PRIMA CAUSA MORBI (Footnote to § 6)

The meaning of the word “prima causa morbi” is “the primary cause of the
disease”. In the footnote to aphorism 6, Hahnemann says that the old school,
without paying dew importance to the symptoms of the patient, considers the
material causes as the primary cause of the disease. These old school adherents
believed that the bacteria, viruses and the material creations of the diseased
persons are the primary cause of the diseases. They considered that removal of
these material causes will remove the disease. But this is a foolish assumption.
These material causes are the proximate and not the distal cause of the diseases.

Hahnemann confidently asserts that the primary cause of diseases are the
miasms. The dynamic derangement of the vital force by the miasms only causes
the diseases. Even the “acute” miasm cannot affect a person unless he is already
dynamically infected by the psoric miasm, which is the original or the primary
cause of all the diseases. So, miasms are the only basic, real and fundamental
cause of diseases. Without understanding this fact the old school calls itself the
“rational medicine”, just by treating the results of the diseases and the proximate
causes of the diseases.

Example: “The cause of tuberculosis is tubercular bacillus” says the old
school. But the same old school is aware of the fact that a patient’s constitution,
predisposing factors like environment and nutritional status play a major role in
the development of the disease. In unfavorable conditions, even the presence of
the bacteria in the body cannot develop the disease. Only when the person’s vital
force is dynamically deranged by the miasm, a person falls ill.

So, the prima causa morbi is not the material cause, but the miasm. The
synonyms for the “prima causa morbi” are causa morbi, causa prima, inner
cause, proximate cause, prime cause, real cause, fundamental and basic cause of
diseases.