Minutus

Hey John,

Well said . I agree with your analysis.
Since we are on the subject though, I was once told by someone (non-classical) during an argument that Kent at the end of his teaching career would lecture on combined remedies (i.e. calcarea silicata) not based on experimentation (since they had not been proved) but based on the proved characteristics of their individual constituents.

Still though, since then I have not been able to verify that anywhere. Has anyone heard anything about it or was it just a random (untruthful) comment to throw me off the topic?
ps: Calcarea silicata was not mentioned in the conversation, i just brought it up as an example of what i mean by combination remedy.
Thanks
Thanos
"Every passing moment is a chance to turn it all around." Vanilla Sky

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Απο: John Harvey
Προς: minutus@yahoogroups.com
Στάλθηκε: 9:31 π.μ. Κυριακή, 30 Οκτωβρίου 2011
Θεμα: Re: Σχετ: [Minutus] combination remedies
Hi, Thanos --

Thanks for the clarification. In turn, I confess that I deliberately treated (1) and (2) as suffering much the same problems. I think it's clear that in fact (1) has an uncertainty problem that (2) does not -- the unknowability and unpredictability of the changing of medicinal dominance from potency to potency -- and that (2) has an uncertainty problem that (1) does not: the unknowability and unpredictability of the effect of one (or more) ultrapotency upon another. But, all in all, both early and late mixing suffer from the major problems of changeability, unpredictability, uncertainty, and instability.

I'm aware of certain presumptive treatment of a chemical compound as having dynamic effects constituting the sum of an element from each of two potential contributors to that compound. In the case you mentioned, the presumption is that Natrum sulph. would have the effects of Sulphur and a compound of which natrum (sodium) is just one half, Natrum mur. (sodium chloride). That this presumption is unfounded and most likely to be almost wholly wrong in the majority of cases is evident if you consider the effects of the substance Natrum sulph. as similarly being constituted of the effects of Sulphur and those of Natrum phos. or being constituted of the effects of Kali sulph. and Natrum mur. When you begin to examine the logical implications of the presumption, what you find is that all sulphur compounds -- Nat. sulph., Kali sulph., Merc. sulph., etc. -- must share many of the same effects -- Sulphur ones. It just doesn't seem to stand up to examination.

Cheers!

John
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Saturday, October 29, 2011 3:43 PM
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Hi, Thanos --

Although Kent's descriptions of the so-called new remedies are distinctly more prosaic than his descriptions of the medicines whose provings appear in such earlier works (and more direct pathogenetic sources) as Hering's Guiding Symptoms, they contain no indication that they are not constructed similarly from a mix of genuine pathogenesis, intuition, and clinical insight. But it's my understanding that they were not constructed in the same way at all and have received at best sketchy provings if any; that, in other words, the indications for the so-called new remedies are worthless. I've read (but don't remember the source of this) that he did this under some pressure to produce a materia medica of these substances, a materia medica for which there was no basis in pathogenetic trials. I'm sure there are others on this list far more familiar with this history than I am.

As I understand it, he took the approach of interpolating effects in the way we've already discussed, from one element of one known medicinal compound (say, to take your example, calcium as it might be expressed in Calc. carb. and Calc. phos.) and another element of another known medicinal compound (silicon as it might be expressed in the compound Silicea) and guess which of these effects would persist in the compound Calc. silicata.

Of course, there are several obvious weaknesses in this guesswork. First, nobody knows the effects of calcium; it's a substance that hasn't yet received a pathogenetic trial and that may not ever do so, as it is a metal highly reactive to oxygen and so is difficult to triturate! So the influence of calcium in its various salts can only be estimated.

Second, nobody knows the effects of silicon. It doesn't suffer the same extremity of reactivity and potentially might be triturated without including its oxide, but I don't think it's yet received a pathogenetic trial or even been successfully triturated.

Third, the effect of the part of Calc. silicata that is the silicate ion (Si2O5¯ ¯) must be different from the effect of silicon the element (Si).

