THE APPROACH TO REALITY


THE APPROACH TO REALITY. Here are four approaches to reality. Had he known of them, Lippe could have made his prescription of Lac can. with whichever he chose to use. There was an objective relation between the drug and the impotent patient. Any approach to reality should have indicated the relation. Lippe solved the problem by a study of the symptoms. He might have observed the autonomic responses.


That master prescriber, Wm. P. Wesselhoeft, describes a case which is classical in epitomizing the art of homoeopathy. A man had suffered from impotence for six years. Wesselhoeft treated him for a while, but all he succeeded in doing was to reduce the patients extreme tendency to catch cold; the impotence remained untouched. At length Wesselhoeft referred the patient to A. Lippe of Philadelphia. Among other things, Lippe found that ten years earlier the man had had diphtheria which had alternated sides, eventually settling on the side where it had started.

Since that time he had never really been well. All his colds showed this alternating characteristic. Finally, the impotence had supervened. Lippe gave Lac caninum CM. There was no record of impotence amongst the proved symptoms of the drug. Nevertheless, impotence, colds, everything disappeared, and the patient became the father of two exceptionally healthy children, The whole case will be found in H.C. Allens Materia Medica of the Nosodes. Allen, himself a master, considered Lippes prescription a classic.

To those who are familiar with the homoeopathic method of practice, the case will seem as classical as it did to Allen. To physicians unfamiliar with the homoeopathic approach, it can only appear unbelievable. The idea of dogs milk as a remedy for diphtheria and its after effects appears fantastic. Action from a remedy so greatly diluted appears impossible. And the giving of a drug to correspond with a condition which had existed ten years earlier appears the most incredible of all. But Lippe sought out- and obtained-the keynote of the patients constitution. To him the patient was a continuum, and the drug had to be matched not against a single phase of the disorder-the impotence-but against the entire disorganization as it had begun and progressed over the years.

Lippe, as was his wont, had grasped the reality of the situation.

Hahnemanns was the first organized approach to reality in medicine and Lippe was his worthy disciple. By describing an invisible, dynamic vital force and an analogous imponderable in potentized drugs Hahnemann at once characterized the objective aspects. Such factors exist independently of our opinion or our ability to denote them instrumentally. How to unlock the reality, how to make it accessible to healing, he discovered in the Law of Similars. Because the understanding and application of that law depend on mind, interpretation and intuition, they represent the subjective aspect of this approach to reality.

The whole Hahnemannian teaching is a closed system passing from an extreme pole to another-from objective to subjective-and back again, in a perfect synthesis. All the master homoeopathists caught the essence of Hahnemann s words. They worked in a region unattainable to the average physician. And this sublime practice of homoeopathy, requiring a special attitude and comprehension, is rarer today than it used to be. Slowly it seems to be passing away. It does not fit the temperament of contemporary times.

THE AUTONOMIC.

The crux of the homoeopathic approach lies in the utilization of symptoms as an expression of body needs. The homoeopath takes the case. He searches into all the patients peculiarities. He is anxious to discover how this patients individual constitution is expressing the disease, instead of how the disease in this patient resembles the same disease in others. The pathological end-products interest the homoeopath least. But the subjective symptoms have deep significance. They represent a response to disorganization of an autonomic mechanism. Symptomatology is the outcry of this autonomic mechanism adjusting the body to an abnormal condition.

The effort is always to restore normalcy-that is, health When, for some reason, the autonomic fails to achieve this, chronic pathology results. Such pathology is usually obstinate since it represents a new habit acquired by the body against the abnormal condition. Pathology, manufactured as an end product by a primary reaction in the body, is comparatively useless to homoeopathic prescribing, because pathologies of a given type, in general, resemble one another too closely to permit of differentiation, and without differentiation, it is impossible to decide which of several similar drugs to prescribe.

In cases of advanced pathology, there are often few distinguishing symptoms. Since the symptomatology is only one of several expressions of the autonomic mechanism, the absence of symptoms must be amended by study of some other autonomic expression. This takes us out of the province of pure homoeopathy. Fortunately, homoeopathy is not the only approach to reality in medicine.

What is this autonomic mechanism? As we have chosen to use the term in this paper, the autonomic mechanism is far more than the bare involuntary nervous fibres. It is the sum total of intelligent, purposeful, integrated cell-activity. It is the adaptation of the total body to conditions, an adaptation in which, more or less, all tissues, all organs, all functions take part. It is the sum of the factors through which the single- celled beginning of each individual develops into a complex living creature. Within the original fertilized cell lie the influences carrying hereditary traits and responsibility for the manner in which the new individual will evolve.

Such exist long before the elaboration of the individual is not less specific because of this lack of the involuntary nerves. To this total of governing and directing forces, of which the involuntary nerves are but one physiological expression, we have given the name of autonomic mechanism. And just as each person is different from every other person, so each autonomic is different from all other autonomics. Indeed, it is the difference in the autonomic total which is responsible for the physical and temperamental differences of people.

Just as any person, when struck, cries out from a sensation of pain common to all people, but always cries in his own voice, which is quite different from anyone elses voice, so the subjective symptomatology of a patient is the crying-out of the individual autonomic mechanism. It is an unique expression never duplicated by another living creature. Conversely, the absence of symptoms indicates the smooth and satisfied working of the autonomic.

Pathology results from the autonomics failure to correct disease; pathology, indeed, represents tissue run out of the autonomics control. In a literal sense, this autonomic mechanism knows best what is good for itself. The maintenance of health and the effort to regain it during illness, both autonomic processes, show how autonomic activity is in the direction of optimum physiological states. Left to itself, the autonomic is all-knowing, a sort of demigod.

Some autonomic expressions are capable of easy external observation. These are reflexes extending directly from one phase of the autonomic mechanism, the involuntary nervous system. The fluctuation of the pupil of the eye in response to variations in illumination belongs in this class. Much can be told concerning circulatory activity by taking the pulse or listening to the heart-beats, two different involuntary activities. Organic and other tissues are impregnated with small muscle fibers which contract and expand under involuntary direction. These muscles give to the tissues what is called tonus.

If parts of the body are percussed, changes in tonus-i.e.,loosening or tightening of these involuntary muscles-manifest themselves as changes in the percussion-note, just as a taut drumhead gives a different sound from a drumhead that has worked itself loose. Here then are three expressions, all part of the complex autonomic mechanism, easily observed from the outside.

If, for instance, the abdomen of a person is percussed over one of the resonant areas, something very remarkable takes place under certain conditions. The resonant percussion note turns dull when another individual approaches.

The exact distance at which this takes place varies with the participating individuals. The same response occurs when plants or drugs are brought close to the subject under percussion. In each case the approaching person, plant or drug establishes its influence over a short distance, three to a dozen feet or so, with no physical contact between it and the percussed subject. If this subject happens to be ill, one or two drugs will be found to exercise their influence at much greater distances-up to a hundred feet.

These drugs appear to act over great distances only because the subject is specifically sensitive to them; just as a victim of hay fever detects the presence of pollens to which the ordinary person in insensitive. A single drug can always be found to act at a greater distance than any other. Much clinical experience has established such a drug as curative if prescribed to the patient. The effect can be observed especially in potentized drugs, even in the highest potencies like 50M. or CM.

Guy Beckley Stearns