to ascertain anything at all, the same
110 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
medicine must be given to the same person to test for several
successive days in ever-increasing doses, we thereby learn, no
doubt, the various morbid states this medicine is capable of
producing in a general manner, but we do not ascertain their
order of succession; and the subsequent dose often removes,
curatively, some one or other of the symptoms caused by the
previous dose, or develops in its stead an opposite state; such
symptoms should be enclosed in brackets, to mark their am-
biguity, until subsequent purer experiments show whether they
are the reaction of the organism and secondary action or an
alternating action of this medicine.
Ž 132.
But when the object is, without reference to the sequential
Order of the phenomena and the duration of the action of the
drug, only to ascertain the symptoms themselves, especially
those of a weak medicinal substance, in that case the preferable
course to pursue is to give it for several successive days, in-
creasing the dose every day.(a) In this manner the action of
an unknown medicine, even of the mildest nature, will be
revealed, especially if tested on sensitive persons.
Ž 133.
On experiencing any particular sensation from the medicine,
it is useful, indeed necessary, in order to determine the exact
character of the symptom, to assume various positions while
it lasts, and to observe whether, by moving the part affected,
by walking in the room or the open air, by standing, sitting or
lying, the symptom is increased, diminished or removed, and
whether it returns on again assuming the position in which it
was first observed,—whether it is altered by eating or drink-
ing, or by any other condition, or by speaking, coughing,
sneezing or any other action of the body, and at the same
time to note at what time of the day or night it usually occurs
in the most marked manner, whereby what is peculiar to and
characteristic of each symptom will become apparent.
§ 134.
All external influences, and more especially medicines,
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 111
possess the property of producing in the health of the living
organism a particular kind of alteration peculiar to themselves;
but all the symptoms peculiar to a medicine do not appear in
one person, nor all at once, nor in the same experiment, but
some occur in one person chiefly at one time, others again
during a second or third trial; in another person some other
symptoms appear, but in such a manner that probably some
of the phenomena are observed in the fourth, eighth or tenth
person which had already appeared in the second, sixth or
ninth person, and so forth; moreover, they may not recur at
the same hour.
Ž 135.
The whole of the elements of disease a medicine is capable
of producing can only be brought to anything like complete-
ness by numerous observations on suitable persons of both
sexes and of various constitutions. We can only be assured
that a medicine has been thoroughly proved in regard to the
morbid states it can produce—that is to say, in regard to its
pure powers of altering the health of man—when subsequent
experimenters can notice little of a novel character from its
action, and almost always only the same symptoms as had
been already observed by others.
ź 136.
(Although, as has been said, a medicine, on being proved
on healthy subjects, cannot develop in One person all the al-
terations of health it is capable of causing, but can only do
this when given to many different individuals, varying in their
corporeal and mental constitution, yet the tendency to excite
all these symptoms in every human being exists in it [& 117],
according to an eternal and immutable law of nature, by virtue
of which all its effects, even those that are but rarely de-
veloped in the healthy person, are brought into operation in
the case of every individual if administered to him when he is
in a morbid state presenting similar symptoms; it then, even
in the smallest dose, being homoeopathically selected, silently
produces in the patient an artificial state closely resembling
the natural disease, which rapidly and permanently [homoeop-
athically] frees and cures him of his original malady.)
112 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
3 137.
The more moderate, within certain limits, the doses of the
medicine used for such experiments are—provided we en-
deavor to facilitate the observation by the selection of a person
who is a lover of truth, temperate in all respects, of delicate
feelings, and who can direct the most minute attention to his
sensations—so much the more distinctly are the primary effects
developed, and only these, which are most worth knowing,
occur without any admixture of secondary effects or reactions
of the vital force. When, however, excessively large doses
are used there occur at the same time not only a number of
secondary effects among the symptoms, but the primary effects
also come on in such hurried confusion and with such im-
petuosity that nothing can be accurately observed; let alone
the danger attending them, which no one who has any regard
for his fellow-creatures, and who looks on the meanest of
mankind as his brother, will deem an indifferent matter.
§ 138.
All the sufferings, accidents and changes of the health of
the experimenter during the action of a medicine (provided the
above conditions [3% 124–127] essential to a good and pure
experiment are complied with) are solely derived from this
medicine, and must be regarded and registered as belonging
peculiarly to this medicine, as symptoms of this medicine,
even though the experimenter had observed, a considerable
time previously, the spontaneous occurrence of similar phenom-
ena in himself. The reappearance of these during the trial
of the medicine only shows that this individual is, by virtue of
his peculiar constitution, particularly disposed to have such
symptoms excited in him. In this case they are the effect of
the medicine; the symptoms do not arise spontaneously while
the medicine that has been taken is exercising an influence
over the health of the whole system, but are produced by the
medicine.
Ž 139.
When the physician does not make the trial of the medicine
on himself, but gives it to another person, the latter must note
down distinctly the sensations, sufferings, accidents and changes
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 113
of health he experiences at the time of their occurrence, men-
tioning the time after the ingestion of the drug when each
symptom arose and, if it lasts long, the period of its duration.
The physician looks over the report in the presence of the
experimenter immediately after the experiment is concluded,
or if the trial lasts several days he does this every day, in
order, whilst everything is still fresh in his memory, to question
him about the exact nature of every one of these circum-
stances, and to write down the more precise details so elicited,
or to make such alterations as the experimenter may suggest.”
§ 140,
If the person cannot write, the physician must be informed
by him every day of what has occurred to him, and how it
took place. What is noted down as authentic information on
this point, however, must be chiefly the voluntary narration of
the person who makes the experiment, nothing conjectural and
as little as possible derived from answers to leading questions
should be admitted; everything must be ascertained with the
same caution as I have counselled above (% 84–99) for the
investigation of the phenomena and for tracing the picture of
natural diseases.
§ 141.
But the best provings of the pure effects of simple medicines
in altering the human health, and of the artificial diseases and
symptoms they are capable of developing in the healthy in-
dividual, are those which the healthy, unprejudiced and
sensitive physician institutes on himself with all the caution
and care here enjoined. He knows with the greatest certainty
the things he has experienced in his own person.”
1 He who makes known to the medical world the results of Such experi-
ments becomes thereby responsible for the trustworthiness of the person
experimented on and his statements, and justly so, as the weal of Suffering
humanity is here at Stake.
2 Those trials made by the physician on himself have for him other and
inestimable advantages. In the first place, the great truth that the medi-
cinal virtue of all drugs, whereon depends their curative power, lies in the
changes of health he has himself undergone from the medicines he has
proved, and the morbid states he has himself experienced from them, be-
comes for him an incontrovertible fact. Again, by such noteworthy obser-
vations on himself he will be brought to understand his own sensations, his
mode of thinking and his disposition (the foundation of all true wisdom:
yvö0, areavrov), and he will be also trained to be, what every physician ought
114 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
§ 142.
But how some symptoms of the simple medicine employed
for a curative purpose can be distinguished amongst the
symptoms of the original malady, even in diseases, especially
in those of a chronic character that usually remain unaltered,
is a subject appertaining to the higher art of judgment, and
must be left exclusively to masters in observation.
ź 143.
If we have thus tested on the healthy individual a consider-
able number of simple medicines and carefully and faithfully
registered all the disease elements and symptoms they are
capable of developing as artificial disease-producers, then only
have we a true materia medica—a collection of real, pure,
reliable” modes of action of simple medicinal substances, a
to be, a good observer. All Our Observations on others are not nearly so in-
teresting as those made on ourselves. The observer of others must always
dread lest the experimenter did not feel exactly what he said, or lest he did
not describe his sensations with the most appropriate expressions. He must
always remain in doubt whether he has not been deceived, at least to some
extent. These obstacles to the knowledge of the truth, which can never be
thoroughly surmounted in Our investigations of the artificial morbid symp-
toms that occur in others from the ingestion of medicines, cease entirely
when we make the trials On Ourselves. He who makes these trials on him-
self knows for certain what he has felt, and each trial is a new inducement
for him to investigate the powers of other medicines. He thus becomes more
and more practiced in the art of observing, of such importance to the phy-
sician. by continuing to obserye himself, the one on whom he can most rely
and who will never deceive him; and this he will do all the more zealously
as these experiments on himself promise to give him a reliable knowledge of
the true value and significance of the instruments of cure that are still to a
great degree unknown to Our art. Let it not be imagined that such slight
indispositions caused by taking medicines for the purpose of proving them
can be in the main injurious to the health. Experience shows, on the con-
trary, that the Organism Of the prover becomes, by these frequent attacks on
his health, all the more expert in repelling all external influences inimical to
his frame and all artificial and natural morbific noxious agents, and be-
comes more hardened to resist everything of an injurious character, by
means of these moderate experiments on his own person with medicines.
His health becomes more unalterable; he becomes more robust, as all ex-
perience shows.(“)
! Symptoms which, during the whole course of the disease, might have
been observed only a long time previously, or never before, consequently
new ones, belonging to the medicine.
* Latterly it has been the habit to entrust the proving of medicines to un-
known persons at a distance, who were paid for their work, and the infor-
mation so obtained was printed. But by SO doing, the work which is of all
others the most important, which is to form the basis of the only true heal-
ing art, and which demands the greatest moral certainty and trustworthi-
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 115
volume of the book of nature, wherein is recorded a consider-
able array of the peculiar changes of the health and symptoms
ascertained to belong to each of the powerful medicines, as
they were revealed to the attention of the observer, in which
the likeness of the (homoeopathic) disease elements of many
natural diseases to be hereafter cured by them are present,
which, in a word, contain artificial morbid states, that furnish
for the similar natural morbid states the only true, homoeop-
athic, that is to say specific, therapeutic instruments for
effecting their certain and permanent cure.
& 144.
From such a materia medica everything that is conjectural,
all that is mere assertion or imaginary should be strictly ex-
cluded; everything should be the pure language of nature
carefully and honestly interrogated.
& 145.
Of a truth, it is only by a very considerable store of medi-
cines accurately known in respect of these their pure modes of
action in altering the health of man, that we can be placed in
a position to discover a homoeopathic remedy, a suitable
artificial (curative) morbific analogue for each of the infinitely
numerous morbid states in nature, for every malady in the
world." In the meantime, even now—thanks to the truthful
character of the symptoms, (a) and to the abundance of disease
elements which every one of the powerful medicinal substances
has already shown in its action on the healthy body—but few
diseases remain, for which a tolerably suitable homoeopathic
remedy may not be met with among those now proved as to
their pure action,” which, without much disturbance, restores
ness, seems to me, I regret to say, to become doubtful and uncertain in its
results, and to lose all value.(“)
! At first I was the only person who made the proving of the pure powers
of medicines the most important of his Occupations. Since then I have been
assisted in this by some young men, who instituted experiments on them-
selves, and whose observations I have critically revised. But what shall we
not be able to effect in the way of curing in the whole extent of the infinite-
ly large domain of disease, when numbers of accurate and trustworthy ob-
servers shall have rendered their services in enriching this, the only true
materia, medica, by careful earperiments on themselves! The healing art will
then come near the mathematical sciences in certainty.
2 See the second note to $109.
116 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
health in a gentle, sure and permanent manner—infinitely
more surely and safely than can be effected by all the general
and special therapeutics of the old allopathic medical art with
its unknown composite remedies, which do but alter and ag-
gravate but cannot cure chronic diseases, and rather retard
than promote recovery from acute diseases. (a)
3 146. (a)
The third point of the business of a true physician relates to
the judicious employment of the artificial morbific agents
(medicines) that have been proved on healthy individuals to
ascertain their pure action, in order to effect the homasopathic
cure of natural diseases.
3 147.
Whichever of these medicines that have been investigated as
to their power of altering man's health we find to contain in
the symptoms observed from its use the greatest similarity to
the totality of the symptoms of a given natural disease, this
medicine will and must be the most suitable, the most certain
homoeopathic remedy for the disease; in it is found the specific
remedy of this case of disease.
& 148.
A medicine selected in this manner, which has the power
and the tendency to produce symptoms the most similar
possible to the disease to be cured, consequently a similar
artificial disease, given in a suitable dose, affects, in its
dynamic action on the morbidly deranged vital force of the
individual, those very parts and points in the organism now
suffering from the natural disease, and produces in them its
own artificial disease, which, on account of its great similarity
and preponderating strength, occupies precisely the seat
hitherto occupied by the natural morbid derangement, so that
the instinctive, automatic vital force is from that time forward
no longer affected by the natural disease but solely by the
stronger, similar medicinal disease; which in its turn, on
account of the small dose of the remedy, being, like every
moderate medicinal disease, overcome by the increased energy
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 117
of the vital force, soon spontaneously disappears, leaving the
body free from all disease, that is to say, healthy and perma-
nently cured.
ź 149.
When the suitable homoeopathic remedy has been thus
selected" and rightly employed, the acute disease we wish to
cure, even though it be of a grave character and attended by
many sufferings, subsides insensibly, in a few hours if it be of
recent date, in a few days if it be of somewhat longer standing,
along with all traces of indisposition, and nothing or almost
nothing more of the artificial medicinal disease is perceived;
there occurs, by rapid, imperceptible transitions, nothing but
restored health, recovery. Diseases of long standing (and
especially such as are of a complicated character) require for
their cure a proportionately longer time. More especially do
1 But this laborious, sometimes very laborious, Search for and selection of
the homoeopathic remedy most Suitable in every respect to each morbid
state, is an operation which, notwithstanding all the admirable books for
facilitating it, still demands the study of the original sources themselves,
and at the same time a great amount of circumspection and serious deliber-
ation, which have their best reward in the consciousness of having faithfully
discharged our duty. How could this laborious, care-demanding task, by
which alone the best way of curing diseases is rendered possible, please the
gentlemen of the new mongrel Sect, who assume the honorable name of
Homoeopathists, and even seem to employ medicines in form and appearance
homoeopathic, but determined upon by them anyhow (quidquid in buccam
wenit), and who, when the unsuitable remedy does not immediately give re-
lief, in place of laying the blame on their unpardonable ignorance and laxity
in performing the most important and serious of all human affairs, ascribe
it to homoeopathy, which they accuse of great imperfection (if the truth be
told, its imperfection consists in this, that the most suitable homoeopathic
remedy for each morbid condition does not spontaneously fly into their
mouth like roasted pigeons, without any trouble on their own part). They
know, however, from frequent practice, how to make up for the inefficiency
of the scarcely half homoeopathic remedy by the employment of allopathic
means, that come much more handy to them, among which one or more
dozen of leeches applied to the affected part, or little harmless venesections
to the extent of eight ounces, and so forth, play an important part; and
should the patient, in spite of all this, recover, they extol their venesections,
leeches, &c., alleging that, had it not been for these. the patient would not
have been pulled through, and they give us to understand, in no doubtful
language, that these operations, derived without much exercise of genius
from the pernicious routine of the Old School, in reality contributed the best
share towards the cure. But if the patient die under the treatment, as not
unfrequently happens, they seek to console the friends by saying that “they
themselves were witnesses that everything conceivable had been done for
the lamented deceased.” Who would do this frivolous and pernicious tribe
the honor to call them, after the name of the very laborious but salutary
art, homoeopathic physicians? May the just recompense await them, that,
when taken ill, they may be treated in the same manner!(*)
118 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
\
the chronic medicinal dyscrasias so often produced by allo-
pathic bungling, along with the natural disease left uncured by
it, require a much longer time for their recovery; often, indeed,
are they incurable, in consequence of the shameful robbery of
the patient's strength and juices, the principal feat performed
by allopathy in its so-called methods of treatment.
ź 150.
If a patient complain of one or more trivial symptoms, that
have been only observed a short time previously, the physician
should not regard this as a fully developed disease that re-
quires serious medical aid. A slight alteration in the diet and
regimen will usually suffice to dispel such an indisposition.
3 151.
But if the patient complain of a few violent sufferings, the
physician will usually find, on investigation, several other
symptoms besides, although of a slighter character, which
furnish a complete picture of the disease.
3 152.
The worse the acute disease is, of so much the more numer-
ous and striking symptoms is it generally composed, but with
so much the more certainty may a suitable remedy for it be
found, if there be a sufficient number of medicines known with
respect to their positive action, to choose from. Among the lists
of symptoms of many medicines it will not be difficult to find
one from whose separate disease elements an antitype of cura-
tive artificial disease, very like the totality of the symptoms of
the natural disease, may be constructed, and such a medicine
is the desired remedy.
3 153.
In this search for a homoeopathic specific remedy, that is to
say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the
natural disease with the lists of symptoms of known medicines,
in order to find among these an artificial morbific agent cor-
responding by similarity to the disease to be cured, the more
striking, singular, uncommon, and peculiar (characteristic) signs
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 119
and symptoms of the case of disease are chiefly and almost
solely to be kept in view; for it is more particularly these that
very similar ones in the list of symptoms of the selected medicine
must correspond to, in order to constitute it the most suitable
for effecting the cure. The more general and undefined symp-
toms: loss of appetite, headache, debility, restless sleep,
discomfort, and so forth, demand but little attention when of
that vague and indefinite character, if they cannot be more
accurately described, as symptoms of such a general nature
are observed in almost every disease and from almost every
drug.
§ 154.
If the antitype constructed from the list of symptoms of the
most suitable medicine contain those peculiar, uncommon,
singular and distinguishing (characteristic) symptoms, which
are to be met with in the disease to be cured in the greatest
number and in the greatest similarity, this medicine is the
most appropriate homoeopathic specific remedy for this morbid
state; the disease, if it be not one of very long standing, will
generally be removed and extinguished by the first dose of it,
without any considerable disturbance.
3 155.
I say without any considerable disturbance. For in the em-
ployment of this most appropriate homoeopathic remedy it is
only the symptoms of the medicine that correspond to the
symptoms of the disease that are called into play, the former
occupying the place of the latter (weaker) in the organism, and
thereby annihilating them by overpowering them; but the
other symptoms of the homoeopathic medicine, which are often
very numerous, being in no way applicable to the case of
disease in question, are not called into play at all. The pa-
1 Dr. von Bönninghausen, who has already distinguished himself by his
labors in connection with the new system of medicine, has lately increased
our obligation to him by the publication of his important little book setting
forth the characteristic Symptoms, more particularly of the antipsoric med-
icines, entitled Uebersicht der Hauptwirkungs-Sphâre der antips. Arz.,
Münster, bei Coppenrath, 1833, and the appendix thereto (containing the
antisyphilitic and antisycotic medicines) at the end of the second edition of
his Systematisch-alphabetisches Repertorium der antipsorischen Arzneien, bei
Coppenrath in Münster.
