In the late 1700s, there lived a German
doctor, who so vocally opposed the cruel and inhuman treatment
of the sick commonly practiced by the medical profession of his
day, that he earned their undying enmity. Not content with
criticizing what they were doing, the bloodletting, the
laxatives, the poisonous remedies, he went on to develop a form
of medicine that harkened back to the original principles of
Hippocrates, who wrote "by similar things a disease is produced,
and through the application of the like, it is cured". The name
of this doctor was Samuel Hahnemann, and he was the founder of
the 200 year old approach to illness known to us as homeopathy.
Water Remembers? Homeopathy
Explained?
New research suggests water remembers what has been
dissolved in it, even after dilution beyond the point
where no molecule of the original substances could remain.
Dr. Mae-Wan Ho reports.
For more than a century, practitioners of homeopathy have
used highly diluted solutions of medicinal substances to
treat diseases. Some substances are diluted way beyond the
point at which no trace of the original substances could
remain. It is as though the water has retained memory of
the departed molecules. This has aroused a great deal of
scepticism within the conventional medical and scientific
community. To this day, ‘homeopathic’ is used as a term of
derision, to indicate something imagined that has no
reality.
But a series of recent discoveries in the conventional
scientific community is making people think again.
First, there were the South Korean chemists who discovered
two years ago that molecules dissolved in water clump
together as they get more diluted (see SiS 15), which was
totally unexpected; and further more, the size of the
clumps depends on the history of dilution, making a
mockery of the ‘laws of chemistry’.
Now, physicist Louis Rey in Lausanne, Switzerland, has
published a paper in the mainstream journal, Physica A,
describing experiments that suggest water does have a
memory of molecules that have been diluted away, as can be
demonstrated by a relatively new physical technique that
measures thermoluminescence.
In this technique, the material is ‘activated’ by
irradiation at low temperature, with UV, X-rays, electron
beams, or other high-energy sub-atomic particles. This
causes electrons to come loose from the atoms and
molecules, creating ‘electron-hole pairs’ that become
separated and trapped at different energy levels.
Then, when the irradiated material is warmed up, it
releases the absorbed energy and the trapped electrons and
holes come together and recombine. This causes the release
of a characteristic glow of light, peaking at different
temperatures depending on the magnitude of the separation
between electron and hole.
As a general rule, the phenomenon is observed in crystals
with an ordered arrangement of atoms and molecules, but it
is also seen in disordered materials such as glasses. In
this mechanism, imperfections in the atomic/molecular
lattice are considered to be the sites at which
luminescence appears.
Rey decided to use the technique to investigate water,
starting with heavy water or deuterium oxide that’s been
frozen into ice at a temperature of 77K. The absolute
temperature scale (degree K, after Lord Kelvin) is used in
science. (The zero degree K is equivalent to –273 C, and
deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen which is twice as
heavy as hydrogen).
As the ice warms up, a first peak of luminescence appears
near 120K, and a second peak near 166 K. Heavy water gives
a much stronger signal than water. In both cases, samples
that were not irradiated gave no signals at all.
For both water and heavy water, the relative intensity of
the thermoluminescence depends on the irradiation dose.
There has been a suggestion that peak 2 comes from the
hydrogen-bonded network within ice, whereas peak 1 comes
from the individual molecules. This was confirmed by
looking at a totally different material that is known to
present strong hydrogen bonds, which showed a similar glow
in the peak 2 region, but nothing in peak 1.
Rey then investigated what would happen when he dissolved
some chemicals in the water and diluted it in steps of one
hundred fold with vigorous stirring (as in the preparation
of homeopathic remedies), until he reached a concentration
of 10 to the power -30 g per centilitre, and compare that
to the control that has not had any chemical dissolved in
it and diluted in the same way.
The samples were frozen and activated with irradiation as
usual.
Much to his surprise, when lithium chloride, LiCl, a
chemical that would be expected to break hydrogen bonds
between water molecules was added, and then diluted away,
the thermoluminescent glow became reduced, but the
reduction of peak 2 was greater relative to peak 1. Sodium
chloride, NaCl, had the same effect albeit to a lesser
degree.
It appears, therefore, that substances like LiCl and NaCl
can modify the hydrogen-bonded network of water, and that
this modification remains even when the molecules have
been diluted away.
The fact that this ‘memory’ remains, in spite of, or
because of vigorous stirring or shaking at successive
dilutions, indicates that the ‘memory’ is by no means
static, but depends on a dynamic process, perhaps a
collective quantum excitation of water molecules that has
a high degree of stability (see "The strangeness of water
and homeopathic memory", SiS 15).
This information from
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/WaterRemembers.php
A variation of this theory explains our modern
vaccines, and the use of a stimulant to calm down over-active
children.
His first experiments were carried out with
quinine, used to treat malaria. He determined that large amounts
of the substance brought about in him the symptoms of the disease it
was used to cure, and over the next 10 years or so, he developed
the principles of his new medicine. During an outbreak of
typhus, he was given the first major testing opportunity. The
results were published in a German newspaper a year later, and
show that of 180 patients treated homeopathically, only 2 died.
The mortality rate for conventional treatment was 50%. Despite
the many triumphs of his system, Dr. Hahnemann never tasted the
fruits of success during his lifetime, being plagued by the
attacks of envious colleagues, but the movement he started had
so much to offer that it grew and spread inexorably to country
after country, including the U.S., where in 1900 there were 22
medical schools and nearly 100 hospitals exclusively practicing
homeopathy!
Homeopathy began to decline in popularity with
the rise of the "germ" theory of disease and the simultaneous
"miracle" drug discoveries. It never disappeared, however, and
for many people, including the British Royals, it is always the
first treatment of choice. Then in the 1970s, as discontent
began to grow with the side-effects of drugs, their general lack
of efficacy in chronic disease states, their expense, and their
frequently addictive nature, homeopathy again began to flourish.
Nowadays, it is being approached in a slightly
different manner: classically, to arrive at the correct remedy
would have meant hours spent consulting with a homeopathic
Doctor: now, there are combinations available over the counter
which address certain problems, such as sinus, or indigestion,
and individual remedies marketed for their main symptoms. Very
often this approach is successful, but for serious disease
states, it is still necessary to consult a classical homeopath:
this is because homeopathy is designed to address the patient,
and the totality of the symptoms, rather than the name of a
disease!
Homeopathy works: no medical system could last
for 200 years and still be practiced, if it did not produce
results. Modern medicine, with its record of introducing and
then rejecting many procedures, such as tonsillectomies,
lobotomies, hysterectomies, will have to cede this point: what
succeeds, survives. What doesn't succeed, ends on the dust heap
of history. Homeopathy has survived. To quote Dr. Hahnemann's
epitaph: non inutilis vixi - I have not
lived in vain.
The National Center for Homeopathy
703 548 7790can provide the name of a
local practitioner.
Keywords: the vitamin lady writes
about homeopathy, homeopathy explained, hahnemann medicine,
hahnemann homeopathy, principles homeopathy, how work
homeopathy
The National Center for Homeopathy,
http://www.homeopathic.org/
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