Arndt Schulz rule

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The Arndt-Schulz-Rule , also known as the Arndt-Schulz-Law , is an alleged guideline for the body's reaction to stimuli. It is:

“ Weak stimuli stimulate vital activity, medium-strong stimuli encourage them, strong ones inhibit them, and strongest ones cancel them out. "

This theory, which is not generally scientifically recognized, was named after the pharmacologist Hugo Paul Friedrich Schulz and the psychiatrist Rudolf Arndt . The two professors of the Medical Faculty of the University of Greifswald developed this guideline around 1899.

In the 1920s, Karl Kötschau expanded the Arndt-Schulz rule in the sense of an “effect type rule”, through which the reaction processes described by the Arndt-Schulz rule should be typified.

An example for the Arndt-Schulz rule: A cold stimulus during alternating showers increases the immune defense , the same water temperature over a longer period of time leads to "colds"; for a very long time to hypothermia and then possibly death. In general, however, this guideline still has to be considered individually, e.g. B. "What is a weak or strong stimulus?"

Furthermore, the exceptions to this policy are so numerous that it should not be described as a general law. For example, many paralyzing substances have a different effect than what the directive specifies. This guideline is no longer cited in modern pharmacology books. The Arndt-Schulz rule was superseded by the theory of hormesis .

The rule is often used to explain regulation therapies (including homeopathy, for example ). In homeopathy, the starting substances are only available in lower potencies in strong "dilution" and the Arndt-Schulz rule is used, among other things, as an explanatory model for the mechanism of action, even if it does not provide an explanation for the common high potencies that do not have any molecules Contain more starting substance.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ History of the Greifswald Medical Association ( Memento from June 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Hans Ritter. Current homeopathy. Theory and practice. Stuttgart 1962 pp. 68-71.

literature

  • Schulz, Hugo: Lectures on the effect and application of inorganic medicinal substances for doctors and students , Thieme-Verlag, Leipzig 1907
  • Schulz, Hugo: Rudolf Arndt and the Basic Biological Law , Greifswald 1918
  • Lange-Ernst, Maria-E .; Ernst, Sebastian: Lexicon of Homeopathy , Naumann & Göbel, 1997, ISBN 3-625-10621-3