"A word of honest warning:

Against the repeated, uncontrolled use of homoeopathic remedies

The repeated use of homoeopathic remedies, in lower or higher potencies, has been discussed by many homoeopaths. Most often this was a debate between the 'classical' homoeopaths and the 'non-classicals'.
An article in the esteemed German journal 'Zeitschrift fuer Klassische Homoeopathie" (Journal for classical homoeopathy), Haug Verlag, 1/2002, p.18-28, documents a case with lethal consequences following an uncontrolled repeated ingestion of Arsenicum 6X.

Title:
'Unkontrollierte Niedrigpotenzeinnahme mit letalem Ausgang' (Uncontrolled ingestion of low potencies with lethal outcome), by Prof.Dr.med. C. Reiter, Institute of forensic medicine, University of Vienna, and Dr. med. C. Abermann, Altmuenster (1)

English summary enclosed in the German text:
'Conventional medicine tends to perceive homeopathy as harmless. Common opinion holds, that not only do homoeopathic remedies have no positive effect, but also no negative ones.
In this article, first the opinions of renowned homoeopaths concerning the harmlessness of homoeopathic remedies are discussed, followed by a case demonstrating the lethal outcome of an unintentional remedy disease. In addition, possible conclusions from this case are discussed.'

A short review of the article:
The authors first refer to Hahnemann and Aph. 276, Organon 6th ed., where he warns about too frequent repetitions of a remedy, which could even risk the patient's life.
Though these words were mainly meant for patients, these words are also confirmed for provers by Mezger (referring to a proving of Mandragora 6X, where the prover developped the most violent ischialgia; Ars did not help, the Sulph cured). Even J. Sherr added that a continuous repetition of the remedy could endanger the security of provers. Contrary to the instructions, some provers of Scorpio had continued to take the remedy, and some of them developped persistent, disagreeable symptoms.

The case:
female patient, 32 ys. old. healthy , no chronic diseases. Interested in homeopathy for 12 years.
August 15, 1992: diarrhea with vomiting after eating ice-cream. 2 days later the patient, who feels weak, anxious restless, ask her doctor:'What do you think about Arsenicum?'

About 14 days later, after eating some fish, another bout of vomiting and diarrhea. According to the husband of the patient, the patient took Ars 6X, 3 times 3 glob. daily, till her death on October 29, 1992.

During the time in-between some additional symptoms developped:
oversensitivity to cold; insensitivity on finger-tips and legs; swelling of eye-lids; itching dry skin without eruption, ascending paralysis.
Arsenicum levels elevated in urine and blood.

Probably other remedies were taken as well, such as Verat 3x, Kali-br X3, and others.

In the discussion the authors conlude that the death of the patient was obviously the consequence of a prolonged remedial disease caused by self-prescribing Ars X6. This is confirmed by the laboratory values and the results of the post-mortem examination.
The elevated values of Arsenicum in urine and serum could, hypothetically, be explained by a mobilisation of endogenous Arsenicum, e.g. from the bones.

-----------------------------------------------

Several pictures in the article (Degeneration of the sceleton muscle fibres; demyelinizing, non-inflammatory polyneuropathia of the N. suralis) , some repertorization grids and the bibliography will show the well-documented basis of this article.

As far as I know this is the first description of a death, caused by homoeopathic medicines.
Other , recent adverse effects were described in the journal Contact Dermatitis, 2001, 45, 185:
"An unusual case of baboon syndrome due to mercury present in a homeopathic medicine' © Munksgaard 2001 (2)

Here the author describes the case of a 5-year-old girl, who presented with a baboon syndrome (systemic contact dermatitis due to mercury), 24 h after having taken for a cough a tablet of Mercurius Heel ® S (which contains Merc X10 and 6 other remedies in low potencies). Anamnestically, the as a new-born she had had a neonatal periumbilical dermatitis associated with merbromin use on the cord.
Prick testing showed positive reactions to thimerosal and metallic mercury.

What are the consequences?

