ALLOPATHY FACTS HOMEOPATHY FACTS & THE REAL FACTS

ALLOPATHY FACTS: HOMEOPATHY FACTS & THE REAL FACTS

(A CRITIQUE OF CLASSICAL HOMEOPATHY-10)

Life is a flux; a perpetual change. What does not change is not life. Not only the facts do change, but also their meanings change. Change is the largest inscription on the face of life. What was treachery in the past may be considered ingenuity today, or it may be counted as downright chivalry. With the change of meaning emphases may also change. Such a change can metamorphose the whole scenario. Faithfulness and fidelity was the impeccable virtue of a lover. And the loved one was—in the eyes of the lover—the most beautiful, or the beauty incarnate. Now the poet has shifted the emphasis from the loved one to her one quality, that is the ‘physical beauty’. Now he says that his love seeks a new beautiful face every now and anon; so that his fidelity is to beauty, per se, and not to any particular (beautiful) person.Now this shift of emphasis makes a world of difference. It has totally changed the whole scenario. First the quality of faithfulness was attached from one person to another person; but now it has shifted from first person to some quality of the other person (e.g. beauty). Beauty in this way becomes the idol. Now one has become the worshipper of beauty, and is enamored of it: the more varied the instances of beauty there are the better. And this is the true picture of the modern world. Every beautiful face carves a new niche in the heart of the lover. 

The history of medicine is also the history of changing meanings, changing emphases and revolutionization of methodology. Knowledge is moving and expanding its frontiers to ever new vistas. What was most scientific medical practice in ancient history, and coveted by all the aspiring healers of the past, may now be branded as patent quackery. What Hahnemann described allopathy has now changed beyond recognition. The allopathy, which he first spelled as ‘Alloeopathy’, and later was spelled as ‘Allopathy’, by his colleagues and disciples; was consonant with such terms as: antipathy, heteropathy on the basis of ‘contraria contraribus curantur’. Some 90% of the facts that Hahnemann and his colleagues and disciples stated about allopathy are now no more in currency and have been thrown to the limbo of history. In fact, soon after Hahnemann, the healing art that he called Allopathy was so much changed that his colleagues and contemporaries shirked calling it allopathy. They started mentioning it as “the Dominant School”. Some idols were broken by Homeopathy, but most drastic cleansing was done by the discoveries of science and modern medicine.

THE ALLOPATHY FACTS

Modern medicine is no more the Allopathy of yore, nor can it be described away with such dictums as ‘contraria’, nor can it be called antipathy or heteropathy. Is it palliation? Yes! Palliation, par excellence. It is scientific palliation to its minutest detail. It is a flawless system of palliation, if by ‘cure’ we understand what homeopathy teaches us as ‘cure’. Modern medicine does not subscribe to the ideal of cure of homeopathy. For them it is meaningless and non-practical.   

Homeopathic research is limited to the introduction of ever new therapeutic agents from all sources of nature: viz. herbal, animal, mineral, body secretions (sarcodes) and nosological products (nosodes), and from the sea, and inponderablia like electricity, x-rays, magnetic poles, etc.  Allopathic research, on the other hand, is multidimensional, and multi-directional, but mainly disease oriented, and towards maintaining optimum health. They first target the issues of health and then direct their search for the resolution of those issues or problems that hamper health. So their fields of action are physiology, pathology and morbid anatomy. They first postulate a concrete issue and then direct their all resources and energy for its resolution. They first study the disease in an exhaustive way, and to the fullest extent, and then think for a comprehensive way for its eradication, or amelioration. They shirk not from utilizing whatever means they find helpful in this fight. In this they are unabashedly daring and undauntedly adventurous. Ever new gadgets are at their hands; and new vistas beaconing them to new resources ever and anon. Homeopaths, on the other hand, are conservative breed. They first read or experiment with a medicine and then ruminate on its possible implications and applications.

Modern medicine is discovering ever new facts and coining new terminology to befittingly explain them. Nobody, for example, has ever heard of the new term Abruption of Placenta, in the classical obstetrics. It means placental detachment. It is serious complication of pregnancy. Circulation, and consequently the nutrition of the fetus is affected causing its ultimate demise. In case of habitual abruption the daily use of a blood thinning agent, viz. heparin, in the form of daily intra-muscular injection, was devised, to be given throughout pregnancy. No harm comes to the gravid mother, or to the child. In fact beautiful healthy children are born with every part and all the senses intact. A couple who, after two to three miscarriages, from this cause, could not ever think of having a child in their lap, now can think of having as many as they wish. Such a courageous innovation is only destined for them who have no compunction of committing a sacrilege by prying into uncharted fields.

