James Manjackal MSFS
Thirteen years before a catholic Homeopathy doctor asked me to bless his Homeo Clinic. Gladly I went to his clinic and blessed the clinic with the normal prayers from the Romal ritual and springled the Holy Water all over as he requested. After a few days he came and told me, Father James, after your blessing and springling of the Holy water over my clinic and medicines, I had to throw away all the medicines as they lost the "potency". Thank God he did not threaten to sue me! Then I asked the doctor himself the reason of medicine's loosing the "potency"(power) while I prayed with the power of the Holy Spirit. He had to admit that the power in the medicines was something contrary to the power of the Holy Spirit. Then he asked me to look into bottles of medicines of Allopathy where the contents of the medicines are clearly declared, like Carbo hydrate 15%, Magnesium 20%, Alcohol 5% Water 10% etc, whereas no such declaration of contents on bottles or packets of Homeomedicines is found,instead the medicines declare their effectiveness by "potencies" like 1000 Potency, 10 000 Potency,a million potency etc. The doctor himself admitted his ignorance of the origin of this power or potency. He said that the main effect of Homeomedicines is placebo effect. It is clear that the potency is a hidden power(occult power). I do not make any judgement about Homeopathy as I am not an expert about it, but one thing I will say to my chiristian brethren that it is not good for a christian to use them or to practice them, whatever "good" effect it may bring upon the sick people.Many esotheric and new age treatments(alternative therapies)advertise saying "they are cheap and they have no side effects" but they dont say the main side effect on christians that "they take people away from Christ and the Church, and the Salvation which Christ has brought to this world". The Vatican document "Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Living Water" clearly speaks of the hidden danger of Homeopathy and other alternative medicines based on occult powers.
Here I publish a few articles and excerpts of some eminent doctors and experts on this matter and I leave the discernment and judgement to the readers.
I’m a pediatrician. I’ve got four children aged 14, 12, 9, and 6 years. From 1995 till 2000 I completed the homoeopathy training. I have the certificate from the Austrian School of Homoeopathy. Then I attended the lectures of so-called Indian revolutionary homoeopathy and I also completed the course BIHOST (method of biochemical-homoeopathic regulation of metabolism).I’m a pediatrician. I’ve got four children aged 14, 12, 9, and 6 years. From 1995 till 2000 I completed the homoeopathy training. I have the certificate from the Austrian School of Homoeopathy. Then I attended the lectures of so-called Indian revolutionary homoeopathy and I also completed the course BIHOST (method of biochemical-homoeopathic regulation of metabolism). Since I was mainly on maternity leave at this stage, I especially used to cure my kids and my friends’ kids with homoeopathic drugs. I was very enthusiast about this treatment. I thought I was giving them innocent pills made from medical herbs.
My children were treated for an infection of the upper respiratory tract. I healed my daughter who had bronchitis, after antibiotics showed no effect. I had a wart and it disappeared on the following day after I had used my homoeopathic drugs. Sometimes the homoeopathic drugs which I’d administered to my friends didn’t have effect, but I used to interpret it through my ignorance. Nevertheless, later on, my children started to have various health problems, which I couldn’t explain at all. Problems weren’t of physical but rather of psychological nature.
What was next? Our priest let me know that this method of treatment is supported by the New Age. But, as I defended homoeopathy stubbornly, he ended up telling me to keep on searching. And so, I went to further trainings. I even bought the instruments that they recommended to us. I planned to devote my time to the homoeopathy after my maternity leave. However, there was a great unrest within me. I didn’t know what the real source of such drugs was. I read all available literature about homoeopathy and I asked different people about their opinion on it. Well, nobody gave me any satisfying answer.
I even read the viewpoint of the Conference of Slovak Bishops on the subject of homoeopathy (published in the Catholic Newspaper in 1996); I perceived it as a Church agreement to my therapy methods. Nonetheless, my conscience told me: “don´t heal!” That´s why I refused to treat strangers. I only treated my friends and I administered homoeopathic drugs exclusively to my children. They were a sort of guinea pigs for me. On the one hand, unrest prevailed in my heart, and on the other hand homoeopathic drugs attracted me and impressed me. I wasn’t able to understand it and I always wanted to know the truth and look for it. Then, something happened and I changed my mind radically. There were two reasons for it:
A friend of mine told me about an alcohol-addicted man who had been found lying on the ground during one winter evening. They brought him home and then they said the prayer for the liberation from the demon of alcoholism. One month later, they found out that he stopped drinking and started preparation for the sacraments. She explained this prayer to me. I heard it for the first time.
I received the book of MUDr. Judith Erdélyová: The alternative medicine in the light of the Bible (MSEJK, Bratislava, 2000). Dostala sa mi do rúk kniha MUDr. Judithy Erdélyiovej: Alternatívna medicína vo svetle Biblie (MSEJK, Bratislava 2000). The writer often put together alternative medicine – where she also included homoeopathy – with occultism.
I was seized with horror because I thought I also might have something in common with it. At home, I knelt down before the cross and prayed: “Jesus, take away this spirit of occultism and magic.” Moreover, I asked for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This prayer came from my torn heart. Only long time later I understood how much it had changed the orientation of my life. The thoughts which crossed my mind after this prayer were really wonderful. Suddenly it started to sink in. Devices!At the last training I bought two instruments and I was convinced that I would devote my time to homoeopathy and I would use them. We can test the patient and find the right homoeopathic drug through the measuring instrument based on the EAV method. It’s going to save a lot of time. Indeed, homoeopaths spend long time looking for the homoeopathic drug in the Repetitorium and Materia Medici. Thanks to such instrument, the homoeopathic drug can be made from clean water... It’s sufficient for the homoeopath to own diagnostic homoeopathic drugs. Then the instrument will provide the patient with produced homoeopathic drops, i.e. clear water where the information contained in the homeopathic drug is transferred. The instrument also measures energy in separate acupuncture points.
This instrument was sold at the training by sales representatives from abroad. I had to make a quick decision. My colleagues recommended me to buy an instrument like this. When I bought it, I didn’t think about the way it would work. After I prayed the prayer of self-exorcism, I realized: the instrument makes homoeopathic drugs from clean water. It is magic! I went to check the units this instrument uses in order to measure energy in the acupuncture points. There were no units on the dial. Then I realized that this instrument gave only two simple answers (just like the pendulum): it says yes – when there was a light between the points 80 and 90, or no – when the instrument glowed between the points 50 and 60. I was stunned because I realized it was an occult thing. The practitioners of alternative medicine would have laid themselves open to ridicule by using a pendulum; but nowadays it’s easy to assemble the device with a modern design – and this is an efficient solution. My instrument was under warranty. I wanted to immediately return it and get my money back – it cost fifty thousand Slovak crowns (1660 EUR). I called back the sales representatives telling them it was broken down. They told me there was nothing that could break down… Prístroj som mala v záruke. Chcela som ho okamžite vrátit' a dostat' naspät' peniaze – stál 50-tisíc Sk. Volala som obchodným zástupcom, že sa pokazil. Vysmiali ma, že co sa už môže na nom pokazit'… (in Slovak)
The other instrument – the pocket diary Psion – looks like a bigger cell phone. The name of the homoeopathic drug and patient can be written down on its display. By pushing Mode, the homeopath sends information (i.e. homoeopathic drug) directly into the patient’s organism. This information can also be sent from distance, if the homoeopath knows the patient’s date of birth. Unbelievable! This was what I believed in!
I used this instrument a few times. It worked. I didn’t need any homoeopathic drug. It was sufficient to have this device with me. During our last trainings, the lecturer emphasized the fact that in homoeopathy chemical substances don’t have any effect, but the most important thing is the transfer of information. I felt empty-headed at that time – I had attended the trainings for five years and I hadn’t heard that until then…
I asked my brother who was an electrical engineer what kind of information this instrument sent and why it worked. My brother told me that only a naive person can believe in these things. After he took a look at the instrument, he said: “This is just a normal diary made in 1989”. I missed the point.
After praying I understood: there’s nothing in the device and it works. It must be magic! It must be an occult thing! Later, I got angry because of the amount of money I’d wasted on both devices and called abroad. I wanted to return this instrument and get my money back. I spoke with a homoeopath (a lady). She asked me why I wanted to send it back; so I told her I’d found out that it worked through white magic and I didn’t want to keep using it. Her reply was surprisingly sad: “And what do you think it is about?” I was flabbergasted. The homoeopath knew that it was about magic but at the training nobody had mentioned it!
Nevertheless, I still didn’t conceive the essence of homoeopathy – why can homoeopathy be used even through occult instruments? I wasn’t still sure about these aspects; so I started to study. The first book I came across was bought by my husband; it was a pastoral letter of the Conference of Tuscany bishops: Magic, soothsaying and influence of the Devil (Jas 2001): "Conferenza Regionale dei Vescovi della Toscana, A proposito di magia e di demonologia, Nota pastorale, 1994". The introduction explained something very interesting: there is a sort of imitating magic through which similar things engender similar things back. At this moment I remembered the first principle of homoeopathy – similar thing is cured by a similar thing (like cures like) – and I understood that the principles of the homoeopathy are based on magic. My decision on homoeopathy was clear – no homoeopathy at all. Not even the French school. This is about magic - white magic! It’s not about herbs and minerals. Gradually I started noticing things I hadn’t understood at the trainings about homoeopathy and I began to grasp the point…
Turning away from the spirit of homoeopathy
As I’d mentioned before, my children started having troubles. My oldest daughter (she was nine at time when she used homoeopathic drugs) had nightmares that woke her up and scared her. I was thinking about various reasons, but I didn’t even think that the cause could reside in the homoeopathic drugs. The worst moment was when she saw the Devil in a dream. The Devil wanted her to tell him yes; and then she saw another demon who wanted to cut her hands and legs. My daughter and I said the prayer for the liberation from the spirit of homoeopathy. Her dreams didn’t recur but her fear when falling asleep lasted for long time.
My second daughter couldn’t breathe at night and it went from bad to worse. She didn’t have any cold, no mucus from her nose, no allergies. Her conditions were terrible – she couldn’t breathe. She continually tried to blow her nose. She got mad. She kicked her legs on the bed and woke up other siblings. Once I said to myself: try to pray! When she was in this condition, I put my hand on her and I prayed the prayer of the liberation from the spirit of homoeopathy. To my great surprise, she fell asleep. During the following nights as well, she slept without problems.
My son (three years old at that time) showed terrible and incomprehensible states of aggressiveness when I refused to give him some sweets before breakfast or lunch. He threw down things from the shelves and then started throwing away all the stuff from the wardrobe. All educational methods were vain. Once I said to myself: try to pray. After the prayer, he calmed down and ate a little. Still today he likes sweets. But now he’s able to renounce to a candy, if it is necessary. He sometimes gets angry but he obeys.
I didn’t pray the prayer of liberation over my youngest daughter. She was six months old when I stopped using homoeopathic drugs. I gave her quite diluted homoeopathic drugs and I didn’t even use the main homoeopathic drugs on her.
There was another question: what next? The spiritual exercises for the internal healing helped me a lot. I understood the state I’d been in. I intensively read the Scriptures. I burned all my homoeopathic books – strengthened by this biblical passage: “Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men” (Acts 19, 19). However, I didn’t know what to do with the instruments. It took me about seven months to understand that I had to destroy them as well. My husband and I dismantled them and burned them. And my heart was filled with peace...
The life of the founder of homoeopathy
It’s essential to know the personality and the basic work of Doctor Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of the principles of this method. Since the death of this controversial doctor, nobody brought considerable changes to treatment methods.
Christian F. Samuel Hahnemann was born as a son of a porcelain painter in Meissen in 1755. He was a very talented pupil and he was soon given the possibility of studying at the Sankt Afra princely school. Apart from the French language he also studied English, Greek and Latin to such an extent that later on he was able to earn his living with translation (since he was a poorer student). When he was twenty, he started studying medicine at the university in Leipzig. Then he continued studying at the place of the famous physician von Quarin in Vienna for two years. Here he got acquainted with the baron Samuel Von Brukenthal who engaged him as a house doctor and librarian. The freemason Von Brukenthal led him into a Masonic lodge where he got initiated at the age of twenty-two. He learned something of deism (a teaching saying that God exists, that He is the original cause of the world, but He doesn’t intervene in further development of the world – the world develops according to its own laws – note of the editor). He finished his studies by writing a thesis where he mentioned for the first time the founder of so-called animal magnetism, Anton Mesmer, at that time a well-known person.
After finishing his studies, Hahnemann, as a doctor, settled in Hettstedt, later Dessau, where he got married with Henriette Kuchler, the local pharmacist’s daughter. Because of his failures in the medicine profession, he turned more and more away from medicine. Nevertheless, his translation activity was fervent. When translating papers from Materia Medici by the English scientist Cullen, Hahnemann criticized Cullen’s comprehension of the medicinal effects of the quinine peel.
He came across homoeopathy through his own experiments. From that time on, he worked tirelessly on research tasks, in order to define the results of the new curative principle. In 1796 he published the famous paper The new principle for discovering the medicinal power of the substance of medicines and for the first time he mentioned here the homoeopathic tenet similia similibus curentur (Like cures like).
Immediately after this, there was a dispute between the scholars of the scholastic medicine who refused this method of treatment very categorically. Despite strong aversion, Hahnemann achieved a higher doctorate at the university in Leipzig where he had been teaching the subject of homoeopathy since 1811. At the same time he was a general practitioner and he managed to heal some people in an extraordinary way according to the testimony of his followers. In his work Organon of therapeutics, which was published in 1810, he described the origin and the way of effect of his treatment principle. This treatise is still today considered as the basic work of the homoeopathy.
In Leipzig Hahnemann got involved in an argument with pharmacists because of independent administration of homoeopathic drugs to his patients. He was banned from producing his medicines by himself. Therefore, he went to Kothen where he could carry out his alternative medicine activities under the protection of the duke. Here he spent a peaceful period of his life that he dedicated to the development of the homoeopathy. The articles in the German empire bulletin went a long way towards spreading the homoeopathy. The editor of this bulletin was Rat Becker, also a freemason.
Despite his advanced age, Hahnemann honed his art of healing. He extended also the second tenet of homeopathy beyond the limit of measurability – i.e. the principle of dynamization or potentization. At that time he recommended people not to take medicines but “only taking a sniff at them.” As an eighty-year old widower, he married a young thirty-five French painter, Melanie d’Herville and moved to Paris. Here they set up an homoeopathy outpatient department. He died on July 2, 1843.
Organon of the healing art
In 1810 Hahnemann published the Organon of the rational therapeutics in Leipzig. Later, it was translated with the title Organon of the healing art. In this volume he laid the foundations of philosophy and methodology of the homoeopathic treatment. In the preface of the sixth reprint he criticized allopathic medicine of those times and he put forward a new art of treatment – the homoeopathy – i.e. the method he discovered. He defined it as a method of treatment that is completely different from allopathic methods. He claimed that sicknesses are caused just by the disruption of the spiritual strength reviving the human body. By using the right homoeopathy you can bring about the spiritual – dynamical change and retune the patient’s state. He administered small doses of these medicines to the patients. He claimed that the old school, the classical medicine, is the opposite of the homoeopathy, as well as night is the opposite of day.
