chapter  12 organon

The effects of the remedies

105- 120:

It may be well for you to brush up exhaustively the first portion of the study of the Organon, containing the doctrines in general that may be hereafter found to be helpful in the application of Homoeopathy. The first stride may be called theoretical Homoeopathy, or the principles of Homoeopathy after which we take up the homoeopathic method of studying sickness. In this way we have found that the study of sickness in homoeopathy  is entirely different from the study of sickness under the allopathic school.

But up to this time the doctrines have not demonstrated their purpose ; we only get their purpose when we come to the third step, which deals with the use of Materia Medica.

Three pace in studying Homoeopathy are

	Learning theoretical Homoeopathy, or the principles of Homoeopathy.
	Learning  homoeopathic method of studying sickness, by case taking.
	Learning Materia Medica

We have seen that we must study sickness by amassing the symptoms of sick patients, relying upon the symptoms as the language of nature, and that the totality of the symptoms represents the nature and quality and all there is that is to be known of the disease.

The subject we will now take up and regard is, how to acquire a knowledge of the tools that we shall make use of in battling human sickness.

In allopathy knowledge of medicine is attained only by experimenting with medicines  upon sick .  This Hahnemann express strong disapproval of as dangerous, because it subjects human sufferers to hardship and because of its uncertainty. Though this system has survived for many hundreds of years, it has never disclosed a principle or method that one can take bold of to help in curing the sickness of the human folk.

 Hahnemann experiments in drug proving were made before he studied diseases. In other words, Hahnemann built the Materia Medica and then took up the plan of examining the patient to see what remedy the sickness looked like.

On the other hand  now, after Homoeopathy has been established, and the Materia Medica has been established, the examination of the patient precedes, in a particular case, the examination of the Materia Medica. But for the purpose of study they go hand in hand.

Before Hahnemann could study the Materia Medica you may say he had to make one, for there was none to examine, there were no provings as yet ; we now have the instruments before us to examine, we have the proved remedies, we have materia medica. 

The homoeopathic physician must be innocent. He must throw way all that is unprejudiced-that pathological findings are everything in disease and that must be treated in order to cure and no organ can make another organ sick.  He must put that aside  and be willing to learn of all sources, providing the truth flows from these sources. In this form of mind, and this form of mind only, can the physician proceed to examine the Materia Medica.

DISCOVERY OF HOMOEOPATHY

We have already said that Hahnemann had no Materia Medica to begin with. He could not go to books, and read, and find remedies in the image of human sickness. He had no such remedies to study, and hence it was necessary to construct up the Materia Medica.  He felt in his own mind that we should never know anything about the Materia Medica so long as we perceived its effects only in human sickness, but that a true and pure Materia Medica must be formed by observing the action of medicines upon the healthy human race.

Hahnemann did not start up to give these medicines to others ; he took the Peruvian Bark himself, and felt its effects upon himself. He allowed it to manifest its symptoms, and when he had thus proved Peruvian Bark (which we call China). Hahnemann searched the literature of the day to find out what other effects of China had been discovered accidentally, and accepted such as were in harmony with what he had discovered. We have already referred to the fact that Hahnemann was able, after proving China, to see that in its action it closely matched the intermittent fevers that had existed through all time ; that there was the most abundant relation of similitude between China and intermittent fever. It might be then said that the first remedy known to man was discovered, and that the drug effect was known to man and china was born and homoeopathy discovered.

CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIRST  MATERIA MEDICA

Do we wonder then, that Hahnemann said to himself, can it be possible that the law of cure is the law of similars ? Can it be possible that similars are cured by drugs that produce symptoms like unto the sickness ?

Every drug he proved thereafter demonstrated the law more and more, made it appear more certain, and every drug that he proved bestowed one more remedy to the instrument that we call the Materia Medica, until it came to be what we now distinguish as Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura and the Materia Medica of the Chronic Diseases. This work was simply enormous and very thorough, but many additions have been made to it since the time of its publication, and these form the instruments we have to examine.

ADDING OF MORE AND MORE MEDICINE BY PROVING

The most beneficial way to study a remedy is to make a proving of it. Suppose we were about to do that ; suppose a group  were entering upon a proving. Each member of the group would dedicate, say, a week, in examining carefully all the symptoms that he or she is the victim of, or believes himself or herself to be the victim of, at the present time, and for many months back.

Each one then continues to write down carefully all these symptoms and places them by themselves. This group of symptoms is recognized as the diseased state of that individual. 

Will begin with the first or earliest form of the drug, it may be the tincture, and potentize it to the 30th potency, putting a portion of that potency into a separate vial for each member of the class. The provers do not know what they are taking, and they are requested not to make known to each other their symptoms.

When their symptoms appear in the proving the effect of the remedy upon any one of these chronic symptoms is simply noted, whether cured or exaggerated, or whether or not interfered with ; but when the symptom occurs in its own natural way, without being increased or diminished, it may be looked upon as one of the natural things of that particular prover.

