Preface

We have no means of sensing the life processes inside a man.

It is only at times granted us to draw speculative conclusions from what is happening as to the manner in which it may have occurred or taken place.

But we are unable to furnish conclusive proofs of our explanations from the changes in the organic kingdom. This is because the changes in living organic subjects have nothing in common with those taking place in what is organic, since they take place by processes entirely different.

This is why, in presenting the Homoeopathic Therapeutics, I did not explain how the cure of diseases is effected by operating on the patient with substances possessing the power to excite very similar morbid symptoms in healthy persons.

I furnished a conjecture about it. But it was not an explanation because one was not needed.

We just need to cure similar symptoms correctly and successfully, according to a law of nature which is being constantly confirmed.

We do not need to boast with abstract explanations, while we leave the patients uncured. This is what so-called physicians have accomplished.

These physicians have made many objections on my explanation. They reject the whole homoeopathic method of curing (the only one possible) merely because they were not satisfied with my explanations.

I do not write here to satisfy those critics. I write to present to myself and to my successors, the genuine practical Homoeopaths, another and more probable attempt of this kind toward an explanation.

This I present because the human mind feels within it the irresistible, harmless and praiseworthy impulse to give some account to itself as to the mode in which man accomplishes good by his actions.

The Vital Force

Our vital force, without the assistance of active remedies of human art, cannot overcome even the slight acute diseases (if it does not succumb to them) and restore some sort of health without sacrificing a part (often a large part) of the fluid and the solid parts of the organism through a so-called crisis.

How our vital force effects this, will ever remain unknown to us.

But this force cannot overcome even these diseases in a direct manner, nor without such sacrifices.

The Chronic Diseases, which spring from miasms, cannot be healed unaided, even by such sacrifices. Real health cannot be restored by this force alone.

But even if this force is enabled by the true (homoeopathic) healing art, guided by the human understanding, to overpower and overcome (to cure) not only the quickly transient, but also the chronic diseases arising from miasms in a direct manner and without such sacrifices, without loss of body and life, nevertheless, it is always this power, the vital force, which conquers.

It is in this case as with the army of a country, which drives the enemy out of the country.

This army is victorious even if it may not have won the victory without foreign auxiliaries.

It is the organic vital force of our body which cures natural diseases of every kind directly and without any sacrifices as soon as it is enabled by means of the correct (homoeopathic) remedies to win the victory.

This force would not have been able to conquer without this assistance, for our organic vital force, taken alone, is only sufficient to maintain the unimpeded progress of life so long as man is not morbidly affected by the hostile operation of forces causing disease.

Unassisted, the vital force is no match to these hostile powers. It hardly opposes a force equal to the hostile operation. This, with many signs of its own sufferings (which we call morbid symptoms).

By its own power, our vital force would never be able to overcome the foe of chronic disease, nor even to conquer transient diseases, without considerable losses inflicted on some parts of the organism, if it remained without external aid, without the assistance of genuine remedies.

To give such support is the duty enjoined on the physician’s understanding by the Preserver of life.

Our vital force hardly opposes an equal opposition to the foe causing the disease, and yet no enemy can be overcome except by a superior force. Only homoeopathic medicine can give this superior power to the invalidated vital force.

Of itself this vital principle, being only an organic vital force intended to preserve an undisturbed health, opposes only a weak resistance to the invading morbific enemy; as the disease grows and increases it opposes a greater resistance, but, at best, it is only an equal resistance; with weakly patients it is not even equal, but weaker. This force is neither capable, nor destined, nor created for an overpowering resistance, which will do no harm to itself.

But if we physicians are able to present and oppose to this instinctive vital force its morbific enemy, as it were magnified through the action of homoeopathic medicines - even if it should be enlarged every time only by a little - if in this way the image of the morbific foe be magnified to the apprehension of the vital principle through homoeopathic medicines, which, in a delusive manner, simulate the original disease, we gradually cause and compel this instinctive vital force to increase its energies by degrees, and to increase them more and more, and at last to such a degree that it becomes far more powerful than the original disease.

The consequence of this is, that the vital force again becomes sovereign in its domain, can again hold and direct the reins of sanitary progress, while the apparent increase of the disease caused by homoeopathic medicines disappears of itself as soon as we, seeing the preponderance of the restored vital force, i. e., of the restored health, cease to use these remedies.

The fund or the fundamental essence of this spiritual vital principle, imparted to us men by the infinitely merciful Creator, is incredibly great, if we physicians understand how to maintain its integrity in the days of health, by directing men to a healthy mode of living, and how to invoke and augment it in diseases by purely homoeopathic treatment.

Dilutions exist almost solely in objects of taste and of color.

A solution of salty and bitter substances becomes continually more deprived of its taste the more water is added, and eventually it has hardly any taste, no matter how much it may be shaken. So, also, a solution of coloring matter, by the admixture of more and more water, becomes at last almost colorless, and any amount of shaking will not increase its color.

These are, and continue to be, real attenuations or dilutions, but no dynamizations.

Homoeopathic Dynamizations are processes by which the medicinal properties, which are latent in natural substances while in their crude state, become aroused, and then become enabled to act in an almost spiritual manner on our life; i. e., on our sensible and irritable fibre. This development of the properties of crude natural substances (dynamization) takes place, as I have before taught, in the case of dry substances by means of trituration in a mortar, but in the case of fluid substances, by means of shaking or succussion, which is also a trituration. These preparations cannot be simply designated as dilutions, although every preparation of this kind, in order that it may be raised to a higher potency, i. e., in order that the medicinal properties still latent within it may be yet farther awakened and developed, must first undergo a further attenuation, in order that the trituration or succussion may enter still further into the very essence of the medicinal substance, and may thus also liberate and expose the more subtle part of the medicinal powers that lie hidden more deeply, which could not be effected by any amount of trituration and succussion of the substances in their concentrated form.

We frequently read in homoeopathic books that, in the case of one or another person in a certain case of disease, some high (dilution) dynamization of a medicine was of no use at all, but a lower potency proved effectual, while others have seen more success from higher potencies. But no one in such cases investigates the cause of the great difference of these effects. What prevents the preparer of the medicines (and this ought to be the homoeopathic physician himself; he himself ought to forge and whet the arms with which to fight the disease) - what prevents him, in preparing a potency, from giving 10, 20, 50 and more suc-cussive strokes against a somewhat hard, elastic body to every vial containing one drop of the lower potency with 99 drops of alcohol, so as to obtain strong potencies? This would-be vastly more effective than giving only a few nerveless succussive strokes, which will produce little more than dilutions, which ought not to be the case.

The perfection of our unique art of healing and the welfare of the patients seem to make it worth while for the physician to take the trouble necessary to secure the utmost efficiency in his medicines.

Modern wiseacres have even sneered at the 30th potency, and would only use the lower, less developed and more massive preparations in larger doses, whereby they have been, however, unable to effect all that our art can accomplish. If, however, every potency is dynamized with the same number of succussive strokes, we obtain, even in the fiftieth potency, medicines of the most penetrating efficacy, so that every minute pellet moistened with it. after being dissolved in a quantity of water, can and must be taken in small parts, if we do not wish to produce too violent an action with sensitive patients, while we must remember that such a preparation contains almost all the properties latent in the drug now fully developed, and these can only then come into full activity.

Paris, December 19th, 1838.