Choosing the Remedy

Organon Aphorism §148

The natural disease is never to be considered as a noxious material situated somewhere within the interior or exterior of man (§ 11-13) but as one produced by an inimical spirit-like (conceptual) agency which, like a kind of infection (note to § 11) disturbs in its instinctive existence of the spirit-like (conceptual) principle of life within the organism torturing it as an evil spirit and compelling it to produce certain ailments and disorders in the regular course of its life. These are known as symptoms (disease). If, now, the influence of this inimical agency that not only caused but strives to continue this disorder, be taken away as is done when the physician administers an artificial potency, capable of altering the life principle in the most similar manner (a homoeopathic medicine) which exceeds in energy even in the smallest dose the similar natural disease (§§ 33, 279), then the influence of the original noxious morbid agent on the life principle is lost during the action of this stronger similar artificial disease. Thence the evil no longer exists for the life principle – it is destroyed. If, as has been said, the selected homoeopathic remedy is administered properly, then the acute natural disease which is to be overruled if recently developed, will disappear imperceptibly in a few hours. An older, more chronic disease will yield somewhat later together with all traces of discomfort, by the use of several doses of the same more highly potentized remedy or after careful selection of one or another more similar homoeopathic medicine. Health, recovery, follow in imperceptible, often rapid transitions. The life principle is freed again and capable of resuming the life of the organism in health as before and strength returns.

Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine, 6th edition (Boericke translation, public domain).

Expert explanation & clinical interpretation for this aphorism are coming soon.