In the late eighteenth century, the celebrated German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, known for his work in pharmacology, hygiene, public health, industrial toxicology, and psychiatry founded homeopathy. Reacting to the barbarous practices of his day, such as bloodletting (the use of leeches), and toxic mercury-based laxatives, Dr. Hahnemann set out to find a more rational and humane approach to medicine.

  Dr. Hahnemann conducted an experiment in which he twice daily ingested cinchona, a Peruvian bark well known as a cure for malaria. Soon after Dr. Hahnemann began his experiment he developed periodic fevers common to malaria. As soon as he stopped taking the cinchona, his symptoms disappeared. Dr. Hahnemann theorized that, if taking a large dose of cinchona created symptoms of malaria in a healthy person, this same substance, taken in a smaller dose by a person suffering from malaria, might stimulate the body to fight the disease. His theory was borne out by years of experiments with hundreds of substances that produced similar results. 

    The principles of homeopathy based on Dr. Hahnemann's  work:

• Like cures like (Law of Similars).
• The more a remedy is diluted, the greater its potency (Law of the Infinitesimal Dose).
• An illness is specific to the individual (a holistic medical model).

   

 

  According to Dr. Hahnemann, each individual case of disease is most certainly, radically, rapidly, and permanently destroyed and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) the most similar and complete manner of the totality of the symptoms. In other words, the same substance that in large doses produces the symptoms of an illness, in very minute doses cures it.

  This phenomenon, called the Law of Similars, was first recognized in the fourth century B.C., by Hippocrates, who was studying the effects of herbs upon disease. This Law of Similars was also the theoretical basis for the vaccines of physicians Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk, and Louis Pasteur. They would "immunize" the body with trace amounts of a disease component, often a virus, to strengthen its immune response to the actual disease. Allergies are treated in a similar fashion by introducing minute quantities of the suspected allergen into the body to bolster natural tolerance levels.

 

  Most people fasly believe that the higher the dose of a medicine, the greater the effect. But in homeopathy: the more a substance is diluted, the higher its potency. Dr. Hahnemann discovered this Law of the Infinitesimal Dose by experimenting with higher and higher dilutions of substances to avoid toxic side effects.

  Today, homeopathic remedies are usually prepared through a process of diluting with pure water or alcohol and succussing (vigorous shaking). Homeopathic solutions can be diluted to such an extent that literally no molecules of the original substance remain in the remedy. Yet, the more dilute it gets the more potent it becomes. This phenomenon has been the source of great fascination among practitioners and researchers in the field of homeopathic medicine, as from the point of view of conventional chemistry, diluted homeopathic remedies may contain no trace of the original substance. In fact, any homeopathic remedy over 24X potency (twenty-four successive dilutions and succussions) will have no chemical trace of the original substance remaining.

  According to Trevor Cook, Ph.D., DI Hom., President of the United Kingdom Homeopathic Medical Association, the explanation of the therapeutic action of the highly dilute homeopathic remedies appears to lie in the domain of quantum physics and the emerging field of energy medicine. A study using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging demonstrated distinctive readings of subatomic activity in twenty-three different homeopathic remedies. This potency was not demonstrated in placebos (substances having no pharmacological effect).

  Some researchers believe that the specific electromagnetic frequency of the original substance is imprinted in the homeopathic remedy through the process of successive dilution and succussion.

 Emilio del Giudici, the distinguished Italian physicist, has set forth a theory that helps explain homeopathy's manner of therapeutic action. Del Giudici proposes that water molecules form structures capable of storing minute electromagnetic signals. This proposition is given added weight by the findings of Dr. Wolfgang Ludwig, a German biophysicist, who has demonstrated in preliminary research that homeopathic substances give off measurable electromagnetic signals. These signals show that specific frequencies are dominant in each homeopathic substance.

  If del Giudici's model is correct, a homeopathic remedy may transport an electromagnetic "message" to the body that matches the specific electromagnetic frequency or pattern of an illness in order to stimulate the body's natural curing response. What Dr. Hahnemann may have been doing in his empirical research was unwittingly matching the frequencies of the plant extract with the frequency of the patient's illness.

 

  A session with a homeopathic practitioner is a unique experience for someone accustomed to conventional medicine. For instance, you may suffer from chronic headaches, perhaps migraines. While the conventional medical treatment for this condition is the same for most everyone (some form of analgesics or anti-inflammatories), homeopathy recognizes over two hundred symptom patterns associated with headaches, and has corresponding remedies for each.

  The headache may be in the front of the head. It may get worse with a cold sensation and improve with heat. It may be better while you is laying down or sitting up. You may be a person who is thin, and easily excited, or the docile, sedentary sort. The first task of the homeopathic practitioner is a process called "profiling," or recording all of the qualities-physical, mental, and emotional-that will determine the patient's remedy or combination of remedies.

  Practitioners of classical homeopathy consult numerous compendiums called repertories and materia medicas to determine the remedy that most closely matches the total picture of the patient's symptomology. These compendiums are compilations of the findings of thousands of tests, for over two hundred years, that record how healthy individuals react to different substances. The very detailed reactions of the subjects are catalogued in these compendiums and the homeopathic practitioner's task is to match them exactly to the patient's profile.