Chelidonium and organ therapy^{[ * ]}

Summary

The author first of all quotes from Rademacher's Erfahrungsheillehre der alten scheidekünstigen Geheimärzte and Rudolph Steiner's 1920 Lectures to Doctors and Medical Students, to show that considerable differences exist within homœopathy and similar schools of medicine regarding the method of finding the remedy.

Paracelsus, Rademacher, Rudolph Steiner and others hold the view that the physician must first diagnose the organ in which the disease takes its origin, before he can prescribe the appropriate organotropic medicine. Hahnemann on the other hand is against such a theoretical approach and depends entirely on the predominantly subjective symptoms of the individual, to find a remedy for this particular person and not for an abstract disease.

Only those who follow Rademacher's line of thought will therefore be content with seeing a remedy such as Chelidonium as a specific for the liver. The Hahnemannians need all the symptoms of the remedy for their method, down to the smallest and most subjective detail.

With the aid of tape recordings made in his surgery, the author therefore goes into the details of three indications for Chelidonium—abdominal pain, pain in the back, and headache. This establishes the fact that, as with all remedies, the action of Chelidonium is in no way limited to a single organ, but extends to the whole human being, and to all his organs.

In conclusion it is stated that the remedy may be frequently indicated if there is hepatic involvement, but that a closer study of the more detailed actions of Chelidonium will enable the practitioner to recognize it far more frequently in the patients he sees day by day, and become more certain in his choice of the remedy.

^* A paper read at a Postgraduate Event of the Baden-Wurttemberg Regional Association at Rentlingen, Germany, on 31 March 1979. Translated from the German by A. R. Meuss, FIL, MTG.