Coined from the Greek words homois, meaning ’similar’, and pathos, meaning ’sickness’, homoeopathy received its name from its German founder, Samuel Hahnemann. Based on the principle of similia similibus curentur (like cures like), homoeopathy proves that the agents that bring about symptoms of sickness can cure the cause of those very symptoms when used in extremely diluted form. This phenomenon, though originally scoffed at by practitioners of modern medicine, is more and more, being accepted as credible due to the continuing success of laboratory experiments.

Hahnemann: The Founder of Homoeopathy

The eighteenth century was the time when medical practice had lost its moorings. Newer discoveries had been made in the fields of anatomy and physiology of the body, but had, so far, remained unconnected and unutilised in the practice of medicine. On the other hand, discoveries in the field of chemistry and physics had been applied to the understanding of the functioning of the human body and had, in turn, resulted in the propagation of chemical and mechanical theories about health and disease. These later-day theories clarified less and puzzled more. In the process, the classical theory of the humours in health and disease, got unhinged. Physicians were flummoxed about what to believe and what not to believe. Amidst the theorists flourished quacks all over Europe. If a patient survived, it was in spite of the doings of the practitioners of the healing art! 

Samuel Hahnemann was born at such a time in the small town of Meissen near Dresden, in the Dutchy of Saxony in Germany, on April 10, 1755. Son of a porcelain painter, he was good at studies. He went to a medical college, acquired his M.D. degree in 1779, and set himself up in practice. By 1790, he was accepted as ‘one of the most distinguished physicians of Germany, a physician of mature reflection and experience’.

Yet the more Hahnemann engaged himself in the practice of medicine, the more dissatisfied he became with the prevalent modes of treatment with drugs. In a letter to an eminent physician in 1784, he expressed his dissatisfaction in these words:

‘It was agony for me to walk always in darkness, with no other light than that which could be derived from books. I had to prescribe those drugs to the patients which owed their place in the Materia Medica merely to an arbitrary decision. I could not conscientiously treat the unknown morbid condition of my suffering brethren by these unknown medicines, which being very active substances, so easily could occasion death or produce new afflictions and chronic maladies, often more difficult to remove than the original diseases …. Soon after my marriage, I renounced the practice of medicine … and I engaged exclusively in chemistry and in literary occupations. When I became a father, serious diseases threatened my beloved children, my flesh and blood. My scruples redoubled when I saw that I could afford them no certain relief.’

Looking for a way out, Hahnemann did find one. While engaged in translating Cullen’s Materia Medica, he felt uneasy about the explanation given for the cure of malarial fever by administering cinchona bark (quinine). He took the drug himself to find out how it acted. ‘I took by way of experiment, twice a day, four drachms of good china. My feet, fingerends, etc. at first became cold. I grew languid and drowsy. My heart began to palpitate and my pulse grew hard and small. Then appeared intolerable anxiety,1 trembling, prostration throughout all my limbs, pulsation in my head, redness of my cheeks and thirst. In short, all the symptoms which are ordinarily characteristic of intermittent fever, made their appearance one after the other, but without the peculiar chilly, shivering rigor.’

Hahnemann felt convinced that the drug which was the best agent to cure malarial fever produced in him the initial symptoms of that very fever. He then investigated the action of as many as 50 more drugs in a duration of six years on normal human beings. He recorded the symptoms produced and compared them with the symptoms of the diseases in which they were administered successfully. He published the results of his findings in an article in 1796.

Simila Similibus Curentur

‘Every powerful medicinal substance produces in the human body a kind of peculiar disease; the more powerful the medicine, the more particularly marked and violent the disease. We should imitate nature, which sometimes cures a chronic disease by superadding another, and employ in the (especially, chronic) disease we wish to cure, that medicine which is able to produce another very similar artificial disease, and the former will be cured — similia similibus.’

                                                                                    Samuel Hahnemann

Essay on the New Principle for Ascertaining the Curative Power of Drugs (1796).

