It's Only Natural
Chapter XVI
Understanding Homeopathy
Of all the methods used at the Beverly Hall Corporation Healing Research Center, the one least understood by most patients is our use of homeopathic medication. Although homeopathy as a form of therapy is more than 200 years old and has been practiced continuously during this period, few lay people today are familiar with its fundamentals. Unlike orthodox medicine, called allopathy by the homeopath, which has an ill defined set of assumptions about health and disease, the homeopathic practice is based on very definite conclusions about disease and its effects. For homeopathic treatment to be optimally successful, it is important for the patient to be acquainted with these basic principles and to be in agreement with the objectives the homeopath desires to obtain.
Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), the founder of homeopathic medicine and a brilliant scientist of his day, abhorred the completely unscientific manner in which drugs then used for healing human ailments were selected, tested, and prescribed. From his investigations and the observations of his fellow practitioners, he realized that most drugs were discovered mainly by chance, often by those not in the medical professions and they were used basically for what has become known as the "primary effect," with little regard to their actual mode of operating within the body or their secondary toxic effects.
Many years have passed since Hahnemann's original observations, yet modern-day homeopaths find that despite our current improved technology, the basic information available to orthodox medicine concerning drug functioning has advanced only meagerly since Hahnemann's time. In fact, because there has been such a tremendous proliferation of drugs since Hahnemann's time and only a moderate amount of new revelations about their use, there probably is now more accumulated ignorance about the actions of drugs in use than there was in Hahnemann's time.
The allopathic school takes a simplistic and almost naive view of health and disease. Allopaths consider disease as that which is represented by certain sets of symptoms that are deviations from the normal parameters of body activity. They then attempt to discover a drug or drugs that will force these symptoms to regress to a point they consider normal. Only rarely do they concern themselves with the true causes of the symptoms or with the reason that the body produces them in the first place. The general assumption is that if the various body reactions they can measure by their insensitive methods are within normal ranges, the patient is healthy. This isn't to say that allopaths don't try to find the cause of an infection, or if the ankles are swollen that they wouldn't check the heart or kidneys for malfunction. On the other hand, they probably wouldn't attempt to discover what body imbalances enable the infection to occur or what deficiencies are causing the heart or kidney malfunction.
The homeopath, on the other hand, as do all natural healing physicians, tends to consider most symptom patterns not as the disease per se, but as the body's attempt either to warn of the disease condition or to cast off the basic disease entity. If the disease were only the symptom pattern, the allopathic method would be adequate to cure all our ailments. If the homeopathic and naturalist views are correct, however, the allopathic method would all too often tend to thwart the body in its actual healing efforts, making the person less healthy than he was before the treatment.
In the late 1700s and early 1800s, Hahnemann began to develop a theory of medicine that he hoped would place the medical art on a solid foundation. He was a logical, methodical physician who did not believe in putting into the body any substance whose action he did not know as completely as possible.
He postulated that each drug used in treating the sick had a unique specific action on the body, and that before such a substance could be properly used, this unique and specific action must be thoroughly investigated to the point that the physician knew exactly what effect it would have in the human economy. In his day, there were no instruments capable of such a complete investigation, so the good doctor turned to biologic methods. After some thought, however, he rejected the much-used animal research of his allopathic contemporaries. Experience had taught him that the reactions of each species are individual and unique and one can't necessarily extrapolate information gained from one animal body system to that of another species.
Hahnemann therefore restricted all his investigation to the use of human subjects and with this he developed the method known as proving. In order to prove a drug, moderate physiologic doses of the compound were given to a large number of persons considered in to be in good health. Young medical students were usually used because they were available and were considered to be more observant than the average lay persons. The specific drug was continued until various symptoms caused by the drug's action began to appear. These symptoms were carefully recorded by the students and the drug was continued until either the symptoms had run their gamut or until signs of toxicity appeared.
