Minutus

Dear John
In my view, anything and from any source, when potentised will be able to cause disease in the healthy. These are each a single remedy.
If it does so, it will cure a similar set of symptoms in unhealthy person.
Why do you need to argue about the source?
We have sources which are completely inert before they are potentised (eg Sil, Lyc etc).
As I said, the lake water is regarded as a single remedy and it has all sorts in it.
Rgds
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of John Harvey
Sent: 08 July 2009 15:13
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Re: definition [was: New media attacks on homeopathy...
Really? Here's just one sample of many quotes from the master herself showing otherwise:
(54) "There *is* logic to the similar symptom illness entities being put

together top make a "similar" remedy:
"We know from Hahnemann's work, and from The Law of Similars, that a

similar disease energy will overcome another similar disease energy

for example a pox entity that is similar to the smallpox one, will

cure smallpox. It is the same with the cat flu remedy. It is cat flu

illness substance (instead of cowpox illness substance) being used

because it is similar to cat flu - hence it works against cat flu of

ANY kind - not just the range covered by the 4 flus used to make the

cat flu remedy called URI 30C. (URI( stands for upper respiratory

infection" (30 Jun 09)
Cheers!
John
2009/7/9 Shannon & Bob Nelson >
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

Dear Soroush,
I wonder whether you're making this more complicated than it need be and overlooking the forest for the wood grain. Let me ask three things:
(1) What, in your view, did Hahnemann mean by anything other than a single, simple medicinal substance?
(2) How do you know that the mixtures that you believe "become" a single substance upon dilution and shaking will cure a set of symptoms similar to those they cause -- has this ever been demonstrated in practice, and if so, has it been replicated?
(3) How do you know that by diluting a mixture and shaking it, you change its chemistry so fundamentally that it becomes a single substance?
I believe that when you take the time to think carefully about the first question in the context of a clear understanding of § 273 and its footnote 159, you'll realise that Hahnemann must have meant to exclude something from the definition of single, simple substance -- otherwise there would have been no point in writing that aphorism or § 274 or, I think, several others.
Let's realise also that when Hahnemann used the term "more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time" he was not simply referring to a mixture of two or more potencies of substances: he was also and more particularly referring to any potency, from zero up, of two or more medicinal substances.
As Chris has ably pointed out, he also made perfectly clear in that footnote that whereas his meaning of "single, simple medicinal substance" includes any whole plant, it excludes "on the other hand... those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants",
(a) "[because they] are exposed to great variety in their preparation", a critique that may be overcome simply through better technology, and
(b) "[because] the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants" -- or in other words will not be the single, simple substances their names suggest.
But really, when you think about it, if, in saying that it is not permissible to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at a time, Hahnemann did not mean more than one plant or reliable compound or element, then what could he possibly have meant that doesn't stretch the bounds of credibility? Is it at all credible, the idea that -- having campaigned against polypharmacy even before his discovery of homoeopathy -- Hahnemann came to think that one could stir together one substance and another and another; dilute them; shake them; and regard them as an inviolable whole single substance rather than a diluted, shaken mixture?
Let's give him credit for having kept some intelligence and integrity!
Thanks --
John
2009/7/9 >
________________________________

