I have highlighted Swedenborgian teachings, misapplication of Hahnemanns words and direct contradictions.
Mixing philosophy, religion and prejudice with fact is not a good idea ever.
LECTURES ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY
BY
James Tyler KENT, A.M., M.D.
Chronic diseases-psora
Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)
Dr Samuel HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)
In the work on “Chronic Diseases” Hahnemann refers to psora as the oldest most universal and most pernicious chronic miasmatic disease, yet it has been misappropriated more than any other.
“Psora is the oldest miasmatic chronic disease known. The oldest history of the oldest nation does not reach its origin. Psora is just as tedious as syphilis and sycosis, and is, moreover, hydra-headed. Unless it is thoroughly cured, it lasts until the last breath of the longest life. Not even the most robust constitution, by its own unaided efforts, is able to annihilate and extinguish psora.”
The three chronic miasms, psora, syphilis and sycosis, are all contagious.
In each instance there is something prior to the manifestations which we call disease.
We speak of the signs and symptoms of a disease, we speak of the outcroppings of the symptoms when we speak of syphilis, but remember there is a state prior to syphilis or syphilis would not exist.
It could not come upon man except for a condition suitable to its development.
In like manner psora could not exist except for a condition in mankind suitable for its development.
Psora being the first and the other two coming later, it is proper for us to inquire into that state of the human race that would be suitable for the development of psora.
There must have been a state of the human race suitable to the development of psora ; it could not have come upon a perfectly healthy race, and it would not exist in a perfectly healthy race.
There must have been some sickness prior to this state, which we recognize as the chronic miasm psora ; some state of disorder, some state that it would be perfectly rational and proper for man to undertake to solve as to its cause, as to its history, and as to its very nature.
Some will say, but if we undertake to do this we will have to accept the word of God as historical, as relating to the beginning, because there is no other going so far back.
There is no harm in reasoning from that and I hope you will so accept it, not only as history, but as divine revelation, not that I wish to quote from or refer to it, because I never do so in my teaching.
If we look upon syphilis we will see that man’s own act leads him to the place where he comes in contact with syphilis; it is the result of action.
Syphilis is that disease which corresponds to the effect of impure coition, of going where syphilis is, of coming in contact with those who have it.
It is an action ; it is not so with psora.
Man does not seek it, he does not go where it is, he does not associate with those necessarily that have it.
He may be exposed; but syphilis is the result of his own action, which is an impure fornication or adulteration which he knows better than to seek, and knows enough from his intelligence to avoid.
Syphilis, then, is a result of action, although after once ultimated it may be perpetuated by accident.
There is always a state and condition of man that precedes his action, and if syphilis corresponds to man’s action, and there is a state prior to it a diseased condition that precedes, that state must correspond to that which precedes action, which is thinking and willing.
Thinking and willing establishes a state in man that identifies the condition he is in.
As long as man continued to think that which was true and held that which was good to the neighbor, that which was uprightness and justice, so long man remained upon the earth free from the susceptibility to disease, because that was the state in which he was created.
So long as he remained in that state and preserved his integrity he was not susceptible to disease and he gave forth no aura that could cause contagion ; but when man began to will the things that were the outcome of his false thinking then he entered a state which was the perfect correspondence of his interior.
As are the will and understanding, so will be the external of man.
As the life of man or as the will of man, so is the body of man, and as the two make one in this world, there is evolved from him an aura which is vicious in proportion to his departure from virtue and justice into evils.
And long before the time of Noah’s flood, which was an inundation that destroyed the evil ones that were upon the earth at that time, there was a manifestation, called leprosy, which was but the result of the dreadful profanity that took place in this period.
A great many people suffered then from the violent aura of leprosy, whereas the natural disorder of the human race today is a milder form of psora upon a different race of people.
If we had the same race upon the earth today we would have leprosy among them, as we now have the milder form of psora.
The ancients referred to leprosy as an internal itch.
Hence this state, the state of the human mind and the state of the human body, is a state of susceptibility to disease from willing evils, from thinking that which is false and making life one continuous heredity of false things, and so this form of disease, psora, is but an outward manifestation of that which is prior in man.
It was not due to actions of the body, as we find syphilis and sycosis to be, but due to an influx from a state, which progressed and established itself upon the earth, until we can see it as but the outward manifestations of man’s very nature.
The human race today walking the face of the earth is but little .better than a moral leper.
Such is the state of the human mind at the present day.
To put it another way, everyone is psoric.
