Presented before the Naturopathic Medicine Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona, on April 28, 2024.
The subject of my talk, The Scientific Basis of Homeopathy, is so critical that a clear understanding of all its ramifications would define, from the bottom up, medical education and medical practice.
Homeopathy poses a great dilemma for the thinking physician who is new to it. It is either the greatest hoax in the history of medicine and is not worth paying any attention to, or it is the greatest discovery of all time for humanity and deserves our full attention. If it were the greatest hoax, it should have disappeared a long time ago, as would be expected. If it were the greatest discovery of all time for humanity, it would have been recognized as such in its 234 years of existence.
However, the thinking physician is not more advanced in finding clarity on this dilemma, as neither of these two scenarios occurred. Thinking physicians will have to figure out this enigma, as so much of life depends on it. Hopefully, my presentation will illuminate the true value of homeopathy and increase the interest of thinking physicians in homeopathy.
Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, a 35-year-old physician began a series of experiments that led him to the discovery of the law of the similars, also known as the law of cure. Unfortunately for suffering humanity, only a tiny fraction of physicians have learned to apply the law of cure systematically in their practice. If the law of the similars were to be humanity’s greatest discovery of all time, why is it so misunderstood and neglected?
Clearly, we have a major problem!
Essentially, the problem seems to be due to a difference in paradigms. Undoubtedly, the major stumbling block for preventing an unbiased examination of the facts associated with the law of cure is the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist paradigm, which blinds the mind and prevents the perception of the following three phenomena: one, the vital force; two, the dynamic cause of disease; and three, the use of dynamic remedies to trigger a curative response.
But even among physicians who are said to be vitalistic, the application of the law of cure is greatly neglected, and its clinical application is usually improperly applied. This is generally related to ignorance about homeopathy’s true place in medicine and how to best practice it.
Today, I want to thank the NMI Board for giving me this unique opportunity to address a vitalistic group of physicians about the law of cure, both of which are very dear to me. As it is such a critical subject for each person’s well-being and the survival of our species, my responsibility today is to ensure that I deliver it to you as clearly and comprehensively as possible.
Let’s start with the origin of the discovery of the law of cure.
In 1785, at the age of 30, after only six years in his medical practice, an exceptionally brilliant and learned physician decided to abandon medicine and began dedicating his time to translation and chemistry. He thus wrote, “I became very uneasy in my conscience about treating the unknown diseased conditions of my suffering brethren with these unknown medicines—powerful agents which, if they did not exactly suit the case, might change life into death or produce new affections and chronic ailments, which are often much more difficult to remove than the original disease. It was to me a most fearsome thought that I might, in this way, become a murderer or endanger the lives of my brethren. I completely abandoned the practice and scarcely treated anyone for fear of doing him harm.”
However, when his children’s lives became endangered, he said, “My flesh and blood caused my conscience to reproach me still more loudly, that I had no means on which I could rely for affording them relief.”
He kept searching through 2,500 years of medical darkness for a tiny ray of light. He not only had access to some of the best libraries on the history of Western medicine but was an extraordinarily talented philologist and could read all the ancient medical texts in their original languages, including Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac and Chaldean. In his thesis for the teaching chair of medicine at the University of Leipzig, he quoted authors verbatim in eight languages, as if he were a perfect acquaintance with all the ancient medical authors.
The historian Thomas Bradford wrote on Hahnemann’s extraordinary facility for language, “It is said that when he wished to understand anything in a language with which he was not familiar, he at once commenced the systematic study of that language. Here he was unwittingly preparing himself for his great future.” Carroll Dunham remarked that Hahnemann was unsurpassed in his knowledge of the history of medicine, which has probably remained the same to this day. “Hahnemann as a physician was distinguished by profound learning and the broadest medical culture of his times. His writings are full of this learning. His extensive reading in every language in which medical men had written enabled him to make those citations which, in the Organon, so irrefutably prove his positions, and in the materia medica enrich his pathogeneses.”
So here we have an exceptionally gifted, thinking and philanthropic physician who, after abandoning the practice of medicine because of the dangers inherent to its practice, began seeking the tiniest ray of light.
This ray of light appeared in 1790 when Hahnemann was translating the main textbook of materia medica of the time, the one of the Scottish physician William Cullen. In it, Cullen recognized the efficacy of Peruvian bark in the treatment of patients with malaria, but the results were sporadic, as there were numerous cases of failure following its use. Therefore, he asked the most important question in the history of medicine, “And whilst it (cinchona) is allowed to be a very safe and very powerful remedy, the only question which remains respecting it is, in what circumstances it may be most properly employed?”
Why was it the most important question ever posed in the history of medicine? When Samuel Hahnemann, the translator of this text, came to this question in the midnight hour, he decided to attempt to solve it. He was more prepared than others to answer this question because his experience using Cinchona was the same as Cullen’s: the results were sporadic, hit and miss. He was also aware that the symptoms of intoxication with Cinchona closely resembled those of malaria. Further, he was aware of the principle of the similars that had been reported throughout the history of medicine. He wrote, “For the sake of experiment, I took for several days four drachms of good cinchona bark twice a day. . . . in order to learn the sick-making effects of this bark.”
Following this, Hahnemann experienced a group of symptoms exactly like the ones he had experienced when he suffered from malaria as a medical student thirteen years before, eureka, the ray of light he was looking for!
However, he was not satisfied with this observation. He repeated his experiment several times and obtained exactly the same result. He wrote, “I stopped taking it and got well.” He continued, “With this first trial broke upon me the dawn that has since brightened into the most brilliant day of the medical art; that it is only in virtue of their power to make the healthy human being ill that medicines can cure morbid states, and indeed, only such morbid states as are composed of symptoms which the drug to be selected for them can itself produce in similarity on the healthy.”
