My story

I’m a pediatrician. I’ve got four children aged 14, 12, 9, and 6 years. From 1995 till 2000 I completed the homoeopathy training. I have the certificate from the Austrian School of Homoeopathy. Then I attended the lectures of so-called Indian revolutionary homoeopathy and I also completed the course BIHOST (method of biochemical-homoeopathic regulation of metabolism). Since I was mainly on maternity leave at this stage, I especially used to cure my kids and my friends’ kids with homoeopathic drugs. I was very enthusiast about this treatment. I thought I was giving them innocent pills made from medical herbs.

My children were treated for an infection of the upper respiratory tract. I healed my daughter who had bronchitis, after antibiotics showed no effect. I had a wart and it disappeared on the following day after I had used my homoeopathic drugs. Sometimes the homoeopathic drugs which I’d administered to my friends didn’t have effect, but I used to interpret it through my ignorance. Nevertheless, later on, my children started to have various health problems, which I couldn’t explain at all. Problems weren’t of physical but rather of psychological nature.

What was next? Our priest let me know that this method of treatment is supported by the New Age. But, as I defended homoeopathy stubbornly, he ended up telling me to keep on searching. And so, I went to further trainings. I even bought the instruments that they recommended to us. I planned to devote my time to the homoeopathy after my maternity leave. However, there was a great unrest within me. I didn’t know what the real source of such drugs was. I read all available literature about homoeopathy and I asked different people about their opinion on it. Well, nobody gave me any satisfying answer.

I even read the viewpoint of the Conference of Slovak Bishops on the subject of homoeopathy (published in the Catholic Newspaper in 1996); I perceived it as a Church agreement to my therapy methods. Nonetheless, my conscience told me: “don´t heal!” That´s why I refused to treat strangers. I only treated my friends and I administered homoeopathic drugs exclusively to my children. They were a sort of guinea pigs for me. On the one hand, unrest prevailed in my heart, and on the other hand homoeopathic drugs attracted me and impressed me. I wasn’t able to understand it and I always wanted to know the truth and look for it. Then, something happened and I changed my mind radically. There were two reasons for it:

A friend of mine told me about an alcohol-addicted man who had been found lying on the ground during one winter evening. They brought him home and then they said the prayer for the liberation from the demon of alcoholism. One month later, they found out that he stopped drinking and started preparation for the sacraments. She explained this prayer to me. I heard it for the

Dostala sa mi do rúk kniha MUDr. Judithy Erdélyiovej: Alternatívna medicína vo svetle Biblie (MSEJK, Bratislava 2000).

I received the book of MUDr. Judith Erdélyová: The alternative medicine in the light of the Bible (MSEJK, Bratislava, 2000). The writer often put together alternative medicine – where she also included homoeopathy – with occultism. I was seized with horror because I thought I also might have something in common with it. At home, I knelt down before the cross and prayed: “Jesus, take away this spirit of occultism and magic.” Moreover, I asked for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. This prayer came from my torn heart. Only long time later I understood how much it had changed the orientation of my life. The thoughts which crossed my mind after this prayer were really wonderful. Suddenly it started to sink in. Devices!

At the last training I bought two instruments and I was convinced that I would devote my time to homoeopathy and I would use them. We can test the patient and find the right homoeopathic drug through the measuring instrument based on the EAV method. It’s going to save a lot of time. Indeed, homoeopaths spend long time looking for the homoeopathic drug in the Repetitorium and Materia Medici. Thanks to such instrument, the homoeopathic drug can be made from clean water... It’s sufficient for the homoeopath to own diagnostic homoeopathic drugs. Then the instrument will provide the patient with produced homoeopathic drops, i.e. clear water where the information contained in the homeopathic drug is transferred. The instrument also measures energy in separate acupuncture points.

