“The highest ideal of cure is the speedy, gentle, and enduring restoration of health by the most trustworthy and least harmful way.”1
— Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)
Founder of Homeopathic Medicine
What exactly constitutes valid evidence in scientific and medical inquiry?
Homeopathic medicines have proven themselves as a safe, effective and low-cost therapeutic option. Is this the reason the pharmaceutical industry has waged war against homeopathy in particular, and natural and alchemical medicines in general, for more than 100 years. Now, under cover of the C. crisis, they are further intensifying their efforts to monopolize accepted medical practice using dubious means.
The broad and deep influence on corporate, governmental and non-governmental institutions exercised by pharmaceutical industry lobbyists serves to propagate the untruth that homeopathic medicines are nothing more than sugar pills and that their considerable experiential medical benefits over more than 200 years can only be attributed to the placebo effect.
In a lecture in 1923, Dr. Rudolf Steiner mentions the results of research, conducted by the anthroposophist Dr. Lili Kolisko, in which natural scientific methods had been successfully used to prove the effectiveness of homeopathic medicines:
“That such dilutions are possible has now been exactly proven by the work of Dr. Kolisko. In our biological institute in Stuttgart, an attempt has just been made for the first time to bring this to an exact basis. It has become possible to produce dilutions of substances in the ratio of one to a trillion, and it has indeed been possible to determine exactly the effects which the individual substances have in such dilutions. That, therefore, which up to now could be a mere belief about the effects of the individual substances in homeopathy, has thus actually been raised to the rank of an exact science. After all, according to the curves that have been drawn, there can be no doubt today that the effects of the smallest parts are rhythmic. Well, I do not want to go into the details, the work has been published, and the things can be checked everywhere today. But I only want to mention here that we have to reckon with tremendous dilutions which show effects even in the earthly sphere.”
(translation from the German of a lecture given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner on 6th October 1923)2
In the last 100 years, many clinical trials have been carried out attesting to the medicinal benefits of homeopathic medicines. They are not widely known, however, by most professional healthcare providers and the general public. They have also been consistently ignored in studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry to disprove the effectiveness of homeopathic treatment.
“The fact that homeopathic medicines are made into such infinitesimal doses is counterintuitive to most rational people. Yet homeopathy has been used for more than two hundred years by hundreds of thousands of doctors all over the world. Further, a large body of high-quality scientific studies has been published in respected medical journals that verify the biological activity and clinical efficacy of homeopathic medicine.”
–- Dana Ullman, MPH, CCH
Experiential medicine has existed, in fact, in various cultures throughout the world over millennia. It has been successfully employed for diagnosis and treatment by generations of insightful, compassionate physicians.
Is it not enough to know there have been thousands upon thousands of documented cases of successful treatment using homeopathy over the last 200 years?
What constitutes a valid clinical trial in truth? Are double-blind, placebo-controlled studies really the most effective means of validating the health benefits of a medicine?
It would be a herculean labor and require exceptional natural scientific and editorial expertise to thoroughly evaluate just how sound the designs of massive numbers of “medical industrial complex” funded studies really are. How reliable is their data and how conclusive are their results? So many studies have been peer-reviewed and published in scientific and medical literature over the years, in which it was later discovered that they were biased and unreliable and intended to serve the commercial interests of their funding sources rather than patient health.
Instead of unscrupulous pursuit of wealth, power and social status, open-minded inquiry into the secrets of the cosmos, humankind and the earth, in humility and with honesty, would serve to restore integrity in scientific and medical research. This would lead to reliable findings upon which truer medical theory and practice could be based. It would also serve to restore the trust of the intelligent public in mainstream scientific and medical institutions.
With the Light and Warmth of the soul and heart,
Joseph Michael Contrada
Teacher, Healer
Heilpraktiker (Lic. German healthcare and psychotherapy provider)
Medical Philosopher and Journalist
www.heilpraxis-contrada.com
www.heilpraxis-contrada.de
1 The original German of the text translated above:
“Das höchste Ideal der Heilung ist schnelle, sanfte, dauerhafte Wiederherstellung der Gesundheit, oder Hebung und Vernichtung der Krankheit in ihrem ganzen Umfange auf dem kürzesten, zuverlässigsten, unnachtheiligsten Wege, nach deutlich einzusehenden Gründen.”
2The original German excerpt from the Rudolf Steiner lecture translated above:
„Daß solche Verdünnungen möglich sind, ist ja jetzt exakt bewiesen durch die Arbeit von Frau Dr. Kolisko. Es ist eben in unserem biologischen Institut in Stuttgart zum ersten Mal der Versuch gemacht worden, dies auf eine exakte Grundlage zu bringen. Es ist da möglich geworden, Verdünnungen von Substanzen in dem Verhältnis von eins zu einer Trillion herzustellen, und es ist gelungen, in der Tat die Wirkungen exakt festzustellen, die in solchen Verdünnungen die einzelnen Substanzen haben. Dasjenige also, was bisher über die Wirkungen der einzelnen Substanzen in der Homöopathie ein bloßer Glaube sein konnte, ist dadurch tatsächlich zum Range einer exakten Wissenschaft erhoben worden. Es kann ja heute nach den Kurven, die da gezogen worden sind, gar nicht gezweifelt werden daran, daß die Wirkungen der kleinsten Teile in der rhythmischen Art verlaufen. Nun, auf das Genauere will ich nicht eingehen, die Arbeit ist ja erschienen, und die Dinge können heute überall nachgeprüft werden. Aber ich will hier nur das erwähnen, daß also gerechnet werden muß auch schon im Bereich des Irdischen mit ungeheuren Verdünnungen, die Wirkungen zeigen.”