Introduction to Homeopathy (History and Laws)

History of Homeopathy

 Homeopathy is a holistic system of medicine founded by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. Hahnemann's inspiration for the development of homeopathy was an experiment. To investigate the use of cinchona (i.e. quinine) in the treatment of malaria, he began to ingest regular doses and found that it produced all the symptoms of malaria, though of mild severity. In 1796, he published his Essay laying out the framework of the Laws of Similars - the idea that an illness could be cured by giving a medicine which, given to a healthy person, would produce similar but less severe symptoms of that same illness. Hahnemann's homeopathic methodologies were further expounded upon in the Organon of the Healing Arts which he published in 1810. 

Hahnemann continued to experiment with dosing various substances at different levels of dilution and wrote down the full range of mental, emotional, and physical effects that those substances created, recognizing that the more dilute a substance, the more etheric its effects. When people came down with a specific subset of symptoms that matched a substance, he would give it in very dilute form to heal them. The process of homeopathic dilution, while secondary to the laws of similars, became an important aspect of the medicine and one that radically differentiated it from the orthodox medicine of the time. 

Homeopathy was widely embraced by the United States in the 1800's, it offered an integrated, coherent, systematic basis for treatment and gained a wide following among educated physicians. The American Institute of Homeopathy was formed, and in response, orthodox physicians formed the American Medical Association (AMA) both of which exist to this day. 

At this time, and into the early 1900's, many of the largest medical schools in the country taught homeopathic medicine, including the New York Medical College, Boston University, and Standford University. Twenty to twenty-five percent of all physicians in urban areas identified themselves as homeopaths. 

By the end of the 19th century, there were 22 homeopathic medical schools, over 100 homeopathic hospitals, and over 1000 practitioners in the States. Homeopathy's greatest success at the time was in treating epidemic diseases: hospital records show that death rates in homeopathic hospitals were 12-50% those of orthodox hospitals. During a cholera epidemic in Ohio for example, only 3% of the patients in a homeopathic hospital died as opposed to 50% of patients in a orthodox hospital. 

During the Spanish Flu of 1918, which killed 50-100 million people worldwide, homeopathy was also very successful. While the mortality rate of people treated with traditional medicine was 30%, those treated by homeopathic physicians had mortality rates of 10.5%.

Competition between the two schools of thought started coming to an end after the release of The Rockeffeler Foundation-sponsored Flexner report, which sought to standardize medical education with a bias towards orthodox schools and resulted in the shutdown of all but two homeopathic colleges. 

Homeopathy then declined for a variety of reasons, including the advent of antibiotics and large-scale pharmaceutical production, which heralded a new era of orthodox medicine. Homeopathy began a resurgence in the 1970s fueled by the lay public and dissatisfaction with mainstream medicine. In the 1970s there were as few as 100 homeopaths in the US, but by the 1980's there were over 1000.

Since the 1980s, homeopathy has seen steady growth. It is included in the national health systems of many countries, including Switzerland, Brazil, India, and Mexico. In France, 36% of the public and 32% of physicians use homeopathic medicines. In Germany, 10% of physicians specialize in homeopathy. In the United Kingdom, 42% of physicians refer patients to homeopathic doctors. 

Homeopathy is practice far and wide in India as well, where there are 125 four and five-year homeopathic medical colleges and more than 100,000 homeopathic physicians treating 100 million people who use it as their sole medical care. 

According to the National Institute of Health, over 6 million people in the United States use homeopathy as for day-to-day health care. Remedies are prepared by licensed homeopathic pharmacies and regulated by the FDA. The term HPUS found on homeopathic medicines refers to the regulating code book, The Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States, which since 1987 has regulated the production of thousands of homeopathic medicines. 

Four Fundamental Laws of Homeopathy

1. The primary basis for homeopathy is the Law of Similars, or "like cures like". Put simply, whatever symptoms a substance is found to be able to cause when given to healthy people, it should also be able to cure in those that are ill. For example, the remedy Apis is made from a honeybee, and is used to treat histamine-like allergic responses such as swelling and itching that are similar to the symptoms that occur after a bee sting. 

2. The second law of homeopathy is the Law of the Minimum Dose. Hahnemann discovered that when preparations are diluted (in serial steps) and vigorously shaken (succussion) between dilutions, they retain or even increase in healing potential despite a reduced (biochemical) concentration. He named this process "potentization". Unlike orthodox medicine, which generally maintains the principle that higher doses are more potent, homeopathic experience shows that: 

- low potencies, i.e. small dilutions, have a short and superficial effect

- medium potencies act longer, and the range of the symptoms they effect have broader and deeper proportions

- high potencies, i.e. the greatest dilutions, can be the deepest acting, and their influence continues long after cessation of use

3. The third law of homeopathy is the Single Remedy Law. Therapist of classical homeopathy will determine only one remedy at a time for the person - one with a symptom picture matching the whole person (all symptoms). Most homeopaths are on the lookout for the best single remedy to fit the whole person. 

4. The fourth fundamental law of homeopathy is Hering's Law: "Cure proceeds from above downward, from within outward, from the most important organs to the least important organs, and in the reverse order of the appearance of symptoms." 

This means that a well-selected remedy will stimulate the body to heal the most important systems and organs first. Symptoms of the disease will be "pushed" outward from the deeper layers to the more peripheral ones and move downward, away from the head. Recent symptoms will also tend to heal before old symptoms. This law is important to understand when healing chronic disease to assess whether a remedy has had good effect. If after taking a remedy, a person is more mentally stable, but also has more rashes, fevers and colds, this is considered a positive direction of healing because the mental level is considered deeper than the physical level of symptom expression.