What the homoeopathy is…..?

Is it not a strange question? Everybody is aware that homoeopathy is a medical system but we mean a bit different here. In this era of living with knowledge it is essential to know a system to extract the best of it. It has been observed in surgery that if a patient is explained in advance that what is going to happen with him and what is expected outcome not only operation would be more successful but recovery will also be less eventful.

The subject matter of study in medical science is the study of man in health and disease, means and ways to cure diseases and their application. Homoeopathy by definition is a system of medicine which treats patient on the principles of “Similia Similibus Curenter” and “Individualisation” and the rules of Simple and Single medicine and minimum dose of medicine. 

The law of similar –  Similia Similibus Curentur –We recognize health or disease through symptoms. We all have heard about side effects of medicines. What does that mean? Side effects are observed in sick persons but when a medicine is administered in a healthy person it causes signs and symptoms of suffering unique and characteristic to the medicine. In homoeopathy effects of drug substances on healthy persons have been thoroughly observed and noted. This is called drug proving.

Drug proving are carried on several persons of both sexes and different age groups with different quantities of the drug substance.

In a sick individual one can apply a drug which can produce effects (sign and symptoms) opposite to the disease or similar to it or the one whose effects have no relation to the disease what so ever.

For homoeopathic treatment physician notices the symptoms of patient and prescribes a medicine which during drug proving have produced symptoms similar to those of the patient.   

Individuality – This is the central point which makes homoeopathy different from all other medical systems. Though at first go it would be strange to know but is very essential to understand if one really wishes to get benefits of homoeopathic treatment. Everyone knows that no two persons on this earth are same even homozygous twins. People differ in their personalities, choices and desires regarding food, ambitions, how to live, in their relationship and interaction with the environment and so on. These differences make everyone’s suffering also different!

There are always at least two types of symptoms – those which signify disease causing agents or their effects and those which are originated from the reaction of the patient towards the disease agent and its effect. These happen to be the most important symptoms for homoeopathic physician but generally patients do not give them importance so do not mention them and feels odd if such things are asked. For example if patient is asked to describe the type of pain he may feel odd. Here we name some types of pain each differs in feeling – aching, biting, boring or digging, broken sensation, bruised or sore, burning, bursting, cutting, darting, as if part is displaced or dislocated, drawing, gnawing, lacerating or tearing, lancinating or piercing or stitching, pinching, pressing, pricking, scraping, shooting, sprained etc. There are still variations in each type of pain. Sometimes the symptoms seem to be so absurd that patient feels foolish/ shy to narrate. For example anxiety felt in stomach during a downward motion of a swing or a bus, in a case of fever feeling of chill is generally mentioned but how it runs as begins in hands or abdomen or chest etc. is rarely mentioned. Same is applicable for feeling hot during fever. There is no lack in such unusual, strange and peculiar symptoms but ordinarily physician and hence the patients ignore them, even do not observe. Such symptoms actually represent the patient’s reaction hence individuality.    

A disease bearing the same name for the purpose of diagnosis manifest differently in different patients as a color of variation is added by the individual patient’s reactions. So no two patients of diabetes or typhoid or gall bladder stones or leukemia or what so ever is the name of disease are same. There can be difference in what complaint is associated or otherwise occur simultaneously to the main complaint and how the patient and his complaints are affected by various factors as time and circumstances, as symptoms are worse at certain time of a day, weather or season or affected by state of emotion, mood, mental or physical activities.  Life situations as exams, interview, office or business stresses, loses monitory, of beloved one and so on are variable. Pregnancy, life style, eating and other habits like sleeping etc. also vary. Therefore, a homoeopath cannot prescribe one common medicine to all the patients diagnosed to suffer in sickness known with the same name.

Similarly when administered in a healthy person each drug substance causes altered sensations and functions manifested as a train of signs and symptoms unique and characteristic to the drug substance affecting the whole of the person. It has been repeatedly confirmed that no two substances produce exactly same effects or signs and symptoms when totality of their effects is considered.

 A patient is always affected as a whole so a homoeopath needs relevant information in the following areas to prescribe correctly –

 - Characteristic symptoms and changes belonging to the personality of the patient.

 - Characteristic complaints of the patient.

 - Characteristic symptoms belonging to the location of the disease that is part affected.

 - Characteristic symptoms belonging to the cause of the disease.

