"There is no question that I said something like the following before you did in public, verifiable: the remedy gets rid of the mistunement, and the VF gets rid of the symptoms. " (John Lunstroth - in private communication with the authors)

Reply:

Dear John,

Your above statement neatly summarizes what you have belabored for several months on the Internet. On that we agree. However, we must take issue with your statement that we said the same thing (or something like it), either before or after you did. We have never said the same thing, nor did Hahnemann.

Let's first examine what WE said (June 1999 publication) prior to YOUR (Spring 2000) raising the issue of the respective roles of the Living Power and the medicine:

"Hahnemann also states that the "...image of the total internal suffering" is what we are looking at, which is made up of the "primary action of the disease malignity" (what Hahnemann names in another context the "initial action") and the "self-help reaction of the Living Power" (what Hahnemann elsewhere calls the "back- or counter- or after- action"). (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 164, June 1999)

68 footnote "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. 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."

Both of these sides of disease need to come together to form the outward image of the inner disease process. However, where the vitality of the patient is weak, there may be little response, or the patient may have successfully blocked the energy flow so that none of the disturbance appears visible to him or others (what Reich terms the "successfully armoured" person).

Disease has a functional duality that mirrors the functional duality of the Living Power and that in turn is mirrored in the functional duality of the remedial process (the initial action and the after-action)." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 164, June 1999)

"When the sustentive aspect of the Living Power produces a counter-action against disease, in the absence of a resonant curative remedy, it becomes mixed up in the disease indications. As Hahnemann states, we cannot separate out the indications of the disease itself and those of the efforts of the Living Power to restore balance." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 177, June 1999)

"In contrast, the resonant remedy, given on the basis of the law of similars, destroys the existing disease through lysis, but then may, under certain conditions (encountering of armour or "barriers"), generate a crisis in the form of a particular counter-action." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 178, June 1999)

"Hahnemann explains the gentle (curative) action of the homeopathic remedy in natural disease.

P. 15. (Preface)
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 of only such medicines whose capacity to (dynamically) alter and re-sonify 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. (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 179, June 1999)

Hahnemann taught us about the dual nature of the Living Power. To understand this dual nature is to reap a harvest of further insight into his genius. However, this dual nature has effectively been ignored because its significance was not at all understood. Past translators buried the meaning of Hahnemann's dual-sided Living Power under the single and abstract term "vital force."

For Hahnemann, the Living Power consists of a sustentive aspect and a generative aspect." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 225, June 1999)

"It is also the sustentive aspect which provides the innate healing capacity of the organism (to restore balance after illness, to heal wounds, etc.), which Hahnemann called the counter or back-action of the Living Power." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 225, June 1999)

"P.103 ... 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 ..." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 226, June 1999)

"&#sect; 63.5. This back-action belongs to the Sustentive Power of our Life and is an automatic function of the same, called after-action or counteraction." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 227, June 1999)

"However, nature cannot cure disease on its own. Thus, the efforts of the purely instinctual sustentive aspect of the Living Power (crude nature) to restore balance without correct medical intervention (based on the law of similar resonance) results in the sacrifice of some part to save the whole. The suffering and morbid anatomy induced by the Living Power in its blind efforts to restore health becomes a part of the original disease. It is impossible to separate out what is due to the disease and what is due to the counter-action of the sustentive aspect of the Living Power." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 230, June 1999)

"The two views of the Living Power existed because no one had seen the dual nature of that Power. Hahnemann's insight into the generative power elegantly and powerfully resolved this apparent contradiction. Disease was not solely the efforts of the Living Power to restore health (a view held by much of the natural health movement and by classical homeopathy), but involved the generative power. 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. 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 affect a destruction of this impingement on the generative side of the Living Power." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 233, June 1999)

"P. 61.a] 1. Instead of extinguishing the malady rapidly, without digression, without loss of vitality, with homogenic, dynamic, medicinal Potences leveled directly at the diseased points in the organism itself as Homeopathy does." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 245, June 1999)

"&#sect; 68.1. Experience shows us that in homeopathic cures following the uncommonly small medicinal doses (&#sect; 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 extinguishment of the previous morbid mistunement. (See &#sect; 64 B)" (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 309, June 1999)

Instead of acting against a vacuum, the Living Power now faces the remains of the medicinal disease. In the face of this, it cannot simply oppose an equal energy to the vacuum; it must assert itself by a superior power to first overcome the medicinal disease. In addition to the ability of the Living Power to re-establish balance in the absence of disease, it is also able to overcome the artificial or medicinal disease where some is left after the removal of the natural disease. After this extinguishing of the medicinal disease, the Living Power then easily re-establishes balance. Why do provings actually strengthen health, according to Hahnemann, if not due to this phenomenon? (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 310, June 1999)

"&#sect; 22.1. ..so it follows, on the one hand, that medicines only thereby become remedial and are capable of annihilating diseases, and that the medicament lifts and extirpates the already present symptoms by arousal of certain occurrents and symptoms, that is, by engenderment of a certain artificial disease state..." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 313, June 1999)

"The eradication of the natural disease through the initial action occurs as a result of the action of the medicinal wesen and the subsequent action of the generative side of the Living Power. Thus, the initial-action consists of two sides as well, although the seminal action of the medicine initiates the germinal action of the ever present Kraftwesen.

