BFR - parallels with homeopathy

[Shannon Nelson]

And, John,
It may be relevant to your argument here to recall that Hahnemann himself enjoyed drawing parallels between homeopathy and all sorts of other things.
He enjoyed explaining "homeopathic use" of things such as cold, heat, sound (Intro to Organon, remember?).
He stated that any system that *cures* "is homeopathy" -- because (he explains, in that same Intro), no healing can occur other than by homeopathic correspondence.
This is another discussion we have had here in the past, and one conclusion reached, was to make a distinction between "homeopathic correspondence" -- which can give rise to what someone called "accidental homeopathy", where a treatment or substance actually cures because there IS homeopathic therapeutic correspondence (e.g. cisPlatinum drugs in treatment of ovarian cancer), VERSUS homeopathy-the-healing SYSTEM.

Is this ringing any bells in your memory?

[John Harvey]

Shannon, every time we reach this point in the discussion and I answer it, you bow out, too busy or too confused to continue. Let's see whether we can keep it simpler.

There are two issues you raise here. The first is a confusion between argument by analogy and treatment by analogy. Hahnemann used the analogy, for instance, between the similarity of the ability of the shrill cries of fyfes in war marches to drown out the screams of the dying and the ability of a medicine to replace (or perhaps drown out, I don't quite recall) the symptoms of the patient. That is an argument by analogy. But it's different from treatment by analogy, which would have us use fyfes to cure those dying (and screaming) of war wounds. Irene's slippery use of "parallel" here has drawn you into imagining that Hahnemann might agree that it is rational to use fyfes to cure war wounds, whereas in fact Hahnemann's fyfes were connected only with the subject of sound and perception.

There is no parallel between Bach flower remedies and homoeopathy unless the prescription is intended to match the patient''s symptoms homoeopathically. So, in Irene's argument that they're "parallel" because they both "match", it is implicit that the flower remedies are prescribed homoeopathically. As just demonstrated under the subject line "BFR", the claim is impossible to sustain.

The second issue you raise is the distinction that I drew to your attention many years ago now in order to attempt to overcome the confusion between homoeopathy as a purposeful or accidental or lucky result of any prescription method and homoeopathic prescription as a method. Presumably you raise this distinction again now because it occurs to you that Bach flower remedies may be used homoeopathically despite lack of intent to do so? Let me assume that that is the thought.

The question then becomes whether Irene herself was arguing:

(a) that, in the result, Bach flower remedies may (occasionally) be prescribed in an (accidental) homoeopathic relationship to the patient or

(b) that the method by which Bach flower remedies are prescribed (occasionally) conforms with the homoeopathic method.

Irene's argument clearly refers to method. Whilst it's clear that any single (not multiple) prescription by a prescriber of any stripe (e.g. the vet intending to kill the tetanic horse with a large dose of strychnine) may unintentionally (and, critically, unknowingly, since no recognition of the similarity of pathogenesis to patient entered into it) be a homoeopathic prescription, Irene was not arguing for occasional accidental homoeopathicity; she was arguing for a "parallel" between the Bach method and the homoeopathic method.

With that established, please see my last posting under "BFR".

Cheers --

John

[Shannon Nelson]

) Confused? No… Sometimes too frustrated, or just bored.

But mostly it's just busy. You'll have to take my word for it -- or not.

More tomorrow...