Homeopathy & Conventional Medicine

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Historical Perspective

1. Hahnemann was a genius, a Renaissance man. Unfortunately those that inherited the legacy of Homeopathy, his pupils did not continue where Hahnemann left off.

Samuel Christian Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Germany in April 1755 and died in Paris in July 1843. During his lifetime he was influenced by many scientific discoveries, socioeconomic changes, mistakes or grave problems in the medical practices of his day that led him to formulate his Homeopathic philosophy and potentization process. The development of a new idea as a solution to a certain problem in society and this case medicine comes forth when the status quo practice of doing things no longer present viable answers to these problems. Not only was Hahnemann appalled by the medical practices of his day (bloodletting and purging) but he saw these practices as being the cause of further human suffering.

Hahnemann was a genius, a Renaissance man who was not only a medical doctor, but a good chemist and a very good translator. He translated many scientific works that influenced him in his own thinking about medicine. Also during this period new Physics and Chemistry theories were surfacing. "In Hahnemann's lifetime, Black (1755) and Cavendish (1766) were to identify the gases in air, and Priestley (1770) prepared several new gases, Priestley (1774), Lavoisier (1772) and Scheele (1770) made fundamental discoveries on combustion which overturned the "phlogiston" theory and in 1774 chlorine was discovered. Between 1781 and 1785 Priestley, Cavendish and Lavoissier established the composition of water and subsequently it was decomposed into hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis by Davy (1806). Henry's (1803) work on solubility of gases in liquids made a great contribution to physical chemistry and later he published his work on flame (1815.) The quantitative laws of chemistry were propounded by Proust (1799), Dalton (1803) and Richter (1792). Dalton's atomic theory was enhanced by Avogadro (1811) and Berzelius (1811) confirmed the polar nature of elements in his electro-chemical theory, developed chemical nomenclature and determined critical atomic weights. Faraday published the laws of electrolysis in 1833."1

1. Cook, Trevor M. "Samuel Hahnemann The founder of Homoeopathic Medicine" 
Thorsons Publishers Limited Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, 1981 pp. 41-42

In 1820 Oersted discovered that electric currents produce magnetic fields. In 1831 Michael Faraday, an English physicist and chemist discovered that when a magnetic field through a wire loop was changing, a current was induced in the wire loop. Thus he guessed that magnetic fields might also produce electric currents.

In his formulation of the Potentization procedure which is at the core of Homeopathic philosophy and treatment Hahnemann was very much influenced by the above theories as is very much evident in his 6th edition of the “Organon” - his major work. He refers to electromagnetism, when describing the potentization process in the footnote paragraphs 145 and 146 of the 6th edition of the Organon (Hahnemann's major opus.) and I quote these paragraphs below,

146 "Long before this discovery of mine, experience had taught several changes which could be brought about in different natural substances by means of friction, for instance, warmth, heat, fire, development of odor in odorless bodies, magnetization of steel, and so forth. But all these properties produced by friction were related only to physical and inanimate things, whereas it is a law of nature according to which physiological and pathogenic changes take place in the body's condition by means of forces capable of changing the crude material of drugs, even brought about by trituration and succussion, but under the condition of employing an indifferent vehicle in certain proportions..."

147 "The same thing is seen in a bar of iron and steel where a slumbering trace of latent magnetic force cannot but be recognized in their interior. Both, after their completion by means of the forge stand upright, repulse the north pole of a magnetic needle with the lower end and attract the south pole, while the upper end shows itself as the south pole of the magnetic needle. But this is only a latent force; not even the finest iron particles can be drawn magnetically or held on either end of such a bar. Only after this 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, potentiation) develop the medicinal powers hidden with and manifest them more and more or if one may say so, spiritualizes the material substance itself." 1

After reading this, around 1988, and looking at various other books referring to the "vital energy” given to the body by homeopathic remedies I deduced, that since matter is not only seen as a particle but as a wave as well, (DeBroglie’s Particle Wave Duality theory) that the homeopathic substance that gives the information to the molecule of water or ethanol does so by first stabilizing certain spatio-temporal patterns (dissipative structures) and then by providing for a different magnetic or electromagnetic wave, field or frequency. This was also apparent since up till this time, other biochemical and chemical studies could not measure or detect the homeopathic substance in dilution, this leading many scientists to believe that the homeopathic remedy was a placebo. But homeopathic doctors know this not to be true since giving a wrong remedy to an individual does not warrant a therapeutic reaction.