Two groups of symptoms were generally elicited. First, a prevailing group that was more or less common to almost all the drug's provers; and second, individual idiosyncratic symptoms that occurred only in one or two prover. The more consistent set of symptoms was considered the most important; although the idiosyncratic symptoms were preserved and are available in the larger homeopathic texts on materia medica. They can be useful to the homeopath in difficult cases.
From these provings, Hahnemann ascertained the specificity of each drug he tested. In other words, after an extensive set of such provings, Hahnemann had information about the specific organs and tissues affected by each drug, and he also had knowledge about the exact manner in which this drug affected these structures. While such information went well beyond what had been done previously in pharmacology, it still didn't provide him with a method of curing diseases.
At this time, the inspiration came to Hahnemann that resulted in the homeopathic school of medicine and laid the foundation for the fundamental basis of cure by all the natural therapeutic methods. Some inner wisdom brought him to see that the symptoms usually present in most diseases weren't actually the disease itself, but were in truth the body's attempts to overcome the disease and that a true healing method should encourage the body in these efforts and not discourage the body from carrying out its constructive eliminative processes.
As Hahnemann began to appreciate the true nature of health and disease, he also began to develop a method by which drugs, and the knowledge of their action, could best be used to help the sick. He hypothesized that because the symptoms produced by the body in most diseases were really an effort by the body to overcome such conditions, we should help the body in this effort in every way we can. If drugs are to be used to treat disease, the most practical way, he reasoned, was to use them to stimulate the body in its efforts to eliminate the disease.
In his provings on drugs, he discovered that individual drugs were capable of stimulating specific tissues in the body in the same manner that the different disease processes could. "If the drugs and disease cause similar effects, what would happen," he asked himself, "to a patient, who has a certain set of symptoms which the body is creating to overcome a disease, if I gave a drug which in a healthy person would cause that identical set of symptoms? Would this drug stimulate the body in its efforts to overcome the disease more rapidly than it could without this help?" Such reasoning put into practice was the beginning of homeopathic medicine.
When this new method was put to the test, Hahnemann was overjoyed to discover that it was more successful than even he had hoped. He found that when the specific drug that caused a certain set of symptoms in a healthy person was given to a diseased patient with a similar set of symptoms, a speedy and apparently complete recovery ensued. For example, belladonna, when given in large doses to a healthy person produces a hot, dry, very red, sore throat. When such a throat is encountered as a disease entity, it usually is rapidly cured if small amounts of belladonna are given. Thus, although the allopath and the homeopath both use this drug in their treatment programs, the conditions and principles behind the administration of the drug are entirely different.
Let's use the sore throat again to show the difference between these schools. The allopath holds that if he can destroy the bacteria, the disease is cured and the body will be healthy once again. Hahnemann and the homeopaths would look on this matter from an entirely different viewpoint. They know our body is always inhabited by bacteria; in fact, almost all the known pathogenic bacteria can be cultured from the healthy human throat. The homeopath would therefore consider the sore throat an attempt by the body through an inflammatory process to eliminate a morbid or unhealthy condition that may have been building up in the body, rather than consider it a disease per se. The homeopath would consider bacteria as the agents by which this morbid matter is destroyed and not necessarily as detrimental agents. This would be particularly true of recurring sore throats that are controlled but not cured by the usual antibiotic therapy.
The disease process then is actually this morbid or toxic matter that has accumulated within the body. The throat inflammation is the body's attempt to overcome and cast off this disease material. The homeopath gives the patient a remedy that will help the body in its efforts to eliminate this matter. When this is done, the bacteria, their job finished, disappear and the throat returns to normal.
Antibiotics, as used by the allopath, prevent bacterial growth and suppress the acute inflammation, thereby leaving the body with the disease still fulminating within its depths. Homeopathic treatment helps the body to cast off the disease so that when the symptoms subside by the use of homeopathic remedies, not only is the patient pain-free, but also the morbid disease matter itself is eliminated. In other words, the patient usually becomes healthier after the proper treatment of conditions by homeopathic methods, whereas all too often he may become less healthy when treated by allopathic methods.
