(First Post)
Sickness and Medicine : From First principles

The purpose of all medical systems is to restore sick persons to health, i.e., to cure them.

The meaning of "to restore" or "to cure" can be misleading, because it implies a significant task performed by the medicine. This is NEVER the case.

In restoring health, the body does the work - the medicine just assists in some very specific way.

In this discussion let's set aside "emergencies and surgical cases" (accidents, serious mechanical problems) as exceptions.

Sickness is a state in which the patient IS or FEELS ill. The process of identifying the kind of illness the patient is suffering from is called diagnosis. Successful diagnosis will help to decide the most appropriate treatment.

Is diagnosis of the particular disease essential? The primary objective is the restoration of health. Must all medical systems use disease diagnosis even if they can accomplish the primary objective without it?

No.

When a person feels ill, they may wait for improvement, but if it doesn't come, or it worsen so that they are in significant discomfort, they may visit a doctor.

The doctor will attempt to diagnose and treat the disease - and failing this, refer them to someone who can.

Generally speaking, what could be wrong with the patient? In Britain today, in hygienic conditions, with safe food, water, and a generally healthy life-style available to all, the problem is unlikely to be plague or a fatal infection.

The cause of the problem is likely to be either connected to an unhealthy lifestyle or a chronic condition. An unhealthy lifestyle would include smoking, excessive drinking, unhealthy diet, being overweight, lack of exercise, drug abuse, unsafe sex, etc.

Chronic conditions, incurable in conventional medicine, normally have a genetic connection, and are more common in middle and old age, e.g., fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, spinal deformity, IBS, arthritis, ME, and many more.

It goes without saying that the lifestyle issues need to be addressed first, to remove all exciting factors.

But, supposing you could deal with all the persistent chronic conditions without ever having to diagnose the individual disease(s) at all. By approaching the problem from a completely different direction.
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(Cont 1)
Discussions on sickness and disease which involve Homeopathy frequently use words like immune system and body defences, but these are just simplifications. Consider the term HOMEOSTATIS : "stability of all body functions at normal levels".
Homeostatic control involves every cell in the body, with systems able to quickly recognize any deviation from the normal state, and then able to correct this deviation. The billions of cells involved make this a very significant task. Millions of cells die each day and are replaced. The dead tissues have to be detected, gathered up, and removed from the body, a full-time task for the lymphatic system, which is also a key component of the immune system, attacking and removing both disease agents and foreign matter.

The immune system is just one part of the Homeostatic control system, ultimately under the control of a centre in the brain called the Hypothalamus. The Hypothalamus has many receptors which receive neural signals and monitor blood chemistry. The blood contains many messengers which indicate the status of the various systems involved in Homeostasis around the body. The Hypothalamus then takes action based on these inputs. There are four major inputs to this control system, which are:

1)PSYCHE : Higher Centres of Brain.

2)NEURAL : Nerve input from around the body.

3)IMMUNE SYSTEM : Signals of Immune system's status.

4)ENDOCRINE SYSTEM : Signals of status.

Because the Hypothalamic centre for Homeostasis is so central to total homeostatic control, it is called an "axis" ("something around which everything else revolves"). In this case the: PSYCHO-NEURO-IMMUNO-ENDOCRINE Axis ("PNIE" axis), the body's highest-level control system. PNIE is sometimes shortened to PNI, as you'll see in Searches. The study of this field is not new, but the 'logical' approach to the problem taken by this discussion, as you will see, IS new. The four major inputs to the PNIE centre have to be evaluated, resulting in the end in instructions back to them. A book on immunology will not say much about PNIE or PNI because so little is actually known about the relationship between the immune system and PNIE.

And Scientific experimentation on the PNIE is virtually impossible. The uncertainty principle of physics, proposed by Heisenberg, states that both the momentum and position of a quantum-mechanical particle cannot simultaneously be determined sharply. The very act of attempting to tie-down and measure the momentum or position of a particle, alters these parameters. An "uncertainty principle" also applies to the study of Homeostasis in the area of the PNIE axis. It is simply impossible to separate or fragment it's components for study without alteration. Unlike Science which insists that everything is identified and nailed down, Homeopathy accepts this limitation. (Continued later.)
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cont 3)
From the way people react to excessive doses of Homeopathic medicines, i.e., with symptom aggravations or violent swings between symptoms from one extreme to another, e.g., from feeling very cold to feeling very hot and back again, Hahnemann likened the process to a pendulum swinging. In these situations he used the term "Vital Principle becoming untuned". He reported that in disease, the Vital Principle could absorb a lot of stress before "becoming untuned".

