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human body and correlated these with the same forces that they perceived in plants. Thus the driving force of the concept appears to be an underlying instinct in all races, and it may well be that at the root of all is a resonance between the human mind, the natural world and events that take place in it.
It was in the middle ages that serious attempts were made, both in Europe and the Ottoman regions, to record the knowledge that existed in the folk lore of the doctrine, and the concept was developed and expanded, firstly beyond plants to incorporate both animals and minerals, and then into considerations of the more dynamic aspects of life. The ancient Greeks had the concept of spirits that inhabit the natural world and the Native American Indians believed that spirits inhabited the lakes and moun- tains that made up their natural sur- roundings. The idea of nature having a ‘soul’, mirroring the idea that God was in fact just nature itself rather than a divine entity, was characterised by Paracelsus (1493-1591) as the ‘light of nature’, which he considered to be an equivalent manifestation to man’s divine spark and to be linked to the latter in one indivisible whole. Hence it was the by the utilising of this ‘light of nature’ as found in the products of the natural world that man could be healed of his ills. The writings of Paracelsus were well known to Hahnemann although there is no mention of him in any of Hahnemann’s writings. These ideas, although containing a strong mystic element, were moving towards the homeopathic concept, whilst at the same time being greatly influenced by the Doctrine of Signatures. This led Paracelsus to his detailed study of all forms of nature as potential healing agents. He considered also that individ- ual organs of the body were influenced by individual planets and that particular plants that were influenced in a similar way could be used to treat afflictions of those organs. Hahnemann incorpo- rated this broad concept when he spoke of the ‘medicinal spirit’ in substances, stating that “Medicinal substances are not dead masses in the ordinary sense of the term, on the contrary, their true essential nature is only dynamically spiritual” (Lesser Writings).
Linked to the doctrine there was a widespread belief that for every ill from which mankind suffered there was a remedy available in nature which could be discovered by close observation of the natural forms. Although Hahnemann never used the Doctrine
of Signatures in any formal way, from the earliest days of his medical training and disillusionment with the medicine of his time he was convinced that God had created the prerequisites for healing and that ‘nature was replete with elements and forces for such an art [of healing]’ (Treuherz 2010). Later, in his Essay on a new principle for ascer- taining the curative power of drugs (Lesser writings 1796) he accepted and wrote about the usefulness of the hints that could be obtained from nature as to the potential medical usefulness of substances (plants in particular), espe- cially when linked to other investigative methods such as provings. The concept of a ‘benevolent providence’ providing for all man’s medical needs runs through his writings plus the conviction that that same providence had given mankind the power to discover all that was needful for him through his powers of observation and his intellect. It was also an integral part of his philosophy, and his whole approach to healing that it was the dynamic nature of both disease and cure that was important. Count Clemens von Bonninghausen, Hahnemann’s great friend and disciple, was using the same underlying concept when he drew on the Doctrine of Analogy and the macrocosm and micro- cosm in his writings.
OTHER CONNECTIONS
It is always a mistake to equate what later ages describe as ‘primitive’ and ‘unsophisticated’ with ‘stupid’. People of all ages have interpreted their situa- tions in the light of their experiences and beliefs, using the language of their times to communicate the concepts behind their understandings. Coming from an age before there was any understanding of infectious disease or epidemics the term ‘influenza’ derives from the same linguistic root as’ influ- ence’; at the time it was felt that such widespread pestilence could only have arisen due to the activity of the planets and other heavenly bodies impinging on earth. Others of those early under- standings and concepts were based on a more truly scientific triad of observa- tion, hypothesis and experimentation and contained profound truths. Just because the language of later genera- tions changed as their appreciations and priorities changed does not auto- matically mean that the older interpre- tations became completely invalid.
The advent of the ‘age of reason’ heralded a materialistic approach to understanding the world, which in its
own way produced another conflict- that between church and science- which in some ways is continuing to the present day. In the medical sphere this accentuated the split begun by Galen in Roman times. With time there was apparently an inevitable swing of the pendulum back towards a more ‘romantic’ view of the world, but in fact a basic shift had occurred; the precepts of reduction and separation which characterise modern scientific attitudes had been established and the entity of the spiritual and the material had been destroyed. Although the enlightened man aimed to embody the full gamut of knowledge, henceforth each field was regarded as a separate area of study and appreciation within the whole rather than as one unified creation. Within homeopathy this separatist approach has affected attitudes towards the Doctrine of Signatures as much as within any other field of study.
LATERAL OR LINEAR THINKING?
For some homeopaths the Doctrine of Signatures and other lateral thinking is an irrelevance, even a heresy, not worthy to be mentioned in the same breath as the purity of the Hahnemannian ‘proving’ technique: for some, provings occupy the same posi- tion in homeopathy as the Randomised Controlled Trial does in the orthodox world! Paragraphs 105 to 145 of the Organon are regarded as the sole authority and final word on the subject, yet Hahnemann himself in his Paris practice would often use part proved or occasionally unproved remedies. For some practitioners ‘signatures’ are an integral and essential part of under- standing the full depth of remedies. In practice the similarities and parallels that emerge from both the traditional proving and the signature and other methods of investigation are so inter- twined that it is clear that there is often no intrinsic antagonism between differ- ent approaches. A blind dream proving of Petroleum as a homeopathic remedy undertaken by the Bristol Homeo- pathic Hospital revealed strong themes of ‘travel, explosion, fire and money’, all features that many people would asso- ciate with oil as a material substance. Indeed, in many cases a formal proving can only produce what is essentially a two dimensional picture of a remedy and it requires the addition of the more lateral type of thinking provided by sig- natures and other approaches to round the picture out into three dimensions In addition, there are situations where,
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