Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

Nature of Symptoms:
          General
          Common
          Particular
Grades of symptoms
          General
                    First Grade
                    Second Grade
                    Third Grade
          Common
                    First Grade
                    Second Grade
                    Third Grade
          Particular
                    First Grade
                    Second Grade
                    Third Grade

§ 153 is the one that teaches more particularly how the process of individualization or discrimination shall be carried out.

It treats of characteristics, it treats of grades.

The homoeopathic physician may think he has his case written out very well, but he does not know whether he has or not until he has mastered the idea of this paragraph.

He may have page after page of symptoms, and not know what the remedy is, and if he takes the record to a master the master will say :

“You have no case !”

“Why, I have plenty of symptoms.”

“But you have no case. You have left your case out ; you have left the image of the sickness out, because you have fated to get anything that characterizes it. You have plenty of symptoms, but have not anything characteristic. You have not taken your case properly.”

Now, after you have mastered this paragraph you will know whether you have taken your case properly, you will know whether you have something to present to a master, a likeness of something.

The lack of this knowledge is the cause of non-success with the majority homoeopathic physicians.

There are a great many homoeopathic physicians that prescribe and tinker a long time with their cases, and will ask you what a characteristic is, and if it is some one peculiar thing that guides to a remedy.

The idea of a keynote comes to the mind of many.

I do not mean that all or any part of what you have written is useless, but it is necessary to have individualizing characteristics to enable you to classify that which you have, to perceive the value of symptoms, and, if you must settle down to a few remedies, to ascertain which of these is more important than another, or most important of all.

You cannot individualize unless you have that which characterizes.

The things that characterize are things to make you hesitate, to make you meditate.

Suppose that you have been acquainted with a large number of cases of measles, for instance, but along comes one of which you say to yourself,

“That is strange ; I never saw such a thing as that before in a case of whooping cough. It is peculiar.”

You hesitate, you meditate, and at once recognize it as something individual, because it is strange and rare and peculiar.

You say, I do not know what remedy has that symptom.

Then you commence to search your repertory, or consult those of more experience, and you find in the repertory, or upon consultation, that such a medicine has that thing as a strong feature, as a high grade symptom, and it is as peculiar in the remedy as in your patient, though you have never seen it before.

You may have seen a hundred cases of measles without seeing that very thing.

That peculiar thing that you see in measles relates to the patient and not to the disease, and as the sole duty of the physician is to heal the sick that peculiar thing will open the whole case to the remedy.

When you find that the remedy has that symptom, along with the other symptoms, you must attach some importance to it, and when there are two or three of these peculiar symptoms they form the characteristic features.

What would you think would constitute a common symptom ?

We shall at once see that the common symptoms are those that appear in all cases of measles, that you would expect to find in measles.

It would be strange to have measles without any rash ; that would be peculiar.

We know that the absence of rash is a striking state of affairs and means trouble, and is peculiar.

Either it is not measles, or the absence of the rash is a serious state.

Suppose it is a fever. The patient has intense beat, an ordinary fever, coming in the afternoon and running through the night, with hot hands and feet, high temperature, dry tongue, etc.

What would you say concerning the presence or absence of thirst ?

You would say it is common if he has thirst, because almost anybody who has fever would want water.

Nothing is so natural to put fire out with as water, and the absence of thirst in a fever is strange, is rare and uncommon, peculiar and striking.

You would ask yourself at once, is it not strange that he does not have thirst with such a high temperature ?

You at once strike to the remedies that are thirstless.

You would not think of hunting up a remedy that has thirst.

So the absence of the striking features of disease constitutes a peculiarity that relates to the patient.

Well, then, that which is pathognomonic is common, because it is common in that disease, but an absence of the pathognomonic characterizes that particular disease in that patient, and therefore means the patient, and in proportion as you have that class of symptoms just in that proportion you have things that characterize the patient, and the specific remedy for the patient will be the simillimum.

It is necessary to know sicknesses, not from pathology, not from physical diagnosis, no matter how important these branches are, but by symptoms, the language of nature.

A true homoeopathic prescription cannot be made on pathology, on morbid anatomy ; because provings have never been pushed in that direction.

Pathology gives us the results of disease, and not the language of nature appealing to the intelligent physician.

Symptomatology is the true subject to know.

No man, who is only conversant with morbid anatomy and pathognomonic symptoms, can make homoeopathic prescriptions.

In addition to diagnostic ability he must have a peculiar knowledge ; that is, he must be acquainted with the manner of expression of each and every disease.

He must know just how each disease expresses itself in language and appearance and sensations.

He must know just how every remedy affects mankind in the memory and understanding and will, because there are no other things that the remedy can act upon as to the mind, and he must know how the remedy affects functions, because there are no other ways in which the remedy affects the body of man.

Now, if he knows bow diseases express themselves in signs and symptoms, then he knows what constitutes an individual disease a little different from all others.

It is the peculiar way that the same disease affects different patients that makes the symptoms strange, peculiar and rare.

That which is pathognomonic in the remedy is that which you will study out most, because it is that which is related to the patient.

Such is the state of mind that the homoeopathic physicians must keep themselves in order to begin this study, and when they have begun to think in this way they can then study the symptoms of the disease as to grade.

The symptoms of the remedies must be studied especially with respect to order on grade.

To look upon them as all alike, because they appear to be all on the same level, is to be unable to make .distinctions.

One symptom with some physicians is as good as another. It is a fact that symptoms, to a great extent, are upon a ,sliding scale.

What is peculiar in one remedy is not in any degree peculiar in another.

While it may be peculiar in a chronic case to have thirst, it is not so in a fever.

That which is true in many respects in a chronic state may be the very opposite in an acute case.

The chronic miasms are the very opposite in their character and order to the acute miasms, and this is a fact that the homoeopathic physician must know.

If you had a striking case of inflammation of the parotid gland, the patient says :

“Do not press upon it, because it is very sore,”

how would you classify that, as common or strange ?