Surgery has been incorporated seamlessly with therapeutics. Surgical operations go hand in hand with the therapeutic. Therapy is installed before and continues after the surgery. A patient starts with medicine and ends with medicine and the surgery in between.  The prospects of cure or handling a situation are estimated in a combined sense. Surgery of eyes, for example, for the replacement of lenses (Phaco procedures), or the treatment for glaucoma is fully therapeutic-o-surgical.  Bypass or open-heart surgery is performed hand-in-hand with drug therapy for thousands of people all over the world.  Pace-makers work for decades, when decades before that implant the patient might have been dead and lying under tons of earth.

In fact the understanding of diseases and method of dealing with them have been metamorphosed beyond recognition. The diagnostic technology has so miraculously advanced that no room for error is left. To pin point faultlessly the location or the site of invasion or damage, and the determination of the kind of morbidity has totally changed the approach to deal with it. The modern approach in medicine is basically analytic. Disease is searched to the basic cells of the organism, to form the theory of etiology. And a full case of a patient is analyzed to the basic systems that are affected and dealt with accordingly and individually. Separate medicines are prescribed for separate organs or systems, with miraculous palliation with positive value for life prolongation. 

Great strides have been taken into advancement of knowledge of diseases, physiology, pathology, pathologic physiology, histology, histopathology, endocrinology, and the role and the extent that hormones control life functions, and the discovery of micro-nutrients and trace-elements, their role and therapeutic application. The pervasive inclusion of surgery into therapeutics is simply amazing. One can give few examples: insertion of metallic rod along the fractured long bone and the latter’s becoming the integral part of the body; or implanting new artificial bone structures, as of knees, opening of an obstructed vein or duct by laparoscopic procedures, or by the use of stents; repair of abdominal hernias by the surgical procedure of a few minutes’ duration where homeopathy, if successful, would have taken months or years. One can enlarge and enumerate endlessly the marvels of modern medicine.

THE HOMEOPATHY FACTS

To understand Homeopathy one has to unlearn many things and come out of the grooves of conventional thinking. People who cannot come out of the conventional grooves can never become conversant with homeopathy and its queer facts. One example can be adduced here. There is no therapeutic in the world where after giving one dose of the medicine, in a very complicated and chronic case, no repetition of the dose is done for many weeks or months. Sometimes this one dose suffices to cure the whole case, may it take full one year or more. There can be a case of incessant vomiting and nausea in a case of severe jaundice. Vomiting had not been redressed in spite of hospitalization. One dose of Phosphorus in homeopathic potency, split in 3 doses in a watery solution, not only cured nausea and vomiting, but also cured the underlying jaundice. This would be unheard of in the whole modern practice. 

Giving one medicine in an acute and complicated case is quite foreign to the modes of thinking and practice in allopathy—where analyzing a case into many comprising factors is a rule with no exceptions. Take a case of acute bronchitis, in a child, with high fever, vomiting, and a supervening diarrhea that is rapidly draining the patient. The Allopathic prescription may be somewhat as follows:

• An expectorant cough syrup;
• Ventoline syrup for pulmonary congestion and dyspnea;
• Some anti-pyretic to allay the febrile intensity;
• And, of course, some anti-diarrheal preparation.

After doing so much for the patient they will not be satisfied, because they aren’t covering one factor of the case that is, vomiting.  How can they give an anti-emetic with an expectorant, since expectorants usually induce vomiting?

Now how would a homeopath fare with such a case? The patient has severe dry and retching cough, and vomiting, with difficulty of retaining anything and oppression of chest and breathing, high fever and watery green motions. The astonishing fact is that he gives only one medicine that is Ipecac. and the whole case takes a rapid turn towards cure.

In old-age infirmities, where a patient has lost control over bowels and soils clothes. They give some opiates and antimotility drugs that create some restraint and delay in urges, by slowing down the peristalsis of the bowels. Here we give a confirmed purgative, as Aloes, which, by acting on the principle of Similia, creates costiveness and mastery over bowel-control. One can do wonders, in geriatrics, with this medicine alone. A peculiar symptom of this remedy is: ‘even formed and hard feces pass unaware’. (cf. Dr. Nash)

Homeopathy is a boon that saves from massive drugging. If a heavy attack of tonsillitis with high fever and malaise can be cured with 3 small pilliules, of the size of poppy seed, in a watery solution, of a homeopathic medicine, viz. Merc. Sol., what fun is there to wash down the gullet of the patient all the massive doses of Anti-biotic, Anti-pyretic, and Anti-tussive medicines?

