The approach to the study of the case and the approach to the study of the materia medica are essentially the same-the materia medica is the fac simile of the sickness.
Boenninghausen has shown in his Repertory that these aggravations and ameliorations are modalities, and therefore rank as generals. Close rates this repertorial work as “the greatest masterpiece of analysis, comparison and generalization in our literature”. The attempt to limit the application of the modality to the particular symptoms with which they were first observed has not been successful in practice, so Boenninghausens grouping of them as generals was masterpiece of inductive reasoning. Writing in regard to these modalities which he considers generals, he says:.
All of these indications are so trustworthy, and have been verified by such manifold experiences that hardly any others can equal them in rank, to say nothing of surpassing them. But the most valuable fact respecting them is this: That this characteristic is not confirmed to one or another symptom, but like a red thread it runs through all the morbid symptoms of a given remedy, which are associated with any kind of pain whatever, or even with a sensation of discomfort, and hence it is available for both external and internal symptoms of the most varied character.
He arrived at these truths by the inductive study of the facts and the results were the products of sound reasoning.
We see then that homoeopathy is more than the law of similars. It is basically a scientific method of healing which is based upon natural laws and developed by inductive reasoning. The whole fabric is summed up in the third paragraph of the Organon, where Hahnemann writes:.
If the physician clearly perceive what it is in disease in general and in each case of disease in particular that has to be cured (knowledge of disease, knowledge of the requirements of disease or disease-indications) if he clearly perceive what is the healing principle in medicine generally and in each medicine in particular (knowledge of the powers of medicines) if in the light of clear principles he can so adapt the healing virtue of the drug to the illness that is to be cured that recovery must follow, and if the has the ability not only to select the particular remedy whose mode of action is most suitable for the case (choice of the remedy or indicated medicine), but also to choose the exact quantity of the remedy required (the suitable dose) and the fitting period for its repetition, if, I say, he knows all these things and in addition recognizes in every case the hindrances to lasting recovery and can remove them, then truly he understands how to build up his work on an adequate basis of reason, and he is a rational practitioner of the healing art.
DERBY, CONN.
It is not enough that the patient complains of no pain, or is silent as to unusual sensations in the cardiac region, for many cases make destructive progress without these, and without exhibiting the symptoms presently to be named, and which usually characterize such attacks. Nothing but a careful examination of the sounds of the hearts action can be perfectly relied on as evidence of its safety or danger in cases of acute rheumatism.
No matter what the other symptoms, while these reveal only the dull, soft and smooth sounds, with the regularity of rhythm, and no more nor less than the active impulse of health, we need entertain no fear. It is all right. But any departure from these is a warning, and woe to both physician and patient if it be not heeded and met by proper means. If there is a greater impulse to the beat than accords with the general signs of fever, it is significant of threatened trouble, and this is much enhanced, if at the same time the action of the heart is more rapid than would have been anticipated from the grade of violence of the fever, and still more if this action is tumultuous, or irregular in its rhythm.
If with or without these signs there is heard with the usual sound of the beat, or with each beat, a blowing like that from the action of a small hand bellows, we have no occasion longer for suspicion, for trouble is already upon us. The careful examination of the state of the heart is the more earnestly insisted on, because without this the evil may reach a development necessarily destructive before it is in the least perceptible in the general symptoms of the case. P.P.WELLS, M.D., 1863.
