Miasmen Anhang 2
[Peter Morell]
This article attempts to use a short discussion about miasms
and nosodes as a launching pad into a deeper discussion of homeopathic views
about disease and cure, as basically aspects of essentialism.
Dr Samuel
HAHNEMANN (1755-1843)When Hahnemann announced his miasm theory in 1828 it was
greeted with shock, disbelief, uproar and derision by the entire medical world.
Even many homeopaths blushed with shame and completely ignored the idea as
preposterous. It was hard to see where Hahnemann was coming from. The grand
scheme of the miasms, so familiar today, seemed just like words from an alien
language. If you start from symptom totality, then you can just about reach the
even wider concept of a miasm as a grouped entity deriving from hundreds of
cases. But if you start from the familiar allopathic terrain of a 'disease'
affecting whole populations, then the idea of miasms as internalised and
inherited dyscrasias seems very hard to grasp. The conceptual challenge is
simply one of breadth of view. Each individual case, upon which homeopathy is
based, was henceforth to be viewed in the light of another totality - the
family legacy of Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis.
The theory
of miasms originates in Hahnemann's book The Chronic Diseases, published around
the same time that he also decided to fix 30c as the standard potency for all
homeopaths.
He declared that the theory was the result of 12 years
of the most painstaking work on difficult cases of a chronic character combined
with his own research into the historical diseases of man.
The 3 miasms
given in that work are held to be responsible for all disease of a chronic
nature and to form the foundation for all disease in general. This latter
aspect was then to receive considerable amplification from
question, at the time, the theory was generally
greeted with disbelief and derision from all but the most devoted followers.
This can be explained in part by the primitive nature of medical
science at that time, which was not really very
willing to accommodate any theory for the origin of disease, least of all such
a grand and all-embracing one.
The word
miasm means a cloud or fog in the being. Its meaning can be expanded and seen
as a primary defect; a root cause; a shadow, fragment or internalised relic of
an actual disease
passed down the genetic line; a vaccine defect; a
pre-disposition [dyscrasia] towards a predictable pattern of certain diseases
and disorders within a family, race or the human race; and a
defect of the vital force.
The theory
suggests that if 100% of all disease is miasmatic, then 85% is due to the
primary and atavistic miasm Hahnemann called Psora. The remaining 15% of all
disease he held to be
either syphilitic or sycotic, being derived from
suppressed Syphilis or suppressed Gonorrhoea. Hahnemann, unlike
of the two latter miasms.
Taking them
in reverse order, we can depict the main characteristic features of each miasm.
This miasm
is held to be responsible for many sexual and urinary disorders, and affections
of the joints and the mucous membranes. Those conditions < damp
weather/contact with the sea.
Thus arthritis and rheumatism, asthma, catarrhs,
bronchitis, cystitis and warts are all regarded as partly or mainly sycotic in
character. The wart came to be seen as the underlying archetype of
this miasm as it is also held to be responsible for
all warty excrescences and growths.
Chief remedies: Thuj., Lyc., Nat-s., Caus., Kali-s.,
Staph., Calc, and Sep. amongst many others.
This miasm
is held to be responsible for many diseases of the nervous system, the blood
and skeleton as well as a range of psychological disorders, incl. alcoholism,
depression, suicidal impulses, insanity, loss of smell and taste, blindness,
deafness and ulcerations. Associated with many heart conditions, some vesicular
skin eruptions and diseases that have a definite nocturnal periodicity. Chief
remedies: Ars., Aur-met., Merc., Phos.s and Lyc., Nit-ac., amongst many others.
The word
Psora is probably derived from the Hebrew 'Tsorat' and Greek 'Psora' meaning a
fault, groove or stigma. Hahnemann held that all non-venereal chronic diseases
are Psoric. That includes most diseases of a chronic nature, all skin diseases,
most mental illness, other than syphilitic ones, allergies, varicose veins,
haemorrhoids, most dysfunctional diseases of organs
and systems, etc. He lists among others, catarrhs,
asthma, pleurisy, haemoptysis, hydrocephalus, stomach ulcers, scrotal swelling,
jaundice, swollen glands, cataract, diabetes, tuberculosis,
epilepsy, fevers and suppressed urine as all being
typically Psoric manifestations, including, of course, the whole gamut of skin
problems.
