Method of Potentizing Remedies



He thus continued to proceed in the same manner in order to determine what successive levels would reached in therefore said jar by the different quantities of water necessary to prepare the 100th, 200th, 400th, 600th, 1000th, 2000th, 4000th, 6000th and 10,000th dilutions, writing on the outside of the jar the number corresponding to each dilutions.

To make the 10,000 dilution be needed 10,000 times five grampus of distilled water; that is to way, fifty kilograms or fifty liters of distilled water.

To prepare the 10,000 dilution he allowed the water of the siphon to run for about thirteen hours a day, during from seven to eight days.

In order to get along more rapidly, Lembert prepared simultaneously the high dilutions of six remedies, having, at a distance of forty centimeters, six siphons above six vials with lateral orifices, each one above a graduated jar, such as I have described.

In order to prepare these high dilutions, Lembert thus utilized the two factors ordinarily used; that is to say, dilution in a certain quantity of water or alcohol and succussions, He determined, as has been seem, the exact quantity of the diluting liquid and the approximate number of successions.* these are by no means the each quantities of the diluting liquid required for the preparation of Hahnemannian potencies (I; 99); for, practically, the ratio of Lembert’s potencies is I:I; however, this would not interfere with their efficacy. Counting three successions produced by the distilled water, falling from the siphon into the medicated water of the little vial with lateral orifice, during each second thee would have been I,080 per hour, and 14,040 during the thirteen hour occupied each for the preparation of these high dilutions; and as it took from seven to eight days for the preparation of the 10,000th dilution; and as it took from seven to eight days for the preparation of the 10,000th dilution, this was brought about by means of from 88, 280 to 112,320 succussions; in other words, from eight to eleven succussions for each dilution.

The use of these thousands of succussions, in order to chance the molecular state of the remedies and thus bring them into the radiant state-this practice, which at first sight seems, like all new things, so eccentric and ridiculous-is now beginning to be made use of by chemists themselves, in order to educe mater to a species of radiant state which favors certain chemical reactions between different bodies., This is related in the following manner, in his opening lecture delivered in 1876 in the medical school, and Montpellier, by the celebrated chemist, Mr. Bechamp, then the dean of that medical faculty and now dean OF the free Medical Faculty of Lille:

For making alcohol, Mr. Berthelot has taken the carbonated hydrogen produced by the reduction or carbonic acid. He has caused this gas to be absorbed b means of an ingenious process, which consisted in agitating buy a number of succussions sulphuric acid in the presence of mercury. The absorption having taken place, water is added and the whole is then distilled-the distilled product contains alcohol.

……I was, in 1856, at the College de France, in Mr. Berthelot’s laboratory, when Mitscherlich the celebrated berlin chemist and discoverer of isomorphism, dropped in. At once the following conversation took place between the visitor and they visited:

Mr. Mitscherlich-I have tried to repeat your experiment concerning the synthesis of alcohol, but I did not succeed in causing he absorption of the carbonated hydrogen by the sulphuric acid.

Mr. Berthelot-How did you got about it

Mr. Mitscherlich-I put the sulphuric acid into a vial with the hydro-carbonic gas, and the absorption did not take place.

Mr. Berthelot-You did not put in mercury, or shake the whole together.

Mr. Mitscherlich-No.

Mr. Berthelot-Then you neglected an essential condition. In order to case the absorption of thirty liters of bi–carbonated hydrogen by 900 grams of sulphuric acid, in the presence of a few kilograms of mercury., 53,000 succussions re necessary. That is what you neglected to do.

And Mr. Berthelot demonstrated on the reality of the fact to Mr. Mitscherlich.

These 53,000 successions divide the molecules of mercury and separate them more widely from each other. Then these molecules in their turn divide and more widely separate the molecules of the bi-carbonated hydrogen and of the sulphuric acid educe the two latter to the species of radiate state, and permit the sulphuric acid to absorb the bi-carbonated hydrogen. In that case the mercury plays the same role as does the sugar of milk used by homoeopathic pharmacists to operate the trituration of remedies and greater and greater separation of the constituent molecules, which brings them into the radiant state and develops there curative powers. Mr. Berthelot, therefore, and all other chemists like him unconsciously make use of this process of succussions which has been used for half a century by Hahnemann and his disciples-a process considered so ridiculous by the ignorant, but so useful, indispensable indeed, by chemists.