120 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
tient, growing hourly better, feels almost nothing of them at
all, because the excessively minute dose requisite for homoeop-
athic use is much too weak to produce the other symptoms
of the medicine that are not homoeopathic to the case, in those
parts of the body that are free from disease, and consequently
can allow only the homoeopathic symptoms to act on the parts
of the organism that are already most irritated and excited by
the similar symptoms of the disease, thus changing the morbid
affection of the vital force into a similar but stronger medicinal
disease, whereby the original malady is extinguished.
ź 156. (a)
There is, however, almost no homoeopathic medicine, be it
ever so suitably chosen, that, especially if it should be given
in an insufficiently minute dose, will not produce, in very
irritable and sensitive patients, at least one trifling, unusual
disturbance, some slight new symptom whilst its action lasts;
for it is next to impossible that medicine and disease should
cover one another symptomatically as exactly as two triangles
with equal sides and equal angles. But this (in ordinary cir-
cumstances) unimportant difference will be easily done away
with by the potential activity (energy) of the living organism,
and is not perceptible by patients not excessively delicate; the
restoration goes forward, notwithstanding, to the goal of per-
fect recovery, if it be not prevented by the action of hetero-
geneous medicinal influences upon the patient, by errors of
regimen or by excitement of the passions.
ź 157. (a)
But though it is certain that a homoeopathically selected
remedy does, by reason of its appropriateness and the minute-
ness of the dose, gently remove and annihilate the acute
disease analogous to it, without manifesting its other, un-
homoeopathic symptoms, that is to say, without the production
of new, serious disturbances, yet it usually, immediately after
ingestion—for the first hour, or for a few hours—causes a
kind of slight aggravation (where the dose has been somewhat
too large, however, for a considerable number of hours), which
has so much resemblance to the original disease that it seems
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 121
to the patient to be an aggravation of his own disease. But
it is, in reality, nothing more than an extremely similar
medicinal disease, somewhat exceeding in strength the original
affection.
3 158.
This slight homoeopathic aggravation during the first hours—
a very good prognostic that the acute disease will most prob-
ably yield to the first dose—is quite as it ought to be, as the
medicinal disease must naturally be somewhat stronger than
the malady to be cured if it is to overpower and extinguish the
latter, just as a natural disease can remove and annihilate an-
other one similar to it only when it is stronger than the latter
(% 43–48).
Ž 159.
The smaller the dose of the homoeopathic remedy is, so
much the slighter and shorter is this apparent increase of the
disease during the first hours.
*
3 160.
But as the dose of a homoeopathic remedy can scarcely ever
be made so small that it shall not be able to relieve, over-
power, indeed completely cure and annihilate the uncom-
plicated natural disease of not long standing that is analogous
to it (3 249, note), we can understand why a dose of an ap-
propriate homoeopathic medicine, not the very smallest
possible, does always, during the first hour after its ingestion,
produce a perceptible homoeopathic aggravation of this kind."
1 This exaltation of the medicinal symptoms over those disease symptoms
analogous to them, Which looks like an aggravation, has been observed by
other physicians also, when by accident they employed a homoeopathic
remedy. When a patient suffering from itch complains of an increase of the
eruption after sulphur, his physician. Who knows not the cause of this, con-
soles him with the assurance that the itch must first come out properly
before it can be cured; he knows not, however, that this is a sulphur eruption,
that assumes the appearance of an increase of the itch.
“The facial eruption which the viola tricolor cured was aggravated by it
at the commencement of its action,” Leroy tells us (Heilk. für Mütter, p. 406),
but he knew not that the apparent aggravation was owing to the somewhat
too large dose of the remedy, which in this instance was to a certain extent
homoeopathic. Lysons says (Med. Transact., vol. ii, London, 1772), “The bark
of the elm cures most certainly those skin diseases which it increases at the
beginning of its action.” Had he not given the bark in the monstrous doses
usual in the allopathic System, but in the quite small doses requisite when
the medicine shows similarity of symptoms, that is to say, when it is used
122 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
Ž 161. (a)
When I here limit the so-called homoeopathic aggravation,
or rather the primary action of the homoeopathic medicine that
seems to increase somewhat the symptoms of the original dis-
ease, to the first or few first hours, this is certainly true with
respect to diseases of a more acute character and of recent
origin; but where medicines of long action have to combat a
malady of considerable or of very long standing, where one
dose, consequently, must continue to act for many days, we
then occasionally see, during the first six, eight or ten days,
the occurrence of some such primary actions of the medicine,
some such apparent increase of the symptoms of the original
disease (lasting for one or several hours), whilst in the inter-
vening hours amelioration of the whole malady is perceptible.
After the lapse of these few days the amelioration resulting
from such primary action of the medicine proceeds almost un-
interruptedly for several days longer.
ź 162.
It sometimes happens, owing to the moderate number of
medicines yet known with respect to their true, pure action, that
but a portion of the symptoms of the disease under treatment
are to be met with in the list of symptoms of the most appro-
priate medicine, consequently this imperfect medicinal morbific
agent must be employed for lack of a more perfect one.
3 163.
In this case we cannot indeed expect from this medicine a
complete, untroubled cure; for during its use some symptoms
appear which were not previously observable in the disease,
accessory symptoms of the not perfectly appropriate remedy.
This does by no means prevent a considerable part of the dis-
ease (the symptoms of the disease that resemble those of the
homoeopathically, he would have effected a cure without, or almost without,
seeing this apparent increase of the disease (homoeopathic aggravation).
1 If the action of those medicines to which the longest duration of action
is proper, quickly expires in acute diseases—most quickly in those that are
most acute—it is proportionately long lasting in chronic diseases (of psoric
origin), and hence it happens that the antipsoric medicines often do not
show any such homoeopathic aggravation in the first hours, whilst they do
so later and during various hours for the first eight or ten days.
ORGANON OF MEDICIGIE. 123
medicine) from being eradicated by this medicine, thereby
establishing a fair commencement of the cure, but still this
does not take place without those accessory symptoms, which
are, however, always moderate when the dose of the medicine
is sufficiently minute.
§ 164.
The small number of homoeopathic symptoms present in the
best selected medicine is no obstacle to the cure in cases
where these few medicinal symptoms are chiefly of an uncommon
kind and such as are peculiarly distinctive (characteristic) of
the disease ; the cure takes place under such circumstances
without any particular disturbance.
3 165.
If, however, among the symptoms of the remedy selected,
there be none that accurately resemble the distinctive (charac-
teristic), peculiar, uncommon symptoms of the case of disease,
and if the remedy correspond to the disease only in the general,
vaguely described, indefinite states (nausea, debility, headache,
and so forth), and if there be among the known medicines
none more homoeopathically appropriate, in that case the
physician cannot promise himself any immediate favorable re-
sult from the employment of this unhomoeopathic medicine.
§ 166.
Such a case is, however, very rare, owing to the increased
number of medicines whose pure effects are now known, and
the bad effects resulting from it, when they do occur, are
diminished whenever a subsequent medicine, of more accurate
resemblance, can be selected.
3 167.
Thus if there occur, during the use of this imperfectly
homoeopathic remedy first employed, accessory symptoms of
some moment, then, in the case of acute diseases, we do not
allow this first dose to exhaust its action, nor leave the patient
to the full duration of the action of the remedy, but we inves-
tigate afresh the morbid state in its now altered condition, and
124 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
add the remainder of the original symptoms to those newly
developed in tracing a new picture of the disease.
ź 168,
We shall then be able much more readily to discover, among
the known medicines, an analogue to the morbid state before
us, a single dose of which, if it do not entirely destroy the
disease, will advance it considerably on the way to be cured.
And thus we go on, if even this medicine be not quite suffi-
cient to effect the restoration of health, examining again and
again the morbid state that still remains, and selecting a
homoeopathic medicine as suitable as possible for it, until our
object, namely putting the patient in the possession of perfect
health, is accomplished.
& 169.
If, on the first examination of a disease and the first selec-
tion of a medicine, we should find that the totality of the
symptoms of the disease would not be effectually covered by
the disease elements of a single medicine—owing to the in-
sufficient number of known medicines,—but that two medicines
contend 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 examina-
tion, for the medicine that seemed to be the next best would
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 appro-
priate homoeopathic remedy must by selected in place of the
second medicine for the set of symptoms as they appear on a
new inspection.
ź 170. (a)
Hence in this as in every case where a change of the morbid
state has occurred, the remaining set of symptoms now present
must be inquired into, and (without paying any attention to
the medicine which at first appeared to be the next in point of
suitableness) anothor homoeopathic medicine, as appropriate as
ORGANON OF MEDICINE, 125
possible to the new state now before us, must be selected. If
it should so happen, as is not often the case, that the medicine
which at first appeared to be the next best seems still to be
well adapted for the morbid state that remains, so much the
more will it merit our confidence, and deserve to be employed
in preference to another.
Ž 171. (a)
In non-venereal chronic diseases, those, therefore, that arise
from psora, we often require, in order to effect a cure, to give
several antipsoric remedies in succession, every successive one
being homoeopathically chosen in consonance with the group of
symptoms remaining after the expiry of the action of the
previous remedy (which may have been employed in a single
dose or in several successive doses).
ź 172.
A similar difficulty in the way of the cure occurs from the
symptoms of the disease being too few—a circumstance that de-
serves our careful attention, for by its removal almost all the
difficulties that can lie in the way of this most perfect of all
possible modes of treatment (except that its apparatus of
known homoeopathic medicines is still incomplete) are removed.
3 173.
The only diseases that seem to have but few symptoms, and
on that account to be less amenable to cure, are those which
may be termed one-sided, because they display only one or two
principal symptoms which obscure almost all the others.
They belong éhiefly to the class of chronic diseases.
ź 174.
Their principal symptom may be either an internal com-
plaint (e. g. a headache of many years' duration, a diarrhoea of
long standing, an ancient cardialgia, &c.), or it may be an
affection more of an external kind. Diseases of the latter
character are generally distinguished by the name of local
maladies.
ź 175.
In one-sided diseases of the first kind it is often to be at-
126 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
tributed to the medical observer's want of discernment that he
does not fully discover the symptoms actually present which
would enable him to complete the sketch of the portrait of the
disease. *
ź 176,
There are, however, still a few diseases, which, after the
most careful initial examination (3% 84—98), present but one
or two severe, violent symptoms, while all the others are but
indistinctly perceptible. \ sº
ź 177.
In order to meet most successfully such a case as this,
which is of very rare occurrence, we are in the first place to
select, guided by these few symptoms, the medicine which in
our judgment is the most homoeopathically indicated.
ź 178.
It will, no doubt, sometimes happen that this medicine,
selected in strict observance of the homoeopathic law, fur-
nishes the similar artificial disease suited for the annihilation
of the malady present; and this is much more likely to happen
when these few morbid symptoms are very striking, decided,
uncommon and peculiarly distinctive (characteristic).
ź 179.
More frequently, however, the medicine first chosen in such
a case will be only partially, that is to say, not exactly suitable,
as there was no considerable number of symptoms to guide to
an accurate selection.
Ž 180.
In this case the medicine, which has been chosen as well as
was possible, but which, for the reason above stated, is only
imperfectly homoeopathic, will, in its action upon the disease
that is only partially analogous to it—just as in the case
mentioned above (§ 162, et seq.), where the limited number of
bomoeopathic remedies renders the selection imperfect—pro-
duce accessory symptoms, and several phenomena from its
own array of symptoms are mixed up with the patient's state
of health, which are, however, at the same time, symptoms of the
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 127
disease itself, although they may have been hitherto never or very
rarely perceived; some symptoms which the patient had never
previously experienced appear, or others he had only felt in-
distinctly become more pronounced.
Ž 181.
Let it not be objected that the accessory phenomena and
new symptoms of this disease that now appear should be laid
to the account of the medicament just employed. They owe
their origin to it certainly, but they are always only symptoms
of such a nature as this disease was itself capable of pro-
ducing in this organism, and which were summoned forth and
induced to make their appearance by the medicine given, owing
to its power to cause similar symptoms. In a word, we have
to regard the whole collection of symptoms now perceptible as
belonging to the disease itself, as the actual existing condition,
and to direct our further treatment accordingly.
ź 182.
Thus the imperfect selection of the medicament, which was
in this case almost inevitable owing to the too limited number
of the symptoms present, serves to complete the display of
the symptoms of the disease, and in this way facilitates the
discovery of a second, more accurately suitable, homoeopathic
medicine.
Ž 183.
Whenever, therefore, the dose of the first medicine ceases to
have a beneficial effect (if the newly developed symptoms do
not, by reason of their gravity, demand more speedy aid—
which, however, from the minuteness of the dose of homoeop-
athic medicine, and in very chronic diseases, is excessively
rare), a new examination of the disease must be instituted, the
status morbi as it now is must be noted down, and a second
homoeopathic remedy selected in accordance with it, which
shall exactly suit the present state, and one which shall be all
1 When they were not caused by an important error in regimen, a violent
emotion, or a tumultuous revolution in the Organism, such as the occur-
rence or cessation of the menses, conception. Childbirth, and so forth.
128 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
the more appropriate can then be found, as the group of
symptoms has become larger and more complete.”
ź 184.
In like manner, after each new dose of medicine has ex-
hausted its action, the state of the disease that still remains is
to be noted anew with respect to its remaining symptoms, and
another homoeopathic remedy sought for, as suitable as possi-
ble for the group of symptoms now observed, and so on until
the recovery is complete.
Ž 185.
Among the one-sided diseases an important place is occupied
by the so-called local maladies, by which term is signified
those changes and ailments that appear on the external parts
of the body. Till now the idea prevalent in the schools was
that these parts were alone morbidly affected, and that the
rest of the body did not participate in the disease—a theoret-
ical, absurd doctrine, which has led to the most disastrous
medical treatment.
3 186.
Those so-called local maladies which have been produced
a short time previously, solely by an external lesion, still
appear at first sight to deserve the name of local diseases.
But then the lesion must be very trivial, and in that case it
would be of no great moment. For in the case of injuries
accruing to the body from without, if they be at all severe,
the whole living organism sympathizes; there occur fever, &c.
The treatment of such diseases is relegated to surgery; but
this is right only in so far as the affected parts require me-
chanical aid, whereby the external obstacles to the cure, which
can only be expected to take place by the agency of the vital
force, may be removed by mechanical means, e. g. by the re-
duction of dislocations, by bandages to bring together the lips
1 In cases where the patient (which, however, happens excessively seldom
in chronic, but not infrequently in acute diseases) feels very ill, although
his symptoms are very indistinct, so that this state may be attributed more
to the benumbed state of the nerves, which does not permit the patient’s
pains and sufferings to be distinctly perceived, this torpor of the internal
sensibility is removed by opium, and in its secondary action the Symptoms
of the disease become distinctly apparent.(*)
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 129
of wounds, by the extraction of foreign bodies that have
penetrated into the living parts, by making an opening into a
cavity of the body in order to remove an irritating substance
or to procure the evacuation of effusions or collections of
fluids, by bringing into apposition the broken extremities of a
fractured bone and retaining them in exact contact by an ap-
propriate bandage, &c. But when in such injuries the whole
living organism requires, as it always does, active dynamic aid
to put it in a position to accomplish the work of healing, e. g.
when the violent fever resulting from extensive contusions,
lacerated muscles, tendons and blood-vessels requires to be re-
moved by medicine given internally, or when the external pain
of scalded or burnt parts needs to be homoeopathically sub-
dued, then the services of the dynamic physician and his
helpful homoeopathy come into requisition.
ź 187. (a)
But those affections, alterations and ailments appearing on
the external parts, that do not arise from any external injury
or that have only some slight external wound for their im-
mediate exciting cause, are produced in quite another manner;
their source lies in some internal malady. To consider them
as mere local affections, and at the same time to treat them
only, or almost only, as it were surgically, with topical ap-
plications—as the old school have done from the remotest
ages—is as absurd as it is pernicious in its results.
3 188.
These affections were considered to be merely topical and
were therefore called local diseases, as if they were maladies
exclusively limited to those parts, wherein the organism took
little or no part, or affections of these particular visible parts,
of which the rest of the living organism, so to speak, knew
nothing."
Ž 189.
And yet very little reflection will suffice to convince us that
no external malady (not occasioned by some important injury
from without) can arise, persist or even grow worse without
1 One of the many great and pernicious blunders of the Old School.
10
130 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
some internal cause, without the co-operation of the whole or-
ganism, which must consequently be in a diseased state. It
could not make its appearance at all without the consent of
the whole of the rest of the health, and without the participa-
tion of the rest of the living whole (of the vital force that
pervades all the other sensitive and irritable parts of the
Organism);(d) indeed, it is impossible to conceive its produc-
tion without the instrumentality of the whole (deranged) life;
so intimately are all parts of the organism connected together
to form an indivisible whole in sensations and functions. No
eruption on the lips, no whitlow can occur without previous
and simultaneous internal ill-health.
Ž 190.
All true medical treatment of a disease on the external parts
of the body that has occurred from little or no injury from
without must, therefore, be directed against the whole, must
effect the annihilation and cure of the general malady by
means of internal remedies, if it is wished that the treatment
should be judicious, sure, efficacious and radical.
ź 191.
This is confirmed in the most unambiguous manner by ex-
perience, which shows in all cases that every powerful internal
medicine immediately after its ingestion causes important
changes in the general health of such a patient, and particu-
larly in the affected external parts (which the ordinary medical
school regards as quite isolated), even in a so-called local
disease of the most external parts of the body, and the change
it produces is most salutary, being the restoration to health of
the entire body, along with the disappearance of the external
affection (without the aid of any external remedy), provided
the internal remedy directed towards the whole state was
suitably chosen in a homoeopathic sense.
Ž 192.
"This is best effected when, in the investigation of the case
of disease, along with the exact character of the local affection,
all the changes, sufferings and symptoms observable in the
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 131
patient's health, and which may have been previously noticed
when no medicines had been used, are taken in conjunction to
form a complete picture of the disease, before searching among
the medicines, whose peculiar pathogenetic effects are known,
for a remedy corresponding to the totality of the symptoms,
so that the selection may be truly homoeopathic.
ź 193.
