Homœpathy Without Remedies

and Hahnemann’s greatest gift

A guest post by Veronika Bond

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“Only freedom from prejudice and tireless zeal avail for the most holy of the endeavours of mankind, the practice of the true art of healing.” Samuel Hahnemann

In autumn 1990 I spent a weekend in London to attend an event with Rajan Sankaran who was advertised as the ‘big attraction’. My first homœopathic conference! I’d never heard of the guy, but everyone else was so excited. This was an opportunity too great to miss, I was told. Swept along by the wave of enthusiasm whipped up by my fellow students, I arranged for my kids to stay with friends for the weekend, and joined the excitement.

Rajan Sankaran was the rising star in homœopathy heaven in those days. The son of renowned homœopath Dr. P. Sankaran, Rajan had graduated as a Gold Medalist from the Bombay Homeopathic Medical College in 1981, forging his path to greatness. Sitting in a conference hall in the big city, along with hundreds of aficionados of homœopathy, listening to a celebrity homœopath from India, was like going to a pop-concert for ‘homœopathy groupies’.

Fast forward to becoming a dipl.hom. myself…, I’d be attending homœopathic conferences in big cities in mainland Europe ~ Munich, Vienna, Hamburg, Zurich, and some smaller towns ~ several times a year. As a simultaneous interpreter, I would lend ‘a German voice’ to many of the ‘big names’ in the world of homœopathy. I would attend not only the conferences but also post-conference dinners with celebrity homœopaths, and translate some of their books too. But that page in my book of life had not yet been turned.

On this particular weekend in late September or early October 1990, I was a 2nd year student enrolled at the School of Homœopathy in Devon. The only thing I remember from Sankaran’s presentation is a video he showed towards the end.

“I am experimenting with a new form of homœopathy,” he told his adoring audience. “I call my new method ‘Homœopathy without Remedies’.”

Because homeopathic remedies, in high potencies, contain no chemical substance, Sankaran argued, they are effectively carriers of information. And if they are carriers of information, there is no reason why we can’t give the same information in another way and skip the prescription altogether.

“In my practice, I am experimenting with giving homœopathic information directly, bypassing the remedies.” Sankaran explained and proceeded to show a video- recording of a case study.

The principle instantly struck a chord with me. The video itself, on the other hand, left me rather underwhelmed. The case presented a young woman who had come for treatment of some physical ailment and reported difficulties in her marriage. Instead of reaching for Sepia, or Staphisagria, or some similar ‘typical prescription’, Sankaran gave his patient a verbal lowdown of the remedy picture.

The patient seemed to take it onboard. After all, the great Dr. Sankaran was administering his new ‘talking-remedy’ to her, in person. From my Western perspective it sounded so patronising! I could not imagine anyone in the audience following his lead and trying this at home…

I don’t remember the outcome of this particular case, or whether Sankaran developed this idea any further. The principle, however, of using homœopathic information directly without remedies, made a lot of sense to me.

In my own homeopathic practice, from 1996 onwards, my clients were mostly people who didn’t suffer from either acute or chronic physical conditions (apart from the odd cold or ear infection). They had emotional issues, struggling with everyday life. Instead of prescribing homeopathic remedies, I offered questions and little exercises based on homœopathic principles. My ‘method’ of giving homœopathic ‘talking-remedies’ seemed to work, although at the time, my understanding of what I was doing was embryonic and difficult to explain.

In the year 2001 I had an unexpected breakthrough. My teenage daughter suffered with a severe bout of tonsillitis. The homœopathic remedy picture wasn’t clear enough, so I spent time talking to her in my familiar ‘homœopathic talking-remedy-mode.’ Since speaking was too painful for her, I asked questions and suggested potential answers, so she only needed to signal ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

To my surprise, this ‘treatment’ had the same effect I’d observed on many occasions when giving a well matched homœopathic remedy! The shift of energy was visible in her eyes and facial expression almost instantly.

On this particular occasion, my daughter needed three ‘doses of the immaterial remedy’, given over a couple of days. After the first two sessions she got better, followed by a relapse of symptoms. After the third one she quickly recovered. I hadn’t given her a single pill or drop of any remedy. And yet the high fever went down, the pain in her throat subsided, the appetite returned, the dis-ease vanished.

