As a result of his careful prolonged investigations and experiments, Hahnemann taught the following:
(1) The administration of only “like” remedies:
“A drug can only cure in virtue of its symptoms being similar to those of the case of disease; and here it could not fail to cure, in accordance with the eternal homoeopathic law of Nature.”
(2) The single drug: Without which no scientific data on drug-action or estimate of curative drug-action can be determined.
(3) The single dose: Repeated only in response to the demand of symptoms: i.e. in minutes to hours in acute and urgent conditions; but only in weeks to months in chronic diseases of slow peace.
(4) Initial homoeopathic aggravation : Now generally recognized – but only where such homoeopathic remedies as vaccines have been used – as Wright’s “negative phase.” This homoeopathic aggravation Hahnemann explains as the reaction of the vital force to the artificial similar drug disease “called forth in the diseased parts of the body by an excessive dose,” diseased parts being hypersensitive to “like” drug action. With him it is “quite in order” and of good prognosis “if excited within proper limits.” Therefore,-
“The doses of the homoeopathic medicines are invariably to be reduced so far that, after they have been taken, they will merely produce an almost imperceptible homoeopathic aggravation.” And he says: “The doses of reduced, provided that the dose, immediately after being taken, is capable of causing a slight intensification of symptoms of the similar natural disease.”
(5) Non-interference with vital reaction : The necessity for waiting till the aggravation and the subsequent stage of amelioration is spent, before repeating the stimulus. This – in consequence of Wright’s work – is becoming generally recognized.
(6) Potentization : Which “causes medicines to penetrate the organism, and thus become more efficacious and remedial.”
It will be observed that the small doses of homoeopathy are no mere fad on the part of Hahnemann and his followers. They are necessitated for the avoidance of the severe aggravation where a homoeopathic remedy – that is, the remedy to which the patient is supremely sensitive – is administered. Hahnemann says : “They produce the uncommon effects they do because they are not so large as to render it necessary for the organism to get rid of them by the revolutionary processes of evacuation:’ and also because “The diseased parts of the body have become extremely susceptible of a stimulus so similar to their own disease.” Again, where homoeopathy makes use of such remedies as snake poisons, the virus of diseases, and the deadly poisons that have always formed such an important part of our equipment, doses must be reduced. Ordinary textbooks are concerned with the maximum dose that may be given without danger; homoeopathy only with the minimum dose that will supply the stimulus and start vital reaction. It is on vital reaction that the whole of Hahnemann’s teaching and homoeopathic experience are based.
By grinding down insoluble substances until they could be used as remedial agents, and in reducing his “like” medicines till aggravation became negligible, Hahnemann stumbled upon “potentization.” Hahnemann claimed to be the first to make “This great and extraordinary discovery, that the properties of crude medicinal substances gain (when fluid by repeated succussion with unmedicinal fluids, when dry by frequent trituration with unmedicinal powders) such as increase of medicinal power, that when these processes are carried very far, even substances in which for centuries no medicinal power has been observed in their crude state display under such manipulation a power of acting on the health of man that is quite astonishing.”
“Thus, pure gold, silver, platina, have no action on human health in their solid state – or crude vegetable charcoal, etc…. These substances are in a state of suspended animation as regards their medicinal action. But triturate one grain of gold leaf with 100 grains of sugar of milk, and a preparation results which has already great medicinal power.” And by repeating this process again and again, “till the last preparation contains in every grain a quadrillionth of a grain of gold, it gives a medicine in which the medicinal power, latent and locked up in gold in its massive state, are so strikingly roused into activity” that a single dose will “change a miserable melancholic loathing life and contemplating suicide, into cheerfulness and renewed love of life.”
“Medicinal substances are not deal masses in the ordinary sense of the term; their true essential nature is only dynamically spiritual – is pure force, which may be increased in potency almost to an infinite degree by that very remarkable process of trituration (and succussion) according to the homoeopathic method.”
(It is with 30 small phials that Hahnemann’s favourite “decillionth or 30th potency” is prepared. One drop from the strong tincture in No. 1 phial is shaken up with 99 drops of alcohol or water in No.2 and a drop from this, in the same way, in No. 3: and so on for 30 times to make the 30th centesimal potency.)