Hahnemann criticized classical allopathic medicine because it tries to look for the causes of the illness and then to remove this cause. However, he claimed that the majority of sicknesses have spiritual origin; therefore, their cause cannot be known by the human senses. He insisted that the causes of the sicknesses aren’t of material nature. He even considered that observations made by the anatomists, pathological anatomists, and physiologists were all working through mere imagination. He repeatedly insisted that the causes of the sicknesses aren’t of material nature. He didn’t believe in the material transfer of an infection, for instance, into the wound or to the skin. He thought that material views on the origin and the essence of the illness aren’t correct. He believed that the illnesses of the human organism are caused and kept only by the spiritual dynamical strength. Hahnemann refers to the wise and good Creator who let him find the art of treatment – homoeopathy. He may appear to be a Christian believer. But what theological sources are behind all this?
If Hahnemann professed Christianity, then we might look for a justification of his spiritual theories in the Word of God, in the Scriptures. However, the opposite is true. Hahnemann refused the basics of the Gospel including Jesus Christ. In his list to his disciple Stapf (Brief an Stapf, Kothen 1830) he wrote:
“I consider the fact that today we read Confucius as an important sign of our times. Soon, I will embrace him in the kingdom of the happy souls. I will hug the benefactor of mankind who’s been leading us on the right track towards wisdom and God, six and a half centuries before that Daydreamer”.
According to Hahnemann’s sick statements, the daydreamer was Jesus from Nazareth who reportedly did not lead Hahnemann to the straight path to wisdom, but he wanted to fight together with mythmakers and sinners over the arduous path to God’s kingdom on the earth. This man of sorrow, who speaks to the thief on the cross, is unacceptable for Hahnemann (!).
A tragic and inalienable fact is well evident: Hahnemann built up his knowledge according to natural religion that was very widespread at that time. From his youth to his death he was a loyal supporter of the already mentioned deism. His extensive work (papers and manuscripts) and also his early membership in the freemasonic lodge reveal his real spiritual attitude.
What is the present-day opinion on the Organon? Even nowadays, homoeopathy is implemented on the strength of the same principles like at the times of Hahnemann. The followers of this method think that his viewpoints still hold. Nevertheless, almost all of them avoid Hahnemann’s metaphysical words and forget the fact that without the spiritual ideas of his founder the functioning of the homoeopathy is incomprehensible. They suppress the original spiritually based explanations and substitute them with new “scientific” terms. Up to now, almost two hundred years later, no natural scientific evidence based on research results was shown that would explain the basic tenets of homoeopathy.
Clinical trials and registration of homoeopathic drugs
None of the well-conceived clinical trials succeeded in reliably proving the effectiveness of the homoeopathic drugs. In the prestigious medical journal Lancet (vol. 344 – 1994), Dr. Reily, a homeopath, introduces a study on the efficiency of the homoeopathic drugs in the therapy of the allergic catarrh. He claims that homoeopathic drugs are more efficient than placebo. Nevertheless, the very next issue of this magazine (vol. 345 – 1995) reports an article stating that this trial contains significant errors that could completely misrepresent its results.
In 2002, the British Medical Journal (vol. 324) published a double blind random controlled clinical trial by Lewith et al.: The use of ultramolecular potencies of allergen to treat asthmatic people allergic to the house dust mite. Two hundred and forty-two asthmatics with positive reaction to house dust mite took part in this trial. Nonetheless, no differences in the results were established between one group using placebo and the other one using homoeopathic drugs.
In 2003, the British Journal Clinical Pharmacology published a study by Brien, Lewith and Bryant with the title: The ultramolecular homoeopathy has no observable clinical effects. It’s a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled proving trial of Belladonna 30C. The objective of the trial was to establish whether the ultramolecular rarefaction of Belladonna 30C differs from the effects of placebo. However, the results didn’t confirm any significant differences between both examined groups. During this trial 37 undesirable effects were registered, two of which were serious – a severe earache that can be linked with the use of homoeopathic drug Belladonna.
I’d like to point out that the above mentioned trials are published in foreign journals that are not easily accessible to the physicians in their common practice. I haven’t found any clinical trial in the Slovak medical journals. In Lullmann’s Pharmacology and toxicology (Grada 2002) we can read in:
“A group of experts of the European commission decided in 1996 that homoeopathic drugs had to be subject to the same trial conditions as the drugs of the scientific medicine and their efficiency and security have to be proven with the same conditions (controlled clinical studies). Nonetheless, according to the current approach of our authorities the “successes” of the some methods of peripheral importance (where homoeopathy also belongs) can be judged only by staff members who perform the respective method. This is an anti-argument which contradicts every critical scientific method.”
Consequently, homoeopathic drugs (reportedly considered as drugs) miss their fundamental attribute, i.e. their proven effectiveness. In the EU countries homoeopathic drugs are registered even without such effectiveness. Conversely, in those countries where they should prove their efficiency during the registration procedure (e.g. in Norway) there isn’t any homoeopathic drug registered. In Slovakia the homoeopathic drugs had their registration at the Research Institute of Drugs Trial from 1991 to 1993 and you can usually get them in pharmacies. Their effectiveness was judged by a homoeopath...
Viewpoints of professional medical companies.
The permanent medical board of the European Community (gathering medical organizations of EU countries) classifies homoeopathy as a method whose tenets aren’t scientifically justified. In Belgirat in 1992, the executives of the European pharmacologist companies had negative standpoints towards homoeopathy. On the basis of the analysis of the homoeopathic tenets and clinical studies, many professional medical companies refuse homoeopathy as an irrational and amateurish method. The Slovak Homoeopathic Company doesn’t belong to expert medical companies. The homoeopathy can be practiced only as a “healing practice” in Slovakia.
Conclusion
When I took part in the homoeopathy trainings, I was not required to have a degree certificate from medicine. The homoeopathy is not a medical field of study and therefore it is not publicly discussed at university. This cure is not a sort of cure lege artis (according to the medical scientific recommendations). If physicians neglect scientifically recommended cures and prescribe a homoeopathic cure, they might be sued for that. The Slovak Homoeopathic Company officially does accept physicians and pharmacists, but only because it wants to establish itself in the medical business. But so far they did not reach this goal (because of their unscientific method).
I gave this contribution because I wanted to point out to the spiritual–occult essence of the homoeopathy. Many doctors don’t have the slightest idea about it. At the trainings, the lecturers use numerous pseudoscientific formulations: vital energy, information, and so on. The doctors who study homoeopathy thoroughly and start doing EAV method, Chinese medicine etc. may get into the snares of occultism. Their views start to gradually change; and it is not too easy to free oneself from this...
Dr. Emília Vlcková
Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon
Discovering how homeopathy began is crucial to understanding why it is a false method of diagnosis and treatment. Homeopathy was developed by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). In 1810 Hahnemann published his Organon of the Rational Art of Healing,2 the “Bible” of classical homeopathy.3 Editions today are frequently titled Organon of Medicine.
Hahnemann was a physician who had wisely rejected many of the somewhat barbaric medical practices of his day, but this left him without a profession. In order to support his family, he resorted to translating books into German and practicing other vocations. Nevertheless, he always retained his interest in medicine; for example, he experimented with drugs and conducted other research.
One day he was translating a book which had described the effects of quinine or Peruvian bark on malaria. Out of curiosity, Hahnemann took the drug himself and discovered that it ap-peared to cause symptoms similar to malaria: general malaise, chills, fever, etc. Hahnemann was struck with a revolutionary thought: The possibility that a substance which causes symp-toms in a healthy person might cure those symptoms in a sick person. He therefore continued testing this idea on other substances using himself, his friends, and his family as subjects. Believing the results confirmed his theory, he developed the basic theory of homeopathy: “like cures like.” In other words, any substance producing symptoms in a healthy person similar to those symptoms in a sick person will cure the sick person.
The word “homeopathy” comes from two Greek words which reflect this basic idea; Homoios, meaning like or similar and pathos meaning pain or suffering. Homeopathic medicine, then, is that substance which produces similar pain or suffering in a healthy person to that experienced by a sick person. In Hahnemann’s own words:
By observation, reflection and experience, I discovered that, contrary to the old allopathic method, the true, the proper, the best mode of treatment is contained in the maxim: To cure mildly, rapidly, certainly, and permanently, choose, in every case of disease, a medicine which can itself produce an affection similar to that sought to be cured!Hahnemann proceeded to conduct experiments on other people by examining and recording their “reactions” to a wide variety of different substances. These were termed homeopathic “provings.” Once a particular item was given to a person, everything that happened to that person for a number of days or weeks (physically or mentally) was carefully observed and recorded as a supposed “effect” of that particular substance. Hahnemann also culled the litera-ture of his day to see if similar effects had been noted by anyone else.Over time, Hahnemann and his followers conducted an endless number of “provings,” admin-istering minerals, herbs, and other substances to healthy persons, including themselves, and recording the alleged “actions” of these items. Each substance, of course, produced a large number of symptoms; according to Hahnemann’s research, the lowest was ninety-seven differ-ent symptoms, the highest being over fourteen hundred symptoms! With each new edition of his Materia Medica Pura the symptoms increased. As one biographer observed:
Hitherto no one has ever taught this homeopathic mode of cure, no one has carried it out in practice.4
The number of medicinal manifestations he noted and recorded increased daily. While the first edition of his Materia Medici Pura contains information about six hundred and fifty proved reactions to belladonna, the number rises to 1422 in the second edition. In the same way, the figures for nux vomica mount from 961 to 1267, and the first edition’s 1073 citations for pulsatitia become 1163 in the second.Eventually these records were compiled into a reference book, the homeopathic Materia Medica (Latin for “materials of medicine”), which lists the substances or “medicines,” giving a detailed account of the physical and mental symptoms they supposedly cause and will therefore supposedly cure.But Hahnemann’s “discovery” of homeopathy was flawed from the start in at least eight major ways.
This method of homoeopathic practice remains a unique psychic phenomenon. It goes far beyond the frontiers of what may be learned, and demands an almost oriental capacity for absorption and concentration.5
Misinterpretation
First, Hahnemann had apparently misinterpreted the symptoms he experienced after taking quinine. He thought they were symptoms of malaria, but they weren’t. “Hahnemann had taken quinine earlier in his life, and it is quite probable that his experiment had caused an allergic reaction, which can typically occur with the symptoms Hahnemann described. However, he interpreted them as malaria symptoms.”6
Thus, not surprisingly, the particular symptoms described have been unique to Hahnemann and a few other homeopaths. Those researchers outside of homeopathic ranks who tested quinine for similar symptoms have never been able to produce the effects that Hahnemann claimed. In other words, experiments using healthy test persons have never produced the symptoms Hahnemann claimed should be produced.
Lack of Independent Verification
The second problem was that the “provings” conducted by Hahnemann and other homeo-paths and recorded in the Materia Medica have also never been capable of replication by non-homeopaths. In fact, only homeopaths appear to be able to produce the symptoms cited in their Materia Medicas. For example, as long ago as 1842, one hundred and fifty years ago, homeo-pathic “provings” were tested and failed to produce the symptoms homeopathy attributes to them. In a critical lecture series delivered in 1842, “Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions,” the famous Oliver Wendell Holmes, M.D., for thirty-five years an eminent anatomy professor at the Harvard Medical School, observed:
Now there are many individuals, long and well known to the scientific world, who have tried these experiments upon healthy subjects, and utterly deny that their effects have at all corresponded to Hahnemann’s assertions.
[The] distinguished physician [Andral] is Professor of Medicine in the School of Paris, and one or the most widely known and valued authors upon practical and theoretical subjects the profession can claim in any country…. Assisted by a number of other persons in good health, he experimented on the effects of Cinchona [Peruvian bark], aconite, sulphur, arnica, and the other most highly extolled remedies. His experiments lasted a year, and he stated publicly to the Academy of Medicine that they never produced the slightest appearance of the symptoms attributed to them....M. Double, a well-known medical writer and a physician of high ranking in Paris, had occasion so long ago as 1801, before he had heard of Homeopathy, to make experiments upon Cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He and several others took the drug in every kind of dose for four months, and the fever it is pretended by Hahnemann to excite never was produced.
M. Bonnet, president of the Royal Society of Medicine of Bordeaux, had occasion to observe many soldiers during the Peninsular War, who made use of Cinchona as a preservative against different diseases—but he never found it to produce the pretended paroxysms.
If any objection were made to evidence of this kind, I would refer to the express experiments on many of the Homeopathic substances, which were given to healthy persons with every precaution as to diet and regimen, by M. Louis Fleury, without being followed by the slightest of the pretended consequences.7
Lack of Sufficient Controls
A third major flaw was Hahnemann’s basic method. He wrongly assumed that his own experi-mental safeguards proved that the particular substances actually had the observed effects. But his safeguards were ineffective, and he proved nothing. All that Hahnemann and earlier homeo-paths observed was the normal variety of “symptoms” that any people would experience over a period of days or weeks, which were then falsely attributed to the substance itself.
In essence, the basic error of the Materia Medica is that the physical and mental symptoms that people would have normally experienced, even without the substance, were attributed to the effects of the substance itself. Remember, the substances themselves were often given in minuscule or non-existent doses, so how could they produce any symptoms at all? Further, these “provings” were carried out over days and weeks and the subjects themselves were told to expect symptoms:
Hahnemann seems to have somehow overlooked the fact that people regularly experience “symptoms,” unusual physical and emotional sensations, whether taking drugs or other stimulants, or not—especially if they have been forewarned that the experimental pills that they have been given might, nay probably will, cause symptoms and that the symptoms might be mild and take several days or weeks to manifest themselves. Thus prepared by suggestion, Hahnemann’s provers were inclined to regard the morning backache formerly charged to poor sleeping posture as a consequence of drugs....8Consider the alleged “symptoms” of chamomilla as given by Hahnemann in his Materia Medica Pura (1846, Vol. 2, pp. 7-20): “Vertigo…. Dull….aching pain in the head…. Violent desire for coffee…. Grumbling and creeping in the upper teeth…. Great aversion to the wind…. Burning pain in the hand…. Quarrelsome, vexatious dreams…. heat and redness of the right cheek….”9In fact, Hahnemann listed some thirteen pages of “symptoms” of chamomilla. Can it seriously be maintained that this substance will produce some thirteen pages of symptoms in healthy people? Or that it will cure these symptoms in the sick?
As medical historian Harris L. Coulter observes:
The allopathic physician takes a contrary view, feeling that the measurement of physiological and pathological parameters are more reliable guides to treatment precisely because they are “objective,” while the “subjective” symptoms [of homeopathy] are too ephemeral and unstable to be reliable.10
Notes:
1 This information is extracted from John Ankerberg, John Weldon, Can You Trust Your Doctor (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991) pp. 270-283, 315-319).
2 Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine, 6th edition, reprint (New Dehli, India: B. Jain Publishers., 1978).