Chief remedies: Sulph., Nat-m., Calc., Ars., Lyc.,
Phos., Mez., Graph., Caus., Hepar., Petr., Sil., Zinc-met. and Psor. amongst
many others.
Hahnemann:
Psora was the most ancient and insidious miasm, deriving primarily from skin
eruptions of various types in the past, such as scabies (Itch), leprosy and
psoriasis. These had
been supposedly contracted by ancestors or in one's
own early childhood. Their subsequent suppression (the use of ointments), he
held to be the primary cause of forcing skin conditions
inwards to cause the internalised Psora miasm. Psora,
he says, "is that most ancient, most universal, most destructive, and yet
most misapprehended chronic miasmatic disease which for many thousands of years
has disfigured and tortured mankind...and become the mother of all the
thousands of incredibly various chronic diseases“.
mind and body, as in the Garden of Eden. He thus
regarded the acquisition of Psora as being equated with the 'Fall of Man' and with
original sinfulness. He portrayed Psora in this highly
moralistic light as also being the foundation of the
sexual miasms that came later.
We can see
that Hahnemann must have obtained his original idea of miasms through an
extension of the very fruitful threads in his thinking about similars and
poisonings, with which he
was deeply immersed in the original construction of
homeopathy. His mind simply must have been drawn towards seeing the wider
patterns in cases. For example, Hahnemann "suggested, in
1789, that Mercury...displaced the syphilitic disease
by imposing a similar illness. He "had taken his time to formulate his
first intuitive deduction [similia] in fact 7 years...[he] clung
obstinately to the everyday world of common
sense...and had no use for the theories of pathology then current...[being, in
fact] dissociated from theories of physiology and pathology.
The notion
of Psora has many facets; for example, "seven-eighths of all the chronic
maladies prevalent are ascribed by Hahnemann to Psora“. He did not confine its
meaning solely to
Scabies; "Psora...was widely known in Hahnemann's
time, as the general term for a whole series of skin troubles of the most
varied kinds“. Its underlying significance was even broader:
"to Hahnemann Psora is a disease or disposition
to disease, hereditary from generation to generation for thousands of years and
it is the fostering soil for every possible diseased condition“. However, the
miasm theory should not be viewed too literally as meaning that everyone needs
to be dosed up with Psorinum, Syphilinum or Medorrhinum; rather it means that
the broad outline
of the miasms need to be kept in mind when observing
the symptoms of a specific case or family.
For example,
in a family with some evidence of alcoholism, deafness, blindness, bone
disorders and insanity, one is entitled to believe a syphilitic streak is
present. It should not dominate
one's view of each case, but it is useful background
information. It guides one towards certain remedies, and away from others, but
should never wholly dictate practice. Such would be to
fall prey to medical speculation, which Hahnemann
certainly regarded as "arid and obfuscating scholasticism“ and "the
elaborate manipulation of hollow symbols“. The dim view he took of medical
speculation presumed that that too often it is disengaged from practice,
lacking efficacy and encourages harmful practices.
Homeopaths
should resist the temptation to allow miasms, like some cuckoo in the nest, to
exclusively dominate its conceptual base in the way 'evolution' has come to
dogmatically
dominate biology, or the way genetics and bacteria
have come to totally dominate allopathy. Allowing such 'soiling of its own
nest' might be to indulge a delusion, a monistic theory, and to
allow the subject to be well and truly hijacked by one
idea, or even to comprise a lamentable waste of otherwise objective talent.
excessive dominance to be granted to one idea or
theory. Such advice applies equally to the miasm theory, which should be
balanced against other homeopathic views.
Nosodes
On the point
about the use of miasms in treatment, some people routinely give the
corresponding nosode. For example, to a child born with fine syphilitic skin
vesicles, they might wish to
give Syphilinum rather than the simillimum, say
Mercury. This would tend to be seen as an inappropriate use of the miasm
concept, as the simillimum is what the patient needs, not the nosode.
Such routine use of Psorinum, Medorrhinum and
Syphilinum is therefore frowned upon. Certainly, the nosode can do good work,
but it should be used more as an occasional inter-current
remedy, or when it becomes the simillimum - not just
routinely.
