In my experience inside of homeopathy I was able to observe the
existence of an inverse relation between the degree of knowledge of a
homeopath and the number of cured cases that he achieve or obtain in
their clinical practice. While some assure they cure many and many of
their patients, others really more serious and wiser, recognize that
their successes are very limited, and that in their daily practice they
don´t even reach 2% of the similar remedies.

As a believer of the human being I don´t think the first are lying or
giving malicious data or information, at least mostly of them, but I
think there is a difference of criterion in relation to what´s to cure?
means.

Is here that I would like to share with you these considerations about
health, starting with their other face, to which maybe all of us are
more familiar, I mean, the disease.

What`s disease?
In homeopathy, we can say that disease is the disequilibrium or
energetic unbalance experienced by a human being, which inhibits him
from realization. Or, in another words, the break they have that
inhibits him to go to a higher place of the existence in a way of
well-being and feeling, well thinking and well acting, as said
Hahnemann. This is in synthesis the concept of disease, which we can
more or less manage, and to which we must add that very important nuance
of our medicine that is the individuality.

It is enough to a good observer, to be advised to what is the disease,
how much differenced the human being is from their fellow-creatures,
representing that individuality their particular unbalance or
disequilibrium.
Each pathogenesis is an individuality expressed to their maximum in a
real picture. It is as if the disequilibrium was located in an initial
point from which all of us could depart, and like small streams spilling
from that initial point, each one of us individualized the disease,
being as much ill, as farther we are from the other human beings.

Is here that we separate from the single. But maybe I am wrong and there
is not agreement in relation to this my definition of disease even
between the homeopaths, I invite you to a healthy discussion in relation
to this, assured as I am that I will learn very much from you, and by
this reason I will receive even more than I am giving.

While this does not happen, I?ll still continue with my reflections.

If the disease is that energetic unbalance, which predisposition is an
implicit part of the human being that inhibits him from reaching the
higher purposes of the existence, we can then say that the disease
cannot be these symptoms which are manifested by that unbalance, I mean,
the organic affection, but something more transcendent, or something
that this organic affection would try to equilibrate or balance at their
particular, individual and idiosyncratic way.

The really disease, is by the way I can see it, the deep suffering that
the confronting with their existential loneliness could cause in the
human being. In form of symptoms, their behavior in face to the life, a
wrong way, a failed tentativeness to palliate the anguish produced by
the knowledge of their deviation from the Total Unity, the confronting
with himself, and his obscured loneliness.

In terms of the Kentiano scientist Dr. Masi Elizalde, the man envies God their
Quality and is punished in his arrogance, lacking the envied attribute.
This way each individual would be attracted by a facet of God that has
been denied to him to let him understand the big lesson of humbleness
pending from processing in every human being.

Is due to this concept that the studies of the Materia Medica done by
the followers of Dr. Masi, use the relate of the first man and the first
woman in the Paradise of the earth, an idyllic place where they lived
with the father, protected and loved as only God can do.

Done the sin of wanting be like God, the man has condemned himself to
the dram of the expulsion from the Paradise, meaning the expulsion from
the loved arms of the entity who gave him the life and their habitat.
There, roving and looking for the redemption of their punishment, with
the nostalgia of the loosed protection, the man struggles with their
disease, which by this point of view is present at the metaphysical
level.

The envy that makes a man to put poison in the food of lots of children,
the attack until killing a roving by a skin head (Neo-Nazi) A shooter
who kills 10 people, the highway of the drug addiction, the active or
incited violence, the arrogance, the abuse of a weak person... are all
examples of the diseases very well defined and extreme. Guilty, fear,
moral pain, are in a different order manifestations of the same
unbalance, and this way we can see that the disease is not out of our
bodies. The disease is inside of us, more or less latent, more or less
disguised.
The inverse way leads us to the health, since the individuality to the
Whole, since the existence to the essence. As individual as is the
disease, is the movement to the health, because the man will need to go
back through the same steps in order to reach the balance. Is their most
similar remedy, that is the only able to initiate that movement.
The similars, the Allium Cepa, the specific, the acute remedies... all
of them will act against the smoking signs, but not against the centre
of the disease. It is as if we confuse the name of a city with the city
itself. The plate signing the way to the city may be located a several
Kilometers from the city itself and is nothing else than a sign invoking
the place, but is not the city.

