Homeopathic Medicines

The homoeopathic materia medica comprises over two thousand different substances derived from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, as well as certain remedies classified as "imponderabilia" such as X-ray (which is a potentization of alcohol that has been irradiated with X-rays). There are some borderline substances between these three natural kingdoms, for example Calcarea carbonica or calcium carbonate is a mineral salt derived, for homoeopathic use, from oyster shells (the middle layer), rather than from mineral deposits.

Among the mineral substances used are mineralelements and salts that have been demonstrated to play an important role in the functioning of living organisms. Some of the most frequently used homoeopathic remedies including Sulphur, Natrium muriaticum (sodium chloride or table salt), Cuprum (the element copper) and Silicea (silica or sand), are found in the human body either as trace elements or as important building blocks of body tissues. Other minerals, such as arsenic, mercury and phosphorus are extremely toxic to the human organism in their natural form, yet, when they are prepared as homoeopathic potencies they have therapeutic effects in a broad range (polychrest) of disorders. Some of the mineral remedies, such as silica, are generally considered medicinally inert outside the practice of homoeopathy; others, such as common table salt, are recognised as playing an essential role in the functioning of the organism, but are believed to have limited uses as specific drugs. However, through the process of potentization, hitherto unsuspected properties are brought out in such substances, and they can then be used as effective remedies.

The vegetable remedies include plants that have had long use as medicines, as well as those that have long been known to produce toxic effects. Belladonna, Chamomilia and Ipecacuanha, for example have been highly prized since prehistoric times for their medicinal (and toxic) properties. It is interesting that belladonna has also been used as a poison, as have nux vomica (strychnine), aconite, conium (hemlock) and others. The vegetable remedies also include plants whose medicinal value was virtually unknown before they were used in homoeopathy; Lycopodium is an example.

Generally, food plants are not employed as homoeopathic remedies since, as foods, they should not have drug effects. However, a few edible substances, such as the onion, have obvious biological effects and are frequently employed.

Remedies derived from the animal kingdom include the venoms of a number of animals including the bee, various poisonous snakes and the tarentula, all of which when potentized, have a wide range of uses. Sepia, or the ink of the cuttlefish (ink-fish), is a commonly employed animal remedy, that was considered inert before it was introduced into therapeutics by Hahnemann.

The nosodes are derived from disease materials: pus, bacteria, etc. The nosodes are usually identified by the suffix - inum. Before vaccination was introduced into allopathy, homoeopaths had already been potentizing some disease products, such as Lyssinum (Hydrophobinum), the saliva of the rabid dog, to treat victims as a preventive therapy. Employment of a substance that is identical with the disease, rather than a substance that is similar, is known as isopathy.

Isopathy enjoyed considerable popularity before the time when the idea of vaccination became widespread. Today, however, homoeopaths prescribe on the totality of the patient's symptoms, rather than on the basis of a specific disease producing organism. There are incomplete provings for many of the nosodes, and homoeopaths might be able to prescribe them more widely, if the symptom pictures calling for them were more thoroughly investigated, in some countries, nosodes are used isopathically by some practitioners both to treat acute diseases and as a preventive in epidemics. For example, potencies of Influenzinum, or influenza virus, may be prepared to confer immunity on the public during an influenza epidemic'1.

Although routine prescribing of nosodes along isopathic lines is generally not considered good orthodox homoeopathic practice, nosodes can nevertheless be of great value in the treatment of chronic disorders. They are used not only to break up the lingering effects of a disease, such as tuberculosis, but also to reach deeply into the constitutional pattern of a patient and clear a chronic miasm that was implanted in the past through exposure to a disease, through vaccination or inheritance. Thus, for example, Medorrhinum (from gonorrhea), Psorinum (from scabies), Syphilinum (from syphilis) and Tuberculinum (from tuberculosis) are helpful in many cases, when there is a history of such infection either in the individual patient or in the ancestry; often so, when the carefully selected homoeopathic remedy fails to act. A dose of the appropriate nosode, determined from the patient's history, will either cure by itself or cause the patient to respond subsequently to the specific remedy. Nosodes are similarly credited with breaking up the periodicity of certain chronic diseases; whereas each individual flare-up of a chronic condition may respond to the proper remedy, a nosode may be needed to prevent the pattern of recurrence.

Remedies that have produced a wide range of symptoms in provers and, therefore, have a broad range of applications in the treatment of illness, are known as polychrests. The term, meaning "many uses", was coined by Hahnemann from Greek, and was first used In his 1817 article on Nux vomica in volume two of the Materia Medica Pura. Because the polychrests, in their provings, demonstrate an ability to affect every part of the organism, they are particularly adapted to constitutional prescribing, in which the homoeopath is matching the total constitutional picture of the patient (every aspect of his physical, emotional and mental state) to a drug that manifests similar symptoms in every sphere of a healthy human organism. The following is a description of some commonly used remedies. A brief clinical picture has been summarized for each of the remedies.

Here are the materia medica of comon homeopathic remedies: