Exploring the Art & Science of Homeopathy

Ontario College of Homeopathic Medicine

Distance Education

COURSE OUTLINE
SESSION 1: INTRODUCTION COMPLETED
 History, Origins of Homeopathy
 History of Medical Thought
 Comparison of Paradigms

SESSION 2: PHILOSOPHY COMPLETED

 Fundamentals and Principles
 Law of Similars
 Vital Force
 Totality of Symptoms
 Arndt-Schultz Law
 Hering’s Law

SESSION 3
 Homeopathic Theory of Disease
 Defining Disease, Cure and Health
 Action of Medicine
 Defining Acute and Chronic Disease
 The Cause of Acute and Chronic Disease

SESSION 4
 Symptoms: Definition, Types and Hierarchization
 Remedy Preparation: Dilution and Succussion
 Posology: Potency Selection and Repetition

SESSION 5: KNOWLEDGE OF MEDICINE

 Introduction to Materia Medica
 Review of Materia Medica Headings
 Remedy Classifications
 Introduction to Provings

SESSION 6: INTRODUCTION TO REPERTORIES

 Repertories: Definition, Organization and Comparison
 Some Problems with the Repertory
 Rubrics: Definition and Organization
 Repertorization: How to use the Repertory
 Appropriate versus Superfluous Symptoms

COURSE OUTLINE, continued

SESSION 7: ORGANON OF THE MEDICAL ART

 Introduction to the Organon (§ 1-21)

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 SESSION 8: CASE TAKING
 Case Taking According to the Organon (§ 82-104)
 Case Taking Hints
 The Importance of Dreams

SESSION 9: CASE ANALYSIS & REPERTORIZATION

SESSION 10: ACUTE & CHRONIC DISEASES/ MIASMS

 Acute versus Chronic Disease
 Types of Acute Disease
 Introduction to Miasms
 Definition of Miasms
 Hahnemann’s Thoughts and Theory of Miasms

SESSION 11: COLDS & FLUS

 Colds and Flus: What is the Difference?
 Comparing Allopathic, Holistic and Homeopathic Treatments
 Colds and Flu Remedy Chart

SESSION 12: FIRST AID AND EMERGENCY MEDICINE

 Homeopathic First Aid Kit
 Homeopathic First Aid Materia Medica
 Determining Dosage and Repetition
 First Aid Indications and Homeopathic Treatment

SESSION 13-15: INTRODUCTION TO MATERIA MEDICA

Materia Medica
 Natrum muriaticum
 Ignatia
 Sepia
 Pulsatilla
 Phosphorus
 Silica
 Nux vomica
 Lycopodium
 Arsenicum
 Aurum
 Platina
 Lachesis

SESSION 3
 Homeopathic Theory of Disease
 Defining Disease, Cure and Health
 Action of Medicine
 Defining Acute and Chronic Disease
 The Cause of Acute and Chronic Disease

HOMEOPATHIC THEORY OF DISEASE

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Hahnemann’s observations that a substance able to mimic a sick person’s symptoms can help cure the
patient, revealed a revolutionary understanding of symptoms. Instead of assuming that symptoms
represent illogical, improper, or unhealthy responses of the body and that they should be treated,
controlled and suppressed, Hahnemann proposed that symptoms are positive, adaptive responses to the
variety of stresses the body experiences. Therefore, symptoms represent the body’s best effort to heal
itself. In this context, symptoms are not the disease. Symptoms are only evidence of disease.

Homeopathy’s definition of the term “symptom” encompasses the physical and psychological, the
obvious and subtle, the common and the unusual. Symptoms are read as the language of disease at the
mental, emotional and physical level and therefore all should be studied in their totality as the spiritual
nature of an individual’s life. Every individual has to be understood in their own terms, each with
his/her concept of vitality (Hahnemann named this vitality the vital force), which maintains the body
in health and responds in disease through the manifestation of symptoms. The assumption is that no
matter what combination of conditions, complaints, and sufferings the patient experiences at any one
time, all are the manifestation of a single, dynamic “disease”, an integral physiological disorder that is
unique to the individual. The homeopath believes that no one organ of the body can be sick without
affecting the person as a whole. As such, all symptoms must be taken into account; all are part of the
body’s effort to heal. Disease is therefore nothing other than the spiritual dynamic mistunement of the
individual’s vital force, altered in its feeling and function. Consequently, symptoms only appear after
the vital force is disordered.

