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The seven principles of homeopathy
1) VITAL FORCE
Homeopathy can be defined as a therapeutic method that clinically applies
the SIMILITUDE’S LAW and makes use of medicamentosus substances in
low or infinitesimal doses.
In homeopathy there are no illnesses but ill people, not only in the
theoretical composition of the illness but also in the therapeutic one.
This is the reason why homeopathic medicine has to be adapted to each
patient in particular with all their symptoms and their whole
individuality.
To be able to fully understand homeopathy, it is necessary to remember
that behind its method there is an occidental philosophical school of
thought called VITALISM which roots are found in the CORPUS
HIPOCRATICUM (attributed to Hippocrates 460-377 B.C.). This school of
thought already considered the illness as a lack of equilibrium and
established the existence of an active force within human nature which is
called NATURA MORBORUM MEDICATRIZ (nature cures illnesses).
Other well-known authors of Vitalism are: Aristotle, Paracelsus, Van
Helmont, Stahl, Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin…
VITALISM is a synonym of life, and life cannot only be reduced to
some physicochemical forces.
Behind them, there is a vital principle, a vital force or the CH´I of
Chinese medicine, which ANIMATES and keeps the somatic part –body-
and the brain together, as much in health as in illness.
This VITAL FORCE impels the growth and harmony of all human being’s
physical and psychical functions (intellect, feelings, will).
In this way, although we can divide the human being into different parts
to be studied (giving birth to the different medical specialties in
allopathy) we consider from the homeopathic point of view, that we are an
indivisible UNIT in our EXPRESSION, in our way of organizing
our own lives, our way of thinking, acting, moving, etc. and this makes us
UNIQUE, either healthy or sick.
This VITAL FORCE has a direction from the inside to the outside (let’s
remember the seeds and the tree, the ovule and the spermatozoon, the
embryo, the baby, the child, the teenager and the adult, finally
expressing the complexity of the human being).
It has, as we said before, a direction and also a sense which allows to
keep and preserve life, encouraging growth and expansion.
This conception of the person allows us to see life and the processes of
getting sick and healed from a wider perspective.
From this perspective, life is movement, a constant interchange between
the inside and the outside and a permanent interdependent relationship
regarding the own vital processes and everything around us.
The human being is and exists by interacting and communicating with the
environment through their body and mind. When in equilibrium, the person
is said to feel and be healthy.
Later on we will see that all the efforts of the homeopathic therapy are
laid in restoring the normal functions of this VITAL FORCE, which
lets us exist and live healthily when we are in HEALTHY EQUILIBRIUM,
but has to be oriented when that equilibrium is lost.
Allopathy doesn’t accept the existence of this vital force; therefore, the
sick person cannot contribute to the healing process, letting it all
depend on the medicine given.
Subjectivities as “I feel bad” don’t exist. All proofs will be objective
and quantified.
From homeopathy, it is said that the one who heals is the VITAL FORCE,
and homeopathic medicine provides information to restore the lost
equilibrium.
2) INDIVIDUALIZATION OF THE SICK PERSON
Experimenting with substances lets us get to know them widely and gives us
an image of the medicine, which belongs to it in particular (e.g.
Pulsatilla, etc.)
Individualizing the sick person means choosing among their multiple past
and present manifestations, those which are characteristic and peculiar,
which represent them better. It would be similar to what a caricaturist
would draw if we explained him what makes us different from the rest and
defines our personality: the way we behave, the main characteristics of
our reactions facing certain stimulus, our way of thinking and feeling,
etc.
It is necessary to discover what distinguishes us from the rest, what
makes us different, our own particular features without which we wouldn’t
be ourselves.
Within homeopathic medicine, the symptoms of the illness -pathognomonic,
will be useful to diagnose the patient’s illness according to the language
established by allopathy. However, those symptoms will be the least useful
to help us diagnose the medicine, since they are common to all the sick
people. Therefore, they don’t say anything about their peculiarity, their
intimacy and their way of expressing themselves.
With the aim of helping us choose the medicine, the symptom has to be
accompanied by its modalities.
As I have already mentioned, the mental symptoms are also taken into
account (lack of concentration, hatred, indolence, impatience, etc.) and
sometimes these symptoms are of main help to choose the medicine because
they individualize the person.
In order to gather all the symptoms which allow us to individualize the
patient, observation and questioning are required.
3)
THE
SIMILITUDE’S LAW
As mentioned before, this LAW emerges from the experimentation of
substances in healthy people and the observation of similar alterations to
the ones produced by natural illnesses.
This law was known since Hippocrates and Paracelsus’s time and …had been
already used by other cultures such as the Mayas and American, Chinese and
Asian aborigines. However, it was Hahemann, to whom we will refer later,
who systematized it as a healing law within the homeopathic methodology.
To be able to understand the correspondence between the symptoms of a sick
person and the medicines (to apply the SIMILITUDE’S LAW) it is
necessary to change some concepts we have already learned.
In general we are used to considering the symptoms of the sick person as
an expression of the illness, but we can see it in a different way.
We can certainly think that the SYMPTOM expresses an effort on
behalf of our vital force to maintain the equilibrium, to defend ourselves.
It is all about a survival solution, understanding that the symptom is a
manifestation of the ill person and not of the illness itself.
The symptom is, therefore, the response; the position the body adopts in
order to face its lack of equilibrium.
In this way, between death and life, there are infinite possible degrees
of equilibrium. Health is an optimal one. The illness would be placed in
between life and death.
