ORGANON 6: 7

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

7
Now, as in a disease, from which no manifest exciting or maintaining cause
(causa occasionalis) has to be removed (1), we can perceive nothing but the
morbid symptoms, it must (regard being had to the possibility of a miasm,
and attention paid to the accessory circumstances, ? 5) be the symptoms
alone by which the disease demands and points to the remedy suited to
relieve it - and, moreover, the totality of these its symptoms, of this
outwardly reflected picture of the internal essence of the disease, that is,
of the affection of the vital force, must be the principal, or the sole
means, whereby the disease can make known what remedy it requires - the only
thing that can determine the choice of the most appropriate remedy - and
thus, in a word, the totality 2 of the symptoms must be the principal,
indeed the only thing the physician has to take note of in every case of
disease and to remove by means of his art, in order that it shall be cured
and transformed into health.

(1) It is not necessary to say that every intelligent physician would first
remove this where it exists; the indisposition thereupon generally ceases
spontaneously. He will remove from the room strong-smelling flowers, which
have a tendency to cause syncope and hysterical sufferings; extract from the
cornea the foreign body that excites inflammation of the eye; loosen the
over-tight bandage on a wounded limb that threatens to cause mortification,
and apply a more suitable one; lay bare and put ligature on the wounded
artery that produces fainting; endeavour to promote the expulsion by
vomiting of belladonna berries etc., that may have been swallowed; extract
foreign substances that may have got into the orifices of the body (the
nose, gullet, ears, urethra, rectum, vagina); crush the vesical calculus;
open the imperforate anus of the newborn infant, etc.

(2) In all times, the old school physicians, not knowing how else to give
relief, have sought to combat and if possible to suppress by medicines, here
and there, a single symptom from among a number in diseases - a one-sided
procedure, which, under the name of symptomatic treatment, has justly
excited universal contempt, because by it, not only was nothing gained, but
much harm was inflicted. A single one of the symptoms present is no more the
disease itself than a foot is the man himself. This procedure was so much
the more reprehensible, that such a single symptom was only treated by an
antagonistic remedy (therefore only in an enantiopathic and palliative
manner), whereby, after a slight alleviation, it was subsequently only
rendered all the worse.

Rgds
Soroush

No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.11/944 - Release Date: 09/08/2007
14:44