Homoeopathy is medicine system developed and introduced by a German physician Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. He came across a called Cullen’s Materia Medica where he read about cinchona which can cure malaria but produces similar symptoms like chills and aching on healthy individuals.
Through that experiment, Dr. Hahnemann found out that any drug which can produce a set of symptoms on a healthy human being can be used to cure the similar symptoms in a diseased person. He gave cinchona to various malaria patients and the result was wonderful and a system called homoeopathy originated.The word homoeo means similar,pathy means suffering.
The basic principle of homoeopathy is ’similia similibus curantur’ means like cures cure.Hahnemann prepared some other drugs using alcohol as a vehicle and started experimenting on different age groups and noted down the symptoms produced in them.He proved nearly 30 drugs and the symptoms produced were noted down systematically.The symptoms collected by drug proving were categorized in the order in a book form named materia medica pura.
How was homoeopathy developed?
The Organon of Medicine is a book written where all the principles of homoeopathy can be found. Right from the beginning of homoeopathy somany doctors of other system started working against homoeopathy. Physicians like Dr J T Kent, Dr Hering, Dr Boenonghausen are among others who followed Dr Hahnemann’s mission and developed the system. They all started preparing so many other drugs on the basis of guidelines given by Hahnemann.
A process called potentisation where the same drug were made in different levels of potency. They found that by increasing the potency, the penetrating power of medicine is increased so that it act on a higher level than the usual material form of drugs used in other systems. This unique nature of homoeopathic medicine is the reason for the wonderful cures of even the mental diseases.
What are the general principles in homoeopathy?
- Homoeopathy treats the diseased individual as a whole rather than treating diseased parts or organs.
- The physical,mental,emotional,social spheres of a person is considered for a permanent cure.
- Homoeopathy believes thet the real desease comes before the bacteria & viruses,hence the root cause of the disease has to be treated for a permenent cure
- Diseases are produced by noxious morbific agents called Miasms which are dynamic influences which affect the vital force.There are mainly three miasms psora , syphilis & sycosis
- These three causes are accepted by other schools of medicine but called by different names. Psora causes functional disturbances, syphilis causes structural changes in the form of destructions and sycosis causes changes in the form of overgrowth.
- These three miasms can act individually or in combined form to produce different disease conditions.
How to prepare the medicines in homoeopathy
Medicines are prepared from these substances by a special process called potentisation.Here the soluble substances are potentised by diluting(mixing with spirit with a downward stroke) with spirit and insoluble substances by grinding(trituration) with sugar of milk.The crude drug substance is first mixed with a calculated quantity of spirit and water and kept for few days.
From this mixture extract is taken and is called mother tincture(denoted as Q).From this mother tincture dilutions are prepared by potentisation.
Potentisation is a mathematical process by which the quantity of original drug substance reduces but medicinal power increases. Depending upon the ratio of quantity of drug substance and vehicle(spirit or sugar of milk)there are different scales for this process.Each scale has got different potencies which indicate power of medicine.
Example in decimal scale the drug substance vehicle ratio is1/10 and the availables potencies are 3x,6x.12x ect.In centismal scale the ratio is 1/100 and the available potencies are 30c,200c ect,in LM potency the ratio is 1/50000 and the available potencies are 0/1,0/2,0/3 etc.
Potency is written after the name of every medicine.