Personality Taint: A Window to Successful Prescribing
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2002 Mar / Apr VOL 4 NO 2.
Dr S K Mamagin
'Nux-vom / Puls / Arg-nit / Nat-m / Hep-sul
According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary ‘Personality’
is defined as:
"Habitual patterns and qualities of behaviour of any
individual as expressed by physical and mental activities and attitudes;
distinctive individual qualities".
Every individual can present three different kinds of
personality:
- Personality during the normal state of health.
- Personality under the influence of a disease.
- Personality under the influence of a drug (medicinal substance).
Hahemann, in Aphorism No 9 of his "ORGANON OF
MEDICINE", defines the qualities of healthy state of any individual person
as under: in.
"In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital
force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules
with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable,
harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations and functions, so that
our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy
instrument for the higher purposes of our existence".
In the healthy state of man his personality remains rational.
When a person falls ill his personality becomes deviated from his healthy
personality. To accurately picture out this deviated personality ie personality
under the influence of a disease, Hahnemann says in Aphorism 6 (ibid):
"The unprejudiced observer-....... takes note of
nothing in every indvidual disease, except the changes in the health of the body
and of the mind (Morbid phenomena, accidents, symptoms) which can be perceived
externally by means of the senses; that is to say, he notices only the
deviations from the former healthy state of the now diseased individual, which
are felt by the patient himself, remarked by those around him and observed by
the physician. All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole
extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait of
the disease".
And in respect to the law of the power of medicine for
affecting any man, Hahnemann says in Aphorism 32 (ibid):
"But it is quite otherwise with the artificial morbific
agents which we term medicines. Every real medicine, namely, acts at all times,
under all circumstances, on every living human being and produces in him its
peculiar symptoms (distinctly perceptible, if the dose be large enough, so that
evidently every living human organism is liable to be affected, and, as it were,
innoculated with the medicinal disease at all times, and absolutely
(unconditionally).......".
He further clarifies that the medicinal substances have the
power of deranging the health of man unconditionally whereas the morbific agents
and the infectious miasms i.e natural diseases can derange the health of the man
only in certain conditions and only certain indviduals see Aphoirsm 33 (ibid).
"in accordance with this fact, it is undeniably shown by
all experience that the living human organism is much more disposed and has a
greater liability to be acted on, and to have its health deranged by medicinal
powers, than by morbific noxious agents and infectious miasms, or, in other
words, that the morbific noxious agents possess a power of morbidly deranging
man’s health that is subordinate and conditional, often very conditional;
whilst medicinal agents have an absolute unconditional power,
greatly superior to the former."
It is a proven fact that all medicinal substances have the
power to derange the man’s health unconditionally. On the basis of this
natural law "Personalities under the influence of various medicines’ are
processed by individually proving them on various healthy and sensitive
individual human beings, so that the true picture of the power of each medicinal
substance is known clearly (our Materia Medica has been constructed on this
basis). Only this fact that the living human organism is much more disposed and
has a greater liability to be acted on, and to have its health deranged by
medicinal powers, is not sufficient to prove their power to cure natural
diseases. They can only perform a cure if any medicinal substance is capable of
producing in the human body an artifical disease as similar as possible to the
disease to be cured. This fact is described by Hahnemann in Aphorism 34 (ibid).
"the greater strength of the artificial diseases
producible by medicines is, however, not the sole cause of their power to cure
natural diseases. In order that they may effect a cure, it is before all things
requisite that they should be capable of producing in the human body an
artificial disease as similar as possible to the disease to be cured".
Simultaneously the dose of thus selected, similar disease
producing medicine must be somewhat stronger than the disease to be cured, i e
the power of the dose of such similar medicine must be strong enough to produce
a similar disease in the sick person than the disease to be cured. See Aphorism
48 (ibid).
"Neither in the course of nature,..... nor by the
physician’s art, can an existing affection or malady in any one instance be
removed by a dissimilar morbific agent, be it ever so strong, but solely by
one that is similar in symptoms and is somewhat stronger, according to
eternal, irrevocable laws of nature, which have not hitherto been
recognized".
Thus Hahnemann says with confidence in Aphorism 53 (ibid),
that the Homoeopathic method is the only method to obtain true mild cured:
"The true mild cures take place only according to the
homoeopathic method, which, as we have found (# 7-25) by experience and
deduction, is unquestionably the proper one by which through art, the quickest,
most certain and most permanent cures are obtained, since this healing art rests
upon an eternal infallible law of nature.
The pure homeopathic healing art is the only correct method,
the one possible to human art, the straightest way to cure, as certain as that
there is but one straight line between two given points".
When one goes through the Materia Medica one finds various
symptoms very similar in a number of medicines, yet every medicine differs a lot
from any other medicine inspite of similarity in various aspects among two or
more medicines. The differentiating factor between the medicines may be called
as the personality taint or the peculiar personality. Whenever one is
able to identify the personality taint of the disease, which is especially in
mental sphere, enables to select the curative medicine, which has similar
personality taint in its pathogensy.
I may be allowed to quote a few examples from my own experience:
