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What's the difference in definition of "potency" and "dose" in those quotes above, if there is one?

Once again, I have to ask: If its 6th ed. Organon the potency scale (for most the aphorisms) is LM not C, is it not?

Dose to me refers to how much of the potency solution or "poppy seed" granules are dissolved in a further solution and how often it is taken. One dose on one day, another dose on another day, or taking two doses in one day (after plussing of course), etc.

Potency refers to LM1, LM2, LM3, LM4, LM5, etc., i.e the actual strength of the medicine.

So how does this fit in the quotes that are provided in the above quotes from The Organon?

[ 24 June 2002, 05:54: Message edited by: Simone ]

__________________
Regards,<br /><b>Simone H</b><br /><br /><i>Aude Sapere</i><br /><br />"Never be a passive listener or learner" ~ Christian Gottfried Hahnemann

Hi Simone,

Granted, it's unfortunate that the word "dose" was chosen, because people are clearly attaching their own meaning to it ("Hahnemann means use one pellet instead of 2," and so on) and that's why I quoted from or cited 4 different paragraphs, because when you start seeing enough of these in The Organon, you start to get his point.

The 6th ed. of the Organon was written to introduce the LM's. The LM's were the result of Hahnemann's efforts to find a way to speed up the cure and do away with aggravations. He found that on the LM potencies, within just a few days of starting the remedy, the patient would report feeling calm and peaceful and able to cope. No aggravations were reported until the end of treatment when old symptoms would reappear. Hahnemann said, This is the true homeopathic aggravation, the one that comes when the patient is healed. He says, What you think is the aggravation, the "so-called homeopathic aggravation" he calls it, is really a medicinal disease that you caused by over-prescribing. You prescribed too high and caused a medicinal disease. He says, This medicinal disease you caused may be even harder for the patient to overcome than the natural disease he had.

What I have been taught, and what I've seen borne out in practice, is that the lower potencies in water can be given just like the LM's and you get the same results: that the first response to the remedy is a sense of calm and ability to cope, with no aggravation. Do you remember Rahul? The social anxiety guy with the rumbling in the abdomen? I prescribed for him Lyc. 6C in water 3 times a day. A week and a half later he writes, "Is it possible that a remedy can work this fast?" He had been a life-long Lyc. They say that low potencies can't work on the mental level. Some say you have to give a 10M.

Do you remember Contenta's husband, "The Absent-Minded Professor"? He was completely nuts! He thought his wife was trying to kill him! I prescribed Plumbum 12C in water once a day with succussions. Everyone said it wouldn't work in such a low potency. In less than a week, Contenta said, "For the past week, I've been living with a different man. He's a lot calmer."
Less than a week! In that time frame on a high potency, he'd be still recovering from an aggravation. There's no comparison.

I hope that somewhere in here there was an answer to your question, or statement.

Snoopy

Simone, thanks for starting a new thread. In 279, H says 'the dose of homeopathically selected and highly potentized remedy for the beinning treatment (snip) can never be prepared so small that it shall not be stronger than the natural disease'. I think we can see from this that dose is referring to quantity, not potency.

I do use more higher potencies than Snoopy, but find that I can put them in water and have the person take just one sip if they have a history of sensitivities.

Sensitivity is an interesting issue. When discussing how to conduct a proving, H says you can't tell ahead of time how sensitive someone is going to be. However, I don't think in his day they had such things as multiple chemical sensitivities and fibromyalgia and all those types of diseases. These are the people in my experience who seem very sensitive to the remedies. On the other hand these are not the people who would take part in a proving.

Also 129 refers to instructions for conducting provings, which is different than prescribing homeopathically for someone who is ill.

On the page four of 270, in reference to the LM potencies, H says 'The preparations thus produced, I have found to be (snip) the most powerful and at the same time mildest in action, i.e., the most perfected'. I don't use them a lot, though, because I have too much trouble with client compliance, although there are a few people who have been willing. Most people do just as well with a water potency.

I'm working with a sensitive now and everything has to be in water and she can only take the tiniest sip. However, she does have a greater aggravation from the 30C than the 200C, a common experience, IMO, so I do like to start with the higher potencies. In this case, she was doing well on the 200C and her daughter threw away her water bottle. She was out of town, so I told her to go to the nearest health food store and get the remedy in the highest potency they had, so she took a 30C in water and had a much more severe aggravation that with the 200C. It's not the first time I've seen this happen. So unless I think their life style indicates that they will antidote the remedy regularly, I start with the high potencies.

__________________
Shirley Reischman

Maybe hopefully I can settle this issue:

275

The correctness of a medicine for a given case of disease depends not only on its accurate homeopathic selection but also on the correct size (or rather smallness) of the dose. A medicine given in too large a dose, though completely homeopathic to the case, and in itself of a beneficial nature, will still harm the patient by its quantity AND its unnecessarily strong action on the vital force, and through it, because the medicine is homeopathic, on precisely those parts of the organism which are most sensitive and have already been afflicted most by the natural disease.

