Today we take up this subject that deals with the main theme of the Science of Homeopathy. Homeopathy would have no significance without the concept of this phenomenon; and if this concept is accepted in toto and followed scrupulously, the agonies of the human race would not only be reduced but even removed and averted for the future. This concept if worked out in full detail with illustrations would require a good number of volumes to be written. Here we shall only discuss a few essential features as a sort of introduction, whereas more elaborate solutions can be found in the use of conjure oils or manifestation rituals.
The concept of the life force, with the process of construction and destruction of the structure through which it has to play the role of a living being, is not at all a mechanical one. According to the well-concieved and intuitively experienced concept of life, the soul, which carries the impact of its past, yields to the cycle of existence, through its own intuitive faculty, and ultimately fixes itself into a circumstance resembling its own impact.
The life thus germinated has triple factors to mould itself into a living entity.
- The soul carrying the impact of the former life.
- The qualitative influence of the soul through which it takes a chance to come into existence.
- The influences of various environments through which it has to pass during the course of the process of the life from the beginning to the end.
The life dependent on such different aspects to mould itself, cannot be expected to be in a perfectly healthy state. Nature has to adopt the principle of adjustment, and every step where it has to adjust is marked by a particular type of complex. These complexes exist in the system, as the dormant form of the unhealthy condition, which we call the disease force.
The most stubborn of the complexes are the inherited ones, which are existing from the beginning and are manifested through the constitution. The others are invited through suppressed disease conditions and through unmanageable circumstances. The medicinal poisoning and the suppression of diseases are inter-related and go side by side.
No ailment can take its chance independently in the life. According to homeopathic science there are three disease producing influences which are termed as “miasms,”—Psora, Syphilis and Sycosis.
The vital force subjugated by these miasms is made to carry on the order under their influence. This process in the life is called the “background.” As we shall see, this background plays a decisive role in fostering, enhancing and complicating the ailments in the system.
What is suppression? The mere literary meaning of the word cannot fully explain its true significance. By suppression the disease condition is made to go deep. For suppression to take place, there must be some material or condition to be suppressed; some agent to cause the suppression, and at the same time, there must be some resistance offered by the organism which not being able to halt the process in the beginning has halted it at some level.
In order to understand the process of and the manifestations of suppression, we have to examine the conditions under which the disease manifests. The discomfort experi-enced by nature under the excited and activated susceptibility—the sensitive focus of the complex which yields to mould the outer impressions into ill health—or under the constant unaccommodative circumstances, is shown in the form of symptoms. These manifested symptoms are the resultants of the disease phenomena, the resistance of nature, and the things required to be eliminated out.
Any such condition when tackled with crude medication or even with the palliative methods, will weaken the resistance of the organism. Nature will then reconcile and make arangement to establish resistance on a deeper plane. This disease force and the disturbing effect of the medicine which is used, will have their sway over the region captured, and will arrange to consolidate their position for the further attack on the resistance. Here the general order of the system is allowed to be carried on, but the total absence of resistance to the unaccommodative circumstances will be noticed all throughout. This condition is called the suppression of the disease fore. It is the suppression of the revolt of nature and signifies the acceptance of the influence of the disease and the medicinal influence upto a certain level.
Here the medicinal disturbance is responsible for the suppression, and it opens out the channel for the disease condition to penetrate as deep as the medicinal influence. The deeper the effect of the medicine, the deeper the disease penetrates. While determining the condition of suppression, the role of the miasmatic and the inherited background, is also to be taken into consideration which are ever alert to play their part when any chance is available. So, how far the resistance is weakened depends on the means of suppression as well as the background.
The vital order of the existence is planewise in the order of merit, according to the qualitative grade of each function needed to preserve the economy, from the centre to circumstance, vitally linked with each other.
- The nervous plane—The sympathetic and the central nervous system, (including the will and understanding), are the central forces to manage the senses and to maintain the order throughout the economy. It is the last plane in which nature offers resistance before extinction.
- The metabolic plane, wherein the nutrition and the repair are balanced. The circulatory system is not independently responsible for any disorder. It simply bears the burden of disturbances in the different planes.
- Fibrous tissues. (The muscles, ligaments, sheaths, connective tissues, bones and cartilages).
- The mucous linings of the viscera bear collective responsibility of secretive and absorbtive functions.
- The skin—the outer surface of the body.
The order of penetration of the disease through suppression is from circumference to the centre and is planewise maintaining link on both the sides. It is also from below upward and from the less vital to more vital organs. It owes its progress to the weakened resistance. The suppression exerts its influence in three types:
- The obstructive type, creats functional disturbance which again is classified into two types:
- Crude—involving the surface, the mucous and the muscular planes only, shows non-wasting and non-organic tissue changes.