It took a unique genius and a very knowledgeable person to understand the immense importance of the underlying principle of the phenomenon he had just observed. That eureka moment, epiphany or Urphänomen opened up a whole new world for Hahnemann and medicine when he lifted the veil of that old but yet “undiscovered principle.” The principle of the similars has been pointed out since antiquity as one of the main therapeutic principles. Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Plato and Aristotle knew about it. For instance, in Aphorisms 42 in On the Places in Man, Hippocrates wrote, “Another process: illness is produced by similar things; and by taking similar things, the patient returns from illness to health.” The concept of the principles of similars can also be found in the antiquity of non-European cultures, as in the Mesoamerican cultures prior to the sixth century of our era.[*]
Further, Hahnemann acknowledged the immense importance of radical cures that had been occasionally reported throughout the history of medicine, such as cases of insanity or epilepsy being permanently cured after taking but a small dose of a medicine once.
The problem that Hahnemann progressively solved through continuous experimentation was the relation between the symptoms that can be produced by a medicine and the symptoms of a disease that can be cured by that same medicine.
This could be determined in no other way than by conducting two sets of pure experimentation. First, by the proving of remedies on healthy subjects. Second, by using these provings to identify the remedy that could be used to cure the sick. All this was determined by simple experiments, without the slightest mixture of theory. When a patient presented a collection of symptoms similar to those produced by a certain remedy, this remedy was administered, and a cure ensued. The symptoms of the provers and the ones of the sick formed two sets of undisputable facts that commanded certainty in prescribing.
After a sufficient number of similar experiments, with different remedies, in various diseases, and with similar results, the scientist Benjamin Joslin wrote in 1853, “The great benefactor of the medical art felt justified in announcing the law, similia similibus curantur, like is cured by like.” Then and there, the law of cure was discovered, which is undoubtedly the greatest and most beneficial discovery of all time for humanity.
Having convinced himself that he had discovered a law of nature, he set out to find its clinical application. This led to a set of principles and rules, including the totality of symptoms, the single remedy, and the optimal posology. When he observed that the crude doses acted with violence when they were prescribed on similarity, he began diminishing the doses. Throughout his career, he sought the optimal posology, meaning the one that would produce the least aggravation with the maximal amelioration in each individual patient.
So far, no theory or hypothesis has been interjected in the discovery of the law of the similars and its application. Homeopathy was thus developed through astute observation, meticulous investigation and experimentation, and logical thinking. It is pure science.
In thus founding a system of therapeutics upon a law of nature, Hahnemann elevated medicine to a true science. Thus, it is very easy to verify the truth of the law of the similars by meticulously following the methodology of Hahnemann.
In 1808, in a letter he had written to his close and respected friend Hufeland, Hahnemann asked his famous colleagues to put homeopathy to the test, “Refute, I cry to my contemporaries, refute these truths if you can, by pointing out a still more efficacious, sure and agreeable mode of treatment than mine—and do not combat them with mere words, of which we have already too many. But should experience show you, as it has me, that mine is the best, then make use of it for the benefit, for the deliverance of humanity, and give God the glory!”
In his 1817 essay Nota Bene for My Reviewers, he repeated this same plea for his contemporaries to experiment, “ ‘This doctrine appeals not only chiefly, but solely to the verdict of experience—’repeat the experiments,’ it cries aloud, ‘repeat them carefully and accurately, and you will find the doctrine confirmed at every step’—and it does what no medical doctrine, no system of physic, no so-called therapeutics ever did or could do, it insists upon being ‘judged by the result.’ ”Hahnemann’s discovery is confirmed daily by millions of observations.
Incidentally, Hahnemann discovered another very important phenomenon: Disease is a dynamic process of inimical forces: the force within that continuously tries to maintain harmony against competing forces and influences. Further, consequent to the discovery of the law of cure, Hahnemann discovered another law of Nature, or constancy of a natural phenomenon, which is the law of the dynamicity of remedies and their capacity to affect the vital force.
In diluting and succussing his remedies, Hahnemann realized that it was the dynamic properties of remedies that potentiate the healing response in the sick. This is confirmed by the fact that medically inert substances such as charcoal, sand, salt, oyster shells, clay, graphite, gold, etc., can be manipulated to extract their medicinal forces. Further, once this medicinal force has been liberated from the original substance, it can not only be multiplied indefinitely, but also its power can be augmented.
Whoever would deny that homeopathy is the science of therapeutics should be asked:
1- About their knowledge of all the experimental steps that led to the discovery of the law of the similars and all its practical rules.
2- Which aspects of homeopathy are actually not the results of pure science?
3- And finally, whether they have tried to reproduce Hahnemann’s experiments. If not, why?
On the contrary, homeopathy fulfills all the criteria of a science by using two sets of data that are the results of pure observation. First, the provings are based on the observation of the toxic effects of medicines on the healthy. Provings can be reproduced indefinitely while maintaining consistent outcomes. Second, the objective and subjective symptoms of the sick are also obtained through pure observation. Now, here we have two sets of independent phenomena, the symptoms of the provings and the ones of the sick, which are being connected together by a general principle. The law of the similars is the pure language of Nature, which can be trusted to guide us in navigating the difficulties of life.
Homeopathy has another trait of being a science, as it presents a coherent body of knowledge that can grow indefinitely without ever compromising the integrity of any of its parts. Homeopathy not only has the capacity to predict the outcomes of the juxtaposition of the symptoms of the proving of a remedy with those of the sick, but it can also predict which remedies will be indicated in newly emerging diseases, as Hahnemann did when cholera first entered Europe in 1831, and as we did with the appearance of the first cases of COVID-19.
To top it all off, homeopathy is not only a science but also pure wisdom and goodness. It presents a coherent understanding of health and disease, which is associated with the most successful medicinal approach ever reported in the history of medicine. Contrast this with the incoherent, usually ineffective and often dangerous approach of the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist approach on which conventional medicine is based.
Hahnemann is undoubtedly humanity’s greatest benefactor. Beyond the discovery of the two laws of Nature mentioned above, Hahnemann revolutionized medicine by rejecting its millennium-long practice based on opinions, hypotheses and abstracted ideas (diagnosis) and establishing instead a principle-based practice that aims for certainty. Experience indisputably shows that certainty in medicine is best achieved through the systematic and strict application of a set of fundamental principles and laws that govern health and healing.