Over the years, there have been many explanations about why homeopathic medicine works. One theory is that because the remedy and the disease are nearly identical in their effects, there is created within the body a neutralization somewhat like that caused when two out-of-phase sound waves of identical frequency cancel one another.
Hahnemann's original explanation, however, was not quite so complicated. He merely said that the drug has a stimulating effect on the specific cells affected by the disease and that this reaction greatly hastens the body's attempt to cast off the ailment. In chronic diseases, he believed that the body's attempts to overcome the disease were unfortunately quite feeble, thus enabling such chronic ailments to persist. Here he particularly thought the homeopathic stimulative method to be very important to properly direct and activate the vital force in its efforts to overcome such conditions.
The Minimal Dose
The foregoing discussion explains the choices of the homeopathic remedy, but there is another unique factor in homeopathic medication that has always been an obstacle to the general public's acceptance of this method. This reticence has to do with what is known as the "diminutive dose." The homeopath uses dosages of medicine that are so small by standard physiologic measurement that in the higher dilutions it is utterly impossible to detect by chemical or other analytic means any of the drug within the carrier material. It seems that only a very minute part of the drug is needed to produce the stimulative activity.
Perhaps this feature of homeopathy, more than any other, has held it up to constant ridicule by the allopath. Hahnemann, nevertheless, developed this technique only after long experience and experimentation, and he used it only because it proved to be the most satisfactory method of treating with drugs in his estimation.
In his early prescribing, Hahnemann used fairly large physiologic doses of his remedies. He soon found that although he would cure the disease for which he prescribed his drug, he often left the patient with other problems because of certain toxicities inherent in the remedy. In order to offset these toxicities, he began to diminish the size of the drug dose given. Although he expected less success with his cures, he believed this was best for the long-term health of the patient.
To his amazement, he soon found that his patients got well faster and the cure seemed more permanent than it did with larger dosages. Once he had observed this phenomenon, his fertile brain wouldn't rest until he'd found just exactly to what extent the dose reduction could be carried out with continued beneficial results. From extensive investigation, he found that many remedies became more effective for certain types of cases as they were further divided, especially when this division was done in specific steps with certain measures taken to ensure adequate dispersal of the original drug.
This process, called trituration, is still used by all authentic homeopathic manufacturers. In this procedure, a specific amount of the pure drug is taken and mixed with ten equal parts of a dilutant; either milk sugar or alcohol is usually used. This first dilution is then shaken a certain specific number of times. This remedy is then called a 1x or first trituration. For the 2x or second trituration, a specific amount of the 1x mixture is taken, again mixed with ten parts of dilutant, and shaken for proper mixture and division. For a 3x, a portion of the 2x is taken, mixed again with ten parts of dilutant, and this procedure repeated for the other dilutions.
Thus, the method is one of geometric progression. The first trituration is a 1 to 10 dilution, the second a 1 to 100 dilution, the third a 1 to 1000 dilution and so on. Because the homeopath commonly uses remedies of 30x and 200x, these triturations contain almost an infinitesimal amount of the crude drug. In some of the highest triturations, it is possible, owing to the size of the molecules, that there may be none of the original crude substance at all in the dose.
This being true, one can see why allopaths ridicule homeopathy. For if there is none of the crude drug left in the higher triturations, how can they possibly be effective? Strange to say, according to homeopathic theory and practice, the more a drug is divided, the greater its strength or ability to heal becomes, especially in chronic ailments. In fact, the homeopath believes these higher potencies have such a powerful effect that they must only be given with great care and when one is very sure of the specific symptom pattern.
Hahnemann taught that each drug has a specific character that causes its basic effects on the body. This character, although due to the physio-chemical structure of its molecule, is independent of this molecule, once such a character is established, in the same way that the Soul inhabits the body and yet doesn't directly depend on the body for its existence. It is this "soul of the drug" that does most of the healing in homeopathy, and it is this nebulous entity that is released for its most complete action by the process of trituration and shaking (succussion) to which these drugs are subjected.
