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Hahnemann and the Natural Healing Power
(part of a forthcoming book by R. Verspoor and Steven Decker) 
Why Medicine Should Not Imitate Crude Nature
The idea of the natural healing power, or vis medicatrix naturae, is based on direct experience throughout history of cases of recuperation without medical intervention, what allopathy today refers to as "spontaneous remission." Hippocrates made it into a formal observation. Because the use of medicines was limited in its effectiveness, efforts to assist patients were seen by Hippocrates and others since in terms of supporting this natural healing power. So-called modern medicine no longer relies on it directly in treatment, but relies on it indirectly for the patient's recovery from the effects of drugs and surgery. In contrast, the natural medicine movement relies on it almost exclusively in treatment. Allopathic medicine in Hahnemann's time used harsh methods, such as purgatives and bloodletting, which were justified on the basis that they were imitations of the very efforts of nature to remove disease. In theory, this sounded laudable. Who could object, at least in theory to trying to follow what nature herself, the great natural healing power, attempted in cases of disease? Hahnemann objected, and strenuously. He condemned not only the practical excesses of this medical approach, which others had done before him, but the very theory itself on which it was based, namely the idea that the natural healing power could ever cure disease. For this he was strongly attacked. Hahnemann's enemies had cast upon him the reproach — Your method of treatment is a direct contradiction of our great teacher, Nature. Open your eyes! A rush of blood to the head, a congestive headache, is healed by nature by a wholesome bleeding from the nose. We copy nature and draw blood when congestion is present. You fly in nature's face and reject bleeding. In case of opthalmia you see an eruption make its appearance in the continguous parts of the face, and the inflammation is thereby diminished. We follow this hint of nature and excite an artificial eruption or inflammation by means of blisters, moxas, cauteries, setons, etc. Have you never seen the original malady relieved by metases? Have you never seen a skin eruption disappear on the supervention of diarrhoea? At variance with nature you try to fulfill her requirements. (Bradford, p. 213, quoting from Ameke's History of Homeopathy). Hahnemann's views were a problem not only for the allopaths, as there were many homeopaths who had difficulties with them. Hahnemann's attitude towards natural healing was just as great a stumbling-block to his friends as the psoric theory. A large part of the hostile attacks on him and his theory was based on reputed statements of the innovator concerning this very question... From our modern point of view it does indeed seem incomprehensible that any reasonable man -- expecially if he have a medical training — should deny the existence of natural healing or, in other words, the occurrence of self-healing in the human organism. (Haehl, Vol. I, p. 282). Not much seems to have changed from the time this was written (1922). In 1836, the Central Homeopathic Society of Magdeburg, Germany passed a resolution rejecting Hahnemann's views: Hahnemann certainly does not deny the existence of natural healing. But he describes its action as not being always worthy of imitation and as being rarely sufficient. This opinion of Hahnemann's as everyone must know, has never been shared by the majority of homoeopaths. (Haehl, Vol. I, p. 282) Both of the main biographers of Hahnemann, Bradford and Haehl, found this issue a thorny and embarrassing one and both took pains to try to show that the criticism leveled at Hahnemann was incorrect. Both cite passages that show that Hahnemann supported this power despite other passages that seem to say the contrary. Both conclude that Hahnemann accepted the natural healing power, but that he had a very limited view of its role. In the end, Hahnemann's views remain an embarrassment and apparent contradiction, papered over by his supporters through weak protests that he did indeed support the vis medicatrix naturae. The apparent contradiction is never really explained and this awkward conclusion is at odds with the general view as to Hahnemann's genius and the truth of his system of remediation. As the two main biographers, Bradford and Haehl point out, Hahnemann was highly critical of the natural healing power of the human being, but also had some positive things to say about it. How can such seemingly contradictory statements be reconciled, other than to cite the positive passages and protest rather weakly that Hahnemann was indeed a friend of nature? One is reminded of the line from Shakespeare, "Methinks he doth protest too much." Indeed, homeopathy is today often represented in terms of this prevailing orthodoxy such that the action of the remedy is seen solely as one of supporting the natural healing power, which is seen as synonymous with the vital force. Most modern books explaining homeopathy usually contain a section that describes the positive role of symptoms of the patient in removing disease matter and thus helping to heal the organism in the case of disease. This action of the system is attributed to the abstract "vital force" and is often referred to as the "defense mechanism." Such a section also tends to make clear that this positive view of the symptoms of the patient is in contrast to the allopathic tendency to see such symptoms as negative and harmful. When disease occurs, the first disturbance occurs on the dynamic electromagnetic field of the body, which then brings into play the defense mechanism. This concept was first enunciated definitively as the basis for therapeutics by Samuel Hahnemann...In Aphorism 11 of his monumental masterpiece, The Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann writes: 'This vital force is the one which is primarily deranged by dynamic influences upon it of a morbific agent.' For any therapy to be effective, it is obvious that the practitioner must cooperate with this process and must not deviate from it at all. Since the defense mechanism is already responding with the best possible response, any deviation from the direction of its action must inevitably be of a lesser degree of effectiveness. This is why therapies that are based upon intellectual theories and partial comprehension of the totality can only inhibit the process of cure, and often produce actual harm to the organism through suppression. Since the activity of the defense mechanism originates on the dynamic plane, the most logical therapeutic approach would be one which enhances and strengthens this level, thus increasing the effectiveness of the organism's own healing process. (Vithoulkas, The Science of Homeopathy, p. 87-89) This view is reinforced by the argument that allopathic medicine strives to suppress the symptoms, seen as the efforts of the vital force to remove the disease. Surely, homeopathy does the opposite of what allopathy does! Thus, we have the following picture in so-called classical homeopathy: Disease is an imbalance in the 'vital force,' and the symptoms of the patient are the efforts to restore balance. The homeopathic remedy acts to support and strengthen the 'vital force' so that this natural healing process can then overcome the disease. Disease is seen mainly as a quantitative disturbance of the patient's 'vital force,' which is equated to the natural healing power; the removal of disease is seen, in turn, as a function of the strength (quantity) of the 'vital force.' Finally, the symptoms of disease are seen as positive efforts of the 'vital force' to restore health and are to be supported. This view is very much like the vitalism prevalent in the late 18th and much of the 19th century. Vitalism teaches that the final basis of all processes in the organism is the vital principle...Illness is an affection of the life power and is expressed by disturbances in the movement, sensibility, etc. All disturbances call forth a reaction of the life power. Consequently, in treatment of illness the natural tendency to heal must be supported or regulated and the individual disease factors must be influenced by remedies having that specific effect... Healing takes place as a rule through the organism itself. Treatment should have primarily as its aim the maintenance of those forces needed by the organism for healing ... (Haehl, vol. I, p. 285) This vitalist doctrine "...acquired a prevalence in Germany lasting for decades under Hufeland's influence (1762-1832)." (Haehl. Vol. I p. 285). Yet, we cannot find this view of disease and of the remedial process in Hahnemann himself! Hahnemann was not a vitalist. Thus, we have a false dichotomy today between an allopathy (crude drugs) that opposes the symptoms of the patient, seen as the disease, without being able at the same time to remove the actual disease, because ignorant of the curative law of nature, and an allopathy (natural medicine) that seeks to support the symptoms, seen as the efforts of the organism to remove disease, without again being able to remove the actual disease because equally ignorant of the curative law. We then find a presumed homeopathy that is cognizant of the curative law, but conceives of the symptoms of the disease as something to support because it can only conceive of the symptoms as a positive function of the vital force (a one-sided abstraction of the functionally dual Living Power). The curative action of the homeopathic remedy [initial action] is reduced to a function of the healing power. Hahnemann stands apart from all of these views. His position was that the medicine destroyed disease, which the natural healing power was not capable of doing and that the ineffectual efforts of the natural healing power only added to the disease.
The vis medicatrix naturae is, for Hahnemann, only one side of this Living Power. It is another name for what he termed the sustentive power (Lebens-Erhaltungskraft). This side of the Living Power is what maintains us in health and what restores balance in the case of quantitative disturbances (over-eating, a cut to the hand, for example). It is also the side that restores balance once disease has been removed. Thus, the vis medicatrix naturae, for Hahnemann, cannot directly cure, that is, remove disease. This is because disease involves the other side of the Living Power, the generative power. Disease is not a quantitative disturbance, but a qualitative change in the state of the human being. It is an act of engenderment and this qualitative change cannot be removed by the quantitative efforts of the sustentive side (vis medicatrix naturae). It can only be removed by another disease, usually an artificial disease (medicine) based on the law of similars. This discovery of the fundamentally generative nature of disease is the greatest and most original revelation contained in Hahnemann's writings. It is also the one least understood and the origin of much of the confusion over the role of the homeopathic medicine. The discovery of the dual nature of the Living Power and the generative nature of disease came from Hahnemann's genius. However, it took the penetrating mind of Steven Decker to consciously discern the dual nature of the Living Power in Hahnemann's writings when translating the Extended Organon. Until Mr. Decker's careful scholarship, there was only a unidimensional view of the Living Power in homeopathy, expressed in the term "vital force," which was only the sustentive aspect being made to carry the whole burden of disease and remediation.
