Possibly Naive Question

[tg.partington]

--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, Luise Kunkle wrote:

[tg.partington]

I had a semi-chronic joint condition with acute inflammatory flare ups at one time and benefitted a lot from acupuncture. I was told that all inflammatory joint conditions were 'damp' (contrary to what they felt like!) and needed 'warming up' so the end result *was* homeopathic, I felt.
I also got on much better with Chinese acupuncturists who concentrated on treating the condition at the site of the problem than with the UK ones who identified a 'constitution' and stuck pins in all over the place. After all if you affect the energy positively in the place where it is weakest and manifesting, you can't help but affect the overall level of energy positively. The meridians run through the system after all.
In short, the terminology seemed more allopathic than the reality.
Theresa
--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, Luise Kunkle wrote:

[jill1313]

Unfortunately she won't even talk to me now (she is not a friend but was recommended to me by another lymie--and I was originally going to speak to her on the phone about her perspective). Case closed, she was right and had all the knowledge and I was wrong.

However I really feel more impelled than ever to treat myself with a good classical homeopath--and while reading in the park on this beautiful day a butterfly landed on my book page and stayed there quite a while. So might as well take it as a good sign, eh? Caterpillar changes its DNA into butterfly...

--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, Luise Kunkle wrote:

[Luise Kunkle]

On Tue, 30 Jun 2009, tg.partington wrote:
One should do both:-)
After all if

Yes - that is a way to express why one should always include in the
treatment the place where the trouble manifests.
Well no - dampness one should dry. Sure they did not needle a point on
the inside of your calf, near the knee? Or one on the inside of the
foot/ancle? Or...

Regards

Luise

--
One thought to all who, free of doubt,
So definitely know what's true:
2 and 2 is 22 -
and 2 times 2 is 2:-)
==========> ICQ yinyang 96391801 <==========

[Irene de Villiers]

Great example of how important it is to use the Law of Similars

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]

The obvious thing to point out to somebody who thinks this -- even, perhaps, if she is no longer speaking with you -- is that she has compared Heilkünst not with "classical" homoeopathy (a term invented by, I believe, George Vithoulkas in desperation to differentiate homoeopathy from junk medicine) but with sympathetic magic. To give a pertinent instance of the sympathetic magic: a patient was prescribed a remedy made from swan feather, essentially because she looked out at swans every day and envied them their freedom and ability to fly and float. Was the remedy prescribed on the basis of a knowledge of the symptoms of this feather? No, it was not. Was this part of the swan particularly homoeopathically appropriate? No; it had not received a proving. Was this swan related in any particular way to the patient? No. (It was most likely not even the same species of swan as the patient had been envying!) So essentially it was a chance prescription based on a chance encounter between the patient and a wild animal, engineered through the symbolism in the mind of the practitioner.

Of course his success rate is going to be low. It's acknowledged to be very low anyway, I understand; this "method" would certainly explain why.

Homoeopathy, Hahnemann said, has no room for idle speculation and little need of it. Those unable to work at it go to Sankaran and Scholten and imagine they've found something easy that works just as well.

My limited reading of Heilkünst suggests that its practitioners practise real homoeopathy by and large but are not averse to throwing in complexes like Irene's, though the individual remedies have been proven in those I've read of. Whilst one may wish to throw out such bathwater -- and I would -- the larger live baby inside it may have a lot to offer to complement what real homoeopaths do. It may be that you could each learn quite a lot through the other.

Cheers --

John
2009/6/29 jill1313 >

[Luise Kunkle]

Hi John,

just a correction of fact:
No.

While I do not know who coined that expression and why, I do know that
its German equivalent was being used long before Vithoulkas came back
from India.