If you think but a moment, you will see that it would be a very strange thing for a highly inflamed gland not to be sue, and that soreness upon pressure is not something to be prescribed for, but something to be known, to be taken into the general view of the case, and the remedy indicated in the case would be suitable if it have inflammation and soreness of the gland ; there is nothing striking in that : quite a group of remedies have produced hardness, soreness and tenderness of the gland ; it may be one of those, or it may be one which has never produced these things, if it have the characterizing features of the patient.

In sicknesses the symptoms that cannot be explained are often very peculiar ; the things that can be accounted for are not so often peculiar ; peculiar things are less known to man.

For instance, a patient can sit only with his feet up on the desk, or with his feet elevated ; he is a great sufferer, and because of this suffering he is compelled to put his feet up.

The symptoms hence will be put down, worse from letting the feet hang down.

“Well, what do you mean by that ? Why, if I let my feet hang down, I find I bring the nates down upon the chair, and there is a sore place there.”

Now that is quite a different thing.

You may find if it is an old man that he has a large prostate gland, which is very painful at times and very sore, and when he lets the feet hang down the gland comes in contact with the chair.

So we see that the real summing up of the case is that this enlarged and sore prostate gland is worse from pressure, and all you have learned from that symptom is that the gland is sensitive to touch, which is a common symptom.

There are instances, however, where by letting the feet hang down the patient is ameliorated ; for instance, you take a periostitis and the pain is relieved by letting the limbs hang.

No one can tell why that limb is better when hanging over the bed.

He lies across the bed with the foot hanging over the side, and why it is that he cannot lie upon his back nobody can figure out.

Now that condition is found in Conium, and you will not be astonished after you know that Conium has that symptom to find all the symptoms of your patient, say Conium.

All the rest of them perhaps, are common.

Now, when you think along this line of science, it will not take you long to get into the habit of estimating among the symptoms that appear in a record the things that are common, the things that you would expect, and the things that are strange.

Again, we see that there are certain symptoms in the remedies that are general and on the other hand the symptoms that are general must also be taken into account in order to examine any record.

All the things that are predicated of the patient himself are things that are general ; all the things that are predicated of any given organ are things in particular.

So we see how there are things in general, and things common, and things particular ; some times it may be a condition or state, sometimes it may be a symptom.

We have said that what the patient predicates of himself will generally appear to you to be at once something in general.

When the patient says, “I am thirsty,” as a matter of fact, although he feels that thirst in the mouth, yet it is his whole economy that craves the water.

The things of which he says, “I feel,” are apt to be generals.

The patient says, “I have so much burning,” and if you examine him, you find that his head burns, that the skin burns, that there is burning in the anus, burning in the urine, and whatever region is affected burns.

You find the word burning is a general feature that modifies all his sickness.

If it were only in one organ, it would be a particular, but these things that relate to the whole of the man are things in general.

Again, when the patient tells things of his affections, he gives us things that are most general.

When he speaks of his desires and aversions, we have those things that relate so closely to the man himself that the changes in these things will be marked by changes in his very ultimates.

When the man arrives at that state that he has an aversion to life, we see that that is a general symptom and that premeates his economy ; that symptom qualifies all the symptoms and is the very centre of all his states and conditions.

When he has a desire to commit suicide, which is the loss of the love of his life, we see that that is very innermost.

Medicines affect man primarily by disturbing his affections, by disturbing his aversions and desires.

The things that he loved to do are changed, and now he craves strange things.

Or the remedy changes his ability to comprehend, and turns his life into a state of contention and disturbance ; it disturbs his will and may bring upon him troublesome dreams, which are really mental states.

Dreams are so closely allied to the mental state that he may well say,

“I dreamed last night;”

that is a general state.

The things that lie closest to man and big life, and his vital force, are the things that are strictly general, and as they become less intimately related to man they become less and less general, until they become particular.

The menstrual period gives us a state which we may call general.

The woman says, “I menstruate,” so and so ; she does not attribute it to her ovaries or to her uterus ; her state is, as a rule, different when she is menstruating.

So the things that are predicated of self, of the ego, the things described as

“I do so and so,”

“Dr., I feel so and so,”

“I have so much thirst,”

“I am so chilly in every change of the weather,”

“I suffocate in a warm room,” etc.,

these are all general.

The things that are general are the first in importance.

After these have been gathered, you may go on taking up each organ, and ascertaining what is true of each organ.

Many times you will find that the modalities of each organ conform to the generals.

Sometimes, however, there may be modalities of the organs, which are particular that are opposed to the general.

Hence we find in remedies that appear to have in one subject one thing, and in another subject the very opposite of that thing.

In one it will be a general, and in another it will be a particular.

Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

Organon §146 : “The third point in the duty of the physician is to employ those medicines whose pure effects have been proved upon a healthy person in the manner best suited to the cure of natural diseases homoeopathically.”

We will take this up in our next talk.

This third point in the duty of the physician referred to in Par. 146 really takes up the balance of the Organon.

Par. 147 : “Of all these medicines that one whose symptoms bear the greatest resemblance to the totality of those which characterize any particular natural disease ought to be the most appropriate and certain homoeopathic remedy that can be employed ; it is the specific remedy in this case of disease.”

It is not an uncommon thing in this advanced day of science to read of specific remedies.

The old school distinctly affirms that there are only three or four species, but almost every off-shoot who starts at something for himself has to a great extent the idea of specifics in him.

One of the first things the quack physician seems inclined to do is to commence advertising specifics for headache, for diarrhoea, for this or that.

This is altogether opposed to Homoeopathy.

There are no specifics in Homoeopathy except at the beside of a patient when the remedy has been wrought out with great endeavour and care.

Then it may be said that that medicine which is found to be similar to the symptoms which characterize this disease is specific.

Now, please note that there is an emphatic sense in that word “characterizes.”

It is no ordinary expression.

We have read in the earlier portions of the Organon that the disease makes itself known to the physician by signs and symptoms, and that the totality of the symptoms is the sole representation of the disease, to the physician but that totality has to be studied to ascertain what there is among all the symptoms, that characterizes the disease, or marks the symptoms as peculiar.

