POTENTIZED HIGH DILUTION (HAHNEMANN'S DYNAMIZED REMEDY)

electrical energy

provenance:electrical energy

first introduced:1810

regulatory status:unregulated

context:The potentized dilution is the proposed active principle of homeopathy: the doctrine of the minimal, serially diluted and succussed dose codified in the Organon der rationellen Heilkunde (Dresden, 1810). It rests on the principle of similars Hahnemann first published in 1796, but the potentization doctrine itself dates to the 1810 Organon, which is why the year recorded here is 1810. Starting substances are botanical, mineral, animal, or other; the founding remedy was cinchona bark and the substance tested in the 1835 Nuremberg salt test was common salt.

MECHANISM CLAIMED

Serial dilution accompanied by vigorous shaking (succussion), a process Hahnemann named potentization or dynamization, was held to release and intensify an immaterial, spirit-like medicinal power while reducing the material dose. Combined with the law of similars, a remedy that produces a disease's symptom-picture in a healthy prover was claimed to cure a disease of like symptoms when given in such a potentized, minute dose, acting on the vital force (Lebenskraft) that homeopathy held to govern health and disease.

MECHANISM ACTUAL

Beyond roughly the twelfth centesimal dilution (12C, about 10^-24, or 24X), the Avogadro constant (about 6.022 x 10^23 per mole) makes it increasingly improbable that a dose contains even a single molecule of the starting substance (Bellavite et al. 2005), so the most-diluted preparations are materially indistinguishable from the solvent. No spirit-like medicinal force released by succussion is recognized in chemistry or physiology. When a single high dilution was tested under controlled, blinded conditions in the 1835 Nuremberg salt test, it produced no effect distinguishable from distilled water (Stolberg 2006), and a 2005 comparative meta-analysis in The Lancet concluded that homeopathy's clinical effects are compatible with placebo (Shang et al. 2005).

INTERVENTIONS USING IT

Homeopathy (Hahnemann's system of medicine)

NOTES

The potentized high dilution is treated as this case’s ingredient in the same way the proposed universal fluid is treated for Mesmer (see animal-magnetism-fluid) and the vital force for Hufeland (see vital-force-lebenskraft): it is the claimed active principle, not a measurable substance. The provenance category is a schema-fit compromise and is noted as such. The data model has no bucket for an immaterial dynamic principle, and ‘electrical_energy’ is used only as the nearest force-or-energy slot, following the precedent set for Mesmer’s fluid and Hufeland’s Lebenskraft; Hahnemann did not claim the potentized power was electrical. The substances homeopathy starts from are ordinary (cinchona bark, common salt, and many others), but its distinctive claim is that dilution with succussion past the point where any starting molecule remains leaves, and even strengthens, a therapeutic power. That claim is the law of infinitesimals, and it is the part of the system most directly contradicted by physical chemistry: past about 12C the Avogadro constant leaves essentially nothing of the original material. The regulatory status is recorded as unregulated in the sense that homeopathic preparations are generally sold without the efficacy substantiation required of conventional drugs; their distinctive high-dilution claim was disconfirmed under controlled test as early as 1835 and again by modern meta-analysis.