Hahnemann's criticism of the Old School thinking on the role of the natural healing power, which is contained centrally in the Introduction to the Fifth Edition of the Organon (retained by Hahnemann for the final, Sixth Edition), is a model of reasoning based on solid observation. It was important for Hahnemann to challenge the theory itself, for the excesses of treatment were always defended on the basis of this theory (substantial bloodletting, for example), leaving any criticism of any excesses ineffective. To destroy the excesses, one must reveal the false basis of such action. Hahnemann's argument concerning the vis medictrix naturae (what he termed crude nature) is as follows:
68. The old school merely followed the operation of crude instinctual nature in its indigent a] strivings to pull through only in moderate, acute disease attacks — it mimicked solely the Sustentive Power of Life, incapable of deliberation left to itself in diseases, which, incapable of acting according to intellect and deliberation, resting simply as it does on the organic laws of the body, works only according to these organic laws, — crude nature, which is not capable, like an intelligent physician, of bringing the gaping flews of a wound together and of healing by fusion, which does not know how to straighten and fit together the oblique ends of broken bones far apart from one another, however much it lets bone gelatine exude (often to excess), can tie off no injured artery, rather, in its energy, makes the injured bleed to death, which doesn't understand how to reset a dislocated shoulder, but, to be sure, hinders the art of bone-setting by the swelling that comes quickly to pass round about, — which, in order to remove a splinter stuck in the cornea, destroys the entire eye by suppuration and only knows how, with all its exertion, to dissolve a strangulated inguinal hernia by gangrene of the bowels and death, also, often in dynamic diseases, makes patients far unhappier by its metaschematisms than they previously were. 68. a] 1. In ordinary medicine one regarded the self-help of the nature of the organism in diseases where no medicine was employed as model treatments worthy of imitation. 68. a] 2. But they were greatly mistaken. 68. a]3. The lamentable, highly imperfect exertion of the Living Power for self-help in acute diseases is a spectacle that summons up active pity in humanity and musters all of the powers of our intelligent spirit in order to put an end to this self-torment by genuine remediation. 68. a] 4. If nature cannot homeopathically remedy an already-existing disease in the organism by employment of another new similar disease (§43-46), the likes of which are extremely rarely at her disposal (§50), and if it remains for the organism left to itself alone to overcome a newly arisen disease out of its own powers without outside help (in chronic miasms its resistance is powerless anyway), we see nothing other than agonizing, often dangerous exertions of the nature of the individual to save itself, cost what it will, ending not seldom with the dissolution of the earthly existence, with death. 68. a] 6. The inner process in diseases becomes known only through the perceptible alterations, ailments and symptoms — the only way our Life gives utterance to the inner disturbances — so that in each case at hand we never even come to know which of the disease symptoms is a primary action of the disease malignity or which is a self-help reaction of the Living Power. 68. a] 7. Both [actions and reactions] flow into each other before our eyes and present to us an outwardly reflected image of the total internal suffering, in that the unhelpful exertions to end the suffering of life left to itself are themselves sufferings of the entire organism. 68. a] 8. Therefore, often more suffering than remedial help lies even in the organized evacuations, called crises, brought about by nature at the end of rapidly arisen diseases. 68. a] 10. In the mean time, so much is certain, that the Living Power sacrifices and destroys more or less of the suffering parts in order to save the rest. 68. a] 11. This self-help of the Living Power, going to work upon elimination of the acute disease only according to the organic constitution of our body, not according to spiritic [mental] deliberation, is mostly only a sort of Allopathy; it arouses, in order to free the primary suffering organs by crises, an increased, often stormy activity in the excretory organs, in order to divert the malady of the suffering organs onto the excretory organs; there result vomiting, diarrhea, urination, perspiration, abscesses, etc., in order, by this provocation of remote parts, to achieve a sort of diversion from the originally sick parts, since then the dynamically strained nerve-energy appears to discharge itself as it were in the material product. 68. a] 12. Only by destruction and sacrifice of a part of the organism itself is the nature of the individual, left to itself alone, enabled to save itself from acute diseases and, if death does not ensue, to reconstitute the harmony of Life and health; however, only slowly and imperfectly. 68. a] 14. In a word: the entire process of the self-helping organism befallen with diseases shows the observer nothing other than suffering, nothing that he could or might imitate in proceeding in a genuine remedially artistic fashion. 80. However they did not realize that all those discharges and eliminations (apparent crises) organized by nature left to itself were only palliative, short lasting alleviations in chronic diseases, which contributed so little to a true remediation; that they, much to the contrary, only aggravated the original internal sickness by means of the thereby resultant squandering of vitality and humours. 