 - Characteristic symptoms belonging to the modality (variables) of time.

 - Characteristic symptoms belonging to the modality of circumstances, and

 - Characteristic symptoms belonging to concomitants that is occurring simultaneously and may not belong to the disease.

The decision of physician as to give a particular medicine depends upon the totality of characteristic symptoms of the above variety found in the patient. The diagnosis by the name of a disease is based on a group of common signs and/or symptoms which generally do not include the sign and symptoms defining the individuality of a patient. So one should be more observant about own suffering and whenever opt for homoeopathic treatment be more elaborative and relevant in narration.

Constitutional Treatment – Constitution of a person includes his genetic, mental, emotional and physical makeup which is the result of his diathesis and disposition and environmental inputs during the course of his development. This constitutional base makes a person prone to acquire and continue certain type of sickness. Correction of this constitutional fault through homoeopathic medicine is named as constitutional treatment.

 During the course of living the life a person goes through variety of experiences some leaving permanent and life changing effects sometime people call a turning point. With accumulation of various impacts constitution goes under changes several times in different phases. During treatment these phases have been observed to revert and each phase may require a different medicine for correction. Constitutional treatment thus needs patience both on the part of physician as well as patient.

The most important thing to know is that disease is not an event but it is a progressive phenomenon. Therefore, whenever a correct homoeopathic medicine in correct potency is administered in a patient it reverts the phenomenon and patient notices some of the old sufferings (which were suppressed and said to be relieved) coming again. This is a curative process and patient should consult the homoeopath who will take the necessary action.

Yet often patient turns to a physician whose treatment had relieved those complaints and the process of cure was hampered. Then he comes back and says doctor your medicine relieved my gastric ulcer but I got tonsillitis again when consulted to an ENT specialist the tonsils were relieved my gastritis had come again!  

 Rule of Simple and Single medicine –Simple and single medicine means a medicine not mixed with other medicine. In homoeopathy a medicine is prescribe on the basis of proved symptoms and when we mix two  or more medicines the mixture so formed does not produces the same set of symptoms as its constituents do individually. A medicine which covers the characteristics of the patient should be prescribed singly.

Principle of Minimum dose and Dynamism –Minimum dose means the smallest amount of medicine necessary to produce curative action. In homoeopathy potentised medicine are prescribed on the basis of symptom similarity of the patient and the medicine. The greater the similarity the higher would be the potency prescribed and least would be the repetition. It has been observed that one dose of a potentised medicine produces lasting effect. For the same reason homoeopathic medicines are said to be dynamic as they simply give a stimulus to initiate the process of elimination of the disease. The effect is assessed from the continuous process of improvement in the patient. The next dose of medicine is as a rule repeated or a new medicine is prescribed if indicated only when the action of the previous dose is over.

There is much controversy over dynamism of the potentised homoeopathic medicines and they are often compared with or supposed as dilutions. The subsequent potencies of homoeopathic medicines are prepared by taking one part of previous potency in ninety nine part of vehicle (a medium, as alcohol in case of liquid potencies) and shaking this mixture vigorously. The process (for liquid preparations) is termed as succussion. The controversy is that after 12 C or 24D potency there is no material existence of the drug substance in the solution. Then how homoeopathic medicines effect the changes in a sick person to relieve and in a healthy prover to manifest symptoms?

Most traditional scientists refused to accept anything that could not stand the test on materialistic existence. So with many other things homoeopathy was also discarded because it uses diluted solution for treatment (Potentised medicines as homoeopaths believe) in which no material existence of the drug could be proved with the help of existing instruments of scientific experimentation! Therefore its effects were equated with placebo and psychic phenomena.

While considering above notion two things are to be kept in view. One, there are many other forms of existences in the universe beside the matter. Human has a limit of sensory perception. And second the homoeopathic potencies are not diluted solutions. Meaning of dilution is ‘simply increasing the amount of solvent while keeping the amount of solute constant’ which is not so in case of homoeopathic potencies. They are prepared in definite proportion and for each subsequent addition of solvent there, 10 powerful strokes are given to the mixture. The critics never counted this addition of force or energy of any effect. However, recent experiments by scientists have proved contrary to the belief of traditional scientists.

The difference in a diluted solution and homoeopathic potency has been experimentally proven by Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for his discovery of AIDS virus and who is also founder and president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention.

