CORRECTION ON MISTAKEN BELIEF OF ALLOPATHs

(With reference to the above article "Allopathy" by William T. Jarvis, Ph.D)

[The books referred by the author were written by allopaths.

There has never been a true research based on books written by homoeopath or any attempt to look into the essence of homoeopathy.

Even quotation from Organon of Medicine was second-handed. The response provided here is to add comments thru homoeopath’s own writings.

Remember: The enemy to any science is a closed mind. - Mohamed Hatta Abu Bakar, HMD. homeohbi@yahoo.com]  Our Company: HBI. Our Library: MALAYSIA HOMOEOPATHY CYBER LIBRARY. Our Institute: MALAYSIA HOMOEOPATHY VIRTUAL INSTITUTE. Our books: ISBN. Our Products: THE FUTURE. Our Clinic: JERTEH. Our Head Office: BANTING.

The original article by Dr. Jarvis is reproduced below, in black with our comments in read interspersed. 

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The term "allopathy" was invented by German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). He conjoined allos "opposite" and pathos "suffering" as a referent to harsh medical practices of his era which included bleeding, purging, vomiting and the administration of highly toxic drugs.

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These practices were based on the ancient Greek humoral theory which attributed disease to an imbalance of four humors (i.e., blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile) and four bodily conditions (i.e, hot, cold, wet and dry) that corresponded to four elements (earth, air, fire, and water). Physicians following the Hippocratic tradition attempted to balance the humors by treating symptoms with "opposites." For instance, fever (hot) was believed due to excess blood because patients were flush; therefore, balance was sought by blood-letting in order to "cool" the patient. Hahnemann sought to replace allopathy with his "law of similia" that treated "like with like," a prescientific idea that he had discovered from reading ancient sources.

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The history of homeopathy begins with the discoveries of its founder Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician. Hahnemann first coined the word "homeopathy" ("homoios" in Greek means similar, "pathos" means suffering) to refer to the pharmacological principle, the law of similars, that is its basis. Actually, the law of similars was previously described by Hippocrates and Paracelsus and was utilized by many cultures, including the Mayans, Chinese, Greeks, Native American Indians, and Asian Indians (1), but it was Hahnemann who codified the law of similars into a systematic medical science.

Hahnemann's first comments about the general applicability of the law of similars were in 1789 when he translated a book by William Cullen, one of the leading physicians of the era. At one point in the book Cullen ascribed the usefulness of Peruvian bark (Cinchona) in treating malaria to its the bitter and astringent properties. Hahnemann wrote a bold footnote in his translation, disputing Cullen's explanation. Hahnemann asserted that the efficacy of Peruvian bark must be for other factor, since he noted that there were other substances and mixtures of substances decidedly more bitter and more astringent than Peruvian bark that were not effective in treating malaria. He then described his own taking repeated doses of this herb until his body responded to its toxic dose with fever, chills, and other symptoms similar to malaria. Hahnemann concluded that the reason this herb was beneficial was because it caused symptoms similar to those of the disease it was treating. (2)

This account epitomizes Hahnemann. First, he was translating Cullen's work, which indicates that he was one of the more respected translators of his day. By the time he was only 24, Hahnemann he could read and write in at least seven languages. He ultimately translated over 20 major medical and scientific texts. This story reveals Hahnemann as both an avid experimenter and a respected chemist. He had authored a four volume set of books called The Pharmaceutical Lexicon, which was considered one of the standard reference texts for apothecaries/pharmacists of his day. (3) And this account also reveals Hahnemann as an audacious rebel. He was unafraid to speak his mind, even if it meant correcting the analysis of a very respected physician. He was unafraid to question commonly accepted truths. And he had enough initiative to seek his own alternative explanations.

After translating Cullen's work, Hahnemann spent the next six years actively experimenting on himself, his family, and a small but growing group of followers. In 1796 he wrote about his experiences with the law of similars in Hufeland's Journal, a respected medical journal in Germany. (4) Coincidentally, in 1798 Edward Jenner discovered the value of giving small doses of cowpox to people in an effort to immunize them against smallpox. Whereas Jenner's work was generally accepted into orthodox medicine, Hahnemann's work was not. In fact, there was so much antagonism to Hahnemann and the new school of medical thought he called homeopathy that entire medical journals were called Anti-Homoeopathic Archives or Anti-Organon (the Organon refers to the book that Hahnemann wrote as the primary text on the homeopathic art and science). (5)

Hahnemann was particularly disliked by the apothecaries because he recommended the use of only one medicine at a time and prescribing only limited doses of it. (6) Because he recommended only small doses of each medicine, the apothecaries could not charge much for them. And because each medicine required careful preparation, Hahnemann found that the apothecaries were not always making them correctly or were intentionally giving his patients different medicines. As he grew to distrust the apothecaries, he chose to dispense his own medicines, an illegal act at the time in Germany. The apothecaries then accused Hahnemann of "entrenching upon their privileges by the dispensing of medicines." (7) Arrested in Leipzig in 1820, he was found guilty and forced to move.

