The subject this morning relates to cure, to what the nature of a cure is. It is stated in the second paragraph of the Organon that

The highest ideal of a cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.

If you were to ask a physician, who had not been trained in Homoeopathy, of what a cure consists, his mind would only revolve around the idea of the disappearance of the pathological state; if an eruption on the skin were the given instance, the disappearance of the eruption from the skin under the treatment would be called a cure; if hemorrhoids, the removal of these would be called a cure; if constipation, the opening of the bowels would be called a cure; if some affection of the knee joint, an amputation above the knee would be considered a cure; or if it were an acute disease and the patient did not die, it would be considered a cure of the disease. And that is really the idea of the patient as it is derived from the physician.

The patient will often wonder at the great skill of the physician in removing an eruption from the skin, and will go back again when the graver manifestations, the tissue changes threatening death, have come on as a consequence, and will say to the doctor: “You so wonderfully cured me of my skin disease, why cannot you cure of my liver trouble?” But this very scientific ignorant doctor has made a failure: he has driven what was upon the surface and harmless into the innermost precincts of the economy and the patient is going to die as a result of scientific ignorance.

There are three distinct points involved in this paragraph and these must be brought out. Restoring health, and not the removing of symptoms, is the first point. Restoring health has in view the establishment of order in a sick human being; removing symptoms has to in view a human being; removing the constipation, the haemorrhoids, the white swelling of the knew, the skin disease or any local manifestation or particular sign of disease, or even the removal of a group of symptoms, does not have in view the restoration to health of the whole economy of man. If the removal of symptoms is not followed by a restoration to health, it cannot be called a cure.

We learned in our last study that “the sole duty of the physician is to heal the sick,” and therefore it is not his duty merely to remove the symptoms, to change the aspect of the symptoms, the appearance of the disease image, imagining that he has thereby established order. What a simple-minded creature he must be! What a groveller in much and more he must be, when he can mediate upon doing such things, even a moment!

How different his actions would be if he but considered that every violent change which he produces in the aspect of the disease aggravates the interior nature of the disease aggravates the sickness of the man and brings about an increase of suffering within him. The patient should be able to realize by his feelings and continue to say, that he is being restored to health, whenever a symptom is removed. There should be a corresponding inward improvement whenever an outward symptom has been caused to disappear, and this will be true whenever disease has been displaced by order.

The perfection of a cure consists, then, first in restoring health, and this is to be done promptly, mildly and permanently, which is the second point. The cure must be quick or speedy, it must be gentle, and it must be continuous or permanent. Whenever an outward symptom has been caused to disappear by violence, as by cathartics to remove constipation, it cannot be called mild or permanent, even if it is prompt. Whenever violent drugs are resorted to there is nothing mild in the action or the reaction that must follow.

At the time this second paragraph of the Organon was written psyching was not so mild as at the present day; blood-letting, sweating, etc., were in vogue at the time Hahnemann wrote these lines. Medicine has changed some what in its appearance; physicians are now using sugar-coated pills and contriving to make medicines appear tasteless or tasteful; they are using concentrated alkaloids. But none of these things have been done because of the discovery of any principle; blood-letting and sweating were not abandoned on account of principle, or the old men depreciate their disuse, and often say they hope the time will come when they can again go back to the lancet. But the drugs of today are ten times more powerful than those formerly used, because more concentrated.

The cocaine, sulphonal and numerous other modern concentrated products of the manufacturing chemists are extremely dangerous and their real action and reaction unknown. The chemical discoveries, of petroleum have opened a field of destruction to human intelligence, to the understanding and to the will, because these products are slowly and insidiously violent. When drugs were used that were instantly dangerous and violent the action was manifest, it showed upon the surface, and the common people saw it. But the patient of the present day goes through more dangerous drugging, because it destroys the mind.

The apparent benefits produced by these drugs are never permanent. They may in some cases seem to be permanent, but then it is because upon the economy has been engrafted a new and most insidious disease, more subtle and more tenacious than the manifestation that was upon the externals and it is because of this tenacity that the original symptoms remain away. The disease in its nature, its esse, has not been changed; it is still there, causing the internal destruction of the man, but its manifestations has been changed, and there has been added to this natural disease a drug disease, more serious than the former.

The manner of cure can only be mild if it flows in the stream of natural direction, establishing order and thereby removing disease. The direction of old-fashioned medicine is like pulling a cat up a hill by the tail; whereas, the treatment that is mild, gentle and permanent, flows with the stream, scarcely producing a ripple; it adjusts the internal disorder and the outermost of man returns to order. Everything becomes orderly from the interior. The curative medicine does not act violently upon the economy, but establishes its action in a mild manner; but while the action is mild and gentle, very often that which follows, which is the reaction, is a turmoil, especially when the work of traditional medicine is being undone and former states are being re-established.

The third point is “upon principles that are at once plain and intelligible.” This means law, it means fixed principles; it means a law as certain as that of gravitation; not guess work, empiricism, or roundabout methods, or a cut-and-dried use of drugs as laid down by the last manufacturer. Our principles have never changed, they have always been the same and will remain the same. To become acquainted with these principles and doctrines, with fixed knowledges, with exactitude or method, to become acquainted with medicines that never change their properties, and to become acquainted with their action, is the all-important aim in homoeopathic study. When one has learned these principles, and continues to practice them, they grow brighter and stronger. The use of these fixed principles is the removal of disease, the restoration to health in a mild, prompt and permanent manner.

