Organon of Medicine

§ 21:

Now, as it is undeniable that the curative principle in medicines is not in itself perceptible, and as in pure experiments with medicines conducted by the most accurate observers, nothing can be observed that can constitute them medicines or remedies except that power of causing distinct alterations in the state of health of the human body, and particularly in that of the healthy individual, and of exciting in him various definite morbid symptoms; so it follows that when medicines act as remedies, they can only bring their curative property into play by means of this their power of altering man’s state of health by the production of peculiar symptoms; and that, therefore, we have only to rely on the morbid phenomena which the medicines produce in the healthy body as the sole possible revelation of their in-dwelling curative power, in order to learn what disease-producing power, and at the same time what disease-curing power, each individual medicine possesses.

Dr Prasad Rasal:
In this aphorism, Dr Samuel Hahnemann wants to explain the importance of Drug Proving on healthy human beings in order to understand the pure effects of the Medicines. Unless we prove it on them, we cannot understand the medicinal i.e. disease producing powers of those medicines which we can utilize as disease-curing properties on the basis of Law of Similars. The hidden properties of those medicine come in to activity when we use them on healthy human being in dynamic doses. We get the functional morbid alterations at the level of altered sensations & functions which are very much useful to find out Similimum. This is the only method to find out the hidden properties of the Medicines.