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Homeopathy in Theory and Practice
Eric D. Remy
Gettysburg College
Background
Homeopathy is a medical treatment that uses highly diluted
solutions of specific materials in order to treat a wide range
of conditions. Developed by Samuel Hahnemann in the late
1700’s, homeopathy relies on the law of similia, where
materials are chosen to mimic the symptoms of the
conditions that they treat.
Homeopathic laws
Homeopathic remedies are based around two laws
•Simila, Similibus, Curantur: Let Likes Be Cured By Likes
•Investigate the symptoms of the illness, including both
traditional ones such as fever, cough and the like as well
as non-traditional ones such as the time of day when the
symptom is the worst, the effects of warm and cold air on
the patient and others.
•Check a Materia Medica to determine the substance that
will create similar symptoms. Modern Materia Medica are
available on the Internet and allow searching by
substance name, symptom, illness and many other
options
Homeopathic remedy preparation
Homeopathic remedies are easy to prepare, although you may
also purchase pre-made versions
•Examine patient and catalog symptoms: As an example,
assume you see a child with a violent and unproductive cough,
along with weakness and cold sweat. They are irritable and want
to be left alone. Lying down in a warm room seems to make
them worse; sitting up and cool air improves the situation. They
want to drink only cold water but not very much at any time.
•Consult Materia Medica: Antimonium Tartaricum is used to
treat illness involving severe coughs such as whooping cough.
Treatment with Antimonium Tartaricum is also indicated for illness
where cool air helps circulation, and those illnesses where the
patient is irritable and unwilling to be touched.
•Create mother liquor: This is done by grinding the compound
into a fine power and then dissolving it into a solution of milk
sugar or oil.
•Dilute and Succuss: Take one drop of the mother liquor and
add 99 drops of water (or water/ethyl alcohol mix). Succuss the
mixture by hitting the bottle against a leather strap sharply. This
is the 1C dilution (100x) dilution.
•Continue dilution: Take 1 drop of the 1C solution, add 99 drops
of water and succuss again. This is the 2C (x10,000) dilution.
Repeat the procedure until the desired strength is obtained. 10C
dilutions can be effective although 50-100C can be used in cases
of serious illness
•Dose according to severity of illness: Rapid onset illness may
need a dose every 30 minutes, although flu-like illness would be
better every 4-8 hours. Remember that homeopathic remedies
work best at small doses so do not overdose.
Theoretical Background: Non-local quantum effects
Theoretical Background: Water memory
Clinical Trials
Controlled clinical trials of homeopathic remedies are ongoing.
Examples are shown below:
Water molecules
are well known to
form hydrogen
bonded clusters
even in the liquid
phase
Water molecules form
clusters around molecules
(here imidazole) to lower
their free energy
Jacobs et. al studied the
treatment of childhood
diarrhea in Nepal and
Nicaragua using randomized
clinical trials that compared
children treated with
homeopathic remedies to
children on a placebo. The
remedies were made from a
variety of compounds
including Podophyllium,
Sulfur, Chamomile and
Arsenic. They found a
statistically significant
reduction in the number of
stools per day and the overall
length of diarrhea for children
treated with the homeopathic
remedy as opposed to the
control group.
Benveniste (Nature, 1988)
showed that water
molecules retain the
memory of the substances
that they were in contact
with even at dilutions
where no molecules of the
original substance exist in
the sample. Data at left
show human basophil
reactions to highly diluted
Anti-IgE antiserum.
Dilutions show here range
from 1060 to 10120
A number of meta studies
have collected large
numbers of studies like
Jacobs’ and pooled them
to look for overall efficacy
of homeopathic
treatments. Linde et. al
developed the table to
the left showing analyses
of a 189 clinical trials
broken up into multiple
different groups and
determined that the
results would be highly
unlikely to be chance
References
For those who wish to further personalize their poster PPR
•The Law of Infinitesimals
•Homeopathic treatments become more effective as the
original substance (mother liquor) is diluted
•Dilutions of 500,000-1,000,000 times are more effective
than original, many remedies are much more dilute
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Physician-Patient-Remedy entanglement represented geometrically. In (a),
Walach's two semiotic triangles for remedy and patient (also wave functions,
ψRx and ψPx) are joined by a third for the practitioner ψPr, which are entangled
into the PPR ‘state’ represented by ψPPR in (b). The multi-dimensional
geometry of this state is represented in (c)–(e) and shows the action of the
homeopathic operator Πr in ‘reflecting’ this state (d). But the reflection is not
passive: by opening out the polyhedra in (d) and superimposing them, it is
seen that the reflecting plane also twists the reflection through 60° (e). The
‘space’ in which these wave functions and ‘operations’ take place is a
therapeutic state space created by the homeopathic operator Πr, which also
functions within it. (From Milgrom)
E. Davenas et al., “Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE,”
Nature 333, no. 6176 (6, 1988): 816-818.
Jennifer Jacobs et al., “Homeopathic Treatment of Acute Childhood Diarrhea: Results from a
Clinical Trial in Nepal.,” Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine 6, no. 2 (April 2000):
131.
Klaus Linde and Nicola Clausius, “Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A
meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials” Lancet 350, no. 9081 (1997): 834.
L.R. Milgrom, “Conspicuous by its absence: the Memory of Water, macro-entanglement, and the
possibility of homeopathy,” Homeopathy 96, no. 3 (July 2007): 209-219.
Conclusion
Homeopathy has a bright future ahead of it. It is easy to
understand, the treatments are easy to make and
inexpensive, and a host of clinical trials show that it’s clearly
effective. Additional work needs to be done to better
understand the nature of the water memory effect and nonlocal quantum effects in order to improve treatment
modalities.