83. Thus, when nature is left to itself with life-threatening endangerments from an internal chronic malady, it does not know how to help itself otherwise than by generation of outer local symptoms in order to divert the danger from the indispensable parts of Life and to guide them onto those formations dispensable for Life (metastases); however, these arrangements of the energic, intellect-lacking Living Power, incapable of deliberation and foresight, lead to anything but true help or remediation, they are merely palliative, short appeasements for the dangerous, internal suffering, dissipating a great portion of the humours and vitality without reducing the arch-malady by so much as a hair; without genuine homeopathic remediation, they can at most delay the inevitable downfall. 94. Since what crude nature does in order to help itself in diseases, in acute as well as chronic ones, is highly imperfect and is disease itself... 100. What intelligent human being would want to imitate it in its rescue operations? 101. These efforts are indeed simply the disease itself, and the morbidly affected Living Power is the engenderer of the self-manifesting disease! In a state of health, the sustentive aspect of the Living Power works admirably to keep the organism in dynamic balance. Discharges and eliminations are in the natural order of things and do not weaken the organism; rather they sustain it in health. However, in a state of disease, the sustentive power now tries but is unable to restore balance. The continual efforts to restore balance result in abnormal discharges and secretions, as well as inflammatory reactions and the like. These are indeed efforts to restore balance, but doomed to failure. They are, in fact, as Hahnemann points out, part of the disease itself (the counter-action). These efforts can lead to damage to a part in order to save the whole, if not to death itself. Such efforts are not to be imitated or supported. Rather, the disease must be destroyed. Only then can the sustentive aspect of the Living Power again regain its natural mandate and operate in a manner that is to the benefit, not detriment of the human being. The goal of the remedy provided on the basis of the law of similars is to destroy the disease so that the natural healing power, through the phenomenon of the counter-action, can restore balance in the newly restored state of health. It is not to support the disease creating effects of the sustentive power in the state of disease. The confused, but oft-repeated view that the homeopathic remedy supports the efforts of the "vital force" to heal is based on ignorance of the dual nature of the Living Power and the reality of disease (it is the disease that the remedy treats, not the patient directly). It is true that some disturbances of the organism can involve only the sustentive power, but these were not "degenerative" and could be healed from within and aided by regimen from without. However, eventually even such measures, if sustained long enough, affect the generative power to a degree by stricture, not conception (protracted disease). Then, the efforts of the sustentive power are insufficient and even dangerous to the organism unless aided by medicine. Even if aided by measures that support the sustentive side of the Living Power, the patient is unable to remove the disease, which has affected the generative power. Only remediation directed by the Heilkünstler can effect a destruction of this impingement on the generative side of the Living Power.
§.43.1. But the result is entirely different when two similar diseases meet in the organism, that is, when a stronger similar one joins with the already present disease. §.43.2. It is shown here how in the course of Nature cure can result and how people ought to be curing. §.46.1. Very many examples of diseases would be adducible, which in the course of nature were cured homeopathically by diseases of similar symptoms, if we did not have to keep solely to those few static diseases arising out of a fixed miasm, and thus worthy of a determinate name, so as to be able to speak of something determined and undoubted. §.46.2. Prominent among them, on account of the great number of its violent symptoms, is the so infamous smallpox disease that has already lifted and cured numerous maladies with similar symptoms. §.46.3. How common are the violent eye inflammations, mounting even unto blindness in cases of smallpox, and see! the latter, once inoculated, cured a protracted eye inflammation completely and permanently as reported by Dezoteux and another by Leroy. §.46.4. A two-year blindness, arisen from suppressed scald-head, yielded to it entirely according to Klein. §.46.5. How often did not smallpox engender deafness and dypsnea! and it lifted both protracted maladies as it had climbed to its greatest height, as J. Fr. Closs observed. §.46.6. Testicular swelling, even very violent swelling, is a frequent symptom of smallpox, and therefore it could cure by similarity a large, hard swelling of the left testicle arisen from a bruise, as Klein observed. §.46.7. And a similar testicular swelling was cured by it under the eyes of another observer.a] §.46.8. Among the trying occurrents of smallpox there belongs also a dysentery-like bowel movement, and, therefore, as a similar disease Potence, it conquered a dysentery according to Fr. Wendt's observation. §.46.9. The oncoming smallpox disease lifts the cowpox at once entirely (homeopathically) and does not let it come to completion, as is known, on account of its greater strength as well as its great similarity; however, on the other hand, due to their great similarity, the ensuing outbreak of smallpox is at least greatly diminished (homeopathically) and made more benign by the cowpox which has already neared its maturity as Mühry and many others attest. The problem is that nature has few means at her disposal to cure, namely the few fixed, constant diseases of infectious nature (miasms), whereas the reasoning power of man has resulted in many more curative agents (artificial diseases) derived from nature, but altered