Books & Journals » The Homoeopathic Recorder 1944 Jun Vol LIX No 12 » NEW BASIS FOR MEDICAL SCIENCE
NEW BASIS FOR MEDICAL SCIENCE
by Allan D. Sutherland
The diagnostic side of medicine has emerged as an orderly science. Its processes are easily standardized once the appropriate instruments are made and the technique of their use mastered. However, since no two people are exactly alike, therapeutic standardization is not so simple.
Reprints of this article will be made, but in order to know how many reprints will be needed those who wish copies should notify the Editor promptly. Anyone who wishes to use these groupings should order several copies, because it will probably be a long time before another printing of the groups is issued. An average of probably fifty drugs will be added each year until all the drugs have been grouped.
A REPORT FROM THE FOUNDATION FOR HOMOEOPATHIC RESEARCH.
Each individual has his illness in his own way, and the diagnostic factor is neither accurate nor safe as the guide to therapy. George Starr White and Albert Abrams intuitively recognized this and sought for more helpful methods of diagnosis and treatment. Both finally reached the conclusion that the autonomic activity of the body is the field in which all curative effort originates and is the spontaneous source of all constructive and reparative efforts.
White used the autonomic reactions of the patient himself, comparing the response to light of various colors in healthy persons and in patients. Abrams found that a substitute for the patient could be arranged if a healthy person were properly connected to a tuning circuit, in which case energy from the patient passed through the circuit and manifested its presence by exciting reflexes in the healthy person connected to the opposite terminal of the circuit.
Abrams went a step further when he discovered that a drop of the patients blood connected into the circuit was just as good a source of the patients energy as the patient himself, each drop of blood literally epitomising the radiation or energy complex proceeding from the patient. Apart from the blood under test, the most important element in the setup thus became the healthy person in the circuit, for by responding to factors associated with the patient he acted both as a detector giving articulation to the circuit and as a substitute for the absent patient. The extent of this substitution is apparent from the fact that the reflexes in the healthy detector can be shown to take place at the sites of the patients pathology.
This phenomenon permits of localization of the illness even when the diagnostician is purposely kept ignorant of the patients condition. This mirroring of the patient by the healthy detector is new to science. But is uncovers the deep interrelatedness of all material things and the extraordinary responsiveness especially of living creatures.
A great step forward was taken when Wm. E. Boyd of Glasgow, Scotland, straightened out Abrams confused theories and constructed a new tuning circuit similar to the circuits used in radio receivers but adapted to energy which Boyd felt to be of high frequency compared with wireless waves. Boyds circuit became known as the Emanometer. As a result of its enormous increase in sensitivity over Abrams instruments, the Emanometer made two cardinal contributions.
(1) For the first time potentized drugs could be detected by other than purely clinical methods. Boyd found that drugs emitted an energy which could be detected by and analyzed on the Emanometer much like the energy from patients blood. Under suitable conditions, the energy from drugs seemed to mingle and interfere with the blood energies, giving a resultant different from either the blood or the drug energies alone. Because of this interaction it seems probable that the drug energies detected by the Emanometer, despite their origins in inanimate material, are akin to the energies emanating from blood.
Boyd now worked out a technique on the Emanometer for finding the patients similimum. Only a brief summary of the technique can be given here:.
Blood from the patient passes energy, representing illness, through the circuit and to the healthy person who acts as detector in the manner explained above. Drugs are now placed in the circuit with the blood, one at a time, until the disease- indicating energies from the blood disappear as the result of a particular drug being in the circuit. This phenomenon has been interpreted to mean that the correct drug gives out energy of just the right character to interfere with and annul the abnormal energy from the patients blood. If the drug is removed from the circuit, the abnormal blood energy reappears, but disappears once more as soon as the specific drug is replaced. A drug having this effect will always bring clinical improvement when administered, unless the patient is too far gone to respond.
For fuller descriptions of this technique consult the literature.
(2) The second great contribution of the Emanometer resulted from improved methods of analyzing energy from the blood of patients. Boyd discovered that all persons, ill or healthy, presented eleven basic variations in one very fundamental physical characteristic. This characteristic could be obtained by using the Emanometer in conjunction with patients blood as the source of energy and a healthy person as detector in the setup previously described. Neither Abrams, nor any other known technique, serves as indicator of these eleven variations, or groups. Through its ability to discriminate amongst crude and potentized drugs, the Emanometer next showed that all drugs exhibit the same eleven basic variations as do human beings. Furthers clinical work brought to light the most important single generalization ever discovered in remedy selection:.
