HOMEOPATHY - MEDICINAL SUBSTANCES

Calling homeopathy names such as witchcraft or wizardry cannot banish it from the face of earth. Homeopathy shall always remain established as the true healing science and art which it is. Sound curative principle of homeopathy makes it the potential cure for all possible ailments afflicting mankind despite many of them having been deemed incurable by the traditional medicine.
Another beautiful discovery of homeopathy is that of medicinal substances. It was found that homeopathic medicines in their crude form aggravated the symptoms occasionally. It became necessary to reduce the dose. Initially it was attempted to reduce the dose to achieve a reduction in the degree of such aggravations. Finally even a quantity of medicine absorbed by one small globule of cane sugar was found to be too much for some patients. There was a need to reduce the dose further.
It was at that stage that many experiments of Hahneman led him to the discovery of dilution. He found that latent curative potential of a medicine could be enhanced by diluting it with rectified spirit and strongly shaking the bottle. He found that a very small quantity of the resulting diluted solution worked as well as and sometimes even better than the original medicine.
First requirement was that of standardization. It was solved by making each degree of dilution a one percent solution of the previous degree in rectified spirit followed by the process of strongly shaking the bottle. Note that these successive dilutions are not diluted solutions of the medicine.
Further research led Hahneman to conclude that pure water, ethyl alcohol and cane sugar served the purpose equally well, if correctly used to prepare dilutions. He named these as medicinal substances, defining a true medicinal substance as one with no curative or medicinal properties of its own but which absorbs the medicinal properties of any substance which is mixed with it
Thus we know that pure water, ethyl alcohol and cane sugar are three truly medicinal substances. They are pure food and create no symptoms when given to a normal person. As a corollary these substances have no medicinal properties of their own. However, when dilutions of a medicine are prepared using one of these substances, the dilutions retain the medicinal properties of that medicine.
We see that preparation of dilutions is an extremely well defined process and it can be carried out only with a medicinal substance. Subsequent researches have come to accept sugar of milk also as a medicinal substance though ethyl alcohol remains the most preferred medium. The reason for this preference appears to be its preservative properties, which make the dilutions last practically without any expiry date.
Of course, the dilutions have to be kept carefully stored away form direct sun light or ultraviolet light of any kind and no substance with a strong smell kept in the vicinity of the medicine. One may find it unbelievable but I can personally testify to having used medicines up to twenty year old which worked as well as they had worked when fresh.