Before we can discuss Principles, it is vital that the practitioner understands the rationale behind the approach of a homoeopath towards a sick patient.
Homoeopathy is a science and is focused on patient management of Disease. The process of analytics in managing a disease is based on a holistic overview of patient reaction to a disease influence. What is evident today in the poor training a homoeopath receives, is the harmful influence of the Swedenborg School of thinking (KENT) which is contradictory to the scientific mode of application as defined by Hahnemann and expanded on by Boenninghausen and others.
Hering and Kent and the influence of the American school of Homoeopathy did not influence the medical practice in the positive way the therapy displays it to be.
Kent And Hahneman
- S. Hehr, M.B.B.S., D.P.M.
(Originally Published in British Hom. Journal as “Was Kent a Hahnemannian?”, Vol. 73, No. 2, Re- edited by Dr R.S.Mann after consultations with Dr. G. S. Hehr)
Kent has been hailed as a true disciple of Hahnemann.1 There should be a reassessment in light of the following contrast between the view of Kent and Hahnemann:
On “authority” and “experience”
KENT:
“We must begin by having respect for law … Let us acknowledge the authority.”2
“… and medicine today, outside of homoeopathy, is a medicine of experience…It is necessary that the exact and proper position of experience should be realized … Experience has … only a confirmatory place. It can only confirmed that which has been discovered by principle…Experience leads to no discoveries … One who has no doctrines…imagines he discoveries by his experience”.3
HAHNEMANN: “Medicine is the science of experience…”4
“The true healing art is in its nature a pure science of experience …”5
“…the complete true healing art can never be the work of self-satisfied ratiocination…, but that the requisite for this … are only to be discovered but due attention to nature by means of our senses, by careful honest observations and by experiments conducted with all possible purity and in no other way…6
“I demand no faith at all and do not demand that anybody should comprehend it. Neither do I comprehend it; it is enough that it is fact and nothing else. Experience alone declares it, and I believe more in experience than in my own intelligence.”7
“But what and how much …can be determined by no speculative reason or unreason, but experience alone must determine…and in the domain of facts there is no appeal from experience…”8
On the relation of skin symptoms to internal malady
KENT: “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.”9
HAHNEMANN: “The diseases … springing from such one-sided destruction of the chief skin symptom (eruption and itching) which acts vicariously and assuages the internal psora (which destruction is erroneously called ‘Driving the itch into the body’)…”10
“All miasmatic maladies … are always present as internal maladies … before they show their local (skin) symptoms.”11
“… when the development of the (internal) venereal disease has been completed, only then diseased nature endeavours to mitigate the internal evil and to soothe it, by producing a local symptom…”12
“…some wretched casuists have considered as resulting from driving back of the poison out of the chancre into the interior body…”13
On Psora
KENT: “Psora is the beginning of all physical sickness. Had psora never been established as a miasm on the human race, the other two chronic diseases would have been impossible. All the diseases of man are built upon … it (psora) goes to the very primitive wrong of the human race … that is the spiritual sickness from which … the race progressed into … the true susceptibility to psora…”14
HAHNEMANN: “…the ailments and infirmities of body and soul … (if they do not belong to the two venereal diseases, syphilis and sycosis) are … manifestations of (psora).”15
“In Europe and also in other continents … only three chronic miasms are known…”16
“….and indeed so many that at least seven-eights of all chronic maladies spring from it (psora) … while the remaining eighth spring from syphilis and sycosis, or from a complication of two of these three … chronic diseases, or (which is very rare) from a complication of all the three of them….”17
On Vitalism
KENT: “Hahnemann could perceive this immaterial vital principle. It was something he arrived at himself, from his own process of thinking (but all historians mention that it was Joseph Barthez, b.1734, d.1806, who introduced the term “vital principle”18).
