Minutus

Dear Anthony
The discussion of Patient or Disease is always interesting for me. I searched sixth Organon for words "Patient" and also for "Disease".

The word disease was used for 715 times but I only found 210 patient.

Take a look at § 3:
§ 3

"If the physician clearly perceives what is to be cured in diseases, that is to say, in every individual case of disease (knowledge of disease, indication), if he clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine (knowledge of medical powers), and if he knows how to adapt, according to clearly defined principles, what is curative in medicines to what he has discovered to be undoubtedly morbid in the patient, so that the recovery must ensue - to adapt it, as well in respect to the suitability of the medicine most appropriate according to its mode of action to the case before him (choice of the remedy, the medicine indicated), as also in respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose), and the proper period for repeating the dose; - if, finally, he knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them, so that the restoration may be permanent, then he understands how to treat judiciously and rationally, and he is a true practitioner of the healing art ."
In this aphorism he clearly cited that to be a good homeopath you should know these items:

1-what is to be cured in diseases (knowledge of DISEASE)

2-what is curative in medicines (knowledge of medical powers) [Materia medica]

3-how to adapt medicines and what is MORBID in patient
By knowing and applying these items, "the recovery must ensue ".

Specially if:

4- "He knows the obstacles to recovery in each case and is aware how to remove them"

5- "respect to the exact mode of preparation and quantity of it required (proper dose), and the proper period for repeating the dose"
Again in 71 he emphasized on 3 main knowledge of true homeopath:

§ 71

"As it is now no longer a matter of doubt that the DISEASE of mankind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms, and may be annihilated and transformed into health by medicinal substances, but only by such as are capable of artificially producing similar morbid symptoms (and such is the process in all genuine cures), hence the operation of curing is comprised in the three following points:

I. How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary to be known in order to cure the DISEASE?

II. How is he to gain a knowledge of the instruments adapted for the cure of the natural disease, the pathogenetic powers of the medicines?

III. What is the most suitable method of employing these artificial morbific agents (medicines) for the cure of natural disease?"
There are some more aphorisms in Organon which provide proofs that homeopaths work with disease(like § 147).

As you see he only talks of nothing but disease. It seems that Hahnemann beleived that physician should cure the disease as he mentioned in 1st aphorism: "The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed."
But in the note of first aphorism he insisted that his meaning of disease is different from old school. I think as our classification of disease as homeopaths is different from old school classification of disease, to prevent confusion, great homeopaths like Kent insisted that we are not treating the disease, we cure the patient. I think it can explain the paradox, that why Hahnemann told Cure the disease but others like kent insisted on curing the patient not the disease.
Regards

Farbod

Dear Dr. Farbod,

I thank you for your reply, I took notice of the words "specific
remedy".
Hahnemann saying, "specific remedy", in reference to a specific
diseases, [Venereal] without mention of the *patient* or *constitution*.

In Jay Yasgur's, Dictionary of Homeopathic Medical Terminology under
SPECIFIC he writes, "- a remedy which in virtually all cases and under
all circumstances is curative. A remedy particularly curative of a
certain disease."

"Venereal diseases also have been radically healed by Homoeopathy much
more surely, with less trouble and without any sequelae; for without
disturbing or destroying the local manifestation it heals the internal
fundamental disease from within only, through the best specific remedy."

Regards,
Anthony
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

But in various places (can anyone offer a quote?) Hahnemann specifies that
when he says "a disease" he does *not* mean "a named disease", but rather
means the disease picture *as presented by the patient*. He does
(somewhere) talk about certain diseases which are transmitted by specific
vector and which express nearly always in the same way, as being (often)
treatable by their "specific" remedy. (I hope I'm not mangling my memory of
this...) Examples would be e.g. measles, chicken pox? (Tho even these have
more than one "specific".) But he specifies that instead of saying, e.g.
"typhoid" (not sure if that was the example), we should more properly say,
"a typhoid-like disease"; and the remedy is to be chosen *not* on the name
of the disease, by according to the symptom picture presented.

So this appears to be neither really "treat the patient" (while ignoring
symptoms of the "named disease") *nor* "treat the disease" in a
this-for-that sense... Sigh, *where* are all our Organon-quoters???


Shannon
on 3/1/04 1:04 PM, Homoeopathy@webtv.net at Homoeopathy@webtv.net wrote:

Dear Shannon
I agree.
Thanks

Dear Anthony
This subject is so interesting for me.

1-You wrote: " Hahnemann saying, "specific remedy", in reference to a specific
diseases, [Venereal] without mention of the *patient* or *constitution*."
Yes. HMN never mention constitution like kent. He only talks of constitution as "peculiar corporeal constitutions" like sanguine, bilious, phlegmatic and melancholic constitutions. He also never talked about remedy of a patient. He only mentioned a case of diseased, morbid states etc.
2-You wrote: "In Jay Yasgur's, Dictionary of Homeopathic Medical Terminology under SPECIFIC he writes, "- a remedy which in virtually all cases and under all circumstances is curative. A remedy particularly curative of a
certain disease."
Here Jay Yasgur mentioned two meanings for specific. I don't believe that first phrase means a unic remedy, if it means so, it is not about homeopathy.

