Thank you for the opportunity, though I'm not sure anything I can say
is going to clarify anything before you post it. It's not-so-early
morning here now, and the fact is that I'm not awake enough to be sure
of what you're saying here. But I think that what you're getting at
is that Hahnemann's use of intercurrents as described here sounds very
like what Irene is doing.
I won't speak for Irene, but I think she'll hotly deny it. (But I
think that Luise will rather confirm it, on the basis that this makes
Hahnemann too a polypharmacist.)
I'd like to see what Irene's response is to the direct suggestion, if
you put it to her, that what she is doing is exhausting the use of one
medicine before administering the other -- or even perhaps antidoting
it by the other. I think she'll boldly state that it's imperative
that the two remedies act at the same time.
I too am unsure why a lot of fuss was made of Irene's brave new double
remedy that's not polypharmacy. But the original post actually had
nothing to do with Irene's kittens. It was a question from a highly
interested and intelligent and humble woman, Margaret in Boston, about
why homoeopaths don't embrace combinations as a standard part of
homoeopathic practice rather than leave them out in the cold.
Margaret drew some great answers, and one of the first of them was
from Irene herself! The kittens came in later as examples of the
superiority of polypharmacy (not called that, naturally).
Irene's most consistent argument has been that what keeps her style of
polypharmacy from violating the definition of homoeopathy is not the
slight displacement in time (though she says that such a displacement
is her more "usual" practice) between the two medicines, as you might
think; it's the "magic bullet" effect: one remedy is for the illness,
the other passes straight through to elsewhere; therefore there's only
one remedy and no polypharmacy. (Also, of course, there's the
argument that Hahnemann's criticism of polypharmacy was not directed
at the use of fewer than three drugs.)
I hope those thoughts are of some use. Only Irene can make sense of
all these contradictions.
The only other thing I'd note, if your intent is to post what you've
sent me, is that it's not entirely clear to me at all points whether
you might be quoting somebody else. (But that may be just my brain
shutting down.) And one small thing, a typo maybe:
"This vital force is thereby too violent and too suddenly assailed and
excited" -- I think you want "violently" rather than "violent"?
Sorry if I haven't done your question justice. I'll read over it
again when I'm awake.
Cheers!
John
--
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"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands
science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We
might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this
combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our
faces."
-- Carl Sagan