The preparation of homeopathic remedies is so closely interwoven with my personal life history that I can no longer consider these two facets separately. It is in this spirit that I would like you to understand the story which I am about to tell you.

“We live in a very special, yet very dangerous time, wherein a new global culture is painfully struggling to be born. It is the challenge of our times to integrate human culture and knowledge. It is essential that this process occurs on the level of the healing sciences also. Healing is always a matter of unification. If our healing knowledge cannot be integrated, how could we as human beings find unity among ourselves?”

These lines are taken from the foreword of a book on ayurvedic herbs(1) and have been chosen as an introduction here as they also apply for homeopathy.

It was in the sixties that I decided to study pharmacy. At this time I was neither able to think along the lines of integrating human culture and knowledge, nor was I able to even sense anything of that sort. My world view was being shaped by the university and a completely materialistic and mechanistic way of thinking. In total. merely a few days of our studies were spent on homeopathy. Each and every one of the students as well as our professor were in agreement that this was something ever so dubious and that it was merely worth spending our time on discussing the pharmaceutical aspects of the differences in dilution between the D and the C potencies and also the procedure of potentiation.

In the mid-seventies, not too long after having graduated as a pharmacist, I fell ill. Yet no one was able to make a diagnosis. This prompted a first critical analysis of conventional western medicine. It was thus, that I got to know the different naturopathic methods which “Heilpraktiker”(2) and medical doctors applying naturopathy make use of. In 1978 I passed the state examination and became a “Heilpraktikerin” myself. One of these “alternative methods” which I got to know at this time was homeopathy.

It was Dr Mathias Dorsci who opened the door to the world of homeopathy for me. This was in the year 1976 in a training course in Baden, which is not far from Vienna. It was he too who triggered a remarkable healing with merely 3 small white sugar pills.

Dr Dorsci´s talks impressed me so much that I became very enthusiastic about taking part in training courses. This euphoria apparently came to be by entering into realms new to me and led to a craving that could only be satisfied by pursing further qualifications and attending all of the homeopathic training courses offered at that time: starting with the repertorisation courses on Spiekeroog off the North Sea coast of Germany with Dr Künzli, Dr von Ungern-Sternberg and Dr Tiedemann, the A-B-C courses in Bad Brückenau in northern Bavaria and those in the hospital for naturopathy in Munich Harlaching with Dr Braun and Dr Zimmermann and finally the homeopathic courses at Weidenkam Castle given by Dr Stübler. The courses offered by the companies Wala and Weleda gave me a first glimpse into spirituality.

The piles of books around my bed grew and grew. In addition to my daily pharmaceutical work I was given the opportunity of evaluating consultations in the practice of a “Heilpraktiker” in 1978/79 on a regular basis. In those days this was always done by hand with a repertorisation table which most of you are probably familiar with. The daily advice at the pharmacy became a homeopathic consultation and this proved to a blessing. How else would I have been able to stay in my profession as a pharmacist, if all of my allopathic medicines and the medical doctors weren’t of help to me?

Slowly but surely a change began taking place deep down inside of me. It was an initially subconscious development and it steadily paved the way to new topics in my life. This internal growth went along with a gradual change of my consciousness and world view: out of the field of science from my years of studying and into a field of information patterns in material and nonmaterial states and spheres of spirituality.

It was also about leaving a rational, linear way of thinking. It was about making a genuine effort for a nonlinear approach with an outlook onto the whole instead of the observation and the analysis of “microscopic parts”(3).

In the first ten years after having discovered homeopathy for myself, I could get hopping mad about not being able to understand how it worked. This annoyance gradually changed in accordance to my willingness to acknowledge the fact that it did work, even if I didn’t have a clue as to how! What is written here in these three last lines is the result of a challenging inner struggle of trying to maintain my position, this being: humans know everything and can do everything, and if not today, then certainly latest by tomorrow, guaranteed. Take a bet on it…

Finally, I had to abandon this position. Or, to be more precise, this position had to be transformed into one of humbleness that is now: I know that I know nothing.

The questions “What is matter? What are we actually potentiating? And what happens with the matter in this process?” became key issues.

The piles of books around my bed became even higher…
It was in the creation myths of the different religions and in the field of physics, with the shamans of the Indians and Hawaiians, with Rudolf Steiner and Mrs Blawatzski, with the alchemists and in the Vedas that I searched for an answer to the question “What is matter?”…

Setting out on this path from solid matter to fine information wave patterns, from the domain of natural sciences to that of spirituality, I found gateways into many different realms of our universe.