- Active—involving the active metabolic order of the life which affects the glandular and the circulatory system, the excretion, the secretion, the absorption, the nutrition and the repair. The function is either exaggerated or reduced.
- The organic tissue changes— This type creates non-malignant inflammatory condition within the organs, and favours tissue deposits.
- Wasting types—This leads to malignancy within a particular organ or at a place, which is fomented by general crisis. Here the general resistance of the system capitulates and accepts total extinction by stages.
The pus formation comes under two items:
- The elimination of accumulated damaged tissues, accompanied with or without fever, is accomplished within the range of general repair. So while attempting to discriminate its stand, the suppression has to be determined in the glandular and the circulatory order.
- The pus formation denoting tissue decay under the con-dition of waste, should be taken up for wasting type and should not be listed under eliminative attempt of nature.
We must accept that the symptomatic account of a diseased condition does not represent its full form. One should go deep to investigate and show that the beginning of the appearance of the condition owes its existence to something which is the real cause of it. So the manifestation of any type of disease of the human race, of any intensity, can be systematically explained to have been developed through this process of suppression—” from surface to centre”.
Before going on to the manifestation and the treatment side of the suppression, we have to clear certain points which baffle the prescribers viz., the dormant stage of the disease, how and when it becomes active by itself and the role it plays.
The disease force remains dormant at a particular point after the adjustment with nature, in the form of the tendency of nature, which is deviated from the natural working order. Its continuous existence weakens the resistance. The condition is exposed in acute form at the slightest provocation or even by itself, thereby, nullifying the former adjustment.
Acute manifestations of the chronic diseases are the result of the unadjustable condition created internally by the disease force, under constant strain exerted against nature. The acute exuberance of this type is opposed by the general resistance and is quelled at the cost of the general vitality. This process, if allowed to run on like this, will ultimately bring about general depression and a shortening of the periods intervening between the attacks. The diseases which are kept checked at their level by the palliative treatemnt also go the same way. A rheumatic attack every year in cold winter passes off by itself under general resistance or by the palliative treatment which does not amount to suppression. Every attack takes away a part of the general resistance thereby weakening the system. Ultimately the patient will have the attacks coming at very short intervals, and the wear and tear which is fast developing, will bring the all-round depression leading to the ultimate end.
The dormant items got through inheritance:
Each cell inherits the tendency with all the qualities and the defects of the parents. These tendencies are let loose, when the time is found favourable for their manifestations.
The disease condition while undergoing further suppression, changes the plane according to the severity of the medicinal effect and the background.
The transformation of the influence of suppression also depends upon the medicinal effect and the background e.g., the suppression of itch or boils with Sulphur crude is likely to go to the mucous lining which is the immediate next plane, while after the Zinc ointment the suppression takes seat in the nervous plane directly without touching other planes in between.
With sycotic background Sulphur will take the suppression to the muscles and Zinc will intensify the nervous trouble.
With syphilitic background Sulphur will take the suppression to the metabolic order and will influence the wasting type, and Zinc will create total depression prone to be affected by very slight disease influences which may take serious turn.
Nature tries to accommodate itself with the condition under the disease influence, and in doing so, it will have to use the energy for arranging different ways and means, to bear the burden as smoothly as possible, just as to accommodate with the feeling of heat, thirst is produced; to stand the nervous strain, headache is produced, and so on. With every disease condition nature finds its own way of accommodation which is manifested in symptoms; side by side with this, the adjustment arrived at a certain point between nature and disease is also manifested in certain symptoms. These adjustive symptoms are helpful to nature, and any attempt to prescribe upon these symptoms only, will temporarily dislodge the symptoms from the scene just to get them back again, and the disease will proceed further under cover. The symptoms of accommodation of nature and the symptoms of adjustment of nature exist in the manifestation of a disease. The former point to the disease condition and the latter signify elimination.
The effect of the medicine should be determined by its capacity to produce accommodative symptoms only. The prescription based on this consideration on the symptom similarity of adjustive symptoms will simply establish palliation.
Migraine with all the symptoms of Kali-bi. or Puls., Gels., or Lachesis will simply be palliated to recur again. The headache is conditional here. The headache in Kali-bi. and Puls, is due to accumulation of mucus in sinuses and in Gels. and Lachesis due to congestion. Both the conditions when dislodged will give relief. With all the symptom similarity these medicines will lack the capacity to tackle the nervous background which gives rise to migraine. The causative basic condition to which migraine owes its existence will need eithr Arg-nit., Sulph., Thuja, Hep-sul., Nat-mur., Chinsulph., Cedron or Sepia to eradicate it permanently.