When the immune response is triggered, there is indeed a lag of 7-14 days for the production of antibodies to build up. In practice, the infection is usually destroyed before that 7-14 days, and antibody production then cancelled - all this happening before any symptoms appear in the patient.

Otherwise, if the infection takes root, with constant monitoring by Homeostatic Control (HC), HC may decide to intervene by raising body temperature to help destroy the infection, for instance.

Hahnemann's concept of a "Vital Principle" is equivalent to HC, the body's Homeostatic control system. He provides so much detail about its behaviour, that it is not difficult to put forward a theory of what it is.

Hahnemann's medicines did not contain any disease agent at all, yet they produced symptoms closely matching a particular patient's disease.
Therefore, how could the disease agent be responsible for symptoms? It cannot - the body always produces the symptoms.

An anatomical map of the brain shows areas reserved for each part of the body. Though a feeling in our feet may seem to be coming from that location, it is actually constructed in the brain area responsible for sensations/activities involving the feet. HC, too, because its activities affect the whole body, e.g. symptom generation, must have a location or centre in the brain.

Hahnemann discovered these bizarre medicines that do absolutely nothing except produce specific symptoms in people. Indeed, their ONLY medicinal value is to produce symptom patterns, and even then, they are useless unless they closely match a patient's symptoms - only then do they have the capacity to act 'homeopathically'.

What we have called the PNIE axis is a significant part of HC, handling all the inputs to HC, and involved in relaying back outputs from HC.

If the HC centre in the brain controls Homeostasis throughout the body, what controls Homeostasis of HC itself? The HC is itself brain tissue, providing its own Homeostasis input (Psyche or Neural) like all other systems through the PNIE axis. HC does not exist in one specific location, but has several locations in the brain.

Homeopathic medicines are always administered by mouth or inhalation, and never to organs or tissues. Homeopathic medicines themselves cannot result in symptoms such as elevation of body temperature. But, natural diseases, acting through the HC, can result in temperature elevation.
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Cont 4)
Scientific studies have shown that Homeostatic Control (HC) can have profound effects on the activities of the immune system, e.g., greatly reduced T-cell activity in some people in depression. HC can simply override the immune system if it considers its activities to be a waste of resources, or not essential for survival.

After reading Hahnemann's books and his detailed description of the behaviour of HC, I am convinced that the main reason millions of people suffer incurable chronic diseases (of genetic origin) is due to HC being incapable of adequately performing it's regulatory tasks around the body.

Returning to the chronic diseases mentioned previously, these are not the result of an infective agent but are of genetic origin. In a healthy person, HC has no problems in maintaining homeostasis, promptly extinguishing any disease - a system which evolved into its almost perfect state over millions of years.

However, being perfect is not the rule of genetics - the variation of individuals is essential for the species to survive, and many individuals must be sacrificed for that overall goal. In all our cells are 40,000 genes, each having between 2 and 200 operational versions. The combinations we are dealt make us unique. The DNA of these genes is translated into proteins which make our bodies and define who we are. The variation of genes at each generation makes us all different in our constitution; we are all genetic experiments to test our suitability to the world as it is today. This is measured by whether or not we pass our genes onto the next generation.

People have chronic diseases of genetic origin because the "total genetic variations" have proceeded to a level at which some metabolic or physical process of the body is not fully functional, AND which cannot be fully compensated for by the person's HC system.

This "stress" situation can persist for very many generations, thus selecting the genes responsible for successful strategies used by the Homeostatic control system.

[ 14. June 2003, 11:25: Message edited by: Timokay ]

I'll get a round tuit!
I'll get a round tuit!

