Physical comfort is not palliation [Was: taking multiple remedies]
Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2010 3:28 am
Hi, Shannon --
I didn't realise that the indentation indicating quoted posts isn't showing up at your end. My apologies, and I'll try to keep who's saying what clear by other means.
Shannon (1):
I am 100% familiar with the distinction between "acute exacerbation" and "true acute." So if at any point you feel I am confusing a manifestation of one with a manifestation of the other, I will certainly be interested in your thoughts on it, but otherwise let's please just assume that I'm talking about "true acutes," because that's what I've been talking about.
John (1):
You seem to have missed quite a bit here. To recap: there is no such thing as "an acute", and your confusion of acute diseases with acute exacerbations continues to render your arguments nonsensical. It would be really helpful if you'd use terminology that has a meaning that isn't interpretable in various ways either by others or by yourself.
Shannon (0):
Well, we may be into another area of "religious beliefs"...
John (0):
I'm discussing the bedrock of homoeopathy: the treatment by a substance as pathogenetically similar as possible to the patient. This is not a matter of my religious belief against yours. It is, fundamentally, a method.
Shannon (1):
Argh, here we go again... Okay, similar to what *part* or *aspect* or "level" or "layer" or "totality" of the patient. Please don't tell me there's only one, 'cause if you're going to do that, then there's no basis for further discussion. Yes there's only one patient, but what is the remedy similar *to*--his face? his history? his emotional traumas? his currently throbbing knee? his chronically blocked liver?
John (1):
Is that question somehow relevant to the topic I raised, which is that the homœopathic method requires knowledge of the pathogenesis of any substance prescribed?
Shannon (1):
Of course an appropriate homeopathic presciption *even* for an acute will be based on much more than the single symptom, and will be aiming for much more than relief of the single symptom. But good grief, this discussion arose in the context of *cough syrup*, and whether there's harm from taking a combo remedy for an acute!
John (1):
Yet you discussed it repeatedly in terms of chronic ailments and continue to confuse the two by use of unclear terminology; I'd really appreciate your maintaining a consistently unambiguous distinction between acute disease and acute exacerbation/spike/worsening.
More significantly, you were claiming that this was not a remedy for an acute but merely a palliative, which you have consistently confused with a weakly curative response. A palliative is not a remedy, but a cloak; and nobody has ever presented evidence that I've heard about to suggest that Hahnemann was wrong in claiming, in the aphorisms referred to above, that that cloak deranges health and represses the patient's vitality, opposing any tendency to recovery or cure.
Shannon (1):
"Works" is like the length of a string...
John (1):
My point exactly. It's a word whose entire deletion from your vocabulary would instantly help you to think more clearly about what a patient's response amounts to in terms of the ideal of cure.
Shannon, your writing and your thinking is plagued by consistent confusion because you persist in using terms without meaning and in using well-defined terms to connote things quite opposed to their well-defined meanings. These word games are obviously highly enjoyable to you; you use them to open a new can of worms at every turn. But as the worms pile up, they become difficult to continue cutting through, and the resultant mess does not serve the beginner well. Misleading everyone for a bit of fun has its place, but for those struggling to grasp basics, it can be highly discouraging. I beg you, use words accurately wherever you can.
Shannon (1):
What's wrong with palliating something that's on its way out anyway?
John (1):
Wow. The answer to that is so basic that I hardly know where to begin. If you believe that the patient is recovering well without you, then even in homoeopathy, unnecessary medication may mean unnecessary confusion. Given, though, that the patient, in recovering well without you, is in some discomfort (which was not the question posed here) and that you feel compelled to relieve it, then you're talking about relief, not palliation. The two must not be confused.
Hahnemann, for instance, spoke of such relief: amelioration by desired foods and drinks, etc. And he said that though it may (hypothetically, it would seem) have the effect of being palliative ( because it's short-term amelioration without particular long-term gain), "they are, however, not strictly speaking of a medicinal character [by which he means that they do not have the capacity in themselves to derange the health of a healthy person], and merely supply a sort of want. The slight [again, evidently hypothetical] hindrances that the gratification of this desire, within moderate bounds, could oppose to the radical removal of the disease [fn 141] will be amply counteracted and overcome by the power of the homœopathically suited medicine and the vital force set free by it, as also by the refreshment that follows from taking what has been so ardently longed for" [§ 263].