Near the end of his life, Hahnemann took to curing his patients in some instances by merely having them smell a vial containing the proper remedy for their condition. Although such a procedure was a natural outgrowth of his investigations, the technique hasn't been continued by modern practitioners, perhaps from a fear that their patients may consider them even more unusual and less scientific than they seem to be anyway.
Long experience has shown that the lower homeopathic potencies (those up to 6x) are most useful in acute or short term diseases, whereas higher potencies (12x, 30x, 200x, or higher) are best adapted as long-term, deep-working remedies in chronic ailments.
Many remedies, by their very nature, are short-working and therefore best adapted to acute conditions. Aconite is a good example. This drug is used by the homeopath in the first stage of infective and feverish conditions, but its usefulness wanes as the fever lowers. On the other hand, certain other remedies, such as sulfur, calcarea carb and silicia, are usually used as constitutional remedies, for they are very deep working drugs that can be used for months and even years with continued good effect and will root out many well-seated chronic diseases.
How to Best Use Homeopathic Remedies
In using homeopathic remedies, certain important precautions should be taken so that their optimum effect may be realized.
They should be taken dry under the tongue, whether the liquid or the more common trituration tablet is used. If they are swallowed with water, as are most medications, their effectiveness is negated. When placed under the tongue, their medicinal power is rapidly absorbed into the blood in the same manner that nitroglycerin is absorbed.
Because the homeopathic remedy is so subtle, it should not be taken just before or just after having eaten or drunk. At least fifteen minutes should pass after a meal before a homeopathic remedy is taken, and a longer time is preferred.
For a homeopathic remedy to function correctly, the use of allopathic drugs should be restricted because their use tends to counteract the full effectiveness of most homeopathic remedies. I don't find this as true with the low homeopathic potencies as it is in the high potencies.
For this purpose, commonly used compounds such as tea, coffee, Coca Cola, and cigarettes, must be considered drugs, because they contain substances that have pharmacologic effects on the body. Although patients who have these habits can be helped by the homeopathic method, the cure is much more rapid if the patient attempts to live a life without the use of physiologic stimulants or inhibitors during the treatment.
There is an old saying, "You have to get worse before you get better." In general this is a lot of nonsense and it is used by many physicians to cover their inability to help their patients. With homeopathic remedies, however, this maxim may well be true. We attempt with homeopathic remedies to further stimulate the specific organs that are producing the symptoms. At first this stimulation may result in a short-term intensification of these symptoms, but this soon passes as the vital energy of the body responds to this stimulus and rapidly overcomes the disease. The homeopath is encouraged if his patient worsens slightly soon after taking the remedy, because this positively indicates that he has selected the correct remedy and it is having its desired effect. If the remedy is ill-chosen, it doesn't affect the proper tissues and no symptom will intensification result.
The Laws of Homeopathic Cure
In treating acute disorders, the homeopathic method frequently works rapidly with good success. To the unknowing patient it seems to work much in the same fashion as do allopathic medications. Thus, the patient will present himself to the physician with a certain set of symptoms. He is given the indicated homeopathic remedy, and although there may be slight temporary symptom intensification, this is followed by a rapid cure of the condition and the patient is returned once again to his normal activities. From the patient's viewpoint, the allopathic cure and the homeopathic cure of acute ailments are similar. Of course, this similarity is only on the surface and the long-range results of the two methods can be very different as described before.
The outer differences between the allopathic and homeopathic schools are very distinct in the treatment of chronic diseases. To the homeopath, these chronic diseases can best be eliminated by stimulating the repair mechanism of the body, which he likes to call the Vital Force, with the properly chosen homeopathic medication. It may take many different remedies to correct most chronic conditions because these diseases are usually due to multiple causes and a different drug or group of drugs is needed for each cause.
The homeopathic and natural healing physician look on chronic disease as the consequence of improper nutrition, emotional tension, improper treatment with allopathic medication and an over abundance of stress from which the body is not able to recover. The symptoms or the final manifestations that occur are merely an end result of these accumulated body assaults. While allopathy attempts to battle these manifestations when they become objectionable, the true natural healing physician directs his efforts to overcoming the underlying causes, thereby resulting in a patient who is disease-free, not one who is just symptom free.
