According toHippocrates there are two methods of therapeutic application,the Law of Opposites and the Law of Similars. Unfortunately hedid not define the realm of application of each. The Organon isnot simply a book on homeopathy, but is The Organon of the RemedialArt. Hahnemann, in addition to re-introducing the world to theLaw of Similars in a very well presented workable manner, alsoclearly describes the working of the Law of Opposites, but withoutstating it by name. He first refers to the Law of Opposites whenspeaking of crude nature...
... which, in order to remove a splinter stuck in the cornea, destroys the entire eye through suppuration and only knows how, with all its exertion, to dissolve a strangulated inguinal hernia through gangrene of the bowels and death, also, often in dynamic diseases, makes patients far unhappier through its metaschematisms than they previously were. (Introduction)
He speaks ofit when he describes the suppressive efforts of the old school.
In contradiction to this procedure the old school not seldom allowed itself the opposite from this; namely, the discretionary suppression of the efforts of the Living Power in appeasement of the internal sickness by evacuations and local symptoms organized on the outer parts of the body when they became troublesome, by Reflectants and Repellants, the dispersal of chronic pains, insomnias and old diarrheas with daringly intensified doses of Opium, vomitings with effervescing salt mixtures, stinking foot sweats with cold footbaths and astringent compresses, skin eruptions with lead and zinc preparations, the checking of uterine hemorrhages with vinegar injections, colliquative sweats with alum whey, nightly seminal emissions with a great deal of Camphor, frequent heat flushes of the body and face with saltpeter, vegetable and sulfuric acids, nosebleeds by tamponing of the nostrils with plugs dipped in alcohol or astringent fluids, and the drying up of ichorous leg ulcers with lead and zinc oxides, allaying the great internal sufferings organized by the Living Power, etc... (Introduction footnote)
These are instancesof attempting to cure by means of opposition with deleteriousconsequences. The positive form of the Law of Opposites is atwork in the form of the 'intelligent physician' who removes the"manifest or maintaining cause", the indisposition thereuponusually ceases by itself.
§7 It goes without saying that each intelligent physician will clear this right away; then the indiposition usually gives way of its own accord. He will remove from the room the strongly fragrant flowers that arouse faintness and hysterical plights, draw out of the cornea the splinter-arousing inflamation of the eye, undo and more fittingly apply the all-to-tight bandage threatening gangrene on the wounded limb, lay bare and tie off the injured artery inducing faintness, seek through vomiting to get rid of swallowed Belladonna berries, etc., pull out foreign substances which have gotten into the openings of the body (nose, ears, urethra, rectum and genitalia), crush the bladder stone, open the imperforate anus of the newborn child
The Law of Oppositesis further elaborated when he authorizes its use.
§67, footnote Only in highly urgent cases, where danger to Life and imminent death permit no time, not hours, often not quarter hours and hardly minutes, for the action of homeopathic auxiliary means in suddenly arisen accidents to previously healthy persons, e.g., asphyxiation, apparent death from lightening, from suffocation, freezing, drowning, etc., is it permissible and expedient, at least for the time being, to excite the irritability and sensibility (the physical life) again by means of a palliative, e.g., by gentle electric shock, by clysters of strong coffee, by excitative olfactory means, gradual warmings, etc.; once the physical life is again roused, the play of the life organs goes along on its previous healthy course, because no disease was to be done away with here, but rather only obstruction and suppression of the in itself healthy Living Power.
This is the keywhich points to the distinction that must be made between healingand curing.
Heal comes from the AngloSaxon "hael" meaning to make whole. When a finger iscut, it heals. The integrity that was disrupted is made completeagain. There has been an injury, a physical harm or damage, whetherthat be from a pin prick in an instant or the eating of devitalizedfoods during the course of a life time. This is the realm of theremedial Law of Opposites. It is the treatment that re-establishesequilibrium by removing that which is harmful, and correctingexcess or deficiency. When someone gets lead poisoning from thewater he drinks from ancient water pipes, you have him stop drinkingthat water. When someone is suffering from scurvy you give himthe citric acid that he is lacking; if someone has a goiter froma deficiency of iodine, it needs to be included in his diet. Hahnemannrefers to maladies...healable by diet and regimen
§.77.2. These self-inflicted unhealthy [practices] fade away of themselves with improved regimen
§. 150.2. A small modification in diet or regimen usually suffices to wipe away this indisposition.
Regimen as defined in the WebstersTwentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary is: a regulated systemof diet, exercise, rest, and general hygiene, intended to maintainor improve the health or any regulation or procedure which isintended to produce beneficial effects by gradual operation. (evensurgical operations)
The positive effect of regimenaladjustment of vitality has been realized in our time by Max Gerson.
