HOMOEOPATHIC RESEARCH



Compiling and Correlating.

An important part of research is the compiling of results of all workers who have produced anything related to he unable discoveries which have not been recorded. Some of the older homoeopathists have a store of knowledge which is priceless. This ought to be salvaged. A mass of precious material is buried in forgotten writings. All of these writings should be resurrected. Much information relating to occupational disease lies in the archives of the Smithsonian Institute.

Every occupational poisoning is an involuntary proving and points the way to proper proving. Through collaboration of the best prescribers in the world, the drugs related to various diseases should be complied and their indications be tabulated. Individual writers should be encouraged to put in printed form their experiences. The books produces by Case, Close, Edmund Carleton, Nash, Pierce, Rabe, Royal, Wheeler, and others are shining examples of individual effort. Investigating Principles.

The foregoing, which applies to the gathering of facts about drugs, has a bearing on the daily work of the physician, but the function of research is not only to seek facts. Provings of all the remedies in the world will not enable the physician to cure a patient unless he knows to select the right remedy. Definite principles must be followed in order to make a homoeopathic prescription and it is the function of the homoeopathic researcher to elucidate these principles.

This triad-the similar remedy, and the minimum dose-is basis for every homoeopathic prescription and each component of this triad furnishes ample material for research in ways heretofore never undertaken.

The similar remedy means drugs which cause symptoms similar to those suffered by the patient. What is significance of symptoms? Why is such a remedy curative? Broadly stated, all symptoms are the result of the various reactions caused by disease and they represent the curative effects of the body- cells. To the patient, they are summed up in his uncomfortable sensations.

No one has treated the subject of “Significance of symptoms” more intelligently than Sir James MacKenzie, but what he meant by this is vastly different to what is meant when the phrase is applied to the symptoms which form the basis for the homoeopathic prescription. MacKenzie was always thinking of diagnosis.

Timothy Field Allen is credited with the aphorism : “The more diagnostic a symptom, the less indicative is is for a homoeopathic prescription; the less diagnostic, the more indicative is it of the remedy.” The homoeopathic researcher must, then, first-know and be able to classify the symptoms which are useful for prescribing. To do this, he must have learned the art of prescribing. Then he is prepared to investigate symptoms from the angle of the homoeopathist.

The field covered by such research can be indicated by a few interrogations : Why is one person constitutionally sensitive to cold, and another to heat? Why is one persons condition aggravated by wet weather and anothers by dry weather? Why do electrical disturbances affect one individual and the rays of the sun another? Why do people have cravings for special food, such as salt, sour, sweet and to cold, to wet weather, to dry weather? Why does Natrum Muriaticum cause an aggravation of symptoms at 10 A.M. and Arsenic at 1 A.M.? Why do people, when ill, duplicate exactly the symptom- complex caused by drugs?.

No biological exhibition is more impressive than a sick person who is presenting symptoms in the form and sequence of a drug proving. A student of materia, on obtaining one strong keynote-symptom frequently can tell a patient all the rest of his symptoms. Take, for example, a woman with the well-known characteristic of Sepia-a yellow saddle across the nose. Anyone who knows Sepia, observing, this, can tell her what are her menstrual symptoms, her state of mind, her digestive symptoms, and so on.

The similarity between drug-action and disease-action represents a law of life and the study of this law is worthy of the efforts of the best researchers. The law can be expressed as follows : Any stimulant causes a reaction of the organism as a whole each part reacting according to its function, the total reaction being a protective effort. A stimulant which causes a reaction similar to that caused by disease helps to restore health. Different bacteria have special affinities for certain tissues.

