Introduction To 6th Edition Of Organon of Medicine--A brief Summery

A Summary of Introduction to 6^th edition of Organon of Medicine

Medical Teaching During Hahnemannian era

Hahnemann’s Introduction gives a brief history of medical theory and practice. He describes the broad medical paradigm ( and several of its variations) which has been dominant for centuries, and which his revolutionary medical paradigm, presented in the body of The Organon of the Medical Art, almost diametrically opposes.

I. Theoretical Systems of Medicine

With civilization, diseases and theories for their treatment multiplied dramatically -------Formation of so called theoretical hatching's or systems.

II. The old School’s Material View of Disease

Origin of Allopathy----Mixtures of unknown medicinal substances were employed against arbitrarily erected forms of disease which were arranged according to material view in contradiction with nature and experience.

Rational Medical Art--- Old school claimed that theirs is Rational medical art, because they alone sought for and strived to clear away the cause of the disease.

Tolle Causam:  Means remove the cause. They never were able to find the  real cause of disease, since majority of diseases are of dynamic nature (spirit like), their cause is not discernable to senses. Then they tried to devise the cause for themselves. They drew conclusions from

1. Viewing parts of normal dead bodies (anatomy) compared with the visible changes in these parts in people who died of disease (pathological anatomy), and
2. Comparing the appearances and functions in healthy life (physiology) with their endless deviations  and countless disease states (pathology).

Which resulted in Prima causa Morbi---first cause of the disease, which was then both proximate cause of the disease as well the disease itself.

Common sense says----- the cause of a thing or an event can never be, at the same time, the thing or event itself. How can they cure the unknown disease with prescription of unknown mixture of medicines?

Foot note: The cure of a c/c disease depends upon the discovery of its origin. The originating cause of all chronic non-venereal diseases is psora.

Old school hypotheses about the general character of disease.---Inflammation, fever? Paralysis? Cramp? Blood excess? Excess of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen or nitrogen in body fluids? Raised or lowered arterial/venous pressures? Etc.

All guesses which were hypothetical to serve any practical purpose.

Only Homoeopathic medicines can cure disease, but these were banned by old school. Homeopathy is  individualized treatment, not the generalized treatment like Allopathy.

III. Old school Efforts to Remove Disease Matter

The adherents of the old school removed disease matter because they didn't acknowledge the dynamic nature of disease.

The old school believed that it could directly lift the disease through the removal of the (alleged) material cause of disease.

Common Removal procedures of Old school

• Removal of bile in bilious fever
• Emetics in so-called stomach-vitations
• Purging in worm troubles ( pallor, ravenousness, bellyache, and enlarged tummies of children)
• Blood letting for hemorrhages and esp all sorts of blood—extractions as its treatment-of-choice for inflammations, by applying leeches to affected parts. ( following the procedure of a well-known bloodthirsty Persian Physician Broussais)

LEECHING

• Old school considers the main material cause of all hemorrhages and inflammations to be an alleged excess of blood, which it has to remove and drain off through venesections (bloody cuppings) and leeches.

VENESECTION OF MALE PATIENT

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• Materia Peccans (offending matter): In general inflammatory fevers, in a/c pleuracy, the old school regards even the lymph in the blood, as the Materia Peccans which they tried to remove by repeated venesections, cuppings and blood lettings, even unto the brink of death. They didn’t understand that the inflamed blood is only a product of the acute fever.

CUPPING THERAPY

• It is impossible for the causa morbid (cause of disease) in this case to be an excess blood. The only true causa morbi here is a diseased dynamic inflammatory irritation of the blood system.

Surgical procedures of old school

1. tie off polyps
2. cut out cold glandular swellings or uses local heating means to artificially excite suppuration of the glandular swellings
3. enucleate encysted tumors.
4. Operate on aneurysms or on lachrymal or rectal fistulas.
5. cut out scirrous tumors of the breast.
6. amputate a necrotic limb, etc.

External treatments of the old school

1.    use repellents (things that repel)

2.    dry up old, ichorous leg ulcers through astringent compress, through lead, copper and zinc oxides.

3.    cauterize chancres

4.    topically destroy figwarts

5.    drive the itch diathesis away from the skin with salves of sulphur-lead, mercury-and zinc-oxides.

6.    suppress eye-inflmmations with solutions of lead or zinc.

