Homeopathy in Theory and Practice Eric D. Remy Gettysburg College

1. Homeopathy in Theory and Practice Eric D. RemyGettysburg College Homeopathic remedy preparation Theoretical Background: Water memory Background Clinical Trials Homeopathy is a medical treatment that uses highly diluted solutions of specific materials in order to treat a wide range of conditions. Developed by Samuel Hahnemann in the late 1700’s, homeopathy relies on the law of similia, where materials are chosen to mimic the symptoms of the conditions that they treat. • Homeopathic remedies are easy to prepare, although you may also purchase pre-made versions • Examine patient and catalog symptoms: As an example, assume you see a child with a violent and unproductive cough, along with weakness and cold sweat. They are irritable and want to be left alone. Lying down in a warm room seems to make them worse; sitting up and cool air improves the situation. They want to drink only cold water but not very much at any time. • Consult Materia Medica: Antimonium Tartaricum is used to treat illness involving severe coughs such as whooping cough. Treatment with Antimonium Tartaricum is also indicated for illness where cool air helps circulation, and those illnesses where the patient is irritable and unwilling to be touched. • Create mother liquor: This is done by grinding the compound into a fine power and then dissolving it into a solution of milk sugar or oil. • Dilute and Succuss: Take one drop of the mother liquor and add 99 drops of water (or water/ethyl alcohol mix). Succuss the mixture by hitting the bottle against a leather strap sharply. This is the 1C dilution (100x) dilution. • Continue dilution: Take 1 drop of the 1C solution, add 99 drops of water and succuss again. This is the 2C (x10,000) dilution. Repeat the procedure until the desired strength is obtained. 10C dilutions can be effective although 50-100C can be used in cases of serious illness • Dose according to severity of illness: Rapid onset illness may need a dose every 30 minutes, although flu-like illness would be better every 4-8 hours. Remember that homeopathic remedies work best at small doses so do not overdose. Controlled clinical trials of homeopathic remedies are ongoing. Examples are shown below: Water molecules are well known to form hydrogen bonded clusters even in the liquid phase Jacobs et. al studied the treatment of childhood diarrhea in Nepal and Nicaragua using randomized clinical trials that compared children treated with homeopathic remedies to children on a placebo. The remedies were made from a variety of compounds including Podophyllium, Sulfur, Chamomile and Arsenic. They found a statistically significant reduction in the number of stools per day and the overall length of diarrhea for children treated with the homeopathic remedy as opposed to the control group. Water molecules form clusters around molecules (here imidazole) to lower their free energy Homeopathic laws Benveniste (Nature, 1988) showed that water molecules retain the memory of the substances that they were in contact with even at dilutions where no molecules of the original substance exist in the sample. Data at left show human basophil reactions to highly diluted Anti-IgE antiserum. Dilutions show here range from 1060 to 10120 • Homeopathic remedies are based around two laws • Simila, Similibus, Curantur: Let Likes Be Cured By Likes • Investigate the symptoms of the illness, including both traditional ones such as fever, cough and the like as well as non-traditional ones such as the time of day when the symptom is the worst, the effects of warm and cold air on the patient and others. • Check a Materia Medica to determine the substance that will create similar symptoms. Modern Materia Medica are available on the Internet and allow searching by substance name, symptom, illness and many other options • The Law of Infinitesimals • Homeopathic treatments become more effective as the original substance (mother liquor) is diluted • Dilutions of 500,000-1,000,000 times are more effective than original, many remedies are much more dilute A number of meta studies have collected large numbers of studies like Jacobs’ and pooled them to look for overall efficacy of homeopathic treatments. Linde et. al developed the table to the left showing analyses of a 189 clinical trials broken up into multiple different groups and determined that the results would be highly unlikely to be chance Theoretical Background: Non-local quantum effects References E. Davenas et al., “Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE,” Nature 333, no. 6176 (6, 1988): 816-818. Jennifer Jacobs et al., “Homeopathic Treatment of Acute Childhood Diarrhea: Results from a Clinical Trial in Nepal.,” Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine 6, no. 2 (April 2000): 131.   Klaus Linde and Nicola Clausius, “Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials” Lancet 350, no. 9081 (1997): 834.   L.R. Milgrom, “Conspicuous by its absence: the Memory of Water, macro-entanglement, and the possibility of homeopathy,” Homeopathy 96, no. 3 (July 2007): 209-219.   Conclusion For those who wish to further personalize their poster PPR Physician-Patient-Remedy entanglement represented geometrically. In (a), Walach's two semiotic triangles for remedy and patient (also wave functions, ψRx and ψPx) are joined by a third for the practitioner ψPr, which are entangled into the PPR ‘state’ represented by ψPPR in (b). The multi-dimensional geometry of this state is represented in (c)–(e) and shows the action of the homeopathic operator Πr in ‘reflecting’ this state (d). But the reflection is not passive: by opening out the polyhedra in (d) and superimposing them, it is seen that the reflecting plane also twists the reflection through 60° (e). The ‘space’ in which these wave functions and ‘operations’ take place is a therapeutic state space created by the homeopathic operator Πr, which also functions within it. (From Milgrom) Homeopathy has a bright future ahead of it. It is easy to understand, the treatments are easy to make and inexpensive, and a host of clinical trials show that it’s clearly effective. Additional work needs to be done to better understand the nature of the water memory effect and non-local quantum effects in order to improve treatment modalities.