Dear Louise,

I only know that if you don't know the cause,
you can wind up in the wrong part of the repertory, and I guess CRA's case is a good example. If only she had known she had been bitten by a tick, we'd have all sung a grand chorus of, "Leeeeedum!!!!" As it was, we hurled a barrage of ineffective remedies at her. Ledum even has those bluish eruptions ("Abscess and septic conditions better by cold"-Murphy) she described that made us recommend Lachesis.

I think the patient is at a real disadvantage if she doesn't know the etiology.

Snoopy

Causation can be very helpful in choosing a remedy, but it is like every other part of the case.....just a part of the totality. You can work without it, as long as you have enough symptoms.

Causation can be tricky - I see some people put undue emphasis on certain features of a person's life because they feel it must have been important. Allow the person themselves to emphasise what has been important in their lives - they will bring it up if it needs your attention. This is one reason why leading questions can take you down the wrong track. I see "Ailments from Abuse" used like this alot, everyone wants to give Staph to anyone who has suffered abuse, or Carc or Anac etc. The fact that there was abuse may not be as important as how the person has shaped their life because of it.

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David Kempson.<br />Dip.Homoeopathic Medicine.<br />Lecturer Australian College of Natural Therapies (Brisbane Campus)<br />Member AHA, AROH, HMA<br />Member Australian Homoeopathic Association. Member#0442.

Hello to all.

In our cases we always look for cause, & it's been said many times that..for eg.. if you find a mental/ emotional cause & treat accordingly, the physicals will clear too.

I am asking about unknown cause; if people have experienced this process of by treating presenting physical sympts, then the unknown underlying cause (be it emotional or otherwise) is revealed and cured with the first, original perscrition? (not layers)

With thanks.

Louise.

Hallo Louise
Indeed a few good questions.
Hahnemann writes in par.:73 the following:

As regards acute disease, they are either of such a kind as attack human beings individually, the exiting factor being injurious influences to which they were particularly exposed. Excesses in food, or an insufficient supply of it, severe physical impressions, chills, overheating, dissipation, strains, etc, or physical irritations, mental emotions, and the like, are exciting causes of such acute febrile affections; in reality, however, they are generally only a transient explosion of latent Psora, which spontaneously return to its dormant state if the acute disease were not too violent a character and were soon quelled.----
Par.:93 is also worth reading in the context.

About unknown causes:
In the context of par,;73---No, unless you have eradicated the Psora in the patient, which is unlikely to happen with only one remedy alone. (see par. 171)
It is very instructive what he says in the paragraphs about the fevers (233-245)
The same applies to most of the acute diseases, where, if the symptoms are unclean Psora ones (meaning clear Psora ones mixed with non-psoric ones) the choice should fall on a remedy of the non-psoric class first, which is then followed by Psoric(s).
Events in the history of the patient can only be classed as causes, if they bear a timely relationship with the current disease.
------if you find a mental/ emotional cause & treat accordingly, the physicals will clear too.
This implies the superiority of the mind over the body and stems from Kent’s
Writings, who got the idea from Swedenbourg.
Homeopathy as a method is not concerned with psychological models.
Greetings from Ireland, hans

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cure by symptom similarity!<br /><a href="http://www.Boger-Boenninghausen.com/" target="_blank">www.Boger-Boenninghausen.com/</a>

The homeopath who spotted my sensitivity to Alumina in 10 minutes flat always said if you could find the cause of the persons ill health then you had the remedy

She found that many people were severly affected either by a food or by what it had been cooked in and very often helped patients referred to her by much more eminant Homeopaths who had failed by all other routes

?????


I have to say, Pat, that that is an awfully materialistic view your "homeopath" has of illness...Allopaths believe that there is always a material cause for illness (hence the endless search for the "materia pecans", be it environmental poisons, viruses, bacteria, nutritional causes, and now genes....)

Hahnemann knew that you could, at best, only support the body by eliminating maintaining causes--but the bottom line is this: the susceptibility of each patient determines whether or not anything will affect his/her state of health...not toxins, or biochemical causes, or genes, or ideas, or what have you. You have to aim to change the thing that is immaterial--the dynamic thing: the "terrain", or the way the vital force responds to the dynamic influence of disease.

Even pathologists and epidemiologists confirm this: in cases where 100% of people are exposed to the material causes of a disease the highest number to be effected by the illness stays under the 50% mark (that is, 50% or less will actually develop the physical illness. The other 50% or so will not).

