Go straight to the list of principles

Homoeopathy is healing with principles

Homoeopathy is a complete, coherent system of healthcare with a long tradition of practice. It has formulated scientific theories to explain both how the world operates, and how to interact effectively with it. These theories, which see the body, mind and spirit as a complex whole, applying a constant self-corrective force to maintain a homoeostatic balance in the face of wildly varying environmental pressures, are in tune with the very latest scientific understanding 1.

As with the best ideas, homoeopathy arose through the intuitive experimentation of a free-thinking individual, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. It is a mark of Hahnemann's considerable intellect that he was able, in his own lifetime, not only to develop the theories to explain his observations but to a great extent decode the fundamental principles underlying them. For understanding comes with simplification, and in the nine long-standing and well-proven fundamental principles on which their craft is based, homoeopaths have all they need to practice it effectively. On this there is almost universal agreement, while it is certain also that burgeoning public interest and professional research will continue to refine the practice, expand the remedy pictures, and sharpen the details of the theory.

As it is a theory so at odds with orthodox medicine and orthodox culture as a whole, its principles are important in order to defend the system from charges of mysticism and irrationality (although one may never hope the scientific argument for homoeopathy to penetrate the linear thinking of the average public health care materialist). And for practitioners venturing into the field with a conviction that may be founded largely on intuition, the principles provide a wellspring of truth to refresh the vision.

'Orthodox' treatment of disease - principles perverted

The principles by which the orthodox medical system operate seem in contrast much more unclear, at least to those who work in and use it. According to Kent `in the writings and actions of the Old School there is a complete acknowledgement that no principles exist'. When, for the purposes of this article, I asked a doctor friend what the principles of orthodox medicine were, she said she would have to think about it and get back to me (she didn't).

From the higher ground of the homoeopathic perspective they are in fact identifiable by their perversity:

The disease is the thing to be treated. On the surface this seems wonderfully simple. Symptoms are classified into diseases, the patient is diagnosed as having a particular disease and the appropriate drug for that disease is administered. But it means patients are made to fit a diagnosis which is often wrong; a variety of symptoms which belong to different disease classifications are treated with different drugs causing ever more complicated and dangerous effects; and in the battle to destroy the disease the well-being of the patient herself gets ignored.The vast sums spent on medical research have produced beautifully detailed biochemical pictures, but from the perspective of disease as an entity rather than a process. From the homoeopathic perspective, where disease is seen as a manifestation of the vital force not separate from the organism, these snapshots have little value.

With the cure for disease constantly eluding this analytical approach, the cure seeming to be always just around the corner; a new drug announced in a flurry of publicity before its limitations or drawbacks become apparent, orthodox medical care resorts to palliating or `managing' disease. At least the acknowledgement of this limitation within the profession has allowed the concept of homoeostasis to enter medical vocabulary of late.

The body is a machine. This Newtonian idea supposes that by concentrating on analysing the parts we may be able to better treat the condition. This has led to over-specialisation, with patients shuffled between medical departments as their parts are treated; and failure to see the overall pattern and progression of patients' disease. Study of anatomy, however, reveals the body to be not a collection of discrete parts but a highly complex interconnected series of systems and the destruction wreaked by crude drug therapy on the delicately-balanced living organism is all too evident.

Materialism is all there is. Hence material (crude) drugs are necessary. Hence the patient's emotional and mental state can be sidelined. Against this dogma all the weight of evidence in favour of potentised doses may be dismissed as placebo, unverifiable, or statistical error.

These spurious principles allow allopathy to claim distance between itself and the acknowledged barbaric practises of earlier times. But the time it takes before today's practises are considered equally barbaric will depend to a large extent on how well homoeopaths can disseminate understanding of their own more comprehensive and systematic principles. 2

Given the huge gulf between the homoeopathic and the orthodox world view it was of critical importance that the theory and principles were worked out speedily and so stand up to scrutiny.

However, partly because the thinking was so far in advance, partly because by the nineteenth century, professional and commercial vested interests in orthodox medicine were already so powerful, the generational revolution from the old to the new scientific paradigm we might expect did not take place. 3 There was instead a gradual incorporation of some of Hahnemann's and his followers' ideas, usually without acknowledgement of the source 4.

