Minutus

Irene-
People have used mother tinctures, low potenices, high potencies,
LMs and what not in treating and curing diseases.

I have used mother tinctures myself in very many cases; and I know
that they work, I have used them not just for tonic or physiological
effects but for regular homeopathic effects.

Please do not suggest an opinion without thinking thru what you are
posting. Please do not issue blanket statements without
understanding what is being stated by others.

Remedy selection and administration goes by steps. The first step
and the most basic step is finding the right remedy. Then finding
the suitable potency to administer it. Both are needed for an
OPTIMUM prescription - but a not-so-optimum prescription can be made
with any available potency. I have prescribed a lot like that...
It is like going from Seattle to South Africa. The best route may
be flying to NY first and then flying to South africa. This is the
best optimum route. But you can also go to Australia and then go to
South Africa. This may be like going to the same place ( the cure)
but using a time consuming process ( like using a sub-optimum
potency).
--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, Irene de Villiers
wrote:
case..
can
of
getting
Nor
diluted, that
medicinal effect.
Homeopath.)

Soroush,
I like your idea of offering to treat journalists! While we're at it, why not explore the possibility of treating disadvantaged groups with serious problems that respond well to homeopathy.... like returning Iraq war vets who have PTSD or problems from concussions?
In the United States, many returning vets are having problems finding adequate medical care (yet another aspect of the war Bush did not think through!). What would happen if we homeopaths donated our services to treat these soldiers? We could do some good for a traumatized group as well as earning some good press for homeopathy.
If anyone on the list is interested in exploring this further, please e-mail me privately.
Peace,
Dale

Dale you have not given your private address - but COUNT ME IN - I'm in UK.
With Veterans, kinesiology might be very useful tool too - especially for PTSD sufferers.

Regards

Soroush

hahnemannian2002 wrote:

Which is why I cannot leave out the potentized ones as also being
integral to homeopathy as a science.
You have no place to make such a comment - you are not present in my
brain to know my thinking - I suggest you read my words instead -
perhaps often enough and in context enough to understand my point.
If you still do not get my point, please either drop it or have the
courtesy to ask what I meant.
What I state is my opinion - it need not be in line with what you think
nor with what John thinks
Homeopathy includes unpotentized AND potentized remedies - and the
latter cannot be omitted as John suggests for a definition of what is
homeopathy.

If you do not agree, that is your right
But *I* stand by that opinion. (So did Hahnemann if it matters.)

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."

Dear Irene,

If we can't educate ourselves in the most fundamental logic (let alone
in correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar), then we have little
hope of making a valid argument to homoeopathic novices, let alone a
persuasive one.

(1) Is potency sufficient in order that a treatment method be
homoeopathic? Clearly not.

(2) Is potency necessary in order that a treatment method be
homoeopathic? Clearly not.

(3) Therefore potency -- though it may usually or even always make a
better prescription -- is neither necessary nor sufficient in order
that a treatment method be known as homoeopathic.

If potency is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for
calling the method homoeopathic, then it's irrelevant to whether the
method may be called homoeopathic.

It's as simple as that.

We've covered this before, if you'll recall, in the discussion about
what homoeopathy is (10:57 a.m. GMT, 27 October 2007, subject
"homeopathy: definition to include remedy format?"). As most of us
know, homoeopathic practice originally did not include potentisation;
today it usually does. But potentisation is merely a refinement and
is not a necessary part of the practice, which in essence only
concerns the giving of medicine based on the Law of Similars.

To defend as homoeopathic practice anything that's not necessary to it
is to defend something that is not inherent in it. Potentisation --
though it's unusual amongst medical practices and plays a special part
in making the effects of our practice gentle, rapid, and permanent --
is not necessary for a medical prescription to be homoeopathic.

If H2002 seems to be just a little short with you, perhaps it's
because you continue to make the same assertions regardless of their
previous disproof. Once a thing has been shown to be false, there
seems little value in waiting to return to its repeated assertion at a
later date. Let's live and learn. The task is a far smaller one than
you seem to think necessary; it's the task of showing the validity of
the Law of Similars and nothing else.

Kind regards,

John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands
science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We
might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this
combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our
faces."

-- Carl Sagan

This is logic or what???

Sorry this is getting too much for me ; let us just say cat got my tongue

-thanks

John Harvey wrote:

Speak for yourself dear John:-)
The so-called disproof is not universally accepted obviously
Just your opinion.
And as usual you take what I said out of context.

For example - I explain how a client can know they are obtaining a
homeopathic remedy by whether it has one and only one potency number.
This works really well for clients unfamiliar with our science, who want
to know how to tell if something called homeopathic remedy by the sales
person/sales-blurb really is a homeopathic remedy.
That number is not always 0.
And homeopathy (today) does not exclude the use of potencies above zero
- in fact it is relatively rare to use the mother tincture to cure a case.
Do you?
I had nothing to say about "the task" - that's your issue:-)
I only commented on your assertion that potency could be left out of a
definition of homeopathy. It cannot - in my opinion.
In my opinion if you think that is all homeopathy is about - you need to
read the Organon - there's a lot more power to homeopathy than that.
Thankfully - or I'd be out of work:-).
Hardly a single case that comes my way is appropriate for mother
tincture use. For you to pretend that is all homeopathy needs, will lead
to justified ridicule in my view - by those to whom you speak in mother
tinctures only.