For all of us who use the classical approach with C or LMs (minimum dose, which includes the aqueous solution; no repetition as long as an action is perceived) nothing will change in the case-management.

But what is important: more emphasis has to be put on the anamnesis:

which remedies were precribed?
how often?
which potency?
did the patient self-prescribe?
which remedies/which potencies does the patient have at home for personal use?
Many of us know that bad prescriptions may make a case difficult or even uncurable. It was Hahnemann who mentioned this for the first time:
"Preface about the repetition of a homoeopathic remedy ", 1833, (3):

".that by giving small doses quickly one after another nearly never the most possible Good can be achieved in the cure of diseases, especially in chronic diseases, and that, because by such a procedure the vital force won't calmly turn from her mistunement by the natural disease to a mistunement in a similar remedial disease, but generally gets so violently excited and disturbed by a large dose or several small doses, given quickly one after another, that its [the vital force's; GR] reaction can express itself in most of the cases the least helpful, but damages more, than helps."

Boenninghausen writes about the continued use of remedies (here he talks about provings of healthy persons) (4):

"Only if the use of a medicine is continued for a long time, a chronic artificial disease develops..."

We have enough hints about the damage of such repetitions in our older literature, and the experiences of the present.

What we need is to do is:

education of patients and pharmacists about the power of homoeopathic remedies
educate the public about the 'How not to do it'
establish better standards for the education of homoeopaths
establish better standards for schools teaching homoeopathy
establish a database, where adverse effects of homeopathic treatment should be gathered
.....
Your opinions are needed! I welcome any discussion about this topic!

Literature:

1) Zeitschrift fuer klass. Homoeopathie,46, 1/2002, Haug Verlag

2)Contact Dermatitis, 2001, 45, 185:"An unusual case of baboon syndrome due to mercury present in a homeopathic medicine' © Munksgaard 2001.

3)Samuel Hahnemann - gesammelte kleine Schriften; Haug Verlag, Heidelberg, 2001

4)Boenninghausen: Ein Lesebuch für das gebildete, nicht-ärztliche Publikum; Münster, 1834"

Author Gaby Rottler
link:
http://www.curantur.de/English/Artic...epetition.html

Lisa

__________________
"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham

Hi Lisa,
This is very revealing and frightening too. It looks
logical to a lay man like me. I wonder what Haloperidol,
Thioridazine, Risperidone etc in mg doses ingested
years together on allopathic prescription might be doing
to the person? Arsenic is extremely lethal it should not
be available to public at large in X potency. What about
12 tissue remedies taken routinely? hope to see more
posts on this.

Routine prescriptions are not recommended in true Homoeoapthy at all.

Biochemic remedies should be limited to a duration.

Again i would say any thing in excess is bad.

Professional opinion is needed when afer a week 0r two you do not get any joy with your self medication.

__________________
Dr. Shashi Roy
"Sarve Santoo NirAamyah"<br />"Sarve Bhavantoo Sukhinaam"<br /><br />Best Regards<br /><br />Shashi Roy

Lisa:

BRAVO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is shocking but not surprising in the light of what Hahnemann wrote in Chronic Diseases. He said there were three main errors a prescriber can fall into:
1. too large doses
2. wrong remedy
3. not waiting long enough

Ref too large doses, he said he on occasion had trouble when using a dose of 4-6 poppyseed granules of 6c because it was not a small enough dose.
[CD p120 footnote]
Ref not waiting long enough, he writes CD p126 that immediate repetition is only permitted by a practiced observer under certain circumstances.

It is problematic that the unsuspecting public has access to homoeopathic remedies, on the other hand if supply were to be restricted you can be sure that it would be restricted to the wrong hands.

Hahnemann wrote that homoeopaths should follow him EXACTLY if they were to cure the sick. What hope has the untrained public of being able to do that? Especially when the doses widely available in the UK from Ainsworths, Boots, Nelsons etc are 6c's promoted as safe to take, with dosage instructions on the bottles, take 3tabs 3 times a day. EXACTLY OPPOSITE to Hahnemann's advice and warnings.