A TUIT is an enigmatic, almost mythical, lucky charm very difficult to get hold of. Many yearn for possession of one throughout their lives, believing the day of possession never to be far off, judging by their repeated utterances (especially people who work in offices and get behind with their work). Tuits come in three shapes; square, round and triangular. The round one is by far the most desirable.

[ 14. July 2003, 18:05: Message edited by: Timokay ]

"The foundations of magnetic recording"
by J. C. Mallinson

The RECORD head is an electromagnetic device in which electric current is used to 'magnetize' the magnetic tape.

Chapter 5: The writing or recording process.

"The changing magnetic field magnetizes the tape in a manner that must bear a unique relationship to the writing head coil current. A complete understanding of this process has not been achieved despite many decades of study. There are many reasons for this failure, but there is little doubt that the most profound problem is the almost complete absence of a good 2-D hysteresis model".
(He then describes the best model, but explains that it "bears little relationship to physical reality".)

2. BOOK 2 : Quantum Theory of Magnetism by R.M. White

"Although it is one of the oldest physical phenomena studied, magnetism continues to be an active and challenging subject. This is due to the fact that magnetic phenomena represent a complex application of quantum mechanics, statistical physics, and electromagnetism. My purpose is still the same - to use linear response theory to establish a common conceptual basis for understanding a variety of magnetic phenomena".

There are some people who 'apply' the complicated mathematical formulae of Quantum Theory to the real world, making it more understandable.

Message Title: re: Electromagnetic Bio-information

Message:
Joel,
This Board stores everything. Please present evidence for this, and be richly rewarded financially :

"The topic of OT being dyslexic came up because you attacked him for grammar."

You know how to copy/paste don't you?

Rest answered.

(Methinks at least one of you posters is using two+ names on this Board, e.g., Joel, Benjy and Benjy Mouse, all being the same idle B.)

(Cont 4)
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A THEORY:

Regarding the Homeostatic Control System (HC) activities, how does the HC make its decisions? It must be made aware of, and be able to deal with, all abnormal (disease) conditions around the body. The immune system, for instance, has many feedback loops to guide its many actions, but it cannot cope with all situations which it must leave to HC. How could HC know what to do when the immune system is overwhelmed?

It is getting these P,N,I & E inputs from around the body, but the decision-making processes of HC are difficult to imagine.

In the brain, HC has its own "image" of the body, and its Homeostatic status. After HC receives its PNIE input, and after recognition of any deviation indicating disease, HC may for example use a cross-reference table which translates that "disease" into symptom patterns. Call this the DSP-TAB (disease-symptom pattern table - instinctual memory). The "disease", instead of being an entity, may actually be a particular "set of PNIE input parameters" which are passed to the symptom table for translation.

In Health, of course, the DSP-TAB would not be referenced nor activated. Even after some serious infection, HC would not immediately invoke the symptom table, but wait until immune system activities indicate its failure to overcome the disease agent.

In this situation, HC (by some means) would identify the kind of disease, and send its identifying signal to the symptom table, which then initiates the wide range of symptoms for this particular disease.

How does DSP-TAB communicate or initiate such wide-ranging symptoms? The mechanism of Homeopathic medicines, whose signal is probably carried in magnetic or electromagnetic form, may suggest an answer. These medicines appear to be mimmicking the signal from HC to the DSP-TAB, actually false signals of disease which generate symptom patterns.

Perhaps, DSP-TAB's subsequent activity of initiating symptoms also operates through an electromagnetic signal which passes into the Cerebral Cortex, affecting areas corresponding to specific parts of the body.

Note that, although Homeopathic medicines may trigger DSP-TAB activity like HC does, there are still some differences in the symptom patterns generated by the two. For instance, only in real illnesses would HC initiate an elevation in body temperature. This would be called a REAL symptom, and the others, activated by DSP-TAB across the Cerebral Cortex, as PERCEIVED (at this stage) because they only exist inside the brain (e.g. may cause toxic reflexes in the tissues, but the toxicity may not actually exist).

Since Homeopathic medicines do not produce the "REAL symptoms", I suggest that they do not act directly on HC but bypasses its activities to trigger DSP-TAB itself.

