Pottyopathy, homoeopathy, and why one is not the other [Was: For John Harvey]

[Dr. Joe Rozencwajg, NMD]

So if I may (although I swore not to get involved....darn....), I would define Homeopathy as a therapy based on the application of the law of similarity, with the condition that the instrument/medium/remedy can be demonstrated as similar.
But then that would confirm what many have said, that group therapy is a form of homeopathy, where you receive a similar dose of the suffering of others, which eases yours.
I have no problem with that........what would psychologists and counselors say if we call them "accidental homeopaths"?
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, MD, PhD, NMD.
"The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind".

[Fran Sheffield]

Hi Dr Roz (and Irene),

Dr. J. Rozencwajg, MD, PhD,NMD. wrote:

So if I may (although I swore not to get involved....darn....), I would define Homeopathy as a therapy based on the application of the law of similarity, with the condition that the instrument/medium/remedy can be demonstrated as similar.

If I can add an important point - it must be more than just similar - it must be similar to the suffering, which is how the name homeopathy was coined - the name does define the practice.

I've never had the time to write this Irene but this is why the treatment you employ, using one remedy similar to the constitution and one remedy similar to the disease cannot be called homeopathy - you cannot homeopathically apply a "disease" to treat a state of health - a healthy constitution cannot be "strengthened" by a similar disease under the name of homeopathy - it is illogical.

To understand homeopathy you have to understand it through vitalism and the resulting relationships between disease, health, and potentised substances (similar and dissimilar). An understanding of this, plus the concepts of stronger/weaker diseases, similar/disimilar diseases, palliation, suppression and cure, while important for making that first prescription, are vital for effective followup case management - they are all fully explained in the Organon.

It is relatively easy to make a good first prescription - like treats like is an easy concept to apply once you understand it. Being able to do this only shows that the person has used homeopathy though - not whether they are competent in the practice of homeopathy - this is shown only when the other concepts are used to guide or modify ongoing treatment.
But then that would confirm what many have said, that group therapy is a form of homeopathy, where you receive a similar dose of the suffering of others, which eases yours.
I have no problem with that........what would psychologists and counselors say if we call them "accidental homeopaths"?
Yes! Many things can be employed homeopathically - not just potentised remedies.
--

Kind regards,

Fran Sheffield
Homeopathy Plus! (Information - Education - Treatment)
http://www.homeopathyplus.com.au
Do No Harm Initiative (Homeopathic Immunisation)
http://www.d-n-h.org

[Shannon Nelson]

Just a couple of thoughts: The practice of "strengthening a healthy
constitution" has been done by others, with claimed success. Eizayaga
is the only one I know specifically, but others use it also. I think
this is the sort of practice that needs to be evaluated
empirically--scientifically, by observation--not on basis of theory. I
can think of a number of ways to play "dueling theories" on this, but I
don't think that would be useful.

Irene claims to have seen far better results from this practice than
from "symptoms only" approach. Wouldn't it be better to evaluate her
observations (e.g. ask, if one is interested, for details about prior
practice and results, what led to the change, and how that changed her
results) than to critique the theory?
Shannon

[Rosemary C Hyde PhD]

I think a statement like that below that homeopathy only fails when people haven't used it well fails to take into account the state of the patient's vital force. It also requires a definition of "fail" and "succeed."
Rosemary

[Irene de Villiers]

Fran Sheffield wrote:

That is true when you are treating pathology - your simillimum must have
similar pathology/pathos.

However support for constitution is also alluded to in the Organon,
albeit not necessarily directly through use of a matched remedy.
If I remember it's somewhere round aph 261. Hahnemann firmly believes
in doing everything necessary to ensure the environment aids in the
healing - whether that is nutrition or exercise or intellectual
stimulation or whatever else is needed. A constitutioal-type remedy
falls into that supportive arena.

