Single Remedy

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

Dear Shannon

I liked the question you asked. I hope I have understood it correctly.

Sure - we have all seen it - the patient comes and sees you and gives a
case, you prescribe on what you see, and nothing happens! You check, and
yes you have selected the correct remedy on the info available.

Both patient and homoeopath continue and then eventually at some stage the
patient some how reveals a bit of info which has been the key to the case
all along, you change the remedy to a new one and BANG.

That is not what I meant. Because we are still dealing and managing with a
single remedy.

What I mean is that basically if I may use a legal analogy is alike to
trying to find the guilty.

There has been a stabbing and although a lot of people were around the
victim, we have to find the person who actually stabbed him. We cannot go
around and wily nilly arrest people and punish them. We have to be SURE. We
have to do our BEST.

If we cannot find the person who did the stabbing, then we do not arrest
anyone. But we have our suspects, we keep watch and keep asking questions.

You may say, yes but we may have a case of multiple stabbing (as in Julius
Cesar) where the victim was stabbed by a number of people in concert.
Again if we run the film slowly we note that there were single cases of
stabbing and if we maintain our order of occurrences, we should be able to
find out who did what first and whose blow was fatal. We can then like a
detective deal with the case.

My view would be that we would have to look at the case and treat the most
important symptoms and proceed slowly and gently peeling event after event
if we need to. It is a bit like an onion which because of poor storage
conditions has sprouted. You will find that some of the inner leaves have
gone brown. As we peel from the outer surface trying to get to the heart of
the matter, we have to treat each leaf and each layer differently - some can
be saved and used for food, some go in the bin. This way we may be able to
rescue something of the onion. But put the lot into a blender and you can
then pour the thing down the drain, but have no onion to use.
Listening to people who advocate polypharmacy when challenged it often boils
down to "Well I could see a bit of Nux and bit of causticum and bit Nat-m
and bit of this, that and of the other .... so I gave them all."
As Kent says, I would rather enter a pit full of vipers rather than be
treated by such a 'practitioner'.

My point would be that at selection time our duty suddenly changes - from
the detective and the prosecutor to the defence attorney. Having selected a
remedy, we now have to change our hat and start to defend the accused
(nominated) remedy - why it could not be remedy X. Only when we fail to
defend it, then it is time to prescribe it.

Rgds
Soroush
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[Shannon Nelson]

Hi Isali and Soroush,

If I read correctly, the point here

on 12/18/02 5:44 PM, isali at isali@bellsouth.net wrote:
is (?) that, altho all players have had a part (all remedy pictures are
"there" and could reasonably be prescribed?), *one* of those players struck
the death blow (and in the analogy, *one* of those remedies has played the
most pivotal role. After all, had the death blow not been struck, the
charge would have been "battery" not "murder", and the person would
(perhaps) have recovered. Similarly, if not for the central susceptibility,
those other remedy pictures might have never arisen, or at least not taken
hold in an enduring way.)

So, we can have a situation of "totalities within a (greater) totality", and
many decisions regarding which possible totality -- would that be, "which
partial totality" (smile) -- will give us greatest leverage, but also with
necessary gentleness.
I think about this a lot. Various approaches advocate starting in different
ways, from "deepest totality" ("Mt. Everest or bust!"), others starting more
peripherally. I find it an intriguing question...

Personally, I think that each extreme would be best for a different class of
cases, and something in the middle works just fine for most. E.g. in a
severely compromised patient, you would be leery of going "too deep, too
fast", and would prefer to begin gently, which might even mean palliatively,
to give the person's strength a chance to recover.

But in a person who is very vital but also suffering greatly, and in whom
you *do* (blessed be) see a clear "central disturbance", there might be no
point in messing around with drainage, local symptoms, palliatives, etc.

I trust the above is a pretty non-controversial idea? The good ol'
"it depends", aka "individualization"!
You will find that some of the inner leaves have

This makes sense to me in general terms, tho I'm unable to understand why
one would presume a need for "sequential application of single remedies in
close timing." When we *assume* we know "what will be needed next", we are
not always correct, and sometimes the first remedy turns out to be the
*only* one that is needed.