Between 1796 and 1810, Hahnemann worked feverishly towards analysing more and more drugs so as to be sure of his hypothesis about the mode of action of drugs. In 1810, he published The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, his greatest book, wherein was elucidated systematically the method and principles of medical treatment to which he had given the name of Homoeopathy. He derived the name Homoeopathy from the statement of Hippocrates, in which the latter had said that, at least occasionally, a drug could cure the condition it could cause.

The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing aroused a storm of opposition. This was because Hahnemann had criticised the then current practice of medicine, and had advocated the use of small doses of single drugs. Coupled with this was the fact that the orthodox physicians were afraid that Hahnemann might after all be right, because he had used a new experimental method.

Shortly after publishing his controversial book, Hahnemann applied to the University of Leipzig for permission to teach. This being granted, he gathered around him some enthusiastic students and open-minded physicians and taught them for eight years. His students not only learnt the principles of homoeopathy from him but also helped him in analysing many drugs.

Over the years, opposition to Hahnemann and his mode of treating patients gathered momentum. He was prohibited from dispensing his drugs in Leipzig. He left Leipzig and, thereafter, went from one state to another, at last securing shelter at Coethen, where he remained for fourteen years. In 1835, he moved to Paris where he practised for eight years until his death on July 2, 1843.

After Hahnemann’s death, his pupils took to practising homoeopathy in many parts of Europe — Austria, Hungary, Italy, France, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, England and Canada, USA, Australia. England produced some of the greatest homoeopaths.

As early as 1810, some German physicians and missionaries landed in Bengal and started distributing homoeopathic remedies among the populace. By the middle of the nineteenth century, there were many amateur homoeopaths among the Indian Civil and Military Services in Bengal. A book entitled Thirty-five Years in the East, Adventures, Discoveries, etc. published in London in 1852, by John Martin Hoenigberger, provides a glimpse of the beginning of homoeopathic practice in Lahore at the Court of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Hoenigberger had learnt homoeopathy from Hahnemann in Paris in 1835 and had come to India in 1839 to treat Maharaja Ranjit Singh.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, some homoeopathic dispensaries and hospitals opened in Bengal and in the south. During this period, a remarkable personality appeared in Calcutta, who had much to do with the establishment and spread of homoeopathy in India. Raj an Dutta (1818-1889) belonged to a scholarly and affluent family of Bengal and had, for sometime, studied in Calcutta Medical College. He had once been treated for a chronic disease by an amateur homoeopath and thereafter, developed interest in homoeopathy. He brought Dr Tonnere, a French doctor, (who had converted to homoeopathy) and put him in charge of the Homoeopathic Hospital and Dispensary in Calcutta in 1851. This venture somehow failed. He learnt homoeopathy himself and treated many patients successfully, some of whom were distinguished men of the time such as Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Raja Radha Kanta Deb Bahadur, and Dr Mahendra Lai Sircar.

Gradually, homoeopathic dispensaries opened in other cities such as Benaras and Allahabad, and by the beginning of the twentieth century, most cities and towns had homoeopathic dispensaries. Efforts by trained homoeopaths to procure government recognition and training bore fruit with the Bengal Government establishing the General Council and State Faculty of Homoeopathic Medicine in June 1941. In 1944, the All India Institute of Homoeopathy was formed with its general office at Delhi. After independence, homoeopathic teaching and practice was accorded a fair amount of attention and a Government of India enquiry committee recommended the creation of a Central Homoeopathic Council.

How Homoeopathy Works

Similia Similibus Curentur: The basic concept of homoeopathy is contained in these words. Hahnemann discovered this concept while investigating the mode of action of the cinchona bark from which quinine is derived. He took the drug himself and to his surprise, experienced the symptoms that occur in malaria. This led him to investigate thoroughly the symptoms produced in healthy human beings by many other drugs. He arrived at the conclusion that a drug cures those symptoms of a disease which it can, on the other hand, also produce if taken by healthy human beings.