He moved to Kothen, where he was delegated special permission to practice and dispense his own medicines by Grand Duke Ferdinand, one of the many European royalty who supported homeopathy. (8)

Despite the persecution, homeopathy continued to grow. It grew not just because it offered a systematic approach to treating sick people, but also because orthodox medicine was ineffective and even dangerous. There is general agreement among medical historians today that orthodox medicine of the 1700s and 1800s in particular frequently caused more harm than good. (9)

Bloodletting and application of leeches were common practice even through to the mid-1800s. One French doctor bloodlet so much that some jokingly estimated that he spilled more blood in his medical practice than was spilled throughout the entire Napoleonic Wars. (10). Benjamin Rush, considered the father of American medicine, asserted that bloodletting was useful in all general and chronic disease. (11) As many as 41 million leeches were imported into France in 1833 alone. (12) In the United States, one firm imported 500,000 leeches in 1856; its competitor imported 300,000. (13). Besides bloodletting and leeches, orthodox physicians used medicines made from mercury, lead, arsenic, and various strong herbs to help purge the body of foreign disease-causing matter.

The combination of poor medical care and prejudicial reaction against homeopathy is certainly understandable in light of medical education at the time. Nathan Smith Davis, who was the driving force in the creation of the American Medical Association described medical education in 1845:

  "All the young man has to do is gain admittance in the office of some physician, where he can have access to a series of ordinary medical text-books, and see a patient perhaps once a month, with perhaps a hasty post-mortem examination once a year; and in the course of three years thus spent, one or two courses of lectures in the medical colleges, where the whole science of medicine, including anatomy, physiology, chemistry, materia medica, pathology, practice of medicine, medical jurisprudence, surgery, and midwivery are all crowded upon his mind in the short space of sixteen weeks...and his education, both primary and medical, is deemed complete." (14)

Despite the fact that historians and scientists today consider medicine of the 18th and 19th century as unscientific and even barbaric, orthodox physicians had the audacity to call homeopathy "quackery," "unscientific," "cultish," and "devilish."

 

 

- Ullman, Dana., 1991, Internet edition: A Condensed History of Homeopathy (Excerpt from Discovering Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21^st Century)

 

 

 Hahnemann had abandoned medical practice because of his inability to heal his patients by the methods of his era. He earned money by translating classical works into German leading him to ancient medical ideas. (Kaufman M. "Homeopathy in America: The Rise and Fall and Persistence of a Medical Heresy," in Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America, Ed. Norman Gevitz, Johns Hopkins, 1988.)

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Hahnemann did not start out as a theoretician, pontificating from high ground about the best and ideal form of medicine or its philosophical basis. He did do that, but it came second. It is hard to say with absolute certainty, but his clinical experiments probably came first and these were then followed at a later stage by his theoretical rantings. Important and much overlooked point: those rantings were always derived from practice and confirmed by it. Thus he was never speaking from a purely theoretical level, but always based upon the sound bedrock of practice, of clinical experience. Ideas were amended through practice, revised, extended, embellished, corrected and altered only through practice. Practice, practice, practice. Thus he provided, created and perfected chiefly a clinical method, but greatly enriched, underpinned and supplemented by theoretical writings. This is a very important point: theory always follows method and is it's subordinate. It also reflects an aspect of the man: he was both an excellent experimental scientist and a powerful thinker and writer.

In another sense you could argue that the ideas preceded the methods. And there is some truth in this. It is true of many areas of research and is often difficult to establish with any certainty whether the ideas or the experiments came first. The probem is in trying to trace the origin of a system, part of which comes out of someone's head and their reading and thinking and part of which comes out of the experiments and observations they undertake on the practical level in the real world. Inevitably, it is usually a mixture of both. Then in addition, there is also the wider cultural element and how a person has drawn upon concepts and belief-patterns within the society and times they lived in. No doubt these were all influences impinging upon Hahnemann as a person.

For example, in Hahnemann's case it is very difficult to know with certainty to what degree he leaned upon Paracelsus. That is a separate though interesting strand. He left behind little evidence of any substantial interest in occultism or mediaeval medicine, so it is more likely that he devised homeopathy partly through practice and partly through his own mind just thinking things through. And for that there is abundant evidence right through his life - he had a brilliant, searching and restless inventiveness to his mentality. He was very perceptive and very original in almost everything he did. It therefore remains unlikely that he copied Paracelsus. And it is often imposssible to trace back to its source an idea that has taken root in someone's mind and then borne fruit many years later.

Some people are good at making things but they can't teach it. Emulators must simply observe them very closely in order to become good or to work out why they are so good. Others are good at describing and teaching but cannot do it very well. Some rare beings are good at doing and at describing and teaching. Hahnemann was in this latter category. He combined a genius for doing new things and for teaching them, describing them, and for analysing the meaning and significance of what he was doing. He was well rooted in bothworlds - theory and method, both as a keen obseerver and experimenter but also as an articulate and competent theoretician. He explored and stressed both aspects - we should try and follow his lead and strive to be strong in both areas.

The reasoning behind theory and method is very interesting and focuses upon how Hahnemann discovered homeopathy in the first place. It rests chiefly upon his brilliant critique of allopathy. What are the origins of that critique?