Allopaths define disease according to material views, were the pathological findings
form the basis of diagnosis -- a contradiction with the laws of nature and life
experiences. The source, process and nature of sickness, and the concept of real health
were not studied by the standard medical community who limited the sphere of sickness
to the physical level where only tissue changes were seen and considered. Hahnemann
realized that tissue changes are of the body and are results of the disease and are not the
disease itself; the disease cause is more subtle.

Allopathic physicians failed to realize that the symptoms that appear in disease are
products, and not producers of the disease. They therefore overlooked and misjudged
the body’s impressive effort to heal itself. The restoration of health was confined to
relief in the ailments of particular organs where they appeared, a belief which failed to
realize that treating symptoms can suppress the body’s natural responses and inhibit the
healing process. Through their material focus on disease, the allopath’s cure constitutes
a removal of the material cause of disease, which in its application disregards: 1) the
body as a spiritual organism that is dynamically altered by disease and, 2) that at certain
instances there is no physical cause to remove as disease is not always discernible to the
senses. As a systematic observer of nature and healing, Hahnemann was able to
recognize that the body makes amazing and impressive efforts to heal itself, but that it is
not always strong enough to complete the healing process. It often needs a catalyst to
stimulate its defenses. With the law of similars, Hahnemann developed a highly
systematic method to individualize the choice of the right catalyst by prescribing a
substance that imitates the body’s defenses. Homeopathy, therefore, does not fight
disease, it does not destroy any form of life, nor hinder any process. It strengthens the
organism, brings back balance, and always helps the dynamic force of life along its own
path to health.

DISEASE, CURE AND HEALTH

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 “The physician’s highest and only calling is to make the sick healthy, to cure, as is
called. The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of health;
that is, the lifting annihilation of the disease in its entire extent in the shortest, most
reliable, and least disadvantageous way, according to clearly realizable principles.”

Organon § 1
&2

Hahnemann states that in a state of health, the vital force maintains all parts of the
organism in a harmonious or balanced way. H.A. Roberts in his book, Principles of Art
and Cure by Homeopathy, states that “health is a matter of perfect equilibrium, perfect
balance; trifling circumstances may sway it, and even as seemingly trifling
circumstances may sway it, so may it be balanced by the least possible in medication,
which may, in conditions of perfect health, cause the same loss of balance, or a
corresponding loss of equilibrium.” In Thorsons Encyclopedic Dictionary of
Homeopathy, health is defined as, “the state of an individual organism when it
functions optimally, with its cells dynamically in phase and resonance, and without any
reactive disease symptoms, disequilibrium or abnormality….” Upon examining these
two statements, one can see that health is not just the absence of disease, but includes a
balance or equilibrium of an individual with his/her environment.

Disease: A dynamic alteration of the vital/life force, from a state of health, that is
expressed or
manifested through symptoms. Disease is not something local or
diagnostic but a
general state of being of an individual at a given time.

Cure: A rectification of the alteration; restoration of health.

‘To cure’: refers to the restoration brought about through the use of
medicines or other treatments

‘To heal’: refers to the body’s own process in recovery, the natural
process of healing

Health: Freedom from disease or abnormality on all three spheres: physical,

mental/emotional
and spiritual

Medicine: A substance which has the power to alter the state of health, and is
expressed through
signs and symptoms.

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 ACTION OF MEDICINE

Hahnemann and his basic concepts of the homeopathic system of medicine were the
products of their times and his profound genius. Disillusioned by the medical practices
of his day, and armed with a keen insight of the laws of nature, human life, disease and
its manifestations -- homeopathy, a holistic form of medicine aimed to help the body
heal itself, was born.

As an ever-innovative contributor to medical science, Hahnemann was the first to

recommend giving medicinal remedies to healthy people to assess their physiological
properties, in experiments called provings. He carefully observed, recorded and noted
how each substance created a variety of physical, emotional and mental symptoms,
unique to that substance. As such, he realized that the homeopathic provings provide the
experimental factors required for learning what symptoms a substance causes and thus,
according to the law of similars, what it is capable of curing.

