Disorder First in Vital Force by James Tyler Kent

Organon $10. The material organism, without the vital force is capable of the sensation, no function, no self-preservation; 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.

$11. 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 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 power invisible in itself, and only cognizable by the effects on the organism, its morbid derangement only makes itself known by the manifestation of disease in the sensation and functions of those parts of the organism exposed to the senses of the observer and physician: that is, by morbid symptom and in no other way can it make itself known.

It is clear that Hahnemann wishes to teach that it is a disorder of the activities of the internal man, a lack of harmony or lack of balance, which gives forth the signs and symptoms by which we recognize disease. These sensations constitute the language of disorder, i.e., the means by which we recognize disorder and disease. This immaterial vital principle, this simple substance, everywhere pervades the organism, and in disease this disorder everywhere pervades the organism, it pervades every cell and every portion of the human economy. We will see in course of time that the change in forum of a cell is the result first of disorder, that the derangement of the immaterial vital principles is the very beginning of the disorder, and that with this beginning there are changes in sensation by which man may know this beginning, which occurs long before there is any visible change in the material substance of the body.

The patient himself can feel by his sensations the changes, and this is inimical to life, and death immediately follows, for life in its fullest sense is freedom. As soon as the internal economy is deprived in any matter of its freedom, death is threatening where freedom. As soon as the internal economy is deprived in any manner of its freedom, death is threatening, where freedom is lost death is sure to follow.

So it is when there is the inflowing of a simple substance that has the form or essence of a disease. It is in its essence an evil that is flowing into the economy, but it is a simple substance. Every thing is substantial or real, and has in itself operating and perpetuating power the fact that it can operate and perpetuate is the evidence of power, and if it has power it result in something.

Every cause of disease then has form. If it were not in the form, of single substance it could not affect the forms of simple substance in the natural state of the economy. Moreover, it has its association from the finest forms of physical substance to the crudest, from beginning to end, from the inner to the outer. Such changes and activities as result in the very crudest forms are but the results of disease through a series of degrees, coarser and coarser to the outermost man.

Everything than can be seen, that can be observed with the aid of the finest instrument, is but the result. Nothing in the world of immaterial substance can be seen with any faculty that is capable of seeing things in the world of material substance. The employment of instruments of precision will enable us to see the finest disease results, which are the outcome or results of things immaterial, the bacteria for instance, the very finest form of animal or vegetable life; but the cause of disease is a million times more subtle than these and cannot be seen by the human eye. The finest visible objects are but results of things still finer, so that the cause rests within.

The morbific agents that Hahnemann refers to are simply the extremely fine forms of simple substance, or to bring them down to human thought we might call them viruses; but viruses are often gross because they can sometimes be observed by the vision of man, and therefore we must remember that within the virus is its innermost and that this inner most is in itself capable of giving from to the outermost, which is the visible virus aggravated and concentrated.

The coarser forms would be comparatively harmless were it not for their interiors. Disease products are comparatively harmless were it not for the fact that they contain an innermost and it is the innermost itself that is causative.. The bacteria are the result of conditions within, they are, as it were, evolved by a spontaneous generation-literally, that is what it is. Every virus is capable of assuming forms and shapes in ultimates. the causes of ultimates are not from without but the immaterial invisible center. Those things that appear to man’s eye are evolved, just as man himself is formed from a center which has the power of evolving, an endowment from the Creator,. operating under fixed general laws.

It is only when the vital principle is disturbed by cause of a disease character (that is the innermost of a virus in the form of a simple substance) that it gives forth any consciousness of itself

If there were no disturbing influence in the interiors of man he never would have symptoms. As you sit there is your seats in a perfect state of quietude or tranquillity you are not conscious of your eyes, of your limbs, of your hair. You have to stop and think whether you feel or not. When all the functions are carried on in a perfectly orderly way you have no consciousness of your body, which means that you are in freedom. When not in freedom the individual says. “I feel.:”

It is this disturbance of an invisible character which comes from cause, and appears by changes in the activities of the body, changes in sensations, changes in functions. It is in accordance with all-wise Providence that these sensations should appear to the physician who shall be intelligent enough to read them and know what they mean. They are a warning, they are for us, for purpose. No feeling a man can have is without its purpose., as there is nothing in the universe without its purpose, as there is nothing in the universe without its use. Hence these morbid sensations reveal to the physician that there is disorder.

To establish freedom should be the aim of the physician, and if a physician’s work does not result in placing his patient in freedom he cannot heal the sick, for healing the sick is placing the patient in freedom, giving him absolute physical freedom, If the physician causes the pains to cease by a dose of Morphine, can we call that freedom? Is the patient not made stupid beyond the recognition of the nature of his feelings?