Homœopathy has withstood continuous storms of criticism since its conception by Samuel Hahnemann in 1796. The most frequent critique is the ridicule of the ‘minimal dose’ prescribed by homœopathic practitioners. Because the remedies of our materia medica contain very little or no traces of any toxic substance ~ as opposed to the long list of harmful ingredients in the more popular pharmaceutical drugs ~ they are often likened to a ‘placebo’. Rather than giving evidence of the alleged ‘unscientificness of homœopathy’, this assessment proves that the commentator is ignorant of the law of the infinitesimal dose.

While the remedies always steal the spotlight, the true and far more significant powers of homœopathy always get overlooked. What if homœopathic treatment can have therapeutic effects without giving any remedy at all? 

“Diseases of man are not caused by any substance, that is to say, any disease-matter, but they are solely spirit-like (dynamic) derangements of the spirit-like power (the vital principle) that animates the human body.”

Samuel Hahnemann wrote in 1842 in the preface to the 6th edition of his Organon of Medicine.

If diseases are caused by “dynamic derangement of the vital principle” in the human organism, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that the matching remedy to a ‘dynamic spirit-like force’ can come in various forms, carrying an equivalent ‘dynamic spirit-like force’. Thanks to Hahnemann’s pioneering work, and many generations of homœopaths worldwide, we know that homœopathic remedies are effective carriers of this dynamic force. But they may not be the only ones. Other ways of giving the infinitesimal dose of a simillimum lie dormant within our own minds and human potential.

Homœopathy is a scientific therapeutic method developed on the basis of six principles (or laws):

1- the law of similars, based on Hahnemann’s clinical observations that, “A weaker dynamic affection is permanently extinguished in the living organism by a stronger one, if the latter (whilst differing in kind) is very similar to the former in its manifestations.”

2- the wholeness of the living organism and the self-healing forces of life. In his Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann repeatedly and consistently emphasises the importance of the principle of wholeness, “All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its whole extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceivable portrait of the disease”

3- treatment of the whole person, including their mental state and environment. Hahnemann talks about the effects of the remedies on the whole organism “medicinal force contained in the medicinal substance which acts dynamically by contact with the living animal fibre upon the whole organism (without communicating to it anything material however highly attenuated) and acts more strongly the more free and more immaterial the energy has become through the dynamization.”

4- understanding and correct assessment of the individual case, “for without the most minute individualisation, homoeopathy is not conceivable.” Samuel Hahnemann

5- the skill to match the case with the accurate remedy, potency, and dose with the goal of providing a rapid gentle cure. “The highest ideal of cure is rapid, gentle and permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles.” Samuel Hahnemann

6- the minimal, or infinitesimal dose, based on the discovery of French mathematician and first President of the Royal Prussian Academy of Science Pierre Louis Maupertius (1698-1759) who discovered that, “The quantity of action necessary to affect any change in nature is the least possible, the decisive amount is always a minimum, an infinitesimal.”

Allopathic medicine is built on the assumption that identifying a cause for a disease and removing that cause restores the physical body to health. Critics of the homœopathic method erroneously compare the remedies of our materia medica with pharmaceutical drugs. They judge the healing impulses, encoded in these subtle preparations, from the perspective of the paradigm that forms the foundations of the medical-pharmaceutic-complex.

Homœopathic medicine is rooted in the wisdom of the living organism as a self-healing system, which on the occasion of dis-ease requires gentle impulses towards health. Practitioners of homœopathy rely on the self-healing forces of the organism and the homœopathic principles, based on clinical experience and scientific studies of over 225 years.

Samuel Hahnemann, a fully trained physician and pharmacist, who also worked as a medical translator, has not only gifted us with the first homœopathic materia medica, including the skill and knowhow to prepare these dynamic substances. His most precious legacy and genius may lie in his understanding of the principles and forces of life within the continuum of dis-ease and health.

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Thank you to Veronika Bond for this GUEST POST - a prolific writer, you can support Veronika by subscribing to her incredible work

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‘In contrast to frequent claims, the available Meta Analyses of homoeopathy in placebo-controlled randomised trials for any indication show significant positive effects beyond placebo. Compared to other medical interventions, the quality of evidence for efficacy of homoeopathy was similar or higher than for 90% of interventions across medicine. Accordingly, the efficacy evidence from placebo-controlled randomised trials provides no justification for regulatory or political actions against homoeopathy in health-care systems.’¹

1. Hamre HJ, Glockmann A, von Ammon K, Riley DS, Kiene H. Efficacy of homoeopathic treatment: Systematic review of meta-analyses of randomised placebo-controlled homoeopathy trials for any indication. Systematic Rev. 2023 Oct 7;12(1):191. https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-023-02313-2#Abs1