The Homeopathic signal can never produce just one or two symptoms - an array of symptoms is always generated, supporting the idea of a symptom table.
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(Cont.5 : Last Continued)

Why should closely matching a patient's symptoms, and then exceeding those symptoms, be effective at extinguishing all the symptoms (and therefore resolving the illness)?
The appearance of sensory symptoms in specific organs and tissues which we see in illness (or mimmicked by Homeopathic medicines) must be an indication that HC is asking them to address some Homeostasis issue. We see only the sensory activity of the symptoms, but much more is probably going on.

These organs and tissue, in turn, report their status back to HC via PNIE. On receipt of this input, HC may decide that no homeostasis issue remains in these organs and tissues, so no further signals are sent to DSP-TAB to sustain symptoms, and all symptoms resolve. Homeopathic medicines appear to be fooling the HC into believing the symptoms they are inducing via DSP-TAB belong to the patient's disease in process. The resulting reinforced message to the organs and tissues results in a re-affirmation of their status to HC.

The chronic disease the patient is suffering may actually just be a "hanging" disease. HC cannot shut off the symptoms because the Organs/Tissues affected have not confirmed their Homeostatic status. Or the fault is in HC itself in failing to identify disease and trigger the symptom table to the required degree.
Wherever the failure of communication in the cyclical process is occurring, a re-activation of the symptom table by the Homeopathic medicine is enough to complete the cycle of communication, and the disease resolves.
Perhaps the illness in the body has long resolved, leaving HC sustaining symptoms unnecessarily.

Above, I mentioned Hom medicines "fooling" HC into believing the signals coming thru are from the disease in process. It is only by closely matching symptoms that this can be achieved.
If the symptom pattern of the Hom medicine is not a close match, HC somehow interprets and processes this e/m signal as nonsense, causing unusual symptoms not related to any diseases management.

Summary so far:

1. There is a centre in the brain, HC, which is an image, or construct, of the Homeostatic status of the whole body.

2. HC uses an instinctual memory centre to trigger symptom patterns for diseases.

3. The comunication signals between HC and
DSP-TAB, and onwards to centres in the Cerebral Cortex may be electromagnetic in nature, the suspected nature of Homeopathic medicines.

Next, let us consider all the information Hahnemann provides about the nature of HC. .

For a start: Giving exactly the same dose of the same medicine twice in succession is forbidden. The next dose(s) must always be more potent than the one before. Higher potencies act "deeper and longer".

[ 14. June 2003, 16:05: Message edited by: Timokay ]

Electronic Reactions

The only Scientific study, published in very reputable Journals, which has ever come close to providing evidence (though unwittingly) for "Homeopathic Medicines not being mere dilutions", was performed in 1924 and published in Lancet and British Medical Journal in 1925.
I have obtained full copies of these detailed papers and studied them.

Why nothing ever came of this research is difficult to explain. Had it been followed up seriously, the mystery of Homeopathy's mechanism would certainly have been solved. I hope this discussion will lead to some answers to this question. The first, and main, conclusion of this Scientific work in 1924, performed by a team including physicists and led by an eminent British Scientist, Sir Thomas Horder (later Lord Horder), was as follows :-

(1) That certain substances, when placed in proper relation to the emanometer of Boyd, produce beyond all reasonable doubt, changes in the abdominal wall of a person, of a kind which may be detected by percussion of the abdomen.

The "certain substances" referred to above were blood and sputum samples initially, but mainly Homeopathic medicines later on. After resolving experimental setup problems, 100% success rates were obtained during experimentation. Horder's team did not object to the use of Homeopathic medicines as samples as long as it was understood that these experiments were in no way providing supporting evidence for Homeopathy or its principles.

After studying this work carefully, I am convinced that pure research by a physicist or biophysicist is the best way forwards in research into the mechanism of transmission of Homeopathic medicines.

HISTORY :

It was an American medical doctor, Dr Abrams, who discovered the "electronic reactions" or "emanations" from living tissue. He built some electronic devices able to detect it.
Scottish Dr Boyd, starting with Abrams "Reflexophone", built his own version, called the "emanometer", and spent years experimenting with it.

