HAHNEMANNS CONTRIBUTION TO MEDICAL SCIENCE


HAHNEMANNS CONTRIBUTION TO MEDICAL SCIENCE. On account of the extreme minuteness of the homoeopathic doses, and the relation of homoeopathicity to the ailment, the Vital Energy does not revolt against the remedy as it naturally does against all foreign matter. According to the natural laws of equal and opposite action and reaction, minute doses cannot give rise to untoward and uncontrollable reactions.


To pay homage to the memories of great scientists, philosophers, heroes and martyrs is not vain idolatry. They are great towers of light and power capable of inspiring their followers, lending an added zeal, succour and support to the tired and worn-out spirits of those desirous of pushing on towards the goal. To think of those mighty minds of old now and then furnishes us with an opportunity to come closer to their lives and work and to refresh our memories as to the great principles and truths unfolded or emphasized by them for the benefit of humanity:

April 10, 1954, the 199th birthday anniversary of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, furnishes us with one such occasion to know something about this great scientists contribution to medical science and to the amelioration of human suffering in the simplest, safest and most effective way ever known to humanity.

You must often have heard the common arguments in favour of Homoeopathy, that it is simple, safe, economical and based upon certain unerring laws of nature. These in themselves are not mean attributes for a system of treatment, especially in a poverty-ridden country like India. But instead of talking about these commonplace features of Homoeopathy, I shall take you straight to the most out standing part of Hahnemanns message to humanity in general and to the medical scientists in particular.

For the purposes of the non-Hahnemannian medical scientists, man meant, as indeed it still means, his physical body and its material contents and components as perceptible to the senses, unaided or aided by scientific instruments and laboratory methods. A patient complaining of any pain or other ailment is subjected to a thorough physical examination, and by the application of the sciences of Physics, Chemistry and Biology are examined and analyzed the blood, stool, urine and other excretions and discharges to determine the components lacking or found in excess; organs and their functions are investigated with the help of X-rays, microscopes an other scientific instruments and apparatuses to detect any possible abnormalities.

Attempt is then made to supply the deficiencies, remove the excesses and remove superfluous growths or diseased organ; treatment by germicides, sera-vaccines, antibiotics, counter-irritants and sedatives is instituted, unfortunately at a cost prohibitive to a majority of patients. But it should be carefully noted that all these and similar scientific methods of diagnosis and treatment concern themselves with the physical or material plane of human existence; the mental and dynamic plane of mans existence is altogether ignored by this view. The question as to the real and ultimate cause of the findings on the physical plane referred to above had yet to be answered. It was left for Hahnemann to furnish the answer.

Hahnemann came to the conclusion that medical scientists started treating ailments without a clear conception of what was health, how it was maintained by nature, how illness was caused, what was its true nature and how it could be not merely temporarily relieved but radically cured without giving rise to unwanted side reactions of medicines. He started with first things first.

Man is, beyond all doubt, something more than a mere bundle of flesh, blood, bones, and the different physical and chemical components which can be seen with the eyes or analyzed in the laboratory. The conception of “man” is incomplete without the invisible dynamic Vital Energy that animates the physical body, keeping its organs and parts properly integrated as regards their normal structure and function, AUTOMATICALLY maintaining all these in harmonious vital operation, “so that the indwelling reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living healthy instrument for the higher purposes of existence.”

This is the state of well-being, free from any pain or abnormal sensations or even a consciousness of our various organs or of the functions or even a consciousness of our various organs or of the functions or even a consciousness of our various organs or of the functions going on inside the body. Now disease (disease) is just a negation or absence of this feeling of healthy ease, even if it amounts to a mere unpleasant sensation or pain, and is obviously caused by an invisible dynamic Vital Energy, expressing, itself through signs, symptoms and morbid sensations.