In 1864, Carroll Dunham wrote: “The object of our professional life is to find out the truth and shape our practice accordingly.” In 1810, in the first of the six editions of the Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, Hahnemann established three key points about this truth in medicine that characterized his entire medical career and work as an enlightened humanist and avant-garde physician. The first point is that health is our most treasured possession in this life. The second point is that the practice of the true art of healing is the most sacred of all human occupations, as our well-being depends on it. Because of these truths, the third point becomes essential: the fundamental principles of the true art of healing must be rigorously examined.
Hahnemann was correct: When we become ill, the path to regaining our health is not always obvious, and the results depend greatly on the care we happen to find. When its fundamental principles are systematically applied, medicine can effectively guide the sick back to health. Unfortunately, conventional medicine has largely disregarded these principles for centuries. Examining the fundamental principles of medicine is one of the physician’s important tasks, which we will now undertake.
Incidentally, the word “principle” comes from the Latin principium, which means beginning or fundamental truth. When I became interested in studying chiropractic in 1975, I began to pay special attention to the fundamental principles of health and healing and began assembling and studying them intelligently, which I have continued to this day. The first two principles that caught my attention, which I found in 1974 in a brochure in a chiropractic waiting room, were: 1) that the body can heal itself and 2) there are causes to sickness, and the job of the physician is to identify and address them.
Regarding prevention, vis medicatrix naturae and wholism, I read in 1976 in a brochure from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine. In the early 1980s, I included another principle, Tolle causam, from reading Hahnemann. In the later 1980s, I added Cito, tuto et jucunde from Asclepiades. Only about fifteen years ago, I added Aude sapere from Horace and, subsequently, from Hahnemann. Only lately have I raised the law of cure as one of the most fundamental principles of medicine rather than an underlying principle of the vis medicatrix naturae.
Some of these principles are actually laws of Nature that represent established orders of the universe whose applications are universal and lead to constant outcomes. Let’s develop a quick overview of these fundamental truths before we focus our attention on one of these principles, the law of cure.
1. Praeventum: Prevention is better than a cure. Since health results mainly from healthful living, the highest mission of the physician is to guide people to choose ways of living and environments that are conducive to good health.
3. Cito, lenis, jucunde, toto, durabile, certo, simplex et tuto curare: The highest ideal of therapy is the rapid, gentle, pleasant, complete and permanent restoration of health in the surest, simplest and least harmful way.
4. Tolle causam, cessat effectus: Remove the cause, and its effects will cease. There are causes of sickness, and above all, physicians address them. In conformity with the law of health, health returns spontaneously as soon as the causes of illness are removed. This principle implies that the physician must be a good diagnostician, as bona diagnosis, bona curatio (Good diagnosis, easy cure.).
5. Similia similibus curantur: Likes are cured through the use of likes. The whole person’s health is best achieved and maintained through the systematic application of the law of cure, namely the law of similars. When disease is primarily due to susceptibility, often through the long-lasting effects of noxious causes, the most certain and quick way to regain health is through the application of the law of similars.
8. Aude sapere: Physician dare to know and become a true philosopher and scientist but, above all, a true artist. Constant questioning and assiduous research are the road to knowledge.
Experience indisputably shows that the greatest clinical successes occur when the fundamental principles of the healing art and laws of health and cure are systematically applied. Medical education should be entirely based on meeting the above objectives, while medical practice should aim at the systematic application of the above principles and laws.
The physician of the future will be fully trained to counsel people to choose ways of living and environments that are conducive to good health, recognize and address the primary and secondary causes of diseases and successfully apply the law of cure (homeopathy) and supportive treatment methods, including hydrotherapy, manipulation, therapeutic fasting, spiritual healing, and electrotherapy.
Naturopathic medical schools should take the lead in the upcoming and much-needed medical revolution to save humanity and our planet. This revolution will have to occur when a principle-based practice becomes fully recognized while the conventional medical establishments collapse and fade into history.
Let’s now focus on the laws governing health and healing, which rest on two fundamental laws of Nature.
First is the law of health. The living organism is characterized by a unity of harmonious functions, which we call health and is associated with a state of well-being. This is quite a feat as the human body is composed of approximately 37 trillion cells, and it is thought that each of these cells contains 20,000 different types of substances, which effect from about 100,000 to 100 trillion biochemical reactions every second, and for which the current materialistic-reductionist-mechanistic paradigm of medicine and science does not come close to offering any plausible answer regarding the incredible state of unity and harmony which are characteristics of living organisms.
Health is a natural and spontaneous state of balance and harmony that exists as long as the conditions necessary for life and the individual’s needs are met. Health is lost when inimical forces and influences overcome the vital force’s capacity to maintain balance. At its core, disease is essentially an overcome, imbalanced, untuned vital force. That is the very origin of disease, including those that are related to lifestyle and poor environment.
Once the impediments to health are removed, health tends to return spontaneously. However, if ill health is primarily due to an untuned vital force, health can only return completely and durably through the application of the law of cure. The cure of these primarily dynamic diseases occurs when the vital force is back in tune.
Essentially, the well-trained physician is the one who has wisely learned to link, with great art, two sets of facts in the presence of a disease that is primarily due to an untuned vital force, namely, the symptoms of the sick, with the ones of a remedy, without the interjection of hypotheses. In itself, this act is a truly beautiful application of a law of Nature in its greatest simplicity.
However, at all times, the application of the law of the similars can’t be dissociated from the other sound practices of medicine, such as:
Medical science is absolutely impossible without the systematic, scientific and harmonious application of those fundamental principles.
The true healer will remove any impediment to health, or causa occasionalis. For instance, Hahnemann recognized that rickets, scurvy and goiter were lifestyle diseases and, for their cures, recommended activity in fresh air, vegetables and roasted sponge, respectively. Extensive and thorough knowledge of physiology, pathology, hygiene and diagnosis is thus indispensable to the physician for the proper evaluation of the sick and for determining how to best change the sick state of the patient into health.
