Homoeopathy, by one definition, is a method of treatment of diseases based upon the conception “similia similibus curentur” (let likes be cured by likes). According to Dr. Linn J. Boyd in the National Encyclopedia there are four tenets of Homoeopathy. 1. The first and chief tenet holds that diseases can be cured by drugs which produce similar symptoms and signs in the healthy human body. 2. The second tenet is that drugs shall be used in such dosage as will stimulate without producing secondary depression.
Small or minute doses are usually employed. 3. The third tenet is that the effects of any drug must be previously determined by a “proving” on healthy human beings. 4. The fourth tenet is that treatment shall be directed at the individual patient and his manifestations rather than at the name of the disease. Hence, the drug is selected on the totality of the symptoms, signs and findings of the sick individual.
Isopathy is treatment by administering the virus which causes the disease (Medical Dictionary,) Lux was the father of isopathy and based his healing method on the principle “Aequalia aequalibus curantur”.
I. ORGANON, S. Hahnemann.
In recent cases of frost-bitten limbs frozen sauerkraut is applied or frictions of snow are used.
It is on such examples of domestic practice that Mr. M. Lux founds his so-called mode of cure by identicals and idem, which he calls Isopathy, which some eccentric-minded persons have already adopted as the non plus ultra of a therapeutic method, without knowing how they could carry it out.
But if we examine these instances attentively, we find that they do not bear out these views.
The purely physical powers differ in the nature of their action on the living organism from those of a dynamic medicinal kind.
Heat or cold of the air that surrounds us, or of the water, or of our food and drink, occasion (as heat and cold) of themselves no absolute injury to a healthy body; heat and cold are in their alternation essential to the maintenance of healthy life, consequently they are not of themselves, medicine.
Heat and cold, therefore, act as curative agents in affections of the body, not by virtue of their essential nature (not, therefore, as cold and heat per se, not as things hurtful in themselves, as are the drugs, rhubarb, china, etc., even in the smallest doses), but only by virtue of their greater or smaller quantity, that is, according to their degrees of temperature, just as (to take an example from purely physical powers) a great weight of lead will bruise my hand painfully, not by virtue of its essential nature as lead, for a thin plate of lead would not bruise me, but in consequence of its quality and massive weight.
If, then, cold or heat be serviceable in bodily ailments like frost-bites or burns, they are so solely on account of their degree of temperature, just as they only inflict injury on the healthy body by their extreme degrees of temperature.
Thus we find in these examples of successful domestic practice, that it is not the prolonged application of the degree cold in which the limb was frozen that restores it isopathically (it would thereby be rendered quite lifeless and dead), but a degree of cold that only approximates to that (homoeopathy), and which gradually rises to a comfortable temperature, as frozen sauerkraut laid upon the frost-bitten hand in the temperature of the room soon melts, gradually growing warmer from 32 to 33 (Fahr.) to the temperature of the room, supposing that to be only 55, and thus the limb is recovered by physical homoeopathy.
In like manner, a hand scalded with boiling water would not be cured isopathically by the application of boiling water, but only by a somewhat lower temperature as, for example, by holding, it in a vessel containing a fluid heated to 160, which becomes every minute less hot, and finally descends to the temperature of the room, whereupon the scalded part is restored by homoeopathy. Water in the act of freezing cannot draw the frost isopathically from potatoes and apples, but this is effected by water only near the freezing point.
So, to give another example from physical action, the injury resulting from a blow on the forehead with a hard substance, (a painful lump) is soon diminished in pain and swelling by pressing on the spot for a considerable time with the ball of the thumb, strongly at first, and then gradually less forcibly, homoeopathically, but not by an equality hard blow with an equally had body, which would increase the evil isopathically.
There are several phases of isopathy to be considered. That of “regular” medicine which may treat a disease by the vaccine or virus of that same disease. This has not been eminently successful. However, prophylaxis against infections or contagious diseases by vaccine or virus is one phase of isopathy to which they point with pride and confidence, e.g. typhoid vaccine and diphtheria or tetanus toxoid.
