Diseases can be cured by Spirituality. Because Homoeopathy proves Disease is Spiritual in nature.

Diseases can be cured by Spirituality. Because Homoeopathy proves Disease is Spiritual in nature.

The Spiritual nature of diseases is well explained by Dr.Samuel Hahnemann in his sixth edition of Organon – the Book of Homeopathy Treatment and Medicine.

CONTENTS

1.    Diseases are caused by derangements of vital force (Prana)

2.    Even physical treatment are indirectly helps to set right the vital force.

3.    Vital force is the principle force for health and disease.

4.    How disease appears?

5.    Vital force is much similar to the Universal forces [What is dynamic influence,

6.    Subtle is more powerful than the physical or large in quantity.

7.    The morbidly affected vital force(*) alone that produces diseases.

8.    Most severe disease may be produced by sufficient disturbance of the vital force through the imagination and also cured by the same means.

9.    What is a curative medicine?

10. Diseases are not Chemical or Mechanical but Spiritual.

11. Primary action and Secondary action of Vital force

12. Operation of curing

13. Cause of Diseases

14. Emotions affect health

15. Power of mind over health

16. External forces cannot influence (or influence less) human being,otherwise man cannot live in this world.

17. Animal Magnetism

1.    Diseases are caused by derangements of vital force (Prana)

As regards the latter (homoeopathy) it is quite otherwise. It can easily convince every reflecting person that the diseases of man are not caused by any substance, any acridity, that is to say, any disease-matter, but that they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital force) that animates the human body.

Homoeopathy knows that a cure can only take place by the reaction of the vital force against the rightly chosen remedy that has been ingested, and that the cure will be certain and rapid in proportion to the strength with which the vital force still prevails in the patient.

2.    Even physical treatment are indirectly helps to set right the vital force.

The old school of medicine believed it might cure diseases in a direct manner(a) by the removal of the (imaginary) material cause of disease _for to physicians of the ordinary school, while investigating and forming a judgment upon a disease, and not less while seeking for the curative indication, it was next to impossible to divest themselves of these materialistic ideas, and to regard the nature of the spiritual-corporeal organism as such a highly potentialized entity, that its sensational and functional vital changes, which are called diseases, must be produced and effected chiefly, if not solely, by dynamic (spiritual(a] influences, and could not be effected in any other way.

3.    Vital force is the principle force for health and disease.

The affection of the vital force, (a) must be the principal, or the sole means, whereby the disease can make known what remedy it requires - the only thing that can determine the choice of the most appropriate remedy - and thus, in a word, the totality (2) of the symptoms must be the principal, indeed the only thing the physician has to take note of in every case of disease and to remove by means of his art, in order that it shall be cured and transformed into health.

In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations and functions, so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence.

The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function,  no self-preservation;(1) it derives all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital force (*)which animates the material organism in health and in disease.

(1) It is dead, and now only subject to the power of the external physical world; it decays, and is again resolved into its chemical constituents.

(*) In the Sixth Edition the word "force" is replaced by "principle"

4.    How disease appears?

When a person falls ill, it is only this spiritual, self acting (automatic) vital force, everywhere present in his organism, that is primarily deranged by the dynamic (2) influence upon it of a morbific agent inimical to life; it is only the vital force, deranged to such an abnormal state, that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations, and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease; for, as a power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by its effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensations and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician, that is, by morbid symptoms, and in no other way can it make itself known.

(1) It is dead, and now only subject to the power of the external physical world; it decays, and is again resolved into its chemical constituents.

5.    Vital force is much similar to the Universal forces [What is dynamic influence, - dynamic power?

Our earth, by virtue of a hidden invisible energy, carries the moon around her in twenty-eight days and several hours, and the moon alternately, in definite fixed hours (deducting certain differences which occur with the full and the new moon) raises our northern seas to flood tide and again correspondingly lowers them to ebb. Apparently this takes place not through material agencies, not through mechanical contrivances, as are used for products of human labor; and so we see numerous other events about us as results of the action of one substance on another substance without being able to recognize a sensible connection between cause and effect.

Only the cultured, practised in comparison and deduction, can form for himself a kind of supra-sensual idea sufficient to keep all that is material or mechanical in his thoughts from such concepts. He calls such effects dynamic, virtual, that is, such as result from absolute, specific, pure energy and action of the one substance upon the other substance.