in form (dynamically) so as to be used safely, unlike the rather crude instruments of Nature. §50.1. Great nature itself has as homeopathic curative implements, as we see, only a few established miasmatic diseases as aids: scabies, measles, and smallpox, a] a] and the above mentioned skin-eruption-tinder which moreover is to be found in the cowpox lymph, disease Potences which, b] b] namely smallpox and measles are partly, as remedies, more life-threatening and atrocious than the maladies to be cured therewith, and partly (like scabies), after cure of similar diseases is accomplished, require cure themselves in order to be extirpated in turn — both circumstances which make their employment as homeopathic means difficult, uncertain and dangerous. §.50.2. And how few disease states are there among human beings which find their resonant (homeopathic) remedy in smallpox, measles and scabies! §.50.3. Only a few maladies can therefore be cured in the course of nature with these dubious and precarious homeopathic means, and success shows forth only with danger and great ailment, surely for the reason that the doses of these disease Potences do not lend themselves to reduction according to circumstances, as can be done with medicinal doses; on the contrary, the one afflicted with an old similar malady is covered over with the entire dangerous and troublesome suffering, the entire smallpox-, measles- or scabies-disease, in order to recover from the old similar malady. §.51.1. The curative law became known to the capable human spirit from such facts which were sufficient hereto. §.51.2. On the other hand, see what advantage man has over crude nature's chance events! §.51.3. How many more thousands of homeopathic disease Potences for the aid of his suffering brethren man has in the medicinal substances spread throughout creation! At this point, we can better appreciate the profound difference between Hahnemann's dynamic view of disease and the vitalism of his time. For the vitalists, the life force carries out both the functions of homeostasis and healing/curing. There is no distinction between its role in health (normal functioning) and disease (abnormal functioning). There is, further, no distinction between healing (the efforts of the sustentive power) and curing (involving the generative power). The life force is understood purely as a force that maintains and restores balance, thus, the sustentive side of the Living Power. The Living Power is reduced to the function of vitality (level of life energy). It is to be supported by regimen (much of the natural health movement - diet, vitamins, exercise, right living, avoidance of toxins, elimination of toxins, etc.) or by medicine (classical homeopathy, which speaks of the patient, not disease, and which sees the role of the medicine to support the efforts of the "vital force," not to destroy the disease). Without the profound insight into the dual nature of the Living Power, one is left with an abstract notion of disease and cure.
First, we need to recall the dual nature of disease as well as of the remedial process. For Hahnemann, both processes involve an initial action and a counter-action. The initial action is carried out by the disease Wesen (natural or artificial) on the generative power of the human Wesen, leading to the engenderment of a new disease Wesen inside the human Wesen. This creation of a state of disease then calls forth a response from the natural healing power, the counter-action. In the case of disease, the counter-action is unable to remove the disease lodged in the generative power, as the sustentive power has jurisdiction only within the state of health. However, in the case of remediation the artificial disease Wesen destroys the existing disease Wesen and then disappears on its own, leaving the natural healing power to restore balance, which it can do now that disease no longer exists. In the Sixth Edition of the Organon, Hahnemann sets out the role of the remedy. P.15. Homeopathy avoids therefore even the least enervation, also as much as possible every arousal of pain, because pain also robs the vitality, and therefore, for cure, it avails itself only of such medicines whose capacity to (dynamically) alter and resonify the condition it exactly knows and then searches out such a one whose condition-altering powers (medicinal disease) are in a position to abrogate the natural disease at issue by resonance (Similars by similars), and administers this simply, in subtle doses to the patient (so small that they, without causing pain or weakening, exactly suffice to lift the natural malady); whence the sequel: that without in the least weakening, tormenting, or torturing him, the natural disease is extinguished and the patient soon grows stronger on his own already while improving, and is thus cured — to be sure a seemingly easy, however very cogitative, laborious, arduous business, but that which fully restores the patients in a short time to health without ailment, and so becomes a salutary and blessed business. §.29.1 As each disease (not devolving solely upon surgery) consists only in a specific, dynamic, morbid mistunement of our Living Power (Living Principle) in feelings and functions, so is this Living Principle, dynamically mistuned by natural disease, seized during homeopathic cure by a somewhat stronger, resonant, artificial disease affection due to application of a medicinal Potence selected exactly according to symptom similarity; the feeling of the natural (weaker) dynamic disease affection is extinguished and disappears for it [the Living Principle] thereby, which affection from then on exists no more for the Living Principle, which is now solely occupied and governed by the stronger, artificial disease affection which, however, soon plays itself out leaving the patient behind free and recuperated. §.29.1. a] 1. The short active duration of the artificial morbific Potences which we call