Words: Dr Jan SCHOLTEN
Most people often wonder as to what ‘disease’ really is. Where is it emerging, or cascading, from? The answer is — disease is ‘dis-ease,’ or not being at ease. This happens because your healthy, inner tranquillity is disturbed and the resultant ‘unrest’ is replaced by chaos.
Why should unrest come to pass? Where does it emanate from? Conventional, or allopathic, medicine perceives disease as emerging fundamentally from the outside, from bacteria, viruses, trauma and the like. It ‘stops’ when the cause is treated. But, the big question is — do conventional interventions really treat the cause and provide relief? Not really. In chronic diseases, for instance, it turns out that most symptoms are ‘treated,’ or better ‘counteracted.’ The fact is such disease, or illness, isn’t really cured — more so, because the individual, or patient, has to take medicines for the rest of their life.
This means that the disease, or illness, is only palliated — in other words, a disease, or its symptoms, is made less severe without removing the cause.
Homeopathy is an advance. Homeopathy evidences that disease comes from the inside, or from within. In this respect alone, homeopathy is akin to Buddhism. The cause of disease is seen as emanating from desires and disappointments with a sense of fear arising, or transpiring, from them. The idea that things have to be placed in a certain way also results in sadness, anger and frustration — more so, when things are not what one expected them to be.
The best healing solution is to free people from delusions and replace them with the vision of how things should be. This is achieved in Buddhism with meditation. This is achieved in homeopathy with healing remedies. In other words, it may be said that homeopathy is the scientific and therapeutic corollary of Buddhism. It helps people to free themselves from delusions, unwanted desires and illness.
Mind Versus Matter
Conventional medicine views human beings and all other living beings as machines. When your heart does not function well, it is ‘replaced’ with a new one, just like you replace the battery in a car when it is not functioning well. The mind and emotions, likewise, are simply seen as ‘side-effects’ of the brain and hormones. This goes as far to say that the mind doesn’t really exist, or that computers could develop consciousness, or conscience, when they become sophisticated enough. The problem is that this so-called ‘parable’ leads to contradictions. The first is that humans perceive their emotions and thoughts as something real, not as the ‘side-effect’ of their brain.
The second problem is that emotions often influence the body much more than the other way around. The mind seems to be primary. This is obvious in all kinds of designs. The design of a car is just as primary to its existence.
Medicine & Healing
Homeopathy relates everything, every substance, including the living being as ‘medicine by itself,’ as a healing substance. This is the upshot of the first law of homeopathy — the ‘law of similars,’ which says that the toxic capacity of a substance is similar to its healing capacity. One can presume that all substances are toxic; I haven’t encountered one that is not. Sugar and salt, also water, are highly toxic and deadly when taken in excess amounts. So, every substance, likewise, must also have healing qualities. The only problem is to discover which they are.
It is also obvious that such information can have deep and lasting effects on human beings, primarily because homeopathic remedies achieve that advantage, as they are full of such information.
Ekdioky
Yet another law of homeopathy, ‘the law of cure,’ has not had a good, apt, or precise name, so far. This is also known as Hering’s Law — named after the legendary American homeopath, Dr Constantine Hering, MD. This is why I have invented the word, ekdioky, from the Greek, ekdiok, meaning ‘throwing out.’ It states that living beings try to expel health problems from the utmost and to the farthest — in other words, from the centre to the periphery. They prefer to have the disease located at the farthest part, like the toe, and not the head. They also prefer to have the disease in the outer tissues, like the skin, and not the inner tissues like the brain.
Psychologically, one can see such a progression in the tendency of people to blame others, the circumstance, or the like. They, thus, prefer to see the problem located elsewhere, instead of the ‘inside,’ or within oneself.
This process is called projection in psychology. It explains the preference of most people, as is done in conventional medicine, who label the ‘cause’ as being from the outside, that is ‘above’ homeopathy, when the cause is perceived to be, or is, from inside.
A Big Question Answered
Can homeopathy cure everyone? In practice, the answer is ‘no.’ In theory, the answer might be ‘yes,’ but then more and more remedies have to be discovered. This is so because every remedy can only cure its ‘own’ disease. This is the consequence of the ‘law of similars,’ the basic law of homeopathy. It means ‘like cures like.’
This, otherwise said, suggests that ‘a remedy can only cure what it can produce as a toxin,’ because every substance in the world has toxic properties when taken in ‘enough’ quantities. This also means that every substance is a remedy. So, every plant, mineral and animal has healing properties; this is ‘similar’ to its toxic qualities. The development and progression of homeopathy largely depends in the discovery of new healing, or ‘identical’ toxic qualities of minerals, plants and animals.