While this eased the relationship between the two systems from outright hostility to uneasy tolerance, the piecemeal incorporation of holistic ideas led to orthodox practises that were distortions of true homoeopathy.

For example, the development of vaccine therapy around the turn of the century, while finally acknowledging the principles of Similars and the minimum dose, does so incompletely and with disregard for other connected principles. For the serum is not in fact similar but the same - it treats the disease itself and not the individual's expression of it, and the dose is only minimal in materialist terms; while ignorance of the importance of susceptibility creates many adverse reactions. The failure of vaccine treatment is seen today in the rapid ineffectiveness of sera, and the growth in auto-immune diseases (a case of the cure being worse than the problem).

That this has happened is due to the lack of coherent scientific principles and indeed moral principles in the orthodox establishment. Like cheapskate politicians, orthodox medicine claims credit for all successes while shirking responsibility for failure. They point to the eradication of smallpox as proof of the good of vaccination, while jettisoning the burden of their own scientific method; for a more complete view would look at concurrent improvements in sanitation and sewage, and in nutrition, and at the lifespan of viruses (smallpox was already on the decline when the vaccine was introduced), as well as the possible long-term toxicological effects of the drug (smallpox vaccine has been implicated as a factor in AIDS). And it would not ignore the evidence for success of homoeopathic and other forms of treatment 5.

So we see the untold suffering that results from a healthcare system operating without principles.
Inevitably there is growing disillusionment both among those working inside the orthodox system and its consumers, a growing awareness of alternatives and a willingness amongst people to take responsibility for their own healthcare. These multiple factors provide the opportunity to complete the revolution in healthcare started by Hahnemann 6. To do that we need to present homoeopathy to scientists and the public in a way that can be understood, and that is best achieved with a firm grounding in the rational, logical, and proven fundamental principles. As Close remarks, homoeopathy is in the last analysis `essentially a state of mind'.

The 9 fundamental principles of homoeopathy:

KEY PRINCIPLE:
Law of Similars

CRUCIAL PRINCIPLES:
Miasms
Proving
Totality of symptoms
Direction of Cure

IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES:
Vital Force / dynamism
Single remedy
Potentisation
Susceptibility / individualisation

These principles form an interconnected whole 7 . We have seen with vaccination the dangers of playing with one or two in isolation. Nevertheless they may be considered in terms of importance.

KEY PRINCIPLE:

The Law of Similars is generally considered the cornerstone of homoeopathy, and I agree because it is the essence that lifts homoeopathy beyond the struggling, purely empirical approach of allopathic medicine where imperfect drugs constantly supersede each other. It was the first of the principles to be formulated by Hahnemann, partly because it is the key to understanding how homoeopathy works, partly because it had considerable history already. In the fourth century BC, Hippocrates, often cited as the founder of medicine, said `Through the like, disease is produced, and through the application of the like it is cured.' In the 15th century, the alchemist Paracelsus referred extensively to it. The Law was also employed by many non-European cultures.

The Law of Similars is the secret of genuine cure, whereby the body is assisted to heal itself by externalising symptoms and restore to balances disturbances in the mental, emotional and physical bodies. Any treatment which does not obey the Law (allopathic drugs actually oppose the symptoms) will result in suppression or palliation of symptoms,. Even if the treatment is homoeopathic, it will either have no effect, or complicate the symptoms of the susceptible patient who proves the dissimilar remedy.


CRUCIAL PRINCIPLES:

The Miasms are of crucial importance because they are a synthesis of all human suffering into just four basic patterns of disease. As such they are a wonderfully useful tool for diagnosis unlike the thousands of unwieldy disease classifications and sub-classifications used by allopaths on a par with the zoological principle of distinguishing species according to four phyla. The miasms lead to the root of the problem, beyond the acute to the constitutional, and beyond the constitutional to the genetic.

An understanding of the principle of the miasms places disease in the wider context of the potentiality of the individual (for miasms govern the direction of life). It is necessary for all but the most superficial treatment. The principle underlies those of susceptibility and direction of cure (miasms proceed from the skin to the inside).
Most diseases left unsuppressed will cure themselves, but miasms eventually destroy the most robust constitution, and in the words of Hahnemann `Apart from those due to medical mismanagement these are the commonest and most serious tormentors of the human race'. It is impossible to fundamentally and permanently cure a chronic disease state except by treating the underlying miasm(s).

