This aura occupies a most prominent sphere in the study of Homoeopathics. How do we know the aura of musk? How do we perceive light? How does the animal scent its prey? It is only when the invisible, immaterial substance of mans vital force comes into contact with another immaterial substance that this aura is felt. The aura of some substances causes sickness in some people. The rose causes sickness in some people. The painter has been known to take colic from the aura of his brush. This has been observed in the colic coming from a newly-painted room. What happens when a man become sick, is that there is an influx, from the atmosphere, of some deleterious simple, immaterial substance.
This cannot be seen or manipulated, it cannot be detected by the microscope. The dangerous and most noxious agencies are of the unknown. The most astute have failed to find the cholera or yellow fever causes. The cause of small-pox is yet unknown. The subtle influence that in one stroke swoops down upon a village is not measurable by our crude senses. The small-pox, when attenuated through millions of volumes of atmospheric air, comes to the surface through the nails and through old clothing, by inhalation and the slightest contact. When these noxious substances are so crud that they can be seen and manipulated, they are feeble sick-making agencies.
Take the coarser poisons as an example. Many of these can be taken into the stomach in crude form with very little manifestation upon the vital force. The small-pox crust can be swallowed and it will be digested and very little trouble come from it, but the inhalation of the atmosphere that contains the aura of small-pox will bring him down with the disease. I think these examples are enough to convince anybody that the cause of sickness is to be found in some invisible, immaterial substances and not to be detected by the microscope in the fluids of the body.
The next question is to what degree do these noxious influences, when coming into contact with the vital forces of mans economy produce disease? and why do they not invariably produce the same sickness in different individuals? The answer to this question involves the consideration of one of the basic foundations of Homoeopathy, and that is the subject of.
PREDISPOSITION.
We read in the time-honoured text-books that there is such a condition of the body known as diathesis, in fact, several of them, and that these are hereditary and predisposed to disease. What is this diathesis out of which grow so many diseases? which is responsible for the growth in one subject of cancer, in one of tuberculosis, in another Brights disease, and so on. What is the cause of this lesion and why do not these named exciting cause always produce the same results, and why does not every person subjected to these exciting causes become afflicted? We have a right to demand these things of traditional medicine.
Yes, because there is a predisposing determining influence at work. What is this latent thing that may exist for years in a latent state, be handed down from generation to generation and come to view at any time and cause chronic troubles to follow acute attacks of sickness. Yes, the diathesis, traditional medicine will say. Then, we ask, if a latent wrong like this is capable of existing outside of the tissues for years in an invisible state, can it be doubted that a disease may exist for years with or without changes in the functions or organs of the body?.
In answer to this, Hahnemann describes three constitutional miasms that may exist in latency, that develop and progress in the vital dynamis without changing the tissues, that may spring into destructive activity and attack organs and give shape to countless lesions called disease. He affirms that these miasms should be recognised as primary wrongs out of which grow incurable maladies, and all structural changes. These are PSORA, SYPHILIS AND SYCOSIS. Of these later.
The question that has now to be answered is, disease being capable of existing in an invisible and immaterial condition, is it rational to attempt to nullify it by material substances? Hahnemanns deduction was that disease, being of an immaterial nature, could develop only on a similar basis or in a similar sphere, when in contact with a similar quantity of force; and to again reach it curatively a force must be found equally as immaterial. He argues that tissue changes like waxy liver, fatty degeneration of heart, etc., are not the primary expressions of disease but are only the results of disease.
Changed feelings are the only primary manifestations. Hence the totality of the symptoms, this outwardly reflected image of the inner nature of the disease, that is, of the suffering vital force, is the vital wrong. These are the signs and symptoms by which we recognise disease. But for the vital disorder there would be no signs and symptoms. As you sit there in your seats in quiet, you are not conscious of your eyes, body or hair. It is only when the functions of the body are disturbed that you say “I feel”.
So every sensation is a pointer to the disturbing influence. No feeling a man can have is without purpose, as there is nothing in the universe without its use. So we must take all these changed feelings and sensations, the totality of these, as the primary expressions of disease, and this is why in Homoeopathy this totality is to be prescribed for always. Coming to cure, medicines must cure by a change of these sensations and functions to the healthy condition. Then only can they be said to have the power of altering mans state of health. This alteration they must effect through the.
SUSCEPTIBILITY.
of the patient even as we have seen that contagion operates only when there is a susceptibility. Earlier we have seen that the aura of a given substance causes sickness when there is a susceptibility to it. The painter takes colic from the aura of his brush. If so small a quantity can make him sick, why would it not be a wise experiment to reach a quality so subtle that it would make him well on other occasions? If a chemical antidote be suggested, that is, crude forms of drugs, it would be surely reasonable to inquire what we expect to antidote as the substance known as the sick-making cause was too small to be observed by the microscope.
But it was powerful enough to make him sick. Then this which is a recognised idiosyncrasy is sickness. This lack of resistance against common things is an idiosyncrasy. This marked idiosyncrasy is not observed for the crude materials. Crude salt does not disturb, while a potency, Natrum Mur, causes the sharpest aggravation. Hahnemann deduced from all this that cure must rap at the same portals as cause. One man is made sick through his susceptibility while another is not. Therefore cure also must operate through his susceptibility to the action of a given drug in dynamic form. But how is this to be ascertained?
How are we to observe the effect that medicines have upon the sick in restoring order? By inducing the effects upon healthy individuals. Give Aconite to many men and note the symptoms of each. That is the only way of finding out what Aconite will do to the economy. In this way Hahnemann carefully studied the effects of potentised drugs upon the healthy, and gathered together from the literature a number of reported cures for the purpose of observing whether the cures were accidental or in accordance with the above deductions, that is, was the drug which cured in each case capable of producing symptoms similar to those which it cured? Then he declared distinctly that the phenomena of cure depended entirely upon fixed law,.
THE LAW OF SIMILARS.
“A dynamic disease is extinguished by another more powerful when the later is similar to it. The word powerful contains an interior thought. Power is from within and hence we potentise going higher and higher, in order that we may reach intensity and it is in this sense that the remedy becomes intense by potentisation. So is it with the light of the sun. It is grander than all other lights because there is more in its interior, it is purer, it is more dynamical, and it will turn aside and destroy all other lights.
This Law of Similars is seen prominently in the natural world. We see it from man to man. It is the secret of mind cure, and there are many instances of mind cure that are based on the law of similars. One examples of this is seen in the young woman who has lost her mother or her lover, and is ill as a consequence, is constantly sobbing and melancholy. She sits in a corner, hears nobody, thinks no one can pity her because no one has had just such grief. Let us apply allopathic treatment to her.
“Come, there is nothing the matter with you; why dont you brace yourself up? But this only throws her into a deeper state of melancholy. But introduce the Homoeopathic treatment. Employ a nurse who pretends to have gone through the same identical grief, and let her make a big fuss in the other corner. Pretty soon the patient will say, “You seem to have the same grief that I have”. “Yes, I have lost a lover.” And the two fall to bellowing and weep it out together. There is a bond of sympathy.