This instrument was sold at the training by sales representatives from abroad. I had to make a quick decision. My colleagues recommended me to buy an instrument like this. When I bought it, I didn’t think about the way it would work. After I prayed the prayer of self-exorcism, I realized: the instrument makes homoeopathic drugs from clean water. It is magic! I went to check the units this instrument uses in order to measure energy in the acupuncture points. There were no units on the dial. Then I realized that this instrument gave only two simple answers (just like the pendulum): it says yes – when there was a light between the points 80 and 90, or no – when the instrument glowed between the points 50 and 60. I was stunned because I realized it was an occult thing. The practitioners of alternative medicine would have laid themselves open to ridicule by using a pendulum; but nowadays it’s easy to assemble the device with a modern design – and this is an efficient solution. My instrument was under warranty. I wanted to immediately return it and get my money back – it cost fifty thousand Slovak crowns (1660 EUR). I called back the sales representatives telling them it was broken down. They told me there was nothing that could break down…

Prístroj som mala v záruke. Chcela som ho okamžite vrátiť a dostať naspäť peniaze – stál 50-tisíc Sk. Volala som obchodným zástupcom, že sa pokazil. Vysmiali ma, že čo sa už môže na ňom pokaziť…

The other instrument – the pocket diary Psion – looks like a bigger cell phone. The name of the homoeopathic drug and patient can be written down on its display. By pushing Mode, the homeopath sends information (i.e. homoeopathic drug) directly into the patient’s organism. This information can also be sent from distance, if the homoeopath knows the patient’s date of birth. Unbelievable! This was what I believed in!

I used this instrument a few times. It worked. I didn’t need any homoeopathic drug. It was sufficient to have this device with me. During our last trainings, the lecturer emphasized the fact that in homoeopathy chemical substances don’t have any effect, but the most important thing is the transfer of information. I felt empty-headed at that time – I had attended the trainings for five years and I hadn’t heard that until then…

I asked my brother who was an electrical engineer what kind of information this instrument sent and why it worked. My brother told me that only a naive person can believe in these things. After he took a look at the instrument, he said: “This is just a normal diary made in 1989”. I missed the point.

After praying I understood: there’s nothing in the device and it works. It must be magic! It must be an occult thing! Later, I got angry because of the amount of money I’d wasted on both devices and called abroad. I wanted to return this instrument and get my money back. I spoke with a homoeopath (a lady). She asked me why I wanted to send it back; so I told her I’d found out that it worked through white magic and I didn’t want to keep using it. Her reply was surprisingly sad: “And what do you think it is about?” I was flabbergasted. The homoeopath knew that it was about magic but at the training nobody had mentioned it!

Nevertheless, I still didn’t conceive the essence of homoeopathy – why can homoeopathy be used even through occult instruments? I wasn’t still sure about these aspects; so I started to study. The first book I came across was bought by my husband; it was a pastoral letter of the Conference of Tuscany bishops: Magic, soothsaying and influence of the Devil (Jas 2001). The introduction explained something very interesting: there is a sort of imitating magic through which similar things engender similar things back. At this moment I remembered the first principle of homoeopathy – similar thing is cured by a similar thing (like cures like) – and I understood that the principles of the homoeopathy are based on magic. My decision on homoeopathy was clear – no homoeopathy at all. Not even the French school. This is about magic - white magic! It’s not about herbs and minerals. Gradually I started noticing things I hadn’t understood at the trainings about homoeopathy and I began to grasp the point…

Turning away from the spirit of homoeopathy

As I’d mentioned before, my children started having troubles. My oldest daughter (she was nine at time when she used homoeopathic drugs) had nightmares that woke her up and scared her. I was thinking about various reasons, but I didn’t even think that the cause could reside in the homoeopathic drugs. The worst moment was when she saw the Devil in a dream. The Devil wanted her to tell him yes; and then she saw another demon who wanted to cut her hands and legs. My daughter and I said the prayer for the liberation from the spirit of homoeopathy. Her dreams didn’t recur but her fear when falling asleep lasted for long time.

