German Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia. GHP 2016 Including 13th Supplement 2016. Vols. 1 and 2

A homeopathic pharmacopoeia is to give precise descriptions of the substances of our remedies and state the scientific identity of each remedy, the tests of identification of the original substance and the methods and the legal as well as scientific rules of producing the potentized remedy. Nowadays there is a French and a German homeopathic pharmacopoeia in use and a European one in preparation. This GHP is an official document providing the legal framework for the manufacturing and quality assurance of homeopathic remedies, published by the German Health Ministry and set up by a 12-headed commission with half the number being doctors or pharmacists, the other half being representatives of research and professional societies.

Mainly a pharmacopoeia is set up for the manufacturers and the offices of quality assurance. But since the typical reader of Homoeopathic LINKS is a practitioner, I will try and see these volumes from that point of view and understand their importance for the quality of our remedies that we are using in our practice every day.

There are two different and often contradictory lines of thinking about this manual.

First of all, the GHP gives a reliable and officially acknowledged basis for the manufacturing of homeopathic, spagyric and anthroposophic remedies for Germany—and maybe on the long run together with the French HP a blueprint for a common European one. An incredible amount of work and knowledge has gone into this compendium that has been formed, written and complemented over decades. The next issue to be published will even give a definition of and therefore an acknowledgment of the production of Q-potencies, which was a long and hard struggle to agree upon, as a member of the commission told me.

In a time of defamation of our healing art, all this is a great asset and a rock of legal certainty. Certainty for the producers, but also certainty for us practitioners, who are able to find the exact definitions of how our remedies have been made, what they are and what they are not.

This brings me to the second line of thought. Being associated with (and historically having been part of) the general German Pharmacopoeia the main point in the definition of manufacturing rules is to assure maximum safety and quality of the remedies according to current scientific and legal standards, and NOT maximum efficacy according to homeopathic standards.

The one and only interest of the prescriber regarding his or her remedy quality is that it is made exactly like the substance that was originally proved. Our whole philosophy and rationale of prescribing rests upon this similarity, which is clearly not the main concern of the official pharmacopoeia. Here, the idea is to standardize and adapt to common laboratory rules.

As homeopaths we are—and as well as the homeopathic members of the pharmacopoeia commission—in a catch-22 situation: To assure the ongoing legality and availability of our remedies, we have to compromise with the official rules of producing pharmaceuticals, valid and made for the general chemical pharmacy, which at the same time may spoil the whole point of prescribing that remedy.

Of course for the majority of simple herb and mineral remedies, this clash of concerns does not arise. But the questions of complex and difficult productions as in Causticum or Mercurius solubilis are not addressed at all in the GHP. Picking the most important example: With Causticum, Hahnemann was trying to isolate the alkaline principle without the cation. This is an idea going along with the alchemical tradition and chemically not possible as we know today. (See the important monograph on the manufacturing of Causticum in ZKH, Vol.33, 1989, Heft 2, ‘Causticum: Ätzstoff oder Phantasieprodukt’ [Causticum: caustic or fancy product] by Andreas Grimm.) So the Causticum that Hahnemann got was the result of a contamination of his destillate with kali-ions, which he couldn't detect in his days. Trying to define a ‘clean’ and chemically reliable way of producing Causticum, the GHP laid down rules that do not follow Hahnemann's and result in a dissolution of caustic ammonium, whereas Hahnemann's Causticum is caustic potash—a different remedy, as different as Natrum carbonicum and Kali carbonicum would be. Most colleagues use this false remedy without knowing about the problem; repeated in short words: The GHP assures that for Causticum we get a wrong remedy, for which our Materia Medica is not valid. (Only few pharmacies prepare the remedy according to Hahnemann's rules, see in www.provings.info.)

Apart from these problems, the selection of substances is not at all typical for the way a classical homeopath will prescribe. You will find very few animal remedies apart from Ambra, Apis, Asterias, Blatta, Calcarea carbonica Hahnemanni, Cantharis, Coccus cacti, Corallium, Crotalus, Formica, Lachesis, Naja, Tarentula, Vespa and Talpa(!), and no nosodes apart from Pyrogenium. And no imponderables at all. So whole groups of remedies we have to use every day will not be found in the GHP. Remedies are registered and treated on application of companies, whose interest is to get first in the best-sold remedies list. So we find many herbs and minerals that are typically used for spagyric and anthroposophic medicines, because our way of prescribing as classical homeopaths seems to use the least amount of resources and material making us of least interest to the manufacturing companies.

(Fortunately, there is still the possibility of producing rarely used remedies, which are sold less than a thousand times a year, without a registration in Germany, which gives some freedom to the pharmacies to keep providing us with ‘small’ remedies where an official registration would never pay.)

According to legal necessities, it does not seem possible at the time being to lay down rules of manufacturing that follow the concerns of the homeopathic therapist or doctor to provide remedies in a precise similarity to the ones that were proved. We have to accept this. But it would be desirable and does not seem to me to be impossible that the making of compromises was made transparent for the reader and user of the GHP. A small remark for each deviation would suffice to make it clear for everyone that this certain remedy is not what the homeopathic name intends, so that in times more favorable for homeopathy these few monographs could easily be picked out and be corrected.

Keeping all these in mind, we still have to be content and thankful for the existence of an official Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia, which assures reliable quality and safety for our substances and potencies. And we have to thank a lot all those colleagues who have worked for decades in the commissions and made it possible that this incredible compendium of an estimated 3,000 pages full of information came to be, is still there and growing, contributing to the treasure of homeopathic knowledge and tradition.