3 Hahnemann published his first work on homeopathy in 1805, although in 1796 he had published his first paper containing similar ideas (Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Homeopathy,” in Douglas Stalker, Clark Glymour, eds., Examining Holistic Medicine (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), p. 221.
4 Hahnemann, Organon, p. 80.
5 Martin Gumpert, Hahnemann: The Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel (New York, NY: L. B. Fisher, 1945), p. 166.
6 Samuel Pfeifer, M.D., Healing at Any Price? (Milton Keynes, England: Word Limited, 1988), p. 65.
7 Holmes, “Homeopathy,” p. 230.
8 James C. Whorton, “The First Holistic Revolution: Alternative Medicine in the Nineteenth Century in Stalker and Glymour, eds., Examining Holistic Medicine, pp. 31-32.
9 Douglas Stalker, Clark Glymour, eds., Examining Holistic Medicine (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), p. 32; cf. David S. Sobel, ed., Ways of Health: Wholistic Approaches to Ancient and Contemporary Medicine (New York, NY :Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1979), pp. 295-297.
10 Sobel, ed., Ways of Health, p. 297.
Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon
Irrelevant Additions to Diagnosis
A fourth major flaw in Hahnemann’s method was his assumption that a host of unrelated issues were important to the diagnosis and treatment of a particular illness. What most people would consider irrelevant information was for Hahnemann crucial. He discusses how the ho-meopathic physician must be concerned with a nearly endless number of issues which a mod-ern doctor would simply ignore. For example, Hahnemann explains that,
the physician sees, hears, and remarks by his other senses what there is of an altered or unusual character about him [the patient]. He writes down accurately all that the patient and his friends have told him in the very expressions used by them….1The questions asked are often unrelated to any physical problem. For example, the homeo-path may ask, “In what position do you like to sleep?” Or, “When do you become dizzy?” He will want to know how the person feels before a storm—or how they feel when their collar is unbut-toned. He thinks it important to know if they walk in their bare feet or whether they like or dislike having a belt around their waist. Questions will be asked concerning susceptibility to heat and cold, about times of sadness, frustration, or anger.The homeopath will want to hear about the person’s fantasies and aspirations, their dreams and fears. Homeopath Dr. Jacques Michaud comments, “Dreams are a mysterious but impor-tant aspect of the personality…. The information we draw from them is sometimes precise enough to indicate a remedy.”3
He begins a fresh line [of questioning] with every new circumstance mentioned by the patient or his friends, so that the symptoms shall all be ranged separately one below the other.2
The homeopath will also want to know the exact location or pattern of pimples and itches. He will observe the physical appearance of the patient, including the complexion and manner of dress. The homeopath observes patient idiosyncrasies and wants to know what the patient thinks concerning how others think of him. He wants to know how he behaves during sleep; whether he snores at in-breathing or exhaling. Does he lie only on his back or on his side? Which side? Does he sleep covered up; what does he wear to bed?4
What any of this has to do with medicine has never been demonstrated by the homeopathic community. That homeopaths might be good counselors who ask picturesque questions may explain their popularity, but it does little for their medical standing.
Experience Determines Truth
A fifth major problem in the birth of homeopathy was that Hahnemann’s experiences alone convinced him of the truth of his theories. Nor was he concerned with a proper explanation of what he experienced; the fact that it “happened” was sufficient proof. Hahnemann emphasized, “... pure experience [is] the sole and infallible oracle of the healing art.”5 Concerning his results, “... it matters little what may be the scientific explanation of how it takes place; and I do not attach much importance to the attempts made to explain it.”6
This basic approach of Hahnemann has been the model of homeopaths since the beginning. It illustrates the inherent flaw of homeopathic practice: To rely wholly upon experience can be misleading. By relying on one’s experience—that homeopathic medicines seem to cure, and never asking the reason why—homeopaths have done nothing more than perpetuate Hahnemann’s own error. They have never proven that the homeopathic substance itself is the reason behind the cure. As we have repeatedly emphasized throughout this text, it is not good enough that something seems to work; it must be proven to work.
Susceptibility to Magical Thinking
The sixth major error undergirding the birth of homeopathy was Hahnemann’s susceptibility to magical thinking. Hahnemann discovered that certain substances produced severe and unwanted reactions in some patients. He therefore sought to reduce the dosages given. In attempting to find the smallest effective dose for his substances, he thought he encountered a curious phenomenon. The more he diluted a given substance, the more powerful it seemed to become. In fact, he believed the medicines were immensely powerful when not even a single molecule of the original substance remained.7
Thus, homeopathic medicines were and are prepared according to what are called “successed high dilutions.” As noted earlier, homeopathic substances or “medicines” are diluted according to a standard scale of measurement. One part of the original substance is mixed with nine parts of water or other inert solution. This may be termed potency one or 1X. To get a potency two or 2X, one part of this diluted mixture is added to nine parts of the neutral sub-stance and again shaken. In other words, at potency 2X, the original substance has been di-luted one hundred times. At 3X the substance has been diluted one thousand times; at potency 4X it has been diluted ten thousand times and at potency 6X one million times, etc. Sooner or later, a limit must be reached where there is not even a single molecule of the original sub-stance left. This occurs at approximately 24X and is known in chemistry as Avogadro’s number.
Remember, with each dilution the mixture is shaken, which allegedly “potentizes” it, making it effective. As Dr. James Michaud, a modern homeopath, observes, “Dilution means diminishing the quantity of the substance, according to a geometric progression, to the point to where there are no more detectible molecules, and even beyond. But although there’s less and less matter as dilution increases, there is more and more energy.”8 In homeopathic medicines, dilutions where not even one molecule of the original substance remains are common.9
These dilutions are identified in homeopathy according to a decimal scale or a centesimal scale.
In the decimal scale the scale is 1:10. The starting point is one drop of the original substance mixed with nine drops of water, identified as D1. Mixing one drop of this solution with nine drops of water is identified as D2, etc.
In the centesimal scale the scale is 1:100. This involves the mixture of one drop of substance with ninety-nine drops of water, and is identified as CH1. Then, one drop of this liquid mixed with ninety-nine drops of water produces CH2, etc. Thus, the centesimal scale involves much higher dilutions. For example, a D3 solution would represent one part per thousand of the original substance; a CH3 solution would represent one part per million of the original substance.
What is certain is that by dilution CH12 (or D24) there is simply nothing left of the original substance.
But as noted, homeopathy often uses medicines that go far, far beyond these figures, even to the point of greater absurdity:
This process continues, usually to the thirtieth decimal, but often as far as the one-millionth centesimal, and there is no reason to assume it should stop there. This amount of dilution is beyond comprehension. There is nothing left at the twelfth centesimal, and yet that substance continues to be diluted, one to a hundred, one to a hundred, one to a hundred, almost a million times more to produce the millionth centesimal. Furthermore, there is another scale, called the millesimal, in which substances are serially diluted one part to fifty thousand of neutral medium up into the hundreds of thousands of times. It is worse than putting a sugar cube in the ocean. A bewildered Abraham Lincoln called it the “medicine of a shadow of a pigeon’s wing.” Yet we are in the “other” [hermetic or occult] science and a different law holds....Rejection of Physical Medicine and Acceptance of Energy Model
It is no wonder that homeopathy finds little acceptance in mainstream medicine.10But Hahnemann was actually convinced that diluting medicine was the key to its power. In his own words: “Modern wiseacres have even sneered at the thirtieth potency… [but] we obtain, even in the fiftieth potency, medicines of the most penetrating efficacy….”11 Hahnemann’s expe-rience with allegedly making substances more powerful by diluting them into oblivion leads us to his seventh major error.
No wonder Hahnemann did not want to try and scientifically explain how homeopathy works! What could possibly be discussed scientifically when you are dealing with medicines that don’t even exist? But he did offer a suggested explanation. This was his seventh major error. He reasoned we must be dealing with energy, not matter. If one can really produce dramatic healings with virtually no physical medicine, then we must be dealing in the realm of a vital force, or some spiritual power that resides within matter itself.12 He concluded that homeopathy must produce spiritual medicines, not physical ones.But if so, how could spiritual medicines affect and cure physical diseases? Apparently, they could not; the only way a spiritual medicine could work on a physical illness was if a physical disease was only a symptom of a much deeper spiritual disease. Hahnemann thus concluded that disease was not ultimately physical in nature but “spiritual.” Therefore, because disease represents an improper function or imbalance of vital force or energy, it must be cured by a like healing or realignment of energy. This, he believed, was accomplished by medicines prepared homeopathically.
Therefore, homeopathic medicines are spiritual, energetic medicines, not physical medicines, and the homeopath works ultimately with energies, not physical disease. In his Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann declares the following:
The diseases of man are not caused by any [material] substance,… any disease-matter, but... they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body. Homeopathy knows that a cure can only take place by the reaction of the vital force against the rightly chosen remedy that has been ingested.13
Thus, the true healing art is… to effect an alteration in… energetic automatic vital force… whereby the vital force is liberated and enabled to return to the normal standard of health and to its proper function…. Homeopathy teaches us how to effect this.14
But once Hahnemann believed he had discovered that the true cause of illness and disease was based in energy not matter, his hostility toward the medical profession re-doubled.
They only fancied that they could discover the cause of disease; they did not discover it, however, as it is not perceptible and not discoverable. For as far the greatest number of diseases are of dynamic (spiritual) origin and dynamic (spiritual) nature, their cause is therefore not perceptible to the senses; so they [doctors] exerted themselves to imagine one….15Unfortunately, once Hahnemann entered the realm of “spirit,” all bets were off; he could never really know the true cause of disease. He could never again practice medicine based on the physical body in the way the average physician does. He even confessed,It is the morbidly affected vital energy alone that produces diseases. … How the vital force causes the organism to display morbid phenomena [symptoms], that is, how it produces disease, it would be of no practical utility to the physician to know, and will forever remain concealed from him….16
Thus, for Hahnemann, “There was nothing he would ignore except the immaterial, metaphysical sources of illness” for nothing could be ever known about how disease originates.17
Here we see the fundamental problem between classical homeopathy and modern medicine. Physicians are trained to painstakingly uncover the root cause of disease. But Hahnemann maintains the entire procedure is worthless. Hahnemann again confessed,
It is unnecessary for the cure to know how the vital force produces the symptoms. To regard those diseases that are not surgical as [physical] ... is an absurdity which has rendered allopathy so pernicious.... It is only by the spiritual influences… that our spirit-like vital force can become ill; and in like manner, only by the spirit-like… operation of medicines that it can be again restored to health.18The spirit-like operation of medicines is how homeopathy claims to cure. Hahnemann taught that:Homeopathic Dynamizations are processes by which the medicinal properties, which are latent in natural substances while in their crude state, become aroused, and then become enabled to act in an almost spiritual manner on our life;…19
In speaking of the “healing energy” of his medicines, he freely admitted such energy did not reside in the “corporeal atoms” of the substances themselves:
That smallest dose can therefore contain almost entirely only the pure, freely-developed, conceptual medicinal energy, and bring about only dynamically such great effects as can never be reached by the crude medicinal substance itself taken in large doses.Finally, he confessed that homeopathy alone could restore the vital force to its proper func-tioning, increase its energetic powers for healing, and that such powers had divine origin;
It is not in the corporeal atoms of these highly dynamized medicines,… that the medicinal energy is found.20
Only homeopathic medicine can give this superior power to the invalidated vital force…. We gradually cause and compel this instinctive vital force to increase its energies by degrees, and to increase them more and more, and at last to such a degree that it becomes far more powerful than the original disease.... The fundamental essence of this spiritual vital principle, imparted to us men by the infinitely merciful Creator, is incredibly great....21In essence, Hahnemann taught that diseases are simply too profound and spiritual for any physician to ever locate them by scientific instruments or specific rests; furthermore, classical homeopaths would claim that any modern “scientifically oriented” homeopathic physician who does so is only deceiving himself. Diseases are the result of energy imbalance, and it is the energy imbalance that must be corrected.(to be continued)
(from Can You Trust Your Doctor (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1991) pp. 270-283, 315-319)
Notes:
1 Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine, 6th edition, reprint (New Dehli, India: B. Jain Publishers, 1978), p. 173.
2 Richard Grossinger, Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), p. 180.
3 Evelyn deSmedt, et. al., Life Arts: A Practical Guide to Total Being—New Medicine and Ancient Wisdom (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 143.
4 See David S. Sobel, ed., Ways of Health: Wholistic Approaches to Ancient and Contemporary Medicine (New York, NY :Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1979), p. 196.
5 Hahnemann, Organon, p. 110.
6 Ibid., p. 112.
7 Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homeopathic Cure—Theoretical Part, trans, Louis H. Tafel (New Delhi, India: Jain Publishing Company, 1976), p. 19; Whorton, “Holistic Revolution,” p. 33.
8 deSmedt, Life Arts, p. 142.
9 Daisie Radner, Michael Radner, “Holistic Methodology and Pseudoscience,” in Stalker and Glymour, p. 154.
10 Grossinger, Plant Medicine, p. 195.
11 Hahnemann, Chronic Diseases, p. 19.
12 Hahnemann, Organon, pp. 112-113; Yogi Ramacharaka, The Science of Psychic Healing, reprint (Chicago, IL: Yogi Publication Society, 1937), p. 104.
13 Hahnemann, Organon, p. 18.
14 Ibid., p. 67.
15 Ibid., p. 32.
16 Ibid., pp. 99, 102, final emphasis added.
17 Martin Gumpert, Hahnemann: The Adventurous Career of a Medical Rebel (New York, NY: L. B. Fisher, 1945), p. 137.
18 Hahnemann, Organon, p. 21, cf. p. 112.
19 Hahnemann, Chronic Diseases, p. 17.
20 Hahnemann, Organon, p. 101.
21 Hahnemann, Chronic Diseases, pp. 14-15.
Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon
The eighth flaw of Hahnemann was to assume that regardless of the symptoms a person has, there is only one underlying illness having only one proper cure. Classical homeopathy teaches that any and all symptoms are only reflections of a single underlying “energy” disease. Because they are reflections of only one particular disease, they require only one particular medicine. It is the homeopath’s job to determine this one, and only one, medicine which most closely corresponds to the one disease with its given set of symptoms. “The use of a single medicine at a time is a basic principle of classic homeopathy. Thus,… although a person may have numerous physical and psychological symptoms, he or she has only one disease....”1
Traditional homeopaths believe that only one medicine should be given at a time; to violate this principle is to bring damage to the patient. But many modern homeopaths ignore this principle and prescribe whatever they think is needed. Regardless,
…the homeopathic physician is trained to spot the one medicine, or the group of complementary medicines, out of the two thousand-odd substances in the homeopathic pharmacopoeia, which the patient before him needs. He will make regular use of perhaps eight hundred different medicines in his day-to-day practice.2In essence, the eight flaws [see also previous articles] of Hahnemann explain our distrust of homeopathy. They also underscore the problems faced by modern homeopaths. How can they justify a procedure based upon a flawed approach to medical practice?But to conclude this section, let us cite just one illustration of the difficulty Hahnemann’s theories present to the modern homeopath, and the consequences of such difficulty.