The best remedy will always belong to the same Emanometer group as the patient.
Thus, Sulfur in the eighth group will do its best work when given to a patient also from the eighth group. Any drug remains constantly in one group, but patients may change their group from a variety of causes to be discussed later. If the group factor is regarded as interwoven with physical characteristics and relationships, then living creatures perhaps show group variations as a consequence of electrophysical disturbances in the organism; inanimate material, with its fixed physical constitution, is freed from such disturbances and their consequent group variations.
Whenever the patient changes his group, the remedy must be sought for amongst the drugs of the new group. Furthermore, when the grouping factor in the drug energy bears a certain very precise relationship to the grouping factor of the patient, then the total energy of the drug will be so related to the patient as to exert maximum curative stimulation. These facts have been confirmed by thousands of Emanometer tests. We are now in a position to state the following important axiom:.
IN THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO EACH OTHER THE GROUP FACTOR IN THE PATIENT AND IN THE DRUG IS THE PIVOTAL POINT AROUND WHICH OTHER FACTORS ROTATE AND MAY BE LIKENED TO THE CENTER OF GRAVITY OF A BODY. IT IS ONLY WHEN THE PATIENT AND THE DRUG ARE IN THE SAME GROUP THAT A PERFECT PRESCRIPTION RESULTS. SIMILARLY, REGARDLESS OF THE IRREGULARITY OF SHAPE OF A FREELY SUSPENDED BODY, ITS FINAL EQUILIBRIUM DEPENDS ON ITS CENTER OF GRAVITY.
Every aspect of drug and patient relation bears out the importance of the grouping. Every perfect homoeopathic prescription can be shown on the Emanometer to belong to the patients group. Sulfur in the eighth group would have only a transitory effect on a patient from the sixth group. Working from the opposite end, if a patients blood were tested on the Emanometer to find a drug which would cause maximum curative intensification in the strength of the group factor, that drug would be found on further test to cancel all the abnormal energy emanating from the blood. By analyzing the effect of the drug factor on that of the patient, none of the rest of the energy need be examined in detail; nevertheless, the drug thus selected will cure or improve the patient to whom it is given. Thus the grouping factor stands in a reciprocal position toward other energy in the patient.
Note that the Emanometer classification is not related to other physical groupings such as the periodical table of the elements. The kind of rhythm observable in the periodic table is not duplicated in the Boyd groups. However, the distribution of drugs in the groups is at times highly suggestive in its own way.
Despite the apparently random distribution of minerals in the groups, study of these reveals that, in general, where two elements from different groups unite to form a substance, the heavier component influences the grouping of the combination. Thus, Ferrum occurs in the first group along with the chloride and bromide of that metal; but the iodide will be found in the eighth group, the position for the element Iodum, which has a heavier atomic weight than Ferrum.
Sometimes the more chemically active component of a salt dominates the combination, as when Ferrum phos. falls into the fifth group, the natural home of Phosphorus, despite the fact that Phosphorus is atomically lighter than Ferrum. From this it is clear that a relation exists between the occurrence of the Boyd groups and the physical structure of drugs, and that certain rhythms and an orderliness may be traced within the confines of the groups. But no correlation is yet perceptible between these groups and the physical and chemical characteristics discovered by orthodox science.
We do not know with what quality of matter to connect the group factor. However, materials with similar physical constitution often fall into the same group. Thus, all of the snake venoms thus far classified, whether of the neurotoxic or hemolytic type, react in the second group. If we are tempted to generalize that perhaps something in animal poisons is responsible for this regularity of arrangement we are silenced by the observation that only snake venoms show this particular orderliness. Spiders have a more heterogeneous distribution: Latrodectus mact. in group 8, Aranea diad. and Tarantula in group 6, Mygale las. and Jumping Spider in group 5. Clearly the animal origin does not explain why all snake venoms apparently belong to the second group.
But this lumping of the venoms does explain why such drugs as Lachesis, Naja and Aurum are not as frequently useful as Sulfur, Silica and Arsenic. The second group is relatively small, both as to the drugs belonging within it and as to patients. Comparatively few patients are classified in groups 2; far larger numbers fall into groups 5,6, and 8. The pathogenesis of a drug like Lachesis is precise and crisp; yet patients do not often exhibit the type of illness making such a symptomatology possible.
Whether this means that the Lachesis (or Naja or Bothrops) type of illness is rare, or that the group 2 constitution productive of such states is rare, we do not know. The position of Aurum in a less usual group (the second), in company with the venoms, helps to make clear why Aurum is useful in the treatment of syphilis when Mercurius fails-i.e., to begin with, the patient probably belonged to the second group and was unresponsive to any drug from the eighth.
