My sense of duty would not easily allow me to treat the unknown pathological state of my suffering brethren with these unknown medicines. The thought of becoming in this way a murderer or malefactor towards the life of my fellow human beings was most terrible to me, so terrible and disturbing that I wholly gave up my practice in the first years of my married life and occupied myself solely with chemistry and writing.
In 1790, having moved away from all conventional medicine, Hahnemann was inspired to develop his own revolutionary school of medicine. His first step towards inventing homeopathy took place when he began experimenting on himself with the drug Cinchona, which is derived from the bark of a Peruvian tree. Cinchona contains quinine and was being used successfully in the treatment of malaria, but Hahnemann consumed it when he was healthy, perhaps in the hope that it might act as a general tonic for maintaining good health. To his surprise, however, his health began to deteriorate and he developed the sort of symptoms usually associated with malaria. In other words, here was a substance that was normally used for curing the fevers, shivering and sweating suffered by a malaria patient, which was now apparently generating the same symptoms in a healthy person.
He experimented with other treatments and obtained the same sort of results: substances used to treat particular symptoms in an unhealthy person seemed to generate those same symptoms when given to a healthy person. By reversing the logic, he proposed a universal principle, namely ‘that which can produce a set of symptoms in a healthy individual, can treat a sick individual who is manifesting a similar set of symptoms’. In 1796 he published an account of his Law of Similars, but so far he had gone only halfway towards inventing homeopathy.
Hahnemann went on to propose that he could improve the effect of his ‘like cures like’ remedies by diluting them. According to Hahnemann, and for reasons that continue to remain mysterious, diluting a remedy increased its power to cure, while reducing its potential to cause side‑effects. His assumption bears some resemblance to the ‘hair of the dog that bit you’ dictum, inasmuch as a little of what has harmed someone can supposedly undo the harm. The expression has its origins in the belief that a bite from a rabid dog could be treated by placing some of the dog’s hairs in the wound, but nowadays ‘the hair of the dog’ is used to suggest that a small alcoholic drink can cure a hangover.
Moreover, while carrying his remedies on board a horse‑drawn carriage, Hahnemann made another breakthrough. He believed that the vigorous shaking of the vehicle had further increased the so‑called potency of his homeopathic remedies, as a result of which he began to recommend that shaking (or succussion ) should form part of the dilution process. The combination of dilution and shaking is known as potentization.
Over the next few years, Hahnemann identified various homeopathic remedies by conducting experiments known as provings, from the German word prüfen, meaning to examine or test. This would involve giving daily doses of a homeopathic remedy to several healthy people and then asking them to keep a detailed diary of any symptoms that might emerge over the course of a few weeks. A compilation of their diaries was then used to identify the range of symptoms suffered by a healthy person taking the remedy–Hahnemann then argued that the identical remedy given to a sick patient could relieve those same symptoms.
In 1807 Hahnemann coined the word Homöopathie, from the Greek hómoios and pathos, meaning similar suffering. Then in 1810 he published Organon der rationellen Heilkunde (Organon of the Medical Art ), his first major treatise on the subject of homeopathy, which was followed in the next decade by Materia Medica Pura, six volumes that detailed the symptoms cured by sixty‑seven homeopathic remedies. Hahnemann had given homeopathy a firm foundation, and the way that it is practised has hardly changed over the last two centuries. According to Jay W. Shelton, who has written extensively on the subject, ‘Hahnemann and his writings are held in almost religious reverence by most homeopaths.’
The gospel according to Hahnemann
Hahnemann was adamant that homeopathy was distinct from herbal medicine, and modern homeopaths still maintain a separate identity and refuse to be labelled herbalists. One of the main reasons for this is that homeopathic remedies are not solely based on plants. They can also be based on animal sources, which sometimes means the whole animal (e.g. ground honeybee), and sometimes just animal secretions (e.g. snake poison, wolf milk). Other remedies are based on mineral sources, ranging from salt to gold, while so‑called nosode sources are based on diseased material or causative agents, such as bacteria, pus, vomit, tumours, faeces and warts. Since Hahnemann’s era, homeopaths have also relied upon an additional set of sources labelled imponderables, which covers non‑material phenomena such as X‑rays and magnetic fields.
There is something innately comforting about the idea of herbal medicines, which conjures up images of leaves, petals and roots. Homeopathic remedies, by contrast, can sound rather disturbing. In the nineteenth century, for instance, a homeopath describes basing a remedy on ‘pus from an itch pustule of a young and otherwise healthy Negro, who had been infected [with scabies]’. Other homeopathic remedies require crushing live bedbugs, operating on live eels and injecting a scorpion in its rectum.
Another reason why homeopathy is absolutely distinct from herbal medicine, even if the homeopathic remedy is based on plants, is Hahnemann’s emphasis on dilution. If a plant is to be used as the basis of a homeopathic remedy, then the preparation process begins by allowing it to sit in a sealed jar of solvent, which then dissolves some of the plant’s molecules. The solvent can be either water or alcohol, but for ease of explanation we will assume that it is water for the remainder of this chapter. After several weeks the solid material is removed–the remaining water with its dissolved ingredients is called the mother tincture.
The mother tincture is then diluted, which might involve one part of it being dissolved in nine parts water, thereby diluting it by a factor of ten. This is called a 1X remedy, the X being the Roman numeral for 10. After the dilution, the mixture is vigorously shaken, which completes the potentization process. Taking one part of the 1X remedy, dissolving it in nine parts water and shaking again leads to a 2X remedy. Further dilution and potentization leads to 3X, 4X, 5X and even weaker solutions–remember, Hahnemann believed that weaker solutions led to stronger remedies. Herbal medicine, by contrast, follows the more commonsense rule that more concentrated doses lead to stronger remedies.
The resulting homeopathic solution, whether it is 1X, 10X or even more dilute, can then be directly administered to a patient as a remedy. Alternatively, drops of the solution can be added to an ointment, tablets or some other appropriate form of delivery. For example, one drop might be used to wet a dozen sugar tablets, which would transform them into a dozen homeopathic pills.
At this point, it is important to appreciate the extent of the dilution undergone during the preparation of homeopathic remedies. A 4X remedy, for instance, means that the mother tincture was diluted by a factor of 10 (1X), then again by a factor of 10 (2X), then again by a factor of 10 (3X), and then again by a factor of 10 (4X). This leads to dilution by a factor of 10 x 10 x 10 x 10, which is equal to 10,000. Although this is already a high degree of dilution, homeopathic remedies generally involve even more extreme dilution. Instead of dissolving in factors of 10, homeopathic pharmacists will usually dissolve one part of the mother tincture in 99 parts of water, thereby diluting it by a factor of 100. This is called a 1C remedy, C being the Roman numeral for 100. Repeatedly dissolving by a factor of 100 leads to 2C, 3C, 4C and eventually to ultra‑dilute solutions.