By G.P.Waring, M.D., Chicago, III., Professor Materia Medica Hahnemann Medical College.

The philosophy of Homoeopathy, applied to the topic selected for this paper, is a very important factor in the ideal cure.

To “cure the sick” is the mission of every respectable and conscientious doctor. An ideal cure is based upon the philosophy promulgated by Hahnemann.

Sections 1 and 2, the very beginning of the Organon, lay down clearly and fully this proposition: “the physician’s high and only mission is to restore the sick to health,” and the “cure should be rapid, gentle, permanent, in the shortest, most reliable and harmless way.”

Cure implies sickness. Sickness implies health. Health is the normal and orderly state of the vital force the vital phenomena as modernly stated by the so-called scientific school of practice.

Restating this fundamental proposition in the reverse of natural order, we understand health to be normal activity of the vital force resulting in normal functioning of the physical and material organism. Sickness has its beginning, and continuous cause in the disorder of this same vital force, the extent of the sickness being in proportion to the disorder.

Cure is the restoration of order, hence a return to the health state. If the return to health is permanent the cure is ideal. If not permanent it is recovery only, and the patient is still sick and will present a history of relapses.

Nearly all of the results in the traditional practice of medicine, and too often in our own work, the patient recover to be sick again. Nature, without interference and unaided, can do as well and often better.

To restore permanently implies the elimination and annihilation of the entire disorder and disorder-producing causes. Then, and not until then, can there be an ideal cure.

It is not the purpose of this paper to deal with ordinary everyday recoveries. The American Institute and kindred societies, supporting the American Medical in an endless chain of recoveries and relapses, have discussed this subject to the limit.

What the patient needs, and what the race needs, is the permanent cure the ideal cure.

This paper then deals with the ideal cure, and I trust the Chairman will rule out any discussions on the paper not consistent with this purpose. We can well afford to leave that with the “fixers and mixers,” who are willing to accept and evidently satisfied with palliation and recovery.

Two essential factors enter into the ideal cure the patient and the remedy.

The patient most truly has an important part in the cure, much more so than most of us realize. In a way we know and understand the relation between the patient and the cure, but neglect to instruct and impress the patient as to his part.

Based upon this fault a natural error results in expecting too much from the remedy. What the remedy can do is limited and of short duration. What the patient can do in getting well and maintaining health is limited only by death itself.

What the patient can and should do large as the Unabridged Dictionary. What the remedy can and must do may be stated in a paragraph.

The patient’s part requires that the habits and environment of everyday life shall be consistent with, support and never interfere or antagonize Nature’s effort, through the vital force, to restore and maintain health.

From the philosophy of Hahnemann what is understood by the remedy?

Sickness has just been defined as the vital force in disorder, cure being a restoration to order, consequently a remedy must be the agent employed capable of changing this disorder into an orderly state. Not the disorder of the material organism, but the disorder of the vital force.

The vital force when restored to normal activity begins instantly the vital process of normal functioning, upon which depends the restoration of the material organism.

The thought and teaching of philosophy is this: The restoration of the vital force is an instantaneous change or a series of such changes the direct action of the remedy.

The restoration of the material organism is a continuous process of hours, days, months or years, the direct action of the vital force.

The remedy has much or all to do with the former, but nothing whatever to do with the latter. The active force of the remedy is immaterial in character, must be so to act upon or impress the immaterial vital force. Action in this plane of being is by instantaneous impulse, not by continuous contact, as is the material plane. The notion that the remedy, when administered, remains somewhere in the human economy to act for a stated time is an error based upon materialism, and has no part in homoeopathic truth. With this common error rests the folly of too much dosing and too little waiting on the restored vital force to do its part, this error of expecting the remedy to more than restore the vital force by a single impulse leads many a good doctor to think and say that “the remedy failed.”

The indicated remedy never fails in curable cases, but the doctor fails continually when confused by this common error. He gives repeated doses of the single medicine, or changes the remedy too soon, saying nothing about alternation or the compound tablets which are not entitled to the back-door entrance to homoeopathic practice.

