HOW DOES HOMEOPATHY WORK?

To many people Homeopathy is a useful method of treatment. They find it effective and safe and that appears to be enough for them. But many others want to look further and question ‘how does it work’? Some homeopathic prescribers and patients say – ‘we know from practice that it works, but precisely how, we cannot say’. For these people a continuing practice is based on the past experience of effectiveness and described as ‘empirical’, that is, experience-based. To answer ‘how does it work’ is not very easy as the extracts used are often of such high dilution levels that molecules of the original substance cannot be demonstrated in them. Hence much more subtle procedures will be required for assessment of the forces involved than the ordinary gross large molecule measurements usually available in laboratories today.

Today it is known that all so-called material objects, including our own bodies, are actually fields of energy behaving as if they are solid. The atoms that comprise apparently gross objects, science reminds us, are whirling zones or energy. With this idea in our minds it is much easier to begin to think of the human body, whether healthy or diseased, as made up of many cells, or relatively small energy patterns, linked together in the larger overall complex.

One idea is that disease only exists if it can be demonstrated under a microscope as abnormal cells, or in laboratory as abnormal levels of chemistry. We also know that disease can be a disturbance of personal function and health although there may be no gross pathology or even though laboratory data cannot be produced to describe in coarse terms what is happening and there may no apparent physical explanation for it. There may not be biochemistry or gross pathology to prove ‘depression’, but many patients, their relatives, and doctors still see clear evidence of how this disease impairs personal function and health.

Such changes in a personal energy field frequently occur and can result in obvious symptoms affecting thought processes, emotional reactions or physical performance. They are clear examples of energy flow changes that are associated with disease even though gross cellular changes cannot always be defined to account for them. The process may be fairly easily recognized in relation to psychiatry. We also need to remember that even when an illness includes an apparently defined changes in cells, like inflammation of tonsils in tonsillitis, here also the changes are due to zones of energy behaving In this way. It is a change in the complex of body energy patterns and not merely particular gross cells reacting in this way. In rather more precise terms it is saying that our bodies are fields of energy where the processes of thought, feeling and physical pursuit are like currents converging in a single river.

According to Dr. Samuel Hahnemann M.D., the Founder of Modern Homeopathy, the disease is a process where the substantial effects were always due to dynamic processes within a person provoked by factors as varied as physical trauma, emotional upset or infectious forces, that is, bacteria or viruses, in his day were termed ‘miasms’. The external signs and symptoms of a disease reported by a patient are the products of disturbances of Vital Force/Vital Energy that tries to save and heal the body and restore health. He also deduced that even the bacteria or viruses would provoke symptoms through a dynamic effect on the Vital Force. In other words, he regards the disease as a dynamic disturbance of that harmonious relation, which in health exists between the material body and the Vital Force which animates that body. While identifiable agents such as micro-organisms or obvious physical trauma may be implicated, he argues that they produce their characteristic effects through manipulating the unseen Vital Force.

Hahnemann argues that as the cause of disease is such a dynamic or non-material force, a similarly dynamic and non-material agent will be required to correct it, “The Like Cures Like” theory or “Law of Similars”/Similia Similibus Curentur. Such a dynamic medicine, he says, is prepared by potentization, that is, the serial dilution and succession developed by him and still used today in the preparation of homeopathic medicines. Such a dynamic radical, he reasoned, was then capable of interacting with the disturbed Vital Force to help restore health.

There is a lot of talk today about antibodies to diseases. Such antibodies are protein products of cells contributing to immune responses. They are said to oppose the agents causing diseases and therefore to check their development. They could be likened to an army roused to combat an invader. In some diseases measurements are made of these immune proteins and recorded as ‘antibody titres’. A rising titre can be a sign of active infection. It is a way of assessing the organic responses to a disease process.

Hahnemann’s theory of opposition from the Vital Force can be compared with such insight. It is arguable that organic opposition to the intruding infection is one particular gross example of the body’s own resistance to disease which is comparable to and determined by the counter-revolution of the Vital Force. This dynamic force which makes the difference between a corpse and a human being he called the Vital Force.

In Aphorism 9 of the ‘Organon of Medicine’ he describes its qualities, “In the healthy condition of man, the spiritual Vital Force, the dynamism that animates the material body (organism), rules with unbounded sway, and retains all the parts of the organism in admirable, harmonious, vital operations, as regards both sensations and functions”.

When disease occurs, the first disturbance occurs on the dynamic electromagnetic field of the body, which then brings into play the defense mechanism. This concept was first enunciated definitively as the basis for therapeutics by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann M.D., the nineteenth-century German physician who discovered and developed the science of Homeopathy. In Aphorism 11 he writes, “This Vital Force is the one which is primarily deranged by dynamic influences upon it of a morbific agent”.

The dynamic disturbance which shakes the entire organism, starting from the centre, first affects the electromagnetic field of the human body. The modern research with field-measuring devices and Kirlian photography are demonstrating that there is a highly active electromagnetic field permeating every living organism. These fields can be measured in intensity, and they have been demonstrated to be very dynamic. From moment to moment, the field changes to intensity depending upon alterations in consciousness, emotional changes, ingestion of alcohol or drugs, and even the acquisition of illness.