medicines, makes it possible that they, although stronger than the natural diseases, are far more easily overcome by the Living Power than the weaker natural diseases, which solely on account of their longer, mostly lifelong effective duration (Psora, Syphilis, Sycosis) can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone until the Remedial-Artist more strongly affects the Living Power with a very resonant morbific, but stronger Potence (of homeopathic medicine). §.29.1. a] 2. The diseases of many years standing, which (according to §46) were cured by an outbreak of smallpox and measles (both of which also run their course in only a few weeks), are similar processes. §.29.2. The Dynamis, so freed, can now continue life again in health. §.34.2. It is above all required for cure that it be an artificial disease as resonant as possible to the disease to be cured so as to shift, albeit with somewhat stronger power, the instinct-like Living Principle, capable of no deliberation and of no recollection, into a morbid sonation {tonation} very resonant to the natural disease, in order not only to obscure the feeling of the natural disease mistunement in the Living Principle but to entirely extinguish and so to annihilate the feeling. §.45.1. No, two diseases, indeed differing as to mode, but very similar to one another in their manifestations and actions as well as in the sufferings and symptoms caused by each of them, do always and everywhere annihilate one another as soon as they meet in the organism, namely, the stronger disease the weaker, and to be sure from a cause not difficult to guess: because the stronger additional disease Potence, on account of its active similarity, claims (and to be sure by preference) the same parts in the organism which were up till now affected by the weaker disease stimulus, that consequently can now no longer impinge, but expires, or in other words, because as soon as the new resonant but stronger disease Potence masters the Feeling of the patient, the Living Principle, on account on its unity, can no longer feel the weaker similar one; the weaker one is extinguished, it exists no more, for it is never something material, rather only a dynamic (spirit-like) affection. §.45.2. The Living Principle now remains affected by the new similar but stronger disease Potence of the medicament, however, only temporarily. At this point, we need to consider what happens when the artificial disease (medicine) has extinguished the original, natural disease. Essentially, Hahnemann states that the stronger artificial disease remains and the Living Power (sustentive side) organizes a counter-action, which in this case is successful, unlike the natural disease. This counter-action completes the process of heilen. We need to be aware here that the German term heilen (verb), or Heilung (noun), literally means to make whole (as in the old English term hale - hale and hearty) includes the concepts of healing and curing, and that the context will dictate which one is being used. In addition, the term remediation is sometimes used in English for the root word heil where the overall sense of making whole (that is, the process of initial action - curative action - and counter-action - healing action) is meant. Wholing is perhaps a better term, but seems somewhat awkward. P.14. Homeopathy is aware that remediation [Heilung] can only succeed by the counter-action of the Living Power against the correctly taken medicine — an all-the-more certain and faster cure, the stronger the Living Power is that still prevails in the patient. [this states that the counter-action is an integral part of the process] 103. No! that glorious power innate in the human being, ordained to conduct Life in the most perfect way during its health, equally present in all parts of the organism, in the sensible as well as the irritable fiber, and untiring mainspring of all normal natural bodily functions, was not at all created for purposes of helping itself in diseases, nor for exercising a Remedial Art worthy of imitation — no! true remedial art is that cogitative pursuit that devolved upon the higher human spirit, free deliberation, and the selecting intellect deciding according to reasons, in order to retune that instinctual, intellect- and awareness-lacking but automatic, energic Living Power, when said Living Power has been mistuned by disease to abnormal activity, by means of a resonant affection to the disease, engendered by a medicine selected homeopathically, the Living Power being medicinally diseased to such a degree, and in fact to a somewhat higher degree, that the natural affection could work on it no more, and thus it becomes rid of the natural disease, yet remaining occupied solely with the so resonant, somewhat stronger medicinal disease affection against which the Living Power now directs its entire energy, soon overcoming it, the Living Power thereby becoming free and able again to return to the norm of health and to its actual intended purpose, "the enlivenment and sustenance of the sound organism," without having suffered painful or debilitating attacks by this transformation. §.29.1 As each disease (not devolving solely upon surgery) consists only in a specific, dynamic, morbid mistunement of our Living Power (Living Principle) in feelings and functions, so is this Living Principle, dynamically mistuned by natural disease, seized during homeopathic cure by a somewhat stronger, resonant, artificial disease affection due to application of a medicinal Potence selected exactly according to symptom similarity; the feeling of the natural (weaker) dynamic disease affection is extinguished and disappears for it [the Living Principle] thereby, which affection from then on exists no more for the Living Principle, which is now solely occupied and governed by the stronger, artificial disease affection which, however, soon plays itself out leaving the patient behind free and