Volume 1

Organon of medicine ... / by Samuel Hahnemann.

  • Hahnemann, Samuel, 1755-1843.
Date:
1922
    What ponderable quantity of material substance could have been absorbed into the fluids, in order to develop, in the first of these instances, a tedious dyscrasia (syphi¬ lis), which when uncured is only extinguished with the remotest period of life, with death; in the last, a disease (smallpox) accompanied by almost general suppuration,11 and often rapidly fatal? In these and all similar cases is it possible to entertain the idea of a material morbific matter being introduced into the blood? A letter written 11 In order to account for the large quantity of putrid excre- mentitious matter and foetid discharge often met with in dis¬ eases, and to be able to represent them as the material substance that excites and keeps up disease—although, when infection oc¬ curs, nothing perceptible in the shape of miasm, nothing material, could have penetrated into the body—recourse was had to the hypothesis, that the matter of infection, be it ever so minute, acts in the body like a ferment, bringing the fluids into a like state of corruption, and thus changing them into a similar morbific ferment which constantly increases with the disease and keeps it up. But by what all-potent and all-wise purifying draughts will you purge and cleanse the human fluids from this ever reproduc¬ tive ferment, from this mass of imaginary morbific matter, and that so perfectly, that there shall not remain a particle of such morbific ferment, which, according to this hypothesis, must ever again, as at first, transform and corrupt the fluids to new mor¬ bific matter? Were that so it would evidently be impossible to cure these diseases in your way!—See how all hypotheses, be they ever so ingeniously framed, lead to the most palpable ab¬ surdities when they are not founded on truth!—The most deeply rooted syphilis may be cured, after the removal of the psora with which it is often complicated, by one or two small doses of the decillionfold diluted and potentised solution of mercury, whereby the general syphilitic taint of the fluids is forever (dynamically) annihilated and removed.
    in the sick-room at a great distance has often communi¬ cated the same contagious disease to the person who read it. In this instance, can the notion of a material morbific matter having penetrated into the fluids be admitted? But what need is there of all such proofs? How often has it happened that an irritating word has brought on a dan¬ gerous bilious fever; a superstitious prediction of death has caused the fatal catastrophe at the very time an¬ nounced; the abrupt communication of sad or exces¬ sively joyful news has occasioned sudden death? In these cases, where is the material morbific principle that entered in substance into the body, there to produce and keep up the disease, and without the material expulsion and ejec¬ tion of which a radical cure were impossible? The champions of this clumsy doctrine of morbific matters ought to be ashamed that they have so incon¬ siderately overlooked and failed to appreciate the spiritual nature of life, and the spiritual dynamic power of the ex¬ citing causes of diseases, and that they have thereby degraded themselves into mere scavenger-doctors, wdio, in their efforts to expel from the diseased body morbific matters that never existed, in place of curing, destroy life. Are, then, the foul, often disgusting excretions which occur in diseases the actual matter that produces and keeps them up ?12 Are they not rather always excre¬ tory products of the disease itself, that is, of the life which is only dynamically deranged and disordered? 12 Were this the case, the most inveterate coryza should be certainly and rapidly cured by merely blowing and wiping the nose carefully.
