Minutus

Because that is how you are *defining* homeopathic prescription -- one based upon provings.
Hahnemann's *definition* was not that strict; he did include causation (which cannot come from provings), and poisonings (not necessarily done on healthy people), and for that matter, he did use provings not done on healthy people, not adequately "controlled", done only on a single person, etc.

There is ideal procedure, and there is definition--the two are not the same.
I am not talking about prescribing blindly, please don't do that.
Not painful, just boring.
Oh yes I do have to go through the withdrawal from discussion, because the rest of my life is calling, again. You are putting your ideas out and I am putting out mine; and once again I will leave mine hanging and you are free to have the last word if you like--no hard feelings.
Tapping fingers.... We've been through that too. No further comment.
Words, in opposition to meaning. Sophistry... We interpret this differently, and I have no time to chase it further right now.

Best wishes!
Shannon

All I am saying is that homeopaths tend to get defensive in the face of skeptic and allopathic
type criticism and we need not and should not do that. We have a system based on sound philosophy and practice
but health can be an elusive venture. We need to keep thinking about ways to improve our
healing protocols and sometimes may need to look outside the proven box. And there have
been dramatic successes in doing so with rx that have not undergone the typical proving but
subscribe to reasonable/sound theories. And this is Hahnemannian, also as previously posted.
tanya
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Oh, really? The following excerpt, for instance, comes from Materia Medica Pura, under Magnetis poli ambo.

"

The subjoined symptoms occurred from various powerful magnets brought in contact with various sensitive individuals, without distinction of the poles.

"

How do you explain that?

Cheers --

John
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“The meltdown of a 500-megawatt reactor located 30 miles from a city would cause the immediate death of an estimated 45,000 people, injure roughly another 70,000, and cause $17 billion in property damage.”
—Benjamin K. Sovacool, "The dirt on nuclear power", Project Syndicate: A World of Ideas 16 Mar 2011,

Yes, that is how Hahnemann defined it: one based on knowledge pathogenesis. If I may stretch the word "provings" to include any means by which sure knowledge of the deranging effects of a substance in acquired, then you see that this becomes a much simpler affair than you have imagined it to be. It does not necessarily require healthy subjects, though they obviously make the certainty much easier to acquire. What it does necessitate is that attention be paid to the details of the affection that the substance (or imponderable) causes, rather than to clinical "success".
And, Shannon, having read the Organon a number of times and taken a fair number of notes from it, I'd dearly love to know where I missed in it Hahnemann's sudden broadening of the meaning of homoeopathy to include, as you suggest, substitution of "causation" for pathogenetic symptoms in the indications for a medicine.

In answering that challenge, I hope you'll manage to distinguish between a recommendation for a medicine in certain circumstances (e.g. Sulphuric acid in heartburn due to dietary indiscretion, clearly a cause) and defining homoeopathic prescription as being possible on the basis of (surmised) causation in lieu of a basis in pathogenetic knowledge and comparison with the patients state.
Well, at least we can agree on that. I think I've made the point many, many times now that guesswork is a potentially valuable tool in itself. It is you, amongst others, who have repeatedly mistaken the value of guesswork for reason to confuse it with homoeopathy.
Any prescription that attempts to be homoeopathic that is based on something other than pathogenesis is, to that exact extent, blind prescription. That's what guesswork -- educated and otherwise -- is: it's working in the dark. Knowledge of pathogenesis is the only light we have in homoeopathy. It is that knowledge that allows us to guess that Arnica may be suitable for traumatic soft-tissue injury. It is that knowledge that allowed Hahnemann to guess that Sulphuric acid would be suitable in relieving the temporary traumatic heartburn that follows some dietary silliness. It is that knowledge that allows all of us to guess at the missing pieces of various clinical puzzles and to prescribe with success despite the incompleteness.

