Just to be a stickler about this:

The article Shirley Reichsman posted is a homeopath's description of how he employed Genus Epidemicus prescribing techniques, which Hahnemann writes about at length in Chronic Diseases.

You have a verified small pox epidemic, its boundaries are defined as limited to specific areas, specific times in history, specific groups of people.

You take the case of SEVERAL of the patients who have the epidemic disease. You can see a pattern: one or two very clear remedy indications. You try to understand the patients' cases as if they were all one case, combining the symptoms. You come up with two, sometimes one if you're lucky, remedy which would fit everyone's case. You can then use that one remedy to treat those who've come down with the disease; and you can also use that remedy on those who are in the epidemic's boundary but haven't caught the disease as a prophylactic.

That's the only time you can use a nosode or any remedy in this way. If there is an epidemic the next year, of the same disease, somewhere else in the world, the process has to be undertaken again; it may be that the remedy which worked in the previous epidemic can be used as a cure and a preventative; but it is also very likely that a different remedy will be necessary.

Now, this is what Will Taylor talks about, when he says that if there is a prevalence of lyme disease in his area, he will take a prophylactic remedy like Ledum. When he wrote that, he was writing about an epidemic he saw that year in Maine, where he lived. Now that he lives on the West coast, if he were to see an epidemic of lyme's disease there, its possible he would have to consider a different prophylactic remedy--something more suitable to the particular epidemic of that time and place. A BIG note here: he doesn't use a remedy made from human tissue that has been affected by the Lyme's disease organism; he uses plain old Ledum, the prophylactic and Genus Epidemicus remedy which fits the epidemic case.

The veterinarian Nosodes schedule I've seen is a very routine type of prescribing, where nosodes for particular vaccine-type diseases are collected and then administered on every animal, regardless of whether or not there is an epidemic. I know lots of people who practice this form of homeopathy feel this is okay to do with people, as well--but there is no justification for this in Homeopathic literature--that is, in Hahnemann's writing. It is a type of isopathy, because this type of practice assumes that you can avoid getting a disease merely by taking a remedy made from human tissues infected by that same disease. The nosode isn't used because it matches the case (as most likely, it doesn't match it at all); it's used because it's made from the same disease.

And that, folks, is not homeopathy.

[ 25. February 2003, 14:35: Message edited by: ChaChaHeels ]

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