However, this law has been used empirically. Neither in the Organon nor in any other writings or teachings of Hahnemann and the homeopathic school can be found a clear and concise explanation of why like cures like. The proof offered has been negative rather than positive.
Therefore the allopath says: "You tell me that ~"like cures like,"
~and that you can prove it at the sickbed; but unless you can give me good and valid reasons why it should be so, I cannot and will not believe that it is your "similar" which cures the patient. How do I know it is your "potency"? The patient might recover just as well without it."
With the aid of the three laws of cure, I shall endeavor to give the reasons and furnish the proofs for our contentions. The laws alluded to are: The Law of Cure, the Law of Dual Effect and the Law of Crises.
~Similia similibus curantur~ is only another way of stating the fundamental Law of Nature Cure: "Every acute disease is the result of a cleansing and healing effort of Nature."
If a certain set of disease symptoms are the result of a healing effort of Nature, and if I give a remedy which produces the same or similar symptoms in the system, am I not aiding Nature in her attempt to overcome the abnormal conditions?
In such a case, the indicated homeopathic remedy will not suppress the acute reaction, but it will help it along, thus accelerating and hastening the curative process.
In the last a.n.a.lysis, disease resides in the cell. The well-being of the organism as a whole is dependent upon the health of the individual cells of which it is composed. This has been explained more fully in connection with the action of stimulants.
In order to cure the man, we must free the cell of its enc.u.mbrances.
Elimination must begin in the cell, not in the organs of depuration.
Laxatives and cathartics, by irritating the digestive tract, may cause a forced evacuation of the contents of the intestinal ca.n.a.l, but they do not eliminate the poisons which clog cells and tissues.
In stubborn chronic diseases, when the cells are too weak to throw off the latent enc.u.mbrances of their own accord, a well-chosen homeopathic remedy is often of great service in arousing them to acute reaction.
For instance, if the system is heavily enc.u.mbered with scrofulous taints and if its vitality is lowered to such an extent that the individual cell cannot of itself throw off the morbid enc.u.mbrances by means of a vigorous, acute effort, sulphur, if administered in doses sufficiently triturated and refined to affect the minute cells composing the organism, will start disease vibrations similar to those of acute scrofulosis, and thus give the needed impetus to acute eliminative activity on the part of the individual cell.
The acute reaction, once started, may develop into vigorous forms of scrofulous elimination, such as skin eruptions, glandular swellings, abscesses, catarrhal discharges, etc.
Are High-Potency Doses Effective?
The question now arises: How large or how small must the dose be in order to affect the minute cells?
In the administration of medicines, the size of the dose is adjusted to the size of the patient. If half a grain of a certain drug is the normal dose for an adult, the proper dose of the same drug for a small infant, say, less than a year old, may be about one twenty-fifth of the adult dose. How small, in proportion, should then be the dose given to a cell a billion times as small as the infant?
The dose given to an adult would paralyze or perhaps kill an infant.
In like manner the minute cell would be benumbed and paralyzed by the drug suited to the infant"s organism.
But this is how allopathy effects its fict.i.tious cures. It suppresses inflammatory processes by paralyzing the cells and organs and their vital activities.
Homeopathy adapts the smallness of the dose to the smallness of the cell which is to be treated. Herein lies the reasonableness of the high-potency dose.
The Personal Responsibility of the Cell
The cell resembles Man not only in physical and physiological aspects, but also in regard to the moral law.
Elimination must commence in the cell and by virtue of the cell"s personal effort. Its work cannot be done vicariously by drugs or the knife. Large, allopathic doses of medicine may be given with the idea of doing the work for the cell by violently stimulating or else paralyzing the organism as a whole or certain ones of the vital organs; but this is demoralizing and destructive to the cell. The powerful doses calculated to affect the body and its organs as a whole make superfluous or paralyze the individual efforts of the cells and thus intensify the chronic disease conditions in cells and tissues.
Alms-giving, prison sentences and capital punishment have a similar allopathic effect upon Man, the individual cell of the social body.
Instead of providing for him the proper environment and the opportunity for natural development and for working out his own salvation, they take this opportunity away from him and weaken his personal effort or make it impossible.
The Efficacy of Small Doses
The late revelations of chemistry, Roentgen rays, x-rays, radio-activity of metals, etc., throw an interesting light upon the seemingly infinite divisibility of matter. A small particle of a given substance may for many years throw off a continuous shower of corpuscles without perceptibly diminishing its volume.
For an ill.u.s.tration we may take the odoriferous musk. A few grains of this substance will fill a room with its penetrating aroma for years. When we smell musk or any other perfume, minute particles of it bombard the end filaments of the nerves of smell in the nose.
Therefore the musk must be casting off such minute particles continually without apparent loss of substance.
