A Scientific Basis for Homoeopatic Potencies
Posted: 16 Oct 2006, 20:40
Small is Beautiful
Let us consider the concept of the minimum dose and see if we can satisfy the rigours of orthodoxy, by giving a comprehensive and concise theory that satisfactorily explains the conundrum of the homoeopathic potencies. After all, if we claim that homoeopathy is scientific, we must be able to explain it scientifically.
Hahnemann considered these things unimportant, essentially because he did not have the language to describe it. To the modern homoeopath it may make the difference between alternatively looking somewhat bewildered or sheepish and being capable to sufficiently impress the most learned of our scientific brethren.
Von Boenninghausen says: “For a scientific establishment of the curative power and efficiency of the high potencies, we cite the well-established law of nature, discovered by Maupertuis and mathematically proved by him; this we apply to therapy. This is the law of the least effects, by others called the Lex parsimoniae. The discoverer stated it in the following words: ‘La quantite d’action necessaire pour causer quelque changement dans la nature, est la plus petite qu’il soit possible,’ i.e. the quantity of action necessary to produce any change in nature, is always the smallest that is possible.”
(Von Boenninghausen The Lesser Writings)
Hahnemann said, that it is folly to use large means, where small means suffice.
“This law of effects (minimus maxima) appears therefore to be an essential and necessary complement to the law of homoeopathy (similia similibus) and to occupy a similar place with it.”
(Von Boenninghausen ‘The lesser writings.’)
Since size is considered important, we must first consider the size of the dose. After all, this article is written about the subject and the results of too large doses. We have seen that pumping endless amounts of poisons onto the land has the severest repercussions.
A perfect example of the power of small doses is the US leopard frog, which becomes a hermaphrodite from a concentration of only 0.1 part per billion of the herbicide Atrazine. If we then also consider that drugs like prozac are in the tap water of many large cities in ultra-small doses, we can begin to appreciate their effect on all living entities that use that water.
Recent investigations show that our drinking water is severely polluted with all kinds of agricultural and medicinal chemicals, which have a cumulative effect on our health.
Most of these effects are caused by minimal amounts of these chemicals and not by larger amounts, since the body will react immediately to such pollutants in lage doses. This does not mean that we will not get sick, but that our disease is easier recognisable. Nobody will be able to discover that his sperm is not viable, other than being ‘infertile’. This may express itself as low sperm count or the sperm being less mobile.
Minimus Maxima
Many are the objections that those ignorant of homoeopathy and its doctrine have brought against the Organon of Rational Medicine. The founder of homeopathy has been accused of all sorts of things, the least of which is the ridicule piled upon our infinitesimal doses as mere placebos.
Orthodoxy has the greatest difficulty with our dilutions, which they consider to be ineffective. If there is any effect from homoeopathic medicines, so is their claim, it cannot but be the effect of suggestion and thus be nothing more than a placebo-effect. If this be true, it would serve even the orthodox to adopt them, since they are apparently very useful placebos that are more efficacious than orthodox medicine.
Hahnemann was engaged in mainstream research, when he did his experiments with the remedies in superfine dilutions. In his attempts at explaining them, he lacked the language in which to express himself. Like Paracelsus 300 years before him, he had to invent the language by which he could explain what was really happening. If we study his Organon, we find there the solution to the potency conundrum. Let us investigate Hahnemann’s own words, to see if the solution can be found.
“The homoeopathic system of medicine develops the medicinal powers to a previously unheard degree by means of a process unique to it. This process develops and liberates the medicinal powers of crude substances to an immeasurable and penetrating efficaciousness, even in those that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medicinal power on the human or animal body.
‘This remarkable change in the latent medicinal qualities of natural bodies develops the unperceived dynamic powers that are capable of influencing the state of health, changing the wellbeing of all animal and human life. This is effected by mechanical action upon their smallest particles by means of rubbing and shaking and which through the addition of an indifferent substance, dry or fluid, are separated from each other.
‘This process is called dynamisation or potentisation and the products are dynamisations or potencies in different degrees.”
(Organon 269)
Here Hahnemann makes a few apparently outrageous claims and statements. ‘It develops the medicinal powers to a previously unheard degree’, ‘to an immeasurable and penetrating efficaciousness’; these are pretty tall claims.
And then comes the clincher: 'even in those that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medicinal power on the human or animal body’.
Indeed, this is the most outrageous of all his claims, at least in the minds of the sceptics and quack-busters. Yet we all know from practical experience that they work and that their power is awesome. So how do we obtain this power?
Several attempts have been made to explain it, but none has succeeded in doing so to everyone’s satisfaction. We must therefore consider carefully what Hahnemann really meant. Let us investigate these claims on their own merits, before we throw out the child with the bathwater.
The claims of Hahnemannian homoeopathy are reminiscent of Richard Feynman’s expressions, when he was working for the California Institute of Technology. He put it like this, at a meeting of the American Physical Society in 1959:
“I can hardly doubt that when we have some control over the arrangement of things on a small scale, we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have.”
This means that when the size of the building blocks of a material become smaller than the critical length-scale associated with any property of that material, the property changes and can be engineered accordingly through size control.
“The suitableness of a medicine is not only decided by symptom similarity alone, but also by the size of the dose. By means of division and dynamisation preparations are produced, which only in this way reach their full capacity to influence the suffering parts of the organism.”
(Organon 275)
Nanophase Potencies
Besides the argumentative shortcomings of orthodoxy, there have not been any homoeopaths that have explained the potencies from a truly scientific viewpoint, since their apparent inability to do so, is in my view caused by the divergence between the mental and emotional symptoms and the explanations by mechanistic theories. Moreover, the divergence between dilution rate and power, so brilliantly displayed in their action on the sick, has also not been adequately explained. It is these ‘placebos’ that form the subject of this little chapter. Their apparent effectiveness needs at least further investigation.
Many experiments have been conducted in the more remote past as well as recently, to at least prove the existence of something in our potencies, of which I will give some examples here.
In 1948, Wormser and Loch tested several substances from 24X to 30X. They used a photoelectric cell, to measure the intensity and wavelength of these potencies and found measurable changes, of both intensity and wave-length in these substances.