There was a paucity of individual ideas at that time… but Hahnemann thought much, and by thinking he arrived at the ideas contained in this (i.e. the 9th paragraph of the 5th edition of the Organon), which only appeared in the last (i.e. 5th.edition of 1833).”19
(Allusion to “vital force” appeared in the Chronic Diseases20 published in 1828, and in the fourth edition of the Organon that we shall refer shortly, Kent substitutes “simple substance for “immaterial vital principle” in the paragraphs subsequent to the one sited above – vide reference 19. This new expression appears to be Kent’s own coinage. Imputation of “much thought” to Hahnemann appears to be Kent’s projection of his own thinking, the result of which was the new expression. Hahnemann’s views on reasoning and speculation are clear in reference 8).
KENT: “…simple substance is endowed with formative intelligence…”21
HAHNEMANN: “… the instinctive, irrational, unreasoning vital force (instinktarige, verstandlose. keiner Uberlegung Fahige .. Lebnskraft — this could also be translated: instinctive, unable to reason/understand, without the capacity for reflection) 22 (the contrast between Kent and Hahnemann over the attributes of vital force is obvious from these words)…
“…unreasoning, merely animal vital force (die verstandlose, bloss aminal ische Lebenskraft).”23
On Bacteriology
KENT: “Hahnemann did not adopt any such theory as bacteriology”.
HAHNEMANN: “… the cholera miasm … grows into an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible creatures …”24 (How else could one have described bacteria at that time!)
Why was Kent so often wobbling off the pivot? Perhaps it was not for nothing that Jouanny wrote:
“The second trap is to do what certain absent-minded homoeopathic doctors do, namely to consider only the symptoms of the patient in his reaction to his disease, and in particular his psychic signs. This was the attitude of Kent and his spiritualistic school which went so far as to say that the pathognomonic signs of the disease have no importance in the selection of the homoeopathic drug.”
“This is a philosophical attitude which makes homoeopathy into theology, and considers man to be made only of the soul. There is a great danger here…”
“This attitude has practically destroyed homoeopathy in America where it was at one time a flourishing discipline. It is now practised by a few esoteric doctors.”
“One can say that this attitude is not in conformity with the methods set out and defined by Hahnemann, because generally the ‘psychic symptoms’ taken into consideration by the followers of Kent, are not experimental changes in the mental behaviour of a patient, but the psychological characteristics of susceptible types of individuals. This is the result of the subjective interpretation of the experimenter and the patient. These doctors select the homoeopathic drugs on the basis of psychic symptoms … such a practice can be justifiably criticized …”25
Kent’s homoeopathy is not necessarily always Hahnemannian. As Campbell recently put it : “Nevertheless, it does not take a very detailed study of the history of homoeopathy to show that modern practice actually differs in quite significant ways from Hahnemann’s own practice. In both England as well as America, for example, the influence of J.T.Kent, who imported certain ideas derived from Swedenborg, has been paramount since shortly after the turn of the century”.26
Hahnemann’s distinction between the responses of the animate and the inanimate; his view about adaptive responses of the organisms”, 28 his stress on the value of signals in biology;29 his almost foreshadowing of “the law of initial value” of Joseph Wilder,30 his near modern views on nutrition31 and his suggestions for psychological exercise32 are all missing from Kent’s writings. One feels constrained to ponder how far the words of Inglis (on the relation of Galen to Hippocrates) would apply also to the relation of Kent to Hahnemann.
“Ostensibly by the Hippocratic School, he was to subvert its teachings. Hippocrates, Galen admitted, had led the way … ‘He opened the road, I have made it possible’ … Galen was able to impose his views on how the road should be followed; and as a prolific writer, he saw to it that they were published.33
Conclusion-
- Kent was a Swedenborgian, and he can be accused of including the fundamental concept of a mystical correspondence between the spirit world and humans to Homoeopathy. Which distract the Homoeopathic philosophy from Hahnemann’s “Rationality” to Kent’s “Metaphysical”.
- This shift from the basic nature of reality of the human system compelled Kent to start unrealistic and unbalanced emphasis on “Mind” or “Mental Symptoms” or “Mental Origin” of every disease. Hahnemann is realistic and balanced in his approach in an individual case of sickness, he searched for the totality where is actually lies but Kent arranged the “Mind” always on the beginning of a case. Kent pushed the basic methodology of Homoeopathy towards “Irrationalism”.