Drug Provings: The testing of medicines on healthy persons in homoeopathy is called ‘proving’, after the German prufung, meaning ‘testing’. There are, however, many conditions which must be fulfilled before drugs are tried in this fashion. Hahnemann has provided details of such conditions.

Homoeopathic provings on healthy human beings are conducted only upto the point of reversible, physical changes, and not to the point of irreversible pathology as is done while studying the pharmacological action of drugs in laboratory animals. The actions of these provings are reported verbally by the provers themselves. These verbal reports in the words of the prover include his subjective, physical, emotional, mental, and intuitive reactions to the drug. All these symptoms are faithfully recorded.

Furthermore, the drug is not administered in usual pharmacological doses, but in minute doses prepared according to homoeopathic principles. The symptoms produced and recorded are, as a result of the dynamic action of drugs, noticed in provers who are somehow susceptible to a particular drug, in doses ranging from minute material doses to micro-doses or potencies, as they are called in homoeopathy.

In a particular drug proving, the symptoms produced rarely cover the whole range of symptoms of a particular disease from its beginning to its end. They project symptoms that occur during certain stages. That is why one drug is seldom found adequate to cure a disease; rather, it is usual to find that a series of drugs are often required to treat a disease at its various stages

The Holistic Principle: Totality of Symptoms

A core principle that Hahnemann developed within homoeopathy was related to holism, which he called ‘the totality of symptoms’. By this he meant that health problems faced by an individual were not based on merely one or two symptoms or a diagnosis, but the disturbance of the whole mind and body, taking in the widest possible view of life — what today homoeopaths call ‘the maximum totality’. This takes into account the attitude, inner thoughts, outer expression, diet and climate relationships, work and creativity, sleeping, dreams and fantasies, ambitions, will, determination, love, sex, spirituality, emotions, current problems and problems from conception onwards, as well as the state and nature of the country the patient lives in.

Dilution and Potentiation: Homoeopathic remedies are diluted forms of natural substances. These dilutions are accomplished by succession (thorough shaking) of medicines at each stage of dilution.

When a remedy is prescribed by a homoeopath, he selects the appropriate potentiation or dilution and prepares the medicine by diluting it with pure ethyl alcohol or milk sugar in the proportion of 1:10 or 1:100. In centesimal dilution (1:100 if liquid), one drop of the original substance is added to 99 drops of pure ethyl alcohol, and the vial containing the mixture struck many times against a leather pad. This is added to 99 drops of pure alcohol in a fresh vial and the process repeated. When the desired stage of dilution is reached, it is added to a large number of milk granules. These granules are then described by the name and dilution — for example, Belladona 30 centesimal (using Latin terminology).

These dilutions are sometimes carried far beyond the point where, quantitatively speaking, none of the medicinal substance is left. Yet it is considered that the more diluted the remedy, the greater is its effect. The remedy is said to often develop new qualities not apparent at lower unsuccessed dilutions. Some materials with no medicinal value in gross dilution as in the case of quartz, are said to develop profound physical, emotional, and mental effects with successed high dilution.

Health and Disease: According to Hahnemann, a human body functions and is maintained by a vital force. This force is capable of bringing about an adjustment in the body and mind to the best advantage of a person when he is threatened by adverse influences.

Disease means disorderly functioning of this vital force. In acute disease, this vital force, though disordered to a great extent or even to the point of extinction, still retains the inherent capacity to set itself right with or without medicinal help. In chronic diseases, however, the vital force, though altered in an insidious way, gets so deranged that it seems to have lost that inherent capacity of self-adjustment.