Again - it is just my view.
I find it far better to explain the power of potency as paert and parcel
of the science. Do that well, and you need not pussy-foot around the
criticisms of dilution. Dilution is irrelevant - it's succussion that
matters. Same as when making a magnet as Hahnemann himself described.
Everyone accepts magnets - all you need do is show the parallel between
magnet making with rubbing/filing to increase energy stored - and remedy
potency through succussion to increase energy stored.
Why shy away from this - it's basic to homeopathy, just as basic as the
similia similibus curentur principle.

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."

Hi, Irene --

I seem to have expressed myself poorly. When I say that potency is
not necessary to the homoeopathic method, I don't mean by it that
homoeopathy only uses mother tinctures. What I mean by it is that on
occasion (even if rarely; even if only once!) a perfectly valid
homoeopathic prescription, based absolutely on the principles of
homoeopathy, will be an unpotentised substance (probably mother
tincture, probably diluted). Because to include potency as one of the
necessary parts of homoeopathy is actually to exclude all
prescriptions of unpotentised remedies, it's necessary to exclude
potency as a consideration of whether the method is homoeopathic.

We could complicate matters by requiring that in certain circumstances
a potency would be required rather than a mother tincture; but in fact
that would be merely a matter of whether it's better or worse
homoeopathic practice, not of whether it's homoeopathic.

Does that better make the case?
You're obviously correct about the VALUE of potentisation, and I'd be
the last to decry its value and the first to be dubious about the use
of low and very low potencies in most circumstances.

As you would, I too would like all to understand intuitively and
intellectually something about the great benefit of potentisation and
to understand the rationality (and truth) of the idea that
water-alcohol solutions can carry dynamic properties independent of
their chemical ones.

These matters are more than worthy of putting to those open-minded
enough to consider such possibilities. They will help, as they always
have helped, the open-minded to understand, at least intuitively,
homoeopathy's brilliance.

What I'm writing about, though, is not our ability to educate the
open-minded. It's our ability to educate or at least overcome the
arguments of the closed-minded.

The closed-minded approach to homoeopathy tends (speaking in terms of
broad numbers) not to look at homoeopathy's method at all. Instead it
takes cheap shots at easy targets for ridicule. Potentisation is one
of those targets, and the one we've had greatest difficulty in
recognising as being unnecessary to defend.

We all know that there is no necessity, in defending homoeopathy
successfully, to defend all those practices that may go with it
according to individual taste and sanity: black boxes, colour wheels,
alchemical classifications, you name it. But potentisation is
something that, because it is so valuable to all homoeopaths, appears
to need defending.

It doesn't.

Homoeopaths are under concerted attack world wide by the
pharmaceutical industry at this point in history for understandable
reasons that Carol Boyce made crystal clear in her very readable
_Similia_ article "Magnus Pharma and the golden goose: The case of
allopathy" (June 2007; I should declare here that I edit the journal.)
Such reasons include imminent patent expiries on huge moneyspinners
such as Viagra; homoeopathy's exploding popularity; and the increasing
difficulty of countering positive clinical studies of homoeopathy
without buying off medical journals to print shoddy second-rate
negative "research" and censor all criticism of that "research".

In this concerted effort to destroy homoeopathy once and for all, no
holds are barred. Homoeopathy is misrepresented as based on lies,
quackery, foolishness, witchcraft, and all the rest. The single
aspect of homoeopathic practice that the campaign leaves unmolested is
the Law of Similars!

Most of these targets are relatively easy to dismiss as something the
occasional homoeopath might do but NOT part of homoeopathic practice
any more than fraud and overservicing are part of allopathic practice
simply because the occasional allopathic doctor engages in them.

The one subject of attack that we feel constantly obliged to defend is
that of so-called ultra-dilutions. In the past, homoeopaths have
defended potentisation by pointing out various aspects of
ultra-dilutions and the physics of succussion. The more direct
approach to this that Carol Boyce introduced into this very forum was
that of pointing out that potencies are not simply dilutions, and that
attacking dilutions ignores the nature of potencies. This was a
significant step forward.

We can go a step further. We can point out that the potencies are
merely a late addition to the homoeopathic armamentarium. We can
point out that potentisation is not necessary to homoeopathic
practice: without that technology we would simply carry on practising
homoeopathy using small quantities, as Hahnemann did in his early
homoeopathic years. We can point out that we would do so successfully
and prescribe, with rare exception (heavy metals come to mind,
particularly radioactive ones), the same medicines, and with
ultimately good results. But, we can point out, the results would not
be AS good, because the medicines would inherently be more violent in
their action on the patient susceptible to them.

In other words, we can point out that we use potencies not because
homoeopathy wouldn't work without them, but rather because it's
gentler with them.

