A review of machines and devices to potentize homeopathic medicines
Homeopathy Volume 106, Issue 4 Pages 240-249 (2017)
Abhirup Basu, Akkihebbal Krishnamurthy Suresh, Shantaram Govind Kane and Jayesh Ramesh Bellare
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
Background:
Potentization, consisting of serial dilution and succussion, is a key step in the manufacture of homeopathic medicines. Originally prescribed as a manual process, several attempts at mechanization have been published, patented and even commercialised in order to remove the human element and introduce reproducibility without drudgery. Various machines have been used over the years to prepare homeopathic medicines. Although these machines follow the same principles, i.e. energetically mixing the medicines and diluting them significantly, their mode of operation is different from each other.
Methods:
This review paper surveys the main methods of preparation of homeopathic medicines. The main machines discussed are: Boericke's potentizer, Tyler Kent's instrument, John Alphonse's machine and the fluxion potentizer, which were used in the past, as well as more recent potentizers like arm-and-weight instruments, the K-Tronic potentizer and Quinn's machine. We review the construction and operating principle of each of these machines, along with their advantages and limitations. A scheme for relative performance assessment of these machines is proposed based on the parameters mechanical efficiency, physico-chemical efficiency, turbulence generation, energy dissipation, and accuracy of dilution.
Results: Quinn's machine and the arm-and-weight potentizer perform well for generating turbulence due to high impaction forces, while John Alphonse's machine is much more accurate in diluting the homeopathic medicines at every step.
Conclusions:
Both the commercial potentizers, Quinn's machine and the K-Tronic potentizer, are completely automated and therefore reduce the manual labour and variation in succussive forces during each step, which may produce uniformity in physico-chemical changes within the resulting homeopathic medicines.
https://www.thieme-connect.com/products/ejournals/abstract/10.1016/j.homp.2017.09.002Excerpts:
"In spite of its high demand, the mechanism responsible for a curing effect of homeopathy has still not been established. The potency/dilution relationship is formed during the process of manufacturing of these medicines. The controversy stems from the fact that the potency of the medicines is claimed to increase with increasing dilution. The homeopathic medicines undergo serial dilution with, at every step, a forceful shaking called succussion, which is said to increase the activity of medicines. In many cases, the dilution factor is 10^60 or even 10^400 (30c and 200c respectively) and is far above Avogadro's number, which leads to doubts about the presence of active materials in the medicines. Many hypotheses like water memory, epitaxy, clathrate formation and quantum theory attempted to explain the retention of information of original active materials at ultra high dilution, but there has been no widely accepted physical evidence to validate the retention of the information of the original active materials, as a result of which this remained as a mystery until the recent detection of nanoparticles of the original material in the final medicine.
"When Hahnemann conceptualized homeopathy, he manually pounded the vials containing the active materials in water-ethanol solution for preparation of homeopathic medicines. But this process is extremely labour extensive and requires high manpower. Besides, during manual pounding, the force was not equally imparted on the vials for all the strokes. So to maintain uniformity in the force and to reduce manual stress, many researchers have built different machines for preparing homeopathic medicines. There is also difference of opinions among different researchers about the process of preparation of homeopathic medicines as discussed later."
"It is also important to determine the efficiency of these machines in the light of the theories that have emerged recently. The most important of these theories are nanoparticle retention theory and the silica encapsulation theory.
"Recent research using sophisticated instruments has proved that medicinal substances are actually present even at high dilution at a measurable concentration of 10–1000 pg/ml as measured by ICP-AES (inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy) and reach an asymptotic non-zero value. The traces of original substances are also directly observed under transmission electron microscopy. Researchers have hypothesized that the particles remain in the solution through silica encapsulation and levitate to the surface of liquid through nanobubble formation, which are carried in each dilution step. Although in this paper, we do not deal with this issue any further, here we have tried to investigate the parameters of the machines, which govern the overall mechanism of preparation and are important in detecting the performance of the machines. The performance assessment of these machines and the parameters that characterize them are discussed in the later part of the paper."
"Potentization, also known as dynamization, is the process of trituration, succussion and dilution or fluxion of medicines, which Hahnemann claimed to transform their properties and develop dynamic powers, helping in healing many diseases when taken in minute doses."
