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A New View on Homeopathy

A doctor has to stand on his head to practise homeopathy. Everything is upside-down and contrary to medical school training. It’s not surprising that so few doctors opt to learn the principles of this healing system, yet its power to help patients is as close to miraculous as you can get in medical therapeutics. So what’s so contrary about homeopathy? Why don’t doctors roll up their sleeves and get busy?

Like Cures Like

In 1793, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann observed that symptoms similar to malaria could be created by taking large doses of quinine, a drug that cured malaria in small doses. Thus, the Law of Similars, or “like cures like,” was rediscovered. (It had previously been mentioned in Indian ayurvedic texts and by Hippocrates and Paracelsus). Hahnemann coined the term “homeopathy” from the Greek words homœos (“similar”) and pathos (“disease”) for this healing principle: Small doses of a substance can cure the same symptoms that large doses of the substance can cause. For example, too much coffee can cause a type of insomnia where the mind is very active and the senses keen, so homeopathic Coffea can cure this particular type of sleeplessness.

Microdoses

There are more than 2,500 remedies in the homeopathic pharmacopoeia that can be applied to a wide range of diseases using the above principle. To prepare them, plant, mineral and animal products are made into tinctures and repeatedly diluted and “succussed” by vigorous shaking. Homeopathic remedies actually increase in potency with each subsequent round of dilution and succussion.

Doctors just can’t seem to grasp this idea of the homeopathic microdose. Even today’s pharmacists cannot remember the Arndt-Shultz Law taught in school, which states that every substance has an opposite effect in high doses from its effect in low doses. How can a homeopathic remedy, diluted beyond the point where there are no molecules of the original substance left, exert a healing influence? Doctors are bound to be puzzled!

When you’re used to prescribing grams and micrograms as the measure of a drug’s strength, it’s hard to conceive of the transfer of information alone as being a powerful agent. How homeopathy transfers this information is still unknown; science does not have an answer yet. But investigators such as Dr. Jacques Benveniste are searching. Recently, he carried out experiments demonstrating that cells experiencing allergic reactions can be successfully stimulated to release histamine by exposing them to water that previously (but no longer) contained the triggering allergen. In other words, water seems to have a memory of its own. The use of extremely small doses has been confirmed in clinical research and homeopathic daily practice for the last 200 years. The fact that animals and infants respond to microdoses helps rule out the placebo effect. (My 17-year old dog can still kick up his heels thanks to homeopathy.) Unfortunately, lack of a theoretical basis of action is a huge stumbling block for physicians.

Individualization

Canada’s great physician Sir William Osler wrote: “It is more important to know what sort of patient has the disease than what sort of disease the patient has.” Homeopathy is individualized to each patient using the characteristic way in which the disease process is expressed in that person to select the correct medicine. In orthodox medicine, the diagnosis (of the disease) is everything; in homeopathy, the patient (with the disease) is everything. Conventionally, once the diagnosis, say rheumatoid arthritis, has been reached, the treatment regimen is standardized. However, in homeopathic treatment, more than 50 remedies have successfully treated rheumatoid arthritis. The symptoms each patient exhibits will determine whether they get Kali carbonicum (chilly, worse when damp, worse between 2 and 4 a.m., anxiety about family, swelling over the eyes) or Rhus toxicondendron (worse with rest, better after initial movement, better with heat) or one of many other remedies.

Wholism

In orthodox medical practice, the emphasis is on treating the part without recognizing its relationship to the whole. Thus, a patient with PMS, severe menstrual cramps, varicose veins, acne rosacea and migraines is given four or five different drugs (and probably surgery) over time to treat these problems. Homeopathy tries to put it all together by asking the question, “What single remedy will help correct all these issues simultaneously?” (Probably Sepia in this case.) The correctly chosen remedy will also stimulate the person’s intrinsic healing abilities in such a way as to prevent the recurrence of these problems.

The doctor who stands on his head (i.e. the homeopathic doctor) views symptoms as the unsuccessful attempt of the body to get better under its own power. The characteristic symptom pattern will guide the homeopathic physician to the correct remedy if he/she can understand the language being spoken by the body. However, as in orthodox medicine, if symptoms are covered up and not treated at the level of the internal struggle, the way to a real cure will be lost and the patient frequently made worse in the long run by inappropriate treatment. Homeopathy avoids this harmful approach and returns the patient to a healthy state of equilibrium.

What is Homeopathy?

Homeopathy is a type of medicine that treats illnesses by stimulating the body’s own healing mechanisms. Effective and gentle, it has been used since the early 1800s. A homeopath recommends remedies based on the pattern of symptoms that an individual is experiencing in order to correct any imbalances.

Reference: Davenas E, Benveniste J. Human basophils triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE, Nature 333 (1988): 816-818. After practising allopathic medicine in BC for 11 years, Dr. Malthouse spent two years in India and Nepal studying homeopathy and the traditional medicines of the regions. A past-president of the Canadian Complementary Medical Association and a founding member of the Association of Complementary Physicians of BC, Dr. Malthouse now practises homeopathy in Victoria, BC. Phone: 250-383-0454.

Source: alive #247, May 2003