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| Index to Boger's Lesser Writings | Index to Historical Archives | ||||
Studies in the Philosophy of Healing-- C. M. Boger, 1929 |
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| Ever since Hahnemann pointed out the homeopathic method as the law of healing there have been all grades of followers, from such as merely admit its validity and use it incidentally, to those who cling to the precepts of the Organon for guidance. It is a variation common to every sort of human endeavour and really depends upon instruction, ability and will. To teach anything less than the ideal makes for final retrogression because execution is necessarily made by fallible mortals. Quickly enough does the neophyte feel his limitations and lack of firmness in his foothold; then, having but a loose grasp of the philosophy of healing, descent into the murky shades of palliation and suppression will be swift and sure, and at the cost of many a saddening failure. The mental attitude of most medical men is a clear example of how far distorted reasoning may subvert logic; withal, a few rise above their training and thereby pay a glorious tribute to the power of indwelling light and truth. These men soon outgrow the fetters of an ultimately reactionary teaching, being helped materially thereto by disinterested work for the uplift of others. The miseries of the cancer problem are a hideously sad commentary on the materialistic viewpoint of life in general and disease in particular, leading as it must do, to attempts at forcible removal of what it cannot cure. Its devotees are not given to trying to find out why the most diverse remedies have incontestably cured cancer. If among such cures there be but a single actual success, the entire materialistic structure falls to the ground. It is a closed and unworthy attitude of mind that rejects the possibility of arousing vital energy to the point of throwing off all abnormal action, and yet gives unbounded credence to a science (?) that does not agree with itself long enough to make it worth while. When the indications are clear there is overwhelming evidence of the power of the similar remedy to cure every sickness not already in its terminal stage, because human beings react individually to disturbing influences, including disease exciters, to the point of self stabilisation. All disease complexes from their incipiency held some peculiarity, often obscure, with increasing tenacity, hence the minutia of the prodrome demand the closest scrutiny, not only in malaria where it has been found so indicative, but in all others as well, especially where it is apt to be most occult, as in cancer, etc. Seemingly functional disorders often contain a symptom or two, the very germinal of future disaster, but as yet easily curable, if studied in its connotations. In every assemblage there are discordant or apparently contradictory symptoms that easily mislead us into overstressing single factors, unless we hold firmly to the concept of unity in diversity and regard them, significant as they are, as the surface play of a deeper and more coherent movement, whose nuances we must fully grasp. It is at this juncture that the two schools of thought diverge; one, following the path of least resistance and the deceptive senses, emerges in the bogs of materialism and consequent violent action. The other, attributing all symptoms to mutations of the vital force, studies effects of exteriorisation of such modifications and is governed thereby, realising that they must all be consistent and of a piece. A crude apprehension of this thought lies at the bottom of the idea of specifics, and has harmed medicine not a little. If every symptom is a little picture reflected from the central disturbance, a composite picture will most nearly depict the whole. This is what we mean when we speak of the symptom complex or the totality of the symptoms. Each one of these small pictures contains at least two elements, the main strain and the variations. As the latter increase in number the former is obscured and harder to detect; for which reason the apparently most discordant symptom rubrics are placed in apposition, in order to find the basic drug or drugs common to all, which will surely again stabilise vital action. It does us small credit to see some one who has always had homeopathic care develop tuberculosis, cancer or what not. Remedies were evidently similar enough to remove passing disease pictures, but not deeply acting enough to eradicate true causative factors, in other words the similimum had never been found or given. This sort of work is much too easy for the ultimate good of our patients, and it imitates traditional medicine too closely to be a cause of boasting. The individualistic way in which the patient reacts affords the best point of departure for inquiry into the more obscure, yet highly essential details for the successful prescription. Uncovering these takes time and patience, and is not altogether attractive to minds obsessed by the incubus of a devitalised science which presents the strange spectacle of viewing life from the standpoint of dying matter. It would be really ludicrous and absurd were the results not so tragic, and did not the arrogant materialists take themselves so seriously, with their absolute dependence upon the tricky senses and the trash piles of disease, where the materialistic approach gropes after the origin of disease in the dead house. But if in nature "likes call to likes" or "as man thinketh... so is he", be true, most assuredly the fruitage of morbidity in thought or deed can not advance sentient life, not even by injecting organised matter from a lower into a higher order of being. The assumption is incontestably false, as well as a true child of black magic. Medicine will advance safely only as it learns its lessons from the way spirit integrates matter. When the ebb and flow of vital energy grows irregular it spells sickness, nothing less, and ineradicable except through similarity of action. If the earliest evidences of disease are disorderly vital action its finality must be an intensification of the same movement, partaking of the same nature, never being transformed into something else. Obviously cure depends upon bringing this movement gently and safely, almost synchronously, back to normal again. If the type of the disease holds true throughout its course, its only possible modifiers are personal reactions thereto, the very factors upon which the accurate prescriber must depend. These remain more or less constant for the life time of the individual. While symptom alignments are beyond numbering they are all pervaded and modified by these basic factors, which Hahnemann attributed to the influence of what he inferentially termed miasms. All instruments fail to disclose the vital dynamis and why its repercussions are violent in proportion to its repression, a very significant fact and not always understood. Inferentially and practically, curing is a mild and gentle process, devoid of suppressive measures, narcotics, etc., all of whose finalities lean deathward. Devotees of such wrongheadedness misguide and repress human energy to the limit, trusting that the rebound will suffice to insure recovery and perhaps final health. We should keep in mind that the finer energies of the human economy can not be manhandled in such a crude way with safety. It reminds one forcibly of blacksmiths attempting to repair watches and is a relic of the positive, dead end, soul destroying materialism of the past century, dying so hard in this; but its break up is inevitable. Dynamism, until lately laughed out of court, is about to rend asunder its mockers before the whole world and it is high time to realise that it is not a thing apart, but an essential factor of our very nature and life and must be reckoned with if we would be efficient healers of the sick. Most of us know something of the things exacted of him who would practice medicine. They are intended to condition him, elevate the profession and benefit the community. Actually we see the reverse; want of logic, incoherence and prideful selfishness. If there be lack of harmony among us our foundations can not be very secure and no amount of subtle reasoning can make them so, hence we have no right to call ourselves scientists, much less artists. If science or art holds anything at all for the benefit of man, by that much is medicine concerned therein. This being true how are we going to disassociate the dynamics of action from action itself. Preposterous as the idea is, it is just what is being attempted in everyday practice. Acute observers soon reach the conclusion that present day practices will utterly shatter the profession unless it turns another volteface and drops its ostracism, its blind bigotries and its self-efficiency and adjusts itself to the trend of general scientific thought. If its traditionalism is still too powerful and its culture too lopsided to do this, it can not hope for universal acceptance of even the fragment of truth which it clutches so tenaciously. A CLlNICAL CASE Sciatica—Mrs. J. K., aet. 42. For six weeks has had stiffness and aching in lumbar region on rising or sitting down. Now confined to bed by throbbing, quivering, soreness, numbness and shooting pains down right sciatic nerve to foot, which feels as if she were stepping on a ????? and the thigh as if lying on rocks; pains agg. on outside of thigh. Aching in right calf on standing and right sole burns. Menses profuse, with backache and hydroae or aphthae. Leucorrhoea
causes itching. Sleeps in catnaps. PARKERSBURG, W. VA. |
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