    With such false and materialistic views concerning the origin and essential nature of diseases, it was certainly not to be wondered at that in all ages the main endeavor of the most obscure, as well as of the most distinguished practitioners, and even of the inventors of the sublimest medical systems, was always only to separate and expel an imaginary morbific matter, and the indication most frequently laid down was to break up and put in mo¬ tion this morbific matter, to effect its expulsion by saliva¬ tion, expectoration, diaphoresis and diuresis, to purify the blood from (acridities and impurities) morbific mat¬ ters, which never existed, by means of the intelligence of sundry obedient decoctions of root and plants; to draw off mechanically the imaginary matter of disease by se- tons, by issues, by portions of the skin kept open and discharging by means of perpetual blisters or mezereum bark, but chiefly to expel and purge away the materia pec cans, or the injurious matters as they were termed, through the intestines, by means of laxative and purgative medicines, which, in order to give them a more profound meaning and a more prepossessing appearance, were fondly denominated dissolvents and mild aperients—all so many arrangements for the expulsion of inimical morbific matters, which never could be, and never were instrumental in the production and maintenance of the diseases of the human organism, animated as it is by a spiritual principle—of diseases which never were any¬ thing else than spiritual dynamic derangements of the life altered in its sensations and functions. Let it be granted now, what cannot be doubted, that no diseases—if they do not result from the introduction of perfectly indigestible or otherwise injurious substances
    into the stomach, or into other orifices or cavities of the body, or from foreign bodies penetrating the skin, etc.—■ that no disease, in a word, is caused by any material sub¬ stance, but that every one is only and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement of the health; how injudi¬ cious, in that case, must not a method of treatment di¬ rected towards the expulsion 13 of that imaginary material 13 There is a semblance of necessity in the expulsion by pur¬ gatives of worms, in so-called vermicular diseases. But even this semblance is false. A few lumbrici may be found in some children; in many there exist ascarides. But the presence of these is always dependent on a general taint of the constitu¬ tion (the psoric), joined to an unhealthy mode of living. Let the latter be improved, and the former cured homceopathically, which is most easily effected at this age, and none of the worms re¬ main, and children cured in this manner are never troubled with them more; whereas after mere purgatives, even when combined with cina seeds, they soon reappear in quantities. “But the tapeworm,” methinks I hear some one exclaim, “every effort should be made to expel that monster, which was created for the torment of mankind.” Yes, sometimes it is expelled; but at the cost of what after¬ sufferings, and with what danger to life! I should not like to have on my conscience the deaths of so many hundreds of human beings as have fallen sacrifices to the horribly violent purgatives, directed against the tapeworm, or the many years of indisposi¬ tion of those who have escaped being purged to death. And how often does it happen that after all this health-and-life-destroying purgative treatment, frequently continued for several years, the animal is not expelled, or if so, that it is again produced! What if there is not the slightest necessity for all these vio¬ lent, cruel, and dangerous efforts to expel and kill the worm? The various species of tapeworm are only found along with the psoric taint, and always disappear when that is cured. But
    substance appear to every rational man, since no good, but only monstrous harm, can result from its employ¬ ment in the principal diseases of mankind, namely, those of a chronic character! In short, the degenerated substances and impurities that appear in diseases are, undeniably, nothing more even before the cure is accomplished, they live—the patient en¬ joying tolerable health the while—not exactly in the intestines, but in the residue of the food, the excrement of the bowels, as in their proper element, quite quietly, and without causing the least disturbance, and find in the excrement what suffices for their nourishment; they then do not touch the walls of the intestine, and are perfectly harmless. But if the patient happen to be af¬ fected with an acute disease of any kind, then the contents of the bowels become intolerable to the animal; it twists about, comes in contact with, and irritates the sensitive walls of the intes¬ tines, causing a peculiar kind of spasmodic colic, which increases materially the sufferings of the patient. (So also the foetus in the womb becomes restless, turns about and kicks, only when the mother is ill; but when she is well, it swims quiet in its proper fluid without causing her any suffering.) It is worthy of remark, that the morbid symptoms of patients suffering from tapeworm are generally of such a kind, that they are rapidly relieved (homceopathically) by the smallest dose of tincture of male-fern root; so that the ill-health of the patient, which causes this parasitic animal to be restless, is thereby for the time removed; the tapeworm then feels at ease, and lives on quietly in the excrement of the bowels, without particularly dis¬ tressing the patient or his intestines, until the antipsoric treat¬ ment is so far advanced that the worm, after the eradication of the psora, finds the contents of the bowels no longer suitable for its support, and therefore spontaneously disappears, for ever from the now cured patient, without the least purgative medi¬ cine.