EDITORIAL


EDITORIAL. Permit a reminder as to putting the theory into practice. It is necessary, first, to become familiar with the characteristic of the three principle miasms and to study Allens so called pseudopsora. Second, it is necessary to obtain and trace the image of the disease in the strictly Hahnemannian manner as directed in Sections 83-90 in the Organon.


“LAW IS A REVELATION”.

“Law is a revelation,” says J.H. Allen in his Chronic Miasms, and truly no more inspired bit of philosophy has come to us from the ages than this distillation of his insight and divination. To recognize law is to know truth and the extent of one is extential with the other.

One law with which all have to deal whether the fact is admitted or not is the moral law. [Allen used the word “sin” occasionally. No, cautious reader, neither do I like that word. It is too reminiscent of the pulpit-pounding Sundays of long ago. My mother used to take me up to a front seat and, as there was no other kid up that far, it was pretty hard. But “sin” is a good old fashioned word that all can understand.

Do you mean to tell me you sit there and dont know what it means? Never mind, well now return to “moral law.” -R.E.S.H.]. Allen, as well as Kent, saw keenly that deviations from the moral law, the perversions of will and desire, are the origins of disease and distresses. Francis Neilson in the January, 1949, American Journal of Economics urges recognition of moral law and advises to go “back to Kant.” He quotes Patons translation of Kants Categorical Imperatives as an inseparable condition of the moral law in economy and of freedom. As it is pertinent to medical practice, as well as to political economy, we will repeat it here:.

1. Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a natural law.

2. Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.

3. So act to use humanity, both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same time as an end, never simply as a means.

4. So act that your will can regard itself at the same time as making universal law through its maxim.

5. So act as if you were always, through your maxims, a law- making member in a universal kingdom of ends.

This may be translated into the common idiom as follows: Search for the illumination of law in right (according to fact or truth); to know law and use it to assist in the work of creation, be consistent with it; use people for unselfish purpose only; do for others with good will, for giving adds more to the general good than getting; the law shall make us free.

Neilson at this time was urging the uses of natural law in political economy.[+For the Mosaic law of political economy see Deuteronomy, ch. 19:14 or Neilsons The Eleventh Commandment. This commandment is misplaced; it belongs in Chap. V, after the tenth,-R.E.S.H.]. The opposite and common impulse of man is to attempt to make his own immature, half-blind motives the law of life instead of discovering law and using it.

That is why we have power centers of murder and tax pillage distributed over the earth with mealy-mouthed leaders struggling for advantage over each other, with armies of bureaucratic dependents living on the backs of the producers, police at every coast and border hindering and restricting the normal intercourse and exchange between human beings; and why do dumb masses of humanity submit their minds, faith, souls and bodies to the tortures of poverty, disease, grief and death, wrecking what they themselves have built, becoming crushed in the ruins, believing that sacrifice to political force will bring something besides the filthy precipitate of its own degradation? Humanity has not yet learned and trusted the law of action and reaction, least of all perceived economic law, the first principle of substances and well being.

The ordinary practice of medicine is a part of this chaotic, barbarous world condition. The art that should be healing and comforting from the first breath to the last is concerned mostly with attempts to exorcise disease with some kind of force. So it goes on suppressing, dismembering, interfering with and degenerating vitality from the cradle to the grave; and, with modern technical facilities, no small part of the total becomes pathoscientific exploitation besides.

How have homoeopaths fulfiled their responsibility to the law of healing which the name implies? Certainly, as a whole there is no comparison with the blind flounderings of old school attempts to catch up with illusions, which, as in politics, leads away from law instead of toward it. But there is one dim corner in homoeopathics where some are not quite orientated; and not always exploited clinically, we fear, even by those who appreciate its validity. For it requires a little extra work for the head and some practitioners are pretty well pressed for time.

It is easier to seize upon the first keynote that comes along, as if it were the polar star, and stop there. But a too hasty grasp may let the little universe slip away before it is seen in its exact relation. We refer, of course, to a consideration of the miasms. Allen argued and demonstrated that the fact of the miasms is the very kernel of the law of similars itself.

Allen joined the International Hahnemannian Association in 1887. During the twenty-one years following, the Association published more than thirty of his articles in its Transactions. They are of absorbing interest and of the finest philosophical and practical quality. These articles would make a small-sized book of perhaps two hundred pages, were it feasible to publish it and would be one of the most suggestive volumes for reference and under- standing. In these days of lay medical curiosity and increasing dissatisfaction and desertions from primitive medicine such a book might sell well.

For the profession, Allens two volume Chronic Miasms stands next to the Organon and Chronic Diseases as a lead to success with chronic disease. For instance, after reading Allens factual and logical treatment of the subject, based as it is on the Organon mainly, Kents treatment of the miasms seems meager in comparison.

Permit a reminder as to putting the theory into practice. It is necessary, first, to become familiar with the characteristic of the three principle miasms and to study Allens so called pseudopsora. Second, it is necessary to obtain and trace the image of the disease in the strictly Hahnemannian manner as directed in Sections 83-90 in the Organon. This is an inviolable requirement, one for which no artificial schedule can be substituted. Third, to evaluate the symptoms as to urgency or activity and decide as to the miasmatic base from which they have arisen, according to similarity to the general miasmatic description, remembering that it is not miasm per se that we are dealing with in a particular patient, but paradoxically with the distorted life pattern.

Then select the remedy that corresponds in the characteristic urgency. Allen says that unless the most active miasm is prescribed for the bond cannot be loosened and the end result will be inferior; that actual improvement of constitutional quality may be something of a failure. If miasm is the acting cause of disease, the highest value will be found in the symptoms peculiar to the individual which relate to that special one.

We trust this tale of an old story has not been too wearisome, but some seem to keep up a sort of immunity or protection against the miasmatic theory. If miasm is not the cause of persistent or chronic disease, what is? Shall we see all the characteristics of a thing and ignore it, even deny it a name? Rather, a search for law in the phenomena of illness always rewards both patient and physician.” Law is a revelation”.

Rabe R F
Dr Rudolph Frederick RABE (1872-1952)
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.

Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.