Homeopathy.
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 in 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 rationellen 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.
Homeopathy is a system of therapeutics, notably popular in the 19th century, which was founded on the stated principle that "like cures like," similia similibus curantur, and which prescribed for patients drugs or other treatments that would produce in healthy persons symptoms of the diseases being treated.
This system of therapeutics based upon the "law of similars" was introduced in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. He claimed that a large dose of quinine, which had been widely used for the successful treatment of malaria, produced in him effects similar to the symptoms of malaria patients.
He thus concluded that all diseases were best treated by drugs that produced in healthy persons effects similar to the symptoms of those diseases. He also undertook experiments with a variety of drugs in an effort to prove this. Hahnemann believed that large doses of drugs aggravate illness and that the efficacy of medicines thus increases with dilution.
Accordingly, most homeopaths believed in the action of minute doses of medicine.
To many patients and some physicians, homeopathy was a mild, welcome alternative to bleeding, purging, poly-pharmacy, and other heavy-handed therapies of the day.
In the 20th century, however, homeopathy has been viewed with little favour and has been criticized for focusing on the symptoms rather than on the underlying causes of disease. Homeopathy still has some adherents, and there are a number of national and international societies, including the International Homoeopathic Medical League, headquartered in Bloomindales, Neth.
Hahnemann observed from his experiments with cinchona bark, used as a treatment for malaria, that the effects he experienced from ingesting the bark were similar to the symptoms of malaria. He therefore reasoned that cure proceeds through similarity, and that treatments must be able to produce symptoms in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated.
Through further experiments with other substances, Hahnemann conceived otherwise known as "let like be cured by like as a fundamental healing principle. He believed that by inducing a disease through use of drugs, the artificial symptoms empowered the vital force to neutralize and expel the original disease and that this artificial disturbance would naturally subside when the dosing ceased.
It is based on the idea that a substance that in large doses will produce symptoms of a specific disease will, in extremely small doses, cure it.
Critics have labeled Hahnemann's law of similars, an "axiom” in other words an unproven assertion made by Hahnemann, and not a true law of nature.
In 1828, Hahnemann introduced underlying causes for many known diseases. A miasm is often defined by homeopaths as an imputed "peculiar morbid derangement of [the] vital force" Hahnemann associated each miasm with specific diseases, with each miasm seen as the root cause of several diseases.
According to Hahnemann, initial exposure to miasms causes local symptoms, such as skin or venereal diseases, but if these symptoms are suppressed by medication, the cause goes deeper and begins to manifest itself as diseases of the internal organs.
Homeopathy maintains that treating diseases by directly opposing their symptoms, as is sometimes done in conventional medicine, is ineffective because all "disease can generally be traced to some latent, deep-seated, underlying chronic, or inherited tendency" The underlying imputed miasm still remains, and deep-seated ailments can only be corrected by removing the deeper disturbance of the vital force.
Hahnemann's miasm theory remains disputed and controversial within homeopathy even in modern times. In 1978, Anthony Campbell then a consultant physician at The Royal London Homeopathic Hospital, criticized statements by George Vithoulkas claiming that syphilis, when treated with antibiotics, would develop into secondary and tertiary syphilis with involvement of the central nervous system.
This conflicts with scientific studies, which indicate that penicillin treatment produces a complete cure of syphilis in more than 90% of cases. Campbell described this as "a thoroughly irresponsible statement which could mislead an unfortunate layman into refusing orthodox treatment.
Originally Hahnemann presented only three miasms, of which the most important was "psora", described as being related to any itching diseases of the skin, supposed to be derived from suppressed scabies and claimed to be the foundation of many further disease conditions.
Hahnemann believed psora to be the cause of such diseases as epilepsy cancer jaundice deafness and cataracts Since Hahnemann's time, other miasms have been proposed, some replacing one or more of psora's proposed functions, including tubercular miasms and cancer miasms.
The theory of miasms has been criticized as an explanation developed by Hahnemann to preserve the system of homeopathy in the face of treatment failures, and for being inadequate to cover the many hundreds of sorts of diseases, as well as for failing to explain disease predispositions as well as genetics environmental factors and the unique disease history of each patient.
