NICOLA HENRIQUES Author

Fundamental Principles of Homeopathy

According to Dr. Samuel Hahnemann the originator of homeopathy, for the medical system of homeopathy to be functional, durable, operate effectively and stand in its integrity, nothing conflicting with its fixed principles may be added to it, and nothing taken away. Ignore, alter, distort, diverge from or omit any of the fundamental principles and the whole edifice upon which the efficacy of homeopathy was built is damaged.

To understand how to treat each individual judiciously and rationally and be a true practitioner of the healing art of homeopathy requires knowledge and rigorous application of the fixed fundamental principles in their totality, to every case of disease. Summarised below, their close inspection reveals how each fundamental principle dovetails with the next to show the practitioner how to gain knowledge of the causes and signs of disease, knowledge of a medicinal substance's power and how to adapt it in respect to its exact manner of preparation, proper dose and proper period of repeating the dose, to the patient and their disease and how to avoid prescriber-created case management obstacles to cure.

The first four fundamental principles are applied during the homeopathic patient examination to ensure the history, precise nature and extent of each illness and its impact on the patients' energy is clearly understood by the practitioner:

The Vital Force of Nature
The life-preserving vital force of nature is intangible and distinct from purely chemical or physical forces. It exists naturally within every molecule of the body to regulate and maintain the body mind and spirit in harmonious order. A strong vital force renders the body less susceptible to harmful influences and possesses the power to transform illness into health naturally without assistance.
Cure using homeopathy can only take place by the reaction of the vital force against the correctly chosen medicine, and that cure will certain and rapid in proportion to the strength with which the vital fore still prevails in the patient.

Inherent predispositions to illness/Miasms
This fundamental principle of homeopathy relates to the homeopathic view of underlying illness causations. Passed from generation to generation, these inherent often masked, unceasing, latent or active inherent predispositions combine to make gaps and breaches in nature that an individual’s weakened vital force cannot repair. They dictate the degree to which an individual is influenced by circumstances, events, environments, internal and external changes, etc., and how slowly or quickly successful adjustment to those changes occurs. Traces of these inherent predispositions to illness are found in our family medical history. Their presence is observed and experienced as either under productive, over productive or destructive tendencies, processes or patterns of symptoms.
Effective homeopathic treatment strengthens the vital force enabling it to repair the breaches in nature caused by our inherent predispositions and resist their harmful influence in the future.

Susceptibility: action and reaction
Susceptibility is a law of nature. In health, we are susceptible to influences that enable us to thrive and less susceptible to harmful influences, we act and react proportionately. During illness, the experience of symptoms indicates a disproportionate susceptibility to a particular harmful influence. The greater the symptom-similarity between symptoms produced naturally during illness and those produced artificially by a medicine in healthy people, the greater the individual's susceptibility to the homeopathic medicine and dose, the less medicine is required for cure and the quicker illness is transformed into health.

Totality of characteristic individualising symptoms
In homeopathy, a single one the symptoms present no more represents the disease itself than a single foot represents the whole person. To cure every disease the medicine with the proven power to produce the greatest number of symptoms similar to the individual’s symptom totality must be identified and administered. The correctly selected medicine administered in the correct dose and intervals between doses increases the power of the vital force enough to remove of the totality of symptoms and restore complete health.

The remaining five principles relate to the applied natural science of homoeopathy and what happens when the correct homeopathic medicine and dose is ingested and absorbed into the body.

Smallest Dose: dilution and potentiation
This principle relates to the smallest dose required for cure and the need to reduce the potential for medicinal side effects and avoid everything that might weaken, cause pain, torture or injure the patient in the slightest degree.
Through experiments to render crude, virulent or poisonous natural substances least harmful, more soluble, most easily assimilated by the body, Hahnemann formulated a unique mathematical scale of substance measurement, serial division, trituration, dilution with an inert medium and violent agitation.
This dilution and potentiation process moderates the strength of the medicinal substance and creates a graduated range of ascending medicinal micro doses called ‘potencies.’ Each potency is more dilute, more highly refined, more potent and capable of penetrating the organism more deeply with less harm and disruption to the ailing vital force than the previous one. The correct homeopathic medicinal dose is one that is similar to and slightly stronger than the proportion of strength with which the vital force still prevails in the patient, just sufficient to remove symptoms of the natural illness but insufficient to harm the vital force.

Prove the curative power of each medicine

Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, Author's Preface to the Organon of Medicine, Sixth Final Edition

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