Introduction
Homeopathy is a department of medicine based on the Principle of Similars and a non-toxic system of experimental science of therapeutics. German physician Dr. Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann received his M.D. with honors in orthodox medicine (now called as modern medicine) from University of Erlangen, Germany on 10 Aug 1779. From Germany (1796) homeopathy spreads to Austria (1816) and then to the rest of the Europe. The birth date of the founder and father of Homeopathy i.e. 10 April every year is celebrated as ‘World Homeopathy Day' and the week following his birthday (10-16 April) is celebrated as ‘World Homeopathy Awareness Week’ all through the world.
Principles and Laws
1. Principle of Similar (1796): The drug which manifest the “likeness” i.e. most likely to cure or relieve a case of disease is that which when administered to a healthy person, has shown itself capable of producing symptoms and change in sensation experienced which most closely resemble those of the case of disease.
2. Law of Minimum Dose (1801): The ‘similar’ remedy must be given in minimum (smallest possible) dose which is sufficient to stimulate the secondary action i.e. to stimulate the energy/vitality and evoke the organism’s innate natural healing response (self-regulatory mechanism) to bring about the necessary curative well-being in a patient.
3. Law of Simplex (1797): One single medicine for the patient at any given time
4. Arndt-Schulz Law (1887) [akin to Hormesis (1943)]: “Weak stimuli slightly accelerate the vital activity, medium-strong stimuli raise it, strong ones suppress it and very strong ones halt it”.
Axioms
5. Individualisation: Each person is unique/one size does not fit all. No two individuals are alike in health or in disease
Concepts
6. Progress of cure in Chronic Diseases (1828): During the course of treatment the cure progresses from above (top of the body) downwards (head to chest to abdomen to legs), from within (inside of the body) outwards (exterior, often as skin eruptions), center to periphery, from more important organ to less vital one (brain followed by heart, liver, kidney and lungs followed by muscle and skin), in reverse order of coming of the symptoms (presenting symptoms disappear in the reverse order of their appearance i.e. First In Last Out, so old symptoms might resurface).
Theory
7. Theory of Chronic Miasms (1828): The cause/origin of chronic disease was an underlying chronic infection or miasm. Dr. Hahnemann defined miasms as infections (material) and disease tendancies (condition that favours a disease) arising from the excessively minute, invisible living creatures/animated beings
Facts
8. Preventive Medicine (1799): Preventive use of homeopathy was first applied in 1799 during an epidemic of scarlet fever in Königslütter, Germany, when Dr. Hahnemann prescribed a single dose of Belladonna, as the remedy of the epidemic genius to susceptible children in the town with more than 95% success rate.
Issues
9. Potentisation (1801): Homeopathic medicines are colloidal solutions containing nanoparticles of measurable (upto 200c potency) source material and glass-derived silica crystals heterogeneously dispersed in water-ethanol solution prepared by a pharmacological process of potentisation in a type-2 borosilicate (96.4%) neutral glass vial.
10. Doctrine of Vital Force (1833) [akin to Homeostasis (1926)]: Vitalism is the metaphysical doctrine that living organisms possess a non-physical bio-energetic self-powered inner inborn biological strength that gives them the property of life.
11. Dynamisation (1837): It is an increased number of succussions to continually strengthen or intensify the potency without further dilution.
12. Diet and Regimen: "Fresh air, fresh water, free movement are, as a general rule, always the preliminary conditions of well-being. Next to food, exercise is the most essential requirement. Exercise and good air alone set all the humours in our body in motion to fill their appointed places, and compel every secreting organ to give off its specific secretions and give power to the muscles." (Dr. Hahnemann, 1792)
For more details, read 'Principles of Homeopathy Explained' at https://drnancymalik.wordpress.com/article/homeopathy-explained/