Hahnemann further stated that disease, as a dynamic alteration of the living whole,
affects initially the vital force. The dynamically mistuned vital force then seeks to
restore its equilibrium through signs and symptoms. The medicinal power must also, as
such, act on the dynamic plane to illicit a cure and bring back the organism to a state of
health. The methodology for similia similibus curentur, choosing the symptom picture
of the medicine most similar to the symptom picture of the disease, was based on
observation by Hahnemann of disease dynamics in the sick. These observations
included:

1. Only one disease dynamic can exist in the body at one time.

2. When two dissimilar diseases meet,

a) the action of the weaker will be suppressed and suspended by the action of
the stronger; until the stronger has run its course and only then does the
weaker one return
b) the older stronger disease keeps any new weaker ones at bay
c) the stronger new disease suspends the weaker older disease

3. When two similar diseases meet, the weaker is completely annihilated by the
stronger
(Homeopathic Natural Law)

The Homeopathic Natural Law led to the following principles: law of similars and
optimal dose. Hahnemann realized that one needed to produce an artificial disease, in
the form of a remedy, which has a similar symptom picture to the natural disease but is
slightly stronger in intensity. From conducting his provings, he also noted that remedies
affect the health of man unconditionally, as every prover reacted in some form to the
substance given, whereas natural diseases affect health conditionally. Thereby, the
individual is more disposed to be strongly affected by the medicine and the weaker,
natural disease will yield to the stronger similar artificial disease. The remedy is
effective because it acts like the disease (an artificial disease with an energy dynamic
similar yet stronger to the natural disease), creating a disturbance of the vital force.

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 The remedy takes over, removing the original pattern of symptoms permanently as the
medicine is close enough in action to resonate with the original symptoms (Remedy A).
If there is not enough resonance (Remedy B, C), the original stimulus remains
untouched and unresolved. Cure is aided by the fact that the duration of the medicine is
limited because it is potentized and kept to the minimum dose.

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The self-limiting action of a medicine is due to:

1. The vital force is further disturbed by a substance whose nature so resembles the disease it can
take over.

2. The potency selected is stronger than the disease, allowing the remedy to obtain a stronger
reaction from the vital force that enables the vital force to complete the action of elimination.

3. The dose is so minimal, there is none left over to continue interference with the action of the vital
force, especially since it is artificially induced.

The speed of reaction to the medicine depends on:

1. The nature of the medicine, the speed in which it acts is part of its character.

2. The vitality of the vital force

a) a strong vital force will react with speed
b) a weakened vital force will act slowly because it is vulnerable

An indication of vitality may be gained by looking at:

1. The types of symptoms being produced: the quality and quantity of characteristic symptoms.

Characteristic symptoms: Distinctive symptoms that are unique to the patient or remedy.
Clarity and number of characteristic symptoms: high indicates a strong and healthy vital force
Clarity and number of characteristics: low indicates a weak and vulnerable vital force

ACUTE AND CHRONIC DISEASE

Applied in relation to diseases, acute and chronic denote duration of time. Acute diseases are
relatively short lasting episodes of illness. Chronic are those that are naturally longer lasting. In some
instances chronic diseases show acute aggravation of symptoms, in which case there may be talk of an
acute stage of a chronic disease. This type of reaction is likely to be described as an acute exacerbation
of a chronic disease.

Hahnemann did not stop at this relatively superficial assessment of disease but probed more deeply
into the nature of the processes involved. In his basic definition of the diseases that he terms acute or
chronic, Hahnemann refers to the dynamic factors giving rise to them, and relates their temporal
duration to the correction or persistence of changes in the vital force. Therefore, a disease is acute or
chronic by its nature. As such, a chronic disease is chronic from the very beginning.

Acute, a short lasting disease is attributed by Hahnemann to a disturbance of the vital force that is
relatively quickly overcome by the body’s own energies and ends with either a restoration of health or
death. Therefore, an acute disease is either an illness to which the body’s own healing process can
respond in due course and restores health without necessarily needing treatment or it is terminated with
the death of the individual. Chronic disease is a different type of process. Instead of effective reaction
to and correction of the disruption, there is ineffectual opposition that fails to rectify the disturbance.
Hahnemann infers that a series of stimuli gradually disrupt the vital force in chronic disease and leave
it weakened to such a degree that it no longer has the reserve needed to correct itself, stating that the
vital force resistance is imperfect, inexpedient and useless (Organon aph.72). Therefore, instead of the
short, sharp resistance that corrects the changes in acute disease, there is a persistent resistance that not
only fails to restore balance and reinstate the essential order, but also further weakens the vital force
and aggravates the problem. In failing to overcome the disturbance that already exists, the ineffectual
resistance adds to the problem and feeds the disease process. It is, therefore, this characteristic of
having a tendency to end that makes a disease acute, and the characteristic of having a tendency to
continue, though in different forms, without ending, that makes a disease chronic.