[fn 141]: "[Any opposition such comforts offer to the radical removal of the disease] is, however, rate. Thus, for instance, in pure inflammatory diseases, where aconite is so indispensable, whose action would be destroyed by partaking of vegetable acids, the desire of the patient is almost always fro pure cold water only".
It's vital to understand what Hahnemann has illuminated here and why.
First, Hahnemann's purpose in discussing any palliative effects that one might hypothesise arise from physical relief to the patient from having those foods and drinks and the warmth and coolness that he craves is not in order to state that all palliative effects are harmless. This much surely is unmistakeable if you've read the Organon's Introduction or §§ 1, 5–7, 18, 22–23, §§ 54–60, 62–66, 69 (including fn 68), 70, or 207. Rather, his purpose in discussing them is to carefully distinguish the hypothetically palliative effects of such influences having no observed potential to derange health from the observable, significant palliative effects due either to (i) medicines, which derange health directly (as outlined clearly in the Introduction and most of the aphorisms mentioned above) or (ii) extremely poor lifestyle (as exemplified at length in § 260 fn 141 and the final sentence of § 263.
But the greater potential of medicines than of physical regimen to derange health (§§ 30–33) is something Hahnemann everywhere makes clear even in respect of palliative harm.
Looking at this in a slightly different way, it is evident that Hahnemann has illuminated that the dynamic effects of physical comforts upon the power of an active medicinal influence is as nothing in comparison with the harmful real palliation that a medicinal influence is capable of invoking.
The other matter that your false analogy between physical comforts and shotgun polypharmacy as a means of giving relief raises is the relevance of each to the prospect of real treatment.
Since, in your own words, the polypharmacy that you suggest is harmless and even "sufficient to ease the way while the vital force does its clean-up" necessarily imposes its own medicinal derangement upon the natural state of the patient's health, it is incompatible with -- indeed, inimical to -- all prospect in the near future of homœopathic cure.
That is not the case with physical comforts, which do not have such a capacity to derange health.
Kind regards,
John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside."
-- Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, p. 249.
I didn't realise that the indentation indicating quoted posts isn't showing up at your end. My apologies, and I'll try to keep who's saying what clear by other means.
Shannon (1):
I am 100% familiar with the distinction between "acute exacerbation" and "true acute." So if at any point you feel I am confusing a manifestation of one with a manifestation of the other, I will certainly be interested in your thoughts on it, but otherwise let's please just assume that I'm talking about "true acutes," because that's what I've been talking about.
John (1):
You seem to have missed quite a bit here. To recap: there is no such thing as "an acute", and your confusion of acute diseases with acute exacerbations continues to render your arguments nonsensical. It would be really helpful if you'd use terminology that has a meaning that isn't interpretable in various ways either by others or by yourself.
Shannon (0):
Well, we may be into another area of "religious beliefs"...
John (0):
I'm discussing the bedrock of homoeopathy: the treatment by a substance as pathogenetically similar as possible to the patient. This is not a matter of my religious belief against yours. It is, fundamentally, a method.
Shannon (1):
Argh, here we go again... Okay, similar to what *part* or *aspect* or "level" or "layer" or "totality" of the patient. Please don't tell me there's only one, 'cause if you're going to do that, then there's no basis for further discussion. Yes there's only one patient, but what is the remedy similar *to*--his face? his history? his emotional traumas? his currently throbbing knee? his chronically blocked liver?
John (1):
Is that question somehow relevant to the topic I raised, which is that the homœopathic method requires knowledge of the pathogenesis of any substance prescribed?
Shannon (1):
Of course an appropriate homeopathic presciption *even* for an acute will be based on much more than the single symptom, and will be aiming for much more than relief of the single symptom. But good grief, this discussion arose in the context of *cough syrup*, and whether there's harm from taking a combo remedy for an acute!
John (1):
Yet you discussed it repeatedly in terms of chronic ailments and continue to confuse the two by use of unclear terminology; I'd really appreciate your maintaining a consistently unambiguous distinction between acute disease and acute exacerbation/spike/worsening.