Fourth, the effects, if it were even possible to isolate them, of the calcium ion (Ca++) and the effects of silicate, if added together, cannot possibly tell us the effects of the chemical combination of them in calcium silicate. The point of a chemical combination is that it changes utterly the chemical (and therefore the dynamic) properties of its constituent parts!

So we have presumptive interpolation (guesswork) as to the effects of calcium and as to the effects of silicon; we have further presumption that the oxygen component of silicate plays no part whatever; and we must simply guess again as to what effects remain of the calcium and the silicon in chemical combination and ignore the new effects that arise from that combination!

Kent wrote confidently of Calc. sil. despite all of these hurdles, giving 15 pages of most particular effects, commencing with "The silicate of lime is a very deep-acting remedy"! J.H. Clarke, who (calling it Calcarea silicica) wrote of it (Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica) at about the same time, did so with far more integrity, limiting his description to just three lines of clinical experience. (I am not passing judgement here on Kent's ethics; I have no idea of the constraints and pressures he was under.)

One thing that is worth being really clear about is the difference between a chemical compound and a compound "remedy".

The first, a compound, is a single substance: although each molecule of it may comprise more than one kind of atom (as in dihydrogen oxide, H2O, two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen), it has only one chemical nature (in this case, that of the entire compound H2O). The second, a compound medicine, is a mixture of two or more chemicals whose individual chemical natures is unchanged by proximity.

I chose the example of dihydrogen oxide (water, of course), above, to illustrate this point most clearly and dramatically. A compound "remedy" in the ratio of two hydrogen molecules (H2) to one oxygen molecule (O2) would stir the two gases together into a homogeneous mixture. Their individual medicinal effects, such as they are, would undoubtedly to a great extent remain in that mixture, and the oxygen would tend to apply its corrosive influence. If the mixture were applied liberally to the eyes of a recently and prematurely born baby, for instance, the baby's eyes would be almost sure to tend to that state now known as oxygen blindness. (I don't know whether crude hydrogen exerts any medicinal effects; but, assuming that it does, the effect of the total is not predictable from the effects of the individual parts, because the total effect is subject to synergy.)

The unpredictability is more dramatic once the two gases enter into the chemical compound H2O: suddenly the corrosiveness of oxygen is no more; the compound is, pathogenetically speaking, completely inert.

But there is a hidden bonus lesson in thinking about this topic using this combination of elements: using the same elements, hydrogen and oxygen, we can construct an entirely different chemical compound again: hydrogen peroxide, H2O2.

Whilst H2O is a low-energy, stable compound, H2O2 is a high-energy, unstable one. It smells different from water; it tastes different; and it is more readily oxidative than oxygen itself. Whereas pure oxygen on the skin and mucous membranes won't do immediate perceptible damage, even a 35% solution of H2O2 in water will cause severe burns very rapidly; pure H2O2 is too dangerous to contemplate storing.

(It is, incidentally, because of H2O2's readiness to break down into H2O+ and O¯ that it makes a very effective and -- in educated hands -- harmless antiseptic and disinfectant ideal for use in the food industry: the O¯ radical it releases is, due to an overwhelming affinity to positive ions, highly chemically reactive and easily kills just about any single-celled organism, yet leaves no chemical baggage lying around. That same reactivity, though, makes it a potent potential carcinogen via its readiness to react with DNA or RNA should it encounter it. It's very much a double-edged sword.)

The bonus lesson here is that we may, using exactly the same constituent atoms, build two chemical compounds, H2O and H2O2, with radically different properties -- H2O, the mildest of compounds, and the highly corrosive H2O2 -- and that the properties of a chemical compound are therefore utterly unpredictable from the properties of its constituent atoms.

Cheers!

John
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Really nice explanation John. Thanks.
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Thank you, Ellen!

John
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Investigation, not presumption, is the cornerstone of science. So investigate!