The large doses of the old school produce anything but freedom. We must look elsewhere to find that kind of healing which turns disorder into order and makes man free. By removing the signs and symptoms in an orderly way, by converting disorder the signs and symptoms in an orderly way, have a cause (for as we have already seen when when the economy is turned into order it ceases to give forth symptoms), we place our patients in freedom, both physical and mental.

“Only the vital principle thus disturbed can give to the organism its abnormal sensations and incline it to the irregular action we call disease. ” This is totally different from calling the results of disease the disease, e.g., calling Bright’;s disease, cancer, or palsy, diseases. Most of the conditions of the human economy that are called diseases in the books are not diseases, but the results of disease. To call a group of symptoms a disease of one part, and another group of symptoms a disease of another part, is a great here and leads to errors in prescribing that can never be corrected. Organic change is the result of disease.

Morbid disturbances can be perceived solely by means of the expression of disease in the sensation and actions! We would have no means of perceiving the morbid disturbance of the invisible principle except by morbid sensations, and if these were not present we would have no means of putting the patient in freedom.

There are patient so sick that they cannot be put in freedom, those for whom there are no means of cure, and in these, while the internal structural changes are going on slowly, the morbid symptoms are not present. Such patients continually change doctors and change climates, recognizing, as it were, that no one is capable of relieving them. With an incurable change in a vital organ. all or most of the symptoms that existed go away; the symptoms of the disease are suppressed, a s it were, by the tremendous strain upon the system.

This is particularly true of he malignant forms of disease results. The symptoms that existed years ago have disappeared and the patient says.”Oh they did not amount to anything. I had had them all my life.” But those are the symptoms that would manifest to the physician and nature of the remedy, for they give to him the real image of the sickness.

Some doctors say: “Oh, we will have a remedy for cancer some day,” having in mind only the symptoms of cancer, that is, the symptoms that represent the results of disease and not the symptoms that represent the disease itself. There is a vast difference between these two. These physicians would not talk so if they only knew and would only think in this proper and wholesome fashion, that to cure the patient would be to cure the cancer, and in order to cure the patient it is necessary to go back in his history and get those symptoms that represent the patient in a state of disease and not the tissues in a state of disease results.

In the latter state, the original symptoms of the disease have often disappeared they are, as it were, swallowed up. So it is when the innermost disease have often disappeared; they are, acted and the whole body is full of disease results, such as dropsical conditions or pus sacs. or hip-joint abscesses. The pains make the patient unable to think of his symptoms. Then these physicians come along and prescribe for the resultant states and end in failure. They give Silica for hip-joint disease and Bufo for epilepsy, and so on giving medicines for groups of symptoms.

That is not Homoeopathy. Such men then go off and say:”Oh, I have tried everything,” but they have tried nothing but modern practice. It is a travesty upon Homoeopathy. The expert physician can listen to signs and symptoms before morbid changes have taken place, and if no medicines have ever been administered, if no drugging has been resorted to, no morphine and no other violent and vicious drugs, the image stands out before him in relief; it is perfect, because it has not been meddled with.

It speaks with clearness, and the physician who is intelligent can learn to read it. But the physician who is not capable of seeing that this is different from the group of pathological symptoms that represent the so-called fixed diseases, if he cannot make a distinction between the symptoms that represent the disease per se and the symptoms that represent the result of disease, he will never practice Homoeopathy successfully. If he cannot understand it he had better work at it until he does understand it; he must continue to labour until he can discriminate between the organic symptoms associated with the results of disease and the pure signs given forth by nature.

Every few days I run across a homoeopathic physician who asks: “What remedy are you using in such and such case?” Such a thing has no place in my mind, and I look upon one who speaks in that way as a man untrained in homoeopathics. I truly have lost my patience over such things, for the old gray-heads, who have practiced for years and pretended to practice Homoeopathy, do not hesitate to say that “the best remedy for epilepsy” is so and so.

What nonsense! That is not adjusting the remedy to the state of the patient that existed before he had these structural changes and fixed groups of symptoms, for if you adjust a remedy to the pathological condition you are not adjusting it to the patient, to his very beginning down to the present time. He need to have pathological results, all he needs to have is symptoms. The patient can cure his own morbid anatomy. If you will take away the first state of disorder his economy will be safe. If the results of disease cannot be removed the patient himself will return to health and the morbid anatomy will undergo such changes that it will no affect his state of health. The fibrinous adhesions needs no necessarily go away a state of quiescence comes and remains year after year so long as he remains well.

