And the goes on to say, “the whole system of active immunization by vaccines is based upon aiding the symptomatic expression of the bodys attempt to throw off the disease” “But,” he adds, “to my mind the homoeopathic ideal had been spoilt by being crystallized into a creed”.
It is amusing! but seeming absurdities have faded away in the light of science, and the worst our critics have to say of us now is that Hahnemanns teaching have been “crystallized into a dogma which is defended with religious fanaticism, and that there has been no evolution in teaching or practice since his death”.
That, as we know,m is far from being the case. The fact is that homoeopathy started 100 years ahead of science, and it is the evolution of science that is, tardily, catching up. But, even so, homoeopathy is by no means standing still during this century: it is more and more being demonstrated and confirmed and extended, and is progressing all the time, as we shall see, along the lines of Hahnemann.
The whole of our work as homoeopathic prescribers during the last hundred years had been based on the abnormal sensitivity of certain patients, and of the provers of certain drugs, to conditions mental, intellectual, physical, alimentary, meteoric, etc., which do not affect the normal, healthy individual.
The observation of such sensitivity has now obsessed the dominant school, and has evoked a new name, allergy; and a fresh field of therapeutics now deals with the discovery of the patients allergic reactions, and attempts to eliminate the offending substance from his existence, or else to employ isopathic (in reality homoeopathic) measures to combat it. But, here again, homoeopathy had always gone one better, and, by prescribing the “like” remedy for not only one such reaction but for his whole allergic-complex (discovered by provings that have evoked it in the healthy), has succeeded in desensitizing the patient, with the restoration of normality.
As an instance of allergy: A certain family has moved into the country, into a place many rhododendrons, and every member of that family (normal till now) has developed a perfect terror of thunderstorms. for this, only homoeopathy can account.
Moreover, medicine is now becoming alive to the opposite effects of large and small doses.
A recent Medical Research Council Report on radium referred to “the general principle that has been established with so many drugs: that large doses and very small doses act in opposite ways”.
Taylor has shown that irradiated ergosterol, in small and medium doses, favours the deposition of calcium from blood to bone; but large doses have a reverse effect and cause calcium to be absorbed from bone into the blood stream.
Duke, in a research on blood platelets, found that large doses of benzol reduced the platelet count to a point where the bleeding time was prolonged, while small doses of benzol brought about an increase in the platelet count. This also held good for a complex substance, such as diphtheria toxin – a large dose caused an immediate fall in the number of platelets, while sub- lethal doses stimulated their production.
It is seen that the same drug may stimulate or depress, given appropriate conditions.
But crude instances of homoeopathy, and the opposite effects of large and small doses, are familiar to all. Physicians use Ipecacuanha to check vomiting; Pot. iod. (Which Norman Walker tells us produces skin affections, diagnosed as gummata) for gumma; Salicylic acid for Menieres disease, etc.
But which of Hahnemanns teaching is not receiving confirmation in these days.
For instance, that the obliteration of disease can only come by the stimulation of curative vital reaction.
The late Sir Walter Fletcher has said that “the search for specific remedies for specific illnesses is bound to fail.” Dr. Todd has pointed out that “every so-called specific remedy is found later to have an indirect action”, and he does not consider that his lead selenide compound acts directly on cancer cells, but stimulates the surrounding “junction” tissues to rapid growth, thereby “strangling” the growth.
Professor Ehrlich, before he died, came to the conclusion that the effective arseno-benzol preparations did not act as parasiticides but as stimulants to the defensive power of the host.
It is obvious, therefore, that the leading pharmacologists believe now in an indirect action rather than a direct effect from drugs, and that the tissues and fluids of the host are the important factors in restoring health.
As to Hahnemanns initial aggravation, transient and little notice in acute sickness, but often very definite in chronic disease, followed by a period of steady amelioration, neither of which, as he insists, must be interfered with if results are to be obtained.
This again has been confirmed by Sir. Almroth Wright in his vaccine therapy as “negative” and “positive phases”.
Then, as regards individualization, homoeopathy, as we known concerns itself only with the individual and his personal reactions to environment, mental, moral and physical: with his personal deviations from the normal, especially from his own normal, due to disease. With Hahnemann, when it comes to prescribing, we know no disease, only sick persons.