Isali, can you explain, from your understanding, what might the principles
be that might lead to sequential application of etc.???

Thanks to both of you for interesting discussion!
Shannon

[isali]

such
struck
susceptibility,
and

isali writes: The question of 'totality' of the case is the issue. That is
true for the homeopath and the paradigm of oriental medicine as well.
Sometimes, as Soroush has pointed out, we don't obtain all the information
pertinent to the case. And sometimes we fail to ask the right question. In
either event we seek to paint the picture of the totality of the case as
best we are able with the information we have.

I believe that Andy stated the three possibilities rather well and remedy
administration follows what we observe. I do not advocate anything more
than identifying the 'totality of a case'. Its failure; however, results in
the sequential administration of remedies. It is that scenario that causes
me to ponder the question as to a distinction without a difference of the
appropriate combination or sequential administration.
most
event
different
more
of
palliatively,
heart
some
able
can
Nat-m
an
are
principles
of
meeting
model
from
selected
to

[Shannon Nelson]

Hi Isali,

One distinction *with* a difference between sequence vs. combination is
simply that, if you are going "in sequence", you still have the opportunity
of noting, e.g., "Oh, well she's fine now! I guess I don't need that other
remedy after all." Which has sometimes led to fascinating new understanding
in our materia medica. (I am thinking of a vaguely remembered case where
the prescriber was unsure what to do about the pt's constitutional case, but
decided to begin by giving her some help with serious and extensive
scarring. Then, he figured, he'd get back to trying to work out her "real"
remedy. Turned out he was confused because her "real" remedy apparently
*was* Thios ("a scar remedy" with not much M/E picture known), and that
solved the whole thing.

Now if he'd decided, well, let's give her everything that might help scars,
and throw in some puls and thuja, because those will probably come up at
some point...

Cheers,
Shannon
on 12/19/02 6:20 PM, isali at isali@bellsouth.net wrote:

[jtikari]

Organic remedies can never be - what we call in Homeopathy - single
drugs/remedies, for they contain multiple molecules of many alkaloids, amino
acids, etc. And we don't even know which ingredient contained in the remedy
is actually the remedial factor.
Lets take an example of Nux vomica.
From the Wikipedia a quick study shows it contains:
"The dried seeds of S. nux-vomica (family Loganiaceae) are commonly known as
kuchla. Kuchla contain 2.6%-3% total alkaloids, out of which 1.25%-1.5% is
strychnine, 1.7% is brucine, and the rest are vomicine and igasurine.[1]
Some other minor alkaloids are ?-colubrine, ?-colubrine, 3-methoxyicajine,
protostrychnine, novacine, n-oxystrychnine, pseudostrychnine, isostrychnine,
chlorogenic acid, and glycoside, loganin...."
Which of these is the remedial factor in Nux vomica? If we say it is the
combination of all of these ingredients...then let us not call it a single
'remedy', for obviously it is not. And many of these alkaloids will be found
in other organic remedies in differing amounts.
Jeff Tikari

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

My dear Jeff
You raise this issue every so often.

If you take 'single' literally, then you are right and in fact NOTHING is a simple substance, because almost nothing that we have is 100% pure. There is always a trace of some other stuff present.
However, the term 'Simple Medicine' is referred to in the Organon many times. I shall quote them below.
But the purposes of this discussion, Single medicine is a homeopathic terminology coined by Samuel Hahnemann and the footnote to aphorism 273 best explains it:

"Two substances, opposite to each other, united into neutral Natrum and middle salts by chemical affinity in unchangeable proportions, as well as sulphurated metals found in the earth and those produced by technical art in constant combining proportions of sulphur and alkaline salts and earths, for instance (natrum sulph. and calcarea sulph.) as well as those ethers produced by distillation of alcohol and acids may together with phosphorus be considered as simple medicinal substances by the homœopathic physician and used for patients. On the other hand, those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants, are exposed to great variety in their preparation (for instance, chinin, strychnine, morphine), and can, therefore, not be accepted by the homœopathic physician as simple medicines, always the same, especially as he possesses, in the plants themselves, in their natural state (Peruvian bark, nux vomica, opium) every quality necessary for healing. Moreover, the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants."

