Pathic and First Aid Prescribing

This blog is part of a series; its original title was Heilkunst Basics : Grade Seven (Junior High School)

This is usually a big threshold for students to cross over into the bigness of Junior High School, where an entirely new and unknown world is anticipated. This is also true in our continuing exploration of the progressive levels of Heilkunst therapeutics, where we are now ready to cross over from the foundation of Regimen, into the more specific realm of treatment with Medicine. Where Regimen is strictly used in the service of correcting imbalances, Medicine has an entirely different scope of treating actual diseases. The understanding of this difference should be (but unfortunately isn’t) a mandatory part of the training curriculum for every form of healthcare modality.

Where the master principle of Regimen revolves around the law of opposites, Medicine, instead, is based on the natural law of similars. The types and categories of diseases are varied, and likewise are the different jurisdictions of medicine which are applied in Heilkunst. All disease represents a fundamental disturbance, or even ‘invasion’ of the generative aspect of our life power, and the specific application of the law of similars varies with the type of disease at hand. To begin our exploration of this seventh grade level of Heilkunst treatment, I’ll present two of the basic jurisdictions of medicine : pathic prescribing, and first aid prescribing.

The pathic dimension is named from the root of the word ‘homeopathic’, and it refers to the acute (ie intense) symptom pictures which either arise from an acute infection, or a flare-up of a deeper chronic disease process. This is usually the first thing on a patient’s mind when the first begin their treatment, in terms of the symptoms which they are currently suffering, and are looking for relief from. Issues addressed at this level may include some of the typical allergy symptoms which people suffer, such as itchiness, or sneezing and mucous discharges. Other treatment of pathic diseases may include mental and emotional symptom pictures, such as acute anxiety attacks, or even full-blown panic attacks. Whatever they are, they are usually the issue(s) which the patient is most focused on, and is grateful to be able to get immediate relief from the remedies prescribed at this level. As we move through the high school level of Heilkunst, we’ll see that there is a polar opposite aspect to the pathic dimension, which is called tonic prescribing, as in ‘homotonic’ remedies, which address deeper, chronic diseases, which may or may not be visible to the patient themselves.

The second aspect of Medicine which we address in grade seven of Heilkunst is the use of specific homotonic remedies for first aid prescribing, and which the patient is often able to learn quickly and know how to apply themselves at home. Basic first aid traumas, such as bee stings, bruises, cuts, and basic emotional shocks such as from experiencing an intense fright are the types of issues prescribed for at this level. There are a number of previous blogs on the site, which you can read here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Feel free to ask me any questions you have about your new school and curriculum, and remember – no running in the halls! (Unless you are aiming to test out your first aid prescribing skills.)

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