So - While simillimum matches pathology - Constitutional type is
about providing the rest of what's needed.
It matches the personality, physical and emotional type/character of the
individual. THAT is what is supported by a constitutional-type remedy -
it is totally separate from the simillimum for the pathology.
I disagree.
There is only one remedy for the pathology - the simillimum.
The one that matches the constitution is as much homepathy as any other
homeopathy Hahnemann used - wherein he supplied the appropriate
environmant as well as the simillimum. That included lifestyle,
nutrition etc. And he considered that part of being a homeopath.
I agree. I did not apply a disease to treat health. I applied a similar
health energy to enhance the health energy of the individual - NO
illness symptoms - no pathology:-)
Just as Hahnemann says in aph 45 the principle is like a stronger
flame replacing a weaker similar one - and I see this strengthening the
constitutional type.
The other principle that has relevance to me is aph 141 in which he says
provings (use of remedy for a healthy state as is the case with
constitutional-type remedy as it addresses the healthy symptoms)
make the prover robust and healthier and more resistant to illness or
anything injurious. Hence the constitutional typ tremedy matched NOt to
illness symptoms but to the normal healthy state of the individual -
strengthens that health.

So while Hahnemann may not directly advocate use of repertorized
constitutional-type remedy based on known healthy characteristics of the
individual, the *principles* for its use are there, and I do not see it
as a stretch at all to employ the principles Hahnemann outlines, in more
ways than he happened to do.
It is not being strengthened by a disease, it is being strengthened by
an energy force. That is not the same thing.
Remedies are sets of energy characterasitics - they are not diseases.

Only a subset of remedy symptoms can be used to undo a similar set in
disease. Not ALL rubrics of a remedy are active at once! Thank goodness!
Every remedy has healthy chartacteristics as well as many pathological
ones, which is why we can say someone is a "Phos type", and Ars type,
a "Calc-phos" type or a Platina" type etc..... it refers to a
constitutioanal type - not an illness.
This is what we employ here in constitutional-type remedy selection.

So - one employs pathological subsets in simillimum use against
pathology - and one applies a subset of healthy characteristics to
enhance constitutional type.
Except there is more to it than diseases.
Potentised substances do MORE than overcome diseases. They enhance
health too. Aph 141 is clear on this.

So if you have a VERY serious illness - it makes sense to me to use a
simillimum to overcome disease AND a matched remedy to enhance health -
at the same time.
That is a subset of what's in the Organon, and it applies only to the
simillimum use against pathology. There is more to being a homeopath -
and that also is in the Organon.

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]

Hi, Irene --
What you're calling constitutional support, which Hahnemann referred
to as removing obstacles to the cure or as treating trivial complaints
by removing their causes, is, if you like, a healthy set of choices in
terms of lifestyle, or regimen. Hahnemann includes (in the very
aphorism you referred to) under that head such things as "innocent
moral and intellectual recreation" and "unmedicinal food and drink".
Do you think it was his intention to use these things to define the
homoeopathic method? Clearly it was not: these things are merely what
ANY good physician will do to help the patient to remain unafflicted
by his or her own lifestyle and environment. This applies to all
means of strengthening of the patient that are not medicinal (i.e.
inherently health-deranging) per se.
Irene, what you're talking about here is not new; it's the observation
that provers are strengthened by the process of provings. What is
relevant to acknowledge for the purposes of the present discussion is
that conducting a proving, whilst it's an essential basis for
homoeopathic treatment, IS NOT ITSELF homoeopathic treatment.

But "constitutional type" prescription of a medicine -- i.e. an
inherently health-deranging substance -- on the basis that its
allopathicity to the patient's symptoms will prevent all derangement
(medicinal action) but its supposed homoeopathicity to the patient's
HEALTH will not remove that health but reinforce it takes a step
beyond Hahnemann's observations of the tonifying effects of provings,
a step that depends heavily on surmise and new theory and that depends
heavily also on defining a medicine as simultaneously effective and
ineffective in deranging health. In other words, it's fundamentally
based on guesswork and makes no sense.

More centrally to this discussion, it violates a central principle of
homoeopathy: the single medicine.