Now Hahnemann commences to analyze the totality of the symptoms for the purpose of giving it character.

It has been said in these lectures that it is necessary to do that, that the information that leads up to characterizing is really the information that makes the homoeopathic physician wise, by which he has the ability to intelligently understand that which he has to treat.

That medicine which is best adapted is the most similar, but you cannot demonstrate beforehand that it is the specific homoeopathic remedy ; for you may be deceived in your idea of the nature of the case.

But when that remedy has acted, then it may be seen that that remedy was homoeopathic, or specific, or that it was not homoeopathic.

You have no idea as to what remedy will be homoeopathic to the case until you have examined all the symptoms, and then proceed to find out that which characterizes.

Put that word characterizes in large type, in red letters.

You cannot dwell sufficiently long upon that, because it grows greater and grander with every study of the case, that idea of the characteristic.

What is there in this case which makes it an individual, what is there in it that makes it unlike any that ever existed ?

In the case of the remedy ascertain that which characterizes it.

When these two occur before the perception, before man’s mind, so that he can think upon them, and he realizes that the remedy is the most similar of all in the Materia Medica, then he is assured that that remedy will cure, and it only requires to be administered to prove that it is the specific.

The homoeopathicity is thus sustained, the similitude has been home out by the medicine having cured.

We cannot have the demonstration that the remedy is homoeopathic until it cures the sick man ; we may only presume that it is homoeopathic, or say it appears to us that it is homoeopathic, because that which is characteristic of the disease is most similar of all other things to that which is characteristic of that remedy, or vice versa.

We may reasonably assume that that remedy is the specific, but the homoeopathicity can only be demonstrated by cure.

So it does not make a remedy homoeopathic simply to be carried in my case.

Homoeopathic remedies are not homoeopathic simply because they have been used by a homoeopath.

Remedies are not homoeopathic because potentized and attenuated or prepared after the fashion of our school.

What constitutes a remedy homoeopathic ?

The answer is : It has demonstrated its curative relation to the patient, after having been prescribed in accordance with his symptoms, the recovery taking place in the proper direction, from above downward, from within out, and in the reverse order of the symptoms.

That constitutes a remedy homoeopathic, and that constitutes the prescription homoeopathic.

It is then a specific remedy, and in no other sense can a remedy he called a specific.

Hahnemann gives his theory of cure in paragraph 148, but you are not compelled to adopt it.

Hahnemann himself says it is only a theory, and he offers it as simply the best in view, but not as binding upon you to accept.

But Par. 149 is something that must be accepted, that is, it must be known, and then accepted because it is true.

It is a general statement of the results of the homoeopathic remedy in the cure of disease.

The rejection of this paragraph must effect a separation amongst those who do not believe, and those who do believe.

“When a proper application of the homoeopathic remedy has been made, the acute disease which is to be cured, however malignant and painful it may be, subsides in a few hours, if recent, and in a few days, if it is somewhat older,” etc.

From this I am placed under the plain necessity of acknowledging that if under my treatment such diseases do not subside, I have not found the right remedy.

That will force the honest homoeopathic physician to seek the proper remedy.

Let not the blame be placed upon the failure of the system and of law and order, but let it be placed upon the one who practices it.

Just so sure as you find the homoeopathic remedy in a case of scarlet fever, just so sure you will see that fever fall and that child improve ; while the rash will remain out, nothing of the malignancy of the case will remain, in an ordinary case of scarlet fever ; we find that in a few days the child is so much better he wants to go to school.

But then we treat the child and not the fever.

Just so sure as the physician has in mind the rash of scarlet fever or of measles as the main element of the disease, he will make a failure, and the patient will not recover so, speedily ; but as a matter of fact, the homoeopathic physician prescribes for the patient on that which characterizes the sickness, even though it be what is called a self-limiting disease.

§ 150. This treats of one of the difficulties we have to contend with.

“If a patient complains of slightly accessory symptoms which have just appeared, the physician ought not to take this state of things for a perfect malady that seriously demands medicinal aid,” etc., etc.

It is right for you, when your patients are under constitutional treatment, to prescribe for a cold, but only when it is not an ordinary one.

If the cold is likely to cause serious trouble, then you must prescribe for it ; slight indisposition, however, should not receive remedies.

You will have patients that will come to you at every change of the wind, at every attack of snuffles the baby has, at every little headache or every little pain.

If you then proceed to change your remedy or prescribe for each one of these little spells of indisposition, you will, in the course of a little while, have such a state of disorder in the individual that you will wonder what is the matter with this patient.

You had better give her no medicine at all, and if she is wise and strong and can feel confidence you can say to her that she does not need medicine for this attack ; but occasionally give her a dose of constitutional medicine when these little attacks are not on.

While you are young and cannot hold these patients with an iron grasp, when they come to you, you had better give them placebo, and let the indisposition pass off of itself.

Watch it, however, and it may at the close develop some constitutional manifestations and throw light upon the patient that you have been treating.

On the other hand, it is an easy matter to, prescribe for severe acute diseases they are decisive, they strongly manifest mew symptoms they are sharp cut in their expressions, the symptoms are prominent, and you will not be confused as you will be in the slight indispositions.

The slight indispositions are nondescript ; you do not know what to do for them.

In vain you seek to find that which characterizes them, and hence it is doubtful about any remedy that is administered being of any value.

You will be astonished after prescribing a number of years, and your patients have gained confidence in you, that when they come in with these little trivial ailments they won’t have them after a few powders of sugar.

They will say :

“Doctor, my trouble went off splendidly.”

This is what is meant by letting the little things alone.

Severe diseases exhibit a strong degree of symptoms, and hence you have something to do.

Par. 151. “But if the few symptoms of which the patient complains are very violent, the physician who attentively observes him will generally discover many others which are less developed and which furnish a perfect picture of the malady.”

Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

Organon § 118, etc.

Comparison, individualization, and difference in the nature of things most similar, are points that must be carefully considered.

The substitution of one remedy for another cannot be thought of, or entertained in Homoeopathy.

The homoeopathic physician must individualize, he must discriminate.