For instance, the dynamic effect of the sick-making influences upon healthy man as well as the dynamic energy of the medicines upon the principle of life in the restoration of health is nothing else than infection and so not in any way material, not in any way mechanical. Just as the energy of a magnet attracting a piece of iron or steel is not material, not mechanical. One sees that the piece of iron is attracted by one pole of the magnet, but how it is done is not seen. This invisible energy of the magnet does not require mechanical (material) auxiliary means, hook or lever, to attract the iron. The magnet draws to itself and this acts upon the piece of iron or upon a steel needle by means of a purely immaterial, invisible, conceptual, inherent energy, that is, dynamically, and communicates to the steel needle the magnetic energy equally invisibly (dynamically). The steel needle becomes itself magnetic, even at a distance when the magnet does not touch it, and magnetizes other steel needles with the same magnetic property (dynamically) with which it had been endowed previously by the magnetic rod, just as a child with smallpox or measles, communicates to a near, untouched healthy child in an invisible manner (dynamically) the small-pox or measles, that is, infects it at a distance without anything material from the infective child going or capable of going to the one to be infected. A purely specific, conceptual influence communicated to the near child smallpox or measles in the same way as the magnet communicated to the near needle the magnetic property. In a similar way, the effect of medicines upon living man is to be judged. Substances, which are used as medicines, are medicines only in so far as they possess each its own specific energy to alter the well-being of man through dynamic, conceptual influence, by means of the living sensory fibre, upon the conceptual, controlling principle of life. The medicinal property of those material substances which we call medicines proper, relates only to their energy to call out alterations in the well- being of animal life. Only upon this conceptual principle of life, depends their medicinal health altering, conceptual (dynamic) influence. Just as the nearness of a magnetic pole can communicate only magnetic energy to the steel (namely, by a kind of infection) but cannot communicate other properties (for instance, more hardness or ductility, etc.). And thus every special medicinal substance alters through a kind of infection, that well-being of man in a peculiar manner exclusively its own and not in a manner peculiar to another medicine.

6.    Subtle is more powerful than the physical or large in quantity.

Far more healing energy is expressed in a case in point by the smallest dose of the best dynamized medicines, in which there can be, according to calculation, only so little of material substance that its minuteness cannot be thought and conveived by the best arithmetical mind, than by large doses of the same medicine in substance. That smallest dose can therefore contain almost entirely only the pure, freely-developed, conceptual medicinal energy, and brings about only dynamically such great effects as can never be reached by the crude medicinal substance itself taken in large doses. It is not in the corporeal atoms of these highly dynamized medicines, nor their physical or mathematical surfaces (with which the higher energies of the dynamized medicines are being interpreted but vainly as still sufficiently material) that the medicinal energy is found, More likely, there lies invisible in the moistened globule or in its solution, an unveiled, liberated, specific, medicinal force contained in the medicinal substance which acts dynamically by contact with the living animal fibre upon the whole organism (without communicating to it anything material however highly attenuated) and acts more strongly the more free and more immaterial the energy has become through the dynamization. Is it then so utterly impossible for our age celebrated for its wealth in clear thinkers to think of dynamic energy as something non-corporeal, since we see daily phenomena which cannot be explained in any other manner? If one looks upon something nauseous and becomes inclined to vomit, did a material emetic come into his stomach which compels him to this anti-peristaltic movement? Was it not solely the dynamic effect of the nauseating aspect upon his imagination? And if one raises his arm, does it occur through a material visible instrument? a lever? Is it not solely the conceptual dynamic energy of his will which raises it?

7.    The morbidly affected vital force(*) alone that produces diseases.

It is the morbidly affected vital force(*) alone that produces diseases, (1) so that the morbid phenomena perceptible to our senses express at the same time all the internal change, that is to say, the whole morbid derangement of the internal dynamis; in a word, they reveal the whole disease; consequently, also, the disappearance under treatment of all the morbid phenomana and of all the morbid alterations that differ from the healthy vital operations, certainly affects and necessarily implies the restoration of the integrity of the vital force and, therefore, the recovered health of the whole organism. (1) How the vital force causes the organism to display morbid phenomena, that is, how it produces disease, it would be of no practical utility to the physician to know, and therefore it will forever remain concealed from him; only what it is necessary for him to know of the disease and what is fully sufficient for enabling him to cure it, has the Lord of life revealed to his senses.

(*) In the Sixth Edition the word "force" is replaced by "energy"

Therefore disease (that does not come within the province of manual surgery) considered, as it is by the allopathists, as a thing separate from the living whole, from the organism and its animating vital force and hidden in the interior, be it of ever so subtle a character, is an absurdity, that could only be imagined by minds of a materialistic stamp, and has for thousands of years given to the prevailing system of medicine all those pernicious impulses that have made it a truly mischievous (non-healing) art.

There is, in the interior of man, nothing morbid that is curable and no invisible morbid alteration that is curable which does no make itself known to the accurately observing physicians by means of morbid signs and symptoms - an arrangement in perfect conformity with the infinite goodness of the all-wise Preserver of human life.

The affection of the morbidly deranged, spirit-like dynamis (vital force) that animates our body in the invisible interior, and the totality of the outwardly cognizable symptoms produced by it in the organism and representing the existing malady, constitue a whole; they are one and the same. The organism is indeed the material instrument of the life, but it is not conceivable without the animation imparted to it by the instinctively perceiving and regulating vital force.

