The Real Danger to Homeopathy: Pseudo-Homeopathy
Posted: Mon Oct 16, 2006 5:46 pm
http://www.drluc.com/pseudo-homeopathy.htm
The Real Danger to Homeopathy:
Pseudo-Homeopathy
November 1999, Homeopathy Today
by Luc De Schepper, MD, PhD, DIHom
At the dawn of a new millennium, homeopathy is in a unique position, with
the power to rescue our current medical system from its morass of
high-tech, suppressive, alienating and exorbitantly expensive measures.
There is a groundswell of interest and involvement in alternative medicine
in general and homeopathy in particular among both patients and allopathic
practitioners. The most recent study by Dr. David Eisenberg of Harvard
Medical School shows 70% of Americans seeking alternative treatment (and
spending billions to pay for it out-of-pocket), while in another recent
survey 49% of primary care physicians stated that homeopathy was the
alternative modality they most wanted to learn about. Insurance companies
are beginning to reimburse for alternative treatments like homeopathy,
recognizing the long-term savings involved.
At this point the greatest threat to homeopathy comes not from allopathic
practitioners or pharmaceutical companies but from self-professed
homeopaths who do not follow the immortal laws and principles laid down by
Hahnemann. Whether out of ignorance or laziness, or the desire to impress
their patients with their gimmicks so that they can charge more money,
these pseudo-homeopaths violate the most basic principle of homeopathy: to
give a single remedy which covers the totality of the symptom picture. Some
give three or four remedies within a single week; others give mixtures of
several or even a dozen remedies at once. In so doing they harm the
patient, which is bad enough, but worse still, they harm the profession and
the reputation of homeopathy.
We are accustomed to patients treating homeopathy as the last resort; they
often come to us after the harmful, suppressive, and invasive measures of
allopathic medicine. In my own practice I find myself in the unenviable
position of the absolute last resort: patients come to me after being
mistreated by other homeopaths. Or other homeopaths refer patients to me
when they are honest enough to admit that they can no longer follow a case.
I have seen hundreds of such patients over the years who have suffered from
bad homeopathy. In addition, I have heard about hundreds more from my
patients. Like typical homeopathy patients, they become missionaries who
zealously try to convince their families and friends of homeopathy, but too
often they come back to me with sad stories of these people who have had
bad experiences at the hands of homeopaths who did not know the most basic
principles of homeopathy.
Typically these patients suffer aggravations lasting weeks or months while
the homeopath offers no succor and even refuses to return phone calls. In
other cases the homeopath actually suppresses the symptoms with the remedy
and fails to recognize that the case is going in the wrong direction, thus
setting the patient up for more suffering later on. In still other cases,
superficial physical symptoms disappear, to be replaced by mental/emotional
ones. Many of these people have suffered so much that they adamantly refuse
to consider consulting another homeopath, and they warn others away from
homeopathy. I am just one practitioner; if I have encountered so many of
these patients, how many more must there be in this country?
With Hahnemann giving us such clear guidance, I am honestly puzzled at how
people practicing in his name can deviate so far from his direction.
I have tried to find out the rationale for these practices of mixing and
alternating remedies. Many practitioners delude themselves that there is no
danger in these practices because the remedies are “harmless.” Apparently
they think that since the remedies contain not one molecule of the original
substance there cannot be any harm in giving several at once, and perhaps
they follow the American belief that “more is better.” I know other such
practitioners who are trying to create for themselves the prestige and
status of allopathic physicians, imitating the lab coats and stethoscopes
as well as the polypharmacy of allopathy.
But polypharmacy (giving many prescriptions at once) is harmful in
homeopathy as well as in allopathy. Remember that the remedies bear a
powerful force. If they can consistently cure the so-called “incurable
diseases,” they must be highly active agents. Each remedy delivers an
energetic “punch” to the Vital Force, and it is the secondary response of
the Vital Force which acts against the illness and heals the patient.
