Its 4:53am. I am awake and my mind is thinking back to my childhood My mother would treat all our minor illnesses with different ‘natural’ products. My hay fever was ‘cured’ with a polypharmacy over the counter homoeopathic product. I grew up having a great respect for non mainstream medicines, but conversely would use the doctor when something non resolvable occurred. It was at this point in my late teens that I observed a difference in ‘alternative medicine’ ie herbal, and a medical treatment following a defined curative path, like acupuncture and homoeopathy.
Therein lies the dichotomy and the answer to mankinds choice. Modern medicine has decreed that it is the ONLY solution to all disease and is squeezing out everything that does not follow the allopathic mode. They point to ‘lifesaving’ medicines and treatments, ignoring the fact that the patient might be on a suppressive regime of medicines to quell the symptoms of whatever ails the patient for the remainder of their shortened life, only to succumb to an iatrogenic ending.
The strange thing is that medicine per se comes down to, not as one would expect, medicines, but to a choice of protocols. One involves a natural law and the other does not.
Hahnemann, in his monumental works, The Organon of Medicine, and the Chronic Diseases, gives a completely researched and science based observation of how living Organisms function in health and disease. I find it sad that this work which actually outlines the theory of modern disease processes is the most attacked medical practice today. Maybe its accuracy yet individualised treatment of a person is the root of the discontent felt by medical professionals. These professionals who believe that a blanket approach to drug therapy for the disease in question is the required response. It is a an easy solution. To treat a named disease instead of the individualised reaction to a named disease.
With the passing of years and growth in experience Hahnemann came upon to regard man more as an organism than as a machine. A machine is composed of many parts, originally separate. Once these parts are put together, its manifoldncss becomes unity. Like the human individual, it is assembled for a specific purpose.
It is both simple and complex. A machine is primarily complex and secondarily simple. However to the contrary, man is primarily simple and secondarily complex. He originates from a single cell. His growth means multiplication and self-differentiation of the primitive cell to form diverse tissues and organs. Thus an organism is not artificially made, but grows, not put together by the force from the outside, but develops from the centre to the periphery or from the whole to the parts.
In disease, we find the disturbance located in the ‘central like mechanism’ which is manifested through perceptible sensory and functional changes of the body as a whole; here nosology fails to be applied as the symptoms do not refer to any particular organ or tissue; and the man, though showing deviations from the perfectly healthy state, is not termed as specifically diseased.
This is the stage of Latent Psora. (INFECTION) In course of time the disharmony of the whole or central life is reflected on to the disharmony of life in the tissues or organs; and the disorder is manifested more on the functional plane related to tissues or organs. This is the stage of secondary psora (INFECTION DEVELOPMENT) when the disease is predominantly functional in nature without proportionate structural changes in the tissues and organs. This is followed by the tertiary stage of psora (DISEASE MANIFESTATION) where the gross structural changes in the tissues or organs appear—the domain of pathology proper and nosology. Central functional changes.
- functional changes of individual tissues or organs.
- gross anatomical/pathological changes of individual tissues or organs.
this seems to be the order of progression in chronic diseases. Here the disease process starts in a simple way and ultimately develops into multilateral directions accordingly as different tissues or organs (though originating from a primordial cell) are affected simultaneously or successively in course of time.
Hahnemann contends that the miasms (INFECTIONS) responsible for psora, syphilis and sycosis are of such a nature as they attack the central life-force at the outset and the primary derangement of the central life-force thus produced, makes the organism susceptible to many other agents to develop functional and structural changes in individual tissues or organs, thus providing occasions for diverse naming or labeling of diseased conditions corresponding to diverse tissues or organs damaged. So in Chronic. cases the central life-force is primarily disturbed.
As there is a central life mechanism corresponding to the whole, there is life in the parts, tissues or organs and there is life in every cell. Life is a scale of energy forming a sort of hierarchy from cell-life to collective or central life. Disease is disorder in any plane—material, vital or mental—as a whole or as a part constituting or conforming to the whole. In acute diseases, the disorder starts from lower scale of life in the tissues or organs and this disorder acts on the whole or central life, here the disease process is the resultant of the action of the part and the reaction of the whole to it. Here the disease process seems to start from outside to within or in the ascending order in the hierarchy of life. The central life mechanism is disturbed eventually but the change is of more a superficial nature analogous somewhat to the condition of “induced magnetism”.
In chronic cases, the whole or central life is attacked and disturbed first by some morbific agent of a miasmatic (INFECTIOUS) nature; this central disturbance leads to disturbance in the life of tissues, organs or cells.
Here the disease process seems to start from within outwards or in the descending hierarchy of life. That is why, in chronic diseases, constitutional symptoms (i.e., symptoms indicative of the disturbance of the central life mechanism) are more marked; whereas in acute cases, structural and functional changes of the tissues and organism overshadow the constitutional symptoms. Herein we get clues for evaluation of symptoms in case-taking to treat patients homoeopathically.
As is patently obvious, a person does not have to accept any of the above. Modern medicine accepts its own version and perception and stays within the bounds of its own concepts.
One thing I am sure of, the terminology gives it away. A ‘curative response’ comes from the organism and not from a medicine. Ergo a medicine CANNOT cure, it can only stimulate an organism to cure itself. If it does not follow this protocol, it is suppression.
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Vera Resnick IHM DHom Med (Lic)
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