ORGANON 6: 6
Posted: Wed Aug 08, 2007 10:12 am
The unprejudiced observer - well aware of the futility of transcendental
speculations which can receive no confirmation from experience - be his
powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every
individual disease, except the changes in the health of the body and of the
mind (morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived
externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the
deviations from the former healthy state of the now diseased individual,
which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him and
observed by the physician.
All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that
is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait of the
disease. 3
============
FN3 I know not, therefore, how it was possible for physicians at the
sick-bed to allow themselves to suppose that, without most carefully
attending to the symptoms and being guided by them in the treatment, they
ought to seek and could discover, only in the hidden and unknown interior,
what there was to be cured in the disease, arrogantly and ludicrously
pretending that they could, without paying much attention to the symptoms,
discover the alteration that had occurred in the invisible interior, and set
it to rights with (unknown!) medicines, and that such a procedure as this
could alone be called radical and rational treatment.
Is not, then, that which is cognizable by the senses in diseases through the
phenomena it displays, the disease itself in the eyes of the physician,
since he never can see the spiritual being that produces the disease, the
vital force? nor is it necessary that he should see it, but only that he
should ascertain its morbid actions, in order that he may thereby be enabled
to cure the disease.
What else will the old school search for in the hidden interior of the
organism, as a prima causa morbi, whilst they reject as an object of cure
and contemptuously despise the sensible and manifest representation of the
disease, the symptoms, that so plainly address themselves to us?
What else do they wish to cure in disease but these?
Rgds
Soroush
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.8/941 - Release Date: 07/08/2007
16:06
speculations which can receive no confirmation from experience - be his
powers of penetration ever so great, takes note of nothing in every
individual disease, except the changes in the health of the body and of the
mind (morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived
externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the
deviations from the former healthy state of the now diseased individual,
which are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him and
observed by the physician.
All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that
is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait of the
disease. 3
============
FN3 I know not, therefore, how it was possible for physicians at the
sick-bed to allow themselves to suppose that, without most carefully
attending to the symptoms and being guided by them in the treatment, they
ought to seek and could discover, only in the hidden and unknown interior,
what there was to be cured in the disease, arrogantly and ludicrously
pretending that they could, without paying much attention to the symptoms,
discover the alteration that had occurred in the invisible interior, and set
it to rights with (unknown!) medicines, and that such a procedure as this
could alone be called radical and rational treatment.
Is not, then, that which is cognizable by the senses in diseases through the
phenomena it displays, the disease itself in the eyes of the physician,
since he never can see the spiritual being that produces the disease, the
vital force? nor is it necessary that he should see it, but only that he
should ascertain its morbid actions, in order that he may thereby be enabled
to cure the disease.
What else will the old school search for in the hidden interior of the
organism, as a prima causa morbi, whilst they reject as an object of cure
and contemptuously despise the sensible and manifest representation of the
disease, the symptoms, that so plainly address themselves to us?
What else do they wish to cure in disease but these?
Rgds
Soroush
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.476 / Virus Database: 269.11.8/941 - Release Date: 07/08/2007
16:06