Electromagnetic fields are characterized by the phenomenon of vibration. As electrons race around atomic nuclei, they first move in one direction and then another as viewed by the external observer. This oscillation back and forth occurs at a specific frequency which is determined by the type of sub-atomic particle and its level of energy. For our purposes, however, the significant point is that everything exists in a state of vibration, and every electromagnetic field is characterized by vibration rates (or frequencies) which can be measured.

The human organism is no exception. One can visualize an individual human being as existing at a particular vibrational frequency which may change dynamically every second depending upon the mental state of a person, internal or external stresses, illness, etc. The electromagnetic field is very likely the ‘Vital Force’ which Hahnemann referred to.

Once a morbific stimulus (infecting agent) has affected the electromagnetic field of a person then, if the person’s constitutional state is quite strong and the harmful stimulus is weak, the electromagnetic field changes vibration rate only slightly and only for a short time and the individual is not aware that anything has happened at all. If, however, the stimulus is powerful enough to overwhelm the Vital Force, the electromagnetic field undergoes a great change in vibration rate, and effects are eventually felt by the individual. A defense mechanism is called into action which may involve changes on mental, emotional or physical levels and then the organism sets in motion processes which are felt by the patient as symptoms. The symptoms of a disease are nothing but reactions trying to rid the organism of harmful influences which are merely the material manifestations of earlier disturbances on a dynamic electromagnetic level.

As all substances possess characteristic electromagnetic fields, the task of a Homeopath is to find that substance whose ‘vibration rate’ most closely matches that of the patient during illness. The vibration rate is manifested by the ‘totality of symptoms’ – whether in a patient during illness, or in ‘Provings’ (taking medicine in a healthy condition). When the ‘vibration rates’ of patient and remedy are matched, a phenomenon occurs which is very well known to physicists and engineers as ‘resonance’. Just as one tuning fork can stimulate the vibration of another of identical frequency, so the remedy enhances the vibration rate of the patient’s electromagnetic field. This results in an increase of the patient’s electromagnetic field at precisely the frequency needed to bring about a cure.

For example, suppose your healthy, robust child suddenly develops a high fever, a flushed face, glassy eyes with dilated pupils, dry mouth without thirst, a dry raw sore throat, swollen submaxillary glands which are more marked on the right side, and a wild kind of delirium. The allopathic physician interprets these symptoms and signs as evidence of a viral or bacterial infection and takes a culture of the throat in the hope of finding an organism which responds to antibiotics assuming that the ‘cause’ is the microbe. The Homeopathic Practitioner, on the other hand, relatively uninterested in the nature of the microbe. He sees the symptoms as a manifestation of disturbance on the dynamic level which can never be “cultured”. The Homeopath, therefore, studies carefully the symptoms themselves in their totality, especially searching for individualizing traits which represent the “resonant frequency” that can be used for cure. He searches for a remedy which reflects as closely as possible the “totality of symptoms”. In this case, such a remedy or substance is Belladonna. The patient is given Belladonna in a single, minute dose, the fever drops rapidly to normal, and the child falls into peaceful sleep. By morning, the child is completely well, and any throat culture taken at that time may well show disappearance of whatever microbe had been found. This case may seem difficult to believe, but every Homeopath can cite innumerable such cases from routine daily practice all over the world.

To find out the correct remedy that most closely matches the “resonant frequency” of the patient, the Homeopathic Practitioner asks questions about the stress or anxiety, mental or physical shock, tolerance to heat and cold, effect of humidity and weather changes, modalities (worse or better by), effects of foods, any strong food cravings or aversions, any strong fear of phobia, dreams, sleep, general feelings, family medical history, past medical history etc.

Of course, to accomplish such benefit, the remedy chosen must be very close to the precise vibration rate of the patient i.e., “the totality of symptoms”. Because of the principle of resonance (the Law of Similars), a remedy which does not cover the ‘totality of symptoms’ of the patient cannot have any effect.

For Further Information & Suggestions,

Please Contact:

Muhammad Dabir Uddin, Homeopath, JP

Dip. Hom. Med; Sydney, Australia

AIN Cert III; St. George TAFE, NSW

MATMS, NSW; Reg. No- 18588

PH: (02) 9758 9931

Mob: 0421 080 687

Email: m.dabir1953@gmail.com

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1)      Thorsons Introductory Guide to Homoeopathy, By Dr. Anne Clover, HerperCollins Publishers.

2)      Introduction to Homeopathic Medicine, By Hamish W. Boyd, M. D., Keats Publishing, Inc., New Canaan, Connecticut.

3)      The Science of Homeopathy, By George Vithoulkas, B. Jain Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi (India).

4)      Homoeopathy – Medicine of the New Man, By George Vithoulkas, B. Jain Publishers Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi (India).

5)      The Family Guide to Homeopathy, By Dr. Andrew Lockie, Published by Hamish Hamilton, London.

6)      A Study Course in Homoeopathy, By Phyllis Speight, Jain Publishing Co, New Delhi (India).

7)      Mosby’s Medical, Nursing, & Allied Health Dictionary, Fourth Edition, Published by Mosby, USA.