“Physical sciences teach that there are great forces (potencies) which are entirely imponderable, like light and heat. If only ponderables were real and imponderables unreal, then one of these seemingly insignificant doses would be, at worst, without effect. There is no agent, no power in Nature capable of morbidly affecting the healthy individual, which dose not at the same time possess the faculty of curing certain morbid states.”
Were Hahnemann alive in this age, to which he belongs, he would find confirmation in the pathological and therapeutic effects of X-rays and radium – “imponderables” – and, by their antagonistically malign and benign actions, perfectly exemplifying his Law. The chemistry of our day is more and more approaching Hahnemann, with its colloids and ions, its ferments and vitamins. The infinitely little is becoming the infinitely potent, and bulk and energy of particle are seen to be in inverse ration. For infinite subdivision we may yet come to substitute Hahnemann’s “dynamization” or “potentization.” Chemistry has now its colloidal gold, silica, etc.; and while homoeopathy warns us to be cautious with potentized silica for its power of breaking down scar tissue and liberating tubercle, non-homoeopaths have demonstrated the power of silica to produce fibrosis of liver, kidneys, etc. Thus in Hahnemann every day finding confirmation.
Hahnemann, a hundred years ago, was already using products of disease for the cure of disease, and arguing that this was not isopathy but homoeopathy: “Isopathy is to cure an equal disease by an equal miasm. The cure in that case could only be accomplished by opposing a similimum to a similimum, since isopathy administers only a potentiated and altered miasm to a patient.” One of Hahnemann’s valuable legacies is “psorinum” prepared from an itch pustule: “The psoric virus, by undergoing a process of trituration and shaking, becomes just as much altered in its nature as gold dose,” and “a powerfully acting agent.” And from Hahnemann’s day on, homoeopaths have been using disease products for the cure of disease. The year 1831 gave us hydrophobinum (“lyssin”) and variolinum (from smallpox); 1836, anthracinum (from anthrax); 1880, syphilinum (“lueticum”), gonorrhinum (“medorrhinum”), bacillinum (“tuberculinum”). Burnett wrote in 1894: “There are but few (disease) viruses known to science that I have not used as therapeutic agents.” That “nosodes” or disease products do act in homoeopathic preparations and potencies, administered by the mouth, is a matter of daily experience with us. And the explanation of the fact that they do not get fatally changed during absorption may be that other fact, which Hahnemann demonstrated – namely, that substances highly potentized have laws of their own and are not subject to chemical neutralization.
Before an acute disease can be diagnosed, the remedy can often be selected, which is an immense advantage in shortening and modifying sickness. A disease expresses itself by symptoms; and where there are symptoms they can be matched and the “similar” drug administered without waste of time. Hahnemann, never having seen cholera, laid down the remedies that would be curative in that disease, the main ones being three: in early and simple cases, camphor (the strong tincture, one drop on sugar repeated every few minutes till reaction); in later stages, with excessive cramping, cuprum; or, with excessive evacuations and profuse cold sweat, veratrum alb. Cholera came to Europe, and the statistics of all countries where there were homoeopathic physicians proved Hahnemann to the hilt. In Austria, the law interdicting the practice of homoeopathy was repealed in consequence of its starting success in the treatment of cholera. In England, in 1854 (according to a Report to the House of Commons), the mortality of cholera under ordinary treatment was 59.2 per cent., the homoeopathic mortality being 16.4. And to this day the spirits of camphor of the chemists bear Rubini’s name – Dr. Rubini, of Naples, being a homoeopath who achieved amazing results in Italy during that cholera epidemic.
Weir received his medical education first at Glasgow University MB ChB 1907, and then on a sabbatical year in Chicago under the tutelage of Dr James Tyler Kent of Hering Medical College during 1908-9. Weir reputedly first learned of homeopathy through his contact with Dr Robert Gibson Miller.
John Weir wrote- Some of the Outstanding Homeopathic Remedies for Acute Conditions with Margaret Tyler, Homeopathy and its Importance in Treatment of Chronic Disease, The Trend of Modern Medicine, The Science and Art of Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl, The Present Day Attitude of the Medical Profession Towards Homeopathy, Brit Homeo Jnl XVI, 1926, p.212ff, Homeopathy: a System of Therapeutics, The Hahnemann Convalescent Home, Bournemouth, Brit Homeo Jnl 20, 1931, 200-201, Homeopathy an Explanation of its Principles, British Homeopathy During the Last 100 Years, Brit Homeo Jnl 23, 1932: etc