As a matter of fact it’s a million dollar question. Famous television show ‘Horizon’, broadcasts from BBC, also asked this question and they offered US$1 million to solve this question, in 2004. Well, lot of scientists and researcher are working to have the answer. Not for money, obviously. They want the answer to solve this quarry. Here I am just trying to accumulate some of those hypothesis and predictions to get a new vision of this topic. I hope it will help us all.

To understand this question we need to know some special regulation/words and their use in homeopathy. This will take while of your valuable time but will help you lot.

1^st: Homeopathic medicine should be administered according to the law of similarity, which is previously summarized in Materia Medica.

2^nd: Homeopathic medicine should be Potentized (Dilution +Succussion), in Organon Of Medicine has absolute instruction.

3^rd: Each time a single drug should be selected and administered.

4^th: Medicine should be selected on the overall condition of the patient, could not be selected on the basis of Organ/site/ same symptoms previously cured by this remedy etc.

5^th: Homeopathic medicine works on and with vital force, it helps vital force to flow in its own pathway. And with it vital force itself become strong and get healed spontaneously.

6^th: During selecting a medicine, we need to keep an eye on some special but individual symptoms which very important to selecting a homeopathic medicine.

There are some other regulations, needed to be considered but due to lack of space I am over lapping those. I hope this will help you enough to realize the question.

Dilution: Reducing the concentration of a chemical/solute in a solution. This we all know. But in Homeopathy Dilution means a process known by practitioners as “dynamisation” or “potentisation” whereby a substance is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called “succussion”. With this, the quantity of medicinal substance is reduced and the latent powers of medicinal substance are aroused and bring out in a dynamic state, which is stated as ‘Potency’.

And according to homeopathic doctrine and experience, the more diluted the solution, the more potent it is. Many of the homeopathic remedies are so diluted that according to the known laws of physics and chemistry, they couldn’t possibly have any medicinal substances or any effect of the substances. Once you get beyond a certain point-24x or 12c -there is probably not even one single molecule of the original active substance remaining in a solution. This fact is often pointed to by critics of homeopathy as they dismiss the effect of homeopathy as merely due to placebo effect.

We, Homeopaths contend that the remedies work and no reason to stop using them simply because we do not understand how they work. As an argue, scientists or pharmacologists cannot explain exactly how most conventional allopathic drugs work. For example, aspirin and metronidazol is not fully understood in terms of how it works, but physicians have no difficulty/hesitations in recommending its use.

Effects of a mole of various substances are recognized to scientists. Over the years several theories have been proposed to explain the action on homeopathic potentization. Some of them are summarized bellow.

Hormesis (Effects of micro doses): The effects of micro doses have been known for a long time, and there are a number of examples that support the idea that much diluted concentrations of a substance will have a measurable and sometimes profound effect. Scientists call this phenomenon: hormesis. It’s a theory that, some substances could have low output or less result when they are used in macro doses, but if those are applied in micro doses than they show tremendous result that did not show before.

Scientists from Michigan State University have shown how hormesis work in nature. They used micro doses of a fertilizer to stimulate crop production. In a dose equivalent to a 9x dilution, the fertilizer increased tomato yield by 30 percent, carrots were 21 percent bigger, and corn yield increased by 25 percent.

Our own bodies secrete minute amounts of hormones that have powerful effects. Thyroid hormone is present in our blood at only 1 part per 10 billion-yet this is enough to regulate the rate of our entire metabolism. Many animal studies show that low doses of some substances elicit a beneficial response while high doses are harmful. This phenomenon has been documented to occur with radiation, antibiotics, and heavy metals.

Pheromones: Pheromones are powerful aromatic hormone-like substances that creatures secrete to attract one another. One molecule of moth pheromone is so potent that, it attracts another moth from miles away and triggers a cascade of physical reactions. Though well documented, the exact mechanism for pheromones remains unknown yet.

Homeopathic Remedies Work in Spiritual/Energy Plane and Not in Physical Plane: Homeopathic remedies are claimed to work in the spiritual plane as opposed to the physical plane as we are used to think and measure. According to homeopathy, dilution and succussion releases a spirit- like power that works on the spiritual level of the vital force in living bodies. We are familiar with the formerly invisible, immeasurable, unknowable energy forms, such as electromagnetic radiation and subatomic particles (electron, proton, neutron, isotope) etc; We all know that these atomic particles are discovered few years back and also know these can produce huge energy. But how this energy creates? Scientists are still working to discover this.    Magnets exerted their force long before science could explain the mechanism. Physicists are still trying to explain gravity and the nature of matter, still discovering phenomena such as the “strong force” and the “weak force.” Could we ignore them as because they are not explained properly?

