HAHNEMANN - The Therapeutic Pioneer of Psychosomatic Medicine of Today
Geography and You|Issue 141, 2020
In wellness clinics of the modern world, there is an increased inflow of patients with symptoms diagnosed by modern medicine as psychosomatic diseases. These latest advancements in medical science were well documented in the homoeopathic system of medicine since 1796. Samuel Hahnemann was in fact the first to design therapeutic cures for such diseases.
Mayur Jain
HAHNEMANN - The Therapeutic Pioneer of Psychosomatic Medicine of Today

Any person with any bodily symptoms have psychological, emotional or mental distortion or dysfunction at its origin (psychosomatic). This is coming up as a big breakthrough in current medical advancement, but history suggests that some of this work has been done in the past by Hippocrates, Galen and others—the influence of the psychic over the physical body. Modern medicine is now recognising the trinity of life—mind-body-soul and its relation to humans in health and in disease.

Way back in 1796, Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homoeopathy recognised the importance of integrating mental and subjective symptoms in addition to pathological diagnosis or symptoms in selecting the ‘simillimum’ for cure. Hahnemann in 1813, mentioned ‘biological-whole treatment theory’ in his famous essay, Spirit of the homoeopathic doctrine of medicine. He reiterated the theory in the 6th edition of ‘Organon of Medicine’ too. This today is popularly known as psychosomatic medicine-the study of the sick human as a biological whole among multiple psychosomatic inter-reactions.

He explains, “Nearly all morbid states which are referred to as ‘psychic’ are, in reality, nothing but somatic ailments in which the discord between the intellectual and moral faculties, each in its specific way and in a manner more or less rapid, have become predominant through their relation to the purely physical symptoms. Thus, they finish by taking on the character of a ‘defective’ disease which gives the appearance of a local ailment having its seat in the delicate and invisible organs of thought.”

Hahnemann built upon the theory advocated by Hippocrates and Galen that every human sickness has roots at the emotional or mental dysfunction level and was the first to design the solution and possible therapeutic cure for the diseases that are arising inside the mind and later reflecting on the physical body.

This story is from the Issue 141, 2020 edition of Geography and You.

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This story is from the Issue 141, 2020 edition of Geography and You.

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