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The Elasticity of the Law of Homeopathy -- E. A. Farrington |
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Electively I decide for the Hahnemannian, and designate the round upon which he stands as that which gives the broadest and loftiest view of medicine ever yet obtained by mortal discoverer. His position is the only logical one, for he holds in his mental grasp all that is below him, and, moreover, knows just how to value every step below him and so to determine their relation with the higher and the highest. He heralds with delight the discovery that Arsenic can cause endocarditis, Bryonia, pleurisy, Mercurius Corrosivus, Bright’s disease, and Kalmia, almbuminuria. If he can not possibly do any better, he is at liberty to descend from his height and employ one or the other of these drugs accordingly. But usually his command of other and more interior effects of drugs leads him to proceed more intelligently and to act more comprehensively. “ I see”, he says, “ certain subjective and less ultimate objective symptoms that call more emphatically for another drug--- for Pulsatilla”. “ But”, comes up the objection from the round below, “Pulsatilla has not the pathological symptoms”. “True, but it has the important symptoms, of the case, which I recognize as not mere reflex effects of the localized disease, but which rather bear a causative relation; and, besides, they are manifest in planes of molecular action, which necessarily hold to the coarser parts the relation of cause to effect, and any drug applied to the local symptoms only will have but a partial and palliative effect.” Continuing the conversational style I have almost unconsciously drifted into let me presume the pathologist ask: “How can your method ever result in a tangible, fixed therapeutics? Are you not doomed always to remain in the speculative?” “No,” the Hahnemannian answers, “ we rest on terra firma as well as you, even if we are not so anxious to measure out precisely where shall be our footing. Our method develops an objective therapeutics.” “ How?” “ To illustrate, the world-renowned Aconite owes its febrile usefulness to the method of Hahnemann. When Hahnemann first prescribed it, he knew little or nothing of its power to cause and cure synochal fever. He selected it from concomitant symptoms, guided by the rule of characteristics, and lo, soon it becomes an invincible fever-remedy. It does not clearly appear from the provings of Hepar that the drug can hasten the formation of pus; boils were developed, unhealthy sores suppurated, but the power of the drug over pus was deduced from such symptoms as intolerance of pain, parts feel sore as a boil etc.” “But it is rejoined,” now that these objective and pathological facts are determined, are they not of paramount importance, and it is not Homeopathy to use them?” “It certainly is Homeopathy, but whether or not it is always pure Homeopathy is another question. The same process of deduction that gave these facts existence still rules. Aconite is doubtless similar to synochal fever; indeed, experiments since Hahnemann’s time have proved that it can cause chill, fever and sweat; but to be the similimum in a given case Aconite requires also the peculiar mental anguish and restlessness so distinctive of it, and not the quiet and torpor of some other inflammatory drugs.” “Are not such subjective symptoms as you refer to incomplete, and when fully developed into their pathological ultimate do not the latter become all sufficient as indications?.” “ They certainly are incomplete in the sense that they are not ultimated; but since they originate the ultimate they do not cease their activity when the latter appear; they still hold the superior position of cause to effects; and, besides, they represent disease changes of a more interior character than do their ultimate---disease changes which, be it ever remembered, may ultimate in more than one way; hence they are of a more universal value.” In this connection I can not do better than quote the words of an allopath, Dr Andrew Clark, who, while learning a wholesome lesson for himself is un-wittingly re-teaching many a delinquent homoeopathist what has long since been practically forgotton. I quote from the Hahnemmanian Monthly of October 1884: “We are so much concerned with anatomical changes; we have given so much time to their evolutions, differentiations, and relations; we are so much dominated by the idea that, in dealing with them, we dealing with disease itself, that we have overlooked the fundamental truth that these anatomical changes are but secondary, and sometimes the least important, expressions or manifestations of states which underlie them. It is to these dynamic states that our thoughts and enquiries should be turned: they precede, underlie, and originate structural changes; they determine their character, course, and issues; in them is the secret of disease; and, if our control of it is ever to become greater and better, it is upon them that our experiment must be made.” While, then, I admit that the law of Homeopathy is elastic enough to give me quite a range of treatment, it is clear to me that my duty demands my earnest endeavor to employ, whenever I can, the purest and highest method of applying that great boon to humanity--the law of similars. |
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