Homeopathy is an energy medicine, as are Acupuncture and therapeutic touch. Homeopaths believe that although the physical molecules of the original substance may be gone, dilution and succussion leaves something behind-an imprint of its essence, or its energy pattern-that gives it a kind of healing charge. Potentization does not occur if you simply dilute the substance, even if you dilute it repeatedly. Nor does it occur if you only shake the substance vigorously. There is something about each process that builds sequentially upon the other, causing the power to be retained and progressively intensified.

But how does the information in such a minute amount of substance get transferred to the body? Some theorists suggest the repeated succussion creates an electrochemical pattern that is stored in the water carrier and then spreads like liquid crystallization through the body’s own water (body fluid); others say the dilution process triggers an electromagnetic imprinting that directly affects the electro- magnetic field of the body. This concept is used in other therapies also. For example, Ayurveda suggests taking water that has been powered or being potentized by precious metals such as gold. The water is believed to possess curative power as a result of coming in contact with gold and other gemstones although no molecular transfer takes place. The healing power of crystals and magnets are believed to come from their effect on the energy pattern or vibration frequency. So, the suggestion of the homeopathic remedies as working on the energy plane may not be as far fetched as we may think at the first glance.

Homeopathic Remedies Activate the Vital Force: Homeopaths believe that it is the energy or “vibrational pattern” of the remedy, rather than the chemical content that stimulates the healing by activating what Hahnemann called the Vital force. Vital force is the living force that makes us to live, acts as healing power or energy when we become sick, that exists within us all. It is called by the name Chi by Traditional Chinese Medicine and Prana by Indian Ayurveda. The vital force fuels the mind, body, emotions and mental state. It keeps us healthy and balanced. When the balance of the vital force is disturbed by factors such as stress, pollution, improper diet and lack of exercise, it becomes weakened resulting in the person getting sick.

It is all about the balance of this vital force/living force/life of cell/Chi/Prana. It is the same thing but we may call it in names. Today’s science calls this as Immune system. So that they are classifying the disease as immune compromised or immune suppressive or auto immune etc.

Scientists who accept the potential benefits of homeopathic theory suggest several theories to explain how highly diluted homeopathic medicines may act. Using recent developments in quantum physics, they have proposed that electromagnetic energy in the medicines may interact with the body on some level. Researchers in physical chemistry have proposed the “memory of water” theory, whereby the structure of the water-alcohol solution is altered by the medicine during the process of dilution and retains this structure even after none of the actual substance remains.

To get approval of a drug, (As to get permission for production and administration as a drug for human) the selected drug must go through some testing protocol. According to this procedure every single drug must go through ‘Double blind’ or ‘Single Blind’ research method to prove its efficacy and its safety. In Double blind method both researcher and donor don’t know which one is ‘Medicine’ and which one is ‘Placebo’. And in Single blind method donor do not know the difference. Here in both cases in researcher select a target population on the basis of some common symptoms, for an example, a group of people suffering from common cold, having some common complain like low grade temp, malaise, anorexia and mild rinorrhoea. And to remove these entire symptoms researcher uses a drug ‘Paracitamol’ as an antipyretic agent. After a successful procedure researcher get a statistics and present a result. But in homeopathy it is quite impossible to give a single medicine to a group of people having some common symptoms. Because, with the same set of symptoms those patients have red tip of tongue will be given Rhus tox; rinorrhoea with blend discharge and corrosive lacrymation will be given Euphrasia; with corrosive nasal discharge will be given Allium Cepa. So, it is clear that today’s research methodology is not sufficient enough to evaluate homeopathic medicine. It needs more experiments and thoughts to evaluate. It is true that homeopathic medicines works and have a lot of clinical data on it. Even an Allopathic medicine practionar knows ‘Take thuja 30 for warts’. They also appreciate homeopathic medicine for their children, not only inBangladeshbut also through out the world.

After all these discussions, I hope that you will not be against homeopathy. Well, even after this, if you do not want to recognize it, if you still talk about the physical particle of medicine in the administered drugs than what can I say! Of course there is a way. Why don’t you use the mother tinctures, potencies from 1X to 23X or 1C to 11C, which will help you in curing disease! Now a day, various companies are producing drugs in these scales and also producing various combinations which have very good result. But, then you may ask, why homeopathy and Hahnemann went for further more potencies? It is only to avoid medicinal aggravation, to make the treatment faster and comfortable to the patient.

Above all, I strongly hold my position that Homeopathic medicine works. And in course of time the mode of action will be discovered, I hope. But for that we have to step forward. Have to work more and more on research methodology and invent a new protocol that satisfy everyone. We need to become united unconditionally. Until that, we wouldn’t be able to establish ourselves in the field of Medical science.