Only when we can see a similar cure, we may know that a true cure has
happened. After this experience is reached a first time, it could be
difficult to afford a different thing than the same, the prescription of
the similimum. But the search for the similimum is not an easy job, you
can say; including the most orthodox Kentish prescribe their patients
with several remedies. Is right, they don´t know how to find the true
simillimum at the first time, but they do not recognize it, they know,
but still looking for the ideal, given remedies they think are the
similimum, one and another time again.

What´s the difference? The homeopaths of similars get happy with the
results, the Homeopaths of the similimum still searching for it. The
homeopaths of similars have big quantities of ?cures?, the homeopaths of
the similimum know that are just a small quantity of patients for which
they can find the similimum. We lack homeopaths of the similimum, the
world asks for them in order that the obscure reality of an unjust world
of suffering men and women, may be able to change. We have all
responsibility in it, the homeopaths to point to a higher degree, the
patients to demand it.

Well said!

__________________
Shirley Reischman

Yes, very well said.
Schussler, the founder of the biochemic treatment of disease said that symptoms are mearly signs od deficiencies, and by examining the symptoms, the cries for help from the body, we can find the right remedy, and with his understanding, he meant the right tissue salt. I do like his view of disease, and health, but, as you also implied, there are much more to it. Sometimes the deficiency are of a biochemical nature, and are treatable by wichever modality, but lately more often the deficiencies are ones of love, peace, stability, security, etc. If we can differentiate between these we will increase our sucesses.

__________________
Christiaan van Schalkwyk<br />Registered Homeopath (RSA) (M.Tech.Hom (Natal))

Many practitioners do not know the difference between a similar cure and a similimum cure - some colleges do not even teach it. The term 'similimum' can be confusing to students - as Opium has said, many students and practitioners assume any similar remedy is good enough. This may come partly because health and disease are not explained very well to them - if they do not know what they are aiming for, then they never know that they have not reached it.

How do we know when we have given the similimum? It is not simply the disappearance of presenting symptoms - just as health is not simply the absence of disease. A person must be better than they were before - on mental, emotional and physical levels. The mind should be clearer, their feelings more balanced, their body stronger. The patient should be quite different - they should make a "jump to freedom" which transforms their state dramatically.

I looked through some of my files to see the type of language patients use when they experience the similimum.

"My senses have been heightened"
"Felt on a high"
"Feel more soft and caring"
"Have been really calm"
"Feel more mature"
"So much more in control of my life"
"Things are so much clearer"
"Have become more responsible"
"Feel stronger like a new person"
"Feel more at ease with myself"
"Things that really used to bug me don't affect me anymore"
"Feel more rational"
"Great energy inside me"
"Feel bullet-proof"
"Able to make decisions about my life and happy with them"
"Feel like I have stepped out of my old body and into a new one"
"Feel more happy - living life for life's sake"
"Nothing can go wrong in the world at the moment"
"Feel like I am getting a new start"
"Feel like a huge weight has lifted from me"
"Feel as if a cloud has lifted and I can see everything more clearly."
"Food tastes better"
"Have enrolled to do adult education - feel I want to better myself and that I have the ability to do it now."
"Feel like I did 10 years ago, before I got sick"
"Feel brilliant - on top of everything - like nothing can bring me down."
"I am able to look at my behaviour now and see what I have been doing and why."

I wondered about the idea of 2% - this is not the first time I have heard that figure. If I see 20 patients a week, then that would mean less than one would get the simillimum - I think I do better than that, but you can't be sure until you have seen the patient after a year - to be sure there have been no relapses or new diseases appearing. Also, the simillimum at any one time will be different, as it is necessary to treat the miasm as it appears.

