It is common experience, especially in chronic diseases, to find the laboratory reports negative in cases with plenty of signs and symptoms and a history running into several pages. And now it will be easily understood and appreciated how early homoeopathy can diagnose and treat disease by properly assessing and acting upon the earliest symptomatic indications, often averting subsequent pathological and other developments.
Now as regards TREATMENT. Samuel Hahnemann, originally a highly qualified and learned medical scientist of the allopathic school, became deeply conscious of the aforesaid unphilosophical approach of the old school of medicine to the nature and causation of disease, and of the equally unsatisfactory and crude methods of treatment. Having become disgusted with vague, untenable and everyday changing theories and hypothesis, and purely speculative and lawlessly empirical methods of treatment, he set about thinking if in the realm of medicine also there were some natural laws which could guide with a reasonable certainty in the treatment of sickness.
His persistent quest and investigations led him to the discovery of the famous LAW OF SIMILARS according to which a drug can cure in the sick such symptoms as it has the power to produce in the healthy persons, provided it is administered in sufficiently small and potentised doses. This is a law of nature as true, universal and immutable as the Law of Gravity, and it has stood the test for over a hundred and fifty years. This is the solid rock on which Homoeopathy stands, firm and secure, and unshaken by millions of medical tempests and blasts which have blown away theories after theories and hypothesis after hypothesis.
Besides the Law of Similars, there are certain other natural laws to guide the homoeopathic prescriber of which we cannot take note in a general discussion like the present one. But all this is enough to show how homoeopathy emancipates us from the lawless empiricism of the old school and offers a system of treatment based on definite, precise and well – tested principles. Just as an apple detached form the tree falls to the ground and does not fly off in any other direction, so the similar remedy must bring about a cure if a cure is possible.
If the homoeopathic treatment is applied at too advanced a stage when the vitality of the patient has gone down too low to respond to the indicated remedy, or if the disease has advanced so far that an organ has become altogether useless and unable to carry on its natural functions, homoeopathy cannot be blamed for failure in the treatment. Even in incurable conditions where palliation of suffering is all that can possibly be done, Homoeopathy will bring the speediest possible relief, giving quicker and longer lasting results than Morphia, Aspirin, etc., without any injurious after – effects.
The drug so selected according to the natural laws is administered singly in a dynamised or potentised form in the smallest possible and in frequent doses. Here again we have to bow down in reverence before the mighty genius of Hahnemann for giving us the method of graduated potentisation of drugs, i.e. a method of releasing the dynamic forces residing in drugs according to a graduated scale of decimal or centesimal measurement.
The dynamic forces released from the homoeopathic remedy arouse the Vital reaction of the patient and enable the vital energy to conquer and extinguish the disease force, thereby restoring the normal functioning of the Vital Force, gently, safely, effectively, permanently, in its whole extent, in the shortest possible time and on easily comprehensible principles. This is Hahnemanns definition of a CURE which is being abundantly demonstrated by his followers every day in every part of the world.
Homoeopathy thus treats the patient and not the disease. When the patient is restored to health, then all his ailments are, as a necessary implication, cured and abnormalities removed. It is only recently that the medical science has started taking note of the mind as a causative factor in physical ailments.
Hahnemann had announced this to the medical world more than a hundred and fifty years ago, declaring emphatically that all diseases affect the mind first and the body and the organs afterwards. He gave the highest importance to mental symptoms in the selection of the remedy. While the orthodox medicine looks as a helpless spectator in the cases of most of the mental and nervous ills, homoeopathy is able to treat them effectively.
As Dr. H. A. Roberts has no nicely expressed, “Homoeopathy studies man as an individual in relation to his environment and circumstances more than any other school of medical thought, for it takes into consideration not only his immediate heritage but the more subtle and complex burden that is the heritage of long ages of struggling and developing ancestors. Homoeopathy not only seeks to relieve the individual as much as possible from the heavy burden of the hereditary tendencies he carries but also to guard against increasing this load by enabling his Vital Energy to provide its own IMMUNITY against disease.”
We have taken a passing note of the fact that homoeopathy treats patients with drugs tested on human beings. It is not rational or scientific to test drugs on animals and to expect the same results on administering them to human beings.
In a limited field this method has its own utility, for example, in regard to investigations on food, vitamins, hormones, etc. But the claims of the experimental pharmacologist that out of the results of these experimental methods an objective materia medica can be built up which can be utilised on objective indications for the control and treatment of diseased conditions, are far too excessive. The reasons are:
1. These experiments can throw light only in respect to a few human functions which are common to man and animals.
2. In experiments on animals we deal with artificially produced conditions, and it would not be logical or rational to apply the results of such investigations to the treatment of naturally excited disease phenomena.
3. The human organism, especially in diseased conditions, does not show constancy or uniformity of reaction.
4. Some of the effects of drugs on animals may be altogether different from what they are on human beings. In man adrenalin at first retards and later on furthers the gastric movements while the movements of the dogs stomach are influenced in the reverse manner. Hypophysis extracts provoke diuresis in cats and dogs but oliguria in rabbits and guinea pigs.
Homoeopathy stands unrivalled in the treatment of CHRONIC DISEASES. Hahnemann has left us a most precious gift in his discovery of the factors which give rise to and keep up the progress of chronic disease, viz., PSORA, SYPHILIS and SYCOSIS. A detailed exposition of these would be beyond the scope of this chapter, and the readers interested in this branch of study are referred to Hahnemanns Chronic Diseases and other leading works on homoeopathic philosophy.
B.A., M.D.S.
Dehradun, India