What is homoeopathy?
Homoeopathy is a system for the treatment of illness that is based both on the recognition of patterns within the symptoms of the illness and a wider consideration of how the individual is as a person.
Although conventional medical assessment also takes these issues in to account, the homoeopathic approach integrates personality type, previous experiences, emotional state, the influence of the environment and other social factors to a greater degree than is usual with ‘standard’ medical practice.
The types of treatment used in homoeopathy, although superficially similar to the medicines prescribed by a conventional doctor, differ markedly in their source, preparation and dosage.
A German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, discovered the principle behind homoeopathy in the late 18th century. A child prodigy, he was teaching Greek by the age of 12, and had mastered eight languages by the time he started to study medicine at the age of 20. After qualification he became disillusioned by the limitations of medical practice as it was then, and he left medicine to study chemistry, working as a translator to pay his way.
One of his jobs was to translate a major medical textbook of the time, known as Cullen’s Materia Medica, into German. Among all the ineffective remedies used then, it was recognised some did actually work – one of which was the use of the bark from the Cinchona tree to treat ‘swamp fever’. (We now know that swamp fever is malaria, and the active ingredient of cinchona bark is quinine.) Hahnemann wondered how the bark could work and experimented upon himself by taking some of it. He was amazed to note that he developed all the symptoms of the ‘fever’. It seemed to him that taking a remedy that was effective in treating an ill person could bring on the signs of illness in a healthy person.
He had stumbled upon the principle of homoeopathy – ‘Like cures like’.
The progress of homoeopathy
Hahnemann set about investigating the power of many other substances to induce symptoms, with the aim of using these as cures for diseases where the symptoms were similar. In the course of this he used many materials which were potentially toxic, and so he investigated using dilute solutions of these materials. He found that the diluted substances retained the ability to cause symptoms, thus making them safe to use. Furthermore, by diluting time and time again, and by vibrating the solution each time, the diluted substance seemed to actually gain in power! This observation, although it defies explanation, is still observed in modern homoeopathic practice.
The pioneering work of Hahnemann has been expanded enormously over the past 200 years. There are now over 2000 recognised homoeopathic remedies and the popularity of homoeopathy as a method of treatment is expanding rapidly.
There are many reasons for this. Conventional medical research has brought us many powerful and effective treatments for many illnesses, such as infectious disease. Unfortunately it has also brought many problems. Not only are there far more illnesses which do not have a cure than those which do, but the treatments available can be associated with significant side effects in the short and long term. Both patients and doctors find this unsatisfactory.
Homoeopathy is not a ‘pill for every ill’, but it can offer a safe alternative to conventional medical treatments, and can usually be given alongside ordinary medicines without causing problems.
How does homoeopathy work?
Many people, whether patient, doctor or scientist are sceptical of how extremely dilute substances can work. Some of the treatments used in homoeopathy are so dilute it is unlikely that even a single molecule of the original substance is present in the finished preparation.
Some believe that perhaps the molecules of the water used to dilute the material somehow can retain an ‘imprint’ of the original compound, but essentially no-one knows how homoeopathic medicines work. So, is it all in the mind? This is probably the wrong way to look at any treatment, whether ‘conventional’ or ‘complementary’.
Living organisms are self-repairing and continuously act to keep their various biological systems functioning. We do not have to think about keeping our body temperature normal, or our heart beating, or to make a cut heal. In illness this self-repair process has been disturbed – usually only for a short period. In longer-term illnesses the body seems to have greater difficulty in restoring the natural balance.
Homoeopathic treatment, it is believed, appears to stimulate the self-healing response. In a way it is a bit like trying to find the correct key to open a lock. In this case it is the selection of the correct remedy which will, hopefully, act as the proper stimulus to the body that will unlock the self-healing process.
Some sort of positive response, the so-called ‘placebo effect’, will accompany the giving of any medical treatment. There is now a large amount of medical research which confirms that the action of homoeopathic treatment is greater than can be explained by the placebo effect alone.
