Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine - Aphorism 81

[Ardavan Shahrdar]

Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine
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Aphorism 81:

'The fact that this extremely ancient infecting agent
has gradually passed, in some hundreds of generations,
through many millions of human organisms and has thus
attained an incredible development, renders it in some
measure conceivable how it can now display such
innumerable morbid forms in the great family of
mankind, particularly when we consider what a number
of circumstances1 contribute to the production of
these great varieties of chronic diseases (secondary
symptoms of psora), besides the indescribable
diversity of men in respect of their congenital
corporeal constitutions, so that it is no wonder if
such a variety of injurious agencies, acting from
within and from without and sometimes continually, on
such a variety of organisms permeated with the psoric
miasm, should produce an innumerable variety of
defects, injuries, derangements and sufferings, which
have hitherto been treated of in the old pathological
works2, under a number of special names, as diseases
of an independent character.
Footnotes:

1 Some of these causes that exercise a modifying
influence on the transformation of psora into chronic
diseases manifestly depend sometimes on the climate
and the peculiar physical character of the place of
abode, sometimes on the very great varieties in the
physical and mental training of youth, both of which
may have been neglected, delayed or carried to excess,
or on their abuse in the business or conditions of
life, in the matter of diet and regimen, passions,
manners, habits and customs of various kinds.

2 How many improper ambiguous names do not these works
contain, under each of which are included excessively
different morbid conditions, which often resemble each
other in one single symptom only, as ague, jaundice,
dropsy, consumption, leucorrhoea, haemorrhoids,
rheumatism, apoplexy, convulsions, hysteria,
hypochondriasis, melancholia, mania, quinsy, palsy,
etc., which are represented as diseases of a fixed and
unvarying character, and are treated, on account of
their name, according to a determinate plan! How can
the bestowal of such a name justify an identical
medical treatment? And if the treatment is not always
to be the same, why make use of an identical name
which postulates an identity of treatment? "Nihil sane
in artem medicam pestiferum magis unquam irrepsit
malum, quam generalia quaedam medicinam," says Huxham,
a man as clear-sighted as he was estimable on account
of his conscientiousness (Op. phys. med., tom. I.).
And in like manner Frittze laments (Annalen, I, p.80)
"that essentially different diseases are designated by
the same name." Even those epidemic diseases, which
undoubtedly may be propagated in every separate
epidemic by a peculiar contagious principle which
remains unknown to us, are designated, in the old
school of medicine by particular names, just as if
they were well-known fixed diseases that invariably
recurred under the same form, as hospital fever, goal
fever, camp fever, putrid fever, bilious fever,
nervous fever, mucous fever, although each epidemic of
such roving fevers exhibits itself at every occurrence
as another, a new disease, such as it has never before
appeared in exactly the same form, differing very
much, in every instance, in its course, as well as in
many of its most striking symptoms and its whole
appearance. Each is so for dissimilar to all previous
epidemics, whatever names they may bear, that it would
be dereliction of all logical accuracy in our ideas of
things were we to give to these maladies, that differ
so much among themselves, one of those names we meet
with in pathological writings, and treat them all
medicinally in conformity with this misused name. The
candid Sydenham alone perceived this, when he (Obs.
med., cap. ii, De morb, epid.) insists upon the
necessity of not considering any epidemic disease as
having occurred before and treating it in the same way
as another, since all that occur successively, be they
ever so numerous, differ from one another: "Nihil
quicquam (opinor,) animum universae qua patet
medicinae pomoeria perlustrantem, tanta admiratione
percellet, quam discolor illa et sui plane dissimilis
morborum Epidemicorum facies; non tam qua varias
ejusdem anni tempestates, quam qua discrepantes
divewrsorum ab invicem annorum constitutiones
referunt, ab iisque dependent. Quae tam aperta
praedictorum morborum diversitas tum propriis ac sibi
peculiaribus symptomatis, tum etiam medendi ratione,
quam hi ab illis disparem prorsus sibi vendicant,
satis illucescit. Ex quibus constat morbus hosce, ut
ut externa quadantenus specie, er symptomatis aliquot
utrisque pariter super venientibus, convenire paulo
incautioribus videantur, re tamen ipsa (si bene
adverteris animum), alienae admondum esse indolis, et
distare ut aera lupinis."

From all this it is clear that these useless and
misused names of diseases ought to have no influence
on the practice of the true physician, who knows that
he has to judge of and to cure diseases, not according
to the similarity of the name of a single one of their
symptoms, but according to the totality of the signs
of the individual state of each particular patient,
whose affection it is his duty carefully to
investigate, but never to give a hypothetical guess at
it.

If, however, it is deemed necessary sometimes to make
use of names of diseases, in order, when talking about
a patient to ordinary persons, to render ourselves
intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ
them as collective names, and tell them, eg., the
patient has a kind of St. Vitus’s dance, a kind of
dropsy, a kind of typhus, a kind of ague; but (in
order to do away once and for all with the mistaken
notions these names give rise to) we should never say
he has the St. Vitus’s dance, the typhus, the dropsy,
the ague, as there are certainly no disease of these
and similar names of fixed unvarying character.'
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Minutus appreciates your fruitful contribution!

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"Life is beautiful, if you look at it in a beautiful way."

Dr Ardavan Shahrdar, MD, DIHom
President of Iranian Homeopathic Association
Website: http://www.minutus.org
Email: ashahrdar@yahoo.com
Mailing list: http://www.yahoogroups.com/group/minutus

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