Homeopathy believes that because the true disease is spiritual and not physical, the entire organism is affected, physical and mental. Therefore mental symptoms or problems may be as significant or even more significant than physical symptoms in diagnosing the true disease: “Homeopathic physicians since Hahnemann’s time have made further study of the different grades of symptoms and of their relative importance. They have found that mental symptoms when well defined, are usually the most useful [in diagnosis].”3
Further, the homeopathic diagnosis is contrary to that of the physician practicing scientific medicine. The homeopath does not look for symptoms which are common to all men that would assist the diagnostic process. For example, he does not look for symptoms such as coughing, temperature, runny nose, and sneezing that could indicate a cold or flu.
The homeopath takes an opposite approach and looks for absolutely unique symptoms that are not found in any other person. This is why he must examine and question the client so thoroughly. It is only in this manner he thinks he can make an effective diagnosis.
The homeopath examines (1) the mental symptoms, (2) the general symptoms, and (3) the particular physiological symptoms. “In all three of these categories the symptoms which are absolutely dominant are the ‘strange, rare, and peculiar’ symptoms which qualify the given patient and distinguish him from all others with similar mental, general, or particular symptoms.”4 Thus, the homeopath does not look for symptoms the patient has that are common to known illness but “those which distinguish and differentiate” the patient “from any other patient in the world with a similar complaint”!5
This is why the homeopathic exam can be extremely time consuming. Because illness and disease are not primarily physical, to treat them in such a manner is wrong, misleading, and harmful. The true “spirit” illness is what produces the outward symptoms of disease, whether physical or mental in nature. Thus, only by exhaustive analysis of the physical, mental, and emotional symptoms can the root disease be determined so it may then be properly treated. Thus, “most [root] disorders or diseases… produce symptoms which are emotional, mental, and/or physical in nature….”6
Because both emotional and physical “symptoms” of an illness are diagnosed, the homeopath must determine the emotional and physical “condition” of a patient. As we saw, questions must be asked on the basis of patient likes and dislikes in various areas, such as food, his relationship to the weather and environment, and many other things a normal physician would never consider as having any relationship to an illness or disease.
But Hahnemann was adamant about this approach and so are modern homeopaths. Without detailed questioning, the totality of the symptoms and a whole picture of the disease cannot be accomplished.7 Dr. Harris Coulter states:
The alterations in the vital force are to be perceived only by a most careful and exhaustive analysis of symptoms…. Thus the homeopath must record a long list of symptoms, including many which would be ignored by the orthodox physician. He must pay special attention to the “modalities”: is the particular symptom aggravated or relieved by heat, cold, motion, rest, noise, quiet, wetness, dryness, and changes in the weather;... These changes in the symptoms produced by different environmental conditions are often the key to the correct medicine.8And what are the consequences to such an exhaustive procedure of symptomatology? As we will see, this draining and subjective approach to examination leads many homeopaths into psychic means of diagnosis in order to save time. Furthermore, it also proves that homeopathic diagnosis is a myth.Contradictory Theory and Practice
It goes without saying that any false system of medicine that has existed as long as home-opathy will have generated its share of confusion and contradiction. Thus, as a whole, home-opathy operates on contrary principles and offers contradictory treatments.
Homeopathic Categories
We have divided practitioners of homeopathy into three basic categories: (1) the traditional homoeopathist who largely follows the unscientific and potentially occultic theories of the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann; (2) the scientifically and/or parapsychological oriented homeopath who attempts to bring homeopathy into the twentieth century, including, however, the suspect practice of “infinitely” diluting its medications; and (3) the “demythologized” homeopathist who thinks homeopathic medicines may work by unknown principles but questions that homeopathic medicines can be effective in dilutions so high that none of the original medicine remains. The first category, the traditionalist, stands in contrast to the second and third categories which reflect more of a modern approach to homeopathy. However, both categories one and two stand in contrast to category three in their more occultic approach.9
The traditional homeopath generally follows the teachings and philosophy of Samuel Hahnemann, offering the least amount of revision, if any, in light of modern scientific knowledge. This group almost blindly accepts all or most of Hahnemann’s ideas and is the most overtly reactionary, anachronistic, and perhaps occultic among the three. They readily prescribe ho-meopathic medicines in such high dilutions that not a single molecule of the original substance remains. They believe that the homeopathic practice of repetitive shaking and diluting the sub-stance somehow energizes it to become an effective medicine. They may employ astrology, radionics devices, pendulums, or spiritistic revelations in their work.
The second category is comprised of both scientifically oriented homeopaths and parapsychologically oriented practitioners. The scientific homeopath usually operates in con-junction with scientific medicine and believes that homeopathy works on the basis of physical principles that have not yet been discovered. This group thinks science will one day prove the truth and efficacy of homeopathy.
In France, there are some three thousand M.D.’s who use homeopathy; many of them think its “effectiveness” is caused by some material reaction in the body not yet scientifically under-stood. They do not necessarily accept the idea of immaterial, mystical forces or spiritual ener-gies. Boiron Laboratories, the major homeopathic pharmaceutical in France, allocates four to five percent of its profits (of $150 million in global sales yearly) to research for discovering the supposed scientific mechanism behind homeopathy.10
This group is embarrassed by the many false theories of Hahnemann that continue to be accepted by homeopaths. These practitioners are attempting to bring new support to home-opathy based on scientific medicine and modern scientific theories such as those in quan-tum physics.
But the approach based on supposed parallels to the phenomena of quantum mechanics is suspect at best, and plain wrong in many formulations.11 For example, neither the actions of sub-atomic particles nor their observed paradoxes are applicable to the homeopathic claim that infinite dilutions of a substance somehow produce extremely powerful medicines.
The scientific approach of this practitioner is sometimes legitimate, but it is also sometimes compromised by the other “scientific” homeopath, the parapsychological practitioner. The para-psychological homeopath combines scientific research with occultic practices or principles. This group often employs such things as divinatory pendulums and occultic radionic devices in their attempt to lend “scientific” credibility to homeopathy. They, too, may accept astrology or spiritistic revelations. They are little different from the modern parapsychologist in general who attempts to use scientific methods and experiments in order to investigate clearly occultic phe-nomena.
But even in the category of scientific homeopath, problems remain in the classification of their practices. Many of them maintain that homeopathy is only effective in such high dilutions that not a single molecule of the homeopathic medicine remains. This raises the issue of how scientific such practitioners really are.
Dr. Desmichelle, an M.D. and honorary president of the Centre Homeopathique de France, states his conviction that “The homeopathic remedy, to be efficient, has to be given in extremely low dosage. The more diluted the active principle, the more powerful the remedy.”12 But what is the “active principle” when not a molecule remains? Homeopaths can’t say.
Further, even when homeopathic M.D.’s use both homeopathy and scientific medicine, the two categories of practice remain distinct and separate. No truly scientific homeopath ever maintains that homeopathy is the practice of scientific medicine; he only maintains a faith that someday, somehow, science will finally discover its alleged workings and then homeopathy will become an accepted part of scientific medicine. But whether such faith is ever justified is clearly open to question.
The third category, the modern “demythologized” homeopath, usually does not prescribe the “infinitely” diluted homeopathic medications nor do they attempt to “cosmically energize” them. These homeopaths are fundamentally pragmatists; they are less concerned about philosophical backgrounds or scientific proof and are attracted to homeopathy because of its “natural” ap-proach to medicine. They believe that homeopathic treatments in the lower potencies (6X-12X) have a legitimate physical, curative effect, probably on the immune system, even though no such effect has ever been scientifically demonstrated. They employ homeopathy primarily because it works and they are not necessarily concerned why.
Despite their differences, the above three categories of homeopathist share two common themes. Neither of the three is, strictly, operating under the principles of scientific medicine, and all of them may potentially be dangerous to one’s health and/or involve one in the occult.
Notes:
1 Dana Ullman, Stephen Cummings, “The Science of Homeopathy,” New Realities, Summer, 1985, p. 19.
2 David S. Sobel, ed., Ways of Health: Wholistic Approaches to Ancient and Contemporary Medicine (New York, NY :Harcourt Brace Jovanich, 1979), pp. 303-304.
3 Ibid., pp. 301-302.
4 Ibid., p. 302.
5 Harris L. Coulter, “Homeopathy,” in Leslie J. Kaslof, Wholistic Dimensions in Healing: A Resource Guide (Garden City, NY: Dolphin/Doubleday, 1978), p. 48.
6 Ibid., p. 49.
7 Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine, 6th edition, reprint (New Dehli, India: B. Jain Publishers, 1978), pp. 172 186.
8 Sobel, ed., Ways of Health, pp. 295-296.
9 These categories are for purposes of general contrast; the descriptions given do not necessarily apply to every practitioner.
10 Letter from Annick Sullivan with a copy of personal testimony re: the benefits of homeopathy, p. 2; Mary Carpenter, “Homeopathic Chic,” Health, March, 1989, p. 53.
11 Cf., Douglas Stalker, Clark Glymour, eds., “Quantum Medicine,” in Examining Holistic Medicine (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), pp. 107-125.
12 Translation from French of an interview with Dr. Desmichelle, M.D., Elle Magazine, April, 1988, p. 2.
by Dr. John Ankerberg and Dr. John Weldon
(1) the traditional homoeopathist who largely follows the unscientific and potentially occultic theories of the founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann;
(2) the scientifically and/or parapsychological oriented homeopath who attempts to bring homeopathy into the twentieth century, including, however, the suspect practice of “infinitely” diluting its medications; and
(3) the “demythologized” homeopathist who thinks homeopathic medicines may work by unknown principles but questions that homeopathic medicines can be effective in dilutions so high that none of the original medicine remains.1
The Nature of the Disagreement
These categories reveal why the homeopathic community is so divided: they cannot agree on either the theoretical basis of homeopathy or its practical application.
To understand how serious this is, imagine the modern medical community vociferously arguing over the nature of a disease, its cause, its symptoms, and the proper remedy. No one outside the profession could possibly know what to believe or the proper method of treatment when the profession itself remained in the dark.
Traditional homeopaths feel that “modern” revisionists have betrayed their tradition and have offered sharp criticism, maintaining they are “pseudo-homeopaths” and “charlatans.” (We tend to agree; because of its premises, homeopathy cannot be so radically compromised without destroying its nature.) In essence, a true homeopath is a Hahnemannian purist; modernists are only engaging in speculations and largely futile research endeavors by attempting to force homeopathy to become what it can never be: scientific medicine. They are muddying the waters and producing confusion over what real medicine is and is not.
To these pure Hahnemannian homeopaths, the scientifically oriented and/or “low dose” homeopaths are essentially heretics performing a travesty upon true homeopathy; they cannot be true homeopaths.2 Further, by their low doses and/or multiple remedies, they are aggravating an illness, not curing it. This is why “Hahnemann viewed these hybrids as ‘worse than allopaths… amphibians… still creeping in the mud of the allopathic marsh… who only rarely venture to raise their heads in freedom toward the ethereal truth.”3
Perhaps an illustration will help us understand the issue involved here. A true Christian is a biblical purist; he accepts the Bible’s claim to be the literal word of God and therefore authorita-tive over his life. Because basic Bible doctrines can objectively be established through accepted hermeneutical principles, modern, liberal, and cultic revisions of Biblical teaching simply do not have the right to the name Christian. Their mere claim to be Christian cannot alter the fact that they deny and reject fundamental biblical doctrines.
But right or wrong, the true principles of homeopathy are Hahnemannian; to violate those principles is to violate homeopathy. This is why even Dr. Grossinger concludes, “These events prove that Hahnemann was right when he denied the possibility of half-homeopathy. Half-home-opathy is nonhomeopathy.”4
Nevertheless, all this reveals why homeopathy will never agree on even fundamental issues; the divisions in theory and practice are far too deep and unmanageable.
If classical practitioners reject modern heretics, modern “homeopaths” think the traditionalists are ignorant and deceived.
The traditional homeopath is perfectly comfortable with the following statement made by the leading homeopathist at the turn of the century, James Tyler Kent, M.D., a statement which makes the more modern homeopath cringe: “There is no disease that exists of which the cause is known to man by the eye or by the microscope. Causes are infinitely too fine to be observed by any instrument of precision.”5
Significantly, Hahnemann was his own worst enemy. It was the extremely bizarre nature of his theories which caused the divisions and confusions among his own followers. For example, Hahnemann claimed that it took him twelve long and arduous years of diligent research and study to discover the major cause of almost all human disease. He claimed that seven-eighths of all disease including things like cancer, asthma, paralysis, deafness, madness, and epilepsy was directly attributed to psora, in less refined terms, itch.
According to Hahnemann’s Organon, this “psora, [is] the only real fundamental cause and producer of all the other… innumerable forms of disease.”6
But “a large majority” of Hahnemann’s own followers refused to accept the idea and, accord-ing to Wolff, a leading homeopath and contemporary of Hahnemann, it “has met with the great-est opposition from Homeopathic physicians themselves.”7 (In his 1842 critical lectures on homeopathy, Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to it as “an almost insane conception, which I am glad to get rid of.”8)
But homeopaths have always been at each other’s throats, so to speak. For example, in 1900 in James Tyler Kent’s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, a commentary on Hahnemann’s Organon, he observes that even though homeopathy was extensively distributed throughout the world, its own doctrines were perverted and polluted primarily by homeopaths themselves.
As a whole, little has changed. Homeopathy is everywhere a contrary practice. Hahnemann himself was aware of contradictory methods and results among his followers,9 and this problem has been the plague of homeopathy ever since. Some homeopaths are purists when it comes to Hahnemann’s theories; some pick and choose what seems suitable to them, and some reject most of his ideas entirely. Some are thus adamant about one aspect of homeopathy that others reject entirely; some prescribe homeopathic medicines in low dilutions, others in incredibly high dilutions, and both claim that only their method is proper. Some homeopaths are vitalists; others allegedly materialists. Some are modern and ecletic, prescribing a variety of additional remedies or therapies along with homeopathy; some stick to homeopathy alone.