Hahnemann first discovered for himself the appalling ineffectiveness of allopathic practice. As a physician, as a compassionate man and as a parent, that fact depressed him very greatly. But working on a theoretical level this inspired him to search out and identify the underlying reasons for its ineffectiveness. That could only be revealed through clearly identifying and enunciating its underlying creed or philosophy. He must have spent a great deal of time just thinking and reflecting about allopathic medicine - its methods and its whys and wherefors. He must have done that to have arrived at the conclusions he came to.

One thing that is wonderful about Hahnemann is that he resolutely believed that a rational form of medicine could be developed and he meticulously searched it out. Many would have just given up and done something else, but he soldiered on, translating medical texts from many languages, unearthing data from the past and experimenting on a practical level. Though it is true that he gave up medical practice for a time, he never gave up the hope of finding a medical path superior to allopathic drugging.

His critique asserts that allopathy is based chiefly upon three ideas: polypharmacy, strong doses and the law of contraries. He identifies all three as the root causes of its ineffectiveness. Then he chooses the opposite medical creed - single drugs, small doses, and similars, which he provisionally identifies as the most likely features of an effective and superior medical path. What is so interesting is that he uses the very creed of his enemy - allopathy - as the basis for first setting his feet down onto clean Paracelsan sand! I shall return to this point.

His clinical practice therefore both suggested and confirmed his theoretical ideas. He felt fully justified in vilifying allopathy because at both levels he could see that it was fundamentally incorrect. Incorrect as a method because it didn't work, and therefore incorrect as a creed. What is so striking and modern about his apporach is that he attacked a method that didn't work and then decided that it must contain suspect principles that underpin the technique and form the cause of why it didn't work. That whole approach is so modern and so scientific that it has gone unnoticed. Thus through his powerful analysis of allopathy he came to conceive an outline sketch of the most probable qualities of a superior method - similars, small doses and single drug. He then tested this method and found it very useful.

Through continued experiment he became more and more convinced that it was the best of the two - what he termed a 'rational healing art'. This increased his confidence and widened the gulf with allopathy. This is why Hahnemann criticised so forcefully both the methods and the ideology or creed of allopathy. He had successfully unearthed its essence and shown it to be incorrect through testing its opposite creed and showing that the latter was both more effective and more predictable. No-one before Hahnemann had done this. No-one before had so clearly identified and laid bare the underlying creed of allopathy and chosen from its basis an opposite creed and then systematically investigated it and pushed it through into a new system. That was a remarkable achievement.

 

- Morrell, Peter., Internet edition: HOMEOPATHY - THEORY AND METHOD
 

 

 

Although many modern therapies can be construed to conform to an allopathic rationale (eg, using a laxative to relieve constipation), standard medicine has never paid allegiance to an allopathic principle.

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The label "allopath" was considered highly derisive by regular medicine. A 1902 book intended for new medical graduates reveals just how vehemently Medical Doctors once opposed and resented the label:

Remember that the term "Allopath" is a false nickname not chosen by regular physicians at all, but cunningly coined, and put in wicked use against us, in his venomous crusade against Regular Medicine by its enemy, Hahnemann, and ever since applied to us by our enemies with all the insinuations and derisive use the term afford. "Allopathy" applied to regular medicine is both untrue and offensive and is no more accepted by us that the term "Heretics" is accepted by the Protestants, or "Niggers" by the Blacks [1].

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Homeopathy posed a serious threat to entrenched medicine. Orthodox physicians criticized herbalists, midwives, and various other "non-regular" practitioners because they were not medically trained. Homeopaths, however, could not be discredited as being unlearned, since they had been were graduates from many of the same medical schools as "regular" physicians. In fact, many of the initial practitioners of homeopathy graduated from some of the most prestigious medical schools of the day. (15)

Orthodox medicine was also threatened because homeopathy offered an integrated, coherent, systematic basis for its therapeutic practice. In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Social Transformation of American Medicine Paul Starr noted, "Because homeopathy was simultaneously philosophical and experimental, it seemed to many people to be more rather than less scientific than orthodox medicine." (16)

One of the most important reasons that orthodox physicians and drug companies disliked homeopathy was that inherent in the homeopathic approach was a sharp critique of the use of conventional drugs. Homeopaths were primarily critical of the suppressive nature of these drugs. They felt that they simply masked the person's symptoms, creating deeper, more serious diseases. Homeopaths also noted that this masking of symptoms made it more difficult for them ultimately to find the correct medicine, since the person's idiosyncratic symptoms are the primary guide to the individual selection of the medicine.

Perhaps the most important reason that conventional physicians disliked homeopathy and homeopaths was well expressed at an A.M.A. meeting by one of the more respected orthodox physicians who said, "We must admit that we never fought the homeopath on matters of principles; we fought him because he came into the community and got the business." (17) Although most physicians, past or present, won't as easily admit it, economic issues play a major role in what is practiced and what is allowed to be practiced.

Hahnemann's principles therefore posed a philosophical, clinical, and economic threat to orthodox medicine.

