knowledge of medicinal powers Here the physician should know that curative action of the drug in disease is ability of that drug to produce similar symptoms in healthy individual also. Action of drug on healthy individual is affected by age, sex, temperament, constitution; occupation, habits, climate, season, weather; the nature, type, extent and stage of the disease- psychological, physiological, or pathological status of the individual patient. Knowledge of medicinal power is knowledge of medicine as whole.
WHAT IS CURATIVE IN MEDICINES ?.
Here again he progresses from generals to particulars.
He cannot be having fair knowledge of the action of medicines individually until he becomes acquainted with the action of medicines collectively, proceeding from a collective study to a particular. This is to be done by studying provings. Suppose we make a proving of some unknown drug, it would be expected that you would all bring out the same symptoms, but the same general features would run through this class of provers. Each individual would present his own distinctive features. No. 1 might bring out the symptoms of the mind more prominently than No. 2 ; No. 2 might bring out the symptoms of the bowels more clearly than No. 1 ; No. 3 might bring out pain symptoms very strongly, etc.,NO.4 might bring respiratory symptoms more distinctly than NO.1 and NO.2.Now if these were collected together as if one man had proved the medicine, we would then have an image of that medicine. If we had a thousands of provers we would go through the whole nature of this remedy and comprehend how it affected the human race, how it acted as a unit. studying the nature of disease must be applied to the study of the nature of a remedy.
Now the collected symptoms are arranged. Mind symptoms are arranged under mind, head under head etc. which was originally followed by Hahnemann. We go on adding to it, developing it, noting the symptoms or group of symptoms that are prominent. A fully proved remedy affects all region of the body. Now it is ready for the study.
Choice of the remedy
When a case reaches you with symptoms you will get a picture of disease. The patient may be having a viral fever, typhoid etc. Lets us consider measles. It is not a new disease, it is an old form. The allopathic physician has unconsciously made an case history of his measles cases, he has unconsciously written it out in his mind and carries it around. It is not hard to work out the group of measles remedies, and from this group he works. Every now and then there will come up single case, which will compel you to go outside of the usual group. Never allow yourself to be so hampered that you cannot go outside of the medicines that you have settled upon as medicines, say, for measles. All your nondescript cases of course will get Pulsatilla, because it is so similar to the nature of measles, but it does not do to be too limited or routine, but be sure in administering a remedy that the indications are clear. So the physician perceives in the disease what it is that constitutes the curative indication.
This presents itself to his mind only when he is familiar with the nature of the sickness, as, for instance, with the nature of chicken pox, of dengue, of Chikungunya fever ,of measles, of typhoid fever, - the zymosis, the blood changes, etc., so that when they arrive he is not surprised ; when the typhoid state progresses he expects the tympanitic abdomen, the loose stool, the continued fever, the rash, the delirium and unconsciousness. These things stand out as the nature of typhoid. When, therefore, he refers the Materia Medica he at once calls up before his mind this nature of typhoid, and so is able to pick out the remedies that have such a nature. He sees in Phosphorus, Rhus, Bryonia, Baptisia, Arsenicum, etc., low forms of fever, corresponding to the typhoid condition. But when the patient moves out of the ordinary group of remedies, then it is that he has to go outside his group of medicine and find another remedy that also should fits the nature of typhoid fever.
First he sees the disease in general as to its nature, and then when an individual has this disease this individual will present in his own peculiarities along with the features of that disease. The homoeopath is in the habit of studying the slightest difference between patients, the little things that point to the remedy. If we looked upon disease only as the allopathic physician sees it we would have no means of distinction. But it is because of the little peculiarities manifested by every individual patient, through his inner life, through everything he thinks, that the homoeopath is enabled to individualize.
proper dose
Before Hahnemann's time, and indeed in his early work, the dose played an important part. Crude and massive doses had been used in the treatment of the sick. All physicians used these massive doses as a matter of course, and Hahnemann, being a product of the best medical education of that day, followed, in his early career, in the footsteps of his forerunners. Even after Hahnemann began to see the light of the LAW OF CURE he continued to use crude doses, and it is to be remembered that he made cures with massive doses of crude medicine. But from continual experiments he found that he was incurring drug effects oftener than he was making a successful cure.
When he became convinced of this, he reduced the dose, dividing and again dividing the dose serially, watching closely the results. He soon found that the smaller the dose, the more benevolent the results. His experiments with the divided dose did not come to light until after he had discovered the dynamic action of disease; then with his logical mind he must have mutually related his results- For if disease be dynamic in nature, the use of a medicine to cure, or even to reach the disease, must be dynamic, rather than physiological, in form and power.
The more Hahnemann became convinced of the dynamic nature of disease, the more he sought the dynamic plane in medicine, and the more he sought the dynamic plane in medicine, and the more good he found the administration of the similia. Step by step, the minimum dose, which is always a pliable measure, became ever smaller and smaller, until it has developed into the infinitesimal.
Herbert A Roberts has said "There is a law of dosage as well as a law of cure, and when we use a Homœopathic remedy it should be based upon that law, for if homœopathy means anything, it is that it is based upon natural law and order. This law is fixed and unchangeable. It makes no difference with the law if we do not follow it, but it does make a difference with out results. The quantity of action necessary to effect any change in nature is the least possible: The decisive amount is always a minimum, an infinitesimal."
