Life is consciousness.
It is a complex balance between energy, i.e., mind and matter, i.e., body.
It is a quality that distinguishes an animate – active,functional being, from an inanimate or dead body.
Living things have capacity for nutrition, metabolism, growth, repair, secretion, excretion, self-recognition, self-preservation, reproduction and most important of all – reaction to stimuli.

Susceptibility is the ability of the living organism to reaction to stimuli.
Upon it depends all functions – physiological and pathological.
Examples of susceptibility:

1. Digestion, assimilation, excretion, repair and all the other normal physiological functions of body.
2. Disease processes arising from infection or some other external stimuli.
3. Reaction to the curative remedy, leading to cure of diseases.

Death is the end of life.
It is cessation of consciousness.
It is a permanent cessation of all important functions of life, like nutrition, metabolism, growth, repair, secretion, excretion, self-recognition, self-preservation, reproduction and most important of all – reaction to stimuli.
It denotes the absence of the force or energy that activates a material body.
Only the inactive, material body exists in death.

Immunity is the defensive reaction of the body against foreign proteins, so that they are neutralized or eliminated, preventing damage to the normal body functions.
The neutralization or elimination of foreign proteins is done by counter-proteins, produced by the body, called antibodies.

Disease is the reaction of the living organism to the injurious agents or influences, leading to the

the loss of harmony in the working of body.
It is alteration in the state of health, expressed by perceptible signs and symptoms.
It occurs due to the interaction of multiple factors which can be divided under the three headings:

1. Susceptible host
2. Environment (the aggregate of social, cultural, climatic condtions)
3. Microbial agent
Diseases can be divided into two types:
a. Acute
b. Chronic
Q- What is Acute disease?
1) It Has a sudden, rapid onset
2) Has severe symptoms
3) Has a short course
4) Without medical aid terminates either in death or cure
Q. What are the types of acute diseases?
i) Individual: These diseases attack human beings individually.
ii) Sporadic: These diseases attack several persons at a time but not at the same place, i.e., one may be in Bombay and the other in Delhi.
iii) Epidemic:These diseases attack many persons at the same time, and living in the same locality.
Q. Chronic disease: It
i) Has a gradual, insidious, imperceptible beginning.
ii) There is life long suffering.
iii) Is not extinguished without homœopathic aid.
iv) Destroys the organism in the long run if untreated homeopathically.
Types of chronic diseases:
1 True chronic diseases: These are the diseases occurring from the remaining effect of any microbe, which the body’s immune mechanism is unable to wash off after the acute bout of the disease is over, either due to no treatment or wrong treatment.
2 Artificial Chronic Diseases/latrogenic diseases: Such diseases are produced artificially, either due to
I) Prolonged use of large doses of medicine
II) Vaccines
III) Various investigative procedures like X-ray, ultrasound, endoscopy
IV) Various surgical procedures.
These are very difficult to treat and in many cases incurable.
3 Falsely called chronic disease or indisposition: These diseases are caused by continuous exposure to some harmful influence, removing which brings about health, e.g.,

i) Additiction to liquors, etc.
ii) Not taking life supporting food, e.g., minerals, vitamins, etc.
iii) Unhealthy surroundings, e.g., open drain, marshi district, damp house, etc.
iv) Unhealthy life style, like lack of exercise and good food, excess stress, worry.

Cure is recovery or restoration of health undisturbed by after sufferings.
A patient recovers when the balance that had been disturbed by various disease causing agents, is restored and he is able to perform all functions normally again.
Recovery relates to the patient as a whole and not to some symptoms of his disease, nor to what may be called one of his diseases.
To say that the patient has recovered from his piles but still has his heart disease is absurd.

The various modes of treatment are:
Homœopathy: Employment of a single medicine that possesses symptoms similar to the disease symptoms.
Antipathy: Employment of medicines that posses symptoms exactly opposite to the disease symptoms.
Allopathy: Employment of medicines whose symptoms have no actual (pathological) relation to the symptoms of disease.
Isopathy: Employment of medicine prepared from the same substance that produced it.

Homœopathy was discovered by a German doctor: Dr.Samuel Hahnemann.
It is a philosophy of being healthy.
It is a way of living a healthy life.
‘Homœo’ means similar, ‘pathy’ means disease.
Homœopathic use of medicine is based on the law which can be simply stated as “Poison to be treated by Poison”. “Iron is cut by Iron”, and medically be stated as ‘Let likes be treated by likes’. This general remark, though found in the old scriptures of Ayurveda, could never be used successfully for the treatment of sick. It was Dr.Hahnemann, who, for the first time, successfully used the law for trating patients.
Medicine selection is based on a similarity between the collection of symptoms, shown by the patient and the collection of the symptoms, that are noticed during experimental administration of the medicinal substance to a healthy person: e.g., coffee, which causes sleeplessness in most healthy people, cures the same condition, i.e., sleeplessness, in a patient, when used in homœopathic dose.

