“The physician’s high and only mission is to restore the sick to health…” Organon, Paragraph 1
This statement is the first principle that guides the homeopath in his/her treatment of each and every client. Unlike other practices which manage and control illness, Classical Homeopathy presents an opportunity to “restore the sick to health” by stimulating a person’s vital force based on his or her unique holistic condition which allows the body to naturally heal itself.
Samuel Hahnemann
In the early 1800s, a German medical doctor by the name of Samuel Hahnemann founded the practice of homeopathy and defined the principles of cure in his publication “Organon of the Medical Art.” These principles have been repeatedly confirmed effective since then and continue to be the guiding light in the holistic practice of modern Classical Homeopathy.
Hahnemann discovered early on in his medical career that conventional practices caused more harm to the sick than it did good. He publicly questioned the prevailing medical theories and proved their inaccuracy. In one experiment, he took a regimen of an extract prepared from Peruvian bark (quinine) and discovered that he develop symptoms similar to malaria. When he discontinued taking the extract, all the symptoms subsequently disappeared. This was a revolutionary discovery that was not found anywhere in the medical practices of that time. So, he searched for precedents for this affect and found them in the teaching of Hippocrates (460-377 BCE) who is regarded as the father of medicine. Hippocrates taught that likes can be cured by likes… that any illness caused by one means can be treated successfully by a similar means. * This discovery propelled Hahnemann to investigate and experiment with a wide variety of substances, and dilutions of those substances, in order to understand the effect on human suffering. This fundamental principle of Classical Homeopathy has since been called the Law of Similars.
Hahnemann discovered that otherwise harmful substances became safe and medically beneficial effective when diluted and energized, and so homeopathic remedies are essentially energy extracts of anything in creation. More commonly used remedies are prepared from elements, minerals, plants, and animals; but remedies are also prepared from energy sources like electricity, the sun, and the moon, or disease substances like malaria, gonorrhea, cancer and tuberculosis.
To determine the healing properties of remedies, Hahnemann established the practice of testing or “proving” remedies based on his initial experiment with quinine. Once he selected a substance for proving, he prepared it in dilution form (i.e. a remedy) and then administered that dilution to healthy individuals who do not know the nature of the substance being tested. Newly developed physical, mental and/or emotion symptoms that appeared during the proving were meticulously monitored and recorded. Today, provings are carefully supervised using double or triple blind experiments with a controlled group receiving placebos. Healing properties determined by provings and verified in clinical experience are then documented in the vast library of Homeopathic materia medic .
*Family Homeopathy – A Practical Guide for Home Treatment by Paul Callinan
