The vital principle that pervades all simple and complex organisms and substances manifests itself, through various media and under varying circumstances. The grain of musk that was exposed for, seventeen years in an open atmosphere, constantly revealing, itself, to all who entered its aura, was not perceptibly reduced in weight or power to impress the olfactories.
The protoplasm reveals its life to vision on by the aid of the microscope, in motion, which is an actual observation.
The class of inert substances, of which silica is a prominent member, demonstrates its life force when acted upon by the elements of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, by the change, produced in the, elements of these kingdoms. This class, therefore, negatively demonstrates that there is life in so-called inert substances.
There is no substance know to man that does, not possess life, lower or higher in proportion to the complexity of its, organization, growing higher and higher in order and manifestation until the image of the Creator of all things has been reached. Shall it stop with man No; the higher type is yet to be seen in God, the author of life and its every medium.
We observe that the animal body loses its identity or individuality vital energy, and the elements instantly manifest their own individual vital forces, each to its kind, like busy bees, until the shapeless mass has been transformed to its original dust.
The acting and acted upon, the lively and the inert bodies and substances are observed throughout nature. To make use of the lesson of life is the demand of the day, through which the healing principle or life can be measured and its nature as a force perverted, an idiosyncrasy is to be corrected, or, if you prefer, cured.
The blending of these forces are the complexities of living and healing. We see the blending of life and death into each other, until the one disappears within the other. If it be life perfected and pure, it is the complete absence of visible death. Midway between life and death we see perfect equilibrium. This condition becomes the necessity of all reproduction or nutrition, through which we observe life living and acting upon its media. The slightest defect, in the vital operations creates friction, and the machinery wears out rapidly, becomes heated; death increases and this that was a slight defect, becomes a threatening monster; yet, great only through results, as we know that the very gentle force, properly applied, corrects the original defect, and the grand old machinery soon returns to normal action. The defect may or may not be an idiosyncrasy. Reduced resistance against common things is an idiosyncrasy. In olden times we said, “this patient cannot take Calomel” because she is so susceptible to its action that the smallest dose has been known to salivate and do great injury. People are often susceptible to a substance that will do them great good if the positive and negative of life are duly, considered and applied. Cure is often contagion as well as disease. When the vital energy of the disease cause be taken in too great incept, disease is the result, but if the sphere of vital plane of the same cause be elevated to the quality that becomes corrective, the contagion becomes cure. Cure must seek the same via as cause; in entering the economy, it must rap at the same portals.
The aura of a given substance causes sickness. This has been observed by long distance inhalations of the Rhus vine. The rose causes sickness in some people. This has been observed in the painter who takes colic from the aura of his brush, even when painting in the open air, or the same colic may come from sleeping in a newly painted room If so small a quantity can make him sick why, would it not be a wise experiment to attempt to reach a quality so subtle that it would make him well enough to resist this aura on other occasions. If the vital wrong can be corrected he is well, and his resistance has returned, which is his protection. If a chemical antidote should be suggested it would surely be reasonable to enquire, what we expect to antidote, as the substance known as the sick producing cause was too small to be observed by the aid of the microscope, and was an insoluble, and yet it was so powerful that it made the individual sick. Not all are so affected. Quite likely the healthy man is not so affected; therefore the contagion, for such it was, could not be due to nothing but lack of health, or sickness. Then this, which is a recognized idiosyncrasy, is sickness. Was he sick before he took the colic Was he sick before he was sick What is sickness
The curative remedy is sometimes pointed out to the intelligent physician by accident through symptoms.
The animal organism can generally resist the crude substances when the lower attenuations may make him sick, and this is especially true of substances inert and insoluble.
It has been observed that the negative state may be intensified by large incepts of a given poison. A subject is rendered more sensitive to Rhus after once having been poisoned by it.
The causes must be very similar when the effects known by symptoms are so nearly identical, hence it is that persons susceptible to the poison of Rhus are also equally susceptible to the curative or correcting principle.
Rhus apparently cures Rhus poisoning in some cases, but actually cures the patient because he needed Rhus or a similar dynamis as badly before as after he was poisoned. The incept that caused him to become sick was too large to cure and it made him sick. The highly potentiated Rhus cured him of the sickness he had before he was poisoned and the disease that he has instantly ceases, as its cause is overcome by the normal vital reaction, he, not having taken enough of the poison to make a well man sick, but only enough to make a sick man sick or worse, recovers his normal state in a few days. Then Rhus has not cured Rhus poisoning, but the patient of his susceptibility to Rhus poisoning.
How different is this state from the state of large dose poisoning, by Morphine or any other crude drug, which must have its own antidote. In one case the patient is poisoned because he was sick, and in the other he is sick because he is poisoned and was not susceptible to the drug that made him sick, and cannot be impressed by that drug only in toxic quantities. This again brings out the positive and negative state of the human system, in which the individual may be as unable to protect himself against cure as cause, as unable to resist cure as cause. Cure and cause are different planes in the same sphere.
What is contagion, as understood, and what is cure, but the irresistible appropriation of some unknowable energy applied by accident or intelligence. We have seen that Rhus cures the patient of his sensitiveness to Rhus as well long after as before he was poisoned by it. This is not Isopathy, as it was not Rhus that was cured, but the patient, and is was simply pointed out to the intelligent physician by the accidental poisoning wherein Rhus was pointed to as one of the medicines that he is sensitive to; it being fully understood that the patient is always highly sensitive to his needed medicine. This, therefore, is but a centering of a complex of symptoms in a homoeopathic problem.
The negative state of the body as observed is utilized by the electrologist or magnetic controller, demonstrates many facts. The mesmerist, by his peculiar movements so acts upon the negative subject that the latter is deprived of sensation; his tongue can be punctured and a needle passed through; he can be managed like an automaton, without sensation; but the positive subject cannot so easily surrender himself that he is negative enough to be influenced in the slightest degree. Some can by slight resistance oppose the mesmerist, others are at once controlled and made unconscious. In this state the forces of the body are, alone disturbed, the tissues are unchanged. Can disease be more than this primitively It need not be more. It is not more, while all tissue changes are the results of disease. With this thought in mind, it must seem strange that men study morbid anatomy to be able to find means to correct a wrong that wholly vital. It must seem strange that a learned professor will still hunt with the microscope or the germ that causes the cholera, yellow-fever, and zymotic sicknesses; searching among the results of disease to destroy its cause. As well examine a grain of wheat under the microscope to ascertain how tall a stalk it will grow, or to ascertain whether it will grow anything; as the lens has never discovered the vital spark in that grain of wheat, it will not likely become a safe guide to the nature of a vital energy in disease cause or curative force.
The pathological anatomy is the intermediate state, while the external image, made up of sensations, is a perfect likeness of the primitive state; the true disease and these only correspond with each other, and in these only do we see fathomable harmony.
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.