The most widely used branch of isopathy nowadays, and the most effective as well, is the treatment of an allergy by minute and graduated doses of the allergen, e.g. pollen extracts for hay fever and asthma.
Auto-hemic therapy i.e. drawing blood from patients vein and injection into the muscles of the same individual is a branch or offshoot of isopathy and has apparent value in some few, selected diseases.
Isopathy is not a complete system of therapeutics as is Homoeopathy and at its best it is usually palliative rather than curative. One of its inherent weaknesses is that one treats a diagnosis rather than an individual who is sick.
Ever since Hahnemanns day disease products or nosodes, as they are called, have been used in the treatment of disease by homoeopaths. Some of these are psorinum from the itch vesicles, syphilinum from syphilis, medorrhinum from gonorrhea, etc.
II. CHRONIC DISEASES, S. Hahnemann.
The antipsoric medicines treated of in the following volumes contained no so-called isopathic remedies, because their pure effects, even those of the potentized itch-miasm (psorin), are a long way fro being sufficiently proved to enable us to make a sure homoeopathic use of them. I say homoeopathic, for the prepared itch-matter does not remain idem, even if given to the patient whom it was taken, because, if it is to do him good, it can only do so in a potentized state, seeing that crude itch- matter, which he has in him already, being an idem, has no action on him. The preparation that develops its power (potentization) changes and modifies it, just as gold-leaf, after being potentized, is no longer crude gold without action on the human body, but at every stage of its potentization is more and more modified and altered.
Potentized and modified in this way, the itch-matter (psorin) for administration is no longer idem with the crude original itch-matter, but only a similimum. For between idem and similimum there is, for those who can reflect, nothing intermediate; or, in other words, between idem and simile only similimum can exist. Isopathic and aequale are misleading terms, which if they can mean anything trustworthy, can only mean similimum because they are not idem.
According to Hahnemanns logic these potentized products are not isopathy but a form of homoeopathy. These nosodes, if prescribed on their characteristic symptoms, are homoeopathic remedies and will cure what they can cause. If given on the diagnosis, they have a much more limited effect. In practice they are often helpful in clarifying the case or instituting a reaction but they are rarely curative per se.
In 1881, at the time when there was great interest in using nosodes wherever possible as a short and quick way to cure. Dr. Ad. Lippe wrote an article for the Homoeopathic Physician, Vol. I. His title was “Isopathy: a Fatal Error.” “The modern isopathists claim it to be a law of cure that the products of a disease taken from one individual, when highly potentized will cure the same disease in other individuals.” Lippe proceeds to show that this is rarely the case.
I should not want to practice homoeopathy without the nosodes, for I use them often and frequently with very beneficial effect. They often clarify, simplify and set in order the difficult case. It has been shown that where ill health started from some acute ill, such as measles, mumps, or influenza, the nosode of such disease, even many years later, will remove the ills which have persisted since that acute infection.
And I certainly should not want to be limited only to nosodes for their field is narrow and the more they are used as isopathic rather than homoeopathic remedies, the more restricted is their value.
I close by quoting from Hahnemanns Organon again:
It is impossible that there can be another true, best method of curing dynamic diseases, (i.e., all diseases not strictly surgical) besides homoeopathy, just as it is impossible to draw more than one straight line betwixt two given points. he who imagines that there are other modes of curing diseases besides it could not have appreciated homoeopathy fundamentally nor practised it with sufficient care, nor could he ever have seen or read cases of properly performed homoeopathic cures; nor, on the other hand, could he have discerned the baselessness of all allopathic modes of treating diseases and their bad or even dreadful effects, if, with such lax indifference, he places the only true healing art on an equality with those hurtful methods of treatment, or alleges the latter to be auxiliaries to homoeopathy, which it could not do without! My true, conscientious followers, the pure homoeopathists, with their successful, almost never-failing treatment might teach these persons better.