The second sentence is more logical. I think the better reference for the meaning of specific is Organon:
§ 146

"The third point of the business of a true physician relates to the judicious employment of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) that have been proved on healthy individuals to ascertain their pure action in order to effect the homoeopathic cure of natural diseases."
§ 147

"Whichever of these medicines that have been investigated as to their power of altering man's health we find to contain in the symptoms observed from its use the greatest similarity to the totality of the symptoms of a given natural disease [a patient, or as kent says a constitution-Farbod], this medicine will and must be the most suitable, the most certain homoeopathic remedy for the disease; in it is found the specific remedy of this case of disease."
It seems that HMN used specific remedy for something that we call Simillimum.
Or in §153 we find these:
§ 153

"In this search for a homoeopathic specific remedy, that is to say, in this comparison of the collective symptoms of the natural disease with the list of symptoms of known medicines, in order to find among these an artificial morbific agent corresponding by similarity to the disease to be cured, the more striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar (characteristic) signs and symptoms1 of the case of disease are chiefly and most solely to be kept in view; for it is more particularly these that very similar ones in the list of symptoms of the selected medicine must correspond to, in order to constitute it the most suitable for effecting the cure."
3-And about Venereal diseases:For some known Venereal diseases, like Syphilis, which the picture of disease is known and fixed we can find specific remedies, like epidemic diseases. As HMN wrote about Merc-s as specific remedy for syphilis (if it is not complicated with psora) on §276:

"when yet one or several doses of a mild but active mercurial preparation would certainly have radically cured in a few days the whole venereal disease, together with the chancre"
Or in Chronic diseases he wrote:

"Even syphilis, which on account of its easy curability yields to the smallest dose of the best preparation of mercury" [Merc-s]
That is the reason when you wrote about specific, I disscus on the matter of patient or disease.
Regards

Farbod
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Shannon,
read (long) footnote to Aph. 81:

".....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."
About disease states, that seldom change in their order of symptoms he
says in Aph. 72:
"Thence arise fevers1, in each instance of a peculiar nature, and,
because the cases of disease have an identical origin, they set up in
all those they affect an identical morbid process, which when left to
itself terminates in a moderate period of time in death or recovery. The
calamities of war, inundations and famine are not infrequently their
exciting causes and producers - sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms
which recur in the same manner (hence known by some traditional name),
which either attack persons but once in a lifetime, as the smallpox,
measles, whooping-cough, the ancient, smooth, bright red scarlet fever2
of Sydenham, the mumps, etc., or such as recur frequently in pretty much
the same manner, the plague of the Levant, the yellow fever of the
sea-coast, the Asiatic cholera, etc."

was that what you were looking for?

Best,

Gaby

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gaby Rottler
Germany
rottler@curantur.de

http://www.curantur.de
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beautiful, Gaby -- thanks!

And now I'm puzzled -- the diseases he describes as having "unvarying morbid
process", are also treated on the basis of individual symptom picture, not
simply with a single "specific". So is the difference simply that there are
*fewer* likely choices in the second instance (measles, mumps, "plague",
whooping cough, etc.) compared with the first set?

Shannon
on 3/2/04 12:43 AM, Gaby Rottler at rottler@curantur.de wrote:

Hi Shannon,

Not really.

In cases of measles, whooping cough etc. you normally don't have
individual cases only, but several. Not necessarily an epidemic, but
simply from their infrectious nature you will have several individuals,
whose symptom picture will/should complement each other and so be able
to allow to choose from a set of remedies.
Of course, whenever there are peculiar symptoms even within an epidemic,
then these rare and peculiar symptoms may outweigh the general symptoms
of an epidemic situation.

In contrast, e.g. a 'kind of dropsy or edema' is not helpful, as each
individual may present different causations, different modalities,
different concomitants etc, as already from the general differential
diagnosis a dropsy may stem from:
- general diseases of the heart
- lymphedema
- cachexia
- endotoxemia
- tumors
etc etc etc etc.

Whereas in measles the origin of the disease is clear, and it generally
has several pronounced sets of symptoms that are well-known. Symptoms
produced within the time of being 'sick of measles' but that clearly are
outside of the well-known sets of symptoms, may then be regarded as
characteristic.

Does that help?

Best,

Gaby

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gaby Rottler
Germany
rottler@curantur.de

http://www.curantur.de
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yup, that makes sense. Much of what he mentions in the second (more vague)
group would be considered "constitutional", symptoms of the chronic state,
rather than acutes; but a few seemed to be acutes (can't now remember the
list), which is what I found puzzling.

Best,
Shannon
on 3/3/04 2:23 AM, Gaby Rottler at rottler@curantur.de wrote: