A VISION OF HOMOEOPATHY


Symptoms are manifestations of natures effort to restore equilibrium. The similar remedy, harmonizing as it does with the symptom picture, may temporarily magnify the symptoms. This is what is known as a homoeopathic aggravation, and when not too severe is favorable and helps to prove the homoeopathicity of the remedy.


In its totality, homoeopathy is so vast a subject that a whole lifetime of study could not exhaust it. It is something without limit in its possibilities for development and in its power to help and cure the many millions of sick and suffering in the world.

The homoeopathic materia medica includes practically all drugs and medicines used by the old school and many hundred other medical substances besides. There are, perhaps, around two thousand medicines used by homoeopathic physicians in this and other countries, but countless thousands, doubtless many millions, of others substances could be used and prescribed on the homoeopathic law were sufficient known about them to warrant their use.

Every mineral and metal, every flower and fruit, every weed and plant, every bird, beast or bug, every living and every dead thing, every substance known to man in all kingdoms of nature can be legitimately included in homoeopathic materia medica, and somewhere on the earth there may be some sufferer to match or require each and every remedy that was ever known or that can be known–surely the researcher has yet more worlds to conquer.

On the other hand, if often seems, and it is probably true, that one medicine can do the work of another and the materia medica may be overloaded with more or less duplications.

It is entirely possible that in time to come a correctly chosen group of one hundred remedies or less will cure every possible case of illness, or palliate where a cure is no longer possible–again, more work for the researcher.

Consider also the infinite divisibility and potency of medicines prepared according to the homoeopathic method. A drachm of any drug is more than sufficient to treat every patient in the world needing that remedy. To illustrate: Nux vomica is a frequently indicated medicine. One drachm of the tincture run up through a series of potencies–sixth, thirtieth, two hundredth, one thousandth, ten thousandth, fifty thousandth, and one hundred thousandth–could provide enough potentized Nux to treat every patient, requiring this remedy, who ever lived or who may yet live.

One drachm of the tincture in one hundred parts of water would be the first centesimal potency. One drachm of this dilution in one hundred drachms of water would be the second, and so on. If all of each potency were used each time in preparing the next higher, long before the one hundred thousandth, or CM, potency as reached, all the water in the oceans of the world would, doubtless, be inadequate. We have remedies not only run up to the CM but even to the millionth and two millionth and the end is not yet.

I have personally used the millionth and two millionth potencies of Nux vomica, Pulsatilla, Lycopodium and other remedies with such definite and striking results that I am as certain they acted as I am that the sun rose this morning.

A very few trials of these extremely high potencies, in cases where the symptom picture is sharp and clear, will suffice to convince any homoeopathic physician of their tremendous power.

We hear much these days about the energy latent within the atom and also of efforts being made to spilt the atom and the electron and thus liberate this latent energy. It is quite certain, moreover, that every atom is, in itself, a living thing. Every life has an identity of its own and it is forced to express itself in and through some form. All forms are encasing and limiting in their effect, are, in fact, containers and retainers of the life energy within.

The method of potentizing medicines has the effect of breaking up the form and the encasing envelopes and thus liberating, to a greater or lesser degree, the specific drug energy lying dormant or latent within each molecule. Potentizing a substance, therefore, is a means of raising the specific energy from the plane of bondage to the plane of liberation, from the finite toward the infinite.

But let us consider further. When kept well corked and sealed, away from heat away from sunlight and under all around good conditions, these potentized remedies will hold their specific energy and their power undiminished as the years roll on. How long would they retain their virtue? Doubtless, for centuries.

Many homoeopathic physicians today are using potencies obtained as grafts (a few medicated pellets placed in alcohol) from Hering, Boenninghausen, and other early masters of homoeopathy. Probably they in turn obtained some of those potencies from Hahnemann himself. When your brother physician wishes a graft potency of any remedy let him have it. You can share all your remedies and potencies with others and still have enough and to spare of each of them. Such is the resourcefulness, the boundlessness, the infinite of the potentized remedy as given to the world by Samuel Hahnemann.

The correct homoeopathic remedy when given in suitable potency will, in favorable cases, initiate a cycle of curative action in the organism. The momentum, duration and ultimate effect of this curative cycle depends on several factors among which are the nature of the disease, the corresponding nature and pace of the remedy, and the degree of vitality still possessed by the patient. Such a cycle of remedial action may last for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and often, in chronic cases for years.

Just what will and what will not cut or divert such a remedial cycle is not fully known but there is sufficient evidence to show that the too frequent repetition of the remedy, and the indiscriminate employment of various potencies, constitute a most certain means of interference to the detriment of the patient. The rationale of the classical rules for repetition and potency selection is thus understandable on the basis of cyclic action.

When you have gotten all you can out of a given remedy in a given potency and improvement has ceased, and after waiting a reasonable time no further action of the remedy is observable in the behavior of the symptoms, then and then only is another step or perhaps a higher potency to be considered in order that a new rising cycle may be initiated to carry forward the restorative process.

Cyclic law operations in, and through, all nature. In applying the law of similars we must harmonize and time the application with the other fundamental laws of nature, and not attempt to force one law against another.

When, and how, is one to begin so gigantic a task as that of studying and applying homoeopathy? Fortunately, the study and the application can, and should go hand in hand. No study will pay larger or quicker dividends in results and satisfaction.

What are the essential steps in taking up the study of homoeopathy? In the first place, the mind must be prepared to receive the teachings, and this requires that preconceived notions and prejudices be laid aside while the new ideas and the new viewpoints are being acquired. A critical, skeptical attitude can only act as a barrier to the acquirement of new knowledge. Obstructive and destructive criticism are ever born of ignorance. Constructive criticism is needed and that can only come from the informed mind.

The study of homoeopathy includes:

1. Homoeopathic philosophy

2. Materia Medica

3. Case taking

4. Repertory study and remedy selection.

5. Case management.

If one desires to achieve success and to become a really competent Homoeopathic physician he cannot afford to neglect any of these five major lines of study. Successful practice hangs on this five-linked chain and no matter how proficient one may be in any of these if there is a missing link the chain will be too short to reach a large proportion of the cases treated and the physician will not rise above the level of mediocrity.

Homoeopathic philosophy requires, first of all, a full appreciation of the law of similars for on this law homoeopathy is founded. Other systems of medicine have their empiricism, their routinism, their accepted, accredited, recognized, regular and orthodox modes and methods of treatment, and these change, ever change, as the swift seasons roll.

Correct homoeopathic practice, on the other hand is founded on one of the simple and eternal laws of nature and as such it grows and broadens, is subject to further elucidation and definition, but is ever anchored to one and the same fundamental law.

But, you say, why then is not homoeopathy universally recognized and practised? Why is it not taught in all of our great medical colleges and universities if it is based on a simple, natural law and is after all, the really scientific method of treating the sick?.

In the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, written 700 B.C., we find this: “Even as Truth, doth Error have its lovers”; and we have Hahnemanns writings that “Indolence, love of ease and prejudice of mind preclude service at the altar of Truth”. These limiting attributes of the human mind in general and of the medical mind in particular explain in large measure why homoeopathy is not in the forefront and universally recognized today.

The simplicity, the truth, the honesty of homoeopathy do not particularly appeal to the coldly materialistic type of mind which predominates in so many branches of science and learning in our day.

Eugene Underhill
Dr Eugene Underhill Jr. (1887-1968) was the son of Eugene and Minnie (Lewis) Underhill Sr. He was a graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of Pennsylvania Medical School. A homeopathic physician for over 50 years, he had offices in Philadelphia.

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.