Out of eleven variations of the group factor, three occur with greater frequency than the other eight combined. These three variations have already been mentioned as the fifth, sixth and eighth groups. More persons belong in these groups than in any others; and more than half of all classified drugs also belong here. The eighth group is the commonest, the fifth a close second-it will be remembered that they comprise part of a series. Doubtless the preponderance of these three groups is associated with important physical factors. Perhaps the distribution of groups is in some manner related to the occurrence of blood types. We do not know.
The first group is interesting because one of its rhythms shows exceptionally close agreement with a physical classification already accepted in science. Ferrum, Niccolum and Cobaltum will be recognized at once as the only three metals gifted with magnetic properties; in the periodic table of elements they occupy adjoining positions. They also fall into the same Boyd group. The first group is further interesting for containing the two lighter halogens, Bromine and Chlorine; but the family of halogens is more loosely tied together than the magnetic metals, Iodine belonging to the eighth group and Fluoric acid to the fourth (pure fluorine has not been potentised).
Whereas the elements occupy an ascending scale according to atomic weight, they are not distributed amongst the Boyd groups in any similar pattern. A light mineral like pure Calcium exists in the second group together with Aurum, one of the heaviest of the elements. The fifth group shows an equally wide divergence between phosphorus, which is light, and Plumbum, which is heavy. The eighth group embraces Mercurius and Platinum, both heavy; and other heavy elements appear in the tenth group (Thorium and Uranium) and in the eleventh (Thallium). Until we learn the physical factors that establish the Boyd grouping of a substance we shall be unable to explain these divergencies from the atomic table by weights and by periods.
The grouping is most suggestive with reference to drugs of animal origin-especially the nosodes. We have seen how the snake venoms all cling to the second group. Of the true Tuberculins so far classified (Koch, bovinum, etc.), all are in the tenth group.
Bacillinum, not a tuberculin at all but the trituration of a tubercular lung tissue saturated with its end-products of disease and secondary infections like staphylococcus and streptococcus, belongs to the eighth group. Carcinosin, Scirrhinum, Carcin. axillae (a Gruener nosode), and Cancer inject. blood (Koch) show their relatedness by belonging to the fifth group. Influenzin (old type) and Influenzin antitoxin (horse) occupy positions close by in the fifth group; and the occurrence of another nosode in that group, Coryza, may well set us thinking about the common cold, its similarity at times to the prodromal stages of mild flu, and the way in which a cold sometimes persists despite remedies and at length flares up into flu.
Obviously, there is much more continuity amongst disease than many imagine. Equal continuity must therefore be shown by medicaments. How tightly a nosode group can cling together is shown by the Bach colon nosodes. The micro-organisms from which they are prepared are all gram-positive and do not ferment lactose. They are, however, found in patients of the most diverse types, suffering from innumerable dysfunctions and pathologies. Yet all seven, despite their scattered origins, occupy a firm position in group 8.
Sometimes the groups seem to be teaching us a lesson by the irregularities. Of the Kalis so far grouped, the largest single cluster is to be found in the eighth group. Some of the Kali salts show the influence of the heavier member; others do not. In the sixth group we find Kali mur., Kali nit., Kali ferrocy. From the strong domination by Arsenic in the case of other salts we might expect Kali ars. in this group, the home of Ars. Instead, Kali ars. belongs to the seventh group with Kali carb.
The position of Kali phos. and Kali mang. in the fifth group is clearly due to the Phosphorus and the Manganese (both fifth groupers), and Kali osmic. is pulled into group 10 by the Osmium. We thus observe that Kali salts may occupy any of the groups from five onwards; so far no Kali has been placed in the first to the fourth groups. If this distribution can be explained on physical grounds, we do not yet know how.
Of eighteen organic and inorganic acids thus far classified, seven are distributed amongst five different groups; the remaining eleven are clumped together in the fifth group. If we remember the relation of the Hydrogen element to all acids and the occurrence of pure Hydrogen in group 5, the clumping of eleven acids becomes clearer. On the other hand, no clue has been found which will explain the behavior of the nonconformist seven.
The prescriber will be chiefly interested to know whether symptomatic identification is possible with the groups. Can the physician recognize the group 2 patient as compared with a patient from group 6? In the last analysis, perhaps all such efforts will be found to reduce to a drug rather than a group picture. A patient will look like the sixth group because his symptoms so blatantly call for Arsenic; he will not lead one to Arsenic by first exhibiting sixth group characteristics. A quick glance over the drugs in group 6 will show how impossible, how contradictory and chaotic, a sixth group "type" would be.