Giving too many remedies at once can leave the Vital Force punched down
like a boxer staggering to his knees. In fact I have seen patients who have
been given so many remedies by previous homeopaths that their Vital Force
no longer responds to the single well-chosen remedy, which could have cured
their case in the first place before they were rendered incurable by bad
homeopathy.
The well-chosen remedy, the simillimum, delivers an energetic impact which
exactly matches the symptom picture of the patient. Any other remedy will
not be a perfect match, that is, it will have symptoms in its symptom
picture which do not match the patient’s. These aspects of the remedy can
stimulate the Vital Force to create new symptoms, called accessory symptoms
of the remedy. It is only logical that if more than one remedy is given at
once or in close succession, only one can be the simillimum and the others
are likely to create accessory symptoms. For example, I have seen a mixture
labeled “Grief” which has every grief remedy under the sun, from Pulsatilla
to Nat mur. There is no way that one patient can need both these remedies;
they cannot be both the weepy, needy, consolation-seeking Pulsatilla and
the stiff-upper-lip, leave-me-alone Nat mur.
The result of these mixtures can be a tangled mess of symptoms which make
it impossible for the homeopath to follow the case. I have seen these
patients too. It is bad enough that we have to sort out the patient’s true
symptoms from those induced by their allopathic medications. We should not
have to sort out symptoms induced by our own colleagues! Speaking of
difficulties following the case, mixtures and alternation of remedies bring
about another problem which we see in allopathic medicine all the time. I
have seen allopathic physicians give my patients several drugs, one of
which might “cure” the case but all of which have serious side effects. The
mixture achieves the desired effect (suppressing the symptoms, which they
call a cure). Then the physician does not know which medication “worked”
and which ones can be discontinued. As a result the patient is kept on the
dangerous drug cocktail indefinitely, with drug interactions compounding
the side effects of the single drugs. When remedies are mixed the same
problems arise. If the patient aggravates it is difficult to tell which
remedy caused the problem; if the patient is improving slightly, which
remedy should be re-administered in a higher potency?
And just as in allopathic medicine, the interactions among the remedies can
bring about harmful effects which the single remedies would not create.
This can even happen when the remedies are alternated. Each remedy has a
long duration of action, usually lasting weeks or months. Giving several
remedies within a single week creates all the bad results of mixing
remedies because their effects will overlap.
To make the problems arising from mixtures more clear, consider remedies
made from chemical compounds containing more than one element, like our old
friend Nat mur. If it were possible to remove the Natrum (sodium) element
from the muriaticum (chloride), the proving results of each one separately
would be entirely different from the combination. It stands to reason that
adding further elements would change the proving picture again. Another
justification for mixing remedies stems from a confusion over existing
remedies like China sulphuricum or Calcarea silicata which seem to be
mixtures. But these remedies were proven as such. Their indications are not
invented by adding the symptom picture of China with that of Sulphur, or
that of Calcarea with that of Silica. Provings were done on the compound
itself so that it can be prescribed confidently according to Hahnemann’s
principles. This type of proved compound in no way justifies creating new,
unknown and unproven mixtures.
Another reason I hear for mixing and alternating goes like this: “The
modern era, with its more complicated diseases, requires more than one
remedy to cover the case.” Again, this answer betrays an ignorance of
Hahnemann’s principles so beautifully and clearly laid out in Chronic
Diseases and the Organon. He has given us powerful tools which enable us to
clearly analyze even the most complicated case. True, we see more effects
of medical suppression in modern times: allopathic medicine has much more
powerful tools at its disposal, including antibiotics, chemotherapy, and
radiation. And it is true that the miasms have become increasingly more
powerful; sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have become pandemic because
of changes in sexual mores and because of the world wars, among other
causes. At the same time STDs have become more effectively suppressed by
antibiotics, thereby creating new miasmatic cases, while existing miasms
are fueled by factors like mandatory vaccinations.