In the years 1951-3, Gay and Boiron tested both distilled water and Natrum muriaticum in the 27C potency, for their dielectric constant. They were able to show that the potency of Natrum mur. could be easily selected from among 99 control bottles.
In 1963, Boericke and Smith tested a 12X potency of Sulphur, with and without succussion. They tested the solvent structure by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. They found that there were structural changes in the solvent, as the potency was increased by succussion, while no such change was detected in the controls. They repeated the experiment in 1974, with diverse potencies of Sulphur, up to the 30C.
In 1966, Stephenson and Brucato tested both distilled water and Mercurius corrosivus, from the 1X to the 33X. They found that the dielectric constant for the controls varied from 5.6 to 6.05. For the homoeopathic potencies it varied from 2.8 to 4.4.
In 1975, Young tested Sulphur from 5X to 30X, with controls. He also tested the solvent structure by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. He found that there were measurable changes in the spectra at each dilution and succussion. No such changes were observed for the solution without succussion or without Sulphur.
In 1976, Boiron and Vinh used Raman Laser Spectroscopy, showing that for the 1C potency of Kali bichromicum the spectrum of alcohol disappears completely, while that for potassium bichromate appears. In Kali bich 1C the ratio of the number of potassium bichromate molecules is 1 to 500. In such a case the light meets 500 more alcohol molecules as those of bichromate, yet the alcohol spectrum does not appear.
In 1982, Resch, Gutman and Schauer found that dilute sodium chloride solutions revealed an increase in electrical conductivity, by rocking them prior to measurement.
Four French researchers developed a method of detection through nuclear magnetic resonance, conducted in the late 80's, which shows specific sinus waves for each potency, as well as a specific sinus wave for the substance used. These latter remain the same throughout all potencies of that substance, while the sinus wave expressing the potencies, are specific to those potencies. Thus a clear and recognisable scientifically provable frame of reference exists, for each remedy and potency.
These are however, only the physical proofs we possess that potencies have something more than distilled water and alcohol. From these examples it is obvious that there exists a particular quality in homoeopathic medicines not found in mere dilutions beyond Avogadro’s limit and even before that. We mention this, because we expect some resistance from the mechanistic heads at work in the diverse research facilities, which will no doubt put forward many objections against the use of homoeopathy in high dilutions.
From Avogadro to Quantum Mechanics
The silliest of these is Avogadro’s limit, which tells you nothing more than that in any given substance, there are no more molecules found beyond the 12th centesimal or the 24th decimal dilution. However, there are between 2 and 250 atoms in each molecule, so their relative size should have an influence on the dilution rate – at least in the potencies. Moreover, Avogadro discovered the limit for gases, where the molecules always have the same size regardless the amount of atoms per molecule, while its use for dilutions is but a derived value. Even the use of the term is misleading for that reason alone and thus not scientifically sound.
Avogadro’s limit tells you nothing more than that he had no means to detect beyond the molecular level. Yet we find that nuclear magnetic resonance sinus waves are not found in Avogadro’s dilutions, but are visible from the second homoeopathic potency onward. This is because the homoeopathic potencies are not mere dilutions, but receive the succussions that are believed to confer their power.
However, the mystery remains. These are not explanations, but the gathering of relatively useful data. These data moreover, are not the process.
A homoeopathic potency lasts indefinitely and can always be perpetuated simply by adding new solvent. Nor can psychic induction be quantified or shown to be subject to entropy. Einstein’s formula E= mc2 does not apply, there being no quantities, masses, energies or velocities.
In reality, our remedies are quantum mechanical entities, which derive their effectiveness not from the imagination of the patient or some such magical superstition. We shall try to satisfactorily explain our potencies from the modern scientific point of view.
We also do not believe we must succumb to the onslaught of these orthodox superstitions or their demands of pseudo-scientific rigidity, but finally be able to explain our entire doctrine, especially our potencies, scientifically.
If we examine the ultra-small achievements of technology, we notice that nobody makes objections to the micro-chip, nanobots, atomic particles such as neutrons, quantum-mechanical photons and other examples of ultra-small scale, while denying the same for homoeopathic remedies.
This is due to bias and/or prejudice, of which our opponents have plentiful supplies, but which in the face of the reality of homeopathic potencies are not very scientific, to say the least. In reality, it is utterly childish. We might expect at least adult behaviour in those scientists that are opposed to homoeopathy through ignorance.
“By means of this procedure a change is effected in the given drug, which in the crude state shows itself as material – often unmedicinal material. The higher dynamisations liberate the dynamic conscious medicinal power, which in itself is imperceptible by the senses. The medicinally prepared globules are but the carrier of the inherent consciousness of the medicine. In this condition they manifest their healing power on the sick mind and body.”
(Organon 270)
Nanophase technology is a relatively new way of using materials – at least in the field of technology. It seeks to change the properties of a substance through an extreme reduction in size of the particles, according to the principles set out by the physicist Richard Feynman, quoted above. When the particle size is reduced to nanometre size, it is smaller than the critical mass associated with its regular properties. As a result, those properties change to something different and the difference is determined through control of the size of the particles.
In regular nanophase technology the properties wanted are malleability, elasticity, hardness, superconductivity or ceramic, among several other options. In order to arrive at the nanophase, the substance is boiled and brought in the gaseous state. The gaseous particles are then passed through an inert gas like helium or a chemically active gas such as oxygen, depending on the properties that are wanted after precipitation.
In the case of the inert gas, the properties of the substance itself are changed. In this manner, malleability, elasticity or the hardness of the substance are changed, depending the size of the particles. In the case of a reactive gas, the structure of the substance is changed. Thus, a metal becomes a ceramic or super-conductive, also dependent on the particle size. Since control of the particle size is a relatively easy matter, substances can be made with great accuracy.
Besides the boiling method, nanophase technology makes use of super finely ground powders to produce its diverse products. In the case of superfine powders, the resultant product is again dependent on the particle size. It is the latter method that applies to homoeopathic potencies, since they also depend on grinding the substance to the appropriate sizes, so that the medicinal powers are released or developed.
