The practice of homoeopathy has existed since the late eighteenth century when Samuel Hahnemann, an eminent German physician and chemist rediscovered the law of similars . By taking small doses of Peruvian Bark, an accepted effective treatment for malaria, Hahnemann found his body developed symptoms similar to those of malaria. He experimented with other highly toxic substances including mercury and arsenic with the same result and formed the conclusion that the curative power of a substance resulted from its potential to create symptoms similar to those of the disease. From this Hahnemann formulated the medical system homoeopathy from the Greek 'homoios' - similar and 'pathos' disease - suffering.
Hahnemann then found that by a process of dilution and sucussion (vigorous shaking) of the original crude substance, any toxic side-effects were eliminated and the potent healing energy held within that substance was released. After the sixth centisimal scale dilution there is no trace of the original substance materially detectable in a laboratory analysis. He then went on to prove that the greater the dilution the more powerful and potent the action of the remedy. Conventional science concerned with quantifying the properties of a substance in the main consider these claims unfounded and nonsensical, yet as the rigid boundaries of scientific thought are rapidly being pushed outwards the acceptance that the physical world is not completely determinate, and that any event may hold in it the element of surprise, there may still remain a claim for homoepathy as a scientific system.
"Physics is predictable but within limits; its world is ordered but not causal."
Robert Oppenheimer
Within the process of dilution and succussion it would appear that something on a more dynamic level is released. There is an unlocking of the latent energy held within the substance that releases its very essence and vitality. This vital energy is that force which animates all living things and although hitherto undetectable in purely scientific terms, permeates and activates all levels of being. It is in this essential expression of a substance that its curative properties may be found. The total pattern of these symptoms are well documented in the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, containing the provings of remedies available at the present time. The true art of homoepathy lies in the recognition of these of these patterns in their totality and in accessing the relevant information from the patient. An extensive case history is meticulously recorded and all symptoms are arranged into a 'picture' of the individual. The picture is then matched with the pattern presented by the similar substance. By applying the law of similars and administering the simmillimum, the remedy, potentised on its vital level, then stimulates the patient's own vitality to mobilise and overwhelm the dis-ease within the patient's own energy system. Hence the defence mechanism is stimulated to heal itself.
It is not only the physical symptoms that are considered in this matching. The emotional and mental /spiritual aspects are part of our total make-up through which the vital energy force flows and interweaves. How we react on any one of these levels sends ripples of response through the vital force affecting us on every level to a lessors or greater degree. It is the totality of symptoms on all three levels that leads the homoepath to finding the true simillimum.
Symptoms are the individual's best effort to draw attention to any imbalance or disturbance of the vital force on any level of being, and the best mechanism we have to redress that balance rather than palliate or suppress those symptoms. As the remedy is prepared on a vital level so it acts on the vital level of the patient.
In conventional drug therapy, manufactured drugs are administered that will remove or alleviate our physical symptoms without direct bearing on any underlying cause other than a physical response to a physical disease caused by physical phenomena. This is not to deny the existence of bacteria , viruses, environmental pollution etc., which all play their part in the causation of physical disease, but also to draw attention to the individual patterns of susceptibility within each one of us which determine individual responses when exposed to these invading physical phenomena.
The healing art of homoepathy is therefore a truly holistic therapy in its treatment of the individual as a three fold being. The homoepath collects, observes and records 'symptoms' from the medical, emotional and physical planes of the individual and with these individual strands of symptoms weaves the whole picture of the patient.
If we can suspend our belief that cause leads to believable effect and that the patterns and forms of matter may be beyond our quantifiable comprehension at this time, we may be able to open the higher aspects of the human mind to accommodate the seemingly inexplicable. Authoritative scientific research has proved the efficacy of homoeopathy only to have it refuted by an equally convincing scientific paper to the contrary. With humanity continuing to search for more effective and non-toxic forms of treatment in a world with a rapidly increasing incidence of chronic disease, there is a place for the science of homoeopathy.
Copyright © 1996 The International Communique Ltd