Diseases of the Spleen

One of the gems of works of Burnett is Diseases of the Spleen. In this book he has given a brief account of various remedies used for different conditions of the vital organ, the spleen.

He inumerates the various condition for which condition & stage the remedy is useful for. Various cases have been given with the drugs for a practical help. Differential diagnosis also mentioned under few cases.

J. C. Burnett, M.D. was a contemporary with R. Hughes, R. E. Dudgeon & J. H. Clarke and was one of the most potent influence on evolution of British Homeopathy. Early in his career, he attended the clinic of Dr John Drydale at liver pool with friend A. Hawkes and J. H. Clarke that touched his fascination with organopathy. He is the acclaimed author of dozens books on homeopathy which includes "Consumption," "Liver," "Ringworm," "Gout," "Stunted Children," "Organ Diseases of Women," "Diseases of Skin," "Change of Life in Women," "Enlarged Tonsils" and "Tumours" etc.

The strength of a chain is equal to that of its weakest link, and similarly the value of a person’s. life may be equal to that of his weakest vital organ here the particular organ is equal in importance to that of the entire organism.

Even where the tissue state of the entire organism is everywhere equally bad, it may be a life-saving act to relieve the particular organ that first gives way, so that time may be gained to alter the entire crasis or the quality of the stroma..

Death itself is often at the start in a particular organ, i. e.,., local, and if the part be saved in time life may be preserved. In the acute processes the value of a particular organ strikes one often very forcibly, there may be no need of any constitutional treatment; the one suffering part may be the whole. case. And in many chronic cases certain organs claim, and must have, special attention. This is my standpoint in the following pages on Diseases of The Spleen. As Forget says, "Entre la nature medicatrice et la nature homicide, il n’y a souvent que leepaisseur d’une oponevnose."

I deem it necessary to guard: myself against mis- apprehension in one or two particulars. In the first place, I understand by organ-remedy not a drug that is topically applied to a suffering organ for its physical or chemical effects, but a remedy that has an elective affinity for such organ, by reason of which it will find the organ itself through the blood. For instance, an astringent applied to a mucous surface to get rid of a catarrh is no organ-remedy in my meaning, it is no example of Rademacher’s organ- opathy..

Then I do not put forward organopathy as an idea of my own, or as something new, but as that of Hohenheim, and of his co-doctrinaires, as resuscitated, extended, elaborated, and systematized by Rade- macher, in the early part of this century. Honor to whom honor is due; poor Hohenheim has been maliciously befouled and meanly robbed long enough, and it is high time he should have the credit of his own genius, as well as of his own folly.

The modern father of organopathy is Johann Gottfried Rademacher, who was born on the 4th of August, 1772, and died on the 9th of February, 1850. His great life-work bears this title: "RECHTFERTIGUNG ‘der von den Gelehrten misskannten verstandesrechten ER¥AHRUNGSHEILLEHRE der ALTEN SCHEIDEKUN- STIGEN GEHEIMAERZTE, und. treue Mittheilung des Ergebnisses einer 25-jahrigen Erprobung dieser Lehre am Krankenbette, von Johann Gottfried Rademacher." The preface to the Ist edition is dated Ist April, 1841.

This is the work I so often refer to herein, and from which I translate the part on diseases of the spleen, though slightly condensed.

Further, I do not regard organopathy as something outside of homoeopathy, but as being embraced by and included in it, though not identical or co- extensive with it. I would say—Organopathy is homeopathy in the first degree. And, finally, I would emphasize the fact, that where the homoeopathic simillimal agent covering the totality of the symptoms, and also the underlying pathologic process causing such symptoms, can be found, there organopathy either has no raison d’etre at all, or it is of only temporary service to ease an organ in distress.

**Contents and Sample Pages**