Ever since Hahnemann pointed out the homeopathic method as the law of healing there have been all grades of followers, from such as merely admit its validity and use it incidentally, to those who cling to the precepts of the Organon for guidance. It is a variation common to every sort of human endeavour and really depends upon instruction, ability and will. To teach anything less than the ideal makes for final retrogression because execution is necessarily made by fallible mortals.
Quickly enough does the neophyte feel his limitations and lack of firmness in his foothold; then, having but a loose grasp of the philosophy of healing, descent into the murky shades of palliation and suppression will be swift and sure, and at the cost of many a saddening failure.
The mental attitude of most medical men is a clear example of how far distorted reasoning may subvert logic; withal, a few rise above their training and thereby pay a glorious tribute to the power of indwelling light and truth. These men soon outgrow the fetters of an ultimately reactionary teaching, being helped materially thereto by disinterested work for the uplift of others.
The miseries of the cancer problem are a hideously sad commentary on the materialistic viewpoint of life in general and disease in particular, leading as it must do, to attempts at forcible removal of what it cannot cure. Its devotees are not given to trying to find out why the most diverse remedies have incontestably cured cancer. If among such cures there be but a single actual success, the entire materialistic structure falls to the ground.
It is a closed and unworthy attitude of mind that rejects the possibility of arousing vital energy to the point of throwing off all abnormal action, and yet gives unbounded credence to a science (?) that does not agree with itself long enough to make it worth while. When the indications are clear there is overwhelming evidence of the power of the similar remedy to cure every sickness not already in its terminal stage, because human beings react individually to disturbing influences, including disease exciters, to the point of self stabilisation.
All disease complexes from their incipiency held some peculiarity, often obscure, with increasing tenacity, hence the minutia of the prodrome demand the closest scrutiny, not only in malaria where it has been found so indicative, but in all others as well, especially where it is apt to be most occult, as in cancer, etc. Seemingly functional disorders often contain a symptom or two, the very germinal of future disaster, but as yet easily curable, if studied in its connotations.
In every assemblage there are discordant or apparently contradictory symptoms that easily mislead us into overstressing single factors, unless we hold firmly to the concept of unity in diversity and regard them, significant as they are, as the surface play of a deeper and more coherent movement, whose nuances we must fully grasp.
It is at this juncture that the two schools of thought diverge; one, following the path of least resistance and the deceptive senses, emerges in the bogs of materialism and consequent violent action. The other, attributing all symptoms to mutations of the vital force, studies effects of exteriorisation of such modifications and is governed thereby, realising that they must all be consistent and of a piece. A crude apprehension of this thought lies at the bottom of the idea of specifics, and has harmed medicine not a little.
If every symptom is a little picture reflected from the central disturbance, a composite picture will most nearly depict the whole. This is what we mean when we speak of the symptom complex or the totality of the symptoms. Each one of these small pictures contains at least two elements, the main strain and the variations. As the latter increase in number the former is obscured and harder to detect; for which reason the apparently most discordant symptom rubrics are placed in apposition, in order to find the basic drug or drugs common to all, which will surely again stabilise vital action.
It does us small credit to see some one who has always had homeopathic care develop tuberculosis, cancer or what not. Remedies were evidently similar enough to remove passing disease pictures, but not deeply acting enough to eradicate true causative factors, in other words the similimum had never been found or given. This sort of work is much too easy for the ultimate good of our patients, and it imitates traditional medicine too closely to be a cause of boasting.
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