Okay,

I pulled this out of DIVING Homeopathy as a good subject also belonging by itself:

SIXTH EDITION ORGANON

This is what I said there:

"Not to add another subject to this, I wish to point out that this [Kunzli et al.] is the best and only reliable translation that we should quote from when we do. However, we each will of course want them all, obviously."

Then LisaAnnan, Member # 3892, writes on 15 June, 2003 06:47 PM at DIVINE Homeopathy:

"Albert,
It is my understanding that Boericke is the most reliable to quote from.

Regards,
Lisa"

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"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

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Nope, I'll also re-read and bring the paper by the Head Librarian of the Library at the Robert Bosch Institute telling why and quote the reference. It's a horrible story, and the details are tragic. Boericke (Bor-ah-key) didn't have all of it or something. Besides, we need to keep low-potency pseudo-homeopaths (LPHs) away from our literature from now till the Big Crunch. Arf!

[ 28. June 2003, 03:08: Message edited by: Hahnemannian444 ]

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Albert, also Hahnemannian444B

Albert,

More to the point, what is your understanding of the significance of the 6th ed. of the Organon?

By the way, wouldn't you suspect that Boericke would be pronounced: Bear-eh-key?

Snoopy

and what the heck is LPH and HPH and GV

__________________
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to animals. For they are without sin and you in your greatness defile the earth by your appearance on it and leave traces of you foulness after you. Dostoyevsky

That would be lower potency homeopaths and higher potency homeopaths..and George Vitoukas(sp?)

Thanks Carol; ever the authority.

Snoopy

From the

"Translators' Introduction:

"Samuel Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine clearly and completely states, for the first time in history, the true nature of health and disease, the natural principles of cure, and the system of medical therapy based on these principles which we know as homoeopathy. It has remained until today the one essential cornerstone of homoeopathy, the ultimate authority on its doctrines and practice. Everything ever written on homoeopathy proceeds from it [and depends upon it].

"It was first published in 1810, in Kothen,* Germany. Hahnemann published five editions of the work during his lifetime and completed the manuscript of the sixth and final edition in 1842, the year before he died at the age of eighty-eight. This last edition was not published until 1921.

"The standard English version of the Organon has hitherto been a nineteenth-century translation of the fifth edition, to which a translation of the important changes introduced by Hahnemann in the sixth edition were later added in an effort to bring it up to date. Unfortunately, this translation is very tedious and difficult to read because it approximates in stilted Victorian English the dense and cumbersome style of Hahnemann's German. Hahnemann's language is difficult even for a modern German ear, and its literal equivalent in English is a formidable obstacle to understanding. Furthermore, there are serious errors in the translation and in additions made to it.

"The present translators have made a completely new translation from the original text of the sixth edition. Hahnemann's manuscript is in the possession of the School of Medicine of the University of California in San Francisco, and we have been fortunate in obtaining a photocopy of it. We have scrupulously adhered to every word of Hahnemann's text but have renedered it into standard modern English, sometimes dividing his very long sentences into several shorter ones for the sake of clarity and readibility.

"There has been a most remarkable reawakening of interest in homoeopathy during the last ten years [1972-82], and many important [homeopathic] textbooks have been republished in different English-speaking countries. It seemed therefore all the more urgent to bring out a clear English translation of the book from which all others in the literature developed and on which they comment.

"This translation is the fruit of many months of arduous labor; it has been rigoroously and systematically checked against the original text by us and by other scholars. It was commissioned by The Hahnemann Foundation of California with the intention of providing a reliable modern English source for homoeopathic physicians and the public.

"The Organon may in time be widely recognized as one of the most important books in the entire history of medicine, because it introduces in the long story of man's struggle against disease a successful system of medicinal therapy that contrasts radically with everything previously taught and practiced.

"Homoeopathy is recognized and practiced throughtout the world, but it is still something of a challenge to the orthodox medical establishment, which can neither assimilate it nor refute it.

"Amid the public doubts and criticisms that today cloud the image of technological medicine, homoeopathy offers a clear, simple, and inexpensive way to cure disease. It may indeed turn out to be the new medicine of the world."


*That is news most miss, for it has previously been always reported as having been first published by Arnold of Dresden. Kothen is where Hahnemann found political exile from the evil apothecaries, allopaths and judges of Leipsig following the death of the field marshal who'd come there specifically to be treated by Hahnemann of apoplexy or stroke. He of course came too late, which is usual to this day, and the uproar spilled over so much that some of Hahnemann's students were jailed. Duke Ferdinand von Anhalt-Kothen offered him santuary. Kothen will come up again in connection with the mysterious remarks Hahnemann made about the Spagyric physicians in his first formal presentation of homeopathy called "Essay on a New Principle...," for the duke was also a Mason who'd been a member in the lodge in Breslau. Breslau is where a great deal or possibly even all of the remaining Spagyric literature that survived the Inquisition and the ravages of the evil Pauline, Lutheran and Calvinist Churchs' persecutions of alchemy would have existed until ignorantly destroyed by the careless bombings of evil men of war during World War II and then subsequently looted up to our times.

