It is well to obtain this clear view of what is before us and face candidly the true place for the practice of the healing art that we may become true physicians, and to stabilize still further, let us look at what Carroll Dunham called the scientific reasonableness of homoeopathy.
Homoeopathy is developed through the inductive method of reasoning. Not only are the conclusions of homoeopathy consistent with its assistant with is assumption but they are founded upon truth, for homoeopathy as a method is drawn logically according to the strictest rules of inductive generalization from data derived from the closest observation of facts and experiments. All the processes from the proving to the curative prescription are controlled by the principles of inductive reasoning.
Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary defines inductive reasoning as follows:.
The Inductive Method in Reasoning is the scientific method that proceeds by induction. It requires (1) exact observation; (2) correct interpretation of the observed facts with a view to understanding them in relation to each other and their causes; (3) rational explanation of the facts by referring them to their real cause or law; and (4) scientific construction; putting the facts in such co-ordination that the system reached shall agree with the reality.
The search for the cause of anything of anything may proceed according to any one of four methods: (1) the method of agreement, in which a condition uniformly present is assumed to be probably a cause; (2) the method of difference, in which the happening of an event when a condition is present, and its failure when a condition is absent, lead to the assumption of that condition as a cause; (3) the method of concomitant variation, in which the simultaneous variation in similar degree of condition and event establishes a casual relation; and (4) the method of residues r of residual variations, where after subtracting from from a phenomenon the part due to causes already established the remainder is held to be due to some of other unascertained cause or to the known remaining causes.
True says in his philosophy of Logic:.
Logic is the science of inference; it teaches how one judgment may be inferred from other judgments. To reason is to infer, hence it is usually called the science of reasoning.
It assumes that every mind conceive intuitively some ideas or judgments which are at once primary and certain; otherwise we could have no foundation for inference; and to infer one idea or judgment from others would give no certainty.
These ideas are called first truths, They are given be the senses, the consciousness and the reason, and they are innumerable. I exist. There is an external world. This body is solid, extended, round, red, warm or cold, are first truths.
At first those ideas are particular, but afterwards the mind unites those which are similar, or which agree in some respect, into classes. This is called generalization. To express this we no longer say this or that body, but body; not coat, shirt, trousers, etc., but clothes.
I infer that heat in such a degree as will cause the mercury in the thermometer to rise to the point marked two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit will always cause water to boil; in other words, it is proved by induction to be a law of nature that two hundred and twelve degrees Fahrenheit will cause water to boil.
Now the conclusion is not drawn from any number of instances of the boiling of water, but with a few instances combined with the principle that like causes will produce like effects.
The proposition that all reasoning is deductive may be proved by a similar argument using another intuitive principle: no event happens without a cause.
Every case of induction proper proceeds upon the same grounds and in the same way. it is, therefore, evident that induction is no exception to the rule that inference is always from generals to particulars and not from particular to generals.
Reasoning by analogy proceeds in the same way; the difference is only in the character of the first premise, which is, that similar causes are likely to produce similar effects, or that things that agree in certain attributes or relations are likely to agree in certain other attributes or relations.
The process of reasoning, when completed, is found to be simply this: something is predicated, that is, affirmed or denied of a class; an individual is affirmed to belong to this class, and then, of course, the same thing can be affirmed or denied of that individual.
Thus we readily see and approach the aptitude of Stuart Closes description of homoeopathy, when he describe the foundations as being “solid concrete, composed of the broken rock of hard facts united by the cement of a great natural principle” upon which the superstructure can be raised, knowing it to be inseparable from the foundation.
Hahnemann started with this concept, that had been hinted by many from Hippocrates down to Hahnemann, that “diseases are cured by medicines that have the power to excite a similar affection”, and applying the only scientific method of reasoning, by the law of induction, would naturally lead him to give the medicine to a healthy person and observe the effects, since in a healthy person an affection similar to the disease might be developed. Accordingly, his thorough work in proving developed as we know
it.
This show the relation of facts to the practice of homoeopathy, with an outline of th reasoning process by which homoeopathy was worked out and built up, and it is applicable in every concrete case which a homoeopathic physician may be called upon to treat. The principles involved are the same: the examination of the patient, or the record of the proving; the analysis and evaluation of the symptoms in each case; the selection of the remedy; all these are conducted under the rules and in an orderly method based upon inductive reasoning. Thus we determine what is characteristic in the patient and in the remedy; the characteristic symptoms are always the generals of the patient.
What is true of one symptom may often be true of the whole patient, as illustrated by the reaction to thermic changes of individual parts and symptoms, and may be true of the whole man, and therefore we strive for the totality of symptoms. As Close well puts it, in his Genius of Homoeopathy.
Logic facilitates the comprehension of the related totality or picture of the symptoms of the case a whole. From all the parts, logic constructs the whole. It reveals the case; in other words, by generalizing its assigns each detail to its proper place and gives concrete form to the case so that it may be grasped by the mind in its entirety.
The true “totality” is more than the mere numerical totality or whole number of the symptoms. It may even exclude some of the particular symptoms if they cannot, at the time, be logically related to the case. Such symptoms are called “accidental symptoms”, and are not allowed to influence the choice of the remedy. The “totality” is that concrete form which the symptoms take when they are logically related to each other and stand forth as an individuality, recognizable by anyone who is familiar with the symptomatic forms and lineaments of drugs and diseases.
The basis of the homoeopathic prescription is the totality of the symptoms of the patient, as viewed and interpreted from the standpoint of the prescriber. A successful prescription cannot be made from the standpoint of the diagnostician, the surgeon nor the pathologist, as such, because of the differing interpretation and classification of symptoms. A prescription can only be made upon those symptoms which have their counterpart of similar in the materia medica.
Individuality is inculcated always in the examination of a case. The three steps always followed in a carefully developed case consist in the examination of the patient, the examination of the symptom record of the patient and the examination of the materia medica. After these steps are logically taken and analyzed they lead by the process of induction to the generals of the case, for the generals are the sum total of the particulars. The value of the generalization depends primarily upon the data from which it is drawn, for it is an axiom of philosophy that “a general truth is but the aggregate of particular truths, a comprehensive expression by which an indefinite number of individual facts are affirmed or denied”.
It is not possible to form generals until we have considered special particular symptoms and analyzed and assimilated them, in their relation to the whole. Minor particular enter into major, and major into one all-inclusive concept of the case. Such an all-occlusive major ins similia similibus curantur-the most complete and far-reaching generalization ever made from the deduction of individual facts.
The value of generalization depends in its essence upon the data from which it is drawn. The facts must be both accurate and complete.
Where we have many and clear mental symptoms they are always generals for they represent the man in the most characteristic sense. Modalities again are always generals, for they are the natural modifiers of the case. “Where there are no generals”, says Kent, “we can expect no cures”.