Homeopathic remedy is, derived from poison ivy is a technical term in homeopathy that refers to a substance prepared with a particular procedure and intended for treating patients; it is not to be confused with the generally-accepted use of the word, which means "a medicine or therapy that cures disease or relieves pain".
Homeopathic practitioners rely on two types of reference when prescribing remedies: Materia medica and repertories. A homeopathic album is a collection of "drug pictures", organized alphabetically by remedy, that describes the symptom patterns associated with individual remedies. A homeopathic repertory is an index of disease symptoms that lists remedies associated with specific symptoms.
Homeopathy uses animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances in its remedies. Examples include arsenic oxide sodium chloride or table salt, the venom of the bushmaster snake opium and Thyroid hormone Homeopaths also use treatments made from diseased or pathological products such as fecal, urinary, and respiratory discharges, blood, and tissue.
Some modern homeopaths have considered more esoteric bases for remedies, because they do not originate from a material but from electromagnetic energy presumed to have been "captured" by alcohol or lactose. Examples include X-rays and sunlight. Recent ventures by homeopaths into even more esoteric substances include thunderstorms (prepared from collected rainwater)
Today there are about 3,000 different remedies commonly used in homeopathy. Some homeopaths also use techniques that are regarded by other practitioners as controversial. These are, where the substance and dilution are written on a piece of paper and either pinned to the patient's clothing, put in their pocket, or placed under a glass of water that is then given to the patient, as well as the use of radionics to prepare remedies. Such practices have been strongly criticized by classical homeopaths as unfounded, speculative, and verging upon magic and superstition.
Mortar and pestle are used for grinding insoluble solids into homeopathic remedies including quartz and oyster shells.
In producing remedies for diseases, homeopaths use a process whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body. While Hahnemann advocated using substances which produce symptoms similar to those of the disease being treated, he found that material doses would intensify the symptoms and exacerbate the condition, sometimes causing what amounted to dangerous toxic reactions.
He therefore specified that the substances be diluted. Hahnemann believed that the process of succussion activated the vital energy of the diluted substance. For this purpose, Hahnemann had a saddle maker construct a special wooden striking board covered in leather on one side and stuffed with horsehair. Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with lactose.
Three logarithmic potency scales are in regular use in homeopathy. Hahnemann created the diluting a substance by a factor of 100 at each stage. The centesimal scale was favored by Hahnemann for most of his life. A 2C dilution requires a substance to be diluted to one part in one hundred, and then some of that diluted solution diluted by a further factor of one hundred.
This works out to one part of the original substance in 10,000 parts of the solution. A 6C dilution repeats this process six times, ending up with the original material diluted by a factor of 100−6=10−12 (one part in one trillion)(1/1,000,000,000,000). Higher dilutions follow the same pattern. In homeopathy, a solution that is more dilute is described as having a higher potency, and more dilute substances are considered by homeopaths to be stronger and deeper-acting remedies.
The end product is often so diluted that it is indistinguishable from the dilutant (pure water, sugar or alcohol).
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes. In Hahnemann's time it was reasonable to assume that remedies could be diluted indefinitely, as the concept of the atom or molecule as the smallest possible unit of a chemical substance was just beginning to be recognized. The greatest dilution that is reasonably likely to contain one molecule of the original substance is 12C.
Some homeopaths developed a decimal scale (D or X), diluting the substance to ten times its original volume each stage. The D or X scale dilution is therefore half that of the same value of the C scale; for example, "12X" is the same level of dilution as "6C". Hahnemann never used this scale but it was very popular throughout the 19th century and still is in Europe.
This potency scale appears to have been introduced in the 1830s by the American homeopath, Constantine Hering In the last ten years of his life, Hahnemann also developed a quintamillesimal (Q) or LM scale diluting the drug 1 part in 50,000 parts of diluents. A given dilution on the Q scale is roughly 2.35 times its designation on the C scale. For example a remedy described as "20Q" has about the same concentration as a "47C" remedy.