And the others are getting at that, too!.
Devine, in his Recent Advances in Psychiatry (1929) writes: “The micro-organism provokes the organism, but it is the organism which makes the malady. There are no local illness: there are only general illnesses with manifestations more or less localised” and again, “It is not an illness we treat but an individual who is ill”.
He might be quoting Hahnemann who said it all 100 years ago, and who puts it so neatly and concisely when he talks of “the abnormal functional activity of the body which we call disease”.
Professor Langdon Brown in his Inaugural Lecture, English Medicine and the Cambridge School, says “that the body acts as whole in both health and disease, is the important conclusion to be drawn.” He quotes Dr. Cawadias, The British Physiologists- Foster, Gaskell, Langley, Sherrington, Schaeffer, Starling-by demonstrating that man can no longer be considered as a bundle of organs or cells but as an integrated whole, gave the scientific basis of a synthetic conception of disease.
And Dr. Alfred Alder, of Vienna, at a recent meeting in London, speaking on Individual Personality the Unit, said: His criticism of the other schools was that they devoted themselves to the consideration of parts or contents of the personality, to instincts, the conscious and the unconscious, and so forth. The results of such a method did not satisfy him, and the individual psychology which he advocated was interested not so much in contents, or in the various elements within the mind or psyche, but in the whole personality. The individual was always the unit. Individual psychology had in mind the words of Aristotle: “The whole is earlier than the parts”.
Someone, writing to the British Medical Journal on this question, states:.
Far too little time and attention is devoted to the study of the individual, and the sick man is often forgotten in the study of his disease. For the proper understanding of disease and its treatment there must be a thorough knowledge of the patients personality and of his environment, using the latter word in the widest sense of the term.
This is only reasonable, since no illness, as we know well, affects all persons in the same way. In rheumatism, one person, like Bryonia in its provings, has pain on the slightest movement; another, like Rhus, needs to be constantly on the move to make the pain endurable.
Even in pneumonia, for abortive and curative and curative work, the individual patient has to be considered in prescribing. A number of drugs have caused and cured pneumonia-Phosphorus, Bryonia, Nitric Acid, etc. But which are we to use? since one will not do for the other.
This is being recognised even in the serum treatment of pneumonia when Lintz maintains that the pneumococci producing lobar pneumonia are neither similar nor identical in all case. The immune serum produced in the host as the result of infection of one type of pneumococcus will neutralise or destroy the homologous pneumococcus and its poisons but will have no effect on the pneumococcus or its poisons of a different type. The susceptibility or personal factor seems to be of far greater importance than the virulence of the germ.
This aspect of the constitutional treatment of patients is finding favour in Europe under the expression “Neo-Hippocratic conception” where every diseased individual constitutes a problem by himself. We are no longer dealing with diseased organs but a sick person. This approach of medicine to disease had interested many leaders all the World over, and today us developed by Dr. Cawadias (of London) in his book The Modern Therapeutics of Internal Disease, which had been generally approved wrote that it should be put into the hands of every medical teacher).
Dr. Cawadias claims that the homoeopathic method of diagnosis has given us three principles for modern medical practice: the principle of individualization; the careful consideration of symptoms; and the study of the constitution of the patient as a factor in disease.
Weir received his medical education first at Glasgow University MB ChB 1907, and then on a sabbatical year in Chicago under the tutelage of Dr James Tyler Kent of Hering Medical College during 1908-9. Weir reputedly first learned of homeopathy through his contact with Dr Robert Gibson Miller.
John Weir wrote- Some of the Outstanding Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Conditions with Margaret Tyler, Homeopathy and its Importance in Treatment of Chronic Disease, The Trend of Modern Medicine, The Science and Art of Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl, The Present Day Attitude of the Medical Profession Towards Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl XVI, 1926, p.212ff, Homeopathy: a System of Therapeutics, The Hahnemann Convalescent Home, Bournemouth, Brit Homeo Jnl 20, 1931, 200-201, Homeopathy an Explanation of its Principles, British Homeopathy During the Last 100 Years, Brit Homeo Jnl 23, 1932: etc