This does not stop us from a clear analysis of our patients’ cases,
however. If we search the patient’s past medical history and family medical
history to find the active miasm, we can give one of the remedies most
strongly active against that miasm, thereby ensuring good results every
time. If we have the patient create a timeline, marking different traumatic
events as well as surgeries and medically-suppressive interventions and
correlating these with the first appearance of different symptoms, we can
determine which are the most recently-created symptoms and therefore which
ones need to be addressed first.
I might mention an error I see even among my true colleagues, the real
classical homeopaths who give a single remedy at a time. Too often they
lump all the patient’s symptoms together, even those created by a long-ago
grief or other trauma, and attempt the impossible task of finding a single
remedy to cover the patient’s entire life. This is not what Hahnemann meant
by the totality of symptoms. We must address the totality of current
symptoms in the current layer, those created by the most recent trauma or
suppressive act, before retaking the case and finding a different match for
the previous layer (as Hahnemann explains in the Organon).
A final argument I hear is that we do not need to limit ourselves to
Hahnemann’s principles because he was senile at the end of his life. I only
wish that these Hahnemann-bashers could read Hahnemann’s Paris case books,
as I have. They would see for themselves that far from floundering in the
dark, as the Hahnemann-bashers claim, he was constantly experimenting to
perfect and refine his system within the framework of the basic principles
which he had so brilliantly laid down.
It was in the last years of his life that he experimented with the higher
potencies (far beyond the 30C which many people claim was his limit) and he
developed the LM potency, the crown jewel of his method. Those who read the
Paris case books for themselves will also debunk the myth that alternation
of remedies is acceptable because Hahnemann himself did it. Hahnemann had
earlier experimented with alternating remedies, but discarded the practice.
He did give some of his Paris patients two remedies, but only because they
had traveled a great distance and he anticipated that at some point they
would need to switch from one to the other.
I look forward to the time when Hahnemann’s case books will be available in
English for all to read. In the meantime, all those who claim to be
homeopaths should read and re-read, study and re-study, Chronic Diseases
and the 6th edition of the Organon. I am shocked that whenever I talk to
professional colleagues at conferences, I find that the great majority have
never read the Organon even once! Each time I study this masterpiece I am
astounded at how Hahnemann was able to anticipate the medical concerns of
our modern world. On each re-reading I gain new insights which help me in
my practice.
I also encourage my colleagues, all those who sincerely aspire to deserve
the title of “homeopath,” to read the old masters—Kent, Hering, von
Boenninghausen, Lippe—and the masters from the earlier part of this
century—Farrington, Wright-Hubbard, Pierre Schmidt, Tyler, Compton-Burnett.
Few if any homeopaths in the world today have the stature of our great
predecessors. By studying their works, we find that they always adhered to
Hahnemann’s principles. In everything they did they harked back to the
master, never questioning his guidance and never accusing him of being
senile. We also find that there is nothing new under the sun: the old
masters and Hahnemann himself lamented the pseudo-homeopaths of their day,
who were harming patients and ruining the reputation of our profession with
their mixtures and alternations.
As practitioners we must remember, as I always tell my students, that we
are not repairing refrigerators. We have our patients’ lives and health in
our hands. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves in the laws and
principles of homeopathy: we must know how to give a single well-chosen
remedy, chosen by the totality of the symptoms, based on the proving
picture of the remedy. We must educate our patients and the public that
anyone who does not follow these laws does not deserve the title of
homeopath. They may call themselves eclectics or anything else they want,
but not homeopaths. In the words of Constantine Hering, one of our most
revered masters, “If our school ever gives up the strict inductive method
of Hahnemann, we are lost and deserve only to be mentioned as a caricature
in the history of medicine.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath
Well Within & Earth Mysteries & Sacred Site Tours (worldwide)
Vaccination Information & Choice Network
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/homeo.htm
homeopathycures@tesco.net
ONLINE Introduction to Homeopathy Classes
ONLINE Introduction to Vaccine Dangers Classes
Voicemail US 530-740-0561 UK phone from US 011-44-1874-624-936
The Real Danger to Homeopathy:
Pseudo-Homeopathy
November 1999, Homeopathy Today
by Luc De Schepper, MD, PhD, DIHom
At the dawn of a new millennium, homeopathy is in a unique position, with
the power to rescue our current medical system from its morass of
high-tech, suppressive, alienating and exorbitantly expensive measures.
