Homeopathy and Integrative Medicine
Has Integrative Medicine been part of homeopathy from the start?
Dr Samuel Hahnemann Memorial, Washington DC, USA
In this essay, we explain how Hahnemann was, besides homeopathy, interested in other ways to help patients. Even though the 6 editions of the Organon is the legacy in which he developed the principles of homeopathic medicine, it also contains references to other important aspects of medical practice and other types of treatments. This means that the Organon can also be seen as an introduction into integrative medicine.
Similarity principle
The discovery (or rediscovery) of the principle of similarity marked, for Hahnemann, the beginning of a research journey that progressively formed into a well-defined therapeutic method, which we know as homeopathic medicine. The pathogenic proving of medicinal substances on the healthy, the collection of cases with attention to every particular symptom within the general context, the systematic analysis of collected symptoms, the administration of individual substances appropriately diluted and potentized according to precise preparation rules based on the principle of similarity, constitute the foundations of the homeopathic method. The Hahnemannian homeopathic method has progressively spread worldwide and has been practiced for more than two hundred years by a multitude of physicians.
The Organon
The fundamental text of the homeopathic method, the Organon, has been published in six different editions. The first, in 1810, was titled Organon of Rational Medical Science. From the second edition onwards, the title was changed to Organon of the Art of Healing. From one edition to the next, we can discover the evolution of Hahnemann’s detailed and thoughtful observations and reflections translated into a proposal for a holistic practice of medicine that aims for the best for each individual patient making use of all that what was known in his time.
It is noteworthy that the title of the Organon never directly refers to homeopathy but rather to medicine or the art of healing in a broad sense. Certainly, a good part of the text details the homeopathic method, but it does not limit itself to it. Hahnemann does not neglect to examine the reality of the patient and the disease in a broad vision, which today we would consider to be a systemic form of medicine: Hahnemann considered the disease to be an expression of altered dynamics in the patient, and the patient is analyzed in the context of their living and working environment and their relationships. In his clinical activity, no details of the patient and their relationships with the environment were overlooked.
While the structure of the Hahnemannian homeopathic method remains a fundamental starting point for every homeopathic physician, there are numerous references to other aspects of medicine, understood in its complexity, which in the Organon remain only briefly outlined and explored summarily. These other aspects reflect Hahnemann’s interest in a large variety and diversified fields of knowledge covering medicine, chemistry, agriculture and other specialties.
It can be considered that Hahnemann had time to develop the homeopathic method but not enough to delve into observations regarding the broad panorama of medical activities, which therefore remained superficially scattered as hints in the text of the Organon. Reading the Organon carefully, from the first to the last paragraph, not neglecting the footnotes, a broad set of observations, stimuli, hints, hypotheses, and research outlines to be explored emerge. It is medicine and the activity of the physician, as he understood it in his research activity and clinical practice, in which the homeopathic method is the fundamental lever on which the physician relies to modulate the vital dynamics of the patient.
A new medicine, an Integrative Medicine?
It is possible to hypothesize that Hahnemann intended to propose a new medicine, in which certainly the homeopathic method was central, but which provided the physician with all the tools, for all situations, without any limitation of means, for the good of the patient.
It is clear from his writings that the activity of the physician should not be limited to the administration of the most similar homeopathic medicine. The physician must also include a careful analysis of the patient’s environmental living conditions, the healthiness of living and working places, and dietary habits. Toxic and deficient aspects of the case need to be addressed.
The theory of miasms, an outdated term in relation to modern medicine concepts, was a brilliant intuition that includes multiple dynamics that we now recognize in modern terms in genetics, epigenetics, chronic infections, “slow” viruses, and intracellular wall-less bacterial forms.
Hahnemann also highlighted the importance of emotional and psychological factors in the genesis and evolution of the disease, anticipating by almost a century, with his preliminary observations, modern psychosomatics.
He briefly explores the principle of similarity in the applications of some rudimentary electromagnetic devices and encourages continued experimental observations to understand their real usefulness. He observes the benefits of thermal medicine. He does not want to deprive the patient of all possible therapeutic efforts and, in the note to paragraph 67, he also urges the use of substances with palliative action (which at the time was limited to rudimentary pharmacological substances) when the situation requires it.
Finally, he explores the phenomenon that in his time was called ‘animal magnetism’ and which in modern times has taken various denominations, the most current being healing touch. A search for ‘healing touch’ in the PubMed database produces a significant 3941 scientific articles discussing healing touch. Hahnemann managed to make some preliminary observations, from his direct experience, on how the ‘vital energy of the patient’ can be modified by the “powerful will of a well-intentioned man.” In the brief descriptions of the phenomenon, paragraph 288 of the Organon contains some elements of great interest.
On consciousness.
In the modern debate on consciousness, materialistic and idealistic views are recognized.
The materialistic view holds that consciousness is an emergent property of matter out of the sufficient complexity of the nervous structures of living organisms.
The idealistic view posits consciousness as a fundamental property, finding in nervous structures a possibility of manifestation.
In the contemporary debate supported by physicists, biologists and psychologists, the “hard problem of consciousness” is discussed, as proposed years ago by David Chalmers. If consciousness were an emergent property of the brain, as the materialistic view proposes, the ability to explain the subjectivity of experience is lost, and even more importantly, there would be no room for free will and intentionality, since behavior would be the result of reflex mechanisms, conditioned by biological needs.
Iain McGilchrist proposes that consciousness was present right from the beginning of our universe, is present in all things and has become conscious of itself in us, humans.
Hahnemann clearly positioned himself in an idealistic stance, recognizing will and intentionality as peculiar expressions of the free consciousness of man, anticipating by two centuries the most modern views on consciousness, which question the mechanistic reductionism that merely describes the living being as a biological machine.
Physicist Federico Faggin, inventor of microprocessors, writes in the introduction to his book “Irreducible”: “For years I have unsuccessfully tried to understand how consciousness could arise from electrical or biochemical signals, and I have found that, invariably, electrical signals can only produce other electrical signals or other physical consequences such as force or movement, but never sensations and feelings, which are qualitatively different… it is consciousness that understands the situation and makes the difference between a robot and a human being.” Furthermore, Hahnemann recognized in the well-directed activity of the intentionality of the individual’s consciousness a therapeutic potential that acts on the vital dynamics of the patient in a peculiar way.
Conclusion.
From this brief analysis of Hahnemann’s fundamental text and his research path, we could define Hahnemannian medicine as a set of insights and observations that may have contributed to laying the foundations for many future developments in modern medicine, both in conventional and complementary fields, or at least predates these developments.
His contribution to the generalization of the principle of similarity has paved the way for the development of an approach in medicine that can offer a completeness in which every need of the patient finds an adequate response, in observance of the fundamental principles of safety for the patient, efficacy, rapid action, and minimization of therapeutic risks.
