Possibly Naive Question

[jill1313]

Hi folks. I was emailing with someone who recently graduated from Heilkunst (Rudy Verspoor). I didn't know much about it at the time. It appears they believe this is the real Hahnemann approach and that classical homeopathy is inadequate. Our email correspondence was confusing to me. I mentioned that a description of Cinchona I'd read (and which had come to me as a remedy intuitively) seemed like a constitutional remedy for me. Here's what she wrote:

"Cinchona is the name of a disease called Cinchona disease (its symptoms are listed in the Materia Medica), and ALSO the name given to the remedy that cures it, which is the remedy called Cinchona, as in 'like cures like'. The remedy Staphysagria cures Staphysagria disease, the remedy Nat-mur cures grief disease, and so on - the Law of Similars. I have studied the Organon and Dr. Hahnemann's Heilkunst for 5 years. China/Cinchona is not a constitutional remedy. A constitutional remedy would support your constitution in health but not annihilate disease."

I wrote back that cinchona was a remedy not a disease and the first one that Hahnemann had proved etc. So I didn't know what she was talking about. Neither had I ever heard someone talk about "Staphysagria disease" per se.

She forwarded my email to the practitioner who had trained her. And got this reply:

"Cinchona, or China officinalis, is a disease. Dr. Hahnemann used it to cure the China-like disease in someone suffering from the same
symptoms as were caused, in healthy individuals, by ingesting that
substance. That is his law of similars.
However, it is not a constitutional remedy by any stretch of the
imagination. Heilkunst is the SYSTEM OF MEDICINE that was created by Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathy is one small part of that system. His first epic tome was "Organon der Heilkunst.""

I wrote back that certainly there are experienced homeopaths who regard China as a constitutional remedy. She agreed but indicated that's not their (Heilkunst) belief.

In addition, it seems like she/they think you can heal shocks and traumas by doing so in reverse, addressing each trauma with a remedy.I don't understand how this is so. Suppose you had six "aconitum" type shocks over many decades? How does your body know which shock from the past you are addressing? I find it confusing.

And why do they think there are eight miasms for each person?

I believe there is at least one Heilkunstler on this list. This new homeopath/Heilkunstler studied it because she was healed of bad interstitial cystitis with it and feels very healthy now. I myself am suffering the worst episode of such in my life--I've had it twice before in the last 17 years but never this bad and drugs are impossible for me so I know I have to see a homeopath now and am trying to figure out which direction to take (usually i just experiment with my own remedies and acutes. I still have china LM5 here which came to me intuitively and I wrote about to the list a while ago but I never did take it.)

[Irene de Villiers]

Rudy has his followers, but it can be hard to find logic in the
approach advocated.
For example, any remedy can be a constitutional remedy if it matches
that individual's constitutional type.
It can also be a simillimum in any illness hat has the illness
symptom WITHIN the range of action of the remedy as documented in
provings and cured cases in the materia medica.
(I emphasize "within" because what other symptoms the remedy can help
- ones not present in the case - are not relevant to its selection -
ONLY the symptoms of the individual are relevant - and need to be
found within a remedy. The remedy that contains the best set from
the ill individual is the best match or simillimum.

Rudy's approach is not classical homeopathy - he was actually fired
from the British Institute of Homeopathy for teaching his system
there instead of classical homeopathy. So his system is
congtroversial for sure. Classical homeopathy includes ALL that
Hahnemann taught by the way.
NO there is no such thing.
Cinchona has tens of thousands of rubrics (proven symptoms it can
help in an ill individual) including many opposite ones. These
rubrics are like a supermarket for symptoms China can help. This huge
list of rubrics can not be a disease (with conflicting symptoms?).
However if an illness with say 10 or 20 significant symptoms, falls
within the range of the 10,000 or more China rubrics, then the 10 or
20 symptoms will be helped by the China remedy. (It then is
irrelevant what the other 9,980 rubrics are about. They may be needed
in a different China-needing case.)
We match only the PART of the symptom supermarket which China can help.