Our vital force, as a spirit-like dynamis, cannot be attacked and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the harmonious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic) way, and in like manner, all such morbid derangements (diseases) cannot be removed from it by the physician in any other way than by the spirit-like (dynamic(*), virtual) alterative powers of the serviceable medicines acting upon our spirit-like vital force, which perceives them through the medium of the sentient faculty of the nerves everywhere present in the organism, so that it is only by their dynamic action on the vital force that remedies are able to re-establish and do actually re-establish health and vital harmony, after the changes in the health of the patient cognizable by our senses (the totality of the symptoms) have revealed the disease to the carefully observing and investigating physician as fully as was requisite in order to enable him to cure it.

8.    Most severe disease may be produced by sufficient disturbance of the vital force through the imagination and also cured by the same means.]

(1) A warning dream, a superstitious fancy, or a solemn prediction that death would occur at a certain day or at a certain hour, has not unfrequently produced all the signs of commencing and increasing disease, of approaching death and death itself at the hour announced, which could not happen without the simultaneous production of the inward change (corresponding to the state observed externally); and hence in such cases all the morbid signs indicative of approaching death have frequently been dissipated by an identical cause, by some cunning deception or persuasion to a belief in the contrary, and health suddenly restored, which could not have happened without the removal, by means of this moral remedy, of the internal and external morbid change that treatened death.

(1) It is only thus that God, the Preserver of mankind, could reveal His wisdom and goodness in reference to the cure of the diseases to which man is liable here below, by showing to the physician what he had to remove in diseases in order to annihilate them and thus re-establish health. But what would we think of His wisdom and goodness if He had shrouded in mysterious obscurity that which was to be cured in diseases (as is asserted by the dominant school of medicine, which affects to possess a supernatural insight into the inner nature of things), and shut it up in the hidden interior, and thus rendered it impossible for man to know the malady accurately, consequently impossible for him to cure it?

A weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differing in kind) is very similar to the former in its manifestations. Thus are cured both physical affections and moral maladies. How is it that in the early dawn the brilliant Jupiter vanishes from the gaze of the beholder? By a stronger very similar power acting on his optic nerve, the brightness of approaching day!- In situations replete with foetid odours, wherewith is it usual to soothe effectually the offended olfactory nerves? With snuff, that affects the sense of smell in a similar but stronger manner! No music, no sugared cake, which act on the nerves of other senses, can cure this olfactory disgust. How does the soldier cunningly stiffe the piteous cries of him who runs the gauntlet from the ears of the compassionate bystanders? By the shrill notes of the fife commingled with the rool of the noisy drum! And the distant roar of the enemy's cannon that inspires his army with fear? By the loud boom of the big drum! For neither the one nor the other would the distribution of a brilliant piece of uniform nor a reprimand to the regiment suffice.-In like manner, mourning and sorrow will be effaced from the mind by the account of another and still greater cause for sorrow happening to another, even though it be a mere fiction. The injurious consequences of too great joy will be removed by drinking coffee, which produces an excessively joyoux state of mind.

Nations like the Germans, who have for centuries been gradually sinking deeper and deeper in soulless apathy and degrading serfdom, must first be trodden still deeper in the dust by the Western Conqueror, until their situation became intolerable; their mean opinion of themselves was thereby overstrained and removed; they again became alive to their dignity as men, and then, for the first time, they raised their heads as Germans.

9.    What is a curative medicine?

The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in strength (#12-26), so that each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) in the most similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger than the disease.

This disease-manifestation no longer exists for the principle of life which is now occupied and governed merely by the stronger, artificial disease-manifestation. This artificial disease-manifestation has soon spent its force and leaves the patient free from disease, cured. The dynamis, thus freed, can now continue to carry life on in health.This most highly probable process rests upon the following propositions". 

(1) The short duration of the action of the artificial morbific forces, which we term medicines, makes it possible that, although they are stronger than the natural diseases, they can yet be much more easily overcome by the vital force than can the weaker natural diseases, which, solely in consequence of the longer, generally lifelong, duration of their action (psora, syphilis, sycosis), can never be vanquished and extinguished by it alone, until the physician affects the vital force in a stronger manner by an agent that produces a disease very similar, but stronger, to wit a homoeopathic medicine, which, when taken (or smelt), is, as it were, forced upon the unintelligent, instinctive vital force, and substituted in the place of the former natural morbid affection, by which means the vital force then remains merely medicinally ill, but only for a short time, because the action of the medicine (the time in which the medicinal disease excited by it run its course) does not last long. The cures of diseases of many years' duration (#46), by the occurrence of smallpox and measles (both of which run a course of only a few weeks), are processes of a similar character.

The human body appears to admit of being much more powerfully affected in its health by medicines (partly because we have the regulation of the dose in our own power) than by natural morbid stimuli - for natural diseases are cured and overcome by suitable medicines.

10. Diseases are not Chemical or Mechanical but Spiritual.

The inimical forces, partly psychical, partly physical, to which our terrestrial existence is exposed, which are termed morbific noxious agents, do not possess the power of morbidly deranging the health of man unconditionally;(1) but we are made ill by them only when our organism is sufficiently disposed and susceptible to the attack of the morbific cause that may be present, and to be altered in its health, deranged and made to undergo abnormal sensations and functions - hence they do not produce disease in every one nor at all times.