Dear John
1- It is a term which means 'A Single POTENTISED substance' as opposed to a mixture of such substance. You need to understand this difference clearly.
2- The system is called proving!
3- Chemically it is never a simple substance. The mixture does not form a single 'molecule'! Nor does the extract of Nux-vom form a single molecule!
Aph 273 is clearly about more than one potentised substance being administered together. The clue is in the last sentence:
"It is absolutely not allowed in homœopathy, the one true, simple and natural art of healing, to give the patient at one time two different medicinal substance."
Best wishes
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of John Harvey
Sent: 09 July 2009 07:08
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Single Substance
Dear Soroush,
I wonder whether you're making this more complicated than it need be and overlooking the forest for the wood grain. Let me ask three things:
(1) What, in your view, did Hahnemann mean by anything other than a single, simple medicinal substance?
(2) How do you know that the mixtures that you believe "become" a single substance upon dilution and shaking will cure a set of symptoms similar to those they cause -- has this ever been demonstrated in practice, and if so, has it been replicated?
(3) How do you know that by diluting a mixture and shaking it, you change its chemistry so fundamentally that it becomes a single substance?
I believe that when you take the time to think carefully about the first question in the context of a clear understanding of § 273 and its footnote 159, you'll realise that Hahnemann must have meant to exclude something from the definition of single, simple substance -- otherwise there would have been no point in writing that aphorism or § 274 or, I think, several others.
Let's realise also that when Hahnemann used the term "more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time" he was not simply referring to a mixture of two or more potencies of substances: he was also and more particularly referring to any potency, from zero up, of two or more medicinal substances.
As Chris has ably pointed out, he also made perfectly clear in that footnote that whereas his meaning of "single, simple medicinal substance" includes any whole plant, it excludes "on the other hand... those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants",
(a) "[because they] are exposed to great variety in their preparation", a critique that may be overcome simply through better technology, and
(b) "[because] the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants" -- or in other words will not be the single, simple substances their names suggest.
But really, when you think about it, if, in saying that it is not permissible to administer more than one single, simple medicinal substance at a time, Hahnemann did not mean more than one plant or reliable compound or element, then what could he possibly have meant that doesn't stretch the bounds of credibility? Is it at all credible, the idea that -- having campaigned against polypharmacy even before his discovery of homoeopathy -- Hahnemann came to think that one could stir together one substance and another and another; dilute them; shake them; and regard them as an inviolable whole single substance rather than a diluted, shaken mixture?
Let's give him credit for having kept some intelligence and integrity!
Thanks --
John
2009/7/9 >
________________________________
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

Hi, Soroush --

I'm sure you're putting this idea out only as speculation intended to provoke thoughtful responses, which I appreciate, but I wonder whether it would be helpful for you to make that explicit. We can enter into the same reasoning process but not confuse beginners with any illusions that you, a professed homoeopath -- and a Hahnemannian one at that -- believe that such notions as the transmutation of mixtures into compounds through succussion have any place in a medicine based on the predictable application of a method derived by induction from careful experimentation. Nevertheless, to enter into the spirit of it:
(1) So your suggestion is that what Hahnemann means by more than one single, simple medicinal substance is only a mixture of potentised substances, excluding all other mixtures.

This interpretation is, of course, inconsistent with § 264 ("The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to rely upon their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of their genuineness"), which evidently refers to access not to potencies but to substantial medicines, which the physician, according to § 265, would ideally then himself prepare for the patient in accordance with §§ 266-274. It would take very convoluted thinking indeed, in light of those aphorisms, to conclude that Hahnemann intended, in § 273, to refer only to proscribe the use of more than one potentised solution but not to proscribe what went into that solution.

The clue that you suggest the last sentence provides to such an interpretation -- which I take to be your reference to his stressing "at one time" -- offers no help in making a distinction between mixtures potentised (what our exuberant friends call compound remedies) and potencies mixed (which they call complexes). Moreover, according to the most exuberant and wise of our complex protagonists, Hahnemann did not even think about the possibility of using complexes. If that is so, he could not have possibly been referring only to them in ruling out "more than one simple, single medicinal substance at one time" but must have specifically been referring to mixing crude medicines, whether they were to be potentised or not. But it is perfectly obvious regardless that if he had meant to proscribe potencies mixed but not mixtures potentised, he would have said so! If Hahnemann made at any time, in his long career and many publications, a distinction on such a basis, it would be interesting to find that somebody somewhere could quote it; but of course they cannot: Hahnemann was not such a fool.

But I invite you to remain unconvinced that he had the wit to say just what he meant. I will, if you care to see it, demonstrate that the premise that assuming that the Duck Poo Hypothesis is true leads inexorably to the conclusion that the Duck Poo Hypothesis is also false -- an argument that demonstrates by its conclusion in a contradiction that the premise was false.
(2) So here you're suggesting that merely by giving the mixture, after it has been sufficiently serially diluted and shaken, to a healthy volunteer and inducing symptoms, you would demonstrate -- what? -- that it has become a "single remedy", something with a new pathogenesis unique to itself that we can rely upon remaining stable throughout the potencies?