The Likes cures Like, applies in EACH case needing China, as long as
the symptoms of the sick individual are WITHIN the list that applies
for China.
If they fit better within the list of rubrics for say Phos, then Phos
will be the needed remedy for that illness in thsat person. (There is
No Phos disease either of course - Phos is a substance from which a
remedy was made, to capture and potentize the energy signature of
Phos, to use for healing purposes.
it also has tens of thousands of symptoms it has been shown to have
helped, WHEN the individual's illness issues are represented WITHIN
the Phos list.
It makes no sense to call that huge list a disease.
Correct.
That is not his or anyone's law of similars.
The law of similars has been around since Hippocrates time, it is a
law of nature, not of Hahnemann.
Hahnemann uses it better than people did before him.
Law of Similars is an effect seen in nature whereby an identical
disese or an opposite one will not cure - but a simialr disease will
cure. A remedy is used like an artificial disease.
So if you have say 20 China symptoms, and 19 of them are in the China
list, it will be similar enough to cure you.
Of if you get a burn on your finger, you can run it under the tap and
gradually increase the water temperature (without doing it so fast as
to get uncomfortable) till it is as hot as you can manage - and the
burn will be gone if you then remove the finger frojmt eh hot water
tap. That is cure by Law of Similars. Nothing to do with remedies or
Hahnemann or "hot water disease"
If instead you put the burn on an ice block, the burn will be
suppressed - not cured - you will not feel it while it is suppressed
- and when you remove the finger, the burn will still hurt. The ice
block is allopathic (allo = against or opposite or contrary) Ice is
cold, opposite to burn, and so it will suppress not cure. Opposite of
Law of Similars.
Hot water is similar to the burn as it provides heat - and assuming
the burn is mild, it will cure it. (If not mild it needs POTENTIZED
remedy.
THAT is the Law of Similars. In this example hot water is a zero
potency homeopathic remedy, where heat of water is similar to heat of
burn.
Me too. I like what Hahnemann has said. It makes sense, that does not.

For your situation I suggest - Have a homeopath help you find the
MOST similar remedy that CONTAINS your symp;toms in its action list.
Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

[John Harvey]

Irene, "classical homoeopathy" will be whatever one defines it to be, as there is not yet an authoritative definition of it as there is of "homoeopathy". So there's a term you can argue over and never be wrong about.
I think that Luise is correct: that you have missed the point of the Heilkünst practitioner's remarks. The practitioner was saying something quite significant: that the symptoms caused by Cinchona in any person can be summed up as an occurrence of the disease caused by Cinchona, which can be perfectly adequately named "Cinchona disease".
This much is evidently correct. And it illustrates perfectly that a remedy's genuinely cured symptoms cannot be relied upon as an indication of its pathogenesis. But the explanation of the law of similars that the practitioner gave (though it relied on a specific example rather than remaining general) seems to be accurate enough: Hahnemann used a remedy to cure diseases resembling the remedy's action in healthy individuals. That summation of the method is clearer than use of the example below, which, by the way, Hahnemann himself did use as an analogy, though he did not imagine that one might potentise heat. It's clearer because it refers to medicines; Hahnemann's law of similars specifically applies to use of medicines rather than of hot water.
Assuming that you're not being literal in limiting it to the application of hot water to a burn, your "universal" law of similars, which you call "the" law of similars, is broader than the law of similars underlying homoeopathy. I mention this because without recognition of that, one might easily stumble into imagining that applying hot water (whether really hot or "potentised" hot) to a burn is part of homoeopathic medicine. Certainly it may be part of Heilkünst, though, which evidently incorporates many more of Hahnemann's recommendations than apply to medicine. (One finds some of these in the last few aphorisms of the Organon.)

Cheers --

John

--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

[Shannon Nelson]

Yes, that's the way the term was used in my community.
It pretty much just meant a "long-term" remedy, as opposed to an acute.
Then we learned about Eizayaga's usage, which is *closer* to Irene's
use (and Mangialavore's), but again not the same.
Ooh, can you say anything about it? More confusion, goody!
Shannon

[Irene de Villiers]

I do know that - which is why I added the bit about constitutional
RTYPE.
I like to call that ICT for innate constitutional type and the one
used in illness a "simillimum"
specifically to avoid this confusion.
Regarding calling a remedy a disease....
I believe Hahnemann was trying to explain a new concept - how a
remedy acts "like" an artificial disease, he was not trying to equate
it with an actual illness.
A homeopathic remedy like China can cover far too much for it to be
characterized as similar to any *one* disease.
To call China a disease now - for any reason - would be confusing at
best.
Let's not look for the "at worst" half:-)

I wrote my opinion - or explanation for it - without any concepts
that can have different meanings depending what century or profession
or state of knowledge of homeopathy one has. I lke to go for clarity
(so did Hahnemann but his audience had a different assumption set.)

Namaste,
Irene
--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

[Luise Kunkle]

Hi Irene,
Some people call the simillimum in a chronic disease the
"constitutional". I guess Shannon will answer on that. It is
confusing, especiall since there is yet another meaning of
"constitutional remedy" in the Vienna school (of which I do not know
much)

.

Well, Nah would have contradicted you there:-)

For him the name of the simillimum was also the name of the disease -
which is actually quite Hahnemannian. At H's time there were umpty
"names of disease", which had nothing whatsoever to do with what we
nowadays call name of disease (exceptions confirm the rule, as e. g.
Scarlet Fever). It was often on those names - which were based on what
he called in the footnote to aphor 1 "the weaving of empty theories -
that he fought against. In classical hom. it is often said:"that
person is phosphorus e.g.", which means that the pathological state
calls for phos. Or, expressed differently: this is a phosphorus
disease.

