What is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy has a different concept from that of conventional medicine. Unlike other medicine, it attempts to stimulate the body to fight illness and recover good health.
When we are sick, all symptoms, no matter how uncomfortable, represent the body's attempt to restore itself to health. Instead of looking upon the symptoms as something wrong which must be set right, homeopathy sees them as signs of the way the body is attempting to help itself. Instead of trying to suppress the symptoms, as conventional medicine does, homeopathy will give a remedy that will stimulate an immune response.
Secondly, looking at the totality of the symptoms presented is important in homeopathy. In homeopathy each symptom experienced is dealt with in a unique way.
Homeopathy looks for the one substance that will cause similar symptoms in a healthy person. To a person versed in homeopathy, health is much more than that. A healthy person is a person who is free on all levels: physical, emotional, and mental.
But homeopathy's aim is to cure: "The complete restoration of perfect health," as Dr. Samuel Christian Friedrich Hahnemann (10.04.1755 – 02.07.1843), the father of homeopathy said.
We are used to looking for the one "silver bullet" that will solve the problem, and in homeopathy there is no such thing. There are, however, many "silver bullets" which might be of use, but to know which one to use, one must first see how the disease manifests in the patient. We have to find the unique way in which those affected are responding to the disease, and then find the remedy that is most characteristic to the case.
We can now generalize the common symptoms of each potential disease and determine a group of likely remedies for each disease thus arriving at fixed protocols for treatment. This is the concept that has given birth to the Banerji Protocols.
The homeopathic drug is not administered in the usual pharmacological doses, but in minute doses prepared according to homeopathic principles. The dilution of medicine is done either in generally accepted ranges (molecular dilution) or beyond the generally accepted quantitaters range (ultra-molecular ranges). These dilutions are accomplished by succussion and/or trituration of medicine at each stage of dilution.
Originally Hahnemann gave medicines in very large doses. These did help the patients, but produced several side effects, which he felt were due to the excessive doses. He therefore reduced the dose gradually to one drop or one grain. To his surprise he found, that the single drop or grain was more effective than the large doses and produced fewer side effects. However, Hahnemann noticed that even this drop or grain produced occasional side effects. He reduced the doses further in a definite systematic way. How the tiny doses act is still a mystery to the scientific world and the explanations may differ. However, for our purposes, the results justify the dilutions. The situation may be compared with the curative properties of auto-vaccination with attenuated serums.
Differences between Homeopathy and Conventional Medicine
The Arnold Schultz Law expresses and highlights the differences between conventional and homeopathic approaches very succinctly: "large doses of a poisonous substance may prove lethal, smaller doses of the same poison can actually stimulate vital cellular activity". Consequently, it is not improbable that ultra-micro doses of homeopathic medicines should exert profound influence on the vital force of the patients.
Another important basic difference exists between conventional medical therapy and homeopathy. In conventional therapy, the aim often is to control the illness through regular use of medical substances, even if the medication is nothing more than vitamins. If the medication is withdrawn, however, the person returns to illness. There is no permanent cure, so to say. A person who takes a pill for high blood pressure every day is not undergoing a cure but is only controlling the symptoms. Conventional medicine acts as if all symptoms were alike. It therefore offers a series of suppressive drugs, something to suppress the symptoms and something to ease falling asleep.
Homeopathic medicines act on the immune system. When a disease invades the human body, it produces some symptoms. An ultra dilutional homeopathic medicine prescribed as per symptoms and diagnosis produces in the human body a drug effect that activates the immune system. The activation by the medicine produces an immunity that makes it stronger than the disease and the person is restored to health. It is due to this mechanism of action that these medicines produce hardly any side effects and leave the body stronger than they find it. On the contrary in conventional medicine, the medicines act directly on the disease. After pathological tests, when the infection is detected, a drug is administered which can kill the infection. These drugs in the process of killing infections often kill normal body cells and produce numerous side effects making the patient weaker. In many deficiency diseases, conventional medicine proposes to fulfil the deficiency by supplementing it throughout life. As an example, in hypothyroid cases, the deficiency of thyroxine is supplemented by the administration of it orally throughout life. The homeopathic approach is different. In Homeopathy we prescribe specific medicines which reactivate the thyroid and when this occurs, we discontinue the medicines and the patient keeps well for the rest of his/ her life. We have ample proof of such cases.