The fact that we can take successful steps in the dark because of the stepping stones that homoeopathy illuminates does not make all dark patches on the ground illuminations. They remain dark patches that we may successfully negotiate but only with luck. It is the illuminated portions of the journey, the knowledge that lets us thread out way, that is the homoeopathic portion. The rest, the guesswork, the false trails, the hypothesising as to what lies between the illuminated portions, is potentially useful but is not itself the light of pathogenetic knowledge and can never substitute for it in the creation of such knowledge. Hahnemann himself made all this clear many times over in the Organon alone.
Of course not.
So I see!
You interpret it differently. How very instructive. Well, he expresses the same thought in various ways. Here's another:

"This spirit-like power to alter man's state of health [read that repeatedly till you understand it!] which lies hidden in the inner nature of medicines can in itself never be discovered by us by a mere effort of reason [are you comprehending this?]; it is only by experience of the phenomena it displays when acting on the state of health of man [in other words, deranging health!] that we can become clearly cognizant of it." (§ 20)

Here's a tidbit from another:

"… no physician who would… act contrary to the dictates of his conscience… can employ in the treatment of diseases any medicinal substance but one… whose positive action on the health of healthy individuals he has so accurately tested that he knows for certain that it is capable of producing [do you see how that word is spelt differently from "curing"?] a very similar morbid state, more similar than any other medicine with which he is perfectly acquainted, to that presented by the case of disease he intends to cure by means of it". (from § 119 footnote 99)

Oh, and for your amusement, further from the same footnote:

"In all former ages—posterity will scarcely believe it—physicians have hitherto contented themselves with blindly prescribing for diseases medicines whose value was unknown, and which had never been tested relative to their highly important, very various, pure dynamic action on the health of man". (from § 119 footnote 99; bold emphasis mine)
And sunshine!

John

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“The meltdown of a 500-megawatt reactor located 30 miles from a city would cause the immediate death of an estimated 45,000 people, injure roughly another 70,000, and cause $17 billion in property damage.”
—Benjamin K. Sovacool, "The dirt on nuclear power", Project Syndicate: A World of Ideas 16 Mar 2011,

Tanya, the creative approach is always to be regarded as opening new possibilities, and I'd agree with you in that. But prescribing even a single medicine on the basis of "reasonable" hypotheses in lieu of sure pathogenetic knowledge can never be regarded as Hahnemannian; it clearly falls outside every indication Hahnemann ever gave as to what homoeopathic practice is.

That distinction does not prevent us from making use of reasonable hypotheses to substitute guesswork for homoepathy, as in when we use Causticum or Cantharis for burn states they've never caused or use Arnica or Opium for states (traumatic and otherwise, e.g. strokes) they've never been known to cause. What it does do is to help us to remain clear on the difference between creative, even inspired, guesswork and the sure, precise, incisive tools of homoeopathy.

Cheers --

John
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“The meltdown of a 500-megawatt reactor located 30 miles from a city would cause the immediate death of an estimated 45,000 people, injure roughly another 70,000, and cause $17 billion in property damage.”
—Benjamin K. Sovacool, "The dirt on nuclear power", Project Syndicate: A World of Ideas 16 Mar 2011,

Okay, how about heat and cold?

How about fifes and drums! How about screams and music! Yes, they're all great analogies. Do you see heat and cold listed in Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura, though, with indications that do not come from their effects in deranging health?

He relates cures of burns and frostbite, if I remember right, and describes them as homeopathic cures. I think there was more too, but I don't have time (nor my book) to look it up.

Yes, he does, I can confirm that. But how does he know that they're homoeopathic?

Because it's being accomplished by application of a changed form of the thing (heat / cold) that caused the damage. That is a *sort* of proving -- but informal and "clinical", not controlled.

Somewhere else I recall him saying that *any* method which cures, is presumed to be homeopathic -- because like-cures-like is the only true method of curing -- my poor paraphrasing, but that's the gist of it. Can you also confirm that, perhaps give a better quote?

I'm pretty sure I'm remembering the substance of that correctly.
And that reasoning would IMO *very* well confirm the validity of e.g. the process used in developing materia medica of thiosinamin et al.: Observe what it can *cure*, and use it for purpose of curing that which it has been demonstrably *able* to cure. Hm, when I put it that way, it sounds sort of like a duh...