By means of this medicine, employed only internally (and,
if the disease be but of recent origin, often by the very first
dose of it), the general morbid state of the body is removed
along with the local affection, and the latter is cured at the
same time as the former, proving that the local affection de-
pended solely on a disease of the rest of the body, and should
only be regarded as an inseparable part of the whole, as one
of the most considerable and striking symptoms of the whole
disease.
3 194. (a)
It is not useful, either in acute local diseases of recent
origin or in local affections that have already existed a long
time, to rub in or apply externally to the spot an external
remedy, even though it be the specific and, when used inter-
nally, salutary by reason of its homoeopathicity, even although
it should be at the same time administered internally; for the
acute topical affections (e. g. inflammations of individual
parts, erysipelas, &c.), which have not been caused by external
injury of proportionate violence, but by dynamic or internal
causes, yield most surely to internal remedies homoeopathically
adapted to the perceptible state of the health present in the
exterior and interior, selected from the general store of proved
medicines," and generally without any other aid; but if these
diseases do not yield to them completely, and if there still re-
main in the affected spot and in the whole state, notwithstand-
ing good regimen, a relic of disease which the vital force is
not competent to restore to the normal state, then the acute
disease was (as not infrequently happens) a product of psora
which had hitherto remained latent in the interior, but has
1 As, for instance, aconite, rhus, belladonna, mercury. &c.
132 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
now burst forth and is on the point of developing into a pal-
pable chronic disease.
§ 195.
In order to effect a radical cure in such cases, which are by
no means rare, after the acute state has pretty well subsided,
an appropriate antipsoric treatment (as is taught in my work
on Chronic Diseases) must then be directed against the symp-
toms that still remain and the morbid state of health to which
the patient was previously subject. In chronic local maladies
that are not obviously venereal, the antipsoric internal treat-
ment is, moreover, alone requisite.
3 196.
It might, indeed, seem(a) as though the cure of such dis-
eases would be hastened by employing the medicinal substance
which is known to be truly homoeopathic to the totality of the
symptoms, not only internally but also externally, (a) because
the action of a medicine applied to the seat of the local affec-
tion might effect a more rapid change in it.
ź 197,
This treatment, however, is quite inadmissible, not only for
the local symptoms arising from the miasm of psora, but also
and especially for those originating in the miasm of syphilis or
sycosis, for the simultaneous local application, along with the
internal employment, of the remedy in diseases whose chief symp-
tom is a constant local affection, has this great disadvantage,
that, by such a topical application, this chief symptom (local
affection) will usually be annihilated sooner than the internal
disease, and we shall now be deceived by the semblance of a
perfect cure; or at least it will be difficult, and in some cases
impossible, to determine, from the premature disappearance
of the local symptom, if the general disease is destroyed by
the simultaneous employment of the internal medicine.
ź 198. (a)
The mere topical employment of medicines, that are powerful
for cure when given internally, to the local symptoms of
1 Recent itch eruption, chancre, condyloma.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 133
chronic miasmatic diseases is for the same reason quite inad-
missible; for if the local affection of the chronic disease be
only removed locally and in a one-sided manner, the internal
treatment indispensable for the complete restoration of the
health remains in dubious obscurity; the chief symptom (the
local affection) is gone, and there remain only the other, less
distinguishable symptoms, which are less constant and less
persistent than the local affection, and frequently not suffi-
ciently peculiar and too slightly characteristic to display, after
that, a picture of the disease in clear and perfect outlines.
Ž 199.
If the remedy perfectly homoeopathic to the disease had not
yet been discovered at the time when the local symptoms
were destroyed by a corrosive or desiccative external remedy
or by the knife, then the case becomes much more difficult on
account of the too indefinite (uncharacteristic) and inconstant
appearance of the remaining symptoms; for what might have
contributed most to determine the selection of the most suita-
ble remedy, and its internal employment until the disease
should have been completely annihilated, namely, the external
principal symptom, has been removed from our observation.
ź 200.
Had it still been present to guide the internal treatment,
the homoeopathic remedy for the whole disease might have
been discovered, and had that been found, the persistence of
the local affection during its internal employment would have
shown that the cure was not yet completed; but were it cured
on its seat, this would be a convincing proof that the disease
was completely eradicated, and the desired recovery from the
entire disease was fully accomplished—an inestimable, indis-
pensable advantage.
3 201. (a)
It is evident that man's vital force, when encumbered with
a chronic disease which it is unable to overcome by its own
powers, adopts the plan of developing a local malady on some
1. As was the case before my time with the remedies for the condylomatous
disease (and the antipsoric medicines).
134 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
external part, solely for this object, that by making and keep-
ing in a diseased state this part which is not indispensable to
human life, it may thereby silence the internal disease, which
otherwise threatens to destroy the vital organs (and to deprive
the patient of life), and that it may thereby, so to speak,
transfer the internal disease to the vicarious local affection
and, as it were, draw it thither. The presence of the local
affection thus silences, for a time, the internal disease, though
without being able either to cure it or to diminish it materi
ally." The local affection, however, is never anything else
than a part of the general disease, but a part of it increased
all in one direction by the organic vital force, and trans-
ferred to a less dangerous (external) part of the body, in order
to allay the internal ailment. But (as has been said) by this
local symptom that silences the internal disease, so far from
anything being gained by the vital force towards diminishing
or curing the whole malady, the internal disease, on the con-
trary, continues, in spite of it, gradually to increase and
Nature is constrained to enlarge and aggravate the local
symptom always more and more, in order that it may still
suffice as a substitute for the increased internal disease and
may still keep it under. Old ulcers on the legs get worse as
long as the internal psora is uncured, the chancre enlarges as
long as the internal syphilis remains uncured, just as the
general internal disease continues to increase as time goes on.
ź 202.
If the old-school physician should now destroy the local
symptom by the topical application of external remedies, under
the belief that he thereby cures the whole disease, Nature
makes up for its loss by rousing the internal malady and the
other symptoms that previously existed in a latent state side
by side with the local affection; that is to say, she increases
the internal disease. When this occurs it is usual to say,
though incorrectly, that the local affection has been driven back
1 The issues of the old-school practitioners do something similar; as arti-
ficial ulcers on external parts, they silence some internal chronic diseases
but only for a very short time, without being able to cure them; but, on the
other hand, they weaken and destroy the general health much more than is
done by most of the metastases effected by the distinctive vital force.(?)
ORGANON OF MEDICIGE. 135
into the system or upon the nerves by the external remedies.
3 203.
Every external treatment of such local symptoms, the ob-
ject of which is to remove them from the surface of the body,
whilst the internal miasmatic disease is left uncured, as, for
instance, driving off the skin the psoric eruption by all sorts
of ointments, burning away the chancre by caustics and de-
stroying the condylomata on their seat by the knife, the
ligature or the actual cautery; this pernicious external mode
of treatment, hitherto so universally practiced, has been the
most prolific source of all the innumerable named or unnamed
chronic maladies under which mankind groans; it is one of the
most criminal procedures the medical world can be guilty of,
and yet it has hitherto been the one generally adopted, and
taught from the professorial chairs as the only one."(a)
ź 204.
If we deduct all chronic affections, ailments and diseases
that depend on a persistent unhealthy mode of living, as also
those innumerable medicinal maladies (c. 474) caused by the
irrational, persistent, harrassing and pernicious treatment of
diseases often only of trivial character by physicians of the
old school, all the remainder, without exception, result from
the development of these three chronic miasms, internal
syphilis, internal sycosis, but chiefly and in infinitely greater
proportion, internal psora, each of which was already in pos-
session of the whole organism, and had penetrated it in all
directions before the appearance of the primary, vicarious
local symptom of each of them (in the case of psora the
scabious eruption, in syphilis the chancre or the bubo, and in
sycosis the condylomata) that prevented their outburst; and
these chronic miasmatic diseases, if deprived of their local
symptom, are inevitably destined by mighty Nature sooner or
later to become developed and to burst forth, and thereby
propagate all the nameless misery, the increditable number of
1 For any medicines that might at the same time be glven internally
served but to aggravate the malady, as these remedies possessed no specific
power of curing the whole disease, but assailed the organism. weakened it.
and inflicted on it, in addition, other chronic medicinal diseases.
136 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
chronic diseases which have plagued mankind for hundreds
and thousands of years, none of which would so frequently
have come into existence had physicians striven in a rational
manner to cure radically and to extinguish in the organism
these three miasms by the internal homoeopathic medicines
suited for each of them, without employing topical remedies
for their external symptoms.
3 205.
The homoeopathic physician never treats one of these pri-
mary symptoms of chronic miasms, nor yet one of their
secondary affections that result from their further develop-
ment, by local remedies (neither by those external agents that
act dynamically," nor yet by those that act mechanically), but
he cures, in cases where the one or the other appears, only the
great miasm on which they depend, whereupon its primary, as
also its secondary symptoms disappear spontaneously; but as
this was not the mode pursued by the old-school practitioners
who preceded him in the treatment of the case, the homoeo-
pathic physician generally, alas! finds that the primary symp-
toms” have already been destroyed by them by means of
external remedies, and that he has now to do more with the
secondary ones, i. e. the affections resulting from the breaking
forth and development of these inherent miasms, but especially
! I cannot therefore advise, for instance, the local extirpation of the so-
called cancer of the lips or face (the product of highly developed psora?) by
means of the arsenical remedy of Frére Cosmo, not only because it is exces-
Sively painful and often fails, but more for this reason, because, if this
dynamie remedy should indeed succeed in freeing the affected part of the
body from the malignant ulcer locally, the basic malady is thereby not di-
minished in the slightest, the preserving vital force is therefore necessitated
to transfer the fleld of operation of the great internal malady to some more
important part (as it does in every case of metaschematism). and the conse-
quence is blindness, deafness, insanity, Suffocative asthma. dropsy, apo-
plexy, &c. But this ambiguous local liberation of the part from the malig-
nant ulcer by the topical arsenical remedy only succeeds, after all, in those
Cases where the ulcer has not yet attained any great size, and when the vital
force is still very energetic; but it is just in such a state of things that the
complete finternal cure of the whole original disease is also still practicable.
The result is the same when cancer of the face or breast is removed by the
lºnife alone and when encysted tumors are enucleated; something worse
ensues, or at any rate death is hastened. This has been the case times with-
out number, but the old school still goes blindly on in the same way in every
new case, with the same disastrous results.
* Itch eruption, chancre (bubo), condylomata.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 137
with the chronic diseases evolved from internal psora, the in-
ternal treatment of which, as far as a single physician can
elucidate it by many years of reflection, observation and ex-
perience, I have endeavored to point out in my work on
Chronic Diseases, to which I must refer the reader.
Ž 206.
Before commencing the treatment of a chronic disease, it is
necessary to make the most careful investigation' as to whether
the patient has had a venereal infection (or an infection with
condylomatous gonorrhoea); for then the treatment must be
directed towards this alone, when only the signs of syphilis (or
of the rarer coudylomatous disease) are present, but this dis-
ease is very seldom met with alone nowadays. If such in-
fection have previously occurred, this must also be borne in
mind in the treatment of those cases in which psora is present,
because in them the latter is complicated with the former, as
is always the case when the symptoms are not those of pure
syphilis; for when the physician thinks he has a case of old
venereal disease before him, he has always, or almost always,
to treat a syphilitic affection accompanied mostly by (compli-
cated with) psora, for the internal itch dyscrasia (the psora) is
far the most frequent (most certain) fundamental cause of
chronic diseases, either united (complicated) with syphilis (or
with sycosis), if the latter infections have avowedly occurred;
or, as is much more frequently the case, psora is the sole fun-
damental cause of all other chronic maladies, whatever names
they may bear, which are, moreover, so often bungled, in-
creased and disfigured to a monstrous extent by allopathic
unskilfulness.
1 In investigations of this nature We must not allow ourselves to be de-
ceived by the assertions of the patients or their friends, who frequently
assign as the cause of chronic, even of the severest and most inveterate dis-
ease, either a cold caught (a thorough wetting, drinking cold water after
being heated) many years ago. Or a former fright, a sprain, a vexation
(sometimes even a bewitchmeint), &c. These causes are much too insignifi-
cant to develop a chronic disease in a h;althy bºdy, to keep it up for years.
and to aggravate it year by year. as is the case with all chronic diseases
from Cleveloped psora. Causes of a much more important character than
these remembered noxious influences must lie at the root Of the initiation
and progress of a serious, obstinate disease of long standing: the assigned
causes could only rouse into activity the latent chronic miasm.
138 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
3 207.
When the above information has been gained, it still remains
for the homoeopathic physician to ascertain what kinds of
allopathic treatment had up to that date been adopted for the
chronic disease, what perturbing medicines had been chiefly
and most frequently employed, also what mineral baths had
been used and what effects these had produced, in order to
understand in some measure the degeneration of the disease
from its original state, and, where possible, to correct in part
these pernicious artificial operations, or to enable him to avoid
the employment of medicines that have already been impro-
perly used.
3 208.
The age of the patient, his mode of living and diet, his oc-
cupation, his domestic position, his social relations and so
forth, must next be taken into consideration, in order to as-
certain whether these things have tended to increase his
malady, or in how far they may favor or hinder the treatment.
In like manner the state of his disposition and mind must be
attended to, to learn whether that presents any obstacle to the
treatment, or requires to be directed, encouraged or modified.
Ž 209.
After this is done, the physician should endeavor in re-
peated conversations with the patient to trace the picture of
his disease as completely as possible, according to the direc-
tions given above, in order to be able to elucidate the most
striking and peculiar (characteristic) symptoms, in accordance
with which he selects the first antipsoric or other remedy hav-
ing the greatest symptomatic resemblance, for the commence-
ment of the treatment, and so forth.
ź 210. (a)
Of psoric origin are almost all those diseases that I have
above termed one-sided, which appear to be more difficult to
cure in consequence of this one-sidedness, all their other mor-
bid symptoms disappearing, as it were, before the single,
great, prominent symptom. Of this character are what are
termed mental diseases. They do not, however, constitute a
( ) RG ANON OF MEDICINE. 139
class of disease sharply separated from all others, since in all
other so-called corporeal diseases the condition of the dispo-
sition and mind is always altered; and in all cases of disease
we are called on to cure, the state of the patient's disposition
is to be particularly noted, along with the totality of the
symptoms, if we would trace an accurate picture of the dis-
ease, in order to be able therefrom to treat it homoeopathically
with success.
Ž 211.
This holds good to such an extent, that the state of the dis-
position of the patient often chiefly determines the selection of
the homoeopathic remedy, as being a decidedly characteristic
symptom which can least of all remain concealed from the
accurately observing physician.
Ž 212.
The &reator of therapeutic agents has also had particular
regard to this main feature of all diseases, the altered state of
the disposition and mind, for there is no powerful medicinal
substance in the world which does not very notably alter the
state of the disposition and mind in the healthy individual
who tests it, and every medicine does so in a different manner.
%. 213.
We shall, therefore, never be able to cure conformably to
mature—that is to say, homoeopathically—if we do not, in
every case of disease, even in such as are acute, observe,
along with the other symptoms, those relating to the changes
! How often, for instance, do we not meet with a mild, soft disposition in
patients who have for years been afflicted with the most painful diseases, so
that the physician feels constrained to esteem and compassionate the suf-
ferer! But if he subdue the disease and restore the patient to health—as is
frequently done in homoeopathic practice—he is often astonished and horri-
fied at the frightful alteration in his disposition. He often witnesses the
occurrence of ingratitude, cruelty, refined malice and propensities most dis-
graceful and degrading to humanity. which were precisely the qualities
possessed by the patient before he grew ill.
Those who were patient when well often become obstimate. violent. hasty,
or even intolerant and capricious, or impatient or desponding when ill;
those formerly chaste and modest often become lascivious and shameless.
A clear-headed person not infrequently becomes obtuse of intellect. while
one ordinarily weak-minded becomes more prudent and thoughtful; and a
man slow to make up his mind sometimes acquires great presence of mind
and quickness of resolve. &c.
140. ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
in the state of the mind and disposition, and if we do not
select, for the patient's relief, from among the medicines a
disease-force which, in addition to the similarity of its other
symptoms to those of the disease, is also capable of producing
a similar state of the disposition and mind.”
ź 214.
The instructions I have to give relative to the cure of mental
diseases may be confined to a very few remarks, as they are to
be cured in the same way as all other diseases, namely, by a
remedy which shows, by the symptoms it causes in the body
and mind of a healthy individual, a power of producing a
morbid state as similar as possible to the case of disease be-
fore us, and in no other way can they be cured.
ź 215.
Almost all the so-called mental and emotional diseases are
nothing more than corporeal diseases in which the symptom
of derangement of the mind and disposition peculiar to each
of them is increased, whilst the corporeal symptoms decline
(more or less rapidly), till it at length attains the most strik-
ing one-sidedness, almost as though it were a local disease in
the invisible subtile organ of the mind or disposition.
Ž 216.
The cases are not rare in which a so called corporeal disease
that threatens to be fatal—a suppuration of the lungs, or the
deterioration of some other important viscus, or some other
disease of acute character, e. g. in childbed, &c.—becomes
transformed into insanity, into a kind of melancholia or into
mania by a rapid increase of the psychical symptoms that
were previously present, whereupon the corporeal symptoms
lose all their danger; these latter improve almost to perfect
health, or rather they decrease to such a degree that their
obscured presence can only be detected by the observation of a
physician gifted with perseverance and penetration. In this
1 Thus aconite will seldom or never effect either a rapid or permanent cure
in a patient of a quiet, calm, equable disposition; and just as little will nux
vomica be serviceable where the disposition is mild and phlegmatic, pulsa-
tilla, where it is happy, gay and obstinate. or ignatia where it is imperturb-
able and disposed neither to be frightened nor vexed.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 141
manner they become transformed into a one-sided and, as it
were, a local disease, in which the symptom of the mental
disturbance, which was at first but slight, increases so as to be
the chief symptom, and in a great measure occupies the place
of the other (corporeal) symptoms, whose intensity it subdues
in a palliative manner, so that, in short, the affections of the
grosser corporeal organs become, as it were, transferred and
conducted to the almost spiritual, mental and emotional organs,
which the anatomist has never yet and never will reach with
his scalpel.
Ž 217.
In these diseases we must be very careful to make ourselves
acquainted with the whole of the phenomena, both those be-
longing to the corporeal symptoms, and also, and indeed
particularly, those appertaining to the accurate apprehension
of the precise character of the chief symptom, of the peculiar
and always predominating state of the mind and disposition,
in order to discover, for the purpose of extinguishing the en-
tire disease, among the remedies whose pure effects are known,
a homoeopathic medicinal pathogenetic force—that is to say,
a remedy which in its list of symptoms displays, with the
greatest possible similarity, not only the corporeal morbid
symptoms present in the case of disease before us, but also
especially this mental and emotional state.
