SUMMARY: Everything that can be seen, that can be observed with the aid of the finest instrument, is but the result. The bacteria for instance, the very finest form of animal or vegetable life ; but the cause of disease is a million times more subtle than these and cannot be seen by the human eye. The bacteria are the result of conditions within, they are, as it were, evolved by a spontaneous generation – literally, that is what it is. Every virus is capable of assuming forms and shapes in ultimates. The causes of ultimates are not from without but the immaterial invisible center. If there were no disturbing influence in the interiors of man he never would have symptoms. As you sit there in your seats in a perfect state of quietude or tranquility you are not conscious of your eyes, of your limbs, of your hair. You have to stop and think whether you feel or not. When all the functions are carried on in a perfectly orderly way you have no consciousness of your body, which means that you are in freedom. When not in freedom the individual says : “I feel.”To establish freedom should be the aim of the physician, and if a physician’s work does not result in placing his patient in freedom he cannot heal the sick, for healing the sick is placing the patient in freedom, giving him absolute physical freedom.These physicians would not talk so if they only knew and would only think in this proper and wholesome fashion, that to cure the patient would be to cure the cancer, and in order to cure the patient it is necessary to go back in his history and get those symptoms that represent the patient in a state of disease and not the tissues in a state of disease results. Cancer is the result of disorder, which disorder must be turned in order and must be healed. It is first assumed that the organism is in a state of health and capable of performing its functions, and then the morbid sensations of this healthy organism are the symptoms that come to the physician as a forerunner of death in parts, and finally death of the whole. The physician should be conversant with anatomy and physiology, but by studying the symptomatology he acquires a knowledge of physiology which it is impossible to obtain in any other way ; he acquires a knowledge of the functions and operations of arteries, nerves and muscles because they call attention to themselves when in disturbance, and he sees therefore how the symptoms manifest themselves.
LECTURES ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY
BY
James Tyler KENT, A.M., M.D.
Date: 1900
LECTURE 9: Organon – 10 and 11. Disorder first in vital force.
Organon -10
The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no self-preservation ; it derives all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital force) which animates the material organism in health and in disease.
Organon -11
When a person falls ill it is only this spiritual, self-acting (automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by the dynamic influence upon it of a morbific agent inimical to life; it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by the effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician; that is, by morbid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known.
It is clear that Hahnemann wishes to teach that it is a disorder of the activities of the internal man, a lack of harmony or lack of balance, which gives forth the signs and symptoms by which we recognize disease.
These sensations constitute the language of disorder; i.e., the means by which we recognize disorder and disease.
This immaterial vital principle, this simple substance, everywhere pervades the organism, and in disease this disorder everywhere pervades the organism, it pervades every cell and every portion of the human economy.
We will see in course of time that the change in form of a cell is the result first of disorder, that the derangement of the immaterial vital principle is the very beginning of the disorder, and that with this beginning there are changes in sensation by which man may know this beginning, which occurs long before there is any visible change in the material substance of the body.
The patient himself can feel by his sensations the changes, and this is inimical to life, and death immediately follows, for life in its fullest sense is freedom.
As soon as the internal economy is deprived in any manner of its freedom, death is threatening ; where freedom is lost death is sure to follow.
So it is when there is the inflowing of a simple substance that has the form or essence of a disease. It is in its essence an evil that is flowing into the economy, but it is a simple substance.
Everything is substantial or real, and has in itself operating and perpetuating power.
The fact that it can operate and perpetuate is the evidence of power, and if it has power it results in something.
Every cause of disease then has form.
If it were not in the form of single substance it could not affect the forms of simple substance in the natural state of the economy.
Moreover, it has its association, from the finest forms of physical substance to the crudest, from beginning to end, from the inner to the outer.
Such changes and activities as result in the very crudest forms are but the results of disease through a series of degrees, coarser and coarser to the outermost man.
Everything that can be seen, that can be observed with the aid of the finest instrument, is but the result.
Nothing in the world of immaterial substance can be seen with any faculty that is capable of seeing things in the world of material substance.
The employment of instruments of precision will enable us to see the finest disease results, which are the outcome or results of things immaterial, the bacteria for instance, the very finest form of animal or vegetable life ; but the cause of disease is a million times more subtle than these and cannot be seen by the human eye.
The finest visible objects are but results of things still finer, so that the cause rests within.
The morbific agents that Hahnemann refers to are simply the extremely fine forms of simple substance, or to bring them down to human thought we might call them viruses ; but viruses are often gross because they can sometimes be observed by the vision of man, and therefore we must remember that within the virus is its innermost and that this innermost is in itself capable of giving form to the outermost, which is the visible virus aggregated and concentrated.
The coarser forms would be comparatively harmless were it not for their interiors.
Disease products are comparatively harmless were it not for the fact that they contain an innermost and it is the innermost itself that is causative.
The bacteria are the result of conditions within, they are, as it were, evolved by a spontaneous generation – literally, that is what it is.
Every virus is capable of assuming forms and shapes in ultimates.
