chronic and acute disease in homeopathy

Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd YearIrish School of Homeopathy

Essay: Chronic and Acute Disease21. Oct. 2005

Chronic and Acute DiseaseMark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year, Irish School of Homeopathy

“Hahnemann felt that acute diseases were relatively easy to deal with. The prescriber had simply to find the substance which produced similar symptoms to the diseased state in the healthy individual and after administering the potentised similar remedy, cure would occur rapidly and completely.However, treating chronic diseases was often a different matter”. - Misha Norland Discuss

When Homeopathy and Allopathy are compared, there are a great number of distinctions to be

made between them as systems of medicine. Not only is Homeopathy based upon the law of

similars, it also employs the potentising of remedies and the principle of the minimum dose. Yet

even counting these distinctive traits, treatment cannot be said to be truly classically homeopathic

without holism. Treating the patient rather than the disease is an essential component of the

homeopathic system, without which its scope is no broader than that of Allopathy, albeit while

remaining a safer and more effective approach.

Acute prescribing involves the observation of a temporary crisis in

health that a patient is undergoing. The presenting sypmptoms are

treated with a similar remedy in order to bring about cure. The acute

disease state is temporary, ending with the patient's immunity

overcoming the condition or the death of the patient. It is also bound in

time, having a percievable beginning, middle and an end. The

practitioner is bound in scope in that he will only take the symptoms in

and around this temporary condition and its specific effects on the

patient into consideration when choosing the remedy. In this way it is

like allopathy. It is focused only on the temporary condition and its cure and is not concerned with

deeper conditions or the nature of the patient, only the disease. It is not Holistic.

The disease to which man is liable are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally

deranged vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but

always in a moderate time - these are termed acute diseases . §72

Holism was one of Hahnemann's greatest comtributions to western medicine, echoing more the

medical traditions of the east than the west and it was the journey from acute prescribing to

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constitutional treatment that brought it from him.

During Hahnemann's early days as a homeopath, he practiced acute prescribing with the growing

number of remedies available to him. Despite successes in his practice and with treating

epidemics, in around 1816 he became incresingly concened with patients whose complaints would

cure in the short term but who kept returning with one ailment and another. These patients were

not finding a complete cure and Hahnemann set his mind to finding out why. He says, in Chronic

Diseases

... the Homoeopathic physician with such a chronic (non-venereal) case, yea in all cases of (non-venereal) chronic disease, has not only to combat the disease presented before his eyes, and must not view and treat it as if it were a well-defined disease, to be speedily and permanently destroyed and healed by ordinary homoeopathic remedies but that he has always to encounter only some separate fragment of a more deep-seated original disease. (CD p5)

Thus, a chronic disease is the deeper condition underlying all of the acute

ailments that the patient continually develops, which are but “separate

fragments” of the chronic syndrome the patient has. These chronic

diseases for hahnemann were not as time-bound as the acute conditions,

nor did he see the patient's immunity as being capable of overcoming the

chronic condition on their own but only with the help of well-chosen

constitutional remedies.

Having named the demon, Hahnemann then proceeded to outline how best to approach treating

the patient's chronic disease. He discovered that it was not the remedies or the law of similars that

was at fault but merely a question of approach in case taking.

the Homoeopathic physician must ... first find out as far as possible the whole extent of all the accidents and symptoms belonging, to the unknown Primitive malady before he can hope to discover one or more medicines which may homoeopathically cover the whole of the original disease by means of its peculiar symptoms. (CD p6)

In order to apprehend the underlying condition and prescribe a remedy for it, Hahnemann is saying

here that the patient's history of disease needs to be thoroughly taken as part of the case.

The third aspect to bring into constitutional case taking is the nature of the individual treated. Their

traits and temperaments. Their striking or unusual foibles, appearance and preferences. Hence

treating chronic disease with a constitutional remedy is broad in its scope, not limited in time and

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addresses a condition that has been ongoing and not temporary and takes into consideration the

history and makeup of the patient, not only the presenting condition. It is Holistic and treats the

patient in their totality, rather than just their disease.

The practitioner must be careful when approaching the patient that they do not mix and confuse

these two approaches to case taking. Kent has this to say in his Lectures on Homeopathic

Philosophy:

It is important to avoid getting confused by two disease images that may exist in the body at the same time.

A chronic patient, for instance, may be suffering from an acute disease and the physician on being called may think that it is necessary to take the totality of the symptoms; but if he should do that in an acute disease, mixing both chronic and acute symptoms together, he will become confused and will not find the right remedy.

The two things must be separated.

Therefore there must be clarity in intention as to exactly

what is being treated on a case per case basis.

Symptoms of acute, short-lived conditons must not find

their way into the constitutional case analysis, which is

far broader in scope and vice versa.

Today we can be grateful for the difficulties that

Hahnemann encountered in his acute case taking, since

without them, he would not have been motivated to look

deeper into the condition of disease and human life and

we would have inherited a far lesser form of

Homeopathy, stripped of the holistic approach which enables it to truly and deeply cure.

References:“The Chronic Diseases” S.Hahnemann

“The Organon of Medicine” S. Hanemann

“Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy” James T. Kent

“The Handbook of Homeopathy” Gerhard Koehler Healing arts press, 1989

“James Kent on Acute and Chronic Diseases” David Little, 1999http://www.simillimum.com/Thelittlelibrary/Casemanage/kentonacutes.html

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chronic and acute disease in homeopathy

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