The minimal dose: primary action of the drug and reaction of the vital force

Hahnemann has spent his whole life trying to circumvent the phenomenon of homeopathic aggravation so as to reach results in accordance with the objectives of the Organon, which aims at “a quick, soft and permanent health recovery”. The aggravation is due to an excessive primary action of the medicine thus overwhelming the vital force and preventing its response to the medicine’s initial solicitation. Hahnemann’s obsession to avoid aggravation was not only linked to the patient’s comfort, but most of all to the fact that recovery only depends on the medicine side-effects under the control of the vital force and not at all on the primary action of the medicine.

Aggravation is not a sign the physician must look for. On the contrary, it is important to know how to control and to avoid such a phenomenon, while many physicians (and patients) think aggravation is a necessary step in the homeopathic treatment. At the time when I only knew how to prescribe dry dosages, I tried to limit aggravation as much as I could by giving my patients only a few little globules of the dose. After several years of practice, I realised dry dosages had limits, and deplored the uncontrollable activity of the remedy, comparable to an explosion that cannot be predicted or prevented. Another disadvantage of the dry dosage is that it is inert: it always delivers the same signal even after shaking. The organism thus responds negatively to repetition as long as the effects of the previous solicitation are felt. The dry dosage thus prevents us from using the medicine regularly as it could induce further aggravation.

The solution, in the two senses of the word, has been discovered by Hahnemann: it is the liquid dosage. The pharmacodynamic properties of two globules are diluted into 250 ml of water. The heights of sophistication of the homeopathic technique is that the strength of the treatment can be adapted to the patient’s sensitivity thanks to the dynamisation process (shaking the preparation renders it more and more active) and to the quantity of active substance (according to the number of spoonfuls administrated). Less than a hundred physicians in the whole world use liquid dosages. It took years of research and experimentations for my students and I to be able to use the liquid dosage. We have borrowed Hahnemann’s works from the Stuttgart records to study how he worked in Paris. Thanks to these efforts, our patients can now benefit from treatments with a quick, precise and long lasting action.