Concept Of Disease
Disease is different for a homeopathic doctor. What is seen in conventional medicine as the diagnosis, or disease, is, according to homeopathy, just a symptom, or group of symptoms. This can be compared with the ‘diagnosis’ of a fever state during mediaeval times. We now know that fever is not a diagnosis, but just a symptom of different diseases. It is obvious that it is not easy to imagine that ‘fever’ was once seen as the real diagnosis. For homeopaths, this is the same for normal diagnosis, like ‘bronchitis,’ ‘diabetes,’ or ‘depression.’
In homeopathy, a host of aspects are seen as symptoms of disease. For instance, food desires are generally, or normally, seen as just a matter of taste. In homeopathy, they are suggested to compensate for a certain imbalance, a disease. Sometimes, we understand it, like the desire for sweets can be seen as a desire to be loved. A desire for salt is, likewise, understandable in the case of a patient in the ‘state’ of Natrum muriaticum, which is made of table salt, albeit the reason is not often clearly understood. Yet, the symptom can be used for diagnosis, although it may not be essential to understand what-is-what-as-it-is in order to be able to use it.
A homeopath will never tell a patient that they are not sick, or ‘there is no problem.’ When someone says they are sick, they are sick. The feeling of being diseased is already ‘dis-ease.’ It is remarkable how often patients talk about homeopathic remedies as ‘wonder pills.’
Homeopathic Holistic Cure
One of the most impressive aspects of homeopathy is that it can cure [chronic] disease. This is its striking aspect when compared with ‘normal,’ conventional medicine. We often hear in conventional parlance that patients have to ‘live with their disease’ and take medicines for the rest of their life. A good homeopathic remedy cures the disease and is not needed anymore after the cure. This allows patients more freedom and independence; also improved quality of life [QoL]. There is not just freedom from taking medicines, but freedom that is also felt emotionally. This is what patients will tell after a cure, ‘I feel good again,’ ‘I feel my old self again,’ or ‘a burden has been taken away.’
Isn’t it wonderful to see a chronic disease disappear — vanishing into nothing? A problem that seemed insurmountable before, for the patient and the doctor, just goes away with homeopathic treatment. Later, it feels as if it had never existed. The patient even forgets that they ever had it. This is why conventional medicine often denies a homeopathic cure; sceptics, true to their propensity, often say that the disease never existed and that the diagnosis was false, a mistake.This leads to the second objection to homeopathy. ‘Homeopathy cannot work because there is nothing in it. Homeopathic remedies are so much potentised, or diluted, that they don’t contain molecules anymore of the original substance.’
There are several arguments against this objection, as also confusion between theory and experience. The objection cannot reason, or do away with experience.
A real scientist adapts their theory to experiments; not the other way around. This is what adversaries of homeopathy are doing, or contending, that, ‘homeopathy cannot work, because there is nothing in it.’
Information Chemistry
Conventional medicines are based on chemical reactions in the body. Homeopathic remedies, in contrast, can be best described as ‘information’ medicines. The information is transferred from the original substance by the process of shaking [succussion] the remedy at every step of potentisation. The carrier, water, or lactose base, is imprinted with the information of the original substance. One can compare such information with computer discs.
Homeopathic remedies are chemically all the same, as are like compact discs [CDs], but the information they carry is different — this is what causes the effect. The information the disc carries, as you know, is diverse. It ranges from the music of Bach to family photographs, from the movie Avatar to a software programme — just like the homeopathic remedy that carries infinitely diverse information.
Information Medicine
Homeopathic remedies are often disqualified, or pooh-poohed, by sceptics as ‘there is nothing in them.’ In a way, this may be true — there is nothing, ‘no-thing,’ in them. There are no chemical substances in them. This is where there is a palpable discrepancy between conventional medicine and homeopathy.
Conventional medicine thinks and limits itself to matter, the physical body. Homeopathy includes in its vision the mind, with all its myriad dimensions. In medicines, it is the same too. It is not matter that matters, in homeopathy, but information. In the process of potentisation, or the homeopathic way of producing medicines, the substance is left out, while the information of the substance is kept intact.
Homeopathic remedies can be best compared with music CDs, as already touched upon: the music is nowhere found in the chemical sense. All music CDs are ‘chemically’ alike, whatever the music on them. In chemical analysis, only the carrier is analysed; because, for every kind of music, it is the same. The information is the most important factor — this has to be analysed in a different mode. One can analyse the information with a CD player in music CDs. In the case of homeopathic remedies, the healing information can be ‘read’ by living beings. How? We do not know precisely yet — but, we know through evidence that they do.