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Albert, also Hahnemannian444B

From Jost Kunzli, M.D., presented at the International Homoeopathic Congress (L.M.H.I.) Rome, Italy, May, 1981, HOMEOTHERAPY; JOURNAL OF CLASSICAL HOMEOPATHY, Vol. 7, No. 4, July-August 1981, pp. 99-100:

"A NEW ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE ORGANON

"I would like to present to you today, in this historic place, at this historic congress, a brand-new [sic] English translation of the sixth German edition of Samuel Hahnemann's Organon, translated by Alain Naude and Peter Pendleton of San Francisco.

"Until now, anyone interested in this edition had to read the German text or the translation made in 1922 by William Boericke, which incorporated a great part of the fifth edition.

"The appearance of this translation in 1922 occasioned remarkably little response -- almost total silence!

"Why? And why is there so much interest today in the sixth German edition?

"For one thing, the time was probably not yet ripe. That is the first reason. Secondly, the translation is in many respects inferior: whole passages are completely incomprehensible. Anyone reading them might well think that homoeopathy was, after all, something rather esoteric.

"In 1954 both Frazer-Kerr and T.D. Ross spoke before the British Homoeopathic Association and referred to 'the inadequate English translation' and wished there were a better one. This wish was directed towards Pierre Schmidt, who was there: he had in 1952 published the first French translation of the sixth German edition.

"Thirdly, people are interested in the 50-millesimal or Q-potencies which have been brought to the attention of the public only recently, in fact, only when Pierre Schmidt made the first French translation of the sixth German edition, and when he spoke about them in his lectures. This translation was made from 1947 to 1952, and was available to the public in 1952.

"The 50-millesimals were for Hahnemann a wide departure from his earlier doctrines, a truly astonishing break with the past.

"In France and Germany practitioners, skilled and unskilled alike, adopted the 50-millesimals with fervour. Manufacturerers, both qualified and unqualified, began to sell them, and now the world is awash in them.

"What exactly are these 50-millesimals potencies all about? Now you can study this clearly in Alain Naude and Peter Pendleton's work.

"But that is not all. You will find that hardly any of Dudgeon's expressions remain; they have been replaced by better, more accurate terms.

"The style is modern, while remaining scrupulously true to the original. I have followed the translators' conscientious work very closely.

"Now the entire English-speaking world has a correct, clear translation of the final German edition, with the many changes and improvements brought to earlier editions. This will in all likelihood be very important for the further spread of homoeopathy."

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Albert, also Hahnemannian444B

I have this translation and I like it very much.

Snoopy

Boericke (and it is pronounced "Bor-ah-key") had the original but was simply unqualified to translate it. Turns out, however, that most people were and still are, so it does not necessarily say anything deleterious about the man except that LPHs should not be messing with our literature in general.

I don't know what I could have been thinking when I suggested off hand that he didn't have all of it or something, for I know this tragic story pretty well and have for fully 20 years now. I think the mistake involves not having understood what Josef Schmidt (Head Librarian of the Robert Bosch Institute of the History of Medicine in Stuttgart) meant by having "in 1992 provided the first text-critical edition of Hahnemann's manuscript for the 6th edition of his Organon of Medicine." I've since discovered that it instead has reference to the German edition of the work, which Haehl originally supplied coincident with Boericke's effort. There has apparently been a similar problem with proper translation from Hahnemann's German to the modern ear while remaining text-critically accurate. This is thus a mirror remark to the above from Jost Kunzli.

As far as I know, Josef Schmidt, MD, PhD (no relation to our Pierre), wrote the most recent major paper on the Sixth-Edition Organon, entitled "History and Relevance of the 6th Edition of the Organon of Medicine (1842). It's found in the BRITISH HOMOEOPATHIC JOURNAL, Vol. 83, No. 1, Jan. 1994, pp. 42-48, republished in THE HOMEOPATHIC HERITAGE (Delhi), Vol. 19, No. 9, Sept. 1994, pp. 527-35. His first remarks in the paper are quoted above, and the next are equally telling of the importance of this paper in our history: "The Organon contains all the principles and instructions the homoeopathic physician needs to treat his patients homoeopathically, which is why it has sometimes been considered the Bible of Homoeopathy....let us briefly look back at its history."

