Chandran K C · @similimum
6th Jul 2015 from TwitLonger
Hahnemann made two important observations regarding therapeutics 250 years ago:
Firstly, he observed that diseases with specific symptoms can be cured by highly diluted forms of drug substances that can produce similar symptoms in healthy individuals when applied in crude forms. He called this phenomenon as ‘similia similibus curentur’.
Secondly, he observed that even substances considered to be inert can be converted into powerful therapeutic agents through a process of serial ‘dilution and succussion’. He called this process as ‘potentization’.
These two are the main observations made by Hahnemann, which constitute the essential ‘fundamental principles’ of Homeopathy.
Hahnemann tried to explain these observations in terms of scientific and philosophical knowledge available to him in that point of time. Organon consists of these theoretical explanations and speculations.
Since scientific knowledge was in its primitive stage at that time, Hahnemann’s explanations were bound to bear that limitations. organon contains a lot of theorizations and speculations that do not agree with, or go against modern scientific understanding.
Equipped with modern scientific knowledge and its tools, we are now in a far better position than Samuel Hahnemann to explain the phenomena he observed 250 years ago. Now we can explain ‘similia similibus curentur’ and ‘potentization’ more scientifically, rationally and logically. With full respect the great genius of our master, we should be truthful and bold enough to discard those evidently unscientific theoretical speculations of organon.
These two fundamental observations were based on experiences, experiments and logical evaluations of objective phenomena of nature done by a great intellectual person. But the vitalistic ‘theories’ he used to explain these objective phenomena were unscientific, obviously due to the limitations of scientific knowledge available to him at that time.
We should accept and carry forward his truthful objective observations, but judiciously discard or modify his unscientific philosophical speculations regarding those observations.