ABSTRACT: In modern biomedical science there are two opposing viewpoints. For the first the sole reality is that which may be objectified in terms of quantity (Res - Extensa), the second retains that our experiences derive from the activation of sensorial receivers (Res - Signata Qualitate). Homoeopathy shares the latter.

(Papers of the Transnational Conference: "THE HOMOEOPATIC REMEDY-NON-MEDICINE. A PROPOSAL FOR RECOGNITION" - Rome 12th and 13th december 1988).

The idea of prevention is tied to the provision of suitable measures to prevent the event and anticipate the possible order of succession of the phenomenon.

In this sense, prophylaxis is, according to the root of the word, PRO-PHYLASSEIN = PRESERVE, preservation of the state of health, or in a wider sense, prevention of a possible alteration.

In this respect, we must mention that branch of modern medicine engaged in studying and informing on the means apt to preserve the physical and mental health of the individual and of the community, that is hygiene. I believe that we all agree on this. Actually, the activity of control is extended to other fields and this branch includes nutrition, social sciences, behaviour and environment. I shall now speak briefly of the Homoeopathic idea of disease and what it means by prevention.

In paragraph 11 of Hahnemann's ORGANON, when introducing the idea of disease, we are told that it is nothing but the disorder of a Vital Principle the modification of which causes alterations in the organism amd in the existential attitude of the diseased individual. The idea of the Hippocratic Physis (nature) School is connected with the above and sees the strength directing the birth and development of living beings in terms of energy animating the living and capable of organizing matter and this is of help in therapeutics because the vis (strength) must be stirred up by the doctor with the appropriate Remedy, aimed at favouring and stimulating the moulding and regulating function.

This invisible energetic entity (Vital Principle) has the task of coordinating the various functions and apparatuses of the organism through alterations of sensations and functions, that is symptoms, and expressing its discomfort.

First of all it must be said that there can be no science of the living without the instinctive and generalized convincement that there is an order of nature, an order of things which leaves its mark on all events as transmitted onto us by Greek cosmology.

The Greek fate becomes the order of nature in modern scientific thought and its characteristics lie in the ineluctability of events, in the fact that scientific laws are in fact decrees of destiny, as Whitehead puts it. A science is possible if based on logic principles, if it means a total convergence between thought and its instruments and reality.

The characteristics of living organisms, in the light of modern biology, is that every structure, whether macroscopic or inter-cellular (nucleus - ribosomes - membranes), has its own specific task. Moreover, its single chemical components (lipase - proteins, etc.), have their own specificity; and this because the living matter is characterized by its capacity of extracting and transforming energy from the environment, integrating the tasks of the single components starting from inorganic substances and employing this capacity to build up - maintain - reproduce its complex structures.

Its most extraordinary characteristic, however, is that it transmits the characteristics of the species to its descendants. The beginning and the end of life lies in the disgregation or functional aggregation and this is the very specificity of open systems. In fact, each system is in a dynamic balance with its environment and this means that the quantity of energetic matter transferred and transformed by the environment are equal to the energetic quantity relinguished by the environment.

In modern biomedical science there are two opposing viewpoints. For the first the sole reality is that which may be objectified in terms of quantity (Res - Extensa), the second believes that our experiences derive from the activation of sensorial receivers (Res - Signata Qualitate).

Homoeopathy agrees with this last point of view, convinced as it is that life cannot be bound within patterns or simple movements of biologic matter. The uniqueness of the human event and its role in the universe goes beyond that and cannot be understood without taking into consideration its aims and expectations. The will represents the way man moves within his environment and man is what it loves. Free will and the awareness of it are the safest experimental data we have, as Heisenberg puts it.

Subjective experience, in fact, cannot be separated from its specific existential context. This implies other ways of looking at life and exploring existence and not last the emotional identification with it; because not everything may be considered within laws which can be expressed mathematically, and energies which can be controlled experimentally and reproduced in any way. Every man has conscious life because he has the capacity of identifying himself and penetrating the existence of his fellow-men and this justifies life itself.

