Hahnemann distinctly says that the sum of the symptoms as stressed by their peculiarities, constitutes the sole indication for the curative remedy; one-sided cases being due to the suppressive power of psora. The way a single dose of Sulphur often develops and defines such cases makes his statement very plausible. A highly particularized disease syndrome is either really essential or is made to look so by a poor examination. Unhappily both phases tend to encourage prescribing for disease names instead of individuals; the specialists are especially guilty of this vile practice in that they only chase symptoms about to the great detriment of the sufferer. the poly-pharmacy against which Hahnemann inveighed never was any more pernicious.
A very partial exhibit of nature's distress necessitates making the most minute examination of all of the antecedent as well as the present symptoms, along with their modifications and connections in order that an accurate and complete picture thereof may be available before the search for a similar among our drug provings is undertaken. In this connection let me stress the necessity of being adequately equipped with reference works and of knowing how to use them if the prescriber wishes to do the most for his patients. Let it also be remembered that piecemeal prescribing, done carefully enough to actually advance the cure, is more difficult than finding the simillimum, and yet this muddling sort of work has been much more successful than the usual allopathic prescription; if it were not true, Homeopathy would have died out long ago. Fortunately Nature responds so kindly to even a crude similar that our face is often saved in spite of mediocre work.
This is the day of diagnosis so refined that they have thrown confusion into the camp of their own therapists who cannot keep pace with them. If we are wise enough to use these pointers after instead of before generalizing they may be of the greatest help. Pure diagnosis are made from the concurrence of fairly constant factors, hence make little note of those individual divergencies, so precious to the real Homeopath. His outstanding results believe the importance ordinarily accredited to disease types as indicators for therapeutic measures which at best show but a crude conception of what sickness really means. Truly the action of some drugs resembles the corporeal reaction to some disease, hence they have earned the evil reputation of being specifies, yet no one will claim them to be infallible, even when so indicated. Indeed there can be no such thing as a specific because the very statement avoids the personal element present in every sickness. Specificity applies to the resemble of all the symptoms present and that one drug is indicated more frequently than another is largely incidental as well as subject to sudden changes, according as the genus epidemicus change from time to time.
Particular symptoms which are peculiar, strange or bizarre may appear in any sphere whatsoever. We need not look especially to location, sensation, modalities, connections or the mind, etc., for them but rather to the features which make them prominent as individual morbid expressions. These are the real keynotes and find their greatest usefulness in making differentiations. The temptation to us them as inerrant guide boards pointing the direction which our search should take is the greatest as well as commonest of mistakes in Homeopathic practice, and has done us much harm.
The careful and experienced prescriber learns to associate certain drugs with particular individualities, by his insight into their life histories, activities, etc. The touch of the constitutional remedy has revealed a whole world of information to him, by its reactions, which are almost certain to sweep any form of disease whatsoever right out by equalizing and synchronizing the expenditure of vital energy in the sufferer. Viewed from this stand-point Homeopathy can only live through the death of what most of us know by that name. Be not deceived, the allopath fully realizes the bankruptcy of his own therapy but is not attracted in the least to a system that is not sure of itself and we so-called Homeopaths can never be sure of ourselves individually until we can fully grasp the underlying philosophy of our method. Everyone unable to do this necessarily lacks the solid basis which underlies all real curing, hence must always be of an uncertain mind, the very greatest of all handicaps.
Every symptom of Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura and Chronic Diseases is pure gold to the good prescriber and merits your most careful scrutiny. Where two or three symptoms are gathered together in the sick there the lead to a possible cure exists and if you will carefully search out all of their ramifications and connections the counterpart thereto will appear in some pathogenesis. The method yields results gratifying enough to put many a pathological dictum to shame. No one can foreknow the possibilities inherent in the vital reserve when once aroused by being contacted by a similarly acting force. Every little while the experienced physician obtains results surprising enough to make him wonder how they came about, not always realizing that it all depends upon the degree of symptom similarity which in turn is measured by his own proficiency. |