Another method makes use of neutrons to bombard a substance and so reduce it to the nanophase. The bombarding neutrons peel off neutrons from the substance and so reduce the size and hence change the properties. Depending on how many neutrons are peeled off, different properties arise. The control consists of regulating the amount of neutrons bombarding it or the amount of time.
More Ways to Skin a Cat
The manner in which to arrive at the nanophase must have some bearing on the type of properties generated, otherwise they would stick with one method only. Different examples can be given in which this is the case. There is more than one way to skin a cat. We shall list them here for the benefit of the student.
The Gastein gneiss formation and its nanophase suspension in the drinking water, producing cretinism.
The fluxion potencies that generate the equivalent of a 10M from a 3c in one hour.
The suspension of nanophase particles of lead and copper in drinking water, where such conduits are used.
Volcanic action, where under heat and pressure one type of stone or other material turns into another.
Cooking, where the ingredients all change properties.
Bombarding a substance with neutrons, so that it falls apart in nanophase particles of a particular size, generating particular properties.
Boiling a substance and driving it through an inert gas to crystallise the nano-particles, precipitating them onto the wanted precipitate.
Boiling a substance and driving it through a reactive gas to crystallise the nano-particles, precipitating them onto the wanted precipitate.
Superfine grinding of substances to the nano-phase, to obtain different properties.
Since there are several ways in which the nanophase can be obtained, we propose that trituration is accepted as a valid manner in which to obtain nanophase particles that generate different properties.
How is it possible that solid materials become soluble in water or alcohol? The solids never do. The answer is that under pressure – with the mortar and pestle – the grains are reduced to nanometre size and they slide over each other easier than millimetre sized ones. In the case of solids, the grains are bound to each other. A fracture occurs, when too many of these bonds break. If a crack opens, atoms from the lactose begin to move to fill them in. The smaller the grain size, the shorter the distance the lactose atoms have to travel and thus the finer the substance can be ground. Simultaneously, the substance particles are penetrating the lactose particles in the same manner, thus passing on their properties to the lactose.
Our lactose component differs from the nanophase, in which boiling is used to create the equally sized particles and a gas is used to crystallise the particles, which is wanted in a nanophase material. We on the other hand, want to crush those bonds as well as create particles of different sizes and so change the properties of the material. The lactose achieves the opposite of the inert gas used in nanophase materials.
Just as nanophase technology discovers new properties in matter, homoeopathy has done so for the last 200 years. Our potencies are quantum mechanically different from ordinary solids or substances – both in nano-technology and homoeopathic potencies, which are quantum mechanical dilutions. While nanotechnology uses the boiling point of materials or alternatively superfine powders to precipitate nano-sized particles, we use the mortar and pestle to achieve the same – reduction to nano-size particles. The processes do not differ greatly – grinding equals heat and pressure. In the making of a potency, we seek to divide the nanophased particles, as opposed to the nanotechnologists, who seek to collect them.
A homoeopathic remedy is really a nanophase half-product, which needs the human body to precipitate its entire product, which can be either of two – health or disease. Therefore it is invisible as long as precipitation does not take place. Trituration is the separation of the nanospheres from the original substance, passing through lactose as the carrier, before precipitation in the body with either health or disease as the final product. In summary:
At the nanophase different properties arise in potentio.
They pass through a medium before precipitating into the final product.
Until precipitation, the properties are in suspension or in potentio.
A potency consists of a product reduced to nano-phase, suspended in a medium before precipitation.
Precipitation produces the final product – in homoeopathy this is either health or disease.
These 5 stages apply to all nanophase products, whether visible as a product with a single property or as one with multi-properties. It merely depends on how many differently sized nanospheres have been suspended in the original carrier. Succussion imprints the entire nanophase upon the carrier, including all its latent properties. At the release of those properties onto the precipitating medium, the entire product becomes visible.
To understand the concept of nanophase potencies, the following points regarding nanophase materials and products must be considered:
When control is obtained of the arrangement of things on a very small scale, we arrive at an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have. (See also Organon 269)
When the size of the building blocks of matter become smaller than the critical length scale associated with any property, that property changes and can be engineered through size control. (See also Organon 270)
There exists a variety of synthesis methods to produce nanophase materials.
Synthesis from atomic precursors.
Synthesis from molecular precursors – homoeopathic potencies.
Chemical means.
Physical means – homoeopathic triturations.
Mechanical grain refinement – homoeopathic triturations.
Bombarding a substance with neutrons, so that it falls apart in nanophase particles of a particular size, generating particular properties.
Preferably nanophase materials are made from chemical and physical means, because in them size control is the easiest. However, other methods yield valuable results, sometimes with greater ease. Trituration is such a process and so is succussion.
Nanophase materials are made by bringing a substance to a boil and collecting the evaporated atoms, by exposing them to an inert gas, like helium to cool them down. They then condense as small spheroid clusters. The exact diameter is controlled by the evaporation rate and the type and pressure of the inert gas. Accumulation and precipitation produces a macro-material.
Ultra fine powders can be made into consolidate materials. Trituration is a way to arrive at the superfine powder stage.
Nanophase titania is made from 10-nanometre clusters of titanium, reacted with oxygen.
A nanophase metal is formed without any reaction with other elements, using an inert gas for precipitation.
A nanophase ceramic is formed only with a reaction with an appropriate gas, such as oxygen, which is reactive.
Each other material is determined by the size of the clusters and the gas, reactive or not.
This process can produce metals, ceramics, semiconductors, superconductors, polymers with optical, chemical and/or electrical properties. Transparency, UV protection, colouring, cosmetics, catalysts and magnetic properties can all be made with nanophase technology.
Nano-structures are found in nature:
In seashells and skeletons.
From fire come nanophase smoke particles.
Gastein water and Lapis albus are nano-phase products. Lapis Albus. Silicofluoride of calcium. CaSiF6. Taken from Lapis Albus (a species of gneiss found by Grauvogl in the mineral springs of Gastein and named by him. The waters flow over the gneiss formations into the valley of Aachen where goitre and cretinism abound). Trituration.
