Organon * (lat. organum: Instrument) is a Greek word by its origin and literary means "implement, musical instrument,
organ of the body" or "a tool" but in the new English lexis it has the meaning of "an instrument for acquiring
knowledge; specifically: a body of principles of scientific or philosophic investigation".
In this sense we can simplify the semantics of ORGANON merely to:
1. A method of scientific investigation,
2. An instrument of thoughts,
3. A system of logic,
4. Literary work.
It is presumed that Hahnemann was influenced with the word Organon, because its meaning had some practical
relationship with his discovery of Homeopathic medical science **
The Book
Hahnemann when first experienced the effect of Quinine (Cinchona) wrote an article which was published under the title 'Medicine of Experience'.
After a long trial of medicinal experiments, whatever he have gained, he logically wrote his theory and practical experiences in the book form in the year 1810. Thus the first edition of his Homoeopathic science experience came in existence for the first time before the world. The title of the book was "Organon of Rational Art of Healing" and it contains 271 sections or Paragraphs. The second edition title was 'Organon of Healing Art' and it published in the year 1819 and containing 318 para or sections. The third edition published in the year 1824 and having 320 paragraphs or sections, but the title was the same. The fourth edition published with the same title in the year 1829, having 292 paragraphs or sections, but in this edition "Theory of Chronic Disease"[6] introduced by the Hahnemann for the first time, which was a unique innovation.
The 5th edition was having the same title as previous one and was published in the year 1833, having 294 sections or para. In this edition for the first time the doctrine of Vital Force and drug-dynamization[7] were introduced, which was taken a new approach to Homoeopathic science.
The Sixth edition titled "Organon of Medicine", published in the year 1921, having 291 para or sections. A treatise on Organon of Medicine is more added.
Some Excerpts (Aphorisms) from Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine.
§ 1
The physician’s high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed.
§ 2
The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.
§ 4
The physician is likewise a preserver of health if he knows the things that derange health and cause disease, and how to remove them from persons in health.
§ 16
Our vital force, as a spirit-like dynamis, cannot be attacked and affected by injurious influences on the healthy organism caused by the external inimical forces that disturb the harmonious play of life, otherwise than in a spirit-like (dynamic) way, and in like manner, all such morbid derangements (diseases) cannot be removed from it by the physician in any other way than by the spirit-like (dynamic1, virtual) alterative powers of the serviceable medicines acting upon our spirit-like vital force, which perceives them through the medium of the sentient faculty of the nerves everywhere present in the organism, so that it is only by their dynamic action on the vital force that remedies are able to re-establish and do actually re-establish health and vital harmony, after the changes in the health of the patient cognizable by our senses (the totality of the symptoms) have revealed the disease to the carefully observing and investigating physician as fully as was requisite in order to enable him to cure it.
§ 42
Nature herself permits, as has been stated, in some cases, the simultaneous occurrence of two (indeed, of three) natural disease in one and the same body. This complication, however, it must be remarked, happens only in the case of two dissimilar disease, which according to the eternal laws of nature do not remove, do not annihilate and cannot cure one another, but, as it seems, both (or all three) remain, as it were, separate in the organism, and each takes possession of the parts and systems peculiarly appropriate to it, which, on account of the want of resemblance of these maladies to each other, can very well happen without disparagement to the unity of life.
§ 77
Those diseases are inappropriately named chronic, which persons incur who expose themselves continually to avoidable noxious influences, who are in the habit of indulging in injurious liquors or aliments, are addicted to dissipation of many kinds which undermine the health, who undergo prolonged abstinence from things that are necessary for the support of life, who reside in unhealthy localities, especially marshy districts, who are housed in cellars or other confined dwellings, who are deprived of exercise or of open air, who ruin their health by overexertion of body or mind, who live in a constant state of worry, etc. These states of ill-health, which persons bring upon themselves, disappear spontaneously, provided no chronic miasm lurks in the body, under an improved mode of living, and they cannot be called chronic diseases.
§ 78
The true natural chronic diseases are those that arise from a chronic miasm, which when left to themselves, and unchecked by the employment of those remedies that are specific for them, always go on increasing and growing worse, notwithstanding the best mental and corporeal regimen, and torment the patient to the end of his life with ever aggravated sufferings. These are the most numerous and greatest scourges of the human race; for the most robust constitution, the best regulated mode of living and the most vigorous energy of the vital force are insufficient for their eradication.
§ 83
This individualizing examination of a case of disease, for which I shall only give in this place general directions, of which the practitioner will bear in mind only what is applicable for each individual case, demands of the physician nothing but freedom from prejudice and sound senses, attention in observing and fidelity in tracing the picture of the disease.
§ 84
The patient details the history of his sufferings; those about him tell what they heard him complain of, how he has behaved and what they have noticed in him; the physician sees, hears, and remarks by his other senses what there is of an altered or unusual character about him. He writes down accurately all that the patient and his friends have told him in the very expressions used by them. Keeping silence himself he allows them to say all they have to say, and refrains from interrupting them1 unless they wander off to other matters. The physician advises them at the beginning of the examination to speak slowly, in order that he may take down in writing the important parts of what the speakers say.
§
Every interruption breaks the train of thought of the narrators, and all they would have said at first does not again occur to them in precisely the same manner after that.
§ 85
He begins a fresh line with every new circumstance mentioned by the patient or his friends, so that the symptoms shall be all ranged separately one below the other. He can thus add to any one, that may at first have been related in too vague a manner, but subsequently more explicitly explained.
§ 264
The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to rely upon their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of their genuineness.