The causes of ultimates are not from without but the immaterial invisible center.
Those things that appear to man’s eye are evolved, just as man himself is formed from a center which has the power of evolving, an endowment from the Creator, operating under fixed general laws.
It is only when the vital principle is disturbed by cause of a disease character (that is the innermost of a virus in the form of a simple substance), that it gives forth any consciousness of itself.
If there were no disturbing influence in the interiors of man he never would have symptoms.
As you sit there in your seats in a perfect state of quietude or tranquility you are not conscious of your eyes, of your limbs, of your hair.
You have to stop and think whether you feel or not.
When all the functions are carried on in a perfectly orderly way you have no consciousness of your body, which means that you are in freedom.
When not in freedom the individual says : “I feel.”
It is this disturbance of an invisible character which comes from cause, and appears by changes in the activities of the body, changes in sensations, changes in functions.
It is in accordance with all-wise Providence that these sensations should appear to the physician who shall be intelligent enough to read them and know what they mean.
They are a warning, they are for us, for purpose.
No feeling a man can have is without purpose, as there is nothing in the universe without its use.
Hence these morbid sensations reveal to the physician that there is disorder.
To establish freedom should be the aim of the physician, and if a physician’s work does not result in placing his patient in freedom he cannot heal the sick, for healing the sick is placing the patient in freedom, giving him absolute physical freedom.
If the physician causes the pains to cease by a dose of Morphine, can we call that freedom ?
Is the patient not made stupid beyond the recognition of the nature of his feelings ?
The large doses of the old school produce anything but freedom.
We must look elsewhere to find that kind of healing which turns disorder into order and makes man free.
By removing the signs and symptoms in an orderly way, by converting disorder into order so that the symptoms no longer have a cause (for as we have already seen when the economy is turned into order it ceases to give forth symptoms), we place our patients in freedom, both physical and mental.
“Only the vital principle thus disturbed can give to the organism its abnormal sensations and incline it to the irregular actions we call disease.”
This is totally different from calling the results of disease the disease, e.g., calling Bright’s disease, cancer, or palsy, diseases.
Most of the conditions of the human economy that are called diseases in the books are not diseases, but the results of disease.
To call a group of symptoms a disease of one part, and another group of symptoms a disease of another part is a great heresy and leads to errors in prescribing that can never be corrected. Organic change is the result of disease.
Morbid disturbances can be perceived solely by means of the expression of disease in the sensations and actions !
We would have no means of perceiving the morbid disturbance of the invisible principle except by morbid sensations, and if these were not present we would have no means of putting the patient in freedom.
There are patients so sick that they cannot be put in freedom, those for whom there are no means of cure, and in these, while the internaI structural changes are going on slowly, the morbid symptoms are not present.
Such patients continually change doctors and change climates, recognizing, as it were, that no one is capable of relieving them.
With an incurable change in a vital organ, all or most of the symptoms that existed go away ; the symptoms of the diseases are suppressed, as it were, by the tremendous strain upon the system.
This is particularly true of the malignant forms of disease results.
The symptoms that existed years ago have disappeared and the patient says :
“Oh, they did not amount to anything ; I had had them all my life.”
But those are the symptoms that would manifest to the physician the nature of the remedy, for they give to him the real image of the sickness.
Some doctors say :
“Oh, we will have a remedy for cancer some day,”
having in mind only the symptoms of cancer ; that is, the symptoms that represent the results of disease and not the symptoms that represent the disease itself.
There is a vast difference between these two.
These physicians would not talk so if they only knew and would only think in this proper and wholesome fashion, that to cure the patient would be to cure the cancer, and in order to cure the patient it is necessary to go back in his history and get those symptoms that represent the patient in a state of disease and not the tissues in a state of disease results.
In the latter state, the original symptoms of the disease have often disappeared ; they are, as it were, swallowed up.
So it is when the innermost disease. has acted and the whole body is full of disease results, such as dropsical conditions, or pus sacs, or hip-joint abscesses.
The pains make the patient unable to think of his symptoms.
Then these physicians come along and prescribe for the resultant states and end in failure.
They give Silica for hip-joint disease and Bufo for epilepsy, and so on, giving medicines for groups of symptoms.
That is not Homoeopathy.
Such men then go off and say :
“Oh, I have tried everything,”
but they have tried nothing but modern practice.
It is a travesty upon Homoeopathy.
The expert physician can listen to signs and symptoms before morbid changes have taken place, and if no medicines have ever been administered, if no drugging has been resorted to, no morphine, and no other violent and vicious drugs, the image stands out before him in relief ; it is perfect, because it has not been meddled with it.
It speaks with clearness, and the physician who is intelligent can learn to read it.
But the physician who is not capable of seeing that this is different from the group of pathological symptoms that represent the so-called fixed diseases, if he cannot make a distinction between the symptoms that represent the disease per se and the symptoms that represent the result of disease, he will never practice Homoeopathy successfully.
If he cannot understand it he had better work at it until he does understand it ; he must continue to labour until he can discriminate between the organic symptoms associated with the results of disease and the pure signs given forth by nature.