Cause of Disease
Throughout his writings Hahnemann consistently argues that all symptoms of disease, though
important, are only a visible front or superficial aspect of the hidden processes that give rise to them.
That is, they are outward signs giving evidence of the inner mechanisms. Consequently, it is useless
merely to try to ease these superficial effects. The greater need is to trace the inner cause and rectify
this, so that the surface effects, or symptoms, are cleared at the source.

Fundamental to all such detailed assessments of disease by Hahnemann is his awareness of the pairing
of easily seen physical effects and unseen psychological causes. While he specifies hidden factors such
as emotions, ideological conflicts and family pressures that may contribute to disease, he also warns
against ill-founded speculation on their role. That is, he strongly opposes consideration of subtle causes
of disease without due reference to the symptoms that he regards as their product.

“The totality of these symptoms is the outwardly reflected image of the inner wesen of the
disease, that is, of the suffering of the life force. The totality of symptoms must be the principal
or the only thing whereby the disease can make discernible what remedy (curative means) it
requires, the only thing that can determine choice of the most suitable helping-means. Thus, in
a word, the totality of every case of disease, that the medical-art practitioner has to discern and
to clear away, by means of art, so that the disease shall be cured and transformed into health.”

Organon § 7

This statement and others like it clearly show Hahnemann’s two-way appraisal of the nature of disease,
with due attention both to the physical symptoms and the hidden factors producing them.

Hahnemann openly states his understanding that disturbing emotional imprints, spiritual factors,
restrictive ideas and other memories held by a person can play a major role in the development of
physical symptoms. Therefore, in his determination to understand disease, he regarded these as aspects
of the vital force or dynamis, the hidden influences which provoke visible symptoms. So while he
stressed the importance of checking for physical symptoms and their similarly gross causal factors
(such as inappropriate diet, drainage or drugs), he also looked at the effects of the vital force or hidden
psychological determinants and, on an even more subtle level, tried to understand the original intention
or choice that set the process in motion. He was therefore examining the physical effects and at the
same time trying to understand the psychological and initiatory processes that influenced them.

CAUSE OF ACUTE DISEASE

Acute disease must have an immediate exciting cause, something that brings on or provokes a
condition or event (external circumstance that immediately precedes the acute disease). In some
instances the presence of a maintaining cause, which is a factor responsible for the continuation of the
disease, acts as an obstacle to cure.

Exciting Cause: A stimulus resonating with the particular level of susceptibility of the
 organism resulting in disease (microorganism, foreign chemical, emotional
shock, allopathic drug, vaccination, etc.).

Maintaining Cause: A strong susceptibility to the morbific agent necessary for producing
disease, due to the weakness of the defense mechanism which maintains a
lowered state of health, rather than a succession of exciting causes.

CAUSE OF CHRONIC DISEASE

Hahnemann, in his discussions of chronic diseases, questioned their cause in detail and considered
factors as diverse as drug effects and miasmatic influences.

Drugs were widely used in those days in ways that Hahnemann often criticized as inappropriate and
dangerous. In his opinion drugs were frequently applied in doses that were inadequate to overcome the
diseases for which they were prescribed, and, in addition, they cause further weakening of the vital
force. Hahnemann reasoned that they set up ineffective opposition to the disease, thereby weakening
the vital force and further aggravating the condition. Drugs, in sort, were viewed as toxic as well as
inadequate and another frequent cause of the debilitating cycle leading to chronic disease. For similar
reasons he also condemned the over-use of bloodletting and purgatives. These too, he said, were often
used in a manner that not only failed to rectify the disease, but also themselves further weakened the
body.

