Minutus

Picking up on Fran's ideas, it was a combo remedy that introduced me to the power of homeopathy. This was back in the 80s, when I had a severe bronchitis that threatened to turn into pneumonia (as a similar episode had done in the past). That combo allowed me to get off a codeine-based cough syrup. I could actually feel the cough (and bronchitis) resolving hour by hour.
Granted, this was an acute situation, and the remedy did nothing for my constitution. But it revealed something amazing to me at the time: that something tasteless and seemingly innocuous could deal with a problem A/B and narcotic cough formulae had not been able to touch with any lasting effect.
So discourage patients undergoing constitutional treatment from using combos, by all means. But may they flourish in hopes of turning the uninitiated into believers.
Peace,
Dale
________________________________

This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

Hi, Fran --

There have, in the past, been discussions I've been aware of on Minutus concerning the relative value of various treatment methods, such as homoeopathy and polypharmacy. This discussion, I thought, was not one of those, but a discussion concerning homoeopathy and the boundary between polypharmacy and something else within homoeopathy.

If any polypath or tired mother or mountain laggard wishes to do something less than prescribe on the basis of real knowledge of a substance's pathogenetic effects, I'm not proposing to interfere; anybody is entitled to try something different.

The context of the original question I responded to did not propose a novel system of treatment outside homoeopathy, and in the context of this list it seems reasonable to suppose that the original poster imagined that the question concerns homoeopathic practice. If that much remains uncertain, what is certain is that the later comments I responded to by Joe were genuine attempts to understand why polypharmacy necessarily can't occur within homoeopathy, given certain analogies concerning hormones and receptors; and in that context my responses very much concern what homoeopathy intrinsically excludes and why it must do so.

That's an entirely different issue, though, from the question of whether prescribing multiple hormones (for instance) may have value for a patient. This discussion has not, to my knowledge, concerned value; it has concerned the ability or not of such polypharmacy to fall within that very simple field that we know as homoeopathy.

Returning to Didi's question, any implicit criticism that my response offers of the assumptions implicit in the question is not a criticism of the practice of blindly mixing various substances as allopathic medicine does, but merely a criticism of doing so under the aegis of homoeopathy. A simple disclaimer of practising homoeopathy in making such blind prescriptions will render the person discussing it safe from a great deal of criticism otherwise fairly levelled at him or her; and a similar disclaimer by the manufacturers of mixtures, combos, etc. would similarly settle the hackles on a lot of us. But, as with many of the polypaths promoting them, the manufacturers wish to suggest that these mixtures are recognised as having some worth through their association with the good name of homoeopathy. That is not only unfair on homoeopathy's future reputation and highly inaccurate; it is deliberately deceitful, and utterly fraudulent.

Cheers!

John
________________________________

This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

Nice result, Dale!

I am also recalling one of my very-single-remedy teachers who told us that her intro to homeopathy also had been through combos and cell salts.

Shannon
________________________________

This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

Just to add further context, Didi is completely aware of homeopathic practice; she was asking rather for clinical advice.
I think we should agree that these are debates over *definition*, because that has proven thorny enough.
IMO it is a mistake for one person to assume they understand the range and limits of the practice of another person's method. Or in any case, to keep clear the distinctions between definition (which, sadly, depends on whom you ask…) versus clinical effects. (E.g., arguments about what "will" happen when remedies are given together, some of them simply fly in the face of others' experience, of observation. Which, Hahnemann repeatedly reminded us, is king.)
See, that's an example: You are trying to clarify that you are talking about "What is homeopathy" (and what is not), yet as you do so you are making assumptions and passing judgment about that other practice and method. "… blindly mixing … as allopathic medicine does" -- why assume that it is blind; you simply don't know.

