Minutus

I had the whole night to have this simmer in the back of my mind, so here are a few musings to add to Ginny's dizziness

But first, please note that this is my opinion and my way only, I do not expect anyone to adopt it, share it, or whatever else. And we are talking semantics, linguistics, definitions, words....

I like simple things and in definitions I like to go back and use the origin of the words. We all know that the word homoeopathy (the word, not the practice, coming to that...) means same suffering, and this concept has been used for a long time, Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Paracelsus and many others. To my understanding, Hahnemann used it the same way but now it has become synonymous (meaning similar but not identical!) to the practice of a form of therapy that uses the law of similars AND the administration of proved remedies.

That is where I feel one problem resides.
As written before, I do practice different modalities, some of them based either totally or partially on the law of similars but not involving the administration of proved remedies: to me this still belong to the realm of homoeopathy.

How do *I* differentiate, in terms of definition?

I am now calling prescribing according to the Organon: Homeopathic Medicine, the term medicine implying in most people's mind the administration of some healing substance....as opposed to surgery, psychotherapy, counseling, acupuncture.
When using the strict rules of the so-called classical homeopathy, I will call this Hahnemaniann Homeopathic Medicine whereas when straying from that path, as you all know I am doing with gusto, it will be Non-Hahnemaniann Homeopathic Medicine under the proviso *I* still see it being part of the law of similar.....we already had that discussion, but in a different setting and in a different way.

So, ortho-bionomy, homeopathic osteopathy belongs to the law of similars but is not homeopathic medicine.
Group support, like PTSD, AA, drug addictions, rape crisis, are homeopathic psychotherapy; psychoanalysis is not.

Accidental "homeopathy" like Ritalin treatments, by definition belong to the law of similars by chance.

Nutrition and nutritional therapy belong to every form of therapy as it is part and parcel of medicine, without it being defined by any adjective.

Words, words, words, words,.......headaches on top of the dizziness????

Joe.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind" www.naturamedica.webs.com

Hi Dr. Roz,

Clear, concise and easy to read with no symptoms of dizziness.

Atb,

Leilanae

Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind" www.naturamedica.webs.com

I think similarly. Many things, not just remedies, wittingly or unwittingly utilise the relationship between similiars, and so become homeopathic to a problem. There is no other way or word to describe this effect.

Homeopathic medicine is about as good as we have at the moment but I've never liked speaking about homeopathic medicines as people automatically think they are the same as allopathic medicines with the only difference being the potentisation aspect. Also, the use of the term medicine or medicines is what has really got up the nose of the allopaths and skeptic groups - it has been like waving a red flag at a bull. For these reasons I have always argued in favour of keeping our traditional name of remedy or remedies as this starts to create clear distinction between the approaches of "them and us" in the minds of others.

I have never like the term "Classical" as with so many different practices used under it it has become meaningless - and probably was so from the beginning. Some use it for dry dose prescribing, some for wet, some for one dry dose and long watch and wait, others for single remedy given multiple times. "Hahnemannian" is a little better but excludes many other approaches to treatment that Hahnemann may not have used but still fall within his understanding of homeopathy.

I would strongly reject the inclusion of polypharmacy and experimental methods under the umbrella of homeopathy. Unless symptom similarity can be demonstrated to be the basis of effect, we just don't know and it only confuses things further. In these instances, the best we can say when using remedies is that they are potentised substances whose beneficial effect may or may not be homeopathic but without some sort of proving, we just don't know.

Kind regards, Fran.

Hi, Joe --

The main thing that you're doing here is clarifying so that people can grasp the notions without confusion. That is exactly the point of this discussion, as I understand it, and I appreciate what you're doing in this probably as much as anybody else does. Thank you.
The notion of "homoeopathic medicine" or "homoeopathy" constituting the practice that, I'm sure, we all can agree is homoeopathic medicine is a nice one. And the use of "homoeopathy" to cover, if you will, metaphorical homoeopathic medicine without the medicine has its own appeal. To say that such-and-such is a type of homoeopathy offers a little humour as well as genuine insight into the nature of such-and-such: the insight that it uses similars, one to defeat or remove or annihilate or cancel the other. It has its appeal to me and, I'm sure, to many others here.