My second daughter couldn’t breathe at night and it went from bad to worse. She didn’t have any cold, no mucus from her nose, no allergies. Her conditions were terrible – she couldn’t breathe. She continually tried to blow her nose. She got mad. She kicked her legs on the bed and woke up other siblings. Once I said to myself: try to pray! When she was in this condition, I put my hand on her and I prayed the prayer of the liberation from the spirit of homoeopathy. To my great surprise, she fell asleep. During the following nights as well, she slept without problems.

My son (three years old at that time) showed terrible and incomprehensible states of aggressiveness when I refused to give him some sweets before breakfast or lunch. He threw down things from the shelves and then started throwing away all the stuff from the wardrobe. All educational methods were vain. Once I said to myself: try to pray. After the prayer, he calmed down and ate a little. Still today he likes sweets. But now he’s able to renounce to a candy, if it is necessary. He sometimes gets angry but he obeys.

I didn’t pray the prayer of liberation over my youngest daughter. She was six months old when I stopped using homoeopathic drugs. I gave her quite diluted homoeopathic drugs and I didn’t even use the main homoeopathic drugs on her.

There was another question: what next? The spiritual exercises for the internal healing helped me a lot. I understood the state I’d been in. I intensively read the Scriptures. I burned all my homoeopathic books – strengthened by this biblical passage: “Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men” (Acts 19, 19). However, I didn’t know what to do with the instruments. It took me about seven months to understand that I had to destroy them as well. My husband and I dismantled them and burned them. And my heart was filled with peace...

The life of the founder of homoeopathy

It’s essential to know the personality and the basic work of Doctor Samuel Hahnemann, the discoverer of the principles of this method. Since the death of this controversial doctor, nobody brought considerable changes to treatment methods.

Christian F. Samuel Hahnemann was born as a son of a porcelain painter in Meissen in 1755. He was a very talented pupil and he was soon given the possibility of studying at the Sankt Afra princely school. Apart from the French language he also studied English, Greek and Latin to such an extent that later on he was able to earn his living with translation (since he was a poorer student). When he was twenty, he started studying medicine at the university in Leipzig. Then he continued studying at the place of the famous physician von Quarin in Vienna for two years. Here he got acquainted with the baron Samuel Von Brukenthal who engaged him as a house doctor and librarian. The freemason Von Brukenthal led him into a Masonic lodge where he got initiated at the age of twenty-two. He learned something of deism (a teaching saying that God exists, that He is the original cause of the world, but He doesn’t intervene in further development of the world – the world develops according to its own laws – note of the editor). He finished his studies by writing a thesis where he mentioned for the first time the founder of so-called animal magnetism, Anton Mesmer, at that time a well-known person.

After finishing his studies, Hahnemann, as a doctor, settled in Hettstedt, later Dessau, where he got married with Henriette Kuchler, the local pharmacist’s daughter. Because of his failures in the medicine profession, he turned more and more away from medicine. Nevertheless, his translation activity was fervent. When translating papers from Materia Medici by the English scientist Cullen, Hahnemann criticized Cullen’s comprehension of the medicinal effects of the quinine peel.

He came across homoeopathy through his own experiments. From that time on, he worked tirelessly on research tasks, in order to define the results of the new curative principle. In 1796 he published the famous paper The new principle for discovering the medicinal power of the substance of medicines and for the first time he mentioned here the homoeopathic tenet similia similibus curentur (Like cures like).

Immediately after this, there was a dispute between the scholars of the scholastic medicine who refused this method of treatment very categorically. Despite strong aversion, Hahnemann achieved a higher doctorate at the university in Leipzig where he had been teaching the subject of homoeopathy since 1811. At the same time he was a general practitioner and he managed to heal some people in an extraordinary way according to the testimony of his followers. In his work Organon of therapeutics, which was published in 1810, he described the origin and the way of effect of his treatment principle. This treatise is still today considered as the basic work of the homoeopathy.

In Leipzig Hahnemann got involved in an argument with pharmacists because of independent administration of homoeopathic drugs to his patients. He was banned from producing his medicines by himself. Therefore, he went to Kothen where he could carry out his alternative medicine activities under the protection of the duke. Here he spent a peaceful period of his life that he dedicated to the development of the homoeopathy. The articles in the German empire bulletin went a long way towards spreading the homoeopathy. The editor of this bulletin was Rat Becker, also a freemason.