My recent reply to H2002 sufficiently shows, I think, that a proving, which will of course obtain some symptoms, demonstrates no such thing. But I'll certainly be interested in any attempt to overcome that argument.
(3) Ah. So the claim is now only as strong as this: that serially diluting and succussing a mixture of solutions results in increasingly useful potentisations of a mixture, not of a single substance; and that such a potentisation product, though it is not a simple substance, nevertheless is not more than one single, simple substance.

It seems to me that you've just contradicted your own suggestion! But I'll be interested to see further argument about it.
Surely the straightforward way through this is to take Hahnemann at his word! He plainly explains, in § 273 footnote 159, what he means by a single, simple medicinal substance -- footnoted right from the words single, simple -- and since in that explanation the only mixtures he includes are those occurring within a single organism, which he treats, with good solid historical and medical reason as a single substance. It thus takes an awful lot of specious argument and deliberate overlooking of not only that footnote but the entirety of §§ 264–274, along with all his other writings within and without the Organon on the weaknesses, dangers, and ill-advisedness of polypharmacy to render even slightly plausible the conclusion that Hahnemann meant his proscription in that one aphorism to apply only if the physician was not going to sufficiently potentise his mixture!

And, of course, if he had intended such an exception -- and such a blatant one -- to his clear definition of single, simple medicinal substance, and had intended that exception to apply above a certain potency, then why would he have forgotten to mention that fact and to mention what potency was sufficient? The ridiculous convolutions you'd have to go through to really believe this are very funny, but I think we've made our point.
Cheers!

John
________________________________
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

Dear John
I have been serious in this matter!
We seem to be seeing things in completely different light.
We have seen homeopathic remedies where their base is a mixture: The examples of Carcinocin and also all the lake and spring waters which appear in Clark are ample example. Granted that these were not Hn's remedies - but he only used 90 or so remedies (and I trust that you are not proposing that we only use Hn's 90 remedies.). Consider pls the snake poisons - they are a mixture of various proteins. Look at Tarantula cuban (bits of the animal + whatever was on the deck of the boat) and there are many more.
The way that I see is that one starts with whatever substance or product that one would wish to make a remedy out of, for whatever reason.
Potentise it.
Prove it.
Then use it on the basis of symptom similarity. It is that simple. (Pardon the pun!)
If you can show me anything out of Hn's writings to say that one cannot proceed as I have stated above, please give the references.
However, please do not confuse the single remedy (as opposed to combinations) upon which I am sure we are in total agreement.
Best wishes
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of John Harvey
Sent: 11 July 2009 14:16
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Single Substance
Hi, Soroush --

I'm sure you're putting this idea out only as speculation intended to provoke thoughtful responses, which I appreciate, but I wonder whether it would be helpful for you to make that explicit. We can enter into the same reasoning process but not confuse beginners with any illusions that you, a professed homoeopath -- and a Hahnemannian one at that -- believe that such notions as the transmutation of mixtures into compounds through succussion have any place in a medicine based on the predictable application of a method derived by induction from careful experimentation. Nevertheless, to enter into the spirit of it:
(1) So your suggestion is that what Hahnemann means by more than one single, simple medicinal substance is only a mixture of potentised substances, excluding all other mixtures.

This interpretation is, of course, inconsistent with § 264 ("The true physician must be provided with genuine medicines of unimpaired strength, so that he may be able to rely upon their therapeutic powers; he must be able, himself, to judge of their genuineness"), which evidently refers to access not to potencies but to substantial medicines, which the physician, according to § 265, would ideally then himself prepare for the patient in accordance with §§ 266-274. It would take very convoluted thinking indeed, in light of those aphorisms, to conclude that Hahnemann intended, in § 273, to refer only to proscribe the use of more than one potentised solution but not to proscribe what went into that solution.

The clue that you suggest the last sentence provides to such an interpretation -- which I take to be your reference to his stressing "at one time" -- offers no help in making a distinction between mixtures potentised (what our exuberant friends call compound remedies) and potencies mixed (which they call complexes). Moreover, according to the most exuberant and wise of our complex protagonists, Hahnemann did not even think about the possibility of using complexes. If that is so, he could not have possibly been referring only to them in ruling out "more than one simple, single medicinal substance at one time" but must have specifically been referring to mixing crude medicines, whether they were to be potentised or not. But it is perfectly obvious regardless that if he had meant to proscribe potencies mixed but not mixtures potentised, he would have said so! If Hahnemann made at any time, in his long career and many publications, a distinction on such a basis, it would be interesting to find that somebody somewhere could quote it; but of course they cannot: Hahnemann was not such a fool.

