Trick or Treatment—The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Electronic book text)

Moreover, while carrying his remedies on board a horse-drawn carriage, Hahnemann made another breakthrough. He believed that the vigorous shaking of the vehicle had further increased the so-called potency of his homeopathic remedies, as a result of which he began to recommend that shaking (or succussion) should form part of the dilution process. The combination of dilution and shaking is known as potentization.

Over the next few years, Hahnemann identified various homeopathic remedies by conducting experiments known as provings, from the German word prüfen, meaning to examine or test. This would involve giving daily doses of a homeopathic remedy to several healthy people and then asking them to keep a detailed diary of any symptoms that might emerge over the course of a few weeks. A compilation of their diaries was then used to identify the range of symptoms suffered by a healthy person taking the remedy — Hahnemann then argued that the identical remedy given to a sick patient could relieve those same symptoms.

In 1807 Hahnemann coined the word Homöopathie, from the Greek hómoios and pathos, meaning similar suffering. Then in 1810 he published Organon der rationellen Heilkunde (Organon of the Medical Art), his first major treatise on the subject of homeopathy, which was followed in the next decade by Materia Medica Pura, six volumes that detailed the symptoms cured by sixty-seven homeopathic remedies. Hahnemann had given homeopathy a firm foundation, and the way that it is practised has hardly changed over the last two centuries. According to Jay W. Shelton, who has written extensively on the subject, ‘Hahnemann and his writings are held in almost religious reverence by most homeopaths.’

The gospel according to Hahnemann

Hahnemann was adamant that homeopathy was distinct from herbal medicine, and modern homeopaths still maintain a separate identity and refuse to be labelled herbalists. One of the main reasons for this is that homeopathic remedies are not solely based on plants. They can also be based on animal sources, which sometimes means the whole animal (e.g. ground honeybee), and sometimes just animal secretions (e.g. snake poison, wolf milk). Other remedies are based on mineral sources, ranging from salt to gold, while so-called nosode sources are based on diseased material or causative agents, such as bacteria, pus, vomit, tumours, faeces and warts. Since Hahnemann’s era, homeopaths have also relied upon an additional set of sources labelled imponderables, which covers non-material phenomena such as X-rays and magnetic fields.

There is something innately comforting about the idea of herbal medicines, which conjures up images of leaves, petals and roots. Homeopathic remedies, by contrast, can sound rather disturbing. In the nineteenth century, for instance, a homeopath describes basing a remedy on ‘pus from an itch pustule of a young and otherwise healthy Negro, who had been infected [with scabies]’. Other homeopathic remedies require crushing live bedbugs, operating on live eels and injecting a scorpion in its rectum.

Another reason why homeopathy is absolutely distinct from herbal medicine, even if the homeopathic remedy is based on plants, is Hahnemann’s emphasis on dilution. If a plant is to be used as the basis of a homeopathic remedy, then the preparation process begins by allowing it to sit in a sealed jar of solvent, which then dissolves some of the plant’s molecules. The solvent can be either water or alcohol, but for ease of explanation we will assume that it is water for the remainder of this chapter. After several weeks the solid material is removed — the remaining water with its dissolved ingredients is called the mother tincture.

The mother tincture is then diluted, which might involve one part of it being dissolved in nine parts water, thereby diluting it by a factor of ten. This is called a 1X remedy, the X being the Roman numeral for 10. After the dilution, the mixture is vigorously shaken, which completes the potentization process. Taking one part of the 1X remedy, dissolving it in nine parts water and shaking again leads to a 2X remedy. Further dilution and potentization leads to 3X, 4X, 5X and even weaker solutions — remember, Hahnemann believed that weaker solutions led to stronger remedies. Herbal medicine, by contrast, follows the more commonsense rule that more concentrated doses lead to stronger remedies.

The resulting homeopathic solution, whether it is 1X, 10X or even more dilute, can then be directly administered to a patient as a remedy. Alternatively, drops of the solution can be added to an ointment, tablets or some other appropriate form of delivery. For example, one drop might be used to wet a dozen sugar tablets, which would transform them into a dozen homeopathic pills.