INDIA has become a stronghold of Homoeopathy. In that great country about twenty Homoeopathic journals are published in English and in the various local languages. To the subtle Indian mind the wonderful science and art of Homoeopathy appeals strongly. There are excellent doctors in India, there are hundreds of excellent homoeopathic doctors and thousands of lay practitioners of every kind.
The age-old Indian medical lore which is based on the experience of countless generations has many points of resemblance with the Hahnemannian method of healing. Although India has a large homoeopathic literature produced by her sons, all Indian homoeopaths have the greatest veneration for the founder of homoeopathy, and they study ardently all homoeopathic books published in the English language.
There are some excellent publishing houses in India, and they have had the great merit of bringing out many books which had gone out of print. Hahnemanns “Chronic Diseases” is considered his masterpiece. It was the last great book which he published. It had gone out of print and had become extremely difficult to obtain by advertising for it. Now enthusiastic homoeopaths here and in India can obtain that magnum opus at a reasonable price.
“Chronic Diseases” is an imposing work. Messrs. Ringers have published it in two tall and stout volumes which together run to 1,672 pages. The work is introduced by an essay of 132 pages written by Hahnemann, entitled “The Nature of Chronic Diseases.” Doctors frequently express the principle, “chronic diseases are incurable”. It is to the glory of homoeopathy that it specializes in the cure of chronic disease, and therefore the work before us is particularly valuable to every true homoeopath.
Hahnemann stated in the introductory chapter:.
“The Homoeopathic Healing Art, as taught in my own writings and in those of my pupils, when faithfully followed, has hitherto shown its natural superiority over any allopathic treatment in a very decided and striking manner; and this not only in those diseases which suddenly attack men (the acute diseases), but also in epidemic diseases and in sporadic fevers.
“Venereal diseases, also have been radically healed by Homoeopathy much more surely, with less trouble and without any sequelae; for without disturbing or destroying the local manifestation it heals the internal fundamental disease from within only, through the best specific remedy. But the number of the other chronic diseases on this great earth has been immeasurably greater, and remains so”.
In this introduction Hahnemann gives full directions, how to treat chronic diseases. If we wish to cure, we can, of course, do no better than to listen to the words of that great master of the new healing art.
In the pages following the large introductory chapter, which is by itself equivalent to a big volume, we have an alphabetical list of the more important remedies. The list starts with Agaricus, Alumina, Ammonium carbonicum, Ammonium muriaticum, Anacardium orientale, and it ends with Zincum.
These volumes form a wonderful quarry in which every earnest worker can find priceless treasures. Each remedy is first described and its potentialities, and summarized briefly but adequately.
Then follows a description of the various effects produced by the various remedies in the treatment of diseases of the mind, the inner head, the outer head, the eyes, the apparatus of hearing, the nose, the face, the teeth, the mouth and throat, the stomach, the abdomen, the rectum and anus, the urinary organs, the male sex organs, the female sex organs, the respiratory organs, the chest, the neck and back, the upper extremities, the lower extremities, the nervous system, the skin, sleep, fever, etc.
Hahnemann's three major publications chart the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine, we see the fundamentals laid out. Materia Medica Pura records the exact symptoms of the remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he showed us how natural diseases become chronic in nature when suppressed by improper treatment.