Dear Parents,

My original unedited message follows. I add to it only this paragraph that will offer you as a parent several guidelines so you can begin to separate good homepathic advise from faulty advise here. If you find it necessary to visit and post on these message boards in order to make homeopathic remedy decisions, always look for the signs of good homeopathic reasoning. In particular, a good homeopath asks many many questions. Once he or she is satisfied that there is enough info gathered, he or she usually studies for awhile before rending a suggestion of remedy. In chronic illnesses or conditions of rather long-standing, and given the special slow nature of posting back and forth on this board, I feel that from a homeopathic perspective one week (or more!!) of discussing a case is reasonable BEFORE ANY REMEDY RECOMMENDATIONS are made. This is my suggestion to you. Also, all remedy recommendations MUST be accompanied with lots of substantiation. For example, the homeopath/orstudent-homeopath says to you that he or she is suggesting Remedy Such-and-such because the patient is showing the following important keynote symptoms and believes the patient has the character for this remedy because of such-and-such, etc. Look for explanations!! Then if you disagree with the homeopath's understanding of something, it can be clarified and the homeopath may have to restudy the situation. If there is an urgent situation, an "acute" illness, quicker remedy suggestions may happen, but, again, always look for lots of questions and answers, and the substantiation/explanation of any remedies suggested.

Here follows my original complaint and warning:

There is a gentle but insistent ALERT/WARNING to any parent wanting to use this message board to make decisions on what remedies to give their non-adult dependent children:

As you know, whether you are deciding to give your children homeopathic or allopathic medicine, you as parents must be sure that the prescribing doctor is following the highest standards of his or her chosen profession.

In the time I have been reading these message boards here, I have been dismayed to see an overwhelming quantity of wrong logic being used to make so-called "homeopathic" prescription suggestions. If you are adult seeking assistance for yourself here, that is fine. But, please, I caution you not to use these message boards to make decisions on what remedies to give your innocence children. Too much faulty reasoning is going on here.

I am truly a classical homeopath with 25 years of personal practice, and my mother was a well-known classical homeopath for 70 years before me. I had hoped to be able to contribute here. In the few days of my trying to post guidance for one parent (Ens) here, I have been shocked by messages of several of the members posting to him/her. And it concerns me greatly that the parent Ens prefers their faulty "homeopathy" over my genuine homeopathic reasoning/guidance.

Please, parents, be careful. If you are studying homeopathy, make use of the other excellent resource on this website (books on line, etc), and not this message board. Something is going on here, but it is NOT classical homepathy. And REAL homepaths like me will not want to stay around and take the abuse from those others.

Again, you probably enjoy talking on these boards, but please do NOT use info here to make decisions on what remedies to give your innocent children who are depending on your good judgment as parents.

Thank you.

[This message has been edited by kevin seymour (edited 08 October 1999).]

Dear Kevin, It sounds as though you consider me an irresponsible parent and I take offense to that. My 5 year old son has had a speech problem since he could talk. For the past 2 years he has seen Medical Drs, and speech therapists. All say, " there is nothing to worry about, YET!". I honestly thought, and still think, homeopathy will help him. He has been to 2 Homeopaths. The first being a Harvard Medical Dr./ 25 years Homeopath, highly recommended. The lastest being Paul Herscu, Author of "Homeopathic Treatment of Children". As I already had mentioned, my son has had no results. You tell me who is the most qualified to treat my son! When it comes to my family I always try to search out the best, money is not an option. I thought with many people working on my son's case, I would have a greater chance of finding the correct remedy. It upsets me very much, that with all the years of experience there is on this forum, my son was allowed to go through such an aggrivation. If you notice, There has been about 75 posts regarding my son and he has only received (ONE) remedy. I am not throwing remedies at him willy nilly. Since this last experience with Homeopaths, This Forum, I really DON't know what is my next best course of action. PLEASE ADVISE. Thank You, Ens
PS.
I still thank everyone who have been trying to help.
[This message has been edited by ens (edited 05 October 1999).]

[This message has been edited by ens (edited 05 October 1999).]

A correction. I gave my son 2 remedies. The BRY being out of desperation when his symptoms were severe. He was with me day and night, and a I was in touch with a Dr. Thank You, Ens

Mr Seymour,

I understand your concern. I, too, have seen some things on this board that worry me. Since coming to homoeopathy, however, I have learnt that it is best to put all the options before people and let them decide for themselves. I have also learnt it is best not to take it personally when they wave you, and your work, aside. Each to his own, as they say.