He must individualize things widely dissimilar in one way, yet similar in other ways.

Take for instance the two remedies, Secale and Arsenicum ; they are both chilly, but the patient wants all the covers off and wants the cold air in Secale, and he wants all things hot in Arsenicum.

The two remedies thus separate at once ; they are wholly dissimilar as to the general state, whilst wholly similar as to particulars.

A mere book-worm symptom hunter would see no difference between Secale and Arsenicum.

You go to the bedside of a case of peritonitis, and you will find the abdomen distended, the patient restless ; you will find him often vomiting blood and passing blood from the anus ; you will find horrible burning with the distended abdomen, unquenchable thirst, dry, red tongue, lightning-like pulse.

Well, Arsenicum and Secale have all these things equally ; they both have these things in high degree ; but when Secale is indicated he wants all the covers off, wants to be cold, wants cold applications, wants the windows open ; cannot tolerate the heat, and the warm room makes him worse.

If Arsenicum is indicated in such a case, he wants to be wrapped up warmly, even in the month of july, wants hot food and hot drinks.

The whole Materia Medica is full of these things and is based upon this kind of individualization.

Without the generals of a case no man can practice Homceopathy, for without these no man can individualize and see distinctions.

After gathering all the particulars, one strong general rules out one remedy and rules in another.

Physicians by the questions they ask often show that they have not been able to grasp this idea of individualization.

They pick out two symptoms, or one symptom common to two remedies, and say,

“Now, both of these remedies have this same symptom, how are you going to tell them apart ?”

Well, if you are acquainted with the Materia Medica, with the art of individualization, you will at once easily see how to get the generals ; the generals of one are so and so, and the generals of the other are so and so, and this will enable you to distinguish one of these remedies as best adapted to the constitution, when the two remedies have the one symptom in any equal degree.

Now, this rules out the idea of substitution. If one does not work, they say, try all down the list alphabetically, until you hit it.

Why a remedy that has never been known to produce that symptom may cure the case, because it is more similar to the generals of that case than any other.

This is the art of applying the Materia Medica. Many times a patient brings out that which is so strange and rare that it has never been found in any remedy.

You have to examine the whole case and see which remedy of all remedies is most similar to the patient himself. From beginning to end, the homoeopath must study the patient .

If he become conversant with symptoms apart from the patient, he will not be successful.

Par. 118 reads : “Each medicine produces particular effects in the body of man, and no other medicinal substance can create any that are precisely similar.”

That is the beginning of a doctrine showing that there can be no substitution.

There are cases that are so mixed that man, no matter how much he studies, cannot see the distinctions ; but, remember one thing, there is one remedy that is needed in the case, whether it is known or not ; it is needed in the case, and it has no substitute, for that remedy differs from all other medicines, just as this individual differs from all other individuals.

It may be that we cannot see that it is needed, it may not appear to be indicated, but it is needed all the same, though the intimation may not have come to the eye or ear of the physician.

That shows the necessity of waiting and watching. In Homoeopathy medicines can never replace each other, nor one be as good as another.

As we hasten along with this subject, we find in Par. 122, Hahnemann says :

“In circumstances of this nature on which depend the certitude of the medical art, and the welfare of future generations, it is necessary to employ only medicines that are well-known.”

Purity is important, medicines as they are proved should be kept unmodified and preserved and possessed of their full energy.

Now, it is important that you shall use the same substances, as nearly as possible, as were proved.

Among the potencies that we are using here as high potencies, made by Fincke and others, we have in a large number of instances the very identical substances that were proved by the provers.

It is important not to change. A plant bearing the same name as the one proved, but grown in a different climate and on a different soil, should not be used.

Procure the one that was proved originally. Fincke recognized this when he procured the substances that Hering proved.

We have the same Lachesis that Hering proved. I have a sample of the original Lachesis that I am preserving in a little vial marked with Hering’s own name.

The medicine should be well-known ; its history should be well-known, with all the steps and details.

The question of potentization should be taken into account, the different hands they have been through ; all the little particulars of our high potencies should be well known.

You should not be careless in this and not gather potencies from Tom, Dick and Harry.

When able, go to headquarters and get your potencies.

Hahnemann writes in Par. 144:

“A Materia Medica of this nature shall be free from all conjecture, fiction or gratuitous assertion – it shall contain nothing but the pure language of nature, the results of a careful and faithful research.”

We have formed, built and established the Materia Medica by provings upon the healthy, and observations that are pure and honestly made.

Par. 145: “We ought certainly to be acquainted with the pure action of a vast number of medicines upon the healthy body, to be able to find homoeopathic remedies against each of the innumerable forms of disease that besiege mankind ; that is to say, to find out artificial morbific powers that resemble them.”

At the present time it will rarely be found that a fully developed disease has not its simillimum, its remedy and cure, in our Materia Medica.

It is only those mixed cases that are not developed that puzzle us.

Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

Organon § 17.

The study of the idiosyncrasies is closely related to Homoeopathy.

The usual explanation of the term is an oversensitiveness to one thing or a few things.

It does not apply to the general susceptibility in feeble constitutions where patients are susceptible to all things, over-susceptible and over-impressed by simple annoyances.

In the old school idiosyncrasies relate to certain patients who are known in every practitioner’s practice as oversensitive.

One oversensitive cannot take Opium for his pains, because of the congestion it produces, because of dangerous symptoms ; he is oversensitive to it and has complication from a very small dose even and the physician is compelled not to administer it.

Another patient cannot tolerate Quinine in chills and fever ; the primary action of Quinine makes him alarmingly sick ; where another individual may take 15 grains.

One who has an idiosyncrasy to Quinine cannot take one-quarter of a grain without having an over-action of that drug – a state of quininism.

The homoeopath recognizes a wide range in susceptibility, including things that the allopath is not acquainted with.

There may be a chronic idiosyncrasy from a chronic miasm and an acute idiosyncrasy from an acute miasm.

There are certain individuals in every community that cannot ride in the country because of their susceptibility to bay fever ; others cannot bear the smell of flowers in the room because of becoming sick ; some will get sick from the smell of roses.

