Dear Shirl,

I think that all of us think that Mike is proving Arsenicum. It's exactly the case as described by Hahnemann in paragraph 276 of the Organon which you quoted earlier.

"LM" is a Roman numeral--50,000. It means there is one drop of substance (e.g. Arsenic) for every 50,000 drops of water at the start of the potentizing process. With the C scale, there would be one drop of Arsenic in 100 drops of water. So, to Hahnemann, this meant the energy in the LM's was spread out and less intense than with the C potencies, gentler, in other words.

Yes, we all hope and pray that your homeopath knows what to do in this situation! David said this debacle has nothing to do with the potency used, it was simply poor case management. I'd like to know what there is to manage when you give one dose high and wait a month for the follow-up? What is to manage? If there's a mistake, a proving, for instance, clearly, no one knows what to do about it!

The safe alternative is to give low daily doses so that the case can be managed; by adding more water, by lowering succussions, by giving more or less often, by stopping, by changing remedies; all of this falls under "management". You can't manage a dose that's been given too high; Mike's doctor didn't even try! We, here, have all been scrambling to come up with something.

Nobody really knows what to do, that's why this is a really bad system. Yes, it does work most of the time, but what do you say to Mike? And "Frostbite" (who says she's been proving a remedy for 12 years), what do you say to them; that they're expendable because they don't fit in? "We're sorry but we can't change our practice because of you." Why not? Many homeopaths have actually done just that. They've decided that they don't want to cause aggravations anymore, people are coming around. Dr. Timothy Dooley, for example, who wrote Beyond Flat Earth Medicine, gives 12C's daily instead of starting every case with 200C or higher. Steve Olsen, a frequent conference presenter, gives a 30C every third day because he gets results without causing aggravations.

I realize you can just as easily aggravate on a low potency, but you can stop them, that's the difference. In other words, you can manage them.

Hahnemann says in the Organon
in #249 b., "There can never be any case in the practice of a well-trained, scrupulously careful physician in which he would have to give an antidote, if he starts--as he should do--with the smallest possible dose of his well chosen medicine because an equally small dose of a better-chosen medicine would correct any mistake he might make."

I write this despairingly, knowing that people will say, as they always do, "Hahnemann wasn't referring to potency when he used the word dose ." People have decided on a narrow definition of "dose" which allows them to go on prescribing as usual. Clearly, Hahnemann was referring to anything that might impact the vitality too forcibly, that was his point. What could be more clear than his paragraph 161: "...but when long-acting medicines are to overcome an old or very old chronic disease, none of these apparent exacerbations of the original disease should be allowed to take place during the treatment." He goes on to say that if your dose is small enough, and put in water, and succussed before each use, you won't get these aggravations. In fact, he says you get the exact opposite, "A sense of greater ease, composure, mental freedom, higher spirits and returning naturalness. The very beginning of aggravation, on the other hand, is indicated by the opposite--a more constrained, helpless, pitiable state." (253) How can Hahnemann be more clear?

Snoopy

[ 18 July 2002, 06:32: Message edited by: Snoopy ]