Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, an allopath, is the father of Homoeopathy, one of the epoch making medical discoveries in the world. Actually it was a new system of attending to the disease or to be more exact the patient, or attending to the curable in the disease. This discovery is often is called “Hahnemannian art of healing”. He explained his principles in a book called “Organon of Medicine”. The main principles are:-
The aim of the homoeopath physician is to cure the patient rapidly, gently and personally. He must bear in mind that he is treating a “patient” not a “disease”. To achieve his aim, he must find out what is curable in the disease and what is curative in medicine. In a diseased fellow, the vital force in him is deranged and this derangement expresses itself by abnormal sensations and functions of the organism. These sensations are called disease’s symptoms. For the Homoeopath physician, the disease means the totally of its symptoms. He must need only to take away this totality of symptoms for the entire disease.
In a word, in Homoeopathy there is no disease name like cholera, typhoid, but the sum total of the symptoms of a disease, the name of the disease notwithstanding. The physician thus has to consider the patient with all the related symptoms, not a particular ‘disease’.
Disease and Medicine: - It is medicine that possesses the capacity to produce alterations in a healthy man’s healthy health. If a medicine can’t alter a healthy man’s health or can not produce abnormality, it can not cure any diseased person. This power can be ascertained by its effects on healthy persons. The morbid symptoms that medicines produce in healthy persons are the symptoms the medicines can cure.
Thus the creative power of medicine depends on the symptoms they have which are similar to the ‘disease’. The principle of Homeopathy is “Similia Similibus Curentur”- similar cures similar.
Actions of medicine: - Each medicine has two types of actions – primary and secondary. The primary action takes place under the influence of every medicine and the secondary action or reaction is effected in the living organism. To illustrate this – when a healthy man takes a medicine, its primary action produces disease symptoms is the healthy man. When a diseased person having the similar symptoms takes the same medicine then the secondary action is affected by the diseased organism and it is this secondary action that leads to cure.
Chronic and Acute Diseases:- Diseases has been classified in two headings – 1) Acute and 2) chronic.
Diseases what have a tendency to finish their course quickly but always in a moderate time, are known as acute diseases. Chronic diseases have often imperceptible beginnings. They derange the living organism and gradually cause it to deviate from its healthy condition in such a way that automatic life energy, the vital force, opposes such diseases only at the commencement, and during their progress offers helpless and useless resistance. Then the organism helplessly suffers from them. The diseases go on increasing their morbid influence upon the organism, destroying it in the end.
Chronic Miasma: - There is some morbid force between the curative power of the medicine and the curable in the disease which do not allow the action of the medicine to run its full cause. This force is called Miasma. There are three such distinct forces: - 1) Syphilis 2) Sycosis and 3) Psora.
Syphilis is known to some extent from before as a chronic disease. Sycosis, Tumours, warts or late secondary syphilis manifestation in and around genitals, ineradicable by the vital force without proper medical treatment is not recognized as a Chronic Miasmatic disease. Physicians believe that they have cured this disease when they have destroyed their growth upon the skin. Psora, Hahnemann have found after 12 years of investigation, is the mother of all chronic diseases except Syphilis and Sycosis, and it is responsible for most of the chronic diseases.
Medical Investigation: - The process of applying of a medicine to a healthy man, and collation of the symptoms which develop on the healthy organism is called “Proving” of the medicine which demonstrates the pure effects of the medicine. The action of every medicine differs from every other medicine.
Application of Medicine: - The medicine most homeopathically corresponding is the most suitable, the most specific. Homoeopathic means that the pure effects of the medicine match most suitably the symptoms of the diseases in an individual.
Epidemics: - It must be realized that all those who are affected by prevailing epidemic have certainly contracted it from the source and hence, are suffering from the same disease. However, the whole extent of the epidemic disease can’t be learned from one patient or two but from several patients with different constitutions. Then the area suffering becomes one simple patient, and common symptoms the disease signs.
Only one Medicine: - Only one single medicine should be administered to the patient at one time. Combinations of several medicines are useless. The medicine should be stopped as soon as improvement sets in. This method is same to Acute and chronic diseases. It is impractical to repeat the same dose of a medicine. The succeeding dose should be slightly strengthened by shaking the bottle before offering the dose.
Signs of Improvement: - No new symptoms or worsening of the old symptoms are seen. If an improvement has been observed, it should be understood that the medicine has affected positive diminution of the disease. In matter of acute disease, a slight commencement of amelioration, the state of mind of the patient are informative. In case of slight improvement a greater degree of comfort, calmness, freedom of mind, higher spirits – a kind of return of the natural state is observed. In case of small aggravation the opposite is observed.