In all of these realms I received precious gifts for my later work with the plants and the raw materials for remedies.

With astonishment and also deeply moved, I learned the skill of handling plants and all other beings of nature in books by Native American shamans like “White Eagle”.

Capra amazed me with the statement that the becoming of the smallest particles of matter backwards and forewords in time reminded him of the Dance of Shiva(4).

The “Dance of Shiva” set the course for becoming familiar with the Hindu philosophy and the ancient scriptures of India, the Vedas.

With Maharshi, the Indian master of Tiruannamalai near to the holy Arunachala Hill I realised that “I am” which led me back to the mystics of Christianity.

Yogananda helped me to accept a nonlinear way of thinking.

From Dr Ungern-Sternberg in Bochum I learned to recognize the significance of the role that an intention plays as an influential energy. It is the intention which determines the value of thoughts and actions in our lives.

With Dora Schmidt-Nagel, who is known to have been a follower of the Hindu philosophy, I got to know and appreciate the value of working with remedies in a meditative state.

These are only a few examples that didn’t all effect the preparation of remedies, yet certainly influenced my personal growth.

My teachers of homeopathy
The lecturers of the A-B-C courses and other conferences for the homeopathy profession were our therapists, medical doctors and “Heilpraktiker”, as they are till this day.

These teachers were willing to answer all kinds of questions upon questions. As my relation to homeopathy was strong and as I was very dedicated, various personal contacts developed to these teachers in the course of time. As I see it today, Dr Klunker, Dr Stübler, Dr Gypser and Raimund Friedrich Kastner were of great support in the production of my remedies. I didn´t invent a single thing myself. All I did was to merely follow the instructions, ask questions and digest the answers. A significant question was: what is the key to a high quality remedy?

Dr Gypser always found new homeopathic topics which needed further research in order to “put homeopathy onto firm pillars where the ground is yet boggy” as he was inclined to say. Ulrike Schober, Andreas Grimm and I established a small study group. Under Dr Gypser´s guidance, we dealt with the reliability of literary sources of raw materials that were unclear. Thus the articles about Bryonia(5), Murex(6), Causticum(7), Hekla lava(8) and the spider remedies(9) resulted, which were published in the German homeopathic journals AHZ(10) and ZKH(11).

Dr Gypser had dealt with the development of the different repertories and also the origin of single parts of the literary works of various physicians, e.g. Hahnemann, Kent and Hering. Therefore he knew that the homeopathic drug proving symptoms of the same drug were from provings of various practitioners and that the raw materials of a specific remedy were not always exactly identical. It is easy to understand that those administering homeopathy would like to use the remedy for his/her patients that initially led to the symptoms listed in the repertory. In the beginning this consideration seemed rather odd to the authors of the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of Germany (HAB(12)). It is obvious why Hahnemann not only wanted to administer remedies himself, yet also insisted upon being able to judge the quality of the preparation himself.
As he says in §264 of the “Organon of Medicine”, 6th Edition:

“The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to rely upon their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of their genuineness.”

The production
Looking back, I can see clearly that - as if guided by an unknown hand - circumstances of life, acquaintances and information led to the preparation of remedies according to Hahnemann´s standards.

At a celebration at Lake Constance, Dr Klunker expressed the idea that somebody should prepare all of the important remedies according to Hahnemann´s specifications with a corresponding accurate documentation. I was the only pharmacist amongst the physicians present and this certainly appealed to me. Just like in 1976 on Spiekeroog when Dr Künzli said that a pharmacist in Germany should import the high potencies of Schmidt-Nagel from Switzerland, so that German practitioners would have an easier access to these remedies.

With the knowledge that I had acquired from the many training courses, I was initially considering preparing C potencies. It was Peter Bartel who convinced me to start with the Q potencies. It seemed reasonable to me to begin with those remedies which corresponded to the development in Dr Samuel Hahnemann´s later years and to which he referred to as his “advanced methods”.

Thus, the first remedy was prepared on April 10th  and 11th through a lactose trituration C1, C2, C3 and then the following steps as described in §270 of the “Organon of Medicine”, 6th Edition – this remedy was Mezereum. Later on I realized that April 10th was Hahnemann´s birthday. In the following 10 years we - that is the physicians in the area and I - came together on this day for a big celebration.

Grinding Mezereum, I felt a hot desert wind blowing. The impression of being enfolded in a wonderfully soft and cooling gel arose while grinding Symphytum.

Approximately 80 remedies up to Q12 were prepared in the first year with Dr Gypser as a mentor and a partner to discuss the matter “how does one prepare a finest high quality remedy” with. The first general evaluation of these remedies by known physicians was very good.