No, you know very well there are no pathogeneses of mixtures because:

1. the mixtures would then become a single remedy (see the posts about the Carcinosin and the Plasmodium happening now), and that is not what I am talking about

2. In the correct practice of pluralism, each and every mixture is different and prepared individually according to the patient's needs, so there are as many prescriptions, mixtures, as there are specific indications for this to happen...nobody in his right mind is going to conduct a proving on "something" that is going to be used only once

3. OTC are purely a commercial endeavour and not considered here.

The "separate actions" and 'lack of interference" come purely from clinical observation of well prescribed mixtures, in the few appropriate case they are needed, with well chosen remedies. We discussed that and I gave examples, please see the archives.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind". www.naturamedica.webs.com
________________________________

This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

Well trained pluralists and complexists (if those schools still exist!) do not treat deeper issues, miasmatic or "constitutional" situations with combos!
Once and for all, there is a universe of difference between an OTC sold for this or that and a well prescribed mix prepared by a trained practitioner according to specific indications.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind". www.naturamedica.webs.com
________________________________

This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.

Shannon, yes, that's precisely what this is: a discussion of definition. And why has this subject raised its weary head yet again? Because some of those who can't come out and challenge Hahnemann's definition openly (since they have no right to) wish to subvert it by sliding polypharmacy into it under the door that bars polypharmacy.

You and those others who love polypharmacy but who, unwilling to call it by its proper name, insist upon its identity as some subculture of homoeopathy, could save yourselves all the criticism you imagine falls upon your sensitive souls if you instead adopted a policy of being honest about what you're promoting.

For clarification in return: yes, I'm aware that Didi knows what homoeopathic practice is. And when I use a term such as "blind alternation", it is you who interpret it as pejorative. I use the term in its technical sense -- alternation of prescription without reference to changing symptoms -- rather than with any suggestion of practitioner myopia. By "blind", I mean, if you like, "without an indicative basis in symptoms".
Didi, despite its long history (as with a long history of blind use of nosodes), blind alternation of medicines can't possibly be regarded as falling within the bounds of a practice whose basis requires knowledge of the patient's present symptoms. You do see that, don't you.
Joe, thank you for your frank admission that you know of no pathogenetic trials of mixtures, since they would -- I agree -- be too much work for the paltry benefits they would provide.
That leaves you, though, having claimed this: “You are completely wrong about polypharmacy not knowing the primary effect of the medicine”. That claim, as you have just demonstrated, is false. Polypharmacy is, in the terms I’ve defined above, blind prescription: it is prescription without a basis in knowledge of the effects of what it is prescribing. It therefore is child’s play to understand that it falls outside the bounds of a medical system whose sole principle depends upon three things, one of which is missing here: knowledge of the effects of the medicine upon the healthy.
Squirm, accuse, and hedge as you will: polypharmacy, however valuable you may find it, can't ever meet the principle that requires knowledge of those pure effects.
Kind regards,
John
--
In consigning its regulatory powers to its subject corporations, a government surrenders its electoral right to govern.

Once again you are twisting my words and using a spelling mistake, I should have written medicineS.
We know the effects of each component in the mix and so we know the potential effect of the different remedies acting in synergy, through different pathways, on the same target.

Now you can use the word "potential" as demonstration that this is only a hypothesis. It is confirmed by the clinical use, and each and every remedy has many different actions, not all of them are active as this depends upon the receptivity of the patient.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind". www.naturamedica.webs.com

I beg your pardon if I've twisted your words, Joe, but I fail to see how I did so. And I'm sorry that you wrote something you didn't mean to, but please don't hold me accountable for it.

If the plural "medicines" was supposed to be in the sentence I correctly quoted with a singular medicine, I fail to see the significance of its plurality, unless it's to emphasise that you're speaking of mixtures. In any case, I interpreted your use of "medicine" to mean the mixture, so I fail to understand that you have any reasonable objection to my response.

Now, as to the substantial part of what you're saying here: knowing the effects of each component in the mix gives you, as you've amply demonstrated time and again and as we all know well, at best a guess as to what that mix might do. As you so candidly say, it is merely a hypothesis, a guess; and homoeopathy's most fundamental point of difference from allopathy is that it knows -- does not guess -- the relationship that the medicine's symptoms have to the patient's symptoms.

Now, one difference between double-guessing -- as, below, you have indicated you consider a valid means of acquiring knowledge -- and confirming a hypothesis is that one is possible and the other is not. You can always build guesses upon guesswork; that much is possible. The result, of course, is merely a guess of no greater certainty than the strongest guess in your construction and probably of less certainty than the weakest; but it is at least possible. It's utterly different, though, from confirming a hypothesis, something that no scientist of any credibility would claim to do since it's simply not possible in the scientific method to confirm a hypothesis; only to disprove it.