We know what leprosy means, and to say that the whole world is in a state of psora is no broader or narrower than to say that leprosy prevails today upon the face of the earth, but it prevails in a milder form, in the form of psora.
A new contagion comes with every child.
As Psora piles up generation after generation, century after century the susceptibility to it increases.
This is true of every miasm and true of all drugs.
We find in the drugged world that those who have been mercurized become more susceptible to Mercury and are more easily poisoned by it.
Those poisoned with Rhus are so sensitive to it that they cannot go within a whiff of it ; those that have been poisoned in their earliest beginning with psora become more sensitive to it, so that in childhood the slightest whiff of it from their school friends will bring on a crop of vesicles between the fingers attended with the acarus.
Of course, some persons will say that the acarus is prior to the eruption, but they don’t know that a healthy person will not be affected by the acarus.
The miasm is simply evolved out of a state and the acarus is in turn its ultimate.
It is the state that is prior, the itchbug is not prior.
The human race becomes increasingly sensitive generation after generation to this internal state, and this internal state is the underlying cause which predisposes man to syphilis.
If he had not psora he could not take syphilis ; there would be no ground in his economy upon which it would thrive and develop.
The will and the understanding are prior to man’s action.
This is fundamental. The man does not do until he wills ; he wills what he carries out.
If man did what he did not will, he would be only an automaton.
He wills to go to a house of prostitution, or seeks far a prostitute with whom to copulate and from her he takes the syphilitic miasm.
This action of his will and this disease corresponds to the man.
There is a state in which he thinks it only, in which he wills, but in which he has not yet arrived at the state in which he can act.
First there was the thinking of falses and willing of evils, thinking such falses as led to depraved living and long for what was not one’s own, until finally action prevailed.
The miasms which succeeded psora were but the outward representations of actions, which have grown out of thinking and willing.
Psora is the oldest outward expression of the diseases of the human race representing this vital beginning, and next exists that state that corresponds to action.
Thinking, willing and acting are the three things that make up the science of the life of the human race.
Man thinks, he wills and he acts.
Now, that aura which is given out from the human race at any period of its history is that which corresponds to the state of the human race.
The children inherit it from their parents and carry it on and continue it.
As the internal is so is the external, and the external cannot be except as the result of the internal.
The internal state of man is prior to that which surrounds him ; therefore, environment is not cause ; it is only, as it were, a sounding board ; it only reacts upon and reflects the internal.
One who has the prior, which is internal, may have that which can follow upon the external ; it flows, as it were from the internal and effects its forms upon the skin, upon the organs, upon the body of man.
Such is influx and the inflowing is always in the direction of the least or no resistance ; so that it is in the direction of man’s affections, man’s loves.
Things flow in the direction he wants them to flow.
Diseases correspond to man’s affections, and the diseases that are upon the human race today are but the outward expression of man’s interiors, and it is true if the diseases are such they represent the internal forces of man.
Man hates his neighbour, he is willing to violate every commandment ; such is the state of man today.
This state is represented in man’s diseases.
All diseases upon the earth, acute and chronic, are representations of man’s internals.
Otherwise he could not be susceptible, or could not develop that which is within him.
The image of his own interior self comes out in disease.
This state has continued to progress, and it has accumulated and become complex.
The original simple psora has added to it syphilis and sycosis, and these progress and have now effected a state, they have continued to effect a state in mankind, whereby the race is so susceptible to acute affections that many of our citizens have every little thing that comes along, and every little epidemic of influenza brings them down with an acute attack.
This could not be but for the complications that a man has caused himself to get into, or has taken upon himself.
This was not done in one generation, but has been accumulating upon the face of the earth so long as we have a history of man.
Otherwise man would not be sick, for he should be a perfect animal in his animal nature.
Look at the perfection of all things put upon the earth ; see the plants, how perfect they are ; but man by his thinking evils and willing falses has entered upon a state wherein he has lost his freedom, his internal order, and is undergoing changes which the animal kingdom in its period, and the vegetable kingdom in its period, did not take on.
The miasms that are at the present day upon the human race are complicated a thousand fold by allopathic treatment.
Every external manifestation of the miasm has in itself a tendency to straighten mankind, but the human race is being violently damaged and diseases are being complicated for the reason that these outward expressions are forced to disappear by the application of some violent or stimulating drug.
At the present day nobody will acknowledge that he had the itch in his childhood, until it is seen by some intelligent mother that it is wise to tell the doctor everything.
The itch is looked upon as a disgraceful affair ; so is everything that has a similar correspondence ; because the itch in itself has a correspondence with adultery, only one is adultery as to internals and the other to externals, one succeeds the other.