If one were to ask an allopathic graduate in this class how he could demonstrate that he had cured somebody, the answer could only be such as I have mentioned already, viz., that the patient did not die, or that the manifestations prescribed for had disappeared. If one were to ask a physician trained in homoeopathic principles the same question, one would find that there are means of distinctly demonstrating whey he knows his patient is better. You would naturally expect, if it is the interior of man that is disordered in sickness, and not his tissues primarily, that the interior must first be turned into order and the exterior last.

The first of man in his voluntary and the second of man in his understanding, the last of man is his outermost; from his centre to his circumference, to his organs, his skin, hair, nails, etc. This being true, the cure must proceed from centre to circumference. From centre to circumference is his above downward, from within outwards, from more important to less important organs, from the head to the hands and feet.

Every homoeopathic practitioner who understands the art of healing, knows that symptoms which go off in these directions remain away permanently. Moreover, he knows that symptoms which disappear in the reverse order of their coming are removed permanently. It is thus he knows that the patient did not merely get well in spite of the treatment, but that he was cured by the action of the remedy. If a homoeopathic physician goes to the bedside of a patient and, upon observing the onset of the symptoms and the course of the disease, sees that the symptoms do not follow this order after his remedy, he knows that he has had but little to do with the course of things.

But, if on the contrary, he observes after the administration of his medicine that the symptoms take a reverse course, then he knows that his medicine has had to do with it, because if the disease were allowed to run its course such a result would not take place. The progression of chronic diseases is from the surface to the centre. All chronic diseases have their first manifestations upon the surface, and from that to the innermost of man. Now in the proportion in which they are thrown back upon the surface it is to be seen that the patient is recovering.

Here it is that the turmoil spoken of above follows the true homoeopathic remedy, and the ignorant do not desire their old outward symptom to be brought back even when it is known as the only possible form of cure. Complaints of the heart and chest and head must in recover be accompanied by manifestation upon the surface, in the extremities, upon the skin, nails and hair. Hence you will find that these parts become diseased when patients are getting well; the hair falls out our eruptions come upon the skin.

In cases of rheumatism of the heart you find, if the patient is recovering, that his knees become rheumatic, and he may say: “Doctor, I could walk all over the house when you first came to me, but now I cannot walk, my joints are so swollen.” If the doctor does not know that that means recovery he will make a prescription that will drive the rheumatism away from the feet and knees and it will go back to the heart and the patient will die; and it need hardly be stated that the traditional doctor does not know this, as he resorts to this plan as his regular and only plan of treatment, and in the most innocent way kills the patient. This is a simple illustration of how it is possible for the interiors of man to cease to be affected and the exterior to become affected.

It may be impossible for the man to be entirely cured, it may be impossible for this state to pass off, but that is the direction of its passing off and there is no other course. If the patient is incurable, while the means used are mild he may experience great suffering in the evolution of his disease, in the course of his partial recovery. To him it may not appear mild, but the means that were used were mild. In acute diseases we do not observe so much distress after prescribing as we see in old incurable cases, in deep-seated chronic complaints that have existed a long time. The return of the outward manifestations upon the extremities are noticed in such cases where they have been suppressed.

To illustrate: there are many patients how have had rheumatism in the hands and feet, in the wrists and knees and elbows, who have been rubbed and stimulated with lotions and strong liniments, with chloroform, with evaporating lotions, with cooling applications, until the rheumatism of the extremities has disappeared to a great extent, but every physician knows that as the disappearance of his rheumatism progresses cardiac symptoms are likely to occur.

When this patient is prescribed for the rheumatism of the extremities must come back or the heart will not be relieved. That is true of every condition that has been upon the extremities and driven in by local treatment. Just as surely as you live and observe the action of homoeopathic remedies upon man, so surely will you see these symptoms come back. The patient will return and say: “Doctor, I have the same symptoms that I had when I was treated by Dr. So and-so for rheumatism.” This comes out in practice nearly every day.

It requires a little explanation to the patient, and if he is intelligent enough to understand it, he will wait for the remedy to act. But the physician who thinks most of his pocket book will say: “If I don’t give him a liniment to put on that limb he will go off and get another physician.” Now let me tell you right here is the beginning of evil. You had better trust to the intelligence of humanity and trust that he will stay and be cured. If you have learned to prescribe for the patient even though he suffer, if you have learned what is right and do not do it, it is a violation of conscience.

This paragraph appeals to man’s integrity; it is said in the last line ” on principles that are at once plain and intelligible.” Just as soon as you leave out integrity, and believe that a man can do just as he pleases, you leave out everything that pertains to principle and you leave out the foundation of success. But when these principles are carried out, when a man has made himself thoroughly conversant with the Materia Medica and thoroughly intelligent in its application, when he is circumspect in his very interior life as to the carrying out of these principles, then he will lead himself into a use that is most delightful, because by such means he may cause diseases to disappear, and may win the lasting friendship and respect of a class of people worth working for.

He has more than that, he has a clear conscience with all that belongs to it; he is living a life of innocence. When he lives such a life he does not allow himself to wink at the notions that are carried out in families, as, for example, how to prevent the production of offspring, how to avoid bearing children, how to separate man and wife by teaching them the nasty little methods of avoiding the bringing forth of offspring. The meddling with these vices and the advocating of them will prevent the father and mother from being cured of their chronic diseases. Unless people lead an orderly life they will not be cured of their chronic diseases. It is your duty as physicians to inculcate such principles among them that they may live an orderly life. The physician who does not know what order is ought not to be trusted.

It is the duty of the physician, then, first to find out what is in man that is disorder, and then to restore him to health; and this return to health, which is a perfect cure, is to be accomplished by means that are mild, that are orderly, that flow gently like the life force itself, turning the internal of man into order, with fixed principles as his guide, and by the homoeopathic remedy.