When this disturbed functioning of the Vital Energy is not corrected at the earliest stages by an intelligent grasp of the language of the Vital Energy according to the laws of nature, then it is that the structure and function of the organs become altered or the body becomes susceptible to invasion by germs and viruses, as the diseased vitality is no longer able to perform its natural automatic function of overpowering and destroying the germs and infections. It is at this stage that disease material plane where it can be taken cognizance of by the materialistic school of medical thought which can understand a man to be ill only when the laboratory tests according to physical, chemical and biological methods can detect some abnormality some where on the visible or material plane.

Before this stage in the development of disease arrives, the materialistic school of medical scientists refuse to consider a man to be ill, often pronouncing patients to be neurasthenic, or sick in imagination only, just keeping them on sedatives or nervine tonics only. For the limitations or shortcomings of “science” or of the diagnostician, the patient has to put up with unnecessary agony and suffering! The fact is that the real and ultimate cause of disease lies on the invisible dynamic or Vital plane which is beyond the ken of the senses or scientific apparatuses.

By diagnosing the disease and attempting to treat it in terms of the intermediate physical effects of the real dynamic disturbance behind it, wrongly and ignorantly designating them as the cause of disease, a real cure cannot be effected but only a sort of temporary relief can be provided. For example, by supplying Calcium from outside to make up a deficiency, you are not removing the dynamic cause on account of which Calcium is not being assimilated from the food; you are only trying to remove an effect which may or may not even be followed by a temporary relief.

TO HAHNEMANN GOES THE GREAT FOR NOT ONLY DRAWING THE ATTENTION OF THE SCIENTISTS TO THE ULTRA-PHYSICAL OR ULTRA-SENSUAL ASPECT OF HUMAN EXISTENCE AND TO THE ULTIMATE ORIGIN OF DISEASE IN THE DISORDERED FUNCTIONING OF THE VITAL ENERGY ON THE DYNAMIC PLANE, BUT ALSO OF DISCOVERING THE PRINCIPLES AND THE LAWS OF NATURE ACCORDING TO WHICH SUCH DISORDERS CAN BE UNDERSTOOD AND REMEDIED.

His conclusions were arrived at but he application of scientific methods, viz., experiment, observation and induction. Right here it may be pertaining to a big laboratory or elaborate instruments of apparatuses, or the patching, together of fragments of knowledge derived from the application of Physics, Chemistry or Biology to the human body, its contents and components. To justify a claim to be a scientific system of medical treatment, the system must have the following characteristics: (1) Accurate observation. (2) Correct interpretation of the observed facts with a view to understanding them in relation to each other and in relation to their causes. (3) Rational explanation of the facts by referring them to their real cause or law.

(4) Scientific construction, i.e. putting the facts in such coordination that the system reached shall agree with reality. Put Hahnemanns conclusions to these tests and them pronounce with an unbiased mind which of the two concepts of the origin and treatment of disease, the materialistic or the dynamic, is more rational and conforms to reality.

Natures Law of Cure, “Similia Similibus Curantur,” enunciated and expounded by him, is a perpetual monument to his genius, If his theory of the dynamic origin of disease and the law of similia were not correct, such infinitesimal doses of medicine could never cure sickness so magically, surely, and safely. The deranged Vitality accepts the homoeopathically indicated remedy in the infinitesimal potentised doses as the sorely needed gentle yet potent stimulus to counteract the morbid forces tending to makes the patient sick.

The Vital Energy ruling over the vital functions of the body with its unbounded sway is all powerful to kill automatically all germs or morbific sickening influences. So in a case of sickness, when the Vital Energy receives the required support from the indicated remedy, the germs automatically quit. In fighting the germs and viruses it develops a resistance against future attacks of the malady. In fact it is one of our strongest arguments against the use of antibiotics, the so called “wonder drugs,” that while they relieve the distresses of a patient during an attack, the do not allow this natural immunity to develop, for by destroying the germs they do not allow or help nature to fight the infection and build up this natural immunity, thus leaving him equally or more susceptible to future attacks of the infection. I say “more susceptible” for the germs develop power of resistance in their attempt to withstand their enemy.

R. S. Rastogi
R. S. Rastogi
B.A., M.D.S.
Dehradun, India