I sent you an email. Please reply ASAP!

Thanks,
Shirl

Shirl,

I did reply. I hope your husband responds. It's a shame he's getting worse. I print the following excerpt from the Organon, not to alarm you, but to hopefully alert practitioners who
may be reading this and are in the habit of prescribing high in chronic cases as a matter of course:

Paragraph 276:

For this reason a medicine, although homeopathic to the case, does harm when it is given in overdose. In strong doses the more homeopathic the medicine and the higher its potency the more harm it does, indeed it is far more harmful than equally large doses of unhomeopathic medicine, an allopathic one unrealated to the disease condition. Excessively large doses of an accurately selected homeopathic medicine, especially if frequently repeated, are, as a rule, very destructive. Not infrequently, they endanger the patient's life, or make his disease almost incurable. Of course they do extinguish the natural disease in the feelings of the vital principle--the patient no longer suffers from it as soon as the overdose of homeopathic medicine acts on him, but he is then more seriously ill from the completely similar but far stronger medicinal disease, which is exremely difficult to eradicate.

Snoopy

[ 13 July 2002, 23:00: Message edited by: Snoopy ]

Hi Snoopy,

I read that paragraph in my researching yesterday and cried. I'm afraid that's what may be happening to Mike. What if we can never get him back to normal? (Forget about a cure...I'd be happy to see him in his pre-treatment state!) There must be a way to get his vital force back online. It's as if it's totally suppressed and now he has no reserves to fight this thing with.

He's drinking coffee and whiffing camphor and next week he'll start acupuncture treatments. I'm terrified of what will happen to him when classes start in the Fall if he isn't back to his normal self by then.

I sent you another email with a theory I had of something that might help. I'm desperate for any help I can get.

Thanks,
Shirl

Dear Shirl,

It's amazing a novice like yourself is able to find and understand this paragraph but actual homeopaths have neither seen it nor understand it.

Most patients are resilient enough to withstand and triumph over most errors in prescribing; and this happens often enough to encourage a practitioner to keep making the same errors over and over again, and even to elevate some of them to a dogma; for instance: "Start with a 30C, an hour later give a 200C, and an hour later give a 1M." Totally arbitrary. Right now, we, as a profession, believe that an aggravation is a necessary part of treatment and a good sign. What could be farther from what The Organon--our "owner's manual"--actually says?

Snoopy

[ 14 July 2002, 20:01: Message edited by: Snoopy ]

Snoopy:

Your post is a noble effort to warn practitioners of the risks associated high potency prescribing but if this post does not fall on “deaf” eyes it will fall on too few eyes. You have already expressed these concerns on numerous other threads. The risks associated with the inappropriate use of high potency remedies and the unnecessary repetition of any remedy should be learned in the class room and not in practice. As you are aware these risks and warnings are well documented and not just in the Organon but the same mistakes continue to be made and history repeats itself.

It is unfortunate that Shirl’s husband Mike was accidentally given a 1M and not the planned 200C potency of the remedy Ars but there is no way of determining if he would have responded similarly to the 200C. Hopefully the effects of the remedy can be successfully antidoted or soon wear off and Mike has the strength to recover from his current situation. I do not consider it a “shame he is getting worse”, it is far from a shame and nothing less than homeopathic malpractice. One needs to look no further than the numerous homeopathic books written for the general public or the internet to see the way homeopathy is currently being promoted as completely safe. It is this type of promotion that lures the unsuspecting into the grasp of the unskilled practitioner who can cause unnecessary suffering or even worse, irreversible damage. When will all patients be informed of the risks and allowed to make an educated decision prior to undergoing homeopathic treatment?

I have suffered from the ill effects of high potency prescribing for almost 12 years. Prior to undergoing treatment I had done some basic research and was aware homeopathy was not completely safe especially when high potency remedies were involved. The “world renowned” classical homeopath who treated me assured me there was nothing to worry about and feeling somewhat desperate to regain my health I started treatment. This practitioner was then and probably still is unaware of the damage caused and probably continues to practice and teach in the same manner. My attempts to antidote (coffee, camphor, acupuncture etc) and 9 years of treatment by another practitioner whose name you have mentioned on this BB more than once have been unable to undo the damage. I will probably have to endure the effects of the high potency treatment for the rest of my life. To be quite honest, I wish I had never heard of homeopathy.

