ORGANON $ 35 et seq.
From these paragraphs we see that there are several kinds of protection from sickness. When a violent epidemic is raging we all know that, although the number of victims is large, they are few compared to those who go through the epidemic unscathed, and the question always arises, why is it? We suppose, and probably rightly so, that a large number of the immune have escaped because they were usually strong and vigorous, or in a state of very good order.
But we find among those who have escaped the epidemic a number of persons who are anything but strongly really invalids, one in consumption, another in the last stages of Bright’s disease, another with diabetes. We call them all together and find than none of them have had dysentery or smallpox, or whatever disease was epidemic. They have not been susceptible to epidemic influences. How are you going to explain this? The reason is that they have sickness that it is impossible for the epidemic to suppress.
The epidemic is allopathic, or dissimilar to their diseases, and cannot suppress their disease because of its virulency. Now if they some mild from of chronic disease, a severe attack of dysentery will cause that disease to disappear temporarily, and the new (epidemic) disease will take hold and run its course, and when its subsides the old symptoms will come back again and go on as if they had not been meddled with. This is an illustration of dissimilars, and shows that dissimilars are unable to cure : they can only suppresses. If the chronic disease is stronger than the epidemic disease, i.e., if it has an organic hold upon the body, it cannot be suppressed. This is essentially the relation of the acute dissimilar disease to the chronic disease of severity.
The relation between chronic dissimilar diseases is somewhat different. For example, a patient is in the earlier stages of Bright’s disease, and the symptoms are clear enough to make a diagnosis. He takes syphilis, and at once the kidney disease is held in abeyance, the albumin disappears from the urine and his waxiness is lost. But after a year’s careful prescribing the syphilitic state disappears, and very soon the albumin appears again in the urine the dropsy returns and he dies of an ordinary attack of Bright’s disease.
Then there are cases where two chronic diseases seem at times to alternate with each other; one seems to be subdued for a time and the other prevails. Under proper homoeopathic treatment one will be reduced in its activity and the other chronic disease will show itself. This you will find to be the case when have to treat syphilis and psora together.
The psoric patient, who has been suffering from a skin eruption or one of the various forms of psora, takes syphilis, all the the psoric manifestations, the nightly itching of the salt rheum will disappear, and the syphilitic manifestations for a while and you will be able to subdue them, and in proportion again and will hold inn abeyance that portion of the syphilitic state which is still uncured. You will than be compelled to drop the anti-syphilitic and take up the anti-psoric treatment, and again the homoeopathic remedies will restore apparent order in the economy.
But after this has been done, you will be surprised to see syphilitic state return in the condition corresponding to its last manifestations. You must then drop the anti-psoric treatment and resume the anti- syphilitic. Thus they alternate; when you weaken one, the stronger comes up. The uncomplicated syphilitic eruption does not itch; but the psoric eruption as a rule is an itching eruption, and this will be seen in the alternation of the two diseases. If the patient is given proper treatment his condition will be simplified, but if given proper treatment it will become very complicated.
The two miasms will unite and form a complexity, which is most vicious state of affairs; then the syphilitic eruptions, while they have all the appearance of syphilis, will itch as if they were psoric eruptions. Mercury in large doses is capable of bringing about such a result. Proper homoeopathic treatment causes a separation, while inappropriate treatment produces complication, and you will never see one improve where homoeopathic remedies have caused the trying up of the combination.
Again take a chronic malarial diathesis, which has existed so long that it has complicated itself with psora we sill see after the quinine has been antidoted that the chills and fever will come back in their original form. Here you see an evidence of the separation which Homoeopathy always tends to bring about. The malarial state is now brought into observation for the purpose of cure.
It cannot be cured when complicated, for the remedy cannot be clear that will be similar enough to wipe them out. The first prescription antidotes the drug and liberates the patient from the drug disease, and then you see the most acute or last appearing natural disease which comes back first. This is in accordance with fixed law; the last miasm or the last symptoms that have been made to disappear will be the first to return and go away to appear no more.
In $36 another thoughts comes up: “Thus non-homoeopathic treatment, which is not violent, leaves the chronic disease unaltered. To suppress, there is required a state of violence to be brought about upon the body; one must do violence to the economy by enormous dosing, tremendous physic, much sweating, bloodletting, etc., such as was done in olden times.
Such treatment tends to subdue or suppress disease for the time being; but when the violence has subsided and the rough treatment is removed then the symptoms come back, but in the chronic disease. Violent treatment alter the nature of the chronic disease. A new and more intense disease suspends a prior dissimilar one existing in the body; similarly, just so long as the effect of quinine continues, so long will it suppress and hold in abeyance the disease to which it is dissimilar.
Quinine is capable of engrafting upon the economy its own disease from which will last for years and may not stop until it has been antidoted, by a medicine similar to its symptoms. But if it is antidoted, that malarial disease which its suppressed will appear in its original form and the patient sill say : “These are just the symptoms I had in the first place when I was cured by the late Dr. So-and- so; he cured me with Peruvian bark.” That story is so common that any homoeopathic physician who has been doing sound prescribing for years has lots of records of just such cases. The malaria was subdued only because the quinine was capable of producing a more violent disease than malaria. Arsenicum is capable of doing the same thing; it can engraft upon the economy a dangerous disease that will result in very serious conditions because the Arsenicum will complicate itself with psora.
In some cases we have a complexity of horrible things, lime one built upon another, and when this is so, in treating them the last group which was removed will appear first, which shows that the remedy has done its work, and we then go on to the next, and so on, the different groups sometimes appeared one after another in distant form. They must disappear in the reverse order of their coming, as if put on in layers, one piled upon another.
From all this we see how it is possible for two different diseases to occupy, as it were, two different corners of the same economy, one manifesting itself while the other is subdued. We also see how they may exist in a state of complexity. In the first instance they do not combine, in the other they do and become complex. We also see the propriety and use of observing what treatment has been administered to the patient. It is not always possible to do this, and it is impossible to know whether each on of these drugs has established its own disease.
Not every drug that is administered is capable of establishing a disease. It is always prudent, when symptoms are only partially developed, and when the drug which caused the suppression of symptoms is known, to include the antidotal relation to the drug with the rest of the symptoms; that is to say, select a drug which has a well-known antidotal relation to the drug that caused the suppression of the symptoms, providing it is also the most similar of all drugs to the few symptoms that are present. In that way we make as much of similitude as if possible. The similar remedy is most likely of all others to antidote that drug, Do not be led aside to administer right away the drug that caused the trouble. The principle of Similia is first.
$43. Totally different, however is the result when two similar diseases meet together in the organism; that is to say, when to the disease already present a stronger similar one is added. In such cases we see how a cure can be effected by the operation of nature, and we get a lesson as to how man ought to cure.
Then a real conjunction takes place, a union as it were, a marriage, which results in the disappearance of old things and new things come and exist in a state of order.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.