Drug Proving
Drug Proving is the systematic process of acquiring knowledge of the substances intended for the cure of the natural diseases. In other wards it is the process of investigating the pathogenetic power of drug by administering the same in to the healthy individuals of different age and both the sex. Therefore, it is also known as Homeopathic Pathogenetic Trial (HPT). Drugs cure natural diseases by virtue of their capacity to induce changes, which are similar to those, brought about by disease. Hahnemann set about collecting data pertaining to disease and the drugs. He then had to determine the criteria for establishing similarity between the two. After this was done, he had to administer the drug and to observe accurately the result so produced. Organon of Medicine gives us the details of the great therapeutic experiment in a highly systematized manner stretching over fifty years.
As per homeopathy, to apply drugs for therapeutic use, their curative powers should be known. The proving of the drug is the experiment conducted to know these powers and is unique to homoeopathy as they are proved on healthy human beings first, before being applied to the patients. The symptoms thus known are the true record of the curative properties of a drug or the pathogenesis of a drug. Such symptoms are recorded and called as Homoeopathic Materia Medica.
Holistic as well as Individualistic approach
Successful application of the law of similar depends entirely on concepts of individualization and susceptible constitutions. This forms the corner stone of homoeopathy. The concept of individualization demands the understanding of the total response of the living organism to the un favourable environment. This total response is understood through the signs and symptoms, emotional, intellectual (spiritual) and physical planes where the vital force manifests itself. This is a unique concept of “disease” in homoeopathy. Even though it may sound strange, homoeopathy does not treat disease per se. A homoeopath does not concentrate his therapy on, say arthritis or bronchitis or cancer. In other words, he does not limit his treatment to the painful joints, inflamed bronchi or a malignant growth. Rather, he treats all aspects, mental, emotional and physical of the person who is afflicted with arthritis, bronchitis, cancer etc. Homoeopathy regards each patient as a unique individual; e.g. different person with hepatitis might get a different homoeopathic remedy, each one aimed at the individual’s totality of symptoms rather than at his liver alone. The physicians’ interest is not only to alleviate the patients’ present symptoms but also his long-term well being. The difference between the ways two individuals react to a similar cause of disease is an indication of the unique way in which each of them reacts. This uniqueness of the symptoms and reactions brings in the difference in the remedy prescribed to each one of them.
Homoeopathic medicines are prescribed on the basis of Individualization, which is tailoring the remedy according to the individual’s needs. It means every individual is different from others in some way; be it his stature, talking, choices, behavior, or his susceptibility to diseases. Homoeopathic medicines are always prescribed for the complete package i.e., the individual, so naturally the medicine will differ for different persons. The concept of susceptible constitutions is very much a part of the theory of chronic diseases. Hereditary influences and predisposition point to the primary causes of all the diseases, especially the chronic type. Homoeopathic treatment gives us scope of modifying the adverse hereditary influences and predisposition to disease, aiming at better adaptation of the patient to his environment, including his mental process. Thus, homoeopathy is a practice of “constitutional medicine” of a higher order. It has great scope in the field of psychiatry and psychosomatic diseases.
