SUPPLEMENT 205
ON THE INJUDICIOUS, BLIND AND INSUFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF THE VITAL FORCE.
Hahnemann writes in the Introduction to the “Organon,” 5th edition, pages 18 to 20:
They (the old School-R.H.) merely followed the example of crude instinctive nature in her efforts, which are barely successful even in the slighter cases of acute disease; they merely imitated the unreasoning life-preserving power when left to itself in diseases, which entirely dependent as it is upon the organic laws of the body, is only capable of acting in conformity with those laws, and is not guided by reason and reflection-they copied nature, which cannot, like an intelligent surgeon, bring together the gaping lips of a wound, and by their union, effects a cure; which knows not how to straighten and adjust the broken ends of a bone lying far apart and exuding much (often an excess of) news osseous matter. Neither can Nature put a ligature on a wounded artery; in her energy she causes the patient to bleed to death; which does not understand how to replace a dislocated shoulder, but by the swelling it occasions round about it, soon presents an obstacle to reduction; which, in order to remove a foreign body from the cornea, destroys the whole eye by suppuration; which, with all its efforts, can only liberate a strangulated hernia by gangrene of the bowel and death; and which, by the metaschematisms it produces in dynamic diseases, often renders them much worse than they were originally. But more, this irrational vital force receives into our body, without hesitation, the greatest plagues of our terrestrial existence, the spark that kindles the countless diseases beneath which tortured mankind has groaned for hundreds and thousands of years, the chronic miasms-psora, syphilis, sycosis-not one of which can it diminish in the slightest degree, far less expel single- handed from the organism; on the contrary, ir allows them to rankle therein, until often after a long life of misery, death at last closes the eyes of the sufferer.
In an annotation to this paragraph, which has always been made the target for attacks from his opponents on account of the severity with which Hahnemann expresses himself against the insufficiency of the vital forces, he adds (pages 18 to 20): The pitiable and highly imperfect efforts of the vital force to relieve itself in acute diseases is a spectacle that should excite our compassion, and command the and of all the powers of our rational mind, to terminate the self-inflicted torture by a real cure. Hence, even in these evacuations termed crises, which nature generally products at the termination of diseases which run a rapid course, there is frequently more of suffering than of efficacious relief. What the vital force does in these so-called crises, and how it does it, remains a mystery to us, like all the internal operations of the organic vital economy. One thing, however, is certain that in all these efforts more or less of the affected parts are sacrificed in order to save the rest. In the “Organon,” page 23:
No one ever saw a chronic patient recover his health permanently by such efforts of crude nature, nor any chronic disease cured by such evacuations effected by the organism. On the contrary in such cases the original dyscrasia is always perceptibly aggravated.in spite of the continuation of the evacuations when nature, left to her own resources, cannot help herself in any other way than by the production of external local symptoms (metastasis). these operations of the energetic but unintelligent, unreasoning and improvident vital force, conduce to anything but genuine relief or recovery. And also before in an annotation on page 19: If the task is left to the organism alone to overcome, by its own forces and without external aid, a disease newly contracted (in cases of chronic miasms its power of resistance is quite inefficacious), we then witness only painful, often dangerous, efforts of nature to save the individual at whatever cost, which often terminate in extinction of earthly existence, in death.
SUPPLEMENT 206.
ALLOPATHY ERRONEOUSLY COPIES NATURE.
“Organon” Introduction, pages 16 and 17:
They (the allopaths-R.H.) allege that their multifarious evacuant processes are a mode of treatment by derivation, wherein they follow the example of nature which in her efforts to assist the diseased organism, resolves fever by perspiration and diuresis, pleurisy by epistaxis, sweat and mucous expectoration- other disease by vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding from the anus, articular pains by suppurating ulcers on the legs, cynanche tonsillaris by salivation, etc., or removes them by metastases and abscesses which she develops in parts at a distance from the seat of the disease.
Hence they thought the best thing to do was to imitate Nature, by also going to work in the treatment of most diseases in a circuitous manner, like the diseased vital force when left to itself, and thus in an indirect manner, by means of stronger heterogeneous irritants applied to organs remote from the seat of the disease, and totally dissimilar to the affected tissues, they produce evacuations and generally kept them up, in order to draw, as it were, the disease, thither.
SUPPLEMENT 207
MEDICINAL (HOMOEOPATHIC) SUPPORT OF NATURE’S POWER OF HEALING IN INTERNAL DISEASES.
In third edition of “Materia Medica Pura,” Vol. I, page 272 (1830), Hahnemann says: Only chronic diseases are the touchstone of the true art of healing, because they cannot be cured by themselves.
This is the “true healing art” (from the “Organon,” pages 28 and 29), that reflective work, the attribute of the higher powers of human intellect, of unfettered judgment and of reason, selecting and determining on principle, in order to effect an alteration in the instinctive irrational and unintelligent but energetic automatic vital force, when it has been diverted by disease into abnormal action, and has by means of a similar affection developed by a homoeopathically chosen remedy, excited in it a medicinal disease somewhat greater in degree, so that the natural morbid affection can no longer act upon the vital force.
In the proclamation “to my true pupils” at the time of the fight against the pseudo-homoeopaths, ” he says. (See Supplement 133, page 288): Homoeopathy alone knows and teaches that the cure is to be effected only by means of the entire force still existing in the patient, when a medicine perfectly homoeopathic to the present case of disease, and administered in the proper dose, causes this force to exert its curative activity, One of the most inestimable advantages of homoeopathy is to husband as much as possible this vital force, which is indispensable to the cure in the course of treatment. It is this which places it above all the allopathic methods. It alone then avoids all those means ruinous to life, which are never necessary and constantly adverse to the end aimed at.
In the fourth part of “Chronic Diseases,” second edition 1838 we read:
It is the organic life force of our body which cures all kinds of natural diseases directly, and which without such sacrifice, and by means of the correct (homoeopathic) remedy it is enabled to overcome; this, of course, it could never have accomplished without this help and support because our organic life force by itself suffices only to maintain life in a normal state, as long as the individual has not rendered it morbid through inimical influences of disease-producing elements. Alone it is not powerful enough to fight these.Only homoeopathic remedies can give the supremacy to the vital principle in disease.
In the Introduction to the “Organon,” page 39: In all ages, the patients who have been really, rapidly, permanently and obviously cured by medicines, and who did not merely recover by some fortuitous circumstance, or by the acute disease having run its allotted course, or by the powers of the system having, in the course of time, gradually attained the preponderance under allopathic and antagonistic treatment- for being cured in a direct manner differs vastly from recovering in an indirect manner,-such patients have been cured solely (although without the knowledge of the physician) by means of a (homoeopathic) medicine which possessed the power of producing a similar morbid state.
SUPPLEMENT 208.
OPINIONS ON THE DYNAMIC PRINCIPLE.
Hufeland’s opinion of Hahnemann’s Homoeopathy in his Essay on “Physiatrik” (“Journal der Praktischen Heilkunde,” 1838, Vol. 75, page 24):
Even Hahnemann’s homoeopathy has in spite of all apparent neglect of the healing powers of nature, actually contributed to the support of Physiatrik. Does not the whole of its principles rest upon the action and stimulation of the vital force, for the purpose of altering the abnormal condition into a normal one through the use of a specific, that is of such a remedy which stands in a peculiar relationship to the diseased organ or to the morbid condition affecting life? Is it not frequently a nature cure effected by time and strict diet? It is indeed in this that the value of homoeopathy is to be found; it brings into play the vital force to assist the diseased organs, and finds and makes use of those remedies which stand in the closest relationship to this organ or to its diseased state.
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