Homoeopathy Treats The Man Not The Diseases

From the flu to chronic pain, homeopathy has been used to treat a wide range of illnesses in its adherents for hundreds of years.

Homeopathic medicine was created more than 200 years ago by Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician who did not agree with harsh conventional 18th century medical practices such as bloodletting.

Hahnemann studied medicine at Leipzig and Vienna, taking the degree of M.D. at Erlangen in 1779. After practicing in various places, he settled in Dresden in 1784 and then moved to Leipzig in 1789. In the following year, while translating William Cullen’s Lectures on the Materia medica into German, he was struck by the fact that the symptoms produced by quinine on the healthy body were similar to those of the disordered states that quinine was used to cure. This observation led him to assert the theory that “likes are cured by likes,” similia similibus curantur; i.e. – diseases are cured (or should be treated) by those drugs that produce healthy persons symptoms similar to the diseases. He promulgated his principle in a paper published in 1796; and, four years later, convinced that drugs in small doses effectively exerted their curative powers, he advanced his doctrine of their “potentization of dynamization.” His chief work, Organon der rationalen Heilkunst (1810; “Organon of Rational Medicine”), contains an exposition of his system, which he called Homöopathie, or homeopathy. His Reine Arzneimittellehre, 6 vol. (1811; “Pure Pharmacology”), detailed the symptoms produced by “proving” a large number of drugs – i.e., by systematically administering them to healthy subjects.

In 1821 the hostility of apothecaries forced him to leave Leipzig, and at the invitation of the grand duke of Anhalt-Köthen he went to live at Köthen. Fourteen years later he moved to Paris, where he practiced medicine with great popularity until his death on 2nd July 1843.

His quest to truly understand the nature of disease and find a scientifically sound methodology of treatment resulted in the system he dubbed “Homeopathy,” from the Greek word homoios..meaning similar, and pathos, or suffering. It is a form of alternative medicine that is widely used today in the U.S., Europe, Japan and India.

Hahnemann believed that the root cause of acute and chronic diseases lay in a disturbance in a person’s vital life force and that in order to cure a patient, homeopaths needed to take into account all aspects of a patient – not just their symptoms and complaints – to find the appropriate rebalancing remedy.

The Law of Similars

Both the medical system of Hahnemann’s time and our current system of Western medicine are described as allopathic: diseases and complaints are treated with substances which suppress the symptoms by creating the opposite effect. For example, allopathic medicine often treats arthritis, with an anti-inflammatory drug. Homeopaths, however, achieve restoration of health by administering a highly diluted remedy, made from a substance that in its natural state would cause the inflicting symptoms in a healthy person.

Hahnemann dubbed this phenomenon “The Law of Similars” or “like cures like,” and it remains the central tenet of homeopathy today.

These heavily diluted remedies also form the center of much of the controversy surrounding homeopathy.

From a medical standpoint, a disease diagnosis is key, because drugs are prescribed to target a particular disease condition – for example, Prilosec for heartburn, Fosamax for osteoporosis, and Ritalin for ADHD.

From a homeopathic standpoint, the disease name is not important. Homeopathy triggers the body’s own healing mechanism and homeopathic remedies are prescribed based on the overall symptom picture.

In an acute case – such as flu, gastroenteritis, or an injury – this picture would include such variables as:

• Energy level – are you more or less tired than usual? Is it worse at any particular time of day?
• Changes in emotional state – are you more weepy, restless, or angry?
• Pace of the illness – did it come on quickly, did it progress rapidly or slowly?
• Any unusual symptoms – e.g. a fever with no thirst, hunger with no desire to eat  (These are the most important symptoms for a homeopath, as they help to individualize the case and guide to the best remedy). A medical doctor will elicit the common symptoms, such as aching limbs, chills, cough, sore throat, runny nose and fatigue, and the prescription will be the same for every patient.

A homeopath will take these symptoms too. But will also want to know how your flu is different from everyone else’s.

So you could have a situation where two members of the same family have contracted the same virus, but one may have felt it coming on for several days, with chilliness, irritability and fatigue, while the other experienced a rapid onset of symptoms with a high temperature, perspiration, restlessness and anxiety.  Although the medical diagnosis would be the same, the manifestation of the virus is quite different, and each person would require a different homeopathic remedy.

This is the beauty of homeopathy – that it is unique and personalized for each individual and for each case of illness – but the downside is that homeopathy is not one-size-fits-all, which makes it more complex to practice and not compatible with the double blind trials so popular in the validation of  traditional medicine.