The United States Food & Drug Administration considers that there is no real concern over the safety of most homeopathic products "because they have little or no pharmacologically active ingredients".There have been few reports of illness associated with the use of homeopathic products, but the medical literature contains a few case reports of poisoning by heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury found in homeopathic remedies. However, in cases that they reviewed, the FDA concluded the homeopathic product was not the cause of the adverse reactions. In one case, arsenic was implicated, although FDA analysis revealed that the concentration of arsenic was too low to cause concern. Perhaps the main concern about the safety of homeopathy arises not from the products themselves, but from the possible withholding of more efficacious treatment, or from misdiagnosis of dangerous conditions by a non-medically qualified homeopath.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Miasms as a cause of disease
Another important component of homeopathy is the concept of "miasms". Hahnemann hypothesized that certain illnesses leave behind some residual damage, or miasm (Greek for "stain" or "imbalance"), which is postulated to be responsible for chronic diseases, and is said to be passed on genetically. There are three types of miasms in homeopathy:
i.)"syphilis", resulting in damage to the brain, nerves, and bones, resulting in deafness, insanity, alcoholism, etc.
ii.)"sycosis", a term used in homeopathy to refer to suppressed gonorrhoea, damaging the mucous membranes and genital tract, producing sensitivity to damp weather and storms
iii.)"psora", damaging the skin, resulting in many types of internal disease states
Hahneman developed his miasm hypothesis because he was concerned about the failures of his homeopathic remedies to produce lasting cures for chronic diseases. By 1816, Hahnemann had noticed that "…the non-venereal chronic diseases, after being time and again removed homoeopathically … always returned in a more or less varied form and with new symptoms."
To explain this, Hahnemann introduced his miasmatic hypothesis. Hahnemann's miasm theory was first published in 1828 in his book, The Chronic Diseases, their Nature and Homoeopathic Treatment.
Hahnemann hypothesized that the miasm of psora underpinned most chronic diseases. The word "miasm" is related to an old medical concept known as the "miasma theory of disease", where the term "miasma" represents "pestiferous exhalations". Hahnemann described this in Note 2 to §11 of the Organon: "…a child with small-pox or measles communicates to a near, untouched healthy child in an invisible manner (dynamically) the small-pox or measles, … in the same way as the magnet communicated to the near needle the magnetic property."
According to Hahnemann, miasmatic infection causes local symptoms, usually in the skin. If these are suppressed by external medication, the hidden cause goes deeper, and manifests itself later as organ pathologies. In §80 of the Organon he asserted psora to be the cause of such diseases as epilepsy, kyphosis, cancer, jaundice, deafness, and cataract.
According to Hahnemann, the body can become susceptible to "morbific noxious agents" that cause disease. Homeopaths try to prevent disease, starting with the first symptoms, which can be displayed long before an acute disease appears. However, Hahnemann recognized that sometimes a large group of people are beset by the same acute disease simultaneously, perhaps because of wars, floods, and famines and other causes, and an epidemic ensues. Hahneman advocated administering one or even a few remedies to a population to prevent a threatened epidemic. According to Hahnemann, when an epidemic begins the homeopath can produce an appropriate remedy for each individual patient from a small collection of remedies.
However, the miasm theory was not widely accepted. Even in his own time, many followers of Hahnemann, including the American homeopathy pioneer Constantine Hering, made almost no reference to Hahnemann’s concept of chronic diseases and the miasm hypothesis. Today, some homeopathic practitioners find Hahnemann’s theory difficult to reconcile with current knowledge of immunology, genetics, microbiology and pathology, as it seems to ignore the importance of genetic, congenital, metabolic, nutritional, and degenerative factors in sickness. The miasm theory also fails to differentiate between the multitude of infectious diseases. However, most insist that the key elements of Hahnemann's miasm theory are valid. For instance, most of them believe that the fundamental cause of disease is internal and constitutional (i.e. the susceptibility to becoming ill), and that it is contrary to good health to suppress symptoms, especially skin eruptions and discharges. They also accept Hahnemann's concept of latent psora, the early signs of an organism’s imbalance, which indicate that treatment is needed to prevent the development of more advanced disease.
Philosophy and Treatments
Homeopathy regards diseases as morbid derangements of the organism, and states that instances of disease in different people differ fundamentally. Homeopathy views a sick person as having a dynamic disturbance in a hypothetical "vital force", a disturbance which, homeopaths claim, underlies standard medical diagnoses of named diseases.
Homeopathy is based on the 'principle of similars', first expressed by Hahnemann as similia similibus curentur or 'let likes cure likes'. This is opposite to the 'principle of contraries' which was central to the Galenic medicine in which Hahnemann had been trained. The 'law of similars' is an ancient medical maxim, but its modern form is based on Hahnemann's hypothesis that a constellation of symptoms induced by a given homeopathic remedy in a group of healthy individuals will cure a similar set of symptoms in the sick. Symptom patterns associated with various remedies are determined by 'provings', in which healthy volunteers are given remedies, of varying concentrations, and the resulting physical and mental symptoms are compiled by observers into a "drug picture".