Homeopathy began growing in the New World shortly after Hans Gram, a Dutch homeopath, emigrated to the United States in 1825. It expanded so rapidly that the homeopaths decided to create a national medical society. In 1844 they organized the American Institute of Homeopathy, which became America's first national medical society. (18) Partially in response to the growth of the homeopaths, in 1846 a rival medical group formed which then vowed to slow the development of homeopathy. (19) This organization called itself the American Medical Association.

Members of the A.M.A. had a long-standing animosity towards homeopathy and homeopaths. This feeling ran so strong that shortly after the formation of the A.M.A., it was decided to purge all the local medical societies of physicians who were homeopaths. (20). This purge was successful in every state except Massachusetts. Because homeopathy was so strong among the elite of Boston, the A.M.A. allowed this exception, as long as the Society agreed not to allow any new homeopathic members. Then, in 1871, the eight remaining physicians were expelled from the Society for the heinous crime of being homeopaths.

In 1882 the AMA declined to acknowledge the delegates from the New York State Medical Society because this society had recently passed a resolution that recognized all properly graduated doctors (which thereby included homeopathic physicians).

Besides keeping homeopaths out of their societies, the A.M.A. wanted to discourage any type of association with homeopaths. In 1855 the AMA established a code of ethics which asserted that orthodox physicians would lose their membership in the A.M.A. if they even consulted with a homeopath or any other "non-regular" practitioner. (21) At the time, if a physician lost his membership in the local medical society, it meant that in some states he no longer had a license to practice medicine. Often, orthodox physicians, who controlled the medical societies, wouldn't admit homeopathic physicians and then would arrange for their arrest for practicing medicine without a license. (22) Ultimately, homeopaths set up their own local societies and established their own medical boards.

At a time in American medicine when physicians would very rarely, if ever, be reprimanded by fellow physicians, the ethical code on consorting with homeopaths was regularly enforced. (23) One Connecticut physician was expelled from his local medical society for consulting with a homeopath--his wife. (24) A New York doctor was expelled for purchasing milk sugar from a homeopathic pharmacy. (25) Joseph K. Barnes, the Surgeon General of the United States, was denounced for aiding in the treatment of Secretary of State William Seward on the night he was stabbed and Lincoln was shot, simply because Seward's personal physician was a homeopath. (26)

In a bizarre event Dr. Christopher C. Cox was refused admittance into the Medical Society of the District of Columbia because he had served on the D.C. board of health which had a member who was a homeopath. Dr. D.W. Bliss, a conventional physician and colleague of Dr. Cox, also was expelled, not because he consulted a homeopath, but because he consulted with Dr. Cox who was previously expelled. Ironically, the Medical Society judged that Bliss and Cox had committed a heinous crime, even though it was in the treatment of Schulyer Colfax, the Vice President of the United States under Andrew Johnson. (27)

The A.M.A. and its members did anything possible to thwart the education of homeopaths. In the early 1840's and again in 1855 advocates of homeopathy convinced the Michigan legislature to establish a professorship of homeopathy in the department of medicine at the University of Michigan. The AMA resolved to deny recognition to the university's "regular" medical graduates if a homeopath, as one of their professors, signed their diploma (at the time all professors signed graduates' diplomas). The homeopaths brought their case to the Michigan Supreme Court three times, but each time the court expressed uncertainty as to its power to compel the Regents of the University to take action. (28)

Finally, a compromise was reached. In 1875 the Michigan legislature voted to give money to a new hospital dependent upon the appointment of two professors of homeopathy, but it was also decided that only the president and the secretary of the university would sign the diplomas, thereby allowing their graduates to be recognized by the A.M.A.

Despite this compromise, almost every medical journal in the country urged the Michigan medical faculty to resign rather than participate in the training of homeopaths. (29)

The antagonism to homeopathy was not confined only to the United States; it was also widespread in Europe. A French medical student was expelled from his college for expressing interest in homeopathy. A "consultation clause" similar to the one in the United States was established in France. When J.P. Tessier, a conventional French physician, evaluated the results of homeopathy at Hospital Ste. Marguerite and announced to the Paris Academy that they were favorable, he aroused a storm of protest. (30) No orthodox medical journal would publish these results, and when he had it published in a homeopathic journal, he was summarily expelled by the medical society. (31)

In the 1830s the practice of homeopathy became illegal in Austria. Despite its illegality, many people used microdoses during the cholera epidemic of 1831. Statistics show that those with cholera who tried homeopathy had a mortality rate between 2.4 to 21.1%; whereas over 50% of those with cholera under conventional medical care died. (32)

In addition to the attacks by conventional physicians on the homeopaths' right to practice, the right to join medical organizations, and the right to a medical education, conventional physicians sought to besmirch the reputation of homeopaths. Homeopaths were considered "immoral," "illegitimate," and "unmanly." The opposition to homeopathy was not based on an scientific evaluation of this healing art, but arose primarily because homeopathy and homeopaths were a significant competitor to conventional physicians.

 

- Ullman, Dana., 1991, Internet edition: A Condensed History of Homeopathy (Excerpt from Discovering Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21^st Century)

 

 

The terms "allopath" and "allopathy" are often used in reference to Medical Doctors and standard medicine by medical writers. Such use generally reflects an alternate definition of allopathy: "a system of medical practice making use of all measures proved of value (emphasis added) in treatment of disease." [2]

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This definition accurately describes modern, science-based medicine, but is inconsistent with its root words "allos" and "pathos." The duplicity of the term aids those who wish to misrepresent medicine as ideologically allopathic (i.e., symptom suppression).

