Alternative Medicine

What is Homeopathy?
Homeopathy: is a Greek word. It is formed of two parts:
(Homoios) which means “like” or “the same”, and (Pathos) which means “suffering”.
Homeopathy is the name Dr. Samuel Hahnemann gave to his medical discovery.

Who is Samuel Hahnemann?
Samuel Hahnemann was an intelligent, German physician. He graduated as a Doctor of Medicine in 1779.
At the time of his graduation, purgatives, bleeding, blistering plasters and herbal preparations were the fundamental means of treatment.
Those methods of treatment were not effective. Hahnemann recognized that fact and got himself busy studying hygiene, diets, and other natural means of treatments.

He read books about that issue, learnt different languages and knew a lot about natural medicine from different sources. By chance he was able to discover the law of similars. He left his job as a medical doctor and started applying his new discovery on himself, family and friends.

- Similia Similibus curentur
Homeopathy is based on the principle that you can treat ‘like with like’, that is, a substance which causes symptoms when taken in large doses, can be used in small amounts to treat those same symptoms.
This law was known long before Hahnemann. Hippocrates, Paracelsus,
But it was Hahnemann who recognized the universality of this law and make it the basis of a complete system of medicine.

2-The law of minimum Dose
The quantity of the crude medicinal material is minimum, yet appropriate, for a gentle remedial effect.
When the crude medicinal material is so small, it will not allow the drug to do any organic damage nor there is any risk of drug addiction and drug effects.
“The concept of minimum dose can be verified by Arndt-Schultz law that small doses stimulate, medium doses paralyze and large doses kill. In other words, the action of small and very large doses of the same substance on living matter is opposite.”

3- Proving:
Drug proving is a systematic investigation of pathogenic (diseaseproducing ) power of medicine on healthy human being of different ages, both sexes and of various constitutions.
Remedies must be proved thoroughly in order to obtain full details of their curative properties. The drug must be proved on human beings because:
Animals do not give subjective or mental symptoms.
Effects of the same drug on animals and on human beings are different.
We do not get the modalities and finer symptoms in animal provings.

4-The vital force:
The human organism is a triune entity consisting of body, mind, and spirit. This spirit which is responsible for different manifestations of life was termed by Dr. Hahnemann as ‘Vital
Force’. Hahnemann summed up the meaning of Vital Force in the following:
: “The material organism without the vital force is capable of no sensation, no function, no self preservation; it derives all sensations, and performs all functions of life solely by means of the immaterial being (the vital force) which animates the material organism in health and disease.”

5- Potantization (dinamization):
Homeopathic dynamisation is a process by which the medicinal properties which are latent in natural substances while in their crude state, become awakened and developed into activity to an incredible degree.
Drugs are potentised by two methods:
Dilution and succussion: (with soluble substances such as plants.)
Trituration using lactose sugar: (with insoluble substances such as minerals.)

Tincture means a medicine consisting of an extract in an alcohol solution. A mother tincture is the extract of the original drug substance; the extract being made with alcohol or water in certain proportion. All the medicines that are soluble in alcohol or water are first prepared in mother tincture form and from mother tincture further potencies are prepared.

Tincture is prepared with equal parts by weight of juice and alcohol.
The freshly gathered plant or parts thereof, chopped and pounded to a pulp are enclosed in a piece of new linen and subjected to pressure. The expressed juice is then, by brisk agitation, mingled with an equal part by weight of alcohol. This mixture is allowed to stand for eight days in a well-stoppered bottle, in a dark cool place, and is then filtered.

Centesimal Scale :Two minims of tincture and ninety-eight minims of dilute alcohol give the 1st centesimal potency. One minim of the 1st potency and ninety-nine minims of dilute alcohol give the 2nd centesimal potency. All the succeeding potencies are prepared with one minim of the preceding potency to ninety-nine minims of dispensing alcohol.

Decimal Scale : Two minims of the tincture and eight minims of dilute alcohol give the 1x potency. One minim of the 1x potency and 9 minims of dilute alcohol give the 2x potency.
One minim of the 2x potency and 9 minims of dilute alcohol give the 3x potency. All succeeding potencies are prepared with one minim of the preceding potency to nine minims of dilute alcohol.

Substances those are insoluble in liquid vehicle like alcohol and water are triturated.
Trituration: is a process of potentisation, by which preparation of medicine takes place by the use of a solid vehicle like sugar of milk, by grinding in definite order according to Pharmacopoeia.
Drug substances are triturated up to 3C or 6X. These are then converted to a liquid potency and further potentisation is carried out by the process of succussion.

Process of Trituration:
Before beginning the work, the cleanliness of the apparatus is confirmed. The apparatus required are an unglazed porcelain mortar, pestle, spatula, measuring tile, stop-clock and balance.

Trituration is done for six minutes with pestle fully pressed down with firm grip and thumb on top. It is firmly moved in anticlockwise direction for a right-handed person, in a circular fashion, going from center to periphery and back from periphery to center without lifting the hand, movement being at wrist joint. The mixture is then thoroughly scraped from the walls of the mortar with the spatula and mixed uniformly together.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EEOsiJF1X0

One part of the drug substance and 9 or 99 parts of sugar milk is taken.
The drug is taken in a porcelain mortar that is unglazed by rubbing with wet sand.
The sugar of milk is divided into three parts in the ratio of 1:3:5 or 11:33:55, on a measuring tile.
The process of trituration takes one hour.

