BFR --> homeopathy

[Roger B]

If BFRs are not homeopathic, then what is to stop someone from making a BFR concoction homeopathic. Just because there is this big jump from a flower that one can touch to a BFR does not mean that one could not go farther. In fact, when I made my wife's remedy this morning (I forgot to buy remedy bottles, so I just used a glass of water), I succussed those BFR bottles very vigorously 40 times each before putting two drops in her drink. If that is not potentiating, then please explain to me what is.

And if she had a bottle, I would tell her to succuss it 40 times before she took it.

If I have some sulfur, and I grind it up (the 't' word) and put it into solution in water, then I succuss it a bunch of times and then toss 90% and keep 10% and refill the bottle with distilled water, and then succuss it 40 times, how is this any different from a BFR. Perhaps there is a difference. But, let me surmise here, perhaps the sun method is merely a clever way of getting the flower's vibe or subtle energy out of the flower and into the water. Then it would be merely a matter of going through the potentiating process some more. And BFR merely jumps over the first 6X potentisation iterations. {I think that there may be more than just jumping over some iterations.}

And if the stock BFR or low potency BFR can help one determine if a remedy was appropriate, then one could go ahead and potentise it farther, just like with homeopathy where if 6C is working but not deep enough, then the doctor will prescribe 30C. I am certainly not as experienced with BFR as some here, but it seems to me that I have seen in myself and others that the problem will come back when the person stops taking the BFR concoction, exactly like what can happen with low potency homeopathic remedies. (What a coincidence!!)

Roger

[Shannon Nelson]

Good question!
Nothing at all! Sometimes there is a "homeopathic correspondence" which is used without being recognized (someone takes something for some other reason -- "because that's what we do"; "because it was there"; "because it looks like me", whatever -- and it cures (to whatever degree) because of that correspondence. In that case we would not call it the practice of homeopathy, though we might later realize that there had been homeopathic correspondence; important additions have been made to homeopathy's materia medica in exactly this way (via "cured symptoms" and "cured cases").
Ah, but important to note -- being potentized does not automatically make something "homeopathic"; its relationship to the *case* does that.

By potentizing the BFR you will presumably alter its effects, and would (I assume, based on my experiences with other examples) make it more deeply effective IF it is extremely well suited to her, OR make it less effective if not so well suited.
? Other than being a mineral not a flower, and being diluted and succussed instead of sun extraction…? Sounds more different than similar, so I guess I am missing something!

The example you gave with the sulphur, your potency would be something vaguely similar to 1X -- very low potency, and I am not sure how different this will be in effect from similarly small dose of plain sulphur. I would be interested to hear your comparison!
??? On what basis do you say this?
And if the 30c works *less* well than the 6c -- as may well be the case -- one possible reason is that the remedy is suited only in a local and palliative way, not well suited to the overall case. That isn't *always* the reason, but in my experience it is the most likely reason.
And when we stop eating, we get hungry again. Back to the idea that food is homeopathic too! Actually I am kidding…

The picture is much more complicated…
Shannon

[Maria Bohle]

Years ago, when still a student I did a proving on 'Black Cherry Flower Remedy with Eileen Nauman. Who would figure a flower remedy could cause problems? I was too new a person to homeopathy to realize when i was feeling 'great' after a week or more on the remedy and knew it was not a placebo I should have quit there. I did a terrible proving of that substance. All discharges from all orifices turned black cherry colored, nose, eyes, ears, sputum, etc, etc. Got a lump in one breast (imagine me telling the clinic that I was doing a proving and I was fine, and that went for the pap smear that said there were questionable cells) the clinic went ballistic! They kept calling me and sending me registered letters to get checked out in greater detail. Later on was rechecked and all was normal. Legs turned heavy and swollen and very painful. It took more than a year potentizing and succussing the flower remedy making it in higher and higher potencies to remove the imprint, legs can still bother me today - maybe I do need another dose???

Cannot eat black cherries today either, that is the ONLY substance I have an allergy to, if I eat more than one or two of them my legs will get heavy and start to ache.

Provings are fun, but nothing to play with unless you have good supervision.

