Adolf Voegeli 1898 – 1993

Adolf Voegeli 1898 – 1993 was a Swiss Radiologist in Zurich before he converted to homeopathy in 1930.

Thereafter, he worked as a homoeopathic physician in Pully near Lausanne. He was one of the founders of the Zeitschrift für Klassische Homöopathie in 1957.

Adolf Voegeli is one of the homeopaths who promoted the LM range of homeopathic remedies.

One of the physicians criticized by Schoeler for holding on to the high potencies and even going a step further was the Swiss homoeopath Dr Adolf Voegeli. He had been a successful radiologist in Zurich before he turned to homoeopathy in the late 1930s, after reading a book by the famous French homeopath Leon Vannier. From 1939 up to his death Voegeli worked as a homoeopathic physician in Pully near Lausanne.

He was one of the founders of the Zeitschrift für Klassische Homöopathie in 1957. One chapter in his work Heilkunst in neuer Sicht (1955), which saw several editions, is dedicated to the “potentisation on the 50 millesimal scale” where he describes the manufacturing specifications as set out by Samuel Hahnemann in §270 of the sixth edition of the Organon.

At the same time he was fully aware that such unimaginable dilutions would be grist to the mill of the opponents of homoeopathy:

“The allopaths usually accuse us of using too small dosages that cannot possibly have an effect. They are referring to doses which seem small to the rational mind, doses of a millionth or a billionth gram.

“That means they are passing a judgement about these relatively high dosages, often without having a clear idea of what a 30th centesimal or even a 12th 50 millesimal potency (referred to below as LM) actually is.”

Voegeli admits that he also had initially questioned the efficacy of such highly diluted remedies. But after putting them to the test in his practice he became convinced that Hahnemann had been right with his new potentisation method:

“In thousands of tests I had to convince myself that the 50 millesimal potencies achieve much stronger and longer lasting curative effects than the centesimal potencies.”

Voegeli’s explanation for the efficacy of these “astronomic dilutions” was that during succussion “energetic properties” were transferred from the medical substance to the solvent. He therefore calls the 50 millesimal potencies (from LM 4) “insubstantial, biological energy units”.

We find similar attempts at an explanation, which were influenced by nuclear physics, in the later homeopathic literature. It is not possible to determine whether Voegeli was already aware of Rudolf Flury’s experiments with Q-potencies at the time, but we cannot rule it out altogether seeing they both were Swiss homeopaths.

Voegeli’s ‘teacher’, Leon Vannier, certainly knew about them and did not think much of them…

… a Who’s Who of the Q-potency pioneers - apart from the homeopaths already mentioned - Mathias Dorcsi, Hartmut Oemisch (1901–1992), Jost Kunzli von Fimmelsberg, Pierre Schmidt, Rudolf Flury and Adolf Voegeli, he lists Ernst H Schmeer, one of Voegeli’s students, Willi Sewerin - the founder of Arcana Remedies, Jacques Baur and Hanns C Laudenberg (*1915), the two latter being students of Pierre Schmidt…

Soon after Voegeli’s first seminars in Freiburg and Uberlingen, the first seminar participants were supplied with Arcana LM Potencies… With regard to the dosage the guidelines in Voegeli’s _Das ABC der Gesundheit_ were recommended…

From the beginning, Arcana Remedies has called the 50 millesimal potencies LM potencies (L=50, M =1,000), based on the notations provided by Rudolf Flury and Adolf Voegeli… Adolf Voegeli’s book Heilkunst in neuer Sicht published in 1955, was responsible for the sudden demand in the mid-1950s…

The first homeopath to discover the changes in the sixth edition of the Organon was the Swiss Rudolf Flury, who began to manufacture Q-potencies right from 1942, just 100 years upon the completion of the manuscript of the 6th Organon.

It is obviously also him who invented the term “LM potencies”. Rudolf Flury communicated his discovery to his compatriot Charles Pahud, who introduced the Q-potencies in the French-speaking countries and also inspired Adolf Voegeli to prepare and prescribe Q-potencies.

Concurrently, Pierre Schmidt and his follower Jost Kunzli von Fimmelsberg discovered the new prescriptions for preparing medicines in the 6th Organon and began to produce all so-called antipsoric remedies in the form of Q-potencies from 1949 onwards.

Adolf Voegeli wrote Heilkunst in neuer Sicht, Das ABC der Gesundheit, Homeopathic Prescribing, Die Kreislauferkrankungen, Leit- und wahlanzeigende Symptome der Homöopathie, Homeopathy for rheumatic diseases, Homeopathic treatment of childhood diseases, Asthma and its treatment, The correct homeopathic treatment of acute diseases: With Repertorium, The correct homeopathic treatment in everyday practice. With Repertorium, Stomach, liver and gall diseases, Healing art in a new perspective, The circulatory diseases Heart, blood vessels and systemic diseases,