A maieutic/Socratic question comes to mind for people who're still keen on Melanie babe: It was indeed irreplaceable, right? So why did Melanie refuse to publish it, refuse to sell it, refuse to loan it, refuse to permit anybody to make a copy of it, then have a copy of it made herself but did nothing with it either, and put the original in harm's way through 4-5 generations and through the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the overrunning of Westphalin during World War I? I hope we're finally done with her.

Some interesting details are supplied by Schmidt, so I will quickly simply repeat them for the benefit of those who do not have access to this paper or would not go to the trouble but would like to know some of these facts.

Hahnemann finished it in February 1842. We know this from a letter to his publisher in Duesseldorf (preserved in Stuttgart), in which he said: "After 18 months of work I have now finished the 6th edition of my Organon, the most nearly perfect of all...."

His new German edition (Haug Verlag) has all of the hand-script additions in italics, which includes "almost 1700 footnotes." That must mean that almost 1700 words were added to or as footnotes. I would like to see that repeated in the next English edition of this translation by Peter Pendleton et al.

In 1870 or '71, Melanie, Carl von Boeinghausen (a son or the son) and his wife, whom Melanie adopted (mystery there), left for his estate in Westphalia and took along "all of Hahnemann's posthumous works." The mistranslation there must mean all of his surviving papers like his day books, case books, letters and manuscripts. Melanie finally died with all of that material falling into the hands of two more presumably reliable people. No mention, however, is made of why these two also didn't publish it or what happened to the remaining loot or bootie of Melanie, but it's again confirmed that they also refused all attempts to acquire or publish it. That also makes no sense. Ward reported that this Mrs. Boeinghausen regarded it as a "priceless treasure," or something to that effect; the paper is not around me at the moment.

Ward further reported this. Boericke and Ward, through Haehl in Stuttgart, finally acquired it in 1920 when German hyper-inflation from French demands for war reparations forced the widow von Boeinghausen to part with it for $1000. Rough guessing it at the moment, based upon the calculations I did about Melanie's haul from Hahnemann, that sounds like about $30,000 for her in today's dollars. I'd guess this was no little amount of grace-aid granted to her by them since she would or could have been starving like all other Germans in 1920. Indeed, I'd guess she would have then accepted far less. Nice thought, anyway. Either the handwritten copy Melanie had made or another one subsequently made was also part of the sale. Boericke traveled from Frisco to NYC to take possession of the precious treasure in person. Good man!

Schmidt continues about plans falling through to turn over the original to the Smithsonian. That's a very good idea.

It was instead kept by Ward in his office in danger of destruction or theft. Argh...

He then, in 1933, gave it to The Homeopathic Foundation of California, later The Hahnemann Foundation when Robert Schore moved to Dallas. They kept it in the safe of the Hahnemann Hospital till another precious book was stolen. Geez, this book already has nine lives, and the story is not nearly over.

Then the Chief of Staff kept it in his personal safe.

He died in 1952, and his sister-in-law and former secretary to The Hahnemann Foundation, Mrs. Elsa Engle, had to rent a safe -- good lass -- because "nobody else from The Foundation showed any interest." The tragic ignorance again and again and the hazards this book survived amaze me every time I walk through this history.

Pierre Schmidt acquired slides of it from Mrs. Engle in 1959 or '60 via expenses paid by the California Women's Homoeopathic Association. This implies expensive professional photography. Thank God, mothers have always loved us.

The Robert Bosch Institute for the History of Medicine acquired microfilm of it in 1971 prepared by the University of California at Berkeley. That's when I had an NDE.

Then the kindly lady gave the manuscript to Special Collections at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) some time between 1971 and '74. The medical school received it, and there it sits.

It needs to be in the Smithsonian, because the public can handle it at UCSF. They apparently keep a good handle on it, but it belongs to posterity like the U.S. Constitution, etc., and only the Smithsonian is capable of recognizing its importance and preserving it in the Hermetic chamber our children’s children's children deserve. It's stupid for it to be anywhere else than the Smithsonian, for this history is a comedy of errors like the Keystone cops and is still going on. God save us from fools!

Then Schmidt mentions "the old German handwriting, so that there probably will not be too many people who are interested in reading" the manuscript. All the more reason to give it to the Smithsonian. Mush for brains really bugs me.

It's an interleafed copy. That means he had a copy of the 5th edition produced with blank pages between printed text for his changes. He furthermore pasted small and large sheets into it when the interleafing proved insufficient for his changes.

