Some injurious influences may have to be removed to accomplish a speedy and permanent cure.
253. The first signs of improvement are not always visible. Sometimes improvement will be noted first either in the behaviour of the patient or in his increased sense of comfort. He may declare he feels better, though to observer he does not yet look better. The first signs of aggravation may also exhibit themselves in the sensorium of the patient.
254. The physician must depend on his own power of observation, and not on the reports of the patient or of patient or of friends incapable of recognizing aggravations or ameliorations.
255. In some cases the truth may be discovered only be carefully comparing the condition of the patient with the original record. If no change is discovered except in increased cheerfulness or less distressed expression on the face, relief is begun. But if improvement is too delayed, examine living regimen and the potency of the carefully selected remedy.
256. However, if the invalid mentions some new and important symptom, neglected or not observed in the first report, even though he assures the physician he is improved, don’t be deceived.
Some patients are optimistic in the face of death. A change for the worse is imminent. A new remedy must be selected, a cure may be impossible.
257. Don’t allow certain remedies to become favorites to the neglect of others.
258. Don’t yield to paltry prejudice against a remedy, if results were not satisfactory when it was carelessly selected. 259. The diet and regimen of the patient must not in any way interfere with the action of the highly rarified homoeopathic remedy. Avoid absolutely all extraneous medicinal influences.
260. In chronic cases, especially, great care must be exercised to avoid any impediment to cure by way of error in regimen or obscure noxious influences such as coffee, tobacco, alcohol, sex abuse, worry, anxiety, bad diet, drug habit, patent medicine habit, cathartic habit, salts, pills and castor oil.
261. Remove all obstacles in the way of recovery, institute wholesome modes of living, innocent recreation, active exercise in the open air, daily walks, light manual labor, proper nutritious food, drink pure water unadulterated with any medicinal substance get patient interested in something.
262. In acute diseases (insanity excepted) gratify the patient’s desire, with regard to food and drink, without offering or urging.
263. The gratification of a certain longing and the refreshing effect of a gratified desire is palliative and salutary. Covering and temperature must be regulated by wish of patient. Every emotional disturbance must be carefully avoided.
264. Use only genuine, unadulterated remedies of full virtue previously demonstrated.
265. Be sure the patient takes only the medicine selected for him. 266. Animal and vegetable substances should be prepared for medicine in the fresh crude state and not be allowed to deteriorate by subjecting them to any process of boiling, preserving, drying or fermenting.
267. The freshly expressed juice of freshly gathered plants preserved in alcohol, retain their medicinal virtues, undiminished, if kept in well corked bottles protected from the sun light.
268. Powder, bark, seeds and roots should not be used without assurance of their genuineness and of their fresh condition, when being employed as medicine.
269. The medicinal power of a crude substance is developed to an unparalleled degree by potentization. This process especially developes the medicinal powers of crude drugs, which in their crude state have no medicinal effect on the human body. Recent discoveries of modern science have revealed many facts regarding the infinitesimal. The discovery of radium and its discernible radiant emanations and the phenomena accompanying their activities has revised the thousand year old aspect of physical science, and given to the scientific mind a peep into the realm of the hitherto unknown of the physical world. The molecule, the atom, the electron, are no longer figments of the imagination. They reveal the energy of the mass. Nothing any more is dead. It probably cannot be asserted that matter can be reduced to spirit, but enough is known that the assertion is justified that matter is concentrated energy. What we have hitherto regarded as mass is almost entirely concentrated in the atom as energy. Radio-active substances have provided examples of how vast this stored energy within the atom really is.
The chemistry of the cell and the action of the potency, which for so long a time seemed but a fantastic speculation, is brought to a point of nearly satisfactory understanding. The potency can participate in cell chemistry. The vitamine is but a potency of the essential inorganic elements of living organic structure. Nature liberates the ion and the electron to vitalize the organism. These build up by synthesis the plant structure with which the animal by analysis maintains animal life. Homoeopathy potentize the inert element, by a mathematical progression, to liberate its spirit like dynamis that it may be employed to correct disorders of cell chemistry. Cell chemistry is the chemistry of the infinitesimal, the potentized crude element. Thus Hahnemann, by his carefully devised process of potentization has stolen from nature her secret means of initiating life and correcting its defects.
270. Here briefly is set forth the technique of potentization : Two drops of freshly expressed vegetable juice mixed with ninety eight drops of pure alcohol in a well stoppered vial is powerfully succussed in the closed hand against some resilient object. This makes the first centesimal potency. This process is then repeated with twenty-nine successive vials, each vial containing ninety-nine drops of alcohol, three-fourths full.
To each vial is added one drop from the preceding vial and shaken powerfully, twice, against some resilient object, and so on to be the thirtieth vial. The thirtieth vial contains the thirtieth centesimal potency. The decimal potency is made up in the same way except the proportion of one to ten is used. This potency is called the X potency and is designated by the symbols 1X, 2X, 3X, 4X, 5X, 6X, etc., etc.
271. All substances obtained in the dry state, as metals, minerals, neutral salts, are all to be potentized to the third potency, by triturating them, for three hours, for three successive triturations, one part of the substance to ninety nine parts of the sugar of milk. Thereupon one gram of the third trituration is succussed through twenty-seven successive vials as is above described.
272. In the treatment of disease only one simple medicinal substance should be used at a time in any single prescription. 273. A mixture of medicines is irrational.
274. It is unnecessary to apply a multiplicity of means where simplicity will accomplish the end.
Too many remedies, administered in a single prescription, confuse the vital force, neutralize medicinal effects, disorder the state of sickness, make obscure the true picture of sickness, teaches the physician nothing, creates within his mind a spirit of infidelity in medicine, cultivates a slovenly habit of prescribing and brings discredit upon the profession of medicine.
275. The dose as well as the remedy should fit the case.
276. The homoeopathic aggravation is as bad, if excessive, and as exhausting to the patient as the allopathic complication.
277. Therefore the homoeopathic remedy must be reduced in dose and in frequency of repetition that the aggravation may not amount to a fixed drug sickness.
278. The law of the dose is not yet worked out by actual experience.
279. Experience proves that the dose of the homoeopathically selected remedy cannot be reduced so fine as to be inferior in strength to the natural disease or to lose its power of extinguishing or curing, at least a portion of the same, provided that this dose, soon after having been taken, is capable of causing a slight intensification of the symptoms of the similar natural disease.
280. This incontrovertible principle, founded on experience, furnishes a standard by which the homoeopathic dose may be gauged. Don’t be deterred from its use by reason of its rarification. Any argument against it will be silenced by the verdict of infallible experience.
281. An adult, by reason of his sickness is more susceptible to the influence of his remedy covering the totality of his symptoms, than is an infant, in health, a day old. In view of the infallible proof of experience, incredulity, founded on theories is truly insignificant and ridiculous.
282. The first dose should not produce a severe homoeopathic aggravation, and each succeeding dose should be more highly dynamized. The appended foot note to this paragraph advises the treatment of the chronic miasms, while the external manifestations are in their place and undisturbed, to be conducted with the indicated remedy repeated daily with gradually increasing potencies at the same time keeping watch on the local lesions to determine the effect, of the remedies and the progress of the cure which will certainly follow the administration of the well-matched remedy properly repeated in increasing potencies.
