OK this is funny!!
Posted: Mon Feb 21, 2011 11:52 pm
Andrew, you're not alone in lacking a full insight into this case, it seems. The patient himself appears to be the only one in this conversation with a sense of proportion as to the value of frittering away his life on attempts to make a skin complaint go away -- witness his generous interpretation of mistakes as opportunities to learn. Yet even he fails to demonstrate having had the benefit of any education in what it is that homoeopathy addresses, an insight that all too often is lost in the allopathic conceit that the state of the chief complaint is the chief and even only criterion of success.
I read Tanya's first response as expressing the sarcasm of outrage as to the piecemeal approach that Rochelle's post appeared to express; and, though I was surprised at its vehemence, I thought that at least it offered Rochelle an opportunity to round out the picture.
The picture appears, though, to have no subject broader than that of a skin complaint complicated by uncharitability toward the patient.
How can any rational discussion, any discussion based in the homoeopathic principle, any discussion focusing on the ideal of cure -- let alone any discussion concerning best approach to the homoeopathic treatment of this patient! -- how can any such discussion occur in the absence of all attention to the patient's symptoms; in the absence of all awareness of the patient's overall state; in utter ignorance of the patient's secondary response to the medicines tried upon him; and with no restraint whatever of the patient's understandable proclivity to repeat, in all ignorance, the dose of the medicine whose primary effect, if it is homoeopathically correct, must be to give him a fresh medicinal disease including the very symptoms he is (yes, delusionally) trying to rid himself of?
No relevant discussion of the possibly homoeopathic remedy for a patient can occur on the basis of one or two symptoms. So far, most of us here know of just one, arrogance; and that symptom itself appears to have arisen as a misinterpretation of the patient's (reasonable, I'd have said) relative disillusionment and stoicism. But what is he disillusioned about, and what has he to hope for? He is disillusioned in finding that frequent repetition of a "homoeopathic" medicine has not, thank goodness, been completely effective in suppressing his complaint of concern -- of all things, an itching skin condition! And what he has to hope for is that it will go away!
That is the criterion for successful allopathic treatment, not homoeopathic.
Misinterpretation of the patient's disdain as arrogance would be completely understandable if none of us knew better than to imagine that focusing on the patient's itching skin condition was somehow compatible with the goal of treating him homoeopathically. But we do know better. So let's step back from the itching spot on the poor bugger's skin, let's step back from his skin altogether, let's step back from the insane preoccupation with attaining allopathic ends to allopathic standards, and let's regain our vision.
That vision begins with the highest ideal of cure: rapid, gentle, permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles. If those principles have been so hopelessly confounded with conjectural experimentation, interpolative guesswork, and sympathetic magic as to be utterly obscured, it is not really so difficult to recover them from the mess if one recalls that the practice of homoeopathy -- that is, the possibility of practising it -- relies vitally and entirely upon a complete knowledge of the patient's state, a complete knowledge of the medicine's primary capabilities to induce a state most similar, and an appreciation of the completeness of the relationship of similarity between the two.
When that thread no longer runs through our methods, then we are incapable of finding our way anywhere, because we are already utterly lost.
Kind regards,
John
I read Tanya's first response as expressing the sarcasm of outrage as to the piecemeal approach that Rochelle's post appeared to express; and, though I was surprised at its vehemence, I thought that at least it offered Rochelle an opportunity to round out the picture.
The picture appears, though, to have no subject broader than that of a skin complaint complicated by uncharitability toward the patient.
How can any rational discussion, any discussion based in the homoeopathic principle, any discussion focusing on the ideal of cure -- let alone any discussion concerning best approach to the homoeopathic treatment of this patient! -- how can any such discussion occur in the absence of all attention to the patient's symptoms; in the absence of all awareness of the patient's overall state; in utter ignorance of the patient's secondary response to the medicines tried upon him; and with no restraint whatever of the patient's understandable proclivity to repeat, in all ignorance, the dose of the medicine whose primary effect, if it is homoeopathically correct, must be to give him a fresh medicinal disease including the very symptoms he is (yes, delusionally) trying to rid himself of?
No relevant discussion of the possibly homoeopathic remedy for a patient can occur on the basis of one or two symptoms. So far, most of us here know of just one, arrogance; and that symptom itself appears to have arisen as a misinterpretation of the patient's (reasonable, I'd have said) relative disillusionment and stoicism. But what is he disillusioned about, and what has he to hope for? He is disillusioned in finding that frequent repetition of a "homoeopathic" medicine has not, thank goodness, been completely effective in suppressing his complaint of concern -- of all things, an itching skin condition! And what he has to hope for is that it will go away!
That is the criterion for successful allopathic treatment, not homoeopathic.
Misinterpretation of the patient's disdain as arrogance would be completely understandable if none of us knew better than to imagine that focusing on the patient's itching skin condition was somehow compatible with the goal of treating him homoeopathically. But we do know better. So let's step back from the itching spot on the poor bugger's skin, let's step back from his skin altogether, let's step back from the insane preoccupation with attaining allopathic ends to allopathic standards, and let's regain our vision.
That vision begins with the highest ideal of cure: rapid, gentle, permanent restoration of the health, or removal and annihilation of the disease in its whole extent, in the shortest, most reliable, and most harmless way, on easily comprehensible principles. If those principles have been so hopelessly confounded with conjectural experimentation, interpolative guesswork, and sympathetic magic as to be utterly obscured, it is not really so difficult to recover them from the mess if one recalls that the practice of homoeopathy -- that is, the possibility of practising it -- relies vitally and entirely upon a complete knowledge of the patient's state, a complete knowledge of the medicine's primary capabilities to induce a state most similar, and an appreciation of the completeness of the relationship of similarity between the two.
When that thread no longer runs through our methods, then we are incapable of finding our way anywhere, because we are already utterly lost.
Kind regards,
John
I wonder how he treated the herbalist he saw for 2 years who also appeared to give him the homeopathic Sulphur (and Belladonna)!!!