What is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that promotes the use of infinitesimal amounts of natural substances to treat and prevent disease. The substance chosen to treat a disease is one that, when given in large amounts to a healthy person, would produce symptoms similar to the disease itself. The act of greatly diluting this substance is purported to stimulate the body into counteracting these symptoms in the diseased individual.

Homeopathy as a discipline was developed prior to or without regard to the modern principles of pharmacology, biophysics and pathology as a reaction to the unscientific and barbarous practices used by European physicians of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

At the basis of homeopathy is the belief that the body is ruled by a spiritual, animating force. Ancient Indians called it “Prana”; the Chinese called it “Chi”. According to Samuel Hahnemann, the father of homeopathy:

In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual vital force (autocracy), the dynamics 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 purpose of our existence....

...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 in disease (Organon, sixth edition)

Hahnemann believed that the cause of disease is the disturbance of this vital or life force. Disturbances in the vital force manifest themselves as specific symptoms. An illness or disease can be caused by physicl and emotional factors. A negative state of mind attracts disease entities called miasms to enter and/or invade the body. Miasms can be acquired acutely or they can be congenital or latent, until some negative experience or normal aging trigger their appearance as a symptom and then as disease.

Hahnemann argues that specific treatment of such symptoms by opposing their action, as in conventional medicine, is not useful in treating disease because the disturbance in the vital force remains. Only correction of the underlying disturbance in the vital force can cure disease.

“Similia similibus curentur” (Like cures like)
Hahnemann recognized that many natural products produce pharmacological or toxicological effects,
which he refers to as symptoms. He believed that substances that produce symptoms similar to a given disease should be used to treat that disease. He states:
The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in strength so that 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) in the most similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger than the disease. (Organon, sixth edition).

He felt that the artificially induced disease (caused by the medicine) would push aside the pathologic disturbance in the vital force and replace it with this new, pharmacologically-induced disturbance in the vital force. The body could then overcome this artificial disturbance and a cure would be produced. In Hahnemann's words:

As every disease ... consists only in a special, morbid, dynamic alteration of our vital energy (of the principle of life) manifested in sensation and motion, so in every homoeopathic cure this principle of life dynamically altered by natural disease is seized through the administration of medicinal potency selected exactly according to symptom-similarity by a somewhat stronger, similar artificial disease-manifestation. By this the feeling of the natural (weaker) dynamic disease-manifestation ceases and disappears. This disease-manifestation no longer exists for the principle of life, which is now occupied and governed merely by the stronger, artificial disease-manifestation. This artificial disease-manifestation has soon spent its force and leaves the patient free from disease, cured. The dynamics, thus freed, can now continue to carry life on in health.

Dilution and Dynamization
Hahnemann recognized that the use of substances that cause symptoms similar to an existing disease would acutely aggravate the condition and present other side effects. Thus he advocated the dilution of the substance to the point where the symptoms were no longer present.

Dilutions are performed as ten or one hundred fold steps. Dilutions of 1:10 are designated in the U.S. by the Roman Numeral X (1X = 1/10, 2X = 1/100, 3X = 1/1000, etc). Dilutions of 1:100 are designated by the Roman Numeral C (1C = 1/100, 2C=1/10,000, 3C = 1/1,000,000, etc). Liquids are diluted with alcohol (ethanol) and insoluble powders are diluted with milk sugar (lactose).

The dilutions often reduce the concentration of the active substance to infinitesimal levels. At dilutions, such as 30C, nearly all of the original substance was gone. However, the healing power of the substance could be preserved and actually concentrated by the process of dynamization.

Hahnemann writes of this proposed phenomenon by analogy to magnetism:
"Only after (a) bar of steel is dynamized, rubbing it with a dull file in one direction, will it become a true active powerful magnet, one able to attract iron and steel to itself and impart to another bar of steel by mere contact and even some distance away, magnetic power and this in a higher degree the more it has been rubbed. In the same way will triturating a medicinal substance and shaking of its solution (dynamization, potentation) develop the medicinal powers hidden within and manifest them more and more or if one may say so, spiritualizes the material substance itself "Samuel Hahnemann, The Preparation of Medicines, The Organon, 6th Ed

Proving
To attempt determine which homeopathic remedies would be best for various ailments, Hahnemann and others engaged in a series of provings. In what can be viewed as early clinical trials of natural substances, Hahnemann and others self- administered pharmacologically active doses of many different substances, then carefully recorded the symptoms that resulted in a materia medica. These provings were based on Hahnemann's early study of cinchona bark. He states:

Hahnemann felt that the best proving was done on oneself. Since the proving is based on self- observation Hahnemann cautions that the person doing the proving must be trustworthy, intelligent and have keen observational skills. Some provings were taken from the literature, particularly where poisonings from a known agent produced a specific pattern of symptoms or lesions.

Hahnemann stressed that homeopaths should add to the materia medica with his own provings:

At first, about forty years ago, I was the only person who made the provings of the pure powders of medicines the most important of his occupations. Since then I have been assisted in this by some young men, who instituted experiments on themselves, and whose observations I have critically revised. Following these some genuine work of this kind was done by a few others. But what shall we not be able to effect in the way of curing in the whole extent of the infinitely large domain of disease, when numbers of accurate and trustworthy observers shall have rendered their services in enriching this, the only true materia medica, by careful experiments on themselves! The healing art will then come near the mathematical sciences in certainty. (Organon, sixth edition)
However, most of the homeopathic provings that are currently referred to in the US Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia, which provide the basis for homeopathic prescribing, come from the time of Hahnemann.

Treatment
The homeopathic treatment of a patient begins with careful history taking and observation of the patient. A list of the patient's symptoms is developed and can be determined from the materia medica or compared to a repertory. The materia medica contains the results of provings of thousands of substances. The idea is to match the patients symptoms as closely as possible to the symptoms listed for a given substance in the materia medica.
The prescription is based on the symptoms and the behavior of the patient. Hahnemann believed that a single remedy should be given at a time, to prevent interference between two or more remedies.
The response to treatment is believed to follow the Laws of the Cure, which state:

• A remedy begins to work at the top of the body and progresses downward.
• A remedy works from the inside out; from major to minor organs
• Symptoms go away in the reverse of their order of appearance.

Back to top