Thank you Snoopy, you addressed my concerns quite precisely without benefit of much detail. Palliation seems to be the appropriate focus now for my family member with cancer, yes. There are metastases to the liver, spine, eye, and possibly the lymph nodes, and she is losing the battle to maintain her weight, so the three remedies you mentioned as well as the herbal Alfalfa all sound worthy of consideration.

I don’t doubt homeopathy can help any ailment, really--and in a recent example, speaking of Aurum metallicum, a friend in her late 40s who had spent at least a year nearly unable to walk, on the worst days, from severe plantar fasciitis has little or no pain now. But my relatives are people getting close to the end of life expectancy. I don’t hold out much hope for *any* treatment when the patient is in the late eighth or early ninth decade as they are. By the same token, we have to worry all the more about allopathic methods at that stage of life, and I know for the relative with the musculoskeletal problem, the daily doses of ibuprofen will begin to take their toll at some point; obviously it would be far better to ameliorate the pain with homeopathy, nutrition and some sort of PT. I was thinking of ordering the book "Homeopathy for Musculoskeletal Healing" by Asa Hershoff (comments anyone?)