ź 218.
To this collection of symptoms belongs in the first place
the accurate description of all the phenomena of the previous
so-called corporeal disease, before it degenerated into a one-
sided increase of the psychical symptom, and became a disease
of the mind and disposition. This may be learned from the
report of the patient's friends.
3 219.
A comparison of these previous symptoms of the corporeal
disease with the traces of them that still remain, though they
have become less perceptible (but which even now sometimes
become prominent, when a lucid interval and a transient
142 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
alleviation of the psychical disease occurs), will serve to prove
them to be still present, though obscured.
ź 220.
By adding to this the state of the mind and disposition ac-
curately observed by the patient's friends and by the physician
himself, we have thus constructed the complete picture of the
disease, for which, in order to effect the homoeopathic cure of
the disease, a medicine capable of producing strikingly similar
symptoms, and especially an analogous disorder of the mind,
must be sought for, among the antipsoric remedies, if the
psychical disease have already lasted some time.
Ž 221. (a)
If, however, insanity or mania (caused by fright, vexation,
the abuse of spirituous liquors, &c.) have suddenly broken out
as an acute disease in the patient's ordinary calm state, al-
though it almost always arises from internal psora, like a flame
bursting forth from it, yet when it occurs in this acute manner
it should not be immediately treated with antipsorics, but in
the first place with remedies indicated for it out of the other
class of proved medicaments (e. g. aconite, belladonna, stramo-
nium, hyoscyamus, mercury, &c.) in highly potentized, minute
homoeopathic doses, in order to subdue it so far that the psora
shall for the time revert to its former latent state, wherein
the patient appears as if quite well.
ź 222.
But such a patient, who has recovered from an acute mental
or emotional disease by the use of these non-antipsoric medi
cines, should never be regarded as cured; on the contrary, no
time should be lost in attempting to free him completely," by
1 It very rarely happens that a mental or emotional disease of long-stand-
ing ceases spontaneously (for the internal dyscrasia transfers itself again
to the grosser corporeal organs); such are the few cases met with now and
then. where a former inmate of a madhouse has been dismissed apparently
recovered. Hitherto. moreover, all madhouses have continued to be choke-
full. So that the multitude of other insane persons who seek for admission
into such institutions could scarcely find room in them unless some of the
insane in the house died. Not one is ever really and pſ rmanently cured in
them : A convincing proof, among many others. Of the complete nullity of
the non-healing art hitherto practiced. which has been ridiculously honored
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 143
º
means of a prolonged antipsoric treatment, from the chronic
miasm of the psora, which, it is true, has now become once
more latent but is quite ready to break out anew; if this be
done, there is no fear of another similar attack, if he attend
faithfully to the diet and regimen prescribed for him.
Ž 223.
But if the antipsoric treatment be omitted, then we may
almost assuredly expect, from a much slighter cause than
brought on the first attack of the insanity, the speedy occur-
rence of a new and more lasting and severe fit, during which
the psora usually develops itself completely, and passes into
either a periodic or continued mental derangement, which is
then more difficult to be cured by antipsorics.
3 224.
If the mental disease be not quite developed, and if it be
still somewhat doubtful whether it really arose from a cor-
poreal affection, or did not rather result from faults of educa-
tion, bad practices, corrupt morals, neglect of the mind,
superstition or ignorance; the mode of deciding this point will
be, that if it proceed from one or the other of the latter causes
it will diminish and be improved by sensible friendly exhorta-
tions, consolatory arguments, serious representations and
sensible advice; whereas a real moral or mental malady, de-
pending on bodily disease, would be speedily aggravated by
such a course, the melancholic would become still more de-
jected, querulous, inconsolable and reserved, the spiteful
maniac would thereby become still more exasperated, and the
chattering fool would become manifestly more foolish."
by allopathic ostentation with the title of rational medicine. How often, on
the other hand, has not the true healing art. genuine, pure homoeopathy,
been able to restore such unfortunate beings to the possession of their men-
tal and corporeal health, and give them back again to their delighted friends
and to the World !(“)
* It would seem as though the mind. in these cases, felt with uneasiness
and grief the truth of these rational representations and acted upon the
body as if it wished to restore the lost harmony, but that the body, by means
of its disease, reacted upon the organs of the mind and disposition and put
them in still greater disorder by a fresh transference of its sufferings on to
them.
144 ORGANON OF MEDICINE. .
w
3 225.
There are, however, as has just been stated, certainly a few
emotional diseases which have not merely been developed into
that form out of corporeal diseases, but which, in an inverse
manner, the body being but slightly indisposed, originate and
are kept up by emotional causes, such as continued anxiety,
worry, vexation, wrongs and the frequent occurrence of great
fear and fright. This kind of emotional diseases in time de-
stroys the corporeal health, often to a great degree.
Ž 226.
It is only such emotional diseases as these, which were first
engendered and subsequently kept up by the mind itself, that,
while thry are yet recent and before they have made very great
tnroads on the corporeal state, may, by means of psychical
remedies, such as a display of confidence, friendly exhorta-
tions, sensible advice, and often by a well-disguised deception,
be rapidly changed into a healthy state of the mind (and with
appropriate diet and regimen, seemingly into a healthy state
of the body also).
Ž 227.
But the fundamental cause in these cases also is a psoric
miasm, which was only not yet quite near its full development,
and for security's sake, the seemingly cured patient should be
subjected to a radical, antipsoric treatment, in order that he
may not again, as might easily occur, fall into a similar state
of mental disease.
ź 228. (a)
In mental and emotional diseases resulting from corporeal
maladies, which can only be cured by homoeopathic antipsoric
medicine conjoined with carefully regulated mode of life, an
appropriate psychical behavior towards the patient on the part
of those about him and of the physician must be scrupulously
observed, by way of an auxiliary mental regimen. To furious
mania we must oppose calm intrepidity and cool, firm resolu-
tion—to doleful, querulous lamentation, a mute display of
commiseration in looks and gestures—to senseless chattering,
a silence not wholly inattentive—to disgusting and abominable
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 145
conduct and to conversation of a similar character, total in-
attention. We must merely endeavor to prevent the destruc-
tion and injury of surrounding objects, without reproaching the
patient for his acts, and everything must be arranged in such a
way that the necessity for any corporal punishment and tor-
tures' whatever may be avoided. This is so much the more
easily effected, because in the administration of the medicine—
the only circumstance in which the employment of coercion
could be justified—in the homoeopathic system the small doses
of the appropriate medicine never offend the taste, and may
consequently be given to the patient without his knowledge in
his drink, so that all compulsion is unnecessary.
ź 229.
On the other hand, contradiction, eager explanations, rude
corrections and invectives, as also weak, timorous yielding, are
quite out of place with such patients; they are equally per-
nicious modes of treating mental and emotional maladies.
But such patients are most of all exasperated and their com-
plaint aggravated by contumely, fraud, and deceptions that
they can detect. The physician and keeper must always pre-
tend to believe them to be possessed of reason.
All kinds of external disturbing influences on their senses
and disposition should be if possible removed: there are no
amusements for their clouded spirit, no salutary distractions,
no means of instruction, no soothing effects from conversation,
books or other things for the soul that pines or frets in the
chains of the diseased body, no invigoration for it, but the
cure; it is only when the bodily health is changed for the
1 It is impossible not to marvel at the hard-heartedness and indiscretion
of the medical men in many establishments for patients of this kind, not
only in England, but also in Germany, who, without attempting to discoyer
the true and only efficacious mode of curing such diseases. which is loy
homoeopathic medicinal (antipsoric) means, content themselves with tortur-
ing these most pitiable of all human beings with the most violent blows and
other painful torments. By this unconscientious and revolting procedure
they debase themselves beneath the level of the turnkeys in a house of cor-
rection, for the latter inflict such chastisements as the duty devolving On
their office, and on criminals only, whilst the former appear. from a humili-
ating consciousness of their uselessness as physicians, only to vent their
spite at the apparent incurability of mental diseases in harshness towards
the pitiable. innocent sufferers. for they are too ignorant to be of any use
and too indolent to adopt a judicious mode of treatment. 11
146 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
better that tranquility and comfort again beam upon their
mind.
Ž 230.
If the antipsoric remedies selected for each particular case
of mental or emotional disease (there are incredibly numerous
varieties of them) be quite homoeopathically suited for the faith-
fully traced picture of the morbid state, which, if there be a suffi-
cient number of this kind of medicines known in respect of
their pure effects, is ascertained by an indefatigable search for
the most appropriate homoeopathic remedy all the more easily,
as the emotional and mental state, constituting the principal
symptom of such a patient, is so unmistakably perceptible, –
then the smallest possible doses are often sufficient to effect
the most striking improvement in no very long time, which
could not be brought about by physicing the patient to death
with the largest oft-repeated doses of all other unsuitable
(allopathic) medicines. Indeed, I can confidently assert, from
great experience, that the vast superiority of the homoeopathic
system over all other conceivable methods of treatment is
nowhere displayed in a more triumphant light than in mental
and emotional diseases of long standing, which originally
sprang from the corporeal maladies or were developed simul-
taneously with them.
ź 231. (a)
The intermittent diseases deserve a special consideration, as
well as those that recur at certain periods—like the great
number of intermittent fevers, and the apparently non-febrile
affections that recur at intervals like intermittent fevers—as
also those in which certain morbid states alternate at uncer-
tain intervals with morbid states of a different kind.
ź 232. (a)
These latter, alternating diseases, are also very numerous,"
1 Two or three states may alternate with one another. Thus, for instance,
in the case of double alternating diseases, certain pains may occur persist-
ently in the legs, &c., immediately on the disappearance of a kind of
ophthalmia, which latter again appears as SOOn as the pain in the limbs has
gone off for the time—convulsions and spasms may alternate immediately
with any other affection of the body or some part of it—in a case of three-
fold alternating States in a common indisposition. periods of apparent in-
crease of health and unusual exaltation of the corporeal and mental powers
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 147
but all belong to the class of chronic diseases; they are gen-
erally a manifestation of developed psora alone, sometimes,
but seldom, complicated with a syphilitic miasm, and there-
fore in the former case may be cured by antipsoric medicines;
in the latter, however, in alternation with antisyphilitics as
taught in my work on the Chronic Diseases.
ź 233.
The typical intermittent diseases are those where a morbid
state of unvarying character returns at a tolerably fixed period,
whilst the patient is apparently in good health, and takes its
departure at an equally fixed period; this is observed in those
apparently non-febrile morbid states that come and go in a
periodical manner (at certain times), as well as in those of a
febrile character, to-wit, the numerous varieties of intermit-
tent fevers.
ź 234. (a)
Those apparently non-febrile, typical, periodically recurring
morbid states just alluded to observed in one single patient at
a time (they do not usually appear sporadically or epidemically)
always belong to the chronic diseases, mostly to those that are
purely psoric, are but seldom complicated with syphilis, and
are successfully treated by the same means; yet it is some-
times necessary to employ as an intermediate remedy a small
dose of a potentized solution of cinchona bark, in order to ex-
tinguish completely their intermittent type.
(extravagant gaiety, extraordinary activity of the body, excess of comfort-
able feeling, in ordinate appetite, &c.) may occur, after which, and quite un-
expectedly, gloomy, melancholy humor, intolerable hypochondriacal de-
rangement of the disposition, with disorder of several of the vital operations,
the digestion, sleep, &c., appear, which again, and just as suddenly, give
place to the habitual moderate ill-health; and so also several and very vari-
Ous alternating states. When the new state makes its appearance, there is
Often no perceptible trace of the former one. In other cases only slight
traces of the former alternating state remain when the new one occurs; few
of the symptoms of the first state remain on the appearance and during the
continuance of the second. Sometimes the morbid alternating states are
quite of opposite natures. as, for instance, melancholy periodically alternat-
ing with gay insanity or frenzy.(*)
148 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
Ž 235. (a)
With regard to the intermittent fevers," that prevail sporadi-
cally or epidemically (not those endemically located in marshy
districts), we often find every paroxysm likewise composed of
two opposite alternating states (cold, heat—heat, cold), more
frequently still of three (cold, heat, sweat). Therefore the
remedy selected for them from the general class of proved
(common, not antipsoric) medicines must either (and remedies
of this sort are the surest) be able likewise to produce in the
healthy body two (or all three) similar alternating states, or
else must correspond by similarity of symptoms, in the most
1 The pathology hitherto in vogue, which is still in the stage of irrational
infancy. recognizes but one single intermittent ſever, which it likewise termed
ague, and admits of no varieties but such as are constituted by the different
intervals at which the paroxysms recur. Quotidian, tertian, quartan, &c.
But, there are much more important differences among them than what are
marked by the periods of their recurrence; there are in numerable varieties
of these fevers, some of which cannot even be denominated aſnte, as their fits
consist Solely of heat; others. again, are characterized by cold alone, with
or without subsequent perspiration; yet others which exhibit general cold-
ness of the surface. With a Sensation of heat on the patient’s part, or whilst
the body feels externally hot, the patient feels cold; others, again, in which
one paroxysm consists entirely of a rigor or simple chilliness, followed by an
interval of health, while the next consists of heat alone, followed or not by
perspiration; others, again, in which the heat comes first, and the cold stage
not till that is gone; others, again. wherein after a cold and hot stage
apyrexia, ensues, and then perspiration comes on like a second fit, often
many hours subsequently ; Others, again, in which no perspiration at all
comes on, and yet others in which the whole attack consists of perspiration
alone, without any cold or hot stage, or in which the perspiration is only
present during the heat; and there are innumerable oth,er differences, es-
pecially in regard to the accessory symptoms, such as headache of a peculiar
kind, bad taste in the mouth, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea. want of or ex-
cessive thirst, peculiar pains in the body or limbs, disturbed sleep, deliria,
alterations of temper, spasms, &c., before, during or after the cold stage.
before. during or after the hot stage, before, during or after the sweating
stage, and countless other varieties. All these are manifestly intermittent
fevers of very different kinds, each of which, as might natupally be supposed.
requires a special (homoeopathic) treatment. It must be confessed that they
can almost all be suppressed (as is often done) by enormous doses of bark
and of its pharmaceutical preparation. the 8wlphate of quinine; that is to say,
their periodical recurrence (their typus) may be extinguished by it, although
often only after increased and frequently repeated doses, but the patients
who suffered from intermittent, fevers for which cinchona, bark is not, suit-
able, as is the case with all those epidemic intermittent fevers that traverse
whole countries and even mountainous districts, are not restored to health
by the extinction of the typus; on the contrary, they now remain ill in an-
other manner, and worse. Often much worse, than before; they are affected
by peculiar. chronic bark dyscrasias. and can scarcely be restored to health
even by a prolonged treatment by the true system of medicine—and yet that,
is what is called curing, forsooth !
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 149
homoeopathic manner possible, to the strongest, best marked,
and most peculiar alternating state (either to the cold stage,
or to the hot stage, or to the sweating stage, each with its
accessory symptoms, according as the one or the other alter-
nating state is the strongest and most peculiar); but the
symptoms of the patient's health during the intervals when he
is free from fever must be the chief guide to the most appro-
priate homoeopathic remedy."
ź 236.
The most appropriate and efficacious time for administering
the medicine in these cases is immediately or very soon after
the termination of the paroxysm, as soon as the patient has in
some degree recovered from its effects; it has then time to
effect all the changes in the organism requisite for the restora-
tion of health, without any great disturbance or violent com-
motion; whereas the action of a medicine, be it ever so
specifically appropriate, if given immediately before the
paroxysm, coincides with the natural recurrence of the disease
and causes such a reaction in the organism, such a violent
contention, that an attack of that nature produces at the very
least a great loss of strength, if it do not endanger life.” But
if the medicine be given immediately after the termination of
the fit, that is to say, at the period when the apyretic interval
has commenced and a long time before there are any prepara-
tions for the next paroxysm, then the vital force of the
organism is in the best possible condition to allow itself to be
quietly altered by the remedy, and thus restored to the healthy
State.
ź 237.
But if the stage of apyrexia be very short, as happens in
some very bad fevers, or if it be disturbed by some of the
1 Dr. von Bönninghausen, who has rendered more Service to our beneficent
system of medicine than any other of my disciples, has best elucidated this
subject, which demands so much care, and has facilitated the choice of the
efficient remedy for the various epidemics of fever, in his work entitled
Versuch einer homóopathischen. Therapie der Wechselfieber, 1833, Miinster bei
Regensberg.
2 This is observed in the fatal cases, by no means rare, in which a moderate
dose of opium given during the cold stage quickly deprived the patients of
life.
150 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
after sufferings of the previous paroxysm, the dose of homoeo-
pathic medicine should be administered when the perspiration
begins to abate, or the other subsequent phenomena of the
expiring paroxysm begin to diminish.
Ž 238.
It is only when the suitable medicine has with a single dose
destroyed several fits and manifest health has ensued, but
after some time indications of a new paroxysm appear, only
then can and must the same medicine be given again, provided
always the totality of the symptoms is still the same. This
recurrence of the same fever after an interval of health is,
however, only possible when the noxious influence that first
excited the intermittent fever still continues to act upon the
convalescent, as happens in marshy districts; in which case a
permanent cure is often only possible by the removal of this
exciting cause (as, for instance, a residence in a mountainous
country if the case was one of marsh intermittent fever).
Ž 239.
As almost every medicine causes in its pure action a special,
peculiar fever, and even a kind of intermittent fever with its
alternating states, differing from all other fevers that are
caused by other medicines, homoeopathic remedies may be
found in the extensive domain of medicines for all the numer-
ous varieties of natural intermittent fevers and, for a great
many of such fevers, even in the moderate collection of medi-
cines already proved on the healthy individual.
Ž 240. (a)
But if the remedy found to be the homoeopathic specific for
a prevalent epidemic of intermittent ſever do not effect a per-
fect cure in some one or other patient, if it be not the influence
of a marshy district that prevents the cure, it must always be
the psoric miasm in the background, in which case antipsoric
medicines must be employed until complete relief is obtained.