From the above we see that in a state of health the organism is perfectly suited to the expression of the human being, and becomes the adquate instrument of its total manifestation.

In disease we are out of place, that is we do not live in accordance with the whole and we experience discomfort and disease becomes the expression of the degree of continuity of the individual with his environment.

Disease results from the failure of the organism to integrate with the world and more precisely from the perception of the organism of not having sufficient power over this environment. Hence the change in the functions or in the structures of the organism may be explained by accepting that disease is nothing but the disintregration of enzymatic and energetic models previously established.

Thus the elimination of the morbid process is not limited to the field of enzymatic reactions, but involves the neuro vegetative and psychic field. In other words the result of recovery is that man learns not to fear the stimulations coming from his environment, but syntonizes with them.

This uneasiness-inadequacy lives continuously with the logos, this and nothing more expresses itself in the totality of symptoms which together give the outline of the disease.

According to Hahnemann's doctrine, the miasma or chronic constitutional diathesis is capable of disturbing the Vital Principle which modulates in an organic sequence a series of symptoms having the stigma (hypostasis) of the miasma itself.

In paragraph 202 Hahnemann writes that disease is always due to a suppression and he then introduces the idea of chronic hereditary constitutional diathesis, thus refering to its characteristics, in agreement with Trousseau, contagious hereditary in the sense of congenital or acquired proneness that can be expressed in different localizations having a common base. From this viewpoint, that is seen as chronic constitutional diathesis, disease is precisely the submerged memory - not extinct - of this removed, difficult path towards evolution, of which the present situation is only the first step, the first blossom of that undergroud root and that this can be removed only be bearing it in mind.

There is a relation between the manifestation of a morbid reality and its intimate essence because dynamically speaking it gives rise to a particular metric which, in existentialistic terms, is represented in a particular manner.

The concept of disease meant as chronic constitutional hereditary diathesis, or miasma, with its relative employment, acknowledges a mediational time which from the symptoms expressed (presence) leads to the essence of their originating source.

Through the dynamism expressed by the pathologic condition we reach the origin of the mentioned dynamism. However, from Hahnemann onwards, like from Nietzche in philosophy and Jung in psychoanalysis, when talking of disease, as doctors we cannot but wonder on the nature and the origin of it. This is partly unknown to us because it is dispersed in the history of our ancestors in which the potentialities of our own life are written and that we, as single human beings, cannot narrate because we have come after them.

This is the reason why our discomfort or disease goes beyond our personal sphere of existence and in our sufferings we get a glimpse of the sufferings of our fathers and this is the enigma.

Our attitude takes on the characteristics of the anamnesis to move to the limit, that is to the origin of suffering or of what comes through of it. It is in this abyss that we have to investigate to understand the sense of our being limited and crippled in respect of something and what we once were or could have been; there are indelible traces of this in our memory. Remote traces, lost in the spiral of our genetic code at its origin, or better still, at its forming stage along the crossroads of ontogenesis.

It is not a thought that memory retains jealously, but fragments of an existence which we do not know and can only recognize in successive steps or at intervals and only if they let themselves be understood by emerging from unconsciousness.

This emerging, this existing, is the beginning of keeping out of the composition-integration with the whole and forms the barrier which splits us up and makes us suffer.

According to Homoeopathy and modern biology, the state of disease prevents the full explication of the functions of the human being.

Thus, diversity of identification of what has to be removed and diversity of therapy and not the elimination of the symptom, but deployment of new possibilities with the elimination of the anomalous dynamism which causes the pathologic. Once this anomaly is removed (in a general sense) one may choose one's destiny in conformity to one's own potentiality.

In sum, in the light of the above, the term prevent changes its meaning and not only includes the idea of preserving, as the root of the word explains, but also the idea of the care of the persona, preparing it to carry out its existence because to cure means, for Homoeopathy, clearing the ground, in the sense of clearing the ground of the human being from hereditary vices.