So it is with all miasms.
And now we have the great miasms before us to treat, as physicians, in all their complications.
For instance, if a true sycotic gonorrhoea appears to us second hand it appears in its suppressed form, which is a thousand times worse than the original form.
All the outward manifestations have been made to disappear.
So it is with the external forms of psora, the vesicular and squamos eruptions, and all the outgrowths and outcroppings of psora.
Every conceivable thing has been resorted to to destroy its manifestations, and the disease has grown and grown until nobody can tell what its outcome will be.
How long can this thing go on before the human race will be swept from the earth with the results of the suppression of psora ?
From the suppression of psora we have cancerous affections, organic diseases of the heart and lungs, phthisis, and general destruction of the body.
How long can it go on ?
If Homoeopathy does not spread, if it does not establish its doctrines upon the earth so that sick folks can be headed under its principles, this threatening state and condition will increase.
Allopathic physicians are multiplying rapidly, and they are all doing the same thing, even more so now than at the time of Hahnemann.
It does seem as if Homoeopathy had become a necessity, but the kind of Homoeopathy that is preached in the majority of our schools will not check the progress of psora.
The majority of the college teachers sneer at the doctrine of psora ; they sneer at the miasms and continue in their efforts to establish Homoeopathy upon an, allopathic basis.
Homoeopathy as taught in the colleges at the present day is simply an attempt to establish Homoeopathy upon an allopathic basis, using allopathic names, calling chronic affections by different names, and treating diseases of organs by name.
No study is made of psora, but allopathic books are their textbooks.
Syphilis is not treated from cause to effect, but simply in the way of driving it back or holding it in abeyance, without any effort to permanently cure it.
The patient is filled with Mercury, the Iodides and other strong drugs, drugs that are well known to subdue it temporarily by an allopathic effect.
Psora has progressed until it has become the most contagious of diseases, because the more complicated it becomes the more susceptible are our children to its beginnings, and its contagion adds to the old disease; and while it goes on the children become increasingly sensitive to the other miasms.
The human race at the present day is intensely susceptible to psora, to syphilis and sycosis.
“Psora,” says Hahnemann, “became, therefore, the common mother of man’s chronic diseases.
It can be said that at least seven-eighths of the chronic maladies existing at the present day are due to psora.”
True, if psora could be brought back in a series to its simple state the external of the body would become wonderfully had to look upon, but the internal would be in a much better state.
The vesicular eruptions that come are sometimes dreadful to look upon, horrible in proportion to the vanity of the patient, but these must be allowed to evolve themselves and then wonderful good comes to the economy.
Hereditary states roll out in these manifestations, internal evils flow into external manifestations and Homoeopathy continues to drive them outward and outward, thereby leaving the economy in a state of comparative freedom.
Very commonly itch will not yield to the homoeopathic treatment immediately, because the action of the remedy is routing the heredity within, causing it to flow out more exteriorly into manifestations without.
One who does not know this, of course, loses heart when his remedies do not at once wipe out the eruption,
A sickly child may come out with eruptions, and if the child is treated properly the sickness will flow out into the eruption and that child will be cured from within out ; and finally after much tribulation the outward trouble will pass away, carrying with it the internal trouble.
So that when it is said that the appropriate remedy did not immediately wipe off the skin and make it smooth, and, therefore Zinc ointment or Sulphur ointment was resorted to, we see that it is a violation of law, and a wonderful damage to the patient.
Then Hahnemann gives a long list of cases with authorities, quotations and references which you should certainly look over.
He also gives the symptoms that he collected while observing and investigating.
It was the wonderful similarity between those symptoms when grouped together, representing an image of psora, and those symptoms representing an image of Sulphur, which led Hahnemann to the use of Sulphur in psoric conditions.
In psora we have the images of many remedies; all of the deep acting remedies have more or less something of the nature of psora.
Since illness was to him nothing material, but a dynamic discord of the life force which is so closely dependent on the blood, every removal of blood seemed to him to be sheer dissipation of the life force necessary for the recovery of equilibrium in the physical state. In opposition to such wastage he demands the strengthening of the blood by suitable medicines, acting moderately, so that it may overcome the disease. The blood, the vital fluid, must at most be improved by regularised mode of life and suitable nutriment. Hahnemann can never express strongly enough his indignation against the misuse of the life force as practised by his opponents, particularly when dealing with the idiotic procedure of Broussais’ phlebotomy in chronic diseases.