However, I ask you not to withdraw from posting on this board. If you were to withdraw, how would what you know to be the truth be heard.

I have seen personal attacks being made on this board and I hope they do not dissuade anyone from putting forth their opinion. I feel it is necessary that homoeopaths put on a united front by allowing each person to practice as they see fit (after all, Hahnemann himself had many different modes of practice in his search to develop the utlimate system of healing). Homoeopathy has many critics from the outside without our criticising each other from the inside.

I am loathe to see homoeopathy lose its reputation for being a "caring" profession.

I think if kevin seymour can substantiate his credientials we have something to look forward to. There are NON DOCTORS prescribing on this site and I don't think it is fair to the people subscribing to the site. On Oct 2, he suggested to ens that her child needs Nat Mur, GM has confirmed this today. I have looked this post over very clearly and don't see ANY OTHER suggestion of Nat Mur. I am a lay person and I feel, now that I have looked it over carefully, that it just might be the choice......BUT.....I AM NOT a Dr of Hom. and I would never tell someone to give it to their child and STOP - DO NO MORE - WAIT..... I think we should leave the PRESCRIBING to the professionals..... I have looked at GM's web site. All looks legitimate and I feel he is a qualified Homeopath. I don't always agree to his bedside manner - but that's my problem, not his. I am personally e-mailing GM with a problem and he has been quite helpful. We have many wonderful Drs. and Students - I'm not going to name them, at the risk of offending, but from my past posts, you know who you are. Keep up the good work and agree to disagree......in a civilized manner!!!!!!
Keep the peace - Yvonne

In reply to all:

1. To Ens. From your explanations, I now understand why you continued to ask all participants in your discussion to continue, even though I'd alerted you to the fact that it was disturbing that none of the other participants was providing any substantiation of their many and amazingly varied recommendations of remedies to you. You write that you believed that the more ppl who participated in your discussion, the greater your chances of finding the proper remedy for you son. I understand how you can feel this way. You trusted that the ppl replying to your situation were all experienced homeopaths and perhaps you didn't feel qualified to pressure them to substantiate/explain/give-reasons-for their recommendations (yet I reread all your posts and saw that you bravely did ask them for the "whys" on many occasions but they sadly did not answer you!! I will note, now, that this was the first warning to you that what was going on was not quite right.). In regard to you believeing "the more participants the better", well, yes, IF you had many ppl PROPERLY researching homeopathy (and there are indeed, as Simone's post says, a variety of ways to do the research and reach the correct simillimum), then "the more the merrier". However, this has not been the case in the lengthy discussion involving your son. I also suspect from Yvonne's and Simone's replies to me here, that there are some students and other non-professionals who visit this board but who dare not partake in discussions such as yours because they get the FALSE impression that "the professionals are taking care of things" and then they erroneously feel that their student/newbie input would be useless. The opposite would probably have been true in this particular case, and it is sad that these other students did not participate!! Plus, students/newbies are very likely to give the reasons for their recommendations (and hence it is easy to correct wrong assumptions or incomplete understandings). As far as your taking offense by thinking I was calling you an irresponsible parent. To that I will say that my first concern is for your son, your child. I take this position at all times with the parents. I do not know you. I did not know you were in touch with a doctor. As soon as I heard this, I was relieved and believed you, as a parent, were doing the right thing by keeping an allopathic doctor aware of your son's condition, AT THE SAME time you sought homeopathic advise. That was responsible of you. Remember, though, that I do not know you, and until your response here to my "warning to parents", I did not understand why you were continuing to solicit answers from ppl who were exhibiting very non-homeopathic advice-giving. Now I realize that you do not have the experience to judge whether the advice you received was based on good sound homeopathic reasoning or not. Just please keep in mind a little "rule of life": always command an explanation of why someone/anyone is giving you such-and-such advice. If they refuse to back up their advice with thorough reasons, move on to the next person/the next expert!! Any unwillingness to share one's method in arriving at a decision (at a particular homeopathic remedy, for example, but this applies to everything in life, really) sometimes is a result of EGO, sometimes selfishness, but othertimes it is from ignorance of the topic at hand. Of course, you can find that someone is willing to give you the explanation behind his or her advice to you, and the advice may still not be appropriate, but at least you have more information on which to learn and/or make a good decision. You are the ultimate decision-maker for your son until he becomes an adult. You are the appropriate decison-maker for your son. We homeopaths and the allopathic doctors have the role of giving you our opinions and suggestions so you can decide what is best for your son.
Having said all this, I will be glad to discuss further your son's case. I think we should talk about why I feel Nat mur is appropriate. You can tell me why you have felt that Nat mur is appropriate. And hopefully what will arise from our conversation is a good decision about whether to try Nat mur, or perhaps look at another remedy. I would suggest you read up on Nat mur and on Arsenicum album, and please start off by telling me why you feel one is better for your son than the other. This will be useful, all right? Also, what was the other remedy, besides for Lyc, that those other big-name homeopaths recommended? If you like, please reread my posts to you from your discussions, as then I won't have to repeat what I've already said. Looking forward to talking with you!!