I have known a number of patients who became sick in this way.

It is common enough, and the sickness is known by the name of rose cold or rose fever.

I have a patient who cannot have dry lavender flowers in the house without coming down with coryza.

She is disturbed by two or three things in this way, and will go looking about to see which one of those things is in the house.

I had another patient who could not have peaches in the room without becoming sick ; one of the symptoms that he had was diarrhoea.

This oversensibility is very important and it explains in a measure the susceptibility to the remedy that will cure.

If an idiosyncrasy to the remedy is not present, the patient will not be susceptible enough to be cured.

The state in which he becomes sensitive enough to a drug to cure him is very analogous to these idiosyncrasies above mentioned.

Think what susceptibility man must have to the remedy that cures him, when it cures in the very high attenuations that we use.

There are acquired idiosyncrasies and idiosyncrasies that are born with a patient.

Those that are congenital and those that come from poisons are most difficult.

In Rhus tox., poisoning those that have once been affected by handling it are so sensitive to it that if they go within a quarter of a mile of the vine, though they cannot detect it with the nose, yet in a few days they will come down with a case of Rhus poisoning.

A very high potency of Rhus will sometimes remove that susceptibility and a dose of Rhus c.m. or m.m. will often check the acute poisoning from Rhus : but if you find that the patient has been born with a sensitivity to Rhus, while Rhus may palliate a few times it will finally cease to help him.

When one is born with this sensitivity it is very tenacious and will sometimes persist, in spite of our best endeavors, to the end of life.

If eradicated at all, it requires an antipsoric to get to the bottom of it.

Hay fever is brought on in the fall and is supposed to be caused by the patient’s over-sensitiveness to irritants that develop about that time ; sometimes it is attributed to the hay that is curing in the fields at that time, sometimes to the different weeds that grow up then.

Such patients have often been able to ferret out the thing that they are susceptible to.

But psora is at the bottom of all these troubles.

Patients getting up from typhoid fever have often idiosyncrasies, and the chronic miasms are responsible for these, just as psora is prior to the sore eyes from scarlet fever.

Sequelae are miasmatic, they are simply the outcroppings of chronic miasms.

There are persons who are sensitive, not merely to one or a few things, but to all things ; oversensitive to the high potencies, oversensitive in taste, oversensitive to light, and a great many other things.

This is a constitutional state ; the patient is born with it.

There are persons in whom you will see the sensitiveness only when you go away from the plane of nutrition into the plane of dynamics.

You will see for instance patients who, will sit at the table and crave common salt ; want lots of salt upon their food, and never seem able to get just exactly what they need.

They eat plenty of common salt and remain sick, growing thinner all the time.

This is on the nutritive plane ; the crude common salt is taken with the food.

Now you administer the c.m. to such a patient, and it makes that patient sick, producing a violent aggravation.

This is where a food sustains a curative relation upon a higher plane.

We step out of the nutritive plane into the plane of dynamics, the plane of disease-cause and cure.

Take Calcarea as an instance.

We see the allopath and crude medicine man give to certain babies, that are slow in forming bone and teeth and have open fontanelles, lime water in milk, and the more lime water he gives them the less bone they make.

Here is a bone-salt inanition, a non-assimilation of lime.

A dose of Calcarea very high will enable that child to take all the lime that it needs from the food that it eats.

The remedy given on the dynamic plane causes a digestion and assimilation of the lime naturally present in the food.

You may feed lime in crude form, and no benefit ever come ; the child goes on withering and emaciating.

In such non-assimilating patients the symptoms of Calcarea or Natrum mur., appear, calling the attention of the intelligent physician to the fact that the child needs Calcarea or Natrum mur.

We know very well that we do not build bone with the c.m. potency of lime, it simply corrects internal disorder and causes the outward forms of the body to flow into order.

The turning into order of the internal establishes the nutritive principle from the internal to the external.

So that we can see the wider ranges that idiosyncrasy or susceptibility has in Homoeopathy.

Here we might undertake to coin a word, viz. : – homoeopathicity ; what does it mean ?

Homoeopathicity is the relation between the homoeopathic remedy and the patient who has been cured.

When the homeopathic remedy has acted properly, when it has cured the patient, it has demonstrated that it was homoeopathically related to the case ; so that the relation, when it was sustained, may be called the homoeopathicity, and it is demonstrated by administering the remedy.

It is true that we can have what would be called a normal homoeopathicity, a normal state, and that state exaggerated.

That state exaggerated is where the patient is oversensitive to the curative remedy, and it not only establishes a curative relation, but before curing produces an exaggeration of the symptoms of the patient.

A remedy demonstrates its similitude to a case by curing.

Homoeopathic physicians use the word simillimum.

The simillimum might be called that remedy that has cured the patient, but in advance of curing that case it is only what appears to be the most similar ; a medicine cannot be called the simillimum until it has cured.

It is worthy of consideration to discover the difference between a poison taken upon the nutritive plane, that is, in crude substance, and a poison taken upon the dynamic plane.

A poison upon the nutritive plane is usually not very deep, is more superficial, it relates more to external things, to the body and tissues, while the poison taken upon the dynamic plane may last a lifetime.

The miasms are of such a character.

Poison taken upon the nutritive plane may bring about a life-long effect upon an individual, owing to susceptibility.

The small doses of Arsenicum will establish an Arsenicum poisoning that will last a lifetime, but this is nowhere so deep as will be represented by the higher potencies of Arsenicum.

To poison a patient with the higher potencies there is generally required something of susceptibility, while to poison patients upon the nutritive plane susceptibility is not required ; any patient can be brought under the influence of a poison given upon the nutritive plane.

Here is another difference. Substances that are inert and substances that we can use as food on the nutritive plane may become poisonous upon the dynamic plane to those that are susceptible.

So that there is no substance that may not be a poison in the higher and highest potencies.

This gives us a distinction between crude and dynamic poisons that you will do well to think about.

Now from all this we are led to see that if there were no state of susceptibility, no such condition as idiosyncrasy, there could be no Homoeopathy.

