Evidently, the autonomic is sensitive to all external influences. But it is more than generally sensitive. In the case of a drug which the disordered body needs to reestablish health, the autonomic is specifically sensitive. To such a drug, the autonomic will react when patient and drug are separated by relatively great distances, like a hundred feet. Once more is revealed the unconscious intelligence of autonomic responses. The fact that the responses occur unknown to the individual is of great significance. Organic functions are equally unconscious. They are all part of the integrated autonomic mechanism. And they represent the profoundest levels of living activity.
Thus percussion alone yields much valuable information. A drug which changes the percussion-note at a great distance will also affect the pupil of the eye. When the drug is brought close to the patient. the pupil dilates. The same drug modifies the pulse and the corresponding changes in the heart beat have been observed with the fluoroscope. In fact, all of these techniques supplement one another. Singly or together they may be used to select a curative remedy.
In addition, these responses reveal how sensitive is the autonomic mechanism to influences that produce no conscious impression. That is why, in its role of director and coordinator, the autonomic mechanism is in a position to indicate what is best for the individual. So far, we have learned to read only a few of these responses. We can watch them react to environment. We can watch them select the bodys medicine. It is a new approach to reality, a more intimate approach than the orthodox homoeopathic. Whereas symptomatology is an autonomic effect, it is better to observe the autonomic operations directly-i.e., functions directed by the involuntary nerves.
THE “ELECTRONISTS”.
Originally, the discovery that reflexes could be utilized therapeutically was made by Dr. George Starr White and Dr. Albert Abrams. Each utilized the phenomena in some-what different ways, but it is interesting that the percussion technique was a favorite with each. White explained the abdominal changes in percussion-note by calling in the sympathetic part of the general involuntary nervous system. We have gone farther than he by giving the involuntary nervous network a place subordinate to a remoter and deeper integrator of bodily functions which we have called the autonomic mechanism. But the work with the reflexes mentioned in the previous section-the reaction to persons, plants and drugs-would never have taken place had it not been for the earlier discoveries of White and Abrams.
Abrams in particular specified and elaborated these autonomic reactions. He found that dull spots on the abdomen could be induced by various external influences; for instance, by the presence, without contact, of diseased tissue or of a diseased person. Moreover, he found that different kinds of illness tended to elicit these dull spots in characteristic and constant areas. Finally, he found that a few drops of blood from a patient caused the same dull areas to form on the subjects abdomen as the patients presence.
In ordinary living things there appeared to be a radiant factor capable of influencing the abdominal reflexes of a subject. The next step was to devise some sort of instrument that would tune these radiations selectively, so that they might be admitted to the reagent-the subject-singly instead of together. In this manner the abdominal responses became more sharply defined and clearer. Since different types of reflex responses indicated different conditions in the blood or patient under analysis, it was possible, after years of correlation with clinical states, to build up a system of diagnosis.
This new approach to reality was called “electronics” in the mistaken idea that the electron was the basic factor involved in the phenomena. At that time the electron seemed the ultimate particle of matter. Today we know that at least half a dozen ultimate particle exist, each as important as the electron. This mistaken premise, and lack of physical knowledge on the part of those who developed the instruments used by “electronists”, led to inconsistencies that finally engulfed the whole movement. Despite his errors, however, Abrams made one of the profoundest discoveries of modern times. We are just beginning to fit it into our mosaic of natural sciences.
BOYDS EMANOMETER.
Another significant approach to reality has been worked out by Dr. Wm. E. Boyd of Glasgow. Like the “electronist”, he analyzes blood radiations. But he uses a special tuner developed by himself, the emanometer, which differs from the Abrams instrument. The emanometer, when properly used in conjunction with a human subject, is one of the most sensitive detectors ever developed.
In principle and delicacy it differs more from the coarse tuners used by the “electronist” than a modern thirty-tube differs from one of the original crystal sets. Contrary to statements often made, Boyds instrument is an independent, unique, and thoroughly scientific approach to the problem of blood and drug radiations. It distinguishes, by its tuning system, from different potencies of the same drug; further, it discriminates amongst potencies identical except for the number of succussions applied to them.
It does not diagnose disease as such: it analyzes bodily states. By much clinical correlation Boyd has learned that generally certain analyses are apt to coincide with specific clinical states-cancer, tuberculosis, inflammation, infiltration, and so forth. When the blood picture is abnormal, he tests a series of drugs until one is found which, when placed in the emanometer circuit together with the patients blood, restores a normal picture by canceling out the energies indicating disease and raising the intensity of energies representing the vital factors of the patient.
The physical basis for these phenomena are the interference effects which can take place between radiations. Interactions occur between the blood and drug energies. The abnormal blood energies, those representing unbalance and disease activity, are neutralized. The correct homoeopathic remedy will accomplish this neutralization if placed in the emanometer circuit. This shows that Boyd and the homoeopathist are approaching one fundamental reality from different directions.
These approaches to reality have opened channels for the mind so that it can sense a new aspect of symptoms. They lead into the field of autonomic functions and broaden this field beyond that of the autonomic nervous system so that it includes every hidden aspect of life as it has expanded from the beginning. But these approaches have shed no light on potentization. Hahnemann bequeathed it to posterity as a “spirit-like force”. Korsakoff and Fincke advanced the idea that potentization is a sort of contamination process. Their intuition was correct but they could present no definite proof. Recently however, this factor has come into the field of reality.
CRYSTALLIZATION.
This approach was made by E. Pfeiffer of Dornach, Switzerland. He had observed that frost patterns on the windows of different stores were unlike. A florists window gave curving, plant-like forms, a butchers window angular arrangements of the frost crystals. Pfeiffer made artificial frost patterns whose formation he found he could modify by adding various foreign substances.
He then abandoned these water crystallizations for salt crystallizations-and the salt he finally settled on as the most satisfactory was copper chloride. It invariably gave a characteristic crystal formation, provided the environment was kept constant. But the presence of impurities, of minute quantities of plant tinctures, caused the formations to change characteristically. The addition of belladonna, for instance, always gave a recognizable crystal pattern not duplicated by any other substances. Finally, Pfeiffer found that blood also influenced the crystallization. Different animal bloods gave characteristic patterns.
So did human blood. In fact, blood from a sick person gave quite different effects from healthy blood. And the kind of illness further modified the crystallization. In this fashion. Pfeiffer arrived at a method of diagnosis. By crystallizing copper chloride to which a patients blood had been added, he could tell from the crystal configurations the general type of ailment, much of the past history, and the localization of such pathology as tumors, inflammation, and the like. Still more remarkable, Pfeiffer found, independently of Boyd, that if the patients remedy were added to the copper chloride solution together with the blood, the resulting crystal pattern would be normal, showing none of the crystal forms indicative of disease.
What more proof could be desired that the right potentized remedy, by whatever method chosen, actually tends to restore the normal tissue and functional structures of the ailing body? Here again are the evident the objective and subjective aspects, the objective blood and the process of crystallization; and the subjective evaluation and interpretation of the crystal formations. Here too the autonomic lurks in the background as the conditioning agent of the blood-that which allows the blood to express the nature of the patients affliction. A completed blood crystallization is a changeless monument to natural forces working from a remoter plane into the world of perceptible phenomena.
