Heilkunst and Naturopathic Medicine
I know a friend of a friend who is studying at Naturopathic College in Toronto, Ontario. She has been studying intensively for months in order to complete her final exams. I just found out from my friend that she is quite worried as the failure rate is 25% for each graduating class whether you obtain good results or not. My mouth dropped as I know that the fees are pretty exorbitant and if I were going to dedicate 4 years for a degree of medical study, laid down some serious cash, and then failed because of some numbers game, well there would be a lot of emotional shock remedies to be self-prescribed!
I studied at the Hahnemann College for Heilkunst (HCH) with two individuals who had successfully graduated from this ND College in Toronto. While they enjoyed learning about a variety of modalities, they felt that they needed more grounding in Dr. Hahnemann’s foundational principles for curative medicine. They also wanted a better understanding of dose and potency for the prescribing of homeopathic remedies. Their training at the HCH better equipped them with the tools in the art and science of curing disease as opposed to just supporting or healing the patient.
I decided to go to the Naturopathic College’s website as I wanted to see for myself if the curriculum description had changed since my friends had studied there. I was able to confirm their perspective with regards to how homeopathy is still viewed by Naturopathic medicine, “Homeopathy restores the body to homeostasis, or healthy balance, which is considered its natural state. The symptoms of a disease are regarded as the body’s own defensive attempt to correct its imbalance, rather than as enemies to be defeated. Homeopathic remedies are designed to stimulate this internal curative process rather than suppress the symptoms.”
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of Homeopathic principles wrote the Organon der Heilkunst in 1842, or the Organon of the Medical Art/Science. ‘Heilkunst’ literally means the art/science (Kunst) of healing/curing (heilen) and is the bible of homeopathic medicine. This tome lives on every shelf of every Homeopathic Physician; however, if you ask how many have actually studied this original text, you will find eyes gazing down and some shuffling of the feet.
Most colleges steer away from “the source” and end up in the realm of secondary texts. The problem is that this leads to repeating the same false paradigms over and over again. This is what has happened for the last 200 years, no less. Steven Decker’s interlinear translation of the 6th edition of the Organon offers the most advanced and complete translation of Hahnemann’s living work. In this originally sourced text, Hahnemann never refers to disease as an imbalance, an impingement to the life force for sure, but not an imbalance.
In the preface of the Organon, Hahnemann describes the Dynamic view of disease:
“With the medical art of homeopathy, it is entirely different. It can easily persuade every reflecting person that human diseases rest on no material, on no acridity, that is to say, on no disease matter; rather they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) mistunings of the spirit-like enlivening power-force-energy * (the life principle, the life force) of the human body.”
In order to cure disease, Hahnemann knew that the medicine must be chosen on the basis of similarity. It is like harnessing nature’s artificial means and then sending it in, like a heat-seeking missile to destroy and lift the natural disease. Hahnemann further illuminates, “the result is that, without in the least weakening, tormenting or torturing the patient, the natural disease is extinguished and the patient, while improving, soon grows stronger and thus is cured. This seems so easy, but actually it is a very cogitative, laborious, arduous business; however, it fully restores the patient to health in a short time and without ailment so it becomes a curative and blessed business.”
Frankly, as Hahnemann puts it, it does sound a lot like the disease is the enemy to be defeated! It is a “laborious” and “arduous” job. For example Syphilis is one of the most insidious and deadly diseases I know. It is most often the root cause for chronic anger, blame, fear, alcoholism, abuse, ritualism, suicide, psychosis, and schizophrenia. Being in the same room with this inimical foe is like performing hand-to-hand combat with one of the dirtiest and deadliest diseases I know. I would not want to be in there with the idea I was just going to restore this patient’s imbalance. If I’m going in, then I want to have the capacity to over-run, outsmart and annihilate this … well bastard of a disease. I want to be able to do this in every case I see, consistently, with Dr. Hahnemann’s principles soundly tucked in my back pocket.
Aude Sapere
Dare to Know
*Throughout this text, however, the German word Kraft is translated as power, force or energy and Lebenskraft is translated as life force. For an amazing definition of life force, you will have to look it up in the glossary of terms in the Organon as it is a fairly long passage.