- On Miasm, Hahnemann is certain about three different basic causes of diseases, Psora, Sycosis and Syphilis but for Kent, Psora is the only basic cause of all the diseases, including two other miasms too.
- Hahnemann always talks about the “gentle restoration” of the sick with only mild aggravations, but Kent admitted his was to cure with severe and long homoeopathic aggravations.
- Kent underlined the return of all the past symptoms, eliminations and exteriorization (developing skin lesions etc.) in a case is a good indication and path towards a cure, whereas Hahnemann marked them as organism’s defence or reaction against wrong prescriptions and excess of doses.
- Dr Kent may have a good, efficient and ardent homoeopath but his concepts and theories vary from Dr Hahnemann on most of the basic understandings of Homoeopathy which make differences in approach, the methodology for the treatment of a patient.
7. So accepting Kent as a true disciple of Hahnemann, as Kent himself claims, undermines the value of Hahnemannian theory and concepts of Homoeopathy. We must read and practice Homoeopathy as Hahnemannian methods and Kentian Methods, with their respective theories, concepts and differences from each other.
One method generally leads to a low success rate, If not outright failure.
In taking a case. A correct diagnosis would have been of equal importance
to the therapeutist and to the surgeon if each disease had a distinct cause, as characteristic of itself, as the disease is distinct from all others, however, this is not the case.
The same disease may arise from different causes in different cases, hence to the
therapeutist the diagnosis is of subordinate importance as a basis of treatment. It can be shown that constitutional peculiarities of a patient manifest themselves through certain concomitant symptoms which make a difference in the aggregate
of symptoms in each case. In each case of diseases bearing the same name, we find that the patient exhibits not only the symptoms of the named disease but also concomitant symptoms peculiar to the diseased patient and different from other diseased patients with the same disease name. Hahnemann realised that this combination of expressions of sympathetic disorders in other parts of the body now had become ‘Constitutional’ in its affection, and thus stopped being a local symptom, and the expression of the diseased patient has become an all-encompassing state.
These concomitant symptoms, along with other knowledge, force the homoeopath to relinquish the belief that the malady along with its local expressions is the sole object of treatment. The homoeopath is now forced to view the patient from a ‘causality’ view and look at the pattern of progression of development from all symptoms present, not just the local disease and in effect come to see that the sum of the symptoms is greater than just this new affection.
A clinical history, the basis for disease development in every individual, will necessitate the remedy having or corresponding to the sequence of physiological effects matching the patient’s disease in development. This disease ‘constitution’ in the medicine will be required to enable the patient to receive help from the similar. However, the homoeopath will take the FULL history and other episodes of dis-ease into account as well as the current issue.
Rational reasoning indicates that the development of diseases (with the same name) owes the difference in symptom exhibition simply because of the constitutional differences of each patient. To a therapeutist, the symptoms appearing in its evolutionary sequence represent the cause or a combination of causes of a particular disease condition.
So long as the disease is viewed as a local or anatomical problem, the question of determining the basis or indications of treatment, cannot be answered. A study of the clinical history of each case supplies the key to the solution of this problem.
This is one of the major differences in approach to treatment from allopathic therapeutics.
References:
1 Kanjilal et al – An Appeal to the Homoeopaths of India to Save Homoeopathy. Hahnemannian Gleanings 1979,XLVI,471
2 Kent J.T. – Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy. P.19,Chicago : Ehrhart & Karl, 1954.
3 Ibid – P.43.
4 Dudgeon R.E. – Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann. P.439, New Delhi: Swaran (reprint of New York; Willian Radde, 1852 edition)
