Homeopathy is not just a system of medical treatment; it is an advance in the area of mind-body, holistic medicine. It involves treating the individual having an illness, or disease, with highly diluted substances, prescribed primarily in pill, or liquid, form with the aim of triggering the body’s natural capacity for healing.
Homeopathy is founded on the ‘Law of Similars,’ or ‘like cures like’ principle. Put in précis, “A substance that causes a set of symptoms, when taken in large doses, can in ‘small, minute doses’ treat similar symptoms.” A homeopath, a professional graduate, or post-graduate, in the subject, will match and prescribe the most appropriate remedy, based on such ‘like’ symptoms each individual, or patient, presents with.
To pick an example — drinking too much coffee can cause sleeplessness and disquiet. Taking the homeopathic remedy, Coffea cruda, made from coffee beans, can treat ‘like’ symptoms — a result of overexcitement, or joy, a pay hike, or huge reward on the job. Interestingly, conventional medicine employs the same principle, in certain instances — it prescribes stimulants to ‘treat’ kids with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD]. It, likewise, employs minute doses of allergens, such as pollen, to desensitise allergic individuals. The only ‘dissimilarity’ is homeopathic remedies are used in the form of ultra-high, non-toxic dilutions. They are called homeopathic potencies.
Origin Of The Principle
Dr Samuel Hahnemann [1755-1843], MD, the founder of homeopathy, was a man of many parts — a highly qualified and trained conventional medical doctor, a classical chemist and a botanist, among other things. Dr Hahnemann was an irrepressible critic of the established practice of conventional medicine of his time, a form of treatment based more on a ‘code of belief’ rather than fact, including certain maddening procedures, such as bloodletting, purging, blistering, and callous, or insensitive treatment of the mentally ill, besides using high doses of sulphur and mercury.
He envisioned a vision — to make medicine gentle, safe, humane, and efficacious in the treatment of the ill, who were sick in mind and body.
Dr Hahnemann was also polyglot. He knew over a dozen languages, other than German, his mother tongue. He was a fine translator of scientific works too. When he was once engaged in the translation of Dr William Cullen’s classical work, Lectures on the Materia Medica, in 1790, he could not resist, or contain his analytical excitement. Dr Cullen’s statement that cinchona [quinine] bark possessed specific febrifugal [fever-relieving] action, because it was the most aromatic and bitter substance known, aroused his scientific mind; also curiosity.
Not the one to accept a word for a word, Dr Hahnemann felt that this was simply an overstatement — because, there were several substances, not just barks, having extremely bitter and fragrant properties. None of them, perhaps, had the medicinal strength to cure fevers, no less malaria-like fevers. He was eager to test the idea. He made a decoction of cinchona [China, pronounced keena] bark. He now did what no one had ever done before him in medical history. He drank the decoction. He soon developed malaria-like symptoms on himself. This laid the foundation for homeopathy. Dr Hahnemann now expounded his principle — cinchona can ‘cause’ malaria-like fever, so can ‘cure’ the same illness.
He soon replicated a number of such results with meticulous precision and concluded that a drug capable of producing a set of its own peculiar and characteristic symptoms, when given in their small, minute form to healthy individuals can also cure, effectively and safely, individuals, or patients, presenting a ‘similar’ set of symptoms. He called this homeopathy [homoios = similar; pathos = sickness].
Picture this. You were, the other day, affected by a sudden, or rapid, onset of fever, which escalated into high temperature in no time. Your face appeared ‘red hot’ and dry, along with flushed eyes. Your lips and mouth were pale; your tongue ‘angry’ crimson. What followed next was sweating and confusion. There was little thirst; but, there was a craving for sour foods, or drinks. Your other symptoms included a raw, aching feeling in the eyes, with sensitivity to light with tearing, throbbing pain deep inside your ear.
According to the concept of ‘like cures like,’ as referred to earlier, a substance that is capable of provoking such symptoms in an otherwise healthy individual can also therapeutically act on similar symptoms in a person who is ill. The homeopathic remedy, Belladonna, is employed, when accompanied by such symptoms — as described above.
Such a set of symptoms actually resembles Belladonna poisoning. The interesting fact is Belladonna, in spite of its toxic nature, has for long been used as an antispasmodic, relaxant, or sedative, in herbal medicine. Homeopaths use Belladonna, in its potentised form, when symptoms match, to treat high fevers with inflammation and pain, among other symptoms — and, with complete safety.
The Basics
Homeopathy is based on studies of single medicines, on healthy human volunteers. These studies are called provings, in English, or prüfung in German. Belladonna, for example, can cause, in provings, symptoms such as redness, inflammation, swelling, photophobia [aversion to light] and pain. It is, in its homeopathic form, prescribed to treat individuals experiencing such ‘similar’ symptoms.
Ipecacuanha, in large doses, can, likewise, cause nausea, with weak pulse and vomiting. When given in its homeopathic form, it can help ease that ‘specific’ type of nausea and vomiting of undigested food. Its other indications may include a distended, inflated feeling in the abdomen, with cramping and colicky pain around the navel. The stomach seems to ‘slump’ inside the abdomen.
All symptoms are worse while lying down and after eating. Each homeopathic remedy stimulates the healing systems of the body to build up a response, or reaction, to treat a specific illness.
There you are. Belladonna can cure throbbing headaches and infection; Ipecacuanha, nausea and vomiting. The ability of the body to adapt to a specific ‘response’ is our greatest asset — this is employed by holistic homeopathy, through the ‘like cures like’ principle, at the cellular and immune levels, to treat illness.
Patient First
Homeopathy stimulates our natural healing processes by the use of micro-dosage medicines that closely match the specific, unique manner in which each of us responds to illnesses that we present with.
Homeopathy also suggests that symptoms are the body’s warning signs and failed attempts to restore balance, harmony, health and well-being. Homeopathy takes each of them into consideration to select the closest remedy that will, for the most part, fit the symptom-picture of the homeopathic remedy that can ‘cause’ the same condition in health, while desensitising the given individual’s susceptibility, or response, to the allergen, for instance, associated with allergy — or, creating an internal environment that the pathogen would find detrimental to its existence, or replication.
Picture this. Individuals having allergy present with a range of ‘conflicting’ symptoms. Their associated characteristics also vary in many ways, including the type of sneezing, the form of skin eruption, if any, or food allergy, what gives relief, or what aggravates the condition.
Some individuals with allergy may have a burning sensation, or fiery red rash, but would possibly desire, or feel better by, warmth — perhaps, a steaming cup of coffee. Is this not a paradox — an individual-specific response? This is what homeopathy aims at and treats with a patient-centric perspective. From the homeopathic standpoint, 15-20 different individuals with allergy may need as many homeopathic remedies — to treat the specific, characteristic reaction that their body produces, albeit the name of the illness, or clinical diagnosis, may be the same.
Signature ‘Connect’
Homeopathy is based on the ‘Law of Similars’ — or, the ‘like cures like’ principle. It analyses and treats the similarity between the symptoms [signature] caused by the healing properties in plants, and other natural substances, by ‘matching’ them with symptoms produced by the illness. To highlight a classical example. When you chop onions, you develop watery eyes, a runny nose, sneezing, cough and throat irritation, from exposure to the tuber’s active substances.
The homeopathic remedy, Allium cepa, made from red onion, can help you overcome a similar cold, or allergy attack, in which you may have similar symptoms — watery eyes, runny nose, sneezing, cough and throat irritation. The actual symptoms of the illness, as you’d figure out, were not caused by exposure to onion. Yet, the remedy made from the tuber can help the body overcome them, because the symptoms [signature] are similar.