There is, though, a problem with this nice metaphorical approach (and it is metaphorical; I'll come to that): that they who can best appreciate its appeal and its informativeness are limited to them who already have a clear understanding of, if you like, "homoeopathic medicine", or "homoeopathy". Now, whereas you and I and most here do share that clear understanding, the real point of this discussion is to help shed light on all this for those who don't; and that includes the newcomer to the entire concept of "homoeopathic medicine" -- or "homoeopathy". Without that understanding in place, when we wisecrack by mentioning one thing and another as an (even metaphorical) type of homoeopathy, we leave the newcomer little wiser -- little better able to discern homoeopathy from non-homoeopathy -- than he was before these terms were applied. To understand these terms, the newcomer first has to be told what homoeopathy is.

Now, for the sake of argument, let's say that this person is told that homoeopathy is -- as Shannon continues to suggest after and despite all these years of discussion -- any application (medicinal or not) of the likeness of one thing to another. Where does that get us? It gets us incorporating the allopathic doctrine of signatures!

All right, so if we were to refine the concept of homoeopathy according to your very sensible suggestion that it require "similar suffering", we'd overcome that; we'd then be including anything that uses similar suffering rather than merely similarity. Let's further refine it to say that the practice of homoeopathy (of any medicinal or non-medicinal kind) uses similar suffering in the cause only of healing. So we've now excluded, as an example of "homoeopathy", repetition of some torture merely in order to increase its likelihood of causing harm, or breakdown, or revelations of secrets.
But two further problems remain: (a) that something that we haven't excluded, and may be difficult to exclude in any simple way, is the addition of some torture, some suffering, without (despite the would-be healer's intent) any real prospect of healing, as in adding a few flagellations to the back of a thoroughly whipped animal or adding a whisky to the drinks list of a thorough inebriate; and (b) that we may still exclude something (such as your ortho-bionomy) that -- despite its use of similar postures, situations, memories, locations, words, or other factors -- does not restimulate or recall suffering as such but rather offers another means of removal of suffering via such similarities of circumstance.

And here is where it's useful to be consistently clear about two aspects of the "similar suffering" that inheres in the word "homoeopathy".
First, the word did not in fact originate with Paracelsus or any other of the ancient healers and philosophers who conjectured its possible usefulness to healing and other activities. The word was in fact invented by Hahnemann, and for a very definite and explicit reason: to differentiate it from all these previous conjectures, philosophies, and non-medical applications.

Yes, Shannon is perfectly correct in her recollection (thanks, Shannon): Hahnemann referred to the approach of the fire to a burn, the shrill of fyfes over the screams of the dying, and so on in homoeopathic terms. But let's not be babies about this; let's do the work of discerning why he did so. Was it in order to commend, for instance, the use of fyfes in warfare to embolden soldiers to continue fighting, and therefore as a kind of healing or as a mode of warfare? Clearly, no: it was not. The examples he used were merely and purely illustrative of the ability of one thing in resonance with or similar to another to have an annihilative effect upon it. Raise the contentious matter of the healing power of radiant heat over burns as many times as you like; in doing so, you cannot simultaneously escape the use of the fyfe-over-screams analogy. And that is what these illustrations were: analogies, and nothing more.
Hahnemann's use of various everyday or extraordinary examples of this annihilative relationship of similarity merely as analogies raises a second aspect that it's useful for us to be clear about: the function and power of metaphor.

