Abstract: Homeopathic remedies do not suppress according to Hahnemann. However, agreement with this statement depends on whether the homeopathic community recognizes the definitions used by Hahnemann in the Organon.
Keywords: suppressed, “unterdrückte,” homeopathic aggravation, imperfect remedy, incorrect remedy
The German word for suppress is “unterdrücken.”1,2 This word is used in the following aphorisms, which are presented in numerical order:
§39. The allopathic prescriptions create a dissimilar artificial disease that merely silences, suspends and suppresses (“unterdrücken”) the original malady for a short time only, without curing it. They add a new disease condition to the old one.3 For example, if allopathic treatment for chronic skin disease is stopped, the itch will return or internal symptoms will develop.
§46. A person who was blind for two years after the suppression of the scalp eruption recovered his sight after smallpox.4
§59. Frequently recurring pains of all sorts were suppressed for a short time with opium, and coughs are again and again suppressed by opium.5
§67a. When the vital force is suppressed to apparent death by things like lightning, drowning, freezing, drowning, then palliatives help. This is allowed because one is not treating a disease.
§235a, §244a. Large doses of cinchona bark or quinine sulphate can suppress intermittent fevers, but then the person is sick in a different way from a chronic disease caused by the cinchona.
Some English translations of the Organon use the word suppress for other German verbs:
§285. Mineral baths very often make patients worse by driving away (“vertrieben,” suppressing6?, removing, expelling) the skin rash. After brief well being, the life principle makes the uncured internal trouble break out in another part of the organism, one that is far more important to life and well-being.
§289. A woman received a violent emotional shock which (suppressed?)6,7 “gehemmt” (inhibited)8 her menstruation.
Hahnemann uses the word “suppress” as another synonym to the words suspend, stop, inhibit, silence, displace, transpose or drive away.
§201. In chronic disease, the vital force forms a local disease on some external part to relieve the internal disease. In this way, the local disease silences (“schweigen”) the internal disease for a time without healing it or diminishing it overall.9
§202. If the old school doctor destroys the local symptoms, nature compensates for this by awakening the internal malady that has been dormant all along. “In such cases one usually says, incorrectly (“unrichtig”), that the local disease has been driven back (“zurück getrieben”) into the body.”10
Homeopathy considers the complete process in the formation of chronic dynamic disease. The miasmatic process transforms, makes sick, the whole internal person before the local skin erupts.11
To help clarify this, take the example of a young atopic child with eczema. The allopaths may use corticosteroids. They assume the whole disease is removed when the skin improves. If the child later develops asthma, they consider it a new development of disease. On the other hand, some homeopaths may say that the steroids suppressed the skin eruption and drove the disease to the healthy more vital lungs, but this assumes that the lungs were not already sick. The suppression of the local symptoms reawakens the already existing internal disease. External ailments arise from internal causes (§189).
§205. The destruction of the local symptoms transfers (“versetzen,” displaces, transposes) the focus of the malady to more noble (“edlere,” important, vital) parts.
§58. Allopathic palliatives aggravate disease after a short time of relief.
§75. Allopathics can cause incurable chronic disease.
From Hahnemann’s examples and from experience, homeopaths can say that non-homeopathic medicinal interventions are likely to suppress disease.
§215. Mental/ emotional diseases [serious] start in the physical body and then become a local disease in the psyche.
An example from my practice is used here to expand on Hahnemann’s observation: An active, otherwise healthy family man of 60 suddenly became depressed and sat in his recliner all day.
There was nothing to account for it: no family tragedy, no financial loss, no trauma, no injury, no previous emotional events in his life, and no physical complaints. He wanted to jump off a pier into Lake Michigan but was not aware of a reason why he came to this state of mind. After Aurum metallicum, he became his old self and involved his whole extended family in starting a new business of limousine service to O’Hare airport. In about three months, I received a phone call from his daughter that he suddenly had intense gastrointestinal symptoms and was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with metastases. He died soon after. In all likelihood, the advanced cancer must have already been there and caused the depression.
Another point: Hahnemann talks about the directions of the disease or changes of the location of disease that the vital force initiates. However, he never mentions the directions of cure, often codified as Hering’s Laws or rules.
§156. The correct remedy may bring about some new symptoms, but the autocracy of the organism extinguishes the ailment if the patient is not too sensitive.
§161. The homeopathic aggravation (“Verschlimmerung,” worsening, increase)12 should not be allowed in chronic disease and won’t happen if the dose is properly small and gradually increasing by dynamizing in liquid.
§167-168. If additional symptoms of significance arise from the imperfect (“unvollkommen”) homeopathic remedy, re-examine the modified new disease picture and choose a more suitable remedy.
§163. The “Nebensymptome” (secondary symptoms, side effects,13 accessory symptoms14) of an imperfect remedy do not hinder a good start toward cure and such unavoidable effects are only mild.
§180. The imperfect remedy will arouse additional complaints and mix them up with the disease of the patient.
§181. The whole visible symptom complex now belongs to the disease itself as the true present state.
§182. The imperfect remedy serves to complete the symptom content of the disease and facilitates the finding of a second better homeopathic remedy.
§248-249. If after a homeopathic remedy is given, the patient experiences new, different and troublesome symptoms not characteristic of the disease to be cured, then an antidote or another more homeopathic, appropriate medicine must be chosen to counter influence it.
§250. If the homeopathic remedy is incorrectly chosen and the patient is worse and new symptoms arise, the doctor must rectify the mistake and give an appropriate homeopathic remedy indicated for the disease condition and the new symptoms (§167).
§283. If the practitioner chooses the inappropriate, unfitting (“unangemessenen”) homeopathic remedy, the “Nachtheil” (disadvantage,15 harm done16) would be so small that it would quickly be corrected by the life force and by a more similar remedy in small dose.
Hahnemann does not use the verb suppress or any of its synonyms to describe the homeopathic aggravation or the action of a wrong or incorrect homeopathic remedy.
Currently, homeopaths use the word suppress most often for unwanted allopathic effects. Hahnemann uses many different words to describe the unwanted results of medical interventions. Hahnemann describes how disease undergoes changes in location in the organism but does not detail the direction of cure. He also describes what to do after a homeopathic aggravation or after an imperfect remedy or incorrect remedy. He does not state or imply that suppression takes place in any of these circumstances.
About the author: Joel Shepperd, MD, has practiced homeopathic medicine for over 40 years in the Chicago area. He is a partner of the Center for Integral Health in Lombard, Illinois, and a co-founder of the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association. He is an adjunct professor at the National University of Health Sciences naturopathic medical school where he authored the textbook “Hahnemann’s Organon for Students.”
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