Homeopathy

We will be led here to the formulation of certain hypotheses that are not yet scientifically proven, but are very convenient to explain the phenomena observed. All these hypotheses will remain as long as physicists will not find how homeopathic remedies work.

The healthy subject

Hahnemann, although reluctant to any kind of medical theory, admits (Organon §9) that “in the healthy condition of man, the vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway”. (§11) “It is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by its effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician, that is, by morbid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known”.

The organism thus seems to be maintained in a good functioning state thanks to a “vital force” – in the physical sense of the word, that governs the organs and up to the least cell in a harmonious functioning.

In the ill patient

A derangement of the dynamic force produces perceptible peripheral material changes, which may, at the beginning, only be manifested by symptoms felt by the patient, then by chemical changes detectable in laboratories, or even objective signs observed in a clinical examination.

Hahnemann adds (§7) “the totality of symptoms, the expression of which reflects the origins of the disease, that is the deranged vital force, well this universality of symptoms must be the principal or only means for the disease to allow us to find the appropriate remedy”.

The universality of symptoms reflects the internal derangement, may it be natural, or induced by drug intake. The advantage of this indirect reasoning is that we do not need to determine the nature of the derangement, which remains a mystery anyways. The Law of Similars shows that two derangements with quite similar manifestations will destroy one another. The natural disease is cured by a resembling drug-induced artificial disease.