President’s Message: The Essence of Our Method

I spent this past Saturday at the National University of Health Sciences in Lombard giving two lectures for the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Association. The room had naturopathic medical students, IHMA members, and veterinarians from the Academy of Veterinary Homeopathy, some in person, some joining online. At the end of the day, nine of the students joined the AIH.

Before I get into the lectures themselves, I want to extend a warm welcome to nine naturopathic medical students who joined the AIH this weekend:

To each of you—Welcome! I am personally honored you have joined us and more than excited to see you shine in your future. This work is a calling and, in my opinion, requires community and support so that we can stand strong and treat our patients. I have found over my years in this profession that it is my close colleagues, most of whom are here, that have cheered me on when I felt weary, been with me to celebrate and challenged me to grow. Let us walk with you on your journey!

“Such a practice of Homoeopathy would be like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.” – Adolph Lippe, MD, 1867

“Hamlet” is Shakespeare’s most famous play. The entire work is built around one character: a prince wrestling with whether to avenge his father’s murder. Every scene, every other character, every piece of the plot exists only in relation to him. You could have the castle, the ghost, the court, the script and without Hamlet himself, none of it holds together.

Lippe was making the same point about prescribing. You can have the diagnosis, the pathology, the objective findings and, if you leave out the individual patient at the center, you cannot find the simillimum. The play exists. Hamlet is gone.

The first lecture was about prescribing for the patient who cannot speak. The infant, the toddler, the person in acute distress, the patient who does not share your language, the person in the ICU, someone living with dementia, etc. There are more of these patients than we sometimes acknowledge. When words are not available, we rely on what we can see, hear, smell, and touch. The objective symptoms. The case is still there; it just requires a different kind of listening.

We worked through four short cases from 1867, all from Adolph Lippe’s article “What Is Homoeopathy?”, published in the Hahnemannian Monthly, Volume II, 1866–1867. Below you will find these cases reprinted. Each case is differentiated by a single observable finding. No verbal report from any of these patients.

CASE 1 · H.N. GUERNSEY, MD

“I had a case of croup, a bad case, in which the child could not speak. The symptoms were peculiar, and the ordinary remedies did not seem to be indicated. Soon, however, I observed that one cheek was red and the other pale. Several remedies were indicated by this symptom, among them Chamomilla—but at last it came out that the child could not be pacified except by being walked rapidly up and down the room by the nurse, and that it breathed more freely while thus exercised. This decided, in connection with the other symptom, that it was a case for Chamomilla. Who ever thinks of Chamomilla in croup? This medicine was given, and the child was well in a very short time, whereas he had previously quite despaired of its life.”

CASE 2 · ADOLPH LIPPE, MD

“We find, in this case of ‘vomiting,’ say, for example of a child, that the child is quite plump and fat; that it is eighteen months old and teething; that it is constipated; that it vomits its food, the milk it drinks; and that all vomits smell sour. If we apply the law of the similars, as Hahnemann taught us to understand it, to this case, we administer Calcarea carbonica, and none of the ordinary emetics. That child will be cured by Calcarea carbonica, but neither of the emetics. The sour vomiting is characteristic in this case, and likely to occur in a fat child while teething.”

CASE 3 · ADOLPH LIPPE, MD

“In another case of ‘vomiting,’ we find that the child has also purging, but it is characteristic that either or both symptoms occur as soon as the patient drinks the least quantity. Such a patient will not likely be cured by a common ‘emetic,’ but by its similar, Croton tiglium.”

CASE 4 · ADOLPH LIPPE, MD

“Another patient, a man, vomits all he drinks; but in this case it is characteristic that he has much thirst for cold water, and that he only vomits after some time; i.e., as soon as the water becomes warm in his stomach. This case again would not be benefited by any one of the ordinary emetics, but the ‘similar’ would be found in Phosphorus, and it would cure him, because the characteristic symptoms of the patient are also characteristic of the remedy.”

Source: Lippe, A. “What Is Homoeopathy?” Hahnemannian Monthly, Vol. II, 1866–1867.

The second lecture took a longer view: Where this profession has been, what it has nearly lost, and what it means to have a consensus definition of homeopathy now in place across the national associations of licensed prescribers in the United States. Hahnemann built this medicine inductively, from observation to principle. The definition restores that as the starting point.

Francis Bacon challenged centuries of entrenched deductive thinking when he published the Novum Organum in 1620. Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the specific—you begin with a principle assumed to be true and reason downward to conclusions. The danger is that if the starting principle is flawed, every conclusion built on it is also flawed, and the internal logic will never reveal that to you. Bacon proposed something different—inductive reasoning, which moves in the opposite direction. Begin with specific, careful observation. Accumulate facts through systematic experience. Let the principles emerge from what you actually find.

Hahnemann did exactly this. He did not theorize that like cures like and then set out to prove it. He proved medicines in healthy individuals, observed that two similar disease states cannot co-exist in the same person, and from those careful observations concluded that the medicine producing similar symptoms in a healthy prover would cure the sick patient expressing those same symptoms. The proving precedes the prescription. The observation precedes the principle. This is inductive medicine, and it is what Hahnemannian homeopathy is built on. The law of similars, the single medicine, optimal posology, none of these were hypotheses that got tested. They were conclusions that emerged from systematic observation.

Deductive medicine is not wrong. It is the dominant model in modern day medicine and it is often powerful. You begin with a hypothesis, if this combination of medicines or a protocol, is given, it will treat a certain disease. Or you propose that a particular mechanism explains a particular condition and design treatment around that assumption. Combination homeopathic products, protocol-based prescribing, or any approach that selects a homeopathic medicine without grounding that selection in the proving picture and the law of similars works this way too. The condition drives the selection. The evidence is gathered after the fact. That is a legitimate scientific path, and some of these approaches genuinely help people.

But they are not operating by Hahnemann’s method. A practitioner trained in one approach and a patient treated by another may both call it homeopathy and mean entirely different things. The same medicines in the same sequence for every patient regardless of who they are. These may be effective, but the disease is driving the prescription, not the patient. That is not the law of similars. These approaches belong on a deductive path and should be introduced with the rigor that deductive medicine demands: hypothesis, clinical trial, evidence gathered after the fact. That is the appropriate standard for medicine that is not grounded in an already proven law of nature.

For the first time, the national associations of licensed homeopathic prescribers in the United States have agreed on what homeopathy actually is. Carroll Dunham, in that same 1870 address, said the AIH would welcome sound ideas from any quarter. That spirit is not in tension with clear standards—it depends on them. You cannot welcome a sound idea unless you know what you are welcoming it into.

Homeopathy is not dogma. It is a science anchored in careful observation, natural laws, and guiding principles of practice. The goal is not to do exactly what Hahnemann did. The goal is to walk the same path and follow the direction he was pointing. As Lippe put it:

“There is open to progressive homeopathy, a very large field. We must continue to develop the healing art, guided by the well-established fundamental principles—the science—and the established rules—the art—left us as a legacy by Samuel Hahnemann.”

– Adolph Lippe, MD

That is the spirit behind the consensus definition. Not a closed door. A foundation.

To every member of this organization, thank you. This medicine asks a lot of us. Stay close to the patient. Stay close to the observation. Keep following where Hahnemann pointed. And if you know someone who should be part of this work, invite them.