The law of health guides the physician to investigate whatever causes may have been inducing the diseased condition and, if possible, to address them. The application of the law of health alone is sufficient to restore many sick persons to health without the intervention of therapeutics. The well-rounded physician applies equally and systematically the laws of health and cure. When sickness is primarily dynamic, namely due to an untuned vital force, the thinking physician will now rely on the law of cure.
The strictly hygienic physician only applies the law of health. However, the law of cure obliges the physician to intervene, let’s say, for instance, when:
A person has been poisoned. Should the physician just then put the patient to rest and wait until the poison has been fully absorbed and destroyed life? Or should the physician use an appropriate antidote with an adsorbent?
Hahnemann gives a number of these cases of poisoning he treated early in his career. For instance, he was called to see a five-year-old girl who was in a coma, convulsing with foam at her mouth after having swallowed a piece of camphor. Hahnemann simply administered crude opium per rectum, and she came back to life.
A patient is in shock after a serious accident or emotional trauma.
A woman begins to bleed profusely soon after delivery.
An unconscious toddler is breathing at 120 breaths per minute with viral pneumonia, and after 24 hours, the parents are told that the child will not last much longer in this state.
An eight-year-old young girl is threatening to kill other members of her family with a knife.
A two-year-old child screamed in the middle of the night; on putting the light on, his mom uncovered a black scorpion inside the bed sheet and a couple of red marks on her child’s thigh.
None of these cases is the province of hygiene but of therapeutics. You may comment that these cases are for the emergency room. Whether an emergency or not, the well-rounded physician is always prepared and must act quickly to avert death. All these cases responded quickly and decidedly to the application of the law of cure.
In less severe cases, the application of the law of cure is nonetheless as imperative. Let me illustrate the long-term impact of the systematic application of the law of cure in someone’s life with a recent case. Marty first consulted me in 1989 at the age of 65 after having had surgery for colon cancer. He was put on a whole-food, plant-based diet, and I followed him through the years whenever he had problems. In August 2023, now 99, he called me and said he had bad news. His wife of 67 years had died three weeks before. He told me that he had lost 30 lbs since her passing due to ongoing diarrhea associated with immense grief.
I prescribed a remedy for him, and some four weeks later, he reported that he had never felt so well in his life. I asked what he meant by this, aside from the fact that his diarrhea had stopped quickly after taking the prescribed remedy. He said that he can now read for six to eight hours at a time without interruption. He said that in his life, he could never have read more than an hour or two at a time. You can see Marty as he was interviewed on December 23, 2023, by Bret Weinstein (Dark Horse podcast). Marty is the last surviving pilot to have bombed Germany during WWII. He is one of the few people in California older than 95 who hold a driver’s license, which he will have until his next test at 103. Marty drives about 50 miles each day of the week to purchase his fresh food. He is alert and all there, living and active. He doesn’t need glasses to read or drive. He has all his teeth.
It is the duty of every physician to carry out an intelligent study of the natural laws that govern health and healing. I want to reiterate that a natural law is an established order of the universe. A natural law expresses a universal constancy that knows no exception and is infallible. A natural law carries the weight of authority.
We can acknowledge that in the science of medicine, there is no authority higher than natural laws. For thinking and philanthropic physicians, the law of health and the law of cure become the focal points of their medical practice. The law of health and the law of cure are applicable to almost every sick person, with the exception of those with purely mechanical issues.
Incidentally, empirical medicine and eclecticism have no law. The management and suppression of symptoms, as are commonplace in conventional medicine, are not based on any law of nature and are unwise, detrimental and dangerous.
By basing our practice on natural laws, we can confidently face any sick person, regardless of the gravity of their problem or new epidemics, which represents an extraordinary wealth for humanity. The law of cure expresses the relation that exists between a remedy and sickness and is thus our only trustworthy guide in the medicinal treatment of the sick. It is the only law that exists for the cure of the sick with medicines, and on it rests all our hope to achieve certainty in medicine. Therefore, as physicians, it becomes our duty to pursue an intelligent study of all natural laws and principles related to healing, and our ultimate goal is to let our practice be governed by them.
Consistency and adherence to principles are associated with favorable outcomes that can be predicted with almost mathematical accuracy. The application of the law of cure is very simple in principle: If we wish to cure the sick, we must first obtain an accurate knowledge of what needs to be cured; second, we must know the effect of the means to be employed for the cure, namely, we must have a reliable materia medica; and, thirdly, we must know how to apply these means. Physicians who neglect to apply the law of cure in their medicinal treatment of the sick are, unfortunately, the victims of ignorance in bypassing the most efficient means to treat patients medicinally.
We can’t discuss the scientific basis of homeopathy without addressing the question of the vital force, which is perhaps the greatest obstacle to its acceptance. First of all, is there any such thing as the vital force?
Since the nineteenth century, we have been told that scientists have universally decided there is no such thing as a vital force. However, if the question were asked whether light comes from the sun, the answer would be quite simple: look and see. So let’s see. Soon after a person dies, circulation, digestion, excretion, secretion, defense, repair, sensation, and all voluntary and involuntary movements cease, as do all other functions that are present in the living body but absent in the dead one. All these functions of the living organism are characterized by motion (activity).
Now, motion implies a force. This force that animates and maintains the integrity of living organisms has been recognized since ancient times as the vital force. I don’t see why we should have any hesitation to recognize the existence of this force unless it was imperative to avoid a cognitive dissonance within the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist mind. The bias associated with the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist mind cannot lead to the truth about critical subjects such as the existence of the vital force or healing.
There should be no hesitation to affirm that this force is inseparable from life. To predicate motion, organization and purpose without such a force would be to perpetrate an absurdity. On the one hand, it is a self-evident fact that living organisms are animated while maintaining their integrity, which “obliges wonderment,” while the dead organism is devoid of any animation and decays. On the other hand, these facts can’t be denied even by materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist scientists.