Nosodes in
general have a chequered history in homeopathy. Some of the more pathological
prescribers [e.g. Hughes and Dudgeon] denounced them from the start. Yet, other
homeopaths
have taken a far more generous view: "the indispensable
curative service of the products of disease...safely administered in sickness;
"for the past 5 years I have regularly used the bacillus
virus as part of my daily practice...with great
satisfaction“; "I think very highly of Koch's remedy...I use it in high
potency..“. In particular, nosodes can be used to neutralise old internalised
illness states [dyscrasias] or remove invisible
'taints' [blockages] that prevent ordinary remedies from working: "the
nosode has removed the miasmatic block. Then "the remedy will work
again after the block is removed with a nosode“. This
much at least is the empirical observation of many who use them in regular
clinical practice: nosodes were not so well proven as
"well-known polychrests...but have been so successful“;
their use "depends more on clinical experience...[which has] accumulated
for many years and has been checked by the experience of
so many practitioners that it is considered
trustworthy.
Miasm,
Holism and Essence
While the
miasms require a certain conceptual 'leap in the dark' for the average
homeopath, they are even stranger to the allopath who takes a generally less
holistic view of the organism in
health and disease. Comparisons of this type are very
stimulating and rewarding.
The upshot
of the miasms theory is very interesting as it illuminates so much about
homeopathy and what distinguishes it as a unique medical system in its own
right, and also so much about
the subtlety of Hahnemann's observational powers and
thinking processes. As soon as you have a mode of medical thinking that regards
disease cause in gross, tangible and molecular terms
[germs, bacteria, molecules, dud organs, genes] then
it is natural not to look much beyond such matters, but to regard "the
cure" of disease, i.e. the removal of symptoms, solely in tangible and
molecular terms. Such is allopathy.
There seems
on this basis to be no need to look beyond the tangible and the molecular. But
when you have, by contrast, a more subtle medical mentality that regards the
tangible and the
molecular as valid so far as they go, but that this
view of disease is not a primary or fundamental one, but a secondary
manifestation of a deeper and intangible, non-molecular realm of causes,
then you are more likely to have modes of cure that
employ similarly subtle, intangible and non-molecular concepts and techniques.
This really demarcates the major dividing line between
allopathy and homeopathy.
While we
might term the former as an entirely ‘phenotypic’ medical attitude and
therapeutic system, rooted solely in the tangible and the molecular, so the
latter reaches behind and beyond
the gross phenotype [secondary expression] of disease
to consider the deeper, hidden ‘genotypic’ realm of primary or true causes. It
is precisely in this latter sense that the great medical philosophers of
homeopathy -
Like the
dwellers in Plato's caves [see Plato, The Republic], trying to make sense of
shadows moving on a wall, homeopaths have been consistently reluctant to accept
the molecular and
tangible as the sole cause of itself, but always look
deeper for non-molecular and intangible root causes of the events observed at
the surface, in the tissues and cells, and in the physiology of
organ systems, never accepting solely tissue events as
causes of themselves, which is precisely where allopathy draws a halt in its
search for causes of disease phenomena, satisfied that there
is nothing beyond that. Clearly, the miasm theory
follows the same line of thinking.
Further
positions flow naturally from these two divergent medical philosophies. For
example, the phenotypic view does not need to see or fix the whole person
because a tangible and
discreet portion of the whole can be hived off as
"the disease" and fixed in isolation from the whole, and this has
come to be regarded far too unquestioningly as a perfectly valid therapeutic
approach. But to the genotypic attitude, events in the body are always seen as
inextricably interconnected and as expressions of deeper events in the network
of vital processes that lies behind
the tangible and molecular expression of symptoms, and
as a whole, and therefore it is not legitimate in such a mode of medical
thinking to merely 'fix things' at the molecular level or to do so in a
localised manner for specific groups of symptoms isolated from the whole and
conveniently labelled as "the disease".
Indeed, such
an approach may conjure up an apparition of cure in the short term, but the
deeper pattern of causes has not been touched or removed and must still be
present and active.
