1. Arborivital Medicine



Coughs that come from what seems to be a dry spot generally need Nat Mur. or Conium. If a sense of a lump in the throat excites it, we have Belladonna, Calc-c., Cocc cact. and Lachesis. So the matter goes on indefinitely, with the accessories determining the final choice, but it is not difficult to see how greatly our task is lightened by being able to find the location of the exciting cause and then differentiate with the aid of the modalities and the general picture. This is the true homoeopathic way and will bring unexpected aid, doing more than any other possible method.

The simillimum re-establishes the normal conversion of energy and the patient reacts with a definite unknown under other methods. It is the nature of every human being to be extremely sensitive to the constitutional similimum, and although it may not always be easy to detect the signs which call for it; when once found a single dose of very high potency will act over long periods of time.

Because they do not known how to manage reaction and are not thoroughly conversant with the materia medica, some prescribers avoid such prescriptions. With a little more knowledge of the Organon and care in handling the complementaries, particularly the nosodes, they will be able to accomplish much more than they do now. We should keep in mind the fact that the premature repetition or changing of remedies before reaction is finished does endless harm to the patient and almost hopelessly confuses the prescriber. The prescriber must know when to give the remedy and when to hold his hand while nature expedites the forces to which he has given a new direction.

He must know the power of sac lac and remember that an inward movement of the symptoms bodes no good.

It is worth remembering that most prescriptions are guess- work, a hideous trifling with human life, for every drug is either similar, hence curative, or dissimilar and baneful, therefore it surely behoves every man to do his utmost in diligently and systematically getting every symptom and then searching for the nearest similar. When you have once fully tested this method you will discard empiricism and all that charlatanry which goes under the name of rational medicine while it puts the conscience of the doctor to sleep and, by suppressive measures, steadily pushes the patient toward the grave.

To make good cures it is above all necessary to avoid running to the specialist every time new symptoms arise, for very few men of this class are broad enough to see that the whole man is sick when he shows local symptoms and that the carefully selected remedy would render most of his work superfluous. If the laity ever learn this lesson they will certainly smite the men who call themselves doctors but as surely are not physicians.

Every day we are confronted with conditions which lie on the borderland between surgical interference and the remedial powers of medicine, for surgeons, with the aid of the knife, have steadily pushed the use of medicines further and further into the background.

This is especially true of allopathic procedures and although most homoeopaths have not gone to such extremes, the signs are not wanting that many men who profess the law of similia understand so little of it that they are constantly willing to relegate it to a very subordinate place and go on using the knife to the utmost limit. It is too often not a question of what is good for the patient but of how far he will allow the operator to go. Such is the spirit with which the glamour of the operating room overshadows the more prosaic prescription, which, if left alone is capable of gradually unloading the embarrassed vital force and allowing life to flow on in its usual way; it nips disease in its inception before the microscope can possibly pass a doubtful verdict. No manner of cutting can do as much.

The simillimum often surprises us by its power; what we have been taught to look upon as incurable or to be removed with the knife only, is cured. In these days the laity look for mechanical removal because homoeopaths have not led them to expect anything better that the work of the surgeon. I can fully confirm what Boenninghausen says in his Aphorisms of Hippocrates, “Homoeopathy cures all kinds of ruptures,” a strong statement, but experience bears him out.

He further says that it is not a local trouble and at best will not long remain so and that the final cure depends upon the concomitants, all of which is true. He mentions Aco., Alumina, Asarum europaeum, Aurum, Belladonna, Bryonia, Calcarea carbonica, Caps., Chamomilla, Cocc., Coloc., Guai., Lachesis, Lycopodium, Mag-c., nitricum acidum, Nux-v., Opium, Phosphorus, Plb., Silicea, Staphysagria, Sul., Sul-ac., Thuja, Verat-a. and Zincum met. as the foremost remedies, from which we choose Aco., Alumina, Aurum, Belladonna, Calc-c., Chamomilla, Coloc., Lachesis, Lycopodium, nitricum acidum, Nux-v., Opium, Plb., Silicea, Sul., Sul-ac., or Verat-a. for incarcerated hernia.

The predisposition to this disorder is often hereditary and the surgical closure of one ring is just the prelude to the formation of a rupture at another.

The domain of surgery lies largely within the traumatic sphere and in the palliative, which enables the chronic patient to live, but on a lower plane. The vast majority of early operations for incipient malignant disease not only inflict a severe injury upon the vital force, but at least remove a suspicion only. None but the grossest materialist would do such a thing. We should use the indicated remedy from the very start, well knowing that it saves the strength of the patient and improves his chance immeasurably if an operation is finally necessary.

Why do we operate for adenoids or polypi, for piles and a thousand other things? Simply because of the uncured sin of the parents and ignorance of how to live the present life.

The law leads toward morality and a natural expression of inherent powers; it adds nothing and substances nothing, but harmonizes everything. Until the cutters can be brought to see this point and that the most facile method of cure lies in its correct application, they can know nothing of homoeopathy and very little of nature.

Such things may seem far off, but a clearer view is fast giving a better understanding of life, its ways and ends, and is beginning to see that sickness means ignorance and a cure means a comfortable return to health instead of the old-fashioned, lame recovery.

The former is what is expected of homoeopathy, the latter is essentially the surgical way. To be a good homoeopath and at the same time a good surgeon; there’s the rub. The materialism of the one seems incompatible with the dynamism of the other, but no amount of sophistry can rub out the fact that we are dealing with the man whose life and being flows from within and who uses his organs to guide this internal self; therefore all external injury has an internal self; therefore all external disturbance shows itself by external signs, be the cause moral or physical.

The psoric theory of Hahnemann has been a great stumbling block, especially to those who have nor read Boenninghausen’s Aphorisms of Hippocrates. Among other things we read there that “The discovery of the itch mite does not belong to modern times, as 650 years ago the Arabian physician Abenzohr not only surmised it but the common people knew it by the name of Syrones. Fabricious, (Entomologist 1745-1808) also, in his “Fauna Greenlandica” praised the dexterity of its inhabitants in detecting and destroying these insects with the point of the needle.” He also points out that Hahnemann’s critics have uniformly confused the product of psora with its cause. Hahnemann was perhaps unfortunate in calling susceptibility, Psora, especially when applied to the herpetic diathesis; he laid the greatest stress upon the fact that itch aroused or greatly intensified this susceptibility (psora); nothing could be truer.

It is certain that psora shows itself in the form of skin symptoms in some persons and that their suppression often causes metastasis. The seriousness of such accidents is perhaps plainest in the case of erysipelas. When this happens the simillimum generally includes the symptoms of the original disease plus these of later development which thereby becomes all important. Occasionally no one remedy corresponds to the whole picture; then we must prescribe for the most recent phase first and for the earlier one when it is again uncovered.

A metastasis means that an ingrained affection is expressing itself in another form and is demanding the patient’s constitutional remedy, rather than a time-saving palliative. In this connection I cannot too strongly insist that the chronic disease cannot be successfully treated without taking the anamnesis into account. The mistake of omitting it seems to be one of the great causes of failure in our times. It has been artfully claimed that such a proceeding nullifies the whole law of similia, but a more egregious blunder is hard to imagine, for it is on the one hand indeed, unthinkable that the entire list of anamnesis, symptoms with their correspondingly numerous drugs could be the result of the experience of any one or two men, or on the other, that they should have so adroitly conjured up by the human mind. On the contrary they bear much inherent evidence of having been reasoned out from the provings as rectified by innumerable experiences.

C.M. Boger
Cyrus Maxwell Boger 5/ 13/ 1861 "“ 9/ 2/ 1935
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