There is a groundswell of interest and involvement in alternative medicine
in general and homeopathy in particular among both patients and allopathic
practitioners. The most recent study by Dr. David Eisenberg of Harvard
Medical School shows 70% of Americans seeking alternative treatment (and
spending billions to pay for it out-of-pocket), while in another recent
survey 49% of primary care physicians stated that homeopathy was the
alternative modality they most wanted to learn about. Insurance companies
are beginning to reimburse for alternative treatments like homeopathy,
recognizing the long-term savings involved.
At this point the greatest threat to homeopathy comes not from allopathic
practitioners or pharmaceutical companies but from self-professed
homeopaths who do not follow the immortal laws and principles laid down by
Hahnemann. Whether out of ignorance or laziness, or the desire to impress
their patients with their gimmicks so that they can charge more money,
these pseudo-homeopaths violate the most basic principle of homeopathy: to
give a single remedy which covers the totality of the symptom picture. Some
give three or four remedies within a single week; others give mixtures of
several or even a dozen remedies at once. In so doing they harm the
patient, which is bad enough, but worse still, they harm the profession and
the reputation of homeopathy.
We are accustomed to patients treating homeopathy as the last resort; they
often come to us after the harmful, suppressive, and invasive measures of
allopathic medicine. In my own practice I find myself in the unenviable
position of the absolute last resort: patients come to me after being
mistreated by other homeopaths. Or other homeopaths refer patients to me
when they are honest enough to admit that they can no longer follow a case.
I have seen hundreds of such patients over the years who have suffered from
bad homeopathy. In addition, I have heard about hundreds more from my
patients. Like typical homeopathy patients, they become missionaries who
zealously try to convince their families and friends of homeopathy, but too
often they come back to me with sad stories of these people who have had
bad experiences at the hands of homeopaths who did not know the most basic
principles of homeopathy.
Typically these patients suffer aggravations lasting weeks or months while
the homeopath offers no succor and even refuses to return phone calls. In
other cases the homeopath actually suppresses the symptoms with the remedy
and fails to recognize that the case is going in the wrong direction, thus
setting the patient up for more suffering later on. In still other cases,
superficial physical symptoms disappear, to be replaced by mental/emotional
ones. Many of these people have suffered so much that they adamantly refuse
to consider consulting another homeopath, and they warn others away from
homeopathy. I am just one practitioner; if I have encountered so many of
these patients, how many more must there be in this country?
With Hahnemann giving us such clear guidance, I am honestly puzzled at how
people practicing in his name can deviate so far from his direction.
I have tried to find out the rationale for these practices of mixing and
alternating remedies. Many practitioners delude themselves that there is no
danger in these practices because the remedies are “harmless.” Apparently
they think that since the remedies contain not one molecule of the original
substance there cannot be any harm in giving several at once, and perhaps
they follow the American belief that “more is better.” I know other such
practitioners who are trying to create for themselves the prestige and
status of allopathic physicians, imitating the lab coats and stethoscopes
as well as the polypharmacy of allopathy.
But polypharmacy (giving many prescriptions at once) is harmful in
homeopathy as well as in allopathy. Remember that the remedies bear a
powerful force. If they can consistently cure the so-called “incurable
diseases,” they must be highly active agents. Each remedy delivers an
energetic “punch” to the Vital Force, and it is the secondary response of
the Vital Force which acts against the illness and heals the patient.
Giving too many remedies at once can leave the Vital Force punched down
like a boxer staggering to his knees. In fact I have seen patients who have
been given so many remedies by previous homeopaths that their Vital Force
no longer responds to the single well-chosen remedy, which could have cured
their case in the first place before they were rendered incurable by bad
homeopathy.