To think of remedies for cancer is confusion, but to think of remedies for the patient who appears to have cancer is orderly, and you will be astonished to know what wonderful changes will take place in these conditions when remedies that correspond to the conditions before the cancer began are administered. Cancer is the result of disorder, which disorder must be turned in order and must be healed. We dwell upon this, for many a paragraphs bring out this distinction between symptoms and results of disease. The true morbid sensations of a healthy organism are what we must first consider.

It is first assumed that the organism is in a state of health and capable of performing its functions, and then the morbid sensations of this healthy organism are the symptoms that come to the physician as a forerunner of death in parts, and finally death of the whole. The patient tells the physician his sensations, of the numbness of his fingers, of the pricking in his skin, of the pain in his stomach, etc., all the sensations of any part of which he is reminded. The healthy man is not reminded of his parts. He passes his stool without pain in the part. If he has pain or bleeding he is reminded of this part. If he passes his urine without sensation we say it is normal and he is in freedom, but if burning and smarting and tenesmus follow he is reminded of it, and these sensations constitute symptoms.

If the patient is waxy and pallid, has papules and pustules, or swollen and varicose veins with red face, red eyes, etc., these the physician can see and not down. Again there are things that the physician cannot see and that the patient cannot tell, that the mother, sister, husband or wife should relate to the physician at his office. These symptoms constitute what there is knowable of the sickness, that which appears to the mind of the physician upon which he makes up his verdict. When the strong symptoms are all gathered together the physician in studying the case must separate out those things that we observed years ago from those things that are observed today, noting how they have changed and why changed. Sometimes they have been changed by drugs so that the whole nature of the economy is giving out a different group of symptoms.

The physician must learn the changes all along the line, from beginning to end; what symptoms represented this sick man ten years ago, and what symptoms represent him now. Perhaps how he has morbid anatomy, pathological conditions in his lungs, liver and kidneys. The physician who has been for twenty year observing previous and present conditions in this manner, by hearing the symptoms can practically locate the morbid anatomy; he can tell where it will appear, knows when pus is on organs and where, and he can foretell pretty well what is soon to go on in the economy.

I would rather trust to a careful study of the symptoms than most physician’s written diagnosis of phthisis, or organic diseases of the liver or of the heart. The symptoms do not lie. They do not exist from opinions of men who have thumped and pounded over the human body to find out what is going on inside, which is in many instances confusing even to the best diagnosticians. A considerable observation amongst medical men will lead on to discover that the dollar is the chief end of the practice of medicine when practiced in the old way; there is nothing else in it, nothing to admire or cherish.

To become conversant with symptoms, to judge of the sphere and progress of disease by he study of symptomatology, is the requirement necessary for the homoeopath. Of course, bystanders will say to the patient, “That doctor cannot know much he did not give you a physical examination.” After the examination of the symptoms has been made there is no reason why you should not make a physical examination of the patient; but do not let this deprive you of becoming thoroughly educated in studying symptoms, because the real study of sickness is the meditation of his symptoms, and to become wise in symptoms is to become an able prescriber.

Study physical diagnosis to you heart’s content, but weigh carefully what you discover and compare it with the symptoms in order to ascertain what the different symptoms mean. You cannot study the symptoms of man without becoming extremely well acquainted with the nervous system, The anatomy of the nerves and of the brain should be thoroughly known. Not always that you may name the nerve, but that you may know where it is and what its functions are, and this study should be continued throughout all your life.

The physician should be conversant with anatomy and physiology, but by studying the symptomatology he acquires a knowledge of physiology which it is impossible to obtain in any other way; he acquires a knowledge of the functions and operations of arteries, nerves and muscles because they call attention to themselves when in disturbance, and he sees therefore how the symptoms manifest themselves. By studying the symptom in the recorded pathogenesis one may learn much about true pathology. Morbid anatomy furnishes no basis for prescribing, but true pathology is often of the greatest benefit, helping the image of he sickness to shape itself before the mind.

LECTURES ON HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY BY JAMES TYLER KENT –

The old school of Allopathy considered about `sickness’ and `medicine’ in a particular way.



– The sphere of sickness was limited to the physical level. Only tissue changes were seen and considered.

– The source of sickness, process of sickness, the nature of sickness and the concept of real health were not studied.

– Only the result of sickness was felt with fingers, seen with eyes and observed by sense through instruments.

