Ost-Debate Questions from Dr. Joe Schwarcz To Dr. André Saine
These questions were posted by Dr. Joe Schwarcz to Dr. André Saine as a follow-up on the Debate held at McGill University on November 27, 2012.
Homeopaths claim that even after a substance is dissolved in water or alcohol and diluted to such an extent that there is not a single molecule of the original solute left, the solution still retains some memory of the solute. But this solution is then impregnated into a sugar pill and the water is evaporated. What then is left behind? And how does whatever is left behind have anything to do with healing?
Homeopaths are actually not making such a claim, but have instead been reporting a series of very important experimental observations that are, first, sick people are sensitive to remedies that can produce a similar state as their sickness1); second, patients usually experience an initial aggravation when remedies are precisely prescribed to them according to this principle of similarity2); third, to avoid this initial aggravation, Hahnemann did what any logical physician would do, he diminished the dose.
At first, he used simple dilutions3), and only many years later he began using serial succussed dilutions4), a process he had previously used in chemistry5) and which had been known at least since Paracelsus6); fourth, Hahnemann noticed that patients responded better and longer the higher the potency was, a fact that is confirmed daily by every practicing homeopath; and fifth, Hahnemann slowly pursued this upward process of serial dilution and succussion over the next forty years as he never stopped observing increasing benefit in the sick7). To illustrate how slow this process of progressive rise in serial trituration/succussion and dilutions was, Hahnemann recommended prescribing Aurum metallicum in the first and second attenuations in 1820, the 12th in 1825, the 30th in 1835 and by 1840 he was consistently using the 200 centesimal potency8).
In view of these experimental facts, Hahnemann logically assumed that durable, physical changes were occurring in the vehicles due to this process of serial trituration/succussion and dilutions, a phenomenon that can absolutely not be explained with the theory of Avogadro’s limit9). In 1825, he wrote, “By the succussion and trituration employed, a change is effected in the mixture, which is so incredibly great and so inconceivably curative, that this development of the spiritual power of medicines to such a height by means of the multiplied and continued trituration and succussion of a small portion of medicinal substance with ever more and more dry or fluid unmedicinal substances, deserves incontestably to be reckoned among the greatest discoveries of this age10).”
Potentiation /Trituration are unique simple process of making Homoeopathic medicines,but the scientists are yet to understand them, its advised that they see/ and observe these processes by their own eyes in the pharmaceuticals to come up with the explanation of what they have observed.