Although Hahnemann included such effects of abused medication in his list of causes of chronic
disease, he disregarded the effects of repetitive trauma, which he considered avoidable. He, therefore,
excluded the effects of too much food or drink, excessive mental exertion or emotional stress,
prolonged lack of exercise, inappropriate housing, etc. These effects, he argued, were due to avoidable
trauma, and able to be corrected by environmental and lifestyle changes. Since external changes could
rectify these problems they were excluded from his category of chronic disease. By contrast, chronic
disease is determined by an inner change, an internal weakening of the vital force and requires
correction by a similarly interior stimulus, a correctly chosen homeopathic remedy.

Hahnemann’s attention to inward and hidden causal factors of chronic disease is emphasized when he
looks at the role of miasms. Miasms, he reasoned, hidden within an individual can be activated by the
range of factors he had previously considered as causes of disease. The latent trait of a miasm might lie
dormant in a person for much of his life, or be aroused by stimuli from physical trauma, environmental
factors, emotional or ideological conflicts, to produce obvious symptoms of a wide range of diseases.
Miasms, therefore, render people vulnerable to disease.

Hahnemann observed a tendency of one disease coming in after another, which lead him to believe that
there must be some very deep acting cause behind this tendency of one disease disappearing and
making room for another. It became apparent to him that these different diseases were only different
manifestations of the same thing, the miasm. In other words, the miasm is the only disease, while all
the so-called diagnosed diseases are its different expressions.

Hahnemann classified them into particular types linked to named diseases from which he says they
have arisen. Syphilis, sycosis and psora, refer to the after-effects that, in his view, stemmed from
chancre, gonorrhea and a recurrent itchy skin eruption. Certain disease patterns develop when the
particular trait is activated by a contemporary stimulus. Syphilis relates to diseases presenting with
ulceration and swollen glands; sycosis with soft fleshy tumours, warty eruptions and discharges; and
psora with irritating skin eruptions. It must be stressed that psora is not itch, sycosis is not gonorrhea,
nor syphilis chancre. These are merely manifestations, effects or expressions of their respective miasm.
The miasm, however, is the cause of the particular manifestations. Therefore in regards to psora, the
itch only indicates the existence of psora, as there can be no itch without psora, but it does not
necessarily follow that there is no psora if there is no itch. Similarly with sycosis and gonorrhea, as
well as syphilis and chancre.

Hahnemann further explained that psora is the true fundamental cause of chronic disease, and as such
is by far the most important of the chronic miasms. Psora is that condition acquired by man, prior to
his having any disease, but now that inherent in him, gives him the tendency for disease. Therefore,
without psora there could be no sycosis and syphilis. Sycosis and syphilis are conditions of the system
arising out of suppressed gonorrheal discharge and suppression of the chancre respectively. The act of
suppression removes the primary manifestation from the surface, the skin, and turns it inward to the
interior.

These three miasmatic traits are fundamental to the development of disease, particularly its chronic
forms. They play a major role in weakening the vital force to such a degree that the natural defenses of
the patient cannot correct the disorder so that the disease persists, and unless treated homeopathically,
until the end of life. Hence, Hahnemann argues, the vital force requires the aid of a correctly prescribed
anti-psoric, anti-sycotic or anti-syphilitic remedy.

Hahnemann’s references to miasms imply a predisposition to disease operating within an individual.

Whether it is inherited pre-birth or acquired by contact shortly post-birth, it remains within the
individual body and is liable to reactivation by other stimuli acquired in time, with the two together
producing obvious disease. The detailed application of the miasm theory, therefore, plays an important
role in reminding practitioners to look for the convergence of latent, perhaps hereditary trait, as well as
recent stimuli in the evolution of disease.

Summary:

“It will help the physician to bring about a cure if he can find out the data of the most probable
occasion (exciting cause) of an acute disease, and the most significant factors in the entire
history of a protracted wasting sickness, enabling him to find out its fundamental cause. The
fundamental cause of a protracted wasting sickness (chronic disease) mostly rests upon a
chronic miasm.”

Organon § 5
Assignment 3:
Part I:
Write a short essay on how the action of medicine demonstrates the Law of Similars.

Part II:
Write a short essay explaining your understanding of the homeopathic use of the terms acute and
chronic. How is this different from the allopathic use of these terms?
Next Session
SESSION 4
 Symptoms: Definition, Types and Hierarchization
 Remedy Preparation: Dilution and Succussion
 Posology: Potency Selection and Repetition