But what preserves the integrity of a living organism and, when lost, reduces it to its dissolution? Similarly, when a sperm enters an ovum, a new spontaneous organization of the fetus sets in within the already organized one of the mother, which puzzled the same scientists. Said scientists have the burden of the proof of the non-existence of the vital force, while we have to present the evidence of the proof in its favor. The negation by said scientists of what appears as a self-evident truth is inadequate. However, as it is difficult or nearly impossible to prove the non-existence of something, the burden of the proof belongs to the ones who affirm the existence of a vital force.
One of the most compelling sets of evidence about the existence of the vital force comes from the great number of scientists who were independently led to postulate from their research, specifically in embryology and ontogeny, that there must be a “mechanism the outcome of whose activity is ‘wholeness,’ organization and continuity.”
Harold Burr from Yale University is one of these scientists who spent a great part of his academic life researching the fields surrounding living organisms. He carried out meticulous experiments for over 40 years on the measurements of “electro-dynamic” fields in living organisms, including humans, animals, trees, plants, seeds and eggs. He called these fields of life, L-fields.
In particular, he was able to measure the L-field around the unfertilized salamander egg and found that it had the shape of a mature salamander. These force fields could be measured from 1 1/2 to 2 mm away from the surface of living organisms. Burr was able to measure electrical patterns that distinguished health from illness, “By measuring the L-fields of seeds, it is possible to predict how strong and healthy the future plants will be.” He observed that the fields change before the appearance of cancer in humans.
In any case, it may not be necessary to prove the existence of the vital force, as its proof is not important per se, as we are satisfied that it is a working hypothesis, which is the keystone to homeopathy and much of alternative medicine. For us, the existence of the vital force is as much a fact of life as gravity. Since time immemorial, physicians from many of the great medical traditions have observed the innate capacity of the body to heal itself and have thus speculated on the existence of a force called, among other names, the force of life, vital force, vital principle, élan vital, qi (chi), prana or dynamis, which is speculated to harmonize all the vital processes into an amazingly functioning unity.
Hahnemann expressed this idea very well in his Organon: “In the state of health, the spirit-like vital force (dynamis) animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and activities of all the parts of the living organism in a harmony that obliges wonderment.”
In any case, in homeopathy, opinions don’t play a big role as we base our actions on principles or fundamental truths and, therefore, on certainties. Denying the existence of a vital force or of our dynamic remedies because they can’t be explained by the sciences of chemistry and physics actually defies logic. It would be unphilosophical to reduce our world to merely chemistry and physics, especially the phenomenon of life, arts and the spiritual world.
There exist other sciences than chemistry and physics, such as the sciences of health, healing and homeopathy. Chemistry and physics have failed to explain the origin and nature of life, the wholeness and organization of living beings, consciousness, intelligence, wisdom, love, embryogenesis, ontogeny and healing. Chemistry and physics are great tools for studying matter and building and propelling machines. However, as far as we can understand, life does not originate from matter. On the other hand, matter is animated by life.
We don’t expect and actually don’t need the physical sciences of chemistry and physics to explain life or why our 99-year-old Marty was able to use his brain better than ever so late in his life. Proving self-evident truths, such as the existence of life, is not important. It seems that it would be futile, while the main question in medicine would have been avoided: Can you elicit cures? That is the question.
The working hypothesis of the existence of a vital force, which is the keystone of homeopathy and alternative medicine, rests on the answer to the question, “Can you elicit cures?” which I will answer later. However, for the moment, we can clearly say that our philosophy is more coherent and yields superb clinical results, whereas the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist approach of conventional medicine is incoherent and yields chaotic, totally disheartening outcomes.
For the ones who recognize the existence of a vital force or, at the very least, use the concept of the vital force as a working hypothesis, disease is essentially a dynamic process of inimical forces. Any disturbance of this inner force would reflect in abnormal functions and eventually in sickness. It is not difficult to see then how a knowledge of this force, and how to work with it when untuned, becomes critically empowering. We should, therefore, not be surprised that, for the homeopath, an untunement of the vital force becomes a focal point in the investigation of sickness.
When the inimical forces and influences of life overcome the capacity of the vital force to maintain balance, disharmony follows. In disease, the vital force has been overcome, put off-balance or untuned, and is thus unable to maintain equilibrium. Clinicians must recognize that much of the activity that occurs in a disease state is related to defensive, adaptive, protective, remedial, eliminative, reparative and regenerative processes. For instance, inflammation, fever and pain are the organism’s defensive, protective and remedial efforts in reaction to injury, tissue breakdown, poisoning, infection or stress. In summary, these processes are survival mechanisms, but they are limited in their capacity to reestablish harmony and balance. Discharges, expectoration, vomiting, diarrhea, skin eruptions, sweat, etc., tend to be exoneration or efforts of the body to free itself from a burden.
As a rule, these efforts of nature should not be interfered with, as they are remedial in nature. It is not the fever or defense process that should concern the physician but the cause of the fever and how to overcome the cause by supporting the remedial efforts of the organism.
Further, the vital force can remain untuned after being put off balance, even though the original cause that created the imbalance is no longer present. For instance, a woman becomes sick after receiving the shocking news that her dear son is reported missing in a mountain climbing accident. Some days later, her son is happily found. Still, the negative effect of the bad news remains unaffected, and the disease that was initiated following the bad news continues to progress.
An untuned vital force can be acquired, as in the above case, but it can also be inherited. A pregnant mother who experienced an intense shock associated with great anger delivers a child who is wheezing from the time of birth. When the child was four, he received one dose of Aconitum napellus 10M, and the asthma ceased, not to return.
The perceptive observer can note signs of untunement or dysregulation in a newborn baby, which can be immediately addressed and corrected with the intervention of a skilled and knowledgeable physician. Soon after my first daughter was born, it was noticed that her skin was mottled blue, she was continuously babbling, and she was sleeping with her tongue out. One dose of Lachesis was sufficient to settle these three “psoric” symptoms. She didn’t need remedial treatment for years afterward.
