Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year

Irish School of Homeopathy

Essay: Chronic and Acute Disease

21. Oct. 2005

Chronic and Acute Disease

Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year, Irish School of Homeopathy
Hahnemann felt that acute diseases were relatively easy to deal with. The prescriber had
simply to find the substance which produced similar symptoms to the diseased state in the
healthy individual and after administering the potentised similar remedy, cure would occur
rapidly and completely.
However, treating chronic diseases was often a different matter. - Misha Norland
Discuss
When Homeopathy and Allopathy are compared, there are a great number of distinctions to be
made between them as systems of medicine. Not only is Homeopathy based upon the law of
similars, it also employs the potentising of remedies and the principle of the minimum dose. Yet
even counting these distinctive traits, treatment cannot be said to be truly classically homeopathic
without holism. Treating the patient rather than the disease is an essential component of the
homeopathic system, without which its scope is no broader than that of Allopathy, albeit while
remaining a safer and more effective approach.
Acute prescribing involves the observation of a temporary crisis in
health that a patient is undergoing. The presenting sypmptoms are
treated with a similar remedy in order to bring about cure. The acute
disease state is temporary, ending with the patient's immunity
overcoming the condition or the death of the patient. It is also bound in
time, having a percievable beginning, middle and an end. The
practitioner is bound in scope in that he will only take the symptoms in
and around this temporary condition and its specific effects on the
patient into consideration when choosing the remedy. In this way it is
like allopathy. It is focused only on the temporary condition and its cure and is not concerned with
deeper conditions or the nature of the patient, only the disease. It is not Holistic.
The disease to which man is liable are either rapid morbid processes of the abnormally
deranged vital force, which have a tendency to finish their course more or less quickly, but
always in a moderate time - these are termed acute diseases . 72
Holism was one of Hahnemann's greatest comtributions to western medicine, echoing more the
medical traditions of the east than the west and it was the journey from acute prescribing to
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Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year

Irish School of Homeopathy

Essay: Chronic and Acute Disease

21. Oct. 2005

constitutional treatment that brought it from him.

During Hahnemann's early days as a homeopath, he practiced acute prescribing with the growing
number of remedies available to him. Despite successes in his practice and with treating
epidemics, in around 1816 he became incresingly concened with patients whose complaints would
cure in the short term but who kept returning with one ailment and another. These patients were
not finding a complete cure and Hahnemann set his mind to finding out why. He says, in Chronic
Diseases
... the Homoeopathic physician with such a chronic (non-venereal) case, yea in all cases of
(non-venereal) chronic disease, has not only to combat the disease presented before his eyes,
and must not view and treat it as if it were a well-defined disease, to be speedily and
permanently destroyed and healed by ordinary homoeopathic remedies but that he has always
to encounter only some separate fragment of a more deep-seated original disease. (CD p5)

Thus, a chronic disease is the deeper condition underlying all of the acute
ailments that the patient continually develops, which are but separate
fragments of the chronic syndrome the patient has. These chronic
diseases for hahnemann were not as time-bound as the acute conditions,
nor did he see the patient's immunity as being capable of overcoming the
chronic condition on their own but only with the help of well-chosen
constitutional remedies.
Having named the demon, Hahnemann then proceeded to outline how best to approach treating
the patient's chronic disease. He discovered that it was not the remedies or the law of similars that
was at fault but merely a question of approach in case taking.
the Homoeopathic physician must ... first find out as far as possible the whole extent of all the
accidents and symptoms belonging, to the unknown Primitive malady before he can hope to
discover one or more medicines which may homoeopathically cover the whole of the original
disease by means of its peculiar symptoms. (CD p6)

In order to apprehend the underlying condition and prescribe a remedy for it, Hahnemann is saying
here that the patient's history of disease needs to be thoroughly taken as part of the case.
The third aspect to bring into constitutional case taking is the nature of the individual treated. Their
traits and temperaments. Their striking or unusual foibles, appearance and preferences. Hence
treating chronic disease with a constitutional remedy is broad in its scope, not limited in time and
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Mark O'Sullivan, 2nd Year

Irish School of Homeopathy

Essay: Chronic and Acute Disease

21. Oct. 2005

addresses a condition that has been ongoing and not temporary and takes into consideration the
history and makeup of the patient, not only the presenting condition. It is Holistic and treats the
patient in their totality, rather than just their disease.
The practitioner must be careful when approaching the patient that they do not mix and confuse
these two approaches to case taking. Kent has this to say in his Lectures on Homeopathic
Philosophy:
It is important to avoid getting confused by two disease images that may exist in the body at the
same time.
A chronic patient, for instance, may be suffering from an acute disease and the physician on being
called may think that it is necessary to take the totality of the symptoms; but if he should do that in
an acute disease, mixing both chronic and acute symptoms together, he will become confused and
will not find the right remedy.
The two things must be separated.

Therefore there must be clarity in intention as to exactly

what is being treated on a case per case basis.
Symptoms of acute, short-lived conditons must not find
their way into the constitutional case analysis, which is
far broader in scope and vice versa.
Today we can be grateful for the difficulties that
Hahnemann encountered in his acute case taking, since
without them, he would not have been motivated to look
deeper into the condition of disease and human life and
we would have inherited a far lesser form of
Homeopathy, stripped of the holistic approach which enables it to truly and deeply cure.
References:
The Chronic Diseases S.Hahnemann
The Organon of Medicine S. Hanemann
Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy James T. Kent
The Handbook of Homeopathy Gerhard Koehler Healing arts press, 1989
James Kent on Acute and Chronic Diseases David Little, 1999
http://www.simillimum.com/Thelittlelibrary/Casemanage/kentonacutes.html

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