Minutus

Hahnemannian, thank you for that kind vote of confidence.

Irene, I'm tempted to point out that the _Organon_'s sparse examples
of the application of homoeopathy are merely examples; that its
principles are laid out with great care; and that between these two
lies the best set of directions for practice -- of homoeopathy and of
medicine -- that Hahnemann was able to offer at any one time.

I'm tempted to point out also, at risk of embarrassment, that
Hahnemann clearly knew the difference between all three, even if some
of his readers do not.

Anybody who cannot tell into which of these three categories one of
Hahnemann's stipulations falls has an easy remedy: read the book. If
you've read it already, then simply read it again (this time with the
music turned off).

Hahnemann's directions for use of fifty-millesimal potencies,
increasing potency, and so on clearly were not "principles". They
were guides, opinions, best-practice directions, even exhortations, if
you like; but they were, as in all his previous editions, simply the
best directions he could offer.

In stark contrast, the principles of homoeopathy remained unchanging,
simple, and very broad: so simple and so broad that we all know them.
Within those principles, all the variations that Hahnemann recommended
were possible.

One of those was, and remains, the single remedy. For all time, the
single remedy will be one of the pillars identifying homoeopathy and
distinguishing it from other medical practices.

Another was, and remains, the pathogenesis obtained through a drug
proving of the single substance. For all time, the single
homoeopathic remedy relies for knowledge of its homoeopathicity upon
the collective and certain effects of a single substance on the
healthy, free of the confusion of "cured" symptoms and free of the
multiple confusions of polypharmacy.

And the third was, and remains, similarity of the patient totality to
at least a part of that pathogenesis.

If any one of those three is lost, then the practice, according not to
examples and not to practice directions but to the most basic
principles of the Organon, is not homoeopathy.

Best practice, in contrast, may advance. Best practice may even
include such radically unhomoeopathic measures as food, water, air,
and good humour. Whatever the best practice of homoeopathy and the
best practice of medicine more generally may be determined to be,
whatever we find out is best for our patients, does not and cannot
change the principles of homoeopathy, which are timeless and
unchanging precisely because it is on those principles that
homoeopathy is defined.

Clearly, one's highest duty being to cure cannot be a principle of
homoeopathy. It is rather an overarching aim, and a good one, and
applies equally to acupuncture. In the practical directions that
Hahnemann gave (supplemented, it's true, by the occasional example),
what he sought to apply as best he could in order to accomplish that
aim were, and remain, the principles defining homoeopathy.

Kind regards,

John
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"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