A still more one-sided and sharper position we find, in this as well s other points in the Organon. He has discussed the vital force more expressly only in the fourth edition but the first edition will be considered here.
In the introduction (p.VI) Hahnemann writes: “In all ages were patients which were actually, rapidly, permanently and visibly cured by drugs-not through some other great event, not through the self-limited course of an acute disease, not through the lapse of time, not through the gradual preponderance of bodily energy,etc., were haled merely through the homoeopathic action if a remedy, although without knowledge of the physician”.
Observe! He speaks of “self-limited course, “lapse of time,” and “energy of the body,” all things which one could understand also without compulsion as the influence of a natural healing power, but he avoids mentioning it, a sign that he is less willing to recognize the actions of nature and preferred to put them down elsewhere.
From the “Materia Medica Pura” (Bd.I,III Aufl. 1830, p.172) one may cite the following place as indicative of Hahnemanns opinion” :”Only chronic diseases are the crucial test of genuine medical science because they do not of themselves go over into healing; rapidly developing illnesses pass with and without drugs-obviously through the intrinsic power of the overcome with striking rapidity and more permanently than if left alone, if it is to be called healing.” The citation in the second edition reads practically the same (1823).
In the fourth edition of the Organon he enters more expressly upon the natural healing power, stimulated through critics both from the allopathic as well as the homoeopathic side who were exercised about his depreciating attitude. (I use the almost identical wording of the fifth edition.).
The place usually cited stands in the introduction (p.30). As we saw earlier, he turns also here against the old school which strived to divert diseases to other places through irritants.
“They followed merely the rude instinctive procedure of nature in her endeavors at resistance which are effective to some extent only copied the sustaining power of life which, if left to itself in diseases, is incapable of exercising reasons and rests entirely upon the organic laws of the body, acting along according to these laws, without being capable of working to reason or deliberation.
They followed crude nature, who cannot, like a skillful surgeons, heal a wound by co-adapting and uniting its gasping edges; who does not know now to adjust and replace the divergent tends of a fractured bone, notwithstanding her ability to furnish, often super abundantly, osseous master; who cannot tie a wounded artery, but with will her energy causes the wounded person to bleed to death; who does not know how to reduce a dislocated humerus, but on the contrary, prevents human art from accomplishing reduction by speedily producing a swelling around the joint -who, in order to remove a splinter from the cornea, destroys the whole eye by suppuration; who, in spite of her efforts, is able to reduce a strangulated inguinal hernia only by gangrene of the intestines and death; and who, by transporting morbid processes in dynamic diseases, often makes the sick more miserable than they were before.
Still more: this unreasonable vital force receives into the body without hesitation those chronic miasms (psora, syphilis, sycosis), the greatest tormentors of our earthly existence, the source of innumerable diseases, under which tortured humanity groans for hundreds, yes, thousands of years and unable even to palliate one of these, this same vital force is utterly incapable of removing such disease from the organism of its own accord, but suffers them to rankle in the system, until death closes the eyes of the sufferer, often after a long life of sorrow”.
Somewhat farther along he states (p.46):.
“That noble innate power destined to govern life in the most perfect manner during health, equally present in all parts of the organism, in sensitive as well as in the irritable fiber, that untiring mainspring of all normal, natural fiber, that untiring mainspring of all normal, natural bodily functions was never created for the purpose of aiding itself in diseases, nor to exercise a healing art worthy of imitation”.
In the last sentence the expression “worthy of imitation” should be noted and stressed particularly. Thereby he of course indicates his new doctrine which does not seek to arrive at its goal through imitation of the crises but often does so in milder direct ways. If one does not consider this word and similar expressions, not rarely one will misunderstand Hahnemanns words and see contradictions where, in fact, none exist. He does not deny that the vital power is active in disease; however, he asserts that it can be only so imperfectly, usually by devious routes (crises) and with the sacrifice of much energy. Healing through the vital power for this reason is not “worthy of imitation”.
The following sentences from the foreword (V,p.vii; VI, p.Ixxvi) show the fact again for another aspect: “homoeopathy knows healing can only be caused by the counteraction of the vital force against the drug correctly chose,” 37 Italics by Tischner.
In this pamphlet “Allopathy” (1831) he comes to speak repeatedly of the vital force and its accomplishments and it is very instructive to hear what he has to say on the theme “Allopathy and the vital force”: “In the first place as regards their treatment of diseases of a rapid course (acute diseases), experience equally shows that patients affected with such maladies, who, without any allopathic interference, were left entirely much sooner and more certainly than when they have themselves up to the treatment introduced” (p.6). We see him here again having some confidence in vital power.
In his very old age in the fourth volume of “Chronic Diseases” (2 Aufl. 1833, pp.iv-vi), he once again occupied himself with this question in a short article “Glance at the manner in which homoeopathic healing proceeds”.
As often before he stressed at the beginning, that the vital power could not overcome acute diseases “without sacrificing a part of the fluid and solid constitutes of the organism through the so-called crises.” Of the chronic diseases he states further: “The chronic diseases, which spring from miasms, cannot be healed unaided, even by such sacrifices, nor can real health be restored by this force alone. But it is just as certain that even if this force is enabled by the true ( homoeopathic) medical science, guided by the human understanding overcome (to cure) not only the quickly transient but also the chronic diseases arising from miasms in a direct manner and without such sacrifices, without loss of body and life, nevertheless it is always this power, the vital force, which conquers.”
He turns to this thought once more and stresses again that it is the vital force which defeats the enemy,when it is supported by drugs. Alone it is not equal to the maladies. “As I have said above our vital force hardly opposes an equal opposition to the foe causing the the disease and yet no enemy can be overcome except by a superior force. Only homoeopathic medicine can give this superior power to the invalidated vital force.” 38 The italics in this and the preceding quotation are by Tischner.
Logically considered, the vital force plays accordingly the role of a “necessary condition”. Thus it indicates a marked misunderstanding if one makes “a necessary condition” identical with a “denial”! Do I deny the necessity of light for a plant, when I remark that is also needs water necessarily?.
In the following he expresses more closely how one can consider the occurrence of healing. In that we increase artificially the diseases with a similarly acting remedy, we also enlarge the vital force and its energy so that it is now stronger than the original disease and conquerors this, when the decline of the medicine effect occurs the seeming increase of the diseases has disappeared.
Here Hahnemann gives the healing of diseases a noticeably different significance than before and indeed he now ascribes an increased significance to the vital power. The vital power is the real remover of the disease with the necessary assistance of the (homoeopathic) drug.
If one surveys the whole matter spread out here completely, then in view of Hahnemanns vitalistic orientation we are not surprised that from the beginning he acknowledges the natural healing power insufficient he considered the natural healing power insufficient and in need of support. With nearly all physician of the time he regarded many processes which appeared in the course of disease, as “healing crises,” e.g., as bleeding, sweat, diarrhea, etc.; but the differentiates healing crises as unsuitable in many cases since they represent a devious route and cost the body much force which might better be spared.
This skepticism against the healing crises increases as he gradually becomes clear over his new way and gains the experience that the treatment according to the simile is often much more sparing than these healing crises and consequently the distrust against depletion treatment and treatment by means of diversion increases as they were crude imitations of an inadequate natural process, according to his view and as such are still more unsuitable.