 Dr. Luc Montagnier’s experimental research confirms that the use of doses of substances those undergo sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution are capable of biological activities. Although modern-day scientists assume that none of the original molecules remain in solution, Montagnier and his colleagues’ research had verified that electromagnetic signals of the original medicine remains in the water and has dramatic biological effects.

Montagnier's new research is on the electromagnetic waves that emanate from the highly diluted DNA of various pathogens. He asserted that they have found that DNA had produced structural changes in water, which persisted at very high dilutions (that undergo sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution), and which led to resonant electromagnetic signals (radio waves) that could be measured. Not all DNA produced signals were detectable with device still the high-intensity signals come from bacterial and viral DNA at very high dilutions.

Montagnier asserted, "I can't say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions (that undergo sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution) of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules." According to him the solutions containing the DNA of pathogenic bacteria and viruses, including HIV, "could emit low frequency radio waves" that induced surrounding water molecules to become arranged into "nanostructures". These water molecules could also emit radio waves.

Montagnier suggested water could retain such properties even after the original solutions were massively diluted, to the point where the original DNA had effectively vanished. Thus, water could retain the "memory" of substances with which it had been in contact. When asked if he was drifting into pseudoscience, he replied adamantly: "No, because it's not pseudoscience. It's not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study."

Benveniste and other researchers used extremely diluted doses of substances that created biological effect on a type of white blood cells called basophils which degranulate under allergic conditions.  

Truly as Brian Josephson, who won Nobel Prize in 1973 for his work on “Superconductivity”, said that the effect of homoeopathic medicine is not attributed to the presence of its molecules in the solution but to modification of water’s structure (due to the process of preparation that is potentisation). 

Recently, a research team from IIT Mumbai  has published a paper as follow –

Read the following news – (please note that emphasis is from author)

IIT-B team shows how homeopathy works

Source : The Times of India 16 dec 2010
Mumbai: Six months after the British Medical Association wrote off homoeopathy as “witchcraft’’ that had no scientific basis, we may now have an irrefutable answer to what makes this ancient form of medicine click. Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay (IIT-B) have established that the sweet white pills work on the principle of nanotechnology.
    Homeopathic pills—made of naturally occurring metals such as gold and copper-—retain their potency even when diluted to a nanometre or one-billionth of a metre, states the IIT-B research published in the latest issue of Homoeopathy, a peer-reviewed journal published by the reputed Elsevier. IIT-B’s chemical engineering department bought commonly available homoeopathic pills from neighborhood shop, prepared highly diluted solutions and checked under powerful electron microscopes to find nano particles of the original metal.
    “Our paper showed that certain highly diluted homoeopathic remedies made from metals still contain measurable amounts of the starting material, even at extreme dilutions of 1 part in 10 raised to 400 (200C),’’ said Dr Jayesh Bellare. His student, Prashant Chikramane, presented the paper ‘Extreme homoeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective’, as part of his doctoral thesis. IIT theory proves what some homoeopaths have always known 
    Homoeopathy was established in the late 18th century by German physician Samuel Hahnemann. While it is widely popular in certain countries, especially India, the British Medical Association and the British parliament have in recent times questioned homoeopathy’s potency. Around four years ago, British research papers rubbished homoeopathy as a mere “placebo’’.
    “Homoeopathy has been a conundrum for modern medicine. Its practitioners maintained that homeopathic pills got more potent on dilution, but they could never explain the mechanism scientifically enough for the modern scientists,’’ said Bellare. For instance, if an ink-filler loaded with red ink is introduced into the Powai lake, Bellare said, there would be no chance of ever tracing it. “But the fact is that homoeopathic pills have worked in extreme dilutions and its practitioners have been able to cure tough medical conditions,” he added.
    “We had analyzed ayurvedic bhasmas a few years ago and found nanoparticles to be the powering agent,” the team members said. For the first time, scientists used equipment like transmission electron microscope, electron diffraction and emission spectroscopy to map physical entities in extremely dilution. They could measure nanoparticles of gold and copper (the original metal used in the medicines). 

These finding though looked upon with suspicion and need further confirmation yet provide sufficient clue beyond the clinical evidences that use of potencies in homoeopathy was right.


Dr. M. K. Tyagi
D.H.M.S., Dip. N.I.H.Research Officer
Sewa Mandir
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Email: 1.sewamandir@usa.net, 2.manju_mkt2003@yahoo.co.in