Homœopathy
I Brings about recovery by stimulating organism’s immunity.
Ii Raises the resistance of the person against disease, in other words, it raises immunity as well as kills micro-organisms.
Iii A single medicine most suited to the patient’s conditions is given at a time.
Iv Homœopathic dose is very small.
v. Medicines are known by experiments on humans only.

To answer the above question, we must know what is healing:
Healing is the power of the organism to become healthy and sound.
Health is a condition of complete physical mental or social wellbeing.
It is the balance or homoeostasis or harmony in the normal functions of the organism.
A person can be healthy by
I preventing diseases or disorder from occurring
Ii curing diseases, one a person falls ill.
Iii palliating the disease is case It has reached a stage where it can no longer be cured, and thus achieving as near semblance of health as possible till the death of the patient.
HOMŒOPATHY
Cures diseases
Prevents diseases
Palliates disease
So Homeopathy is a complete way of healing.

Homoeopathic medicines act through nerves. Homœopathic medicines when taken, first simulate the innumerable nerve endings in the tongue or skin or nose. The stimulation spreads as electrical impulse to the higher centres such as brain, which further transmits the impulses to the endocrine organs of the organism such as hypothalamus, adrenal cortex, thyroid, etc. These organs now affect the biochemical mechanism of the organism, which produce various chemicals, which causes the immune mechanism to react strongly and totally extinguish the disease germs or heal any other disorder. Numerable clinical observations and experiments, since 2000 years, gives evidence to the effective action of the medicines.

The various sources for Homœopathic medicines are:
Vegetables
Animals – different parts, secretions, poisons.
Milk, milk products
Minerals and chemicals
Hormonal secretion of healthy human organs and lower animals
Disease producing agents, disease produces or diseased parts of human beings, lower animals or plants
Natural and artificial energy, e.g., Luna (full moon), Magnetis Poli Ambo (Magnet), X-ray, etc.

Every living organism has the power of reacting to stimuli.
By means of this power, the organism offers resistance to everyting which tends to destroy or injure its normal functioning, e.g. in case when a disease germ invades an organism, the body offers resistance, which we can observe as various symptoms like pain, fever, etc. Similarly, drugs which are also foreign to the organism, have to face the organism’s resistance and so must be in large enough dose to overcome first this resistance and second, to produce the drug effect.
When a drug is similar in action to the disease-producing agent, which has already invaded the organism and weakened its resistance, the drug encounters little or no resistance. So, a very small quantity of drug is needed, now, to effect the sick organism.
A larger quantity of drug would make the defense mechanism to react strongly and thus would make the patient feel uncomfortable.

The process by which the infinitemals are prepared is called potentisation, which involves two methods:
i) Trituration. ii) Succution.
Both are mechanical processes, which is presence of a diluting medium such as alcohol/sugar of milk, lead to the reduction of the crude, inert or poisonous medical substances, according to scale, to enhance their and enlarge their sphere of action, so that cure can take place without any harm or aftereffects.
Recent scientific study of solutions and the theory of dissociation of molecules, has verified the above observation and theory of Hahnemann.
According to theory of dissociation of molelcules:
i) A chemical when dissolved is dissociated into smaller particles, called ions It has been proved that the more dilute the solution the greater the number of ions.
ii) Complete ionization and dissociation are possible only in infinite dilution.
iii) Further the reactivity of chemicals in dilute solution is measured by the degree to which they are ionized
iv) Theoretically, the reactivity is greater at infinite dilution, because then th degree of ionisaton is greatest.
v) Practically however, there is a limit to the reactivity, as after a certain degree of dilution has been reached, the actual reactivity becomes too small.
vi) In case of drugs this reactivity is transferred progressively to the diluting medium like alcohol/sugar of milk, which when administered to the patient, acts in the same way as the drug substance.

The time taken by the medicines to cure in homœopathy is according to the type of disease:
In acute diseases, such as acute influenza, cough, cold, acute stomach complaints or any other acute problems, time taken by th medicine to heal is the shortest possible like few hours to one day.
In chronic diseases, such as allergy, joint pains, asthma, etc., it takes longer time, which may be few months to a year. If the disease has been wrongly treated before coming to the Homœopath, then it takes even longer for the patient to recover, sometimes, total recovery being impossible.
Whatever the disease, once the right medicine is administered to the patient, he starts feeling a change for the better after few minutes to a few hours in acute disease, and after nine days in chronic disease.

