Minimum Dose
Herbert Roberts, MD was a 20th century American Homeopath who was a Professor of Medicine, editor of an important medical journal and chairman of the American Foundation of Homeopathy. In his 1936 book titled the Principles and Art of Cure By Homeopathy he wrote, “The quantity of action necessary to effect any change in nature is the least possible: the decisive amount is always a minimum, an infinitesimal”.
The Law of Minimum Dose states that our medicines should carefully be charged only with the amount of energy needed to correct an imbalance. Homeopathy views the human organism as a vital energetic field and observes that disease occurs as a result of disturbance at this dynamic or energetic level. Our focus is on applying the very least amount of energy or force needed to stimulate the system to correct itself.
If you are walking with a small child and notice he or she is about to lose balance and fall, you support the child with the least amount of force needed to prevent her from falling. If you use too much force you wind up pushing the child over. Homeopaths become concerned when people take powerful medications on a daily basis because all of the sheer energy of the medicine impacts the vital force. It has the same effect as pushing over the child when all you really wanted to do was gently support her. We all know what happens when we are taking a medicine that is too powerful. We experience side effects!
As a homeopath, and as a person who has spent many years working with Native American medicine people, my clear and unmistakable observation is that all disease begins with disturbance in the subtle dynamic energy field. The question that must then be asked is how can we gently and safely work at that level to relieve the disturbance. If disease originates at the energetic level then the healing must be applied at that same level. Hahnemann’s close observation of natural law helped to clarify the principle of minimum dose and it was his discovery of the process of POTENTIZATION that allowed him to refine substances so that they could be applied in accordance with this law.