Dr Anitha MA BHMS,MD(Hom)
Dr.Padiyar Homoeopathic Medical College.Kerala
Everything that has life is more or less influenced by circumstances and environment. This law is true in the vegetable and animal kingdom. Certain plants develop in certain places very well. In animals also we will see such type of adaptation to the environment .Animals from certain parts of the earth develop peculiarities of their own which are entirely different from their close relatives elsewhere .In other words they develop a protective immunity against their environment al conditions .The polar bear is immune to the rigorous of the Arctic, but is susceptible and soon succumbs to the influence of warm climates The Bengal tiger thrives in the humidity of the Indian jungles ; other tigers have adapted themselves to the altitude and rarefied atmosphere of the slops of the Himalayas and the searching wind of those heights.
By susceptibility we mean the general quality or capability of the living organism of receiving impressions ; the power to react to stimuli. Susceptibility is one of the fundamental attribute of life .Upon which all functioning all functioning ,all vital processes , physiological and pathological .We see very frequently the susceptibility to climatic conditions ,as well as all other phases of environment .One person will thrive in a rigorous climate where another will become seriously ill. Altitude affects some individuals kindly and some adversely .the seashore improves one man’s condition while it makes another man ill . The power of assimilation and nutrition is one of the phases of susceptibility. One easily assimilates a certain kind of food while another finds the same food indigestible. Susceptibility is important in almost all the reactions of the living beings ,some will react more and some less ,upon this variation of reaction the nature’s variation depends in homoeopathy understanding susceptibility is very much important in understanding the causation of disease , the homoeopathic mode of cure and the action of homoeopathic medicines .
Human beings are susceptible to contagion and infection in varying degrees. One man will become infected in contact with diseased individuals while another will experience no ill effects whatever .One person is made ill by noxious plants while another man can handle them with impunity.Ceran people are capable of making wonderful proving of a drug where as others will show no reaction whatever . All these reactions have to do with susceptibility. The cure and alleviation of diseases depend upon the same power of the organism to the impressions of the curative remedy. When a homeopathically selected medicine is administered to a sick person, the disappearance of the symptoms and restoration of the patient to health represents the reaction of the susceptible organism to the impression of the curative remedy .
H.A Roberts considers susceptibility as an expression of a vacuum in the individual .The vacuum attracts and pulls for the things most needed that are on the same plane of vibration . contagious diseases thrive in childhood because of the extreme susceptibility of the miasmatic influence ; this susceptibility has an attractive force which draws to itself the disease which is on the same plane of vibration and which tends to correct this miasmatic deficiency .After having drawn to itself this other disease manifestation , the child become immune to further on sloughs of the same condition. Susceptibility varies in degree in different patients and at different times in the same patient. Homoeopathic application of a remedy is an illustration of meeting the susceptibility and filling the vacuum that is present in the sick individual .I.e. the vibrations of the sick individual call aloud for something to meet the need .The proving of the remedy on a healthy individual gives us the basis of similarity of remedies to sick individuals because in a proving the remedy produces an artificial susceptibility similar to the susceptibility of the sick individual .The application of the homoeopathic remedy in sickness satisfies this natural susceptibility The kind and degree of reaction to medicines depends upon the degree of susceptibility of the patient and that the kind and degree of susceptibility , in nay particular case or patient , depends largely upon how the case is handled by the physician for it is in his power to modify susceptibility ,.This power to modify the susceptibility is the basis of the art of the physician The physician must know how the susceptibility of the sick person can be assessed . Susceptibility is known to us by affinity, attraction, desire hunger ,need .
That these all exist and express themselves normally as states and conditions in every living being ;but that they may become morbid and perverted normally consideration of susceptibility is important in the selection of medicine also . it is a well known fact that the living organism is much more susceptible to the homogenous limuli than the heterogeneous stimuli ,or the dissimilar stimuli .throughout the animal and vegetable kingdom we can find this >Organism and organs select elements most similar to their own elements . So disease is actually the morbid susceptibility, and in cure we must satisfy the morbid susceptibility which is expressed through desires aversions , hunger and thirst . This morbid susceptibility which constitutes disease may exists towards several different medicine , the degree of susceptibility to each depending upon the degree of symptom similarity .The highest degree of susceptibility exists towards the most similar remedy We must lay particular stress on demanding the conservation of normal susceptibility in the care of the sick , for in sickness susceptibility is exaggerated and we must be very careful to do nothing to impair it , for it is through this exaggerated reaction that we find clue to the similar remedy. In sickness it is essential to remember that it is only in the administration of the similar remedy that susceptibility is satisfied While selecting the dose also susceptibility must be taken into consideration .The sick organism being much more susceptible to the similar medicine than the well organism , it follows that the size or quantity of the dose depends upon the degree of susceptibility of the patient A dose that would produce no perceptible effect upon a well person may cause a dangerous or distressing aggravation in a sick person . The remedial agents never destroy the normal reactive power of the organism.