The law of similars is more of a guiding principle than a scientific law. It is not built on a hypothesis that can be falsified. A failure to cure homeopathically can always be ostensibly attributed to incorrect selection of a remedy.
There are many methods for determining the most-similar remedy (the simillimum), and homeopaths sometimes disagree. This is partly due to the complexity of the "totality of symptoms" concept. That is, homeopaths do not use all symptoms, but decide which are the most characteristic. This subjective evaluation of case analysis relies on knowledge and experience. Finally, the drug picture in the Homeopathic Materia Medica is always more comprehensive than the symptoms exhibited by any individual. These factors mean that a homeopathic prescription can remain presumptive until it is verified by testing the effect of the remedy on the patient.
Hahnemann tested many substances commonly used as medicines in his time, such as antimony and rhubarb, and also poisons like arsenic, mercury and belladonna, to discover what symptoms they produced in healthy individuals. Homeopathy uses many animal, plant, mineral, and synthetic substances. Examples include natrum muriaticum (common salt), lachesis muta (bushmaster snake venom), opium, and thyroidinum.
Other homeopathic remedies involve dilution of the agent or product of the disease. These are the so-called "isopathic remedies", and include nosodes made from diseased tissue, and sarcodes made from healthy tissue. Rabies nosode, for example, is made by diluting the saliva of a rabid dog. Apis mel., another homeopathic remedy, is made from the venom of the Western honey bee, and is used to treat bee stings and fever induced by viral infections.
Today, about 3000 remedies are used in homeopathy; about 300 are based on comprehensive Homeopathic Materia Medica information, and about 1500 on relatively fragmentary knowledge. The rest are used experimentally in difficult cases based on the law of similars, either without knowledge of their homeopathic properties or through speculative knowledge independent of the law of similars. This modern approach also harks back to the ancient 'doctrine of signatures,' which Hahnemann rejected as uncertain guesswork.
Modern efforts to further develop homeopathy
The constant efforts by homeopaths to develop new treatments are driven by many different forces. For example, some are tempted to use an isopathic, or disease-associated agent as a first prescription in a 'stuck' case when the beginning of disease coincides with a specific event such as vaccination. Also, it is common to try a chemically-related substance when a remedy that was well-indicated fails. A good example of this is the use of bowel nosodes, which were introduced by the British homeopaths, Edward Bach (1886–1936), John Paterson and Charles Edwin Wheeler in the 1920s. Their use is based on the variable bowel bacterial flora thought to be associated with persons of different homeopathic constitutional types. Though receiving more attention today, the bowel nosodes are rarely used outside British homeopathy.
More recently, homeopathy has embraced substances based on their elemental classification (the periodic table or biological taxonomy).This approach may create convenient systems for grouping remedies and classifying the ever-burgeoning Homeopathic Materia Medica, but its usefulness is questioned by some purists on the basis that it involves speculation about remedy action without provings.
Some modern homeopaths are exploring the use of even more esoteric substances. These are known as "imponderables", because they do not originate from a material but from electromagnetic energy or other energy presumed to have been "captured" by a substance like alcohol or lactose. The captured "energy" can be in many forms, such as X-rays, Sol (sunlight), Positronium, Electricitas or even light collected using a telescope (for example, from the star Polaris). Recent ventures by homeopaths into even more esoteric substances include Tempesta (thunderstorm), and Berlin wall
Homeopathic Techniques- Succussion and Dilution
The most characteristic principle of homeopathy is that the potency of a remedy can be enhanced (and the side-effects diminished) by dilution, in a procedure known as dynamization or potentization. Liquids are progressively diluted (with water, or alcohol) and shaken by ten hard strikes against an elastic body (succussion). For this purpose, Hahnemann had a saddlemaker construct a special wooden striking board covered in leather on one side and stuffed with horsehair.Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with lactose (trituration).
Each dilution is either to 1 part in 10 (labelled "D" or "X", e.g. a 20D has been diluted to one part in ten 20 times in sequence, leaving 1 part in 1020 (one part in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000) of the original substance); 1 part in 100 (labelled "C", so a 10C has been diluted to one part in a hundred 10 times in sequence, leaving one part in 10010, or 1020 - but with only 10 sequences of dilution and succussion, instead of 20 as in the 20D). More rarely, 1 part in 50,000 is used for each dilution, known as Quintamillesimal (labelled LM or Q).
Hahnemann advocated 30C dilutions for most purposes, i.e. dilution by a factor of 10030 = 1060. As Avogadro's number is only 6.02 × 1023 particles/mole, the chance of any molecule of the original substance being present in a mere 15C solution is small, and it is extremely unlikely that even one molecule of the original solution would be present in a 30C dilution. For a perspective on these numbers, there are on the order of 1032 molecules of water in an Olympic size swimming pool; to expect to get one molecule of a 15C solution, one would need to swallow 1% of the volume of such a pool, or roughly 25 metric tons of water. Furthermore, 1cc of a solute diluted to a 30C dilution would be diluted into a volume of solvent (water) equal to that of a cube of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 meters per side, or about 105 light years. Thus, homeopathic remedies of the standard dilutions contain, with overwhelming probability, only water. Practitioners of homeopathy believe that this water retains some 'essential property' of the original substance, due to the shaking after each dilution.