Maria

[Tanya Marquette]

A name from the past—Eileen Nauman. I haven’t seen/heard her name in so many
years, I wondered what happened to her.
I did a flower essence proving with her, too. I forget which one. It was a desert flower:
she was doing a series of desert flower provings at the time. Mine was much more benign
than yours. It was calming and centering as I recall. Too bad the effect was temporary.
t
From: Maria Bohle
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 3:26 PM
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] BFR --> homeopathy

Years ago, when still a student I did a proving on 'Black Cherry Flower Remedy with Eileen Nauman. Who would figure a flower remedy could cause problems? I was too new a person to homeopathy to realize when i was feeling 'great' after a week or more on the remedy and knew it was not a placebo I should have quit there. I did a terrible proving of that substance. All discharges from all orifices turned black cherry colored, nose, eyes, ears, sputum, etc, etc. Got a lump in one breast (imagine me telling the clinic that I was doing a proving and I was fine, and that went for the pap smear that said there were questionable cells) the clinic went ballistic! They kept calling me and sending me registered letters to get checked out in greater detail. Later on was rechecked and all was normal. Legs turned heavy and swollen and very painful. It took more than a year potentizing and succussing the flower remedy making it in higher and higher potencies to remove the imprint, legs can still bother me today - maybe I do need another dose???
Cannot eat black cherries today either, that is the ONLY substance I have an allergy to, if I eat more than one or two of them my legs will get heavy and start to ache.
Provings are fun, but nothing to play with unless you have good supervision.
Maria

[Leilanae]

--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "tamarque" wrote:

_______

Eileen's a best selling author now, writing as Lindsay McKenna.

http://lindsaymckenna.com/book-series/

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

[Tanya Marquette]

thanks leilanae
I knew she was an incredibly energetic person, always pushing.
But looking at that list of books, it is clear she is a triple A personality!
t
From: leilanae
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2013 8:36 PM
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Minutus] Re: BFR --> homeopathy
--- In mailto:minutus%40yahoogroups.com, "tamarque" wrote:

_______

Eileen's a best selling author now, writing as Lindsay McKenna.

http://lindsaymckenna.com/book-series/

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

[John Harvey]

Roger, all these matters that look as though they open cans of worms in distinguishing one practice variant from another become relatively straightforward, simple ones in the homoeopathic philosophy when one takes into account the following:

(1) A medicine is a medicine only by virtue of its power to derange health. Anything incapable of deranging health is incapable of restoring, or assisting the vitality to restore, a deranged state to a normal state.

(2) A medicine is a medicine only by virtue too of its predictability. We know that sulphur the chemical is sulphur is sulphur, simply because we can identify one sample as being physically consistent with the next. But we identify that sulphur the medicine is sulphur is sulphur because the medicinal effects of each sample are predictable as being consistent with those of the next.

From this point of view, there are two physically different mineral medicines that, in Hahnemann's lifetime, appeared to be medicinally identical. That may have altered since, and I'd be surprised to learn that any close study has not determined a difference by now, as it would be the single exception. The fact is that in general we have ways to distinguish one medicine from another medicinally -- and ways as well to regard the two as identical. Flowers of sulphur are as physically different as possible from water-based Sulphur 30c, but in homoeopathic they are the same medicine, capable of creating the same derangement of health and capable of stimulating the same return to health.

(3) A medicine's medicinal influence entails something of its history. Though somebody may assume that, for instance, Arnica montana steeped in water in sunlight and then potentised will have the same medicinal effect as Arnica montana prepared according to the homoeopathic pharmacopeia, it may not be so. That's an outcome of differing solubilities in the components of the plant and other factors bearing on the plant's components and the effects of sunlight, time, and water.

Part of the history that enters into the medicinal influence of the medicine is what the water dissolving it contains. So tap water, which naturally contains earth minerals and dissolved gases such as radon, carbon dioxide, oxygen, ozone, nitrogen, and so on -- and which routinely and increasingly commonly contains also fluoride compounds, chlorine compounds, ammonia compounds, hydrogen sulphide, antibiotics, fertilisers, PCBs and other endocrine disrupters, and Roundup -- quite likely differs from pure water both in its chemical effects on the dissolved medicine and in the total load of the dynamic derangements it is capable of inducing. (It's possible that in the highest potencies, many of the lower-concentration contaminants become dynamically irrelevant provided they have not chemically altered the medicine initially dissolved in them. But that hypothesis is not, to my knowledge, a certainty.)

