Homeopathic Potentization

Potentization Details
DEFINITION OF ORGANON BY:

HAHNEMANN
Homeopathic Dynamizations are processes by which the medicinal properties that are latent in natural substances while in their crude state, become aroused, and then become enabled to act in an almost spiritual manner on our life, i.e. on our sensible and irritable fiber.

STUART CLOSE
Homeopathic potentisation is a mathematico-mechanical process for the reduction, according to scale, of crude, inert or poisonous medical substances to a state of physical solubility, physiological assimilability and therapeutic activity and harmlessness, for use as Homeopathic healing remedies.
DYNAMIS OR DYNAMIC POWER

Dynamic action or power is the action of one substance on another substance without being able to recognize a sensible connection between cause and effect.

Hahnemann calls such effects dynamic, virtual, that is, such as result from absolute, specific, pure energy and action of the one substance upon the other substance.

*** The earth carries the moon around her in an orbit, in twenty-eight days and several hours, and the moon alternately, in definite fixed hours raises the seas to high tide and again correspondingly lowers them to ebb. This takes place not through material agencies, not through mechanical device, as are used for products of human labour.

*** Similarly, the energy of a magnet attracting a piece of iron or steel needle is not material, not mechanical. One sees that the piece of iron is attracted by one pole of the magnet, but how it is done is not seen. The steel needle becomes itself magnetic, even at a distance when the magnet does not touch it, and magnetises other steel needles with the same magnetic property (dynamically) with which it had been endowed previously by the magnetic rod.

In the same way, the dynamic effect of the sick-making influences upon healthy man, as well as the dynamic energy of the medicines upon the principle of life in the restoration of health is not in any way material or mechanical.

This is effected by mechanical action upon their smallest particles by means of rubbing and shaking and through the addition of an indifferent substance, dry or fluid. This process is called dynamizing; potentising (development of medicinal power) and the products are dynamizations or potencies in different degrees. [Aphorism 269, 6th edition, Organon of Medicine]

Potentisation is not merely the process of dilution that liberates the dynamic property of a drug, but the friction with an inert vehicle, by the process of succussion or trituration. So it is dilution plus friction that liberates the pharmacodynamic properties of the drug.


OBJECTS / ADVANTAGES OF POTENTISATION

1. By a continued process of reducing the material quantity of a drug, unnecessary medicinal aggravation and side effects of crude substances are avoided
2. Medicinal properties that are latent in crude state become aroused and awakened into activity.

3. Substances that are poisonous or toxic in their crude state like corrosive acids, poisons, heavy metals, venoms, etc. become important beneficial remedies after potentisation

4. Substances that are medicinally inert in their crude state may be rendered active after potentisation.

5. The concept of life, health and disease is not material, but dynamic in nature. Hence the concept of cure is also dynamic - and these properties are revealed by potentisation and provings.

6. Potentisation helps reveal peculiar 'individualistic' properties of a drug aiding in selection of the similimum on the basis of similarity of these peculiar individualistic symptoms.


EFFECTS / RESULT OF POTENTISATION

* Quantitative reduction of the drug material
* Qualitative increase in the disease curing properties
* Elimination of toxicity of poisonous drugs


PHENOMENON OF POTENTISATION
Successive dilution and friction
MATHEMATICS / SCALES OF POTENTISATION

* Centesimal scale
* Decimal scale
* Fifty Millesimal scale


MECHANICS / PROCESS OF POTENTISATION

* Trituration
* Succussion


HISTORY OF POTENTISATION

The principle of drug dynamization succeeded the proving of drugs and the enunciation of the law of similars and it was the third step in the evolution of Homeopathic principles.

Hahnemann began experiments of the application of proven drugs for the cure of the sick upon the basis of the law of similars, by using drugs in their full strength. He found that many times the patient became greatly aggravated. Hahnemann reasoned that the dose was too large, and he experimented by diluting the drug on a definite scale. To his surprise he found that he secured better results. He continued this process until he discovered that the curative power of drugs bore no proportionate relationship to the crude quantity, but that under the peculiar and systematic reduction by a regular scale, and the proper manipulation, many drugs in common use, and many substances supposed to be inert in their crude states, became endowed with new and hitherto unsuspected activities and powers.

Two closely related discoveries brought Hahnemann closer to the principle of dynamization -
1.
One was the improved curative effect of reducing the dosage of previously used medicines.
2.
The other finding was that substances such as salt or lycopodium, not previously identified as medicines became therapeutically active on undergoing this process.

* 1790 - 1796: Essay in Hufeland's journal
* 1798 - 1811: Prescribed medicines in usual doses, but slightly reducing doses. Upto this period, decrease of the dose was advised for the sake of preventing the violent action of the remedy. No mention in Medicine of Experience (1805) and 1st volume of Organon of Medicine (1810).

* Hahnemann gradually increased the dilution of medicines. Around 1825, Hahnemann began viewing these preparations as "dynamizations" or "potentisations" rather than as mere dilutions.
* It was this phase, when he understood the idea of friction as bringing about the remarkable change in the activity of the drug. This is represented in his article "How can Small Doses of such very Attenuated Medicine as Homeopathy employs still possess great power" in 1827.

* Hahnemann felt in 1829, the necessity of a limit in potentising and declared the ultimate degree of dilution to be the 30th centesimal potency.
* In the 5th edition of the Organon, Hahnemann clearly described the concept of potentisation in §269. He provided the first specific instructions on dynamization in §270-271.

* He then developed the Fifty Millesimal scale and described it in the 6th edition of the Organon (§270).