that the same potency shouldn't be given twice in a row

[Shannon Nelson]

Hi John,

I curious what you feel would have been the best and expected outcome of proper treatment in this case?

Shannon

[Jean Doherty]

I wonder if establishing a life and separating from negative energies is curative?? Jean.

[John Harvey]

Hi, Jean --

It certainly helps one recover, doesn't it. And of course Hahnemann wrote of this in the Organon somewhere: the quiescence of psora etc. in conducive circumstances. Or more likely it was in Chronic Diseases. Cure? Hmm... apparently that is the thing about chronic illness...

John
2009/12/10 Jean Doherty >

[John Harvey]

Hi, Shannon --
The outcome sought has to be understood in relation to an entire case, I think. Obviously the outcome sought is, in its most general terms, rapid and permanent entire cure. But the practitioner who shies away from knowing what is present that requires cure is not only reduced in ability to find the substance most homoeopathic to the patient's condition but also reduced in ability to gauge with any degree of validity the overall direction of change in the patient's state.
Furthermore, the reticence to do the work of, for instance, reading materia medica rather than rely upon repertorisation as a means of selecting the most homoeopathic substance -- doubtless due to the same causes as is reticence to do that other work of taking the case properly and following up properly between doses, i.e. laziness, fatuousness, and, ultimately, lack of true appreciation of the subtleties of the art -- such laziness too renders impossible any dispassionate and informed judgement, by the lazer*, of the patient's progress.
Does use of externally suppressed skin symptoms and of an externally determined house sale as proxies for the overall assessment of all of the patient's symptoms -- which obviously were never known or even sought in the first instance -- justify for a moment a practitioner's declaration that what the patient suffered was a cure rather than mere practitioner incompetence?
To look at it another way: Did the practitioner gauge the patient's progress in relation to her cognitive state, her physical energy, and any symptoms that were not actively suppressed through polypharmacy and externally applied remedies? Does the practitioner have even a basis upon which she might judge the progress of the patient's response to the remedy as opposed to the patient's response to her place in her society, her circle, and her family? Is there anything to this case but smoke and mirrors?
Apparently not.
Homoeopathy has an honourable history of conscientious practitioners who steeped themselves in knowledge of illness both natural and medicinal; undertook the assessment, treatment, and repeated assessment of the gravely ill; and attained indisputable, spectacular, rapid cures through sheer hard work.
Resting happily on the backs of all of them are those practitioners who use throwaway measures of their success, delivered in throwaway case reports of casually instituted suppressive measures, to declare themselves of better odour, and better informed, than the likes of Hahnemann and Vithoulkas.
And you ask what I feel would have been the best and expected outcome of treatment? The question of the best and expected outcome of treatment is relevant, but it arises here, I fear, from the lack of reflection that pervades much of the discussion on this list by practitioners who should have read the Organon sufficiently closely, and struggled to understand its subtleties sufficiently conscientiously, to be able to answer that question -- and a hundred other questions posed here monthly -- as soon as it arises in the mind.
This is not to single you out at all; your question is a good one and an important one. But it's one that I'm sure you know the answer to as well as I know it -- and apparently much better than our esteemed and offended practitioner is prepared to admit to knowing it.
The ego of the practitioner is not the most important consideration in the treatment of the patient. Let's all of us get that straight, and we'll be well on our way.
Cheers!
John
*One who lazes.
2009/12/10 Shannon & Bob Nelson >

[Shannon Nelson]

Well, it's not a fully presented case, and I'm not pretending I can *know* that her assessments about the patient's current state of wellbeing are accurate or complete, but all of those caveats apply to *any* briefly presented case. So my conclusion is that, since you don't like her method, you have made negative assumptions about the outcome, tho honestly I don't see where those negative assumptions can be justified by what Liz *wrote* about the outcome--in order to get to an assumption of harm, you have to first assume (it seems to me) that her description of the outcome was incorrect and/or biased--not impossible, but again, same is *always* true of any case write-up.

Okay, I was just curious whether you had a different goal in mind, but that seems not to be the case.

With apologies to Liz, I'm backing out of this discussion too...

Best wishes,
Shannon

[John Harvey]

Point taken, Shannon: the case is of course not reported in its entirety.

Yet the purpose of its presentation was to demonstrate the harmlessness of repeated dry doses. What it suggested instead is the thoughtlessness of the process followed in the case it reports on. The reporting should give enough for the reader to judge that the case had a successful outcome and that repetition of dry doses in this instance did no harm. Instead, it gives just enough to show that the treatment was polypharmaceutical and suppressive and (obviously) in complete contradistinction to homoeopathic methods, which use a single remedy administered either internally or, in potency, through healthy skin, a remedy chosen on the basis of a totality of symptoms; that the practitioner, far from realising her mistakes, imagines she has "blown Hahnemann out of the water" with her imagined prowess; and that she judged the outcome on a completely untenable basis, the ad hoc selection of two symptoms that disappeared through external agencies, one clearly suppressive.

As a case presentation -- even granting that it's a highly incomplete one -- intended to represent homoeopathic method, the report is a disgrace. The gentle treatment that its author received at my hands and the far gentler treatment she received at the hands of Chris, who could have torn her to shreds rather than tried and tried again to help her to see the case in another light, has been to no avail, and instead has perhaps even incited the view that the case actually does have some connection with homoeopathic methods.

Let's remember and remain clear about some basic matters. A homoeopathic treatment does not address a single symptom or favoured two or three symptoms. It does not use more than one remedy at a time. It does not use a remedy routinely or without full assessment of the symptoms of the patient. It does not use a remedy externally except perhaps in the sole exceptional circumstance that Hahnemann was careful to circumscribe exactly and which occur only at the end of a cure.

One does not break one of these conditions without violating the meaning of what it is to treat homoeopathically -- let alone break all of them.

The practitioner in the case will doubtless continue merrily to bring disrepute upon all of homoeopathy, confident in her fellowship with many others doing just the same. The nature of homoeopathy does not alter through such corruption of its application; it merely becomes covered in mud.

Cheers --

John
2009/12/10 Shannon & Bob Nelson >

[Shannon Nelson]

In what way does her report indicate that the treatment was suppressive? I don't mean what methods might we suppose *would* be suppressive; I mean what do you read as indicating that it *was*?

[John Harvey]

Shannon, what do you think happens when you apply a crude medicinal substance designed to make skin things stop; apply it directly to those skin symptoms; and the symptoms, as predicted, cease? A cure?
2009/12/10 Shannon & Bob Nelson >

[John Harvey]

Let's frame the question a little differently. We may suppose that a medicine known to fairly reliably remove a certain symptom -- dyspepsia, or vaginal irritation, or scabies -- when applied directly to the affected area removes the symptom not by curing the patient, but by suppressing the symptom. But how do we *know* that it does?

Well, how do we know?

John
2009/12/10 Shannon & Bob Nelson >

[John Harvey]

Or we could just take a more straightforward approach. Under what circumstances would we be justified in interpreting the disappearance of a symptom in response to rubbing on it a substance with a facility for removing it as a cure of the patient?

Any circumstances that you can think of?

No?

Then can there be any justification for claiming that this symptom was cured and that an emotional state that calmed through the patient's regaining control of her life too was cured? Can there be any justification in claiming that this was not a combination of straightforward allopathic suppression and a change in life circumstances?

No?

In that case, that's all that need be proven, really, isn't it.

Cheers!

John

2009/12/10 Shannon & Bob Nelson >
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"There is a case to be made for using some of the cretins who think animal research is still necessary as experimental subjects."

-- panamajack,