This argument rebuts potencies as the basis of homoeopathic practice.
It thereby deflates the charge that homoeopathy is based on whatever
category of fiction the attacker wishes to place potencies in: magic,
confidence games, self-delusion, mass hallucination, or fairy tale.

The supposed attacks on homoeopathy are attacks on anything but
homoeopathy. They're attacks on character, on motive, on education.
They're based on convenient presumptions of gullibility, ignorance,
and greed. And they avoid almost entirely the one subject that is at
the heart of homoeopathy: the Law of Similars.

What homoeopathy's opponents go for instead is the easy target of
potentisation. They attack homoeopathic patients for being so stupid
as to think a sip of water will cure their ills, and they attack
homoeopaths for letting them think it. And they do so on the basis
that potentisation is a necessary part of the process.

Such strategic ignorance (whether unwitting or deliberate) is the
central battering ram used on homoeopathy. It has engaged homoeopaths
in futile debate for centuries as to the credibility of potentisation
before any knock-their-socks-off proof was available. And since proof
of the interesting effects of potentisation has become available, the
same tired arguement continues to be used, in conjunction with wilful
ignorance of the oddball articles in physics journals pointing out
that potentisation does... something. And it's spectacularly
successful: it has been responsible for radical regression of health
and medical infrastructure in several countries already to exclude
support for homoeopathy.

Yet the battle over potentisation is one that for decades homoeopaths
have imagined they were on the verge of winning.

That victory is years away yet. It will be a pyrrhic one if in the
meantime homoeopaths have effectively been stopped from practising or
rendered bankrupt in the process.

The more straightforward victory for homoeopathy will be based on
putting potentisation in proper perspective. Potentisation is a way
merely to reduce the power of our medicines to cause illness, the
so-called homoeopathic aggravation, in the patient most susceptible to
that power: the one already experiencing its symptoms. Get that
across to those deciding the outcome of this war, and the potency
battle has been won.

For too long have we allowed the pharmaceutical industry to choose for
us what we shall defend as important.

One principle and one principle only is vital to homoeopathy, and that
is the principle of using medicine known to be capable of invoking the
patient's own symptoms.

It's a principle of courage and care in conducting provings, of care
and discernment in conducting case-taking, and of discernment and
ultimate certainty in aligning the two.

We've allowed the pharmaceutical forces to choose our battles for long
enough. It's time to discuss what we choose to discuss rather than
what the industry chooses to. You have the wrong education, the wrong
colour of skin, the wrong beliefs? So what? What matters is whether
the Law of Similars works. You have the confidence to prescribe a
single medicine, at ludicrously low dosages, at ludicrously long
intervals? So what? What matters is whether the Law of Similars
works.

Homoeopathy's natural battleground is not potentisation or any other
auxiliary technology; it's the principle of the Law of Similars. If
we succeed in showing that the Law of Similars works, then who cares
if we find that it works at ludicrously low doses and continues to
work even beyond those?

Once we've clarified that the question of potencies is inessential to
homoeopathic practice, the potency battle is over, and we can muster
our true strengths to defend the essence of homoeopathy -- a far
easier task. Having learned to survive the day -- an ability
questionable right now -- homoeopaths will find that the physics of
potentisation will be allowed to emerge uncensored because it will no
longer be important.

Kind regards,

John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for
leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long
term. One of the criteria for national leadership should therefore be
a talent for understanding, encouraging, and making constructive use
of vigorous criticism."

-- Carl Sagan

Hi John,
Well, I wonder whon YOUR logic can persuade:-))

Agreed.

You are defining the word, not the principle.

The princible is: "like CURES like".

In order to cure,

1) the dosage has to be appropriate.

Give too much arsenicaum album and you poison and possibly kill the
patient, you do not cure him. No matter whether ars. alb. is the
ultimate simillimum.

2) A great percentage of the substances have indeed to be potentized.

E. g. Na mur., Lyc., ..... do nothing in their non-potentized state.

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 <==========

Dear Irene and John

Can I sum up some aspects of this discussion?

For many years after the discovery of Homeopathy, Hahnemann did not dilute nor potentise. Yet the principles of homoeopathy worked. So, as such, dilution and potentisation are NOT essential to the practise of Homeopathy.

This fact should be used against those that say homoeopathy does not work because of its high dilutions - The principle was proved using material substance or mother tincture.

However, the beauty of dilution and potentisation are many fold. Here are a few:
1- Reduces side effects
2- Increases depth of action in to mental and emotional and higher realms.
3- Makes medicinal substances that ordinarily have no 'medicinal' property as such, or are strong poisons. These greatly expands the range of substances that can be use in this form of medicine - so if we were to take away dilution and potentisation, we would lose the use of a great many of our medicines.
In effect a relatively high amount of a substance would kill, a small amount may have some nutritional value, and when potentised and diluted, it will have medicinal properties.

In fact when you see the results of using C4 potencies, you can see the increased effect of potentisation / tritration on the remedy producing results in the spiritual realms of beings.

Regards

Soroush