(1) When I call disease a derangement of man's state of health, I am far from wishing thereby to give a hyperphysical explanation of the internal nature of diseases generally, or of any case of disease in particular. It is only intended by this expression to intimate, what it can be proved diseases are not and cannot be, that they are not mechanical or chemical alteration of the material substance of the body, and not dependent on a material morbific substance, but that they are merely spiritual dynamic derangements of the life.

whenever the vital force, deranged by the primary disease, is more strongly attacked by the new, very similar, but stronger dynamic morbific power, it therefore now remains affected by the latter alone, whereby the original, similar but weaker disease must, as a mere dynamic power without material substratum, cease to exercise any further morbid influence on the vital force, consequently it must cease to exist.

11. Primary action and Secondary action of Vital force

Every agent that acts upon the vitality, every medecine, deranges more or less the vital force, and causes a certain alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or a shorter period. This is termed primary action. Although a product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly it is principally due to the former power. To its action our vital force endeavors to oppose its own energy. This resitent action is a property, is indeed an automatic action of our life-preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action or counteraction.

But on what this pernicious result of the palliative, antipathic treatment and the efficacy of the reverse, the homoeopathic treatment, depend, is explained by the following facts, deduced from manifold observations, which no one before me perceived, though they are so very palpable and so very evident, and are of such infinite importance to the healing art.

During the primary action of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) on our healthy body, as seen in the following examples, our vital force seems to conduct itself merely in a passive (receptive) manners, and appears, so to say, compelled to permit the impressions of the artificial power acting from without to take place in it and thereby alter its state of health; it then, however, appears to rouse itself again, as it were, and to develop the exact opposite condition of health (counteraction, secondary action) to this effect (primary action) produced upon it, if there be such an opposite, and that in as great a degree as was the effect (primary action) of the artificial morbific or medicinal agent on it, proportionate to its own energy; - or (B) if there be not in nature a state exactly the opposite of the primary action, it appears to endeavor to indifferentiate itself, that is, to make its superior power available in the extinction of the change wrought in it from without (by the medicine), in the place of which it substitutes its normal state (secondary action, curative action).

Examples of (A) are familiar to all. A hand bathed in hot water is at first much warmer than the other hand that has not been so treated (primary action); but when it is withdrawn from the hot water and again thoroughly dried, it becomes in a short time cold, and at length much colder than the other (secondary action). A person heated by violent exercise (primary action) is afterwards affected with chilliness and shivering (secondary action). To one who was yesterday heated by drinking much wine (primary action), to-day every breath of air feels too cold (counteraction of the organism, secondary action). An arm that has been kept long in very cold water is at first much paler and colder (primary action) than the other; but removed from the cold water and dried, it subsequently becomes not only warmer than the other but even hot, red and inflamed (secondary action, reaction of the vital force), Excessive vivacity follows the use of strong coffee (primary action), but sluggishness and drowsiness remain for a long time afterwards (reaction, secondary action), if this be not always again removed for a short time by imbibing fresh supplies of coffee (palliative). After the profound stupefied sleep caused by opium (primary action), the following night will be all the more sleepless (reaction, secondary action). After the constipation produced by opium (primary action), diarrhoea ensues (secondary action); and after purgation with medicines that irritate the bowels, constipation of several days' duration ensues (secondary action). And in like manner it always happens, after the primary action of a medicine that produces in large doses a great change in the health of a healthy person, that its exact opposite, when, as has been observed, there is actually such a thing, is produced in the secondary action by our vital force.

12. Operation of curing

The operation of curing is comprised in the three following points:  

I. How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary to be known in order to cure the disease?

II. How is to gain a knowledge of the instruments adapted for the cure of the natural disease, the pathogenetic powers of the medicines?

III. What is the most suitable method of employing these artificial morbific agents (medicines) for the cure of natural disease?

With respect to the first point, the following will serve as a general preliminary view. The diseases 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; - or they are diseases of such a character that, with small, often imperceptible beginnings, dynamically derange the living organism, each in its own peculiar manner, and cause it gradually to deviate from the healthy condition, in such a way that the automatic life energy, called vital force, whose office is to preserve the health, only opposes to them at the commencement and during their progress imperfect, unsuitable, useless resistance, but is unable of itself to extinguish them, but must helplessly suffer (them to spread and) itself to be ever more and more abnormally deranged, until at length the organism is destroyed; these are termed chronic diseases. They are caused by infection with a chronic miasm.