§77 These self-inflicted unhealthy [practices] fade away of themselves with improved regimen
§150. A small modification in diet or regimen usually suffices to wipe away this indisposition.
§222 if the patient remains true to the dietically prescribed regimen.
§281 continual good regimen [on the part] of the patient,
§244 a healthy person can in youth accustom himself even to marshy regions and remain sound if he carries on a faultless regimen and is not oppressed from deprivation, fatigue or destructive passions.
§228 [diseases] to be cured by homeopathic medicine... along with carefully adapted regimen,
§261 The most expedient regimen while using medication in chronic diseases rests on removal of such obstacles to cure (§260) -- often undiscerned faults in regimen.
§78fn with a beneficial regimen for spirit, heart and body,
§228. ..a seemly psychical approach towards the patient as an auxiliary soul-diet must indeed also be carefully observed on the part of the relations and the physician.
By these meansone unburdens the metabolic forces, Erhaltungskraft - (Introduction) thelife sustaining power. It is in this light that the concludingaphorisms of the Organon can be viewed, mesmerism (including itspresent day forms) is an example of the use of the Law of Opposites.
§ 288 This remedial power, often foolishly denied or reviled for an entire century, being a wonderful inestimable gift of God granted to humanity, by means of which the Living Power of the healthy mesmerist gifted with this power dynamically streams into another human being by touch and even without the same, indeed even at some distance, through the powerful will of a well-intentioned individual (like one of the poles of a powerful magnet into a rod of raw steel) works in a different way, in that this remedial power partly replaces the Living Power lacking here and there in the patient's organism, partly drains off, decreases and more equally distributes the Living Power accumulated all too much in other places, which arouses and sustains unnamable nervous sufferings and generally extinguishes the morbid mistunement of the Living Principle, replacing it with the normal 'tuning' of the mesmerist impinging powerfully upon the patient, e.g. in cases of old ulcers, blindness, paralyses of individual limbs, etc.
Cure comes from the Latinword "cura", which means care, implying a deeper response.We speak of being cured of malaria. In this case the life forceis not only violated but also deranged by the presence of a 'maleficPotence' (§16). Here the genetic power -Erzeugungskraft(§21)-engendering power (curative power) is being utilized. This iswhere the medicinal Law of Similiars applies.
As a functionof the genetic forces, the primary action is seen to be a productof the medicinal and life force conjointly
§63.Each Life-impinging Potence, each medicine, resonifies the Living Power more or less and arouses a certain alteration of condition in man for a longer or shorter time. We designate it by the name of INITIAL-ACTION. Although a product of medicinal and Living Power, it belongs more to the impinging Potence.
§64. During the initial-action of the artificial disease Potences (medicines) upon our healthy body (as seen from the following examples), our Living Power appears to comport itself purely conceptively (receptively, passively as it were) and thus, as if forced, to allow the impressions of the artificial Potence impinging from without to take place in itself,
This is distinctfrom the secondary action,
§63 Our Living Power strives to oppose this impinging action with its own energy. This back-action belongs to the Sustentive Power of our Life -- and is an automatic function of the same, called AFTER-ACTION or COUNTERACTION.
Hahnemann showsthe combined working of the two Laws in the example given of worminfestations.
(Introduction, footnote) The presence of these [worms] is always dependent on a general taint of the constitution (psoric), joined to an unhealthy mode of living. Let one improve the lifestyle and cure the psoric wastage homeopathically, which at this age most easily admits of help, so none of these worms are left over, and the children, if they have become healthy in this manner, are no longer bothered by them, while after mere purgatives, even along with worm-seed, the worms however soon propagate again in quantity.
To provide abroader view, these organismic activities are in turn affectedby two distinct 'powers' as Hahnemann states: (Introduction, footnote)
The purely physical powers are of a different nature than the dynamic medicinal ones in their impinging action on the living organism. Warmth or cold of the surrounding air or water or of foods and drink do not in themselves (as warmth or cold) cause absolute noxiousness for a healthy body; warmth and cold belong in their alternations to the conservation of a healthy life and, consequently, are not medicinal in themselves. Thus, warmth and cold do not act as remedies in bodily ailments by virtue of their Genius (therefore not as warmth and cold per se, not as things detrimental in themselves, as are perhaps the medicines rhubarb, China, etc., even in the finest doses) -- rather, merely by virtue of their greater or lesser quantity; that is, according to their degree of temperature, just as (in order to give another example of purely physical forces) a great lead weight painfully bruises my hand, not by virtue of its Genius as lead, but due to its quantity and weight in bulk, whilst a thin lead plate would not bruise me.