&#sect; 63.3. Although a product of medicinal and Living Power, it [initial action] belongs more to the impinging Potence.

&#sect; 63.4. Our Living Power strives to oppose this impinging action with its own energy.

&#sect; 63.5. This back-action belongs to the Sustentive Power of our Life [Lebens-Erhaltungs-Kraft] and is an automatic function of the same, called after-action or counteraction." (Homeopathy Re-examined, p. 308, June 1999)

These quotes from our previous publication point out the following from Hahnemann:

1. Disease symptoms are derived from two sources: the initial action, that is the interaction of the disease and the generative side of the Living Power; and the counter-action, that is the action of the sustentive side of the Living Power against the disease.
2. It is the initial action of the medicine that destroys the existing disease, that is, the interaction of the medicinal Wesen and the generative side of the Living Power. Since some of the symptoms are due to the disease itself (derived from the initial action of the original disease Wesen), it follows that the removal of the existing disease Wesen in the patient will also result in the disappearance of some of the symptoms he is suffering from.
3. The counter-action of the sustentive side of the Living Power is against the medicinal disease Wesen. This action helps to lessen its duration (already self-limiting on account of the optimal dose), as well as to restore health. In the process, the rest of the symptoms disappear. It is not specified by Hahnemann if these symptoms disappear because the original disease was destroyed (that is, these symptoms were a product of the counter-action against the existing disease, so if the existing disease is removed, then the counter-action against this disease would cease, and so would the symptoms), but this seems likely, as the counter-action is now against the new, medicinal disease (compared to the unsuccessful counter-action against the existing disease that produced some of the original disease symptoms).

Here are a few more quotes from Hahnemann that reinforce the above picture already drawn and published in June 1999:

&#sect;.38.6. If mania joins consumption, the latter is taken away with all its symptoms by the former; however, if the insanity passes off, the consumption immediately returns and kills.

&#sect;.45.1. No, two diseases, a] 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, b] 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 of 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.

&#sect;.45.2. The Living Principle now remains affected by the new similar but stronger disease Potence of the medicament, however, only temporarily.

&#sect;.69.2.... the annihilation of the disease symptom should here take place with an opposed medicinal symptom, which however is impossible.

&#sect;.69.3. To be sure, the antipathically selected medicine touches the same morbid point in the organism just as certainly as the similar morbific, homeopathically selected medicine; however, the antipathically selected medicine, as an opposite, only lightly conceals the opposed disease symptom and makes it unnoticeable to our Living Principle only for a short time, so that in the first moment of the impingement of the palliative, the Living Power feels nothing unpleasant from either (neither from the disease symptom nor from the opposed medicinal symptom), since both appear to have mutually canceled and, as it were, dynamically neutralized one another in the Feeling of the Living Principle (e.g., the stupefying power of the opium voids the pain).

&#sect;.69.4. In the first minutes the Living Power feels healthy and is sensible of neither the stupor of opium nor the pain of disease.

&#sect;.69.5. But since the opposite medicinal symptom cannot (as in the homeopathic procedure) occupy the place in the organism (in the Feeling of the Living Principle) of the present disease mistunement like a similar, stronger artificial disease, hence cannot affect the Living Principle with a very similar artificial disease, like a homeopathic medicine, and so cannot step into the place of the hitherto natural disease mistunement, so must the palliative medicine leave the disease mistunement unextirpated, as it is entirely a deviation from the disease mistunement by opposition...

Thus, it is obvious that the first part of Mr. Lunstgroth's assertion (the remedy removes the disease) is a bit simplistic. The initial action has a dual aspect, which his one-sided view of the "vital force" obscures.

We would also ask Mr. Lunstroth to provide the quotes from Hahnemann that support his interesting idea (the counter-action removes the symptoms), since it is one that we cannot find anywhere supported in Hahnemann's writings, although it is a truism that the symptoms disappear as an aftermath of taking the correct remedy. That of course is found everywhere in Hahnemann.

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