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What is it? |
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by Pam Muller |
How to find it |
Homoeopathy Study Course |
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A so-called
“non-scientific” way of
perceiving the question of health and sickness
In a time before the microscope and the more powerful electron microscope were invented, there were people who deduced the presence of micro organisms that were in a mysterious way associated with and in some way responsible for infectious diseases. Men who had ideas like this were considered to be talking nonsense and the established scientific community regarded them with contempt. One of these men was a German physician and chemist and the founder of homoeopathic medicine, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843). Among the many books and essays he wrote on the subject of health, he produced a booklet called “The mode and propagation of cholera” in which he wrote of “....swarms of infinitely small invisible living organisms, which are so murderously hostile to human life and which most probably form the infectious matter of cholera.” The pioneer microbiologist Robert Koch, who identified the cholera bacterium, was born in the year that Hahnemann died. In around 1831-1832 a cholera epidemic swept across Europe. Dr. Hahnemann was was instrumental in producing both cures and prophylactic (preventative) remedies for diseases like scarlet fever and cholera which saved the lives of thousands of people in an age before intravenous re-hydration or inoculation. He also wrote about the importance of town planning, sanitation, isolation and disinfection in epidemics. The introduction of sanitation in UK in Victorian times stopped cholera in its tracks. So why did the established orthodoxy of his day not adopt his discovery? The simple answer is that it was too prejudiced. They were not accustomed to the way he produced his remedies nor his method of prescribing. They thought they knew better without taking a good look at what he had to say despite the impressive results he achieved. The scientific ignorance of the seventeenth century, when doctors insisted on bloodletting, purging and mixing of different dangerous drugs, would not consider Dr. Hahnemann’s discovery. To be honest, he was passionate in his delivery and openly critical of the methods in use at that time, which did nothing to enhance his popularity. But what they rejected was the homoeopathic way of treating sick people, a method of cure so effective in acute epidemic disease and in chronic illness too. It was hugely successful in the 1918 influenza pandemic with a mortality rate of 1.5% of people treated compared with the devastating figures of the orthodox school of the day. Homoeopathy is still misunderstood because people are loathe to think about health and sickness in terms of Energy. The prevailing scientific premise of our time insists that only evidence of physical-material substance is valid and will not consider that which is immaterial, energetic, dynamic. It is not scientific to be so obstinately closed minded. But while profit is to be made in pharmaceuticals it is not likely that unprejudiced research into these matters will be undertaken. Over the past two centuries homoeopathy has continued, despite its detractors, to benefit people all over the world. In addition it keeps a door open to a wider perception of health and sickness should current day science choose to consider entering such "unscientific" realms. |
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