Therefore, one feels justified in saying that one
single 'disease event' might be seen as the cause [or the effect] of any
another 'disease event' all linked together in a chain, while the deeper cause
has been left un-tackled. The tonsils may have been
removed, but the deeper cause of the tonsillitis has not. The deodorant may
have masked the smell, but the essence [cause] of the smell is
still there - its deeper cause is still present and
active. It is precisely in this manner that Hahnemann describes the development
of diseases in the ongoing life of the person [or family, or race,
or humanity] mutating through time ["the
hydra-headed miasm"] and able periodically to throw to the surface very
different 'disease events' springing forth from the same hidden root cause in
the invisible and intangible realm of the non-molecular. This describes very
clearly his depiction of the true nature of the miasms: a hidden realm of
disease cause, and a genotype from which the expressed and visible symptoms,
the phenotype of disease, periodically erupt at the surface and which we see
before us as separate ‘diseases’.
With so much
of their work being grounded solely in the subtle, the holistic and the
non-molecular, it is only natural for homeopaths to be suspicious of and
unsatisfied with the solely molecular, mechanistic and tangible explanation or
technique of crude drugging for specifics [allopathy]. Being daily used to
seeing into the realm of the subtle and intangible, with their more subtle form
of vision, it is only natural for them to seek out deeper root causes in such a
realm that lies behind and beyond the solely molecular realm, which seems so
satisfying to allopaths and scientists. By employing intangible and
non-molecular remedies and seeing their often spectacular effects in the
clinical sphere, it is not so surprising that they have come to develop such
deep respect for non-molecular theories of life, disease causation and cure.
Essentialism
Essentialism
is "the belief in essences independent of the phenomena of appearance“,
and which are conceived as "non-dimensional phenomena“,. The idea is
common to Pythagoras,
Plato and Aristotle and dominated philosophy for
centuries, almost into the modern era. Goethe, for example, seems to have
achieved a "fusion of Plato's essentialism with aesthetic principles“.
An appreciation of essentialism involves the belief
that objects and living things each contain an underlying and immaterial
essence that can only be known through a form of reflection upon the nature of
the substance or organism. Natural selection, for example, seems
"meaningless to an essentialist, for it can never touch the underlying
essence; it can only eliminate deviations from the type“, that is operate at
the physical level of the organism.
The
essentialist position of homeopathy runs through all these ideas like miasms,
nosodes and vital force. It runs through the ‘potency energy’ of the drug; it
runs through the idea of the nosode
as containing some subtle essence of the disease it is
made from; the idea runs through the whole concept of miasm as a defect
resident in the life force; and it runs through the whole concept of
the vital force as a coordinator of whole organism
events. In all these senses it can be seen that homeopathy is riddled with
essentialism, a belief in subtle essences that lie behind and beyond the
visible, physical, tangible or molecular realm of ordinary life. This belief
comes very close to the Platonic idea that behind each phenomenon we see lies a
discreet and corresponding essence
or 'noumenon' that exists in the 'realm of ideas' and
from which the physical object flows and with which it corresponds or
resonates. The realm of ideas is therefore also, as
the realm of causes. It is as if each substance,
species, individual, rock, mineral, insect, plant - carries within it an
invisible imprint, hidden from view. This idea can also be seen to permeate
the 'doctrine of signatures'.
Dr James
Tyler KENT (1849-1916): Miasms and nosodes are suggestive of the idea of
disease being caused not by the "morbific particles" on the material
level, as allopaths contend, but by some internalised 'subtle essence' carried
by the germ and transferred through potentisation to the nosode.
view of disease: "the microbe is not the cause of
disease. We should not be carried away by these idle allopathic dreams and vain
imaginations but should correct the Vital Force“. And that
"the Bacterium is an innocent feller, and if he
carries disease he carries the Simple Substance which causes disease, just as
an elephant would“. Such an idea clearly resonates with the medieval view of
substance as equally ‘alive.’ An idea not as distant as we might think from the
effect of potentisation on substance.
In
archeus' - then we can see a broad and very strong
parallel between the metaphysical views of van Helmont and ‘transcendental
homeopathy’ concerning a triad of ‘spirits’ - vital force, drug essence and
disease archeus. To which we might add that therapeutic resonance [sympathy]
between these 3 spheres operates as 'similia similibus curentur' as well as
'similia similibus causam' - diseases being both cured and caused by similars.