276

For this reason, a medicine, although homeopathic to the case, does harm when it is given in overdose. In strong doses, the more homeopathic the medicine AND THE HIGHER ITS POTENCY the more harm it does.

(my emphasis) So, clearly, Hahnemann is warning us not to prescribe in chronic disease in
"too strong a dose", and now we know what he means.

Snoopy

[ 24 June 2002, 18:18: Message edited by: Snoopy ]

Snoopy, may I ask how you can tell if the patient is having a homeopathic aggravation or a medicinal aggravation caused by too high a potency?

And if the aggravation is a medicinal one, can it still result in healing or is the patient left worse off than before taking the remedy?

Thanks,
Shirl

Hi Shirl,

A medicinal aggravation is when the person has symptoms of the remedy that he has not experienced before. A homeopathic aggravation is when his own symptoms become worse. There is also the curative 'peeling off the layers of the onion' response, where old symptoms return. A medicinal aggravation is a bad thing. The other two are relatively good signs that the remedy is correct, but we really don't want the person to suffer. If there is a homeopathic aggravation, we want it to be very mild and short lived. The ideal is no aggravation with amelioration. This is where picking the correct dose (quantity, dry or liquid, and potency) become so important.

__________________
Shirley Reischman

Dear Shirl,

Hahnemann says the real homeopathic agg. comes at the end of treatment when a formerly suppressed symptom reappears, implying the vitality of the organism has been restored.

He says that what we've been accustomed to calling "the aggravation" is really an error in prescribing, an indication that we over-prescribed (either with regard to amount or potency), that it is not a true aggravation. I should have continued the quote of paragraph 276. Here it is:

*

Excessively large doses of an accurately selected homeopathic medicine, especially if frequently repeated, are, as a rule, very destructive. Not infrequently, they endanger the patient's life or make his disease almost incurable. Of course they do extinguish the natural disease in the feelings of the vital principle--the patient no longer suffers from it as soon as the overdose of homeopathic medicine acts on him, but he is then more seriously ill from the completely similar but far stronger medicinal disease, which is extremely difficult to eradicate.

*

Shirl, it's like if I take antibiotics and they cause a stomach ache, it's easy to distinguish this "medicinal disease" from the natural one I'm suffering from because they occupy different areas of my body.
But if the medicinal disease was SIMILAR to my natural disease, I might mistakenly say, "The antibiotic caused an aggravation!" This is why Hahnemann uses the phrase "so-called homeopathic aggravation" because he's saying, This isn't an aggravation at all, this is a medicinal disease.
You gave the remedy in over-dose.

In other parts of the Organon, which I'm sure I quoted elsewhere, he says, if you make a mistake with a low dose, it's a small mistake, and the patient easily recovers. So, it's true, as Shirley says, it's possible to aggravate on a low potency or an LM, especially if you keep repeating it.

Danielle, on another thread, one time wrote in to say that her practitioner had prescribed Nat-mur LM/1 and it was causing an aggravation, but he told her to keep on taking it!
So, we all said, "Stop taking it!!!!!" In 24 hours she had recovered! This is what Hahnemann means by, "If you make a mistake with a small dose, it's a small mistake."

Snoopy

[ 25 June 2002, 04:19: Message edited by: Snoopy ]

I am a novice to homeopathy and have been reading some posts on BB with great interest. I commend Snoopy, Dr. Leela and others for being so clear and forthright on various topics. I, however, have a question for any body who would like to answer. This relates to potencies of remedies. It is my understanding that potenties of remedies are increased through succession and dilution. My question is: Is this process and its results all scientifically proven and established? Or that they are accepted because they work in practice and produce the desired results.

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge and experiece with others.

Regards,

Jay

Jay,

This is a very interesting question, and I hope it gets a lot of responses. Actually, homeopathy is more than just the pellets you buy in the blue tubes. It's an observation that many, including Hippocrates, have made: that "like cures like".

In The Organon, Hahnemann shows that this fact is observable in nature quite often. He points to a case of herpes that was cured when the patient contracted measles:

"But when measles meets a disease that is similar to it in its main symptom--the eruption--it will undeniably destroy and cure it homeopathically."
(para. 46)

He furthermore explains that "curing" by opposites
(allopathy) actually empowers the disease and worsens the case:

"All carefully conducted experimentation and research prove to us that persistent disease symptoms, far from being wiped out and destroyed by opposite medicinal symptoms, return instead with renewed intensity and evident aggravation after seeming for a short time to have improved." (para. 23)

Oh, this is so true! Have you ever burned your hand and placed it in cold water? What a relief, but what happens when you lift your hand out? Ouch! The burn is worse! Do you know what the Chinese chefs do when they burn their hand? They put it back over the fire! Yes, there is momentary pain, but then it's gone! This is homeopathy! It's not just the pills from the homeopathic pharmacy, it's
"like cures like".

Hahnemann made a systematic healing art out of this folklore.

Snoopy

There is actual evidence about water and memory or retaining the imprint of the substance. I'll try to locate it and paste it here

__________________
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to animals. For they are without sin and you in your greatness defile the earth by your appearance on it and leave traces of you foulness after you. Dostoyevsky