7.    chase away the tearing pains out of the limbs through opodeldoc, volatile liniment, or fumigation with cinnabar or amber.

In every case they believe they have lifted the malady, conquered the disease and executed a rational causal treatment. But there was appearance of those maladies in different forms later, which they claimed as altogether new ones.

Evacuant procedures of the old school:

They thought the disease materials and acridities must be carried away through exhalation, perspiration, through urinary tract, through salivary glands, from the blood and lymph vessels, through the tracheal and bronchial glands as expectoration, through vomiting or purging through which body would get purified.

Procedures

1. cutting holes in the diseased body, which were converted into long-lasting ulcers kept up for years by introduction of foreign substances (setons, fontanels)----to draw materia peccans.
2. applying canthris plasters to the skin.

IV. Diseases are Dynamic, not Material

In short, the deranged materials and impurities that become visible in disease are undeniably, nothing more than engendered products of the disease of the abnormally mistuned organism.

Drainage and counter irritant methods of treatment imitate the life force’s self-help efforts of evacuation and diversion of symptoms.

Eg—sweating and urination—fever

Purgatives and emetics were used commonly, which they called aperients and dissolvent’s.

To assist this drainage method, related antagonistic irritates (stimulants) were employed.

1.    sheep’s wool on bare skin

2.    footbaths

3.    nauseants

4.    hunger treatment whereby the stomach and intestines were tormented with the pain of hunger

5.    means that produced inflammation and suppuration in near and distant parts, such as horseradish and mustard poultices, canthride plasters, setons, tartar emetic ointments, moxa, cautery, acupuncture etc.

duce natura ( guiding according to the nature), ministri natura (helpers of nature).

They thought they are following the nature’s method of cure by inducing evacuations, old school people thought that this way they can bring cure.

But they never thought that those discharges & eliminations (apparent crisis) created by the nature left to itself were, in c/c diseases, only palliative short lasting alleviations which are far from contributing cure, on contrary they lead to aggravation of  the original sickness.

Nature doesn't know how to overcome a c/c internal malady when left to it self; it brings the suffering outside through the external manifestations, or sufferings.

 The imitating method’s of old school:

1.    use of irritating plasters to imitate natural discharges

2.    use of leeches to imitate hemorrhoids

3.    Use of venesections to imitate coughed-up blood.

4.    use of emetics to imitate chronic nausea

5.    use of heating plasters to imitate swollen glands

6.    Use of sweating treatment to imitate night sweats and liquid stools. Etc.

7.    nosebleeds to alleviate headaches

8.    sweating or diarrhea for sudden illness

Nature’s imperfect efforts are best than the medical treatements that imitate and further them.

New symptoms appeared as a consequence of  local symptom removal by allopathic way of treatment, when this happens the allopath declares it as a totally new disease.

Suppressive treatment of old school

Use of repercutientia (reflectants) & repellentia (repellants)

They suppressed:-

1.    Chronic pains, insomnias & old diarrhoeas with daringly intensified does of opium.

2.    vomiting with effervescing salt mixtures

3.    Stinking foot sweats with cold footbaths & astringents compress.

4.    skin eruptions with lead & zinc ointments

5.    uterine hemorrhage with vinegar injections

6.    collequative sweats with alum whey.

7.    nightly seminal emissions with a great deal of camphor

8.    Frequent hear flushes of the body and face with salt paper, vegetable & sulphuric acids.

9.    Nosebleeds by tamponing of the nostrils with plugs dipped in alcohol or astringent fluids.

10. The ichorous discharges from leg ulcers with lead & zinc oxides etc.

The life force was ordained to conduct life in the most perfect way during health, not to cure disease. It can’t  have that intelligence where we human’s believe that life force can take care of itself in disease and can bring back the health, or we imitate the life force’s imperfect efforts to rescue itself from disease.

The process by which the homoeopathic medical art cures disease.

1.    It differently alters the life force which is diseased, by means of an affection similar to that of the disease, engendered by a  medicine that has been homeopathically selected.

2.    By means of this medicine, the life force is rendered medicinally sick to such a degree ( in fact to a somewhat higher degree) that the natural affection can no longer work on the life force.

3.    in this way the life force becomes rid of the natural disease, remaining occupied solely with the so similar somewhat stronger medicinal disease—affection against which the life force now directs its whole energy and which it soon overcomes.