Anna, 6c is safe to repeat three or four times a day as long as the improvement continues and no new symptoms crop up. However, this should be under the supervision of a licensed homoeopath. The pharmaceutical companies should also print the following with dosage instructions: "Discontinue if the condition persists after two days or gets worse or new symptoms appear".

__________________
Best regards<br />Ghazi<br /><a href="http://www.sph.homeoweb.net" target="_blank">www.sph.homeoweb.net</a>

Very interesting article.

The arsenicum story is a good one to examine:

1. It involves self-medication, and what looks like a prescription from a doctor who is not a homeopath (look at the posology--like taking headache medication or allopathic anti-diarrhea medication...same schedule of repetition--and clearly along allopathic lines when you consider the length of the dosing schedule--August to October!!!!!);

2. It involves self-medication with what looks like the wrong remedy, from here; as well as no intervention from the practicing prescriber (another reason to believe a conventional medical doctor dealt with this patient--no evidence of personal contact or in-person casetaking).

3.
oversensitivity to cold
insensitivity on finger-tips and legs
swelling of eye-lids
itching dry skin without eruption
ascending paralysis.
Arsenicum levels elevated in urine and blood
(this last one must be either an autopsy finding or a finding made and then ignored)

These are all CLEAR symptoms of poisoning. ANY doctor would have recognized them. In particular, a homeopath would have recognized WHICH poison had been taken.

This isn't a case of homeopathy killing a patient, its a case of medical negligence: it seems very clear from just this amount of information that no one supervised this case. I question why anyone would have prescribed anything at all for the initial complaint, anyway. The patient was described as "a healthy person, no chronic diseases".

Here's what I have problems with, in this article--don't know if this is the author, or just additional commentary, but:

Oh, I agree here--and most homeopaths do this in the office with each patient, and out of the office, teaching classes in an effort to market themselves as practitioners. Believe me--homeopaths can't tap dance fast enough to do this with their patients...and many of those patients don't care. Homeopaths KNOW they have to do this work in order to survive and to help patients--and they are the best form of education out there, for the general public. And they manage to do this despite the concerted efforts of conventional medicine and its interest's to keep homeopathy marginalized as a medical treatment.

A far better recommendation would be to educate journalists and "Quackbusters" to stop publishing misleading articles about homeopathy--in short, stop the smear campaign that is going on in the media and the medical schools.

This wouldn't have prevented this patient from medicating herself; nor does this prevent untrained medical staff from "practicing" their version of homeopathy, without any understanding of how it works. Clearly we need to restrict the practice of homeopathy only to people who have studied homeopathic medicine--regardless of their accreditations in other forms of medicine.This is not being done--and it won't be done as long as allopathic medicine continues to maintain its hegemony.

This is called The Materia Medica. An index to this vast database exists, as well: it is known as a Repertory. This database and index have been over 2 centuries in the making.

The article is written by conventional medical doctors who do not know or understand homeopathy, and their bias is clear (particularly in the sentence which states that the public holds the opinion that homeopathic medicines not only have no curative effect--but they cannot harm anyone either! That's a rather presumptive statement in an article that's supposed to be about facts. It also puts their bias and their motive right there on the table.)

That's all I can think to write right now, as I'm not sure whether this article was written to discredit homeopathy or cast some disparagement on homeopaths...Homeopaths are missing as a presence in the article, except as a target.

To me, this "arsenicum" story parallels the countless prescriptions of drugs made every day in conventional medicine, whose use is--by nature of the practice--unsupervised. Deaths result from the mis-prescribing, unsupervised prescribing, and continued misuse of those drugs all the time...but those deaths are never properly attributed to case mismanagement and inadequate medical training on the doctor's part.

Divina

[ 04 March 2002, 13:41: Message edited by: Divina ]

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

Lisa,

Thanks for copying all of this!

Divina,

I did a quick check on the website. It seems that it is from homeopaths, not by allopaths as you suspected.

