In §22 of the Organon we read: “The therapeutic properties of medicines reside exclusively in their power to cause pathological symptoms in a healthy person and to make them disappear in a sick person…medicines become capable of defeating diseases by causing a certain artificial pathological state capable of removing and eliminating….the pathological state present”.
The administration of a homeopathic substance in a healthy person is capable of producing a specific consistent group of symptoms. Homeopathic medication is therefore capable of causing a true artificial syndrome in a healthy individual. A disease that occurs in a patient with a symptomatological picture very similar to that caused artificially by a substance may benefit from said substance used in ultra-diluted doses. The reciprocity of manifestations typical of a remedy and those present in a pathological form expresses the applicability of this law. Thus the more a disease imitates the symptomatological picture produced by a remedy, the more it is reflected in the Law of Similars.
For this reason, the doctor has to know the pathogenetic power of medicines in order to select the one which, with its symptomatological group, can cause an artificial disease as similar as possible to the totality of the preeminent symptoms of the natural disease to be cured. To do this it is first of all necessary to know the pathological symptoms and the changes in state of health that each medicine is capable of producing in a healthy person (study of the pathogenesis, collected in the Homeopathic Materia Medica). There is no other way of testing the actions (physical and psychic) of homeopathic medicines with certainty besides administering them individually, in modest doses, to a healthy subject.
THE INFINITESIMAL DOSE
The infinitesimal dose or dilution principle envisages that the homeopathic remedy, to be defined as such, undergoes a well-defined manufacturing process. There are several dilution scales depending on whether a tincture is diluted 1:10, 1:100 or 1:50.000. At each dilution passage, the homeopathic medicine undergoes a process called dynamisation which consists of subjecting the entire product to vigorous shaking (succussion).
Hahnemann reached this principle not entirely at random: as a matter of fact, massive doses of toxic substances like mercury, arsenic and deadly nightshade were commonly used in his day. And precisely their high degree of toxicity prevented taking full advantage of their therapeutic capacities if used according to the Law of Similars. Hahnemann simply decided to dilute the various substances, first in aqueous solutions and later in alcoholic solutions, which better lent themselves to preserving the material. Hahnemann noted that the more he diluted the starting substances, the more he obtained a progressive reduction in the toxic effect, while the therapeutic effect increased at the same time.
It is possible to state that the homeopathic remedy contains the specific information that interacts through biophysical phenomena with the substrate. Its presence and effect are undeniable even at very high dilutions that exceed Avogadro’s number.
HOMEOPATHIC PROVING (OR CLINICAL TRIAL)
Proving is the process through which the medicinal properties of homeopathic substances (hereinafter called “remedies”) are evaluated: it is the process of homeopathic experimentation. Each remedy is administered, following methods recognised and codified by the medical community that deals with this specific sector, to groups of individuals considered healthy (well-defined parameters have been established to this end also). A series of physical, mental and emotional symptoms manifest themselves in all subjects, at different times; some symptoms (the majority) are manifested by all provers: they are what represents the general characteristics of the remedy being tested. Some symptoms manifest themselves only in some provers, depending on their personal susceptibility or idiosyncrasy to that specific substance: these symptoms have to be confirmed clinically in order to be considered reliable. The experimentation was performed using subtoxic doses, while today using homeopathic dilution: this made it possible to highlight some toxic states, characteristic for each substance, in which physical, general and local symptoms, as well as mental and behavioural symptoms, are repeated and are perfectly identifiable as “syndromic pictures”.
Thus each remedy is capable of producing a true specific pathogenesis.
HOMEOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA
All the specific symptoms produced following administration constitute the clinical manifestations characteristic of the remedy under examination and are collected in the Homeopathic Materia Medica. The Materia Medica (MM) thus contains a systematic list of all the symptoms that appeared in the provers after taking a specific substance. Symptoms drawn from toxicology, which a proving could not detect, are also included; these symptoms, arising after hyperacute, acute and subacute poisoning, are extremely precious material for the clinical Homeopath, especially for the veterinarian. Indeed, to date, veterinarian still consults the MM deriving from provings performed on humans, thus sometimes analogical interpolations of the symptoms found in animals are necessary: this constitutes a significantly large interpretative risk and makes a good level of knowledge of the ethological profile of the species to which veterinarians dedicate their work necessary.
The presentation of the symptoms in the MM follows the scheme outlined by Hahnemann: the first to be listed are the symptoms concerning the mental aspect, followed by all the so-called local symptoms divided by anatomical district (head, face, neck, chest, limb, etc.) until arriving at the symptoms concerning the general state. It is important to underline that for each remedy, besides characteristic organic symptoms, a pathological trend, a “genius”, is identified, which indicates and characterises its essence both in the expression of the psycho-behavioural dynamics and of the more specific organic tropisms. The Materia Medica allows fulfilling the applicability of the Law of Similars: the general picture of the individual and of his/her disease is compared with the general picture, expressed in symptoms, of the tested homeopathic remedies.