Our old, brutal materialism seems to be slowly melting away, gradually merging into what a clearer light shows to be action, reciprocal on every plane; even medicine is not escaping the metamorphosis. The power of nature which demonstrates the survival of he fittest is being transformed into another phase wherein its contained good is made to grow at the expense of that which is not quite so good.
Early medicine did much groping about until the later Renaissance opened up even the doctors’ minds to the hidden treasures of the past as well as excited their curiosity into turning them into newer paths.
Such a background helps us to understand how the spirit which animated Hahnemann finally led him into researches of which we today are beneficiaries. Whether we shall continue to deserve the legacy must rest with every individual conscience. Let it not be inferred that a mind capable of bringing to the light of day such an ethereal concept of vital action, must necessarily also inaugurate an irresistible reform. The thinking process of an eminently conservative profession are far too Darwinian for that a concept having the form of finality is moribund from its inception.
In the very year of my graduation Madam Blavatsky laid down the postulate that “the essence of life is consubstantial with electricity.” We are only now beginning to fully realize how true this is. She further said that before the end of the nineteenth century new discoveries would upset the dicta of science. It was left to the role of our own Madam Curie to fulfil this prophesy.
How well she did it we realize more and more every day. Truly the destructive power of radium is not limited to malignancies by any means and by the strongest of inferences we must admit that the developments of physics have rung the death knell of crude drugging as well as brought general medicine face to face with Hahnemann’s experiments and their consequences. It only remains to be seen whether general enlightenment of medical progress will force the issue. The axe has been laid at the tree of preconception and purely materialistic reasoning.
In order to correctly sense the sharpness of his tools the physician must needs have a just comprehension of the physics of life especially as implied in the philosophy of the Organon. He will then realize that Similia Similibus Curantur is a phase of the law of action and reaction on a higher plane. It is an extension into the superphysical where stabilization occurs, as here, through the conversion of energy. In other words health cannot be regained until harmony in the expenditure of vital energy again prevails. It is now beyond cavil that harmony can only be established through the contact of a synchronously acting or vibrating force. Manifestly this must be made through the nerve channels.
It is perhaps not too much to infer that this vital force must be of a fluidic nature and at present perhaps still superphysical, although we are confessedly on its borderland now. It is also interpenetrative in that its effects are practically not only local but general at the same moment. This conception of its action explains how it comes about that amelioration is felt in the mind first, and progress as long as no mental revulsion occurs. The first intimation that the remedial response is beginning to slacken comes through mental attitude.
The experience of much prescribing often causes one to settle upon the use of only a few drugs or at the best into choosing the more promising one from a rather small group. It is a loose and easy way that neglects the minority indications, therefore is less precise and efficient. It smacks of indolence and lack of mental agility, reminding one that versatility is not acquired here any more easily than else where.
We are daily confronted with a typical case that makes the careful assembling of all of their symptoms very important if wish to obtain a clear image for which counterpart is to be sought among our provings. For this purpose we first search the repertory and then compare the actual provings until convinced of their similarity. At present it is the only feasible method, but it is surprising how few men really know how to go about doing it well. Repeated practice, however, soon makes for skill, particularly in evaluating symptoms, which is, after all, exceedingly important as well as has considerable value in prognosis. Over stressing single symptoms or the wrong the easily leads to one-sided prescribing, palliation and ultimate confusion. The whole picture with certain out standing points is the ideal to be sought for, if we wish to succeed.
About a score of our drugs act out the common ills of life in there pathogeneses. These Hahnemann called polychrests and if we must have favorites let us learn all we can about these first of all. They especially include Aconite, Belladonna, Bryonia, Chamomilla, China, Cina, Ferrum phos, Gelsemium, Hepar, Ignatia Ipecac, Lachesis, Mercury, Natrum Mur, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Rhus tox, Sulphur and the Veratrums. The sick making properties of these drugs resemble those of sick people rather than disease forms. This is a very vital distinction for the homoeopath.
At the most drug action can simulate types of disease in part only. No human entity can show forth all or even a majority of the symptoms appertaining to a single drug or even of a single type of disease. The nearest approach to this specificity is perhaps the relation of Mercury to syphilis and yet Hahnemann, like the rest of us, supplemented its use with other drugs when quick silver lagged because of the presence of heterogeneous factors. The latter show themselves as side symptoms seemingly having no connection with the disease in hand; for which reason we view them as the outcroppings of other miasms, that thereby deflect the vital force by just that much.
The older homoeopaths ascribed poor results to the presence of an all pervading miasms which obscured and distorted the real indications. With an enormous increase in available pathogenetic symptoms we do not feel this need so acutely, albeit often to our own disadvantage. Most prescribers gradually enlarge the cope of there remedies quite beyond their seemingly legitimate sphere of action. This springs from the fact that the simillimum releases reactive power strong enough to re-establish harmony, which in turn is capable of sweeping away almost any morbid condition. The crude similar, however, can remove but a small part of the symptom complex and leaves behind a distorted image of the sickness, much harder to treat.
The best that can be said for partial prescribing is that it some times removes the superimposed load which blocks an effectual reaction. Such an impediment originates in the presence of some miasm, pernicious drugging or suppression. Hahnemann inveighed strongly against excessive depletion and pernicious polypharmacy; we, however, are faced by the still more dangerous procedure of serumization and ray treatments. The first always holds the menace of sensitization and vasomotor effects, while the latter drives back upon the vital force very eliminative function; a more dangerous procedure is hard to imagine.
All in all it may be said that the utter therapeutic confusion of dominant medicine is only too apparent to one who thinks clearly. It is becoming increasingly evident that autoantidotalism, as serumization in the old school and isopathy in our own, has captured a large part of the therapeutic field. In either form it is incapable of doing more than removing a present incubus, leaving the basic miasms untouched; it therefore falls short of being the simillimum, hence of doing the most good possible.
A word in inclusion. Jar was ideally correct in stating tat proper repertory analysis as well as the pathogenetic picture should point out the same remedy independently of each other; but practically most of us use the former to amplify, clarify and complement the latter. For us the proving text is too rigid and lacking in flexibility without the addition of some imagination, always a dangerous recourse, because resemblances are not equally evident to us. For this reason we need the check of clinical evidence, in order that our remedies may be properly delimited. This can be best accomplished by a system of coapting symptoms and their related remedies as is nowadays done with card indices, although these are confessedly now in their formative stage.
The procedure itself yields an entirely new point of view and one fully consonant with Hahnemann’s conception of the deduction to be drawn form the clinical picture. The method steps down the enormous rubrics of generalities and adds new ones composed of the most diverse elements present in the clinical picture, thereby forming the combination most likely to contain the particular minutiae so decisive for the homoeopathic remedy. In parting I have a word to leave with you: Hold fast top the law, learn its implication and thereby cure others; it is the only way it can actually be accomplished. Are we as prescribers and healers ready to take what should be the leading part in the reformation of therapeutics?
Born in Western Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and subsequently Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He moved to Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1888, practicing there, but also consulting worldwide. He gave lectures at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and taught philosophy, materia medica, and repertory at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Postgraduate School. Boger brought BÅ“nninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory into the English Language in 1905. His publications include :
Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Boenninghausen's Antipsorics
Boger's Diphtheria, (The Homoeopathic Therapeutics of)
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica, 1915
General Analysis with Card Index, 1931
Samarskite-A Proving
The Times Which Characterize the Appearance and Aggravation of the Symptoms and their Remedies