Homoeopathy has been in existence for two centuries from the beginning it had a controversial relationship with the established medicine of its time. This was difficult to imagine that a medicine which called for such tiny doses as was claimed that is for particular purposes, mere information rather than anything material – that such a medicine could have such effects.
At the time of old school practice Hahnemann discovers the weakness and blunders in his teachings and he felt a state of depression which causes him almost completely despair of his medical studies. He was close to concluding that the whole field was nothing and incapable of improvement. So, he sank into his solitary thoughts and decided to allow his reflections free reign until arriving a decisive conclusion.
It was during the age of enlightenment that Hahnemann had his first expenses in medicine. At that time, France was the center of ideas. Hahnemann consciously attempted to medicine. The motto of enlightenment “Sapere Aude “, “Dare to Know “. Many other tried this. But mostly in the sense of educating people about hygiene or the correct use of the available medicine. For Hahnemann it meant improving his own system and to that extend he is indeed a medical reformer.
Hahnemann himself is still the controversial. He was during the nineteenth century. In my opinion, what is relevant to present day society can be learned by studying the outsider. This particular stimulus includes induced me to concern myself with him. Hahnemann found out that when medicine of any sort is introduced into the organism, it alters it at the physical, spiritual and mental levels. This is time to all medicines and not only of homoeopathic substances. That Is to say, every cup of coffee, every cup of tea, every aspirin, all these stronger medicaments of course sand naturally the homoeopathic substances too will change the organism, also on a mental level, if they are going to have any medical effect at all.
Hahnemann was a well-trained doctor for his time and the only reason he undertook his search for a new medicine was that the medicine of his time with its enormous prescriptions tended rather to poison people than to help them. He experienced a certain delicacy of conscience about treating unknown illness of his suffering brothers with these unknown medications. Because these strong substances, if not precisely matched to the illness in question could quite easily turn life in to death, or give rise to new ailments and lead to chronic sickness which are often more difficult to get rid of them the original disease.
Thought most of history it was believed that in healing disease almost nothing better could be done than to reproduce the crisis and carry out cleaning through sweating, bowel movements, urination, bloodletting from veins, putting on the leeches, putting on Spanish fly fontanels and mustard plasters, herbals rubbing on ointments and herbal spirits, emetics, the prescription of laxatives. These were the favored healing method until recent times. To become thus a murderer or an agent hostile to the life of agent hostile to the life of Hahnemann’s fellow was the most dreadful thought to him; That is so dreadful and disturbing to him in fact Hahnemann gave up his practice completely and repeated almost no one medically but occupied himself solely with the pursuit of chemistry and writing.
How seriously Hahnemann approached the ethical aspect of his doctor’s profession is shown by the fact that because of his dissatisfaction with the method of his time. He did not practice as a doctor for many years perhaps decades. His work was essentially that of a medical writer. Due to his frustration at not being able to help his patients, he said to himself “Better to do nothing and not practice as a doctor than to do harm to someone”.
At that time he had translated a text on medical preparations by a Scottish pharmacologist and doctor, while translating, he noticed that this Scottish doctor had made an assertion concerning that the effect of Cinchona Bark which he could not concur. So he decided to simply try it out himself. As an experiment, he took 4 measures of good cinchona bark twice daily for several days. At first he feels that his feet and finger-tips etc., becomes cold, then he became weak and tired, then his heart started to pound, and his pulse became hard and rapid, and an unbearable anxiety, a shaking, a feebleness through all his limbs, then a pounding in his head, reddening of the cheeks and thirst; in short all the symptoms normally associated with intermittent fever appeared one after the other but without an actual shivering fit. To sum up, all the normal symptoms especially characteristic of intermitted fever; the numbness the sense, the type of stiffness in all the limbs but especially the numb, repulsive feeling which seems to sit in all the bones of the whole body, all the bones of the whole body, all these appeared. This lasted for 2 to 3 hours each time and was repeated when he took the dose again but not otherwise. And he was healthy again.
Everybody pursues homoeopathy poisons on self systematically with these medicinal agents in order to get to know their effects. This can sometimes be quite tough. It changes one’s own actual state and can involve significant restrictions. But it is necessary because in this way one can get to know the condition-alternating power, as Hahnemann puts it of these medicines on one’s own body and soul. One thinks and feels a little differently when one poisons oneself in what could be called a Nano Toxic manner. Doing this to himself only makes sense if he keep a protocol of what happens. So he write what happens in the first hour, in the second hour, on the next day. Etc. in what way dos his condition before taking the medicines differ from that after taking them? These maybe symptoms or alternating’s from his previous condition which have been caused by the medicines. But he can only be certain that these symptoms are not arbitrary by repeating the exercise at a later date or by having others try the same medicines on themselves and observing whether the same changes take place.
It would be a great humiliations for the noble race o man were his survival to depend on mere coincidence. No, it is refreshing to think that for each individual state of illness, for every particular disease, there exists specific and helpful recourses as well as the means of diligently finding them. This became a central concept for Hahnemann and he believed that every effective medical substance can produce quite typical effects on people. He tested this and tried out which medicine led to know symptomatic effects or could quite simply be used on patients whose illness carried similar symptom. This is the birth of the principle of analogy or similarity in homoeopathy, a concept which Hahnemann later describe with the Latin phrase “Similia Similibus Curentor”. We should imitate nature which treats a chronicle disease by adding a different one and use the appropriate medical substance that simulates the symptoms of the disease as close as possible and the original illness will be cured.
It was impossible to line out in the village for another winter. Master Hahnemann cannot go on with literature there nor can he get on with his chemical studies. So he carried everything from the town. Life in village is full of insurmountable hardship- just the thing for a herd of small children. He was at risk of scandal as though he were roaming about the world. He wish for a quiet place where he can enjoy privacy and yet broaden his knowledge as a scholar; where he is surrounded by good people and where he can bring his children up properly.
For many years Hahnemann was in financial difficulties because of his small income and his large family, which eventually numbered eleven children. In his childhood, he had also experienced poverty. His father lost his job when war made employment at the porcelain factory impossible. He knew about poverty and now we knew, through research that he not only gave free medicine to those in need, but sometimes even helped out with alms.
Nature operates according to eternal laws without asking you it allowed to do so. It loves simplicity and works a lot by one remedy, while you affect few by many means. The healing of a disease requires few, very basic, but correct, absolutely adequate means. Provide very basic remedies and not any other before the first one’s effect passed. All means have their very own, irreplaceable tendency to effect, each have their peculiar curativeness to overcome a sphere of condition of disease to which the remaining medicines have few or no points of contacts.
Master Hahnemann was affected with the observation, that humans received no real help by medicine but, you have to imagine that, when someone had syphilis by that time it was classically treated with mercury tremendous amounts.