"There is not one law for contagion and another one for proving. They are
both one; "the quality of contagion is similar in nature to the cure“.
Such a notion then places Hahnemann's system absolutely
in a line with the previous vitalist systems of Paracelsus [1493-1541], van
Helmont [1577-1644] and Stahl [1660-1734].
Dr
Jean-Baptiste VAN HELMONT (1577-1644): Undoubtedly, many modern homeopaths
point to nosodes and high potencies as providing ample confirmation of the
metaphysical remarks
made by figures like
They seem justified, therefore, in claiming that the
corpus of homeopathic expertise of the last century and a half fully validates
such concepts as potency energy, vital force and disease cause
as a spiritual essence [miasm] that temporarily
invades and 'poisons' the spirit of the person, inducing symptoms. While
transcendentalists [and homeopaths] interpret the germ idea as spiritual
contagion by essence, the allopaths interpret it as physical contagion by
microbes. That is what divides us.
It is also
clear that vital force and miasms are 'inferred entities' just as the electron
is an inferred entity. That does not mean it exists or does not exist; it just
means it sits in that borderland between what is observably true and what is
inferred or suggested by the facts that are known with greater certainty:
"unless our theories and observations confirm one another, they will be
still little more than the most probable conjectures...while the mechanical
theories give rise to certain inferences regarding the minute structures of the
body, we lack any concrete verification of these inferences“. For it remains
clear that "theory without verification is mere speculation rather than
science. Theory alone cannot guarantee truth...conjecture and extrapolation,
however probable,
[are] not the same as concrete demonstration. In that
important sense it becomes possible that "crude empirical observations
[might] masquerade under the cloak of theory“, This genuine
tendency is just as likely in "real science"
as it is in homeopathy, where ‘facts’ are fitted together into a ‘bigger
picture’ using the ‘glue’ of assumptions and inferred entities.
The evidence
supporting such inferred entities varies in quality, but the inference in
itself in each case is still strong and valid as it flows naturally from a
field of data unique to the particular field of study, whether it is astronomy
[e.g. black holes], physics [e.g. quarks and muons] or homeopathy. Even those
inferred entities, which are mathematically provable, are not intrinsically
any more real than the inferred entities of vital
force, potency energy or miasms in homeopathy. In both cases, valid ideas and
methods flow from belief in the inferred entities - it is as if they
are real and that is usually sufficient to settle the matter
in every case as a working construct or model of the way things are.
Discussion
A miasm is
clearly an internalised change in the essence of the person, their vital force.
Such a change is acquired as an internal relic or shadow only from certain
virulent diseases that have especially strong essence or power to cause
disease. Classically, these include Syphilis, Gonorrhoea and Psora [suppressed
skin eruptions]. Some homeopaths would go even further than this
and add Cancer, TB and Influenza to the list as
sub-miasms or even recent miasms in their own right. Others would also add
Diphtheria, Polio, Tetanus, Typhoid and Smallpox as minor miasms
and also Birth Pill and vaccine damage as taints and
blockages, which again are internalised imprints of disease that comprise
changes in the vital force capable of preventing remedies working right
[blockages] or acting as sources of symptoms in the person's ill-health. Such
taints and blockages can be removed with the appropriate nosode and each miasm
represents a symptom-causing element acquired into the fabric of the vital
force. A miasm can be seen as a hardened portion of the psychophysical network,
rather like a fixated proving, a rigidified section of the life force,
and an aspect of contagion that has become too solidly
internalised.
The miasm is
the internalised shadow of a big disease; with its own strong essence such a
disease has imprinted itself upon the vital force. The shadow it leaves behind
is therefore a shadow
in the vital force. This concept of the miasm as
merely a damaged or deranged vital force [= essence] is very clearly the view
of Hahnemann, Close,
in the vital force - by which symptoms once caused are
then brought to a halt [subdued] by the neutralisation of the change in essence
that first elicited the original disease. Neutralisation
proceeds by similars - what causes can cure.
