The following statements show how we are gradually approaching again Hahnemann’s conception of the dynamic principle.
Dr. Karl Erhard-Weiss of Stuttgart, writes in an essay on the dynamic principle (“Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Homoopathie,” 1922):
Vitalistic trends of thought are asserting themselves more and more in modern science, which has recognised that the cells is not a simple mass of protoplasm, but with its nucleus and chromosomes it become a complicated system of forces, and can be compared to a solar system and planets. In the same way, modern science in the formation of molecules finds analogies with the cosmic system, and it can generally speaking, no longer maintain the strict differentiation between energy and matter, but is force to come gradually to the adoption of the views held for a long time by natural science and philosophy, which is that movement in the ether modifies primordial matter, and in its vibrations produces the illusions of matter in the physical sense. It is at this point that the ethereal principle of dynamics previously scoffed at once again appears. The spiral of scientific development has again completed a revolution and stands one coil higher exactly at the same point from which Hahnemann tried to find his explanations of disease and curative effects.
And in another passage: We recognise how far in advance of his time was Hahnemann, the exact and unprejudiced researcher, not only by the discovery of the Law of Similars, as a fact of experience, but also by establishing that the effects of disease as well as those of remedies are related to the living organism, not in a chemical, but in a dynamic and an ethereal way. If many an explanation of the details has become obsolete and incorrect, as for example the assumption of a medicinal disease where we no speak of stimulation to produce specific protecting substances, the fundamental principle is correct and will undoubtedly gradually b e recognised by science after the final conquest of crude materialism has ceased to affect elemental substance: the effect of disease on the human body is dynamic as is the effect of homoeopathic medicines.
In the same periodical (1922, page 50), Dr. Meng of Stuttgart, also gives his point of view of this question:
We begin to replace the purely chemico-mechanical or physical explanations of life by one which is related to the vitalistic conception. In the modern dynamic cosmic conception all natural phenomena are “explained” by the action of forces, matter is conditioned by the power -centres of the elements of matter. Modern vitalism has not revived altogether the old theory of the life force in its somewhat crude conception, but fundamentally it has only re-constructed it in a more scientific form.
Not only contemporary homoeopathic physicians but also prominent representatives of the old School medicine express similar views, for instance Professor L. Krehl, of Heidelberg upholds this point of view in his latest (IIth edition) of his “Pathological Physiology” (1921, page 691) in the following words: Biology cannot altogether clearly explain the life processes by its adoption of the theory of mechanico-causal continuity. This requires further consideration, especially in the theory of disease. I know how many distinguished researchers have shunned such considerations because they believe them to be a retrograde step to a period which has already been conquered. But here everyone is compelled to delicate his own convictions, and it is my conviction that we shall only regain a uniform conception of man, nature and God, when we again observe and investigate the super-mechanical processes which are at the back of, and a guide to phenomena, and give them due consideration in our computations This does not appear to me as being a rejection of the prevailing view of nature held at present, but its necessary complement and re-setting.
After these opinions we will be able to agree with Emil Schlegel of Tubingen when he says in his “Reform of Medical Science” (1903):
It is almost remarkable how the enlightened leaders of the modern movement of natural sciences unconsciously extend their hand to the long misunderstood genius.
And his prophetic word indeed seems near it fulfilment:
This time has now come when a thorough understanding of Hahnemann will be easier and more possible, when his honest and well described observations will also find scientific acceptance and when it will begin to be of extreme advantages to represent the teachings of that great German physician, in order to divert them into the stream of recognition and life.
SUPPLEMENT 209
HAHNEMANN’S ATTITUDE TO PATHOLOGY.
In the essay, “On the Value of the Speculative Systems of Medicine,” etc., published in “Hufeland’s Journal,” 1808, No. 263, Hahnemann writes:
But though all the component parts of the human body are to be found in other parts of nature (with the exception perhaps of zoonic acid and uric acid), yet they all act together in this organic combination for the full development of life, and for the discharge of the other functions of man, in so peculiar and anomalous a manner (which can only be defined by the term vitality) that this peculiar (vital) relation of the parts to one another and the external world, cannot be judged of and explained by any other rule than that which it supplies itself; therefore by none of the known laws of mechanics, statics or chemistry.
Yet in spite of these innumerable deceptions physiologists and pathologists would still return to this old leaven;because they tried, chiefly for the sake of their own pride, to explain much, even the inexplicable in the essence of medical science. They considered it impossible to treat the abnormal state of the human body (diseases) scientifically without possessing a tangible idea of the fundamental laws of the normal and abnormal conditions of the human organism. This was the first and great deception which they practised on themselves and on the world. This was the unhappy conceit which, from Galen’s days down to our own, made medical science a stage for the display of the most fantastic, often the most self-contradictory hypotheses, explanations demonstrations, conjectures, dogmas and systems, whose evil consequences cannot be overlooked.
Therefore it was a fight against all the system which resolved and contradicted each other! Derived from the system of experience and not from an external system! This was Hahnemann’s standpoint when he continued:
I pass on to pathology, a science in which that same love of system has upset the mental balance of the metaphysical physiologist, and has caused a similar degeneration of the intellect, in the attempt to fathom the essential nature of diseases, that process by which affections of the organism become diseases. This they term the first internal cause.
No mortal an form a clear conception of what is here aimed at, to say nothing of the impossibility of any intelligence, even in imagination, finding a road to an intimate view of what constitutes the essence of disease: and yet hosts of sophists with important looks, have affected to play the seer’s part in the matter.
Also in the Introduction to the “Organon,” page 3, he rejects the old pathology with its love of systems, which tries to force individual diseases into definite disease categories, for the purpose of treatment. He says:
The old school of medicine flattered themselves that they could justly claim for it alone the title of ” rational medicine” because they alone sought for and strove to remove the cause of disease, and followed the method employed by nature in diseases. They only fancied that they could discover the cause of disease: they did not discover it, however, as it is not perceptible and not discoverable. The great majority of diseases being of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is not perceptible to the senses; they therefore exerted themselves to imagine one, and from a survey of the parts of the normal inanimate human body (anatomy), compared with the visible changes of the same internal parts in persons who have died of disease (pathological anatomy), as also from what they could deduce from a comparison of the phenomena and functions in healthy life (physiology) with their endless alterations in the innumerable morbid states (pathology, semeiotics), they drew conclusions relative to the invisible process whereby the changes which take place in the inward being of man, when diseased are affected-a dim picture of the imagination.
In another passage (page 136) Hahnemann condemns the old pathology with its multitudinous variety of names of diseases which were erroneously considered to stand by themselves, and in a footnote to this he enumerated diseased conditions which differed very widely from each other frequently only having one isolated sign of similarity.
And further: All the diseases which nature produces in human beings exposed to a thousand different kinds of conditions forming an endless variety of changes which can never be defined in advance, pathology has split up to such an extent that they are reduced to a mere handful of artificially formed diseases.
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