Despite his advanced age, Hahnemann honed his art of healing. He extended also the second tenet of homeopathy beyond the limit of measurability – i.e. the principle of dynamization or potentization. At that time he recommended people not to take medicines but “only taking a sniff at them.” As an eighty-year old widower, he married a young thirty-five French painter, Melanie d’Herville and moved to Paris. Here they set up an homoeopathy outpatient department. He died on July 2, 1843.

Organon of the healing art

In 1810 Hahnemann published the Organon of the rational therapeutics in Leipzig. Later, it was translated with the title Organon of the healing art. In this volume he laid the foundations of philosophy and methodology of the homoeopathic treatment. In the preface of the sixth reprint he criticized allopathic medicine of those times and he put forward a new art of treatment – the homoeopathy – i.e. the method he discovered. He defined it as a method of treatment that is completely different from allopathic methods. He claimed that sicknesses are caused just by the disruption of the spiritual strength reviving the human body. By using the right homoeopathy you can bring about the spiritual – dynamical change and retune the patient’s state. He administered small doses of these medicines to the patients. He claimed that the old school, the classical medicine, is the opposite of the homoeopathy, as well as night is the opposite of day.

Hahnemann criticized classical allopathic medicine because it tries to look for the causes of the illness and then to remove this cause. However, he claimed that the majority of sicknesses have spiritual origin; therefore, their cause cannot be known by the human senses. He insisted that the causes of the sicknesses aren’t of material nature. He even considered that observations made by the anatomists, pathological anatomists, and physiologists were all working through mere imagination. He repeatedly insisted that the causes of the sicknesses aren’t of material nature. He didn’t believe in the material transfer of an infection, for instance, into the wound or to the skin. He thought that material views on the origin and the essence of the illness aren’t correct. He believed that the illnesses of the human organism are caused and kept only by the spiritual dynamical strength. Hahnemann refers to the wise and good Creator who let him find the art of treatment – homoeopathy. He may appear to be a Christian believer. But what theological sources are behind all this?

If Hahnemann professed Christianity, then we might look for a justification of his spiritual theories in the Word of God, in the Scriptures. However, the opposite is true. Hahnemann refused the basics of the Gospel including Jesus Christ. In his list to his disciple Stapf (Brief an Stapf, Kothen 1830) he wrote:

“I consider the fact that today we read Confucius as an important sign of our times. Soon, I will embrace him in the kingdom of the happy souls. I will hug the benefactor of mankind who’s been leading us on the right track towards wisdom and God, six and a half centuries before that Daydreamer”.

According to Hahnemann’s sick statements, the daydreamer was Jesus from Nazareth who reportedly did not lead Hahnemann to the straight path to wisdom, but he wanted to fight together with mythmakers and sinners over the arduous path to God’s kingdom on the earth. This man of sorrow, who speaks to the thief on the cross, is unacceptable for Hahnemann (!).

A tragic and inalienable fact is well evident: Hahnemann built up his knowledge according to natural religion that was very widespread at that time. From his youth to his death he was a loyal supporter of the already mentioned deism. His extensive work (papers and manuscripts) and also his early membership in the freemasonic lodge reveal his real spiritual attitude.

What is the present-day opinion on the Organon? Even nowadays, homoeopathy is implemented on the strength of the same principles like at the times of Hahnemann. The followers of this method think that his viewpoints still hold. Nevertheless, almost all of them avoid Hahnemann’s metaphysical words and forget the fact that without the spiritual ideas of his founder the functioning of the homoeopathy is incomprehensible. They suppress the original spiritually based explanations and substitute them with new “scientific” terms. Up to now, almost two hundred years later, no natural scientific evidence based on research results was shown that would explain the basic tenets of homoeopathy.

