The California Homeopath
Journal of the California Homeopathic Medical Society

Hahnemann brought three powerful innovations to the practice of medicine. These three concepts form the three principles of Classical Homœopathy: Like Cures Like, The Minimum Dose and The Single Remedy. Like Cures Like is an ancient idea that is found in Galen and Hippocrates and is a powerful tool in modern medicine where it has had a variety of names the current favorite being The Rebound Effect. Hahnemann's innovation was to see this not just as a methodology but as the exclusive means of bringing about a permanent cure. The second innovation was to prepare remedies in ultra dilute forms, perhaps as much to his surprise as ours, he found the more dilute the remedies were the more powerful they became. The third innovation was to treat not particular symptoms or named diseases but to treat the totality of symptoms being expressed by the patient. The first of these innovations is fundamental to homœopathy is reasonably easy to understand and is accepted by all homœopaths. The second, though straightforward, is counterintuitive and currently has no mechanism that explains it. It is therefore the thing that makes homœopathy unpalatable to conventional scientists and medics, but is almost universally accepted by homœopaths. The third innovation is the most complicated and the most controversial within homœopathy. In order to appreciate the totality of symptoms, and especially the totality of characteristic symptoms, rather than the total of all symptoms it is necessary to think in a completely different way. The totality of symptoms is never merely an accumulation of simple facts rather it is a confluence of patterns. It requires a different way of thinking which is generally referred to as Pattern Thinking, and one which is now central to many disciplines in advanced physics and mathematics including: fractal mathematics, chaos theory and quantum mechanics. The principle of the single remedy that by its nature requires pattern thinking and a holistic view of the case is the most controversial aspect of homœopathy and one to which many do not feel is important in the way the other two are. For example, The Society of Homœopaths in the UK recently removed the principle of The Single Remedy from the list of principles agreed by its founders. Although Hahnemann grasped the importance of this concept he found it difficult to fully describe and explain. Many of his students had great difficulty grasping the concept in its entirety. It was only the late nineteenth century American homœopaths, many of whom had a grounding in Swedenborgian philosophy and the concept of correspondences, who were able to fully comprehend and develop the concept and the way of thinking. Today we still have a dichotomy between the followers of Kent, the Classical Homœopaths who look for the pattern of symptoms, and the followers of Boenninghausen, the Practical Homœopaths who look for the sum of the symptoms.

By Peter Fraser

Peter Fraser practices homeopathy in Bristol and London, England.  He is the author of many provings, working with the The School of Homeopathy, Devon and author of a number of books, including The AIDS Miasm, books on Snakes, Spiders and Insects and the series of Using Maps and Systems in Homœopathy, which includes: Miasms, Realms, Mappa Mundi and Philosophy. He is currently working on a Supplement to Clarke’s Dictionary of Materia Medica that extends it to cover many new homeopathic remedies. He is especially interested in the diseases of our times: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Allergic Reactions, Hyperactivity and Concentration Disorders, Auto-Immune Disease and HIV. Visit his website at http://www.homoeopathist.info/.