Much
understanding can be gained about miasms from considering the nature of the
vital force, disease and cure. For example, "the dynamic potentised drug is
the chief factor in both proving
and healing“, which implies that there is a reciprocal
action between disease and simillimum. As Close says, disease cause therefore
also exists solely in "the realm of pure dynamics“; what he calls the
"sphere of homeopathy is limited primarily to the functional changes from
which the phenomena of disease arise“. Therefore, the removal [correction might
be a better word] of the
internal damage [miasm] is the removal of the cause;
which is not the same as removing the symptoms: "In faithful treatment, it
is sought to accomplish an end far more subtle than the mechanical removal of
bacilli“. Symptoms are not seen by homeopaths as the disease, but as the
results, the end-products, of deeper dynamic disease processes: "tissue
changes...are but the results of
disease; "a cure is not a cure unless it destroys
the internal or dynamic cause of disease.
Dr Stuart M.
CLOSE (1860-1929) When Close states that the "real cure...takes place
solely in the functional and dynamical sphere“, he means it is not the physical
symptoms but views disease primarily as a "dynamic derangement of the life
force“, a derangement of process, which precedes any derangement of structure.
Disease "is the suffering of the dynamis. Close devotes considerable
intellectual energy to clearly defining disease; an effort that repays close
study. For example, he says that "homeopathy does not treat disease; it
treats patients. Disease, he
claims, is "an abnormal vital process“; "a
dynamic aberration of our spirit-like life“; "a perverted vital action“;
it is "not a thing, but only the condition of a thing“; that in the last
analysis
disease is "primarily only an altered state of
life and mind“.
Close lays
bare its deeper nature when he says disease is "primarily a morbid
disturbance or disorderly action of the vital powers and functions“, or
"purely a dynamical disturbance of the
vital principle“. Furthermore, he logically pronounces
that because "disease is always primarily a morbid dynamical or functional
disturbance of the vital principle“, so in turn it is clear that
"functional or dynamic change always precedes
tissue changes“, [15; 72] and that cure has been established only "when
every perceptible sign of suffering of the dynamis has been removed“.
For Close, it is precisely upon such reasons and
definitions that "the entire edifice of therapeutic medication governed by
the law of Similia“, has been conceived and constructed. All these insightful
statements elaborated by Close might be said to derive from
that no disease...is caused by any material substance,
but that every one is only and always a peculiar, virtual, dynamic derangement
of the health.
The remedy
for these sickness processes is equally dynamic and nebulous - the potentised
drug - which gives rise to the comment by Kent: "lower potency...less fine
and less interior than the higher, meaning the higher the potency, the deeper
it penetrates into the hidden realm of disease causes.
Such a mode
of medical conception is most interesting when you consider that conventional
medicine never even enters the realm of essence [true causes] at all and so all
its so-called cures
are false; they are mere rearrangements of the
deck-chairs on the Titanic - superficial window-dressing that does not reach
into the deeper realm of disease cause and that does not bring about [indeed,
is fundamentally incapable of] the radical type of true cure that can only
ensue from direct healing within the realm of essence, that is "the subtle
realm of disease cause or simple substance“. Being rooted mostly in contraries
and the molecular realm of symptom suppression, rather than cure, so allopathy
again looks like mere window-dressing, not true cure. It is a mere tinkering
with symptoms.
The remedy
must be similar in essence to the patient totality and in degree of attenuation
to the miasm, both to induce any change in the case at all, and to reach deep
into the essence realm
itself. Only intangible remedies can reach the equally
rarefied, nebulous and intangible realm of essences [miasms, vital force].
Similarity between remedy and disease [= patient totality] establishes the
primary resonance between the two, such that any healing action is possible at
all, and potentisation establishes the secondary link between similar drug and
the depth of
disorder within the essence state. While similars
might be seen as concerning quality and properties, potency seems more
concerned with matching the energy or intensity of the drug with
that of the derangement in the life force [miasm].
Such a view also echoes Kent when, regarding potency, he says that "the higher
the deeper“, meaning that only the higher [more intangible] potencies of the
right remedy [simillimum] can reach deep enough into the intangible depths of
the vital force where the true miasmic derangements lie hidden, i.e. the realm
of essence.
Therefore, acting only at the surface, superficially,
the low potencies can only act upon acute superficial miasms.
