Incredible medicine

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients,  May, 2006  by Robert Ullman,  Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman

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Homeopathy is both effective and incredible at the same time, and it seems that no amount of double-blind, controlled studies or clinical cases seems able to set the issue to rest. Ever since Hahnemann first set out his theories in the Organon of Medicine in 1810, homeopathy has been the subject of controversy and debate. After nearly two hundred years of successful practice, that homeopathy should still be having problems with acceptance and that it should remain an enigma to the medical world seems implausible to us. Nevertheless, that is the current state of affairs.

Discussing homeopathy for many people is akin to discussing religion and politics at the same time: many opinions, much speculation, and few conclusions. We are no exception, but we have had the benefit of practicing homeopathy for many years and seeing both our successes and our failures with patients. This experience allows us to come down on one side of the issue with a strong opinion about whether or not homeopathy is effective. Some who have never experienced homeopathy, either as practitioners or as patients, flatly deny that homeopathy could possibly work, while those who have experienced homeopathy declare it either miraculous or totally worthless or somewhere in between.

Clearly, our bias is that homeopathic medicine is effective when properly prescribed, and a partial or utter failure when misunderstood and misapplied. We have done our best to master homeopathic practice over the years, and we still have much to learn. We have seen enough success in practice, however, to know that homeopathy is a remarkable medicine, however unbelievable it seems.

What makes homeopathy seem incredible? A number of reasons exist that, individually, might not seem so unbelievable, but they add up, as we shall see. Some of homeopathy's remarkable virtues are also the very things that strain its credibility. What is true of homeopathy is truly incredible, in both senses of the word.

Poisons as Medicine

One of the biggest problems in understanding homeopathic medicine lies in homeopathy's choice of medicinal substances. Every natural substance is a possible homeopathic medicine, as long as it can produce symptoms in a healthy person. This is called the "law of similars" or "like cures like," the foundational principle of Samuel Hahnemann's theory of homeopathy. The symptoms a substance in nature can produce in a healthy person can be cured by that same substance in a sick person. If a substance doesn't produce any symptoms when given over and over to healthy volunteers, it doesn't make the grade. Only those substances capable of making one sick can also be candidates as medicines. Counterintuitive? You bet. Nevertheless, it's true.

Some of the best medicines in homeopathic practice come from the most poisonous substances in nature. Viewing a homeopathic pharmacy is like going on a global hunt for the most deadly agents in the natural world: toxic minerals like mercury (Mercurius), arsenic (Arsenicum), and lead (Plumbum); poisonous plants containing strychnine, such Nux vomica and Ignatia; hallucinogenic alkaloids from Belladonna and Datura (Stramonium); and animal poisons from a wide variety of insects (Apis, Cantharis), spiders (Tarentula, Theridion), snakes (Lachesis, Naja), sea animals (Murex, Medusa, Sepia), and scorpions (Androctonus). Two thousand or so additional mineral, plant, and animal substances of less virulence are also used in the making of homeopathic medicines. The idea of using poisons as medicine may give pause to potential practitioners and patients alike. Nonetheless, these are some of the substances from which effective and non-toxic homeopathic medicines are made.

Astronomical Dilutions

As if the idea of using poisons is not enough to challenge credulity, the process that makes those poisons more acceptable makes homeopathy even more unbelievable. Such medicines are made non-toxic by diluting them. That seems reasonable: you make a poison less toxic by diluting it. The amount of dilution, however, is so astronomical that it seems that nothing could possibly remain of the original substance, thereby seeming to eliminate any possibility that the medicine could remain effective.

An extract of a substance used to make a C potency of a homeopathic medicine, say table salt (Natrum muriaticum), is serially diluted one part to 99 parts, six, 12, 30, 200, 1,000, 10,000, or 50,000 times to make various potencies of the medicine. Theoretically, no molecules of the original substance remain past the twelfth dilution, because the dilution factor exceeds Avogadro's number (i.e., the number of molecules in a mole of the original substance). This is where the chemists decide that homeopathy can't work because "there's nothing left in that stuff!" Nevertheless, homeopathic medicines have been shown to be clinically effective in high dilutions. How is that possible? No one knows. Various theories have been proposed involving the memory of water and liquid crystals, but nothing has been definitively proved.