Over a long period, I've noticed something about the origins of words: that their origin tends very often to be clever, deft, or even sly; to involve a little sleight of hand, a little sideways shift; that the invention of the word itself sheds light on an earlier concept. Take, for instance, the verb "book" in the sense of noting a traffic offence in a book. The first time somebody used the noun "book" as a transitive verb in this sense, what was going on? On the first occasion on which somebody heard it used in that way, what happened in their perception of the meaning of this thing, a book? Try to imagine. To "book" somebody? To place that person somehow into a book, or to place the book on top of him? To hit him with the book or throw the book at him (yes, recognise that metaphor too)? The concept of "booking" a defendant, even once it was clear that it meant to record his name in a book, had to have induced at least a mental smile or two when it was fresh. This is because, at that time, the concept of doing so was metaphorical. You didn't really "book" the person; you only "booked" his name. But the metaphor was there.

The usefulness of metaphor in inventing words or finding new uses for them lies partly in the freshness with which they infuse our perceptions and cause us to re-examine the relationships of things to one another. It lies partly too in simply having fun with words; to some extent, I think, all metaphor is humorous. But the thing I'd ask you to notice is that this adding to the richness of our linguistic perception of the world occurs in the process of inventing or discovering new words that assist us in discerning either difference or similarity.

The novel use or novel hearing of words that do not do this has the opposite effect: it dulls our linguistic sense of the world by tarnishing the clarity of our verbal representations of it. What makes those terms that arise in the managerial realm -- a hire (or report); deliverables; progressing issues; competencies; accountabilities; (triple) bottom line; strategic planning; mission statement; and on and on till some mercy intervenes -- what makes them so dull; so mind-deadening; so soul-destroying and uninteresting, despite their users' (and, obviously, their coiners') illusions that the terms sound smart, fresh, informed, and with it? What is it about these terms that puts us to sleep, discourages us, makes us feel powerless and abused?

I believe I can tell you what it is: it is that, rather than reveal, they obscure. They're not metaphors; they're cloaks. And we too often feel shut out or obstructed by cloaks, and at the mercy of those wielding them. These and other such terms, rather than shed light, taint us with their egocentrism and exclusiveness; they claim power of the user over others by referring to things that do we feel obliged to (though in truth we cannot) imagine actually exist.

Metaphor, by contrast, illuminates fresh perceptions of relationships; it shows something in a brighter light; it shines a new colour over a familiar thought. Its function is to allow fresh thought; its power is the power of shared creation.
Hahnemann's coining of "homoeopathy" and "homoeopathic" had a purpose that anybody familiar with the process of discovery of a new concept can relate to: the purpose of distinguishing one specific kind of medical practice from all others. His purpose was most definitely not to gather all possible or even half-practical applications of similarity into one fold, or even to gather such applications with potential for healing; his meanderings over fields of war and so on were merely part of a book-long effort to open minds closed to the revolutionary idea that treatment by similars rather than by opposites made any kind of sense.

If you haven't absorbed that, then please read that last paragraph again. Hahnemann's purpose in coining "homoeopathy" was not to create a category of various practices all using similarity. It was to distinguish one medical practice from all others. And what was it that made the distinction? It was the single principle of similarity of medicine to patient, a principle with just three (no more! no fewer!) requirements:

(1) a complete patient case-taking;

(2) knowledge of the "pure" effects of various substances;

(3) discernment between the latter as to which is the most homoeopathic (i.e. causing of similar suffering) to the former.

Yes, we may apply fresh metaphors, calling this, that, or the other thing a "kind" or "realm" of homoeopathy (which would most definitely be metaphorical) or calling it a "homoeopathic" activity of some kind (which may be, as in the case of whipping the whipped, strictly true!). And -- to those already initiated into the meaning of homoeopathy -- these novel applications of the term would have meaning and would be kind of fun. But surely applying them in this way would overlook and defeat the very purposes of this discussion:

(a) to clarify for ourselves the minimum that medicinal homoeopathic practice actually requires and what it does not require; and thereby

(b) to provide a consistent understanding to others of the criterion allowing them to work out for themselves what is and what is not homoeopathic practice according to the meaning of the term rather than according to appealing metaphorical uses of it.
To apply the meaning of an already fraught term to analogous activities cannot help but obscure its meaning for those who most need to become clear on it (unless we're able somehow always to convey the sense of analogy by conveying "homoeopathic" in quote marks). For the rest of us -- for those of us who remain clear on what distinguishes homoeopathy from other medical practices -- what possible value can lie in blurring that single distinction, if we actually appreciate it?