The well-chosen remedy, the simillimum, delivers an energetic impact which
exactly matches the symptom picture of the patient. Any other remedy will
not be a perfect match, that is, it will have symptoms in its symptom
picture which do not match the patient’s. These aspects of the remedy can
stimulate the Vital Force to create new symptoms, called accessory symptoms
of the remedy. It is only logical that if more than one remedy is given at
once or in close succession, only one can be the simillimum and the others
are likely to create accessory symptoms. For example, I have seen a mixture
labeled “Grief” which has every grief remedy under the sun, from Pulsatilla
to Nat mur. There is no way that one patient can need both these remedies;
they cannot be both the weepy, needy, consolation-seeking Pulsatilla and
the stiff-upper-lip, leave-me-alone Nat mur.
The result of these mixtures can be a tangled mess of symptoms which make
it impossible for the homeopath to follow the case. I have seen these
patients too. It is bad enough that we have to sort out the patient’s true
symptoms from those induced by their allopathic medications. We should not
have to sort out symptoms induced by our own colleagues! Speaking of
difficulties following the case, mixtures and alternation of remedies bring
about another problem which we see in allopathic medicine all the time. I
have seen allopathic physicians give my patients several drugs, one of
which might “cure” the case but all of which have serious side effects. The
mixture achieves the desired effect (suppressing the symptoms, which they
call a cure). Then the physician does not know which medication “worked”
and which ones can be discontinued. As a result the patient is kept on the
dangerous drug cocktail indefinitely, with drug interactions compounding
the side effects of the single drugs. When remedies are mixed the same
problems arise. If the patient aggravates it is difficult to tell which
remedy caused the problem; if the patient is improving slightly, which
remedy should be re-administered in a higher potency?
And just as in allopathic medicine, the interactions among the remedies can
bring about harmful effects which the single remedies would not create.
This can even happen when the remedies are alternated. Each remedy has a
long duration of action, usually lasting weeks or months. Giving several
remedies within a single week creates all the bad results of mixing
remedies because their effects will overlap.
To make the problems arising from mixtures more clear, consider remedies
made from chemical compounds containing more than one element, like our old
friend Nat mur. If it were possible to remove the Natrum (sodium) element
from the muriaticum (chloride), the proving results of each one separately
would be entirely different from the combination. It stands to reason that
adding further elements would change the proving picture again. Another
justification for mixing remedies stems from a confusion over existing
remedies like China sulphuricum or Calcarea silicata which seem to be
mixtures. But these remedies were proven as such. Their indications are not
invented by adding the symptom picture of China with that of Sulphur, or
that of Calcarea with that of Silica. Provings were done on the compound
itself so that it can be prescribed confidently according to Hahnemann’s
principles. This type of proved compound in no way justifies creating new,
unknown and unproven mixtures.
Another reason I hear for mixing and alternating goes like this: “The
modern era, with its more complicated diseases, requires more than one
remedy to cover the case.” Again, this answer betrays an ignorance of
Hahnemann’s principles so beautifully and clearly laid out in Chronic
Diseases and the Organon. He has given us powerful tools which enable us to
clearly analyze even the most complicated case. True, we see more effects
of medical suppression in modern times: allopathic medicine has much more
powerful tools at its disposal, including antibiotics, chemotherapy, and
radiation. And it is true that the miasms have become increasingly more
powerful; sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have become pandemic because
of changes in sexual mores and because of the world wars, among other
causes. At the same time STDs have become more effectively suppressed by
antibiotics, thereby creating new miasmatic cases, while existing miasms
are fueled by factors like mandatory vaccinations.