I mentioned earlier that the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist approach of conventional medicine is not only incoherent but leads to chaos. On the one hand, in conventional medicine, diseases are considered entities distinct from the living organism. It is seen in the following expressions: communicative diseases, catching the flu, getting rid of the disease, fighting cancer, uprooting disease, resisting disease, etc. Living beings do not resist disease but rather try to adapt to conditions that are unfavorable to life and which are the real causes of illness.
Illness is typically a multifactorial phenomenon since the causes of any phenomenon are, in fact, the sum of all the circumstances and conditions that preceded it. This implies that every physician must be a good diagnostician to properly assess all the circumstances and conditions of the sick person.
In conventional medicine, diseases are classified by names as if they were uniform entities. But in reality, no two patients with the same nosologically named disease, e.g., Klebsiella pneumoniae pneumonia, will present the same symptoms. Once the disease has been nosologically identified, treatment is designed to oppose some aspects of the disease process.
On the other hand, for us, disease is not a material thing, distinct from a living organism, but a state of imbalance that is manifested in symptoms. Disease is a dynamic process during which the force that animates life continually attempts to adapt to forces, influences and conditions that are inimical to life. This is coherent with our methodology and the extraordinary results associated with it, which remain unsurpassed in the entire history of medicine.
Hahnemann wrote on this point in 1813 in The Genius of the Homoeopathic Healing Art, “From this, it is obvious that the diseases of man, produced by the dynamic and virtual influence of pathological harmfulness, can originally be merely dynamic (almost exclusively mentally induced) disturbances of the vital character of our organism. … For the reason that diseases are nothing but dynamic disorders of the condition and character of our organism, they cannot possibly be cured by mankind in any other way than through potencies and forces that are equally able to produce dynamic changes in the condition of man; that is, diseases are cured virtually and dynamically by medicines.”
Similarly, Paracelsus considered the medicinal (or poisonous) power of substances to be dynamic in nature: “The medicine lies in the spirit and not in the substance (or body), for body and spirit are two different things.” In homeopathy, dynamic disorders are met with dynamic remedies. The first step is to gather all the symptoms of the sick to form the true picture of the disease. The second step is to address this untuned vital force with the most similar dynamic force among our remedies, which have been potentiated for that purpose.
The four following corollaries to the law of similars are the logical steps in its application.
The first step that Hahnemann took to uncover the law of similars was to conduct a proving. This first proving was the key that unlocked the mystery of the principle of the similars that had been reported throughout the history of medicine. This first proving clearly showed under what conditions Peruvian bark could be a curative remedy and thus became the cornerstone on which rests the magnificent structure of homeopathy.
From this proving, Hahnemann began to investigate all the rules for the correct application of the law of cure, one by one over many decades, a process that continues to this day. Three thousand years of medical theories and conjectures that had not been able to reveal the curative properties of medicinal substances were annulled forever in the moment of that experiment, and light began to shine on medical blindness.
As the law of similars demands the highest degree of similarity, it obliges the physician to obtain the totality of symptoms for comparative materia medica.
The law of cure requires that the most similar remedy to the patient’s disease be prescribed, which is done by eliminating, through comparison, all the most similar remedies until one remains.
It took innumerable experimentations over many decades for Hahnemann to perfect the dose of the prescribed medicine. At first, he gave drops of mother tinctures but witnessed violent initial aggravations that preceded the recovery of the patient. In the midst of his homeopathic career, Hahnemann explained what made him diminish the dose: “No preconceived opinions or notions induced me to diminish the dose. Manifold experiences and faithful observations caused me to diminish the dose gradually; experience and observation demonstrated the fact that the larger doses, even when they cured, acted too powerfully, more so than was necessary to accomplish a cure. These smaller doses were sufficient to cure, and did not, like the larger ones, retard the cure.”
Shall we be surprised that homeopathy is indicated in patients presenting with almost all human ailments, whether the disease is due to, associated or categorized with accidents (fractures, contusions, torn tissues, etc.), infections (pneumonia, cholera, meningitis, rabies, tuberculosis, etc.), inflammation (asthma, encephalitis, autoimmune diseases), degenerative diseases (cancer, Parkinson’s disease), and mental diseases, homeopathy is not only indicated but curative when properly applied?
However, all the impediments to health must also be addressed concomitantly. Hahnemann followed patients dispersed throughout Europe by correspondence. In a six-paragraph letter to a patient, five paragraphs would be about lifestyle recommendations, and the last paragraph would contain instructions on how to take the prescribed remedy. The law of similars applies to all cases of disease that are due to a primary untunement of the vital force, which would exclude mechanical diseases, those due to unhealthy lifestyles and environments, and deficiencies.
I come here with more than forty-five years of experience in closely applying the laws of similars. I have seen some of the most challenging cases in practice, with both severe acute and chronic diseases, whether it was a case of immunodeficiency with pneumocystis carinii pneumonia with cryptococcus meningitis and liver and kidney failure, centenarians with pneumonia given up to die, patients with stage III and IV of cancer, degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, or genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis, and homeopathy has helped all these to recover their health, partially or fully.
Further, I come to you with close knowledge of the vast homeopathic literature, which means I have witnessed throughout history, on the one hand, the factors that led to the greatest successes in the history of medicine and, on the other hand, the causes of failure and the demise of those who improperly applied homeopathy. The most significant limitation to the practice of homeopathy is the poor methodology adopted by professed homeopaths.
What benchmarks can be used to evaluate whether the principles of homeopathy have been appropriately applied in cases of failure? We could look at the methodology used. To begin with, was the totality of the symptoms obtained? Was the case properly and objectively analyzed with reliable repertories and materia medica? Was the most similar remedy prescribed in an optimal posology? We can also use the overall treatment outcome in patients with severe acute and chronic diseases, which can be used to evaluate any system of therapeutics.
The outcome of the treatment of the pneumonia patient can be used as an excellent benchmark to measure whether homeopathy is well applied, as penumonia has been omnipresent in time and places, and is easy to diagnose.