This long digression on the subject of the dynamization of remedies seems at first sight to have no connection with the treatment of drunkenness; and yet this digression is necessary in order to justify and explain the use of use of dilutions in general, and especially of the high potencies, for the cure of certain morbid somatic or psychical conditions, and especially for drunkenness, which is becoming more and more the courage of families and of modern society. In order to remedy these evils, it is urgent to try the curative means which I propose, since none so efficacious are as yet known.

I am very far, I repeat it, from prescribing exclusively the very high dilutions in my practice, for that would be a mistake that would injure the sick. In many cases the 3rd, 6th, 12th and 30th dilutions, and sometimes even remedies in massive doses, are preferable; but in many others the very high potencies are more efficacious, because they have a more energetic, deep and lasting action. I might adduce many facts to prove it. to that end, however, I think it will be sufficient to relate the give following facts:

OBSERVATION I

Dr. Burnett, professor of materia medica in the Homoeopathic Hospital, London, did me the honor of sending to me, in 1882, a gentleman, 34 years of age, who had for four or five ears been compelled to abandon the practice of his profession, and during that time had been treated by at least one hundred English homoeopathic physicians. He has been declared incurable by two or three homeopathic physicians in Paris. This gentleman came from London to Lyons to consult me. From the 9th of February, 1882, till the 6th of March, 1883, I gave him or sent him, at different intervals, give different remedies, in the 200th, 300th, and 10,000th dilutions. These sufficed to cure him and to permit him to resume the practice of his profession. These five remedies-Nux vomica 200th and 10,000th, Staphis 200th and 10,000th, Calcarea carb. 300th, Mercurius sol. 200th, Laches. 200th-are often used, and doubtless were prescribed by some of the one hundred English physicians who had treated him. But these physicians usually prescribe no high than the third or sixth dilution to be taken several times a day. These lower dilutions proved inefficacious for give uses, while the high dilutions just mentioned cured his gentleman completed in fourteen months, as Was informed by Professor Burnett. This fact is a very instructive for the homoeopathic physicians, who, according to circumstances, would prescribe remedies in all doses and in all dilutions.

When I saw this gentleman taking several times a day the remedy which I had previously prescribed, I quite naturally supposed that he acted in this way in accordance with the advice of his physicians, for in all countries the majority of homoeopathic physicians follow this practice. I followed it myself the first twenty years of my practice, because I was surrounded and influenced by confreres who had that custom. Since then experience, favorable results becoming more and more numerous, has led me to understand and to accept the teaching which I had received from the celebrated Boenninghausen in Monster in 1855, and which is the same as that of Hahnemann, who recommends for the cure of chronic diseases to let the indicated remedy, administered in a single dose, act far weeks and even months. (See Chronic Diseases.) those physicians who do not conform to his teaching are in danger of meeting with failures in the cases of some of their patients and to see those same patients cured by some more faithful disciple of Hahnemann. Those physicians then demonstrate practically just is the thought of Dr. Widmann, expressed in the title of his work on The Sufficiency of Homoeopathy and the insufficiency of Homoeopathists, an article published about thirty years ago two medical journals, one French and the other German. When I do not meet with the desired success in the treatment of a patient, I am often tempted to blame therefore my insufficiency and not the insufficiency of Homoeopathy.

Jean Pierre Gallavardin
Jean Pierre Gallavardin (1825 – 1898) was a French orthodox physician who converted to homeopathy to gain international renown. Gallavardin was a Physician at the Homeopathic Hospital in Lyons.
Gallavardin set up a homeopathic Dispensary for the cure of alcoholics, often working in conjunction with priests, and he wrote several books on this subject.
Jean Pierre Gallavardin wrote Psychism and Homeopathy, The Homoeopathic Treatment of Alcoholism, How to Cure Alcoholism the Non-toxic Homoeopathic Way, Repertory of Psychic Medicines with Materia Medica, Plastic Medicine, and articles for The British Journal of Homeopathy, On Phosphoric Paralysis, and he collated the statistics on pneumonia and other cases for the United States Journal of Homeopathy, and he contributed widely to homeopathic publications.