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NCAHF recommends that these terms not be used in reference to standard medicine or MDs.

Significance of a Misnomer.

Although medicine never accepted the label of allopathy, nonmedical practitioners such as chiropractors, homeopaths, and naturopaths regularly misrepresent physicians as "allopaths." This is usually done in order to make differences between their practice guilds appear based upon conflicting philosophies rather than ideology versus science. Opponents of medicine claim that they treat the underlying causes of disease, while MDs treat only the symptoms. Further, they claim that medicine suppresses the symptoms, thus interfering with the body's inherent healing processes. A close examination reveals that this line of reasoning is only clever rhetoric.

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It is stated in the second paragraph of the Organonthat :

"The highest ideal of a cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the, health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles."

If you were to ask a physician, who had not been trained in Homoeopathy, of what a cure consists, his mind would only revolve around the idea of the disappearance of the pathological state ; if an eruption on the skin were the given instance, the disappearance of the eruption from the skin under his treatment would be called a cure ; if hemorrhoids, the removal of these would be called a cure ; if constipation, the opening of the bowels would be called a cure ; if some affection of the knee joint, an amputation above the knee would be considered a cure ; or if it were an acute disease and the patient did not die, it would be considered a cure of the disease.

And that is really the idea of the patient as it is derived from the physician.

The patient will often wonder at the great skill of the physician in removing an eruption from the skin, and will go back again when the graver manifestations, the tissue changes threatening death, have come on as a consequence, and will say to the doctor :

" You so wonderfully cured me of my skin disease, why cannot you cure of my liver trouble ?"

But this very scientific ignorant doctor has made a failure ; he has driven what was upon the surface and harmless into the innermost precincts of the economy and the patient is going to die as a result of scientific ignorance.

There are three distinct points involved in this paragraph and these must be brought out.

Restoring health, and not the removing of symptoms, is the first point.

Restoring health has in view the establishment of order in a sick human being ; removing symptoms has not in view a human being ; removing the constipation, the hemorrhoids, the white swelling of the knee, the skin disease or any local manifestation or particular sign of disease, or even the removal of a group of symptoms does not have in view the restoration to health of the whole economy of man.

If the removal of symptoms is not followed by a restoration to health, it cannot be called a cure.

We learned in our last study that " the sole duty of the physician is to heal the sick," and therefore it is not his duty merely to remove the symptoms, to change the aspect of the symptoms the appearance of the disease image, imagining that lie has thereby established order.

What a simple-minded creature he must be !

What a groveller in muck and mire he must be, when he can meditate upon doing such things, even a moment !

How different his actions would be if he but considered that every violent change which be produces in the aspect of the disease aggravates the interior nature of the disease, aggravates the sickness of the man and brings about an increase of suffering within him.

The patientshould be able to realize by his feelings and continue to say, that heis being restored to health, whenever a symptom is removed.

There should be a corresponding inward improvement whenever an outward symptom has been caused to disappear, and this will be true whenever disease has been displaced by order.

The perfection of a cure consists, then : first in restoring health, and this is to be done promptly, mildly and permanently, which is the second point.

The cure must be quick or speedy, it must be gentle, and it must be continuous or permanent.

Whenever an outward symptom has been caused to disappear by violence, as by cathartics to remove constipation, it cannot be called mild or permanent, even if it is prompt.

Whenever violent drugs are resorted to there is nothing mild in the action or the reaction that must follow.

At the time this second paragraph of the Organonwas written physicking was not so mild as at the present day ; bloodletting, sweating, etc., were in vogue at the time Hahnemann wrote these lines.

Medicine has changed somewhat in its appearance ; physicians are now using sugar-coated pills and contriving to make medicines appear tasteless or tasteful ; they are using concentrated alkaloids.

But none of these things have been done because of the discovery of any principle ; blood-letting and sweating were not abandoned on account of principle, for the old men deprecate their disuse, and often say they hope the time will come when they can again go back to the lancet.

But the drugs of today are ten times more powerful than those formerly used, because more concentrated.

The cocaine, sulphonal and numerous other modern concentrated products of the manufacturing chemists are extremely dangerous and their real action and reaction unknown.

The chemical discoveries of petroleum have opened a field of destruction to human intelligence, to the understanding and to the will, because these products are slowly and insidiously violent.

When drugs were used that were instantly dangerous and violent the action was manifest, it showed upon the surface, and the common people saw it.

But the patient of the present day goes through more dangerous drugging, because it destroys the mind.

The apparent benefits produced by these drugs are never permanent.

They may in some cases seem to be permanent, but then it is because upon the economy has been engrafted a new and most insidious disease, more subtle and more tenacious than the manifestation that was upon the externals and it is because of this tenacity that the original symptoms remain away.

The disease in its nature, its esse, has not been changed ; it is still there, causing the internal destruction of the man, but its manifestation has been changed, and there has been added to this natural disease a drug disease, more serious than the former.