Prior to the IHM opening its own teaching facilities, some of us would teach in colleges in Europe and give seminars around the world. One of the biggest observations made was that students would comment that acute illness would respond very well to the application of homeopathic medicine, but that more chronic cases would not respond at all or only very feebly.
So what is the I.H.M. doing?
During the 2000s, I spent a lot of time visiting museums, libraries and medical establishments in the USA reading old books that had not yet been copied and released via the Google project.
The last few months has seen the Institute intently examining the writings of Samuel Hahnemann with special reference to his thoughts regarding Chronic Diseases. I have often referred to it as a ‘theoretical’ postulation, but of late have come to realise that my understanding of his position has been deeply flawed, and it is far more than a theoretical writing.
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Vera Resnick IHM DHom Med (Lic)
Kentian Philosophy by Chandran K C
Kentian Philosophy- Theological Influence That ‘Divorced’ Homeopathy From Scientific Knowledge System For Ever.
By mixing up homeopathy with religion and theology, it was Kent who created the greatest divide between modern science and homeopathy.
Kent said in Lesser Writings: “You cannot divorce medicine and theology. Man exists all the way down from his innermost spiritual to his outermost natural”.
Remember, these are not the words of a religious preacher. These words were spoken by a great physician while explaining the philosophy of homeopathy to his students. This statement clearly exposes the world outlook of Kent, which he used abundantly while explaining homeopathic philosophy.
Kent can be rightfully called the ‘father’ of ‘spiritual’ homeopathy.
James Tyler Kent is considered to be next only to Samuel Hahnemann in the history of homeopathy. The repertory he complied still continues to be beyond any doubt the most widely used repertory among homeopathic community. What a neophyte understands as homeopathic philosophy is actually ‘Kentian
philosophy’. Kent’s ‘Philosophical Lectures’ is used as the basic text book to teach ‘homeopathic philosophy’ in colleges. No wonder the majority of homeopathic community vehemently resist any scientific thought or approach evolving in homeopathy. To be known as a ‘kentian homeopath’ is considered to be most respectable position among homeopaths.
I am quoting following statements of J T KENT from his two famous works, which amply demonstrate the ‘theological’ and ‘spiritualistic’ approach he consciously implanted into the body of homeopathic philosophy.
LESSER WRITINGS:
1. ‘You cannot divorce medicine and theology. Man exists all the way down from his innermost spiritual to his outermost natural.’ [Lesser Writings, p.641]
2. ‘A man who cannot believe in God cannot become a homeopath.” [p.671]
3. ‘The body became corrupt because man’s interior will became corrupt.’ [ibid, p.681]
4. ‘Man…becomes disposed to sickness by doing evil, through thinking wrong…’ [ibid, p.664]
5. ‘Psora is the evolution of the state of man’s will, the ultimates of sin.’ [ibid, p.654]
6. ‘This outgrowth, which has come upon man from living a life of evil willing, is Psora.’ [ibid, p.654]
7. ‘Thinking, willing and doing are the 3 things in life from which finally precede the chronic miasms.’ [ibid, p.654]
PHILOSOPHICL LECTURES:
1. ‘…had Psora never been established as a miasm upon the human race… susceptibility to acute diseases would have been impossible… it is the foundation of all sickness.’ [Lectures, p.126]
2. ‘Psora…is a state of susceptibility to disease from willing evils.’ [ibid, p.135]
3. ‘The human race today walking the face of the earth, is but little better than a moral leper. Such is the state of the human mind at the present day. To put it another way everyone is Psoric.’ [ibid, p.135]
4. ‘Psora…would not exist in a perfectly healthy race.’ [ibid, p.133]
5. ‘As long as man continued to think that which was true and held that which was good to the neighbour, that which was uprightness and justice, so long man remained free from disease, because that was the state in which he was created.’ [ibid, p.134]
6. ‘The internal state of man is prior to that which surrounds him; therefore, the environment is not the cause…’ [ibid, p.136]
7. ‘Diseases correspond to man’s affections, and the diseases upon the human race today are but the outward expression of man’s interiors… man hates his neighbour, he is willing to violate every commandment; such is the state os man today. This state is represented in man’s diseases.’ [ibid, p.136]
8. ‘The Itch is looked upon as a disgraceful affair; so is everything that has a similar correspondence; because the Itch in itself has a correspondence with adultery…’ [ibid, p.137]
9. ‘How long can this thing go on before the human race is swept from the earth with the results of the suppression of Psora?’ [ibid, pp.137-8]
10. ‘Psora is the beginning of all physical sickness… is the underlying cause and is the primitive or primary disorder of the human race.’ [ibid, p.126]
11. ‘…for it goes to the very primitive wrong of the human race, the very first sickness of the human race that is the spiritual sickness…which in turn laid the foundation for other diseases. [ibid, p.126]
It is obvious from these quotes that Kent took a very puritanical and moral approach towards the origins of disease within the human race and he apparently felt that Psora was equivalent to ‘Original Sin’ or the ‘Fall of Man’. That is why he says ‘homeopathy cannot be divorced from theology.
