Symptoms are downed trees; causes are beavers

I know there’s a beaver in the woods where I walk my dog.  The paths where I walk are filled with trees with old teeth marks and scars in them and old stumps, pointed at the top like a spear.  Then last year, I found a tree with fresh wood shavings around its base; teeth marks in its trunk.  For a week, I returned to the tree every morning and found more shavings, more cuts in the trunk.  Finally, one morning, the tree was on its side.  Then the morning after that, it had been dragged towards the river. Then the next day it was gone.

But I have never seen a beaver.  I have never seen their house either, although I am constantly searching for it.

In other words, I know the beaver is there because of distinguishing signs, but I have never, and may never, see it. 

This is exactly the model of disease that Hahnemann had.

We know the effects of disease – the symptoms (aphorisms 6-8 among others).  We can even categorize and sufficiently distinguish diseases by their unique and characteristic symptoms (aphorism 153) (for example we can define asthma by difficulty breathing (its characteristic feature), and define a specific asthma by the fact that its worse from mold and starts with a metallic taste in the mouth (unique, identifying features).  However, the cause of disease, the beaver that causes the things I see on my walk, is elusive and may never (aphorism 6) be known. 

The symptoms are the wood shavings I see from the beaver, the old teeth marks on trees and pointed stumps.  They are the things we can clearly see are disease signs – they are not normal variances in physiology!  To continue with the beaver analogy, I cannot know a beaver is present just by the fact that I see something has eaten a few aquatic plants because many animals, most animals that live by a river, will eat some aquatic plants.  Similarly, I can’t know someone has a disease (a beaver) because they like eating lots of eggs, or because a child is delayed in walking (Bell curves are normal – someone will always be in the 99th percentile or 0.05th percentile and be completely normal).  Those can be used in combination with other, obviously pathogenic symptoms (digestive symptoms for example) to come up with a remedy, if necessary.  However, they do not, on their own, indicate the presence of disease. Just like in combination with wood shavings and pointed stumps, the fact that aquatic plants have been eaten can add more evidence for a beaver, but the aquatic plants being munched on doesn’t mean anything without more clear and concrete signs of a beaver.