HERING’S THREE LAWS OF CURE
The symptoms are cured in this order with the correct remedy:
- From within outward
- From above downward
- In the reverse order of their appearance.
This is never the case in chronic disease untreated by homeopathy; therefore, when observed, one can be sure that it is the remedy which is curing and that it is the remedy which is curing and the correct remedy has been found. Hering’s laws are so important that they warrant an example.
A rheumatic fever case, where the joint symptoms have disappeared and the heart is affected receives the similimum (correct remedy). The heart improves, pains return in the shoulders and elbows, these disappear and the knees and ankles are involved. These in turn pass off and the patient completely recovers. If the symptoms do not go in this order, the remedy is wrong. When a patient on a chronic remedy develops a different symptom, search back or question the patient rigorously to determine whether this is the recurrence of an old symptom.
These laws of cure may or may not apply in acute disease. Usually they do not. If the picture of a chronic disease includes a suppression, especially if the suppression is due to crude drugging, the chronic remedy acting according to the third law of cure will sometimes restore the original discharge or eruption.
Pathology should not be removed by surgery until AFTER the sick constitution which produced such pathology has been cured. Sluggish patients, often owing to much allopathic drugging (prescription medications), will often require a very high potency to elicit any action at all.
It is an absolute rule that when favorable reactions sets in, the administration of the remedy must cease. So long as improvement is visible in the patient himself, the remedy should not be repeated. No only is there no need of “more of a good thing”, but a repetition of a remedy which is still acting successfully defeats itself and actually hinders cure.
When to prescribe or treat again? The rule is never to repeat or change the remedy while the patient himself is improving. When the improvement has apparently ceased in acute diseases, you may need to repeat the same remedy in the same or a higher potency, or, if your remedy was not a similimum, you may need another remedy to round out the cure. You must be sure that the cessation of improvement is not due to emotional, mechanical, or hygienic cause, or merely to the aggravation or outcropping of single symptoms. In chronic work, you should wait some time—from 3 to 4 days to 2-3 weeks or more, as the vital force has cycles even on the upward grade, and true curative action must not be interrupted until it is certain that the reactive force is exhausted. Watch and wait!
When you have had true improvement, and particularly in chronic cases, you have observed the working of Hering’s Law of Cure. Sit tight! More cases are bungled by too frequent repetition than by anything else.
Most patients require “medicine” often, not only so that feel that something is being done, but so that they may have remedies for emergencies and it is not only honorable but necessary to give placebos.
The most difficult cases to mange are the new patients who do not yet understand what they must NOT DO: that they must NOT suppress again an eruption or discharge that the homeopath has been trying to bring out again. Always be aware that with suppressions in your history (taking antibiotics and fever reducers) if a rash or a discharge reoccurs, do NOTHING and LET US KNOW. Aggravations are not so hard to handle if you know ahead of time this a normal phase in disease reversal. If this occurs it is a good sign that you are healing.