ź 241. (a)
Epidemics of intermittent fever, in situations where none
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 151
are endemic, are of the nature of chronic diseases, composed
of single acute paroxysms; each single epidemy is of a peculiar,
uniform character common to all the individuals attacked, and
when this character is found in the totality of the symptoms
common to all, it guides us to the discovery of the homoeo-
pathic (specific) remedy suitable for all the cases, which is
almost universally serviceable in those patients who enjoyed
tolerable health before the occurrence of the epidemy, that is
to say, who were not chronic sufferers from developed psora.
ź 242.
If, however, in such an epidemic intermittent fever the first
paroxysms have been left uncured, or if the patients have
been weakened by improper allopathic treatment; then the in-
herent psora that exists, alas! in so many persons, although in
a latent state, becomes developed, takes on the type of inter-
mittent fever, and to all appearance continues to play the part
of the epidemic intermittent fever, so that the medicine, which
would have been useful in the first paroxysms (rarely an anti-
psoric), is now no longer suitable and cannot be of any service.
We have now to do with a psoric intermittent fever only, and
this will generally be subdued by minute and rarely repeated
doses of sulphur or hepar sulphuris in a high potency.
ź 243. (a)
In those often very pernicious intermittent fevers which at-
tack a single person, not residing in a marshy district, we
must also at first, as in the case of acute diseases generally,
which they resemble in respect to their psoric origin, employ
for some days, to render what service it may, a homoeopathic
remedy selected for the special case from the other class of
proved (not antipsoric) medicines; but if, notwithstanding this
procedure, the recovery is deferred, we know that we have to
do with psora on the point of its development, and that in this
case antipsoric medicines alone can effect a radical cure.
ź 244.
The intermittent fevers endemic in marshy districts and
tracts of country frequently exposed to inundations, give a
152 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
great deal of work to physicians of the old school, and yet
a healthy man may in his youth become habituated even
to marshy districts and remain in good health, provided he
preserves a faultless regimen and his system is not lowered by
want, fatigue or pernicious passions. The intermittent fevers
endemic there would at the most only attack him on his first
arrival; but one or two very small doses of a highly potentized
solution of cinchona bark would conjointly with the well-
regulated mode of living just alluded to, speedily free him
from the disease. But persons who, while taking sufficient
corporeal exercise and pursuing a healthy system of intellectual
Occupations and bodily regimen, cannot be cured of marsh in-
termittent fever by one or a few of such small doses of
cinchona—in such persons psora, striving to develop itself,
always lies at the root of their malady, and their intermittent
fever cannot be cured in the marshy district without antipsoric
treatment." It sometimes happens that when these patients
exchange, without delay, the marshy district for one that is
dry and mountainous, recovery apparently ensues, (the fever
leaves them) if they be not yet deeply sunk in disease, that is
to say, if the psora was not completely developed in them and
can consequently return to its latent state; but they will never
regain perfect health without antipsoric treatment.
ź 245. (a)
Having thus seen what attention should, in the homoeopathic
treatment, be paid to the chief varieties of diseases, and to the
peculiar circumstances connected with them, we now pass on
to what we have to say respecting the remedies and the mode of
employing them, together with the diet and regimen to be observed.
during their use.
Every perceptibly progressive and strikingly increasing
amelioration in a transient (acute) or persistent (chronic) dis-
ease, is a condition which, as long as it lasts, completely
precludes every repetition of the administration of any medi-
* Large, oft-repeated doses of cinchona bark, as also concentrated cin-
Chonic remedies, such as the sulph Ate of quinime, have certainly the power of
freeing such patients from the periodical fits of the marsh ague; but those
thus deceived into the belief that they are cured remain diseased in another
way without antipsoric aid.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 153
cine whatsoever, because all the good the medicine taken con-
tinues to effect is now hastening towards its completion. Every
new dose of any medicine whatsoever, even of the one last
administered, that has hitherto shown itself to be salutary,
would in this case disturb the work of amelioration.
Ž 246. (a)
On the other hand, the slowly progressive amelioration con-
sequent on a very minute' dose, whose selection has been
accurately homoeopathic, when it has met with no hindrance to
the duration of its action, sometimes accomplishes all the
good the remedy in question is capable from its nature of per-
forming in a given case, in periods of forty, fifty or a hundred
days. This is, however, but rarely the case; and besides, it
must be a matter of great importance to the physician as well
as to the patient that, were it possible, this period should be
diminished to one half, one quarter, and even still less, so that
a much more rapid cure might be obtained. And this may be
very happily effected, as recent and oft-repeated observations
have shown, under three conditions: firstly, if the medicine
selected with the utmost care was perfectly homoeopathic;
secondly, if it was given in the minutest dose, so as to produce
the least possible excitation of the vital force, and yet suffi-
cient to effect the necessary change in it; and thirdly, if this
minutest yet powerful dose of the best selected medicine be
Tepeated at suitable intervals," which experience shall have
pronounced to be the best adapted for accelerating the cure to
the utmost extent, yet without the vital force, which it is
sought to influence to the production of a similar medicinal
1 In the former editions of the Orgamon I have advised that a single dose of
a well-selected homoeopathic medicine should always be allowed first fully
to expend its action before a new medicine is given or the same one repeated
—a doctrine which was the result of the positive experience that neither by
a larger dose of the remedy, which may have been well chosen (as has been
again recently proposed, but which would be very like a retrograde move—
ment), nor, what a mounts to the same thing. by Several Small doses of it
given in quick succession, can the greatest possible good be effected in the
treatment of diseases, more especially of chronic ones; and the reason of
this is, that by such a procedure the vital force does not quietly adapt itself
to the transition from the natural disease to the similar medicinal disease,
but is usually so violently excited and disturbed by a larger dose, or by
smaller doses of even a homoeopathically chosen remedy given rapidly one
after the other, that in most cases its reaction will be anything but Salutary
and will do more harm than good. As long as no more efficacious mode of
154 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
disease, being able to feel itself excited and roused to adverse
reactions.
proceeding than that then taught by me was discovered, the safe philan-
thropic maxim Of si now juvat, modo me wuceat, rendered it imperative for the
hom Oeopathic practitioner, for whom the weal of his fellow-creatures was
the highest Object, to allow, as a general rule in diseases, but a single dose
at a time, and that the very smallest, of the carefully selected remedy to
act upon the patient and, moreover, to exhaust its action. The very small-
est. I repeat, for it holds good and will continue to hold good as a homoeo-
pathic therapeutic maxim not to be refuted by any experience in the world.
that the best dose of the properly selected remedy is always the very small-
est. One in one of the high potencies (X), as well for chronic as for acute
diseases—a truth that is the inestimable property of pure homoeopathy and
which, as long as allopathy (and the new mongrel sect, whose treatment is a
mixture Of allopathic and homoeopathic processes. is not much better) con-
tinues to gnaw like a cancer at the life of sick human beings, and to ruin
them by large and ever larger doses of drugs, will keep pure homoeopathy
separated from these spurious arts as by an impassable gulf.
On the other hand. however, practice shows us that though a single one of
these Small doses may suffice to accomplish almost all that it was possible
for this medicine to do under the circumstances, in some, and especially in
slight cases of disease, particularly in those of young children and very
delicate and excitable adults, yet that in many, indeed in most cases, not
Only of very chronic diseases that have already made great progress and
have frequently been aggravated by a previous employment of inappropri-
ate medicines, but also Of Serious acute diseases, One such Smallest dose of
medicine in Our highly potentized dynamization is evidently insufficient to
effect all the curative action that might be expected from that medicine, for
it may unquestionably be requisite to administer several of them, in order
that the vital force may be pathogenetically altered by them to such a de-
gree and its salutary reaction Stimulated to such a height, as to enable it to
completely extinguish, by its reaction, the whole of that portion of the
Original disease that it lay in the power of the well-selected homoeopathic
remedy to eradicate; the best chosen medicine in such a small dose, given
but once, might certainly be of some service, but would not be nearly suffi
Cient.
But the careful homoeopathic physician would not venture Soon to repeat
the same dose Of the same remedy again and again, as from such a practice
he has frequently experienced no advantage. but most frequently, on close
observation, decided disadvantage. He generally witnessed aggravation,
from even the smallest dose of the most suitable remedy. Which he had given
One day, when repeated the next day and the next.
Now. in cases where he was convinced of the correctness Of his choice Of
the homoeopathic medicine, in order to obtain more benefit for the patient
than he was able to get hitherto from prescribing a single Small dose, the
idea often naturally struck him to increase the dose. Since, for the reasons
given above, one single dose only should be given; and, for instance, in place
of giving a single very minute globule moistened with the medicine in the
highest dynamization, to administer six. Seven or eight of them at Once, and
even a half or a whole drop. But the result was almost always less favora-
able than it should have been ; it was often actually unfavorable. Often
even very bad—an injury that, in a patient so treated, it is difficult to
repair.
The difficulty in this case is not solved by giving. instead, lower dynamiza-
tion of the remedy in a large dose.
Thus, increasing the strength of the Single doses of the homoeopathic
medicine with the view of effecting the degree of pathogenetic excitation of
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 155
% 247.
Under these conditions, the smallest doses of the best
selected homoeopathic medicine may be repeated with the best,
the vital force necessary to produce Satisfactory salutary reaction, fails al-
together, as experience teaches, to accomplish the desired object. The vital
force is thereby too violentiy and too suddenly assailed and excited to allow
it time to exercise a gradual, equable. Salutary reaction. to adapt itself to
the modification effected in it; hence it strives to repel, as if it were an
enemy, the medicine attacking it in excessive force, by means of vomiting,
diarrhoea. fever, perspiration, and so forth, and thus in a great measure it,
diverts and renders nugatory the aim of the incautious physician,—little or
no good towards curing the disease will be thereby accomplished; on the
contrary, the patient will be thereby perceptibly weakened and, for a long
time, the administration of even the smallest dose of the same remedy must
not be thought Of if we would not wish it to injure the patient.
But it happens, moreover, that a number of the smallest doses given for
the same Object in quick Succession accumulate in the organism into a kind
of excessively large dose. With (a few rare cases excepted) similar bad re-
Sults; in this case the vital force. not being able to recover itself betwixt,
every dose, though it be but Small, becomes oppressed and overwhelmed
and thus, being incapable of reacting in a salutary manner, it is necessitated
passively to allow in voluntarily the continuance of the over-strong medi-
cinal disease that has thus been forced upon it. just in the same manner as
we may every day observe from the allopathic abuse of large cumulative
doses of one and the same medicine, to the lasting injury of the patient.
Now, therefore, in order, whilst avoiding the erroneous method I have here
pointed out, to attain the desired object more certainly than hitherto, and
to administer the medicine selected in such a manner that it must exercise
all its efficacy without injury to the patient, that it may effect all the good
it is capable of performing in a given case of disease. I have latterly adopted
a peculiar method.
I perceived that, in order to discover this true middle path, we must be
guided as well by the nature of the different medicinal substances, as also
by the corporeal constitution of the patient, and the magnitude of his dis-
ease. So that—to give an example from the use of su phur in “” ronic (psoric)
diseases—the smallest dose of it (tinct. Sulph. X*) can seldom be repeated
with advantage, even in robust patients and in fully developed psora, oftener
than every seven days, a period of time which must be proportionally
lengthened when we have to treat weaker and more excitable patients of
this kind; in such cases we would do well to give such a dose only every
nine, twelve. or fourteen days, and continue to repeat the medicine until it
ceases to be of service. We this find (to abide by the instance of sulphur)
that in psoric diseases seldom fewer that four. often, however, six, eight and
even ten such doses (tinct. sulph. X*) are required to be successively admin-
istered at these intervals for the complete annihilation of the whole portion
of the chronic disease that is eradicable by sulphur—provided always there
had been no previous allopathic abuse of sulphur in the case. Thus even a
(primary) scathious et uption of rect mt origin, though it may have spread all over
the bºdy, mºtif he perfectly cured, in persons who are not too weakly, loy a dose of
tinct, sulph X* giurn, ev, ry reven days, in the course of from ten to twelve
weeks (accordingly with ten or twelve such globules), so that it will seldom
be necessary to aid the cure with a few doses of carb. veg X9 (also given at
the rate of one dose per week), without the slightest earternal treatment besides
frequent change.8 of linem, and good regimen.
When for other serious chronic diseases also we may consider it requisite,
as far as we can calculate, to give eight, nine or ten doses of tinct, sulph. (at
156 - oRGANON OF MEDICINE.
often with incredible results, at intervals of fourteen, twelve,
ten, eight, seven days, and, where rapidity is requisite, in
X°), it is yet more expedient in such cases, instead of giving them in unin-
terrupted succession, to interpose after every, or every second or third dose,
a dose of another medicine, which in this case , is next in point of hom CeO-
pathic suitableness to sulphur (usually hep. sulph ), and to allow this like-
wise to act for eight, nine, twelve or fourteen days before again commencing
a course of three doses of sulphur. -
But it not infrequently happens that the vital force refuses to permit sev-
eral doses of sulphur, even though they may be essential for the cure of the
chronic malady and are given at the intervals mentioned above, to act
quietly on itself; this refusal it reveals by some, though moderate, Sulphur
symptoms, which it allows to appear in the patient during the treatment.
In suchêcases it is sometimes advisable to administer a small dose of musc vom.
X*, allowing it to act for eight or ten days, in order to dispose the system
again to allow succeeding doses of the sulphur to act quietly and effectually
upon it. In those cases for which it is adapted, pºts X* is preferable.
But the vital force shows the greatest resistance to the salutary action
upon itself of the strongly indicated sulphur, and even exhibits manifest
aggravation of the chronic disease, though the sulphur be given in the very
smallest dose, though only a globule of the size of a mustard seed moistened
with tinct sulph. X9 be smelt, if the sulphur have formerly (it may be years
since) been improperly given allopathically in large doses. This is one la-
mentable circumstance that renders the best medical treatment of chronic
diseases almost impossible, among the many that the ordinary bungling
treatment of chronic diseases by the old school would leave us nothing to do
but to deplore, wére there not some mode of getting over the difficulty.
In such cases we have only to let the patient smell a single time strongly
at a globule the size of a mustard seed moistened with mercur. me all. X, and
allow this olfaction to act for about nine days, in order to make the vital
force again disposed to permit the sulphur (at least the olfaction of tinct.
sulph, X9) to exercise a beneficial influence on itself—a discovery for which
we are indebted to Dr. Griesselich. Of Carlsruhe. .
Of the other antipsoric remedies (except perhaps phosph. X) it is necessary
to administer fewer doses at similar intervals (of sepia and sil. at longer in-
tervals, without any intermediate. remedy, where they are homoeopathically
indicated), in order to cure all that is curable in a given case by the remedy
indicated. Hep, sulph. cale. X can rarely be taken or smelt at shorter inter-
vals than every fourteen or fifteen days. - -
Before making such a repetition of the dose the physician must of course
be convinced that his selection is truly homoeopathic.
In acute diseases, the time for repeating the fitly chosen medicine is regu-
lated by the greater or less rapidity of the course of the disease we have to
combat, so that, when necessary, it should be repeated after twenty-four,
sixteen, twelve, eight, four and even fewer hours, if the medicine continue
to prove beneficial without interruption—without producing new symptoms
—but is not sufficiently rapid in its action for the excessively quick and
dangerous course of the acute disease, so that in cholera, the most speedily
fatal disease we know, at the commencement of the dispase, one or two drops
of a mild solution of camphor must be given every five minutes, in order to
procure speedy and certain relief, and in the more developed cholera, doses
of cuprum, veralrum, phospho wº, &c. (X2), frequently require to be given
every two or three hours, and also arsenic, carbo vegetabilis, &c., at similar
short intervals. - - . . . .
In the treatment of so-called typhus fevers and other continued fevers,
the repetition, in smallest doses, of the medicines that proves itself of ser-
vice, must be regulated by the above directions.
( ).R.G.A. NON OF MEDICINE. 157
chronic diseases resembling cases of acute disease, at still
shorter: intervals, but in acute diseases at very much shorter
periods—every twenty-four, twelve, eight, four hours, in the
very acutest, every hour, up to as often as every five minutes,—
in every case in proportion to the more or less rapid course of
the disease and of the action of the medicine employed, as is
more distinctly explained in the last note.
Ž 248.
The dose of the same medicine may be repeated several
times according to circumstances, but only so long as until
either recovery ensues, or the same remedy ceases to do good
and the rest of the disease, presenting a different group of symp-
toms, demands a different homoeopathic medicine.
ź .249.
Every medicine prescribed for a case of disease which, in
the course of its action, produces new and troublesome symp-
toms not appertaining to the disease to be cured, is not Capa-
ble of effecting real improvement,” and cannot be considered
as homoeopathically selected; it must, therefore, either, if the
aggravation be considerable, be first partially neutralized as
In pure syphilitic diseases I have generally found a single dose of metallic
mercury (XO) sufficient; and yet not infrequently two or three such doses
were requisite, given at intervals of six or eight days, when the slightest
complication with psora was perceptible.
In cases where some particular medicine is urgently indicated, but where
the patient is very excitable and weak. a more efficient and certain proced-
ure than giving more substantial. though ever so small doses of the highly
potentized medicine, is a single Olfaction of a dry globule the size of a must-
ard seed that has been impregnated with the same medicine; this is effected
by holding the mouth of the phial that contains it first in one and then (if it
is wished to give a stronger dose) in the other nostril and making a momen-
tary inspiration; the action of this medicine. thus administerod, lasts just
as long as that of the medicine that has been taken in substance, hence even
this olfaction ought not to be repeated at shorter intervals. (")
* As all experience shows that the dose of the specifically suited homoeo-
pathic medicine can scarcely be prepared too small to effect perceptible
amelioration in the disease for which it is appropriate (§§ 275–279), we should
act injudiciously and hurtfully were we, when no improvement, or some,
though it be even slight, aggravation ensues. to repeat or even to increase
the dose of the same medicine, as is done in the old system. under the delu-
Sion that it was not efficacious on account of its small quantity (its too small
dose). Every aggravation by the production of new sumptoms—when nothing
untoward has occurred in the mental or physical regimen—invariably proves
wnswitableness on the part of the medicine formerly given in the case of disease
before us, but never indicates that the dose has been too weak.
158 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
soon as possible by an antidote before giving the next remedy
chosen more accurately according to similarity of action; or if
the troublesome symptoms be not very violent, the next remedy
must be given immediately, in order to take the place of the
improperly selected one. (q)
Ž 250.
