Minutus

I have a problem with this limited type of definition as it does not specify a process.
Homepathy is not just the remedy but the process for how you get there.
t
From: Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2014 8:59 PM
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Post 3

I must be hypoglycemic, but the only change I can perceive is "offering" instead of "giving".....what is the difference??

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

Hi, Joe --

No, it's not intended to be a whole sentence; it's intended to stand as a definition of homoeopathy, one you could replace the word with. But preceding it with "Homoeopathy is" will do the trick.

Fran, sorry, I missed your brief post about this version (and all other versions I've mentioned)) not allowing for prevention. Anyway, I trust that I effectively responded a little earlier…

Cheers!

John

Thus spoketh the Master Dog......and suggested the tweaking as follows (changes are in italics):
"Homeopathy is a natural therapy that attempts to restore health to the whole patient and prevent health deterioration without neglecting the actual presenting problems.
It does that by considering at the same time the main complaints while putting them into the perspective of everything else happening to the patient during his life, taking into account all aspects, physical, mental, emotional and psychological.
The treatment is done essentially by the use of remedies made of substances that, given to a healthy person, could create the same symptoms and signs presented by the patient, prepared in such a way that all toxicity is removed."

What do you reckon?

Still a bit too long for my own taste, it should take about 10-15 seconds to be an effective tool, but I cannot see how I could shorten it without removing important facts.

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

Hi, Joe --

It's a good description, I think; again doesn't make clear that it's a single substance that can create those symptoms and a single remedy made of it, but otherwise seems very clear.

And are you content that your definition too, as I modified it, reflects what homoeopathy is? Amazingly, I see no objections to it yet aside from its non-inclusion of the somewhat contentious preventive prescription.

Cheers!

John

Because it is a wide ranging definition, if we start including precisions, then we can add more and more, and we are back to the situation that Carol described so eloquently.

The purpose of this is to have a short, descriptive but all-including "explanation" that will not repel anybody, and if interested, will lead to more questions, not the reaction "here is the preacher again, let's hide".

As for the professionals, it allows us to have a common basis from which we can elaborate and discuss the "finer" points, expanding them in 21st century words and concepts (at least for me).
I realise it can be said there is nothing else to add or discuss that has not already been written by the "masters", but seeing how we get into heated arguments over discordances in practices, I feel there is a need to air that, while keeping in mind that we have all evolved into our techniques for a good reason and what needs to be done is an exchange of information and not an exchange of insults.

Or, we can stop there......

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

If prescription good chosen on homeopathic principles it restores balance.

Hi, Joe --
If your first paragraph is about the definition we refined together, I agree. If it's referring to a description that conveys the notion of multiple substances and multiple remedies that together reproduce the patient's symptoms, I don't think that making it as precise as requiring use of a single substance (which takes fewer words) is adding anything; it's actually confining the idea, exactly as it needs to be confined, to what we actually do rather than including polypharmacy. But it's a bit of a side issue to the topic, I guess, of arriving at a common understanding of how to say what homoeopathy is (and what it isn't), which I think you did very nicely in your definition.
Cheers!
John

You are already going one step forward, and rightfully call it a side issue in the discussion of definition.

Remember that unicists AND pluralists AND complexists all say they are practicing homeopathy....now there is a common platform from which the discussion about the differences between those methods, and others like the "mentals only " school of Sheghal, can originate, if we really do wish to go yet again that road....

One thing we have to remember though, is that each one of us defines himself and his practice first...so when I say ortho-bionomy is homeopathic osteopathy, that is a definition I stand by; it then becomes my task, if I want to do so, to explain this affirmation, as I think I have done earlier on.

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

HI, Joe --

Yes, I think that it's going to be up to those offering a different therapy (such as ortho-bionomy) the alternative label of being a homoeopathic (non-medicinal) therapy (such as "homoeopathic osteopathy"), it's going to be up to then to justify the accuracy of an appellation that entails the ability of the particular therapeutic intervention to reproduce the patient's totality of symptoms in the healthy. If they can do so, then I don't see a great deal of conflict arising from it; the only problem I foresee in it is that those yet to come to grips with what homoeopathy is, including many on this list, will have lost the clear use of the term that would allow them to eventually discern what "homoeopathic" means: not because the term has necessarily been inappropriately applied, but because its meaning in medicine entails not just one requirement but three, and the struggle even for practitioners to maintain sight of those three is made no easier by beginning to apply the term by analogy.

As for reintroducing polypharmacy and all the other mixtures of therapies as being some "kind" of application of a principle that inherently requires monopharmacy, no, I agree: we've managed to invalidate pretty thoroughly the notion that anybody's wish to believe such a self-contradiction gives him or her the right to purloin a term whose purity of use was set when it was defined.

You've spoken of this confusion here in terms of practitioners rather than of practices. Very well, let us speak then in those terms.

The reason for which the battle by pluralists, polypharmacists, sympathetic magicians -- even radiaesthesiests -- to be known as practising (in these respective practices) either some kind of homoeopathy or a homoeopathic kind of something is endless and heated is not that one kind of homoeopath sees these practices as violating Hahnemann's directions or as "new" (what could be older than polypharmacy?). It is that even a genuine homoeopath who may resort to polypharmacy or sympathetic magic or radiaesthesia on occasion but who understands the difference between one and the other will not wish to attempt or to tolerate misrepresentation of what homoeopathy is or of what "homoeopathic" implies.

Tolerate these confoundments we must, to an extent, because we can't spend out entire lives battling the pecuniary interests of companies that peddle mixtures as "homoeopathic" and the fools who support them in doing so. But none of us, including your good self, is capable of entirely overlooking the relevance to homoeopathy's very survival of that triple-twined singular boundary between homoeopathy and non-homoeopathy. Meeting one of the three requirements of homoeopathic practice does not constitute a "kind" of meeting of the three; it constitutes not at all meeting the three.

Kindest regards,

John

The survival of homeopathy is not a problem in itself. What is true an right always finds a way to survive and regenerate.

It is the survival of the possibility to practice and access homeopathy that is compromised by the fruitless fights, the sectarian opposition between factions that have lost the ability to have a common front. I see this happening under my eyes right now in a country that is seeing the freedom of access and the freedom of practice dwindling while bickering continues and flourishes. Fortunately not mine, as we have avoided that through unity and diversity within the unity.

Can we make sure that the time we have spend on a definition will lead to the same type of behaviour?

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