More significantly, you were claiming that this was not a remedy for an acute but merely a palliative, which you have consistently confused with a weakly curative response. A palliative is not a remedy, but a cloak; and nobody has ever presented evidence that I've heard about to suggest that Hahnemann was wrong in claiming, in the aphorisms referred to above, that that cloak deranges health and represses the patient's vitality, opposing any tendency to recovery or cure.
Shannon (1):
"Works" is like the length of a string...
John (1):
My point exactly. It's a word whose entire deletion from your vocabulary would instantly help you to think more clearly about what a patient's response amounts to in terms of the ideal of cure.
Shannon, your writing and your thinking is plagued by consistent confusion because you persist in using terms without meaning and in using well-defined terms to connote things quite opposed to their well-defined meanings. These word games are obviously highly enjoyable to you; you use them to open a new can of worms at every turn. But as the worms pile up, they become difficult to continue cutting through, and the resultant mess does not serve the beginner well. Misleading everyone for a bit of fun has its place, but for those struggling to grasp basics, it can be highly discouraging. I beg you, use words accurately wherever you can.
Shannon (1):
What's wrong with palliating something that's on its way out anyway?
John (1):
Wow. The answer to that is so basic that I hardly know where to begin. If you believe that the patient is recovering well without you, then even in homoeopathy, unnecessary medication may mean unnecessary confusion. Given, though, that the patient, in recovering well without you, is in some discomfort (which was not the question posed here) and that you feel compelled to relieve it, then you're talking about relief, not palliation. The two must not be confused.
Hahnemann, for instance, spoke of such relief: amelioration by desired foods and drinks, etc. And he said that though it may (hypothetically, it would seem) have the effect of being palliative ( because it's short-term amelioration without particular long-term gain), "they are, however, not strictly speaking of a medicinal character [by which he means that they do not have the capacity in themselves to derange the health of a healthy person], and merely supply a sort of want. The slight [again, evidently hypothetical] hindrances that the gratification of this desire, within moderate bounds, could oppose to the radical removal of the disease [fn 141] will be amply counteracted and overcome by the power of the homœopathically suited medicine and the vital force set free by it, as also by the refreshment that follows from taking what has been so ardently longed for" [§ 263].
[fn 141]: "[Any opposition such comforts offer to the radical removal of the disease] is, however, rate. Thus, for instance, in pure inflammatory diseases, where aconite is so indispensable, whose action would be destroyed by partaking of vegetable acids, the desire of the patient is almost always fro pure cold water only".
It's vital to understand what Hahnemann has illuminated here and why.
First, Hahnemann's purpose in discussing any palliative effects that one might hypothesise arise from physical relief to the patient from having those foods and drinks and the warmth and coolness that he craves is not in order to state that all palliative effects are harmless. This much surely is unmistakeable if you've read the Organon's Introduction or §§ 1, 5–7, 18, 22–23, §§ 54–60, 62–66, 69 (including fn 68), 70, or 207. Rather, his purpose in discussing them is to carefully distinguish the hypothetically palliative effects of such influences having no observed potential to derange health from the observable, significant palliative effects due either to (i) medicines, which derange health directly (as outlined clearly in the Introduction and most of the aphorisms mentioned above) or (ii) extremely poor lifestyle (as exemplified at length in § 260 fn 141 and the final sentence of § 263.
But the greater potential of medicines than of physical regimen to derange health (§§ 30–33) is something Hahnemann everywhere makes clear even in respect of palliative harm.
Looking at this in a slightly different way, it is evident that Hahnemann has illuminated that the dynamic effects of physical comforts upon the power of an active medicinal influence is as nothing in comparison with the harmful real palliation that a medicinal influence is capable of invoking.
The other matter that your false analogy between physical comforts and shotgun polypharmacy as a means of giving relief raises is the relevance of each to the prospect of real treatment.
Since, in your own words, the polypharmacy that you suggest is harmless and even "sufficient to ease the way while the vital force does its clean-up" necessarily imposes its own medicinal derangement upon the natural state of the patient's health, it is incompatible with -- indeed, inimical to -- all prospect in the near future of homœopathic cure.
That is not the case with physical comforts, which do not have such a capacity to derange health.
Kind regards,
John
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
"The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside."
-- Allan Bloom, Closing of the American Mind, p. 249.