But I invite you to remain unconvinced that he had the wit to say just what he meant. I will, if you care to see it, demonstrate that the premise that assuming that the Duck Poo Hypothesis is true leads inexorably to the conclusion that the Duck Poo Hypothesis is also false -- an argument that demonstrates by its conclusion in a contradiction that the premise was false.
(2) So here you're suggesting that merely by giving the mixture, after it has been sufficiently serially diluted and shaken, to a healthy volunteer and inducing symptoms, you would demonstrate -- what? -- that it has become a "single remedy", something with a new pathogenesis unique to itself that we can rely upon remaining stable throughout the potencies?

My recent reply to H2002 sufficiently shows, I think, that a proving, which will of course obtain some symptoms, demonstrates no such thing. But I'll certainly be interested in any attempt to overcome that argument.
(3) Ah. So the claim is now only as strong as this: that serially diluting and succussing a mixture of solutions results in increasingly useful potentisations of a mixture, not of a single substance; and that such a potentisation product, though it is not a simple substance, nevertheless is not more than one single, simple substance.

It seems to me that you've just contradicted your own suggestion! But I'll be interested to see further argument about it.
Surely the straightforward way through this is to take Hahnemann at his word! He plainly explains, in § 273 footnote 159, what he means by a single, simple medicinal substance -- footnoted right from the words single, simple -- and since in that explanation the only mixtures he includes are those occurring within a single organism, which he treats, with good solid historical and medical reason as a single substance. It thus takes an awful lot of specious argument and deliberate overlooking of not only that footnote but the entirety of §§ 264–274, along with all his other writings within and without the Organon on the weaknesses, dangers, and ill-advisedness of polypharmacy to render even slightly plausible the conclusion that Hahnemann meant his proscription in that one aphorism to apply only if the physician was not going to sufficiently potentise his mixture!

And, of course, if he had intended such an exception -- and such a blatant one -- to his clear definition of single, simple medicinal substance, and had intended that exception to apply above a certain potency, then why would he have forgotten to mention that fact and to mention what potency was sufficient? The ridiculous convolutions you'd have to go through to really believe this are very funny, but I think we've made our point.
Cheers!

John
________________________________
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

I think there is some 'loggerhead' position on this but as it began, I think? with a mention of stanza 273, what is your take on that stanza Soroush.

Best wishes, Joy

http://www.joylucashomeopathy.com
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/homeopathystudy/

Dear Joy

Aph 273

In no case under treatment is it necessary and therefore not permissible to administer to a patient more than one single, simple medicinal substance at one time. It is inconceivable how the slightest doubt could exist as to whether it was more consistent with nature and more rational to prescribe a single, simple1 medicine at one time in a disease or a mixture of several differently acting drugs. It is absolutely not allowed in homœopathy, the one true, simple and natural art of healing, to give the patient at one time two different medicinal substance.

1 Two substances, opposite to each other, united into neutral Natrum and middle salts by chemical affinity in unchangeable proportions, as well as sulphurated metals found in the earth and those produced by technical art in constant combining proportions of sulphur and alkaline salts and earths, for instance (natrum sulph. and calcarea sulph.) as well as those ethers produced by distillation of alcohol and acids may together with phosphorus be considered as simple medicinal substances by the homœopathic physician and used for patients. On the other hand, those extracts obtained by means of acids of the so-called alkaloids of plants, are exposed to great variety in their preparation (for instance, chinin, strychnine, morphine), and can, therefore, not be accepted by the homœopathic physician as simple medicines, always the same, especially as he possesses, in the plants themselves, in their natural state (Peruvian bark, nux vomica, opium) every quality necessary for healing. Moreover, the alkaloids are not the only constituents of the plants.