Fluxion potencies are also nanophase products.
Copper and lead poisoning from drinking water, which is passed through those ducts.
Herbicide, pesticide and fungicide poisoning in the rivers lakes and the ocean, where the substance occupies the smallest possible dilution rate. As an example, 0.1 per billion of Atrazine causes hermaphroditism in amphibians.
Nitrogen pollution in the ocean, as seen at the Great Barrier Reef.
Pollution with other agrochemicals causing changes in the lifecycle of diverse groups of animals.
Volcanic action, where under heat and pressure one type of stone or other material turns into another.
Cooking, where the ingredients all change properties.
Water, Complicated Simple Substance
Nanophase materials and colloidal suspensions stand in relation to my quantum-mechanical concepts of potency. Nanosphere cobalt has different properties – pliability or ceramic, superconductiveness or elasticity for instance. This may mean that if such a material is potentised, we could get different properties altogether. In the crude state we do not have those properties.
In our remedies we also have different properties from the crude as in the potencies. This is even more so with the medically inert substances. They only are released by the process of trituration. It may also mean that for instance a 30C will have all the possible properties Cobalt may possess in all its phases. Because, the admixture with lactose in the first three stadia of potency may release the full properties to the lactose, which then dissolves in water.
On the one hand, those nanophase particles between 20 to 100 nm show differences in material properties, which are useful for nanophase materials. They need to obtain these particular sizes to get the properties they want or need.
On the other hand, homeopathic potencies cannot change properties at the same nanophase as the nanophase materials. This is impossible, since the properties are totally different.
We must therefore conclude that homoeopathic potencies are obtained at another nano-sized particle, possibly larger, but more likely to be smaller than the nanophase materials. Naturally, one would expect that the subtler a property, the smaller the nanophase must be, to accommodate the subtlety. Since nanophase particles are visible under the electron microscope, it should be easy to confirm or refute these notions.
Consciousness or mental and emotional properties are among the more subtle. So are programmability and holographic properties, all present in the raw substance, and released when triturated with lactose. Moreover, the subtler the properties, the easier they should dissolve in water.
Water is that wonderfully complicated simple substance at the border between alkaline and acid. It is the universal reagent, while not becoming itself affected. Simple distillation returns the original substance, whether it is a simple solution or a nanophase potency before distillation.
Water does not have a memory, as Benveniste asserted. Water is a storage medium, much like a CD or a hard disk in a computer. The disk has no memory, but only space to write bits of information. Similarly, water has space to store bits of matter or the information concerning that matter.
Matter can be divided by several means to nanometre-size and smaller. Our potencies have been reduced to nano-size powders, which are soluble in water. The process of succussion, which is rhythmically shaking the vial with powerful strokes, arranges the water molecules in patterns.
At sea we call these patterns waves. That pattern arranges the water molecules on a micro scale, whereas the waves in the sea are macro-patterns. It is a question of size, as we see in the nanophase materials. The pattern arranges the water molecules, in which the intra-molecular spaces provide a foothold for the nanophase substance to be carried. Succussion is the writing program that puts the information on the carrier – the water. That water, like a CD, can be carried everywhere and fits the sick body with the right program – the corresponding remedy.
Programmable Solutions
Put into proper sequence, the body is similar to an infected pc, which needs the antivirus program. The remedy is that program that the pc needs.
The remedy has received the program by succussion, which is the writing program that put the information onto the CD/water. Sugared sweet water is sweet always, till you distil it.
Distillation is the wiping program to clean up the CD – the bottle of water. We need only a small portion of the program to write it fully onto the next CD, implying holographic properties in the program.
Differently said, homoeopathic potencies are holographic quantum-mechanical medicines, where the part contains all the properties of the whole. This is contrary to ordinary reason, where the reduction in size always implicates a reduction in properties. Of course a hologram has the peculiar property that the smallest particle always contains the whole. This is why such a small dose has such dramatic effects.
Divine in its simplicity, it puts quantum-mechanics at work practically. Medicine is the hologram of disease. Its smallest part always contains the entire picture of the disease. ‘As above so below’ is not merely an unsubstantiated or unsubstantiable statement of medieval superstition. The concept of the entire Milky Way represented in the human body extends also to the other side.
To the remedy in the smallest possible dose, man is a macro cosmos. Their microcosmic scale is as much a reflection of the universe as man is. In the cosmic scale, man holds the middle ground, between the micro- and macro-cosmic size. He goes upright for the same reason.
All his states are reflected in the heavens on a macro-cosmic scale and in the remedies on a micro-cosmic scale. The remedies and man are holographic images of the real thing on the macrocosmic scale. That reality is in turn a holographic image of a larger entity still, whose reality is reflected in each holographic universe.
Man, as well as animal and plant, are holographic images of this and their reality is reflected in all the different remedies. A hologram of reality is what constitutes our universe, our body and our remedies. For each state a corresponding hologram can be found. All states exist in the original and therefore must exist on every level and in each universe from macro- to micro-cosmic scale. Homoeopathy is in a sense a game of matching holograms. As the remedies are capable of generating disease, so they can cure that same disease.
Our scales of potencies made from medicinally inert substances prove that Feynman’s assertions for nanophase materials are also applicable to our remedies. For these potencies suddenly develop medicinal powers, when they are reduced below the critical length scale associated with their crude properties. This means that the process of trituration causes a change in properties, with the implication that the critical mass associated with its regular properties – non-medicinality etc. – has been reduced to nanophase size and has generated different properties, such as medicinality.
The process to come to the nanophase does not matter very much, as we have seen before – only the reduction to nanophase size has significance for the new properties that arise.
Our properties are medicinal, as opposed to malleable, super-conductive or strong. Although trituration seems very different from the making of uniform extra-fine powders, the process of grinding is the same. We seek not to have uniformity nor to accumulate the nanophase particles, but on the contrary to disperse them. Also, we want not just one property, but all possible properties, from different nano-sized particles. This is what makes nanophase materials and homoeopathic potencies different in both effects and properties.
So far the theoretical basis for the ideas concerning homoeopathy and its effects on man, animals and plants.
Your comments please.
