THE LAW OF SIMILARS AND THE LAW OF CURE


THE LAW OF SIMILARS AND THE LAW OF CURE. After a few years of practice. It found that I could not cure some cases with my knowledge of materia medica. I used the help of Dr. Kents Repertory for the selection of the proper remedy and consulted senior physicians and prominent homoeopaths of Bengal. Yet some cases were not cured though they were curable cases. This led me to re-study the science.


Dr. Chowdhuri is a member of the Homoeopathic State Faculty of Bengal.-ED.

When I studied and completed the course of Ayurved (Indian medical service) a friend of mine gave me a copy of Dr. J. T. Kents Philosophy. This book gave me much interest and a new idea about diseases. Then I studied Dr. Samuel Hahnemanns Organon and was converted to Homoeopathy. As a Hahnemannian homoeopath,. I have recorded every case since the beginning of my practice in 1932 and follow the principles of Homoeopathy strictly.

After a few years of practice. It found that I could not cure some cases with my knowledge of materia medica. I used the help of Dr. Kents Repertory for the selection of the proper remedy and consulted senior physicians and prominent homoeopaths of Bengal. Yet some cases were not cured though they were curable cases. This led me to re-study the science.

After formulating the law of similars and practising a few years. Dr. Samuel Hahnemann also found that he could not cure some cases permanently. So he worked hard for 12 years to find out the reason. At last he found out that psora is the root cause of all these diseases and that two other diseases, syphilis and gonorrhoea. mixed with psora, from the syphilitic and sycotic miasms, respectively.

He then classified the drug according to the different miasms and advised us to administer one of the antimiasmatic medicines according to the signs and symptoms of miasms in the patients when the well selected medicine does not work. Thus, in the case of a psoric patient, to administer Sulphur when the well selected remedy dies not work is his advice. If we fail, even after following his advice, we have nothing to do. One can not remain satisfied with this helpless condition. So I began to study the science minutely again.

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann writes in his Organon, paragraph 130: If, at the very, commencement, the first does administered shall have been sufficiently, strong this advantage is gained that the experimenter learns the order of succession of symptoms and can note down accurately the period at which each occurs which is very useful in leading to a knowledge of the genius of medicine, for then the order of the primary action as also that of the alternate actions is observed in the most unambiguous manner.

A very moderate dose often suffices for the experiment, provided the experimenter is endowed with sufficiently delicate sensitiveness and is very attentive to his sensations. The duration of the action a drug can only be ascertained by a comparison of several experiments.

Here, Dr. Hahnemann has given much stress to the importance of thee order of succession of symptoms and also declared that it is essential for the proper knowledge of the drug.

Again Dr. Hahnemann writes in paragraph 131 of the Organon: If, however, in order to ascertain anything at all, the same medicine must be given to the same person to test for several successive days in ever-increasing doses, we thereby learn, no doubt, the various morbid states this medicine is capable of producing in a general manner but we do not ascertain the order of succession,and the subsequent dose often removes curatively some one or other of the symptoms caused by the previous dose or develops in its stead an opposite state; such symptoms should be enclosed in brackets to mark their ambiguity, until subsequent purer experiments show whether they are the reaction of the organism and secondary action or an alternate action of this medicine.

Here Dr. Hahnemann advised us not to rely on the symptoms only of the subsequent purer experiment for the proper knowledge of the drug. But in the materia medica there are a mass of symptoms but no order of succession of symptoms.

Dr. J. T. Kent in his Lesser Writings advises, page 431: The artist studies his models until he feels the lines and shadows in his mind, sees the image on canvas or carved in stone. He builds or carves in granite the similars. The student of our Materia Medica must study a proving until he feels the image of the totality of such feeling of all his provers as if he had proved the remedy and felts all the morbid feeling of provers. The doctor that prescribes for symptoms as they look on paper fails to feel the weight of responsibilities of a true healer.

Dr. Kent advised us to study the provings in order to perceive the picture of the disease accurately. To prescribe medicine only on the basis of the symptoms without the image of the disease is not the work of the true physician.

I then procured the Cyclopedia of Drug Pathogenesy in 1937 and began to study the proving of the drugs. Here, I first observed the real images of the artificial diseases produced by drugs. There is an order of succession of symptoms in each drug similar to that of natural disease. One proving of Arsenic is quoted here:

A large number of persons were poisoned at St. Denis by eating bread containing Arsenic. Dr. Feltz had eighty cases under his care. They presented similar symptoms. Vomiting occurred in 1 to 4 hours after eating, several had diarrhoea at the same time. There were burning pains in the throat, behind the sternum and in the epigastrium. On the third day these symptoms abated and were followed by swelling of the face on some, and in others there developed an eruption like urticaria.

In two women the eruption was Scarletiniform in character. One had herpes labialis. Those who had no eruption suffered from intense itching of the skin. In eight of these were at the same time visual disorders. These symptoms continued the eighth day when the skin affection abated. After that they complained of muscular weakness and debility to an extreme degree.

In these cases they first suffered from a disorder of the digestive system; secondly, from disorder of the skin and sensory function; thirdly, from disorder of the motor function.

By carefully studying the provings of the drugs, it is observed that every drug shows the order of succession of symptoms in a definite way.

Dr. Herings Law of Direction of Cure draw my attention to the nature of disease. He formulated his famous law: “Diseases will be cured in the reverse order of their appearance.” This law has been verified by thousands of homoeopaths all over the world. For more than a hundred years, homoeopaths have been observing that whenever the cure of the disease starts, that last symptoms goes first and the other symptoms disappear in reverse order of their appearance. Dr. Hahnemann, the founder of Homoeopathy, observed in his Chronic Disease that, when a disease begins to heal, the last symptoms goes first and the first symptom, in the case of the suppression of a skin disease, reappears and then disappears. It is a practical fact and truth and there is no controversy about it. Then its reverse must also be true, i.e., every disease has an order of succession of symptoms.

When any intelligent person, whether a physician or a layman, observes the development of a disease he always finds that every disease progresses by deranging one function after another of the patient in a definite order.

Dr. Hahnemann knew well the symptoms of malarial fever and also might have cured many cases of malaria fever with cinchona bark but it was not known why cinchona bark cures malarial fever. To find out the cause, he proved cinchona bark on himself. He writes:

I took drug of good bark, twice a day. My fingers and other parts became cold and I felt tired and sleep; I got a great uneasiness, a trembling but without rigor, a weariness in all my limbs, then a beating in my head, redness of cheeks and thirst. In short all the symptoms which I had seen in ague appeared one after another yet without any actual chill or rigor. The paroxysms lasted two or there hours and repeated themselves whenever I had a new dose, but not otherwise. (Hahnemanns note to his translation Cullens Materia Medica).

What did Dr. Hahnemann observe from the proving of cinchona bark? First, he observed that the drug when taken in the healthy condition would produce symptoms like a disease and there is an order of succession of symptoms. What did he observe more especially in cinchona bark? He observed that cinchona could produce symptoms in a similar order as was observed in ague. What is the cure of malaria fever by cinchona back? It may be either (1) the similarity in order of succession of symptoms or (2) the similarity in the totality of symptoms ( 147 of the Organon) or (3) the similarity in the more striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar symptoms ( 154 of the Organon). One of these alternatives must be true.

After proving many drugs on himself and conducting provings on others, he began to treat patients with proved drugs and cured them. After a few years of practice, he formulated a law known as the law of similars. “A weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differing link) is very similar to the former in its manifestation (26 of the Organon).”

S M Chowdhuri