Editorial: The Logic of Healing

“The adherents of the old school moreover, believe, that by putting a ligature on polypi, by cutting out, or exciting suppuration by means of local irritants in indolent glandular swellings, by dissecting out encysted tumours (steatoma and meliceria), by their operations for aneurysm, and lachrymal and anal fistula, by removing with the knife scirrhous tumours of the breast, by amputating a limb affected with necrosis, &c., they cure the patient radically, and that their treatment is directed against the cause of the disease; and they also think, when they employ their repellent remedies, dry up old running ulcers in the legs with astringent applications of lead, copper, or oxyde of zinc (aided always, by the simultaneous administration of purgatives, which merely debilitate, but have no effect on the primary dyscra￾sia), cauterize chancres, destroy condylomata locally, drive off itch from the skin with sulphur, lead, mercurial or oxyde of zinc ointment, suppress ophthalmiae with solutions of lead or zinc, and drive away dragging pains from the limbs by means of opodeldoc, hartshorn liniment, or fumigations with cinnabar or amber; in every case they think they have removed the affection, conquered the disease, and conducted a rational treatment directed towards the cause. But what is the result? The new forms of disease that sooner or later, but inevitably appear, caused by this mode of treatment (but which they pretend are entirely new diseases,) which are always worse than the original affections, sufficiently prove the error of their notions, and might and should open their eyes to the deeper seated, immaterial nature of the disease, and its dynamic (spiritual) origin, which can only be removed by dynamic means.”¹

Simply put: the logic of healing is on the side of homeopathy. The living organism struggles against a hostile and stressful environment either successfully without much difficulty or discomfort to itself or with some discomfort or what we term as symptoms. What are symptoms if not an attempt of the organism to heal itself? Can healing (haeling or restoration of wholeness) be only of a part or as the word implies of the “whole”? There are only two “obstructions” to complete healing or cure: one is external and the other is internal. External factors are well known such as inadequate nutrition, sleep and mental disturbances, environmental pollutants in the air and food, etc. Internal factors are what we can call by a collective name as susceptibility to disease. To overcome “disease” the organism creates symptoms which are an inadequate attempt at curing itself and continues to manifest those symptoms as it keeps trying to complete the cure. It follows then that the duty of the physician is to find those means which assist the organism in doing what it has the potential to do completely but is not capable of at this moment. As paraphrased in Dudgeon’s translation of the Organon, “The sole mission of the physician is to heal, rapidly, gently, permanently.”² Then, it follows invariably that a system of medicine which catalyzes the organism to react more strongly by means of a similar influence should bring about a cure of the ailment.

All of this is not empty theory, as Hahnemann (and many after him) has demonstrated in his meticulous and original testing (pathogenetic trials) upon healthy subjects of different natural substances and by applying the rule of similia in treating diseased individuals successfully with those substances over a 40-year period of his life. Hahnemann’s discoveries have been verified repeatedly, (demonstrating ad nauseam to the medical fraternity) clinically and scientifically over a 230-year-old medical history with successful cures of every kind of ailment by many different homeopathic practitioners in many different parts of the world. (This makes multicenter, randomized, controlled clinical trials pale in comparison as evidence-based facts!) 

If all this is so clear and straightforward then why is homeopathy not accepted by «mainstream science»? Simply put again: it does not fit into the reductionistic paradigm of medical «science» of today which grew out of the biomedical model—with its narrow focus on the individual as a machine³ —of the early 20th century. Reductionism implies study of the parts in order to understand and manipulate the material world. This undoubtedly has had great utility in several aspects of medicine, as is evident in surgery and emergency medicine, for example. However, it has not produced the same excellent results in the treatment of chronic disease. Why not? Because chronic ailments invariably involve the whole person being sick. Does diabetes mellitus only affect one part of the person? For the study of the whole person another path needs to be followed. We are on the verge of it. “Emergence” or the study of the whole, being greater than the sum of its parts, in regular medicine has not yet been extensively studied or applied therapeutically.⁴

The reductionistic materialist views are akin to someone who has to believe that an ape given a typewriter will produce the genius and creativity of Shakespeare’s works given enough time and paper. Everything is reduced to “behavior,” hormonal influences, and neuronal pathways. In other words, the human has become nothing more than a “machine.” Opposed to this view, cutting-edge theoretical physics leads to a completely different “world” of science, such as that described by Federico Faggin and his research in non-material aspects of consciousness.⁵

What are we to make of all this? My own personal conclusion is that homeopathy has nothing to answer for from the scientific point of view since “science” has yet to catch up with our insights. Rather than offering an unwarranted defense of homeopathy in the same way that a pilot need not prove to anyone that airplanes can fly, we should rather offer a challenge and ask anyone who is “skeptical” to reproduce the results that we have had with our treatment and then be a true skeptic (to doubt, inquire, and reflect), as in the manner of Constantine Hering’s attempt to prove Hahnemann wrong⁶ and follow this line of reasoning to question the foundations of allopathic medicine and revise it accordingly!⁷ Sapere aude.