Thus, if we admit the existence of the VITAL FORCE which tends to
preserve our lives at every moment in the maximum equilibrium possible and
accept that the symptoms are an expression or a manifestation of its
efforts to maintain that equilibrium, we can easily understand the
necessity to help the sick person in the same direction as their
manifestations. This is done by homeopathy through the application of the
similitude’s law.
The medicine prescribed by similitude acts in the same way as the vital
force also introducing an intelligent principle which “helps it remember”
what to do and how to do it to reestablish the equilibrium, that is to say,
to be healed.
4) PURE EXPERIMENTATION
Hahnemann (1755-1843) was a German doctor who, disappointed by the
medicine of those times, gave up his practice and started to translate
books.
He translated Cullen’s Medical Matter, where the toxic symptoms of the
CINCHONA (used to cure malaria) were described. That author said that
its ability to cure laid in its astringent and bittering properties.
Hahnemann didn’t agree with this, and in a footnote he replied to Cullen
that quinine must have had other properties being other factors, the
reason for curing malaria.
That is when Hahnemann’s big work began. It was in 1790 when he decided to
experiment quinine on his own body, ingesting repeated doses of it until
his organism started showing symptoms such as fever, shivers, etc. similar
to malaria.
After this experience, he spent six years experimenting on him, friends
and relatives different substances in a rigorous and constant search:
trying to know the symptoms these substances produced on healthy people
and discover the relationship they may have with the illnesses.
As he experimented, he realized that the different substances reproduced
symptoms and groups of symptoms (syndrome) SIMILAR to natural
illnesses. Facing this observation he posed the SIMILITUDE’S LAW,
as the necessary relationship which must be established between the sick
person and the medicine, for the medicine to be able to cure.
But in the experimentation, what it is mostly evident is that the
ingestion of a substance alters, more or less intensely, almost the whole
organism, being these alterations physical, mental, and in response to the
environment.
5)
UNIQUE MEDICINE
When we talked about experimentation we didn’t mention that it is done
through the recollection of substances belonging to the animal, vegetal or
mineral world. That recollection is carried out without any manipulation,
in a simple way and one by one, to get to know the effects on the healthy
person and therefore its healing potential on the sick person.
On the other hand, we have just seen that we only have an image of our
patients, a “caricature” of the total amount of symptoms they present.
As a consequence, there isn’t any reason to think that it would be
necessary to apply different substances, but to adapt by analogy A
MEDICINE FOR EACH PATIENT. This is called Classic or Unicist
Homeopathy.
6) MINIMUM OR INFINITESIMAL DOSES
When Hahnemann first began assaying applying the medicines according to
the Similitude’s Law, he didn’t use to dilute or dynamize the medicines
but he gave them in ponderable doses, with the subsequent aggravations,
what made him think that the doses were too strong.
Then, he progressively started to dilute and dynamize the doses of the
medicines, until he made them so tiny there weren’t weighable any more
becoming infinitesimal doses (dose-energetic stimulant).
Along this process of successive dilutions and dynamizations (dynamization:
dilution + agitation), Hahnemann revealed a therapeutic potential latent
and numbed in each plant, mineral or animal substance.
At the beginning substances were also experimented in gross state – in
ponderable doses – but later on Hahnemann saw that if dynamized substances
were experimented, more subtle, characteristic and personalized symptoms
could be obtained from the medicine, such as mental, dreams or different
functional levels.
And, on the other hand, substances such as Lycopodium, Silica and Common
Salt which in gross state didn’t produce any symptomatology on the healthy
person, were incorporated as main medicines into the homeopathic
pharmacopeia.
The preparation of the medicines in MINIMUM DOSES allows them to
act at the right level of the vital force. In this way, following the
similitude’s principle (medicine and doses) that produces a subtle and
efficient response of the vital force, an optimal prescription should be
able to set into action the curative process.
The pathogenesias (group of symptoms and signs collected using the
experimentation of a pure substance on a healthy person) obtained through
the administration of infinitesimal doses of substances, are a testimony
of the deep relationship, between the human being’s inner world and the
nature’s world. Paracelsus said, “I have looked at them all – stones,
plants, and animals, and they appear to be like letters of the alphabet
scattered on the page, while the human being is the complete and living
world”.
The human being, on its way to evolution and individualization, has been
separating from nature, being however, always related to it.
When a person loses the equilibrium, they get sick, it is as if they were
not themselves any more, and resembled a substance found in nature. It is
as if they lost their identity, their natural way to be organized as a
living person, and started to be organized in a different way…looking into
the medical matter, we could find it as Pulsatilla, Lachesis…
In other words, a fragment of nature can be turned into a medicine when,
through a certain preparation (dynamization), it is able to act over a
process similar to its own, as if what it is healthy to nature can be
observed as an illness in a person.
7) CHRONIC PATHOLOGY
In homeopathy, basically two kinds of illnesses are found:
1) Acute illnesses (instauration,
state period and resolution)
- they are self-cured
- they lead to death
- epidemic, infectious, infantile illnesses
2) Chronic illnesses (after the instauration stage
they are in continuous development, without any self-cure tendency)
This point was also described by Hahnemann, who observed that after a
correct treatment, a series of symptoms tend to reappear. He called this
phenomenon chronic or miasmatic pathology, which could be explained as a
tendency inherited from our ancestors which predisposes us to organize and
express our symptoms, our lack of equilibrium, our way of facing things in
a certain direction and repeated way.
The main objective of HOMEOPATHY is to be able to treat this
predisposition in a stage in which the symptoms are functional or latent,
to prevent the crystallization of an illness in the future.
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