As regards acute diseases, they are either of such a kind as attack human beings individually, the exciting cause being injurious influences to which they were particularly exposed. Excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical impressions, chills, overheatings, dissipation, strains, ..etc., or physical irritations, mental emotions, and the like, are exciting causes of such acute febrile affections; in reality, however, they are generally only a transient explosion of latent psora, which spontaneously returns to its dormant state if the acute diseases were not of too violent a character and were soon quelled. Or they are of such a kind as attack several persons at the same time, here and there (sporadically), by means of meteoric or telluric influences and injurious agents, the susceptibility for being morbidly affected by which is possessed by only a few persons at one time. Allied to these are those diseases in which many persons are attacked with very similar sufferings from the same cause (epidemically); these diseases generally become infectious (contagious) when they prevail among thicklycongregated masses of human beings. Thence arise fevers, (1) in each instance of a peculiar nature, and, because the cases of disease have an identical origin, they set up in all those they affect an identical morbid process, which when left to itself terminates in a moderate period of time in death or recovery. The calamities of war, inundations and famine are not infrequently their exciting causes and produces - sometimes they are peculiar acute miasms which recur in the same manner (hence known by some traditional name), which either attack persons but once in a lifetime, as the small-pox, measles, whooping-cough, the ancient, smooth, bright red scarlet fever (2) of Sydenham, the mumps, ..etc., or such as recur frequently in pretty much the same manner, the plague of the Levant, the yellow fever of the sea-coast, the Asiatic cholera, ..etc.

The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic miasm, which when left to themselves, and unchecked by the employment of those remedies that are specific for them, always go on increasing and growing worse, notwithstanding the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated sufferings. These ["excepting those produced by medical malpractice (#74), " in the Sixth Edition] are the most numerous and greatest scourges of the human race; for the most robust constitution, the best regulated mode of living and the most vigorous energy of the vital force are insufficient for their eradication. (*)

13. Cause of Diseases

(1) Some of these causes that exercise a modifying influence on the transformation of psora into chronic diseases manifestly depend sometimes on the climate and the peculiar physicial character of the place of abode, sometimes on the very great varieties in the physician and mental training of youth, both of which may have been neglected, delayed or carried to excess, or on their abuse in the business or conditions of life, in the matter of diet and regimen, passions, manners, habits and customs of various kinds.

(2) How many improper ambiguous names do not these works contain, under each of which are included excessively different morbid conditions, which often resemble each other in one single symptom only, as ague, jaundice, dropsy, consumption, leucorrhoea, haemorrhoids, rheumatism, apoplexy, convulsions, hysteria, hypochondriasis, melancholia, mania, quinsy, palsy, ..etc., which are represented as diseases of a fixed and unvarying character, and are treated, on account of their name, according to a determinate plan! How can the bestowal of such a name justify an identical medical treatment? And if the treatment is not always to be the same, why make use of an identical name which postulates an identity of treatment?

The instructions I have to give relative to the cure of mental diseases may be confined to a very few remarks, as they are to be cured in the same way as all other diseases, namely, by a remedy which shows, by the symptoms it causes in the body and mind of a healthy individual, a power of producing a morbid state as similar as possible to the case of disease before us, and in no other way can they be cured.

Almost all the so-called mental and emotional diseases are nothing more than corporeal diseases in which the symptom of derangement of the mind and disposition peculiar to each of them is increased, whilst the corporeal symptoms decline (more or less rapidly), till it at length attains the most striking one-sidedness, almost as though it were a local disease in the invisible subtle organ of the mind or disposition.

If the mental disease be not quite developed, and if it be still somewhat doubtful whether it really arose from a corporeal affection, or did not rather result from faults of education, bad practices, corrupt morals, neglect of the mind, superstition or ignorance; the mode of deciding this point will be, that if it proceed from one or other of the latter causes it will diminish and be improved by sensible friendly exhortations, consolatory arguments, serious representations and sensible advice, whereas a real moral or mental malady, depending on bodily disease, would be speedily aggravated by such a course, the melancholic would become still more dejected, querulous, inconsolable and reserved, the spiteful maniac would thereby become still more exasperated, and the chattering fool would become manifestly more foolish.

(1) It would seem as though the mind, in these cases, felt with uneasiness and grief the truth of these rational representations and acted upon the body as if it wished to restore the lost harmony, but that the body, by means of its disease reacted upon the organs of the mind and disposition and put them in still greater disorder by a fresh transference of its sufferings on to them.

14. Emotions affect health

There are, however, as has just been stated, certainly a few emotional diseases which have not merely been developed into that form out of corporeal diseases, but which, in an inverse manner, the body being but slightly indisposed, originate and are kept up by emotional causes, such as continued anxiety, worry, vexation, wrongs and the frequent occurrence of great fear and fright. This kind of emotional diseases in time destroys the corporeal health, often to a great degree.

It is only such emotional diseases as these, which were first engendered and subsequently kept up by the mind itself, that, while they are yet recent and before they have made very great inroads on the corporeal state, may, by means of psychical remedies, such as a display of confidence, friendly exhortations, sensible advice, and often by a well-disguised deception, be rapidly changed into a healthy state of the mind (and with appropriate diet and regimen, seemingly into a healthy state of the body also).

