With great esteem, I remain, Your devoted, ERNST GEORG VON BRUNNOW.
Dresden, 15th June, 1834.
Hahnemann’s remark on this letter is: “Not answered.”
SUPPLEMENT 143
EIGHTEEN THESES
FOR FRIENDS AND FOES OF HOMOEOPATHY
AS AN EXPLANATION OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF THIS THERAPEUTIC SYSTEM IN ITS TRUE SENSE AND SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE, OUTLINED BY DR. PAUL WOLF OF DRESDEN, AND APPROVED BY THE ANNUAL ASSEMBLY OF THE CENTRAL HOMOEOPATHIC SOCIETY IN MAGDEBURG ON AUGUST 10TH, 1836.
The basic conception of these theses which are of the greatest historical importance, and are acknowledged even to the present day, is given in the following short extract:
1. Recognition of the Law of Similars: An illness is cured by small doses of that remedy which if given in large doses to a healthy individual, would have the power to cause a similar illness. (Similia similibus curentur).
2. The practical application of this law in the treatment of diseases is by no means easy, as judged by the standard medical representatives of homoeopathy; no one can become a homoeopathic physician on a few weeks or days.
3. Homoeopathy does not stand solely for the comparison and elimination of symptoms; it by no means renders superfluous the possession and of medical knowledge, as can be ascertained from the wording of certain sentences of the ” Organon.”
4. The choice of the homoeopathic curative remedy is regulated by the totality of the symptoms in the comprehensive meaning of this term. It not only includes the complaints of the patient, and the result of the medical examination, but all the pathological findings, from the termination of health, to the present condition in their sequel, duration and transitions.
5. Unintelligent comparison of the symptoms in the proving, and the disease are not sufficient to effect a cure. The symptoms of the the disease, and those of the remedy to be chosen, must not only bear an apparent external resemblance; the law of homoeopathic therapy requires the inner correspondence of the natural and the artificial medicinal disease in respect to locality, kind and character.
6. The symptoms are not the disease itself; the ” Organon”says: “The totality of the symptoms is the part visible to the physician, the outwardly reflected impression of the inner character of the disease.” In searching for the homoeopathic specific remedy the ” striking, peculiar, uncommon, and actual signs must be especially and almost exclusively borne in mind.” The physician, therefore, must be able to judge the value of the individual symptoms and their original connection.
7. Hahnemann’s conception, that the nature of a disease is not recognisable, applies only to the purely dynamical, vital side, of the original changes (the causa proxima in its most restricted meaning) and not to the physical changes. These we observe with accuracy, but do not forget, at the same time, that the dynamic side is predominant, and the one most accessible to the physician.
8. Homoeopathy, like every other therapeutic system, implies by cure, the lasting and complete disappearance of all morbid conditions; it only considers the patient re-established when all the disease symptoms have permanently disappeared, and neither physician nor patient can any longer detect any morbid condition. It, therefore, actually cures causally ” by permanent elimination of the sum total of the disease symptoms.”
An assertion to the contrary rests partly upon intentional misunderstanding, and partly on ignorance; Hahnemann has expressed himself in an unmistakable way on this subject, in the annotation to 7 of the ” Organon.”
9. The nature of the disease cannot be taken as the objective by which to regulate the treatment, either by the new or the old school, as it is unknown to both. But homoeopathy, in the same way as the older school, endeavours in the first place to investigate and remove the cause; to procure by estimation of the disease picture, by the valuation of the primary and secondary conditions, and with the help of the means which are to-day at the disposal of the physician, as deep an insight as possible into the ” innermost cause.” Yet homoeopathy remains clearly conscious on the one side, of a Causal cure, where the relation of the remedy to the disease is concerned.
10. Homoeopathy is not a symptomatic procedure in the sense of the older school. It does not attack the individual morbid symptoms by means of remedies which have no connection with the disease, or which may even become injurious to the patient; on the contrary, it demands the sum total of the symptoms as the only absolute guide for the selection of the remedy.
11.To the homoeopathic physician the knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology, and all other medical branches of scientific help, are as indispensable, and in some instances more so than to the physician of the old school. The dispute between the two schools of medicine concerns the knowledge of medicinal remedies, and the method of their application. Men, who, without having first acquired medical training, undertake to treat with homoeopathy are not recognised by us as physicians, we consider them amateurs, such as the older method can also produce.
12. When Hahnemann in striving to bring light into the darkness of chronic diseases and their origins, arrived in his ultimate deductions at the theory of psora, he should not have incurred derision, but have deserved recognition. Because apart from various points which cannot be proved, his theory when rightly understood contains much that is true. And ultimately the main point is, that his teaching on chronic diseases, and his theory of psora in on way affects the principle of similibus.
13. Without failing to recognise the imperfections and shortcomings of medicinal provings on the healthy organism, of Hahnemann’s Materia Medica pura, and of other symptom indices, we must adhere to the usefulness of the provings on the healthy organism for the purpose of ascertaining the true efficacy of remedies. The results of the provings are only, in the first place, suggestions regarding the form of disease in which the remedy proved should always be tried; only the repeated successful results elevate those suggestions to the rank of symptoms for further use at the bedside.
14. It is a fact, that homoeopathic cure can be accomplished with the usual medicinal preparations of the old school, even by giving them in not very minute doses. Experience however has proved that remedies in a very diluted from are very much more efficacious and in many cases they are quite indispensable. It is recognised by homoeopathic physicians without exception, as correct, that even very much diluted remedies are still effective. We do not depreciate Hahnemann’s attempt at explaining this fact, but we do not consider them binding. W e reject Hahnemann’s claim, of his very advanced years, that the 30th dilution is the only one suitable for all cases, and that provings on the healthy organism should only be undertaken with such high dilutions. We recognise in the dilution, as Hahnemann originally did himself, merely a diminution of the medicinal power, and do not agree with his later conception of the absolute increase of efficacy through further potentising.
15. The length of the effective duration of remedy depends upon its nature, the size of the dose, the disease under consideration, and the peculiarities of the patient, and cannot be defined in advance.
16. Being conscious of the deficiencies and imperfections which still cling to the homoeopathic therapeutic system, we do not reject every other method of treatment, and do not consider every help from palliative remedies of the old school as altogether indispensable, although with correct homoeopathic treatment they are frequently unnecessary.
17. Hahnemann does not deny the healing power of nature (vis medicatrix naturae) but he does not always consider it worthy of imitation, and thinks that it is sufficient only in rare instances. This opinion of Hahnemann has never been shared by the majority of the homoeopathic physicians.
18. The homoeopathic physicians must request that the new therapy be judged by its present standard. It has developed beyond Hahnemann’s own conception as found in his “Organon.” The medical representatives of this system, in spite of their great admiration for its founder, and the essential of his system of treatment, are not willing to sacrifice its further healthy development to the authority of the founder, or to the theoretical doubts and ridicule of its opponents.
Richard Haehl was also an editor and publisher of the homeopathic journal Allgemcine, and other homeopathic publications.
Haehl was responsible for saving many of the valuable artifacts of Samuel Hahnemann and retrieving the 6th edition of the Organon and publishing it in 1921.
Richard Haehl was the author of - Life and Work of Samuel Hahnemann