recuperated. §.29.1. a] 1. The short active duration of the artificial morbific Potences which we call medicines, makes it possible that they, although stronger than the natural diseases, are far more easily overcome by the Living Power than the weaker natural diseases, which solely on account of their longer, mostly lifelong effective duration (Psora, Syphilis, Sycosis) can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone until the Remedial-Artist more strongly affects the Living Power with a very resonant morbific, but stronger Potence (of homeopathic medicine). §.29.2. The Dynamis, so freed, can now continue life again in health. §.51.4. In them he has disease-engenderers of all possible operational diversities [working actions] for all the countless, conceivable and inconceivable natural diseases against which they can afford homeopathic aid — disease Potences (medicinal substances) whose power, conquered by the Living Power after completed curative employment [that is, the initial action - see 64], disappears of itself without requiring repeated aid for expulsion time and again, like scabies — artificial disease Potences, which the physician can dilute, divide, potentize up to the limits of infinity and whose dosage can be decreased to the point that they remain only just a little bit stronger than the similar natural disease to be cured by them, so that it requires no violent attack on the organism by this matchless curative mode in order to eradicate even an old stubborn malady, indeed, that this manner of cure, as it were, forms only a gentle, unnoticeable but often swift transition from the tormenting natural suffering into the permanent health desired. In the above references, Hahnemann refers to the Living Power acting against the artificial disease (medicine). In Aphorism 64 Hahnemann provides us with detail on this counter-action. It can occur in two forms. In the first form (natural diseases), the Living Power simply replaces the artificial disease with an opposite condition-state from nature, thus completing the "wholing." In the second form, there is no equal opposite condition-state (unnatural diseases) and the Living Power (sustentive side) seems to rouse itself to overcome the artificial disease before then establishing balance. §.64.1. During the initial-action of the artificial disease Potences (medicines) upon our healthy body, our Living Power appears (as seen from the following examples) to comport itself purely conceptively (receptively, passively as it were) and thus, as if forced, to allow the impressions of the artificial Potence impinging from without to take place in itself, thereby modifying its condition, but then, as it were, to rally again and a) to generate the exact opposite condition-state, when there is such a one (counteraction, after-action), to this impinging action (initial-action) in equal degree to that which the impinging action (initial-action) had on it by the artificial morbific or medicinal Potence, and according to the measure of the Living Power's own energy, or, b) when there is not an exact opposite state to the initial-action in nature, the Living Power appears to strive to assert its superiority by extinguishing the alteration actuated in itself from without (by the medicine), in place of which it reinstates its norm (after-action, healing-action). In summary, the process of heilen is as follows: 1. The artificial disease (medicine) removes (extinguishes, annihilates, cures) the original disease (termed initial action - Erstwirkung) by means of its ability to alter the generative power where the disease is lodged (qualitative action). 2. The Living Power (sustentive side) then attempts to remove the artificial disease (counter-action - Gegenwirkung), just as it had earlier attempted to remove the original disease. This is a quantitative action. However, in this case, the effort is successful because the artificial disease, while stronger, is of shorter duration (due to the small dose and dynamic form). It is not entirely clear whether the medicinal disease leaves of its own accord, or if this leaving is the result of the counter-action. We can gain a further clue from Aphorism 68. §.68.1. Experience shows us that in homeopathic cures following the uncommonly small medicinal doses (§275-287) which are necessary in this curative mode, and which were just sufficient, by similarity of their symptoms, to tune-over the similar natural disease and to expel the natural disease from the Feeling of the Living Principle, some small amount of medicinal disease still continues on alone initially in the organism occasionally after extirpation of the natural disease, but, because of the extraordinary minuteness of the dose the medicinal disease disappears so transiently, so easily and so quickly by itself, that the Living Power has no more considerable counteraction to take up against this small artificial mistunement of its condition than the counteraction of elevating the current condition up to the healthy station (that is, the counteraction suitable for complete recovery), to which end the Living Power requires but little effort after extinguishing the previous morbid mistunement. (See §64 B) The medicine "extirpates" the natural disease while the Living Power "extinguishes" the mistunement caused by the medicine. This is akin to hiring mercenaries to rout the enemy, then having to make the necessary arrangements to send off the mercenaries while also cleaning up after the battle (repairs to roads, rail and power lines, etc.). 3. The result of the counter-action is to complete the process of restoration. Without the counter-action there would be a break or hole. The complete restoration of health (heilen) requires the counter-action triggered by the initial action of the resonant medicine to restore the damage caused by the natural disease (and any damage caused by the artificial disease where the dose was not optimum).
