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| Hpathy Ezine - March, 2004 | ||||
Homeopathic Potency Selection-- Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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The term Posology originates from Greek words 'posos' meaning 'how much' and 'logos' meaning 'study'. In homeopathy, Posology means the doctrine of dose of medicine. A homeopathic dose means the potency, quantity and form of medicine as well as repetition. As it is a very lengthy topic to explore, I will just focus on the potency selection part of Posology. Before we try to learn more about the potency selection, let us
first summarize what potencies are available to a homeopath. Potencies can be broadly classified as low, medium, and high. Low potency designates anything from Q to 12C, medium from 12C up to 200C and high from 200C upwards to DM, MM, DMM. It is believed that the higher potencies were first prepared by Korsakoff in 1834 but came in popular use with Jenichen's high potencies after 1844. Now coming back to the question of potency selection, we will start exploring the views of renowned homeopaths of various eras. It would be appropriate to begin our tour with Hahnemann himself - the person who conceived homeopathic potencies. Hahnemann first started to employ 'similar' medicines around 1790 and 8 years later began to experiment with gradual reductions in dosage. As a physician, he clearly became increasingly satisfied with the results of using dynamized medicines, because he continued to use them in preference to material doses until the end of his long life. He started to conduct the very first experiments with dose reduction in the year 1798. This includes 2x, 4x and 2c. According to Peter Morrel's research, In 1799 Hahnemann began to reduce the dose further, using 5x, 6x, 3c and 8x. In 1800 he begins to use 10x and in 1803 12c appears for the very first time. In 1805 the 18th centesimal dilution appears, which was to prove one of the most consistently favourite potencies that he used throughout his long career. In 1816 30c makes its first appearance and this remained his most extensively used and most highly recommended potency of all time. Further developments include the first mention of 6c in 1819 and
the first mention of 60c in 1824. In 1830 he first mentions Olfaction
as a means of drug administration and this remained a very popular
method with him until the end of his life. Finally, in 1838 the
LM potencies make their first appearance. Towards the end of his
life, he was moving more and more towards the use of LM potencies
but still gave Centesimal potencies to majority of his patients. |
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