After having started with the production of remedies, I continued further homeopathic training. I accompanied Dr Gypser frequently on his course trips e.g. to Switzerland and to Italy and also took part in his training courses in Baden and later on in his Boenninghausen study group.

The raw materials
As of 1988, C potencies were prepared too. The C3 triturates were diluted according to the directions of Hahnemann (CD). Potencies from C4 to C1000 were made by then manually succussing and serially diluting at a ratio of one drop to one hundred drops in 7,5ml bottles which were made especially for this purpose. The globules were medicated directly with these liquid potencies: C6, C12, C30, C200, C1000. Later on, the trituration was continued up to C6 and then potentiated as a dilution according to the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of Germany (HAB).

The raw materials were selected very carefully according to the specifications in “Hahnemann: The Chronic Diseases, Vol. 1-5 (CD)” and “Hahnemann: Materia Medica Pura, Vol. 1-6 (MMP)” and then freshly ground. These instructions were also followed when using fluids. In this process one drop was equated to one grain. We followed Hahnemann´s directions very carefully in order to ensure an exact accordance of the composition of the raw material to that of the first proving. The same impurities were supposed to develop as they did in the compositions in his time. Phosphoric acid was prepared from calcined white bone (CD). Kalium carbonicum from purified tartar which was allowed to attract moisture from the air in a cellar after being brought to a red heat (CD). Phosphorus was prepared by triturating yellow phosphor with moistened lactose (CD). The white vapour rising with phosphorescence green sparks in it, conveyed the eerie feeling of being in a witches´ kitchen of the Middle Ages. Acetic acid was distilled from wine vinegar. The mineral itself was chosen as a raw material for Calcium fluoride. Graphites was prepared with a piece of graphite from the Cumberland Museum in England (CD). To gain the raw material for Hekla lava, I traveled to Iceland where the volcano Hekla is. Aloe soccotrina originates from the island Soqotra which lies in the Indian Ocean south of Yemen. I did this journey full of adventure in the company of Dr J. Wachsmut, who worked in Yemen for many years.

Remedies that had originally found their way into therapy in Hering´s and other prover´s times were prepared according to the synthesising instructions of Mr Venzago, a Swiss chemist, in the laboratory of the Atzelberg Pharmacy in Frankfurt which I was running at that time.

Every single remedy has its own exciting story to tell.

Upon application in 1990, I was issued an authorisation for the production of remedies according to Hahnemann´s working methods by the responsible supervisory authority in Darmstadt. I had handed in this application with a precise description of Hahnemann´s methods together with copies from the original literature.

Move to Bavaria
In 1993 I relocated the production of remedies to Stadtbergen into a building put up specifically for this purpose. It was built according to the established laws and its construction was supervised by the governmental regulating authority. The civil servants of the Bavarian regulation authority confirmed my authorisation for manufacturing from Hesse. By moving to Bavaria and producing remedies outside of the pharmacy, my business became a pharmaceutical company and was thus subject to the corresponding laws.

Due to the increasingly stricter laws for pharmaceutical traders, the lab equipment was continuously being changed. The adaptations to these guidelines demanded air cleaners at workplaces, air-conditioning, division into hygiene zones, further documentation of all operational procedures, regular training courses for the staff members and an overly complicated multitude of SOPs (Special Operating Procedure = exact description of all operations on the premises, including cleaning and many, many signatures for every single step in the course of the production and the packing of the remedies). An external advisor was necessary in order to put all of this into practice. In the long run, I employed an experienced control and production supervisor.

Years passed by before all of the requirements were put into practice. The laboratory needed approximately 25-30% more employees for the maintenance of the required documentations, SOPs, specifications of the starting materials and also the final products, the results of the analysis of all incoming materials, stability analysis of interstage and final products, as well as the stability of the remedies after having opened the bottles, maintenance agreements and validation of equipment and used software. The registrations and the corresponding documentation papers of the remedies prepared every day – even if it was merely a single one (as always with 3 signatures) – now fill metres and metres of shelves in the office and also the cellar. This dampens the optimism and enthusiasm about working considerably, drives up the expenses and turns a remedy producer into a paper producer…

A competing company attempted to invalidate my authorisation for the production of remedies which I subsequently lost after a 3-year lawsuit with the German health authorities. I now have an authorisation for the production of remedies according to §13 of the Pharmaceutical Law (AMG13). In Germany a pharmacist may only sell his/her medicines if these are prepared according to the official pharmacopoeia, in my case the HAB.