Yet another part of the history that enters into the formation of a medicine relates only to "homoeopathic" preparations. This concerns the destruction of prior dynamic influence. It's something that homoeopathic pseudo-skeptics take no account of: that homoeopathic medicines are easily rendered inactive. This occurs, as you may know, through such influences as strong magnetic fields, significant electromagnetic radiation (e.g. UV light and the radiation from mobile and cordless telephones), excessive temperature (above ~70˚ C), and random vibration such as occurs on the floor of a travelling automobile. They're the destructive influences; the known inverse influences, the influences that create homoeopathic potency, include significant physical succussion (and uncertain, hypothetical ones include radionics methods and other signalling systems; for our purposes here, we needn't take particular account of those that are uncertain).

(4) Homoeopathy treats no mixture of single, medicinal substances as constituting a medicine. Why? The primary reason is that it cannot conform to requirement (2) above. One samples of a mixtures of two medicines cannot be relied upon to have the same dynamic effect as the next. In fact, no mixture of two medicines is predictable in the nature of the dynamic derangement it will produce. And no mixture, therefore, is capable of predictable homoeopathicity to a patient's symptom totality.

(5) Secondarily, there is another strong reason never to use a mixture (or two medicines together) in homoeopathic or any other medical practice, and that is the sheer impossibility of ascribing properly the effects of the mixture (or compound prescription) to one medicine or another. Yes, they can be ascribed through sheer chutzpah, as we see the polypaths regularly claim to do here. But homoeopaths leave such arrogance to those whose prescriptions have no methodical basis in understanding that long-term outcomes dwarf short-term "results" in importance.

(6) Homoeopathy never, ever, ever uses "cured symptoms", clinical "experience" or "confirmation", or clinical "success" as a presumptive substitute for knowledge of (any part of) a medicine's actual pathogenesis (the symptoms it can cause). This is for at least two very good reasons. (a) A medicine prescribed homoeopathically will always cure symptoms that it is incapable of causing. Although it success depends upon its accurate prescription on a basis of knowledge of the symptoms it causes, the odd symptom of the patient's that it cannot cause is equally susceptible to cure. And this is so regardless of how well-proven the medicine is. (b) A cure may be a cure; or it may be temporary relief. What may look like a cure may even be the result of enantiopathic treatment. It may even be coincidence.

Kind regards,

John

[Shannon Nelson]

On Jul 26, 2013, at 9:50 PM, John Harvey > wrote:
I have not read all of this carefully, but -- this above is not true. Consider for instance the "waters" -- water and minerals, most certainly a mixture. Also Causticum is a mixture -- but both of these, of course, are potentized *as* a mixture, not potentized separately and then combined.
? Why would this be?

In fact, single remedies are not entirely predictable either! We can only wish that they were… Because the effect depends not only on the *remedy*, but also on the patient. Patients have idiosyncrasies, circumstances, other influences.

But I see no reason why *theoretically* a mixture cannot be made as uniformly as a single remedy. (Which also is not 100% uniform, as the sources are not always identical (*which* pulsatilla flower, harvested when, grown where… Etc.) and there are subtle differences in processing which are still within the realm of acceptable.
Nor is any single reedy -- tho with sufficient skill of the prescriber, some can come darned close. BUT since you are speaking in absolutes here, I will be picky. If remedy effects were entirely predictable, there would be no need to "follow the patient closely" -- ever!

[John Harvey]

Hi, Shannon --

Back to (4)
Do you ever wonder why Sanicula is not the polychrest it should be?

