Posted October 2nd, 2008 by admin
A backdrop to Hahnemann's discovery of chronic miasmatic disease -
This came at a relatively slow time in Hahnemann's life. In 1821, he was rather forced to leave Leipzig for a number of colluding reasons; and settled in the small Saxon-Anhalt village of Köthen (pic to the right, is the Köthen Schloss [castle], which contains a museum to Köthen's 2 most famous sons - Samuel Hahnemann and Johan Sebastian Bach; Bach composed the Brandenburg Concertos while residing here).
With time to reflect, Hahnemann turned much of his attention to folks who returned repeatedly for treatment. Noting recurring patterns in many of these repeated presentations, he speculated that perhaps many of these individual "acute" complaints were perhaps not individual at all, but rather were variable "tips of icebergs" of a more profound chronic disease/dysharmony of the person. Perhaps each presentation displayed merely a portion of the "complete" disease of the person - which then could only be understood fully, if one paid attention to the full collection and sequence of complaints.
He also noted that many folks exhibited similar patterns of recurring presentations - suggesting that perhaps these patterns of chronic disease could best be understood by taking into account the variable presentations of groups of similarly-affected individuals.
This reminded Hahnemann of something he'd observed previously, working with acute epidemic disease. It was common to be able to appreciate the full character of an epidemic, only after seeing several individuals afflicted by "what was going around," and considering their collective case "as if of one person." Individuals might each bring out various aspects of the disease, which could best be fully appreciated by considering the collective presentation of the entire affected population.
Hahnemann set to work assembling the picture of the chronic disease(s) of the patients presenting to him, relying on their constellations and sequences of complaints, as well as on collective observations of groups of similarly-presenting individuals, taken "as if of one person."
One commonality of many of the chronically-presenting patients in Hahnemann's practice, was a history of venereal disease. Although microbes had not yet been described or implicated as the vectors of venereal infection, the contagion and conditions of contagion were well known. This observation that contagion of infectious disease might lie at the root of at least some chronic disease, contributed to Hahnemann's notion that chronic disease in general was an acquired phenomenon.
Now things begin to become a bit complex. In Hahnemann's day, it was widely understood that there was a single venereal disease (syphilis) - which first made its appearance in Europe in 1794. The next phase of this story - in the next installment - called on Hahemann's prowess as a nosologist as well as a homeopath.
Stay tuned.