I actually don't perceive it as an attack on homeopathy, rather as an eye opener to some / reminder to others. Which is needed, as you say yourself. We do need to hear about cases like that, if only to remind us of the respect that homeopathic remedies deserve.

As for the presumption about the public opinion, I would say that at least for Germany (where the website is made), this is quite accurate. Even though homeopathy is much more widespread there, those who don't use it think it can't do any good nor any harm.

I agree that the case in questio is definitely bad medicine under any standards and you're probably right in suspecting the practitioner was an allopath - but even then he should have suspected that something was going on.

Kind regards,
Karin

Hi Karin,

Yes, the physician should have picked up that something was going on, and that his patient was in danger....

when the patient said, "What do you think about Arsenicum?"

That would have been the time to intervene.

Unfortunately, I DO think the article is biased against homeopathy, because it sets out to warn homeopaths about what we already know, and what we are already taught to know:

*arsenicum 6X, a rarely prescribed potency (I don't know anyone who uses the x potencies except in very rare cases, such as when antidoting a higher potency of the same remedy) still contains the material substance

*never consult or take a case without seeing the patient in person, and never prescribe for a named pathology (in this case, diarrhea!).

*do not allow the patient to self-medicate. Do not self-medicate. Advocate against self-medication (this is a universal in all medicine, not just in homeopathy!)

*never repeat a remedy indefinitely. I don't know any homeopaths--and definitely not classical ones--who would counsel a patient to take 3 daily doses of arsenicum 6x every day for 3 months!

Aside from citing this case, the other case mentioned involves the use of a combination remedy--again prescribed allopathically.

Now, I do not believe that the generalisation about homeopathic remedies is widely held anywhere. Why? Because the interest in homeopathy and the growth of its popularity, world wide, proves this generalisation to be false. Despite so many well-funded, heavily concerted efforts to eradicate homeopathy and its practice everywhere, it is flourishing.

However, when you want the world to believe a lie, you keep printing/publishing/repeating that lie; eventually everyone will believe it is true. Everyday, we see polypharmacy companies promoting cures as "homeopathy" which have nothing at all to do with homeopathy. At least once a week, I read an article about how some MD decided to give out combination remedies or abuse some form of herbal medicine--or just prescribe allopathic treatments and botch those up--and see that he is described--actually denounced--as a "Homeopath" in the article.

This article, in my opinion, attempts to do the same thing. If it doesn't attempt to do it, it achieves the same end.

Why write an article telling homeopaths what we already know to be true (and learn in like, lesson #2 of our training?), and use an example of a non-homeopathic practitioner allowing a patient to self-medicate as a cautionary tale? Why put the emphasis on "repeat dosing of a remedy", when what is really illustrated here is how not being trained as a homeopath, not taking a full case, not prescribing homeopathically, and not following up resulted in a death? In short, how the patient's lack of access to a homeopath killed her?

For heaven's sake, I know that poisonous substances kill.

I know that homeopathic remedies, if they are taken long term, with no supervision, cause irreparable harm.

Why, when so many patients die of prescription drug use and over the counter drug use, and when we know MDs with no training in homeopathy are allowed to practice anything they want with impunity...why do homeopaths need to be slapped on the nose with newspaper?

As for the writers of the article being homeopaths--I doubt it strongly. That remark about a "database" betrayed them.

Divina

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

Yes, I do too.

BUT - most lay people/patients' do not. Hence, why I posted this, Divina. I didn't percieve what you did (that it was some sort of smear on homeopathy - not at all) - I was looking at the quotes from Hahnemann and Boeninnghausen on repetition of remedies. I felt it was important to post so that patients could understand that "what heals can also harm". And a bit of reinforcement never hurts, imo - even to those who already know.

Why did you think the author was not a Homeopath? (I'm very curious about that...email me on it if you'd rather).

Best wishes,
Lisa

__________________
"The significance of a fact is measured by the capacity of the observer."
Carroll Dunham