The manner of cure can only be mild if it flows in the stream of natural direction, establishing order and thereby removing disease.

The direction of old-fashioned medicine is like pulling a cat up a hill by the tail ; whereas, the treatment that is mild, gentle and permanent, flows with the stream, scarcely producing a ripple ; it adjusts the internal disorder and the outermost of man returns to order.

Everything becomes orderly from the interior.

The curative medicine does not act violently upon the economy, but establishes its action in a mild manner ; but while the action is mild and gentle, very often that which follows, which is the reaction, is a turmoil, especially when the work of traditional medicine is being undone and former states are being re-established.

The third point is "upon principles that are at once plain and intelligible."

This means law, it means fixed principles ; it means a law as certain as that of gravitation ; not guess work, empiricism, or roundabout methods, or a cut-and-dried use of drugs as laid down by the last manufacturer.

Our principles have never changed, they have always been the same and will remain the same.

To become acquainted with these principles and doctrines, with fixed knowledges, with exactitude or method, to become acquainted with medicines that never change their properties, and to become acquainted with their action, is the all-important aim in homoeopathic study.

When one has learned these principles, and continues to practice them, they grow brighter and stronger.

The use of these fixed principles is the removal of disease, the restoration to health in a mild, prompt and permanent manner.

If one were to ask an allopathic graduate in this class how he could demonstrate that he had cured some body, the answer could only be such as I have mentioned already , viz., the patient did not die, or that the manifestations prescribed for had disappeared.

If one were to ask to a physician trained in homoepathic principles the same question, one would find that there are means of distinctly demonstrating why he knows his patient is better.

You would naturally expect, if it is the interior of man that is disordered in sickness, and not his tissues primarily, that the interior must first be turned into order and the exterior last.

The first of man is his voluntary and the second of man is his understanding, the last of man is his outermost ; from his center to his circumference, to his organs, his skin, hair, nails, etc.

This being true, the cure must proceed from center to circumference.

From center to circumference is from above downward, from within outwards, from more important to less important organs, from the head to the hands and feet.

Every homoeopathic practitioner who understands the art of healing, knows that symptoms which go off in these directions remain away permanently.

Moreover he knows that symptoms which disappear in the reverse order of their comingare removed permanently.

It is thus he knows that the patient did not merely get well in spite of the treatment, but that he was cured by the action of the remedy.

If a homoeopathic physician goes to the bedside of a patient and, upon observing the onset of the symptoms and the course of the disease, sees that the symptoms do not follow this order after his remedy, he knows that he has had but little to do with the course of things.

But if on the contrary, he observes after the administration of his medicine that the symptoms take a reverse course, then he knows that his medicine has had to do with it, because if the disease were allowed to run its course such a result would not take place.

The progression of chronic diseases is from the surface to the center.

All chronic diseases have their first manifestations upon the surface, and from that to the innermost of man.

Now in the proportion in which they are thrown back upon the surface it is to be seen that the patient is recovering.

Here it is that the turmoil spoken of above follows the true homoeopathic remedy, and the ignorant do not desire their old outward symptom to be brought back even when it is known as the only possible form of cure.

Complaints of the heart and chest and head must in recovery be accompanied by manifestations upon the surface, in the extremities upon the skin, nails and hair.

Hence you will find that these parts become diseased when patients are getting well; the hair falls out or eruptions come upon the skin.

In cases of rheumatism of the heart you find, if the patient is recovering, that his knees become rheumatic, and he may say :

"Doctor, I could walk all over the house when you first came to me, but now I cannot walk, my joints are so swollen."

If the doctor does not know that that means recovery he will make a prescription that will drive the rheumatism away from the feet and knees and it will go back to the heart and the patient will die ; and it need hardly be stated that the traditional doctor does not know this, as he resorts to this plan as his regular and only plan of treatment, and in the most innocent way kills the patient.

This is a simple illustration of how it is possible for the interiors of man to cease to be affected and the exteriors to become affected.

It may be impossible for the man to be entirely cured, it may be impossible for this state to pass off, but that is the direction of its passing off and there is no other course.

If the patient is incurable, while the means used are mild, he may experience great suffering in the evolution of his disease, in the course of his partial recovery.

To him it may not appear mild, but the means that were used were mild. In acute diseases we do not observe so much distress after prescribing as we see in old incurable cases, in deep-seated chronic cornplaints that have existed a long time.

The return of the outward manifestations upon the extremities are noticed in such cases where they have been suppressed.

To illustrate : there are many patients who have had rheumatism in the hands and feet, in the wrists and knees and elbows, who have been rubbed and stimulated with lotions and strong liniments, with chloroform, with evaporating lotions, with cooling applications, until the rheumatism of the extremities has disappeared to a great extent, but every physician knows that as the disappearance of his rheumatism progresses cardiac symptoms are likely to occur.

When this patient is prescribed for the rheumatism of the extremities must come back or the heart will not be relieved.

That is true of every condition that has been upon the extremities and driven in by local treatment. just as surely as you live and observe the action of homeopathic remedies upon man, so surely will you see these symptoms come back.