__________________
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.

David: me it turns out to be very agreeable to find who speaks the same language homeopático that I (though in different idiomatic language). You have seen cases simillimum, me it consists. I agree in everything what says, except in his last phrase, if I understand her well, in that you say that the simillimum is different in every moment. I think that the simillimum is one for the whole life of the human being, who does not change since they do not change the finger fingerprints. I think that the simillimum finds the similarity with the energetic stamp that receives the individual from the instant itself of his conception, and that will never change during all his life. Every remedy has his miasmal phases, they are these stages those that change in the remedies, not the remedies in the persons. I regret not being able to begin bigger conversation with you, you see my difficulty with the Englishman, but I am glad very much of homeopaths find unicistas or classic hereabouts. A greeting.

Thanks Opium.

The reason I say the simillimum may change, is that when you apply a remedy, that person's state changes and moves away from the remedy. The root of their illness is diminished, but that is not to say that there only one root (alias Miasm). As you reduce the influence of one miasm in the person, another may come to the front - which may call for a completely different remedy. I am refering to mainly long term management of a case.

The person may, as the remedy diminishes the influence of their miasm, then require remedies for epidemics - more healthy more acute remedies, perhaps remedies for traumas and accidents they suffer after receiving treatment.They may also require specific remedies for old symptoms that may reappear under the action of the similimum - remedies they may have needed at that time in the past, but of course never received.

Sankaran talks at length about multiple roots in the one person, with events in that person's life deciding which root becomes active. After you have reduced the strength of one root, another may be stimulated into producing disease if the person comes in contact with the appropriate exciting cause.

[ 03. January 2003, 06:18: Message edited by: DavidJK ]

__________________
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.

David: Little time, I will try(mean) that me translate what I want to say, it is complex and I cannot do understand. Thank you for sharing thoughts. A greeting.

Dear members
Lot said and a lot to be said.
Back to the question what is disease, or as Hahnemann puts it: What is to be cured in disease. –
Here the par.: 71 lines out:
As it is no longer a matter of doubt that the diseases of mankind consist merely of groups of certain symptoms, and may be annihilated and transformed into health by medical substances, but only by such, as are capable of artificially producing similar morbid symptoms –and such is the process of all natural cures--, hence the operation of curing is comprised in the following three following points:
n How is the physician to ascertain what is necessary to be known in order to cure the disease?
n How is he to gain a knowledge of the instruments adapted for the cure of the natural disease, the pathogenetic powers of the medicines.
n What is the most suitable method of employing these artificial morbific agents –medicines- for the cure of natural disease?

Noticeable is, that Hahnemann does not cure the person, No, he cures the disease, and this means, that for Hahnemann disease and person are not identical.
If they were identical treatment would be impossible, as every symptom of the person would be taken into account, normal ones and disease-symptoms as well.
And here is it where the most of the homeopaths fail; by mistaking every expression as a symptom and every symptom –past or present--, as a disease-symptom and every disease-symptom equally important for the selection of the now curative remedy.
Likewise it is the alteration in the mental state compared to the former healthy state, which forms an indication, but NOT if the state of mind did not change with the onset of the disease.

David presents a list of utterances he heard after he gave the ‘’similimum’’
I would call them independent improventsigns as referred to in the organon when applying a remedy similar enough the bring the cure forward. It is not necessarily the ‘’similimum’’ for the case and in my observation, particularity in chronic miasmatic cases, there is no similimum and it takes a few remedies in succession to bring the cure forward.

And finally here is one for Opium or whoever this person might be:
How do you know, after a remedy is given, that the symptom, which has disappeared under its action, was cured? It could just as well be only suppressed, or what is the case in acute disease, have disappeared on its own accord.