Among the signs that, in all diseases, especially in such as are of an acute nature, inform us of a slight commencement of amelioration or aggravation that is not perceptible to every one, the state of mind and the whole demeanour of the patient are the most certain and instructive. In the case of ever so slight an improvement we observe a greater degree of comfort, increased calmness and freedom of the mind, higher spirits - a kind of return of the natural state. In the case of ever so small a commencement of aggravation we have, on the contrary, the exact opposite of this : a constrained, helpless, pitiable state of the disposition, of the mind, of the whole demeanour, and of all gestures, postures and actions, which may be easily perceived on close observation, but cannot be described in words. (1)

15. Power of mind over health

I must here observe that this so essential rule is chiefly transgressed by them, if they are capable of being taught, hear from natural philosophers that there are enormously powerful things (forces) which are perfectly destitute of weight, as, for example, caloric, light, ..etc., consequently infinitely lighter than the medicine contained in the smallest doses used in homoeopathy; - let them, if they can, weigh the irritating words that bring on a bilious fever, or the mournful intelligence respecting her only son that kills the mother; let them touch, for a quarter of an hour, a magnet capable of lifting a hundred pounds weight, and learn from the pain it excites that even imponderable agencies can produce the most violent medicinal effects upon man; - and let the weak ones among them allow the pit of their stomach to be slightly touched by the thumb's point of a strong-willed mesmeriser for a few minutes, and the disagreeable sensations they then suffer will make them repent of attempting to set limits to the boundless activity of nature; the weak-minded creatures!

["I find it yet necessary to allude here to animal magnetism, as it is termed, or rather Mesmerism (as it should be called in deference to Mesmer, its first founder) which differs so much in its nature from all other therapeutic agents. This curative force, often so stupidly denied and disdained for a century, acts in different ways. It is a marvellous, priceless gift of God to mankind by means of which the strong will of a well intentioned person upon a sick one by contact and even without this and even at some distance, can bring the vital energy of the healthy mesmeriser endowed with this power into another person dynamically (just as one of the poles of a powerful magnetic rod upon a bar of steel).

It acts in part by replacing in the sick whose vital force within the organism is deficient here and there, in part also in other parts where the vital force has accumulated too much and keeps up irritating nervous disorders it turns it aside, diminishes and distributes it equally and in general extinguishes the morbid condition of the life principle of the patient and substitutes in its place the normal of the mesmerist acting powerfully upon him, for instance, old ulcers, amaurosis, paralysis of single organs and so forth. Many rapid apparent cures performed in all ages, by mesmerizers endowed with great natural power, belong to this class. The effect of communicated human power upon the whole human organism was most brilliantly shown, in the resuscitation of persons who had lain some time apparently dead, by the most powerful sympathetic will of a man in full vigor of vital energy, (+) and of this kind of resurrection history records many undeniable examples.

If the mesmerizing person of either sex capable at the same time of a good-natured enthusiasm (even its degeneration into bigotry, fanaticism, mysticism or philanthropic dreaming) will be empowered all the more with this philanthropic self-sacrificing performance to direct exclusively the power of his commanding good will to the recipient requiring his help and at the same time to concentrate these, he may at times perform apparent miracles".]

(+) A new foot-note is added in the Sixth Edition, as follows: ["Especially of one of such persons, of whom there are not many, who, along with great kindness of disposition and perfect bodily powers, possesses but a very moderate desire for sexual intercourse, which it would give him very little trouble wholly to suppress, in whom, consequently, all the fine vital spirits that would otherwise be employed in the preparation of the semen, are ready to be communicated to others, by touching them and powerfully exerting the will. Some powerful mesmerisers, with whom I have become acquainted, had all this peculiar character".]

 ["All the above mentioned methods of practising mesmerism depend upon an influx of more or less vital force into the patient, and hence are termed positive mesmerism (++). An opposite mode of employing mesmerism, however, as it produces just the contrary effect, deserves to be termed negative mesmerism. To this belong the passes which are used to rouse from the somnambulic sleep, as also all the manual processes known by the names of soothing and ventilating. This discharge by means of negative mesmerism of the vital force accumulated to excess in individual parts of the system of undebilitated persons is most surely and simply performed by making a very rapid motion of the flat extended hand, held parallel to, and about an inch distant from the body, from the top of the head to the tips of the toes. (+) The more rapidly this pass is made, so much the more effectually will the discharge be effected. Thus, for instance, in the case where a previously healthy woman, (++) from the sudden suppression of her catamenia by a violent mental shock, lies to all appearance dead, the vital force which is probably accumulated in the precordial region, will, by such a rapid negative pass, be discharged and its equilibrium throughout the whole organism restored. So that the resuscitation generally follows, immediately. (+++) In like manner, a gentle, less rapid, negative pass diminishes the excessive restlessness and sleeplessnss accompanied with anxiety sometimes produced in very irritable persons by a too powerful positive pass, etc".]

 (++) ["When I here speak of the decided and certain curative power of positive mesmerism, I most assuredly do not mean that abuse of it, where, by repeated passes of this kind, continued for half an hour or a whole hour at a time, and even day after day, performed on weak, nervous patients, that monstrous revolution of the whole human system is effected which is termed somnambulism, wherein the human being is ravished from the world of senses and seems to belong more to the world of spirits - a highly unnatural and dangerous state, by means of which it has not infrequently been attempted to cure chronic diseases".](+) ["It is a well known rule that a person who is either to be positively or negatively mesmerised, should not wear silk on any part of the body".]