Hahnemann thenproceeds to give many instances of the positive benefits of physicalhomeopathy; 'frozen sour crout laid upon the frost bitten hand;...muscular contractions caused by chill, cured by cold bathing...and spirits of wine applied to burns' (Introduction). If thereis an injury and one is shivering from the cold, one applies thelaw of opposites and rebalances the metabolic forces by puttingon a coat; there is no subsequent reaction to the therapy, thatis, one does not become colder; "because it acts only physicallyone need not fear the counteraction that follows dynamic medicinalpalliatives." (§ 291) If the coldness goes to the pointof frostbite, applying the Law of Opposites, hot water will causea secondary reaction of pain and perhaps blistering. In this casethe only safe and gentle cure is to apply the Law of Similarsin the form of cold 'that only approximates that (homeopathically),and which gradually rises to a comfortable temperature' (Introduction).
Hahnemann presentstwo modes of medicinal treatment
homogenic andheterogenic (Introduction) which in itself is polarized into
allopathic:
§22, footnote The other possible manner of employing medicines against diseases besides both of these is the allopathic method in which medicines are prescribed whose symptoms have no direct pathic reference to the disease state, therefore are neither similar nor opposed to the disease symptoms; rather, are entirely heterogenic.
§39 Didn't they see then that when they used an aggressive allopathic treatment against a protracted disease (as was commonly the case), they thereby only created an artificial disease DISSIMILAR to the original one, which, as long as it was sustained, silenced the original malady, merely suppressed and suspended it; however, it always came to light again and had to come to light as soon as the decrease of the patient's strength no longer permitted the allopathic attacks on Life to continue?
§70... 3rd) that according to all experience, a natural disease can never be cured by medicines, which of themselves can arouse in healthy people a extraneous disease state (dissimilar morbid symptoms) dissimilar to and DIFFERING from the disease to be cured (never therefore by an allopathic treatment procedure),
and antipathic:
§70...4th) that also, according to all experience, only a rapid transitory relief is effected by medicines which have a tendency to arouse in the healthy person an artificial disease symptom OPPOSITE to the single disease symptom to be cured, but never a cure of an older ailment; rather pursuant aggravation of the same is always effected, and, in a word, this antipathic and merely palliative procedure is thoroughly inexpedient in older, serious maladies:
Heterogenic medicineheeds only the primary actions, naming the secondary actions untowardside effects.
In summary theLaw of Similars applies to the internal realm of Medicine workingby simulation to cure disease through the imaginative applicationof homeopathic principles directed at the genetic forces, thusrealizing the dynamic potential. This is the realm of qualitythat is given a verbal account through the materia medicas. Itis used in the physical realm when the usual parameters have beenextended beyond its normal limits.
On the otherhand, the Law of Opposites applies to the external, remedial realmof Regimen necessary to heal injury, working by essential oppositionthrough the judicious application of physical laws operant onthe metabolic forces so that an equilibrium can be established.This is the realm of quantity and aspects of it can be numericallycalculated. It can be called upon for immediate, life saving measureswhen the life force has become severely depressed.
With the differencesbetween the law of Opposites and the law of Similars taken intoconsideration, what is at work in the following situation?
A profound and long-standing problem with warmth is often found in patients with illness such as cancer and M. E. (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or post-viral fatigue syndrome). Such patients often have body temperatures nearer to 35 degrees Celsius than the normal 37 degrees. In healthy people, there is generally a rhythmical variation of their temperatures, most people being slightly warmer in the evening than they are first thing in the morning. Patients whose body temperatures are reduced tend to lack this regular rhythmical quality.... within the context of hydrotherapy, special 'pyrogenic' baths can help by supporting the normalization of body temperature. The patient is immersed in water up to the chin for an hour, during which time the water is kept at, or just above, body temperature. The warming effect is not from the water but, in this case, from removing the body's ability to cool itself. The main method of cooling is the evaporation of sweat from the skin, but in the bath, the sweat goes into the bath instead of evaporating, and the cooling effect is lost.
A pyrogenic bath can raise the body temperature as high as 39 or 40 degrees Celsius and if the patient has not had a feverish illness for years and has a subnormal temperature, is quite strenuous for the body...but its profound warming effect can make a valuable contribution to re-establishing a normal body temperature when this is lacking.
*§291 provides a discussion on the homeopathic and palliative use of hydrotherapy.