Homoeopathic practice would be a lot simpler if it was absolutely true that “treat likes with likes” was universally applicable.
However, even Hahnemann himself was forced, in the face of failures when applying strictly this rule, to introduce a modifying element, suggesting that the physician when considering a case of chronic disease should try to find out the condition’s original cause, which he thought was connected mostly to a chronic miasm (Organon, Article 5).
A footnote to Organon §7 points out that more immediate causes have to be considered too; and §206 says it must be ascertained whether the patient has had syphilis or genital warts (Human Papilloma Virus) - the latter, Feigwarzen-Tripper in the original, baldly translated as figwart-gonorrhoea.
It seems obvious that “cause” is very important, but difficult to take into consideration because it can rarely be ascertained from working backward from assessing the patient’s currently-presenting symptoms. Faced with the impossibility, in many cases, of finding an incontestable cause it is tempting to try all sorts of methods and theories claimed to be solutions to the problem.
Modern miasm theories fill the bill. The greatest impetus to these theories may very well have been Processo Sanchez Ortega’s presentation at a Liga Medicorum Homoeopathica Internationalis conference in 1944 of his idea that psora spelled deficiency/inhibition, sycosis excess, and syphilis perversion/destruction. This is not a development of anything found in the writings of Hahnemann; it is a concept so close to ideas found in Eastern medicine I suspect Ortega concocted it under the influence of an Indian author.
Theories like Ortega’s are a betrayal of the principle that a system of medicine should have a clearly perceived rational basis. How can remedies be classified in “miasm” groups with any certainty? How can there be uniformity of opinion on classification? Boenninghausen wrote in 1862 “. . . we do not yet have any sure signs to allow the realm of one miasm to be distinguished with certainty from that of another.” It is no better today; to say Abelmoschus, Mancinella and Thyroidinum are in the typhoid miasm group is dangerous drivel and only serves to move the would-be prescriber away from the key principle of homoeopathy - the matching of the symptoms of the case of disease (not the patient!) with those known to be capable of being manifested by the action of a substance in an organism.
To trot out the pathetic argument that runs along the lines of “If Hahnemann were alive today it is quite possible he would have a miasm theory very like that of Rajan Sankaran” is like saying “If Gotama Buddha were alive today he might very well be an Anglican; if Moses were here today he could be chairman of the Pig-meat Marketing Board.” Obviously each case would involve a betrayal of the very principles and concepts which made their contribution to the world unique and revolutionary. Hahnemann’s situation is just the same.
Bruce Barwell