General philosophy
Homeopathy is a vitalist philosophy
in that it interprets diseases and sickness as caused by disturbances in
a hypothetical vital
force or life
force and sees these
disturbances as manifesting themselves in unique symptoms. Homeopathy
maintains that the vital force has the ability to react and adapt to
internal and external causes, which homeopaths refer to as the "law of
susceptibility". The law of susceptibility states that a negative state
of mind can attract hypothetical disease entities called "miasms" to
invade the body and produce symptoms of diseases.[24] However,
Hahnemann rejected the notion of a disease as a separate thing or
invading entity and insisted that it was always part of the "living
whole".[25]
[edit]Law
of similars
Hahnemann observed from his experiments with cinchona bark,
used as a treatment for malaria,
that the effects he experienced from ingesting the bark were similar to
the symptoms of malaria. He therefore reasoned that cure proceeds
through similarity, and that treatments must be able to produce symptoms
in healthy individuals similar to those of the disease being treated.
Through further experiments with other substances, Hahnemann conceived
of the "law of similars", otherwise known as "like cures like" (Latin: similia
similibus curentur) as a fundamental healing principle. He
believed that by inducing a disease through use of drugs, the artificial
symptoms empowered the vital force to neutralise and expel the original
disease and that this artificial disturbance would naturally subside
when the dosing ceased.[24]
Miasms
and disease
Hahnemann found as early as 1816 that the patients
he treated through homeopathy still suffered from chronic diseases that
he was unable to cure. In
1828, he introduced the concept of miasms, which he regarded as
underlying causes for many known diseases. A
miasm is often defined by homeopaths as an imputed "peculiar morbid
derangement of [the] vital force". Hahnemann
associated each miasm with specific diseases, with each miasm seen as
the root cause of several diseases. According to Hahnemann, initial
exposure to miasms causes local symptoms, such as skin or venereal
diseases, but if these symptoms are suppressed by medication, the cause
goes deeper and begins to manifest itself as diseases of the internal
organs. Homeopathy maintains
that treating diseases by directly opposing their symptoms, as is
sometimes done in conventional medicine, is ineffective because all
"disease can generally be traced to some latent, deep-seated, underlying
chronic, or inherited tendency". The
underlying imputed miasm still remains, and deep-seated ailments can
only be corrected by removing the deeper disturbance of the vital force.
Hahnemann's miasm theory remains disputed and
controversial within homeopathy even in modern times. In 1978, Anthony
Campbell, then a consultant physician at The Royal London
Homeopathic Hospital, criticised statements by George
Vithoulkas claiming that syphilis,
when treated with antibiotics, would develop into secondary and tertiary
syphilis with involvement of the central nervous system. This conflicts
with scientific studies, which indicate thatpenicillin treatment
produces a complete cure of syphilis in more than 90% of cases. Campbell
described this as "a thoroughly irresponsible statement which could
mislead an unfortunate layman into refusing orthodox treatment".
Originally Hahnemann presented only three miasms,
of which the most important was "psora" (Greek for itch),
described as being related to any itching diseases of the skin, supposed
to be derived from suppressed scabies,
and claimed to be the foundation of many further disease conditions.
Hahnemann believed psora to be the cause of such diseases as epilepsy, cancer, jaundice, deafness,
and cataracts. Since
Hahnemann's time, other miasms have been proposed, some replacing one or
more of psora's proposed functions, including tubercular miasms
and cancer miasms.
