100

Take a through case when investigating an epidemic or

sporadic disease. With little exception, each reigning
epidemic differs from all previous ones.
In the investigation of symptom complex of epidemic disease, it
makes no difference if something similar has ever appeared
before under the same or any other name .The noveltry or
peculiarity of such a contagion makes no difference, either in its
examination or its cure, since the physician presupposes that the
pure image of each and every presently reigning disease is new
and unknown. He must explore it for himself from the ground up if
he wants to be a genuine ,through medical-art practitioner who
never put conjecture in the place of prescription and never
assumes (with out carefully spying out all of the disease
manifestation)that the treatment for a case of disease entrusted
to him is either entirely or partially known .This is all the more
case here since each reigning epidemic is in many regards a
phenomenon of a
particular kind
that is found, by exact
investigation, to deviate greatly from all former epidemics(which
have been falsely labeled with certain names)this is true of all
contagious disease except those that stem from an invariable
infectious tinde ,such as smallpox, measles etc

101
The symptom complex of an epidemic disease only comes
to light through the observation of several cases involving
different bodily constitutions

It is may well be that the physician does not get a prescription of

complete image of the epidemic disease with first case he
encounters since each such collective disease only brings the

complex of its symptoms to the light of day with the closer

observations of several cases. Mean while ,the carefully
investigating physician can often come so close to the true state,
even with the first or second patient, that he become alive to the
characteristic image of the disease, and then finds a fitting,
homeopathically commensurate remedy for it.
102
Upon recording the symptoms of several cases of this kind ,the
sketch of the disease image become more and more complete-not
larger and more verbose, but more characteristic ,more
encomposing of the peculiarity of this collective disease .On one
hand the general signs (e.g.-loss of appetite ,sleeplessness)obtain
their own narrower determinations .On the other hand ,the more
marked ,particular and(at least in this connection)rarer symptoms
,belonging to only a few disease, emerge from what is
characteristic for this epidemic.
To be sure, all those afflicted by this epidemic at that time have
the same disease, following from one and the same source.
However the entire extent of such an epidemic disease and the
totality of its symptoms (knowledge of which belongs to the
overviews of the complete disease-image, so one can choose the
most fitting homoeopathic remedy for this symptom-complex)
cannot be perceived in a single patient, but can only be
completely abstracted and gathered (inferred) from the suffering
of several patients of different bodily constitutions-Hahnemann
s Organon of the Medical Art translated by Wenda
Brewster Oreilly PhD
Hahnemann is against the nosological classification of disease not
because it has no utility but because it is misleading for treatment
purpose. In epidemic disease, the disease cause (WHETHER
PHYSCICAL OR BIOLOGICAL) might be identical or of a nature of a
fixed miasm, giving rise to a general picture of the disease

which all the patient conform to; but general picture of the
disease which all the patient confirm to; but each individual
patient add his quota to this general symptom-complex to make
each patient unique and different from other patients.
As for example in a cholera epidemic all cholera patients present
such common picture as to render the diagnosis of cholera very
easy.
But if each individual patient is carefully investigated, enough
symptoms might be ascertained to individualize one from other.
So that ten cholera patients might eacg require different remedy
which is most similar in symptoms to each of them.
Thus treatment by the name of disease, in a stereotyped way, is
not possible in the homoeopathic mode of treatment. Individuals
vary from each other and even the generic picture of the
epidemic disease may vary from year to year.
So Hahnemann says these useless and misused names of
disease ought to have no influence on the practice of a true
physician, who knows that he has to judge of and to cure
diseases, not according to the similarity of the names of a single
one of their symptoms, but according to the to the totality of the
signs of individual state of each particular patient ,whose
affection it is his duty carefully to investigate, but never give to
hypothetical gues at it. If ,however it is deemed necessary
sometimes to make use of names of disease, in order ,when
talking about patient to ordinary person ,to render ourselves
intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ them as
collective names and tell them.eg the patient has a kind of St.
Vitu s dance, a kind of dropsy, a kind of typhus, a kind of auge;
but(in order to go away once for all with the mistaken notions
these names give rise to) we should never say he has the St
.Vitus dance ,the typhus, the dropsy ,the ague ,as there are

certainly no disease of these and similar of these and similar

names of fixed unvarying character(vide foot note of 81)
So Hahnemann recommends to investigate each sporadic and
epidemic disease as a new and unknown case and select
medicine according to symptoms similarity.
In epidemic disease a complete picture of the disease becomes
apparent to a physician only when he observes a number of cases
during the epidemic .No disease is fully manifested through
symptoms in one individual case. Epidemic disease may be
taken as providing or a particular noxious agent on a
gigantic scale ,as a complete picture of a drug disease is
obtained after collecting the different groups of symptoms
from good many provers; similarly the complete picture of
a natural disease is grasped through observation of a
good many persons falling victims of that epidemic
disease. commentary by Dr.B.K Sarkar