Eizayaga biography of martin

     After much serious thinking and experience, an Argentinian homeopath began to venture beyond the Kentian paradigm. He wrote a book in 1972 (translated into English in 1992), Treatise on Homeopathic Medicine, which deserves to be read by every serious student of Hahnemann. Experience and considerable research led Dr. Francisco Eizayaga to formulate a more complex model of therapeutics involving the concept of �layers.� This concept effectively cracked the mould of the uniformitarian constitutionalism, which has dominated homeopathic philosophy in North America and other parts of the world. From the concept of layers, Eizayaga derived some valuable insights into what Hahnemann's writings were really about.

     Eizayaga concluded from his observations that cases had several layers:

  • Local/regional disease (mainly the morbid pathology)
  • Fundamental layer (essentially the mentals and generals)
  • Morbid terrain (chronic miasm)
  • Constitutional layer (state of being before disease)

     The homeopath needs to be able to divide the symptoms of the case into these different layers, ascribing to each what properly belongs to each. Once Eizayaga identified the layers, a plan of treatment suggested itself.

     We need to address these layers consecutively, according to Eizayaga. Thus, if there is a local lesion, or morbid pathology, we start with this because it is

"...the most serious and the one which must be aided by us first." (p. 260).

     It is this emphasis on the morbid pathology that set Eizayaga apart from the neo-Kentianism of his time. Eizayaga explains how classical homeopathy sees the acute layer as something to be treated by the fundamental remedy, and treating it using acutes as suppressive, an argument he rejects. Eizayaga also points out that Kent, later in life, came to see the need for this type of "local" prescribing.

See:

Kent and the Two Sides

     Where there is no morbid objective pathology, then the case can start from the symptoms which precede the "disease," or the symptoms of the patient, the generals and mentals. This he calls the fundamental layer (objective pathology [clinical] & subjective pathology [sufferings], or signs and symptoms).

     There can be cases where there is no pathology of either type (morbid or psychosomatic), simply tendencies in the chronic miasms, of which he distinguishes five: psora, tuberculosis, sycosis, cancer and syphilis. He suggests that these pre-disposing terrains be treated with the corresponding nosode (a tonic prescription).

     Underlying all this is the constitution, which is simply the "way of being of a person." Eizayaga then distinguishes between the natural state of the constitution, which he calls the genotype and the state produced by various shocks and traumas, which leads to a phenotypical constitution (pp. 133-134).

     It is the phenotype which is the basis for the fundamental layer and which corresponds to the classical remedy, derived from the mentals and generals with no morbid pathology, or what is often referred to as purely "functional" disturbance.

See:

Constitutional Types

     They are revealing a pathological alteration of the phenotypical constitution which must be treated with the so-called "fundamental remedy or simillimum" with which we shall not only cause the disturbed individual to recover but also we will prevent the future evolution and organic localisation of the progressing disease. (p. 257) 6)

     In looking at the development of disease, Eizayaga sees the following order or layers that become involved:

  1. "Constitutional layer" � involving the genotype
  2. "Morbid terrain" � considered to be a miasmatic �diathesis� or predisposing susceptibility.
  3. "Fundamental layer" � The generals and mentals of the case produced by shocks acting on the constitution of the patient.
  4. "Lesional layer" � consisting of the morbid tissue signs, as well as any symptoms which can be related to the morbid tissue and not to the other layers.

     In order to select this 'local' medicine, we recommend not to reject any symptom of the disease or clinical entity, its modalities and concomitants, but on the contrary, to make use of them all. The psychic symptoms of an emotional, affective, or volitive type and the mental symptoms corresponding to the intellect and to judgement (psychiatric symptoms) will be immensely important and will constitute a fundamental aid in individualising the acute medicine, on the condition that all these symptoms appeared or were exacerbated right from the beginning of the disease and that they are not chronic symptoms of the patient which preceded this disease. (p. 260)