(++) ["Hence a negative pass, especially if it be very rapid, is extremely injurious to a delicate person effected with a chronic ailment and deficient in vital force".]

(+++) ["A strong country lad, ten years of age, received in the morning, on account of slight indisposition, from a professed female mesmeriser, several very powerful passes

with the points of both thumbs, from the pit of the stomach along the lower edge of the ribs, and he instantly grew deathly pale, and fell into such a state of unconsciousness and immobility that no effort could arouse him, and he was almost given up for dead. I made his eldest brother give him a very rapid negative pass from the crown of the head over the body to the feet, and in one instant be recovered his consciousness and became lively and well".]

: ["Here belongs also the so-called massage of vigorous good-natured person given to a chronic invalid, who, though cured, still suffers from loss of flesh, weakness of digestion and lack of sleep due to slow convalescence. The muscles of the limbs, breast and back, separately grasped and moderately pressed and kneaded arouse the life principle to reach and restore the tone of the muscles and blood and lymph vessels. The mesmeric influence of this procedure is the chief feature and it must not be used to excess in patients still hypersensitive".]

I find it necessary to allude here to animal magnetism, as it is termed, or rather mesmerism (as it should be called, out of gratitude to Mesmer, its first founder), which differs so much in its nature from all other therapeutic agents. This curative power, often so stupidly denied, which streams upon a patient by the contact of a well-intentioned person powerfully exerting his will, either acts homoeopathically, by the production of symptoms similar to those of the diseased state to be cured; and for this purpose a single pass made, without much exertion of the will, with the palms of the hands not too slowly from the top of the head downwads over the body to the tips of the toes, (1) is serviceable in, for instance, uterine haemorrhages, even in the last stage when death seems approaching; or it is useful by distributing the vital force uniformly throughout the organism, when it is in abnormal excess in one part and deficient in other parts, for example, in rush of blood to the head and sleepless, anxious restlessness of weakly persons, ..etc., by means of a similar, single, but somewhat stronger pass; or for the immediate communication and restoration of the vital force to some one weakened part or to the whole organism, - an object that cannot be attained so certainly and with so little interference with the other medicinal treatment by any other agent besides mesmerism.

If it is wished to supply a particular part with the vital force, this is effected by concentrating a very powerful and well-intentioned will for the purpose, and placing the hands or tips of the fingers on the chronically weakened parts, whither an internal chronic dyscrasia has transferred its important local symptom, as, for example, in the case of old ulcers, amaurosis, paralysis of certain limbs, ..etc. (2) Many rapid apparent cures performed in all ages, by mesmerisers endowed with great natural power, belong to this class. The effect of communicated human power upon the whole human organism was most brilliantly shown, in the resuscitation of persons who had lain some time apparently dead, by the most powerful sympathetic will of a man in full vigour of vital force, (3) and of this kind of resurrection history records many undeniable examples.

16. External forces cannot influence (or influence less) human being, otherwise man cannot live in this world.

If the psychical and physical inimical forces of nature which are termed morbific noxae possessed an unconditional power of morbidly deranging man's health, as they are universally distributed they would leave nobody sound; every one must be ill, and we should have no idea of health. But as, on the whole, diseases are only exceptional states in man's health, and as a concourse of so many and varied circumstances and conditions both on the side of the disease-forces and on that of the human beings to be morbidlyderanged are required before a disease can be produced by its exciting causes, it follows that man is so little liable to be affected by these noxae that they can never make him ill quite unconditionally, and that the human organism is only capable of being deranged by them into disease when it has a particular disposition to be so affected".

"#42. But the human organism in its living state is a complete whole, a unity. Every sensation, every manifestation of power, every affinity of the component parts of one part is intimately associated with the sensations, the functions and the affinities of the component parts of all other parts. No part can suffer without all other parts sympathising and simultaneously undergoing more or less change".

"#43. This vital unity does not permit a disease to remain only local, completely and absolutely local in our body, as long as the malady misnamed local is on a part not entirely separate from the rest of the body. The rest of the body always sympathises more or less, and expresses this sympathy by some symptom or other. Every powerful medicine, even when applied to a quite distant part or given internally, effects a change- making impression on this apparently local affection also, and the remedy specifically suitable for the general disease (of which the local affection is always only a part, only a symptom) generally cures the local affection, though it may be in quite a distant part and apparently isolated".

"#57. These epidemics, admitting of no fixed, special name, which at every fresh appearance among the people occur in altered from and with an altered group of symptoms and manifestations, are, as collective diseases, most appropriately consigned to the large class of all other diseases, infirmites and dyscrasias of the human body due to a concurrence of dissimilar causes and forces, which vary in number, strength and kind- influences of extremely complex nature, whence arise those infinitely various diseases from which the great race of mankind on the globe suffers and always has suffered".

"#58. All things that are in any degree operative (their number is inconceivable) caninfluence and cause changes in our organism, which stands in connection and conflict with all parts of the universe, and everything causes a different change, because it differs from every other thing".