"Trituration is the method of dilution of insoluble solid substances by grinding them with lactose in a particular ratio for preparation of homeopathic medicines. Hahnemann proposed the ratio of solid substances to lactose to be 1:99 and the trituration was to be carried out for 2 h."
"Maximum 3rd potency can be reached via trituration and the subsequent steps should be carried out via liquid dilution."
"Succussion is the first method of potentization used by Hahnemann where the bottle containing the medicine and the solvent in a particular ratio was taken upward, stopped momentarily and then pounded on a rubber pad. Succussion creates a high turbulent regimen where vortices continuously form and disappear. Mechanical energy applied during succussion diffuses through the larger vortices and then through the smaller ones. Finally the energy gets dissipated from the fluid at the molecular level, which might be taken up by the substances and can increase their activity.
"According to different pharmacopeias, the main motive of succussion is to separate the fine particles attained by trituration from one another by forming an admixture in an inert liquid."
"For dilution of homeopathic medicines, Hahnemann mixed one part from the top of the previous dilution with 99 parts of 95% (v/v) ethanol in a new fresh bottle which is succussed thoroughly to make the new potency. Since the previous bottle contains the old dilution, it cannot be used for making new potencies. Therefore a large number of bottles are needed for this process which is a limitation of the method.
"There is another type of dilution method used in homeopathy and was discovered by Nikolai Korsakov, who thought it to be the advanced method of dilution. This approach is also known as the single vial method, or dilution of the remaining drop, and is applicable beyond 200c potency. Here in each step, instead of taking the top 1% volume, the vial is turned upside down or given a jerk. It is thought that due to this jerk, 99% of the fluid is removed. The remaining 1% of the fluid gets adhered to the walls of the vial as drops, which is mixed with 99% of fresh solvent and succussed to make the new potency."
"Fluxion is another process of potentization, which was first discovered by B. Fincke. In this process, the turbulence is created by allowing a high speed fluid flow over the particles. As the fluid flows over the particles, due to the high velocity of the fluid, the impact on each molecule becomes high and energy gets transferred to the particles due to the impact."
"...many researchers like Fincke and Skinner felt that the fluxion process can be much more effective than succussion since fluxion does not involve manual or mechanical/automated pounding of vials and can dilute the medicines at the same time.
"According to various homeopathic pharmacopeias, however, the fluxion process is non-compliant, i.e. as per the pharmacopeia, homeopathic medicines have to be made by succussion and not by fluxion. The probable reason for this is that the water flow cannot create as much turbulence as in impaction of vials."
"Physico-chemical efficiency is based on inducing new changes in the homeopathic medicines due to the manufacturing steps. During succussion, the particles may become encapsulated within the polysiloxane chains formed due to the cross-linking of silicates leached from the vial and are retained at infinite dilution. Besides, the medicinal particles might undergo chemical changes due to trituration and succussion which might be a plausible direction for future research."
"Relative efficacy would be a desirable sixth parameter for comparative assessment of performance, but the intrinsic efficacy of homeopathic medicines remains to be proven. Once techniques to demonstrate this efficacy are established, it may be possible to compare the efficacy of the same medicines prepared with different methods."
"Similarly if succussion is done with light impact, it may have different effects than the succussion done with strong impacts. The resulting difference in the impact forces would transfer different energies into the active and therefore might have different medicinal effects. Heavy impacts, for example, might cause more particle breakup, might induce more surface defects and thereby increase or decrease bio-activity."
"Machines used for preparation of homeopathic medicines"
"Succussion potentizers
"Boericke's Potentizer"
"Tyler Kent's potentizer"
"Quinn's potentizer"
"The design of the arm is such that it duplicates the action of a human arm while manually pounding the glass vial on a rubber pad."
"Unlike the Hahnemannian method, since the dilution of particles is done by the Korsakovian method, the accuracy of dilution is low. Some of the previous remedies are likely to be present in the vial but the actual quantity present will be unknown. In spite of these disadvantages, this machine is the best possible automated instrument based on succussion."
"Homeopathic potentization machine used by John Alphonse"
"Arm-and-weight potentizer"
"Shah considered the power to be the most important factor for the efficacy of the medicines."
"The K-Tronic potentizer is an automated machine used by many pharmaceutical companies....Production of each potency requires six seconds, which shows that this potentizer can reach high potencies in very short times. The potentizer can make potencies as high as 100,000 K."
"Fluxion potentizers"