We've discussed the Causticum distraction before, and you've seen more than adequate answers to it. Causticum is not a specific mixture, but merely a compound with impurities. As recently as January, in the context of the Causticum distraction, I pointed out the following (between rows of equals signs):

===========================

There is some reason to think that a clear predominance is a major factor in the fate of various radicals, ions, atoms, and molecules dissolved and suspended in homoeopathic solutions during the processes of potentisation. (See, for instance, the extended hypothesis on the nature of potency offered by Colin B. Lessell inThe Infinitesimal Dose: The Scientific Roots of Homoeopathy, C.W. Daniel, 1994, which is based partly on observations that predominant dissolved ions increasingly predominate in effect through succussion and dilution.)
There are several reasons to suppose that Hahnemann was completely correct in stating the unpredictability of the interactions between remedies in their crude form, let alone in potency. These include the present difficulty even in the allopathic world of predicting the combined effects on one patient of two drugs that have been prescribed together to many previous patients and his inability to predict such effects despite the rigorousness with which he conducted provings (especially in comparison with almost all modern provings, which pale into relative meaninglessness).
There are several more reasons, as I detailed in a post in discussion of this same topic in 2007 and have offered to re-post, to believe that additional complexities arise in mixing successful potencies of two or more substances. Though these will not usually arise in a potency of a plant substance within which it's possible (most likely due to the organisation of chemistry within the plant itself) to determine a clear hegemony of medicinally active components, they may very well arise in a mixture designed to offer medicinal activity in more-or-less equal parts, as the product of more-or-less equal quantities, of two or more substances unable to combine to form a new one.
===========================

In relation to Causticum in particular, you've already seen the following response from Chris Gillen (July 2012)…

===========================

Soroush, I would refer you to Aphorism 273 before stating "if you mix a few substances and then potentise the mixture, it then becomes a single remedy..." In the footnote Hahnemann explains what he means by a single *simple* substance suitable for homoeopathic application.
Briefly:

(1) Neutral (non-acidic) or middle (low acid) salts which are compounded from 2 substances ... and combine through a chemical relationship in *unchangeable* proportions. (e.g. Kali salts, Magnesiums, Nit ac)

(2) Sulphuretted metals that can be compounded with alkaline salts and which are *always in constant proportions* (e.g. nat sulph, calc sulph)

(3) Ethers which are *formed by the linking* of wine spirit and acids through distillation.

(4) Phosphorus.
Essentially, he refers to a single *simple* substance as one by which its constituents are in constant proportions, or can form stable chemical bonds and exist as a single unit, and remain unvarying during its preparation. This includes Causticum.
===========================

… and, on the same date, from me:

===========================

Soroush, I beg to differ on this point: that Hahnemann, in creating Causticum, did not do so by mixing substances: he created a new chemical compound. Though it undoubtedly contained impurities, as will almost all chemically created compounds, they were, as evidenced by the provings, not enough to destabilise the remedy's pathogenesis. This is a completely different matter from, for instance, mixing more-or-less equally four acids, four alkalis, or four salts and expecting thereby to create a new remedy with a stable pathogenesis; much would be left to chance.
===========================

To save you referring to Lessell's book, I addressed the same distraction more explicitly in October 2010:

===========================

Good question. Incidental contaminants such as appear in Hepar sulph and Causticum may or may not make some difference; according to the understanding of potentisation that Colin B. Lessell communicates in The Infinitesimal Dose, an understanding that concerns the transmission, through succussion, of molecular-bond vibrations to surrounding H-O bonds in H-O-H molecules in particular, a clearly subdominant solute will, with sufficient dynamisation steps, play no part in the total medicinal effect. According to the way the molecular bond motions are thought to populate, or perhaps infect, nearby H-O bonds through resonance, it is predictable that the lower the degree of impurity, the fewer the steps necessary in order to eliminate or virtually eliminate their medicinal effect.

A useful day-to-day analogy may be to the "founder effect", wherein, for instance, the smaller a proportion of, blue-eyed people in an isolated and generally brown-eyed population, the fewer the iterations of natural selection that will result in their complete elimination from the population.

This may explain why Hepar sulph and Causticum, despite their contaminants, appear to have a reliable symptom picture. With the degree of contaminants sufficiently low and perhaps the contaminants sufficiently innocuous (or insoluble) in any case, it may only take a degree or two of potentisation to stabilise the medicine's total dynamic effect.