In addition, the drugs and their symptoms vary considerably: “Thousands of homeopathic drugs are listed in the cults’ Materia Medicas—handbooks that vary widely from time to time and from country to country 10”
Furthermore, homeopathic Materia Medicas are not exactly reliable. As Oliver Wendell Holmes commented over a century ago in his critical lectures on homeopathy:
What are we to think of a standard practical author on Materia Medica, who at one time omits to designate the proper doses of his remedies, and at another to let us have any means of knowing whether a remedy has even been tried or not, while he is recommending its employment in the most critical and threatening diseases?11Some homeopaths think their medicines must be administered in a state of absolute purity, unmixed with other substances, otherwise you will destroy its effectiveness. But other homeo-paths mix substances freely and claim it is too cumbersome to try and find the one “correct” remedy according to classical homeopathy.12With homeopaths employing anti-scientific methods, subjective evaluations, and occultic practices and with wide disagreements about theory and practice, it is hardly surprising that the world of homeopathy lives in such disarray.13
As noted, Dr. Richard Grossinger spent ten years researching homeopathy. He concludes that in recent years around the world, “Standards have deteriorated; far worse, there is contro-versy from country to country, and even from doctor to doctor, as to what constitutes acceptable homeopathic treatment.”14 He ends his discussion by noting:
Different levels and types of homoeopathy are inevitable as long as basic contradictions within the system and the practice are unresolved. A person today seeking homeopathic treatment truly enters a great metaphysical riddle, further compounded by historical and ideological variations. We are finally left without an absolutely clear sense of what homeopathy is, without a sense that will allow us to judge practitioners and give clear advice to people seeking doctors.15Perhaps James Taylor Kent was correct when he commented, “We cannot rid ourselves of confusion until we learn what confusion is.”16Notes:
1 See “Homeopathy, Part 3” (November 2004) for more details.
2 James Tyler Kent, Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy (Richmond, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1979), pp. 81, 87.
3 Richard Grossinger, Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), p. 231.
4 Grossinger, Planet Medicine, p. 238, cf. p. 234.
5 Kent, Lectures, p. ii.
6 Samuel Hahnemann, Oragon of Medicine, 6th ed., rpt. (New Dehli, India: B. Jain Publishers, 1978), p. 167.
7 Douglas Stalker, Clark Glymour, eds., Examining Holistic Medicine (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1985), p. 242; cf. p. 225.
8 Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Homeopathy,” in Ibid., p. 241.
9 e.g., Samuel Hahnemann, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homeopathic Cure—Theoretical Part, trans., Louis H. Tafel (New Dehli, India: Jain Publishing Co., 1976), p. 18.
10 Martin Gardner, “Water with Memory? The Dilution Affair: A Special Report,” The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter, 1989, p. 133; See also Wallace I. Sampson, “When Not to Believe the Unbelievable,” and Elie A. Shneour, “The Benveniste Case: A Reappraisal,” in The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14, No. 1, Fall, 1989, pp. 90-95.
11 Holmes, “Homeopathy,” p. 230.
12 Ibid., p. 223; Evelyn deSmedt, et al., Life Arts: A Practical Guide to Total Being—New Medicine and Ancient Wisdom (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 143.
13 Holmes, “Homeopathy,” pp. 225, 242; Kent, Lectures, p. 81.
14 Grossinger, Planet Medicine, p. 240.
15 Ibid., p. 244.
16 Kent, Lectures, p. 55.
H O M O E O P A T H Y : COSMIC ENERGY IN BOTTLES
The February 3, 2003 Document on the ‘New Age’ Movement [NAM], in tracing its origins and background through “ancient occult practices and gnosticism” [n 2.4], says that “the essential matrix of New Age thinking is to be found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was particularly strong in Freemasonry, spiritualism, occultism and Theosophy” [n 2.3.1].
It finds that “a focus on hidden spiritual powers or forces in nature has been the backbone of much of what is now recognized as New Age theory” [n 1.3].
WHAT HAS ALL THIS TO DO WITH HOMOEOPATHY ?
Everything, as it is the purpose of this study to analyse. In the section on Health: Golden Living, the Document says “Formal (allopathic) medicine today tends to limit itself to curing particular, isolated ailments, and fails to look at the broader picture of a person’s health… Alternative therapies have gained enormously in popularity and are about healing rather than curing.”
Identifying these ‘alternative therapies’ as ‘holistic health’ techniques, it continues, “There is a remarkable variety of approaches for promoting holistic health, some derived from ancient cultural traditions, whether religious or esoteric… Advertising connected with New Age covers a wide range of practices as acupuncture, biofeedback, chiropractic, kinesiology, homeopathy, iridology… reflexology, Rolfing, polarity massage… meditation and visualisation, psychic healing, various kinds of herbal medicine, healing by crystals or colours…” etc. “The source of healing is said to be within ourselves, something we reach when we are in touch with our inner energy or cosmic energy” [n 2.2.3].
HOW DOES THE DOCUMENT EXPLAIN THIS ‘ENERGY’ ?
According to New Ager “William Bloom’s 1992 Formulation of New Age… All life, in its different forms and states, is interconnected energy…” and one of New Ager David Spangler’s “principal characteristics of the New Age vision is holistic (globalising, because there is one single reality- energy) [Appendix 7.1].
In the New Age “the cosmos is seen as an organic whole- it is animated by an Energy which is also identified as the divine Soul or Spirit” [n 2.3.3]. “In New Age thinking… the energy animating the single organism which is the universe, is ‘spirit’ [n 2.3.4.3]. Recording that Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung was one of the “precursors of the Age of Aquarius”, “a central element in his thought is the cult of the sun, where God is the vital energy within a person” [n 2.3.2]. If homoeopathy satisfies the Vatican criteria of what New Age is, in terms of its founder’s beliefs and its foundational principles in its relation to the occult, gnosticism, esotericism, ancient religious or esoteric traditions, Freemasonry and other alternative medicines, and a focus on holistic health, ‘vital energy’ etc., then it certainly can be declared as a New Age alternative therapy.
At the same time, it must be established that it is not a medical science. This issue is crucial, because in response to his earlier in-depth report on this subject, the writer has received two letters in defence of homoeopathy from Catholics in ministry who have however agreed with his conclusions in his writings on other New Age themes.
THE FOUNDER
Dr. Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann, was born on 11th April 1755 in the German town of Meissen. He studied medicine in Leipzig, later practicing in Vienna, becoming Doctor of Medicine in 1779.
In 1796, he became convinced that as a first step in the treatment of a sickness, a doctor must know the effects a medicine would have in its pure form on a healthy human being.This was followed by a second principle: One should apply in the disease to be healed that remedy which is able to stimulate another artificially produced disease as similar as possible, and the former will be healed – Similia Similibus – Like with Likes. This principle of ‘Homoeopathy’ [from the Greek homoios, similar, and pathos, disease], a word coined and used by Hahnemann, was set down in contrast to Contraria Contraris, [healing Opposites by Opposites] the other therapeutic method available at that time and named ‘allopathy’ [alloios, different]. 1.
He was sure at this stage that the smallness of a dose did not matter…He believed large doses aggravated the disease, because any medicinal substance could cause an adverse reaction unless administered in a proper dose. In 1811, all the work he had done till then culminated in ‘The Organon of Rational Healing’, his most important written work. For the title page of the book, he used as his motto the phrase ‘Aude Sapere’* or ‘Dare to be wise’. *see page 4.
He experimented also with poisons like arsenic and mercury in their pure form. But they produced an adverse reaction resulting in symptoms of sickness. This meant making healthy people sick, not sick people healthy. Where lay hidden the principle of cure ? He started administering dynamized or potencized drugs, pure substances reduced through a special process of dilution, rubbing and shaking and through the addition of an indifferent substance, dry or fluid to a negligible physical quantity, in the dose which was administered to a sick person.
About the result of potencization: “It will be realized that the quantity of the original substance left is very minute indeed, and to understand how such a trace can do any good at all, we must understand the basis of homoeopathic thought. Homoeopaths believe that once an active substance has been released from its physical manifestations, its spiritual energies are released, and that it is on this level that it will be able to help the patient. It is really the spirit of a substance that is being used” [Pathways to Alternative Medicine, E.G. Bartlett]. “From practical observation, Hahnemann found that the greater the potencization, the greater was the power of the medicine in curing the symptoms homoeopathically indicated… In the third potency, the degree of dilution is one-millionth. It may be difficult to imagine that in a dose say of 10,000 potency there would be some medicine left” [Homoeopathic Guide to Family Health, R.K. Tandon & Dr. V.R. Bajaj M.D].
In The Complete Homoeopathy Handbook, Miranda Castro, F.S. Hom. is candid about the fact that Hahnemann’s “process of dilution incurred… derision from [his contemporaries in] the medical establishment, who could not explain, and therefore could not accept, how anything so dilute could have any effect.”
THE FOUNDING PRINCIPLE
“The Organon was reprinted five times, and in later editions Hahnemann changed his thesis… He had earlier said that medicine should help the body’s self-healing process. Now he began to talk of a ‘vital force’ in the body. This vital force could be called ‘energy’ or ‘consciousness’ or the ‘universal intelligence’ of chiropractors, and Hahnemann said that it was this which gave rise to the body’s immune system and made the body heal itself… It was the ‘Ch’i’ of acupuncture, the ‘Ki’ of shiatzu. Like the acupuncturist, Hahnemann came to see disease as an imbalance in this vital force, and treatment became a question of restoring that balance. Like all the other alternative therapies, therefore, homoeopathy had a holistic approach. The patient had to be seen as a whole man in his environment, and all factors pertaining to his state, not just his present symptoms had to be considered when dealing with him… In this, they are [like] acupuncturists, who cannot point to the meridians of Ch’i because they are not there in a physical sense, but who know that they must have an existence or their healing system would not work.” [Bartlett].
“Homoeopathic remedies are believed to act upon the vital force, stimulating it to heal the body and restore the natural balance.” [Brockhampton Reference Guide to Alternative Medicine].
“In the Organon, Dr. Hahnemann laid down the fundamentals of the then-new doctrine of homoeopathy. He wrote, ‘Substances …are medicines only in so far as they possess each its own specific energy to alter the well-being of man… The medicinal properties of those material substances which we call medicines relates only to their energy to call out alterations in the well-being of animal life. Only upon this conceptual principle of life depends their medicinal influence…” [Tandon and Bajaj].
In Homoeopathy For All, Dr. V. Radha Krishna Murti who was Deputy President of the Indian Homoeopathic Organization with almost 40 years of practice behind him wrote, “Homoeo drugs are prepared by a special process of dynamization which retains only the energy relating to the drug in the globules, and not the material.
“Vital Force: A term used by Hahnemann to describe the energy that permeates all living beings.” [Castro]
IT WORKS ! BUT HOW ?
“Homoeopathy has been attacked again and again on the grounds that the potencised drugs cannot be tested in a laboratory... However laboratory tests have been going on in many countries and certain phenomena not acceptable to conventional science have been observed… On his ‘proving’ trials of the effects of substances on healthy human beings, Hahnemann says, ‘As this natural law of cure manifests itself in every pure experiment, it matters little what may be the scientific explanation of how it takes place’.” [Tandon & Bajaj].
“Homoeopathy is a science based on experience…[and] either stands or falls on the principle of similarity…[In] Similia Similibus Curentur [Like Cures Like]… we are not dealing with a law of similarity in the form of a generally applicable rule of physics or natural phenomenon on which homoeopathy purports to be based.” [Homoeopathy, Dr. W. Schwabe]. Schwabe are one of the world’s leading manufacturers of homoeopathic remedies.
“Homoeopaths have to confess that they do not know how their system works; they can only say that it does.” [Bartlett].
In Homoeopathy, The Complete Handbook Dr. K.P.S. Dhama and Dr. (Mrs.) Suman Dhama write, “We, the homoeopaths, devote a great deal of our time and attention to the correct and precise analysis of symptoms and, based on that analysis, continue to administer our ‘magic pills’ undeterred… 2.
“An eminent allopath of England, Dr. Compton Bennett said that if the homoeopathic method was kept secret, the governments of the world would have been surprised by its curative powers and would be prepared to give anything to learn its secrets. How true is his statement! Homoeopathic treatments, if correctly prescribed, work like magic.”
HAHNEMANN’S SPIRITUALITY
“Although brought up in a Protestant household, in later life he became a religious free-thinker, believing that God permeated every living thing. He also seems to have believed that he was divinely chosen and guided in his work” [Castro].
“He made it clear in the Organon and elsewhere, that he believed his new doctrine was inspired by God…”
[A biography of Samuel Hahnemann by Dr. Richard Haehl]. According to the French encyclopedia Larousse du Xxe siecle [1930] he was believed to received it through the ‘revelation of heavenly powers’, "revealed truth" directly from "God" whom he named "great spirit adored by the inhabitants of all the solar systems".
[Quotations from Hahnemann’s Organon of Rational Healing].
Dr. H.Unger [a homoeopath] gives a clear description of his spiritual personality: ‘Like Goethe, Hahnemann embodies the two streams of the classical German genre, the pantheistic idealism of nature and the rational idealism of Freemasonry’ (Swiss Journal of Homeopathy No.1/1962).
“The truly homeopathic doctor is initiated into this transcendental, spiritualist world. He must have knowledge ‘of the four states of matter: the solid, liquid, gaseous and radiant states” James T. Kent in The Science and The Art of Homeopathy.
Hahnemann has formulated a whole doctrine explaining man as a tripartite being: will and thought (the inward man); vital energy [spirit substance or immaterial essence]; and, the body, which is material.
HOMOEOPATHS SPEAK
“Just a single dose of this remedy will produce a seemingly miraculous cure. How does this cure occur ? As I said, we have no idea, but we do know the method of producing it. What exactly are the homoeopathic remedies ? Again, we do not really know. We only know how to prepare them… When we give a homoeopathic remedy, what are we giving?…Nobody knows. All we know is that it works” [Dr. Bill Gray MD., The Role of Homeopathy in Holistic Health Practice, Yoga Journal, Nov/Dec 1976].
Even his devout German biographer M. Gumpert [Hahnemann,die abenteuerlichen…] who compares him to Goethe, Kant and Martin Luther, is puzzled: “This way of practising homoeopathy is a unique psychic phenomenon”
Homoeopathic authority James Kent in his work Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, states that there are two worlds, the physical world and the invisible world, and says that the whole of homoeopathy is bound up in the invisible world.
It is to be noted that ALL of the opinions quoted above are not of opponents to the practice of homoeopathy, but of homoeopaths themselves and biographers of Hahnemann, and are therefore uninfluenced by possible Christian biases against him or the practice of homoeopathy. Christian critics of homoeopathy could not have done better than this to expose the real underpinnings of this supposedly scientific system of healing.
Do Christian writers on the NAM and its Alternative Medicines warn the believer against the use of homoeopathic medicine ?
I have examined around 40 such works and find that every single one of them definitely does. A study of these books reveals that the protagonists of homoeopathy have, either ignorantly or intentionally, withheld certain aspects of the philosophies and life and of its founder, while highlighting those areas that enhance his image as a crusader for healthy living, or lend support to the tenets of his philosophies and the credibilty of his remedies. These concealed aspects are relevant to the believer who has been using homoeopathy, and an awareness of them is critical to the decision that he or she must take, as we shall see.
A PSEUDO-SCIENCE
In Occult Shock and Psychic Forces, John Weldon and Clifford Wilson give some examples to show that there is no consensus among leading homoeopaths themselves who express divergent views as to the reasons for the working of homoepoathy. “After thoroughly studying the effects of homeopathy, Prof. G. Kuschinsky in his book Lehrbuch der Pharmakologie concludes ‘homoeopathic substances may be admitted in the realm of suggestion, seeing that they possess neither main nor secondary effect [pharmacologically].” Prof. Schwartz of Strasbourg who gives a course on pharmacology states ‘No study of homeopathy to date would appear to be significant. No experimentation authenticates the theory.”