5 Hahnemann S. – Organon der Heilkunst, P.7, Dresden: Arnold, 1819.
6 Ibid – P.15 -16.
7 Dudley P ed. – The Chronic Diseases by Samuel Hahnemann, P.124, f.n. New Delhi, Jain Reprint
8 Ibid –P.325
9 Kent J.T. – Lectures.P.27
10 Dudley P. – The Chronic Diseases, P.17.
11 Ibid – P.32.
12 Ibid – P.36.
13 Ibid – P.36 f.n.
14 Kent J.T. – Lectures.P146.
15 Dudley P. – The Chronic Diseases, P.8.
16 Ibid – P.9.
17 Ibid – P.14.
18 Castiglioni A. – A History of Medicine, P.586, New York: Alfred Knoff, 1958.
19 Kent J.T. – Lectures.P.76-77.
20 Haehl R. – Samuel Hahnemann: His Life and Work. P.136, New Delhi, B.Jain Reprint.
21 Kent J.T. – Lectures.P.79.
22 Hahnemann S. – Organon der Heilkunst, P.IV, Dresden and Leipzig, Arnold, 1829.
23 Ibid – P.146.
24 Hehr G.S. – Bacteriology and Homoeopathy.Br.Hom.J. 1982, 71,62,64-5.
25 Jouanny J. – Essentials of Homoeopathic Therapeutics, P.39, Laboratories Boiron, 1980.
26 Campbell A.C.H. – Editorial, Br. Hom. J., 1980, 69, 3.
27 Hahnemann S. – Organon der rationallen Heilkunde, P.5-8, Anm. Dresden, Arnold, 1810.
28 Dudgeon R.E. – Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann. P.62, Para 289-290.
29 Hahnemann S. – Fingerzeige auf den homoopathischen Gabrauch der Arzneien in der bisherigen praxis. Neues Journal der practischen Arzneikunde von Hufeland 1807, 43.
30 Dudgeon R.E. – Lesser Writings of Samuel Hahnemann. P.34.
31 Hehr G.S. – Hahnemann and Nutrition. Br. Hom. J. 1981,70,208-12.
32 Hehr G.S. – Self awareness and Homoeopathy, Br. Hom. J. 1983, 72, 90-5.
33 Inglis B. – Natural Medicine, 0.18. London, Collins, 1979.
Preface by Dr Donald MACFARLAN
Keynotes Of The Homoeopathic Materia Medica
by Dr. Adolph VON LIPPE
Preface.
by Dr Donald MACFARLAN
Dr Donald MACFARLAN
The I.H.M. will offer a comment on some of the statements presented here at a later date and compare them with Hahnemanns medical thinking for defined clarity.
One of the distinguishing features of homoeopathy is that the cure is accomplished by administering a medicine, the characteristic symptoms of which correspond with the characteristic symptoms of the patient. Within its distinctive sphere it is quite unfailing and immutable. Homeopathic medicines, following the analogy of nature, are all specific – definite agent with a definite purpose with power only for the fulfillment of its attainable object. Quite apart, however, from this viewpoint treatment is traditional theory and traditional practice which may be truly termed anti-pathic in application. The modus operandi may best be exemplified by example – a patient has pain, its opposite, opium is given. The malady is not cured, but stifled by stupor, only to awake with renewed violence with the wearing away of the effect of the drug and demanding augmented dosage for fugacious assuagement at each successive return. Homoeopathy, on the other hand, chooses a remedy capable of producing the same pain. It is directed solely to the part affected in minimal dose. From this action a cure results, for two similar diseases cannot exist in the same body at the same time.
The effects of medicine can only be ascertained by provings on the healthy human and the symptoms which these medicines have produced constitute the bulk of the Homoepathic Materia Medica. In order to effectively cure, it is first necessary to ascertain the characteristic symptoms of the patient, as Hahnemann teaches in the “Organon,” and next, to find the medicine which corresponds in the characteristics with those of the patient, which is done by means of the Homeopathic Materia Medica.