When, to the observant practitioner who accurately investi-
gates the state of the disease, it is evident, in urgent cases
after the lapse of only six, eight or twelve hours, that he has
made a bad selection in the medicine last given, in that the
patient's state is growing perceptibly, however slightly, worse
from hour to hour, by the occurrence of new symptoms and
sufferings, it is not only allowable for him, but it is his duty
to remedy his mistake, by the selection and administration of
a homoeopathic medicine not merely tolerably suitable, but the
most appropriate possible for the existing state of the dis-
ease (ž 167). (a)
Ž 251. (a)
There are some medicines (e. g. ignatia, also bryonia and
rhus, and sometimes belladonna) whose power of altering man's
health consists chiefly in alternating actions—a kind of pri-
mary-action symptoms that are in part opposed to each other.
Should the practitioner find, on prescribing one of these, se-
lected on strict homoeopathic principles, that no improvement
follows, he will in most cases soon effect his object by giving
(in acute diseases, even within a few hours) a fresh and equally
small dose of the same medicine."
ź 252. (a)
But should we find, during the employment of the other
medicines in chronic (psoric) diseases, that the best selected
homoeopathic (antipsoric) medicine in the suitable (minutest)
dose does not effect an improvement, this is a sure sign that
the cause that keeps up the disease still persists, and that
there is some circumstance in the mode of life of the patient
! As I have more particularly described in the introduction to “Ignatia.”
(in the first volume of the Materia Medica Pura).
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 1.59
or in the situation in which he is placed, that must be re-
moved in order that a permanent cure may ensue.
Ž 253
Among the signs that, in all diseases, especially in such as
are of an acute nature, inform us of a slight commencement of
amelioration or aggravation that is not perceptible to every
one, the state of mind and the whole demeanor of the patient
are the most certain and instructive. In the case of ever so
slight an improvement we observe a greater degree of comfort,
increased calmness and freedom of the mind, higher spirits—
a kind of return of the natural state. In the case of ever so
Small a commencement of aggravation we have, on the con-
trary, the exact opposite of this: a constrained, helpless,
pitiable state of the disposition, of the mind, of the whole de-
meanor, and of all gestures, postures and actions, which may
be easily perceived on close observation, but cannot be de-
scribed in words."
ź 254.
The other new or increased symptoms, or, on the contrary,
the diminution of the original ones without any addition of
new ones, will soon dispel all doubts from the mind of the at-
tentively observing and investigating practitioner with regard
to the aggravation or amelioration; though there are among
patients persons who are either incapable of giving an account
of this amelioration or aggravation, or are unwilling to con-
fess it.
Ž 255. (a)
But even with such individuals we may convince ourselves
1 The signs of improvement in the disposition and mind, however, may be
expected only soon after the medicine has been taken when the dose has
been sufficiently minute (i. e. as small as possible); an unnecessarily larger
dose of even the most suitable homoeopathic medicine acts too violently,
and at first produces too great and too lasting a disturbance of the mind
and disposition, to allow us 800m to perceive the improvement in them. I
must here observe that this so essential rule is chiefly transgressed by pre-
sumptuous tyros in homoeopathy, and by physicians who are converted to
homoeopathy from the ranks of the old school. From old prejudices these
persons abhor the smallest doses of the lowest(q) dilution of medicine in such
cases, and hence they fail to experience the great advantages and blessings
of that mode of proceeding which a thousandfold experience has shown to
be the most salutary; they cannot effect all that homoeopathy is capable of
doing, and hence they have no claim to be considered its adherents.
160 ORGANON OF MEI) [CINE.
on this point by going with them through all the symptoms
enumerated in our notes of the disease one by one, and finding
that they complain of no new unusual symptoms in addition
to these, and that none of the old symptoms are worse. If
this be the case, and if an improvement in the disposition and
mind have already been observed, the medicine must have
effected positive diminution of the disease, or, if sufficient
time have not yet elapsed for this, it will soon effect it. Now,
supposing the remedy is perfectly appropriate, if the improve-
ment delay too long in making its appearance, this depends
either on some error of conduct on the part of the patient, or
on the homoeopathic aggravation produced by the medicine
lasting too long (% 157), consequently on the dose not being
Small enough. -
- ź 256.
On the other hand, if the patient mention the occurrence of
some fresh accidents and symptoms of importance—signs that
the medicine chosen has not been strictly homoeopathic—even
though he should good-naturedly assure us that he feels better,
we must not believe this assurance, but regard his state as
aggravated, as it will soon be perfectly apparent it is. (a)
ź 257.
The true(a) physician will take care to avoid making favor-
ite remedies of medicines, the employment of which he has, by
chance, perhaps found often useful, and which he has had
opportunities of using with good effect. If he do so, some
remedies of rarer use, which would have been more homoeo-
pathically suitable, consequently more serviceable, will often
be neglected.
ź 258.
The true practitioner, moreover, will not in his practice with
mistrustful weakness neglect the employment of those remedies
that he may now and then have employed with bad effects,
owing to an erroneous selection (from his own fault, there-
fore), or avoid them for other (false) reasons, as that they
were unhomoeopathic for the case of disease before him; he
must bear in mind the truth, that of medicinal agents that
oRGANON OF MEDICINE. 161
one alone invariably deserves the preference in every case of
disease which corresponds most accurately by similarity to the
totality of the characteristic symptoms, and that no paltry
prejudices should interfere with this serious choice.
% 259.
Considering the minuteness of the doses necessary and prop-
er in homoeopathic treatment, we can easily understand that
during the treatment everything must be removed from the
diet and regimen which can have any medicinal action, in order
that the small dose may not be overwhelmed and extinguished
or disturbed by any foreign medicinal irritant."
ź 260.
Hence the careful investigation into such obstacles to cure
is so much the more necessary in the case of patients affected
by chronic diseases, as their diseases are usually aggravated
by such noxious influences and other disease-causing errors in
the diet and régimen, which often pass unnoticed.”
1 The softest tones of a distant flute that in the still midnight hours would
inspire a tender heart with exalted feelings and dissolve it in religious
ecstasy, are inaudible and powerless amid discordant cries and the noise of
day. t - - -
* Coffee; fine Chinese and other herb teas; beer prepared with medicinal
vegetable substances unsuitable for the patient's state; so-called fine
liquors made with medicinal spices; all kinds of punch; spiced chocolate;
odorous waters and perfumes of many kinds; strong-scented ſlowers in the
apartment; tooth powders and essences and perfumed sachets compounded
of drugs; highly spiced dishes and sauces; spiced cakes and ices; crude
medicinal vegetables for soups; dishes of herbs, roots and stalks of plants
possessing medicinal qualities; old cheese, and meats that are in a state of
decomposition, or that possess medicinal properties (as the flesh and fat of
pork, ducks and geese, or veal that is too young and sour viands), ought just
as Certainly to be kept from patients as they should avoid all excesses in
food, and in the use of sugar and salt, as also spirituous drinks, heated
rooms. Woolen clothing next the skin (which should be exchanged in warm
Weather, first, for cotton, thon for linen garments), a sedentary life in close
apartments, or the frequent indulgence in more passive exercise (such as
riding, driving or swinging), prolonged suckling, taking a long siesta in a
recumbent posture (in bed), sitting up long at night, uncleanliness, un-
natural debauchery, enervation by reading obscene books, subjects of anger,
grief or vexation, a passion for play, over-exertion of mind or body, dwell-
ing in marshy districts, damp rooms, penurious living, &c. All these things
must be as far as possible avoided or removed, in order that the cure may -
not be obstructed or rendered impossible. Some of my disciples seem need-
lessly to increase the difficulties of the patient's dietary by forbidding the
use of many more, tolerably indifferent things, which is not to be com-
mended. . . . '.
12
162 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
§ 261.
The most appropriate regimen during the employment of
medicine in chronic diseases consists in the removal of such
obstacles to recovery, and in supplying where necessary the
reverse: innocent moral and intellectual recreation, active
exercise in the open air in almost all kinds of weather (daily
walks, slight manual labor), suitable, nutritious, unmedicinal
food and drink, &c.
& 262.
In acute diseases, on the other hand—except in cases of
mental alienation—the subtile, unerring internal sense of the
awakened life-preserving faculty determine so clearly and pre-
cisely, that the physician only requires to counsel the friends
and attendants to put no obstacles in the way of this voice of
nature by refusing anything the patient urgently desires in the
way of food, or by trying to persuade him to partake of any-
thing injurious.
Ž 263.
The desire of the patient affected by an acute disease with
regard to food and drink is certainly chiefly for things that
give palliative relief; they are, however, not strictly speaking
of a medicinal character, and merely supply a sort of want.
The slight hindrances that the gratification of this desire,
within moderate bounds, could oppose to the radical removal of
the disease will be amply counteracted and overcome by the
power of the homoeopathically suited medicine and the vital
force set free by it, as also by the refreshment that follows
from taking what has been so ardently longed for. In like
manner, in acute diseases the temperature of the room and the
heat or coolness of the bed-coverings must also be arranged
entirely in conformity with the patient's wish. He must be
kept free from all over-exertion of mind and exciting emo-
tions. (a)
ź 264.
The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines
1 This is, however, rare. Thus, for instance, in pure inflammatory dis-
eases, where aconite is so indispensable, whose action would be destroyed
by partaking of vegetable acids, the desire of the patient is almost always
for pure cold water only.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 163
of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to rely upon
their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of
their genuineness.
Ž 265.
It should be a matter of conscience with him to be thor-
oughly convinced in every case that the patient always takes
the right medicine.
ź 266. (a)
Substances belonging to the animal and vegetable kingdoms
possess their medicinal qualities most perfectly in their raw
state." º
Ž 267.
We gain possession of the powers of indigenous plants and
of such as may be had in a fresh state in the most complete
and certain manner by mixing their freshly expressed juice
*mmediately with the equal parts of spirits of wine of a
strength sufficient to burn in a lamp. After this has stood a
1 All crude animal and vegetable substances have a greater or less amount
of medicinal power, and are capable of altering man's health, each in its own
peculiar Way. Those plants and animals used by the most enlightened na-
tions as food have this advantage over all others, that they contain a larger
amount of nutritious constituents; and they differ from the others in this,
that their medicinal powers in their raw state are either not very great in
themselves, or are diminished by the culinary processes they are subjected
to in cooking for domestic use, by the expression of the pernicious juice
(like the cassava root of South America), by fermentation (of the rye-flour
in the dough for making bread, Sour-crout prepared without vinegar and
pickled gherkins), by smoking and by the action of heat (in boiling, stewing,
toasting, roasting, baking), whereby the medicinal parts of many of these
substances are in part destroyed and dissipated. By the addition of salt
(pickling) and vinegar (sauces, salads) animal and vegetable substances
certainly lose much of their injurious medicinal qualities, but other disad-
vantages result from these additions.
But even those plants that possess most medicinal power lose that in part
or completely by such processes. By perfect desiccation all the roots of the
various kinds of iris, of the horseradish, of the different species of arum and
of the peonies lose almost all their medicinal virtue. The juice of the most
virulent plants often becomes an inert, pitch-like mass, from the heat em-
ployed in preparing the ordinary extracts By merely standing a long time,
the expressed juice of the most deadly plants becomes quite powerless; even
at a moderate atmospheric temperature it rapidly takes on the vinous fer-
mentation (and thereby loses much of its medicinal power), and immediately
thereafter the acetous and putrid fermentation, whereby it is deprived of
all its peculiar medicinal properties; the fecula that is then deposited, if
well washed, is quite innocuous, like ordinary starch. By the transudation
that takes place when a number of green plants are laid one above the
other, the greatest part of their medicinal properties is lost.
164 ORGANON OF MIEDICINE.
day and a night in a close stoppered bottle and deposited the
fibrinous and albuminous matters, the clear superincumbent
fluid is then to be decanted off for medicinal use." All fer-
mentation of the vegetable juice will be at once checked by the
spirits of wine mixed with it and rendered impossible for the
future, and the entire medicinal power of the vegetable juice
is thus retained (perfect and uninjured) for ever by keeping the
preparation in well-corked bottles and excluded from the sun's
light.”
Ž 268. A
The other exotic plants, barks, seeds and roots that cannot
be obtained in the fresh state the sensible practitioner will
never take in the pulverized form on trust, but will first con-
vince himself of their genuineness in their crude, entire state
before making any medicinal employment of them.”(a)
1 Buchholz (Taschenb f. Scheidek. u. Ap' th a. d. J , 1815, Weimar, Abth. 1,
vi) assures his readers (and his reviewer in the Leipziger Literaturzewtung,
1816, No. 82, does not contradict him) that for this excellent mode of prepar-
ing medicine we have to thank the campaign in Russia, whence it was (in
1812) imported into Germany. According to the noble practice of Germans
to be unjust towards their own country men, he conceals the fact that this
discovery and those directions, which he quotes in my very words from the
first edition of the Orgamon of Rational Medicine, § 230 and note, proceed from
me, and that I first published them to the world two years before the Russian
campaign (the Orgamon appeared in 1810). Some folks would rather assign
the origin of a discovery to the deserts of Asia, than to a German to whom
the honor belongs. O tempora! O mores!
Alcohol has certainly been sometimes before this used for mixing with
vegetable juice, e. g. to preserve them some time before making extracts of
them, but never with the view of administering them in this form.
2 Although equal parts of alcohol and freshly expressed juice are usually
the most suitable proportion for effecting the deposition of the fibrinous
and albuminous matters, yet for plants that contain much thick mucus (e.
g. Symphytum offieinale, Viola tricolor, &c.) or an excess of albumen (e.g. Æthusa
cynapiwm, Solanum migrum, &c.), a double proportion of alcohol is generally
required for this object. Plants that are very deficient in juice, as oleander,
Buacus, Taſcus, Ledum, Sabina, &c., must first be pounded up alone into a
moist, fine mass, and then stirred up with a double quantity of alcohol, in
order that the juice may combine with it, and being thus extracted by the
alcohol, may be pressed out; these latter may also when dried be brought
with milk-sugar to the millionfold trituration, and then be further diluted
and potentized (v. § 271).
3 In order to preserve them in the form of powder, a precaution is requisite
that has hitherto been usually neglected by druggists, and hence powders;
even of well-dried animal and vegetable substances could not be preserved
uninjured even in well-corked bottles. The entire crude vegetable sub-
stances, though perfectly dry, yet contain, as an indispensable condition of
the cohesion of their texture, a certain quantity of moisture, which does not
indeed prevent the unpulverized drug from remaining in as dry a state as is
requisite to preserve it from corruption, but which is quite too much for the
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 165
Ž 269. (a)
The homoeopathic system of medicine develops for its use,
to a hitherto unheard-of degree, the spirit-like medicinal pow-
ers of the crude substances by means of a process peculiar to
it and which has hitherto never been tried, whereby only they
all become penetratingly efficacious and remedial, even those
that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medi-
cinal power on the human body.
% º' ().
Thus two drops of the fresh vegetable juice mingled with
equal parts of alcohol are diluted with ninety-eight drops of
alcohol and potentized by means of two succussions, whereby
the first development of power is formed, and this process is
repeated through twenty-nine more phials, each of which is
filled three quarters full with ninety-nine drops of alcohol, and
each succeeding phial is to be provided with one drop from the
preceding phial (which has already been shaken twice) and is
in its turn twice shaken," and in the same manner at last the
finely pulverized state. The animal or vegetable substance which in its en-
tire state was perfectly dry, furnishes Uherefore, when finely pulverized, a
somewhat moist powder, which, without rapidly becoming spoilt and mouldy,
can yet not be preserved in corked bottles if not previously freed from this
superfluous moisture. This is best effected by spreading out the powder in a
flat tin saucer with a raised edge, which floats in a vessel full of boiling
water (i. e. a water-bath), and, by means of stirring it about, drying it to
such a degree that all the small atoms of it (no longer stick together in
lumps, but) like dry, fine Sand, are easily separated from each other, and are
readily converted into dust. In this dry state the fine powders may be kept
for ever uninjured in well-corked and sealed bottles, in all their original
complete medicinal power, without ever being injured by mites or mould ; and
they are best preserved when the bottles are kept protected from the day-
Light (in covered boxes, chests. cases). If not shut up in air-tight vessels,
and not preserved from the access of the light of the sun and day, all animal
and vegetable substances in time gradually lose their medicinal power more
and more, even in the entire State, but still more in the form of powder.
1 In order to maintain a fixed and measured standard for developing the
power of liquid medicines, multiplied experience and careful observation
bave led me to adopt two succussions for each phial, in preference to the
greater number formerly employed (by which the medicines were too highly
potentized). There are, however, homoeopathists who carry about with
them on their visits to patients the homoeopathic medicines in the fluid
state, and who yet assert that they do not become more highly potentized
in the course of time, but they thereby show their want of ability to observe
correctly. I dissolved a grain of soda in half an ounce of water mixed with
alcohol in a phial, which was thereby filled two-thirds full, and shook this
solution continuously for half an hour, and this fluid was in potency and
energy equal to the thirtieth development of power.(")
º
V
166 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
thirtieth development of power (potentized decillionth dilution
X), which is the one most generally used.
ź 271.
All other substances adapted for medicinal use—except
sulphur, which has of late years been only employed in the
form of highly diluted (X) tincture(a) —as pure or oxydized
and sulphuretted metals and other minerals, petroleum, phos-
phorus, as also parts and juices of plants that can only be
obtained in the dry state, animal substances, neutral salts, &c.,
all these are first to be potentized by trituration for three
hours, up to the millionfold pulverulent attenuation, and of
this one grain is to be dissolved, and brought to the thirtieth
development of power through twenty-seven attenuating phials,
in the same manner as the vegetable juices."
ź 272.
In no case is it requisite to administer more than one single,
simple medicinal substance at one time.*(q)
ź 273.
It is not conceivable how the slightest dubiety could exist
as to whether it was more consistent with nature and more
rational to prescribe a single, well-known medicine at one time
in a disease, or a mixture of several differently acting drugs.
Ž 274.
