The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7191 p431-434
30 March 2002

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  The Profession
  Community pharmacy
  FP10 switching
  CPD
  Childhood vaccination
  Homoeopathy
  Drugs of abuse
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Letters to the Editor

Homoeopathy

Let us agree to disagree

From Mr I. M. Caldwell, FRPharmS

After an all too brief interval, we seem to be in the midst of another futile bout of correspondence about homoeopathy. If this is to continue, could we first set out some ground rules, such as being clear that herbalism has nothing to do with homoeopathy, that allopathic patients also expect their treatment to be individually tailored to their needs and that the hypotheses behind homoeopathy are as important as the evidence to sustain or refute them.

The theory of "like treats like" is not without its precedents. For instance, the 17th century "Doctrine of signatures" depended on the physical characteristics of a drug to determine its use: red plants for blood diseases and yellow drugs for jaundice. This theory eventually collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity but would certainly have been within the recent awareness of at least some of Hahnemann's teachers. To his credit, in forming his theory Hahnemann observed, experimented and recorded his results, but, in the case of inorganic compounds, he did so without the benefit of Frankland's discovery of valency and the understanding that elements could combine in more than one way, that they could be made to shift from one state to another and that the resultant salts would exhibit different characteristics.

It is with Lawrence Collin's reference to the "memory" of water (PJ, 9 March, p326), quoting the work of Conte et al, that we really hit the big paradox: can the water molecules distinguish between drug and impurity? If they can, how so, and if they cannot, at what point does the serially replenished contaminant molecular memory overwhelm that of the serially diminished drug?

The last orgy of correspondence on homoeopathy in The Journal ended with Dr Steven Kayne and I sharing the last, and diametrically opposed, words. Some time later, Steven was kind enough to invite me, as the "skeptical chymist", to write the foreword to his well-researched textbook on homoeopathic pharmacy. May I suggest that we take a lead from Dr Kayne, and accept that we can only agree to disagree, close this disputative correspondence and devote the space so released to discussion on the status, governance and remuneration of the profession.

Ian Caldwell
Larkhall, Lanarkshire

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