Organon §46
Examples of cure by similar diseases:
There are many examples of diseases which, in the course of nature, have been homeopathically cured by other diseases with similar symptoms. Here, however, we wish to present only that information which is determinate and indubitable. For that reason, the cases presented below are limited to those (few) unvarying diseases which arise from a fixed miasm and hence merit a definite name. Prominent among them is smallpox which, on account of the great number of its violent symptoms, has already lifted and cured numerous maladies with similar symptoms.
Smallpox vaccinations have cured eye inflammations and blindness.
1. How common are the violent eye inflammations of smallpox that even mount to the point of blindness. Dezoteux 100 reports one case and Leroy 101 reports another in which smallpox vaccination completely and permanently cured a protracted eye inflammation. A blindness of two years duration which arose from suppressed scald-head completely yielded to a smallpox vaccination, according to Klein. 102
Smallpox has lifted deafness and dyspnea.
2. How often smallpox engenders deafness and dyspnea! J. Fr. Closs observed that smallpox lifted both of these protracted maladies as it climbed to its peak. 103
Smallpox has cured testicular swellings.
3. Testicular swelling, even very violent, is a frequent symptom of smallpox, and therefore smallpox could cure through similarity a large, hard swelling of the left testicle that arose from a contusion, as Klein 104 observed. Another observer reports that it cured a similar testicular swelling. 105
Smallpox has conquered dysentery.
4. Among the troublesome befallments of smallpox is a dysentery-like bowel movement. Wendt reports that smallpox, as a similar disease potence, conquered a case of dysentery. 106
Smallpox has lifted recently inoculated cowpox, and cowpox inoculation has prevented or greatly diminished smallpox.
5. It is well known that when smallpox comes on shortly after a cowpox inoculation, it will at once, entirely lift the cowpox homeopathically, not allowing it to come to completion. This is due to its greater strength as well as its great similarity. If, however, the cowpox is near maturity when the smallpox comes on, then the cowpox, due to its great similarity to smallpox, will at least substantially diminish the smallpox (homeopathically) and make it much more benign, 107 as Mьhry 108 and many others attest.
Inoculated cowpox has cured skin eruptions.
6. The lymph of the inoculated cowpox contains, in addition to the substance that protects against smallpox, a different substance which is tinder to a general skin rash of another nature. This rash consists of small dry (rarely, larger festering) pimples sitting on red patches. The pimples are often intermixed with red round skin patches. This rash, which not-infrequently itches violently, may appear several days before or, more often, after the red areola of the cowpox appears. It then passes away in a couple of days, leaving behind small, hard, red spots. There are many reports of children with skin eruptions, often very old and troublesome ones, being completely and permanently cured by the inoculated cowpox, after the inoculation takes in them. This is due to symptom similarity with the accessory miasm in the inoculated cowpox. 109
Cowpox has cured a swollen, half-paralyzed arm.
7. Cowpox, whose peculiar symptom is to cause arm swelling, 110 cured after its outbreak, a swollen, half-paralyzed arm, according to Stevenson. 111
Cowpox has cured intermittent fevers.
8. The cowpox fever, which appears at the time the red areola arises, cured (homeopathically) two cases of intermittent fever, according to Hardege the younger. 112 This confirms what John Hunter had already noticed: that two fevers (similar diseases) cannot exist in one body at the same time. 113
Measles temporarily protected children from whooping cough.
9. The fever of measles, and the quality of its cough, are quite similar to whooping cough. In one epidemic where both measles and whooping cough reigned simultaneously, Bosquillon noticed that many children who had already had the measles remained free from the whooping cough. 114 They would all have become free from whooping cough and uninfectable by measles in that and all subsequent epidemics if measles and whooping cough were more than just partially similar, that is, if whooping cough also had a skin rash similar to that of measles. For this reason, measles protected many, but not all, of the children and it did so only in the epidemic of whooping cough that prevailed at the time.
Measles permanently lifted an eruption of herpes.
10. On the other hand, when measles meets a disease that is similar to it in its main symptom (i.e. , the skin eruption) then it unquestionably lifts and cures the disease homeopathically. Thus a protracted eruption of herpes was cured at once, entirely and permanently, 115 by an outbreak of measles, as Kortum observed. 116
Measles cured a burning skin eruption with fever.
11. An extremely burning, miliary-like fever eruption on the face, neck and arms that was renewed by each change of weather and that had lasted six years, turned into a swollen skin surface upon accession of the measles. After the course of the measles, the miliary fever was cured and did not come again, according to Rau. 117
Comments
100 Dezoteux, Traitй de l'inoculation [Treatise on Inoculation], p. 189.
101 Leroy, Heilkunde fьr Mьtter [Medical Art for Mothers], p. 384.
102 Klein, Interpres clinicus [The Clinical Interpreter], p. 293.
103 J. Fr. Closs, Neue Heilart der Kinderpocken [New Medical Mode for Child-pox], Ulm, 1769, p. 68, and Specim., obs. 18.
104 Klein, op. cit.
105 Nov. Act. Nat. Cur., vol. I, obs. 22.
106 Fr. Wendt, Nachricht von dem Krankeninstitut zu Erlangen [News from the Institute for Disease at Erlangen], 1783.
107 This seems to be the reason for the beneficent, remarkable result of the widespread use of Jenner's cowpox inoculation. Smallpox has never again appeared as epidemically nor as virulently. Forty to fifty years ago, a city would lose at least half and often three-quarters of its children from this wretched pestilence.
108 Mьhry, in Robert Willan's Ьber die Kuhpockenimpfung [On Cowpox Inoculation].
109 This has been reported by Clavier, Hurel and Desormeaux, in Bulletin des Sciences Mйdicales, publiй par les membres du comitй central de la Societй de Mйdecine du Dйpartment de L'Eure [Bulletin of the Medical Sciences, published by the members of the central committee of the Medical Society of the Department of L'Eure], 1808; also in Journal de Mйdecine Continu [Journal of Continuing Medicine], vol. XV, p. 206.
110 Balhorn, in Hufeland's Journal der practischen Arzneikunde [Journal of Practical Medicine], vol. X, p. 2.
111 Stevenson, in Duncan's Annals of Medicine, lustr. II, vol. I., part 2, no. 9.
112 Hardege the younger, in Hufeland's Journal der practischen Arzneikunde [Journal of Practical Medicine], vol. XXIII.
113 John Hunter, On the Venereal Diseases, p. 4.
114 Bosquillon, in Cullen's Elйments de Mйdecine Pratique [Elements of Practical Medicine] French translation, pt. II, I, 3, chap 7.
115 Or at least that symptom was taken away.
116 Kortum, in Hufeland's Journal der practischen Arzneikunde [Journal of Practical Medicine], vol XX, no. 3, p. 50.
117 Rau, Ueber d. Werth des homцop. Heilverfahrens [On the value of the homeopathic procedure of treatment], Heidelberg, 1824, p. 85.