68. The old school merely followed the operation of crude instinctual nature in its indigent a] strivings to pull through only in moderate, acute disease attacks... 68. a] 3. The lamentable, highly imperfect exertion of the Living Power for self-help in acute diseases is a spectacle that summons up active pity in humanity and musters all of the powers of our intelligent spirit in order to put an end to this self-torment by genuine remediation. 68. a] 6. The inner process in diseases becomes known only through the perceptible alterations, ailments and symptoms — the only way our Life gives utterance to the inner disturbances — so that in each case at hand we never even come to know which of the disease symptoms is a primary action of the disease malignity or which is a self-help reaction of the Living Power. 68. a] 7. Both [actions and reactions] flow into each other before our eyes and present to us an outwardly reflected image of the total internal suffering, in that the unhelpful exertions to end the suffering of life left to itself are themselves sufferings of the entire organism. 68. a] 8. Therefore, often more suffering than remedial help lies even in the organized evacuations, called crises, brought about by nature at the end of rapidly arisen diseases. 68. a] 10. In the mean time, so much is certain, that the Living Power sacrifices and destroys more or less of the suffering parts in order to save the rest. 68. a] 11. This self-help of the Living Power, going to work upon elimination of the acute disease only according to the organic constitution of our body, not according to spiritic [mental] deliberation, is mostly only a sort of Allopathy; it arouses, in order to free the primary suffering organs by crises, an increased, often stormy activity in the excretory organs, in order to divert the malady of the suffering organs onto the excretory organs; there result vomiting, diarrhea, urination, perspiration, abscesses, etc., in order, by this provocation of remote parts, to achieve a sort of diversion from the originally sick parts, since then the dynamically strained nerve-energy appears to discharge itself as it were in the material product. 68. a] 12. Only by destruction and sacrifice of a part of the organism itself is the nature of the individual, left to itself alone, enabled to save itself from acute diseases and, if death does not ensue, to reconstitute the harmony of Life and health; however, only slowly and imperfectly. 72. The disease vanishes, to be sure, when acute, even under these heterogeneous attacks on remote, dissimilar parts, its course having been disposed only to short duration anyhow; — but it was not cured. 106. In not very dangerous cases, the acute diseases were held down so long by the old school by means of blood withdrawals or suppression of one of the chief symptoms by an enantiopathic palliative means, (Contrary Things by Means of Contraries) or suspended by means of counterirritating and drainage (antagonistic and revulsing) means, on sites other than the diseased ones, until that point in time when the natural course of the short malady was over — on detours robbing vitality and humours, and to such an extent that it was left to the individual nature of the one so treated to do the most and best for the complete dispatch of the disease and restoration of the lost vitality and juices — to the Sustentive Power of Life which, along with the dispatch of the natural acute malady, had to conquer the consequences of inexpedient treatment and so, in the innocuous cases, by means of its own energy, the functions could resume their normal relationship, however, often laboriously, imperfectly and with many an ailment. [Here we see that the counter-action plays a role in the removal of the disease, but not a direct role, as the disease leaves of its own accord, being self-limiting.] 107. It remains very doubtful whether the recovery process of nature be really foreshortened or alleviated even a bit by this intervention of the hitherto medicinal art in diseases, in that the latter could not go to work in any other way than indirectly just like the former (the Living Power), but its drainage and antagonistic procedure is far more aggressive and robs far more vitality. 156. In all ages, the patients who were cured effectively, rapidly, permanently and visibly by a medicine, and not by any chance by another beneficent event or by the acute disease running its course, or finally recovered over time by a gradual preponderance of the bodily powers during allopathic and antagonistic treatments — for the direct cure differs very greatly from recovering in an indirect way — (although without cognizance of the doctor) have been cured solely by a (homeopathic) medicament, that had the power of itself to generate a resonant disease state. Here cure is related to the homeopathic medicine, and recovery - restoration of balance to the counter-action of the sustentive power. Thus, we can have recovery without cure. Next we need to consider an instance where there can be cure [of the disease] without recovery [restoration of health]. Consider the case of someone who has insufficient vitality to mount a counter-action. Hahnemann states that this counter-action is an integral part of the process of remediation (heilen). Thus, we can have the removal of the disease by means of the homeopathic remedy, but a failure to complete the process by the restoration of damage caused by the disease to living function and tissue. These cases tend to be called "incurable" in the literature. Kent gives an example of this in his Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, p. 256. The patient needs a particular remedy based on the symptoms, but the healing reaction does not clear. The "vital reaction was impossible," meaning that the Living Power could not mount a proper counter-action to complete the remediation, and Kent concludes that "he was an incurable case." We can also consider cases where the patient was near death and the well-indicated remedy provided a cure, visible in the improvement in mental and physical state with a relaxation and calmness, followed by a peaceful death. Here again, the remedy was able to cure, but the level of the sustentive power in the organism was insufficient to complete the process of restoration of health. [ Back to Articles ] [ Top of page ]  |