I think colleagues may be having a problem with definitions.
My understanding is that when something is potentised, it becomes a simple substance.
In my mind, very clearly this is the case as Hn knew well that the extract of say Nux-v was not a simple substance.
Hn then clearly states that it is NOT permissible to prescribe more than one potentised substance. Something that I trust all Hahnemannian homeopaths hold dear to their hearts and minds.
Very clearly Hn is saying No to combinations and polypharmacy.
What is your take please Joy?
Rgds
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Joy Lucas
Sent: 12 July 2009 12:24
To: minutus
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Single Substance
I think there is some 'loggerhead' position on this but as it began, I think? with a mention of stanza 273, what is your take on that stanza Soroush.

Best wishes, Joy

http://www.joylucashomeopathy.com
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/homeopathystudy/

Hi, Soroush --
Tarentula cubensis, by the way, is a good illustration of a remedy that (1) must of course always be taken from the original stock and (2) happens to have some impurities. But all remedies have some degree of impurity. The ubiquity of impurities does not render invalid Hahnemann's distinction between one single, simple medicinal substance and a mixture of such. If it did, then his distinction would obviously be meaningless.
Impurities are something that medicine has always lived with and that are unproblematic below a threshold that depends on the nature of the impurity. Mixtures seek to exceed that threshold, for one of two purposes, depending purely upon the beliefs of the concocting prescriber.
For these reasons, I hope you're not suggesting either
(1) that if Hahnemann had intended to exclude from the unpotentised medicines that he classed as single, simple ones all those medicines made from two different sources, then he must have intended to exclude from that group those medicines made from plants;
or
(2) that if Hahnemann had intended to exclude from the unpotentised medicines that he classed as single, simple ones all those medicines mixed from medicinal substances from two sources, then he must have intended to exclude from that group all medicines that contained any impurities;
or
(3) that even if Hahnemann had intended to exclude from the unpotentised medicines that he classed as single, simple ones all those medicines mixed from medicinal substances from two sources, then he nevertheless intended no longer to exclude those same medicines once they had been potentised to a sufficient degree!
-- are you? Would you seriously claim any of those things? And if you would, are you prepared to state what you'd base such a claim on, if there is any basis at all apart from simple belief?
Yes, evidently this is the way you see it. Yet this very plainly contradicts the entirety of § 273, which explicitly excludes from the zeroth potency the very mixtures you seem to believe it includes at higher potencies!
I really don't know what else I can say about it, if what I've said already doesn't suffice even to dent your certainty, except to ask you to tell me whether you have come across any evidence whatever that a mixture of two independently proved remedies that clearly falls outside Hahnemann's § 273 definition -- that is, a mixture of two or more substances from clearly different origins, such as two different species of plant or two minerals -- not only creates a distinctly characteristic pathogenesis at some potency but creates essentially the same pathogenesis from the crude to at least the middle potencies -- and to tell me how you know that Hahnemann's definition of single, simple medicinal substance comprehended this exemption.
Thanks!
John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------

"Nothing is so fatal to the progress of the human mind as to suppose that our views of science are ultimate; that there are no mysteries in nature; that our triumphs are complete; and that there are no new worlds to conquer."

— Sir Humphry Davy, in "An Account of some Galvanic Combinations", Philosophical Transactions 91 (1801), pp. 397–402 (as quoted by David Knight, Humphry Davy: Science and Power, Cambridge, 1998, p. 87)

It is the footnote that is a tad confusing, and I realise this has probably already been explained (not followed all the posts, sorry) but what to you understand from the footnote.

Joy

http://www.joylucashomeopathy.com
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/homeopathystudy/

Dear Joy
I think we can boil the fn to :
1- Mineral compounds - whether natural or manufactured - are regarded as simple substances.
2- The acid extracts of plant alkoloids etc - because of possible process variability are not acceptable as a 'simple substance'.
1- I think is clear and there is no argument.
2- In my mind means that one should work with the whole extract from the plant.
Although we have many remedies made out of such substances.
You did not answer my qn!

Rgds
Soroush

________________________________

From: minutus@yahoogroups.com [mailto:minutus@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Joy Lucas
Sent: 12 July 2009 15:51
To: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Minutus] Single Substance
It is the footnote that is a tad confusing, and I realise this has probably already been explained (not followed all the posts, sorry) but what to you understand from the footnote.

Joy

http://www.joylucashomeopathy.com
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/homeopathystudy/