Maybe everyone on this BB should read Maragret Tyler’s article “How not to do It” if they have not already done so. A link to this article is attached below.

http://www.simillibus.com/tyler_hownottodoit.html

prescribing repeated low dilutions without waiting and watching is no more within the principles of homeopathy than prescribing high dilutions without reason... in this case, the complications of too high a dilution were exacerbated by the the frequent repetitions of the same remedy in lower dilution after the fact....the case needed to be retaken and the correct remedy prescribed...Snoopy, stand up and take your share of responsibility in this botched case..... Denise

OMG...I'm really starting to freak! How can a homeopathic overdosing result in 12 years of ill effects!!! I keep telling Mike that it will wear off eventually, but deep down inside I'm terrified that he'll never be the same and I know he's feeling the same fear.

Please...someone explain to me how retaking the case with another practitioner could resolve this? I'm afraid that another remedy would just add to the problem. I'm afraid that once a person's vital force is suppressed, they wouldn't be able to handle the stimulation of another remedy. If someone can explain to me exactly how it would be possible for a good practitioner to resolve this, then I might be able to convince my hubby to see my new homeopath, who I have a great deal of respect for.

Please...I'm panicking over this!!!! Should we stop the 6C ars???

Shirl

[ 15 July 2002, 01:10: Message edited by: Shirl ]

Shirl

I am so sorry for your husbands trouble - I too suffer from headaches and IBS so can truly sympathize.

Listen, you need to describe in detail the symptoms that are "aggravating" him and how they are the sqame or different from his usual IBS and migraine symptoms. It needs to be determined if a better antidote is being asked for by the vital force in the sympotm picture.

barb

__________________
Man, do not pride yourself on your superiority to animals. For they are without sin and you in your greatness defile the earth by your appearance on it and leave traces of you foulness after you. Dostoyevsky

Shirl,
STOP the 6c Ars.... yesterday....also, consider studying homeopathy - you have an aptitude for it and you know enough now to respect it and little enough this results in a fear that is easily resolved with knowledge.... Denise

Shirl,

With regard to your concern about the danger of low doses repeated often: This information is from the 5th edition of the Organon, as you stated. If you read the 6th ed., you'll see that this paragraph is completely changed.

Paragraph 247 from the 6th ed. addresses your question; here it is:

It is inadmissible to repeat, even once, exactly the same dose of medicine without modifying it....

The vital principle [the vitality] does not accept such identical doses without opposition [this is what Hahnemann was referring to in the paragraph you quoted], i.e., without bringing out the other symptoms of the medicine, symptoms not similar to those of the disease being treated. The previous dose has already completed the transformaion of the vital principle expected of it, and a second, unmodified dose of the same medicine identical in degree of dynamization is consequently no longer able to work exactly the same effect upon the vital principle. Now the patient can only be made sick in a different way by such an unaltered dose, basically more sick than before, because now the only symptoms left to act are the medicinal ones that are not homeopathic to the disease. Therefore no progress toward cure but only a real aggravatiion of the case can result.

But if one slightly modifies the potency of each new dose by dynamizing it to a somewhat higher degree, the sick vital principle allows itelf to be altered further by the same medicine without ill effect ... and thereby to be brought nearer to cure.

a. This is why one should not give the patient soon afterward a second or third dose of even the best chosen homeopathic medicine dry, e.g. another globule of the same degree of potency which helped so much the first time. And this is also why if the remedy that has helped so much the first time is in aqueous solution [water], to give the patient a second or third dose, of the same amount or less, from he bottle without shaking it will not help him again, even if the doses are some days apart. ...

But when each dose is modified in its degree of dynamization, as I explain here, then the doses are not a shock to the organism, even if they are repeated frequently....

248:

For this reason, the medicinal solution is potentized anew each time before it is taken (with about 8, 10 or 12 succussions of the bottle).

*****

Shirl, here, in a nutshell, is the big difference between the 5th and 6th ed. of the Organon: Start low, put the remedies in water, succuss before each dose, and as Hahnemann says, doses can then be repeated without arousing the vital force to untoward reaction as you described earlier.

Let me know if you're still unclear.

Snoopy

[ 15 July 2002, 05:37: Message edited by: Snoopy ]