If there were no susceptibility, there would be no sickness and no need of Homoeopathy.

Susceptibility underlies all contagion and all cure.

So that cause and cure, the cause of sickness and the cure of sickness, knock at the same door.

They flow in the same way because of the immaterial or simple substance.

All disease is in primitive substance, or first substance ; all cure of disease must also be in simple substance.

In olden times we used to think that all substances capable of extinguishing the vital force, or which overcome the vital force, were poisons ; that in itself is a crude idea of a poison.

Any substance capable of impressing itself upon the economy of man sufficiently to cause death, or to create a disorder in the economy, may be called a poison.

That definition will apply to both dynamic and crude poisons.

Poison presents two problems : an external problem and an internal problem.

The external deals with the question of quantity, the internal with the question of quality.

A dynamis cannot be considered from the standpoint of weights and measures, but from quality.

Crude substances are considered from the standpoint of quantity, from weights and measures.

This is only a beginning to set you thinking. This subject leads into the study of protection as well.

There are two forms of protection from sickness. Man is protected from sickness in two ways, by Homoeopathy and by use.

The physician and the nurse who go into the district of yellow fever or typhoid or diphtheria or smallpox, who keep busy, who have, in the highest sense of the word, the true love of the use, who have gone into the work as mediums of mercy, will be largely protected just simply from their love of the work, from their delight in it.

They have no fear. Fear is an overwhelming cause of sickness ; those who fall prey to fear are likely to become sick, but those who, face disease with no fear are likely to remain well ; they do sometimes fall sick, it is true, but I believe it is because they begin to have fear in the work.

The other and greater prophylactic is the homoeopathic remedy.

After working in an epidemic for a few weeks, you will find perhaps that half-a-dozen remedies are daily indicated and one of these in a large number of cases than any other.

This one remedy seems to be the best suited to the general nature of the sickness.

Now you will find that for prophylaxis there is required a less degree of similitude than is necessary for curing.

A remedy will not have to be so similar to prevent disease as to cure it, and these remedies in daily use will enable you to prevent a large number of people from becoming sick.

We must look to Homoeopathy for our protection as well as for our cure.

Organon § 105, et. seq.

Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)

It may be well for you to review thoroughly the first portion of the study of the Organon, containing the doctrines in general that may be hereafter found to be useful in the application of Homoeopathy, including the oldest established rules and principles.

The first step may be called theoretical Homoeopathy, or the principles of Homoeopathy after which we take up the homoeopathic method of studying sickness.

In this way we have found that the study of sickness in our school is entirely different from the study of sickness under the old school.

But up to this time the doctrines have not exhibited their purpose ; we only get their purpose when we come to the third step, which deals with the use of Materia Medica.

We have seen that we must study sickness by gathering the symptoms of sick patients, relying upon the symptoms as the language of nature, and that the totality of the symptoms constitutes the nature and quality and all there is that is to be known of the disease.

The subject we will now take up and consider is, how to acquire a knowledge of the instruments that we shall make use of in combating human sickness.

We know very well that in the old school there is no plan laid down for acquiring a knowledge of medicines except by experimenting with them upon the sick.

This Hahnemann condemns as dangerous, because it subjects human sufferers to hardship and because of its uncertainty.

Though this system has existed for many hundreds of years, it has never revealed a principle or method that one can take bold of to help in curing the sickness of the human family.

His experiments in drug proving were made before he studied diseases.

In other words, Hahnemann built the Materia Medica and then took up the plan of examining the patient to see what remedy the sickness looked like.

Whereas now, after Homoeopathy has been established, and the Materia Medica has been established, the examination of the patient precedes, in a particular case, the examination of the Materia Medica.

But for the purpose of study they go hand in hand.

Before Hahnemann could examine the Materia Medica you may say he had to make one, for there was none to examine, there were no provings as yet ; we now have the instruments before us to examine, we have the proved remedies.

When the fallacy of old school medicine fully entered Hahnemann’s mind ; when he became disgusted with its method at the time his children were sick ; when he placed himself in the stream of Providence and affirmed his trust that the Lord had not made these little ones to suffer, and then to be made worse from violent medicines ; then his mind was in an attitude for discovery.

It was a discountenancing of and disgust for the things that were useless, and this brought him to the state of acknowledgment of not knowing and that everything of man’s own opinion must be thrown away.

It brought him to a state of humility and the acknowledgement of Divine Providence.

The state of humility opens man’s mind.

You will find so long as man is in a position to trust himself he makes himself a god ; he makes himself the infallible ; he looks to himself and does not see beyond himself ; his mind is then closed.

When a man finds out that in himself he is a failure, that is the beginning of knowledge in any circumstance ; the very opposite of this closes the mind and turns man away from knowledge.

I have been teaching long enough to observe, and I will tell you some things I have observed.

I have observed quite a number of young people turn away from Homoeopathy after once confessing it, and professing to practice it, and after seeming able in a certain degree to practice it.

I often wondered why it was that after they had made public profession of it they turned away from it, and I found in every instance that it was due to lack of humility.

The great mistake comes from turning one’s attention into self and relying upon self, with an attention that closes the mind and deprives one of knowledge and prevents clear perception.

Man takes himself out of the stream of Providence when he becomes dissatisfied with himself and thinks

“now that I have done so many things I have nothing more to study.”

This is a wrong attitude ; for anything like self-conceit will blind a man’s eyes, will make him unable to use the means of cure and will prevent his becoming acquainted with the Materia Medica.

The homoeopathic physician, as much as the clergyman, ought to keep himself in a state of purity, a state of humility, a state of innocence.

So sure as he does not do that he will fall by the wayside.

There is nothing that destroys a man so fast in the scientific world as conceit.

We see in old-fashioned science men who are puffed up and corpulent with conceit.

The scientific men who are in the greatest degree of simplicity are the most wise and the most worthy, and you need not tell me that those who are innocent and simple have not had a tremendous struggle in order to keep self under control and to reach this state of simplicity.

Extensive knowledge makes a man simple, makes him gentle.

