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.”
Let us go over the definitions:-
Allergy is a condition of unusual or exaggerated specific susceptibility to a substance which is harmless to the majority of persons given in like amounts and under like conditions. Examples :- Fish, berries, egg white, and various foods producing symptoms such as urticaria, nausea, vomiting, pains, purging, migraines, asthmatic attacks, and many other symptoms of various natures. Drugs and medicines that would be even toxic manifestation in those specifically sensitive.
This food and drug allergy is probably more extensively present than is ordinarily known, and may first show itself it. childhood and continue through life unless corrected.
The symptoms may also embrace urticaria, angioneurotic oedema, intestinal oedema, etc.
Hypersensitive. This is defined as having ability to react with characteristic symptoms to the application or contact with certain substances (Allergens)in amounts innocuous to normal individuals.
Hypersensibility. Abnormal susceptibility to poisons, infections entirely innocuous to normal individuals.
Anaphylaxis. Unusual or exaggerated susceptibility to a foreign protein.
Taraxy. Novy’s terms for anaphylaxis.
Atopy. Hereditary disposition to sensitiveness.
The works on modern medicine give long lists of Allergic diseases as to their causation and cure and to review a few may not be amiss. Thus, asthma is said to be 40 Percent allergic in origin, hay fever, vaso-motor rhinitis, and his is often produced by such drugs as Quinine, Aspirin, the great quack remedy, Ipecac, Iodine, Morphine, etc.
Serum disease is an allergic reaction, characterized by skin symptoms, enlargement of lymph nodes, fever and polyarthritis.
Urticaria is not uncommon, following blood infusions, etc.
Eruptions, gastro-intestinal disturbances respiratory affections are noticed in the latest text-books, and we read that collapse may ensue from the ingestion of “smallest amounts of things to which the patient is susceptible” says Rosenau. We homoeopaths call them “aggravations,” and as contrariwise they’ may be beneficial so we denominates them as “ameliorations.” In most cases this sensitiveness is inherited, though it may be acquired.
The fault is not in the food but in the person, says Rosenau. We have for more than a century called it constitutional.
Then according to the same authority, he recommends in order to relieve this, the use of an allergen which “SHOULD BE GIVEN IN MINUTE AMOUNTS SO SMALL THAT IT BE JUST SHORT OF PRODUCING SYMPTOMS!”
Could anything be more homoeopathic?
It has ever been a cardinal requirement that a remedy applied on homoeopathic or curative grounds should be given in quantities to stimulate nature’s defenses, or more them in other words, instead of producing more symptoms.
Dr. Ditmars advocates the use of permanganate of potash in snakes bites in a I to 2000 solution which sounds rather homoeopathic.
This tissue hypersensitivity, or allergy as is now on the medical tapis, is found in most if not all tuberculinics and furnishes a soil for the tubercular germ, and exists in what might be termed cancerinics, or those having a trend towards the growth but as yet no tumor.
There is along list of disturbing foods, the symptoms of these are found in our repertories. Our aggravations and ameliorations are founded upon a scientific basis, which the allopathic school is just beginning to recognize.
They severity of these allergic manifestations is to be determined by the constitutional symptoms.
They may at times be fulgurating, and even produce death. This is the case in special susceptibility to special poisons for we read of ergotism, lathyrism or even solanism (from eating old sprouty potatoes).
This susceptibility underlies contagion and cure so that cause and cure knock at the same door.
Atropine “produces an eruption like scarlet fever” says a 1931 edition of a popular work (allopathic) on practice. The writer must have been reading some work of Hahnemann published 100 years ago, before atropine was known, but Belladonna where it is found as well known and used remedy then, and has been one of our best scarlet fever remedies ever since. It dilates the pupil to-day as it did then.
“The so-called regular school of medicine looks upon any thing it can gather from homoeopathic sources as its lawful spoil” wrote Dr. George A. Durrie in 1878.
One of the methods for determining the sensitivity of a person to the various allergens is that of the skin test, which is made by applying them to scratches on the arm or some part of the body and noting the irritation that may or may not come. These pollen, and protein extracts are furnished by any pharmacological concern and the more the better. We read in one of the “ads” that a good wide forearm would accommodate 8 to 10 rows of these scratches and from 24 to 30 tests!
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.