Homeopathy was founded in the late eighteenth century by the celebrated German physician Samuel Hahnemann, known for his work in pharmacology, hygiene, public health, industrial toxicology, and psychiatry. Reacting to the barbarous practices of his day, such as bloodletting (the use of leeches), and toxic mercury-based laxatives, Dr. Hahnemann set out to find a more rational and humane approach to medicine.
Dr. Hahnemann’s breakthrough came during an experiment in which he twice daily ingested cinchona, a Peruvian bark well-known as a cure for malaria. Soon after he began his experiment he developed periodic fevers common to malaria. As soon as he stopped taking the cinchona, his symptoms disappeared. Dr. Hahnemann theorized that, if taking a large dose of cinchona created symptoms of malaria in a healthy person, this same substance, taken in smaller dose by a person suffering from malaria, might stimulate the body to fight the disease. His theory was born out by years of experiments with hundreds of substances that produced similar results. Based on his work, Dr. Hahnemann formulated the principles of homeopathy.
According to Dr. Hahnemann, “Each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly, and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) the most similar and complete manner of the totality of the symptoms.” In other words, the same substance that in large doses produces the symptoms of an illness, in very minute doses cures it.
Dr. Hahnemann referred to this phenomenon as the Law of Similars, a principle first recognized in the fourth century B.C., by Hippocrates, who was studying the effects of herbs upon disease. This Law of Similars was also the theoretical basis for the vaccines of physicians Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, and Louis Pasteur. They would “immunize” the body with trace amounts of a disease component, often a virus, to strengthen its immune response to the actual disease. Allergies are treated in a similar fashion by introducing minute quantities of the suspected allergen into the body to bolster natural tolerance levels.
Most people believe that the higher the dose of a medicine, the greater the effect. But the opposite holds true in homeopathy where the more a substance is diluted, the higher its potency. Dr. Hahnemann discovered this Law of the Infinitesimal Dose by experimenting with higher and higher dilutions of substances to avoid toxic side effects.
Today, homeopathic remedies are usually prepared through a process of diluting with pure water or alcohol and succussing (vigorous shaking). Homeopathic solutions can be diluted to such an extent that literally no molecules of the original substance remain in the remedy. Yet, the more dilute it gets the more potent it becomes. This phenomenon has been the source of great fascination among practitioners and researchers in the field of homeopathic medicine, as from the point of view of conventional chemistry; diluted homeopathic remedies may contain no trace of the original substance. In fact, any homeopathic remedy over 24X potency (24 successive dilutions and succussions) will have no chemical trace of the original substance remaining.
Learn How to Make a Homeopathic Remedy
A session with a homeopathic practitioner is a unique experience for someone accustomed to conventional medicine. For instance, you may suffer from chronic headaches, perhaps migraines. While the conventional medical treatment for this condition is the same for most everyone (some form of analgesic or anti-inflammatory), homeopathy recognizes over two hundred symptom patterns associated with headaches, and has corresponding remedies for each.
Your headache may be in the front of your head. It may get worse with a cold sensation and improve with heat. It may be better while you are laying down, or while you are sitting up. You may be a person who is thin, and easily excited, or the docile, sedentary sort. The first task of the homeopathic practitioner is a process called “profiling,” or recording all of the qualities-physical, mental, and emotional-that will determine the patient’s remedy or combination of remedies.
Practitioners of classical homeopathy consult vast compendiums called repertories and materia medicas to determine the remedy that most closely matches the total picture of the patient’s symptomology. These compendiums are compilations of the findings of thousands of tests, for over two hundred years, that record how healthy individuals react to different substances. The very detailed reactions of the subjects are catalogued in these compendiums and the homeopathic practitioners task is to match them exactly to the patient’s profile.
Copyright© 2019 by David R. Card