To use the agents in such a manner or in such a form or quantity as to diminish impair or destroy the power of the organism to react to stimuli is to align ourselves with the forces of death and disintegration . ure and contagion are very similar and the principles applying to one apply to the other But there is a difference In cure we have the advantage of change of potency, and this enables us to suit the varying susceptibility of sick man .because of these varying susceptibilities some are protected from disease cause and some are made sick .The degree of the disease cause fits his susceptibility at the moment he is made sick .But it is not so with medicines, .Man has all the degrees of potentisation and by these he can make changes and there by fit the medicine to the varying susceptibility of man in varying qualities or degrees . Susceptibility can be considered as a state both mentally and physically .State involves the attitude of organizations to internal causes and to external circumstances .It is all the resource of defense or the way of yielding . Many substances are used medically in such form , in such doses , by such methods and upon such principles as to be distinctly depressive or destructive of normal reactivity .They are forced upon on into the suffering organism empirically without regard to nature’s laws. So far as their effect upon disease is concerned they are in no wise curative but only palliative or suppressive and the ultimate result ,If it be not death is to leave the patient in a worse state than he was before Existing symptoms are transformed into the symptoms of an artificial drug disease
Professor James Ewing of Cornell University Medical college in a lecture upon immunity called the problem of the endotoxins “ the stone wall of serum therapy “ he said “ the effort to produce passive immunity against immunity against the various infections by means of sera may fail in spite of the destruction of all the bacteria present in the body , by reason of the endotoxins thrown out in the process of bacteriolysis resulting from the serum injections .Another attempt to forcibly regulate body reaction is through the use of antiseptics, which is another means of destroying bacilli but which at the same time destroys normalsuscaptibility .The Boston surgical journal has shown that antiseptics used in cases of tonsillitis increase the inflammation prolong the disease and retard the convalescence .It is demonstrated that in the effort to diminish bacteria in the formation of the requisite amount of antibodies was unduly prolonged . It is shown that even if diseased the living organisms has some power of self protection and that other things being equal the automatic formation of antitoxins or antibodies goes on at about an equal pace with the generation of toxins .Antiseptics have some destructive action o the living cells and phagocytic leucocytes of the patient . In destroying these bodies we are destroying the physical basis of life itself since antiseptics powerful enough to destroy cells of one type must certainly have an equally destructive effect on other cells .Increase of fever is a manifestation of the vital reaction and the resistance towards disease on the part of the organism : this normal reactivity shows an increase in leucocytes and an increased production also of antibodies interfered with because it represents the normal reaction and resistance of the vital energy ,and it is Nature’s method of protecting the organism.
The human economy has inherited many tendencies from the accumulations of its ancestral heritage . athese tendencies show themselves in child life in the great number of so called children’s diseases , which are nothing more or less than an inward turmoil of bringing the surface and expelling certain conditions : again these eruptions are a lack of ability on the part of the patient to create similar state within his own economy to satisfy the susceptibility . when the susceptibility of this particular state has once been satisfied by an expression of the similar condition a partial cure has taken place and they can no more develop the reaction to a similar infection . This tendency of human economies is brought out still further by the susceptibilities of whole families towards certain types of diseases .This again is governed by the law of susceptibility which attracts unto itself and has particular affinity for certain diseased conditions because they are similar to the constitutional condition.
Thus we see that susceptibility and reaction are basic principles – a proper concept of these principles is something that the homoeopathic must seriously consider : the interplay of these principles must become as second nature to him , if he wishes to use well the forces of nature in healing the sick .The similar remedy satisfies the susceptibility and establishes immunity .
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