In 1966, Dr. Fritz Donner MD., a homoeopath who made the scientific proof of homoeopathy his goal, published a paper in which he confessed all the failures and all the errors of homeopathy discovered during his years of research [Homoeopathy and Science, O. Prokop and L. Prokop]. In another similar experiment by Prof. H. Rabe, President of the German Homeopathic Society, it was found that “all those displaying symptoms had received placebos.”
[A placebo is a pill or liquid lacking any medicinal properties]. That is why homeopaths are not interested in these experiments and content themselves with their individual successes. Present -day medicine as taught in the universities speaks very little about homeopathy. Its basic literature as well as scientific periodicals do not mention it.
THE OCCULT CONNECTION
The Drs. Dhama [above] could not have been more precise. In the absence of any rational explanation or scientific evidence to validate homoeopathic claims, assessing the curative ‘powers’ of homoeopathic remedies as ‘magic’ is probably the truest statement that a homoeopath can ever make. The Christian vocabulary’s equivalent for ‘magic’ is ‘occult’. Christian writers on New Age themes provide extensive information on the following aspects of homoeopathy and its founder.
Hahnemann studied and delighted in the teachings of a Swiss occultic medical philosopher named Paracelsus (1493-1541). They stimulated his thinking and he developed some of his doctrines, including Similia Similbus, based on them.
He became a Freemason in 1777. ‘Aude Sapere’ is the motto of Freemasonry. He was an ardent follower of ex-Theosophist Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) of Sweden who taught his followers how to enter a state of consciousness that would put them in touch with spirit entities. His views on invisible life energy are shared by Rudolf Steiner, the pioneer of anthroposophy [wisdom of man]. Anthroposophy, Swedenborgianism and Freemasonry are treated in the Vatican Document on the New Age.
He adopted the practices of Franz Mesmer (1733-1815), a Swiss-German physician who founded the doctrine of animal magnetism called mesmerism. Mesmer used a hypnotic state to heal persons who were sick.
In the Organon, Hahnemann compared the similarities between homoeopathy and mesmerism. Consider this quote from the 6th edition of the Organon: “I find it yet necessary to allude here to animal magnetism… or rather Mesmerism… It is a marvelous, priceless gift of God.”
His ‘vital force’ is the ‘prana’ of yogic philosophy, the monistic ‘universal life force’ that many traditions see as God.
His predominant strain of pantheism would place God everywhere, in each man, each animal, plant, flower, cell, even in homeopathic medicine. As a matter of fact the vocabulary of the Organon is esoteric and its ideas are impregnated with oriental philosophies like Confucianism and Hinduism into whose philosophies his biographers have recorded that he delved. He lived at a time when especially Chinese thought and the teachings of Confucius were increasing in popularity in Europe. For one who claimed divine revelation from God for his principles of homoeopathy, the occult makes a strange bed-fellow.
What could be the source of this revelation, when he is known to have spoken derogatorily about the Son of God ? [2Cor. 4:4]
HAHNEMANN ON JESUS CHRIST
A. Fritsche, his biographer writes “He took offence at the arch-enthusiast Jesus of Nazareth who did not lead the enlightened on the straight way to wisdom, but who wanted to struggle with sinners on a difficult path towards the establishment of the kingdom of God… the man of sorrows who took the darkness of the world on Himself was an offence to the lover of etheric wisdom... Hahnemann certainly was not a Christian… In his struggles as a spiritual seeker, in his plight for enlightenment, he is strongly attracted to the East. Confucius is his ideal.”
From a letter on Confucius and Confucian philosophy, Fritsche quotes Hahnemann:
“This is where you can read divine wisdom, without miracle-myths and superstition. I regard it as an important sign of our times that Confucius is now available for us to read. Soon I will embrace him in the kingdom of blissful spirits, the benefactor of humanity, who has shown us the straight path to wisdom and to God, already 650 years before the arch-enthusiast” [Die Idee der Homoeopathie].
His biographer Gumpert [cited above] says that he was influenced by animism and was also into other Eastern religions.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH THE NEW AGE
Especially in the U.S, alternative therapies like chiropractic and applied kinesiology use homeopathic remedies. Parallels are drawn between homoeopathy and Bach Flower Remedies, a New Age therapy based on Dr. Edward Bach’s process of ‘potentising’ plants, herbs and flowers, in books on New Age medicine. Because of its occult background and theories of healing, many homoeopaths have no difficulty in employing other New Age techniques like psychic diagnosis, astrology, pendulum dowsing [radionics] and healing with gems, crystals and colours in the selection of drugs, medical diagnosis and preparation of remedies. There is extensive documentation on this.
George Vithoulkas’ Homeopathy, Medicine for the New Man begins with a chapter titled ‘Coming of the New Age’ and his last chapter is ‘Promise for the New Age’. He says, “The real purpose of homeopathy is to open the higher centers (brain) for spiritual and celestial influx. The purpose is to become one with yourself, one with the universe, through your mind”, a New Age goal.
CATHOLICS SPEAK
1. The December 2003 issue of the Slovak charismatic magazine Zivy Pramen [Living Spring] carried an article contributed by Dr. Vladimir Biba, State Department of Drug Control of the Czech Republic, and Fr. Ales Franc, former member of the Czech Homoepathic Society. The article provides evidence to support all that has been already said above, also quoting Hahnemann’s criticism of Jesus Christ as, in their translation of ‘arch-enthusiast’, a fool.
Some extracts:
The activity of Hahnemann to make use of mesmerism opened his mind for demonic contacts.
The rudiments of homoeopathy are Gnostic principles. Homoeopathic law sets on a very little quantity of substance, involution and dynamic power - nothing else but an application of gnosticism.
Hahnemann admired Swedenborg who was a gnostic.
Some of the homeopathic healers or physicians misuse God’s Word and Christian religion. Examples:
Dr. Bartak: to look at the bronze snake (Num. 21) "is a way of a homoeopathic healing".
Dethlefsen: The blood of Christ given to the apostles at the Last Supper is "homoeopathic concentrated blood, continuously being practised to reach a high homoeopathic involutioned [diluted] medicine".
The homoeopath Zentrich says: "It was Jesus Christ, who showed us the highest level of the homoeopathic law of similarity – (‘Like cures Like’ principle), when he conquered death through death."
2. Esoteric Practices and Christian Faith, An Aid to Discernment, Fr. Clemens Pilar Cop, Vienna, 2003.
Apart from its scientific questionability, homoeopathy is an important carrier of esoteric ideas. If somebody asserts… that homoeopathy has nothing to do with esotericism, then this is factually wrong… We see an introduction of an impersonal force as the life giving principle. This idea is found in Gnostic tradition as well… (In homoeopathic teaching) behind the visible material body of man, there is an energy body (depending on your culture- or in the esoteric sense- on your taste, whether it is called chi, prana, Vis Vitalis…etc]…
Vitalism teaches that man is animated by a ‘vital soul’ i.e a ‘spirit-like vital energy’ (as Hahnemann himself put it).
This Vis Vitalis (Latin for life force) is nothing else but a ‘second soul’ or an ‘unconscious’ soul… Here homoeopathy depends on the idea that- seen from the Christian point of view- very definitely can be characterised as problematical.
3. At the February 2004 Asian Seminar on Healing and Deliverance in Ernakulam, Fr. Larry Hogan, Chief Exorcist of the Archdiocese of Vienna, when answering questions raised concerning the nature of homoeopathy, said that ‘homoeopathy is magic’, that he would not recommend anyone to use it, and that in Europe an estimated 80% of homoeopaths use occult practices for the selection, preparation and prescription of remedies.
Fr. Larry repeated this firmly a second time in a subsequent session. The Semina was organizerd by the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Fr. Pilar confirms this statistic in his book.
MORE CONFIRMATION: FR. MULLER’s HOMOEOPATHIC COLLEGE in MANGALORE
The annual magazines, Pioneer, of the Fr. Muller Homoeopathic Medical College and Hospital, Mangalore, founded by Jesuit missionary Fr. Augustus Muller in 1880, and run by the Diocese of Mangalore, only authenticate our earlier findings. The Freemasonic motto “Aude Sapere”* is printed in several of their issues. *see page 4
They admit that “[This] system of medicine has been struggled (sic) from the time of Dr. Hahnemann till today with lots of criticism” and hence they still continue to reproduce articles in “attempts to justify the scientific basis of homoeopathy” [2003].
“Homoeopathy has made claims of magical cures… Do [homoeopathic prescriptions] really effect any cure ?… Some of the cases do respond, but a majority have no effect”. “Homoeopathy as science of medicine… and as an art of practice, both the areas are explosive and fraught with controversies… Many remedies are partially or unreliably proved… Efforts have been made to provide statistical and scientific data in favour of homoeopathy. However, the scientific community have either refused to take a look or found the explanations above their scientific bent of mind” [1998].
It really means that the ‘explanations’ are not in the realm of science. Why do its proponents feel a desperate need to justify homoeopathy as a science or question its effectiveness as a remedy two centuries after its origination ?
Is it because they themselves need convincing ?
The 1994 and 1998 Pioneers recommend using Bach Flower Remedies [BFR] and yoga with homoeopathy, respectively.
We learn the use of gems and colours, as well as pranayama, the “life energy, vital force or prana” to heal disease in the issue of 2000. The 1999 issue teaches use of the New Age Alexander Technique, aromatherapy, BFR, tai chi, yoga and meditation. The 2003 issue carries articles on BFR, Universal Life Force Energy – Reiki, The Chakras [“gateways for the flow of life and energy into our physical bodies”] and Tachyon - The Energy with Healing Power. An excerpt from the last-mentioned article:
“In addition to the material physical body that we perceive with our senses, we have several other layers of energetic bodies… The energy… comes from one source. In India, it is called the Divine Mother. Christians call it the Holy Spirit, and in many modern new age spiritual teachings, it is called Cosmic Energy.” 5.
The article, like others, also talks of the ‘subtle energy’ of the ‘subtle body’ [which are ‘vital energy’ equivalents] commonly used in Freemasonic and Theosophical esoteric writings.
The common denominator in all the above ‘alternative’ techniques, including homoeopathy, is the ‘life force’ principle. Their inclusion is for the purpose of justifying or reinforcing, as it were, belief in the homoeopathic concept of ‘vital energy’. If it were not so, they would not find place in an annual that promotes a supposed modern medical science.
One Pioneer issue mentions the use of Kirlian photography that reportedly maps the aura. The 1999 Pioneer features an essay on how to induce hypnotic trance states in a patient. Pioneer 2000 teaches mudras [hand gestures] for healing- physical, intellectual, spiritual[or holistic]; and music therapy [different ragas to heal different diseases]. There is almost a cultic reverence for Hahnemann who is often referred to as “our Master”. Misuse of homoeopathic practice “is called as criminal treason of Divine Homoeopathy according to our Dr. Samuel Hahnemann” [emphasis theirs, 2000].
“It is a sin to name homoeopathy linked with his followers or disciples, or by terming it as …scientific etc.” [2003].
DIE-HARD ENTHUSUIASTS
Says Fr. Pilar, “There is a historical trail from homoeopathy to the Bach-flowers (Eduard Bach, the inventor of this therapy began his career as a homoeopath). Even today, many patients follow the same trail. Once the door to irrationalism has been opened, there is no stopping.” Prof. Dr. Raynaud, homoeopath and director of Pharmaceutical Faculty in Lyon, France, said about homoeopathy: "As soon as you start with it, you stay loyal to it. Perhaps that is why so many physicians in France are literally addicted to it." [Zivy Pramen]
There are, to be sure, some honourable and conscientious ones seeking to utilize a homeopathy detached from its esoteric practices. The question is, ‘can it ?’, rather than ‘can they ?’ Of course, those who see some sort of scientific energy at work in water divining, or who believe that water divination is a gift from God, will see no cause of concern in using homoeopathy.
REASONS AND RISKS
As Christians we need to understand why homoeopathy, and indeed many other seemingly ridiculous New Age alternative therapies, are not discounted or abandoned. The reason is simple. THEY WORK!
What answer can be given to someone who says he took a remedy and it worked ? The Christan believer is obliged to make a discerning enquiry to find out why they work. Articles like this provide the searcher with information in that direction. Everyone will have probably heard reports of how a friends or relative was wonderfully cured by a homoeopathic remedy.
But the question is: What was it that actually healed them ? The cosmic occult vital force in the remedy ?
The accompanying measures (no smoking, no alcohol, dieting, taking a holiday) ? Or faith in the healer or his remedies?
About a century ago, the first experiments were conducted with placebos, tablets with no active ingredients. The researchers discovered that, more important than the substantial effect of many medications, is the faith [both, of the doctor as well as the patient] in the effect of the remedy. The placebo effect is probably the most important factor in the success of homoeopathic remedies. The least probable factor in a cure is the homoeopathic remedy itself. All genuine clinical trials have determined that the ‘cures’ are due to either the placebo effect, time itself and the body’s self-healing ability, or auto-suggestion.
Additionally, for the Christian, is the occult factor to be considered.
Supporters also claim that there are no risks from homeopathic treatment. They say that the ultra dilute remedies are safer and cheaper than most prescription drugs. First, it has been shown that several homeopathic remedies for asthma actually were contaminated with large amounts of artificial steroids. Second, some remedies do contain measurable amounts of the critical substance. If a patient takes 4 tablets daily of mercury D4, he would receive a potentially toxic dose. And a dose of D6 cadmium exceeds the safe limits. Finally, a D6 or less dose of Aristolochia contains significant amounts of this cancer-causing herb.
Therefore we cannot easily and quickly claim that homeopathic remedies are always safe. There is an additional risk of seeking homeopathic treatment. If someone is ill and requires immediate medical treatment, any delay could have serious consequences. These risks are present with all alternative medical care.
Where should we draw the proverbial ‘line’ either to take a homoeopathic remedy, or not ? It would be naïve for one to expect a clear response from those who give homeopathic treatment. Obviously this is a question of conscience everyone will have to answer for himself after reading this report.
Most homoeopathic practitioners want nothing else than soft medicine. The foundations and the effects of these remedies are dubious to say the least. It should not be too difficult to do without homoeopathy. There are many herbal remedies which are, without unnecessary dilution, at least as effective in exerting their natural healing power free of undesired side effects.
However, the thinking of many runs so deep in the ruts of homoeopathic reasoning that they are no longer able of critically evaluating these disturbing facts.
OBJECTIONS
1. A set of arguments, ones that were made by a Catholic homoeopathic doctor recently in a Catholic fortnightly [in response to the Vatican Document and also probably to my earlier write-up], who is ‘alarmed by… remarks’ that ‘homoeopathy has recently been labelled by some as an evil therapy, occult practice, primitive science and so on’ , is that ‘all healings are the handiwork of God’, that ‘homoeopathy is a 200-year time-tested healing art and science’, that ‘the origin of the vital force is the Holy Spirit who is God’, and that the vital energy is the energy of ‘God the Creator… flowing through sun and moon,… animal and human bodies’.