It may, incidentally, also explain why homoeopathic remedies obtained from plants have continued to enjoy such success world wide as they have in spite of regional and temporal variations in the conditions of those plants' growth: prescribed in sufficiently high potency, the differences between them in dynamic effect have been overwhelmed by resonance with the plant's chief soluble ingredients.

===========================

If we follow the habitual rut of this endlessly trodden discussion, you, Shannon, will now trot out the objection: but many homoeopaths use all kinds of mixtures -- rare earths, entire plants, etc. -- and surely they can't all be wrong. Need I recycle my answers to that, or may we skip it on the basis that you'll search your own e-mail history? Is it possible you'll even refer to § 273 of the Organon?
Next para
See above. And then search your e-mail history for more. Specifically, see the mathermatical breakdown I first posted in 2007 and reposted in the July 2009 iteration of this rut:

============================

Besides those difficulties already enumerated, the matter of unpredictability involves also what can broadly be called synergies. I posted something on this in May 2007. For the sake of informing those newer to the list than that, here it is again, between the rows of asterisks [annotated in square brackets].
*************************************************************************
The concept of synergy needs to be understood as the difference

between the whole and the sum of its parts. In that sense, "emergent

properties" is a good alternative term, though it perhaps doesn't

clearly convey the negative (i.e. negated features) differences

between the whole and the sum of the parts as well as it does the

positive ones (i.e. new features).
The mistake that seems to have been made several times on this list is

to understand the term in a very narrow and improbable sense, as

referring to each drug's giving the others specific assistance in

strengthening the desired pathogenetic symptom. So, for instance,

three drugs that all happen to cause acute coryza have the "synergy"

of acting together to suppress an acute coryza, though without having

any particular relation to the patient's other symptoms.
This strengthening of the pathogenetic symptom at which the

practitioner has taken aim is in fact anything but synergy. The sum

of the parts involved in this particular whole naturally lead one to

EXPECT to see acute coryza as a strong feature in the combination of

drugs involved.
...
Synergy is of its nature unpredictable. The synergistic aspects of

the simultaneous administration of several drugs are by and large the

unexpected ones, and, in using the term "synergy" or "emergent

properties", they're the ones I'm discussing:
• the symptoms that the combination causes that cannot be expected

from the effects of its constituents, and
• the symptoms that the combination does NOT cause that one of its

constituents does.
Such surprises, such synergies, are extremely common and, by their

nature, completely unpredictable in the interaction of even two crude

drugs in the organism. They are equally unpredictable, for many of

the same reasons and more besides, in the interactions between

homoeopathic potencies in the organism, and unpredictable for still

other reasons in interactions between such potencies in solution (and

very likely in mixed powders compressed into pillules) before they

even reach the organism.
The potential causes of synergies (or surprises) in simultaneous or

near-simultaneous administration of two separate moderately potentised

well-known drugs, A and B, amount to
• the effect of A on (the effects of) B;
• the effect of B on (the effects of) A;
• the effect of any new chemical combination resulting from the combination AB
• in itself, on the patient (call this AB),
• on (the effects of) A, and
• on (the effects of) B;
• the effect of A on (the effects of) AB; and
• the effect of B on (the effects of) AB,
both dynamic and chemical [except in high potencies]: SEVEN causes of (dynamic and chemical) synergy (or surprise) -- and this ignores the dynamic effects of the drugs on each other in solution before reaching the organism.
I won't even mention the drugs' interactions with the drug vehicles

(water, ethanol, lactose, sucrose, glucose, and impurities).
The potential synergies from combining the effects of MORE than two

well-known drugs escalate rapidly in accordance with the number of

permutational pairs and higher-order permutations involved. Here is

an indication of the number of potential CAUSES of surprise results in

the interactions of just two and of three drugs:
Two drugs (A and B): seven potential causes of synergy, as above (A on

