The Nature of Chronic Diseases

Dilutions, properly so-called, exist almost solely in objects of taste and of color. A solution of salty and bitter substances becomes continually more deprived of its taste the more water is added, and eventually it has hardly any taste, no matter how much it may be shaken. So, also, a solution of coloring matter, by the admixture of more and more water, becomes at last almost colorless, and any amount of shaking will not increase its color.

These are, and continue to be, real attenuations or dilutions, but no dynamizations.

Homoeopathic Dynamizations are processes by which the medicinal properties, which are latent in natural substances while in their crude state, become aroused, and then become enabled to act in an almost spiritual manner on our life; i. e., on our sensible and irritable fibre. This development of the properties of crude natural substances (dynamization) takes place, as I have before taught, in the case of dry substances by means of trituration in a mortar, but in the case of fluid substances, by means of shaking or succussion, which is also a trituration. These preparations cannot be simply designated as dilutions, although every preparation of this kind, in order that it may be raised to a higher potency, i. e., in order that the medicinal properties still latent within it may be yet farther awakened and developed, must first undergo a further attenuation, in order that the trituration or succussion may enter still further into the very essence of the medicinal substance, and may thus also liberate and expose the more subtle part of the medicinal powers that lie hidden more deeply, which could not be effected by any amount of trituration and succussion of the substances in their concentrated form.

We frequently read in homoeopathic books that, in the case of one or another person in a certain case of disease, some high (dilution) dynamization of a medicine was of no use at all, but a lower potency proved effectual, while others have seen more success from higher potencies. But no one in such cases investigates the cause of the great difference of these effects. What prevents the preparer of the medicines (and this ought to be the homoeopathic physician himself; he himself ought to forge and whet the arms with which to fight the disease) - what prevents him, in preparing a potency, from giving 10, 20, 50 and more suc-cussive strokes against a somewhat hard, elastic body to every vial containing one drop of the lower potency with 99 drops of alcohol, so as to obtain strong potencies? This would-be vastly more effective than giving only a few nerveless succussive strokes, which will produce little more than dilutions, which ought not to be the case.

The perfection of our unique art of healing and the welfare of the patients seem to make it worth while for the physician to take the trouble necessary to secure the utmost efficiency in his medicines.

Modern wiseacres have even sneered at the 30th potency, and would only use the lower, less developed and more massive preparations in larger doses, whereby they have been, however, unable to effect all that our art can accomplish. If, however, every potency is dynamized with the same number of succussive strokes, we obtain, even in the fiftieth potency, medicines of the most penetrating efficacy, so that every minute pellet moistened with it. after being dissolved in a quantity of water, can and must be taken in small parts, if we do not wish to produce too violent an action with sensitive patients, while we must remember that such a preparation contains almost all the properties latent in the drug now fully developed, and these can only then come into full activity.

Paris, December 19th, 1838.