Homeopathy, being an extremely effective way to treat the human organism of any disturbing conditions of health, brings together two essential phenomenon that go hand in hand, and one cannot work without the other, which is curing similars with similars and with potentized remedies.

When Hahnemann rediscovered the law of similars, which had been left lying dormant under a mass of past and recent discoveries of his times, it was as if he had found a gold mine presenting a source of unlimited possibilities. And to have fallen upon the process of attenuating the crude materials to make them more potent for curative purposes, could not have been timed more aptly. 

After his initial discovery with cinchona bark, Hahnemann started using highly diluted crude form of medicines to nullify the side effects but that would ultimately render no effect at all upon the patient after a certain number of dilutions. Then he realized how when he would visit patients at their homes carrying the remedies along with him upon a horse cart, they would somehow have a different effect which made him wonder whether it was the vigorous shaking that the remedies would be subjected to during the turbulent ride as a reason for that.(https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15593258211022983)

That simple fact coupled with being an alchemist, led him into experimenting with attenuated remedies, finding great success in doing so yet this outstanding concept of potentizing also remains to this day as the weak link of this scientific discovery leaving it exposed to all forms of scrutiny and ridicule. One can understand how this could have been a crucial point of debate back in the mid 19th century, with its limited scope of understanding of the inner workings of the human organism, but to make that an obstacle in grasping the breadth of this therapy today, is nothing but ignorance at its height.

“The true homeopath observes wonderful changes resulting from potentized medicine and being compelled to reflect he sees that crude drugs cannot heal the sick and that what changes they do effect are not real but only apparent.”

Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy (J T KENT) 

The method of attenuating the remedies in a gradually increasing manner as instructed by Hahnemann is as follows:

Mix 1 part mother tincture of substance with 99 parts mixture of pure alcohol and water in a glass vial.

Shake the mixture with some force, a method he called succussion, where the vial is struck against a hard yet pliable surface with each forceful shake up to 40 times.

This mixture now becomes a 1C potency (1/99 centesimal scale)

To further strengthen it:

Take 1 part from that mixture and add it to a new vial containing 99 parts of pure alcohol and water, succuss it 40 times to attenuate it to a 2C potency, and so this process can be kept on repeating to increase the power of the remedy, up to infinitesimal doses. 

Now if one were to use an insoluble substance to begin with, the procedure changes to dissolving the substance with the sugars of milk in a process known as trituration. 

The trituration process requires a mortar and pestle made of porcelain to potentize the substance by grinding it in the following fashion,

1 part of insoluble substance mixed with 99 parts of sugars of milk, mixing a third of it at a time. The first third is ground with the crude substance which involves grinding the mixture until the mixture starts sticking to the sides of the mortar and the pestle, which is scraped back in with a spatula, ground again, repeating this process thrice for about a period of 20 minutes followed by another third of the sugars of milk repeating the same grinding motion. The final third is added to form the 1C potency. 

To make a 2C potency, one shall add one part of the 1C mixture to a new batch of 99 parts of sugars of milk, triturate it, repeating the whole procedure again. 

Then finally you do this one more time bringing it up to the 3C power. 

After this step the remedy has now become soluble and now can be attenuated using the method of succussion into an aqueous form, where you take:

1 part of the powdered 3C mixture, add it to 99 parts of pure alcohol and water, whereby succussing it by the vigorous shaking. The resulting mixture is a 4C potency which can be further succussed using the same steps to make it into a 5C potency and so on. 

This step by step strengthening of the substance in repetitive steps is key to slowly release the latent remedial power of the substance yet nullifying the toxic effects it may carry and can be repeated over and over where the power can go into the infinitesimal degree.

The trituration method has been proven to bring out medicinal benefits from substances that are inert when in their original state like lycopodium, calcium carbonate, charcoal etc. 

In fact, there possibly isn’t any substance that cannot be potentized by both the method of succussion and trituration, as stated by Hahnemann in the Organon:

“By means of this mechanical procedure, provided it is carried out regularly according to the above teaching, a change is effected in the given drug, which in its crude state shows itself only as material, at times as unmedicinal material but by means of such higher and higher dynamization, it is changed and subtilized at last into spirit like medicinal power..”



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