Homœopathy has a good scope in the field of prevention of diseases. Working on the law of similar, it strengthens our immune system, whch can then prevent many diseases from occurring. Prevention in homœopathy can be divided into a few main spheres:
Prevention of acute diseases:
a. Epidemic diseases: During an epidemic, homœopathic remedy, chosen on the basis of symptoms of the many suffers of epidemic, when given repeated by to those persons who have not yet had the disease, prevents its occurrence.
b. Sporadic diseases: In case of sporadic spread of disease, prescribing a medicine to a healthy person, according to his particular constitutional make up, will save him from the disease.
c. Individual diseases: Constitutional treatment to the mother during pregnancy, prevents occurrence of acute diseases in the child.
Prevention of chronic disease:
a. Prevention of hereditary disease: Constitutional remedy given to the mother during pregnancy, to the child after delivery, toa healthy person at any stage of his life will prevent any familiar disease from occurring.
b. Prevention of recurrent episodes of any disease: Constitutional remedy strengthens the immunity of the patient and prevents the recurrent bouts of disease.

Palliation is lessening the severity of symptoms in a patient, whose disease has reached a stage where it cannot be cured, i.e., so much structural changes have been produced in the body that it is no longer possible to revert them back to normal.
In Homœopathy, palliation is done in exactly the same way as the treatment of the patient, i.e., a single medicine, most suitable to the patient’s condition as re veiled symptomatically, is given.

The first step towards cure is the selection of the right physician. But what is the criteria on which one bases his judgment?
Is a physician good just because big posters advertise him, or there is hardly any place in his waiting hall, or there is a long list of his degrees or because of the large amount he charges?
Is he a good physician just because of his grayng hair, immaculate dressing, perfect etiquettes, or the fact that he is foreign returned, has a big car, a cell phone, a well furnished clinic?
Is he a good physician just because he is a professor or lecturer in some college or has written many books and articles or has given lectures on TV, or is the son of a good homœopath, or was an assistant to some well known homœopath.
Though the above points are important but they are not the criteria of determining the competency of a physician.
Then what are the qualities in a physician that determine his competency?
A competent homœopathic physician is:
i A man of sound common sense who sees his patient not as money-making object but as sick individual requiring his help.
Ii A thorough listener and examiner of the patient.
Iii A prescriber of single medicine that he finds most serviceable for all the sufferings of the patient.
iv. Not a prescriber of mixtures.
v. Not a prescriber of medicated creams, oils, skin ointments.
vi. He advises the patient as per the required diet, regimen auxiliary measures.

The Homœopathic physicians needs to know about
Your main complaint—
I Its time of starting and progress
Ii Its most probable cause
Iii What increases or decreases it
Any other complaint in any part of the body
Your appetite, thirst, stool, urine, sleep, dreams, sweat, desires and aversions.
History of your illnesses since birth till date
Any major disease in your direct blood relations.
Gynecological and obstetric history of females.
Finally, your general mental set up and attitude.

Biochemic medicines are salts, which are administered on the principle that when the body becomes deficient in a particular salt, it produces symptoms, which can be cured by removing the deficiency. So, they do not work on homœopathic principles.
Patents and combinations of various drugs are mixtures and not compounds, which can be proved as single drug substance. Since Homœopathy practices single and simple remedy, mixtures cannot be considered as homœopathy.

External treatment was advised by Hahnemann, the father of Homœopathy, only in some and not all cases. External application of ointment, oils, creams is advised in
I Untreated Figwarts, which have existed for a long time. In such cases, external application of their specific medicine along with their internal use, is advised.
2 A dilute solution of the medicine in alcohol or water, should be applied on burns and for cleaning pus in wounds, along with internal use of medicine.
External treatment of local symptoms such as eruptions, itch, etc., is harmful as –
1. External treatment removes the visible signs of the disease, and makes it difficult for us to judge if the disease has been totally uprooted or not.
2. Once the right homœopathic remedy has been administered, the immune mechanism of the organism is stimulated to throw out the old uncured diseases on the surface of the body, which if now treated by creams and ointments, are again suppressed to harm the body further.

To answer this question, let us classify diseases as under:
1. Deficiency disease, caused by deficiency of nutrition such as minerals, vitamins, proteins.
2. Infective disease, caused by the various micro organisms.
3. Degenerative disease, leading to slow wasting of the body.
4. Allergic and immunological disease, due to defective defensive mechanism of the organism.
If the person is already taking allopathy, then homœopathic remedy according to his symptom can be started and allopathy should be continued or supported as follows.—
1. Deficiency disease
The vitamins and other supplements act as food to the body.
They are not easily obtained from natural diet and should be continued as per need and doctor’s advice.
Afterwards, keeping in view the patient’s psychological dependence on the supplements, they should be tapered off slowly.
2. Infective disease
If the patient is not suffering from side effects, then the antibiotic should be discontinued only after completing it’s minimum course, to avoid complication of future autoimmune disease.
If the side effects are severe, the antibiotic should be immediately discontinued.
3. In degenerative chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, patient gets dependent on the allopathic drugs and sudden stopping would cause severe withdrawal symptoms harmful to life, so the drugs should be tapered off slowly only after the homœopathic remedy starts showing positive response in the organism.
4. In allergic and immunological diseases also, drug dependence occurs and so slow tapering off is required, as in point 3.
In case the patient has not taken any other medicine before coming to the homœopath, then in all the above cases homœopathy cures, except in deficiency diseases where the organism requires the natural artificial supplements as food.

