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Yes, a proposed principle, observed sporadically, and never tested till Hahnemann tested it. It couldn't validly be called a summation of observations till he'd pulled together all the evidence and summated it. His summary was (at least, in Latin) Similia similibus curantur, and his instruction was therefore Similia similibus curentur. The proposed (i.e., little more than hypothetical) principle was just one more idea till he'd tested it. The principle was refined through testing, to the point at which he could later declare that Cinchona was rarely similar enough to malaria to actually have a curative (rather than simply disruptive) effect; yet it is the same, unchanged principle as he began with.
Cheers!
John
2009/7/22 Lynn Cremona >
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"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."
— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)
"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."
— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)
And by the way, he didn't 'discover' homeopathy - the word comes from the Greek, and the principle of 'like cures like' was already known to the Ancient Greeks. Hahnemann, who knew about this way of treating illness from the Ancient Greek writings, simply took the idea and developed it.
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John - if we follow your logic to identify who is a homeopath, then the oncologist who prescribes cisplatin for cancer of the ovaries is a homeopath!
Liz
Well, if every accidentally homoeopathic prescription made one a homoeopathy, then yes. But I've argued explicitly and often that homeopathic practice is not about results but about the attempt to make the match, which presumably one's oncologist is not doing!
No Liz
He developed it after his experiment with China!
Although Homeopathy is a Greek based word, I do not think it existed before Hn. He coined.
Rgds
Soroush
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From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Liz Brynin
Sent: 22 July 2009 15:09
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Re: Recommended Reading
And by the way, he didn't 'discover' homeopathy - the word comes from the Greek, and the principle of 'like cures like' was already known to the Ancient Greeks. Hahnemann, who knew about this way of treating illness from the Ancient Greek writings, simply took the idea and developed it.
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In our exchanges, the word CURE has been used.
Would colleagues like to share what they understand Cure means. Especially how we should know it as Homeopaths.
Rgds
Soroush
My thought exactly. And § 2. But the meat of his meaning is found in "Nature of Chronic Diseases", in Chronic Diseases.
From page 26, 1976 Jain edition (summing up the previous few pages' discussion of the failure of homoeopathy to maintain its effect in certain chronic illnesses):
"This was, and remained, the quicker or slower process in such treatments in all non-venereal, severe chronic diseases, even when these were treated in exact accordance with the Homoeopathic art as hitherto unknown. Their beginning was promising, the continuation less favourable, the outcome hopeless."
And from page 76:
"In the chronic miasmatic diseases nature observes the same course with respect to the mode of contagion and the antecedant formation of the internal disease, before the external declarative symptoms of its internal completion manifests itself on the surface of the body, but then that great remarkable difference from the acute diseases shows itself, that in the the chronic miasmata the entire internal disease, as we have mentioned before, remains in the organism during the whole life, yea, it increases with every year, if it is not exterminated and throughly cured by art."
And from the footnote to page 144 (the final page of the chapter):
"Now since, in addition, the other remedies, although also selected according to the similarity of their symptoms, do not by far yield so durable and thorough a cure in such chronic diseases, as those which are recognised as anti-psoric, and which are selected in as Homoeopathic a manner, because these more than the others are adequate to the whole extent of the endless number of symptoms of the great Psora malady: I do not see why men will deny to the latter the title of the especially anti-psoric remedies, unless this springs from dogmatism."
What these paragraphs and those they sum up convey of the matter is that Hahnemann's standard is one of the illness's entire and permanent removal -- which in the case of chronic diseases entails recognition of the greater part of the illness of which only some portion may be manifest at the time of the homoeopathic consultation.
Perhaps you've found some source for the word preceding Hahnemann; if so, the dictionary-makers would be pleased to know of it. But Hahnemann's claim is to have discovered it, and to have done so through his pathogenetic experiments, beginning with that using Peruvian bark.
From the Introduction to the Organon: (pages 78 to 80, Jain 1976 reprint):
"It was high time for the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of mankind to put a stop to these abominations.... It was high time that he should permit the discovery of homoeopathy.
"By observation, reflection and experience, I discovered that, contrary to the old allopathic method, the true, the proper, the best mode of treatment is contained in the maxim: To cure rapidly, certainly, and permanently, choose, in every case of disease, a medicine which can itself produce an affection similar () to that sought to be cured!
"Hitherto no one has ever taught this homoeopathic mode of cure, no one has carried it out in practice. But if the truth is only to be found in this method, as I can prove it to be, we might expect that, even though it remained unperceived for thousands of years, distinct traces of it would yet be discovered in every age [30].
"And such is the fact. In all ages, the patients who have been really, rapidly, permanently and obviously cured by medicines, and who did not merely recover by some fortuitous circumstance, or by the acute disease having run its allotted course, or by the powers of the system having, in the course of time, gradually attained the preponderance, under allopathic and antagonistic treatment -- for being cured in a direct manner differs vastly from recovering in an indirect manner -- such patients have been cured solely (although without the knowledge of the physician) by means of a (homoeopathic) medicine which possessed the power of producing a similar morbid state.
"... They prescribed a medicine the very reverse of that which they should have employed according to the traditional therapeutics, and it was only in consequence of so doing that the patients were rapidly cured."
From pages 80 to 81:
"Blind experience sometimes led them to a homoeopathic mode of treatment [31], and yet they did not perceive the law of nature in obedience to which cures so effected did and must ensure."
Footnote 31 gives many illustrations of the homoeopathic cure and of "such evident relief" of various illnesses by physicians who had no inkling that this was the mode of treatment that they were using.
Cheers!
John
2009/7/23 Liz Brynin >
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His summary was (at least, in Latin) Similia similibus curantur, and his instruction was therefore Similia similibus curentur. The proposed (i.e., little more than hypothetical) principle was just one more idea till he'd tested it. The principle was refined through testing, to the point at which he could later declare that Cinchona was rarely similar enough to malaria to actually have a curative (rather than simply disruptive) effect; yet it is the same, unchanged principle as he began with.