PROLOGUE.
Early training brings to bear a mighty influence on the plastic child. When one is born and bred into homoeopathy, as I was, it may take long to see the error of ones way. Hence, I wish to warn all my homoeopathic brothers and sisters to turn from the path before it is too late. Homoeopathy is not scientific. How do we know? Is it not banged at us continually at our meetings, in the press, in fact, everywhere? Is not the Hahnemannian the worst of the lot? Is he not thought of as a combination of the fanatic, the occult, the religious and the medical?
Does he not speak an antiquated language and cling to the archaic idea of a “vital force?” Then, away from such false doctrines, my friends, and catch up the vanguard of science! Kent said we owe allegiance to no man, only to truth. With that injunction I have broken away from all paternal influence and authority, but feel that in speaking publicly I must present.
SCIENTIFIC REASONS FOR ABANDONING HOMOEOPATHY.
For my authority (each man who endeavors to think scientifically must have authority for his views and Hahnemann is not considered an authority by many) I take excerpts from the address of Gen. Jan C. Smuts, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the latter probably representing the last word of the Empire in science. (If we are to pick at all, why not pick the latest?) These excerpts are taken, oddly enough, from a Scripps-Howard newspaper, placed there by the scientific editor, one David Dietz. The following quotations will be followed by the initials “S” and “D”, depending on whether Smuts is quoted directly or whether I quote the Dietz summaries.
To quote:.
“The new point of departure was reached when physical science ceased to confine its attention to the things that are observed.” (S).
“It dug down to a deeper level, and below the things that appear to the sense, it found, or invented, at the base of the world, so-called scientific entities, not capable of direct observation, but which are necessary to account for the facts of observation”. (S).
“The stuff of the world is thus envisaged as events instead of material things.” (S).
Aha! When we cannot observe directly, we invent! This must be a lawful scientific procedure. Science is my authority. Did not Hahnemann confine his attention to things that he could not directly observe as early as 1796? Did he not also dig down to a deeper level? did he did not invent an entity in the “vital force” or “dynamis” that explains the facts as well as any of our present day theoretical conceptions? Have we, in science, any really satisfying explanation about the problems we desire most to solve, such as life and the hereafter? Did not Hahnemann teach that we could only observe disease indirectly through the symptoms? Did he teach that disease was a material thing? Did he not tell us to treat sick men? Is disease not a series of events taking place in the diseased object?.
“The world truly becomes process, where nothing ever remains the same or is a duplicate of anything else, but a growing, gathering, creative stream of unique events rolls forever forward.” (S).
Poor Hahnemann stressed individualism, a curse in this age of Ford production, education, thinking, etc. Did he not teach that no two individuals or diseases are alike, that each case must be treated on its own merits as though it were something brand new? Every homoeopathic practice testifies to this entire quotation. As each individual unfolds, is he not a “growing, gathering, creative stream of unique events?” If not, we must deny evolution in toto.
“The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures – at any rate on this planet.” (S).
“Life and mind thus appear as a product of the cosmic decline, and arise like the phoenix from the ashes of a universe radiating itself away. In them nature seems to have discovered a secret which enables her to irradiate with imperishable glory the decay to which [she] seems physically doomed. (S).
We need here to be only concerned with what is going on upon this planet. Does this not bring to mind the keen intellects rising like a phoenix from the ashes of syphilis and tuberculosis? Is this not a testimony of Kents observation of the alternation of physical and mental symptoms?.
“The quantum follows the all-or-nothing law and behaves as an indivisible whole; so does life.” (S).
“A part of a quantum is not something less than a quantum; it is nothing or sheer non-entity; them same holds true of life.” (S).
“Modern biology has developed a new point of view with regard to the nature of life which goes beyond the old mechanistic point of view.” (D).
“Life is not an entity, physical or other. It is a type of organization; it is a specific principle of central or self- organization.
“If that organization is interfered with, we are left, not with bits of life, but with death. The nature of living things is determined not by the nature of their parts, but by the nature or principle of their organization. In short, the quantum and life seem to have this in common, that they both behave in wholes.
“A whole is not a sum of parts, or constituted by its parts. Its nature lies in its constitution more than in its parts. The part in the whole is no longer the same as the part in isolation.
“The interesting point is that while this concept of the whole applies to life, it is according to the recent physics no less applicable to the ultimate physical units. Thus the electron within an atom is no longer a distinct electron.
“The general trend of the recent advances in physics has thus been toward the recognition of the fundamental organic character of the material world. Physics and biology are beginning to look not so utterly unlike each other.
“Hitherto the great gulf in nature has lain between the material and the vital, between inorganic matter and life. This gulf is now in the process of being bridged.” (S).
Oh, Hahnemann! It is to weep! After 136 years things foreseen by your far reaching eye are now beheld by your myopic successors! There is yet hope! If it be true that as biology goes, so medicine must go, our progeny may yet see the dawn of a brighter day. Poor old “vitalistic” Hahnemann!.
If there is any true relation between the so-called quantum and what we know as life, and if the condition known as disease is merely abnormal life process, then we have a basis on which to work and one that would very clearly seem to support the long believed tenets of homoeopathy. To go more into detail:.
Have you ever seen a disease apart from anything that can become diseased? Disease cannot even be “a part in isolation,” let alone be an entity. An amputated limb is not the same as when it was on the body. An excised tumor is not the same after excision as it was before. Disease in its binding up with life must, as does life, follow the “all-or-nothing” law. It must be considered as a change in the “central or self-organization” of the body. If its signs and symptoms are its parts and their organization makes up what is known as the disease then the following things must be true:.
That Hahnemann was right when he stated that the disappearance of the symptoms and signs of a disease showed that disease to be annihilated in its full extent. To claim that the symptoms go but the disease remains is to deny the “all-or-nothing” law.
It is the type of organization that is the same thing as our “totality of symptoms” in the patient and the “genius” of the drug. This explains why we do not have to take into account, in prescribing, every single symptoms found either in the patient or the drug. Also, it explains what difference we make in the “totality” and the “numerical totality.”
Our “Clinical” symptoms, those which disappear after a remedy but not found in the pathogenesis of the remedy, may be due to the fact that the provings were not pushed far enough or may be due to the fact that they are only results of the “central organization” of the diseased state and by the “all-or-nothing” law must disappear with the “whole.” When we treat a single symptom we suppress because we do not interfere with the “central organization” but only with a part, and, since “the nature of the whole lies in its constitution more than in its parts” and if the organization is not interfered with, how, if we accept this all-or-nothing principle, can we expect a cure?.
It is interesting to note that “modern biology has developed a new point of view with regard to the nature of life which goes beyond the old mechanistic point of view,” and that “the interesting point is that while this concept of the whole applies to life, it is according to the recent physics no less applicable to the ultimate physical units, et seq”.
This brings us to pathology and diagnosis. Does not the hardened liver bear some relation to the events that went on before? Might it still be subject to the same laws as in its formative state? Is it wise to call the destruction left by a cyclone the cyclone itself? Then, why call the damaged tissue the disease? Edison was said to die of five different diseases, a great feat for modern diagnostics. If we name each damaged organ we can have a different disease, BUT, where is the “central organization?” The only answer I can offer is, in the patient.
