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| Hpathy Ezine - April, 2004 | ||||
Homeopathic Potency Selection-- Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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Among the contemporary homeopaths, George Vithoulkas lays the following guidelines in his work "The Science of Homeopathy" - "Patients who have weak constitutions, old people, or very hypersensitive people should initially be given potencies ranging, roughly, from 12 X to 200. The reason for this is that higher potencies can over stimulate the weakened defense mechanism, resulting in unnecessary powerful aggravations. The principle particularly applies to patients known to have specific pathology on the physical level. Oversensitive patients …are very reactive to both low potencies and high potencies. Consequently it is better to restrict initial prescription to 30 or 200 in such patients. Children who are suffering from severe problems should generally be given low potencies. …Cases with known malignancy should not be given potencies above 200. If a case seems relatively curable and free of physical pathology, higher initial potencies may be tried, ranging from 30 to CM. The primary guiding principle here is the degree of certainty, which the homeopath has about the remedy. Medicines such as Lachesis, Aurum, and Nosodes have strong tendency toward physical pathology. For this reason, they should usually be restricted to lower potencies (30 or 200) unless the individual case is demonstrated to be quite free of physical pathology. In children with acute ailments, it is best not to give potencies lower than 200 …If the patient is elderly, chronically weakened, or even if severely weakened by the acute ailment, a 200 potency would be preferable for the initial prescription." Rajan Sankaran writes: "The selection of the potency depends, … on the intensity, clarity and spontaneity of the symptoms expressed - especially of the peculiar symptoms, which reflect the individuality of the person. Consider the following: A patient comes and says, " I don't know why but I often feel
that I am poor, that I look like a beggar and am wearing tattered
clothes." Of course, the potency also depends on the nearness (similarity)
of the remedy to the case. The patient may be clear about his symptoms,
express it with intensity and spontaneity, but the remedy selected
may not have that feeling as intensely or clearly. In such a case
the potency will depend on the extent to which the drug selected
expresses the feelings of the patient." -------------------------------------------------------------------- The guidelines given by Hubbard, P. Sankaran, Vithoulkas and Rajan more or less summarize the clinical approach that one should have for potency selection. The only problem that we see these days is that a large majority of homeopaths practice with very limited range of potencies. There seems to be some hesitation in using very low potencies like mother tinctures and 1x, 2x etc. and at the same time most people are also not ready to try very high potencies like CM, MM, DMM. Due to this reason often a correctly chosen remedy does not give the desired result and instead of changing the potency, the homeopath often changes the remedy. A homeopath should be open to using the full range of potencies available to him. The certainty in potency selection grows with experience. If you are confident of your remedy selection and the desired action is not there, try changing the potency to higher or lower before you decide to change the medicine itself. You cannot be flexible in your remedy selection; for cure, a remedy has to be similar, but you can be flexible about potency selection. A given case may respond to more than one potency of the same medicine. While choosing the potency just remember Hahnemann's words that an ideal cure has to be quick, gentle and permanent. Things will become easier from thereon! |
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