But, it was Boyd's emanometer that was the only successfully Scientifically-tested device of this kind. After Boyd's death, his sons were unable to make the emanometer work properly.

German medical doctor Voll later developed a device on the same principle which measured fluctuating "emanations" at Chinese acupuncture points on the body which he claimed were related to disease states. He developed a treatment strategy. Scimmel did more work on these lines but failed to Scientifically prove any therapeutic effect for his device. None of Voll's nor Schimmel's work has been accepted as Scientific because they failed to adequately explain what these subtle enamations are.

THE PROBLEM

Boyd's emanometer needs pure research by a physicist or biophysicist. Why are Medical doctors inventing and testing electronic equipment? (that's what they did 80 years ago.)At some stage, the electronics of this medical device should be passed over to Physics for research.

Science needs to know exactly what these emanations are first. And Medical Science wants research into their Medical applications.

Taking on the emanometer would initially appear to be difficult for a physicist, the obstacle being the "medical component" of using a person as the measuring instrument, but this obstacle would soon be separated/eliminated.

I hope there is a physicist out there who may be interested in discussing this further, or who could answer a few questions I have, will post more details about this work.

[ 16. June 2003, 16:58: Message edited by: Timokay ]

V.sensitive light detectors (Search on Yahoo).

CHANNEL PHOTOMULTIPLIER OPERATION

"A new photomultiplier design takes the form of a monolithic structure that provides complete photomultiplier functionality with greatly increased sensitivity. The photomultiplier tube has been the mainstay of low-light detectors for well over 50 years. Over that time, performance has slowly improved while the basic operating principles have remained unchanged for the most part. Recently, however, a new design has led to dramatic improvements in performance."

Perhaps I'll get one for Christmas..or find a university that has one and take the portable BBCi emanometer to it.

BACKGROUND

Photomultipliers are extremely sensitive light detectors that provide a current output proportional to light intensity. They are used to measure any process that directly or indirectly emits light. Large-area light detection, high gain, and the ability to detect single photons give the photomultiplier distinct advantages over other light detectors.
The Channel photomultiplier (see Figure 1), as do all photomultipliers, detects light at the photocathode, causing it to emit electrons by the photoelectric effect.

[ 17. June 2003, 13:18: Message edited by: Timokay ]

NON-MAGNETIC INDUCTION

I'll get a round tuit.
I'll get a round tuit.

A TUIT is an enigmatic, almost mythical, lucky charm very difficult to get hold of. Many yearn for possession of one throughout their lives, believing the day of possession never to be far off, judging by their repeated utterances (especially people who work in offices and get behind with their work). Tuits come in three shapes; square, round and triangular. The round one is by far the most desirable.

I need one of these to help complete my studies, or to even steer me towards a PhD.

Thanks for your many posts Tim, I have enjoyed reading them. You could probably do with some acknowledgement.

PIEZOELECTRIC

http://chemistry.about.com/gi/dynami...g/candywww.htm

http://chemistry.about.com/library/weekly/aa060601a.htm

TRI
http://www.ca.sandia.gov/Materials&E...Chem/trib.html

A new sensor material has been developed that consists of a structural polymer (foam, elastomer, etc.) and a triboluminescent (TL) powder additive. The initial motivation for this work was to produce a sensor which provides its own sensing energy that emits detectable light upon crushing and to then use that light output as an indicator of the functioning of an explosive valve. A unique attribute of this concept is that it will allow for the real-time sensing of physical displacement with no electrical conducting path to the valve assembly.

http://www.photonics.com/Spectra/tec...asp?techid=826

http://www.micropat.com/classdef/CLS...9/s025350.html

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/ava...ornThesis1.pdf

http://www.techtransfer.psu.edu/Scie...20Newswire.htm

Hofmann adds that the magnitude of the piezoelectric material's vibration determines the magnitude of the voltage: "Since, in operation, the amount of vibrations can vary widely, some way must also be found to adaptively maximize power flow as well as convert it from AC to DC."

http://www.eng-tips.com/subscribetof...ar%20Engineers

http://www.eng-tips.com/

[ 04. July 2003, 15:23: Message edited by: Timokay ]