She claims that ‘each substance, whether animate or inanimate, possesses this energy by virtue of motion of its atomic particles,’ that ‘this energy can easily be recorded by modern instruments’ and that ‘the homoeopathic remedy resonates with this energy’.
Scientific tests are objective. When performed under the same conditions, they follow certain physical laws and produce the same specific results. Homoeopathy is subjective, and does not, as science confirms. Any honest homoeopath will admit to that. In contrast to the prevailing medicine of his day which treated only the disease, Hahnemann sought to treat a person holistically. Homoeopaths enquire into the social, emotional and spiritual life of a patient before deciding their course of action.
All healings are certainly NOT the handiwork of God.
These include psychic healings, healings by shamans and voodoo doctors, and those of alternative medicines like reiki and pranic healing that too are founded on the ‘vital energy’ life force principle.
If indeed there were such a thing as the ‘vital energy’ then it would certainly be recorded by 21st century medical instruments. But no such discovery has been documented. The doctor also will remember that after potencizing and dilution, there is not a molecule left of the original substance selected, and consequently no possibilty of using or detecting this non-existent energy .
More importantly, Hahnemann and fellow homoeopaths insist that it is a spiritual energy, not a material one, [a fact that the doctor conveniently ignores], which precludes the possibilty of quantification. And, in the Biblical revelation of man as a tripartite being, there is no evidence of any aspect of him, or creation, that is a spiritual energy.
Certainly, man is spirit, soul and body. But that spirit is not the energy that is manipulated for healing in New Age medicine, that was ‘divinely revealed’ to Hahnemann, and that forms the basis for his philosophies of homoeopathy as set forth in the Organon.
Since homoeopathy as a holistic health practice meets all the conditions treated in the referred Vatican Document, it qualifies as a New Age alternative therapy. In fact, it has been called the ‘flagship of holistic health deception among Christians’. When physicians use homeopathy, they actually offer their patients the philosophy and spirituality of the New Age Movement.
2. The writer also received the following questionnaire from a priest sincerely seeking answers to common difficulties:
A. Is there any other reliable source from the medical field who has doubted or questioned the credibility and effectiveness of homeopathy ?
B. What about the doctors, who neither know about nor care for the founder, but have seen through experience that it benefits a lot of people ?
C. What about patients who, after having tried allopathy in vain, have turned finally to homeopathy and seen it works for them and been thankful to God for having brought them to something that has cured them ?
They will never ever know about its founder and New Age means nothing to them ?
As a concerned fellow Christian what will you say to them ?
BOGUS OPERANDI
Just because something ‘works’, it is not good enough reason for Christian acceptance.
Astrology, necromancy and divination WORK. Which is why God forbade their use, warning His people that there existed dark powers which they must distance themselves from.
“See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ” [Col. 2:8]. Paul is teaching that humanistic thoughts and ideas are not a neutral as we like to imagine. There are spiritual forces at work behind the basic philosophical assumptions upon which man builds his society.
Ignorance, in all cases, is not bliss.
As Christians engaged in constant spiritual warfare, we are enjoined by Scripture to increase our knowledge and discern the signs of the times [Hosea 4:6; 1 Chron. 12:33]. Spiritual inquiry is a commendable thing.
It is the Vatican’s awareness of the subtlety of New Age philosophy and practice that resulted in its producing such a Document.
Hence the two significant words “now recognized’’ [n 1.3] in the first page of this write-up.
Healing may not be in God’s will for a person in a particular situation.
A friend of the writer failed to be relieved of a painful complaint after two visits to a popular retreat centre, but was healed when she submitted herself to pranic healing.
Psychic healing and dowsing have been around for longer than 200 years. Does that make them any less spiritually dangerous ? Longevity is not a guarantee of validity. Nor is the popular acceptance of something.
Colleges now offer post-graduate degree courses in homeopathy. Degrees in the ‘science’ of vedic astrology too will soon be on offer. Does that make it any more credible ? By and large doctors don’t like what they see as an absence of science, but it is much worse than that. As a holistic healing system, it offers treatments for everything from Aids to ‘examination funk’ to ‘fear that something might come out of a corner’. A short ode to homoeopathy in the 1998 Pioneer self-advertises its diverse ‘applications’:
“When food seems lumpy,
Bed seems bumpy,
Wife is grumpy,
Nerves are jumpy,
Give Nux Vom.”
OTHER PROBLEMS
John Hoenigburger introduced homoeopathy to India more than 150 years ago, but with 150 homoeopathic colleges and over 200, 000 practitioners, there is no national policy for homoeopathic remedies, or a standard guideline for manufacturing them. For users of homoeopathic remedies there is always the danger that comes from self-prescribing and where poisons are used, and from failing to take timely allopathic medical treatment in favour of homoeopathy, in cases that could turn out to be critical.
And, to answer the Reverend Father’s first question, hundreds of doctors have, after research, concluded that homoeopathy is fundamentally unscientific and is not a legitimate medical practice.
“The International WHO Centre for research of undesirable effects of drugs and medicine in Uppsalla, Sweden noticed cases of damaged health, some of them very seriously, after treatment with homoeopathy” says Zivy Pramen.
Says Fr. Pilar, “It is not correct to say that a rejection of homoeopathy only happens due to a lack of knowledge. Scientifically founded criticism comes from highly competent experts. Prof. Otto Prokop in his book Homoeopathie- Was leistet sie wirklich ? quotes a whole list of such scientists.
One of the outstanding critics, Prof. Fritz Donner, was even a former homoeopath himself. We can hardly attribute his critical attitude to lack of competence.
A professor of pathology, Dr. Werner Dutz said, Homoeopathy is voodoo.
That is the only thing doctors can say about it.
As far as the philosophical aspect is concerned, it should be assessed by the priests, who should rack their brains about it, but it is not the task of the medical sciences to deal with this.”
TAIL PIECE
After reading my earlier detailed analysis, several Catholic users of these ‘remedies’ informed me that they have discontinued taking them, while one doctor has given up the teaching and practice of homoeopathy.
I pray the same for this short version too.
The Christian, seeking to walk in the light and in obedience to his Lord, must not allow himself to be seduced by every brand of the ‘in’ philosophy and practice, especially when it comes to finding help for his body, the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 COR 6:19). That is why it is so important to examine the doctrinal origins and basis of Homoeopathy.
Homeopathy’s message to Western medicine is, to put it bluntly, ‘Everything you know is wrong!’
“Christian and non-Christian alike may be drawn to homeopathy because of its emphasis on the body’s efforts to heal itself and its shunning of drugs and surgery. A few enthusiastic Christians argue that Hahnemann’s system is a gift from God,an answer to the medical establishment which they view as steeped in secular humanism. Despite many claims and alleged parallels to modern medical practices and phenomena, homeopathy is not a legitimate medical practice.
Until it has been categorically and scientifically proved that cure is rooted in a measurable physical reaction or change within the body, one must assume that the power behind homeopathy is spiritual and has side effects.
Need we say any more ?
Only that the Vatican is fully justified in warning Catholics against the New Age dangers of Homoeopathy by including a mention of it in the Document
More articles by Michael Prahbu
HOMOEOPATHY AN UNSCIENTIFIC NEW AGE FRAUD
http://ephesians-511.net/docs/HOMOEOPATHY_%20AN_UNSCIENTIFIC_NEW_AGE_FRAUD.doc
HOMOEOPATHY BBC THE TEST
http://ephesians-511.net/docs/HOMOEOPATHY_BBC_THE_TEST.doc
REPORT: HOMOEOPATHY INSTITUTIONALIZED IN THE INDIAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
http://ephesians-511.net/docs/HOMOEOPATHY%20INSTITUTIONALIZED%20IN%20THE%20INDIAN%20CATHOLIC%20CHURCH.doc
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
Basic Misbeliefs
Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician, began formulating homeopathy's basic principles in the late 1700s. Hahnemann was justifiably distressed about bloodletting, leeching, purging, and other medical procedures of his day that did far more harm than good. Thinking that these treatments were intended to "balance the body's 'humors' by opposite effects," he developed his "law of similars"—a notion that symptoms of disease can be cured by extremely small amounts of substances that produce similar symptoms in healthy people when administered in large amounts. The word "homeopathy" is derived from the Greek words homoios (similar) and pathos (suffering or disease).
Hahnemann and his early followers conducted "provings" in which they administered herbs, minerals, and other substances to healthy people, including themselves, and kept detailed records of what they observed. Later these records were compiled into lengthy reference books called materia medica, which are used to match a patient's symptoms with a "corresponding" drug.
Hahnemann declared that diseases represent a disturbance in the body's ability to heal itself and that only a small stimulus is needed to begin the healing process. He also claimed that chronic diseases were manifestations of a suppressed itch (psora), a kind of miasma or evil spirit. At first he used small doses of accepted medications. But later he used enormous dilutions and theorized that the smaller the dose, the more powerful the effect—a notion commonly referred to as the "law of infinitesimals." That, of course, is just the opposite of the dose-response relationship that pharmacologists have demonstrated.
The basis for inclusion in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia is not modern scientific testing, but homeopathic "provings" conducted during the 1800s and early 1900s. The current (ninth) edition describes how more than a thousand substances are prepared for homeopathic use. It does not identify the symptoms or diseases for which homeopathic products should be used; that is decided by the practitioner (or manufacturer). The fact that substances listed in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia are legally recognized as "drugs" does not mean that either the law or the FDA recognizes them as effective.
Because homeopathic remedies were actually less dangerous than those of nineteenth-century medical orthodoxy, many medical practitioners began using them. At the turn of the twentieth century, homeopathy had about 14,000 practitioners and 22 schools in the United States. But as medical science and medical education advanced, homeopathy declined sharply in America, where its schools either closed or converted to modern methods. The last pure homeopathic school in this country closed during the 1920s [1].
Many homeopaths maintain that certain people have a special affinity to a particular remedy (their "constitutional remedy") and will respond to it for a variety of ailments. Such remedies can be prescribed according to the person's "constitutional type"—named after the corresponding remedy in a manner resembling astrologic typing. The "Ignatia Type," for example, is said to be nervous and often tearful, and to dislike tobacco smoke. The typical "Pulsatilla" is a young woman, with blond or light-brown hair, blue eyes, and a delicate complexion, who is gentle, fearful, romantic, emotional, and friendly but shy. The "Nux Vomica Type" is said to be aggressive, bellicose, ambitious, and hyperactive. The "Sulfur Type" likes to be independent. And so on. Does this sound to you like a rational basis for diagnosis and treatment?
At Best, the "Remedies" Are Placebos
Homeopathic products are made from minerals, botanical substances, and several other sources. If the original substance is soluble, one part is diluted with either nine or ninety-nine parts of distilled water and/or alcohol and shaken vigorously (succussed); if insoluble, it is finely ground and pulverized in similar proportions with powdered lactose (milk sugar). One part of the diluted medicine is then further diluted, and the process is repeated until the desired concentration is reached. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (1X = 1/10, 3X = 1/1,000, 6X = 1/1,000,000). Similarly, dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C = 1/100, 3C = 1/1,000,000, and so on). Most remedies today range from 6X to 30X, but products of 30C or more are marketed.
A 30X dilution means that the original substance has been diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth. Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's "law of infinitesimals" is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, a 30C solution would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water. This would require a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth.
Oscillococcinum, a 200C product "for the relief of colds and flu-like symptoms," involves "dilutions" that are even more far-fetched. Its "active ingredient" is prepared by incubating small amounts of a freshly killed duck's liver and heart for 40 days. The resultant solution is then filtered, freeze-dried, rehydrated, repeatedly diluted, and impregnated into sugar granules. If a single molecule of the duck's heart or liver were to survive the dilution, its concentration would be 1 in 100200. This huge number, which has 400 zeroes, is vastly greater than the estimated number of molecules in the universe (about one googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes). In its February 17, 1997, issue, U.S. News & World Report noted that only one duck per year is needed to manufacture the product, which had total sales of $20 million in 1996. The magazine dubbed that unlucky bird "the $20-million duck."
Actually, the laws of chemistry state that there is a limit to the dilution that can be made without losing the original substance altogether. This limit, which is related to Avogadro's number, corresponds to homeopathic potencies of 12C or 24X (1 part in 1024). Hahnemann himself realized that there is virtually no chance that even one molecule of original substance would remain after extreme dilutions. But he believed that the vigorous shaking or pulverizing with each step of dilution leaves behind a "spirit-like" essence—"no longer perceptible to the senses"—which cures by reviving the body's "vital force." Modern proponents assert that even when the last molecule is gone, a "memory" of the substance is retained. This notion is unsubstantiated. Moreover, if it were true, every substance encountered by a molecule of water might imprint an "essence" that could exert powerful (and unpredictable) medicinal effects when ingested by a person.
Many proponents claim that homeopathic products resemble vaccines because both provide a small stimulus that triggers an immune response. This comparison is not valid. The amounts of active ingredients in vaccines are much greater and can be measured. Moreover, immunizations produce antibodies whose concentration in the blood can be measured, but high-dilution homeopathic products produce no measurable response. In addition, vaccines are used preventively, not for curing symptoms.
Stan Polanski, a physician assistant working in public health near Asheville, North Carolina, has provided additional insights:
Imagine how many compounds must be present, in quantities of a molecule or more, in every dose of a homeopathic drug. Even under the most scrupulously clean conditions, airborne dust in the manufacturing facility must carry thousands of different molecules of biological origin derived from local sources (bacteria, viruses, fungi, respiratory droplets, sloughed skin cells, insect feces) as well as distant ones (pollens, soil particles, products of combustion), along with mineral particles of terrestrial and even extraterrestrial origin (meteor dust). Similarly, the "inert" diluents used in the process must have their own library of microcontaminants.
The dilution/potentiation process in homeopathy involves a stepwise dilution carried to fantastic extremes, with "succussion" between each dilution. Succussion involves shaking or rapping the container a certain way. During the step-by-step dilution process, how is the emerging drug preparation supposed to know which of the countless substances in the container is the One that means business? How is it that thousands (millions?) of chemical compounds know that they are required to lay low, to just stand around while the Potent One is anointed to the status of Healer? That this scenario could lead to distinct products uniquely suited to treat particular illnesses is beyond implausible.
Thus, until homeopathy's apologists can supply a plausible (nonmagical) mechanism for the "potentiation"-through-dilution of precisely one of the many substances in each of their products, it is impossible to accept that they have correctly identified the active ingredients in their products. Any study claiming to demonstrate effectiveness of a homeopathic medication should be rejected out-of-hand unless it includes a list of all the substances present in concentrations equal to or greater than the purported active ingredient at every stage of the dilution process, along with a rationale for rejecting each of them as a suspect.
The process of "proving" through which homeopaths decided which medicine matches which symptom is no more sensible. Provings involved taking various substances recording every twitch, sneeze, ache or itch that occurred afterward—often for several days. Homeopathy's followers take for granted that every sensation reported was caused by whatever substance was administered, and that extremely dilute doses of that substance would then be just the right thing to treat anyone with those specific symptoms.
