Report homeopathy

In the late 1700s, there lived a German doctor, who so vocally opposed the cruel and inhuman treatment of the sick commonly practiced by the medical profession of his day, that he earned their undying enmity. Not content with criticizing what they were doing, the bloodletting, the laxatives, the poisonous remedies, he went on to develop a form of medicine that harkened back to the original principles of Hippocrates, who wrote "by similar things a disease is produced, and through the application of the like, it is cured". The name of this doctor was Samuel Hahnemann, and he was the founder of the 200 year old approach to illness known to us as homeopathy.

Water Remembers? Homeopathy Explained?

New research suggests water remembers what has been dissolved in it, even after dilution beyond the point where no molecule of the original substances could remain. Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports.

For more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have used highly diluted solutions of medicinal substances to treat diseases. Some substances are diluted way beyond the point at which no trace of the original substances could remain. It is as though the water has retained memory of the departed molecules. This has aroused a great deal of scepticism within the conventional medical and scientific community. To this day, ‘homeopathic’ is used as a term of derision, to indicate something imagined that has no reality.

But a series of recent discoveries in the conventional scientific community is making people think again.

First, there were the South Korean chemists who discovered two years ago that molecules dissolved in water clump together as they get more diluted (see SiS 15), which was totally unexpected; and further more, the size of the clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a mockery of the ‘laws of chemistry’.

Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has published a paper in the mainstream journal, Physica A, describing experiments that suggest water does have a memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be demonstrated by a relatively new physical technique that measures thermoluminescence.

In this technique, the material is ‘activated’ by irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays, electron beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and molecules, creating ‘electron-hole pairs’ that become separated and trapped at different energy levels.

Then, when the irradiated material is warmed up, it releases the absorbed energy and the trapped electrons and holes come together and recombine. This causes the release of a characteristic glow of light, peaking at different temperatures depending on the magnitude of the separation between electron and hole.

As a general rule, the phenomenon is observed in crystals with an ordered arrangement of atoms and molecules, but it is also seen in disordered materials such as glasses. In this mechanism, imperfections in the atomic/molecular lattice are considered to be the sites at which luminescence appears.

Rey decided to use the technique to investigate water, starting with heavy water or deuterium oxide that’s been frozen into ice at a temperature of 77K. The absolute temperature scale (degree K, after Lord Kelvin) is used in science. (The zero degree K is equivalent to –273 C, and deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which is twice as heavy as hydrogen).

As the ice warms up, a first peak of luminescence appears near 120K, and a second peak near 166 K. Heavy water gives a much stronger signal than water. In both cases, samples that were not irradiated gave no signals at all.

For both water and heavy water, the relative intensity of the thermoluminescence depends on the irradiation dose. There has been a suggestion that peak 2 comes from the hydrogen-bonded network within ice, whereas peak 1 comes from the individual molecules. This was confirmed by looking at a totally different material that is known to present strong hydrogen bonds, which showed a similar glow in the peak 2 region, but nothing in peak 1.

Rey then investigated what would happen when he dissolved some chemicals in the water and diluted it in steps of one hundred fold with vigorous stirring (as in the preparation of homeopathic remedies), until he reached a concentration of 10 to the power -30 g per centilitre, and compare that to the control that has not had any chemical dissolved in it and diluted in the same way.

The samples were frozen and activated with irradiation as usual.

Much to his surprise, when lithium chloride, LiCl, a chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds between water molecules was added, and then diluted away, the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the reduction of peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser degree.

It appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and NaCl can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water, and that this modification remains even when the molecules have been diluted away.

The fact that this ‘memory’ remains, in spite of, or because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive dilutions, indicates that the ‘memory’ is by no means static, but depends on a dynamic process, perhaps a collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has a high degree of stability (see "The strangeness of water and homeopathic memory", SiS 15).

This information from
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/WaterRemembers.php

A variation of this theory explains our modern vaccines, and the use of a stimulant to calm down over-active children.

His first experiments were carried out with quinine, used to treat malaria. He determined that large amounts of the substance brought about in him the symptoms of the disease it was used to cure, and over the next 10 years or so, he developed the principles of his new medicine. During an outbreak of typhus, he was given the first major testing opportunity. The results were published in a German newspaper a year later, and show that of 180 patients treated homeopathically, only 2 died. The mortality rate for conventional treatment was 50%. Despite the many triumphs of his system, Dr. Hahnemann never tasted the fruits of success during his lifetime, being plagued by the attacks of envious colleagues, but the movement he started had so much to offer that it grew and spread inexorably to country after country, including the U.S., where in 1900 there were 22 medical schools and nearly 100 hospitals exclusively practicing homeopathy!

Homeopathy began to decline in popularity with the rise of the "germ" theory of disease and the simultaneous "miracle" drug discoveries. It never disappeared, however, and for many people, including the British Royals, it is always the first treatment of choice. Then in the 1970s, as discontent began to grow with the side-effects of drugs, their general lack of efficacy in chronic disease states, their expense, and their frequently addictive nature, homeopathy again began to flourish.

Nowadays, it is being approached in a slightly different manner: classically, to arrive at the correct remedy would have meant hours spent consulting with a homeopathic Doctor: now, there are combinations available over the counter which address certain problems, such as sinus, or indigestion, and individual remedies marketed for their main symptoms. Very often this approach is successful, but for serious disease states, it is still necessary to consult a classical homeopath: this is because homeopathy is designed to address the patient, and the totality of the symptoms, rather than the name of a disease!

Homeopathy works: no medical system could last for 200 years and still be practiced, if it did not produce results. Modern medicine, with its record of introducing and then rejecting many procedures, such as tonsillectomies, lobotomies, hysterectomies, will have to cede this point: what succeeds, survives. What doesn't succeed, ends on the dust heap of history. Homeopathy has survived. To quote Dr. Hahnemann's epitaph: non inutilis vixi - I have not lived in vain.

The National Center for Homeopathy 703 548 7790 can provide the name of a local practitioner.