Drugs have the same sort of selective affinities. It has even been shown that certain drugs cause the same antibodies to be formed as are caused by different bacteria. When an infection occurs, the nature of the symptoms depends upon the tissues which are first attacked. From the point of attack, the effects ramify through the rest of the organism. The homoeopathic remedy must have the same tissue-affinity as the infecting organism and the effects must develop in the same way through the organism. This selective affinity and the unity of action of all parts of the organism show the reason for both the similar remedy and the single remedy. A researcher working from the angle of the above law is bound to produce compelling evidence that will influence the trend of medicine. The Minimum Dose.

The third member of the homoeopathic triad-the minimum dose- has caused more controversy than any other problem in homoeopathy. Its controversial aspect alone should have made it, years ago, a subject of research.

Many homoeopathists quote Arndts law to explain the action of homoeopathic dilutions. This law may be expressed thus: A small amount of a drug stimulates reaction; a moderate amount modifies reaction, while a large amount suppresses reaction. In expressing this law, Arndts concept of a small dose was different from the homoeopathists concept of a homoeopathic dilution. Arndt was thinking in terms of quantity. The high dilutions are beyond anything describable in terms of quantity; in fact, the term “dose” as applied to a dilution is a misnomer.

Hahnemann considered that his discovery of the power inherent in high dilutions was the greatest discovery of the age. Our provings and clinical experience during the past century are sufficient proof to satisfy any reasonable mind of the validity of his discovery. Nobody has ever been able to refute the power of the infinitesimal, although nobody has ever been able to explain it any more than he can explain gravitation.

The homoeopathic school has never made enough of it. Studying crude drug-effects is like studying the tracks of an unknown animal. The effects are only on one plane. Potentised drugs arouse reactions in deeper planes and thus reveal a third dimension in drug-action. The extension of the specific qualities of a remedy into all degrees of dilution enables us to make cures which are not possible wit the crude drug alone.

To be sure, no instrument has been devised sufficiently delicate to detect the 200th potencies. The fact that, thus far, only living organisms react to them simply indicates that the biological reagent is the only reagent known for their detection. Probably the response of living cells is the most delicate detector of energy in existences.

Milliken says : “Experimental science at least never takes anything back. It is an ever-expanding body of truth.” Since experimental facts, as they relate to instruments of precision, fail to detect the potency in high dilution, experiments must be expanded either in the direction already proved-that is to say, biologically or into the realm of physics.

A study of dilution, from the angle of physics, leads of a consideration of the ultimate properties of matter. To visualize the present-day concept of this, it is best to start with what Milliken characterises as “celestial mechanics.” Everyone has some idea of the mechanism of our solar system and is accustomed to think of it as merely an insignificant unit amongst a great multitude of infinitely larger solar systems. We are accustomed to consider immense distances, such as are measured by light- years. For our concept to approximate atomic dimensions, we must imagine space as being as immensely small as light-years represent the immensely great.

The usual concept of the atom is a group of negatively charged particles, called electrons, revolving about a central, positively charged nucleus, much as the planets revolve about the sun. The earth travels around the sun at a speed sufficient to balance the gravitational pull of the sun. The electrons revolve in their orbits at a speed great enough to overcome the pull of the nucleus. Their speed is comparable to that of light. The earth is a compelling fact to our senses and only intellectually do we realize that its bulk and its influences are infinitesimal as compared with that of the sun.

Similarly, the electrons are the compelling fact of the atom, because they are interposed between us and the nucleus.

As a matter of fact, the nucleus is the dominant factor in the atom, just as the sun is of the solar system. Soddy expresses it like this: “We are led to view the atom as consisting essentially of a very small, dense nucleus at the center of a relatively enormous and almost empty sphere of influence containing only electrons.” Sir Oliver Lodge estimate that, if an atom be represented by a room 100 feet square, the electron occupies the space of a punctuation period on a news-page. Imagine the nucleus, probably smaller than the electron, of such great density and carrying so large a positive charge as to compel its satellite-electrons within the radius of fifty feet revolve at a speed of thousands of miles a second, in order to resist its centrifugal pull. Such is mechanism that is conceived to compose the atomic structure.

Guy Beckley Stearns