Faulty approach to disease treatment becomes increasingly manifest in our day. This corresponds to the general harvest of wrong thinking and acting in medical, political, economic, social and individual life. Repeatedly there arises the criticism of long established forms of thought and institutions; the cry for rapid and radical change; the willingness to follow the line of least resistance and take the plunge into the uncharted abyss.
Weariness in surplusage grows into carelessness, the readiness to a gamble into the unknown, a false and seductive faith in that which has none of the qualities of perpetuity. Window dressing in the form of an elusive similarity may easily lure the unwary to give up that which has long been proven and accepted in practice through satisfactory results.
It is true that ultimately the right, the true, the eternal, returns to the surface and adjusts to take its rightful place in the economy of man. Irrespective of disjointure of function, the clash of opposing forces, the loss of safe group anchorage, there appears to be a deeper calm in reasoning.
The healing arts, like other established institutions of the social body, face the same challenge. Irrelevant and destructive forces are gnawing at the vitals. The cry for modernistic progress grows in intensity; the pace of its heralded benefits is but exceeded by the publicity of supposed marvels of performance. The record of the past is swamped in the tide which swiftly moves on toward the pictured utopia which lies but ahead to kindly receive us into an embrace of regimented perfection.
Homoeopathy, that grand and divine light of medical truth, naturally under such conditions faces a hostile world, too hurried to grasp the import of its teachings.
Around the name of homoeopathy is centered the specific medical service which has made the battle against disease interesting and successful. To be sure, errors were made in the search for the correct similar. Yet, when the indicated remedy was secured and skillfully handled, a favorable response brought renewed composure within the psyche.
We have learned to revere this designation, which represents a definite and enduring advance in medicine. To him who views its practice a matter of expediency the import may be negligible, but to those of us who daily drink deep from the well of its healing power the value and significance grows with the passing years.
The inductive method of remedy selection which homoeopathy teaches stands without a peer in the individual treatment of disease. It is fundamental and the core of all successful case taking. All of value research may add is but an addition to the totality of symptoms, the rounding out and verification of the miasmatic background of the particular patient.
It was homoeopathy which gave us the distinguishing characteristics of Aconite in the moral symptoms. By what other name can our valued provings be designated, to present the part they have played in curative medicine? The prolific literature, through which is found an underlying consistency in treatment application, forms an epoch in medical history which can neither be divorced or erased.
Homoeopathy appearing upon the scene during the time of therapeutic confusion became a buttress to general medicine, directing toward a better quality of continuity. It faithfully carried on through the critical period of therapeutic nihilism, and has emerged in the new era of remedy recognition, to such an extent that we find the internal use of medicine emphasized.
The former maligned term of potency, also a bone of contention in earlier homoeopathic circles, has in recent years acquired added brilliancy on the medical horizon. Now that potency has been capitalized, it may not be amiss to state that it is in the careful selection of the single remedy, the high and highest potency, we gain the greatest response.
When indicated it brings constitutional rest to the agitated infant, innocently suffering from the sycosis of Hahnemann, lying for relief on the abdomen, thighs and knees tightly flexed to the trunk and head buried in the pillow, through the use of Medorrhinum.
It was homoeopathy which gave us the values of the Calcareas, the Magnesias, the Kalis, etc., to correct the miasmatic inconsistencies of early life. The dangers of adolescence in both sexes are appreciably reduced; the perversions which lead to juvenile delinquency, the mental quirks which increase nerve tension, the sex irregularities and the dysmenorrhoea, are all ironed out and balanced in a growing organism.
Yes, middle and old age share the beneficial effects of good homoeopathic care, although the physical declines and pathology appears; a mental clearance shows better adjustment to the problems of the latter days.
Who is there after having seriously studied and used the single remedy according to our established philosophy, who does not know that the infinitesimal dose makes changes in and modifies the basic miasmatic states of Hahnemann? May he learn to patiently wait for the reaction of the organism to the dynamic impulse set in motion by these forces at his command! New avenues of appreciation await the bid for such an experience.
Again one marvels at the antidotal power of the single, potentized remedy in complications that follow and chronically persist after the indiscriminate use of powerful drug suppressants. These conditions are difficult to handle unless careful case taking reveals the primary master remedy for the original and natural disease.
A patient with a recurrent history of acute conditions developed pneumonia, was hospitalized and given the routine sulfa treatment. Although in the prime of life he has not been feeling well since then; indifferent to his business, aggravated in the morning and always better reclining; and constipation with no desire to defecate. He presented himself to homoeopathy in a confused and semi-invalid state, the business slipping away, and the marriage going on the rocks, all apparently due to irritability and maladjustment. Our provings and extensive clinical experience directed to Bryonia, which quickly cleared the path for normal adjustment.
It may be the patient requests an explanation for the strange return taste of some former medicine taken, or for the renewal of a familiar odor in channel discharges, connected with a former local application up to some twenty years past. I cannot account the process of such phenomena, therefore permit it to rest with future research to disclose. Under proper homoeopathic medications, restricted to minimum potency display, there may be intervals of return, although ultimately the tendency will be to clear, always followed by a testimonial of a deep improvement in general well being.
In our days these complications offer a wide field for treatment adventure in higher homoeopathics. The rational use of the Law of Similars is far in advance to meet such inroads upon health. It is here where a knowledge of the union of allergy and dyscrasias of Hahnemann ideally opens the avenue of perception for correct curative procedure.
A definite long range program of remedy development is thereby attained in an intermediate state of conventional medical progress.
Let no man be deceived, a lack of study and understanding of the fundamentals remains an impediment. As the years roll on toward the midnight hour of individual existence, as we ponder the depth in simplicity of homoeopathy, we truly become amazed at the past discount in our use of its possibilities.
The mere fact that certain phases of modern medicine are running along the channel of the Law of Similars becomes no valid reason for discontinuance of the homoeopathic tradition in medicine. Far more there remains the urge to truly maintain it as an incentive to a fuller use of its far sighted philosophy.
Today public scrutiny is being focused more keenly upon organization, as to whether it is worthy in social service. The strongest is none too safe in the changing and fluid state of the corporate body.
Major organization has no guarantee of permanency. Minorities may have a larger bid for public recognition, provided they measure up to th values of the day. It remains for us to put our house in true homoeopathic order, to be worthy of its world wide tradition of service in disease, by improving ourselves to render maximum service with minimum economic outlay.
May we exalt the honored name of homoeopathy, diligently study its valued literature, and more fully recognize the need to carry it through to a coming day more able and disposed to appreciate its worth.
HAMDEN, NEW HAVEN, CONN.
Education: Cincinnati College of Medicine & Surgery
Author, Distinctive Phases Of Kali Carb. and Homeopathy , the medical stabilizer