As the true physician finds in simple medicines, adminis-
tered singly and uncombined, all that he can possibly desire
(artificial disease-forces which are able by homoeopathic power
completely to overpower, extinguish, and permanently cure
natural diseases), he will, mindful of the wise maxim that “it
is wrong to attempt to employ complex means when simple
1 As is still more circumstantially described in the prefaces to Arsemic and
Pulsatilla in the Mater ia Medica Pura (“) -
2 Some homoeopathists have made the experiment, in cases where they
deemed one remedy homoeopathically suitable for One portion of the symp-
toms of a case of disease, and a second for another portion. Of administering
both remedies at the same Or at almost the same time; but I earnestly de-
precate such a hazardous experiment, which can never be necessary, though
it may sometimes seem to be of use.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 167
p=
3
means suffice,” never think of giving as a remedy any but a
single, simple medicinal substance; for these reasons also, be-
cause even though the simple medicines were thoroughly
proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unim-
paired healthy state of man, it is yet impossible to foresee
how two and more medicinal substances might, when com-
pounded, hinder and alter each other's actions on the human
body; and because, on the other hand, a simple medicinal
substance when used in diseases, the totality of whose symp-
toms is accurately known, renders efficient aid by itself alone,
if it be homoeopathically selected; and supposing the worst
case to happen, that it was not chosen in strict conformity to
similarity of symptoms, and therefore does no good, it is yet
so far useful that it promotes our knowledge of therapeutic
agents, because, by the new symptoms excited by it in such a
case, those symptoms which this medicinal substance had
already shown in experiments on the healthy human body are
confirmed, an advantage that is lost by the employment of all
compound remedies."
ź 275.
The suitableness of a medicine for any given case of dis-
ease does not depend on its accurate homoeopathic selection
alone, but likewise on the proper size, or rather smallness, of
the dose. If we give too strong a dose of a medicine which
may have been even quite homoeopathically chosen for the
morbid state before us, it must, notwithstanding the inherent
beneficial character of its nature, prove injurious by its mere
magnitude, and by the unnecessary, too strong impression
which, by virtue of its homoeopathic similarity of action, it
makes upon the vital force which it attacks and, through the
vital force, upon those parts of the organism which are the
most sensitive, and are already most affected by the natural
disease. (a)
! When the rational physician has chosen the perfectly homoeopathic
medicine for the well-considered case of disease and administered it intern-
ally, he will leave to irrational allopathic routine the practice of giving
drinks composed of Other medicinal substances, of applying compresses of
herbs or formentations with various plants, of injecting medicated glysters
and of rubbing in this or the other ointment.
168 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
Ž 276.
For this reason, a medicine, even though it may be homoeo-
pathically suited to the case of disease, does harm in every
dose that is too large, the more harm the larger the dose, and
by the magnitude of the dose it does more harm the greater its
homoeopathicity and the higher the potency" selected, and it
does much more injury than any equally large dose of a medi-
cine that is unhomoeopathic, and in no respect adapted (allo-
pathic) to the morbid state; for in the former case the so-called
homoeopathic aggravation (4% 157–160)—that is to say, the
very analogous medicinal disease produced by the vital force
stirred up by the excessively large dose of medicine, in the
parts of the organism that are most suffering and most irritated
by the original disease—which medicinal disease, had it been
of appropriate intensity, would have gently effected a cure—
rises to an injurious height; the patient, to be sure, no longer
suffers from the original disease, for that has been homoeo-
pathically eradicated, but he suffers all the more from the
excessive medicinal disease and from useless exhaustion of his
strength.
Ž 277.
For the same reason, and because a medicine, provided the
dose of it was sufficiently small, is all the more salutary and
almost marvellously efficacious the more accurately homoeo-
pathic its selection has been, a medicine whose selection has
been accurately homoeopathic must be all the more salutary
the more its dose is reduced to the degree of minuteness appro-
priate for a gentle remedial effect.
ź 278,
Here the question arises, what is this most suitable degree
of minuteness for sure and gentle remedial effect; how small,
in other words, must be the dose of each individual medicine,
homoeopathically selected for a case of disease, to effect the
1 The praise bestowed of late years by some few homoeopathists on the
larger doses is owing to this, either that they chose low dynamizations of
the medicine to be administered, as I myself used to do twenty years ago,
from not knowing any better, or that the medicines selected were not per-
fectly homoeopathic.
2 See note to $ 246.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 169
best cure? To solve this problem, and to determine for every
particular medicine, what dose of it will suffice for homoeo-
pathic therapeutic purposes and yet be so minute that the
gentlest and most rapid cure may be thereiy obtained—to
solve this problem is, as may easily be conceived, not the
work of theoretical speculation; not by fine-spun reasoning,
not by specious sophistry can we expect to obtain the solution
of this problem. Pure experiment, careful observation, and
accurate experience can alone determine this; and it were
absurd to adduce the large doses of unsuitable (allopathic)
medicines of the old system, which do not touch the diseased
side of the organism homoeopathically, but only attack the
parts unaffected by the disease, in opposition to what pure ex-
perience pronounces respecting the smallness of the doses re-
Quired for homoeopathic cures.
ź 279.
* -
This pure experience shows UNIVERSALLY, that if the dis-
ease do not manifestly depend on a considerable deterioration
of an important viscus (even though it belong to the chronic
and complicated diseases), and if during the treatment all
other alien medicinal influences are kept away from the patient,
the dose of the homoeopathically selected remedy can never be pre-
pared so small that it shall not be stronger than the natural
disease, and shall not be able to overpower, eactinguish and cure
it, at least in part, as long as it is capable of causing some,
though but a slight preponderance of its own symptoms over
those of the disease resembling it (slight homoeopathic aggrava-
tion, % 157–160) immediately after its ingestion.(a)
ź 280.
This incontrovertible axiom of experience is the standard of
measurement by which the doses of all homoeopathic medicines,
without eacception, are to be reduced to such an extent that, after
their ingestion, they shall eaccite a scarcely observable homoeo-
pathic aggravation, (d) let the diminutive of the dose go ever so
far, and appear ever so incredible to the materialistic ideas of
170 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
ordinary physicians; their idle declamations must cease before
the verdict of unerring experience.
ź 281.
Every patient is, especially in his diseased points, capable
of being influenced in an incredible degree by medicinal agents
corresponding by similarity of action; and there is no person,
be he ever so robust, and even though he be affected only
with a chronic or so-called local disease, who will not soon ex-
perience the desired change in the affected part, if he take the
salutary, homoeopathically suited medicine in the smallest
conceivable dose, who, in a word, will not thereby be much
more altered in his health than a healthy infant of but a day
old would be. How insignificant and ridiculous is mere theoret-
teal scepticism in opposition to this unerring, infallible ex-
perimental proof (q)
* Let them learn from the mathematicians how true it is that a substance
divided into ever so many parts must still contain in its smallest conceiva-
ble parts always some of this Substance, and that the Smallest conceivable
parts does not cease to be some of this substance and cannot possibly become
nothing;-let them, if they are capable of being taught, hear from natural
philosophers that there are enormously powerful things (forces) which are
perfectly destitute of weight, as, for example, caloric, light, &c., consequent-
ly infinitely lighter than the medicine contained in the smallest doses used
in homoeopathy;-let them, if they can, weigh the irritating words that
bring on a bilious fever, or the mournful intelligence respecting her only
son that kills the mother; let them touch, for a quarter of an hour, a mag-
net capable of lifting a hundred pound weight, and learn from the pain it
excites that even imponderable agencies can produce the most violent med-
icinal effects upon man;–and let the weak ones among them allow the pit of
their stomach to be slightly touched by the thumb's point of a strong-willed
mesmeriser for a few minutes, and the disagreeable sensations they then
suffer will make them repent of attempting to set limits to the boundless
activity of nature; the weak-minded creatures!
If the allopathist who is trying the homoeopathic System imagine he can-
not bring himself to give Such small and profoundly attenuated doses, let
him only ask himself what risk he runs by SO doing? If the scepticism which
holds what is ponderable only to be real, and all that is imponderable to be
nothing, be right, nothing Worse could result from a dose that appears to
him to be nothing, than that no effect would ensue—and consequently this
would be always much more in 11 Ocuous than What must result from his too
large doses of allopathic medicine. Why will he consider his inexperience,
coupled with prejudice, more reliable than an experience of many years
corroborated by facts? And, moreover, the homoeopathic medicine becomes
potentized at every division and diminution by trituration or succession 1—a
development of the inherent powers of medicinal substances which was
never dreamed of before my time, and which is of SO powerful a character
that of late years I have been compelled by convincing experience to reduce
the ten successions formerly directed to be given after each attenuation, to
tº UO.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 171
ź 282.
The smallest possible dose of homoeopathic medicine, capa-
ble of producing only the very slightest homoeopathic aggrava-
tion, will, because it has the power of exciting symptoms
bearing the greatest possible resemblance to the original dis-
ease (but yet stronger even in the minute dose), attack
principally and almost solely the parts in the organism that
are already affected, highly irritated, and rendered excessively
susceptible to such a similar stimulus, and will alter the vital
force that rules in them to a state of very similar artificial
disease, somewhat greater in degree than the natural one was;
this artificial disease will substitute itself for the natural (the
original) disease, so that the living organism now suffers from
the artificial medicinal disease alone, which, from its nature
and owing to the minuteness of the dose, will soon be ex-
tinguished by the vital force that is striving to return to the
normal state, and (if the disease were only an acute one) the
body is left perfectly free from disease—that is to say, quite
well.
Ž 283.
Now, in order to act really in conformity with nature, the
true physician will prescribe his well selected homoeopathic
medicine only in exactly as small a dose as will just suffice to
overpower and annihilate the disease before him—in a dose of
such minuteness, that if human fallibility should betray him
into administering an inappropriate medicine, the injury ac-
cruing from its nature being unsuited to the disease will be
diminished to a mere trifle; moreover the harm done by the
smallest possible dose is so slight, that it may be immediately
extinguished and repaired by the natural vital powers, and
by the speedy administration of a remedy more suitably se-
lected according to similarity of action, and given also in the
smallest dose. (6)
Ž 284.
The action of a dose, moreover, does not diminish in the
direct ratio of the quantity of material medicine contained in
the dilutions used in homoeopathic practice. Eight drops of
the tincture of a medicine to the dose do not produce four
172 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
times as much effect on the human body as two drops, but
only about twice the effect that is produced by two drops to
the dose. In like manner, one drop of a mixture of a drop of
the tincture with ten drops of some unmedicinal fluid, when
taken, will not produce ten times more effect than one drop of a
mixture ten times more attenuated, but only about (scarcely)
twice as strong an effect, and so on, in the same ratio—so that
a drop of the lowest(q) dilution must, and really does, display
still a very considerable action."
%. 285.
The diminution of the dose essential for homoeopathic use,
will also be promoted by diminishing its volume, so that, if,
instead of a drop of a medicinal dilution, we take but quite a
small part” of such a drop for a dose, the object of diminish-
ing the effect still further will be very effectually attained;
and that this will be the case may be readily conceived for
this reason, because with the smaller volume of the dose but
few nerves of the living organism can be touched, whereby
the power of the medicine is certainly also communicated to
the whole organism, but it is a weaker power.
3 286.
For the same reason the effect of a homoeopathic dose of
1 Supposing one drop of a mixture that contains 1 th of a grain of medi-
TÜ
cine produces an effect . * & ge e te e º * * > e = Q,
one drop of a more diluted mixture containing i 1_th of a grain of the
() ()
medicine will only produce an effect tº e sº tº * # g = a 2:
if it, containrn 1___th of a grain of medicine, about . ſº e º =a+;
0, 00 0
if it contain 1 th of a grain of medicine, it will produce an effect ~ a2;
100,000,000
and thus it goes on, the volume of the doses being equal, with every (perhaps
more than) quadratic diminution of the quantity of medicine, the action on
the human body will be diminished each time to only about One llalf. I have
very often seen a drop of the decillion-fold dilution of tincture of nux vomica.
produce pretty nearly just half as much effect as a drop of the quintillion-
fold dilution, under the same circumstances and in the same individual.
2 For this purpose it is most convenient to employ fine Sugar globules of
the size of poppy seeds, one of which imbibed with the medicine and put into
the dispensing vehicle constitutes a medicinal dose, which contains alyout
the three hundreth part of a drop, for three hundred such small globules
will be adequately moistened by one drop of alcohol. The dose is vastly
diminished by laying one such globule alone upon the tongue and giving
nothing to drink. If it be necessary, in the case of a very sensitive patient,
to employ the smallest possible dose and to bring about the most rapid re-
sult, one single olfaction merely will suffice (see note to § 288).
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 173
medicine increases, the greater the quantity of liquid in which
it is dissolved when administered to the patient, although the
actual amount of medicine it contains remains the same. For
in this case, when the medicine is taken, it comes in contact
with a much larger surface of sensitive nerves responsive to
the medicinal action. Although theorists may imagine there
should be a weakening of the action of a dose of medicine by
its dilution with a large quantity of liquid, experience asserts
exactly the opposite, at all events when the medicines are
employed homoeopathically."
ź 287.
But in this increase of action by the mixture of the dose of
medicine with a larger quantity of liquid (before its ingestion),
the result is vastly different whether the mixture of the dose
of medicine with a certain quantity of liquid is performed
merely superficially and imperfectly, or so uniformly and in-
timately” that the smallest portion of the diluting fluid receives
the same quantity of medicine in proportion as all the rest; for
1 It is only the most simple of all Stimulants, wine and alcohol, that have
their heating and intoxicating action diminished by dilution with much
Water. -
2. By the word intimately I mean this: that when, for instance, the drop of a
medicinal fluid has been shaken up once with one hundred drops of spirits of
wine; that is to say, the phial containing both, held in the hand, has been
radidly moved from above downward with a single smart jerk of the arm,
there certainly ensues a thorough mixture of the whole, but with two. three,
ten and more such Strokes, this mixture becomes much more intimate; that
is to say, the medicinal power becomes much more potentized, and the spirit
of this medicine, so to speak, becomes much more unfolded, developed, and
rendered much more penet, rating in its action on the nerves. If, then, the
required object we wish to attain with the low dilutions be the diminution
of the doses for the purpose of moderating their powers upon the Organism,
we would do well to give no more than two such succussion-jerks to each of
the twenty, thirty, &c.. dilution phials, and thus to develop the medicinal
power only moderately. It is also advisable, in attenuating the medicine in
the state of dry powder by trituration in a porcelain mortar, to keep within
certain limits, and, for example, to triturate strongly, for one hour only,
one grain of the crude entire medicinal substance, mixed with the first hun-
dred grains of milk-sugar, and to triturate the attenuation of one grain of
this mixture with another hundred grains of milk-sugar (to the 1 th at-
* 0,000
tenuation) likewise only for one hour, and to make the third attenuation (to
1 ) also by one hour of strong trituration of one grain of the previous
1,000,000
mixture with one hundred grains of milk-sugar, in order to bring the medi-
cine to such an attenuation that its development of power shall remain
moderate. A more exact description of this process will be found in the
prefaces to Arsenic and Pulsatilla in the Materia Medica Pura.(a)
174 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
the latter becomes much more medicinally powerful by the
diluting mixture than the former. From this every one will
be able to judge for himself how to proceed with the regula-
tion of the homoeopathic medicinal doses when he desires to
diminish their medicinal action as much as possible, in order
to make them suitable for the most sensitive patients."
3 288.
The action of medicines in the liquid form” upon the living
1 The higher we carry the attenuation accompanied by dynamization (by
two succussion-strokes) with SO much the more rapid and penetrating action
does the preparation seem to affect the vital force and to alter the health,
with but slight diminution of strength even when this operation is carried
very far-in place, as is usual (and generally sufficient) to X, when it is car-
ried up to XX, T, TC, and higher; only that then the action always ap-
pears to last a shorter time.(“)
* It is especially in the form of vapor, by Olfaction and inhalation of the
medicinal aura that is always emanating from a globule impregnated with
a medicinal fluid in a high development of power, and placed, dry, in a small
phial, that the homoeopathic remedies act most surely and most powerfully.
The homoeopathic physician allows the patient to hold the open mouth of
the phial first in one nostril, and in the act of inspiration draw the air out
of it into himself and then, if it is wished to give a stronger dose, smell in
the same manner with the otlier nostril, more or less strongly, according to -
the strength it is intended the dose should be; he then corks up the phial
and replaces it in his pocket case, to prevent any misuse of it, and unless he
wish it, he has no occasion for an apothecary’s assistance in his practice. A glo-
bule, of which ten, twenty or One hundred weigh one grain, impregnated
with the thirtieth potentized dilution, and then dried, retains for this pur- .
pose all its power wmdiminished for at least eighteen or twenty years (my ex-
perience extends this length of time), even though the phial be opened a
thousand times during that period, if it be but protected from heat and the
sun's light. Should both mostrils be stopped up by coryza or polypus, the
patient should inhale by the mouth, holding the orifice of the phial betwixt
his lips. In little children it may be applied close to their nostrils whilst
they are asleep, with the certainty of producing an effect. The medicinal
aura thus inhaled comes in contact with the nerves in the walls of the spac-
ious cavities it traverses without obstruction, and thus produces a salutary
influence on the vital force, in the mildest yet most powerful manner, and
this is much preferable to every other mode of administering the medica-
ment in substance by the mouth. All that homoeopathy is capable of curing
(and what can it not cure beyond the domain of mere manual surgical affec-
tions?) among the most severe chronic diseases that have not been quite ruined
by allopathy, as also among acute diseases, will be most safely and certainly
cured by this olfaction. I can Scarcely name One in a hundred out of the
many patients that have sought the advice of myself and my assistant dur-
ing the past year, whose chronic or acute disease we have not treated with
the most happy results, solely by means of this olfaction; during the latter
half of this year, moreover, I have become Convinced (of what I never could
previously have believed) that by this Olfactiou the power of the medicine
is exercised upon the patient in, at least, the same degree of strength, and
that more quietly and yet just as long as When the dose of medicine is taken
by the mouth, and that, consequently, the intervals at which the olfaction
( ) RGANON OF MEDICINE. 175
human body takes place in such a penetrating manner, spreads
out from the point of the sensitive fibres provided with nerves
whereto the medicine is first applied with such inconceivable
rapidity and so universally through all parts of the living
body, that this action of the medicine must be denominated a
spirit-like (a dynamic, virtual) action.
ź 289.
Every part of our body that possesses the sense 9f touch, is
also capable of receiving the influence of medicines, and of
propagating their power to all other parts."
ź 290.
Besides the stomach, the tongue and the mouth are the
parts most susceptible to the medicinal influences; but the in-
terior of the nose is more especially so, and the rectum, the
genitals, as also all particularly sensitive parts of our body
are almost equally capable of receiving the medicinal action;
hence also, parts that are destitute of skin, wounded or ulcer-
ated spots permit the powers of medicines to exercise almost
as penetrating an action upon the organism as if the medicine
had been taken by the mouth or still better by olfaction and
inhalation.
