Homeopathy

What is homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a method of healing based on natural laws. It holds that the substance that causes certain complaints is also the best medicine to cure those or similar complaints.

Samuel Hahnemann

This law was already described in antiquity in India and in Europe by the Greek physician Hippocrates, and later again by the famous medieval physician Paracelsus.

In 1790 this law was rediscovered by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, who gave it the name homeopathy. He developed the method into the healing practice that is still used today. He wrote several works, the theoretical volumes Organon der Heilkunst and Die chronischen Krankheiten Bd.1 as well as several practical volumes, which were reissued together under the title Hahnemanns Arzneimittellehre by Narayana Verlag.

How did homeopathy originate?

Samuel Hahnemann in search

Homeopathy as an independent method of healing was founded by the German physician, pharmacist and chemist Dr Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (10 April 1755 – 2 July 1843). At that time physicians believed that diseases were caused by bodily forces or fluids that had to be expelled from the body. Common methods were bloodletting, cupping or administering blistering agents – even to children and elderly or very weakened people. Hahnemann recognised and protested against the excessive use of these measures, for which he was accused of heresy.

At the same time he condemned the way medicines were prescribed, since up to 50 different ingredients were sometimes mixed for a single remedy. This also earned him the bitter enmity of the guild of apothecaries.

When one of his daughters finally became seriously ill and he could not help her, he turned away from medicine in disappointment. He gave up his practice and limited himself to translating medical works. However, he did not lose sight of his life’s aim to find out “whether God had not perhaps established some law by which the diseases of humans could be cured.” Thanks to his excellent language skills (including Latin, Greek, English, French and Italian) he gained a broad overview of the medical and philosophical literature of his time.

The cinchona bark experiment

While translating the "Lectures on the Materia Medica" by the Scottish medical professor William Cullen in 1790, he found the note that cinchona bark, because of its astringent and bitter properties, could be used to treat marsh or intermittent fever (malaria). At that time malaria was widespread in Europe, and one of the few successful treatments was the administration of large doses of cinchona bark, which often produced serious side effects. Cullen's explanation did not convince Hahnemann, as he knew other similarly bitter and astringent substances; so he tried to research the mechanism of action of cinchona bark and to reduce the side effects. When he took a larger quantity of cinchona bark he developed symptoms typical of malaria.

Therefore he added a footnote to his translation of Cullen's "Materia Medica" in which he describes his experiment: “The active principle of the cinchona bark, which had not previously been discovered, is not easy to find. As an experiment I took for several days twice daily each time four quentchen (note: 1 Quentchen = 1.67 g) of good China; my feet, fingertips etc. first became cold, I grew weak and drowsy, then the heart began to beat, my pulse became hard and rapid; an intolerable anxiety, a trembling (but without chills), a fatigue through all the limbs followed; then a throbbing in the head, redness of the cheeks, thirst, in short, all the symptoms usually present in intermittent fever appeared in succession, but without actual fever chills. This paroxysm lasted each time two to three hours and recurred when I repeated this dose, otherwise it did not. I stopped, and I was well.”

The principle of similars

This self-experiment prompted further tests, which Hahnemann carried out until 1796; he then published his paper "Essay on a new principle for discovering the curative powers of drugs, with some views on the previous" in the medical journal "Hufeland's Journal". In this work he described "treatment by similarity", the basis for the simile rule. He formulated his newly discovered natural law roughly as follows: “If among the symptoms produced by a medicine in a perfectly healthy body there are unmistakable signs of a certain disease, then that medicine is capable of curing that disease very quickly, thoroughly and permanently.”

Typhus and cholera help homeopathy to its breakthrough

Until the winter of 1812/13 Hahnemann did not yet have sufficient evidence for the success of homeopathic treatments. At that time, during the retreat of Napoleon's armies after the lost Battle of Leipzig, typhus broke out among the soldiers. Hahnemann treated 180 sick soldiers with his method, of whom only two died. In 1831 a pupil of Hahnemann treated 154 cases homeopathically during a cholera epidemic in Hungary, and only 6 people died; that corresponds to 3.9%. In contrast, 54.7% of patients treated by conventional medicine died. These therapeutic successes of homeopathy on such a large scale could no longer be dismissed as mere coincidence.

Until his death in 1843 at the age of 88, Hahnemann carried out experiments with around 100 substances. Today more than 3,000 homeopathic remedies are known.

Potentisation

Once Hahnemann was convinced of the usefulness of the similarity rule, he strove for a gentler application. Initially he reduced the dosage of his medicines simply by diluting them, usually with the help of water and alcohol. But they eventually lost their effect. As a chemist he wanted to ensure that the components of his solutions were really well mixed. For this purpose he shook them by forceful blows on a soft surface. The results were incredible. Now the diluted remedies not only worked, but their healing effect even seemed stronger than that of the concentrated preparations. Hahnemann called his method of preparing medicines, in which dilution and shaking were performed simultaneously, potentisation.

Hahnemann suspected that the effect of the potentised remedies was probably not a biochemical one – i.e. not based solely on the material body. He rather assumed that they acted on a more "energetic", immaterial level – which he called the "vital principle" or "vital force". Therefore Hahnemann also used the term dynamisation for the process of potentisation. Today, centesimal, decimal and LM potencies are most commonly used. You can read more about this in Unheilbar? Das faszinierende Heilpotenzial der Homöopathie by Amy Lansky.