2. Simone: yes, there are many ways of practicing homeopathy and arriving at the simillimum!! Neverthelesss, everyone must use the good homeopathic logic and reasoning. In the situation of Ens son, and in a few other situations I have read on these message boards, ppl are NOT using good homeopathic logic. One of the biggest problems is these ppl's unwillingness to state any and all reasons for making a recommendation of a remedy. I saw another scary situation where a lung patient was advised to take silica. So many of the old and wise founders of homeopathy recommend AGAINST this particular prescription!! Who are we to contradict them?? Again, another warning that some of what is going on on these message boards is NOT homeopathic logic. I take no personal offense here, but rather I felt concern for all those who visit here looking for assistance, in particular for parents looking for honmeopathic prescription advice for their innocent children. I felt parents must be warned to be very cautious. Also, I would like to provide my knowledge here and would love to learn of people's various ways of using homeopathic reasoning and logic to arrive at true simillimums. I appreciate your comments and your interest in my continuing to post on these boards.

3. Yvonne: the "substantiation" of my credentials will arise from people reviewing my logic in analyzing their situations and then seeing if any hints or suggestions I make are useful for their attending fuller health. As you can see, Ens says she visited some big-name homeopaths who provided no assistance for her son's health. True proof of whether any person is a good homeopath is whether their patients attain fuller happier health from taking the recommended advice and homeopathic prescriptions. I appreciate your comments.

4. Johnst: please see my reply in the post on my sister's cough. I address your comments there. I did indeed give the "mentals/disposition/constitution" of my sister's situation, as you will understand more thoroughly after reading my detailed reply.

[This message has been edited by kevin seymour (edited 06 October 1999).]

I agree. I think you give us parents TOO little credit. We are not doctors, but we do know our children, better than you ever can. We do read, educate ourselves and solicit opinions to best help our children. Please do not withhold information believing it to be in our best interest. We can best be the judge of that. -L

Gee, if you ladies have something to say to Yvonne why don't you post to her?? (I personally think you are taking what she wrote way way too far. I believe she is just fed up with the careless too-uninformed prescription advice going on here...but I will let her speak for herself.)

One thing that always gets to me is that many parents prefer to protect their egos rather than their children. I see this in my practice all the time, and I always refuse to tolerate it. I support the children before all else. Maybe you yourselves do not know this, but many many parents ignore the truth about what is going on with their children. Today a mother brought in a little boy of 3 years old, for example. He had a fever of 104, and you know what she said to me? She said "Oh he's all right, there is nothing wrong with him except he won't stop crying." !!!! This is an example of what I see one or two times each week.

I certainly believe (see my statements to ens above) that the parents are indeed the appropriate decision-makers for the children. It is there obligation, it is their privilege. Ladies, the topic here on this post is not "who knows best", but rather that some very bad logic is being called "homeopathy" on this message board, and some parents who visit here are NOT informed enough about homeopathy to know the difference between good and bad homeopathy. Why don't you write in support of getting ALL the people who post on this message board (professionals and nonprofessionals) to be more careful and to substantiate their advice?? This will soon separate the good from the bad.

Please think of your children, not your egos, first.

Yvonne, it's up to the individual person to choose whom he wishes to follow whether a layperson or a qualified homeopath. Just because someone has a title after their name doesn't necessarily mean they are the most experienced and I don't mean that as an insult to those of you who do. But please don't insult anyone who is offering help on this board regardless of their credentials. This is supposed to be an open forum to everyone. I personally don't want any individual person trying to select for me who I should listen to.

This isn't a matter of egos, its called common sense and good manners.