Unfortunately for Hahnemann and Homeopathy, the homeopaths who followed in Hahnemann’s footsteps, eminent medical doctors such as Clarke, Boericke and others, did not take up the research and study Hahnemann had pointed to in subparagraphs 146 and 147 in the 6th edition of the Organon. They neglected this because of a lack of information since the 6th edition of the Organon was published 78 years after Hahnemann had written it. This is how the story goes. The first edition of the Organon was written in 1810 and he rewrote it consecutively in 1819, 1824, 1829, 1833 and in 1842. It is in the 6th edition that we notice certain changes that have occurred in Hahneman’s thinking concerning his thoughts on the evolution of pathology in the human being. Unfortunately this 6th edition was not made available to the public, after Hahnemann’s death in 1843, because of certain circumstances that can only be considered bad luck for Homeopathy. Hahnemann’s second wife Melanie had the original copy in her possession and in 1865 conducted negotiations for the publishing of the 6th edition that never came to fruition because of the hostilities between France and Prussia, resulting finally in 1870 in the Franco-Prussian war. Melanie Hahnemann was French and she had problems publishing the manuscript in Germany. A second reason was Melanie Hahnemann’s asking for an exorbitant sum of money, 50,000 U.S. dollars, when the Faculty of the Homeopathic College of Pennsylvania, requested buying the edition to have it translated into English. The homeopaths who were in these negotiations were Hering, Lippe and Rau. The negotiations broke down until they were revived again by Melanie’s adopted daughter Frau von Bοnninghausen after Melanie’s death in 1878. She dealt with the homeopathic physicians in the U.S. and reduced the price of the manuscript to 25,000 U.S. dollars. This was still an exorbitant sum of money and negotiations again came to a halt. Then in 1880 the American physicians undertook once more to appeal to Fraue von Bonninghausen, who lowered the price to 10,000 U.S. dollars. But the American physicians could not raise this amount of money, so negotiations were dropped until Dr. Haehl took them up again in 1897. Finally in 1920, after 78 years of keeping the 6th edition “under wraps” Dr. Haehl acquired all of Hahnemann’s posthumous manuscripts, including the much awaited for 6th edition of the Organon. The 6th edition was finally published in 1921. These unfortunate occurrences had great repercussions for the whole of Homeopathic philosophy and science.

2. The whole idea of Homeopathy, which was a holistic doctrine introduced into society at the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century, went against the whole socioeconomic, medical and scientific trends of the time. Let us not forget that this was also the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, an age where Cartesianism was in its full bloom. The motto of the day was that “the whole was equal to the sum of its parts” and not that “the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.”

The very essence of the day, the change from village to city, the change from a holistic medical viewpoint - that of the village medical doctor to the medical viewpoint of the specialist in a hospital environment in the city - were all against Homeopathy. It was viewed as a doctrine that went against the modern future of medicine. At that time because of Industrialization there was a great migration from the villages to the cities in order for people to work in the new factories and industrial plants. The medical needs of the people were no longer being met by family doctors but by hospitals and specialists. And all this was well and good because that was how medical knowledge expanded. One doctor could no longer hold all the medical information coming forward, thus medical specialties began to blossom to meet these growing needs. We can somewhat view this in our day and age as well. The conventional medical community has come to a point in its research and medical findings where “old” solutions to chronic diseases are no longer viable as solutions. New and better drugs are being manufactured every day to treat “old” and “new” diseases that keep reappearing in stronger forms. These new and better drugs, unfortunately, instead of giving us viable and long term solutions seem to be making these diseases more complex and add new adverse side effects to the organisms that they are supposed to be helping. Thus conventional medicine has come to a new crossroads where new steps have to be taken and where “old” theories and tenets must give way to new innovations and ideas.

The same may be said for the continuation of these same mistakes in today’s day and age. Medical doctors who have become homeopaths are still trying to explain Homeopathy through “metaphysics” and still use the same language used by Hahnemann and others in the Victorian era in which they lived. Phrases such as “vital energy” are still used when biophysics and physics have given us a new terminology that can be understood by many in the medical and scientific communities and not only by those who are into “New Age Philosophies,” etc. Mind you I am not knocking “New Age philosophy” but its associations in people’s minds truly do detract from a therapeutic treatment that can show us the way in developing remedies without adverse side effects and methods to treat chronic diseases with much less danger to the health of the individual undergoing chronic as well as acute treatment. I truly believe since Hahnemann was an innovator, a researcher that he would be the first in this day and age to reprimand the Homeopaths themselves for not being more innovative and searching out in other fields the true answers to the major questions that have plagued Homeopathy all these years.

The major questions that have plagued Homeopathic research and that have detracted from its popularity in the medical and scientific communities are these:

1. How does the Homeopathic substance, when diluted in distilled water and ethanol or in
distilled water, convey its information to the water and ethanol molecules?
2. Why and how does the Homeopathic dilution still maintain its “information” even after the potentization process has surpassed the dilution
point of Avogadro’s number? [Avogadro’s number, named after the scientist who proposed the principle on which it is based, is a mole or the quantity of a substance which contains 6.02 x 10^-23 items. Since a homeopathic dilution in the potentization process is diluted beyond Avogadro’s number the premise is that there is no primary plant, mineral or organic substance left in the dilution and thus the homeopathic remedy is a placebo after this dilution.]
3. How does the Homeopathic remedy affect the organism and at what level? How does it act therapeutically and via what methods to bring about the desired therapeutic result?
5. Why have there not been more double blind clinical trials done to test the efficacy of Homeopathic remedies. And why when these double blind trials are performed have they been unsuccessful in reporting the true nature of the therapy or in convincing the medical community of the true value of Homeopathic therapy.

Dear readers, this website has been written with these questions in mind and we hope through these pages to give some insight to these puzzling questions. 
Also another common argument against the homeopathic remedy was that because the individual was asked so many questions in the homeopathic interview and more time was spent by the doctor with the patient this was considered also to be a placebo effect, but this is refuted by the fact that babies that cannot understand the homeopathic practitioners and animals are also privy to the therapeutic effect of the homeopathic remedy. So there is definitely some sort of information that passes from the homeopathic substance into the organism at specific levels and this website will try to give you more insight on this.

BOOKS - footnotes
1. Hahnemann, Samuel, "Organon of Medicine" 6th edition (Translated with preface by William Boericke MD.
B. Jain Publishers, Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi pp. 288-289

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