"#59. What diversity, I may say what infinite diversity, must there not be among diseases, which are indeed the effects of the action of these innumerable, often highly inimical forces, when several of the latter, together or in varied succession, quality and strength, exert their influence on our bodies, seeing that the latter differ so much from one another in many external and internal properties and peculiarities, and the conditions of life are so diversified that no human individual exactly resembles another in any imaginable respect!" (1)

(1) "Some of these influences that predispose to or produce disease are, e. g., the countless numbers of more or less hurtful emanations from organic and inorganic substances; the many diversely irritating kinds of gas which cause alterations and injuries to our nerves in the atmosphere, in our workshops and dwellings, or which stream out against us from water, earth, animals and plants; deficiency of indispensable food for our vitality, of pure open air; excess or deficiency of sunlight or of electricity; varieties of atmospheric pressure, of humidity or dryness of the air; the still unknown properties and bad effects of lofty mountain localities and those of low situations and deep valleys; the peculiarities of the climate and situation in extensive plains, in deserts destitute of plants and water, on the sea-coast, in marshy, hilly and wooded districts, or in localities exposed to various winds; the influence of very changeable or too long continuance of the same weather; the influence of storms and various meteorological circumstances; excessive heat or coldness of the air, deficient or excessive artificial heat of our clothes or rooms; constriction of the limbs or body by articles of dress; excessive coldness and heat of our food and drink; hunger, thirst or surfeits of victuals and drinks, and the injurious medicinal health-deranging powers they possess (wine, spirits, beer adulterated with more or less harmful herbs, drinking-water polluted with foreign substances, coffee, tea, indigenous or exotic spices, and food, sauces, liqueurs, chocolate, cakes seasoned with them; the unknown injurious character of some plants and animals used as food) or acquire by negligent preparation, spoiling, substitution or adulteration (e.g. ill-fermented or only half-baked bread, underdone meat and vegetables, or putrid or mouldy food, victuals and drinks prepared or kept in metal vessels, made-up, poisoned wines, vinegar adulterated with corrosive substances, the flesh of diseased animals, flour mixed with gypsum or sand, grain mixed with hurtful seeds; dangerous plants mixed with or substituted for table vegetables from malice, ignorance, or poverty); want of cleanliness of the body, clothes or dwellings; injurious substances that have got into the food for want of cleanliness or carelessness; inhaling noxious vapours in sick rooms, in mines stamping mills, roasting and smelting-houses; the dust laden with various hurtful substances that come out of the stuffs made in our factories; the neglect of many of the police arrangements for securing the weal of the community; excessive exertion of our bodily powers, inordinate active or passive exercise, over-exertion of certain parts of the body or of the organs of sense, various unnatural postures and positions incident to occupations and trades; deficient employment of certain parts or over-indulgence in laziness; irregularity in the periods of rest (long midday siesta), of meals, of work; excess or deficiency of night sleep; over-exertion of the mental faculties generally or compulsory intellectual work of a disagreeable nature, or such as excites or wearies certain faculties of the mind; violent mental emotions, anger, fright, vexation, or debilitating passions excited by reading lascivious books, by injudicious education by indulgence by conversation; abuse of sexual functions; qualms of conscience, fear, grief, ..etc".

"#60. Hence the unspeakable number of dissimilar corporeal and mental affections, which differ so much among one another that, strictly speaking, each of them has perhaps existed only once in the world, and that, with the exception of those few diseases with an unalterable miasm (#49) and probably some few others (#50), every epidemic or sporadic collective disease, and besides these, every other case of disease we meet with must be regarded and treated as a nameless, individual disease, which never had occurred before as in this case, in this person, and under this condition, and can never occur again in the world exactly the same".

"#61. As Nature herself produces diseases of such various kinds, so there can be no rational healing art without strict individualisation of each case of disease for the purpose of treatment, without the physician regarding each disease coming under his care as peculiar and unique, which it undoubtedly is. There will then be an end to all that empirical generalising which is so nearly allied to presumptuous speculation and arbitrary substitution".

17. Animal Magnetism

The sensitiveness of the diseased or ailing body attains such a height in many cases that it is acted on and excited by external forces, the existence of which is often denied because they display no obvious action on healthy robust bodies and in many diseases for which they are not suitable. Such a force is animal magnetism, that peculiar power that one living body exercises over another by certain modes of touching or nearly touching, which produces wonderful excitation in weak, delicate and sensitive persons of both sexes.

Who is ignorant of the medicinal powers of cold and heat? Who does not know the power of electricity and galvanism? Who will deny the heroic, often too great power of animal magnetism in altering man's health? And what can surpass the counter-disease force which the magnet, according to the testimony of many acute and honest observers, has clearly manifested in a great number of diseases? - the magnet, whose imponderable matter constantly streaming out from it is imperceptible to our senses, and yet has a great influence on the health of even the most robust man, as any one can convince himself if he lets any part of his body come in contact for one hour with the north pole of a large magnet capable of lifting ten or twelve times its own weight, as experiments of trust, worthy observers on healthy persons have taught us.