Dear Ghazanfar
I wish to reply to this post again, as i do not want you to be mislead by
the other replies to your post by other listees, who correctly described
what vicarious means, but not in the specific context of homoeopathic
philosophy, rather in medical description.
With regard to your question, which was to describe a vital symptom and a
vicarious symptom, I refer you to my original post, and to the Organon # 201
and 204 and the Appendix
Here you should find your answer
Regards
Robyn
#201
It is evident that man's vital force, when encumbered with a chronic disease
which it is unable to overcome by its own powers, ["instinctively" in the
Sixth Edition] adopts the plan of developing a local malady on some external
part, solely for this object, that by making and keeping in a diseased state
this part which is not indispensable to human life, it may thereby silence
the internal disease, which otherwise threatens to destroy the vital organs
(and to deprive the patient of life), and that it may thereby, so to speak,
transfer the internal disease to the vicarious local affection and, as it
were, draw it thirther. The presence of the local affection thus silences,
for a time, the internal disease, though without being able either to cure
it or to diminish it materially. (1) The local affection, however, is never
anything else than a part of the general disease, but a part of it increased
all in one direction by the organic vital force, and transferred to a less
dangerous (external) part of the body, in order to allay the internal
ailment. But (as has been said) by this local symptom that silences the
internal disease, so far from anything being gained by the vital force
towards diminishing or curing the whole malady, the internal disease, on the
contrary, continues, in spite of it, gradually to increase and Nature is
constrained to enlarge and aggravate the local symptom always more and more,
in order that it may still suffice as a substitute for the increased
internal disease and may still keep it under. Old ulcers on the legs get
worse as long as the internal psora is uncured, the chancre enlarges as long
as the internal syphilis remains uncured, ["the fig warts increase and grow
while the sycosis is not cured whereby the latter is rendered more and more
difficult to cure", in the Sixth Edition] just as the general internal
disease continues to increase as time goes on.
#204
If we deduct all chronic affections, ailments and diseases that depend on a
persistent unhealthy mode of living, (#77) as also those innumerable
medicinal maladies (v. #74) caused by the irrational, persistent, harassing
and pernicious treatment of diseases often only of trivial character by
physicians of the old school, all the remainder, ["most the remainder of
chronic diseases" in the Sixth Edition], without exception, result from the
development of these three chronic miasms, internal syphilis, internal
sycosis, but chiefly and in infinitely greater proportion, internal psora,
each of which was already in possession of the whole organism, and had
penetrated it in all directions before the appearance of the primary,
vicarious local symptom of each of them (in the case of psora the scabious
eruption, in syphilis the chancre or the bubo, and in sycosis the
condylomata) that prevented their outburst; and these chronic miasmatic
diseases, if deprived of their local symptom, are inevitably destined by
mighty Nature sooner or later to become developed and to burst forth, and
thereby propagate all the nameless misery, the incredible number of chronic
diseases which have plagued mankind for hundreds and thousands of years,
none of which would so frequently have come into existence had physicians
striven in a rational manner to cure radically and to extinguish in the
organism these three miasms by the internal homoeopathic medicines suited
for each of them, without employing topical remedies for their external
symptoms. (See note to #282)
Appendix
-that is to say, these morbid states appear now in the form and intensity
they orginally possessed when they no longer have the local affection that
mitigated their severity". "Shallow-minded people who can only think of
spiritual things as material, to be grasped with the hands as it were, and
moved like a machine, imagine that the serious diseases following the
destruction of the local affection are a recession of the morbid matter, or
an absorption of it by the lymphatic vessels, whereby the disease now first
develops and evolves, itself in the interior. No! The internal disease was
already there while the local symptom was still going on in the external
parts (as an occasional outbreak of a moderate character, whereby the local
malady was proportionally diminished, shows), but it was restrained from
bursting forth violently and dangerously. 'An apparently robust candidate
for the ministry, who had to preach the following day, and on that account
wished to get rid of a long-standing itch, rubbed himself all over with itch
ointment, and he was seized with anxiety, dyspnoea and tenesmus immediately
after a meal, and died in a few hours. The post-mortem examination showed
the whole lung filled with liquid pus, 'which could not possibly have been
produced in these few hours, but must have been there previously, but
hitherto kept subbued and rendered innocuous by the local symptom (the
eruption spread over the skin). See Unzer's Arzt, ccc St., p. 508". "On the
other hand, the great persistency, often also the extreme painfulness of the
local symptom, which frequently torments the patient for many years and
grows bigger and becomes worse (e.g. the old leg ulcers of aged persons),
shows how terrible and frightful the internal disease must be, for which it
serves as a derivative alleviating substitute on the least dangerous part of
the organism, the external parts, and is the cause of the frequent
occurrence of rapid death, soon after the destruction of the local
affection, under the treatment of the practitioners of ordinary medicine
(e.g. by drying up ulcers of the legs by means of oxyde of zinc.)" "Are the
often dangerous acute or chronic diseases that appear after the removal of
plica polonica anything else than the plica disease previously present,
although hitherto latent, and seldom manifesting itself during the
continuance of the local symptom? The former were only fully aroused when
they were deprived of the palliative silences of the internal general
disease, the vicarious local symptom, the plica polonica, that matting
together of the hair changed from its roots into a sensitive abnormal organ.
The same general disease precedes the outbreak of the plica, it becomes
milder when the latter develops itself and transfers all its intensity and
dangerous character to this local symptom. But however long it may be kept
in abeyance by the undisturbed presence of this vicarious abnormal organ
(the patients feel tolerably well as long as the plica is let alone) the
internal disease wakes from the latent state, in which it has hitherto
existed, with great violence, when robbed of this chief symptom that has
served as its substitute to a great extent, when the plica closely attached
to the head is cut off". "How stupid, how criminal, is not, therefore, the
procedure of ordinary physicians who regard the external malady as not
belonging to, and as separated from, the rest of the body, as merely a
disease of this particular part, and labour to remove from view this
external affection by external remedies only, without curing the important
internal disease from which it originates!" In the following note the
topical application of certain remedies is sanctioned: "Different diseases
demand different rules of treatment. For example, it is imporper and
unjustifiable to apply topical remedies to chancres, old or recent, which
often have a great tendency to yield quickly to local remedies; and it is
equally bad for the patient's future state to apply so-called discutient or
desiccating remedies to venereal buboes and inguinal ulcers; it is only by
the internal administration of the best mercurial preparation that the
entire disease can be cured so thoroughly that, without the aid of external
remedies, the chancre and the inguinal ulcer are perfectly cured both
together. It is not necessary in the case of old or recent scabies to employ
sulphur externally in addition to giving the best antipsoric remedy
internally". "But in some kinds of not very extensive facial cancers arsenic
has long been employed externally, sometimes with apparently good effect.
This corrosive metallic oxyde laid on in substance sets up a severe local
inflammation, whereby the ulcerated surface is destroyed. If the organism
possesses much vital power it often quickly repairs the destroyed part by a
good cicatrix. If now the internal general dyscrasia which lies at the root
of the facial ulcer is cured at the same time by the internal administration
of the appropriate homoeopathic medicine (for otherwise the patient will
remain ill and ailing in some other way there ensues perfect cure of the
entire disease, as in this case the arsenic gave the needful help to the
local symptom.(*)"
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