I ask this pointed question because, as Ardavan and others have pointed out, it's easy for even experienced practitioners to lose sight of what it is that distinguishes homoeopathy from the repressive modes of "healing"; to lose, amongst the attractions of homoeopathy's peripheral technologies (succussion, repertories, computers) and useful concepts (minimal force, degrees of similarity, generalities, classifications, analogies), the central thread, which all analogous activities lack and whose value lies not merely in application but in the wisdom underlying it.
Fran's recent post (hi, Fran) on the application of "homoeopathic" to other solutions based somehow in similarity makes really good points about the ambiguity in speaking of "homoeopathic medicine" rather than of "homoeopathy" and "homoeopathic remedies" (though perhaps "potentised substances" would do that job more thoroughly); and about the terms "classical" and "Hahnemannian", both of which I think have been counterproductive in inadvertently supporting the illusion that any kind of homoeopathy exists that does not rely upon pathogenetic trials (provings).

I can't agree, though, with Fran that there is no other suitable term for non-medical approaches to problems -- health or otherwise -- that utilise some principle of application of similars. It was precisely to exclude all other "similarity" methods that Hahnemann was forced to coin his new word. With a little inventiveness and attention, terms of greater appropriateness may be found, as Joe and I have done with ortho-bionomy, that manage to convey the idea without adding to the confusion that this discussion seeks to dispel.
Fran, if you can direct us to the kind of thing you indicated you specifically meant by homoeoprophylaxis (as opposed to what you didn't mean it to encompass), I think we might make some progress there too.

Cheers!

John
--
In consigning its regulatory powers to its subject corporations, a government surrenders its electoral right to govern.

That brings us back a few years(?) ago, when we had the same type of discussion during which I suggested that we should have different definitions of the same thing ("homeopathy") depending who we are talking to, although they would mean the same thing: not an easy task, in my opinion at least.

What do I mean by that?
Look at what happens in teaching: you do not teach geography or history or anything else the same way to first graders and 12th graders, even though the local subject of teaching can be exactly the same. Therefore we should be able to formulate a professional definition and a "public relations" definition that are both correct but aimed at different levels of knowledge and understanding.

Naughty me has to add here that I understand Fran's reluctance about red flags, seeing what she has just been through, but I still enjoy doing just that, like telling a child psychiatrist that he is practicing homeopathy by prescribing Ritalin (and hence practicing illegally because he is not registered to do so [not true but it scares them]) and watch him getting agitated, almost foaming at the mouth, realising this is true.....

I need to comment on the Doctrine of Signature: it was/is a way to find a relationship between a plant or food and an organ or function of the body, and from there investigating whether that relationship can lead to some usefulness. A positive correlation will lead to using it it, a negative one, to discard it. For example, "eat walnuts for your brain because it looks like a brain": we now know that the walnut oil, like the coconut oil, has a repairing action and protective action on the neurons, plenty of publications about that; that is a positive correlation, but it has not transformed the walnut into a remedy based on the law of similar suffering.

Which leads to the word "homoeopathy". My understanding of what H did, is not that he created a new concept called "homoeopathy" but simply that he translated the concept of "same suffering" in Greek and combined the 2 words in one to simplify communication. The same way we use dermatitis as a generic for skin pathology/inflammation: eczema is a dermatitis, psoriasis is a dermatitis, acne is a dermatitis. He then extended that into the use of proved remedies as a means of treating and removing the suffering, but without ever writing that this should be the only way of treatment. The first Aphorism has never been modified and still comes without the addition of "....to cure only by the system of homeopathy as described further", something that after all H was fully entitled to write, but he never did. And to me, this is very important because of the way he wrote, choosing every word and building every sentence in an extremely careful way, so that the meaning of what he wrote would be very clear....and was somehow modified by translation...We will probably not agree on that.

Now, if you try to encompass everything you quoted into your definition, good luck with that: it might end up with a complicated, long winded and eventually unintelligible sentence that will give only one reaction "Huh?"

Simplify, simplify, simplify.....it reminds me of the Tao: there are thousands of books explaining what the Tao is not; all of them having forgotten or neglected Lao-Tzu' simple sentence: "the Tao that can be explained is not the Tao"

Joe.
Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD "The greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind" www.naturamedica.webs.com

Hi again, Joe --

Regarding the notion of definitions according to whom we are talking to: every time I've expressed my understanding of Hahnemann's exacting meaning of homoeopathy on this list, I've done so afresh. I'd be surprised if on any two occasions (on which I was not consciously quoting another occasion) I'd done so in identical terms. I've therefore used at least a couple of dozen ways of expressing exactly the same concept (including at least three different ways in my last post under this subject) -- but I've done so without altering by one iota the definition, the boundary lines between what the definition includes and what it excludes. So altering the words we use doesn't necessarily alter the boundary, or definition, between homoeopathy and non-homoeopathy. So, yes, I agree that definitions are available for different degrees of general understanding, definitions that differ in the words they use without differing in their meaning.

Love your red flags.

Doctrine of signatures: if its intent was to suggest lines of investigation, it has been translated even by professed homoeopaths as a set of indicators of medicines appropriate (even homoeopathic!) to the patient. Anybody using it merely to fire up an investigation isn't creating a semantic problem; it's only those who claim it as relating to homoeopathy who do that.

Hahnemann: no, we're not at all in disagreement about Hahnemann's priority for cure before homoeopathy. He employed whatever means achieved a cure. But what he clearly didn't do was confuse these means with what he'd already named homoeopathy; so we needn't either. But my memory of Hahnemann's recounting of the process of inventing homoeopathy differs from what you say here about his intent in coining the word "homoeopathy". Let's recall that Hahnemann's use of similar medicines came about not through any attempt to apply some "universal" law of similars to medicine but rather through his attempt to understand how medicines act by investigating their action upon the healthy and discovering an evidently unsought similarity. After seeing this and seeing similar relationships between the pathogenetic potential and the apparent curative power of a number of medicines, he described, in Hufeland's Journal, the apparent relationship "similia similibus" (more or less: with likes by likes), and, I understand, in 1833, in the fifth edition of the Organon, added "curentur" (more or less: care for the sick). His "law of similars" received expression in words via his diligently applying it in medical care following the discovery of the results of employing a medicinal relationship of similars.

As to the wordiness of a definition: I must have miscommunicated badly. All the definition wordings I've ever offered have been nothing if not brief. Here are a couple from this subject line:

"prescribing for the patient the substance whose known… pure effects most closely resemble the patient’s symptoms of departure from health";
"[a method] that leads inevitably from knowledge of patient state and knowledge of medicinal pathogenesis to a prescription designed to apply the most similar of the latter to the former" (okay, imperfect, but clear enough in the context in which I put it).
Even these are perhaps a little longer than they need be; I'm sure I've said it more briefly, and I'm sure others have too. But you can see how easily we can capture what is necessary and omit what is not.
Cheers --
John

Hi John,
Like Jean, I am finding the posts of this thread have too many words to digest fully as well! Lack of time is my problem.

I am skimming to take in as much as I can and doing searches (thank you Ctrl F) to find if and where I am specifically mentioned.

Homeoprophylaxis, prevention by homeopathy, still utilises the law of similars for its effect. On that basis, any substance, potentised or not, should have the ability to prevent disease symptoms as long as it matches the characteristic symptoms of that disease. This is different to treating the infected person where a much broader range of remedies has to be considered because we are dealing with individual response (though if most individuals have the same response, it allows us to identify a genus epidemicus remedy).

