Homoeopathy is the system or a method of curing diseases by small quantities of those drugs which excite symptoms in a healthy individual similar to those of the disease.
We call a disease as a dynamic influence of some morbific agency inimical to life and when disease permeates the material organism of a human body from the outside world, the vitality or a spirit like force animating the material body is disturbed or deranged by the disease force and it (the vital force) produces sensations and symptoms determinable by the physician as well as the patient. Symptoms observed by the physician are objective and those felt by the patient, are subjective symptoms.
The above immaterial being, vital force, animating the organism in the state of health as well as in sickness, is a unit from which no individual vitality is separated: therefore a little globule or a drop of medicine is nothing but the representative of that nightly power aiding and intensifying its (vitality) work towards the cure of the sick.
The duty of our internal nature or the vitality is to fight out the disease by counteraction which is the only work of nature in sickness (vis mediatrix nature-vis= power-the curative power of nature) and when we are in health, that noble innate power (vitality or nature) governs our life in the most perfect manner and harmoniously does its duty in all parts of the organism, in the sensitive as well as in the irritable fibre, without any sort of disturbance which occurs in sickness and the vitality then only counteracts the abnormality in the system.
Like the natural disease, viz, influenza, typhoid etc. the medicine also is capable of producing disease or abnormal symptoms, as has been medicine). It is also to be noted than human organism is more prone to the effects of medicine than to the natural disease. We can illustrate it by saying that we can evade the attack of an influenza, if we go round an influenza ward of a hospital but we can not avoid in any way the action of a bit of opium, say like the size of a mustard-seed, without getting its effect upon us by producing a change of health. therefore a medicine is superior in strength to that of a natural disease and therefore it possesses curative power over a natural disease.
Moreover when we get diseased symptoms from a medicine by proving it in a healthy body, we can call a medicine an artificial disease, which has been brought forth by human intelligence for the welfare of the diseased individual suffering from natural disease. Thus medicines bear the curative power over a natural disease while they can produce diseased symptoms in a healthy individual and they aid and intensify the counteraction of nature which has been working hard to do away with a natural disease.
Now, how that artificial disease (medicine) will be curative for the natural disease; the medicine should possess similar symptoms to those of the natural disease.
The medicine similar to the natural disease when administered in the symptoms, being superior in strength to that of the natural disease, will get the natural disease merged in it (medicine) and the powerful medicine or the artificial disease will alone rule over the interior of the individual, causing the vitality to counteract more intensely than before and as the medicinal power stays but a short while in the system, it (medicine) leaves the body with the natural disease by setting the vitality quite free from exerting its counteraction and it will leave the individual in a orderly state of health.
It is the duty of the physician to find out the symptoms of a medicine similar to that of a natural disease but not identical with the disease; because “similar cures the similar” is a bonafide truth in the medical science-no matter whether it belongs to homoeopathy, Allopathy or Ayurvedic system.
What that similar medicine does: it will allow nature not to forsake the line of its counteraction to the malady which it is fighting for, as a dissimilar medicine will create symptoms other than those, the individual has been suffering from and nature will have to counteract the new disturbance in the system brought forty by a dissimilar medicine. If one after another more and more dissimilar drugs are pushed in nature will have to be divided in many numbers for different counteraction and finally nature or the vitality will be weakened or disturbed in such a way that finally nature leaves the body to its ultimate end.
Thus the law of similar, “similia similibus curantur”, stand out as a standing truth in Homoeopathy for the cure of the sick and it is accepted as an empirical fact and not as a theory or hypothesis. Physicians, perhaps of all medicines, agree with it as the most practical guide to aid cure for diseases.
There are some specific remedies in Allopathy, viz, quinine, Emetine, Penicillin etc which are but the curative agents respectively for Malaria, Amoebic dysentery, septic infectious or gonorrhoea. That to say, those medicines can create those diseases if they are proved in a healthy body but they now possess clinical symptoms for the diseases.
Samuel Hahnemann took cinchona himself in healthy state and found that it produced signs and symptoms of Intermittent fever. Since then, he evinced the truth that medicine producing certain disease in a health body, can be doubtlessly accepted as a remedy of such disease in a diseased person.
Here is, therefore, the long lasting or enduring truth, similia similibus curantur, the Homoeopathic healing method which cures disease gently, rapidly and permanently according to the above process. This process was not unknown to the founder of the Medical science, Hippocrates (born 460 B.C. at Kos in Greece and died 377 B.C. at Larissa in Thessaly, aged 83).
He cured some cases of Cholera with Veratrum album, which it itself causes cholera. After the founder of Medicine, von Hohenheim, the famous Paracelsus, (born 1493 and died 1541, aged 48) had recognised the fundamental law of Homoeopathy and lastly Samuel Hahnemann (born 1755 and died 1843), the last seer and the founder of Homoeopathy, unlocked the mystery of Homoeopathy in his Organon in 1810. Thus we can say that the intellectual bridge of Homoeopathy rests on three pillars and their names are: Hippocrates, Hohenheim and Hahnemann.
We meet the law of similarity even in the “book of books”, the Holy Bible as well as in the literature of all times. Besides the man, God created the woman “flesh of his flesh, similar to man, yet not identical, and after the fall, the woman became a medicine to the man. We generally say “fear cures fear”. Apparently it seems identical but that cannot bring forth any good; then how those fears will be similar to each other?
We should mean the first fear as the of god which will make us fear no man and how they are similar similarly the examples of similarity which serve as a remedy to mankind can be stated by saying that (1) a true love expels false love, (2) actual pain can be a remedy for an unimportant pain, (3) great danger can encourage a man to face a lesser danger calmly, etc. There are Shakespeares striking words in Romeo and Juliet which show that thing similar to one is but its remedy:.
“One fire burns out anothers burning.
One pain is lessened by anothers anguish;.
One desperate grief cures (with) anothers languish.
Take thou some new infection to the eye,
And the rank poison of the old will die.”.
We generally notice that a severe colic is immediately remedied by “Morphinum because the medium possesses the quality of contractility or constriction when taken in the system and the colic does the same thing (constriction) in the circular fibers of the hollow organs of our body. Thus we owe to Morphinum more for its contractile similarity to the disease than for its hypnotic value in the system.
Thus we cannot infringe the law of similarity expounded by Samuel Hahnemann. It will not be out of place to invite kind attention to this representation, of the noble and erudite leaders of Homoeopathy, so that a benign discerument can be expected from the Medical world for the welfare of Homoeopathy.
Now the physicians duty should be to cure the whole disease, by removing the totality of symptoms. The three necessary means of removing the totality of symptoms is of curing are (1) investigation of disease (2) investigation of the effects of medicine and (3) their appropriate application. The study of Pathology and Materia Medica will make a physician achieve the above means-because both Pathology and symptomatology are valuable and inseparable, neither can be excluded.
Now, I humbly beg to state that I heartily owe a debt of gratitude to the benign government of Bengal who kindly sanctioned the inauguration of the Faculty of Homoeopathic medicine in Bengal, which have already granted the permission to the act of forming affiliated Homoeopathic colleges at and near Calcutta, so that the students of Homoeopathy can learn almost all the branches of Medicine.