Homeopathy today

A new heyday

Homeopathy has undergone an astonishing development in the last 25 years, comparable to the heyday around the turn of the century 1880/1920. At that time this wonderful healing art was taken to a new level mainly in the USA by inspired immigrants from Europe. These American classics were taken up with enthusiasm particularly in India and formed the basis of practice for generations of homeopaths there. Around 1980 Narayana Verlag began offering these particularly inexpensive valuable works in Germany to promote classical homeopathy among students.
At that time a new flourishing of homeopathy began in Europe, which has led to revolutionary innovations.

George Vithoulkas

George Vithoulkas

George Vithoulkas is the initiator of the new upswing of homeopathy. Like Kent in his materia medica lectures, he was able to bring many new and old remedies to the point so that they can be better imagined and thus more easily remembered.

His students referred to them as essences and initially published them without authorisation. Whoever understands a large number of remedies in their core will achieve success more quickly in practice, because they have many points of comparison and can already recognise them during the case-taking.

Of course this "essence" must not be mere speculation, and it should be as short and concise as possible. Most well-known contemporary homeopaths have emerged from George Vithoulkas's Greek school on the Ionian island of Alonnissos.

Jan Scholten

The periodic table in homeopathy

Jan Scholten

The group analysis of minerals by Jan Scholten and the shortly thereafter brilliant idea of a homeopathic interpretation of the periodic table of the elements has since been confirmed so often worldwide that there is no serious doubt about its validity.

His fundamental work Homöopathie und die Elemente shows the mineral remedies in natural order. The periodic table thus gives us a new possibility for the homeopathic application of the elements and their compounds. This work should not be missing in any modern homeopathic practice.

Even untested remedies such as rubidium, technetium and scandium can be understood in their homeopathic core message by their position in the periodic table as interfaces of "series and stages", and on that basis they can also be prescribed successfully.

The seven series

The seven "series" in total are the horizontal rows or periods of the periodic table and were named by Scholten after their best-known representatives.

The iron series

The 18 stages

The "stages" are the vertical columns of the periodic table. They are the steps of the developmental process that one passes through in each series. They are the stages of the universal principle of growth, success and decline.

Stage 3

The lanthanides

Jan Scholten's completely new discovery is the homeopathic application of the lanthanides. This group of remedies had so far been completely hidden from homeopathy, even though the rare earth elements have long become indispensable in technology. In his latest work Geheime Lanthanide he deciphers their application according to the same criteria that apply to the other elements. Autoimmune diseases in particular are a grateful field for their therapeutic use, and from our own practice we can now confirm their great usefulness in over 100 cases.

Properties become predictable

Scholten's discovery of the homeopathic interpretation of the periodic table is reminiscent of the discovery history of the periodic table itself. Mendeleev, the discoverer of the periodic table, was convinced that the empty slots in his system must be filled by unknown elements. Although these elements had not yet been discovered, his system even allowed him to predict their chemical properties. For example, as early as 1871 he predicted the existence of germanium as "eka-silicon". This element was actually found five years later in Germany and was named germanium. The expected chemical and physical properties were confirmed. After numerous experiments, the element later revealed its full physical potential in its technical application as a semiconductor. The homeopathic properties of germanium were long unknown until they were predicted in outline by Scholten through its position in the periodic table. This enabled the remedy to be used successfully even though it had not yet been tested. In the meantime its homeopathic properties have been confirmed and refined by a provings by Jeremy Sherr. By integrating such natural systems, homeopathy thus becomes more precise and more comprehensible.

Meanwhile, the classification system of botanical families has also been incorporated in a similar way, which has made the abundance of plant remedies more manageable. This also makes the prescribing of remedies simpler than before, although the number of remedies available continues to grow.

An excellent introduction can be found by Ulrich Welte: Periodensystem in der Homöopathie.

Rajan Sankaran

The systematisation of plants

The systematisation of plants is the latest revolutionary idea of the brilliant Indian homeopath. He developed a kind of "periodic table of plants" which postulates a common sensation for each botanical family, which can be differentiated by miasms. In this model the botanical families correspond to Scholten's series and the miasms to the stages.

Rajan Sankaran

It is striking that his classification, extended to ten miasms, shows so many correspondences with Scholten's stages that one can rightly assume that both authors have here traced the same universal natural law. Sankaran approached this law in the form of disease pictures (mostly infectious diseases) and the miasmatic reactions to the respective pathogens.

Scholten discovered it via the periodic table, which is a rather mathematical approach to the problem. Much is still in flux here, and one gets the feeling of being able to contribute to a great new discovery that is at least as groundbreaking for homeopathy as the discovery of the periodic table was for chemistry or the development of atomic theory for modern physics.

Classification by miasms

With Sankaran's botanical-homeopathic system one can view the sphere of action of a plant as the interface between the sensation of its botanical family and its miasm. This also creates in the plant kingdom the possibility of reasonably justified prescriptions of lesser-known remedies, once the sensation of a botanical family is reasonably established, because the miasms are fixed quantities and remain the same. Indeed, in several cases we have seen excellent effects from remedies identified solely by the idea of botanical family affiliation and the individual miasm.

For example, there were very nice cases of Corydalis formosa (Papaveraceae + syphilitic miasm or Stage 17) or Franciscea uni?ora (Solanaceae + syphilitic miasm or Stage 17), which, according to previous knowledge of these remedies, would not have been solvable with the classical method. For remedies of animal origin the situation is similar, because zoology and behavioural research have already provided good prerequisites for a natural order. There is still much to discover here.

Important works by Rajan Sankaran: Das andere Lied, Die Seele der Heilmittel, Das geistige Prinzip, Einblicke ins Pflanzenreich