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Dr. Jared Hanson ND, LAc is a homeopath in New York City as well as a naturopathic doctor and acupuncturist specializing in the homeopathic treatment of chronic conditions. To make an appointment call 917-267-WELL or email drjaredhanson@gmail.com.

What is a Homeopathic Proving?

Alternative Medicine & Natural Health in NYC

The central experiment in homeopathy is known as a proving. Historically, homeopaths were the first physicians to carry out single drug trials and the first to utilize placebo controls.

The chief premise of homeopathy is that “like cures like”, in other words: that a substance which causes a set of symptoms when given to a healthy person will cure that same set of symptoms in a sick person. In order to take advantage of this principle and use medicines properly, we must of course know what symptoms they are capable of causing. There are essentially three ways of finding this out. The first is to record the symptoms of people who have been unintentionally poisoned with the substance. The second is to intentionally poison healthy (and willing!) people with the substance. This is a proving. The third is to record symptoms that have been cured under the influence of a medicine.

During a proving, healthy individuals are given regular doses of a substance until it produces symptoms that they were not experiencing before. Care is taken to ensure that the symptoms are new (not experienced before) and are due to the remedy (not other influences during the same time). Crude doses of many substances are too dangerous to be taken, so the doses used during a proving are usually potentized in the same way homeopathic remedies are prepared (sequentially diluted and agitated). Ideally, a proving will involve many participants, some of whom receive placebo. The symptoms of all participants who received the medicine are collected and organized, and appropriate weight is assigned to the symptoms based on how many participants experienced them and how strongly. Homeopathy also places importance on “strange, rare and peculiar” symptoms, on what time symptoms occur and on what relieves or aggravates a symptom.

It is important to point out that the term symptom has both a much broader and a much more specific implication in homeopathy than in the conventional sense. Broader because many things that are useful in choosing an appropriate homeopathic remedy are not considered pathological in conventional medicine. An absence of thirst or perspiration, for instance, or a repetitive dream of disaster would be example of symptoms that are not useful for allopathic medicine but very useful in homeopathy.

Symptoms are also much more specific. Headaches are incredibly common, but it is very difficult to choose a remedy based on the word “headache” alone. The reason for this is simple. Many substances will produce a headache. In order to choose the correct remedy, we must match the exact kind of headache the patient is having with the exact kind of headache a remedy produces. “Headache” itself gives us very little to go on, but a headache in which the pain begins in base of the skull and spreads upward, settling over the right eye, that is very specific and calls for a specific remedy. This is the reason why there is never any one homeopathic remedy for a given condition. Though the name of the condition may be the same, the specific symptoms are always different and specific to the individual, any ten people with the same condition are likely to get ten different remedies.

As I mentioned above, symptoms that have been cured by a medicine provide additional information about its indications. This allows us to expand our understanding of a remedy long after the initial proving. It also brings up an interesting point and that is: whenever a condition or symptoms is cured it is through the homeopathic principle that “like cures like”, regardless of whether the doctor or patient is aware of it. This applies to pharmaceutical drugs, herbs, nutritional supplements and even physical therapies such as acupuncture or chiropractic. The rule always applies. So when a patient is truly cured through an antibiotic, for example, or a chiropractic adjustment, we can add the cured set of symptoms to the indications of those medicines or procedures. Similarly, should a patient experience aggravation or side effects from a medicine or therapy, these constitute inadvertent proving symptoms and are also useful in building a complete picture of homeopathic indications.