Prophylaxis is best achieved with the genus epidemicus - if there have been enough cases of infection.

If we are trying to ward off an epidemic and the genus epidemicus is not known, remedies that match the characteristic unchanging symptoms of the disease are the best recourse. This may be the nosode or any other remedy - Phosphorus for hepatitis, Pulsatilla for measles, etc, - until the genus epidemicus reveals itself. There are countries that are currently breaking their epidemics by nosodes though this may not always be the best remedy. Genus epidemicus is the best way to go of that is at all possible and the genus epidemicus will emerge from the best treatment remedies.

It is basic homeopathy and we have been down this path many times before so I may not be able to elaborate much more.

Fran, thank you. We just needed to have the specifics clear, and you've provided them. I think that it is easily possible to work this side of things into a summation of homoeopathy+homoeoprophylaxis as a single item, by referring to attempting to meet symptoms by symptom similarity that are present in the patient or that the practitioner seeks to protect the individual from acquiring.

The big question remains whether it's a good idea to do that -- whether it's more helpful:

(a) to recognise homoeoprophylaxis as a branch of homoeopathy that -- whilst Hahnemann recognised, practised, and instructed others in it -- falls outside his stated requirements of homoeopathic practice; or

(b) to continue to call it something slightly different from homoeopathy (such as homoeoprophylaxis or, possibly, homoeopathic prevention), fully respecting the limits of Hahnemann's meaning of the word and keeping the meaning of the word as simple as we may.

I'm inclined to think that, whilst the disadvantage of the latter to the practice of homoeoprophylaxis is substantial, the instant and potential disadvantages of the former to homoeopathy itself are greater still. But this is a discussion worth having. Thoughts, anybody?

Cheers --

John

One of the neat things about homeopathy is that it re-arranges a deranged inner healing power. If the vital healing power isn't doing something that it is supposed to do, homeopathy sparks it to do what it is supposed to do. If the vital healing agency is doing something that it isn't supposed t o do, then homeopathy stimulates it to stop doing what it is not supposed to do. To me, this is homeopathy.

From what I've read, mistunement is how it's described. Like a piano out of tune vs. deranged. I don't think there is a concept of what the VF is supposed to do or not.
The Vital Force is said to have no intelligence. When you take a proper homeopathic remedy, it creates an artificial similar disease that's greater in magnitude to one's natural disease so that the vital force proceeds fight?, react to?, and the result is one' s suffering from the natural disease is relieved, temporarily or eventually permanently annihilated. Here, disease may not specifically be an allopathic named disease but one's homeopathic disease which Hahnemann describes in Chronic Diseases.
The VF being non-intelligent doesn't know it's fighting an artificial vs. natural disease. If it did, it might act like bacteria that becomes antibiotic resistant, thus remedy resistant.
David Little best describes it....
Hahnemann was the first physician to fully integrate into medicine the innate constitution, the spiritual, mental and emotional temperament, the instinctive vital force, inheritance, predispositions, single and multiple causations, susceptibility, infection, acute and chronic miasms as well as the complete objective signs, coincidental befallments and subjective symptoms. Hippocrates is normally thought of as the father of constitutional medicine but Hahnemann brought this study to its perfection in Homoeopathy
The healthy state represents a harmonious tuning of all vital operations (§9). Disease is the mistuning of this harmonious tone by a dissonant dynamic influence (§11). It is the disease-tuned life force that manifests as the essence of the disease-Gestalt through the totality of the symptoms (§12). Homoeopathic remedies cure through their power to similarly alter the tuning of the human condition (§19). The primary action of a homoeopathic remedy over-tunes the disease and elicits a secondary healing response that retunes to the state of harmonious health. This is the Esse of Hahnemann’s treatment method.
Susan