Read before the Annual Meeting of The International Hahnemannian Association, Atlantic City, N.J., July, 1923.
The human body is composed of a definite number of elements. Many of them have been examined, handled, named. Some are so minute as to be referred to as a trace. Others so infinitesimal as to make if difficult to estimate their amount or character.
The grosser elements are not more important than the most minute. Any deficiency in amount or disturbance in the normal balance, represents the beginnings of disease. The paramount element that can supply this deficiency, or restore and maintain the normal balance, represents the constitutional remedy.
Some claims have recently been made that disease is due to deficient or over-ionization, or to some change in the definite electrical charge as related to electrons and protons within the atom. These are only other ways of saying-disease is due to elements deficient or out of balance.
Element changes are invisible; they take place stealthily, almost unobserved, and only manifest themselves by symptoms- symptoms that relate to the personality of the individual. These elemental changes, therefore, represent the real cause and beginnings of disease.
Man is a three-fold dynamic force composed of Body, Mind, and Spirit-operating as a single entity. Although subject to subtle influences from within and without, if his normal balance is maintained, no limits have been, or can be, imposed upon his achievements. However, many failures, mental kinks, moral lapses, and physical wrecks are directly traceable to elements deficient or out of balance.
Impending changes in the number or arrangement of the elements are not without warning. Some slight discomfort is experienced; some small change in normal function; some slight threat of disease. For a time the vital force makes the necessary adjustments, but there may come a time-and when it comes, it may be on winged feet-when the physical powers are unable to stem the tide of threatened disaster.
These changes occurring at more or less regular intervals, man is compelled to operate on a lower plane; to be something less than Nature and his elemental powers designed him to be. Too often this lowered state of vitality and minimized powers of achievement are accepted without any effort to dissipate the clouds of disease and regain the former heights. A certain amount of disease and suffering are regarded as essential or necessary. Under cover of this yielding and neglect, more subtle and deeper changes take place. The elements appear permanently more or less deficient or out of balance and the proclamation goes forth- “Incurable Disease.” It may be tuberculosis, sarcoma, cancer, general wreckage of the nervous system, any one of a dozen or more diseased conditions, culminating in nameless suffering and death.
Let us say right here-there are no “incurable” diseases; there are some “incurable” individuals, but they are made so, largely because they have not the will to live. If the doubting, halting, wavering will of the individual is arrested and turned in the direction of recovery, is may be safely said, there is no such thing as “incurability”- provided, of course, the proper adjustments are made in the elements deficient or out of balance.
A group of elemental substances is concerned in the precipitation of disease. Usually one of the group is a paramount or dominant element, which represents the constitutional remedy. The paramount element, when found and administered in the proper potency, acts as a regulating and coordinating force the normal balance being restored, the destructive processes arrested and the physical powers turned in the direction of health.
Unless actual structural changes have taken place, well-nigh all forms of illness may be expected to yield to the mighty powers of the remedy or element thus indicated, no matter what the degree of the so-called “incurability”.
The constitutional remedy when founds, fits every case; it is needed in childhood; in youth, in adult life, and in old age. It may be truthfully said of the sufferings of many old men and old woman, that had the true constitutional remedy been found and administered in childhood, this distressing disease or condition would not have appeared, and even at so late so late a date, the beneficent effects of the element of suffering and the prolongation of life.
The paramount element of lifes journey. It is an essential force in the proper functioning of Body, Mind, and Spirit. If it fits at all, it fits the whole man. It may be necessary to change the potency, but the elemental substance remains the same.
A half dozen, a dozen or more elements may be found to be deficient or out of balance, and in this list will be found the paramount constitutional remedy. The constitutional remedy heads the list and benefits the patient in every way, affecting every organ and tissue, and exerting a beneficent influence upon mind and spirit. Some one or more of the elements in the balance of the list may occasionally be required and particularly in acute illnesses. However, it is an interesting circumstance that when the constitutional remedy is found and properly administered, acute illness rarely occurs, and if it occurs, its manifestation is of a limited and mild nature.
Disease is sometimes said to occur because of faulty elimination; too much may be going into the body and not enough going out. Various inorganic salts such as Sodium, Potassium, Calcium, may be dammed up in the body, resulting in arthritis deformans, gout, and a long train of other manifestations of physical disturbance. That this could occur, presupposes a lack of harmony in the elemental substances of the body. In other words, there must be elements deficient or out of balance. This lack of harmony in the elemental balance, therefore, constitutes a personal susceptibility.
Without this susceptibility, disease, per se, has neither place, name, nor manifestations. Disease will not, nay-cannot, attack a house which is in order; having the guards all on duty, in proper place and operating in harmony. The paramount element or constitutional remedy is the harmonizing and controlling force.
In administering the constitutional remedy we are not aiming at any particular disease. Kent says: “To think of remedies for cancer is confuse, but to think of remedies for the patient who appears to have cancer is orderly, and you will be astonished to know what wonderful changes will take place in these conditions when remedies that corresponded to the conditions before the cancer began, are administered. Cancer is the result of disorder, which disorder must be turned into order and must be healed”.
The object, therefore, is to restore order where disorder and a general lack of harmony had prevailed. Every organ and tissue is beneficently affected by the constitutional remedy; it quiets and soothes the nervous system, tends towards the proper functioning of every organ, regulates the warring elements of the body, and does for the whole man that which no other force can be expected to accomplish.
In acute illnesses, while the paramount constitutional remedy often gives very prompt and beneficent results, yet it frequently happens that some inter-current or supplementary remedy is required. Under such circumstances, it will be found that the remedy to fit the acute condition is in the group of remedies found by repertory analysis and from which the paramount constitutional remedy was selected.
In a great many instance the constitutional remedy selected from the totality of the symptoms as presented in childhood, will be fond to be the paramount constitutional remedy persisting and required through life. There is, however, more or less shifting of the elements from childhood to mature adult life, say from infancy up to thirty years of age. This shifting of the elemental relationships may change the original paramount element to second place and elevate some other element or remedy of the group, to first place. After thirty years of age, however, if the constitutional remedy has been actually found, the tendency is to maintain its position on down to old age.
The particular potency may need to be changed, but never the remedy or element itself. The best method of administration is to begin with the lower potencies and as the remedy appears to lose its force, move gradually higher. With each move upward, there will be a gradual deepening and broadening of the physical powers and dynamic qualities of the individual.
The constitutional remedy is he similimum. To find it, means a fascinating and interesting hunt, but nevertheless involving deep thought and hard work; but it is worth the hunt and all the toil. Its value to the patient is beyond all estimation and places in the hands of the physician the weapon enables him to win in many a desperate situation.
The constitutional remedy in some instances may not of itself be a constituent element of the body, but it may be some substance which, when properly administered, enables the nutritional forces of the body to select the element deficient or out of balance and appropriate it from the foods. This selection and appropriation tends to coordination all other elements.
Eugene passed away at his country home on Spring Hill, Tuscarora Township, Bradford County, PA. He had been in ill health for several months. His wife, the former Caroline Davis, whom he had married in Philadelphia in 1910, had passed away in 1961. They spent most of their marriage lives in Swarthmore, PA.
Dr. Underhill was a member of the United Lodge of Theosophy, a member of the Philadelphia County Medical Society, and the Pennsylvania Medical Society. He was also the editor of the Homœopathic Recorder.