This is not to say that it does not "work". Your experience clearly
suggests that this very particular style of polypharmacy may be of
inestimable value in certain cases in which the combination of
homoeopathic principles and practioner ability to effect them is
insufficient unto the day. It is rather to say that the use of a
second medicine for any purpose, and regardless of any theory that it
cannot act medicinally, puts the practice clearly and irrevocably
beyond the bounds of homoeopathy.

If the practice is of real value, as your experience suggests and may
be confirmed by other kitten practitioners, it's possible that
homoeopaths may add it to their armamentarium of other methods (along
with diet, jokes, and slight manual labour). It's not possible that
it IS homoeopathy, any more than diet, jokes, and slight manual labour
are.
I think you've missed Fran's very important point here: that there is
no principle of homoeopathy that says that a healthy constitution is
strengthened by the application of an energy, a force, or a medicine
that is similar to the state of that constitution -- except in terms
of the derangements from health that are common to both, which
derangements will ideally be the totality of the patient's
derangements.

Or, as Fran put it, "it must be more than just similar - it must be
similar to the suffering, which is how the name homeopathy was coined
- the name does define the practice."

Incidentally, there is no such thing as an energy force; and a set of
energy characteristics is a description, not a remedy. Sorry to be
picky, but the need for this conversation arose precisely through
uncritical acceptance of such loose terminology.

What a bamboozling misnomer such as "energy force" too easily obscures
is that when we give a "remedy" for health on the basis that the
"remedy" won't do anything (except to act in a way that nobody's ever
guessed at on the basis of evidence) or that it will somehow find a
strengthening connection with that state of health (again with no
evidentiary basis), we're practising a nonsense.

If you're saving kittens by doing what you're doing, then an
explanation is warranted; but the explanation you've arrived at to
date is inadequate, as it makes no sense and relies on oxymoron to
appear to mean anything. To attempt to shovel all this into the known
and understood domain of homoeopathic principles is a mistake;
violating those principles in various ways, this practice, wonderful
as it obviously is, needs its own name. If it's ever explained
adequately, it won't be in terms of similar suffering and therefore
can never be homoeopathic, a point that I think Fran made particularly
clearly.

Cheers --

John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"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

[Shannon Nelson]

But it's not necessarily that...
Either in the context (actually health *enhancing*), or in the nature
of the substance itself.
In what way would it be allopathic to the patient's symptoms?
E.g. let's say we have a Lycopodium constitutional type patient, and
let's say for the sake of argument that the acute symptoms call for a
different remedy. So in what way is Lycopodium allopathic to anything
in the scenario?
Not homeopathic to their health either.
The nature of a "constitutional" remedy (as the term is being used in
this context) is that it suits the *distinctive*, or characteristic, or
identifying, or differing-from-average, qualities which the patient
has, *even* in their own state of best health. These characteristics
are not necessarily pathological, but they *are* differentiating; and
more importantly they are part of, and signposts of, a pattern of
"difference" which includes susceptibility; includes the pattern of how
the person is likely to breakdown under stress.

So, the remedy is not homeopathic to their *health*, but rather to
their deepest chronic state *even* during their own state of best
health.
Right; the aim is to remove the *weakness*, or, as you say, to
reinforce it.
Right. It's about the tonifying effects of simillimum. In this case
the similarity is not to a local or recent state, but to the deeper,
underlying, inborn state.
Nope, not new.
Eizayaga developed it most pointedly, but before and beyond that, it is
simply the remedy that will *often* be arrived at as the "first
prescription" in a person whose health has not been fragmented by
traumas and poor lifestyle.
Nope.
Your "explanation" of it makes no sense, but is based on an apparent
effort to *not* understand, rather than an effort to understand. Or
maybe it's just that the context of this whole discussion, springing as
it did from Irene's unusual application, has made the idea of
"constitutional remedy" more incomprehensible than it really is...
(And of course it also doesn't help that the word is commonly used to
me not only "inborn" state, but also "chronic" state, which might or
might not be the same in a given person.)

Irene--please correct me if this doesn't seem appropriate to your
understanding...
Shannon

[Irene de Villiers]

Robert & Shannon Nelson wrote:

Hi Shannon- I agree with what you wrote - thanks for answering it for me:-))

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."