homeopathy is a system of treatment evolved by a German physician, Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843). Hahnemann carried out tests on himself with extracts of cinchona bark, which contains quinine, and found it caused fever. From experiments of this kind he formulated the major principle of homeopathy, ‘similia similibus curantur’ (like cures like) — that is, agents which cause symptoms in a healthy person will cure the same symptoms in a sick person. It is worth considering how such an unlikely hypothesis came to be made, especially when something as essential as a simple clinical thermometer was not available to measure body temperature. Hahnemann's idea is actually very old, with ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’ hypothesis for treatment going back to the time of Hippocrates. Also, Jenner, who was contemporary with Hahnemann, had shown that cowpox could provide immunity against smallpox, and Hahnemann may have misinterpreted this finding, by failing to realize that vaccination recruits the
immune system to achieve its effects.
Hahnemann found that some of the remedies when given in large doses may aggravate the symptoms they were designed to eliminate, and formulated a further principle, that of reducing the doses to minute proportions. It has been suggested that the reason for this was to reduce the likelihood of adverse effects, following litigation by dispensing chemists who feared for their livelihoods. Whatever the reasons, the use of dilute preparations has become part of the methodology of homeopathy. To prepare homeopathic remedies, the medicament is diluted with an
excipient — usually
lactose (milk sugar) for solids, or water for liquids — and triturated in a mortar (solids), or
decussed (shaken) (liquids). Usually 1 part of drug is used to 100 parts of diluent. The resulting mixture is then diluted again as before, the whole process being repeated up to 30 times. It is claimed that the more dilute the preparation the more potent it is.
These unsual claims need further comment. Simple calculations, making use of Avogadro's number, confirm that in the more dilute preparations there is likely to be only one molecule of the medicament in a sphere the size of Saturn. The standard reply of homeopaths to this criticism is either that, in the process of preparation, special energies are released, and retained in the diluent, or that the molecules of the active principle leave their imprints on the diluents. These imprints, which are complementary in shape to the medicament molecules, may be the active moiety, as they counteract the effects caused by the medicament itself. These improbable mechanisms are not supported by any evidence, but if true would mean that most of what is known about the chemistry of molecules would have to be rejected. Homeopathic remedies often have fancy names going back to Hahnemann's time, when much of medicine was obscured by use of dog Latin. For example, some enormous dilution of
Nat. mur. is a common remedy for a variety of simple complaints even today.
Nat. mur. is short for natrium muriate, the sodium salt of muriatic acid, commonly known as ordinary salt. Body fluids contain around 150 mM salt, and most foodstuffs contain some salt, so the administration of an odd salt molecule as a form of treatment is surely nonsense.
Homeopaths claim to treat the whole person, so the prescribed treatment will depend on the totality of the person as well as the disease condition. For this reason there have been very few properly constructed clinical trials of homeopathic remedies. There is no scientific basis whatsoever to support homeopathy as a useful form of treatment. Most people get better from most things most of the time, and merely the belief that one is being treated can, through the placebo effect, at least cause the sense of feeling better. But if recovery is coincident with taking a homeopathic remedy then a causative relationship may be claimed, and knowledge of the magical properties passed on to others. Homeopathic remedies continue to be popular, as a result of concerns about side-effects of conventional, allopathic drugs, and patronage from prominent persons. While allopathic remedies require licensing by regulatory bodies, showing both safety and effectiveness, there is no such legislation for homeopathic preparations. The safety of these latter, because of their dilution, is not an issue, but their effectiveness is questionable.
Alan W. Cuthbert