Herring's Laws
In the treating of chronic diseases, the homeopaths have discovered that the elimination of these conditions proceeds in a certain specific order and rules have been laid down outlining this healing procedure. These rules are known as Herring's Laws in honor of Constantine Herring (1800-1880), who is considered the father of American homeopathy.
Herring's three laws may be expressed simply as follows:
1. Symptoms of a chronic disease disappear in a definite order when the patient is properly treated in accordance with homeopathic recommendations. The symptoms usually disappear in the reverse order of their appearance-the most recent symptom disappears first; then an earlier symptom re manifests only to abate when the proper remedy is given. This process continues until all the unresolved disease conditions are eliminated, even though some may go back to early childhood. This procedure is called the reverse progression of symptoms. This procedure of symptom regression isn't restricted to homeopathy alone, but is to be expected when most natural methods of therapy are used to overcome chronic ailments.
2. Herring's second law states that the symptoms tend to move from the more vital organs to the less vital organs and from the interior of the body toward the periphery or skin. This law functions because of the body's attempt to preserve itself. If a disease that produces morbid matter can't be eliminated, the body tries to deposit the residues of this condition in as harmless an area as possible. The skin is one of the safest, but the various connective tissues and joints are also frequently used by the body for this purpose.
Only when the disease process is overpowering does the body allow it to invade the vital organs, and even then the body makes every possible attempt to keep the disease processes out of the heart and brain. When a patient comes to us with disorders of the vital organs, we know the vital force is weak or these areas wouldn't be affected and therefore the cure will be prolonged. Under treatment, the symptoms will subside and recede from the more vital areas to the less vital areas, and the symptoms may even end with a healing reaction on the best eliminator of all-the skin.
3. Herring's third rule states that the symptoms move from the top of the body downward, disappearing first from the head, then from the thigh to the knee, ankle, and foot. We frequently encounter this last pattern, wherein the pain will go from the abdomen into the hip, then thigh, then knee and then in and out the foot. These patients often comment: "You know, Doctor, I'm sure when it gets down to the foot, it will just go out the toes and be gone." They usually are correct.
The functioning of the third law is based on a principle similar to the second. Because the more vital areas are found in the head and upper portion of the body and those of less importance are encountered toward the extremities, the third law is a symptomatic extension of the second law. Its nature is important to the physician but not particularly to the patient.
From these laws, a patient may realize that under proper homeopathic treatment he could re-manifest symptom patterns from an earlier stage of his life, only if these conditions weren't fully corrected originally. If he had so lived that the body didn't have residual disease material, it wouldn't be necessary to go through this retracing regimen.
I have always found this concept for the cure of chronic diseases one of the most fascinating aspects of natural therapy. Such a concept is completely rejected by all but a few allopaths. This rejection is to be expected, of course, for if they accept it, they would also have to accept the fact that most of their methods of therapy are injurious to the patient in the long run. Although there are many fine men in the medical field who have for years been harboring grave doubts about basic allopathic practice, I fear it will be many more years before they are able to accept the homeopathic and naturalistic view of chronic ailments.
The Nature of Homeopathic Cure
Over the years, the homeopath has accumulated provings for thousands of homeopathic remedies. Although in common practice only a few hundred are used, this great number of provings enable the matching of symptoms to almost any encountered disorder. The prudent homeopath doesn't, however, attempt to use homeopathic remedies to cure all ailments. One of the basic principles of Hahnemann was to find the cause of the disease and correct it. If this could be done best by means other than the use of a remedy, then this would be the most practical way to treat the patient.
Dr. George Royal, the famous homeopath, relates the story of a patient who once came to him with a pain in his mid-back, which gradually increased during the day, but which soon disappeared after he left his job. Royal tried one or two remedies, but the pain did not change. One day the patient appeared at Royal's office with a large button in his hand. "Dr. Royal," he said, "this is the cause of my trouble." The button was used on his suspenders where they crossed in the back, and it was applying a constant pressure on a vertebral nerve as the patient sat in his chair at work. Once the man discovered this and removed the button, his ailment was corrected, and no further homeopathic medication was needed.