The patient will return and say :

"Doctor, I have the same symptoms that I had when I was treated by Dr. So and-so for rheumatism."

This comes out in practice nearly every day.

It requires a little explanation to the patient, and if he is intelligent enough to understand it, he will wait for the remedy to act.

But the physician who thinks most of his pocketbook will say :

"If I don't give him a liniment to put on that limb he will go off and get another physician."

Now let me tell you right here is the beginning of evil.

You had better trust to the intelligence of humanity and trust that he will say and be cured.

If you have learned to prescribe for the patient even though he suffer, if you have learned what is right and do not do it, it is a violation of conscience.

This paragraph appeals to man's integrity ; it is said in the last line "on principles that are at once plain and intelligible", just as soon as you leave out integrity, and believe that a man can do just as be pleases, you leave out everything that pertains to principle and you leave out the foundation of success.

But when these principles are carried out, when a man has made himself thoroughly conversant with the Materia Medica and thoroughly intelligent in its application when he is circumspect in his very interior life as to the carrying out of these principles, then he will lead himself into a use that is most delightful, because by such means he may cause diseases to disappear, and may win the lasting friendship and respect of a class of people worth working for.

He has more than that, he has a clear conscience with all that belongs to it ; he is living a life of innocence.

When he lives such a life he does not allow himself to wink at the notions that are carried out in families, as, for example, how to prevent the production of offspring, how to avoid bearing children, how to separate man and wife by teaching them the nasty little methods of avoiding the bringing forth of offspring.

The meddling with these vices and the advocating of them will prevent the father and mother from being cured of their chronic diseases.

Unless people lead an orderly life they will not be cured of their chronic diseases.

It is your duty as physicians to inculcate such principles among them that they may live an orderly life.

The physician who does not know what order is ought not to be trusted.

It is the duty of the physician, then, first to find out what is in man that is disorder, and then to restore him to health ; and this return to health, which is a perfect cure, is to be accomplished by means that are mild, that are orderly, that flow gently like the life force itself, turning the internal of man into order, with fixed principles as his guide, and by the homoeopathic remedy.

 

- Kent, J.t., “Lecture of Homoeopathic Philosophy.”

 

 

When they say they are treating the underlying causes, these vitalistic ideologists refer to a metaphysical life force rather than actual causes of disease such as viruses, bacteria, protozoa, genetic defects, radiation, chemical insult, and so forth.

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(1) 

The physicians high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.

Kent : Now. what is meant by the sick ? It is a man that is sick and has to be restored to health, not his body or his tissues. Tissue change is only the result of diseases. Well, then who is the sick man ? The tissues could not become sick unless something prior to them has been deranged to make them sick. The combination of will and the understanding, constitute man ; conjoined they make life and activity. It is the sole duty of the physician to heal the sick, It is not his sole duty to heal the results of sickness, but sickness itself, and when the man has been restored to health, there will be restored harmony in the tissues and in the activities. Then the sole duty of the physician is to put in order the interior of the economy ,i.e: the will and understanding. As Hahnemann says "They are no diseases, but sick people". The idea of sickness in man must be formed from the idea of sickness perceived in our materia medica. As we perceive the nature of sickness in a drug image, so must we perceive the nature of the sickness in a human being to be healed.

- Hahnemann, Dr. Samuel., “Organon of Medicine” with Kent’s Commentary)

 

(2)

Disease comes about only when two conditions are fulfilled: the presence of an external morbific agent and the patient’s own susceptibility. It is not merely the result of a number of microbic invaders. That is why an epidemic never hits everybody in a particular area.

An allopathic physician are taught that susceptibility is a major factor in the production of disease. This fact is taught, but it is subsequently ignored as the overwhelming emphasisi of medical training and practice focuses exclusively upon the theory of viral or microbic transmission of disease. It is readily acknowledged that people are protected from microbial attack by ‘antibodies’, but no further inquiry is made into precisely what triggers off the production of antibodies. Again, why is it that this happens to certain people and not to others?

The great American homoeopath of the nineteenth century, J.t.kent again writes:

 

          “They will tell you that the bacillus is the cause of tuberculosis. But if man had not been susceptible to the bacillus he could have not been affected by it... The bacteria are the results of the disease.... the microscopical little fellow are not the disease cause, but they come after. They are the outcome of the disease, are present wherever the disease is, and by the microscope it has been discovered that every pathological result has its corresponding bacteria.”

 

- Vithoulkas, George., “Homeopathy: Medicine of the New Man.”

 

 

In reality, chiropractic manipulative therapy's main value is symptomatic relief from back pain. Homeopathy has always been based upon symptomatic relief. Homeopathic remedies are based upon a process called "proving" which identifies prospective remedies by matching the symptoms they produce in high dosages with the symptoms reported by a patient.

Naturopathy is eclectic, but none of its nonstandard medical modalities is truly aimed at causation. The discovery of the true causes of disease can be attributed to the basic sciences. Pasteur was a chemist trying to understand how wine was made.

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The idea of a metaphysical life force has never been objectively verified, nor is the theory of its existence required to explain a single biological phenomenon. Scientific work on the real causes of disease are on-going. For a state of the art look at this, NCAHF recommends a review of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health.

