Aphorism 11
Aphorism itself:
“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 (1) 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.”
*** Note that in the Boericke/Dudgeon translation, the footnote is misplaced. They have two footnotes, one after dynamic (as I have here) and one at the end. This is incorrect. There should be only one footnote, and that one after the word dynamic, as I have it here. The first footnote in the Boericke/Dudgeon version (which just says “materia peccans”) is from aphorism 10 and was misplaced into 11. ***
As I have eluded to in aphorisms 6 and 7, Hahnemann believes it is the vital force that becomes ill. And this is the aphorism where he says that outright. “when a person fall ill, it is only this…vital force…that is primarily deranged….it is only the vital force…that can furnish the organism with its disagreeable sensations and incline it to the irregular processes which we call disease.”
And like I have said before, he believes the symptoms are all we can know of disease, but they are separate from the disease itself. But what we have here goes beyond that. Not only can we only know disease is present because of the signs and symptoms, but we also can only know the vital force by the signs it gives off – namely keeping us in balance or being out of balance. Lack of death I guess you could say.
In aphorism 6 he decries the endless searching for a cause of disease, and says the only thing a practitioner needs to pay attention to are the symptoms. Here, we can understand why that it is: He believes something comes along and infects the vital force. The vital force itself is sickened – meaning there is no physical thing to detox or cause hiding in the body. The disturbance is in the vital force. The only reason we know it’s there is because when the vital force is knocked out of balance, then it starts to create symptoms, defined as changes in sensation or function that are observable to our senses. Said another way, the symptoms are created by the vital force itself and these symptoms are changes in sensation and function (aphorism 9-11).
This is why he believes that if you remove all the symptoms, then you are cured. If the vital force is balanced, then there are no more symptoms, and there’s nothing left to do – you are in balance!
The footnote:
This footnote is crazy long – and its new to the sixth edition of the Organon. It essentially tries to answer the question “what is dynamic influence”.
He uses a couple metaphors to look at dynamic influences:
Moon and the tides
Magnets attracting metals
Infection: 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… a child with small-pox 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.
Becoming nauseous after looking at something gross
Raising your arm
Homeopathic remedies! The more we dilute them, the stronger they act
Now there’s a bit of debate about this aphorism’s footnote, because it is new to the sixth edition, and because in his earlier writings, in particular on cholera (see page 758 of his Lesser Writings: “grows into an enormously increased brood of those excessively minute, invisible, living creatures, so inimical to human life, of which the contagious matter of the cholera most probably consists”), he said that infection was due to small living organisms – in other words, he modeled our current understanding of infection by saying that the cause of infectious disease was material, because you were infected with these tiny living things that made you sick and were passed from person to person. For context, a Dutch man Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered what he called animacules, some of which were bacteria, in the mid-1600’s. I don’t know if Hahnemann knew about his work, but it may have been in the air (or in the “miasma”! haha). It was around the time that the sixth edition was published that microscopes became more common and the idea that infection would be due to these invisible creatures found through microscopes would not have been as far fetched. The disease-creating power of bacteria was proven by Koch thirty years after Hahnemann died.
However, the way I conceptualize this footnote, is that he had now spent decades watching insanely dilute remedies work, and had watched the ideas of magnetism and mesmerism become more popular. He spends a far bit of this footnote describing the dilute remedies, and says “there lies invisible in the moistened globule…a specific, medicinal force … 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”. In other words, these highly diluted remedies work on the whole body and more strongly than material doses did. How often in practice do we see one dose of a dilute remedy change someone’s fever in minutes, or improve someone’s runny nose in an hour? These dilute substances are somehow able to affect change in our whole system mind-bogglingly fast. And I would guess that watching that happen for years would have definitely affected how Hahnemann thought about mechanical vs immaterial causes of disease over time. He also knew that there are many powerful things that operate by invisible forces: the moon and tides and magnets being a classic examples. However, there was also the growth of “magnetism” or “mesmerism” in the world, which he references in the last few aphorisms of the Organon. He believed in the power of mesmerism, which to me just says he already believed you could be healed without a mechanical device in play; you could be healed dynamically.
The moon changes the tides, even though we cannot see or touch the mechanism that does the work
Nowadays, we have a much better understanding of the forces at play in lifting your arm, or in the moon and tides, or electricity and magnetism. So we may be tempted to say that these forces are invisible, but that they are still mechanical. To this point, I would say that what we call mechanical is what we can measure and understand. He could not measure or understand these forces at the time, but new their effects on our physical word.
The footnote text:
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 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 he 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 magnetises other steel needles with the same magnetic property (dynamically) with which it had been endowered previously by the magnetic rod, just as a child with small-pox 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 small-pox 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, as certainly as the nearness of the child ill with small-pox will communicate to a healthy child only small-pox and not measles. These medicines act upon our well-being wholly without communication of material parts of the medicinal substances, thus dynamically, as if through infection. 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 conceived 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 bring about only dynamically such great effects as can never be reached by the crude medicinal substances itself taken in large doses.
It is not in the corporal 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?