VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE) TO PATHOLOGY AND TO DIAGNOSIS.
SUPPLEMENT 203.
HAHNEMANN’S UTTERANCES ON THE HEALING POWERS OF NATURE IN HIS WRITINGS OF 1796-1809.
In 1796 he says in his writings “Essay on a New Principle, etc.”: In acute diseases if we can stave off for a few days the obstacles to recovery Nature will largely conquer by itself.
In 1797 he writes on the question: “Are the obstacles to the attainment of certainty and simplicity in Practical Medicine insurmountable?”
It cannot be a question of dietetic treatment without medicine, the effect of which, when very simple can well be estimated, and from which in special cases a great deal of benefit could be expected.
If great alterations in diet and in the mode of living have to be made, it would be better if the physician first saw how far he could remedy the disease by this change alone, before he prescribed any medicinal remedies.
In 1801 he asserts in his “Fragmentary Observations on Brown’s Elements of Medicine”:
Beneficent Nature and youth will, assisted by such appropriate regimen cure diseases having far more deeply seated causes than deficiency or excess of excitability, which the unprejudiced observer witnesses daily, and which must be explained away, or denied, by Brown in order to support his scholastic system.
In 1801. In “observations on the Three Current Methods of Treatment,” Hahnemann says again about Brown:
Nothing is to be left to the powers of Nature; we must not rest in our application of remedies; we must continually either stimulate or deplete. What a blasphemy against Nature, what a dangerous suggestion for the ordinary, already far too busy, pseudo-physician! What pride is instilled into him as a master over Nature!
In 1805. “AEsculapius in the balance”:
The majority of cases, for the treatment of which a physician is called in, are of acute diseases, that is, aberrations from health which have only a short course to run before they terminate either in recovery or death. If the patient die, the physician follows his remains modesty to the grave; if he recover, then must his natural strength have been sufficient to overcome both the force of the disease, and the usually obstructing action of the drugs he took; and the powers of nature often suffice to overcome both..In epidemic dysentery, just as many of those who follow the indications afforded by Nature, without taking any medicine at all, recover, as of those. (who are treated by anykind of physician-R.H.). What is the inference? Certainly not that the physicians were all correct in their mode of treatment, but perhaps that they were all equally wrong. What presumption for each to claim the credit of curing a disease, which in the milder cases uniformly recovered of itself, if gross errors in diet were not committed.I could run through a number of acute diseases and show that the recovery of those who were treated with such opposite methods were not cures, but spontaneous recoveries….I often say, regretfully, that patient frequently recover from very serious acute diseases as by a miracle, as soon as they put away or secretly discontinue the….medicines prescribed by their physicians. In numerous instances, many a prostrate patient has miraculously cured himself, not only by refusing the physician’s medicine, but by secretly transgressing in his artificial and mischievous system of diet, and freely following his own inclinations, which is in this instance an imperious instinct, impelling him to commit various dietetic paradoxes.
1808. In the essay “On the present want of Foreign Medicines,” the sentence occurs:
Do not the poor, who use no medicine at all, often recover much sooner from a similar kind of disease than the well-to-do patient, who has his shelves filled with large bottles of medicine?
SUPPLEMENT 204
HAHNEMANN’S STATEMENTS ON THE POWERS OF NATURE (VIS MEDICATRIX NATURAE) FROM THE PUBLICATION OF THE “ORGANON” ONWARDS.
“Organon” (Introduction, page 52, annotation 2): It is only the slightest acute diseases that tend when the natural period of their course has expired, to terminate quietly in resolution, as it is called, with or without the employment of not very aggressive allopathic remedies; the vital force, having regained its powers, then gradually substitutes the normal condition for the derangement of the health that has now ceased to exist. But in severe acute and in chronic diseases which constitute by far the greater portion of all human ailments, crude nature and the old school are equally powerless.
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