Proving was the experimental basis of Hahnemann's theories, and remains the basis upon which a given remedy is chosen for a given patient. It is only through proving a substance that we are able to see its complete picture and therefore use it therapeutically. (In allopathy, testing is habitually done using artificial compounds in toxic doses on animals, for use in specific applications). The words used by the human provers to describe their symptoms are very important in order to relate the remedy to what patients say about themselves.

Proving must be ongoing. Patterns of disease, lifestyle and language change quickly. How many remedies are out there, still relatively unproven, that could help with AIDS? On a more mundane level, references in Kent to maladies associated with oyster-eating are redundant now that hardly anyone ever eats them.

The totality of symptoms explains why homoeopaths' case-taking is so extensive. As homoeopathy treats the person not the disease, all symptoms are important, not just the disease-specific ones which interest the allopath. And even these the homoeopath needs to explore in much greater detail, for unrestricted by diagnosis he has a huge repertoire of complex remedies to choose from (the allopath's limited range is defined by his choice of diagnosis and the aggressive marketing of commercial drug companies). The principle of totality recognises that disease is a changeable state (modalities), people are different and complex, and sensitive to subtle influences (like the weather and the moon), all of which makes a difference in how they should be treated.

Hering's Law of Direction of Cure although defined after Hahnemann, plays a crucial role as the simplest indicator of whether a disease is being cured or being suppressed: curative reactions manifest in the body downwards and outwards. This Law provides homoeopaths with an instant reference as to whether the remedy is working, which is not always the same as the patient feeling better.

IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES:

Many homoeopaths see the Vital Force as a key principle on a par with the Law of Similars 8. Hahnemann devoted much of the Organon to it, and it is central to his premise that disease is `nothing more than an alteration in the state of health of a healthy individual'.

However, while it explains a great deal about how homoeopathy works, its understanding is not essential from a purely therapeutic point of view. And what can appear to be the `spiritual' vagueness of the concept has often caused it to be a focus for attack by materialistic scientists 9.

It is in fact, in different guises, a feature of many systems - the chi of acupuncture, the prana of yoga, the spirit worked on by healers, and as such is a useful link with these systems while lacking the uniqueness to homoeopathy of the other principles 10.

The single remedy is a principle which in the homoeopathic world has often not been followed, consciously as well as through ignorance. In the allopathic world, the growing incidence of iatrogenic illness is largely due to combined prescribing.

The arguments in favour of the single remedy do not constitute a law in the same way as the other principles but are based on good practice: Judging the effects of a single remedy requires great awareness, the interactions of two or more make the task extremely complex, bearing in mind the unique and holistic action of the remedies. And as Vithoulkas points out `No provings have ever been conducted on combination remedies, so how can anyone predict what set of symptoms such combinations could cure?'

At present combination prescribing is often done because a practitioner cannot find a single remedy covering the totality of symptoms of the case (I have only ever encountered the practice by a medically trained doctor). 11 However, should combination provings be done and with an increasingly sophisticated understanding of remedy pictures, combined prescribing may have a legitimate role: at present homoeopaths must peel off the layers of a chronic disease, often anticipating what remedy is required several layers in. Could it be possible in the future for a master of the homoeopathic craft to peel them all off at once with a single combination remedy?

Potentisation. Exactly how dilution and succession gives the remedy its power is still unclear. What is clear is that Potentisation adds another dimension to the remedies. Not only does it give the remedies their power (dynamic action) while removing toxic effects, the wide range of potencies allow the homoeopath to target the remedy in relation both to the susceptibility of the patient, and the level on which she is being treated acute or chronic; physical, emotional or mental.

Susceptibility can be seen as a sub-principle of the totality of symptoms. It is a recognition again that people are all different, and the most important way in which they are different is their measure of vitality (Vital Force). For example, tobacco use can be correlated closely with lung cancer, yet there is no certainty that even a heavy smoker will get it. The level of susceptibility affects the choice of potency given.

The nine fundamental principles have stood the test of time. They continue to provide a workable philosophical basis for homoeopathic practice. They are alive enough to still inspire much fresh writing on them.

As an explanatory system there is no obvious missing piece apart from an explanation of homoeopathic energy or `vibration'. The materialists argue there is no such thing and this is the principle excuse for not accepting the science into the mainstream. However, there are convincing theories about it which until proven may not be admitted as principles. And we do not need to, as long as we have the other principles to tell us how to handle the energy.