All this
flow of reasoning is concerned mostly with medical inference based around the
concepts of homeopathy, which in turn flow naturally from its engagement with
clinical practice and the cure of cases. It is therefore a mix of pure
empiricism [raw observation] combined with inferential rationalism [inference
or reasoning], for "what we cannot see directly with the corporeal eye,
we may yet be able to perceive indirectly, by the eye
of reason“. It is similarly true in homeopathy that "the distinction
between observation and inference, between empiricism and rationalism, is
basically artificial, since neither can exist without a substantial share of
the other...in almost every statement, some observation and some inference are
involved...the further we get from direct observation, the more we depend on
inference and reasoning“. And to be sure the realm of essences and miasms, and
vital force is a realm of inference, illuminated and visible almost solely
by the "eye of reason“. Inference and reasoning
act like map and compass or a lamp that lights an unseen path and by which we
can probe the world and navigate through uncharted waters.
Only in this way can we gain our bearings and obtain
the deeper understanding we crave from the patterns in events. Only in this way
can we gain understanding of raw empirical data flowing
from observation and experiments.
In all
subjects of study we employ a mix of both observation and inference
[theoretical models] in order to make sense of our world. And as
there can be no good and original observation“. And as
Galileo and Luther relied upon very different ‘rows of books’ from the Church,
to substantiate their views - in all such notions there is a confluence of
ideas about the nature of knowledge [epistemology], and they therefore make
important statements about how we come to know and how we don't. Theory and
method move crab-
like, shackled in harness, in a perpetual form of
unison, in everything we do and study or try to understand. Vital force,
essence, miasm and potentised drug - in the last analysis, these are all
inferred entities visible only with the inner
"eye of reason“.
Philippus
Theophrastus Bombastus Von HOHENHEIM = PARACELSUS (1493-1541) Hahnemann
basically agrees with van Helmont and Paracelsus that the root causes of
sickness are not
to be found in the outer, tangible and visible aspects
of disease manifestations, the phenotype, but rather in the deeper essence or
genotype. Therefore, they all concur that no radical or genuine change in the
tangible and visible [disease symptoms] can of itself constitute a cure, or
truly remove the causes within the deeper realm of essences, which are the root
causes of disease and therefore the arisal of disease is not terminated by such
chemical tinkering. This can only truly be achieved by employing techniques
that do delve deeper into the realm of essences, the realm
of root causes where disease can be cut off at its
true root. Thus, Paracelsus and van Helmont state just as clearly as Hahnemann
himself that drugs must be selected that match the disease
[patient totality] upon the basis of their essences
and not according to outward physical and chemical properties, which of
themselves are only, and at best, indicative of their deeper, essential
qualities. It also follows that this means holism because it means the whole
person and not just for localised symptoms or using disease labels or named
conditions.
Clearly
therefore, all these vitalist physicians concur that mere tinkering at the
level of symptoms [being results not causes] is a futile undertaking rather
like rearranging the deck-chairs on
the Titanic, as it does not penetrate deep enough into
the essential realm of causes where true changes can be induced. Through
superficial methods, only superficial changes can be brought
about. As long as the deeper cause remains present, so
disease can always at any time spring forth and flow from it. Such a notion is
confirmed by Kent, Close and others who chorus that
remedies cure the patient in the deeper essence state
of vital force and miasm only when potentised to a higher degree of similarity
in essence state as that of the vital force and the miasms themselves.
Dr Cyrus
Maxwell BOGER: Only by such matching of drug picture and patient totality, in
their deeper essence state, can the deeper realm of causes be roused into
useful activity, so as to
throw disease off by the organism's own efforts. This
also echoes the sentiment that cure, like contagion itself, has to be an active
process on the part of the organism, engaged in by the vital
force, by the whole organism, and not by any external
agent, through molecular intervention or by treating localised parts. Cure is
brought about by the vital force, and not by the remedy.
The remedy acts merely to stimulate the vital force
into renewed therapeutic activity. Any alleged therapeutic effort that fails to
engage the effort of the vital force must therefore be doomed
to fail and to be suppressive. Such is the whole of
allopathy. It is mere tinkering with symptoms, with effects not causes, as
aspect of ‘patient totality’ has to be the added dimension
provided by the theory of miasms.
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