When a patient responds to treatment according to homoeopathic concepts, his complaints shift from one area of the body to another — usually from more vital organs to less vital organs as if some inner healing force was directing their course. Symptoms relating to the head move downwards to the trunk and gradually along the extremities to the hands and feet. Illness of vital organs such as the lungs and heart would, probably, shift into the throat or intestines, maybe ending as a discharge or as a skin eruption. Mental illnesses are likely to move into the emotional and then into the physical sphere. In the case of a long-standing disease being treated, the most recent symptoms that the patient has had, would reappear for a brief period first, and the oldest symptoms, last.

In fact, in homoeopathy, the symptoms of illness represent an attempt by the body to heal itself. Underlying every symptom of a particular illness is the attempt of the body to restore balance.

Diagnosis: Identifying the Drug of Choice

Diagnosis in homoeopathy differs from diagnosis in other systems of medicine. While allopathy and other systems label a case as pneumonia or tuberculosis, homoeopathic diagnosis consists of identifying the drug which is known to produce the same symptoms in a healthy person on proving, as in a given patient.

Other aspects in diagnosis are also taken into consideration. The constitutional make-up of the person is assessed thoroughly. Effort is made to search for the factor or factors responsible for the illness. These factors may have operated in the remote past — even before birth, or they could be still operating at the time. According to Hahnemann, the most important factor both in initiating and in maintaining diseases (especially chronic disease) is the presence of toxins in the tissues. Chronic disease, according to homoeopathy, may be due to residual poisoning from previous infections such as diphtheria, measles, typhoid fever, malaria, and so on, as also the aftermath of vaccination and various types of inoculations.

Thus the homoeopathic physician has to find as a curative, a similar remedy from every possible angle: the symptom-picture, type of constitution, causal factors, and the deep-seated toxicosis.

The essential question in homoeopathy is not what disease the patient is suffering from, but in what manner ne reacts to it. Diagnosis in homoeopathy does not consist of labelling the patient with the name of a disease and then treating that nominal disease; it is concerned with drug reactions which will restore his vital equilibrium. In short, the patient is diagnosed in terms of his treatment.

Modern practitioners of homoeopathy are familiar with the latest diagnostic procedures and tests that are available in allopathy, and make full use of them. Besides making a remedial diagnosis, some of them also make a diagnosis using the methods of allopathy, and note down the findings on the patient’s ticket or chart.
Students in homoeopathy colleges are given training in all the basic subjects such as chemistry, physics, biology and anatomy, physiology, pathology, bacteriology, surgery, materia medica, obstetrics, gynaecology, forensic medicine, and social and preventive medicine. Teachers are convinced that without adequate training in these subjects, they cannot produce effective homoeopathic physicians.

Students are taught the Organon and homoeopathic philosophy, and made familiar with the homoeopathic materia medica, repertories, and so on, so that they can work out a case and prescribe homoeopathic treatment.

From Symptoms to Treatment

In homoeopathy, remedies prescribed for the patient are selected and guided by the symptoms that the patient has. Even among the symptoms, some receive the first consideration and priority, while others, the last. Thus the mental and physical symptoms which relate to the patient as a whole, receive the first consideration. Next come the strange, rare, and uncommon symptoms which are not due to physiological, anatomical, or pathological changes, but are unique and consequently expressive of the individuality/ of the patient. Then come the symptoms peculiar to thp concerned parts, tissues, or organs of the patient. Finally the symptoms which are common to all diseases belonging to the same category and corresponding to the common symptoms observed in various drug-provings, ar£ considered.

Homoeopathy has no specific remedy for any disease by name, but it offers a specific remedy for each individual case of disease. Ten cases of tuberculosis may require ten different remedies, whereas ten different disease conditions bearing different labels may require the same drug.

As the patient’s symptoms are said to represent a natural attempt of the body to restore health, and ought to be reinforced rather than interfered with, a correct prescription is often characterised by a brief aggravation of existing symptoms at first, before they are ameliorated.

