No, I like burgundy, aqua and cream. Also, some navy blue. Really dislike black and white and orange.

I think allopathic medicine needs to justify itself spiritually. It needs to prove that by using it's medicine, we have more creative, happier, more whole people. That the children have less attention deficit disorders and do better in school and behave better. It needs to show that by using it, we have less adults with chronic diseases. And that the world is a more peaceful, safer place to live.

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Shirley Reischman

Hello,

Hahnemann was a Vitalist in the Hippocratic tradition. He did not suffer the mind-split between psyche and soma, material and immaterial, that has afflicted allopaths and sadly many homoeopaths as well. Everything does not have to be physically seen to be evidenced. Hahnemann uses the forces of gravity and magnetism in the Organon as means to describe the quality of "dynamism". He saw the lifeforce and the material organism as an indivisible whole.

Hahnemann rejected materia peccans as the sole cause of disease. However, he never rejected the physiological aspect of acquired miasms. His writings reflect the miasma/animalicule influence and observations of Antony van Leeuvenhoek (1632-1723). Hahnemann was also aware of the microbial evidence that could be viewed under the early microscope and believed that some of these microorganisms were responsible for infectious diseases. In the Lesser Writings of Hahnemann in the article "APPEAL TO THINKING PHILANTHROPHISTS RESPECTING THE MODE OF PROPAGATION OF THE ASIATIC CHOLERA" he describes the Cholera miasm in the following ways:
In this brief epidemiological discourse Hahnemann describes the method of infection, contagion, susceptibility, increasing immunity to, and prophylaxis against future epidemics of cholera. We can read from this that Hahnemann viewed miasms as something more than a mathematical or purely spiritual ‘concept’.

In Hahnemann's writings, the acquired miasms have a physiological basis as well as an “invisible” or dynamic nature. The dynamic effects are the mistunement caused to the Vital Force by the morbific agents and which are then manifested in signs and symptoms in the physical organism. It was James Kent who rejected the pathological involvement of microorganisms in line with his Swedenborgian religious beliefs regarding spontaneous regeneration and Simple Substance. It is important, I think, to make these distinctions so that we, and future generations of students, have at least a sporting chance to understand our homoeopathic roots, rather than merely reiterate post-Kentian ideas as if they were Hahnemann’s . Regardless of what conflict arises from such statements, it is in 'Chronic Diseases' that we can read Hahnemann refering to psora as the primary (soft tissue) infection that invades the entire organism as well as the horrific secondary symptoms that arise when the effects of that primary infection are suppressed. The sequalae of that primary infection passed down through the generations is the inherited miasm. An infection has to be acquired in the first place before anyone else can inherit it. Hering and Hempel (both Swedenborgians) are responsible for endowing Psora with the religious connotations of Original Sin. Everyone inherits a congenital constitution and innate temperament from their maternal and paternal lineage, Aphorism 81, This is nature, and is the physical demonstration of the inherited miasms. On top of this everyone is subject to the external environmental influences around them and that of their upbringing. This is nurture. If your beliefs allow, everyone is furthermore endowed with the qualities of their incarnating soul. THIS IS NOT PSORA!!!!

Hippocrates taught that chronic diseases are constitutional in nature and only become localized by the actions of the vital force to promote crisis.
Virchow taught that all diseases are local and of the cells and that they may become constitutional.
The vitalist teachings are based on Hippocrates and the mechanistic allopathic teachings are based on Virchow's ideas. Even modern
allopathy has had to leave Virchow's theorem of cellular pathology behind as mind-body medicine develops.
Homoeopathy is based on the principles that
Hippocrates introduced.
Allopathy has a lot of distance to cover just to catch up.

I agree that some of the material needs to be brought up to date. This is done on a regular basis. However, by any stretch of the intellect, your biochemical explanations for disease causation, effects and imbalances in the human constitution are very paltry compared to Hahnemann's complete system of constitution, temperament, inheritance, predisposition, susceptibility, and their relation to the processes of acute, sub-acute, and chronic infections and their sequels.
A reading of biochemical levels merely records imbalances of disease effects within a narrow context. The use of biochemical remedies is similarly restricted.
Hahnemann's system ascertains the occasion and the fundamental cause of disease within a much more all-encompassing spectrum.

Well, what part of using the minimum dose in homoeopathy don't you understand? Do you have clinical experience in homoeopathy? What sort of cases have you treated homoeopathically using the minimum dose? What were the reactions in the patient?

Amazing! 90% success, no side effects, no zig zags, you must be better than Hahnemann and all of us put together!

Just a joke.

[ 28. December 2002, 06:53: Message edited by: doctorleela ]

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http://www.homeopathy2health.com

How long have you been practicing to get such a high rate of success ? What are your criteria for successfully treated cases? By no zig-zagging, I assume you mean you get the similimum(the perfect remedy)98% of the time - that is practically impossible!! What do you mean by side effects - do you mean no aggravations or no provings? How many cases are we talking about here, with follow-up for how many years?

I assume this unbelievable boast is some sort of joke aimed at the serious practitioners here - I am afraid we are a bit too serious to appreciate it.