The other difference, and the important one for our purposes, concerns the nature of the evidence you'd use to "confirm" your guess or hypothesis, and raises several interesting and wholly pertinent questions.

First, what your hypothesis actually is, in any particular case (let alone the general case here), I defy you to name. Is it that the effects of a particular mixture (one you may care to name) is equal to the sum of effects of its component medicines? Is it some modification of this, with additions and subtractions that, as Hahnemann said, conveniently fly into your mouth just as a pigeon does for your lunch? Just what is this scientific hypothesis, exactly?

Second, would you claim that your "confirmation" of the stable positive (i.e. pathogenetic) effects of the one mixture in various potencies will apply to any mixture of the same substances, no matter in what proportions?

Third, what kind of evidence would serve to "confirm" your hypothesis sufficiently that you'd then generalise it to mixtures of other medicines, or even to all possible mixtures of the same medicines already "confirmed"?

Fourth, how could what you call clinical evidence -- by which I take you to mean noting removal of symptoms -- in any way confirm that the mixture could produce such a symptom, when such an inference is not possible even from the "clinical" effects of a single medicine? You must know that all medicines are capable of removing symptoms that they are not capable of causing; removal of a symptom, then, cannot, can it, constitute "confirmation" of its power to produce it, not even once -- let alone in various potencies, as a true medicine does.

And just one reason -- once again -- that there is no reason even to suppose that mixtures produce pathogeneses stable across the potencies is that the proportions of aqueous O–H bonds that the various components in the mixture directly influence varies as the mixture is variously diluted and potentised. More to the point, there is no reason -- and can't possibly be sufficient reason -- to suppose that any pathogenesis produced by a particular potency of a particular mix of medicines in particular proportions will remain predictable from potency to potency.

To add fuel to this particular conflagration: there is no reason to suppose even that a particular mix in particular proportions is capable of causing the same symptoms in a range of individuals as a single medicine is. And I can offer one very good reason for supposing it will not and cannot. Let me illustrate it with a rather generalised example. Take two medicines, A and B, A being worse by hot weather and B being better by hot weather. Give an equal (however you'd like to define that) mix of the two to volunteer no. 1 and volunteer no. 2, #1 being a person more sensitive to A, and #2 being more sensitive to B. What effect will hot weather have on #1? Or course, he will be aggravated by it. What effect will the same weather have on #2? Why, shock and wonder, he will be ameliorated by it.

The entire absurd edifice of fairy tales upon which the mirage of polypharmacy-as-homoeopathy rests crumbles as soon as you examine any aspect of it, because it consists in nothing more than smoke, mirrors, stumbling in the dark, and prayer. You (by which I mean anybody) can no more predict the pathogenetic effects of any arbitrary mixture of true medicines than you can predict the pathogenetic effects of any untested single substance -- "clinical" investigations notwithstanding.

The delusion that our vast "clinical" experience of something as stable as a particular carcinosin made from a single tumour, or, better still, a plant long used in herbalism, such as Calendula officinalis, will serve in place of pathogenetic trials is comforting, isn't it; but it remains a delusion. The medicine we prescribe when we prescribe it without the guidance of pathogenetic trials, we prescribe allopathically.

This is a message that Hahnemann gave us time and time and time again. It occurs throughout the Organon, and throughout other writings. The message is this: there is no substitute for pathogenetic trials in homoeopathy. And that applies as much to mixtures of medicines -- the unknown and unknowable results of which, as you've admitted, nobody has, to our knowledge, even attempted to learn -- as it does to a single, simple medicinal substance, whose pathogenetic results we know will be consistent precisely because it is a single, simple medicine.

Kind regards,

John

Pontificating and theorizing as usual, same old arguments, especially your example of remedies A and B.

No reason to "suppose" can and is inverted in no reason not to suppose....etc,...ad nauseam...

You will continue to pose as the white knight defender of purity immersed in his own ocean of words, I will continue to follow Aphorism 1, cure my patients.

Have a nice evening, don't bother answering, I am not continuing this thread, at least not with you.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind". www.naturamedica.webs.com