Of course, Hahnemann would have reiterated that the dynamic effects of the disease would be even more potently felt in the population, particularly if the disease effecting the population in question were treated suppressively--hence we have his work, Chronic Diseases.

Certainly you can help people by changing their diets and cooking utensils, getting them out of basement apartments and taking away their "soma", but unless you keep doing this indefinitely, it isn't much of a cure. All you're doing is "avoiding" the real problem. That in itself is sycotic...

Divina

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Hi Louise,
I always found this whole issue of the significance of causes a bit confusing. My understanding is that it is how the person deals with whatever the causation is that individualises them and hence leads towards the similimum, therefore the cause itself must be less significant than the process by which their defence mechanism responds to it? Although I guess the fact that they respond to a given stimulus itself is a guide?
Take care over there
Dave

I think its rather odd to say
"its how a person deals with the cause "

If i get hit by a reaction to Aluminium ( which i had not expected to encounter being careful about what i eat anyway ) all i can currently do is take an antidote

I dont get stressed out or upset or whatever
just work out how i got affected and add that to my place/ food to avaoid

Well, Pat, that perfectly illustrates David's point.

By constantly preoccupying one's self with the "materia pecans" approach, a person would have to do exactly what you're doing--continually updating that list of places, things, foods, environments, etc. etc. to avoid.

Do you see how this is the exact opposite of the definition of restoring health? Hahnemann wrote that health is the ability to be free to become what it was we were meant to be and do, unemcumbered by disease. If a person is constantly focusing on avoiding a substance in all its forms, shapes, permutations, derivations, and disguises, how is that person free to live and to become and to grow? The answer is, that person is not free, not healthy. They are merely preoccupied with avoiding the possibility of suffering from certain symptoms; and they are led by a fear of a particular substance which can create those symptoms for them. That preoccupation then becomes part of the whole illness...another symptom of the disease; another indication of a miasmatic trait in the case. It is definitely a large part of what would be the mental and emotional state of the patient, and it has to be addressed before health can be restored.

What I mean here is that it is not so much important what symptoms you get as a result of exposure to aluminum; what IS important is the reaction you have to being exposed to aluminum. It is an ubiquitous substance, yet not everyone reacts in the same way to being exposed to its influence. What is unique about your reaction? That will be where to look for the case.

I hope (actually, I have a great deal of faith) that a fresh, objective perspective and a fresh homeopathic appraisal of your case can bring you some freedom from this fear, and from the susceptibility you have to the substance. Everyone can easily look at any remedy description and find a large number of similarities to themselves--it is often done. But what we need in homeopathic consultation is the unbiased observation and analysis of the homeopath, who should be able to see a picture larger than the one that is available to your own eyes, about yourself. What you don't see about yourself is the key to your case, I guarantee it.

Divina

[ 09 August 2001: Message edited by: Divina ]

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...and deliverance has many faces<br />but grace<br />is an aquaintance of mine

Thankyou all for interesting replies.

So can I just run this past yous, since I've been reading today...; you really need to know which miasm(s) your dealing with, as well as any other possible cause; psora most frequently & fundamentaly being the CAUSE of disease. Right? Then you start treatment by selecting the anti-miasmatic remedy.

And you've got to discern weither the event in the person's history is remarkable enough, and timely, to have occasioned disease, weighed against the current general health of the person. (sub par 206)

Then along comes Kent in his philosophy, he turns psora, a disease classification, into some kind of human self-inflicted sin, which gave forebearance to the idea that mental/emotion disturbance is central to all ills? (excuse me I'm still unlearning Kent; he had some latent psoric explosions of his own I reckon.)

One time my cat was nearly dying, but I didn't know why. I took his case as best as I could, (only about 4 physical sympts), gave silica as indicated & within minutes a big load of brown pus bust out of his shoulder, followed by rapid recovery. He must have got bitten by a dog, & if I knew he was bit, I probably would've gave ledum first, but will never know if ledum would've worked so good. But the totality of presenting sympts dealt with an unknown cause there, I learned.

But I don't understand Murphy, how can he be Hahnemannian, when his rep. is full of disease names, leading us away from psora as a cause & into allopathic classifications?

And what about Vithoulkas's model, you know the cone-shaped thing, is it in keeping with Hahnemann's teachings? Hes another one who says the mental level is most crucial.

so much to learn/unlearn,
Louise.