Characteristics symptoms show the peculiarities and differences of medicines, and have been ascertained by repeated verifications of symptoms obtained by provings on the healthy and cures on the sick. In one case the locality may be characteristic, as, for instance, under the apis mellifica, the right ovary, and under lachesis, the left ovary; in any case the sort of pain may be characterized as the burning-stinging pain of apis mellifica, or the burning-like-coal-of-fire pain under arsenicum album, or a gnawing pain under ruta. In another instance the conditions may be characteristic, as the ameliorations by heat under arsenicum, and the amelioration by cold under iodine and vice-versa; or conditionally the time of day, as under nux vomica, in the morning, lycopodium 4 P. M., arsenicum from 11 P. M. till 2 A. M., or in another instance the concomitant symptoms as cough with stitches in the small of the back (or rectum) under nitric acid, or cough with paleness of the face under cina. In some instances the mental symptoms may be characteristic, as convulsive and maniacal deliriousness with biting rage under belladonna, extreme mental excitability in association with pronounced sleeplessness under coffea cruda, or aggravated mental apathy with comatose states under arnica. Again the cause may be quite characteristic, as the effects from getting wet while in a perspiration, which comes under the pathogenesy of the rhus toxicodendron.
From a casual observance of these views it will be at once seen that the fundamental doctrine in homoeopathic theraputics is the doctrine of individualization. Man becomes affected primarily in his internals, and by this is solely meant his affectional and intellectual spheres of consciousness, which in point of face, make up the man himself, for it is the will and understanding which form the real individual. Sickness it its essence is a derangement proceeding from the innermost which spreads towards the outermost and it is a realization of this fact which has made homeopathy a distinct science of theraputic law. Consequently the homoeopathic physician views pathological tissues as results or ultimates and tries to perceive how the entire man has been changed from first to last, from mind to external tissue. Each person qualifies illness, as it were, by his or her distinctive personality and that coined aberration, as it were, has its simillimum in the pathogenesy of some homoeopathic medicine. From this it will be seen how a sickened individual is congnate to a sick-making substance – a thoroughly proven drug of our Materia Medica. The sickened one stamps his or her individuality upon a case of sickness, making it quite different from every other case, whilst the latter also behaves in a similar manner, for while it affects man in health through and through – from the mind to the hair and nails – it has a strange and peculiar way of doing it, quite different from any other drug in the entire materia medica. What is it but the inner nature of the drug, almost resembling the will and understanding of man, that has made it quite a distinct entity?
As regards potency, it may be stated that the suitable dynamization is best arrived at by practical experience. There is really no law of potency in one sense. Nevertheless all causes are in the simple substance which exists only in degrees of fineness, for a quantity can barely be predicated of it and as the innermost of the patient has similarly the series in degrees, the remedy to correspond to this must also be administered in potencies of various grades or degrees.
The requisites for homeopathic prescribing are: (1) The law of cure, (2) The single remedy, (3) The minimum dose. All of these items must enter into every correct prescription. It is interesting also to recall that the order in which the above requirements are enumerated are exactly that followed in their development. Hahnemann developed, to its most marked extent, the law of similars. His experiments to obtain the pathogeneses or sick-making powers of drugs naturally led him to apply them singly in diseases, that he might approach as closely as possible the correct correspondence. Finally the adoption and recommendation of the minimum dose was the result of the oft-verified observation, that in order to avoid exacerbation and, at the same time, to expedite cure in a direct, rapid and permanent manner the drug must be adminstered in the smallest possible amount, duly commensurate with its power of exciting similar symptoms in the healthy. In this connection, the drug, if properly chosen, exhibits the power of exerting a correspondingly strong reaction of the vital forces in the direction of health. Such a system of theraputics, embracing, as it does, the most careful individualization of the case at hand, as to its origin in hygenic, psychic or medicinal (abuse of drugs) causes, cannot be any other than the broadest, most truly scientific, and all-inclusive system of healing known to the health seeker of the future.
For valuable considerations given me in the compilation of this little work I wish to thank Dr. Wm. H Yaeger and Dr. Wm B. Griggs for proof-reading and suggestions germane to the form of presentation of the notes themselves and to Dr. E. P. Anshutz and John A. Borneman, Ph. D., for valuable suggestions. To my friend, Dr. G. Harlan Wells, I wish to extend many thanks for his kindness in publishing many of these characteristics in our state organ The Hahnemannian Monthly.
Donald Macfarlan.
1805 Chestnut St.
Philadelphia.
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