Homoeopathy

What does a homoeopathic remedy actually bring about?

A homoeopathic preparation is made of vegetable, mineral or animal products. The intake of the homoeopathic remedy causes the same symptoms as the illness itself, but only in an attenuated way. The body is able to fight this attenuated form of the disease and produces antibodies. With these antibodies the body is now protected against the real disease as well and can cure the illness without any 'chemistry'.

The Law of Similars

Everything began with an English text that was translated into German by a certain Dr. Samuel Hahnemann approximately 200 years ago. In this text, it was mentioned as an example that the so-called cinchona bark was able to cure malaria because of its ascribed stomach-strengthening power. Hahnemann didn’t believe this and started a self-experiment. He ingested the plant as a healthy person and got the same symptoms as malaria patients. As he stopped the intake of the cinchona bark, the symptoms disappeared as well. He concluded that a healing medicine might cause the same symptoms in a healthy person, that the respective illness causes in a sick person. He was convinced to imitate nature and use exactly that remedy for curing a disease that is able to cause a different, as much as possible similar, artificial illness and will cure the former one.

That law of similars has become the basis of homoeopathy.

Infinite Dilutions

In principle, the production of these remedies is simple: The particular plant extract is seemingly diluted infinitely. The dosage plays an important roll since toxic parts of a plant are often used. An example: You take only a little drop from the sap of a deadly nightshade (Beware! Poisonous!) - approx. 60 mg - and mix it with 400 drops of distilled water. Afterwards, a drop of this mixture is diluted again with 300 drops of alcohol and a drop of the resulting solution is mixed with watered alcohol (200 drops) once more to obtain the desired result. This very weak solution of deadly nightshade contains a twenty-four millionth part of the 60 mg per drop. Nevertheless, the results are astonishing.

Homoeopathic remedies are ingested as drops, globules or tablets, which are taken in through the mucosal surface of the mouth. Therefore, drinking a glass of water afterwards, as is done in conventional medicine, does rather more harm than good.