The principle of miasms needs updating to include the nosodes, which occur in modern practice far more frequently than they are represented in the repertories.

One principle intrinsic to homoeopathy is not listed: the law of action and reaction 12. This is because this principle was already established in mainstream science at the time of Hahnemann, although he took it further, looking at multiple causes and effects.

And we should constantly remember the two meta-principles:

1 `The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure as it is termed.'

2 `The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.'

Stuart Close The Genius of Homoeopathy
Samuel Hahnemann Organon of Medicine
Elizabeth Wright Hubbard Homoeopathy as Art and Science
S Ortega Notes on the Miasms
Ian Watson A Guide to the Methodologies of Homoeopathy
James Tyler Kent Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy
Dana Ullman Homoeopathy , Medicine for the 21st Century
Gerard Koehler The Handbook of Homoeopathy
George Vithoulkas The Science of Homoeopathy

A newspaper report of a common type which I came across while researching this essay, and which reveals the lack of principles in orthodox medical treatment. 1,000 patients over a 10 year period had due to a technical error received incorrect doses of radiation treatment. It is illuminating to note that:

1,000 patients all received the same treatment
[no account taken of the total symptom picture].

Nobody knows whether , had the radiation dose been `correct', more or fewer patients would have died.
[because no account is taken of susceptibility]

The error had occurred undiscovered for 10 years
[nobody can tell the difference between the treatment working properly and the treatment not working properly. Therefore, either the treatment does not work at all, or the patients are not being checked to see whether they are being cured as there is no understanding of the Law of Cure].

1 Such as Capra's systems theory and `chaos' studies which have revealed the world to work according to infinitely complex patterns rather than simple linear cause and effect. For this reason homoeopathy is an art as well as a science in the strict sense, where intuition has an important role. Back

2 Despite dramatic changes in forms of treatment, brought about by technological research, fundamentally orthodox medicine has changed little since Hahnemann's day, and his railings against the establishment ring as true today: the time wasted spent looking for the pathological cause of disease in laboratories, and constructing theories about aetiology, while the patient suffers from trial and error prescriptions for a disease that is seen as separate from himself. Are not today's routine `hi-tech' treatments for cancer, for example chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery as destructive to the organism as the leeching and blistering undertaken by the `Old School' in the name of medicine? Back

3 see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Back

4 As Stuart Close points out in The Genius of Homoeopathy: `Having made and announced an important discovery in medical science, it is not flattering to one's vanity to be shown that in all essential points the same discovery was made, announced and put to use in a better way more than a century ago, by one who has been held up to obloquy and scorn by a large part of the profession ever since.' Back

5 There are many statistical records that attest to the dramatically superior success rate of homoeopathy in epidemics. For example, in the London cholera epidemic of 1854 the death rate in the orthodox London hospitals was 53.2% and in the London Homoeopathic hospital 16.4%. Back

6 And while most people would agree that public health care provision is desirable, the dismantling of the monolithic National Health Service may at least serve to allow a breathing space for new forms of healthcare to develop. Back

7 `Nothing conflicting with its established principles can be added to it, nothing taken away...homoeopathy must stand or fall as a whole'. Stuart Close, The Genius of Homoeopathy. Back

8 Close calls it `Hahnemann's greatest discovery, and the absolute bedrock of his system.' Back

9 Despite the fact that, as Close argues `Metaphysical thought and inquiry are quite as legitimate and valid, and quite as capable of being conducted logically and scientifically, as physical research'. Back

10 Modern analogies can usefully update the principle of the Vital Force. For example, Dr. Andrew Lockie: `The body is like a computer, if there is a subtle glitch in the works it spews out the wrong programme and directs the tissues to behave in an abnormal way...Homoeopathic remedies tune into the programme and knock the glitch out.' Back

11 I have also heard of homoeopaths who prescribe combination remedies in the specific case of a debilitated patient, to strengthen a weak organ prior to giving a constitutional remedy. This is legitimate in the same way as emergency orthodox medical treatment Back

12 Newton's Third Law: Action and reaction are equal and opposite. Close refers to the related Law of Causation: `no internal effect can arise without an external cause and...the effect itself may in turn become a cause of further changes. Back