Art:Kunst.Hahnemann writes aboutdisease and cure in artistic as well as scientific terms. In fact,his artistic language is central to his treatise on the remedialart. The language of the various arts of music, painting, sculpture,architecture and poetry is exhibited throughout the Organon. Hahnemannpresents a full musical analogy in his use of the 'stimm' words,here translated with variants of tone.
intone fig. (trans.) To imbue with a particular toneof feeling; to tone. rare. OED
1883 H. Maudsley Body& Will ii.iv. 156 Every one is penetrated and intoned, so to speak, by thesocial atmosphere of the particular medium in which he lives.
Painting is evoked in hisuse of the term Bild (meaning picture, image) and his descriptionof the physician sketching the image of the disease (§192).The word "Gestalt" figures prominently in sculpture;Hahnemann uses it to describe the totality of symptoms in a caseof disease (§6). "Anlage" (meaning make-up, layout,or structure) is an architectural term; Hahnemann uses it in referenceto one's bodily constitution (§78). Hahnemann alludes tothe art of verbal expression in several ways: He uses the wordAeusserungen (which literally means utterances) to refer to themanifestations of disease (§11). He refers to the disease"expressing itself" through symptoms (§12), tothe "pure language of nature" (§144), to the physician's"articulation" of the disease case (§192) and tothe "voice of nature" (§262).
The quintessential featureof art resides in the creation of a symbol which presents a wholetruth, and in the appreciation of that symbol on the part of thebeholder. However, the curative artist's function is the reverseof that of the creative artist in that the patient creates thesymbol (the disease) which then must be understood and appreciatedby the Heilkünstler (semiotics). In a case of disease, thesymbol produced by the patient represents, not some absolute wholetruth, but rather the (counter)truth of his ignorant belief orhis separation from the truth. In other words, whereas the creativeartist starts from a truth and reproduces it, the creative capacityof the patient proceeds from a fundamental error and reproducesthat in his consequent symptoms. It is the office of the curativeartist to stand in relation with the whole truth and also to beable to experience the state of the patient in order to successfullytreat the patient's disease. See also