Homoeopathic Drug Provings

Homoeopathy is a special form of drug therapy which is capable of stimulating the body's own power of self healing in a special way. How is the effect of a drug studied in Homoeopathy? How does picture of a homoeopathic medicine come out? In contrast to conventional medicine, the effects of the homoeopathic medicines are not described in terms of pharmacological mechanism of action, but in a phenomenological fashion. The effects of medicines are described as a collection of symptoms, which can be ascertained from different sources, the most important being provings on healthy human subjects

In Homoeopathic drug provings on healthy subjects, volunteers receive the medicinally active substance over a defined period of time. All striking changes and symptoms affecting the body or psyche are then carefully recorded and evaluated. It is particularly important to give a detailed description, e.g. location and intensity of individual symptoms, their variation at different times of the day inight as well as the symptoms which accompany each of the main symptom (modifying influences). All newly occurring symptoms, in this context, are throughly screened and evaluated and finally the true proving symptoms are identified, which form the picture of the drug substance being proved.

In conventional pharmacology, by contrast, clinical trials on healthy subjects, which are known as clinical phase 1 studies, are used primarily to investigate the pharmacokinetics and tolerability of a drug. In order to smooth out differences between individuals, the volunteers population has to be made as homogenous as possible. Precisely the opposite is true of a homoeopathic drug proving, where in order to generate a spectrum of symptoms, the volunteer group needs to be as heterogenous as possible in respect of age and sex distribution.

Council has undertaken Drug Proving as a continuing programme and has proved Seventy one drugs so far. Emphasis is laid on drugs of indigenous origin as well as on drugs with fragmentary provings.

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