How Does Homeopathic Medicine Work?
Homeopathic medicine works by stimulating the Vital force, that is to say the energy that is responsible for maintaining, repairing and ensuring the healthy running of the body, and for co-ordinating the body's defences against disease. It does this according to the law of similars. The Law of Similars is based on the idea that like cures like. Unlike homeopathic medicine, the ideas which govern, most of, what is known as “modern medicine” are based on the law of contraries. If you have an acid stomach you are prescribed an antacid, if you have an inflammation you will be prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug. Here and there, however, in today's medicine there are a few examples of the Law of Similars at work. A person suffering from an allergy may have small amounts of the allergen injected under their skin to desensitise them. Children suffering from hyperactivity are nowadays prescribed Ritalin; a stimulant derived from Cocaine. The most well known example is probably radiotherapy. Radioactive material is known to cause cancer, but in controlled doses can be used in its treatment.

The idea of like curing like, used in homeopathic medicine, has its roots in Ancient Greece. Hippocrates first put forward the idea that what causes can also cure. Centuries later the famous Roman Physician Galen wrote of the merits of the law of similars. In the sixteenth century the Alchemist Paracelsus was a firm advocate of this philosophy. He believed that plants and minerals could be prescribed to match the specific symptoms of a disease. “You there bring together the same anatomy of the herbs and the same anatomy of the illness into one order, this simile gives you understanding of the way in which you shall heal”

Although these ideas have been around for thousands of years they did not gain popularity until Samuel Hahnemann revived and expanded on the principles some three hundred years later.

Homeopathy works on those principles, by giving the Homeopathic remedy which most closely matches the symptoms of the patient during their illness. It stimulates the vital force and thereby releases what Hippocrates called the “Vis Medicatrix Naturae”- the healing power of nature.