This does not stop us from a clear analysis of our patients’ cases,
however. If we search the patient’s past medical history and family medical
history to find the active miasm, we can give one of the remedies most
strongly active against that miasm, thereby ensuring good results every
time. If we have the patient create a timeline, marking different traumatic
events as well as surgeries and medically-suppressive interventions and
correlating these with the first appearance of different symptoms, we can
determine which are the most recently-created symptoms and therefore which
ones need to be addressed first.
I might mention an error I see even among my true colleagues, the real
classical homeopaths who give a single remedy at a time. Too often they
lump all the patient’s symptoms together, even those created by a long-ago
grief or other trauma, and attempt the impossible task of finding a single
remedy to cover the patient’s entire life. This is not what Hahnemann meant
by the totality of symptoms. We must address the totality of current
symptoms in the current layer, those created by the most recent trauma or
suppressive act, before retaking the case and finding a different match for
the previous layer (as Hahnemann explains in the Organon).
A final argument I hear is that we do not need to limit ourselves to
Hahnemann’s principles because he was senile at the end of his life. I only
wish that these Hahnemann-bashers could read Hahnemann’s Paris case books,
as I have. They would see for themselves that far from floundering in the
dark, as the Hahnemann-bashers claim, he was constantly experimenting to
perfect and refine his system within the framework of the basic principles
which he had so brilliantly laid down.
It was in the last years of his life that he experimented with the higher
potencies (far beyond the 30C which many people claim was his limit) and he
developed the LM potency, the crown jewel of his method. Those who read the
Paris case books for themselves will also debunk the myth that alternation
of remedies is acceptable because Hahnemann himself did it. Hahnemann had
earlier experimented with alternating remedies, but discarded the practice.
He did give some of his Paris patients two remedies, but only because they
had traveled a great distance and he anticipated that at some point they
would need to switch from one to the other.
I look forward to the time when Hahnemann’s case books will be available in
English for all to read. In the meantime, all those who claim to be
homeopaths should read and re-read, study and re-study, Chronic Diseases
and the 6th edition of the Organon. I am shocked that whenever I talk to
professional colleagues at conferences, I find that the great majority have
never read the Organon even once! Each time I study this masterpiece I am
astounded at how Hahnemann was able to anticipate the medical concerns of
our modern world. On each re-reading I gain new insights which help me in
my practice.
I also encourage my colleagues, all those who sincerely aspire to deserve
the title of “homeopath,” to read the old masters—Kent, Hering, von
Boenninghausen, Lippe—and the masters from the earlier part of this
century—Farrington, Wright-Hubbard, Pierre Schmidt, Tyler, Compton-Burnett.
Few if any homeopaths in the world today have the stature of our great
predecessors. By studying their works, we find that they always adhered to
Hahnemann’s principles. In everything they did they harked back to the
master, never questioning his guidance and never accusing him of being
senile. We also find that there is nothing new under the sun: the old
masters and Hahnemann himself lamented the pseudo-homeopaths of their day,
who were harming patients and ruining the reputation of our profession with
their mixtures and alternations.
As practitioners we must remember, as I always tell my students, that we
are not repairing refrigerators. We have our patients’ lives and health in
our hands. We have a responsibility to educate ourselves in the laws and
principles of homeopathy: we must know how to give a single well-chosen
remedy, chosen by the totality of the symptoms, based on the proving
picture of the remedy. We must educate our patients and the public that
anyone who does not follow these laws does not deserve the title of
homeopath. They may call themselves eclectics or anything else they want,
but not homeopaths. In the words of Constantine Hering, one of our most
revered masters, “If our school ever gives up the strict inductive method
of Hahnemann, we are lost and deserve only to be mentioned as a caricature
in the history of medicine.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Hahnemannian Homeopath
Well Within & Earth Mysteries & Sacred Site Tours (worldwide)
Vaccination Information & Choice Network
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm
http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/homeo.htm
homeopathycures@tesco.net
ONLINE Introduction to Homeopathy Classes
ONLINE Introduction to Vaccine Dangers Classes
Voicemail US 530-740-0561 UK phone from US 011-44-1874-624-936