Minutus

Dear Charlotte, and Piet and everybody,
I do hope that I haven't given anybody the impression of being against
Hering's Law because I am not. I would not want to replace it. The main thing
is that I would rather it had been called a General Principle of the
Direction of Cure - Something along those lines.
I also get annoyed when students are given the impression that it was written
down in stone some time in the late nineteenth century - It most certainly
was not. There is a pretty clear description of its features by Roberts in
his celebrated philosophical work but he was writing around the time of World
War 2! Garth Boericke (not the famous Boericke of Mat Med fame) seems to
have been the big populariser of Hering's Law.
To harp on a bit, direction of cure is sometimes more complicated than the
'Law' suggests. An arthritis may start in the knee (it often does as it can
take a lot of strain climbing stairs etc). It may than spread downwards.
Assuming we give a good remedy and help the arthritis and cure starts in the
foot are we to be pleased or alarmed? The foot is the most recent
manifestation of disease....yet we are curing from the bottom. This is the
problem when we attempt to work in a mathematical way. We have to look at the
patient in a more realistic and sensitive manner and I am sure Hering
himself, bless his dear socks, did this too.
Best regards to all,
Stewart

Stewart McOwan MARH
Minerva Homoeopathic Centre
173 Fulham Palace Road
Hammersmith
London
W6 8QT
Tel 0207 385 3512
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hering spoke of a law of order.
Hering wrote about the direction of cure in the Preface to the American
edition of _The Chronic Diseases_ in 1845.

http://www.homeoint.org/cazalet/hering/ ... seases.htm
"Although it, matters little what opinions the respective disciples of
Hahnemann hold relatively to the theory of /psora/. I will nevertheless
communicate a short extract from my essay "Guide, to the Progressive
Development of Homœopathy"

As acute diseases terminate in an eruption upon the skin, which
divides, dries up, and then passes off, so it is with many chronic
diseases. All diseases diminish in intensity, improve, and are cured
by the internal organism freeing itself from them little by little ;
the internal disease approaches more and more to the external
tissues, until it finally arrives at the skin.

Every homœopathic physician must have observed that the improvement
in pain takes place from above downward ; and in diseases, from
within outward. This is the reason why chronic diseases, if they are
thoroughly cured, always terminate in some cutaneous eruption. Which
differs according to the different constitutions of the patients.
This cutaneous eruption may be even perceived when a cure is
impossible, and even when the remedies have been improperly chosen.
The skin being the outermost surface of the body, it receives upon
itself the extreme termination of the disease. This cutaneous
eruption is not a mere morbid secretion having been chemically
separated from the internal organism in the form of a gas, a liquid,
or a solid ; it is the whole of the morbid action which is pressed
from within outward, and it is characteristic of a thorough and
really curative treatment. The morbid action of the internal
organism may continue either entirely, or more or less in spite of
this cutaneous eruption. Nevertheless, this eruption always is a
favourable symptom ; it alleviates the sufferings of the patient,
and generally prevents a more dangerous affection.

The thorough cure for a widely ramified chronic disease in the
organism is indicated by the most important organs being first
relieved, the affection passes off in the order in which the organs
had been effected, the more important being relieved first, the less
important next, and, the, skin last.

Even the superficial observer will not fail in recognising this law
of order. An improvement which takes place in a different order can
never be relied upon. A fit of hysteria may terminate in a flow of
urine ; other fits say either terminate in. the same way, or in
hæmorrhage ; the next succeeding fit shows how little the affection
had been cured. The disease may take a different turn, it may change
its form and, in this new form, it say be less troublesome ; but the
general state of the organism, will suffer in consequence, of this
transformation.

Hence it is that Hahnemann inculcates with so such care the
important rule to attend to the moral symptoms, and to judge of the
degree of homœopathic adaptation, existing between the remedy and
the disease, by the improvement which takes place in the moral
condition, and the general well-being of the patient.

The law of order which we have, pointed out above accounts for the
numerous cutaneous eruptions consequent upon homœopathic treatment,
even where they never had been before ; it accounts for the
obstinacy with which many kinds of herpes and ulcers remain upon the
skin, whereas others are dissipated like snow. Those which remain do
remain because the internal disease is yet existing. This law of
order also accounts for the insufficiency of violent sweats, when
the internal disease is not yet disposed to leave its hiding place.
It lastly accounts for one cutaneous affection being substituted for
another.

This transformation of the internal affection of such parts of the
organism, as are essential to important functions, to a cutaneous
affection a transformation which is entirely, different from the
violent change affected by mwans of Authenreith's ointment,
ammonium, croton oil, cantharides, mustard, etc. - is chiefly
affected by the anti-psoric remedies.

Other remedies, may sometimes effect, that transformation, even the
use of water, change of climate, of occupation, etc. ; but it is
more safely more mildly and more thoroughly effected by anti-psoric
remedies."
Lippe called it a law of cure
Kent called it Hering's laws.
Kent popularized the teachings on the direction of cure under the name
of "Hering's Laws".

The observance was first mentioned in Hahnemann's _The Chronic Diseases_
, 1828_
_Section on Cure of the Chronic Diseases. (Page 135 my copy)

"The latest symptoms that have been added to a chronic disease which has
been left to itself (and thus has not been aggravated by medical
mismanagement) are always the first to yield in an anti-psoric
treatment; but the oldest ailments and those which have been most
constant and unchanged, among which are the constant local ailments, are
the last to give way; and this is only effected, when all the remaining
disorders have disappeared and the health has been in all other respects
almost totally restored."
_
_Lynn

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Imagine Peace