The obvious generalization would stem from the accumulation of quick-acting drugs like Arsenic, Allium cepa, Euphrasia, Echinacea, Gelsemium, Sanguinaria, Spongia, Squilla, Sticta, the Strep. nosodes, and the relation of all these to infections of mucous membranes especially. But in the same breath we must admit the great chronic characteristics of other drugs and of other aspects of some of the drugs just enumerated: Arsenic, Echinacea, Anacardium, Curare, Kali mur., Lithium, Malaria, Natrum ars., the Streps. themselves, nd so forth. Furthermore, the curative range is not at all confined to infective conditions but embraces the whole gamut of disease.
Remedy identification is reached, homoeopathically, through the symptoms. Group identification calls for quite a different technique and is not evident from the symptoms. Thus far in the case of patients appearing for the first time the Emanometer is the only indicator of the Boyd groups. Neither symptomatic evaluation, nor other efforts made through the reaction of the reflexes, has supplanted the Emanometer in this respect.
From the diversity of groups in which fall patients and drugs it is clear that the Boyd classification is not a static phenomenon. It indicates a dynamic relation between disease and its medicaments. It indicates further dynamic activity of the patients most fundamental being. Over 30,000 Emanometer tests have uncovered some clinical observations of great interest.
The most important has to do with the group of any human being at a particular time. Axiomatically, we may state that within the limits of observation thus far the group into which a person is born continues to be his group during his lifetime. Certain influences tend to alter that group; such alterations, usually temporary, are followed by a reversion to the normal group of the person. Illness, especially acute conditions, are the most general causes of change in grouping.
Even the changes tend to follow a pattern rather than to occur at random. Thus, a patient normally in group 8 will change more readily to the fifth or eleventh groups than to any of the others. Circulation within this series of three groups is preeminently shown by patients belonging originally to any one of the three. From this fact, the fifth, eighth and eleventh groups are considered to be complementary at least in a clinical sense.
This is further borne out when a patient erroneously receives a drug from one of his complementary groups instead of his own group; the response to the first dose is often quite satisfactory. When the error leads to a drug from an unrelated group, usually there is no effect, or a very transient one. If the drug from a related group brings a good response in the first dose it will, oddly enough, not bear repetition well. It will aggravate the patient or even mix the case.
Besides the group series just mentioned (5,8,11), there are two others. The first of these, more clearly defined than the second, consists of groups 1, 6 and 10. The second series is made up of groups 2 and 7, perhaps also group 4. Some sort of relation appears to exist between the fourth group and the second on one hand and the fifth on the other. the relation between groups 4 and 5 is indeed quite marked. Thus the fourth group is unusual in connecting with two drug series which are otherwise quite unrelated. Observation has not yet allocated groups 3 and 9 to a series, although the re is evidence, so far insufficient, that the ninth group may be akin to the second and seventh.
Normally the group series in patients is a relatively fixed phenomenon in that a patient from one series shows no tendency to move into the groups of another series. The group-series apparently reflect fundamental constitutional types, few in number, which manifest further variation in the individual groups. Acute illness, however, often disturbs the patient sufficiently to throw him not only out of his usual group but out of his group-series. Traumatic and surgical shock have been observed to bring the same effect. These displacements into groups foreign to the patient give way to the normal grouping as soon as the acute condition passes.
Pregnancy is another influence affecting the groupings. Mc- Crae, one of Boyds co-workers, mentions the fact that immediately after conception the mothers group may change. When the change is to a group in the mothers series, the embryo is usually male; when to the fathers group or to one of the fathers series, the embryo is usually female. If conception takes place without affecting the mothers grouping, the child will probably be male. These observations apply where the mother and father belong to different groups, a fact that must be ascertained by the Emanometer prior to conception.
When mother and father belong to the same group identification of the childs sex is no longer possible on these lines.
From the foregoing remarks it will be clear that under usual conditions if the patients group can be determined it is apt to persist unchanged except for the effects of acute vicissitudes. It is also clear that, once established, knowledge of the patients group is of great value to the prescriber since the Emanometer has shown that the patients best remedy will always be from the drugs of his group. On this, therefore, the prescriber may base his surest generalization.
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Allan D. Sutherland
CUPRUM ARSENICUM
ARTERIOSCLEROSIS CALCAREOUS