Regards

Luise
--
One thought to all who, free of doubt,
So definitely know what's true:
2 and 2 is 22 -
and 2 times 2 is 2:-)
==========> ICQ yinyang 96391801 <==========

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

Dear John
As most remedies have contradictory symptoms, to use a remedy name as a disease a person may be experiencing may be incorrect.
Isn't it better to call it 'remedy name' cure (hopefully)? So after China has cured a set of symptoms, we can call it China cure!
Rgds
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of John Harvey
Sent: 29 June 2009 02:41
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Possibly Naive Question
Irene, "classical homoeopathy" will be whatever one defines it to be, as there is not yet an authoritative definition of it as there is of "homoeopathy". So there's a term you can argue over and never be wrong about.
I think that Luise is correct: that you have missed the point of the Heilkünst practitioner's remarks. The practitioner was saying something quite significant: that the symptoms caused by Cinchona in any person can be summed up as an occurrence of the disease caused by Cinchona, which can be perfectly adequately named "Cinchona disease".
This much is evidently correct. And it illustrates perfectly that a remedy's genuinely cured symptoms cannot be relied upon as an indication of its pathogenesis. But the explanation of the law of similars that the practitioner gave (though it relied on a specific example rather than remaining general) seems to be accurate enough: Hahnemann used a remedy to cure diseases resembling the remedy's action in healthy individuals. That summation of the method is clearer than use of the example below, which, by the way, Hahnemann himself did use as an analogy, though he did not imagine that one might potentise heat. It's clearer because it refers to medicines; Hahnemann's law of similars specifically applies to use of medicines rather than of hot water.
Assuming that you're not being literal in limiting it to the application of hot water to a burn, your "universal" law of similars, which you call "the" law of similars, is broader than the law of similars underlying homoeopathy. I mention this because without recognition of that, one might easily stumble into imagining that applying hot water (whether really hot or "potentised" hot) to a burn is part of homoeopathic medicine. Certainly it may be part of Heilkünst, though, which evidently incorporates many more of Hahnemann's recommendations than apply to medicine. (One finds some of these in the last few aphorisms of the Organon.)

Cheers --

John

--
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"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

- Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397-402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

[John Harvey]

Ah. Thanks, Luise, for the correction. I'd read otherwise; obviously a lack of history there.
Cheers!
John
2009/7/2 Luise Kunkle >

[John Harvey]

Soroush, I very much like that approach -- though for a reason .

As somebody else (and I'm sorry that I can't remember who) pointed out, whatever symptoms one prover experiences will be the tip of the iceberg of the entire possible pathogenesis of the remedy. It falls within that pathogenesis, just as do the symptoms experienced by anybody in an infectious epidemic fall within the entire symptomatology of that epidemic. And, just as we name the particular case of that infectious illness a case of it without confusion, I think that we can readily and validly name a case of pathogenetic illness after the substance inducing it, regardless of contradictory symptoms (which, after all, can occur in the one patient).

A natural illness -- let's say, for example, a case of an infectious illness -- that appears to need, say, China, is, I suppose, a different matter. I say this for three reasons. First, it is not a China-caused illness; it is a natural one, and will most likely only fall within the China pathogenesis mostly (though China will cure all of the symptoms).

Second, China's homoeopathicity to it may be greater than that of any other remedy, yet lesser than a dozen other substances whose pathogenesis we do not yet know. It is, then, relative. It will still cure, but the cure will be less dramatic than would the cure by the most homoeopathic substance in existence. So I suppose that to call the case of illness China is, even assuming that the prescriber is bang on, simply to say that China is the best we've got for it.

Third, we don't know whether China really is close enough to cure until the patient responds to it. So naming it China is always going to be a tentative thing.

And to use your approach, the knowledge that China was the best match the prescriber could find and that it was a sufficient match to induce the curative response gives you every reason to state that it was a China cure and therefore an apt case for China. So yes, I think a "China cure" would be a perfect description.

Old habits die hard, though, don't they; it will be difficult to not say, "I think he's a China patient". Perhaps... "I think China is his nearest known remedy"?

Cheers --

John
2009/7/2 >
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