It is the interests of the major pharmaceutical manufacturers that become manifest in this official pharmacopoeia. Furthermore, this was written by pharmacists and not by homeopaths. As I had taken the challenge upon myself of providing genuine medicines that are prepared correctly (§§264-265, “Organon of Medicine”, 6th Edition) it proved to be a major balancing act in order to maintain the quality of the remedies.
How can one replace ordinary kitchen salt, which was most likely rock salt in Hahnemann´s time, with chemically pure (!) NaCl (CD)? This is just one example of many. All previous complicated attempts to work according to our traditional classics now not only belonged to the past, they were forbidden.

This fact dented my emotional body quite significantly, with results on physical parts of my humble self.
As of 1998, in the course of the mad cow disease in Europe, a specific registration for marketing was required for all of the remedies that were prepared from animals to which the nosodes also belong. Obtaining a registration from our governmental health authorities is another sizable and exorbitantly expensive chapter that I would merely like to point out here.

Triturations
The optimal opening of the raw materials is obtained by trituration, as Hahnemann describes for example in §270 of his “Organon of Medicine”, 6th Edition. The structures of the coarse material are released and transferred to the chemically bound water of the lactose in a mysterious and inexplicable way. The materials disclose their secrets and the more often this process is repeated, the more amplified and more subtle these patterns become.

Quite to my surprise, I experienced several symptoms with the first trituration of Mezereum mentioned above. At the same time I saw pictures like in a daydream which appeared to be associated with the remedy. A question and answer game with the entity of the drug developed, whereby the answers appeared as pictures.
Having initially dealt with this in a completely natural way, I suddenly realised with a tremendous shock the extraordinary nature of this state of mind. “Was I ready for the loony bin?”

It was people like Dr von Ungern-Sternberg, Raimund Kastner and Dr Stübler to whom I confessed this thought that I had to, who comforted me with the words “everything is just fine, this is reality on a different level.” Nevertheless, I didn’t speak about this issue in public for quite a few years.

In the daily process of triturating remedies for general use. an initial ritual act of greeting came to be. This included asking the entity of the remedy for assistance. My greeting was a ray of love energy from my heart. I was able to see this in the meditative state whilst at work as well as seeing the reaction of the entities and their gifts which they lay into the mortar if I expressed the desire. All of the entities responded with joy and gratitude.
It was this gratitude in particular which often moved me to tears.

The result of these encounters is six files full of notes and records of these triturations, as well as those of the trituration courses offered for therapists who would like to experience this for themselves.
Till this day, I still don’t really know where the pictures which become visible come from.

As I speak the name of the drug aloud when I begin a trituration, it may be the energy field of the substance (an old secret of the alchemists which can be learnt in Goethe´s “Faust”). Dr Stübler assumed that biographical material also has a share in this. When triturating cancerous tissue, I discovered that my field of consciousness or the place of perception was not in the region of my body. Or my consciousness was spatially extended. Maybe we humans unite with the field of ideas, as Plato named it.



Footnotes
(1) “The Yoga of Herbs: An Ayurvedic Guide to Herbal Medicine” by Dr Vasant Lad and Dr David Frawley – Lotus Light Publications ISBN 81-208-1172-0

(2) Heilpraktiker/Heilpraktikerin: This is a training and title apparently unique to Germany. It includes anatomy, physiology and pathology, as well as learning alternative methods of healing. A state examination has to be passed prior to opening a “Heilpraktiker” practice. A similar international equivalent might be: naturopath, holistic healer, alternative or complementary practitioner.

(3) “The Yoga of Herbs: An Ayurvedic Guide to Herbal Medicine” (see footnote one).

(4) “The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism” by Fritjof Capra – Flamingo, ISBN-13: 978-0006544890

(5) Bryonia: German homeopathic journal ZKH, 35th volume, 2nd issue, 1992, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg

(6) Murex: German homeopathic journal ZKH, 36th volume, 2nd issue, 1991, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg

(7) Causticum: German homeopathic journal ZKH, 33rd volume, 2nd issue, 1989, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg

(8) Hekla Lava: German homeopathic journal ZKH, 35th volume, 1st issue, 1993, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg

(9) spider remedies: German homeopathic journal ZKH, 39th volume, 5th issue, 1995, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg

(10) AHZ: Allgemeine Homöopathische Zeitung, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg (German homeopathic journal)

(11) ZKH: Zeitschrift für Klassische Homöopathie, Haug Verlag, Heidelberg (German homeopathic journal)

(12) HAB: Homöopathisches Arzneibuch     (Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of Germany)

(13) AMG: Arzneimittelgesetz (Pharmaceutical Law)