Let us consider the concept of the minimum dose and see if we can satisfy the rigours of orthodoxy, by giving a comprehensive and concise theory that satisfactorily explains the conundrum of the homoeopathic potencies. After all, if we claim that homoeopathy is scientific, we must be able to explain it scientifically.
Hahnemann considered these things unimportant, essentially because he did not have the language to describe it. To the modern homoeopath it may make the difference between alternatively looking somewhat bewildered or sheepish and being capable to sufficiently impress the most learned of our scientific brethren.
Von Boenninghausen says: “For a scientific establishment of the curative power and efficiency of the high potencies, we cite the well-established law of nature, discovered by Maupertuis and mathematically proved by him; this we apply to therapy. This is the law of the least effects, by others called the Lex parsimoniae. The discoverer stated it in the following words: ‘La quantite d’action necessaire pour causer quelque changement dans la nature, est la plus petite qu’il soit possible,’ i.e. the quantity of action necessary to produce any change in nature, is always the smallest that is possible.”
(Von Boenninghausen The Lesser Writings)
Hahnemann said, that it is folly to use large means, where small means suffice.
“This law of effects (minimus maxima) appears therefore to be an essential and necessary complement to the law of homoeopathy (similia similibus) and to occupy a similar place with it.”
(Von Boenninghausen ‘The lesser writings.’)
Since size is considered important, we must first consider the size of the dose. After all, this article is written about the subject and the results of too large doses. We have seen that pumping endless amounts of poisons onto the land has the severest repercussions.
A perfect example of the power of small doses is the US leopard frog, which becomes a hermaphrodite from a concentration of only 0.1 part per billion of the herbicide Atrazine. If we then also consider that drugs like prozac are in the tap water of many large cities in ultra-small doses, we can begin to appreciate their effect on all living entities that use that water.
Recent investigations show that our drinking water is severely polluted with all kinds of agricultural and medicinal chemicals, which have a cumulative effect on our health.
Most of these effects are caused by minimal amounts of these chemicals and not by larger amounts, since the body will react immediately to such pollutants in lage doses. This does not mean that we will not get sick, but that our disease is easier recognisable. Nobody will be able to discover that his sperm is not viable, other than being ‘infertile’. This may express itself as low sperm count or the sperm being less mobile.
Minimus Maxima
Many are the objections that those ignorant of homoeopathy and its doctrine have brought against the Organon of Rational Medicine. The founder of homeopathy has been accused of all sorts of things, the least of which is the ridicule piled upon our infinitesimal doses as mere placebos.
Orthodoxy has the greatest difficulty with our dilutions, which they consider to be ineffective. If there is any effect from homoeopathic medicines, so is their claim, it cannot but be the effect of suggestion and thus be nothing more than a placebo-effect. If this be true, it would serve even the orthodox to adopt them, since they are apparently very useful placebos that are more efficacious than orthodox medicine.
Hahnemann was engaged in mainstream research, when he did his experiments with the remedies in superfine dilutions. In his attempts at explaining them, he lacked the language in which to express himself. Like Paracelsus 300 years before him, he had to invent the language by which he could explain what was really happening. If we study his Organon, we find there the solution to the potency conundrum. Let us investigate Hahnemann’s own words, to see if the solution can be found.
“The homoeopathic system of medicine develops the medicinal powers to a previously unheard degree by means of a process unique to it. This process develops and liberates the medicinal powers of crude substances to an immeasurable and penetrating efficaciousness, even in those that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medicinal power on the human or animal body.
‘This remarkable change in the latent medicinal qualities of natural bodies develops the unperceived dynamic powers that are capable of influencing the state of health, changing the wellbeing of all animal and human life. This is effected by mechanical action upon their smallest particles by means of rubbing and shaking and which through the addition of an indifferent substance, dry or fluid, are separated from each other.
‘This process is called dynamisation or potentisation and the products are dynamisations or potencies in different degrees.”
(Organon 269)
Here Hahnemann makes a few apparently outrageous claims and statements. ‘It develops the medicinal powers to a previously unheard degree’, ‘to an immeasurable and penetrating efficaciousness’; these are pretty tall claims.
And then comes the clincher: 'even in those that in the crude state give no evidence of the slightest medicinal power on the human or animal body’.
Indeed, this is the most outrageous of all his claims, at least in the minds of the sceptics and quack-busters. Yet we all know from practical experience that they work and that their power is awesome. So how do we obtain this power?
Several attempts have been made to explain it, but none has succeeded in doing so to everyone’s satisfaction. We must therefore consider carefully what Hahnemann really meant. Let us investigate these claims on their own merits, before we throw out the child with the bathwater.
The claims of Hahnemannian homoeopathy are reminiscent of Richard Feynman’s expressions, when he was working for the California Institute of Technology. He put it like this, at a meeting of the American Physical Society in 1959:
“I can hardly doubt that when we have some control over the arrangement of things on a small scale, we will get an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have.”
This means that when the size of the building blocks of a material become smaller than the critical length-scale associated with any property of that material, the property changes and can be engineered accordingly through size control.
“The suitableness of a medicine is not only decided by symptom similarity alone, but also by the size of the dose. By means of division and dynamisation preparations are produced, which only in this way reach their full capacity to influence the suffering parts of the organism.”
(Organon 275)
Nanophase Potencies
Besides the argumentative shortcomings of orthodoxy, there have not been any homoeopaths that have explained the potencies from a truly scientific viewpoint, since their apparent inability to do so, is in my view caused by the divergence between the mental and emotional symptoms and the explanations by mechanistic theories. Moreover, the divergence between dilution rate and power, so brilliantly displayed in their action on the sick, has also not been adequately explained. It is these ‘placebos’ that form the subject of this little chapter. Their apparent effectiveness needs at least further investigation.
Many experiments have been conducted in the more remote past as well as recently, to at least prove the existence of something in our potencies, of which I will give some examples here.
In 1948, Wormser and Loch tested several substances from 24X to 30X. They used a photoelectric cell, to measure the intensity and wavelength of these potencies and found measurable changes, of both intensity and wave-length in these substances.