Dr. Park has noted that to expect to get even one molecule of the "medicinal" substance allegedly present in 30X pills, it would be necessary to take some two billion of them, which would total about a thousand tons of lactose plus whatever impurities the lactose contained.
Cell Salts
Some homeopathic manufacturers market twelve highly diluted mineral products called "cell salts" or "tissue salts." These are claimed to be effective against a wide variety of diseases, including appendicitis (ruptured or not), baldness, deafness, insomnia, and worms. Their use is based on the notion that mineral deficiency is the basic cause of disease. However, many are so diluted that they could not correct a mineral deficiency even if one were present. Development of this approach is attributed to a nineteenth-century physician named W.H. Schuessler.
"Electrodiagnosis"
Some physicians, dentists, and chiropractors use "electrodiagnostic" devices to help select the homeopathic remedies they prescribe. These practitioners claim they can determine the cause of any disease by detecting the "energy imbalance" causing the problem. Some also claim that the devices can detect whether someone is allergic or sensitive to foods, vitamins, and/or other substances. The procedure, called electroacupuncture according to Voll (EAV), electrodiagnosis, or electrodermal screening, was begun during the late 1950s by Reinhold Voll, M.D., a West German physician who developed the original device. Subsequent models include the Vega, Dermatron, Accupath 1000, and Interro.
Proponents claim these devices measure disturbances in the flow of "electro-magnetic energy" along the body's "acupuncture meridians." Actually, they are fancy galvanometers that measure electrical resistance of the patient's skin when touched by a probe. Each device contains a low-voltage source. One wire from the device goes to a brass cylinder covered by moist gauze, which the patient holds in one hand. A second wire is connected to a probe, which the operator touches to "acupuncture points" on the patient's foot or other hand. This completes a circuit, and the device registers the flow of current. The information is then relayed to a gauge that provides a numerical readout. The size of the number depends on how hard the probe is pressed against the patient's skin. Recent versions, such as the Interro make sounds and provide the readout on a computer screen. The treatment selected depends on the scope of the practitioner's practice and may include acupuncture, dietary change, and/or vitamin supplements, as well as homeopathic products. Regulatory agencies have seized several types of electroacupuncture devices but have not made a systematic effort to drive them from the marketplace.
For more information about these devices and pictures of some of them, click here. If you encounter such a device, please read this article and report the device to the practitioner's state licensing board, the state attorney general, the Federal Trade Commission, the FBI, the National Fraud Information Center, and any insurance company to which the practitioner submits claims that involve use of the device. For the addresses of these agencies, click here.
Unimpressive "Research"
Since many homeopathic remedies contain no detectable amount of active ingredient, it is impossible to test whether they contain what their label says. Unlike most potent drugs, they have not been proven effective against disease by double-blind clinical testing. In fact, the vast majority of homeopathic products have never even been tested; proponents simply rely on "provings" to tell them what should work.
In 1990, an article in Review of Epidemiology analyzed 40 randomized trials that had compared homeopathic treatment with standard treatment, a placebo, or no treatment. The authors concluded that all but three of the trials had major flaws in their design and that only one of those three had reported a positive result. The authors concluded that there is no evidence that homeopathic treatment has any more value than a placebo [2].
In 1994, the journal Pediatrics published an article claiming that homeopathic treatment had been demonstrated to be effective against mild cases of diarrhea among Nicaraguan children [3]. The claim was based on findings that, on certain days, the "treated" group had fewer loose stools than the placebo group. However, Sampson and London noted: (1) the study used an unreliable and unproved diagnostic and therapeutic scheme, (2) there was no safeguard against product adulteration, (3) treatment selection was arbitrary, (4) the data were oddly grouped and contained errors and inconsistencies, (5) the results had questionable clinical significance, and (6) there was no public health significance because the only remedy needed for mild childhood diarrhea is adequate fluid intake to prevent or correct dehydration [4].
In 1995, Prescrire International, a French journal that evaluates pharmaceutical products, published a literature review that concluded:
As homeopathic treatments are generally used in conditions with variable outcome or showing spontaneous recovery (hence their placebo-responsiveness), these treatments are widely considered to have an effect in some patients. However, despite the large number of comparative trials carried out to date there is no evidence that homeopathy is any more effective than placebo therapy given in identical conditions.In December 1996, a lengthy report was published by the Homoeopathic Medicine Research Group (HMRG), an expert panel convened by the Commission of the European Communities. The HMRG included homeopathic physician-researchers and experts in clinical research, clinical pharmacology, biostatistics, and clinical epidemiology. Its aim was to evaluate published and unpublished reports of controlled trials of homeopathic treatment. After examining 184 reports, the panelists concluded: (1) only 17 were designed and reported well enough to be worth considering; (2) in some of these trials, homeopathic approaches may have exerted a greater effect than a placebo or no treatment; and (3) the number of participants in these 17 trials was too small to draw any conclusions about the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment for any specific condition [5]. Simply put: Most homeopathic research is worthless, and no homeopathic product has been proven effective for any therapeutic purpose. The National Council Against Health Fraud has warned that "the sectarian nature of homeopathy raises serious questions about the trustworthiness of homeopathic researchers." [6]In 1997, a London health authority decided to stop paying for homeopathic treatment after concluding that there was not enough evidence to support its use. The Lambeth, Southwark, and Lewisham Health Authority had been referring more than 500 patients per year to the Royal Homoeopathic Hospital in London. Public health doctors at the authority reviewed the published scientific literature as part of a general move toward purchasing only evidence-based treatments. The group concluded that many of the studies were methodologically flawed and that recent research produced by the Royal Homoeopathic Hospital contained no convincing evidence that homeopathy offered clinical benefit [7].
In 2007, another review team concluded that homeopathic provings have been so poorly designed that the data they have generated is not trustworthy [8].
Proponents trumpet the few "positive" studies as proof that "homeopathy works." Even if their results can be consistently reproduced (which seems unlikely), the most that the study of a single remedy for a single disease could prove is that the remedy is effective against that disease. It would not validate homeopathy's basic theories or prove that homeopathic treatment is useful for other diseases.
Placebo effects can be powerful, of course, but the potential benefit of relieving symptoms with placebos should be weighed against the harm that can result from relying upon—and wasting money on—ineffective products. Spontaneous remission is also a factor in homeopathy's popularity. I believe that most people who credit a homeopathic product for their recovery would have fared equally well without it.
Homeopaths claim to provide care that is safer, gentler, "natural," and less expensive than conventional care—and more concerned with prevention. However, homeopathic treatments prevent nothing, and many homeopathic leaders preach against immunization. Equally bad, a report on the National Center for Homeopathy's 1997 conference described how a homeopathic physician had suggested using homeopathic products to help prevent and treat coronary artery disease. According to the article, the speaker recommended various 30C and 200C products as alternatives to aspirin or cholesterol-lowering drugs, both of which are proven to reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes [9].
Illegal Marketing
In a survey conducted in 1982, the FDA found some over-the-counter products being marketed for serious illnesses, including heart disease, kidney disorders, and cancer. An extract of tarantula was being purveyed for multiple sclerosis; an extract of cobra venom for cancer.
In 1984, the FDA warned Botanical Laboratories, Inc., of Bellingham, Washington, that none of its homeopathic products could be legally marketed with drug claims because they did not have FDA approval to make such claims. The illegal claims included effectivness against angina pectoris, heart rhythm distrubances, hypoglycemia, gout, pneumonia, and lung abscess [10].
America's most blatant homeopathic marketer appears to be Biological Homeopathic Industries (BHI) of Albuquerque, New Mexico, which, in 1983, sent a 123-page catalog to 200,000 physicians nationwide. Its products included BHI Anticancer Stimulating, BHI Antivirus, BHI Stroke, and 50 other types of tablets claimed to be effective against serious diseases. In 1984, the FDA forced BHI to stop distributing several of the products and to tone down its claims for others. However, BHI has continued to make illegal claims. Its 1991 Physicians' Reference ("for use only by health care professionals") inappropriately recommended products for heart failure, syphilis, kidney failure, blurred vision, and many other serious conditions. The company's publishing arm issues the quarterly Biological Therapy: Journal of Natural Medicine, which regularly contains articles whose authors make questionable claims. An article in the April 1992 issue, for example, listed "indications" for using BHI and Heel products (distributed by BHI) for more than fifty conditions—including cancer, angina pectoris, and paralysis. And the October 1993 issue, devoted to the homeopathic treatment of children, includes an article recommending products for acute bacterial infections of the ear and tonsils. The article is described as selections from Heel seminars given in several cities by a Nevada homeopath who also served as medical editor of Biological Therapy. In 1993, Heel published a 500-page hardcover book describing how to use its products to treat about 450 conditions [11]. Twelve pages of the book cover "Neoplasia and neoplastic phases of disease." (Neoplasm is a medical term for tumor.) In March 1998, during an osteopathic convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, a Heel exhibitor distributed copies of the book when asked for detailed information on how to use Heel products. A 2000 edition is larger but does not have the neoplasia section [12].
Between June 1987 and September 1994, the FDA issued at least five more warning letters to homeopathic marketers:
- Bio-Botanica was ordered to stop marketing "Nature's Answer" brand Homeopatic Herpes Cream for the relief of skin eruptions cases by Herpes viruses. The notice also warned that the company's Acne Remedy and Allergy Remedy were misbranded [13].
- BHI was ordered to stop making claims that BHI Cold, which contained sulfur and pulsatilla, were effective against mumps, whooping cough, chronic respiratory diseases, herpes zoster, all viral infections, and measles. In addition, when combined with other BHI remedies, it had been illegally claimed to be effective against otitis, pleurisy, bronchitis or pneumonia, conjunctivitis, and tracheitis.
- Botanical Laboratories, Inc., which distributed Natra-Bio products, was ordered to stop claiming that BioAllers was a homeopathic remedy for reliving symptoms of allergy due to pollen, animal hair, dander, mold, yeast, and dust. The products were promoted as homeopathic even though some ingredients were not in the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia.
- L.B.L.-Bot.Bio.Hom.Corp, of Roosevelt, New York, was ordered to stop making false claims that products could prevent AIDS, reduce cholesterol, cure diabetes and other pancreas disorders, and cancerous blood disorders.
- Nutrition Express, of Houston, Texas, was warned that products it was marketing for the temporary relief of infection, minor liver disorders, lymphatic disorders, and menstrual discomforts were misbranded because their labels or labeling included statements that represented that the products were intended to be used for curing or preventing disease.
As far as I can tell, the FDA has never recognized any homeopathic remedy as safe and effective for any medical purpose. In 1995, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request that stated:
I am interested in learning whether the FDA has: (1) received evidence that any homeopathic remedy, now marketed in this country, is effective against any disease or health problem; (2) concluded that any homeopathic product now marketed in the United States is effective against any health problem or condition; (3) concluded that homeopathic remedies are generally effective; or (4) concluded that homeopathic remedies are generally not effective. Please send me copies of all documents in your possession that pertain to these questions [14].An official from the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research replied that several dozen homeopathic products were approved many years ago, but these approvals were withdrawn by 1970 [15]. In other words, after 1970, no homeopathic remedy had FDA as "safe and effective" for its intended purpose. As far as I can tell, that statement is still true today.If the FDA required homeopathic remedies to be proven effective in order to remain marketable—the standard it applies to other categories of drugs—homeopathy would face extinction in the United States [16]. However, there is no indication that the agency is considering this. FDA officials regard homeopathy as relatively benign (compared, for example, to unsubstantiated products marketed for cancer and AIDS) and believe that other problems should get enforcement priority. If the FDA attacks homeopathy too vigorously, its proponents might even persuade a lobby-susceptible Congress to rescue them. Regardless of this risk, the FDA should not permit worthless products to be marketed with claims that they are effective. Nor should it continue to tolerate the presence of quack "electrodiagnostic" devices in the marketplace.
In 1994, 42 prominent critics of quackery and pseudoscience asked the agency to curb the sale of homeopathic products. The petition urges the FDA to initiate a rulemaking procedure to require that all over-the-counter (OTC) homeopathic drugs meet the same standards of safety and effectiveness as nonhomeopathic OTC drugs. It also asks for a public warning that although the FDA has permitted homeopathic remedies to be sold, it does not recognize them as effective. The FDA has not yet responded to the petition. However, on March 3, 1998, at a symposium sponsored by Good Housekeeping magazine, former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler, M.D., J.D., acknowledged that homeopathic remedies do not work but that he did not attempt to ban them because he felt that Congress would not support a ban [17].
References
- Kaufman M. Homeopathy in America. Baltimore, 1971, The Johns Hopkins University Press.
- Hill C, Doyon F. Review of randomized trials of homeopathy. Review of Epidemiology 38:139-142, 1990.
- Jacob J and others. Treatment of childhood diarrhea with homeopathic medicine: a randomized clinical trial in Nicaragua. Pediatrics 93:719-725, 1994.
- Sampson W, London W. Analysis of homeopathic treatment of childhood diarrhea. Pediatrics 96:961-964, 1995.
- Homoeopathic Medicine Research Group. Report. Commission of the European Communities, December 1996.
- NCAHF Position Paper on Homeopathy. Loma Linda, Calif.: National Council Against Health Fraud, 1994.
- Wise, J. Health authority stops buying homoeopathy. British Medical Journal 314:1574, 1997.
- Dantas E. A systematic review of the quality of homeopathic pathogenetic trials published from 1945 to 1995. Homeopathy 96:4-16, 2007.
- Hauck KG. Homeopathy and coronary artery disease. Homeopathy Today 17(8):3, 1997.
- Michels DL. Regulatory letter to James M. Lyons, Dec 11, 1984.
- Biotherapeutic Index. Baden-Baden, Germany: Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH, 1993.
- Biotherapeutic Index, 5th revised English edition. Baden-Baden, Germany: Biologische Heilmittel GmbH, 2000.
- Faline JJ. Regulatory letter to Josephine Perricone, June 11, 1987.
- Barrett S. Letter to FDA Office of Freedom of Information, Feb 7, 1995.
- Davis H. Letter to Stephen Barrett, M.D., April 24, 1995.
- Pinco RG. Status of homeopathy in the United States: Important ominous developments. Memo to Willard Eldredge, president, American Association of Homeopathic Pharmacists, Jan 17, 1985.
- Kessler DA. Panel discussion on herbal dietary supplements. Consumer Safety Symposium on Dietary Supplements and Herbs, New York City, March 3, 1998.
FDA Compliance Policy Guide 7132.15 for Homeopathic Products
Homoeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions (Essay by Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1842)
Homeopathy and Science: A Closer Look
Petition to Ban the Marketing of Homeopathic Products
Why Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof
Alternative Medicine and the Laws of Physics
Samuel Hahnemann's Book: Organon of Medicine
The Scientific Evaluation of Homeopathy
Hahnemann's Homeopathy (Seven articles debunking homeopathic theory and practice)
Homeopathy: All the Idiocy That Fits (Satire by Peter Bowditch)
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