Perhaps the Heilkunst person just expressed it badly or had not really
understood the matter?

Regards

Luise
--
One thought to all who, free of doubt,
So definitely know what's true:
2 and 2 is 22 -
and 2 times 2 is 2:-)
==========> ICQ yinyang 96391801 <==========

[Shannon Nelson]

Yes, Hahnemann talks about that in the Introduction of the Organon.
E.g. p. 53 Decker: "2. A hand scalded with boiling water is ...
restored through a somewhat lesser heat (e.g. by holding the hand in a
dish of liquid that is heated to 60 C [ 140 F] which then becomes
somewhat less hot each minute and finally reaches room temperature,
whereupon the scalded part is restored through homeopathy.
object (a very painful bump) is quite soon diminished in pain and
swelling when one vigorously presses the site with the ball of the
thumb, strongly at first and then gradually more
gently--homopathically."

There's quite a bit more there, along similar lines.

Also, p 49: In all ages, the patients who were effectively, rapidly,
permanently and visibly cured by a medicine--and who did not a) ecover
by some fortuitous event, b) recover because the acute disease ran its
course, or c) finally recover by a gradual preponderance, over time, of
the bodily powers during [in spite of] allopathic and antagonistic
treatments .. --such patients have been cured (althoough without the
cognizance of the physician) solely through a homeopathic medication,
that is, a medication that had the power, of itself, to generate a
similar disease state.
extremely rare, one finds that the predominant means was always of a
homeopathic sort. But t his is much more strikingly persuasive in
cases in which physicians sometimes rapidly brought a cure to pass with
one simple medicinal substance .. "

Fn 35: ". 2) They apply very warm, frequently renewed, pultices to
hard acute swellings ... and behold! The pains decrease rapidly of
themselves with speedy formation of the abscess ... They imagine that
they have softened the hardness throught he wetness of the poultice
but, in fact, they ahve homeopathically stilled the excess of
inflammation through the stronger *warmth* of the poultice...."

Somewhere else Hahnemann remarks that *any* medicine which brings about
real cure of the patient, is homeopathic, because there is no other
way to truly cure.

So yes one can make a case--from the Organon--for the idea that
"homeopathic" and "homeopathy" apply to more than simply potentized
substances being applied by specific methodology.

Okay, silly me--*Hahnemann's* definition of homeopathy is far, far
broader than what's been presented to us as "the definition of
homeopathy" / Hahnemannian! Okay, now I feel dumb... There it is.
*Hahnemann* is defining homeopathy is what I've called "homeopathic
correspondence;" he is NOT defining "homeopathy" as meaning his entire
system and method.

John, what would you like to do with these sections, hm?
Shannon

[Shannon Nelson]

I think what was meant isn't that "a remedy is a disease", but rather
that "the name of the disease" is more meaningfully given by "the name
of the remedy" that can cure it. E.g. it's not a strep throat, and oh
yeah, you could cure it with Bell, but you could just say you've got a
Belladonna throat. Not *the* belladonna throat.

[Luise Kunkle]

Hi John, Irene,
There I disagree from experience. If you keep it in the ice water long
enough the pain will be gone.

Perhaps it takes longer than with using heat - but the process is a
lot less painful.

I have experimented with it - both methods:-)

Sorry, but allopathy is not always suppressive or only palliative.

Acupuncture is based on allopathic principles - and if done well, it
can cure just as homeopathy does.

And the idea that our "allopathic" medicine never cures is also a
myth.

Homeopathy can stand on its own merits - it does not need to demerit
other methods to shine!

Regards

Luise
--
One thought to all who, free of doubt,
So definitely know what's true:
2 and 2 is 22 -
and 2 times 2 is 2:-)
==========> ICQ yinyang 96391801 <==========

[Luise Kunkle]

Hi Shannon,
With aopogies to Prof. Dorcsi, the founder and teacher (he wrote many
books, among geaching at the university etc.) for my poor and possibly
mistaken understanding:

e. g.

The calc. carb. constitution would be fat, pale, lax muscles, lazy,
easily tired..

Phos const: Tall, enthusiastic, slim, red-haired....

more I cannot recall off-hand.

In contrast of Irene's constitution it does not separate between
"healthy constitution" and "non healthy". I. e. the constitution of
calc. carb. would be a central part of the picture used for remedey
selection. After cure he may no longer be a calcium const - although
there may be an underlying level that tends to show up as listed
above.

Regards

Luise
--
One thought to all who, free of doubt,
So definitely know what's true:
2 and 2 is 22 -
and 2 times 2 is 2:-)
==========> ICQ yinyang 96391801 <==========