Generally if a remedy takes a marked hold of a prover all the chronic symptoms will diplayed, but when a proving only takes a partial hold it may only create a few symptoms. These few symptoms, when added to the symptoms that the other provers have experienced, will go to make up the chronic effect of the remedy, which may be said to be the effect of the remedy upon the human race.

Now as to the method.

DOSE IN PROVING

 Each prover takes a single dose of the medicine and waits to see if the single dose takes effect. If he is sensitive to that medicine a single dose will produce symptoms, and then those symptoms must not be interfered with ; they should be allowed to go their own way.

KENT SAYS "In the proving of an acute remedy like Aconite ; the instructor, who knows something about the effect of the medicine, may be able to say to the class :"If you are going to get effects from this remedy you will get those effects in the next three to four days." It will not be necessary to wait longer than that for Aconite, Nux Vomica, or Ignatia, but longer for Sulphur or some of the antipsorics. If we were attempting to prove a remedy like Silicate of Alumina, the master-prover would advise the class not to interfere with the medicine for at least thirty days, because its prodrome may be thirty days.

ACTION OF DRUG ON HEALTHY HUMAN BEING

It is highly important to wait until the possible prodrome of a given remedy is surely passed. If it is a short-acting remedy, the action will come speedily.

We must bear in mind the stages of action of drug upon healthy 

	the prodrome,
	the period of progress and
	the period of decline

when studying the Materia Medica as well as when studying miasms.

creating sensitvity

One who is well versed  will usually be able to indicate to the group whether they should wait a short time or a long time before taking another dose, and from this the group  will only know whether the drug to be proved is acute or chronic. If the first dose of medicine produces no effect, and enough time as been allowed to be sure that the prover is not sensitive to it, the next best thing to do is to create a sensitiveness to it by

1. increasing the potency increases the senitivity.
2. divided dose increases the sensitivity.

(1) Increasing the potency increases the senitivity.

Those who have been poisoned by Arsenic are extremely sensitive to Arsenic after they allow the first effects to pass off. If they continue, however, to keep on with the first effects they become less sensitive to it, so that they require larger 'and larger doses to take effect. This is a rule with all poisonous substances that are capable of affecting the human system markedly.

Now, when the time has passed by which the prover knows he is not sensitive to that remedy, that he has not received an action from the dose (and perhaps in the class of forty you will not get more than one or two that will make a proving from the 30th potency), to make the proving and to intensify the effect, dissolve the medicine in water and have him take every two hours for 24 to 48 hours, unless symptoms arise, sooner.By this means the prodromal period is shortened.

The medicine seems to be stepped up by the repetition, and the patient is brought under the influence, dynamically, of that remedy. As soon as the symptoms begin to show, it is time to discontinue  the remedy.

No danger comes from giving the remedy in this way ; danger comes from taking it for a few days and then stopping it, and then taking it again.

For instance, say you are proving SULPHUR ; you find that you are not all sensitive to it, and after waiting one month  you start out again and take it in water, for three to four days, and the symptoms arise : now wait.

Now, the symptoms begin to arise ; wait, and let the image-producing effect of sulphur  diminish ; let it come and spread and go away of itself ; do not intervene with it ; if you, do interfere with it, the interference should be only by a true antidote ; you should never interfere with it by a repetition of dose.                                                                                                         If the Sulphur  symptoms are coming and showing clearly, and at the end of a week or ten days you say : "Let us brighten this up a little, and do this thing more soundly," and to accomplish this you take a great deal more, you will engraft upon your constitution in that way the sulphur diathesis, from which you will never be cured. At times that has been done and the provers have carried the effects of their proving till the death.

If you leave this Sulphur state alone it will pass off entirely, and the prover is very often left much better for it.

A proving properly conducted will improve the health of anybody ; it will help to turn things into order. It was Hahnemann's advice to young men to make provings.

Toxicological results of poisons

Another portion of the class will not get symptoms, no matter how they abuse the remedy, and if it be Arsenicum they will have to take a crude dose of it to get any effect, and then the symptoms given forth are only the toxic effects, from which little can be gained.

The toxicological results of poisons are provings of the crudest character : they do not give the finer details.

Toxicological effect of opium

For example, you give Opium in such large doses that it immediately poisons ; you see nothing but the grosser, overwhelming symptoms ; 

• the irregular, stertorous breathing, 
• the unconsciousness, 
• the contracted pupil and 
• the mottled face and the irregular heart.

The details are not there, you only have a view of the most common things.

Pathogentic affect is the effect of drug proved on healthy human beings of both sexes, different age group, at different locality, such as effect on body and of mind. Such pathogentic effect of the drug when fully analysed is only used as homoeopathic remedies for curing the sickness.