With the aid of this recent knowledge of the true nature of matter, of the minuteness and complexity of the atom, we can now understand how the highly triturated and refined (attenuated) homeopathic remedy may still retain the dynamic force of the element, as Hahnemann has expressed it, and how a remedy so attenuated may still be capable of exerting an influence upon the minute cell. Since chemistry and physiology have acquainted us with the finer forces of Nature, demonstrating that they are mightier than the things we can apprehend by weight and measure, the claims of homeopathy do not appear so absurd as they did a generation ago.
Undoubtedly, the good effect produced by a well-chosen remedy is heightened and strengthened by the mental and magnetic influence of the prescriber. The positive faith of the physician in the efficacy of the remedy, his sympathy and his indomitable will to a.s.sist the sufferer affect both the physical substance of the remedy and the mind of the patient.
The varying mental and magnetic qualities of prescribers have undoubtedly much to do with the varying degrees of efficaciousness of the same remedy when administered by different physicians.
The true Hahnemannian homeopath, who believes in his remedies as in his G.o.d, will concentrate his intellectual and spiritual forces on a certain remedy in order to accomplish certain well-defined results.
The bottle is not allowed to become empty. Whenever the graft runs low, it is replenished with distilled water, alcohol, milk sugar, or another "vehicle." Every time he takes the medicine bottle into his hands, these potent thought forms are projected into it: "You are the element sulphur. You produce in the human body a certain set of symptoms. You will produce these symptoms in the body of this patient."
If there is any virtue at all in magnetic, mental and spiritual healing, the homeopathic remedy must be an effective agency for transmitting magnetic, mental and psychic healing forces from prescriber to patient.
Transmission of these higher and finer forces, whether directly, telepathically or by means of some physical agent, such as magnetized water, a charm or simile, etc., is the modus operandi in all the different forms of ancient and modern magic, white or black.
It is the active principle in mental healing, Christian Science, sympathy healing, voodooism, witchcraft, etc.
Homeopathy and the Law of Dual Effect
I have formulated the Law of Action and Reaction in its application to the treatment of diseases as follows:
"Every agent affecting the human organism has two effects: a first, apparent, temporary one and a second, lasting one. The second effect is directly opposite to the first."
Allopathy, in giving large, physiological doses, takes into consideration only the first, apparent effect of the drug, and thereby accomplishes in the long run results directly opposite to those which it desires to bring about. It produces the very conditions it tries to cure. As an example, note the permanent effects of laxatives, stimulants and sedatives upon the system. This has been explained more fully in Chapter Six.
On the other hand, the homeopathic physician may use the same remedies as the allopath, provided they produce symptoms similar to those of the disease, but he administers the different drugs in such minute doses that their first effect is noticed only as a slight "homeopathic aggravation," while their second and lasting effect is relied upon to relieve and cure the disease.
In other words, homeopathy produces as the first effect the condition like the disease, and counts on the second and lasting effect of the drug to bring about a permanent change.
If, in accordance with the Law of Dual Effect as applied to drugs, the primary, temporary effect of the homeopathic remedy is equal to the disease, it is self-evident that the secondary, lasting effect of the remedy must be equal to the cure.
This law has been proved by homeopathy for over a hundred years. An experienced homeopathic prescriber would no more doubt it than he would doubt the Law of Gravitation.
Homeopathy and the Law of Crises
Therefore, if the remedy be well chosen in accord with the Law of ~similia similibus curantur,~ the first homeopathic aggravation, which corresponds to the crisis of Nature Cure, will be followed by speedy and perfect readjustment. Nature has her way, the disorder runs its course, and the return to normal conditions will be quicker and more perfect than if the homeopathic remedy had not been employed or if Nature"s healing processes had been forcibly interrupted and suppressed by large, poisonous allopathic doses.
Homeopathy a.s.sists Nature in removing the old enc.u.mbrances, whereas allopathy changes the acute, inflammatory healing effort into chronic, destructive disease.
The Economics of Homeopathy
The Law of ~like cures like~ is of great practical importance from another point of view, namely, that of economics.
The best engineer is the one who accomplishes the maximum of results with the minimum of expenditure of force and with the least friction. The same is true of the physician and his remedies.
We have learned that drugs given in the coa.r.s.e allopathic doses attack and affect the organism as a whole. If, for instance, there is a catarrhal affection of the serous and mucous membranes of the respiratory tract accompanied by fever, the allopath will give quinine in large doses to change this condition. He may accomplish his aim; but if so, he does it by paralyzing the heart, the respiratory centers, the red and white blood corpuscles and the excreting cells of the mucous membranes. The body as a whole and certain parts in particular are saturated with the drug poison and correspondingly weakened. As allopathy itself states it: "Quinine reduces fever by depressing the metabolism" (the vital functions).
Homeopathic materia medica teaches that ~Bryonia~ has a special affinity for the mucous and serous membranes of the respiratory tract and that its symptomatic effects correspond closely to those described in the preceding paragraph.