Drug Action

Drug Action ( Aphorism: 63- 69, 115)

Drug Actions are 3 types

1. Primary action
2. Secondary action/curative action.
3. Alternative  action

Aphorism-63:

Every agent that acts upon the vitality, every midicine, deranges more or less the vital force, and causes a certain alteration in the health of the individual for a longer or a shorter period. This is termed primary action.

Although a product of the medicinal and vital powers conjointly, it is principally due to the former power. To its action our vital force endeavors to oppose its own energy. This resistent action is a property, is indeed an automatic action of our life-preserving power, which goes by the name of secondary action or counteraction.

Aphorism-64:

During the primary action of the artificial morbific agents (medicines) on our healthy body, our vital force seems to conduct itself merely in a passive (receptive) manners, and compelled to permit the impressions of the artificial power acting from without to take place in it and thereby alter its state of health; it then, however, appears to rouse itself again, as it were, and to develop  the exact opposite condition of health (counteraction, secondary action) to this effect (primary action) produced upon it, if there be such an opposite, and that in as great a degree as was the effect (primary action) of the artificial morbific or medicinal agent on it, proportionate to its own energy; - or

(B) if there be not in nature a state exactly the opposite of the primary action, it appears to endeavor to indifferentiate itself, that is, to make its superior power available in the extinction of the change wrought in it from without (by the medicine), in the place of which it substitutes its normal state (secondary action, curative action).

Drug Action

Aphorism-65:

Examples of  Primary  and Scondary action:

(A) are  familiar to all. A hand bathed in hot water is at first much warmer than the other hand that has not been so treated (primary action); but when it is withdrawn from the hot water and again thoroughly dried, it becomes in a short time cold, and at length much colder than the other (secondary action). A person heated by violent exercise (primary action) is afterwards affected with chilliness and shivering (secondary action). To one who was yesterday heated by drinking much wine (primary action), to-day every breath of air feels too cold (counteraction of the organism, secondary action). 

An arm that has been kept long in very cold water is at first much paler and colder (primary action) than the other; but removed from the cold water and dried, it subsequently becomes not only warmer than the other but even hot, red and inflamed (secondary action, reaction of the vital force), Excessive vivacity follows the use of strong coffee (primary action), but sluggishness and drowsiness remain for a long time afterwards (reaction, secondary action), if this be not always again removed for a short time by imbibing fresh supplies of coffee (palliative).

Aphorism-66:

A small dose of every one of them certainly produces a primary action that is perceptible to a sufficiently attentive observer; but the living organism employs against it only so much reaction (secondary action) as is necessary for the restoration of the normal condition.

Aphorism-67:

These incontrovertible truths, which spontaneously offer themselves to our notice in nature and experience, explain to us the beneficial action that takes place under homoeopathic treatment; whilst, on the other hand, they demonstrate the perversity of the antipathic and palliative treatment of diseases with antagonistically acting medicines. (1)

Aphorism 68:

In homoeopathic cures they show us that from the uncommonly small doses of medicine (# 275-287) required in this method of treatment, which are just sufficient, by the similarity of their symptoms, to overpower and remove the similar nature disease,  there certainly remains, after the destruction of the latter, at first a certain amount of medicinal disease alone in the organism, but, on account of the extra-ordinary minuteness of the dose, it is so transient, so slight, and disappears so rapidly of its own accord, that the vital force has no need to employ, against this small artificial derangement of its health, any more considerable reaction than will suffice to elevate its present state of health up to the healthy point - that is, that will suffice to effect complete recovery, for which, after the extinction of the previous morbid derangement but little effort is required (#64, B)

Alternating action:

Aphorism 115:

Among these symptoms, there occur in the case of some medicines not a few which are partially, or under certain conditions, directly opposite to other symptoms that have previously or subsequently appeared, but which are not therefore to be regarded as actual secondary action or the mere reaction of the vital force, but which only represent the alternating state of the various paroxysms of the primary action; they are termed alternating actions.