4.    the life force there by becomes free and able again to return to the norm of health & to its actual intended purpose; that of enlivening & sustaining the healthy organism.

The Homoeopathic medical art teaches how to do this.

Effect of old school’s imitative & suppressible treatment on chronic & a/c diseases

Due to treatment of a/c & c/c diseases through enantiopathic & & draining (antagonistic & revulsive) means at the site other than the sick one, until the time when the natural course of the short malady was over.

Antipathic stimulating and strengthening treatments

ANTI-PATHIC STRENGTHENING & STIMULATING DRUGS

Another treatment procedure of old school, which is termed the stimulating (arousing) & strengthening treatment method ( through excitantia, nervina, tonica, confrontia, & roborantia ( excitants, nervins, tonics, comfortants & strengtheners)

Eg:

1.    Alcohol, cinchona & Iron preparations for debilitation.

2.    Nerve ointments or electric shock for incipient paralysis (electric shock for hardness of hearing)

3.    Excitants or aphrodisiacs for impotence

4.    antipathic action of excitant and strengthening means.

Alternative Treatments of the Old school

·         When they are used allopathically and in large doses, mercury-based medicines completely ruin the health.

·         When they are used allopathically & in large doses, cinchona & quinine suppress intermittent fevers but patients sick.

·         Valerian acts antipathically in nerve fevers, first producing liveliness and then increasing the patient’s stupor.

·         Digitalis acts antipathically in cases of c/c disease with an overly-rapid pulse, first producing a slower pulse and the increasing.

Flaws in the Old School’s Approach to curing Disease

The fundamental cause of the chronic (non-venereal) diseases and the remedies for them remained unknown for these old school practitioners who often boasted about their causal treatments & their research into the genesis in their diagnosis.

They thought the character of the disease as its cause, and therefore directed their treatments against cramp, inflammation (plethora), fever, general & partial debilitation, mucus, sepsis, infarcts etc. which they tried to clear off by administering antispasmodic, antiphologistic, strengthening, stimulating, antiseptic, dissolving, dispersing, draining, evacuating, antagonistic means.

They also claimed that defect or excess of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon or hydrogen in the bodily fluids are caused against irritability, sensibility, reproduction, arteriality, venosity, capillarity, asthenia etc. These all were the treatments but not for the welfare of the patient.

Compound Prescriptions

The making of compound prescription, they mixed medicines which were unknown in their true action and divergent from one another.

1.    One medicine was placed formost as the procipal means (basis) to conquire what the physician assumed to be the chief character of the disease

2.    another medicine was added for the dispatch of this or that accessory indicator, or as a strengthening means (adjuvantia)

3.    to this was added as alleged improvement means (corrigens)

4.    These were all mixed together (decocted, extracted)

5.    Medicinal syrup or distilled medicinal water brought still more medicinal properties into the formula.

Effect of compound prescriptions on the health of the patient.

In these prescriptions, one ingredient offset the action of another, either entirely or in part, and gave to it or to the others a functional quality and operational direction that was suspected nor supposed, so that the expected effect could not possibly be reached.

This resulted in---------New disease mistunement, which was often unnoticed.

F.N—writings against the use of compound prescriptions by old school dr’s itself in Hufeland’s journal.*****

From Allopathy to Homeopathy

Recent increased cruelty of allopathic treatments set the stage for the homeopathic art of cure.

Traces of Homeopathy found in Previous Practices

All real cures by the old school involved medicines that were homeopathic to the disease.

F.N—35  Homeopathic treatments used by the old school:

1. elder blossom tea for fever with sweating
2. warm poultices for inflammation
3. Red oxide of mercury for eye inflammation
4. Parsely juic for a painful urge to urinate
5. Pimprenel root for uterine hemorrhage
6. Sabina leaves for uterine hemorrhage
7. Opium for constipation
8. mercury for throat ulcer
9. Rhubarb for diarrhea
10. Belladonna for rabies
11. Opium for a comatose state with high fever.

Homeopathic Folk remedies

Home remedies….

1. cold application for frost bite
2. Homeopathic use of warmth and cold
3. cold treatment for frostbite
4. Hot water for a scald
5. Freezing water to  thaw frozen foods
6. Heat for burns
7. Homeopathic treatment of burns with alcohol

F.N—36: Isopathy versus Homeopathy.