THE CURE

- BENERJEE.P,

 Ordinary people understand "cure" to be a disappearance of the disease symptoms, or in other words, if the symptoms in any particular case disappear after the administration of the medicine, it is cure. If the patient does not die and if the disease symptoms have been made to disappear, cure is said to have been effected-no matter even if other symptoms of a different type appear, as this last set of symptoms is then pointed out as a separate disease having no connection with the first set. But this is a tremendous mistake. We have already learnt that the symptoms are only the expression of the disease and that they are not the disease itself. And we have also learnt that this plurality of symptoms has a unity behind it and that it is the abnormality, it is the loss of tune in this unity that has to be corrected; and it is this that constitutes cure. All other pathies only care for removing the disease, and therefore, they understand cure as such. But Homœopathy aims at restoring the sick man to health. It is only the patient that is all for the Homœopath, and to him, "disease" is nothing more than a manifestation of the patient's condition, and if the patient can be corrected, the manifestation (namely his diseased condition) is bound to disappear, but if the manifestation only is corrected, the patient is not necessarily corrected and cured. The Allopathic physician says, "I have cured the fever, and if there is asthma now, it is a different thing, and it has to be treated in its turn." "The pox has been cured, and the dysentery that has appeared is quite a new thing. It has to be treated separately." Now, if this is the idea of "cure" entertained by specialists, there is excuse for ordinary people having a similar idea of it.

 As Homœopaths, however, let us understand that it is the patient who has to be cured and not the disease symptoms that have to be removed. As, however different the disease symptoms (the so called diseases) may look, they are all in fact the expressions of the sick man. The sick man is sick when he has got fever, he is sick when he has dysentery, and he is sick when he has asthma. The man is sick all the time; so that by curing the "fever" you cure the fever only, a particular condition of the man, and not the man as a whole, and as such, the man may have dysentery and asthma after you have cured the fever. But if on the contrary, you cure the man (as a whole), there is absolutely no room left for dysentery or asthma to come in. Cure, true cure, therefore, consists in bringing the sick man to health and not in removing the disease. If, however, in any case the removal of the disease is actually a restoration of the sick man to health, it is, of course, a cure. The idea is that, in cure the restoration of the sick man to health is the main thing, and when this happens, the disease (so called) disappears automatically, while in a case of mere removal of the disease, the restoration of the sick man to health does not follow necessarily. A mere removal of the disease leaves room for other diseases, as, in that case, the man is not cured.

 Man is not an automaton like an engine or a clock. Man is an organism, and any disorder in any part of him is not confined to that part alone, as a disorder or derangement in a clock or an engine. Any disorder in any part of the man is a disorder of the whole organism, and that disorder can be corrected only if the whole organism is corrected. The disordered man cannot be corrected only in the part disordered, just as the disordered clock or engine is corrected in the particular part. Thus, a disorder in any particular part of the man, that is to say, a disease, relates to the whole man, and it can be cured only if the whole man is cured.
 Now, what is there in man that makes him an organism, and not an automaton, like an engine or a clock?-It is the mind, and it is the mind that represents the man. The body is only a reflection of the mind, and disease begins in the mind, and is then reflected in the body, and it is this physical reflection that is commonly recognised as disease. If only the physical reflection of the disease is removed, the real disease which is in the mind, does not necessarily go. Cure, therefore, must begin in the mind, and the disease, the physical reflection of it in the body, will then automatically disappear. Correcting the reflection is not correcting that from which the reflection is coming. It is, therefore, idle to effect a cure-a restoration of the whole man to his normal condition-by simply removing the disease, the mere appearance of it in the physical body; and to effect a cure, you have, therefore, to correct the fountain from which the disease is coming, that is to say, you have to correct the mind. If the disordered mind is brought into order, no further disorder is transmitted to the body, but instead, "order," as the mind is now in order; and the disorder that was transmitted to it will gradually die out. This is cure. It begins in the mind, and it then comes to the body. If, however, the bodily disorder disappears first, without there being a corresponding disappearance of the menta disorder, take it that it is not true cure that has been effected. In a case of Rhus Tox or Arsenicum, the patient is first quieted in the mind, and the physical calmness gradually follows. Let me cite a case in point. A lawyer's wife, 5 months pregnant, was suffering from fever and diarrhœa. She was treated by several Allopaths, and after two months, i.e. , when she was about 7 months pregnant, she aborted, and her condition became alarming. I was called in at this stage, but from the condition of the patient, I could not hold out much hope to the husband. I was, yet, prevailed upon to take up the case, and this I did. I gave her Acid Mur. as indicated by the symptoms, and almost all the physical symptoms improved in a day's time, but alas, there was no improvement in the mind. I could see, the patient was not feeling ease in her mind. Her guardians were all glad on the physical improvement, but I was compelled to say that, that was no improvement, as the mental condition had not improved. And my apprehension turned out true. The patient died the very day. Look here, there was no mistake in selection, but yet the patient did not live. The fact is that the improvement had not commenced in the mind, and as such, no cure was coming, but only a disappearance of the disease-of the disease symptoms.