All these views have been taken almost straight from experience. But we are in the happy position of being able to support them also from the scientific point of view. The biological bearing of the organism shows itself already in the well-known tarring of rabbits’ ears; the spontaneous absorption of cancerous relapses and of metastases point to the same fact, and even the spontaneous healing of whole cancerous ulcerations that occur sometimes. Through two Viennese scholars, through Freund and kaminer, we were given, however, in 1925, very conclusively, the biochemical foundations for the disposition to carcinoma. They find that in the cancer patient there must be a disposition favourable to the disease. These authors followed up the biochemical process and were able to differentiate if for cancer and sarcoma. A local disposition to cancer arises, in the opinion of these two scholars, when the aetherizable sebacic acid which destroys the cell of the carcinoma is used up too much, so that its protective prophylactic effects cease. Thus the protection is proved, as well as the cessation of the protection owing to too great biological demands on it, a conception which fits in exactly with the endeavour to find a form of therapeutics for carcinoma, whether through a direct relief by means of a natural diet, or through other operations, for the success of any mode of procedure will depend on whether the organism regains its original forces that serves as a means of self-preservation.
It is easily conceivable that a certain adaptability will still develop in us and our descendants against the injurious results of civilization. It will probably have to be understood so, that counteracting matter will appear in the coming generations in abundance and perhaps in manifold selection. But since the injurious influences resulting from technical and chemical contrivances is rapidly on the increase, humanity with its process of adaptability will probably not be able to keep up with it, and a great reform in the use of all that poisonous matter will be necessary so as to reduce the rate of cancer. If the disease has already broken out, it is for many too late, as it is, to make use of medical instructions that are merely negative.
And so we come to the third possibility of gaining the victory over the formation of carcinoma, viz., through medicines. The effect of medicines is a less sympathetic means by which Nature rids us of diseases, as it leads us through unknown processes in the interior of our organism. Whilst surgical activity solves apparently easily understandable problems, and whilst dietetics with their large scope for action are, in reality, as easy to understand, medicinal science leads us into a wonderland. That which is easy to understand in its effects does not belong at all yet to the medicinal province, as, for example, the destructive effects of soda on acids; the latter has its origin in the dark, and emerges from uncontrollable mutual effects in connection with the organism. But nevertheless such effects do exist in a most astonishing manner. We comfort ourselves with the though that there is much that is obscure in natural-
Process as it is, and that yet we have no doubt whatever about the important interdependency of cause and effect. The whole problem of alimentation falls within this province. From infancy on we demand things the scientific justification of which does not bother us in the least at the first, but the effect of which on the establishment of our body is beyond all doubt. And in reality it is similar with the province of medicinal experience. At all times one has made observations here that are in general established, though it is difficult to turn them to account in the individual case. Extremely different medicines, narcotics as well as strong irritants, and even poisons, of which I will only mention belladonna, conium, chelidonium, potassium, hydrastis, phytolacca, arsenic, have sometimes been found to have a striking effect on cancers; but over against the different natural products there was only the name carcinoma, and many cases had to be treated with one of these remedies in order to obtain once again such an unmistakable reaction. Thus it was a matter of chance, somewhat moderated by the tact and sagacity of the doctor, when such a prescription of medicines had to be made. And yet no one dares fully deny those effects, and even where medical scepticism instead of medical skill has been practised, such remedies were resorted to again in face of the terrible suffering in cancerous diseases.
And now a medical genius came forward, Samuel Hahnemann, whose doctrines in regard to this subject can be summarized thus: Ask Nature! Do not seek to find out scientific names for the different cases of the disease, but rather all its natural phenomena, all its so-called symptoms, objectively and subjectively. Do not let one phenomenon escape you, for they are all the expression of some inner physical necessity. But do not neglect either to inquire into the natural phenomena of the medicines, examine the effects of belladonna, conium, arsenic, on relatively healthy people, and you will get a whole series of disorders that will often strike you with their great similarity with the symptoms of the maladies that affect human beings; and now, when you find a series of symptoms that are similar to those of cancerous diseases, oppose the most similar ones to the individual malady, by freeing their actual energies from the roughest parts of their material original surroundings, and by thus introducing into the affected organism a superior dynamic force which destroys the effects of the disease, just because it is so similar to it, that it, that it touches the very same points of the organism.
It is perfectly easy to imagine this therapeutical analogy, if you intuitively grasp the effects of a medicine; you have a poisoning of the organism before you, and you can experience it in your own person, as Hahnemann did by taking Peruvian bark. The disorder in his health and the fever he felt reminded him of malaria. In consequence, a similar disease-creating energy must have got into his system through Peruvian bark. For a long time he carried this impression about in his mind, till the obvious thought struck him that he had here a process determined by some natural law which must also obtain in the case of other helpful medicines. He put this thought to the test with bryonia and ipecacuanha, and was led by such experiments to consider dilutions of those poisons to be more profitable than the undiluted medicinal substances.
I repeat, this way the analogy is easy to be imagined, but for a theoretical, scientific development the way is more circuitous and difficult. If one takes Hahnemann’s doctrines as a whole, as we meet them finally in the “Organon,” it is evident that medical science can only come by a roundabout way to agree with them. But there is another quite short and purely logical way of looking at it, one which is based on natural dynamics and which declares: if in two such vastly complicated systems as we must suppose them to be in people that have fallen ill spontaneously and those that are ill from medicines, there are far-reaching analogies in prominent natural phenomena, there must exist also a relationship of the inner dynamic, which may include a connection in the mode of cure; this reasoning is correct, but it does not carry us any further. The power to bring us further must come to medical science from experience, from experiment; Hahnemann, as you know, carried through the necessary experiments. By his train of thought the nature of chance has been taken from the whole medical problem, for it is generally valid, in the case of an acute feverish disease was not capable of healing the still fresh disturbance by means of its forces of conservation, can still less do so when it is in its chronic stage.
So if we can perceive in the case of an acute disease that the homoeopathic medicine takes effect rapidly and shortens the suffering in a striking fashion, we shall not effect in a case of cancer a sudden turn towards recovery, but we shall have to watch patiently the natural phenomena of the whole chronic state, and again and again to try to stimulate the whole constitution with the analogous remedy. But this does not exclude the possibility of our also having some rapid successes, at least initial successes, which encourage us greatly, but which necessitate an exact and favourable continuation along the same before mentioned line. And some cases, which take their course with too greatly diminished forces of the individual, we shall not be able to save any more.
I am so fortunate as to speak here before convinced homoeopathic colleagues. You will agree with me in the before- mentioned, formulae for our laws of healing. In reality, this formulation is derived from Hahnemann, though slightly modernized, and it is all the less necessary for us to give any reasons for it, since the whole modern movement in medical science represents a strong approximation to it. You know also that Hahnemann very strongly stressed the difference between an acute and a chronic state, and that his doctrines were not doctrines at chronic state, and that his doctrines were not doctrines at first, but principles founded on experiment.
