The Six-Phase Table: How Illness Progresses, and the Biological Division

Part 2 of our series, ‘Understanding Homotoxicology.’

If the first article in this series reframed disease as the body's defence against poisons, a natural question follows: does that defence unfold in any predictable order? Homotoxicology answers with an emphatic yes.

Its central map is the Six-Phase Table, which sets out ‘the chronological courses of various symptoms of a disease within the framework of the ground regulation’ (Biotherapeutic Index, §1.1.6). Read left to right, it charts a journey from vigorous, self-limiting reactions towards deep-seated cellular damage.

Knowing where a complaint sits on that table is the single most useful skill in antihomotoxic practice — because it tells you both how serious the situation is and in which direction you are trying to move it. The model this table belongs to is set out in our introduction to Reckeweg's model of disease.

Three sections, six phases

The table is ‘subdivided into three sections ... each of which is subdivided into 2 phases’ (§1.1.6). The three sections describe where in the body the contest is being fought: in the fluids, in the connective-tissue matrix, or inside the cell itself.

• Humoral phases — Excretion and Reaction (phases 1 and 2)
• Matrix phases — Deposition and Impregnation (phases 3 and 4)
• Cellular phases — Degeneration and Dedifferentiation (phases 5 and 6)

Crucially, ‘the single phases are transient into each other’ — there are no hard walls between them, only a gradient of increasing severity as the body's regulation is progressively lost.

The humoral phases: defence in full flow

In the two humoral phases ‘the intracellular systems are not disturbed. The defence system is intact and can excrete the homotoxins via various paths’ (§1.1.6). This is health defending itself efficiently.

The Excretion phase ‘contains manifestations of increased physiological excretion mechanisms’ — sweating, salivation, discharge, diarrhoea: the ordinary exits simply being used more vigorously.

The Reaction phase is ‘marked by an exudative inflammation, which enables an accelerated excretion of toxins from the body.’ A fever, an inflamed throat, a productive cough — noisy and uncomfortable, but a sign the body is winning. This is exactly the terrain of an anti-inflammatory antihomotoxic such as Traumeel Tablets.

The matrix phases: when toxins are laid down

If the humoral defences are overwhelmed, the picture changes. In the matrix phases ‘the homotoxins are deposited at first in the mesh of the extracellular matrix’ (§1.1.6).

The Deposition phase arrives when ‘the excretion mechanisms of the body are overworked and toxins are deposited in the matrix.’ Tellingly, it ‘often progresses with few symptoms’ — the quiet phase, easily mistaken for health.

The Impregnation phase is graver: the toxins ‘become a part of the connective tissue and the matrix,’ bringing ‘changes in the structural components as well as their functions’ and signs that ‘demonstrate damage of the organ cells.’ Keeping this matrix drained and responsive is the rationale behind remedies such as Lymphomyosot and Galium-Heel, explored in our article on drainage and detoxification.

The Biological Division: the line that matters most

‘The Biological Division refers to the imaginary boundary between the deposition and impregnation phases. It demarcates the pure deposition in the matrix from the integration of toxins into its structural components ... Thus the spontaneous endogenic excretion of the homotoxins is impeded.’ — Biotherapeutic Index, §1.1.7

This is the prognostic pivot of the whole table. To the left of it — up to and including deposition — ‘a simple excretion of the toxins is possible’ (§1.1.7). The body can still, in principle, clear the problem by itself.

Cross the line into impregnation, and ‘structural and functional changes are found’; spontaneous self-clearance becomes ‘impeded.’ This is where acute, self-limiting illness gives way to the chronic — and why early, matrix-directed treatment matters so much.

The cellular phases: regulation rigidity

Beyond the matrix lie the two cellular phases, in which ‘cell systems are increasingly destroyed’ and ‘the defence system is no longer able to excrete the toxins ... by virtue of its own strength.’ The hallmark is ‘the so-called regulation rigidity’ (§1.1.6).

In the Degeneration phase, the disease process causes ‘serious damage, and destruction of larger cell groups of an organ takes place.’ The Dedifferentiation (neoplasm) phase is defined by ‘the development of undifferentiated, non-specialized cell forms,’ with ‘malignant diseases stand[ing] at the end of this phase.’

Vicariation: which way is the illness travelling?

The table is not static; illnesses move across it, a process homotoxicology calls vicariation — ‘the transition of the indicating signs of an illness ... into another phase, with or without a change of the organ system’ (§1.1.8).

Progressive vicariation ‘refers to an aggravation of the total symptoms and signs of illness’ — movement rightward, towards the cellular phases. Regressive vicariation is the reverse: ‘an improvement of the total symptoms and signs of an illness.’

Regressive vicariation is the therapeutic goal of the entire system. A chronic complaint that flares into a brief, honest inflammation — a returning discharge, a passing fever — may not be worsening at all, but retreating leftward towards a phase from which the body can finish the job. An immune-modulating remedy such as Engystol is often used precisely to help re-open that reactive route.

The takeaway

The Six-Phase Table turns a bewildering array of symptoms into a single coherent line, from vigorous excretion to cellular breakdown, hinged on the Biological Division. Treatment aims always in one direction: to coax the illness back across that line, phase by phase, towards defences the body can once again command.

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Featured remedies from this article

The preparations discussed above are all available to explore:

Source: All quotations and definitions are drawn from the Heel Biotherapeutic Index — Ordinatio Antihomotoxica et Materia Medica, 5th revised English edition (Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH, Baden-Baden, 2000), Section A: ‘Homotoxicology,’ §§1.1.6 (The Phase theory), 1.1.7 (Biological Division) and 1.1.8 (Vicariation).