Extensive knowledge makes a man realize how little he knows, and what a small concern he is.

A little knowledge makes a fool of man, and makes him think he knows it all, and the more he forgets of what he has known the bigger man he feels he is.

The smaller he feels he is the more he knows, you may rest assured.

In order to do this, he must study and keep himself in a state of gravity and in a state of innocence.

In the scientific world we have all those horrible jealousies and feelings of hatred to those who know more than we do.

A man who cannot control that and keep that down is not fit to enter the science of Homoeopathy.

He must be innocent of these things ; he must put that aside and be willing to learn of all sources, providing the truth flows from these sources.

In this frame of mind, and this frame of mind only, can the physician proceed to examine the Materia Medica.

We have already said that Hahnemann had no Materia Medica to start with.

He could not go to books, and read, and meditate, and find remedies in the image of human sickness.

He had no such remedies to study, and hence it was necessary to build up the Materia Medica.

We can imagine that Hahnemann must have been almost in a state of despair, and inclined to say there is no knowledge upon the earth.

He felt in his own mind that we should never know anything about the Materia Medica so long as we perceived its effects only in human sickness, but that a true and pure Materia Medica must be formed by observing the action of medicines upon the healthy human race.

Hahnemann did not commence to feed these medicines to others ; he took the Peruvian Bark himself, and felt its effects upon himself.

He allowed it to manifest its symptoms, and when he had thus proved Peruvian Bark (which we call China) it might be then said that the first remedy known to man was discovered, and that the first drug effect was known and that China was born !

Hahnemann searched the literature of the day to find out what other effects of China had been discovered accidentally, and accepted such as were in harmony with what he had discovered.

We have already referred to the fact that Hahnemann was able, after proving China, to see that in its action it closely resembled the intermittent fevers that had existed through all time ; that there was the most abundant relation of similitude between China and intermittent fever.

Do we wonder then, that Hahnemann said to himself, can it be possible that the law of cure is the law of similars ?

Can it be possible that similars are cured by drugs that produce symptoms like unto the sickness ?

Every drug he proved thereafter established the law more and more, made it appear more certain, and every drug that he proved added one more remedy to the instrument that we call the Materia Medica, until it came to be what we now recognize as Hahnemann’s Materia Medica Pura and the Materia Medica of the Chronic Diseases.

This work was simply enormous and very thorough, but many additions have been made to it since the time of its publication, and these form the instruments we have to examine.

The best way to study a remedy is to make a proving of it.

Suppose we were about to do that ; suppose this class were entering upon a proving.

Each member of the class would devote, say, a week, in examining carefully all the symptoms that he or she is the victim of, or believes himself or herself to be the victim of, at the present time, and for many months back.

Each student then proceeds to write down carefully all these symptoms and places them by themselves.

This group of symptoms is recognized as the diseased state of that individual.

A master-prover is decided upon, who will prepare for the proving a substance unknown to the class and to all the provers, known only to himself.

He will begin with the first or earliest form of the drug, it may be the tincture, and potentize it to the 30th potency, putting a portion of that potency into a separate vial for each member of the class.

The provers do not know what they are taking, and they are requested not to make known to each other their symptoms.

When their own original symptoms appear in the proving the effect of the remedy upon any one of these chronic symptoms is simply noted, whether cured or exaggerated, or whether or not interfered with ; but when the symptom occurs in its own natural way, without being increased or diminished, it may be looked upon as one of the natural things of that particular prover, and hence all the natural things of the prover are eliminated.

Generally if a remedy takes a marked hold of a prover all the chronic symptoms will subside, but when a proving only takes a partial hold it may only create a few symptoms.

These few symptoms, when added to the symptoms that the other provers have felt, will go to make up the chronic effect of the remedy, which may be said to be the effect of the remedy upon the human race.

Now as to the method.

After the master prover deals out these vials, each prover takes a single dose of the medicine and waits to see if the single dose takes effect.

If he is sensitive to that medicine a single dose will produce symptoms, and then those symptoms must not be interfered with ; they should be allowed to go their own way.

In the proving of an acute remedy like Aconite ; the instructor, who knows something about the effect of the medicine, may be able to say to the class :

“If you are going to get effects from this remedy you will get those effects in the next three to four days.”

It will not be necessary to wait longer than that for Aconite, Nux Vomica, or Ignatia, but longer for Sulphur or some of the antipsorics.

If we were attempting to prove a remedy like Silicate of Alumina, the master-prover would advise the class not to interfere with the medicine for at least thirty days, because its prodrome may be thirty days.

It is highly important to wait until the possible prodrome of a given remedy is surely passed.

If it is a short-acting remedy, the action will come speedily.

We must bear in mind the prodrome, the period of progress and the period of decline when studying the Materia Medica as well as when studying miasms.

The masterprover will usually be able to indicate to the class whether they should wait a short time or a long time before taking another dose, and from this the class will only know whether the drug to be proved is acute or chronic.

If the first dose of medicine produces no effect, and enough time as been allowed to be sure that the prover is not sensitive to it, the next best thing to do is to create a sensitiveness to it.

If we examine into the effects of poisons, we find those who have once been poisoned by Rhus are a dozen times more sensitive than before.

Those who have been poisoned by Arsenic are extremely sensitive to Arsenic after they allow the first effects to pass off.

If they continue, however, to keep on with the first effects they become less sensitive to it, so that they require larger ‘and larger doses to take effect.

This is a rule with all poisonous substances that are capable of affecting the human system markedly.

Now, when the time has passed by which the prover knows he is not sensitive to that remedy, that he has not received an action from the dose (and perhaps in the class of forty you will not get more than one or two that will make a proving from the 30th potency), to make the proving and to intensify the effect, dissolve the medicine in water and have him take every two hours for 24 to 48 hours, unless symptoms arise, sooner.

By this means the prodromal period is shortened.

The medicine seems to be intensified by the repetition, and the patient is brought under the influence, dynamically, of that remedy.

As soon as the symptoms begin to show, it is time to cease taking the remedy.