Comparative Mortality from Community-Acquired Pneumonia (CAP) under Different Approaches[†]
| Treatment | Number of Patients | Number of Deaths | Mortality Rate | Odds of surviving CAP |
| Pre-antibiotic allopathy | 197,474 | 47,354 | 24.0% | 3 to 1 |
| Expectancy[‡] | 1,541 | 271 | 17.6% | 5 to 1 |
| Present-day conventional care | 33,148 | 4,541 | 13.7% | 6 to 1 |
| Unqualified homeopathy | 25,631 | 867 | 3.4% | 28 to 1 |
| Hydrotherapy | 1,584 | 25 | 1.6% | 62 to 1 |
| Hahnemannian homeopathy | 1,127 | 6 | 0.5% | 199 to 1 |
The above table’s mortality rate of 13.7 percent under conventional medicine was based on the last available meta-analysis in 1996.[§] You may say these are old numbers; the situation must be much better 28 years later. Let’s see.
The pneumonia mortality rate was evaluated in Denmark for 14 years, from 1997 to 2011, and the average mortality rate was 13 percent.[**]
A 2011 to 2013 study in Italy showed a 16 percent mortality rate in community-acquired pneumonia.[††]
However, during the COVID-19 epidemic, the mortality rate for hospitalized patients with pneumonia was 27.5 percent, according to a Japanese study of 15,000 patients.[‡‡]
Now, if we compare the mortality rate from the combined effects of influenza and pneumonia (CIP) in US army personnel, which were composed of young men in the prime of their life during WWI, who were exclusively treated with pre-antibiotic allopathically versus a primarily civilian population of all ages, including infants, pregnant women and elderlies who were treated homeopathically during the same Spanish flu epidemic, we find:
Comparative Mortality of Homeopathic Treatment in a Mostly Civilian Population and Pre-antibiotic Allopathy in the U.S. Armed Forces of Patients with the Combined Effects of Influenza and Pneumonia during the Fall and Winter of 1918-1919
| Treatment type, treated population and time | Number of patients | Number of deaths | Mortality rate in % | Odds of surviving CIP |
| Pre-antibiotic allopathy in the entire U.S. army personnel in the fall of 1918 | 688,869 | 39,731 | 5.8 | 16:1 |
| Homeopathy in a mostly civilian population of all ages, including infants, pregnant women and elderlies in the fall and winter of 1918-1919 | 71,634 | 461 | 0.7 | 142:1 |
Let’s now evaluate the comparative odds of pregnant women developing pneumonia, miscarrying or dying during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic (NIP) under pre-antibiotic allopathy versus homeopathy, as it is known that pregnant women were the most affected during that epidemic:
Comparative Treatment Outcomes among Pregnant Women with CIP during the NIP under Pre-Antibiotic Allopathy and Homeopathy
| Treatment | Number of pregnant women with CIP | Number and percentage of deaths | Number and percentage of pregnant women who developed pneumonia | Number and percentage of the surviving women who miscarried |
| Pre-antibiotic allopathy | 1,561 | 468 30% | 720 51% | 345 32% |
| Homeopathy | 2,848 | 20 1.1% | 165 5.8% | 32 1.1% |
When all the confounding factors considered, including expectancy, are taken into account, as well as the outcomes of other studies not mentioned here, the results obtained by homeopathy in the treatment of patients with pneumonia demonstrate that:
The outcome of the treatment of a cohort of patients with severe chronic diseases could be used as a valuable benchmark to measure whether homeopathy is well applied, as with pneumonia, as people have been afflicted with chronic disease since prehistoric times.
Results of the practicum 2023: Here is a summary of the outcomes for nine consecutive randomly chosen cases taken during class in that academic year:
1. V.—8 y.o. First seen on March 15, 2023—CC: Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (allopathic treatment put on pause after initiating homeopathic treatment) = >>
2. E.—65 y.o. First seen on April 13, 2023—CC: Bi-weekly debilitating febrile episodes since 2015 = >>>
3. N.—13 y.o. First seen on May 10, 2023—CC: Graves disease (hyperthyroidism), tics from Lyme’s disease and co-infections, HA, fatigue, ADHD, dyslexia, hypersensitivity to homeopathic remedies = >>>
4. M.—41 y.o. First seen on June 14, 2023—CC: Iatrogenic disease = >
5. L.—89 y.o. First seen on July 26, 2023—CC: Multiple myeloma (never received any allopathic treatment) = >>
6. M.—51y.o. First seen on Nov. 22, 2023—CC: Lymphoma (quit allopathy after the first chemotherapy treatment) = >>>
7. R.—67 y.o. First seen on Dec. 6, 2023—CC: Prostate cancer (taking antiandrogenic hormones) = >>
8. O.—48 y.o. First seen on Jan. 17, 2024—CC: Multiple sclerosis (stopped allopathic drugs after initiating homeopathic treatment) = >>>
9. J.—58 y.o. First seen on Jan. 31, 2024—CC: Prostate cancer (no allopathic treatment) = >>>
In summary, all nine patients are better; of these, five are much, much better, three are much better, and one is only a bit better.
Let’s now look at the efficacy of homeopathic remedies in preventing illness when exposed to contagion during epidemics. I have completed a meta-analysis of clinical trials conducted exclusively with Belladonna to prevent Sydenham scarlet fever, when it was very prevalent and deadly. Here is a summary of this meta-analysis:
The use of simple medicines to prevent epidemic diseases: Scientific evidence of the efficacy of Belladonna in preventing Sydenham scarlet fever—A systematic review with its documentation and narratives [***]
In total, 194 trial reports have been found, of which 157 reported positive outcomes, 14 mixed outcomes and 23 negative outcomes.
Of the 157 report series of trials with positive outcomes, 97 or 62 percent of the report series with positive outcomes, or 50 percent of the total number (194) of report series found, presented significant findings, which is by itself quite significant.
Seventy-five of the 157 trial series with positive outcomes reported exact numbers of treated persons, enabling quantitative analysis.
If we exclude the 43 persons who fell sick within the first five days after the administration of Belladonna, which is during the incubation period, out of 8,721 people who took Belladonna in the report series of trials with positive outcomes, 153 or 1.8 percent, contracted scarlet fever, and 8,568 or 98.2 percent were spared.