Note that he calls the WHOLE of Nuv-v as a single medicine.
I trust this resolves this issue once and for all.
Best wishes

Soroush
From Introduction to the Organon

It was high time for the wise and benevolent Creator and Preserver of mankind to put a stop to these abominations, to command a cessation of these tortures, and to reveal a healing art the very opposite of all this, which should not waste the vital juices and powers by emetics, perennial scourings out of the bowels, warm baths, diaphoretics or salivation; nor shed the lifeճ blood, nor torment and weaken with painful appliances; nor, in place of curing patients, suffering from diseases, render them incurable by the addition of new chronic medicinal maladies by means of the prolonged use of wrong, powerful medicines of unknown properties; nor yoke the horse behind the cart, by giving strong palliatives, according to the old favorite axiom, contraria contrariis curentur; nor, in short, in place of lending the patient aid, to guide him in the way to death, as is done by the merciless routine practitioner, - but which, on the contrary, should spare the patient's strength as much as possible, and should, rapidly and mildly, effect an unalloyed and permanent cure, and restore to health by means of smallest doses of few simple medicines carefully selected according to their proved effects, by the only therapeutic law conformable to nature: similia similibus curentur. It was high time that he should permit the discovery of homœopathy.

§ 141

But the best provings of the pure effects of simple medicines in altering the human health, and of the artificial diseases and symptoms they are capable of developing in the healthy individual, are those which the healthy, unprejudiced and sensitive physician institutes on himself with all the caution and care here enjoined. He knows with the greatest certainty the things he has experienced in his own person.1

1 Those trials made by the physician on himself have for him other and inestimable advantages. In the first place, the great truth that the medicinal virtue of all drugs, whereon depends their curative power, lies in the changes of health he has himself undergone from the medicines he has proved, and the morbid states he has himself experienced from them, becomes for him an incontrovertible fact. Again by such noteworthy observations on himself he will be brought to understand his own sensations, his mode of thinking and his disposition (the foundation of all true wisdom gnwqi seuton), and he will be also trained to be, what every physician ought to be, a good observer. All our observations on others are not nearly so interesting as those made on ourselves. The observer of others must always dread lest the experimenter did not feel exactly what he said, or lest he did not describe his sensations with the most appropriate expressions. He must always remain in doubt whether he has not been deceived, at least to some extent. These obstacles to the knowledge of the truth, which can never be thoroughly surmounted in our investigations of the artificial morbid symptoms that occur in others from the ingestion of medicines, cease entirely when we make the trials on ourselves. He who makes these trials on himself knows for certain what he has felt, and each trial is a new inducement for him to investigate the powers of other medicines. He thus becomes more and more practised in the art of observing, of such importance to the physician, by continuing to observe himself, the one on whom he can most rely and who will never deceive him; and this he will do all the more zealously as these experiments on himself promise to give him a reliable knowledge of the true value and significance of the instruments of cure that are still to a great degree unknown to our art. Let it not be imagined that such slight indispositions caused by taking medicines for the purpose of proving them can be in the main injurious to the health. Experience shows on the contrary, that the organism of the prover becomes, by these frequent attacks on his health, all the more expert in repelling all external influences inimical to his frame and all artificial and natural morbific noxious agents, and becomes more hardened to resist everything of an injurious character, by means of these moderate experiments on his own person with medicines. His health becomes more unalterable; he becomes more robust, as all experience shows.

§ 142

But how some symptoms1 of the simple medicine employed for a curative purpose can be distinguished amongst the symptoms of the original malady, even in diseases, especially in those of a chronic character that usually remain unaltered, is a subject appertaining to the higher art of judgement, and must be left exclusively to masters in observation.

1 Symptoms which, during the whole course of the disease, might have been observed only a long time previously, or never before, consequently new ones, belonging to the medicine.