Potencies & Physics
That homeopathic remedies are not ‘just’ water has been shown in several experiments. Researcher Louis Rey demonstrated that potentised water contains information similar to that of the original substance. Shui-Yin Lo showed that ice has several anomalous states. Prashant Chikramane showed that homeopathic potencies retain nanoparticles of the original substance. Ursula Wolf showed that potencies are different from water. George Czerlinski showed that water contains domains of structures following the regional substance.
Of Water & Information
Dr Rustom Roy, PhD, the materials scientist, showed that water can contain information. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. This knowledge, or feeling, is at the centre of true spirituality. In this sense, and wisdom too, as Albert Einstein said, one belongs to the ranks of devoutly spiritual men.
Objection Without ‘Information’
The objections against homeopathy, in general, can be summarised as follows.
- The first is that there is no proof that homeopathy works; that there no evidence and research to show that homeopathy is effective.
- The second is that homeopathy cannot work because the remedies are just water; they contain no chemicals and, thus, cannot work.
The problem, as already stated, highlights a paradoxical conflict between theory and experiment. This can be seen explicitly in the lectures by Dr J Vandenbroecke, an epidemiologist, “One cannot set, or simply state: there is a RCT [random clinical trial], a ‘type-A’ evidence, so we have to follow that, because that leads directly to the acceptance of homeopathy. Accepting that an ‘unendless’ dilution can be effective leads to the rejection of a whole system of chemical and physical insights that supports more than just medicine. That price is too high. So, we stay with that dogma and prefer to stay critical to the facts.” Dr Vandenbroecke, an opponent of homeopathy, makes the mistake of adapting experiment to theory. A scientist has to adapt theory to the experiment. Besides, his conclusion that it “leads to the rejection of a whole system of chemical and physical insights” is incorrect. It is imperative to add something to the system of chemical and physical insights — ‘information.’
Not surprisingly a study by A Shang, et al, received much attention in the media, when they pronounced ‘The end of homeopathy.’
Shang made a ‘careful’ selection of only eight studies and compared them with another selection of eight studies in conventional medicine and came to the conclusion — that homeopathy was due to the placebo [dummy pill] effect. His ‘winding up’ made headlines. Although Shang came to the conclusion that ‘there is evidence for a specific effect of homeopathic remedies,’ he attributed the homeopathic effects to be placebo.
A L B Rutten and others argued successfully against Shang’s ‘biased’ conclusion and showed that almost any kind of selection would show homeopathy to be effective, except in the selection chosen by Shang. Aside from this, the study by Shang was not meta-analysis — a statistical procedure that integrates the results of several independent studies — as such. It was merely a wilted comparison of homeopathy and conventional medicine.
Verification & Conclusion
There is abundant evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy. In the first place, millions of patients have taken [and, continue to take] homeopathic treatment for over 200 years with evidence-based, documented success. Homeopathy has been favoured by them despite all the ‘drawbacks’ that sceptics take pride in, or propagate. Many conventional doctors have also turned to homeopathy, after having been strong adversaries. Today, proof is often asked, mostly in the form of double-blind clinical studies, randomised clinical trials [RCTs] and also meta-analyses, where several studies are taken together, to draw conclusions about a certain kind of treatment.
- J Kleijnen and P Knipschild analysed 107 researches. Their conclusion: the evidence of homeopathic clinical trials, at the moment, is positive.
- J P Boissel and M Cucherat analysed 15 studies. Their conclusion: there is some evidence that homeopathic treatments are more effective than placebo. “The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo.”
- K Linde first analysed 89 studies and concluded: “The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homeopathy are completely due to placebo.”
- K Linde analysed 32 more studies and concluded: “The results of the available randomised trials suggest that individualised homeopathy has an effect over placebo.”
- R T Mathie analysed 93 studies and concluded: “[This] represents a body of research where the null hypothesis has been rejected in favour of homeopathy.”
All five meta-analyses concluded that homeopathy was and is effective medicine and results could not be explained as placebo. It is also, in general, regarded as sufficient for one to have two positive meta-analyses for a science to be recognised.
Most meta-analyses show that homeopathy is effective and that the effects cannot be explained as placebo.
Dr JAN SCHOLTEN, MD, is a well-known medical doctor specialised in homeopathy. He has practised for over 30 years. A researcher, who has discovered the classification of Minerals and Plants, Dr Scholten has also added several remedies to the homeopathic Materia Medica. He has written many books. The most outstanding and well-known are on his discoveries of the elements of the Periodic System. He has been well-received internationally and he has given many lectures/seminars all over the world too. He has started and is also contributing to the website, Qjure. Qjure is an encyclopedia of homeopathic knowledge. Dr Scholten lives in the Netherlands. This piece is ©Dr Jan Scholten.
