Hi, Shannon --
I'm laughing at the idea that the enemies of homoeopathy will overlook
all the inbuilt assumptions and claims of the polypharmacists and
sympathetic magicians contributing to this list if they're left
undisputed as inherently "homoeopathic" in nature than if half a dozen
of us make clear that such practices, though undoubtedly wondrous and
phantastical in their wyccedly divine nature, are not, have never
been, and can never be part of homoeopathic practice itself.
If I were to assert all kinds of untrue things about you to this list
and, in replying, you left those assertions uncontested, would you
expect the list to realise that those things were false or forget
them? Or would you act on some other assumption and correct the
assertions with the facts?
I think you'd correct me, wouldn't you?
If you don't think so, shall we test it?
The memory of water -- or at least of a water-alcohol solution -- that
many of us know must be a fact by the results of its use in the sick
(and even in the healthy!) is inherently implausible to many. That's
what I meant.
Yes... though this seems less certain a moment later...
We seem to have all agreed, after quite a lot of discussion, that
homoeopathy is fundamentally based on the Law of Similars. (Surely
that is the starting point of any understanding of homoeopathy: drug
provings on the healthy, the similar single remedy. We all remember
this now, don't we?) Those who would assert that homoeopathy is based
on some other, somewhat similar principle are having themselves on.
It takes but a single reading of the _Organon_ or a dictionary entry
to confirm this. We're not going to have to repeat the entire
conversation yet again, are we, I hope, in order to establish this
once more!
Yes; the problem here seems to be one of media one-sidedness, so that
factual correction of baseless assertions -- the basis of science! --
remains unpublished.
Homoeopathy has only one thing to prove. To give it two, three,
twenty things to defend is to broaden the target for attack and render
it vulnerable where it need not be.
No doubt they are.
No, I'm addressing the need to be clear on what is and what is not
essential to homoeopathic practice. Even potency, valid and useful as
it is, is not an essential part of homoeopathic practice. And that
fact can be turned to our advantage if we use our intelligence to make
it so.
We can invite them to consult a dictionary. That should be a
sufficiently stinging insult to have them think more carefully before
attacking something whose fundamental nature they have taken no
trouble to learn anything about.
"Proof" of the Law of Similars has to take two forms, I think: factual
evidence that it works, and factual evidence of how it could possibly
work (in contravention of so-called common sense). The first is a
matter of finding ways to get the facts out about clinical trials and
to conduct trials that better suit homoeopathy's methods. The second
is a matter of physics research, which has come a long way in the last
decade. The June edition of _Similia_ (Australian) and the July
edition of _Homeopathy_ (British) provide very recent evidence in this
latter vein.
Kind regards,
John