Clinical trials and registration of homoeopathic drugs

None of the well-conceived clinical trials succeeded in reliably proving the effectiveness of the homoeopathic drugs. In the prestigious medical journal Lancet (vol. 344 – 1994), Dr. Reily, a homeopath, introduces a study on the efficiency of the homoeopathic drugs in the therapy of the allergic catarrh. He claims that homoeopathic drugs are more efficient than placebo. Nevertheless, the very next issue of this magazine (vol. 345 – 1995) reports an article stating that this trial contains significant errors that could completely misrepresent its results.

In 2002, the British Medical Journal (vol. 324) published a double blind random controlled clinical trial by Lewith et al.: The use of ultramolecular potencies of allergen to treat asthmatic people allergic to the house dust mite. Two hundred and forty-two asthmatics with positive reaction to house dust mite took part in this trial. Nonetheless, no differences in the results were established between one group using placebo and the other one using homoeopathic drugs.

In 2003, the British Journal Clinical Pharmacology published a study by Brien, Lewith and Bryant with the title: The ultramolecular homoeopathy has no observable clinical effects. It’s a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled proving trial of Belladonna 30C. The objective of the trial was to establish whether the ultramolecular rarefaction of Belladonna 30C differs from the effects of placebo. However, the results didn’t confirm any significant differences between both examined groups. During this trial 37 undesirable effects were registered, two of which were serious – a severe earache that can be linked with the use of homoeopathic drug Belladonna.

I’d like to point out that the above mentioned trials are published in foreign journals that are not easily accessible to the physicians in their common practice. I haven’t found any clinical trial in the Slovak medical journals. In Lullmann’s Pharmacology and toxicology (Grada 2002) we can read in:

“A group of experts of the European commission decided in 1996 that homoeopathic drugs had to be subject to the same trial conditions as the drugs of the scientific medicine and their efficiency and security have to be proven with the same conditions (controlled clinical studies). Nonetheless, according to the current approach of our authorities the “successes” of the some methods of peripheral importance (where homoeopathy also belongs) can be judged only by staff members who perform the respective method. This is an anti-argument which contradicts every critical scientific method.”

Consequently, homoeopathic drugs (reportedly considered as drugs) miss their fundamental attribute, i.e. their proven effectiveness. In the EU countries homoeopathic drugs are registered even without such effectiveness. Conversely, in those countries where they should prove their efficiency during the registration procedure (e.g. in Norway) there isn’t any homoeopathic drug registered. In Slovakia the homoeopathic drugs had their registration at the Research Institute of Drugs Trial from 1991 to 1993 and you can usually get them in pharmacies. Their effectiveness was judged by a homoeopath...

Viewpoints of professional medical companies.

The permanent medical board of the European Community (gathering medical organizations of EU countries) classifies homoeopathy as a method whose tenets aren’t scientifically justified. In Belgirat in 1992, the executives of the European pharmacologist companies had negative standpoints towards homoeopathy. On the basis of the analysis of the homoeopathic tenets and clinical studies, many professional medical companies refuse homoeopathy as an irrational and amateurish method. The Slovak Homoeopathic Company doesn’t belong to expert medical companies. The homoeopathy can be practiced only as a “healing practice” in Slovakia.

Conclusion

When I took part in the homoeopathy trainings, I was not required to have a degree certificate from medicine. The homoeopathy is not a medical field of study and therefore it is not publicly discussed at university. This cure is not a sort of cure lege artis (according to the medical scientific recommendations). If physicians neglect scientifically recommended cures and prescribe a homoeopathic cure, they might be sued for that. The Slovak Homoeopathic Company officially does accept physicians and pharmacists, but only because it wants to establish itself in the medical business. But so far they did not reach this goal (because of their unscientific method).

I gave this contribution because I wanted to point out to the spiritual–occult essence of the homoeopathy. Many doctors don’t have the slightest idea about it. At the trainings, the lecturers use numerous pseudoscientific formulations: vital energy, information, and so on. The doctors who study homoeopathy thoroughly and start doing EAV method, Chinese medicine etc. may get into the snares of occultism. Their views start to gradually change; and it is not too easy to free oneself from this...

 

MUDr. Emília Vlčková