B, B on A, AB, AB on A, AB on B, A on AB, B on AB).
Three drugs (A, B, and C): 49 potential causes of synergy (A on B, A

on C, B on C, B on A, C on A, C on B, A on AB, A on AC, A on BC, A on

ABC, B on ABC, C on ABC, A on AB, B on AB, C on AB, A on AC, B on AC,

C on AC, C on AB, C on AC, C on BC, AB, AC, BC, ABC, AB on A, AB on B,

AB on C, AC on A, AC on B, AC on C, BC on A, BC on B, BC on C, AB on

AC, AB on BC, AC on AB, AC on BC, BC on AB, BC on AC, AB on ABC, AC on

ABC, BC on ABC, ABC on A, ABC on B, ABC on C, ABC on AB, ABC on AC,

ABC on BC).
And so on.
...
The synergistic combinations referred to above represent merely the

causes of potential surprise inherent in the interacting effects of

two or three simultaneously prescribed drugs on the healthy ORGANISM.
They don't take account of further interactions with those already

affected by natural illness.
They don't begin to take account of what may be occurring dynamically

between potencies of different drugs in the one vehicle (the so-called

"combination remedy") before even involving the organism, our

ignorance of which so outshines our ignorance of mere drug synergy

that describing any purported predictive power as illusory would be a

kindness.
Possibly Hahnemann's greatest gift to posterity was his establishment

of a single certainty: that the curative potential of any substance is

predictable from its pathogenesis. On the basis of this certain

method, we have at our disposal an armamentarium incomparable in its

certainty of curative range and safety and that, as a bonus, can cure

more than it can cause.
...
And that is why prescribing of combination "remedies" can bear no

relation to homoeopathic prescribing and is most correctly termed

"allopathy", the term for a relation between drug and patient that is

neither homoeopathic nor enantiopathic but a relationship of unknowns,

or "other". The one practice has predictive power, and its

predictions work. The other practice rests on a tower of seven, 49,

or more suppositional elephants, and can successfully predict just the

one (childishly obvious) result: suppression of the targeted symptom.
*************************************************************************
In short, true medicines have a predictable relationship with the potencies made from them; a complex of two potencies is a complete unknown, in terms both of its relationship with its base contributing medicines and of the reproducibility of its effects.
It would take a lot of work on many complexes to establish whether relationships hold that are at all similar to those that hold between one dose and another dose of an ordinary drug or potency, and whether they hold between cause and cure.
I don't foresee that work being done by anybody who hasn't the time to prove a single potency. I doubt too that it will be done by anybody who has lacked the mental stamina to prescribe homoeopathically. But time will tell, I guess.
============================
Give me a break.
See above.
I speak here not of absolutes but of predictability. See § 273. See the above. Think.
Cheers --

John

[Irene de Villiers]

Are you sure? I'm not so sure.
I see it for potentized substances eg homeopathic remedies.
Not *necessarily* for non-potentized.

If an epigene in a deranged state, and is methylated or acetylated to a healthy state, where is the power to derange in the acetylation/methylation?
If a dehydrated person drinks water, that will restore a normal state - and it's a reach to call water a health deranging substance.
Vit E when needed, will restore health - it does not derange.
If a cat uses a BFR, (non-potentzed as BFRs are supposed to be) it is not a substance known to derange health. BFRs specifically are known to balance - not go one direction. (unless potentized, and then it is a potential homeopathic remedy after proving - not a BFR)
Same with beach sand - innocuous. (unless potentized.)
Not all substances need to be known for the derangements they cause.
Many can be used directly for benefit.

You feel there are two versions of Sulphur?
"Flowers of sulphur" (it looks like flowers down the microscope) is still plain yellow sulphur powder, not some other substance. It's pure sulphur..... aka Brimstone:-)
This is perhaps John's rule number 459 and a half to throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Of course there are experiential rubrics in homeopathy that are well proved by large numbers of clinical experience records. There is a huge body of work which we would be foolish to throw out because the discovery is through a doorway other than a formal proving. That John does not want to use such information (apparently) is his choice and does not make the clinical knowledge or associated rubrics less valid. Such rubrics have proved themselves over time, and new ones are developed as time and experience progresses.

My paper on some new ones I worked to develop, and which ARE saving lives, is in Nov 2009 Hpathy.
(They are saving lives in an area where no allopath or homeopath has saved a cat to date without them.)
By John's rule, this valuable information, proven to work in practice, should be ignored?
Considered invalid?
Let the cats die?

How does that meet Aph 1?

Namaste,
Irene

REPLY TO: only
--
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."