HAHNEMANNS GIFT TO AILING HUMANITY


Logically the best way to restore the integrity of the vital energy at the earliest stages of the advent of disease would be by applying gentle dynamic stimuli according to natures laws of healing rather than by using violent methods or crude force. When dealing with disease and restoration of health, we are in the realm of dynamics rather than matter. Disease and medicines can act on the body only in a nonmaterial dynamic way.


Mr. President, colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On this memorable occasion of the 200th birthday of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the discover of Homoeopathic Science of treatment, I extend to you all my hearty greeting and best wishes for your health and happiness. The lovers of Homoeopathy and innumerable grateful patients must today be paying their homage and tributes to his mighty genius. To my mind the best way of paying homage and tributes to a might mind of old is to examine his thought and work and to find out in what measure humanity has been or can be benefited by it.

Sick humanity is groaning for a system of treatment which may heal SAFELY, GENTLY, QUICKLY, PERMANENTLY, RATIONALLY, and be within the reach of the patients. If a system of treatment lacks even in one of these essential attributes, it cannot claim to be a satisfactory system of treatment. Is it not one of the sad and grim realities of life that Scientists are fiddling while humanity is groaning under sickness and suffering? What percentage of Indias population is to-day benefiting or is able to benefit from the grand discoveries which Science to-day claims to its credit in the medical field?

Drug manufacturing concerns finance of monopolise those discoveries and are reaping rich dividends, making the cost of drugs prohibitive even for the middle class of India, to speak nothing of the poor class. Moreover, the trend of modern medical Science is such that without a number of expensive laboratory tests, even a diagnosis cannot be made and the modern wonder – drugs cannot be properly used.

More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Hahnemann gave us Homoeopathy, a rational and scientific system of treatment which heals safely, gently, quickly and permanently, but the mists of prejudice, conservation and vested interests have been obstructing a clear view. The mists are, however, rapidly clearing and a closer approach is enabling the seekers of truth, all over the world, to perceive its beauties and useful potentialities. It is no mean achievement to the credit of Homoeopathy that in a short span of about 150 years, it has endeared itself of large sections of people and even won State recognition in most of the civilised countries of the world, like England, U.S.A, Brazil and Germany.

In India, it is officially recognised in U.P., Bihar, Bombay and Madhya Pradesh and other States too are gradually following suit. The U.P. Government has already decided to provide the State, in the second Five Year Plan, with a good Homoeopathic Medical College, with an attached indoor Hospital. Further schemes for the development of Homoeopathy and extending medical relief on Homoeopathic lines in rural areas are under the active consideration of the Government of U.P.

What then is the distinctive contribution of Hahnemann in the field of medicine and is it rational or scientific, or is it just quackery and a myth, as prejudiced or self – interested quarters would have the innocent or ignorant public believe? The word “Scientific”, as commonly used in connection with modern medicine, signifies the application of the Sciences of Physics, Chemistry and Biology to certain phenomena pertaining to human bodies in health and disease. By the application of these Sciences, the “Scientific” School of medicine has made far – reaching examination and analysis of the blood, muscles, bones, excreta – in short, of every little bit of man, has made thorough investigations about the organs and endocrine glands and about their functions and variations in health and disease.

They have discovered certain “bacteria, organisms and viruses. Let it be carefully noted, however, that all these methods of investigation are purely physical and relate to things physical, material and tangible. The existence of man is visualised mainly as a physical being on the material plane. Disease and its Causation are also conceived as purely physical phenomena. Accordingly, deficiencies of hormones and minerals are made us by substitution from outside, germs are destroyed, functions are depressed or accelerated, superfluous things are removed or cut down by knife etc. etc. But if the purely physical view of the existence of man and causation of disease were correct, Science would have made man immortal long before!

But this view does not take us very far. When an otherwise healthy man dies by a sudden heart – failure, all the normal constituents of the body are there, yet it is a corpse and not a man.

Homoeopathy takes us much farther towards the reality as regards human health and disease and the problem of treatment. Man is something more than his physical self, organs or endocrine glands and unless we understand what man really is in health, we cannot fully grasp what disease is and what its treatment should be.

The physical body would be worse than a clay model, if it were not animated by the dynamic Vital Energy which alone is all supreme in man, automatically maintaning health by carrying on and maintaining without any extraneous interference all the vital functions of the organs, glands and every cell of the body in a harmonious vital operation so that then in – dwelling reason – gifted mind can freely employ this living healthy instrument for the higher purposes of existence.

So long as this automatic function of the vital energy goes on unhampered, no organ or endocrine glands will misfunction, and no question of any deficiencies or superfluities or infection or aches and pains or disease arises. Germs will be automatically destroyed by the normally functioning Vital Energy by its natural dynamic action. Man feels the buoyancy and poise of natural health. Disease takes its birth only when something goes wrong with the healthy harmonious functioning of Vital Energy by its becoming deranged by dynamic influence inimical to health.

Experience abundantly confirms that the earliest indication one gets of such derangement is through morbid or painful sensations and when these are not properly diagnosed and cured on the vital plane but only kept under suppression through analgesics and narcotics, it is only then that repercussions of deranged vital energy become manifest on the physical plane through deranged functioning of the organs or endocrine glands or through organic and pathological lesions at which stage the “Scientific” medical school is able to take cognisance of the advent of disease when it has already advanced quite far and perhaps become incurable.

Logically the best way to restore the integrity of the vital energy at the earliest stages of the advent of disease would be by applying gentle dynamic stimuli according to natures laws of healing rather than by using violent methods or crude force. When dealing with disease and restoration of health, we are in the realm of dynamics rather than matter. Disease and medicines can act on the body only in a nonmaterial dynamic way.

Having come to these conclusions, the most important thing to be tackled by Hahnemann was the problem of treatment. Surely, nature which so systematically controls and regulates, not only human health, but the administration of the whole universe, could not have left man, the paragon of Gods creation, at the mercy of forces of death and disease and at the mercy of unregulated and vague empiricism, without any of its laws to act as a guide.

After careful thinking and scientific experiments, he discovered and formulated Natures Law of Cure – Similia Similibus Curantur, i.e. “Similar Cures the Similar”, which enunciates that drugs have got the power in minute doses, to cure symptoms in the sick similar to those which they have the power to produce in the healthy in substantial doses. Hahnemann also invented the method of releasing the dynamic powers residing in drugs, according to a graduated scale of decimal or centesimal measurement so that the strength of the required curative dynamic stimulus may be adjusted according to the strength of the disease.

In case, the system of the patient gets used to this potency of the remedy, the physician can apply higher and higher potencies till the disease is eradicated. This ensures the minimum medication and, therefore, the avoidance of any untoward reactions or side – effects. The selection of the remedy according to the principle of its ability to produce symptoms similar to those of the patient further ensures that the remedial stimulus will act ONLY on the diseased centres and there will be no effects on the healthy parts and centres of the patient.

The remedy so selected and applied produces just the needed reaction in the Vital Energy to fight out the disease dynamis and restore health. thus, homoeopathy ensures the principle of “SAFETY FIRST” which is the first essential pre – requisite of any satisfactory system of treatment. To what extent this principle is violated by the modern “Scientific” medicine, I would not like to tell, as the pronouncements of some of the eminent scientists of that very school of medicine which appear in the press from time to time are enough to throw light on the subject.

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