In the years 1951-3, Gay and Boiron tested both distilled water and Natrum muriaticum in the 27C potency, for their dielectric constant. They were able to show that the potency of Natrum mur. could be easily selected from among 99 control bottles.
In 1963, Boericke and Smith tested a 12X potency of Sulphur, with and without succussion. They tested the solvent structure by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. They found that there were structural changes in the solvent, as the potency was increased by succussion, while no such change was detected in the controls. They repeated the experiment in 1974, with diverse potencies of Sulphur, up to the 30C.
In 1966, Stephenson and Brucato tested both distilled water and Mercurius corrosivus, from the 1X to the 33X. They found that the dielectric constant for the controls varied from 5.6 to 6.05. For the homoeopathic potencies it varied from 2.8 to 4.4.
In 1975, Young tested Sulphur from 5X to 30X, with controls. He also tested the solvent structure by nuclear magnetic resonance spectrum. He found that there were measurable changes in the spectra at each dilution and succussion. No such changes were observed for the solution without succussion or without Sulphur.
In 1976, Boiron and Vinh used Raman Laser Spectroscopy, showing that for the 1C potency of Kali bichromicum the spectrum of alcohol disappears completely, while that for potassium bichromate appears. In Kali bich 1C the ratio of the number of potassium bichromate molecules is 1 to 500. In such a case the light meets 500 more alcohol molecules as those of bichromate, yet the alcohol spectrum does not appear.
In 1982, Resch, Gutman and Schauer found that dilute sodium chloride solutions revealed an increase in electrical conductivity, by rocking them prior to measurement.
Four French researchers developed a method of detection through nuclear magnetic resonance, conducted in the late 80's, which shows specific sinus waves for each potency, as well as a specific sinus wave for the substance used. These latter remain the same throughout all potencies of that substance, while the sinus wave expressing the potencies, are specific to those potencies. Thus a clear and recognisable scientifically provable frame of reference exists, for each remedy and potency.
These are however, only the physical proofs we possess that potencies have something more than distilled water and alcohol. From these examples it is obvious that there exists a particular quality in homoeopathic medicines not found in mere dilutions beyond Avogadro’s limit and even before that. We mention this, because we expect some resistance from the mechanistic heads at work in the diverse research facilities, which will no doubt put forward many objections against the use of homoeopathy in high dilutions.
From Avogadro to Quantum Mechanics
The silliest of these is Avogadro’s limit, which tells you nothing more than that in any given substance, there are no more molecules found beyond the 12th centesimal or the 24th decimal dilution. However, there are between 2 and 250 atoms in each molecule, so their relative size should have an influence on the dilution rate – at least in the potencies. Moreover, Avogadro discovered the limit for gases, where the molecules always have the same size regardless the amount of atoms per molecule, while its use for dilutions is but a derived value. Even the use of the term is misleading for that reason alone and thus not scientifically sound.
Avogadro’s limit tells you nothing more than that he had no means to detect beyond the molecular level. Yet we find that nuclear magnetic resonance sinus waves are not found in Avogadro’s dilutions, but are visible from the second homoeopathic potency onward. This is because the homoeopathic potencies are not mere dilutions, but receive the succussions that are believed to confer their power.
However, the mystery remains. These are not explanations, but the gathering of relatively useful data. These data moreover, are not the process.
A homoeopathic potency lasts indefinitely and can always be perpetuated simply by adding new solvent. Nor can psychic induction be quantified or shown to be subject to entropy. Einstein’s formula E= mc2 does not apply, there being no quantities, masses, energies or velocities.
In reality, our remedies are quantum mechanical entities, which derive their effectiveness not from the imagination of the patient or some such magical superstition. We shall try to satisfactorily explain our potencies from the modern scientific point of view.
We also do not believe we must succumb to the onslaught of these orthodox superstitions or their demands of pseudo-scientific rigidity, but finally be able to explain our entire doctrine, especially our potencies, scientifically.
If we examine the ultra-small achievements of technology, we notice that nobody makes objections to the micro-chip, nanobots, atomic particles such as neutrons, quantum-mechanical photons and other examples of ultra-small scale, while denying the same for homoeopathic remedies.
This is due to bias and/or prejudice, of which our opponents have plentiful supplies, but which in the face of the reality of homeopathic potencies are not very scientific, to say the least. In reality, it is utterly childish. We might expect at least adult behaviour in those scientists that are opposed to homoeopathy through ignorance.
“By means of this procedure a change is effected in the given drug, which in the crude state shows itself as material – often unmedicinal material. The higher dynamisations liberate the dynamic conscious medicinal power, which in itself is imperceptible by the senses. The medicinally prepared globules are but the carrier of the inherent consciousness of the medicine. In this condition they manifest their healing power on the sick mind and body.”
(Organon 270)
Nanophase technology is a relatively new way of using materials – at least in the field of technology. It seeks to change the properties of a substance through an extreme reduction in size of the particles, according to the principles set out by the physicist Richard Feynman, quoted above. When the particle size is reduced to nanometre size, it is smaller than the critical mass associated with its regular properties. As a result, those properties change to something different and the difference is determined through control of the size of the particles.
In regular nanophase technology the properties wanted are malleability, elasticity, hardness, superconductivity or ceramic, among several other options. In order to arrive at the nanophase, the substance is boiled and brought in the gaseous state. The gaseous particles are then passed through an inert gas like helium or a chemically active gas such as oxygen, depending on the properties that are wanted after precipitation.
In the case of the inert gas, the properties of the substance itself are changed. In this manner, malleability, elasticity or the hardness of the substance are changed, depending the size of the particles. In the case of a reactive gas, the structure of the substance is changed. Thus, a metal becomes a ceramic or super-conductive, also dependent on the particle size. Since control of the particle size is a relatively easy matter, substances can be made with great accuracy.
Besides the boiling method, nanophase technology makes use of super finely ground powders to produce its diverse products. In the case of superfine powders, the resultant product is again dependent on the particle size. It is the latter method that applies to homoeopathic potencies, since they also depend on grinding the substance to the appropriate sizes, so that the medicinal powers are released or developed.