Every few days I run across a homoeopathic physician who asks :
“What remedy are you using in such and such case ?”
Such a thing has no place in my mind, and I look upon one who speaks in that way as a man untrained in homoeopathics.
I truly have lost my patient over such things, for the old gray-heads, who have practiced for years and pretended to practice Homoeopathy, do not hesitate to say that “the best remedy for epilepsy” is so and so,
What nonsense ! That is not adjusting the remedy to the state of the patient that existed before he had these structural changes and fixed groups of symptoms, for if you adjust a remedy to the pathological condition you are not adjusting it to the patient, to his very beginnings down to the present time.
He need not have pathological results, all he needs to have is symptoms.
The patient can cure his own morbid anatomy.
If you will take away the first state of disorder his economy will be safe.
If the results of disease cannot be removed the patient himself will return to health and the morbid anatomy will undergo such changes that it will not affect his state of health.
The fibrinous adhesions need not necessarily go away a state of quiescence comes and remains year after year so long as he remains well.
To think of remedies for cancer is confusion, but to think of remedies for the patient who appears to have cancer is orderly, and you will be astonished to know what wonderful changes will take place in these conditions when remedies that correspond to the conditions before the cancer began are administered.
Cancer is the result of disorder, which disorder must be turned in order and must be healed.
We dwell upon this, for many paragraphs bring out this distinction between symptoms and results of disease.
The true morbid sensations of a healthy organism are what we must first consider.
It is first assumed that the organism is in a state of health and capable of performing its functions, and then the morbid sensations of this healthy organism are the symptoms that come to the physician as a forerunner of death in parts, and finally death of the whole.
The patient tells the physician his sensations, of the numbness of his fingers, of the pricking in his skin, of the pain in his stomach, etc., all the sensations of any part of which he is reminded.
The healthy man is not reminded of his parts.
He passes his stool without pain in the part.
If he have pain or bleeding he is reminded of this part.
If he passes his urine without sensation we say it is normal and he is in freedom, but if burning and smarting and tenesmus follow he is reminded of it, and these sensations constitute symptoms.
If the patient is waxy and pallid, has papules and pustules, or swollen and varicose veins with red face, red eyes, etc., these the physician can see and note down.
Again there are things that the physician cannot see and that the patient cannot tell, that the mother, sister, husband or wife should relate to the physician at his office.
These symptoms constitute what there is knowable of die sickness, that which appears to the mind of the physician upon which he makes up his verdict.
When the strong symptoms are all gathered together the physician in studying the case must separate out those things that were observed years ago from those things that are observed today, noting how they have changed and why changed.
Sometimes they have been changed by drugs so that the whole nature of the economy is giving out a different group of symptoms.
The physician must learn the changes all along the line, from beginning to end ; what symptoms represented this sick man ten years ago, and what symptoms represent him now.
Perhaps now lie has morbid anatomy, pathological conditions in his lungs, liver and kidneys.
The physician who has been for twenty years observing previous and present conditions in this manner, by hearing the symptoms can practically locate the morbid anatomy ; he can tell where it will appear, knows when pus is in organs and where, and he can fortell pretty well what is soon to go on in the economy.
I would rather trust to a careful study of the symptoms than most physician’s written diagnosis of phthisis, or organic diseases of the liver or of the heart.
The symptoms do not lie, they do not exist from opinions of men who have thumped and pounded over the human body to find out what is going on inside, which is in many instances confusing even to the best diagnosticians.
A considerable observation amongst medical men will lead one to discover that the dollar is the chief end of the practice of medicine when practiced in the old way ; there is nothing else in it, nothing to admire or cherish.
To become conversant with symptoms, to judge of the sphere and progress of disease by the study of symptomatology, is the requirement necessary for the homoeopath.
Of course, bystanders will say to the patient : “That doctor cannot know much ; he did not give you a physical examination.”
After the examination of the symptoms has been made there is no reason why you should not make a physical examination of the patient ; but do not let this deprive you of becoming thoroughly educated in studying symptoms, because the real study of sickness is the meditation of his symptoms, and to become wise in symptoms is to become an able prescriber.
Study physical diagnosis to your heart’s content, but weigh carefully what you discover and compare it with the symptoms in order to ascertain what the different symptoms mean.
You cannot study the symptoms of man without becoming extremely well acquainted with the nervous system.
The anatomy of the nerves and of the brain should be thoroughly known.
Not always that you may name the nerve, but that you may know where it is and what its functions are, and this study should be continued throughout all your life.
The physician should be conversant with anatomy and physiology, but by studying the symptomatology he acquires a knowledge of physiology which it is impossible to obtain in any other way ; he acquires a knowledge of the functions and operations of arteries, nerves and muscles because they call attention to themselves when in disturbance, and he sees therefore how the symptoms manifest themselves.
By studying the symptom in the recorded pathogenesis one may learn much about true pathology.
Morbid anatomy furnishes no basis for prescribing, but true pathology is often of the greatest benefit, helping the image of the sickness to shape itself before the mind.
