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HOW
HOMEOPATHY WORKS!
PART
2
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Figure
1. Icosahedral Water Cluster Isomers
Cluster mixtures can generate many different isomeric forms: for example,
a cluster of 21 molecules can exist as one of 18 different geometric
isomers or represent 18 unique ‘bits’ of information. To
illustrate the subtle ways in which a molecule can exist in different
unique identities, Fig.1 (above) shows two isomeric forms for a icosahedral
type cluster having 280 water molecules.
If each isomer represents one item of information, and if they turn
out to be the bio-active species in homeopathy, then millions of different
information ‘bits’ can carried in a mixture of isomeric
water clusters.
Interestingly, alcohol forms clusters with water also (Wisniewski, 2001)
although one author (Yui, 2000) , using mass spectrometry, claims some
mutual destruction of cluster ions (not neutral clusters). Being an
associative liquid, i.e. having hydrogen-bonds between molecules, one
is not surprised that alcohol can form its very own clusters, but note
that alcohol is never entirely anhydrous: 95% v/v ethanol is usually
the purest one can get for remedy preparation.
Later, it will be seen that the presence of alcohol actually favorable
to the moderation of succussion energy (by increasing vapour pressure),
which means that succussion is not inherently destructive but , on balance,
creates the water clusters that represent the remedy.
So, if it is given that the water clusters are the moieties that carry
remedy information, what is the role of succussion and dilution in their
preparation?
The Nature of the Succussion Process
It's actually quite easy to create cavitation conditions by succussion.
If you crack your knuckles, the popping noise you hear is cavitation.
Similarly, rapping a remedy vial on the spine of your repertory creates
cavitation, demonstrated by the small bubbles you often see.
Figure
2. Cavitation Bubble Collapse
Fig. 2 shows an imploding cavitation water -vapor bubble (Suslick, 1989).
The imploding cavity
(about 150 microns in diameter) is captured in a high-speed flash photomicrograph,
where the implosion heats the vapor inside the cavity to 5,500 degrees
Celsius (plasma conditions). Since this cavity formed near a solid surface,
the implosion is asymmetric, expelling a jet of liquid toward the surface
of the container at roughly 400 kilometers per hour. Both the heat and
the jet’s kinetic energy contribute to a unique chemical environment
in the liquid.
Similarly, in industrial applications, mechanical cavitation (succussion)
can also generate plasma conditions which usually tend to destroy molecules.
A plasma is a gas-like state where molecules can be disrupted to an
atomic and/or ionic state. The plasma constituents can also reform into
different molecular arrangements, particularly on liquid or solid surfaces.
Using FT-ICR spectroscopy,
(Jongma 1998) showed that the cavitation is moderated by dissolved air
or alcohol, so that the lower attenuated cavitation energy actually
creates quite large stable clusters in water. In Fig. 3, below, a typical
water cluster size-concentration distribution spectrum is shown for
distilled water.
Figure
3. Typical water cluster size-concentration distribution spectrum
Remedy Preparation – The Creation of Water Clusters
The creation of a potentized remedy finds a parallel in the semiconductor
industry where a pure germanium crystal is impregnated or “doped”
with a tiny amount of impurity, which entirely changes the germanium
crystal properties and makes it a semiconductor.
In similar fashion, each remedy starting-tincture (or triturate) is
theorized as “doping” an alcohol/water mix to create a spectrum
of different sized and shaped water clusters, such a spectrum being
unique to that starting remedy material.
At the same time , the "doped" water cluster mix engages in
a series of chemical reactions of its own where each water cluster is
exchanging energy and water molecules with its neighbors, until a mix
of stable sizes is developed and a characteristic “mass spectrum”
of cluster sizes is obtained which, again, is expressive of the fundamental
nature of the starting remedy.
Every chemical reaction is "reversible" to a greater or lesser
degree.
One can drive many
reactions "backwards" given the right
chemical/physical
conditions. Having reagent feedstock (fresh dilution water) in
stoichometric excess
can accelerate the "forward" formation of new
product (specific
water clusters), just as a catalyst might also facilitate this “forward”
process. Some reactions could also be autocatalytic, that is, the products
(i.e. clusters) themselves speed up the process.
When the cavitation energy of succussion is applied, all the reactions
in the cluster mix are accelerated until the entire solution approaches
a stable spectrum.
Note that, in order be self-consistent, different methods of preparation
use differing “standard” numbers of succussions. According
to our cluster theory, however, different degrees of succussion results
in different degrees of approach to a final stable state and hence differences
in observed efficacy for a given “potency”. (Thus the Jenichen
remedies of the nineteenth century may have been “preferred”
because a large amount of succussion energy was applied throughout remedy
preparation.)
Now let’s look again at the role of dilution when the next stage
of potency is being prepared:
As you add fresh water, you are restoring the original stoichometric
"excess" of this reagent and “driving forward”
all the creative (and competing) reactions that form clusters. This
time, however, note that the starting conditions have changed…….
now there is much less starting “doping” material and, second,
we have starting clusters that were not there in the first preparation
stage.
This changes the cluster spectrum and narrows it towards a different
preferred configuration. Just like distilling alcohol, this dilution/succussion
process is the
typical “fractionation”
process of separating and concentrating components in a mixture. Fractionation
is well known in other processes, e.g. freeze–drying of coffee.
Figure
4. Concentration(Dose) and Cluster Size Distribution as a Function of
Potency.
Now, in the simplest
example, suppose that each unique water cluster carries the information
corresponding to a unique remedy symptom. (In fact, several isomers/cluster
types may be necessary to represent a symptom). Then Fig. 4 (above)
shows that the remedy mixture becomes more symptom-specific (narrower
range) when the potency is raised and represents a higher concentration
in the mix (greater height) of those specific clusters.
This may accord
with your own clinical experience of ‘going high’ and why
lower potencies and more frequent dosing may be better in acute cases
if you are not sure of the exact remedy to prescribe.
A corollary of this model is that, at lower potencies, the symptom ‘picture’
of two (or more) remedies appear to overlap. Figure 5 (below) illustrates
how this may be so. Thus either remedy A or B may “cure”
symptom 2.
Figure 5. Overlapping Lower Potency Cluster Size Ranges for
Remedies A and B.
With further succussion
and dilution of each of the remedies, as shown in Fig. 6 (below), Remedy
A may be the only one that “cures” Symptom 1 whereas Remedy
B may only “cure” Symptom 3. With the narrowing of each
remedy spectrum as potency is raised, neither has now much effect on
Symptom 2.
Figure
6. Higher potency Cluster Size Ranges for Remedies A and B.
Besides explaining
the Banerjis’ experience (above), this model theory explains Borland’s
observation that:
“It is sometimes said that certain drugs are effective in high
potency and certain drugs only effective in low. I do not think this
is so. The reason certain medicines have been found effective more commonly
in low potency turns on the point of general similarity. Most of the
drugs which are use exclusively in low potencies have not been fully
proved; we have no knowledge of their finer differentiating points,
we only have a knowledge of their broader effects. So when you use one
of the these drugs in a higher potency you cannot accurately match the
finer differentiating symptoms of the case. The higher you go, the more
accurate the prescribing must be; in low potency a general similarity
is enough to give an effect.” (Borland, 1939)
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