Another method makes use of neutrons to bombard a substance and so reduce it to the nanophase. The bombarding neutrons peel off neutrons from the substance and so reduce the size and hence change the properties. Depending on how many neutrons are peeled off, different properties arise. The control consists of regulating the amount of neutrons bombarding it or the amount of time.
More Ways to Skin a Cat
The manner in which to arrive at the nanophase must have some bearing on the type of properties generated, otherwise they would stick with one method only. Different examples can be given in which this is the case. There is more than one way to skin a cat. We shall list them here for the benefit of the student.
The Gastein gneiss formation and its nanophase suspension in the drinking water, producing cretinism.
The fluxion potencies that generate the equivalent of a 10M from a 3c in one hour.
The suspension of nanophase particles of lead and copper in drinking water, where such conduits are used.
Volcanic action, where under heat and pressure one type of stone or other material turns into another.
Cooking, where the ingredients all change properties.
Bombarding a substance with neutrons, so that it falls apart in nanophase particles of a particular size, generating particular properties.
Boiling a substance and driving it through an inert gas to crystallise the nano-particles, precipitating them onto the wanted precipitate.
Boiling a substance and driving it through a reactive gas to crystallise the nano-particles, precipitating them onto the wanted precipitate.
Superfine grinding of substances to the nano-phase, to obtain different properties.
Since there are several ways in which the nanophase can be obtained, we propose that trituration is accepted as a valid manner in which to obtain nanophase particles that generate different properties.
How is it possible that solid materials become soluble in water or alcohol? The solids never do. The answer is that under pressure – with the mortar and pestle – the grains are reduced to nanometre size and they slide over each other easier than millimetre sized ones. In the case of solids, the grains are bound to each other. A fracture occurs, when too many of these bonds break. If a crack opens, atoms from the lactose begin to move to fill them in. The smaller the grain size, the shorter the distance the lactose atoms have to travel and thus the finer the substance can be ground. Simultaneously, the substance particles are penetrating the lactose particles in the same manner, thus passing on their properties to the lactose.
Our lactose component differs from the nanophase, in which boiling is used to create the equally sized particles and a gas is used to crystallise the particles, which is wanted in a nanophase material. We on the other hand, want to crush those bonds as well as create particles of different sizes and so change the properties of the material. The lactose achieves the opposite of the inert gas used in nanophase materials.
Just as nanophase technology discovers new properties in matter, homoeopathy has done so for the last 200 years. Our potencies are quantum mechanically different from ordinary solids or substances – both in nano-technology and homoeopathic potencies, which are quantum mechanical dilutions. While nanotechnology uses the boiling point of materials or alternatively superfine powders to precipitate nano-sized particles, we use the mortar and pestle to achieve the same – reduction to nano-size particles. The processes do not differ greatly – grinding equals heat and pressure. In the making of a potency, we seek to divide the nanophased particles, as opposed to the nanotechnologists, who seek to collect them.
A homoeopathic remedy is really a nanophase half-product, which needs the human body to precipitate its entire product, which can be either of two – health or disease. Therefore it is invisible as long as precipitation does not take place. Trituration is the separation of the nanospheres from the original substance, passing through lactose as the carrier, before precipitation in the body with either health or disease as the final product. In summary:
At the nanophase different properties arise in potentio.
They pass through a medium before precipitating into the final product.
Until precipitation, the properties are in suspension or in potentio.
A potency consists of a product reduced to nano-phase, suspended in a medium before precipitation.
Precipitation produces the final product – in homoeopathy this is either health or disease.
These 5 stages apply to all nanophase products, whether visible as a product with a single property or as one with multi-properties. It merely depends on how many differently sized nanospheres have been suspended in the original carrier. Succussion imprints the entire nanophase upon the carrier, including all its latent properties. At the release of those properties onto the precipitating medium, the entire product becomes visible.
To understand the concept of nanophase potencies, the following points regarding nanophase materials and products must be considered:
When control is obtained of the arrangement of things on a very small scale, we arrive at an enormously greater range of possible properties that substances can have. (See also Organon 269)
When the size of the building blocks of matter become smaller than the critical length scale associated with any property, that property changes and can be engineered through size control. (See also Organon 270)
There exists a variety of synthesis methods to produce nanophase materials.
Synthesis from atomic precursors.
Synthesis from molecular precursors – homoeopathic potencies.
Chemical means.
Physical means – homoeopathic triturations.
Mechanical grain refinement – homoeopathic triturations.
Bombarding a substance with neutrons, so that it falls apart in nanophase particles of a particular size, generating particular properties.
Preferably nanophase materials are made from chemical and physical means, because in them size control is the easiest. However, other methods yield valuable results, sometimes with greater ease. Trituration is such a process and so is succussion.
Nanophase materials are made by bringing a substance to a boil and collecting the evaporated atoms, by exposing them to an inert gas, like helium to cool them down. They then condense as small spheroid clusters. The exact diameter is controlled by the evaporation rate and the type and pressure of the inert gas. Accumulation and precipitation produces a macro-material.
Ultra fine powders can be made into consolidate materials. Trituration is a way to arrive at the superfine powder stage.
Nanophase titania is made from 10-nanometre clusters of titanium, reacted with oxygen.
A nanophase metal is formed without any reaction with other elements, using an inert gas for precipitation.
A nanophase ceramic is formed only with a reaction with an appropriate gas, such as oxygen, which is reactive.
Each other material is determined by the size of the clusters and the gas, reactive or not.
This process can produce metals, ceramics, semiconductors, superconductors, polymers with optical, chemical and/or electrical properties. Transparency, UV protection, colouring, cosmetics, catalysts and magnetic properties can all be made with nanophase technology.
Nano-structures are found in nature:
In seashells and skeletons.
From fire come nanophase smoke particles.
Gastein water and Lapis albus are nano-phase products. Lapis Albus. Silicofluoride of calcium. CaSiF6. Taken from Lapis Albus (a species of gneiss found by Grauvogl in the mineral springs of Gastein and named by him. The waters flow over the gneiss formations into the valley of Aachen where goitre and cretinism abound). Trituration.