Bilious headaches which are ameliorated by Chelidon., Ipecac., or Nux vomica need deeper investigation for their eradication. In these medicines the accumulation of bile creates a condition which disappears as soon as the bile is dislodged. The headache is conditional like the sensitiveness observed in an abscess under the tension of accumulated pus. The adjustive symptoms are tackled with these medicines. The diseased condition rests with the cause which disturbed the liver. Chelidon. we find, may do away with the apparent condition of jaundice but it does not possess the penetrating range to go to the origin, the cause of the jaundice; so it will lack the capacity to establish a healthy state of liver. Here either Chionanthus, Phos., Nat-mur., Eupator., Ipecac. or Merc-sol. according to the hold of the caustive factor, will bring permanent relief.
Thus, it is ascertained that the symptom similarity without exactly determining the causative factors in the prescription does not help to establish permanent cure; so a prescription on simple pathological guidance however appropriate it may look, is sure to be of little permanent value.
The extent of success in treatment of the disease depends upon the proper choice of medicine administered. To choose the right medicine would be to understand the role played by it. Each medicine has a dual role to perform. One is of palliation by influencing the condition of adjustment between disease and resistance of nature, while the other is of cure by influencing the accomodated condition of the disease in the system. Knowledge of these roles of every medicine through research and study, together with tracing of the origin of the disease, are essential for homeopathy to treat successfully diseases of any origin or any severity.
In non-wasting type of disease, nature on one side adjusts with the disease condition effecting elimination and on the other side it accommodates the disease condition at certain stages by offering resistance. The wasting type of the disease condition is however the subjugated condition of nature where nature has no chance to adjust. It is obvious that none of symptomatic manifestations is favourable to the economy. A prescription based on apparent similarity of the symptoms of the disease and the adjusting ones of the medicine can never help; it may do immense harm on the contrary. Prescription of Mellilotus or Hamamelis for hemoptysis in a case of tuberculosis (showing affinity to simple congestion where an outlet offers relief) may prove dangerous.
Lachesis can create dangerous and even fatal conditions by way of its hold on disorganizing the blood and creating thereby septic conditions. But it lacks the capacity to create a constitutional disturbance. It favourably and actively associates with the acute development after a certain stage and helps to bring up the result to a certain level, but a follow- up with an appropriate medicine becomes necessary. In a septic condition after a burn, Lachesis produces almost normal condition but a follow-up with Silicea or similar medicine would be required to establish a return to health.
With all the modalities of Lachesis, when administered in a case of eczema, it simply palliated the condition due to its tendency to help in eliminating pus, but it could not eradicate the deep consitutional affair or cause. The conditions rather reappeared in course of time. Graphitis here eradicated the disease.
Aloe and Ipecac., have dysenteric type of stools. In both the medicines this condition is the adjusted one by which nature simply effects evacuation. Aloe, though it resembles Argent-nit. and Ipecac., resembles Merc-sol., in the abdominal symptoms, both simply palliate thedysenteric stools when administered. None of the two cure the disease. Here it is the condition of adjustment which carries out the evacuation, palliating thereby the existing condition. One should therefore take care to explore the possible background which caused the condition of dysentery. The symptoms of the dysentery of Arg-nit. and Merc-sol. are of accommodative nature. They can eradicate the tendency.
Claiming to eradicate the tendency to worms by Cina is not proper.
It helps to clear the acute condition when administered but it can not help the chronic indications like enuresis or grinding of teeth during sleep. Toclear the tendency to worms Cicuta, Silicea, Sulphur, Merc-sol. and Zinc should be thought of. The frequent use of Cina disturbs the general resistance, whereby the deeper phenomena might get a chance to disturb liver which has been noticed to often result into jaundice.
Symptoms brought out under the constant stress of the background of the disease and similar ones brought out undersome exciting cause create altogether different conditions, e.g. the asthmatic attack under exciting cause of climatic effect yields to Ant-ars. and that due to dietetic disturbances yields to Nux-vom. or Carbo-veg. Dormant conditions here remain the same. But an attack of asthma without any exciting cause, does not yield to any such homeopathic palliatives. The attack subsides by itself after taxing the vitality. Attempts to tackle it with the constitutional treatment on the consideration of the background will intensify the attack and will make it more frequent. Acute manifestations of digestive disturbances due to any dietetic irregularities will yield to Nux-vom., Carbo-veg., Aloe etc., but when the manifestations are linked up with chronic background any attempt to render temporary help will every time misdirect the vital force to effect the surface adjustment. Every such effort will weaken the resistance.