The modern homeopath, therefore, is fully acquainted with advanced nutrition and specific nutritional substances. He is also familiar with many of the therapeutic modalities used in the natural field, while still being knowledgeable about orthodox allopathic surgery and drugs.
The homeopath knows that, at times, emergency measures must be taken and physiologic drugs may be required, but most of the exasperating conditions of mankind and especially those that respond poorly to orthodox medicine will respond well to homeopathic methods.
Homeopathy-Advantages and Disadvantages
Most of the disorders described in this book can be helped by homeopathic treatment. In our Centers, we almost invariably use this type of therapy along with the other forms of natural medicine. Homeopathy does have, however, one great advantage over every other form of therapy. Because its indicated remedy is chosen only by the symptom pattern of the patient, a remedy can be found for every possible condition, irrespective of whether a definitive medical diagnosis can be established or not. In allopathy, even with the finest modern methods of examination, the causes of many disorders are not readily found and, not finding a cause, the allopath is unable to offer adequate treatment. Such a deficiency can't occur with homeopathy. Because a remedy choice is made exclusively on the symptom pattern, one can always be found for every patient, because even an undiagnosable disease will have symptoms. If this remedy is wisely chosen, an improvement in the patient's condition is almost sure to follow, assuming the problem is among those susceptible to homeopathic treatment.
Another advantage of homeopathy is that it is truly safe. The remedies are prepared in such dilution that they are absolutely harmless and without any adverse side effects, even to the most delicate constitution or frailest infant.
Still other advantages are that the remedies are easily given and readily acceptable, even to children at ages when it is almost impossible to get them to accept other tablets or compounds. Also the remedies are inexpensive; the most potent of the homeopathic remedies cost the patient no more than a few dollars.
The disadvantages of homeopathy are few for the patient, but somewhat greater for the physician. This method takes time and dedication on the part of the physician. It isn't easy to find the proper remedy from among the thousands available. It takes great skill and much time in complicated cases for the physician to properly prescribe for and treat each patient. It generally isn't possible for him to command fees commensurate with the time involved, and homeopathy thus hasn't become popular.
This last disadvantage is now being relieved by the computer. At our Centers we now have special computer programs that help us to find the proper remedy in a few seconds instead of the hours and even days that it has taken in the past. If you are given a homeopathic remedy, ask your physician to show you how this program works, it is most fascinating.
In chronic disorders, considerable time is necessary to effect a proper cure. In these disorders, however, the allopath has little to offer in the way of a cure. With a combination of homeopathic and other natural methods, a cure can be effected as rapid as the body will allow.
One other disadvantage of homeopathy is that it is psychologically weak. The practice of giving little sugar pills under the tongue to cure very severe disorders doesn't seem adequate to most patients. If they have a disorder that to them is serious they want something big and complicated done to correct it. For this reason, beside others of course, surgery is popular even though many medical reports show that a good fifty per cent of surgery is completely unnecessary. Most patients like a show, and homeopathy doesn't put on a good show, except in the fabulous cures it produces. Most homeopaths I have known are quiet, dedicated and unassuming men who are not likely to seek the limelight, so even there best cures are little heard of. In truth homeopathy has had very poor public relations. I hope by this chapter to correct some of this anonymity.
In ending this chapter, I want to quote the preface to the first edition of Hahnemann's Organon of Medicine.* This edition first appeared in 1810:
"According to the testimony of all ages, no occupation is more unanimously declared to be a conjectural art than medicine; consequently none has less right to refuse a searching enquiry as to whether it is well founded than it, on which man's health, his most precious possession on earth, depends."
*Hahnemann, Samuel: Organon of Medicine. Philadelphia. Pa.. Boeriche and Tafel, 1901.
Return to Contents Page