__________________
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.

Thank you, Chris, for the excellent discussion and pointed quotations. Note that 'morbific agents' are also material entities which, in their function, incorporate patterns of energetic functioning peculiar to each type of agent, or organism. The same is true for "instinctual, feeling and regulating" systems of the organism. I'm not sure you would agree, but these quotes seem to support the idea that everything must have a "materialistic" explanation. Some of the confusion we encounter in these discussions comes from an essentially archaic use of the word "materialist," as though anything "material" had to be at or above the level of molecule. We are far from being able to identify all of the matter-energy components or activities in the organism, or anywhere else, but we do know that "energy" is interchangeable with "matter" and that both together constitute what we now call the "material universe."

It is part of homeopathic myth that any dilution exceeding Avogarado's limit is "immaterial," but that is inaccurate; the higher potencies have material substance in them, but in the form of fundamental particles, or of energy or radiation or "vibrations," and these components can in fact be identified and even reproduced. In short, we can actually "read" the contents of the remedy bottle. I also agree that homeoman is too ambitious in using biochemic salts in his explanatory scheme; there are certainly countless physiological concomitants of homeopathic activity, and to focus on only one, no matter how important it may be to physiology, impoverishes our efforts to grasp the whole "physiological/dynamic animism" (to coin a phrase) of the homeopathic process. On the other hand, I think it's incorrect to say that homeopathy works on an immaterial level, for if it did, then one would have to be able to explain the many physical effects of homeopathic remedies, from changes in blood pressure to the elimination of a rash to the production of skin eruptions during a curative aggravation--and, more important, to identify specifically the mechanism by which immaterial actions are translated into material reactions.

You seem to point to constitution and environment (nature/nurture) as the basic elements of analysis, and on this point I agree. I also enjoy reading your excerpts from Hahnemann that suggest, correctly I think, that matter/energy in the body are indivisible, except as a conceptual convenience; to me, this supports the view that "vital force" is essentially the functional dimension of the material/energic (structural/functional) field of action in the human organism, similar, perhaps, to nuclear fusion as the vital force at work within the bowels of the sun.

If allopathy has a long way to go to catch up with homeopathy, which it certainly does, that is not because it is "materialistic," but rather because its concept of materialism is as outdated as the view that there is nothing of a "material" nature to be found in sub-molecular particles, waves, energy fields, and the like.

Shirley:

I think, following Chris' quotes, that the vital force and the cell also cannot be differentiated, except for convenience.

Bach

[ 28. December 2002, 20:13: Message edited by: bwv11 ]

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"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

Dear homeoman –

The problem with explaining things in terms of biochemic salts, or even of chemicals as a whole, is that this limits our understanding of the functioning of the human organism, and of the action of homeopathic remedies, to one level of analysis, namely, chemistry. But there are always many, many levels of analysis from which to approach any subject. On a lesser level of organization, for example, we could analyze the body’s functioning in terms of atomic structure or electromagnetic field activity--everything is capable of being described in such terms. On a higher level of organization, above the chemical or cellular, we can talk about gross accumulations of toxic or metabolic waste, interfering mechanically, perhaps, with motor or intellectual activity or blood circulation. Even if homeopathic remedies work on the atomic level, the action of millions or billions of ‘vibrations’ could act cumulatively to influence cellular structure or even to ‘cleanse’ tissues of gross deposits, although the latter objective is probably better met by interventions such as diet change, massage, or herbology.

There is always ‘structure and function’; but within structure there is fine structure, intermediate structure, and gross structure; within the rubric function, there is neurological, chemical, intellectual, and other functions. Part of structure is anatomy, but even ‘immaterial’ intellectual or emotional or behavioral structures have an anatomy: as Tinbergen (The Study of Instinct) put it, “…fixed patterns…play the same part [in behavior] as ‘organs’ in comparative anatomy. …innate behaviour elements are no different from ‘morphological’ or ‘physiological’ characters in their dependence on genetic[s]….” Piaget (Biology and Knowledge) referred to these fixed patterns as action schemata, and believed that they were “…’forms’ of living organization…only they are functional forms with a dynamic structure and not material ones….” Piaget is not suggesting here that these dynamic forms are ‘immaterial,’ but instead that they represent fluid relationships between material structures.

Ah, language!

I like this idea. It underscores the fact that ‘constitution,’ and by extension its phenotypic expression in ‘personality,’ is not a fixed entity that should not be considered in case taking, but a complex of organic features influenced by past experience (not only personal experience, but the experience of our ancestors). Some personality characteristics are relatively ‘healthy,’ others relatively pathological, regardless whether they are associated with onset of a specific disorder.

Bach

[ 29. December 2002, 23:09: Message edited by: bwv11 ]

__________________
"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

homeoman -

There is not a single elemental 'atom' or particle or wave or force, any more than there is a single chemical that is basic to all other chemicals. In fact, there are hundreds of elementary particles, and also basic forces such as electromagnetism or gravity. My knowledge is not sufficient to give much more of an explanation than this, and I don't know whether research in homeopathy has addressed this question, of which particles or forces may be active in our remedies--though I'd be grateful to anyone who might be able to provide a link or references to discussions of this question.

Bach

__________________
"The need to perform adjustments for covariates...weakens the findings." BMJ Clinical Evidence: Mental Health, (No. 11), p. 95.... It's that simple, guys: bad numbers make bad science.

I work with a doctor (who is studying homoeopathy)who is pursuing a line of research regarding photons as the particle carrying the information of the remedy. Her argument is interesting - perhaps I will get her to come on line and explain it to us.

__________________
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.