If there is one phrase more common than another in the writings of Hahnemann, it is the expression, “The spiritlike medicinal powers.” I would like to impress upon the minds of all who think they can administer tinctures and low attenuations without doing violence to homoeopathic principles or running counter to Hahnemanns homoeopathic example, the fact that only the immaterial can have a spiritlike action. The idea can not be predicated of crude substances, nor utilized by those who administer crude medicines.
Some, not knowing any better, have sneered at Hahnemanns practice of administering these spirit-like medicinal powers by olfaction; but permit me to submit that whether by olfaction or by one or two material pellets, moistened with a high dynamization of the indicated remedy, the power is in the aura; and the medicinal power that is stronger than disease is the immaterial power, the dynamic power, the aura of the drug.
This understood there will be no further tendency toward crude, material doses. And if Hahnemannians would teach this great truth to their patrons and the general public, they would not only advance the true interests of pure Homoeopathy but build around themselves a bulwark impregnable to the fads and heresies of the day.
In her process of preparing drugs and in her therapeutic law Homoeopathy stands exclusive and alone. Let the public understand these issues, then they will not only be able to appreciate the philosophy, but competent to recognize the genuine and detect the counterfeit.
Is it argued that laymen are not capable of under- standing such intricate subjects and that they could never be educated to immaterial dose? I answer, they would have to make a pretty bad showing, indeed, if, under patient education their materialistic tendencies should develop in a greater ratio than those of doctors!.
Hahnemann lived hundreds of years in advance of his day, and his system of medicine still lives hundreds of years in advance of the times; but I am sanguine in the belief that the day is coming when the worlds physicians and hence, the masses, will recognize the spirit-like powers which lay hidden in the inner nature of crude medicinal substance; when they will acknowledge Samuel Hahnemann to have been the greatest public benefactor and the most eminent medical genius of the ages; when they will crown his memory with wreaths of appreciation and gratitude, and when they will embrace Homoeopathy as the only system of cure possessing the inherent qualities worthy of universal acceptance and adapted to universal application.
God speed that day! and may all professed adherents acquaint themselves with the fundamental principles; the very gist and essence of his system, and be filled with his energy, enthusiasm and convictions.
The millions of English speaking people who have turned away from traditional medicine and identified themselves with some no- medicine fad, indicate by their open course that they are tired of material medicine, and for the want of light and knowledge concerning the immaterial powers of crude substances, they go to the opposite extreme and denounce medicine in general.
The safeguard of Homoeopathy now, as in the beginning, is education, not deception; opening the eyes of the public to the chasm between Homoeopathy and Allopathy which is as wide as the North is from the South, and not permitting the masses to conclude that there is not much difference after all. We concede that what they are often taught to call Homoeopathy, does not differ from the old school in any vital particular worth mentioning; but the real difference between Homoeopathy as taught and practiced by its founder; and all other systems of medicine, is the difference between the material and the immaterial.
1. He taught that disease cause is immaterial, outside of the domain of surgery.
2. That disease itself is a derangement of the immaterial vital force.
3. That such morbid derangement, called disease, can not be removed by the physician in any other way that by the spirit- like, dynamic, immaterial powers of the serviceable medicines.
And his conception of the immaterial powers hidden in the inner nature of crude substances, is clearly expressed in a foot- note of his Organon; page 194, as follows: “The medicinal power becomes much more potentized, and the spirit of this medicine, so to speak, becomes much more unfolded, developed, and rendered much more penetrating in its action on the nerves.”.
“The spirit of this medicine,” or its equivalent, is an expression never used by the tongue or pen in the materialistic camp; but is peculiar to dynamic physicians, to pure Homoeopathy and to pure homoeopathic literature.
We conclude, then, that the most salutary and efficient doses of medicine are:.
1. Immaterial doses.
2. Immaterial doses raised to a high power of development.
3. Immaterial doses, the minimum in size, that the vital force may not be shocked by the exaggerated action of the aura, whether conveyed to the system by one or two moistened pellets, or by olfaction.
4. Immaterial doses, repeated at proper intervals, “according to the nature of the different medicines, the corporeal constitution of the patient and the magnitude of his disease;” but in no case until the previous dose has exhausted its action.
5. Immaterial doses, chosen for the patient and homoeopathic to his individual image of disease, whether acute or chronic.
The idea that high dynamizations may cure some chronic diseases, but that they are wholly inadequate for acute and malignant disorders, emanated from materialists. Hahnemann never taught it.
In the last issue of THE MEDICAL ADVANCE Dr. G. W. Harman, of Newark, N. J., said; “They” (intelligent homoeopathists) “know that Homoeopathy is not a matter of dose, but a matter of law in the selection of the remedy. They know that the only small thing in connection with Homoeopathy is the death rate.”.
This was an unfortunate statement to have been printed in his home paper, the Newark Evening News. Unfortunate because untrue and misleading. The people of Newark may have taken it as “all wool and a yard wide,” but when the doctor sent it out to THE ADVANCE he had a different audience.
The smallest thing in connection with Homoeopathy is the dose, and when I quote the founders works respecting this subject, I think all will agree that Homoeopathy is a matter of dose as well as of law in selecting the remedy. This idea that Homoeopathy is not a matter of dose has been worn threadbare by materialists, to the great detriment of pure Homoeopathy, and is always misleading to those who do not know.
The doctor who strives to impress the general public with the idea that Homoeopathy does not necessarily imply small doses will never succeed in building up a homoeopathic practice that will compare favorably with that of Hahnemann or Boenninghausen or Hering. The truth is no man can successfully practise Homoeopathy without employing the small dose.
In paragraph 275 we find the following: “The suitableness of a medicine for any given case of disease does not depend on its accurate homoeopathic selection alone, but likewise on the proper size, or rather smallness, of the dose. If we give too strong a dose of a medicine which may have been even quite homoeopathically chosen for the morbid state before us, it must, not with-standing the inherent beneficial character of its nature, prove injurious by its mere magnitude, and by the unnecessary, too strong impression which, by virtue of its homoeopathic similarity of action, it makes upon those parts of the organism which are the most sensitive, and are already most affected by the natural disease.”
Again, he says: “For this reason a medicine, even thought it may be homoeopathically suited to the case of disease, does harm in every dose that is too large, the more harm the larger the dose, and by the magnitude of the dose it does more harm the greater its homoeopathicity and the higher the potency.” This doctrine is corroborated by Boenninghausen in the following words:
“In the last few years the homoeopaths have made experiments in this field which speaks decidedly for the highest potency in the smallest dose. Therefore the better homoeopaths of today make use only of the smallest part of a drop of the highest (decillionth) potency (one, at the most two, of the tiniest pellets moistened therewith), and not one has had occasion to return to the use of the large dose.”.
Knowing that some have been mislead by the assertion that Hahnemann employed low potencies, permit me to quote what he has to say respecting that matter: “The praise bestowed of late by some few homoeopathists on the larger dose is owing to this: Either that they chose low dynamizations of the medicine to be administered, as I myself used to do twenty years ago from not knowing any better, or that the medicines selected were not perfectly homoeopathic.”–(Foot note, Organon, page 188).
So, when it is argued that Hahnemann chose low potencies, the corollary should always accompany the statement, namely, that it was “from not knowing any better!” If this is the plea in justification of low potencies today, then we should be very lenient, indeed, and I feel sure such is the actual reason, whether so frankly acknowledged or not.
