Hahnemanns Contribution To Medical Science


Hahnemann laid utmost emphasis on the “safety first” principle in therapeutics and devised a unique method of reducing the dosage of even most lethal poisons to such infinitesimal limits that if applied according to the natures law discover and announced by him, only their curative properties of drugs once discovered hold good for all time to come as the experiments to determine them are made on the basis of certain fixed and unchanging laws of nature.


English Version of the Speech delivered on Hahnemanns Birthday at a Public Meeting on 10-4-53, held in the Town Hall under his Presidentship.

One hundred and ninety eight years ago, this memorable day of April 10 heralded the birth of that great apostle of rational healing. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann of Germany who gave the world Homoeopathy to heal the sick humanity gently, safely, surely, speedily and on easily apprehensible principles. Crores of the sick suffering humanity all over the world must today be offering their grateful homage to that great soul who unravelled the hidden mysteries of nature and announced to the lawless medical scientists of the world the existence of Natures Law of Healing – “Similar Cures the Similar”; which is as unerring and immutable as Newtons Law of Gravity.

It is a sad commentary on the progress of modern medicine that even the most plausible and spectacular discoveries in medical treatment have become obsolete with laps of time and sunk into oblivion. The caravan of scientific researchers marches on displaying placards of “SCIENCE ON THE MARCH”, but the fact remains that their march has been a march in the dreary desert of human uncertainties, limitations and helplessness, interspersed with oases and mirages here and there.

With all its boast, has science succeeded in evolving a single drug which is free from harmful effects and is able to remove just the malady from which the patient is suffering? The orthodox school of medicine dare not answer the question in the affirmative. The Hahnemannian homoeopath can say a positive “yes” without the least fear of contradiction.

Hahnemann laid utmost emphasis on the “safety first” principle in therapeutics and devised a unique method of reducing the dosage of even most lethal poisons to such infinitesimal limits that if applied according to the natures law discover and announced by him, only their curative properties of drugs once discovered hold good for all time to come as the experiments to determine them are made on the basis of certain fixed and unchanging laws of nature.

Homoeopathy opens out before us great possibilities, especially towards the fulfillment of our avowed objective of establishing a “welfare state”. It is now an admitted fact that the hitherto state patronised system of “modern medicine”, apart from the question of merit, is absolutely beyond the reach of masses on account of its being so awefully expensive, nor can the government extend on its basis the much needed medical relief in the rural areas on account of paucity of funds. Homoeopathy is pre-eminently suitable for this purpose as it can easily and economically carry the much needed relief to a large majority of patients just on symptomatic indications, without any expence or botheration of having the blood, urine, stool, etc. tested as a routine measure.

If Homoeopathy is to play its due role in banishing sickness and suffering from amongst the poverty striken millions of this vast subcontinent, its rationale must be more widely understood, appreciated and, as a national duty, propagated than at present. Homoeopathy is not merely a new method of treatment, but in fact a radically different outlook regarding life, health, disease and treatment. While the other existing medical systems adopt a physical and materialistic view in this connection, Homoeopathys approach is essentially dynamic and spiritualistic.

It stresses the great incontrovertible fact that it is the sphere of Vital Energy present in us from the very inception of life to automatically maintain health and to retain all the organs, glands and parts of the body and their functions in admirable harmonious Vital operation so that the in dwelling reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living healthy instrument for the higher purposes of existence.

Disease results only when this normal smooth functioning of the Vital Energy is disturbed by the impact on it of some inimical force or influence, call it an infection or germs, with the result that man begins to feel pain and all kinds of morbid sensations first and later on, if the integrity of the Vital Energy is not restored, functional and still later organic and structural changes come into existence and all manner of germs and worms are discovered in the blood, discharges and excreta of the patient. We homoeopaths do not launch a crusade against these subsequently discovered germs and worms, but at once set about putting the house in order by restoring the integrity of the Vital Energy by providing it with the specific needed stimulus according to natures unerring laws of healing and cure.

The discoverer of Homoeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann, after careful experiments and scientific research, discovered natures great and universal law of cure – “Similar Cures the Similar” according to which drugs can cure in small and potentised doses such symptoms in the case of natural sickness as they are capable of producing in the healthy in material doses. The force of dynamis released from the similar remedy, according to the above law, is enough to give the needed dynamic support to the struggling Vital Energy so that it becomes capable once again of resulting its normal and natural Vital functions and thus overpowering the germs or the infection.

This briefly is homoeopathys dynamic or spiritual outlook regarding health, disease and its cure. It is dynamic because according to it the cause of disease is not material or something which can be seen, touched or handled, but is dynami i.e. belonging to the plane of energy. It goes beyond the material causes, the germs, worms and pathological changes etc. and tries to reach the ultimate and the real cause on the plane of dynamic energy which the eye, the senses or the most sensitive scientific instruments are unable to perceive, which can be discerned only by the mind through the signs and symptoms which it produces in the sick, and which can be removed according to the Law of Similars gently, effectively, permanently, in its entirety, in the shortest possible time and on easily comprehensible principles.

In this scientific age of germs, germicides and antibiotic wonder drugs, it becomes necessary to explain the homoeopathic view point in relation to germs. On close examination this business of germ killing will be found to lead us into a vicious circle. The medical scientists have already started coming up against Penicillin and Streptomycin resistant strains of germs necessitating the invention of stronger and stronger antibiotics, and so this race between the germs and the scientists will continue without anybody being able to tell us to who will win in the long run.

When confronted with the question as to why all the persons exposed to the same infection do not come down the illness, the supporters of the “germs theory” are obliged to fall back upon the great indisputable truth that a strong vitality is able to resist and overpower the germs and infections and that it is only persons with a weak vitality who succumb to it. This again confirms the homoeopathic view point. We need not live in perpetual horror of germs which thrive in the human body only so long as they find suitable living conditions there on account of a deranged functioning of the vital administration and which automatically quit when order is restored and the Vital Force reasserts its supremacy.

Experience has abundantly shown that the dynamic powers released from the remedy selected according to Natures Law of similars supply the requisite stimulus to the struggling Vital Force to fight out the germs, worms and infections, gently, safely, effectively, yet more potently than the germicides or the antibiotics. Homoeopathy enables us not only to get rid of germs and infections but also enables us to resist them more effectively by strengthening our vitality and enabling it to build its own immunity against disease.

A few outstanding features of Homoeopathy may be briefly noticed here.

1. Firstly, homoeopathy diagnoses and treats the patient and not the disease and thus the chances of error in the treatment are minimised and the patient as a whole is restored to health. In a majority of cases the diagnosis can be made on the patients statement of his symptoms, without the extraneous aid of laboratory tests and reports, and so the treatment is pre- eminently suitable for rural conditions.

2. Secondly, by placing the art of healing on the basis of the unerring laws of nature, Hahnemann gave the medical science not only precision but also pre-vision by which a physician can approach with full self-confidence even a new type of illness which he may never have seen before. Before seeing a single case of Asiatic Cholera, Hahnemann could lay down the treatment to be adopted with a precision and accuracy which excited the admiration of the whole world.

3. Thirdly, we are indebted to Hahnemann for his discovery of the factors which give rise to and keep up the progress of chronic diseases and which at times render the well chosen remedies ineffective in restoring health. He described these factors as PSORA, SYPHILIS and SYCOSIS.

R. S. Rastogi
R. S. Rastogi
B.A., M.D.S.
Dehradun, India