Attempts have been made by many people to explain the properties of high dilution homeopathic drugs on the basis of the phenomenon known as ‘hormesis’. This phenomenon was first proposed by Southam and Ehrlich and Stebbing. They proposed that a substance which acts as a toxin in high concentrations, acts as a stimulant in low concentrations. This phenomenon is known as ‘hormesis’. There is a theory known as Arndt-Schulz rule or Schulz’ law to explain this phenomenon. The essence of this theory is “for every substance, small doses stimulate, moderate doses inhibit, and large doses kill”. Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz and Rudolf Arndt are the exponents of this theory. According to their view, toxins in their highly diluted form stimulate biological processes, where as in their concentrated forms inhibit or kill the biological processes. But even today nobody succeeded in proving or explaining this phenomenon scientifically.
The scientific experiments conducted at Utrecht University, undertaken by a team under the leadership of Roeland van Wijk and Fred A.C. Wiegant tried to explain homeopathy on the basis of theory of ‘hormesis’. Even though these experiments succeeded in proving the therapeutic properties of potentized drugs to a certain extent, they failed to correlate it with the phenomenon of ‘hormesis’. Actually nobody could so far uncover the molecular kinetics of what is known as ‘hormesis’.
Not only ‘hormesis’, even the discovery of Hippocrates regarding effects of ‘small doses’, still remains scientifically unexplained. What is the exact molecular mechanism by which “small doses of that which caused an ailment would cure” as Hippocrates theorized? Nobody answered that fundamental question yet.
What hippocrates discovered seems to be the same phenomenon which was later known as ‘hormesis’. Somebody has to explain the molecular mechanism involved in ‘hormesis’. In my opinion, only ‘molecular imprints’ can explain ‘hormesis’ or hippocrates’ discovery in scientific terms. The phenomenon of ‘hormesis’ could have been better explained if people understood the concept of ‘molecular imprints’ of drug molecules, which are likely to be formed in the highly diluted solution of a toxic substance. Only ‘molecular imprints’ can produce a biological effect that is exactly opposite to that of original molecules.
To get an answer to the question how ‘hormesis’ works or ‘small doses’ work, we have to understand the process of ‘dilution’ in relation with ‘size’ of drug molecules being diluted. Any drug substance of animal or vegetable origin contains diverse types of drug molecules. Some complex molecules will be very ‘big’ in size, and their number in a given quantity of solution will be comparatively very small as per avogadro theory. Smaller molecules will be present in larger numbers. When we start diluting serially, larger molecules will be ‘imprinted’ into the solvent medium, and those molecules get removed from the solution in very early stages of dilution process. Smaller molecules are removed only at later stages of dilution. By reaching 12 c, even the smallest molecules get imprinted and removed from the medium. That is why I say potencies above 12c contain molecular imprints only.
Obviously, lower potencies below 12c will be a mixture of small molecules as well as molecular imprints of larger molecules. From this point of view, we can now explain ‘hormesis’, ‘hippocrates observations’ and ‘homeopathic potency’ in a rational way.
Obviously, the scientifically elusive phenomenon of ‘hormesis’, or the ‘opposite’ biological actions of low dilutions and high dilutions of toxic substances, could be scientifically explained when perceived in the light of the ‘molecular imprints’ ideas proposed by MIT.
Observation that potentized drugs act upon organism in a way exactly opposite to the original drugs indicated a process of generating three-dimensional nanocavities that can act as binding sites for drug molecules and similar pathogenic molecules, which can happen only though ‘molecular imprinting’.
Study of ‘key-lock mechanism’ involved in the dynamics of enzyme inhibitions, ‘ligand-receptor’ interactions and ‘antibody-antigen’ interactions are also found to be fitting well to the concept of ‘molecular imprints’ in potentized drugs.
Through these studies, it becomes clear that ‘similia similibus curentur’ as well as ‘hormesis phenomenon’ could be explained in the light of available scientific knowledge regarding the molecular level processes of pathology and therapeutics, and homeopathy is actually a higher specialized form of modern molecular medicine.
Actually, ‘hormesis’ is all about the biological actions of ‘small’ quantities and ‘large’ quantities of drugs. How could anybody equate ‘ultra-dilution effects’ with ‘hormesis’ knowing well that ‘ultra-dilutions’ do not contain any drug substance? If you equate homeopathy and hormesis, you are obviously discarding the principles of homeopathic potentization. Homeopathy is not small doses- it is NO doses!
Exact molecular mechanism of phenomenon of so called “hormesis” is still unexplained scientifically. Concept of hormesis is applicable only in effects of “small quantities” of toxic substances. It has no any relevance in homeopathic ultra dilution effects, which will not contain any ‘quantity’ of drug substance.
REDEFINING HOMEOPATHY 