§ 143

If we have thus tested on the healthy individual a considerable number of simple medicines and carefully and faithfully registered all the disease elements and symptoms they are capable of developing as artificial disease-producers, then only have we a true materia medica - a collection of real, pure, reliable1 modes of action of simple medicinal substances, a volume of the book of nature, wherein is recorded a considerable array of the peculiar changes of the health and symptoms ascertained to belong to each of the powerful medicines, as they were revealed to the attention of the observer, in which the likeness of the (homœopathic) disease elements of many natural diseases to be hereafter cured by them are present, which, in a word, contain artificial morbid states, that furnish for the similar natural morbid states the only true, homœopathic, that is to say, specific, therapeutic instruments for effecting their certain and permanent cure.

1 Latterly it has been the habit to entrust the proving of medicines to unknown persons at a distance, who were paid for their work, and the formation so obtained was printed. But by so doing, the work which is of all others the most important, which is to form the basis of the only true healing art, and which demands the greatest moral certainty and trustworthiness seems to me, I regret to say, to become doubtful and uncertain in its results and to lose all value.

Footnote to 273

Two substances, opposite to each other, united into neutral Natrum and middle salts by chemical affinity in unchangeable proportions, as well as sulphurated metals found in the earth and those produced by technical art in constant combining proportions of sulphur and alkaline salts and earths, for instance (natrum sulph. and calcarea sulph.) as well as those ethers produced by distillation of alcohol and acids may together with phosphorus be considered as simple medicinal substances by the homœopathic physician and used for patients. On the other hand, those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants, are exposed to great variety in their preparation (for instance, chinin, strychnine, morphine), and can, therefore, not be accepted by the homœopathic physician as simple medicines, always the same, especially as he possesses, in the plants themselves, in their natural state (Peruvian bark, nux vomica, opium) every quality necessary for healing. Moreover, the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants.

§ 274

As the true physician finds in simple medicines, administered singly and uncombined, all that he can possibly desire (artificial disease-force which are able by homœopathic power completely to overpower, extinguish, and permanently cure natural diseases), he will, mindful of the wise maxim that "it is wrong to attempt to employ complex means when simple means suffice," never think of giving as a remedy any but a single, simple medicinal substance; for these reasons also, because even though the simple medicines were thoroughly proved with respect to their pure peculiar effects on the unimpaired healthy state of man, it is yet impossible to foresee how two and more medicinal substances might, when compounded, hinder and alter each other’s actions on the human body; and because, on the other hand, a simple medicinal substance when used in diseases, the totality of whose symptoms is accurately known, renders efficient aid by itself alone, if it be homœopathically selected; and supposing the worst case to happen, that it was not chosen in strict conformity to similarity of symptoms, and therefore does no good, it is yet so far useful that it promoted our knowledge of therapeutic agents, because, by the new symptoms excited by it in such a case, those symptoms which this medicinal substance had already shown in experiments on the healthy human body are confirmed, an advantage that is lost by the employment of all compound remedies.1

1 When the rational physician has chosen the perfectly homœopathic medicine for the well-considered case of disease and administered it internally, he will leave to irrational allopathic routine the practice of giving drinks or fomentations of different plants, of injecting medicated glysters and of rubbing in this or the other ointment.
From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of jtikari
Sent: 20 September 2013 04:45
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Cc: Mintus Group
Subject: [Minutus] Single Remedy
Organic remedies can never be - what we call in Homeopathy - single
drugs/remedies, for they contain multiple molecules of many alkaloids, amino
acids, etc. And we don't even know which ingredient contained in the remedy
is actually the remedial factor.
Lets take an example of Nux vomica.
From the Wikipedia a quick study shows it contains:

"The dried seeds of S. nux-vomica (family Loganiaceae) are commonly known as
kuchla. Kuchla contain 2.6%-3% total alkaloids, out of which 1.25%-1.5% is
strychnine, 1.7% is brucine, and the rest are vomicine and igasurine.[1]
Some other minor alkaloids are ?-colubrine, ?-colubrine, 3-methoxyicajine,
protostrychnine, novacine, n-oxystrychnine, pseudostrychnine, isostrychnine,
chlorogenic acid, and glycoside, loganin...."

Which of these is the remedial factor in Nux vomica? If we say it is the
combination of all of these ingredients...then let us not call it a single
'remedy', for obviously it is not. And many of these alkaloids will be found
in other organic remedies in differing amounts.

Jeff Tikari