In homoeopathy, a remedial agent is used in its chemically analysed and separated parts. That is why there is no attempt in homoeopathy to analyse an organic drug derived from a vegetable source or elsewhere and find out its alkaloids and to standardise its action from that point of view. The idea behind the homoeopathic

Green Medicine Homoeopathic remedies are produced from naturally occurring substances, without causing damage to the environment. Quantities of substances required to make remedies are so small that the sources of these substances — plants, trees, minerals, and animals — are easily sustainable.

mother tincture is, therefore, to preserve as much as possible of the natural entity. The inactive constituents of vegetable drugs are considered useful for certain purposes, as for example, to control and modify the speed and the way in which alkaloids act in the body.

Around 1873, Dr Schuessler put forward the view that there were some mineral salts or biochemicals which were vitally concerned with carrying on functional activity in the body cells. These, according to him, were twelve in number, and to them he gave the name of tissue salts or functional remedies. These were: Calcarea fluor, Calcarea phos, Calcarea sulph, Ferrum phos, Kali mur, Kali phos, Kali sulph, Magnesia phos, Natrum mur, Natrum phos, Natrum sulph, and Silicea.

For therapeutic purposes, there inorganic salts are administered in a highly subdivided form prepared according to the homoeopathic principle of trituration and potentiation. This is done to facilitate assimilation and proper diffusion into the cells and tissues of the body. By successive steps of trituration (thoroughly shaking), the desired degree of subdivision of the mineral substances is attained. The completed trituration is then moulded into celloids or tablets. The celloids are soft tablets, which immediately and completely dissolve on the tongue. The term ‘cell salt deficiency’ as used by Schuessler, refers to localised deficiency of the salt in a given area only, and not necessarily to the total amount of salt in the body.

Tissue salts given in minute doses are said to restore order to the deranged vital force which is rendered (due to whatever cause or causes) incapable of assimilating the proper amount of required salts. They may not supply the deficient area directly but cause the vital force to absorb the required amount of the salts concerned for restoring the lost physio-chemical equilibrium.

Step’by’Step Approach: When a nine-year-old child afflicted, for the past five years, with breathlessness due to exertion, goes to a learned institutionally-trained homoeopathic physician, the latter wants to find out the complete history of symptoms as they have developed during the course of the disease. This includes the onset of symptoms; how the symptoms developed; what medicines the patient took at each stage of the illness and with what result; what other intercurrent illnesses the patient suffered in-between; what illnesses he suffered from before the age of four years when the symptoms of the present illness started; what injections or inoculations the patient has had and with what result.

The physician also makes enquiries from the patient or his parents, about the likes and dislikes of the child, particularly with regard to the food that he takes. Does he like to take things hot or cold? Does he sleep well or not? What is his appetite like in general? While sleeping, does he keep his feet inside the blanket or outside? What is the nature of his stool, urine, and phlegm? Are the stools excessive? Does the phlegm have a bad odour?

The smallest details in a patient’s life are important for the homoeopath to create the whole picture that is necessary to find the appropriate remedy. 

The physician enquires whether breathlessness is more during the day or at night? Is it accompanied by any other symptom such as coughing? What gives him comfort from breathlessness? Has he ever passed blood with phlegm? Has he ever missed school due to illness? What sort of dreams does he have?

Checking through the family history of the patient, the physician asks whether any other member of the family has had/has the same or similar trouble? What other illness has any other member of the family suffered from? A homoeopathic physician affords the greatest importance to the symptoms narrated by the patient about his illness. He lets the patient speak for as long as the patient likes to, and only afterwards does he put indirect questions so as to elicit more information about the aspects which the patient has not touched upon. He avoids questions, so far as possible, which will get only monosyllabic answers. He likes the patient to describe the symptoms of his illness in his own words.

After the doctor gets to know the history of the patient, he conducts a general physical examination, making note of whether the skin of the patient is dry or rough, hot or cold. He also takes careful note of other features — the patient’s speech, gait, any peculiarity in the patient’s conduct, his mental state, and so on. This is followed by a check of the patient’s temperature, pulse, blood pressure. He observes whether the patient is anaemic or not, as also any other characteristic of the body in general.