There are randomized trials reported in 28 positive-outcome studies that provided exact numbers of treated and untreated individuals sharing the same environment and exposure during the same epidemic, such as living in the same household, institution, or small community.
Out of 675 persons who were exposed to scarlet fever and took Belladonna, only seven or 1 percent, contracted the disease, versus 83 out of 138 or 60 percent, of those who did not take Belladonna and were living in the same household, institution or small community.
This would mean that out of 10,000 people who are exposed to scarlet fever, 6,014 would fall sick with the disease, but only 104 out of 10,000 people would fall sick by simply taking Belladonna preventively.
These numbers are highly significant in favor of the efficacy of Belladonna in preventing Sydenham scarlet fever, as the odds ratio for developing scarlet fever in the ones who took Belladonna versus the ones who did not is 0.0069 (95% CI 0.0031 to 0.0157) with a p-value of less than 0.0001 (p < 0.0001).
As you can imagine, the possibilities of homeopathy are enormous for alleviating human suffering. I will here quote Lippe’s introductory lectures to his materia medica course in 1866, “Homeopathy will make medicine an exact science, and we will have light and certainty all around us, and speculations will cease, epidemics will be promptly met, and there will be less suffering, less mortality. It is my sincere hope that you will patiently follow the course of instruction I shall give you and that I shall be able to interest you in the study of this very important branch of medical science.”
To rephrase Lippe, “Epidemics will be promptly met,” not like the great COVID-19 fiasco, which has been the greatest medical mismanagement and health fraud in human history and is an ultimate illustration of the chaotic outcome of the materialistic, mechanistic and reductionist paradigm in the field of life, human suffering and healing.
Contrast this approach to alternative medicine’s coherent, wise, safe, certain, confident, and beneficial approach. Instead of facing disease in general and epidemics in particular with fear and all the irrationality that follows, as is the rule in conventional medicine, the physician who masters our healing art faces them confidently, as illustrated above in Lippe’s introductory lecture.
Today, I began my presentation by saying that homeopathy is such a critical subject that a clear understanding of all its ramifications should define medical education and medical practice from the bottom up. I hope it is now clear that there is a great needto redefine medical education and practice from the bottom up.
Homeopathy is a mature science to be used for suffering humanity, but how come it has not spread and is not found in every physician’s practice in the world and is instead available to only a very tiny portion of the world’s population?
The two main reasons for this are:
Nonetheless, I predict that a resurgence of homeopathy will soon come, leading to its full recognition. To ensure its growth and spread, we have to keep homeopathy pure. We are all responsible for identifying and repudiating teachings and practices that misrepresent homeopathy. We all have the responsibility to never, ever let misrepresentations infiltrate our institutions, namely our schools, clinics, professional associations, regulating boards, supporting organizations, journals, publishers, etc. The naturopathic school in North America should take the lead by ensuring that education at naturopathic colleges is grounded in the fundamental principles of medicine and that only pure homeopathy is taught well and thoroughly.
Now, imagine a world in which alternative medicine is accessible to every citizen on our planet and even to extraterrestrials when they visit us. “Imagine all the people” being treated intelligently from birth onward; “You may say I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.”
As usual, I will leave the last words to Hahnemann, who will always be remembered as the great genius for developing homeopathy and transforming the practice of medicine into a natural science and, therefore, for being humanity’s greatest benefactor.
“The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy—to heal, as it is termed.”
“The highest ideal of therapy is the rapid, gentle, pleasant, complete and permanent restoration of health in the surest, simplest and least harmful way.”
“When we have to do with an art whose nature is the saving of life, negligence in learning is a crime.”
“Dare to know.”
Finally, I would like to remind all of you, especially the students here, what John Bastyr said in the first class I had with him in 1980: “You are the fifth generation in a direct line from Hahnemann.” He was right, as he had learned homeopathy directly from C. P. Bryant, who had learned it directly from Walter James, who had learned it directly from Lippe, who had learned it directly from Hahnemann.
The younger people in this room are now sixth in a direct line from Hahnemann, and I hope you are realizing the great responsibility associated with it.
[*] At the National Museum of Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropología) in Mexico City, there is a display of hollow clay figures representing human beings or animals with pathological features. It was here cited that they are “probably related to religious matters, since in the Mesoamerican cosmovision these individuals were attributed supernatural powers, or with sympathetic magic (like produces like) to cure or reestablish certain natural conditions. (“Probablemente se relacionen con asuntos de índole religiosa, ya que en la cosmovisión mesoamericana a estos individuos se les atribuían poderes sobrenaturales, o bien con la magia simpática (lo semejante produce lo semejante ) para curar o restablecer ciertas condiciones naturales.” May 3, 2024.)
[†] The three tables in this article come from the upcoming book The Alternative Has Always Been the Best Way, part of a series of five books entitled The Safer Alternative to Vaccination that is a part of the larger collection of The Weight of Evidence, which documents homeopathy in times of epidemics.
[‡] By expectancy, it means that the patient is left without treatment but is observed while under the best hygienic measures.
[§] M. J. Fine. Prognosis and outcomes of patients with community-acquired pneumonia. A meta-analysis. JAMA 1996 Jan 10; 275 (2): 134-41.
[**] Mette Søgaard, et al. Nationwide trends in pneumonia hospitalization rates and mortality, Denmark 1997–2011. Respiratory medicine 2014; 108 (8): 1214-1222.
[††] Marco Falcone, et al. Lower mortality rate in elderly patients with community‐onset pneumonia on treatment with aspirin. Journal of the American Heart Association 2015; 4 (1): e001595.
[‡‡] Hiroyuki Ohbe, et al. Intensive care unit versus high-dependency care unit for mechanically ventilated patients with pneumonia: a nationwide comparative effectiveness study. The Lancet Regional Health–Western Pacific 2021; 13.
[§§] See Appendix E.
[***] This meta-analysis is the title of the fourth book in the upcoming five-book series entitled The Safer Alternative to Vaccination.