Schmidt then answers Snoopy's question above. "The practical and historical significance of the 6th edition lies in changes made from previous editions. Hahnemann expressed NEW THOUGHTS [emphasis mine] regarding the concept of 'dynamic actions,' the 'vital force,' 'disease,' the status of different forms of therapeutics, the nature of treatment of the 'chronic miasms' [the British and their fouled-up English is eternally weird, for miasm simply means "contagious," guys], the self-dispensing of drugs, the administration of single drugs and minimal doses [again, "minimal" assumes an amount, but there is no amount of the original substance in ultramolecular drugs -- materialists are really annoying], and also the justification of 'sniffing' drugs [i.e., olfaction, which is also a misnomer with ultramolecular drugs], the application of magnets [argh...], 'mesmerism' [argh...], electricity and galvanism, drugs applied by rubbing into the skin, massage and baths."

Then Schmidt makes a shockingly careless mistake about Q-potencies, which causes me to wonder at his competence to have interpreted Hahnemann's older or High German. He says, "Since every dilution of 1:100 was now followed by a 1:500 dispersion, the new potencies were supposed to have a gentler, more rapid action, so that they could be taken daily, even over a period of several months." There are two serious and careless mistakes there. The last one first. Daily repetition is possible with Q-potencies but only in acute diseases. Then, the dilution is not 1:100 because the previous potency utilizes one microglobule to 100 drops of diluent instead of one drop to 100 drops of diluent as in C-potencies. This is a fine point of distinction since he does say the dispersion is 1:500, meaning that one drop will not disperse or saturate into 500 microglobules; however, it is just such misrepresentations of Hahnemann that suffuse all of our pharmacies to this day.

This is another subject, for it involves the size of the microglobules, the make up of them, the number of succussions delivered to each stage of potency and the fact that most of our pharmacies still just make fluxion potencies. The point is that they all seem to mess it up in one or all ways, and we cannot understand why it is so difficult for them to finally get it right after 200 years of trying.

Schmidt goes on about the Q-potencies with details that don't seem to interest very many people and are too specific for this quasi-summary of the paper for the benefit of those without the paper and for thoroughness about the subject in this discussion.

Schmidt then makes a very nice remark for another discussion about the physics of our pharmacology: "Hahnemann was also theoretically convinced of the infinite divisibility of matter." I've read that statement at least three times, but nobody has ever shown where Hahnemann said any such thing. I don’t know why it seems to difficult for homeopaths to be scholarly, especially where quotes from Hahnemann are concerned. This leads me to believe that people like Dr. Schmidt are not yet scientifically sophisticated in the higher-dimensional physics we engage in to either understand our pharmacology or Hahnemann's remarks about it. Modern physicists have long since admitted to non-physical particles, so we have finally been vindicated, folks. We simply need to show them. Fincke was the earliest person I've seen to have mentioned this supposed notion Hahnemann held, and he was also the first person to have spied what appears to be the extremely modern and futuristic explanation of our pharmacology that James H. Stephenson, MD, seems to have correctly spied in the 1950s and ‘60s about what Wm. A. Tiller, PhD, later calls deltrons. More modern authors are calling it “water memory,” but none of them seem to have grasped this accurately. Moreover, Hahnemann says this: “the organism…becomes, as I have said, free from the morbid affection AT THE VERY INSTANT [emphasis mine] that it is taken possession of by the medicinal affection, by which it is immeasurably more liable to be altered” (THE LESSER WRITINGS, p. 630). These ultramolecular medicines act on us for a nanosecond, all the rest of which is the reaction of the organism, so it seems clear that Hahnemann understood these are ultramolecular drugs. Another reference from him agrees: “…the medicine does not act atomically [chemically] but only dynamically…” (THE LESSER WRITINGS, p. 387). Therefore, it seems to me that they are simply mistaken who hold that Hahnemann believed in the infinite divisibility of matter. Another subject also.

Schmidt says, “until very recently no manufacturer produced Q potencies [sic] using the original method given by Hahnemann.” OOps! Unless I am very much mistaken, and remember that this was written in 1994, not so long after my last search, nobody makes the microglobules necessary for manufacturing the Q-potencies. These need to weigh 0.062 grams to match up with Hahnemann’s Troy grain, or they should be 0.05 grams according to Jost Kunzli since Hahnemann “almost certainly would have indicated 0.05 grams as a practical quantity easy to work with.” Likewise, they are to be composed of “starch flour and cane sugar” (Art. 270, footnote e). I wish someone would produce the Q-potencies.

The rest of the paper is small stuff to me and not news.

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Albert, also Hahnemannian444B

Carol, where's your avatar?

Snoopy