__________________
Hans Weitbrecht
Consultant Homeopath

Pathogenesis is the exaltation of an individuality, not in time or in space, but in its totality. You can read the pathogenesis of a remedy and observe feelings, fears, dreams, sensations –a way of perceiving and living life. If we understand this correctly, we understand that the simillimum is invariable; it does not change during the whole life of the individual. When you administer the simillimum, the remedy as well as the potency, the picture changes, naturally, we are witnessing the cure. But cure does not mean to remain in a state of grace for ever. It is a path, a road of development, of growth, with psora in a slumbering state, thus not precluding being. The human being does not stop being susceptible, his vital force, even when balanced, remains susceptible to become unbalanced. The simillimum does not force us to be anything but humans, human beings susceptible to falling ill. And because of that, new situations arise which call for prescribing. As you said, we have the influence of many external factors, but they are external factors which the subject will resolve better with his simillimum than with any other remedy. An Argentinean doctor noted, in a course which I took, that a female patient who was taking her simillimum was involved in a car accident, and she suffered a big open gush in the forehead. Besides the emergency care she received at the hospital, she was given Arnica, and some other remedy to help her get over the consequences of the accident. The wound closed completely, but after a few years –note, years! - the patient started to take again her simillimum. Up to then, because of the misperception of her homeopath, she was taking similar remedies for this or that, but she had not been given her simillimum again. Well, the patient recovered her general balance and, in that thrust toward the integral cure, which only the simillimum can unleash, the scar from the accident wound in her forehead reopened –forming later a new scar, this time in a natural and permanent way. This example, which is a real pearl of wisdom, shows us that the simillimum is one for our whole life, and that any remedy which is not the simillimum is a suppressor, even if it does not cause so much suppressive damage as allopathy can produce.
The simillimum is a remedy capable of rebalancing the Vital Force of a human being in his or her totality. Any of our remedies, when studied in depth, has phases of expression. Remedies present a psoric, syphilitic or sycotic face, according to the phases of imbalance through which the human being is coursing, but the remedy which connects with his Vital Energy in its totality is one and the same for his whole life. But, of course, I am aware that this is an ideal situation.
I understand that, in his daily practice, the homeopath has to proceed by successive approximations, because, in the end result, the prescription has to be arrived at through the presenting symptoms of the patient, and these symptoms change. But a deep understanding of disease, and thus of how the human being lives that imbalance which precludes him from being what he has to be, and an in-depth understanding of the remedies --not through the symptoms which they manifest, but through that exalted individuality that has been displayed in the healthy human being, in the peculiar mode of suffering, of being impacted by the events of life, etc.--, a profound understanding of these issues--note the emphasis--, will lead us to see that the simillimum is one and invariable during the whole life of the person, and that the job of the homeopath guided by the highest ideal of cure at this level is to find that simillimum.
You know that it is not possible that, after receiving the correct remedy, the patient would develop a more serious disease than the one he came to get treatment for. This is so because, were it to happen, it would only prove that he has suffered a suppression, and that, consequently, he did not receive the correct remedy, but a suppressive one. If, on the contrary, the disease that appears after administration of the simillimum were to be less serious, we would know that we are on the path to cure, and it would not be advisable to interfere with its course through the administration of new remedies. The simillimum will bring resolution; it will reopen the path of balance in the person in any circumstance, acute or chronic. The acute picture, when correctly understood is the exaltation of the chronic picture of the patient. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to find that simillimum, and that we have to admit, with the greatest humility, that in our daily practice we resort mostly to polycrests because our knowledge of Materia Medica is quite limited, and this leads us inevitably to a shortcoming in the level of individualization which homeopathy proclaims. Often times we don’t have a choice, but, as I believe I have mentioned before, the difference is to be aware of the fact that we are resorting to similars, and to remember that the simillimum is a quest toward the ideal, a search which I personally think that we cannot afford to give up.

Hello Homeoman: I am glad of seeing him again hereabouts.
The Teacher Dr. Masi Elizalde, says that it is necessary to consider three categories for the disease:

1.-Artificial disease or exógena
2.-The entity nosológica
3.-The natural, chronic or miasmal disease (always endogenous).

In the first category there are the disorders caused by external reasons as nutrition, physical, mechanical or toxic reasons. Everything you cause inanimate, so virus, bacteria, etc., they are present or develop because of the endogenous disease, therefore they do not enter this category.

In the second category, we have the clinical disease, which is described in the books of pathology and the one that for the allopath has a consideration and for the different homeopathy.

The third category, that is to say, the chronic or miasmal disease, it is the only natural disease, and is always of endogenous origin.
This one third category is on that the remedy simillimum has aptitude to act, treating of complete and definitive form the patient.
Why to conform with less?
Regards.