An important idea introduced by Hahnemann and which causes homeopathy to differ from conventional medicine is individualizing.  He maintained that there are no diseases, but only patients, and therefore a treatment must aim at treating the individual rather than the disease.

Diseases are nothing but the activation and consequent manifestation of the existing predispositions in response to stress. The totality of the organism`s response under stress creates a pattern of symptomatology that is uniquely individual for that patient. According to this principle, there cannot be generalised treatment for a specefic type of disorder.

According to this idea, ten patients suffering from the same ‘disease’, for example epilepsy, will probably each require a separate pharmaceutical substance, unless the symptoms of two or three of them are identical down to the last detail, a rare but not impossible situation.

The defense mechanism is complex system inside our bodies, created to protect it from hostile effects, whether internal or external. The complex mechanism of the organism’s defense system was named ‘vital force’ by Hahnemann. This phrase expresses the idea that there is a form of ‘energy’ behind the defense mechanism, a ‘power with mind’ which directs and coordinates the organism’s reactions.

The logic behind this idea, according to homeopaths, lies in the understanding that symptoms are nothing more than the expressions of the human organism’s defense mechanism.  For example, the body’s temperature increases – fever – in order to suppress the disease factor, bacteria, viruses, fungi etc., same stands for the edema, pain, chills, convulsions, anxiety, depression and in general any signs and symptoms are not the disease per se, but an expression of the unique way in which the individual1s defense system is trying to eradicate the disease.

Karl menninger in his book The Vital Balance writes,

"..... These phenomena are symptoms in the sense that they indicate that something is wrong and that help is needed.... At first this was rejected as utter nonsense; who on earth would wish to have a headache? who would want to be paralyzed? who would crae even minor discomforts and disabilities?

"....Mental illness is not an invasion but a defensive reaction."

"....Twenty years ago the late Robert Lindner put it brilliantly thus: ' It has been brought home to me ever more forcibly that the aggression, the hostility, the rejection of authority, the migratory tendencies, the impulsiveness, the destructive and blind lashing out of the psychopath- all of these are homeostatic adjustments operating to restore a dynamic equilibruim withing the personality.'

Therefore the organism needs support in its therapeutic efforts, rather than a suppression of the fever. Homeopaths believe that, by giving a remedy, which is capable of causing symptoms in a healthy individual that are identical to those present in the patient, they are in reality stimulating and providing support for the defense mechanism in its attempt to rid itself of the disease.

Homeopaths maintain that the true reason for disease is not infection by a disease element but rather the innate weakness of the defense mechanism and its inability to face up to the invasion and to neutralize it. By strengthening the defense mechanism, without killing the microbes, homeopaths believe that they can to a greater extent influence the return to health of the diseased organism.

1. MENNINGER K: The vital balance, The life process in mental health and illness, New york: viking press, 1975

2. GEORGE VITHOULKAS: New model of health and disease, berkley, 1991

3. GEORGE VITHOULKAS: Levels of Health, Alonissos, 2017