Nature advances by continuous differentiation, while impatient man, wishing to progress more rapidly, tries his own artificial ways. The former moves along inherent lines and powers, amenable to modification, but rebellious to man’s fiat. He has indeed preached theoretical equality but has not been able to actually stand equally upon such a basis.
There is an increasing pandering to the emotions, the faculty which links us so effectually to the animal kingdom, that bodes no good to future society unless the light of higher reason shall come to the rescue. What we call civilisation has been so permeated by this insidious thing that only a great convulsion can set us right and prevent social retrogression. We must remember that nature is inflexible and neither forgives nor forgets.
The man who would burst his bonds and develop his inner self Invariably runs the risk of being disciplined and put in great peril by uncomprehending mediocrities. The idea that such an one can be only himself and not an imitation of some one else comes as a painful shock to such persons. This state of things we call civilisation and culture, which it must in reality be, for have we not made it and named it Ourselves?
Hahnemann was one of the illuminati who dared blaze the way to new fields of human endeavour, for which act he earned the lasting scorn and hatred of entrenched privilege, and we, his lineal successors, are still feeling the blows which were aimed at him. We are still made to feel that we are men apart, because we will not bow to authority, to privilege and to regularity.
The freedom we crave is hedged about by the little minds of precedent, scholasticism and materialism. The air we would breathe is saturated with medical agnosticism or open therapeutic nihilism as intolerant in its own conceits as the Pharisees ever were. The leaders of this age are the slaves of materialism whose fruitage certainly does not fall beyond their own shadows.
The laws of universal harmony, of which similia is an exemplification, are beyond their grasp because, forsooth, they can not be dissected out, seen under the microscope or grown in test tubes. They are true doubting Thomases and the disproportion which exists between the amount of energy expended in their investigations and the beneficial results obtained is out of all reason and will so remain until medical schools shall have courage enough to give a very full course in general philosophy as well as an ample course in the homeopathic application of the same. Then the question of the union of the schools will take care of itself.
Whatever our educational standards may be it can not be denied that successful practice depends upon certain more or less fully developed innate faculties, and that our present methods of training do but little to upbuild them and thus make real healers of the sick. Because of inaptness or faulty instruction these men never get a true grasp of the meaning of a cure and what leads up to it.
It can not be said of the student, caught in the modern whirl of education, that he is taught how to think and reflect; and if there be no correct thinking there can be no accurate or intensive reasoning. As I have said before, the trouble lies largely in our general educational system, and it is quite unreasonable to expect immature minds to reach just and mature conclusions when older heads have not taken the time and pains to grasp the real meaning of our work.
If I were to place before you an apple and a diamond, asking you, a stranger to both, to choose the one which must ultimately be of the most benefit to you, it would be just as reasonable a procedure as what we are now doing. Is it then strange that in their confusion most of our young men have, with the very best of intentions, nevertheless chosen mistakenly.
What then is to be done? Objective teaching under the guidance of experienced experts along with the most thorough instruction in the philosophy of cure is the only course that will make the proper appeal and achieve proportionate results. The neglect of either of these factors will be fatal, while their balanced co-ordination will meet every exigency that can arise. Then will the graduate leave school so well equipped that only his conscience can decide whether he will really cure or only palliate the sick.
The student can and must be made to see the difference between spontaneous recovery, due to the recuperative powers of unfettered nature, and the cures wrought when the similimum releases or converts stored energy within the vital organism. The former inches back to recovery, as it were, while the latter comes back with an unmistakable snap and vigour. When he once sees this he can also be taught how and along what lines he may also do it.
The human economy is a vital organism with properties of a dynamic nature, whose full control involves an exceptional com-pass of skill. It is not enough that the operator should know how to cut here or adjust there, he must also be able to visualise the wellspring of morbid action from the multitudinous phenomena which come before him.
Each disease picture must for him have its own centrum from which spring a multitude of symptoms, objective, subjective, diagnostic and characteristic, but all having but one combination which inevitably links it to the central nervous system and the mind beyond.
Such a combination contains particular landmarks which make it peculiar to itself; nor can we forecast what these should or should not be, for the all-sufficient reason that every individuality has its own way of expressing itself, which way must be learned if we wish to cure. To enter into a detailed account of how nature speaks out her distress is beyond the scope of this paper; let it suffice to say that he who would guide her must know how to lead and not attempt to drive, for her
Born in Western Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and subsequently Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He moved to Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1888, practicing there, but also consulting worldwide. He gave lectures at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and taught philosophy, materia medica, and repertory at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Postgraduate School. Boger brought BÅ“nninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory into the English Language in 1905. His publications include :
Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Boenninghausen's Antipsorics
Boger's Diphtheria, (The Homoeopathic Therapeutics of)
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica, 1915
General Analysis with Card Index, 1931
Samarskite-A Proving
The Times Which Characterize the Appearance and Aggravation of the Symptoms and their Remedies