The entire process is divided into three stages. Each stage consumes twenty minutes. In each stage, one part of sugar of milk is added.
Each stage is divided into two sub-stages that consume ten minutes each. The process carried out in the first ten minutes of each stage is repeated for the next ten minutes.
Each sub-stage of ten minutes consists of – grinding or pulverizing for six minutes; and scraping and mixing for four minutes.

Chamomilla
(Family name: Compositae)
Other names: Corn feverfew; Matricaria Chamomilla;
German Chamomile)
The homeopathic preparation is made from the whole fresh plant when it is full flower. It is chopped and pounded to a fine pulp, the juice is expressed, mixed with equal parts of alcohol and then allowed to stand for eight days before it is succussed.

General symptoms:
Complains from Coffee ; teething; Face red ; one-sided- in spots; with toothache (teething). Likes cold drinks. Pain unbearable. Sweat: clammy; hot, better for uncovering.
Worse: during evening; for fresh air; for coffee.

Who is Who?
Who is
Chamomilla?

Emotional and mental: Complains from anger. Desired to be carried. Desired to be a lone. Dislikes company, being spoken to, being looked at, being touched. Irritable children.
Screaming with pain. Stubborn..
Labour pains: pains: distressing ; severe, unbearable. The woman may say that she can not bear the pain and that she wants to die.

Tabacum ( family: Solanceae. )
Common name: NicotianaTabacum; tobacco, tabacca.

Symptomps:
Nausea, giddiness, death-like pallor, vomiting, icy coldness, and sweat, with the intermittent pulse, are all most characteristic. Has marked antiseptic qualities, antidotal to cholera germs. Prostration of the entire muscular system.
Collapse. Seasickness, cholera infantum; cold, but Wants abdomen uncovered.
Diarrhoea.

Should prove the most homeopathic drug for angina pectoris, with coronaritis and high tension. Constriction of throat, chest, bladder, rectum. Pallor, breathlessness, hard cord like pulse.
BETTER, uncovering, open fresh air.
WORSE, opening eyes; evening; extremes of heat and cold.

States of debility in the digestive tract, and sexual system and respiratory troubles, call for this remedy. Cessation of function of kidneys.

Symptoms: sudden glimmering before eyes; feels confused and empty.
Pain over eyebrows. Feels obstructed and dry. Intolerable itching; red pimples. Hemorrhoids, hot, painful, sore .Urinary
Organs: Frequent desire to urinate. Stinging, burning in orifice. Yellow discharge from urethra. Urine thick, turbid, of strong odour, suppressed. Complete suppression after typhoid.
After urinating, continues to ooze in drops.

abdomen; pain; cramping, griping; from eating
melons; Stomach: Feels heavy, like from a stone
Complaints from eating melons and drinking
impure water acidity. Heaviness in stomach on awakening with wind and rumbling, great thirst and emptiness. Pain from pit to under sternum, worse eating.
Colic, diarrhoea, extremely loose bowels.

Diarrhoea from drinking bad water, with much flatulence, cutting pain, relaxation of sphincter. Hot, sore, painful anus during pregnancy. Sexual desire excited.
WORSE: toward morning. Scratching sensation in throat; stitches in chest. Cough dry, hacking; copious morning sputa. Smarting below larynx; breathing difficult. Very weak in all . Back lame. Cramps in soles and palms.

Sensation of burning and pressure everywhere.
Low attenuations. Sad, apprehensive. Unable to concentrate; starts at any noise. Lips dry and cracked. Nose itches; sneezing; nosebleed. Bursting aching in eyeballs. Red burning face. Eyes inflamed and burning. Heavy headache, as if temples were pressed in; pressure in nasal and facial bones.
Sore, feels raw, burns Burning pain in tonsils. Colic and cramps..

Flatulence. Great thirst. Full feeling. Stomach; Gastric discomfort. Bladder feels full, swollen; frequent inclination without success. Difficult micturition. Burning in bladder and urethra. Urinary Organs. Palpitation, cardiac pain, slow intermittent pulse. Dyspnoea, cough with pain in chest in spots, feels as if spitting blood.

The urinary symptoms give the keynotes for this remedy.
Piles with much itching.
Urinary Organs.
Burning, tingling, from perineum throughout whole urethra;
Sudden urging to urinate; intense biting, itching,
deep in urethra; milky discharge.
Stomach; Thirsty and hungry, but desire fails on beginning to eat or drink. abdomen; bladder; urging to urinate
(unhealthy desire); sudden.

Taking of excessive salt causes profound nutritive changes in the body system, dropsies and oedemas, anaemia and leucocytosis. Symptoms loosely described as gouty or rheumatic gout as a result of a general water retention. The provings of nat. mur are full of such symptoms.

A great remedy for certain forms of intermittent fever, anaemia, chlorosis, many disturbances of the alimentary tract and skin. Great debility; most weakness felt in the morning in bed. Coldness. Emaciation most notable in neck. Great liability to take cold. Dry mucous membranes.
Constrictive sensation throughout the body. Great weakness and weariness.

Oversensitive to all sorts of influences. Hyperthyroidism.
Goitre. Addison’s disease. Diabetes.
BETTER, open air, cold bathing, going without regular meals, lying on right side; pressure against back, tight clothing.
WORSE, noise, music, warm room, lying down; about 10 a.m., at seashore, mental exertion, consolation, HEAT, talking. It disintoxicate in cancer (administered subcutaneously in the treatment of diseases of skin, kidneys and intestines, Gastro-enteritis, and tuberculosis). scrofulous affections of children

Lupus, eczema, varicose ulcers. A great "blood purifier and vitalizer.”

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