Gems from the Organum

Samuel Hahnemann: The Organum of Medicine,

A new translation by J. Kunzli, M.D., A Naude and P. Pendleton.

London, Victor Gollancz, 1986.

Reviewed by Keith Lockett.

The Organum of Medicine is the major work on Homeopathy, written by its inventor, Samuel Hahnemann in 1803 and revised and added to until 1842. There are some sensible things in it, for Hahnemann ridicules the current practice of bloodletting (although for the wrong reason) and advocates good diet and regular exercise (although I know of no doctor who recommends a bad diet and no exercise): However it is not for these reasons that homeopaths revere the book ("It may in time be recognised as one of the most important books in the entire history of medicine"; note the "may be"; almost obligatory in all writings by quacks) but because it is their ultimate source, vindication and foundation ("It still remains the ultimate authority on its doctrines and practice"). Nevertheless, it is repetitious, meandering, boastful, vainglorious and ill organised.

The book consists of some 291 independent paragraphs and almost every one contains some nonsense or total obscurity. Here I have just picked out some of the gems, the numbers refer to the paragraph quoted. However, to get the full effect of idiocy piled on lunacy, the complete text will repay study. Those of us who have engaged in controversy with homeopaths must be grateful to the publishers of this book as we are now able to gauge the full fatuity of the writings of their hero.

21/ Therefore we should concern ourselves exclusively with disease symptoms that medicines bring about in the healthy, the only means by which they reveal their inherent curative powers.

29/ The vital force frees itself much more easily from artificial diseases than from natural ones.

59/ The salient symptoms of a long-standing disease have never in this world been treated in this palliative antipathic way without reappearing in a few hours, often manifestly worse.

147/ Among medicines investigated for their power to change human health, the one whose observed symptoms are most similar to the totality of symptoms of a given natural disease must be the most appropriate.

148/ The natural disease must never be regarded as a noxious substance, but rather as something produced by a spirit like inimical power.

159/ The smaller the dose of the homeopathic remedy in the treatment of acute disease, the milder and shorter is the apparent intensification of the disease in the first hours.

191/ This is categorically confirmed by experience, which shows in all cases that immediately after being taken, every internal medicine brings about in so called local diseases, even of the furthest extremities of the body, significant changes, particularly in the affected external parts and in every other part of the patient's economy as well.

202/ If the physician of the old school destroys the local symptom by some external disease, nature compensates for this by awakening the internal malady and the other symptoms that have lain dormant next to the local disease all along.

214/ What I have to teach about the cure of mental and emotional disease comes down to very little; they are to be cured with a remedy, a disease agent capable of producing in the body and psyche of healthy people symptoms as similar as possible to those of the case.

247/ It is inadmissible to repeat, even once, exactly the same dose of medicine without modifying it, let alone many times. The vital principle does not accept such identical doses without opposition.

259/ Considering the smallness of the dose, it is easy to understand that during treatment everything that could have any medicinal action must be removed from the diet and daily regimen, so that the subtle dose is not overwhelmed and extinguished. [But surely, the greater the dilution, the greater the effect?]

260/ The chronically ill should avoid; coffee, fine China tea, all kinds of cordials, strong smelling flowers in the room, medicinal dentifrices, perfumed sachets, hops, sprouts and all medicinal vegetables including celery, parsley, onions, pickled meats and all kinds of hors d' oeuvres, undiluted alcoholic drinks, woollen underwear, sedentary living, frequent merely passive movement (riding, driving, swinging), reading while lying down, enervation from salacious reading, onanism, or in marriage, coitus interruptus or complete abstinence, etc.

269/ Homeopathy develops the inner, spirit-like medicinal powers of crude substance to a degree hitherto unheard of and makes all of them exceedingly penetrating, active and effective, even those that in the crude state do not have the slightest effect on the human organism. Every day one still hears of homeopathic medicinal potencies referred to as mere dilutions while they are in fact quite the opposite; trituration and succussion unlock the natural substances and reveal the specific medicinal powers lying hidden in their soul,

282/ If during treatment, the first doses already produce a so-called homeopathic aggravation, i.e., as noticeable heightening of the disease symptoms originally observed, then this is a sure sign that the doses were too large.

286/ The dynamic forces of mineral magnetism, electricity and galvanism act no less homeopathically and powerfully on our vital principle than medicines usually called homeopathic.

287/ Magnetic power can be employed in treatment more reliably than before by the use of the positive effects of the north and south poles of a strong bar magnet. Both magnetic poles are equally powerful but they are opposite to each other in their therapeutic action. If the effect is too violent, the application of a plate of polished zinc will serve as an antidote.

In giving these quotations from Hahnemann's book, the last thing I want to do is to make fun of him or to deride his well meant efforts. He was in many ways, ahead of his time; with a burning desire to work for the good of mankind. He was, nevertheless, working before the discoveries of modern medicine so that his ideas are now seen to be derisory and useless. Thus while we do not blame him for not knowing about the action of germs and viruses we can have nothing but contempt for modern homeopaths, who so blatantly cast aside the work of centuries of scientific endeavour. No words of Hahnemann are as ridiculous as those of modern homeopaths as when they say that "homeopathic medicines should not be placed near electrical outlets and appliances nor subjected to the X-ray machines at airports because the remedies possess electromagnetic fields that become distorted by external magnetic fields". Modern homeopaths should bear in mind these words of Hahnemann "The physician's calling is not to weave so-called systems from fancy ideas and hypotheses about the inner nature of vital processes. Nor does it consist of holding forth in unintelligible words or abstract and pompous expressions in an effort to appear learned so as to astonish the ignorant, while the world in sickness cries in vain for help".