Vital Force

Written by Frank Russo, this post originally appeared as an article in the December 2021 edition of Homeopathic Nurses Association Newsletter.

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As of October 2021, the Homeopathic Nurses Association has a new logo that includes the phrase Nursing and Homeopathy—a Vital Force. In the history of nursing and homeopathy, both are regarded as an art and a science. Both look at integrating the person and both systems work to achieve the highest expression of health. In the twenty-first century, we can breathe new life into the relationship between nursing and homeopathy, causing a great force in moving forward.

Most everyone has heard the benedictive phrase “May the force be with you.” It became well known in late twenty-century pop culture because of its use in the dialogue in the first Star Wars movie. It is in fact another way of expressing the original blessing of the word goodbye, which etymologically is traced to “God be with you.” The movie’s audience knows what the force refers to. In the narrative, the force is a mysterious energy field that binds the universe together. We recognize it because it resonates archetypally. Harnessing the power of the force gives the film’s protagonists extraordinary abilities. While the archetypal force can give us seemingly superhuman strength, it also directs our actions. The force has an apparent will of its own, which scholars and mystics have spent millennia trying to understand and explain.¹

In homeopathy, we use the term vital force. Samuel Hahnemann did not coin it. Most likely he learned it when he studied ancient Greek medicine, reading Greek and Latin texts. He probably read Hippocrates; Aristotle’s explanations of biological phenomena; and Galen, who held that vital spirits are necessary for life. Hahnemann was a polyglot—he translated Greek and Latin medical books. He knew, for instance, that the Latin word vita means “life.” He also must have been aware of the contemporaneous vitalism movement in the nineteenth century, which posited that living entities contain a fluidic or a distinctive spirit.²

There’s no movie that portrays the moment when Hahnemann added Aphorisms 9 to 18 into the fifth edition of Organon of Medicine. (An aphorism is a concise statement of a scientific principle; here, we are discussing Hahnemann’s Aphorisms 9 and 10.) But leading up to the time of his writing, he spent years of observation and study before articulating his thoughts on the vital force and its role in health and disease. Below, we examine Aphorism 9.

In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamis that animates the material body (organism), rules
with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations
and functions, so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes
of our existence.³

Almost all readers of Hahnemann wonder exactly what he meant in this aphorism. The English text quoted above is a translation of Hahnemann’s dialectical German by the San Francisco–based German homeopath William Boericke in the sixth edition of the Organon of Medicine, published in 1921. During his class lectures on the Organon in Greece, George Vithoulkas occasionally asks homeopaths who are native German speakers what they think a specific German word or phrase of Hahnemann’s means. A frequent answer is that the translation is slightly different from the modern usage of the example.

In Hahnemann’s nineteenth century, the word spiritual (found in Aphorism 9) had multiple meanings, as it does now, and critics and homeopaths have disagreed about what he meant. Manish Bhatia explains that the word was used contextually “to describe the ‘non-material’ nature of the vital force” and “the energy of the body that is responsible for our being alive.” ⁴ The vital force is the one system that has full rule of governance.

The next phrase, “the dynamis that animates the material body (organism),” further defines vital force.

• • • Dynamis is defined as “power” or “energy.”
    • “Unbounded sway” means unrestrained influence.

Here, vital force can be interpreted to mean that the life energy or bioenergy has the power to rule the organism.

Hahnemann subsequently writes, “and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operation, as regards both sensations and functions … ”

• • • Retains means holds or secures.
    • Admirable means commendable, honorable.
    • Harmonious means melodious and balanced.

Sensations and functions are two properties of the organism that receive the energy from the vital force. Sensations means feelings or consciousness; functions refers to the material body’s purpose, task, or role. Hahnemann comments on the wonder of the vital force by saying it is admirable. The vital force or bioenergy, therefore, manages and balances our emotions and physical actions.

Hahnemann continues, “so that our indwelling, reason-gifted mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument … ”

• • • Indwelling means permanently present or fixed inside.
    • Reason-gifted mind refers to the mind’s the ability to think, understand, and form judgement by a process of logic.
    • This living, healthy instrument and harmonious suggests that Hahnemann may have had an understanding of the role tone and harmonics play in music: when the fundamental of a pitch is sounded, there are sixteen overtones. Again, he is referring to natural energy—possibly in sonic wave form.

“For the higher purposes of our existence”: Every reader has their own understanding of that. Hahnemann writes that if you have a healthy body, you have a healthy mind and can focus your energy on “the higher purposes.” This may allude to evolution, both biologic (family) or individual.

The vital force, therefore, is the bioenergy that preserves life and allows us to sustain continuous equilibrium to evolve and achieve purpose.

Vithoulkas comments on the vital force in his book Levels of Health, calling it an “energy complex. It is the organism’s overall ability to react immediately to internal and external stimuli—whether positive or negative.”⁵ In Medicine for the New Millennium, Vithoulkas writes, “All of us experience this vital force in our daily lives when under stress—a change in climate, travel, change in diet, unusual exertion, a grief, a momentary illness. In all these instances, we observe in ourselves a resiliency, a flexibility, an ability to adapt to circumstances. As this ability is most dramatically evident only in living things, we call it vital force.”⁶

In Aphorism 10, Hahnemann continues his explanation of the vital force.

The material organism, without the vital force, is capable of no sensation, no function, no self-preservation; it derives all sensation and performs all the functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital principle) which animates the material organism in health and disease.⁷

Essentially, Hahnemann is saying that without the vital force, the body is dead. Without the constant flow of energy, the body is unable to maintain life. The vital force enlivens the body in health and disease.

As nurses, we witness the vital force profoundly. Through our work and our experiences in providing patient or family care, we see its waxing vibrancy in the birth of a child and its waning in the death of a patient’s body. Our education as nurses and homeopaths should include the Organon of Medicine. It is not only a book of theory but a masterful treatise of observation and understanding of how the body’s energy works and the role it plays in health and healing.

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• 1. https://www.starwars.com/databank/the-force, retrieved November 21, 2021.
  2. William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson. 1998, “Vitalism,” in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. http://mechanism.ucsd.edu/teaching/philbio/vitalism.htm
  3. Samuel Hahnemann. Organon of Medicine, Sixth Edition, B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi, 1983. pp. 97–98.
  4. Manish Bhatia. Lectures of Organon of Medicine, Volume 1, Hpathy publishers, 2013, pp. 73–74.
  5. George Vithoulkas. Levels of Health, Third Revised Edition, Alonnisos, 2019. p. 13.
  6. George Vithoulkas. Homeopathy, Medicine for the New Millennium, IACH, 26th Edition, reprint 2000, Chapter 4, pp. 21–22.
  7. Samuel Hahnemann. Organon of Medicine, Sixth Edition, B. Jain Publishers, New Delhi, 1983. p. 98.