What is homoeopathy?

Homoeopathy is the health science which is gifted to us by a german physician, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann. Inspite of being very good in his performances and academics, he gave up the then profession of the physician because he was not happy with the ways of treatment carried out during those times. During his time, bloodletting, purging etc. were the common practices carried out to treat the patients. This left the patients with absolute draining and weakness. According to him, the method of restoring the sick to health should be gentle. Hence, he introduced homoeopathy to this world.

Homoeopathy is based on the law ‘Similia similibus curanter’ which means ‘likes are cured by the likes’. To further elaborate, the present state can be overpowered by introducing a similar state of higher strength than the one present. When this principle is applied in a disease condition, a substance administered which has the capacity to produce an artificial disease in the system very similar to the one already present but of slightly higher strength will overpower the natural disease and annihilate it. Again, it is the artificial disease produced therefore will wean away as the effect of the administered substance exhausts. Hence, the disease in the system is permanently removed.

To understand it simple, the immunity is triggered to the level slightly higher than the disease force to overpower it and remove it from the system without creating any side effects. Thus, establishing a system where body cures the disease and not the “medicine” administered to the patient.

Homoeopathy believes in mild, gentle and permanent cure of the sick in a complete form. By complete, it means everything that has gone wrong in the system to make person sick. By getting rid of the presenting symptoms only, does not cure the person. Symptoms are only the indicators of imbalance in the body. Now if these signs are suppressed or removed whereas the problem remains unattended then the patient does not go back to his healthy state. If one way of expression is suppressed, the body will choose another way of expression either in the same form or a different form. Also, possibly, next time it comes up with more violent presentation which could be more alarming then the previous one.

So, to bring about the complete cure, one needs to attend the deeper, actual problem that causes these symptoms. Hence, these sweet and easily palatable medicines are designed to attack the problem/imbalance at it’s core and “fix” the root cause of the symptoms.

The method adopted for the preparation of the homoeopathic medicines are such that the medicines administered, do not produce side effects. For that reason, it follows the law of minimum dose which is less in material and more in power (dynamic).

To select a medicine which is similar to the disease form and at the same time mild and gentle, sufficient enough to bring about the cure without producing any other side effects, one has to carry out individualization.

What is individualization?

Let us take an example. If we have four patients suffering from typhoid come for treatment. As per the general understanding, they should all be treated by same medicine/medicines as they suffer from the same diagnosed disease entity. And many health systems do follow this principle. But, homoeopath does not treat them the same.

Now, these four typhoid patients are different persons. They all will have different reasons of falling sick. The conditions and circumstances they hail from will be different. Each one of them has his own immunity which is highly affected by many parameters like the eating habits, the daily routine habits, the nature of the person, the reaction pattern of the person, the upbringing, the hereditary tendencies etc. So, from this one understands that though all four are suffering from one disease entity ‘ typhoid’, they are all different from each other. To bring about the cure , one needs to understand and differentiate each one of them and give each one what is ‘similar’ to his disease.

Individualization is one of the inseparable, important requirement of homoeopathic way of treatment. It means to bring out those pointers which will mark the difference of the patient. He is identified from those pointers which would belong to him alone. These individual characters are used to select the drug that is similar to these characters. This will be the similimum which can bring about the cure.

When a person is suffering from an ailment, he/she will show various symptoms which will help diagnose the ailment. e.g typhoid. These symptoms more or less will be present in all the patients suffering from it. But, along with these symptoms there are many more things to be taken into consideration which will differentiate each typhoid patient from the other. The causative factors may be different. The general state which covers thirst, appetite, activity, thermal state, sleep, cravings, aversions, mental state may differ from person to person. The selection of the remedy depends on the uncommon symptoms and the individual parameters.

The homoeopathic drugs are selected on these differentiating features and these features are called the characteristic symptoms. The symptoms which are common for a particular diagnosis are important because they are the once which will help us to see what is different in the patient after barring them. So, unless one is aware of the common features, a physician is not able to pick out the characteristics. Hence, to get the individualizing features, it is required to know what is common.

These individualizing features could be in the form of time relation, diurnal, causative conditions, various activities or applications, environmental factors etc. the range is vast which will help a homoeopathic physician to narrow down on the right remedy.

Homoeopathy based on three important laws viz law of similars, law of minimum dose and law of individualization, ensures removal of root cause of ailment/disease from a person. After having decided the medicine for each of the four patients, next is the dosage. In homoeopathy, number of pills or quantity of medicine can vary slightly with very little impact. However, timing between the doses has far greater impact then the quantity of the medicine. This aspect will be taken up in another article.

Doses taken after 3 hours gap are considered more stronger part of treatment as compared to doses after 6 hours. After having administered the treatment, symptoms are monitored to change the medicine or doses are amended. Cure by single dose is possible and will be discussed in future articles.