A cart on some of the most debated issues concerning homeopathy and its clinical application.
The founding principle of homeopathic therapy is the law of similitude (similia similibus curentur):in reality already intuited by Hippocrates at the dawn of medicine, it finds in Hahnemann, finally, its correct application, which places it at the base of a new and more effective system of treatment of human diseases, called, in fact, homeopathy. In summary, through his careful observations, and his deep deductions, the Saxon doctor will come to reformulate the law of similarity in this way: every disease can be cured, using in small doses (infinitesimal) that substance of nature that, administered repeatedly to a healthy individual, has been able to cause symptoms similar to those to be treated.
The other novelty on which the whole diagnostic and therapeutic system of homeopathy is based is the one that allows the doctor who practices it, and fully understands it, to recognize the natural psychophysical complexity of the human being, an aspect that leads homeopathy to be a true holistic medicine (olos in Greek means everything) capable of respecting, that is, in the course of any pathology, that unity of psyche and body that is each of us. Precisely for this reason, a correct homeopathic therapy will start from those symptoms that traditional medicine often seems to ignore, to shift the goal of treatment from the single disease, for which the patient has been visited, to the whole person understood as sick, and will make use of remedies that, properly prepared, have the ability to revitalize the innate powers of defense of every being, and to lead him, in this way, to a completely natural healing, which will be expressed, first of all, with an always decisive improvement of his emotionality.
Let us dwell at this point, however, on the existence of different schools of thought, in the daily practice of homeopathic medicine, to which correspond as many ways of administering homeopathic remedies, and let us try to understand where this fragmentation originates, already present at the time of Hahnemann himself, who had dedicated an entire paragraph of the Organon of the art of healing to the problem (§ 273).
There are four different ways of approaching homeopathy professionally: the first is precisely those doctors of the traditional school who, although poorly educated on homeopathic principles, still like to mix the two methodologies in a different way (the traditional one, that is, and the homeopathic one); close to these those who, seduced by the varied offer of alternative methodologies, approach homeopathy, administered mostly on an allopathic criterion, different techniques typical of other specializations (acupuncture, chiropractic, phytotherapy, etc.): these doctors are omnipractical or eclectic, but undoubtedly still far from being true homeopaths.
Another category is the transcendents, the professionals of homeopathy, those who consider illness as the effect of an earthly existence, contrasting in whole or in part with the intimate, instinctive, and often unconscious emotional tension of every being, to live life in its fullness of realization. This existential fullness, intuited by these homeopaths as the only source of stable psychophysical well-being, is fulfilled only when the person comes to operate always and in any case with respect for his own and others’ human nature.
In other words: the human being healed in the body, but above all in the mind, will be the transcendent being par excellence, that is, the one who will have progressively regained all the capacity and freedom to love, returning to act in harmony with that coordinating and repairing vital energy, which is a fraction of the cosmic energy that governs the whole of creation.
Finally, there are a number of clichés about homeopathic medicine that reduce its spread, often discouraging in advance those who would like to resort to means of treatment other than traditional drugs.
A widespread rumor is that concerning the times, often considered excessively long, with which homeopathy would be able to heal from diseases. As we have already tried to make understood, unlike common therapeutic approaches, homeopathy is not content to suppress local symptoms, under penalty of their rapid reappearance upon discontinuation of treatment, but aims to heal definitively from disorders, without necessarily having to renew, for prolonged times, substances that have already had a beneficial effect, as often happens with synthetic drugs, of which the patient often ends up experiencing even the unpleasant side effects. In other words, therefore, the time of cure of homeopathic therapies is actually the time necessary for the person to heal, that is, to free himself, definitively, from his ills.
Another inaccurate statement with regard to homeopathy is that according to which, using for the treatment of diseases often extremely diluted substances, to the point that with the traditional methods in use, in many formulations of the remedies it is no longer possible to find any trace of the original matter, their therapeutic action would be based simply on a banal placebo effect, resulting from the particular disposition to listen and interest in patients of homeopathic doctors. In this regard, however, too often we forget to face and respond sensibly to a question posed by the evident curative action of homeopathic medicines towards many newborns, and domestic or farm animals, living beings that, due to their lower complexity compared to the adult and healthy human individual, are not suggestible in any way.
Finally, many include homeopathy among the many fashions, fleeting by definition: it is evident instead how homeopathy, starting from the abstract concept of vital energy, and returning to this, finally giving it a meaning of complete meaning, as we have tried to explain, is beyond any fashion, without space and without time, having as its sole objective the rediscovery of the simplicity and original depth of the human being as the right means among the rampant banality, which aims to transform the person into an instrument, and the discouraging complication that feeds in man the idea of his incomprehensibility, thus opening the door to dogmatism and manipulations of all kinds.
We can thus conclude that the supreme purpose of homeopathy is not simply to free the human being from his sufferings, but to obtain this result as an effect of a contemporary renewal of his way of thinking and acting, which will lead him to regain possession of himself.
progressively of his natural inclination to love his neighbor, as a consequence of respect and full understanding of himself, to the achievement of which homeopathy can certainly contribute as an instrument of unparalleled utility.
