What is the origin of Homeopathy?
The father of Homeopathy is Samuel Hahnemann, MD. Hahnemann, who was born in Germany, was a traditionally trained doctor in the late 1700’s and believed that the allopathic or conventional treatments for illnesses (both physical and mental) typically did the patient more harm than good. In his research Hahnemann discovered that “like cures like”; meaning that the best medicinal or herbal treatment for an illness was one which produced the same symptoms in a healthy person that the disease presented in the ill person.
Although the Law of Similars mentioned above, seemed to work in the majority of the patients Hahnemann treated, there were still exceptions to this “law” when dealing with chronic illness and disease. Initially, these chronic conditions seemed to respond to the indicated treatment but as time progressed the treatments ceased to work and the illness came back with increased vigor. This discrepancy lead Hahnemann to research further and develop the Theory of Miasms.
What are Miasms?
As Hahnemann described it, a miasm is defined as the fundamental cause of an erroneous or diseased state of the body. Chronic conditions are caused by chronic miasms, just as acute conditions are caused by acute miasms. Miasms cause a complete dynamic and physical change to the interior of the whole man…his whole being is altered. It is only after this complete change has occurred that symptoms of the disease or illness are demonstrated.
Chronic diseases slowly progress and symptoms result over the course of a lifetime, due to an inadequate constitutional response to a miasm. With respect to acute disease or illness, there is a rapid onset of symptoms progressing towards a crisis which ends in recovery or death without treatment. For example, cancer is typically a chronic disease that progresses slowly over years whereas the flu is an acute disease that progresses swiftly over a few days. In both conditions, the entire body has to be compromised or changed by the miasm before the symptoms are demonstrated by the patient.
In Hahnemann’s research, he observed that a patient with a chronic disease would initially improve once the appropriate homeopathic medicine was administered. But as time progressed and the disease progressed, the medicine would cease to improve the condition and new symptoms would present themselves.
The three miasms that Hahnemann identified after 9 years of research were Psora, Syphilitic and Sycotic. About 85% of the diseases known at that time, were classified in the Psora miasm with the remaining 15% distributed between the Syphilitic and Sycotic miasms. The Psora miasm was the original miasm and the one that Hahnemann spent the bulk of his research and efforts understanding.
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