– The meaning of restoration of health was confined to relief in the ailments of particular organs where they appeared. – Drugs were used in crude forms to remove the ailments.



– The system was based entirely on experience. Decisions were made on opinions of individuals at different times and concensus of opinions or hypothesis.

– Pathological findings formed the basis of the diagnosis.

– The internal of man–his mental and emotional aspects were not considered.

– Symptoms–the language of sickness, at the levels of mind, emotion and body were not studied.



– Every pathological result had its corresponding bacteria.

– Doctrine of Vital Force had no place for them.

– Prime importance was given to the organs of man, and not to the man himself which constituted of body mind and emotions.

Will and understanding of man not studied and considered

HOMOEOPATHIC PHILOSOPHY
Dr. Hahnemann `proved’ the drugs on healthy enlightened human bodies. He found that the drugs affected the mind, the emotions and the body and the effects are expressed through symptoms and modalities. He also found that these drugs in potency are able to remove Similar Sickness appearing in human beings. He discovered an Universal Truth; a truth based on `science’ where opinions do not matter, experiences do not form basis; source of sickness, process of sickness and the nature of sickness is explored and the correct curative agent is found.

Dr. Kent has interpreted and explained the various aspects of Hahnemann’s “Organon of the Healing Art”. His lectures are so vivid that they mirror the fundamental laws of health and healing to the mankind at all levels of understanding. This book was written about 90 years ago-but still, the concepts hold true in the present times. He was an empirical Hahnemannian. He could not compromise with the deviation from principles and philosophy and we find his criticism sometimes sharp and bitter of `Pseudo-homoeopaths’.

KEYNOTES OF PHILOSOPHY
– Man is the will and the understating and the house which he lives in is his body.

– The organs are not the man. The man is prior to the organs.



– The order of sickness as well as the order of cure is from man to his organs. The real sick man is prior to the sick sick body.

– A man is sick prior to localization of disease. When we wait for localization, the results of disease have rendered the patient incurable.

– Symptoms are but the language of nature, talking out, as it were, and showing as clearly as the daylight, the internal nature of the sickman or woman.

– Crude drugs cannot heal the sick and that what changes they effect are not real but only apparent.

– Tissue changes are of the body and are the results of the disease, they are not the disease.

– The bacteria are results of the disease. The disease cause is more subtle.

– The remedy, which will produce on healthy man similar symptoms, is the master of the situation, is the necessary antidote, will overcome the sickness, restore the will and understanding to order and cure the patient.



– Man consists in what he thinks and what he loves and there is nothing else in man.

– The physician has to `perceive’ in the disease that which is to be cured, and that is through `totality of symptoms’. He has to perceive the nature of disease and the nature of the remedy.

– Experience has only a confirmatory place. It cannot take the place of science and truth.

– All true diseases of the economy flow from centre to circumference. All miasms are true diseases.

– The active cause is within, and the apparent cause of sickness is without. If a man has no deep miasmatic influence, outer causes will not affect him.

– Homoeopathy has two parts: the science of homoeopathy are the art of homoeopathy. One has to learn the art of homoeopathy to prepare himself for the application of the science of homoeopathy.

– Vital force is constructive and formative, and in its thing in the universe has its aura. Every star and planet has it. The remedy to be homoeopathic must be similar in quality and similar in action to the disease cause.

– As soon as the internal economy is deprived in any manner of its freedom, death is threatening; where freedom is lost, death is sure to follow.

– Potency should suit the varying susceptibility of sickman.



– Any more than just enough to supply the susceptibility is a surplus and is dangerous.

– Human race has been greatly disordered in the economy because of surplus drug taking.

– Primitive cause is not in the bacteria. Bacteria themselves have a cause to appear and survive.

– Over sensitive patients are actually poisoned by the inappropriate administration of potentized medicines.

– Their chronic miasms are complicated with chronic drugging and its effect upon the vital force.

– The physician who can only hold in his memory the symptoms of a disease or a remedy will never succeed as a homoeopath.

– The majority of such as call themselves homoeopaths at the present time, are perfectly incompetent to examine a patient, and therefore incompetent to examine homoeopathy.

– It is impossible to test homoeopathy without learning how to get the disease image so before the eyes that the homoeopathic remedy can be selected.

– At the present day, there is almost no such thing as an unprejudiced mind.



– Do not prescribe until you have found the remedy that is similar to the whole case, even although it is clear in your mind that one remedy may be more similar to one particular group of symptoms and another remedy to another group.

– It is unaccountable, therefore, that some of our homoeopathic practitioners make use of palliatives that are so detrimental to the patients.