ź 291.
Even those organs which have lost their peculiar sense, e. g.
a tongue and palate that have lost the faculty of tasting, or a
nose that has lost the faculty of smelling, communicate the
power of the medicine that acts first on them alone not less
perfectly to all the other organs of the body.
Ž 292.
Even the external surface of the body, covered as it is with
skin and epidermis, is not unsusceptible of the powers of
should be repeated should not be shorter than in the ingestion of the ma-
terial dose by the mouth.(?)
1 A patient even destitute of the sense of smell may expect an equally
perfect action and cure from the medicine by olfaction.
176 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
medicine, especially those in a liquid form, but the most
sensitive parts are also the most susceptible."(q) -
ź 293. (a)
I find it necessary to allude here to animal magnetism, as it
is termed, or rather mesmerism (as it should be called, out of
gratitude to Mesmer, its first founder), which differs so much
in its nature from all other therapeutic agents. This curative
power, often so stupidly denied, which streams upon a patient
by the contact of a well-intentioned person powerfully exerting
his will, either acts homoeopathically, by the production of
symptoms similar to those of the diseased state to be cured;
and for this purpose a single pass made, without much exer-
tion of the will, with the palms of the hands not too slowly
from the top of the head downwards over the body to the tips
of the toes,” is serviceable in, for instance, uterine haemor-
rhages, even in the last stage when death seems approaching;
or it is useful by distributing the vital force uniformly through-
out the organism, when it is in abnormal excess in one part and
deficient in other parts, for example, in rush of blood to the
head and sleepless, anxious restlessness of weakly persons,
&c., by means of a similar, single, but somewhat stronger
1 Rubbing-in appears to favor the action of the medicines only in this way,
that the friction makes the skin more sensitive, and the living fibres there-
by more capable of feeling, as it were, the medicinal power and of communi-
cating to the whole organism this health-affecting sensation. The previous
employment of friction to the inside of the thigh makes the mere laying on
of the mercurial ointment afterwards quite as powerfully medicinal as if
the ointment itself had been rubbed upon that part, a process which is
termed rubbing-im, but it is very doubtful whether the metal itself can pene-
trate in substance into the interior of the body. Or be taken up by the absor-
bent vessels by means of this so-called rubbing-in. (") Homoeopathy, how-
ever, hardly ever requires for its cures the rubbing-in of any medicine, nor
does it need any mercurial Ointment.
2 The smallest homoeopathic dose, (*) which, however. Often effects wonders
when used on proper occasions. Imperfect homoeopathists, Who think them-
selves monstrously clever, not infrequently deluge their patients in difficult
diseases with doses of different medicines, given rapidly one after the other,
which, although they may have been homoeopathically selected and given
in highly potentized attenuation, bring the patients in to such an over-
excited state that life and death are struggling for the mastery, and the
least additional quantity of medicine would infallibly kill them. In such
cases a mere gentle mesmeric pass and the frequent application, for a short
time, of the hand of a well-intentioned person to the part that is particular-
ly affected, produce the harmonious uniform distribution of the vital force
throughout the organism, and therewith rest, sleep and recovery.
ORGANON OF MEDICINE. 177
pass; or for the immediate communication and restoration of
the vital force to some one weakened part or to the whole or-
ganism, -an object that cannot be attained so certainly and
with so little interference with the other medicinal treatment
by any other agent besides mesmerism. If it is wished to
supply a particular part with the vital force, this is effected
by concentrating a very powerful and well-intentioned will for
the purpose, and placing the hands or tips of the fingers on
the chronically weakened parts, whither an internal chronic
dyscrasia has transferred its important local symptom, as, for
example, in the case of old ulcers, amaurosis, paralysis of
certain limbs, &c." Many rapid apparent cures performed in
all ages, by mesmerisers endowed with great natural power
belong to this class. The effect of communicated human
power upon the whole human organism was most brilliantly
shown, in the resuscitation of persons who had lain some time
apparently dead, by the most powerful, sympathetic will of a
man in full vigor of vital force,” and of this kind of resurrec-
tion history records many undeniable examples. -
Ž 294.
All the above-mentioned methods of practicing mesmerism
depend upon an influx of more or less vital force into the
patient, and hence are termed positive mesmerism.” An op-
posite mode of employing mesmerism, however, as it produces
1 Although by this restoration of the vital force, which ought to be re-
peated from time to time, no permanent cure can be effected in cases where.
as has been taught above, a general internal dyscrasia, lies at the root of the
old local affection, as it always does, yet this positive strengthening and im-
mediate saturation with the vital force (which no more belongs to the cate-
gory of palliatives than does eating and drinking when hunger and thirst
are present) is no mean auxiliary to the actual treatment of the whole dis-
ease by homoeopathic medicines.
2 Especially of one of those persons, of whom there are not many, who,
along with great kindness of disposition and perfect bodily powers, possesses
but a very moderate desire for seawal intercourse, which it would give him very
little trouble wholly to suppress, in whom, consequently, all the fine vital
spirits that would otherwise be employed in the preparation of the semen,
are ready to be communicated to others, by touching them and powerfully
exerting the will. Some powerful mesmerisers, with whom I had become ac-
quainted, had all this peculiar character.
3 When I here speak of the decided and certain curative power of positive
mesmerism, I most assuredly do not mean that abuse of it, where, by re-
peated passes of this kind, continued for half an hour or a whole hour at a
time, and, even day after day, performed on weak, nervous patients, that
13
178 ORGANON OF MEDICINE.
just the contrary effect, deserves to be termed negative mes-
merism. To this belong the passes which are used to rouse
from the somnambulic sleep, as also all the manual processes
known by the names of soothing and ventilating. This dis-
charge by means of negative mesmerism of the vital force
accumulated to excess in individual parts of the system of un-
debilitated persons is most surely and simply performed by
making a very rapid motion of the flat extended hand, held
parallel to, and about an inch distant from the body, from the
top of the head to the tips of the toes." The more rapidly
this pass is made, so much the more effectually will the dis-
charge be effected. Thus, for instance, in the case where a
previously healthy woman,” from the sudden suppression of
her catamenia by a violent mental shock, lies to all appearance
dead, the vital force which is probably accumulated in the
precordial region, will, by such a rapid negative pass, be dis-
charged and its equilibrium throughout the whole organism
restored, so that the resuscitation generally follows immedi-
ately.” In like manner, a gentle, less rapid, negative pass
diminishes the excessive restlessness and sleeplessness accom-
panied with anxiety sometimes produced in very irritable
persons by a too powerful positive pass, &c.
monstrous revolution of the whole human system is effected which is termed
somnambulism, wherein the human being is ravished from the World of
sense and seems to belong more to the world of spirits—a highly unnatural
and dangerous state, by means of which it has not infrequently been at-
tempted to cure chronic diseases.
1 It is a well known rule that a person who is either to be positively or
negatively mesmerised, should not wear silk on any part of the body.
2 Hence a negative pass, especially if it be very rapid, is extremely injur-
ious to a delicate person affected with a chronic ailment and deficient in
vital force.
8 A strong country lad, ten years of age, received in the morning on ac-
count of slight indisposition, from a professed female mesmeriser, several
very powerful passes with the points of both thumbs, from the pit of the
stomach along the lower edge of the ribs, and he instantly grew deathly
pale, and fell into such a state of unconsciousness and immobility that no
effort could arouse him, and he was almost given up for dead. I made his
eldest brother give him a very rapid negative pass from the crown of the
head over the body to the feet, and in one instant he recovered his con-
Sciousness and became lively and well.
*
ºg
ſ.
#
Filmed by Preservation 1980 -
·* **~
! ！！ !§§:az=ã---=（?！~~~~ ~~~~ ~~
i - - -.§§¿??¿№sſºſºïēš！！！！！ſa，șiae
ș* *s*…！）.-
*
• ** ***·Šºs§§§§svº=Š<'zº*-·ºs…====== Ls----<~~~~. *• •■<<<N<\，Sºssº，x_<=•→· §* · · -→→Zee·№--~~~~*=~* <<< … • Cºve+---- · ·,≤ ≥ ≠ ≠
№ÈŠ№№sssssssewae=x，$\ſ*（?：<\N，\，




&§§§§§）. №，-<！-- ***
·§§§§§§i！！！
*****· -- ،-§§§§§§§
№ae，·
ſaeſae
````&'， '·'），
§§
*ae
§§
*...*..* - ***！
∞ √≠ √∞
！\， ，
'，º.
�
§
§§
،¿¿.*¿¿.*
∞∞∞∞∞∞№º. №
§.§§→
********§§
¿№.
Ķ
§§§）.
Ņs
··§§§
STR. ·§¿§
«¿¿.-∞·
№， №8§§s.YR，§§§.º.
ſiſ§ŅÑŅҧ§§È
Jaeºſ）*§§§ÑŅ
§§！\，ŅŅŇŇÑÑŅŅŇŇ
§§、§Ñ
& !， ºŅ
， .…§§∞，
ș*，
ſ）§
§§º ：sae|- ·Ņ
× × × × × ×∞∞∞§§§№8
§§§È****ÈÈÈ
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞×،≤，
§È§§Ř§
§§！ŠŅŅŅŇŇ
Ķ
ſae§§|×Ņ
§§§§§§|×
§§§§§§�
§§§
§§
№ŅNNNNÈ∞∞∞∞∞∞Ņ،≡≡
§````````Ñ&
ſaeŅ№ŅÈ∞ѧS. º.）
```````````
ק§§ŅŅŇŇŅŅŇN`S`NNŌŠ&&ſae
§©®、、ÑŅŇŇŅŅŇRŅŅI
∞∞∞∞∞， ∞, √≠ √æ√° s√≠.ÈÈÈÈÈ
ÈÈÈÈÈÈ
ÈÈÈÈÈÈÈÈȧ§
§§§§§¿?§§№§§§
：§¶√∞∞∞∞∞§§§
§§§§§§
→ →§§∞·
-SYNRYŌ，§N§§§،§§§§§§§§§§-
§§§§§§ÊŘŘ№
Ñ¿RÈN&№§|-ŅÄ∞∞∞
ѧ§
§
■Ņº：§§Ķ
· sae, & & &•§.ºù
§§∞∞∞∞ - º№∞§§R§§
， ， ， '！·��·
（）№№™§§،
§È
،*：& s）× × × ×r.
Ņ§§
∞∞∞§§
&. ，šºšºÑ§Ñ∞∞∞
¿¿.*
&.*
§§§|×~{{！}§§ŘÈ∞
ȧ§§§！§§§§§§ºſ
º.！§§x,&&،ק§§§！ºè
TºÈÈÈȧ§
§.ÑÑŅŅŇ→№
¿¿.*■■■■■■■■■■■ſae·§§§
-ſae, §.&}■ ■∞ √·~： º.¿?·
·§§§§§Ķ-ŅŅŇŇ№§，
··：∞∞∞ŅŅŠŅĶ№
*, ， ，,，^..*¿¿.*§º: •§§§§§§§§§§
§§§§§ſºſ，ſiae*，·§§§§ÈÈÈÈÈ
≡º·ŅŅ§§&&&\\R&\\R&\\ &&
∞§
●
, «¿№ :،t.¿¿.*¿¿.§§§§*-
●|-|- ·§§§§
Ķ∞≡≡≡≡，ſae
Ķȧ§§
Ņ
33
?
º-º-º-º-.aeº º×
N，№RŠ，&&&&&&&&\\
§§§§Ņ№ſº
&.**！
∞
№&
$
... sº
∞§©®}
ºs№8
§§§§§§
º
* =
º
2.
º
∞∞∞∞∞&&&&&&\\&&&&&&\\&&&&&&&&ŅRŅŅI
---：§§§NNNNNNNNNNNN§§§§§§§
،: * .*; º¿&，&&\, \\ ·ÈÈÈÈ
ſae· ~►º，-：ÑŅŅŇҧ§§§§§§ÑŅt.§§
§ºſº， ¿¿.∞∞∞∞∞∞¿?§§§§ÈÈ●§§
， ！--∞∞∞№&• • • •§§§§§w:ŅŅŇŇ
-~--~-ſaeŅRNR§§§§§§§§§§
∞ . ， ！~SNR™）، ●ſy∞∞∞*§§§ŠŅ
№.¿¿§§§§§…ÑŅÈѧ§：§§Ñ§
§§§§§§§§→ · ·…--~--~：Èѧ$\\·§§§ARŅ§§
§§-™-8.∞∞∞،**§§§**º-，*（.*'， 'g'）;،
× × ×،Rȧ§§§§§§§§§
，●Ķ
！ŠŅ
！3.
º∞∞∞· ：·^№- *:8.
№：：· ~�§§§§№ae,º，∞●
*！·*（ŅŅŇŇ），：:№→Ñ
§§§§§Ņ
º
º
sº
** ****
º
ºf .º.º.
º
º
sº
º:
rººs tº
§
№ae，Ķ ķ ****∞！&&
§¿№;§§�ſae§§∞∞∞ſae×
№ſae•ſae،·-- -ѧ§§~
wae·&ŅR§§§∞
-！
¿№-~§§× × × × ·}ĶĪNĀ§.№§§§§¿
§§§§§§Ņ-ÈÈÈŅŅRŞ
：§§§§§§·§§§§`§ŅŇÈÈN§§
*ѧ§ŅŠÈ§§
*****N4.§§`N§§§Ņ§§§N
！ *ſ*_* ！¿№NYŌ§§Ñ№∞§§§§№§§№§№
§§§©®&-ÑÑÑŅŇŅ№
§§§ģ
§ÈÈ
§
× %}∞ŅŠ§¿?， ：،
* & * && x.ĶĀaeŅŅŇŇÈÑÑŅŅŠŅҧÈ
Ķ-?**ſae，§§§§R§§§·§©®N§�§¿§?NNŌ！§§§ºgB§§
º ，,，*,·）&（（*.*¿¿.*¿¿.*-****§§№Ņ§.ŅŅŅI：Ņ
§§§§§§§ì`````````````````````````
* *:）*?！|-ſae∞∞∞、。RŅŠ№¿¿.§§∞∞∞∞∞، ، ،
： …§§§§§\\RĶ~ |-→Ņ№§§?§§§§∞§§§§.ŅÈÈÈŅѧ§§§
§§§§§§§|-∞&&ÑÑŅŅŇŇŅ§ŅŅRŇ№Ņ■§§ 8）.±（√¶√∞
-：：ae§§©s, ºŠŅŅI… %*Ņ■Ņw：§§™N×Ñ
- •：×…§§§§ÑÑÑŅŅŇŇ& & №RNROE§Ņ§§ĶN
！§§« &.*; ***-* ！}ȧ§Ñ````§§§NŘÈÈ&&∞. № 3 *.§©
º-~.~º №. ！§§§§§§§·§§§§§§§§§§№ÑŅҧ§x，��*）*）$$·
§§ÈÈÈȧ∞Ñ
~« * * * *¿¿.*& ºſ：::：&&&&&&&§§ŅÈȧ§©N· ，------§§§
?&````È|-- -Ñ×ȧ
∞ √*/
№w， ， ， ，،|-º, ， ºyº.*--s-，-，-）∞ √° √§§§§&. |-®.Ñ¿
·-§§§
ŅŅŇŇ№Ņѧ§Ñ
3. № ！！ ！！ ！！ÑÑŅŅŇN§§È````
§¶•@¿?，§§~ŅŅſy
§§§§§§§N№ÈŅ، …§Ñ§§§§Ņ
…：…：، ·§§§§|-ÑŅҧÑŅŅŇ
ſae--.*¿¿.·* º *s*...* --， -：-， -：-，…ſae∞∞∞¿！\，§NŅ·§…：، ~RŅÑ
ſ-，→ ·Nj*-§§§º :Ņ≤\\
§§§：-§§§§§§§§§§§§Ņ§à
|-∞§¿¿.*tº§§&.*¿¿.*
Ķſº× × ×-
Ķ§§§ſae№●wae，
*****（№º！！！！！！！!!§ÑÑŅŅŇŇŅÑ?Ř®ŅŇ
§§§©®°¶ŅŅŇŇŅ§§Ņ
ſº: ，，，,，，，，，，№&！is.
§§§§§§§§§№،●§§& ºſ§§§§§Ņ§ÈÑاŅ§§），·.*）§§
¿№ №.§ŅÈ№
§）,§ÑÑŅŅŇŇŅŅŇŇ∞∞∞**®Ņ∞ѧ§§§ÑŅŇ
ÈÈÈÈÈÈŅÈÈÈſ§§
§Ñ&&RŅŅŇŇÑŅŅŅŇҧ§§SN
：،ſae！§§§§§§N∞§ŅŅ§¶√∞∞∞∞، |-…-…--§§§
º.-.*¿¿.*¿¿.-§§§§§§§§§§§§\}\！\！\，ŅŅŇŇ§È№§§§ÑŅҧ§*.§§
§©®§§§§§§§§§§§Ř§§ŠŇ§§ÈÑ §ÑÑŅŅ§§ÑŅŇÑȧ§§ !,ŘŅ
§§§§§§§§§§§§§¡ ¿·§§§t. -&&&&&
§§-*****§§§§§§§Ř§§§§§§§§&&&&\\§§ſae∞§§§∞�ĶĀ！∞
ºš·§§§§§§©®§§§Ņ№wºſº），****Ņ§Ñ§§ÈÑ∞●№
·…·§§Ņا§§§§§Ņ·∞¿
ſae∞∞∞§§§§§§gaelRŇN
-، ،|- ^·ç.|- -：*** Lºſſºſ§§§©®8）º， ſaeſae¿-ſae-º-，
∞·|-，：'， ，ae,ſae→§¶√∞.∞∞∞∞∞§§§§·-~
§§§§§ſiſsae ·≤ ∞！ 4§§º， ，s№ ··~Ņ§È§§~§·ÈŅ
L （ ）······· ·§§§§§§§！§&&|ק§：§§§ÑÑŅŅŇŇا©®§ŅŅŇſae№
…§§§§§§§§§§-§©®^§§Š§§№ÑŅŅI§R
，-r.， &ą§§§§§****-ſae|-∞∞, ∞; ∞.'，ºĂŠŅŅI、§§§*、、ŅſaeŅ
·§§$·ÈÈÈÈÈÈÈÈ≡：|-~ -È№Èѧ§È*（§§* ·Ņ---- È
§§§º， ， ！×。、、、。、、。
Ņ