No danger comes from giving the remedy in this way ; danger comes from taking it for a few days and then stopping it, and then taking it again.

For instance, say you are proving Arsenicum ; you find that you are not all sensitive to it, and after waiting thirty days you start out again and take it in water, for three to four days, and the symptoms arise : now wait.

So long as you discontinue it, it will not do any damage.

Now, the symptoms begin to arise ; wait, and let the image-producing effect of Arsenicum wear off ; let it come and spread and go away of itself ; do not interfere with it ; if you, do interfere with it, the interference should be only by a true antidote ; you should never interfere with it by a repetition of dose.

That is one of the most dangerous things.

If the Arsenic symptoms are coming and showing clearly, and at the end of a week or ten days you say :

“Let us brighten this up a little, and do this thing more thoroughly,”

and to accomplish this you take a great deal more, you will engraft upon your constitution in that way the Arsenicum diathesis, from which you will never be cured.

You are breaking right into the cycles of that remedy and it is a dangerous thing to do.

At times that has been done and the provers have carried the effects of their proving to the end of their days.

If you leave this Arsenical state alone it will pass off entirely, and the prover is very often left much better for it.

A proving properly conducted will improve the health of anybody ; it will help to turn things into order.

It was Hahnemann’s advice to young men to make provings.

Another portion of the class will not get symptoms, no matter how they abuse the remedy, and if it be Arsenicum they will have to take a crude dose of it to get any effect, and then the symptoms given forth are only the toxic effects, from which little can be gained.

The toxicological results of poisons are provings of the grossest character : they do not give the finer details.

For instance, you give Opium in such large doses that it immediately poisons ; you see nothing but the grosser, overwhelming symptoms ; the irregular, stertorous breathing, the unconsciousness, the contracted pupil and the mottled face and the irregular heart.

The details are not there, you only have a view of the most common things.

The reproving of remedies is of great value.

The Vienna Society did not fully endorse Hahnemann’s provings.

This society thought it impossible that such wonderful things could be brought out upon the sensations of people.

The society did not endorse the 30th potency that was recommended by Hahnemann for proving.

So this society gathered itself together and resolved to prove remedies, and to test the 30th potency, and it so happened that the society was honest.

Natrum mur., Thuja and other remedies were proved, and W- was honest enough to say that although his convictions were decidedly against the provings he had to admit that the symptoms gathered from the 30th potency were very strong.

The Vienna Society demonstrated by these reprovings that the polychrests of Hahnemann had been fully proved.

Their provings of the 30th of Natrum mur. was a wonderful revelation of them ; but W-, in spite of this result, held on to his prejudices.

He acknowledged that he was wrong ; but he continued to use potencies lower than the 15th.

He could not get his mind elevated to the 30th ; his prejudice was too strong.

Dunham says of some of these, that in spite of the fact that they had seen better results from the 30th and higher potencies even, they were so prejudiced they could not bring themselves to a state of yielding.

As Dunham humorously expressed it,

“they are ossified in their cerebral convolutions as well as in their bony structure.”

That is to say, their minds were inelastic, they could not expand.

We talk from appearance when we say the eyes are closed ; it is the mind that is closed, the understanding that is closed.

Read Organon § 107-112.

When the patient is under the poisonous influence of a drug it does not seem to flow in the direction of his life action, but when reaction comes then the lingering effects of the drug seems to flow, as it were, in the stream of the vital action.

Then the symptoms that arise are of the best order, and hence it is necessary in proving a drug to take such a portion of the drug only as will disturb and not suspend, as it will flow in the stream of the vital order, in the order of the economy, establishing slightly perverted action, and causing symptoms, without suspending action, as we would, for example, with a large dose of Opium.

When a state of suspension exists in the dynamic economy, then we have a beclouding of all the activities of the economy ; so giving ; a large dose of medicine to palliate pains and sufferings is dangerous.

We have a suspension of the vital order when we give a medicine that does not flow in the stream of the vital influx, Homoeopathy looks towards the administration of medicines that are given for the purpose of either creating order, and then always in the higher potencies, or for the purpose of disturbing, and then in the lower potencies.

We should never resort to crude drugs for provings, unless for a momentary or temporary experiment.

It should not be followed up, and no great weight should be put upon the provings that are made from the crude medicines.

They only at best give a fragmentary idea.

Unless the proving that has been made with strong doses becomes enlarged with the symptoms from small doses the information remains fragmentary and useless.

If we had only the poisonous effects of Opium, we would be able only to use it in those conditions that simulate the poisonous effects of Opium, like apoplexy.

There are some prescribers who teach that for the primary effect one potency must be used and for the secondary effect another must be used.

No such distinction need be made.

I have many times been at the bedside of apoplectic patients when death would have followed had not the homoeopathic remedy been administered.

I have been at the bedside of some when the pulse was flickering, when the eye was glazed, when the countenance was besotted, stertorous breathing coming on, frothing at the mouth, and in a few minutes after the administration of Opium c.m. I have seen the patient go into a sound sleep, remain quiet and rest, wake up to consciousness, and go on to recovery.

Alumina has a similar state of stupor resembling apoplexy, and hence it is that Alumina and Opium are antidotes to each other.

I remember a case of apoplexy once that puzzled many physicians for some days, and I was puzzled, too.

The patient was in a profound stupor.

Opium was administered by the physician in charge before I arrived, and it stopped the stertorous breathing, but the patient remained unconscious.

Finally it was observed that one side was moving, whilst the other side had not moved for many days, and that on the paralyzed side there was fever, while on the well side there was no fever.

That was observed after careful examination for many days.

I asked the doctor if he did not consider that the natural state of a paralyzed side would be coldness ; he thought so too.

The whole paralyzed side of this patient had a feverish feeling to the hand, the other side was normal.

That seemed to be the only strange thing in the case ; no speech, no effort to do anything, no action of the bowels ; a do nothing case.

Upon a careful study of the Materia Medica, I came to the conclusion that Alumina was suited to the case, and in twelve hours after taking a dose of Alumina in a high potency that fever subsided on the paralyzed side and the patient returned to consciousness.