Nonscientific Health Care Based upon Vitalism

A number of healing systems care are rooted in vitalism: "a doctrine that the functions of a living organism are due to a vital principle distinct from physicochemical forces, [3]" or, "the theory that biological activities are directed by a supernatural force; opposed to mechanism," [4] which denotes a paranormal "life force."

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In the thirteenth paragraph Hahnemann says :

   "Therefore disease (that does not come within the province of manual surgery), considered, as it is by the allopathists, as a thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and its animating vital force, and bidden in the interior, be it of ever so subtle a character, is an absurdity that could only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, and has for thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mischievous (non-healing) art."

The material notion referred to was that existing in the time of Hahnemann.

Materialism is still growing.

It seems impossible for the majority of men of the present day to perceive.

Perception, that is, seeing with the understanding, seems to be entirely lost.

The materialist refuses to believe anything that does not conforms to the laws of time and space.

It must be measured, it must be weighed, it must occupy space, or he has no idea of it, and will distinctly affirm that without this it is nothing and has no existence.

Everything beyond this is to the material mind poetical dreamy, mysterious.

So they look in vain in the material world for cause.

 

 - Kent, J.T., “Lecture of Homoeopathic Philosophy.”

 

 

Vitalists are not just nonscientific, they are antiscientific because they abhor the reductionism (ie, versus holism) of science, the materialism (versus etherealism) of science, and the mechanistic (versus mystical) causal processes of science. They prefer subjective experience to objective testing, and place intuitiveness above reason and logic.

( X )

 

Vitalistics are in sync with postmodernist antiscience liberal arts academics and are receiving aid and comfort from many of them who are in positions of influece. Vitalism is a powerful motivating force because it is inextricably linked to the concept of an immortal human soul -- a piece of the Divine that is the essence of existence. This connects vitalism to religious ideologies and explains why Sarton stated that "it is impossible to suppress the vitalist point of view; it dodges every blow and reappears under a new form." [5]

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In the thirteenth paragraph Hahnemann says :

"Therefore disease (that does not come within the province of manual surgery), considered, as it is by the allopathists, as a thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and its animating vital force, and bidden in the interior, be it of ever so subtle a character, is an absurdity that could only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, and has for thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mischievous (non-healing) art."

The material notion referred to was that existing in the time of Hahnemann.

Materialism is still growing.

It seems impossible for the majority of men of the present day to perceive.

Perception, that is, seeing with the understanding, seems to be entirely lost.

The materialist refuses to believe anything that does not conforms to the laws of time and space.

It must be measured, it must be weighed, it must occupy space, or he has no idea of it, and will distinctly affirm that without this it is nothing and has no existence.

Everything beyond this is to the material mind poetical dreamy, mysterious.

So they look in vain in the material world for cause.

You will never find a material entity as in any way causing anything. It has no causative power, no creative influence, no propelling influence.

Causes or simple substances are, in the natural state, in motion, and cause motion in the bodies that they occupy ; the natural state for simple substance is that of power, of mobility, of activity.

The natural state of matter is rest, quietude, silence ; it has no power to move unless acted upon.

Like the dead man, whose tissues are at rest, it has no action of its own.

But the simple substance dominates matter and animates it.

The two worlds, the world of motion, of power, and the world of inertia, exist in one.

There is a world of life and a world of dead matter.

The realm of thought and the realm of matter are the realm of cause and the realm of result.

Causes are invisible, results are visible.

We see the actions of material substance, but the thinking man has only to reflect to see that these actions that are visible in material form are but result of the cause that exist in the form of simple substance which is invisible to the natural eye but visible to the spiritual eye or understanding.

The materialist cannot grasp this idea, he cannot think in this way.

We have the grandest confirmation of these things in the wonderful action of our potencies in the varying degrees in which they operate upon man, from the lowest to the highest.

You will discover in course of time that in a large number of chronic diseases our antipsorics will cause changes in the economy, curative or otherwise, in from five to seven different potencies.

In this you have the demonstration of degree of simple substance, and their relation to different planes in the interior of the economy.

Organon § 14. There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is curable, and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable, which does not make itself known to the accurately observing physician by means of morbid signs and symptoms - an arrangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of human life.

This we have already spoken of.

Every curable disease is made known to the physician by signs and symptoms.

Incurable diseases have few signs and symptoms, and by their absence, the disease is often thus known to be incurable.

By watching the patient gradually decline without any symptoms but those which are the common expressions of pathological conditions, we see that the case is incurable and is going down to death.

All curable maladies, therefore, have signs and symptoms in order to make themselves known ; their purpose is to shadow forth the disorderly condition of the vital force or interior of man, so that the physician may read it and understand its nature.

This imaging forth when the human race is in a state of ignorance, or materialism, is like seeds sown upon stony ground ; there is no man to understand them, to apprehend their meaning.

The images of sickness are continually being formed, and only wait for a man intelligent enough to observe them, to understand their meaning to translate them, and it is possible for men, by the doctrines of Homoeopathy, to become wise and intelligent enough to be conversant with these signs.

In this paragraph we also see Hahnemann's recognition of Divine Providence