Diseases are caused by interaction of multiple factors, which can be distributed under the headings of
I Susceptible host (favourable soil)
Ii environment
Iii microbial agent (seed), as has been stated in our previous definition of disease.
While treating disease, homœopathy takes into consideration all the three factors, so, the popular saying that homœopathy does snot believe in micro organisms, is only a misconception and not true at all.

One of the popular misconceptions about Homœopathy is that it has little to do with diagnosis and that a homœopath does not require the various diagnostic tools like X-ray, ultrasound, pathological lab investigation, CT scan, MRI, ECG, etc. This is an entirely wrong concept.
Lab diagnosis is very much needed by homoeopaths to
a Know whether a disease is in a stage where it can be cured or can only be palliated; e.g., pathological investigation like biopsy helps us to know the stage of cancer in the patient and thus determine whether it can be cured or only palliated.
b Know whether a disease requires surgery or can be treated by medicine alone; e.g., X-ray or ultrasound helps us to measure the size of a renal stone. Too big a stone cannot come out through the ureter and so needs to be oprated upon.
c To prescribe according to the seat of the disease; e.g., organ specific drugs such as chelidonium for liver, ornithogalum for esophagus and so on, are prescribed for the particular organ, after knowing the seat of the disease.
d To prognose the course of the disease. Lab investigations such as the widal test of blood help us to know that the particular fever the patient is suffering from is surely typhoid, and thus prognose that it will run on for approximately 21 days.
e Managing the case by giving proper diet and following lifestyle; e.g., blood sugar test helps to keep track of sugar level in blood of the patient and to know if he has diabetes and if so then advice abstinence from sugar and to go for regular exercise to reduce weight in an obese diabetic, as weight reduction automatically controls the blood sugar level in insulin dependent diabetic.
Laboratory diagnosis does not help homoeopaths in prescribing medicines, and so the doctor is dependent on lab diagnosis only for the above few important aspects. He does not have to wait for the lab report determining the name of the disease the patient is suffering from, before he can start the treatment.

‘Small’ or infinitesimal dose of Homœopathy is one such subject upon which it is exceedingly easy to form hasty and incorrect notions. Many just don’t believe that such small dose of medicines can act against the very serious diseases, many believe that it is not minute doses of medicine but ‘placebo effect’ which cures a patient. This entirely a wrong belief.

That Homœopathy is slow acting is an entirely wrong but popular belief. The time taken by the right homœopathic medicine to cure is the least possible, but depends on the type of complaint the patient is suffering from.

This is a misconception.
Homœopathic medicine is very similar in action to the disease symptoms the patient is suffering from.
It is administered in such a dose (determined by experience), that it is slightly more stronger than the disease suffered by the patient, as then it can stimulate the defense power of the organism to react back in an intensity, slightly more stronger than its previous reaction to the harmful disease germs and thus effectively remove the disease.
This ‘more intense’ reaction of the immunity surfaces as an apparent increase in the patient’s complaint, which goes away by itself as soon as the action of the medicine stops.
Since the medicine is administered in the smallest possible dose, it’s action lasts for a very small time also the patient starts feeling better as soon as the disease is extinguished, so the patient suffers no harm or discomfort from the slightly increased symptoms.

This is a misconception.
In a disease, recovery never takes place unless medicine is given considering the symptoms of the patient in totality, following a fixed principle of administration of medicine, and in proper dosage.
In any wrong treatment, where the above points are not considered for giving medicine, diseases get suppressed and hidden from our eyes, but not cured.
The poor patient goes on feeling that something is wrong with him and he is not totally fit, though there are no clear cut disease symptoms.
Such wrong treatment also causes damage to our immune system, so much so, that at the slightest unfavourable environment, the patient starts feeling ill.
The most indicated homœopathic remedy heals the damage done to the immune system, which then becomes strong enough to repel the burdens of old, unresolved and suppressed diseases, bringing them to the surface to be now healed by the right medicine.
So it is the defense power of the person which actually surface the illness and not homœopathic medicine as the defense power of an healthy person can never keep any waste inside body and repels them out.