Fluxion potencies are also nanophase products.
Copper and lead poisoning from drinking water, which is passed through those ducts.
Herbicide, pesticide and fungicide poisoning in the rivers lakes and the ocean, where the substance occupies the smallest possible dilution rate. As an example, 0.1 per billion of Atrazine causes hermaphroditism in amphibians.
Nitrogen pollution in the ocean, as seen at the Great Barrier Reef.
Pollution with other agrochemicals causing changes in the lifecycle of diverse groups of animals.
Volcanic action, where under heat and pressure one type of stone or other material turns into another.
Cooking, where the ingredients all change properties.
Water, Complicated Simple Substance
Nanophase materials and colloidal suspensions stand in relation to my quantum-mechanical concepts of potency. Nanosphere cobalt has different properties – pliability or ceramic, superconductiveness or elasticity for instance. This may mean that if such a material is potentised, we could get different properties altogether. In the crude state we do not have those properties.
In our remedies we also have different properties from the crude as in the potencies. This is even more so with the medically inert substances. They only are released by the process of trituration. It may also mean that for instance a 30C will have all the possible properties Cobalt may possess in all its phases. Because, the admixture with lactose in the first three stadia of potency may release the full properties to the lactose, which then dissolves in water.
On the one hand, those nanophase particles between 20 to 100 nm show differences in material properties, which are useful for nanophase materials. They need to obtain these particular sizes to get the properties they want or need.
On the other hand, homeopathic potencies cannot change properties at the same nanophase as the nanophase materials. This is impossible, since the properties are totally different.
We must therefore conclude that homoeopathic potencies are obtained at another nano-sized particle, possibly larger, but more likely to be smaller than the nanophase materials. Naturally, one would expect that the subtler a property, the smaller the nanophase must be, to accommodate the subtlety. Since nanophase particles are visible under the electron microscope, it should be easy to confirm or refute these notions.
Consciousness or mental and emotional properties are among the more subtle. So are programmability and holographic properties, all present in the raw substance, and released when triturated with lactose. Moreover, the subtler the properties, the easier they should dissolve in water.
Water is that wonderfully complicated simple substance at the border between alkaline and acid. It is the universal reagent, while not becoming itself affected. Simple distillation returns the original substance, whether it is a simple solution or a nanophase potency before distillation.
Water does not have a memory, as Benveniste asserted. Water is a storage medium, much like a CD or a hard disk in a computer. The disk has no memory, but only space to write bits of information. Similarly, water has space to store bits of matter or the information concerning that matter.
Matter can be divided by several means to nanometre-size and smaller. Our potencies have been reduced to nano-size powders, which are soluble in water. The process of succussion, which is rhythmically shaking the vial with powerful strokes, arranges the water molecules in patterns.
At sea we call these patterns waves. That pattern arranges the water molecules on a micro scale, whereas the waves in the sea are macro-patterns. It is a question of size, as we see in the nanophase materials. The pattern arranges the water molecules, in which the intra-molecular spaces provide a foothold for the nanophase substance to be carried. Succussion is the writing program that puts the information on the carrier – the water. That water, like a CD, can be carried everywhere and fits the sick body with the right program – the corresponding remedy.
Programmable Solutions
Put into proper sequence, the body is similar to an infected pc, which needs the antivirus program. The remedy is that program that the pc needs.
The remedy has received the program by succussion, which is the writing program that put the information onto the CD/water. Sugared sweet water is sweet always, till you distil it.
Distillation is the wiping program to clean up the CD – the bottle of water. We need only a small portion of the program to write it fully onto the next CD, implying holographic properties in the program.
Differently said, homoeopathic potencies are holographic quantum-mechanical medicines, where the part contains all the properties of the whole. This is contrary to ordinary reason, where the reduction in size always implicates a reduction in properties. Of course a hologram has the peculiar property that the smallest particle always contains the whole. This is why such a small dose has such dramatic effects.
Divine in its simplicity, it puts quantum-mechanics at work practically. Medicine is the hologram of disease. Its smallest part always contains the entire picture of the disease. ‘As above so below’ is not merely an unsubstantiated or unsubstantiable statement of medieval superstition. The concept of the entire Milky Way represented in the human body extends also to the other side.
To the remedy in the smallest possible dose, man is a macro cosmos. Their microcosmic scale is as much a reflection of the universe as man is. In the cosmic scale, man holds the middle ground, between the micro- and macro-cosmic size. He goes upright for the same reason.
All his states are reflected in the heavens on a macro-cosmic scale and in the remedies on a micro-cosmic scale. The remedies and man are holographic images of the real thing on the macrocosmic scale. That reality is in turn a holographic image of a larger entity still, whose reality is reflected in each holographic universe.
Man, as well as animal and plant, are holographic images of this and their reality is reflected in all the different remedies. A hologram of reality is what constitutes our universe, our body and our remedies. For each state a corresponding hologram can be found. All states exist in the original and therefore must exist on every level and in each universe from macro- to micro-cosmic scale. Homoeopathy is in a sense a game of matching holograms. As the remedies are capable of generating disease, so they can cure that same disease.
Our scales of potencies made from medicinally inert substances prove that Feynman’s assertions for nanophase materials are also applicable to our remedies. For these potencies suddenly develop medicinal powers, when they are reduced below the critical length scale associated with their crude properties. This means that the process of trituration causes a change in properties, with the implication that the critical mass associated with its regular properties – non-medicinality etc. – has been reduced to nanophase size and has generated different properties, such as medicinality.
The process to come to the nanophase does not matter very much, as we have seen before – only the reduction to nanophase size has significance for the new properties that arise.
Our properties are medicinal, as opposed to malleable, super-conductive or strong. Although trituration seems very different from the making of uniform extra-fine powders, the process of grinding is the same. We seek not to have uniformity nor to accumulate the nanophase particles, but on the contrary to disperse them. Also, we want not just one property, but all possible properties, from different nano-sized particles. This is what makes nanophase materials and homoeopathic potencies different in both effects and properties.
So far the theoretical basis for the ideas concerning homoeopathy and its effects on man, animals and plants.
Your comments please.