Therefore, the remedy useful in curing the sick is solely and only such an agent as will by instantaneous impulse restore the vital force to normal activity. Any aent capable of producing such an impulse becomes a remedy.

The homoeopathic physician adheres to the law of drug selection and secures his remedy. If, however, the hypnotist, the Christian Scientist, the Divine Healer, or the Christ himself, cures the sick, the means used must be an agent capable of restoring the vital force an instantaneous impulse, the immaterial character of which no one questions.

It is folly to deny, especially in many cases of mental and nervous complaints, that there are curative agents outside of the field of drugs. The rapid growth of the no-medicine cults, which are treating the sick, is a natural result of such folly. The highest ideal of the physician being to cure the sick, every known remedy should be at his command, and then there would be no room for the no-medicine cults thriving all about us.

The patient’s part in the cure, the second factor, as previously outlined, begins immediately following the administration of the remedy and continues until all symptoms of the sickness are permanently removed this being the only evidence of a cure.

The impulse of the remedy has been given necessary to restore the vital force. The remedy can do nothing more so long as the vital force is in order. If disorder, for any reason, occurs, a repetition of the same remedy or a new one is indicated.

The vital force once restored the processes of normal functioning are established, and if the patient’s habits and environment do not interfere and antagonize a cure must result in all curable cases.

But that little word “if” “if the patient’s habits and environment do not interfere or antagonize,” speaks of a world of sorrow and disappointment. Almost endless sorrow to the patient and paralyzing disappointment to the doctor.

To live a life in conflict with Nature’s effort to maintain health is a slow but certain suicide. The demands of society, fashion, business, the false habit of eating, sleeping and breathing, the damnable curse of the drugging habit, including intoxicating liquors and tobacco, the false and wicked sexual habit of both the married and the single are a few of the many flagrant and constantly increasing barriers of the ideal cure.

At first, if acquired during the patient’s lifetime, these obstructions to the cure may be only exciting causes of disorder, and if eliminated order may be restored without a remedy. Later, however, a chronic state develops, becoming in itself a predisposing cause. This is a constitutional state a culmination of all the wrong doing and wrong living of the race in violation of certain fixed laws upon which health depends.

This Hahnemann called psora, and whether as a race defeat or acquired during the patient’s lifetime, it becomes a serious obstruction to successful treatment an obstruction which must be corrected and eliminated before an ideal cure can be expected.

The removal of these obstructions, when only exciting causes, is wholly the patient’s part of the cure. The doctor who aims to bring about an ideal cure should not, and likely would not, prescribe until the patient’s life is adjusted, as far as possible, to the requirements of health. Placebo and a corrected daily life is the first and best prescription in such cases. If symptoms disappear permanently no treatment is needed. In case a medicine had been given to agree with the symptoms and the exciting causes removed at the same time, with the same result as above, the doctor will be fooled, not knowing the cause of the cure. That, however, is not of such foolishness. If he reports the case he makes fools of us, who read of a typical cure. We, of course, do not know of the exciting causes, as the are seldom reported. Because of the doctor’s neglect and the patient’s folly in not removing these exciting causes the no-medicine treatments are fast increasing in number and power. Christian Science, Dowdiness, etc., secure their results largely, if not entirely, by eliminating from the patient’s daily life indiscriminate crude drugging and other habits inimical to health.

The removal of the predisposing or chronic causes is quite another thing. When psora is once established no superficial means can do more than palliate. Hahnemann, after twelve years of persistent study, experiment and observation, gave the first solution of this difficult problem. A remedy as deep acting as can be an inherited constitutional miasm must be administered. This is the doctor’s part of the cure, and his success will be in proportion as his practice is consistent with the philosophy of Hahnemann’s antipsoric treatment.

The carefully selected remedy will do its part in curable cases. The reaction will be established which will eliminate psora and its offspring, syphilis and sycosis, providing the patient’s part in the cure is faithfully performed.