Over one hundred year ago, Samuel Hahnemann wrote in his Organon which has had over 50 editions, and has circulated in all the countries of the world, and in all languages, and other substances upon the healthy human body, that “All persons were not affected by a medicine in an equally great degree.” On the contrary there is a vast variance in this respect according to the patient or subject, the amount of the dose, the sensitiveness or the irritableness of same. He says in Section 129 of this work that unknown medicines even of the mildest nature will produce symptoms if tested by sensitive persons. In section 117 he speaks of Idiosyncrasies by which are meant:- “peculiar constitutions which tough otherwise healthy, possess a disposition to be brought into a more or less morbid state by certain thing which seem to produce no impressions or changes in many other individuals.” To this he adds a noSIMILIBUS CURANTUR is the law of all curative medicine.
+ Over one hundred year ago, Samuel Hahnemann wrote in his Organon which has had over 50 editions, and has circulated in all the countries of the world, and in all languages, and other substances upon the healthy human body, that “All persons were not affected by a medicine in an equally great degree.” On the contrary there is a vast variance in this respect according to the patient or subject, the amount of the dose, the sensitiveness or the irritableness of same.
He says in Section 129 of this work that unknown medicines even of the mildest nature will produce symptoms if tested by sensitive persons.
In section 117 he speaks of Idiosyncrasies by which are meant:- “peculiar constitutions which tough otherwise healthy, possess a disposition to be brought into a more or less morbid state by certain thing which seem to produce no impressions or changes in many other individuals.”
To this he adds a note as follows:- “Some persons are apt to faint from smell of roses and to fall into many other morbid and sometimes- dangerous states from partaking of mussels, crabs, and fish roe, or from touching the leaves of some kind of sumach.” (Rhus).
Kent notes than certain subjects cannot take opium because of dangerous congestions arising even from the smallest doses, as occured many times in his practice. He also cites that Quinine made some alarmingly sick; while one would take 15 grains and have no symptoms, another would suffer from Quininism even from a small dose, he noted also that lavender flowers produced coryza in one; in another, the eating of peaches always produced diarrhoea. He regarded a craving for salt as a distinctive symptoms of the psoric or tubercular diathesis.
Susceptibility, said Fincke in 1865, serves as the diagnostic principle and depends some what on the assimilability of medicines.
Dr. Samuel Swan, and Dr. Thomas Wildes of New York and Dr. P.P. Wells of Brooklyn and many others in the latter “seventies” reported many cases of supersensitiveness to various foods, among which was a case where common garden celery when eaten produced itching, changing locality frequently and other disagreeable symptoms. Apium graveolens (Celery) in a high potency removed the condition and permitted the patient to ever afterwards eat celery with no untoward effects.
People exists who cannot eat strawberries. These susceptible individuals suffer from urticarial rashes, sometimes difficulty in breathing as if a weight were on the chest. Potentized Fragaria vesca relieved at once. This was first advocated perhaps by Dr. W. P. Wesselhoeft of Boston and amply verified by Drs. Swan, and Wells. The writer used it successfully in case having similar symptoms whenever strawberries, of which she was most fond, were eaten. Fragaria vesca in a high potency not only removed the condition, but so completely that the patient was ever after able to eat strawberries without symptoms for the remainder of her life, Which ended some 30 years subsequent.
There are numerous cases of over susceptibility to Apis poisoning which is reminded by taking Apis in minimum doses. Bee keepers and those who handle bees are rendered immune, and do not mind or suffer from bee stings, nor do they produce swellings or oedema when the person is thus immunized.
Von Pirquet introduced a term that is modern: Allergy. It would almost seem that the author had been delving into the homoeopathic literature of the 18th and 19th centuries and that he was familiar with the classical work of the learned Reichembach, entitled “Der Sensitiver Mensch.”
Professor of Materia Medica in the University of Michigan Homeopathic Medical College. Member of American Institute of Homeopathy. In addition to his editoral work he authored or collaborated on: Boericke and Dewey's Twelve Tissue Remedies, Essentials of Homeopathic Materia Medica, Essentials of Homeopathic Therapeutics and Practical Homeopathic Therapeutics.