Then he examines the patient’s chest in the same manner as a practitioner of allopathy does: inspection, palpation, percussion, auscultation of the heart and lung.

A homoeopathic physician makes use of all the laboratory investigations provided by allopathy: examination of blood, stool, urine, sputum; X-ray of the chest; and even E.C.G. or echocardiography of the heart.
On the basis of the history of symptoms, examination, and investigations, he arrives at the diagnosis of the illness. He does this by matching the symptoms and other characteristics of the patient with the symptoms produced by the proved drugs as given in the homoeopathic repertories. This approach is termed as remedial diagnosis.

In this particular case, when he comes to the conclusion that the child is suffering from a congenital defect in the heart, he tries to administer the remedies to relieve the symptoms of the patient as far as possible. Then he refers the patient to the surgeon for the latter to decide what he would like to do about the basic defect in the heart.

Homoeopathy in itself offers no speciality like surgery. But a homoeopath has no hesitation in referring a particular patient to a surgeon when, in his opinion, this line of treatment will benefit the patient.

Practitioners of homoeopathy find homoeopathy most suitable for:

Infections such as bronchitis, sore throat, pneumonia, otitis, and infections of the bladder.

Allergies due to food and the environment, hay fever, migraines, allergic rhinitis, eczema.

Mild deficiencies in assimilation of nutrients, anaemia, and hormonal imbalances.

Chronic problems such as colic, peptic ulcer, obesity, and high blood pressure. (Note: in the acute stage, treatment with allopathy would be required.)

Homoeopathic treatment proves helpful in both acute and chronic diseases. Its effects are not startlingly quick; they are gradual and progressive. That has to be so. Homoeopathic remedies do no mass-scale killing of the bacteria in the way that antibiotics do. These remedies energise the vital force, increase the body’s resistance to disease so that the body itself develops the power to deal with both the external and the internal harmful influences that impinge upon it. It is good that homoeopathic remedies act that way. Minimal doses of natural drugs given in a natural way, cause no side-effects.

Precautions

Homoeopathy is rarely recommended for emergency situations, mental abnormalities and for conditions which require surgery. Orthopaedic problems are also not likely to respond to homoeopathic medicine.
Homoeopathic physicians differ among themselves regarding the efficacy of drugs in high potency or low potency. Some of them adhere to Hahnemann’s dictum of ’single, simple, and minimum’. A vast majority, however, do not strictly abide by this. They prescribe mixtures of remedies in large quantities or frequent repetitions of remedies. The subject of high homoeopathic potencies or dilutions has been a controversial topic all along, and this controversy is still unresolved in spite of all the investigative tools that are available now. Homoeopathic research workers must delve further to prove the values of these potencies, and settle this controversy. The Law of Similars also needs to be investigated further in the light of the availability of modern techniques.

Another field in which research is indicated is that of proving more and more newer drugs that have become available, to see whether they can be made use of in homoeopathic practice.

Even more important is conducting well-planned clinical studies to ascertain the efficacy of homoeopathic remedies that are already in use. Merely reporting successful cases without mentioning the failures, carries no weight.

There is an acute need for homoeopathic research workers to carry out these researches, firstly to convince themselves and then to convince sceptics.

Now You Know… 
  
Homoeopathy is gaining in popularity by the day due to its gentle healing qualities and affordability. Treating the individual rather than general symptoms of a disease, it is especially recommended in pregnancy and for women and children.

Based on the common sense, rational approach of increasing the body’s resistance to disease and power to heal itself, homoeopathy propagates the principle of ‘Similia Similibus Curentur’ (Like Cures Like): that is, an extremely diluted dose of a drug can cure a patient of a disease, as well as produce the same symptoms in a healthy person.

Well suited to chronic ailments, homoeopathic remedies are generally considered to be free of side-effects..