Hahnemann only said that Psora was the most ancient and insidious miasm, and that it was derived from skin eruptions of various types in the past, such as scabies (Itch), leprosy and psoriasis. These had been contracted by ancestors or in one’s own early childhood. The suppression of these conditions especially through the use of ointments he held to be the primary cause of Psora.
“Psora is that most ancient, most universal, most destructive, and yet most misapprehended chronic miasmatic disease which for many thousands of years has disfigured and tortured mankind… and become the mother of all the thousands of incredibly various chronic diseases… [Chronic Diseases, p9]”
But Kent, in his Lectures, greatly enlarged upon the theory of miasms, proposing that Psora was the foundation of all other illness, without which mankind would be pure and healthy both in mind and body, as in the Garden of Eden. He thus regarded Psora as being equated with the ‘Fall of Man’ and with original sinfulness. He portrayed Psora in this highly moralistic light as also being the foundation of the sexual miasms that came later.Beyond any doubt, Kent here deviated a lot from original concepts of Hahnemann regarding miasms, there by making homeopathy more of theology than medical science.
The theory of miasms originates in Hahnemann’s book The Chronic Diseases which was published in 1828. Around the same time that hahnemann decided to fix 30c as the standard potency for all homoeopaths. He declared that the theory was the result of 12 years of the most painstaking work on difficult cases of a chronic character combined with his own historical research into the diseases of man. But it was kent, who made homeopathy an art of ‘ultra high’ dilutions.
From the quotes above, it is clear that Kent emphasized the moral aspect of origin of miasms, connecting it with ‘sexual sins’. Hahnemann unlike Kent, attached no moral dimension whatsoever to the sexual nature of the two latter miasms.
See Kent saying: ‘You cannot divorce medicine and theology”. And, ‘A man who cannot believe in God cannot become a homeopath.”
Being spiritual does not necessarily make one a ‘good’ homeopath or ‘bad’ homeopath. If one know how to apply simila similibus curentur correctly, and have enough knowledge of materia medica, anybody can be a ‘good’ homeopath. It was Kent, who unnecessarily introduced the issue of being spiritualist or not as a condition to be a ‘good’ homeopath. His statement that “one who does not believe in god cannot be a homeopath” is totally irrelevant. Hahnemann never placed that condition. It was Kent who ‘married’ homeopathy with theology- not Hahnemann. I was discussing that aspect of Kent’s contribution in my article. In my opinion, without freeing homeopathy from this ‘theological’ and ‘spiritualistic’ philosophy of kent, we cannot study and practice homeopathy as a ‘medical science’. Homeopathy will remain a ‘theological’ or ‘spiritualistic’ healing art as kent wanted it to be.
A scientist can be a spiritualist also. But a man with ‘scientific world outlook’ cannot be a spiritualist. You can give any number of great scientists who were spiritualists. Being a spiritualist, a scientist cannot utilize full potentials of scientific knowledge. To follow a ‘scientific world out look’ is is entirely different from ‘knowledge in science’. Homeopathy cannot be a ‘scientific medicine’, if you understand and practice it as ‘spiritual medicine’ or ‘theological medicine’. I know the influence of spiritualism and Kentian philosophy is very deep rooted among homeopaths, and my statement in this regard will not be easily accepted by the profession. But I am sure, homeopaths having ‘scientific world outlook’ will accept my statement.
Kent said “one who do not believe in god cannot be a homeopath. No man with a scientific world outlook can agree to this statement. Homeopathy as a medical science has nothing to do with ‘believing in god’. You can believe or not believe in god, and be a good homeopath.
I am fully convinced that without freeing homeopathic philosophy and homeopathic community from the spiritualistic or theological influence of ‘kentian philosophy’, we cannot hope homeopathy to become a scientific medical system.
Studying homeopathic philosophy directly from the original works of Hahnemann such as organon and chronic diseases, using scientific and logical mindset is essential first step to free oneself from the influence of ‘spiritualistic’ philosophy of Kent. Only then can we realize the importance of scientific understanding of homeopathy.
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