In recent times homeopathy has come under attack, attacks that have grown increasingly intense over the past few years. As homeopaths we feel offended and misunderstood, and rightly feel mistreated, because the arguments are inappropriate and false.
The attackers claim that there is no evidence to explain homeopathy, even though most meta-analyses carried out to today’s standards of evidence have shown that homeopathy works. We have launched a counterattack, but it is unlikely to attract attention.
However, we can also view this problem from another perspective. From the homeopathic point of view nothing happens by chance, and what we perceive as attacks from outside also appears as a manifestation of a certain imbalance within, just as bacteria are not the cause of a disease but merely a side effect of an internal imbalance.
So what is our imbalance? It resembles what happens to us ourselves. We are attacked by other scientists; but is that not exactly what homeopathy itself did for centuries? There was hardly any contact with other sciences because they were thought incapable of contributing anything valuable to homeopathy; their information was regarded as irrelevant; botany and chemistry were considered unnecessary, and conventional medicine was accused of merely suppressing symptoms. Such treatments, which only served to relieve symptoms, were often “forbidden”. Now we are experiencing the return of what we ourselves once sent out.
This combative nature is also present within homeopathy itself. There have been many battles between classical and clinical homeopathy. Complex homeopathy has been accused of not being true homeopathy; yet it is often forgotten that David Reilly’s studies belong to the best “evidence” of homeopathy’s effectiveness. He was able to show that complex remedies treated hay fever very well. Some homeopathy schools were also accused of not teaching “proper” homeopathy and of deviating from the true “Hahnemann” line.
The arguments used to attack homeopathy are largely theoretical in nature: they never concern a specific homeopathic remedy. The efficacy of homeopathy is not acknowledged, even though it has been demonstrated repeatedly in meta-analyses. This is, of course, a major scientific error, but in the natural sciences facts come first and theory is then adjusted to the facts.
Similar dynamics are obviously playing out within homeopathy. New developments are rejected with theoretical justifications, for example because they are not in the Organon or because Hahnemann said something different. The successes are not acknowledged and the healed cases are ignored. On the one hand, conventional medicine is criticised for poor results; on the other hand the successes of homeopathic treatment are often not spectacular enough, yet they are rationalised away with theoretical argument.
I believe the attacks should rather be regarded as a gift, a gift that leads us to a more intensive analysis of our own weaknesses and divisions. They can help us review our therapeutic successes and encourage us to broaden and improve homeopathy in order to further enhance treatment outcomes. In accordance with our own theory we can understand such incidents as a path to healing not only the homeopathic community but also science and society as a whole.