If homoeopathy is infinitesimal dose then what is dose in allopathy mean?
The dose in allopathy is physiological dose. The physiological action of a drug, has nothing to do with the curative action which form homœopathic point of view, because homœopathic remedies are never used in physiological doses. The physiological action is harmful in nature, therefore injurious to the patient. The physiological action of a drug is not its therapeutic or curative action; it is the exact opposite of a curative action and is never utilised in homœopathic practice for curative effects. The use of the drug in physiological form is an attempt to produce drug symptoms because of their primary action, and an acknowledgment also that the physician so using the drug has never observed the secondary symptoms (secondary symptoms are base of homoeopathy).
obstacles to recovery will be
dealt in details
later
He is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.
COMMENTARY:
If the physician thinks that causes are external, if he thinks that the material alterations in the body are the things that disturb health, are the basic cause of sickness, he will attempt to remove these, e.g., he will cut off hemorrhoids or remove the tumor.
But these are not objects Hahnemann means. The objects he means are invisible and can only be known externally by signs and symptoms. Naturally, it is quite right for the physician to get rid of those things that are external to the sick man and things that are troubling him. These are not disease, but they are manifestation disturbing him and causing him sick, aggravating his internal chronic miasm so that it will progress and destroy. These are outward obstacles and not the disease, but in this way man is very often rendered more susceptible to acute miasms.
The disorder is from the interior, but many of the upsets that aggravate the disorders are external. The cause of disorder is internal, while the coarser things are such as can disturb more especially the body, such as improperly selected food, living in damp houses, anxiety, worry, financial stress etc.
HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN VERSES SURGEON
TO KNOW THE THINGS THAT DERANGE HEALTH AND CAUSE DISEASE, AND HOW TO REMOVE THEM FROM PERSONS SO THAT HEALTH IS RESTORED
There is a notion that every derangement can be treated by medicines alone. That is not true. To discriminate this, is a most important thing. One who is sick in his vital force needs a physician. He who has a lacerated wound, or a fractured bone, or disfigurations, need a surgeon. If his loose tooth must come out he must have a dental surgeon. kent wittingly says "What would be thought of a man who, on being sent for a surgeon to set an injured man's bones should go for a carpenter to mend the roof of the man's house ? If the man's house alone needs mending then he needs a carpenter and not a surgeon. The physician must discriminate between the man and his house, and between the repair of man and the repair of his house."
It is foolish to give medicine for a lacerated wound, to attempt to close up a deep wound with a dose of remedy. Injuries from knives, instruments, accidents, etc., affect the house the man lives in and must be attended to by the surgeon. Here the "mans house" is his body. When an external factors affects "his body" he need surgery. When internal factors threaten his existence in the form of diseases and threatens the "very man" he require medicinal correction.
When the exterior conditions which are brought on from external causes complicated with the interior man then medicine is required. Injuries require surgical correction but an infected injury require medicine. If the physician acts also as a surgeon he must know when to perform his functions as a surgeon, and when he must keep back as a surgeon. He should sew up a wound, but should not burn out an ulcer with Nitrate of Silver. If he is not able to discriminate, and on every ulcer he plasters his external applications, he is not a preserver of health.
When signs and symptoms are present the physician is needed, because these come from the interior to the exterior. Removing tonsils for tonsilitis, cauterizing warts, removing haemorrhoids is unnecessary as they come from interior of the man. They require medicine.
But if his condition is brought on only from external causes, the physician must delay action and let the surgeon do his work. E.g. a man who had an injury, fractured bones etc may require a surgeon.
e.g. one man was injured by car accident, he is heavily bleeding. Glass pieces have gone into his cranium due to impact. He require surgical removal of the glass piece
Kent further adds "Yet we see around us that physicians bombard the house the man lives in and have no idea of treating the man. They are no more than carpenters, they attempt to repair the roof, put on boards and bandages, and yet by their bandaging the man from head to foot they often do an improper thing. The physician must know the things that derange health and remove them. if a fang of an old tooth causes headache day and night that cause must be removed. To prescribe when a splinter is pressing on a nerve and leave the splinter in would be foolishness and criminal negligence." .
AIM OF HOMOEOPATHIC PHYSICIAN
The aim should be to single out and remove external causes and turn into order internal causes.
A man comes for treatment, and he is living on prawns and lobster salad, alcoholism, drug abuse, irregular diet ,eating highly seasoned food , night watching and living in wet cellars, and other trash foods that cannot even be tolerated by healthiest man. If we keep on giving Nux Vomica to that man we are foolish. If a man who has been living viciously stops it, he can be helped. Wrong habits, bad living, living in damp houses are externals and must be removed.
When a man avoids these externals, is neatly, cautiously chooses his food, has a soothing home, and is still suffering, he must be treated from within. To top up kent further says "You know how we are maligned and lied about. You have heard it said about some strict homoeopath, "He tried to set a broken leg with the c.m. potency of Mercury, What a poor fool!". But still outside of such an instance this discrimination is an important matter. You must remember it especially when busy as at times it will be hard to decide. This kind of diagnosis is important, because it settles between things external and internal. Every physician does not discriminate thus, for if he did there would not be so many poultices and murderous external applications used. Among those who do not discriminate are those who apply medicines externally and give them internally".