In a case of violent infantile vomiting, or intolerance of milk, one or two doses of Ipecac., or Aethusa Cyn. can put the disorder right.

In an exhausting diarrhea, which has not been cured in a hospital is promptly cured with one dose of a drastic purgative, viz. Croton-Tig. 30, followed by another dose of 200 potency.

To the arthritic patients modern medicine gives a formula prescription of:

• Pain Killers,
• Muscles Relaxants,
• Mineral Calcium with Vitamin D,
• Vit.B12, and a Multi-Vitamin with Minerals. And
• Some liniments or Gels to be rubbed on the sore joint.

 Decades of such medication brings no permanent results or mitigation of suffering. The patients have gone worse and the patience depleted. Homeopathy never uses pain killers, but gives the indicated medicine after proper case-taking. The homeo-physician will declare to his patient: ‘never to seek pain-killers; your pains sometimes will be mitigated and sometimes they will be exacerbating, but you will heed the movements of your joints, e.g. knees, that they are becoming easy and more versatile.’ Indicated medicine is a magic. But sometimes it does not work.  Here approach a la Burnett succeeds. His pathologic approach benefits every case. Urtica Urens, Benzoic Acid, Natrum  Mur.6, et al. have done wonders with the patients. Burnett is the sole author or discoverer of these medicines’ arthritic application.

Similarly in restless children who try the patience of the parents by not going to sleep till late at night. The dominant school’s physicians give Phenergan or Phenobarbitone for inducing sleep. Both these medicine are dangerous and reprehensible. In such cases potentized coffee, in the form of homeopathic dose, with the name Coffea Cruda 30, induces sleep like magic. In the sleep problems of children there is a category of children who do not want to go to bed. But they do not cry either, or show bad temper, but they are lively and want to play on their own. They don’t let you switch off lights. Stramonium, in homeopathic dose, sometimes cures. But if the case is not settled with this agent or any other indicated medicine, Farrington feels apprehension and warns that some mischief is brewing as regards patient’s mental health. Here he suggests Cyprepedium as the most indicated and a sure means of inducing sleep and, at the same time, of arresting the brewing mischief.

 THE REAL FACTS

Symptomatic treatment is palliation, i.e. Allopathy; and ‘symptoms based’ treatment is Homeopathy, i.e. based on the totality of symptoms. Both lack the concept of disease. Homeopaths lack the pathologic concept of disease; and the allopaths, when they tackle individual or small groups of symptoms, also do not base on any definite concept of disease. The homeopathic concept of disease is holistic—a summarizing of all the existential problems and ailments of the patient plus the hereditary imbroglio.  Palliation in modern medicine is not as crude or as simple as heteropathy of yore. It is not, e.g., treating gastric acidosis with something alkaline; or loose bowels with something astringent. In Allopathy palliation is sometimes the sole medical practice that stands for this way of treatment. So both the schools have incongruous concepts of disease. Allopathic concept of disease is securely based on pathology, or definite pathologic entities or pathologic processes. The symptoms of a particular disease are constant and pathogonomonic of that disease: e.g. Pellagra, Paget’s Disease, Parkinsonism, Zona, Pemphegus, Pleurisy, Myasthenia Gravis, Nystagmus, Telangiectasia (congenital), etc. The symptoms will be the same of any such disease as on the South Pole as they’ll be found on the North. You can recognize the diseases from their symptoms any time and anywhere. This is a sufficient evidence for the existence of definite diseases with which every true physician should be conversant. So homeopaths should shed their prejudice against definite diseases, with their identifying (i.e. diagnostic) symptoms, as being definite pathologic entities. We should accept the database of diseases as prepared and developed by the dominant school with elaborate nomenclature, and make ourselves abreast with it. We must develop the spirit of Dr. Burnett of accepting the hard facts without prejudice. 

Homeopathy is wise and conservative and full of restraints, while allopathy, as I’ve already said, is eventful and daring, sometimes dangerously so. The history of Allopathy is strewn with very dangerous, devastating and painfully unforgettable scenes. Thalidomide Babies come to the mind’s eyes at once. Otherwise also their history of all the inventory of major drugs shows the similar events of causing minor to major side effects. A drug is approved by FDA in a period of at least four to five years, and subsequently, in the coming years, one black box after another goes on being added, as the bad side-effects go on being revealed with time. Cf. the history of Phenergan or Phenobarbitone, especially as regards pediatric practice.  

This was the theoretic part of the discussion. The practical part has both merits and demerits in it. Specialization is good in some respects and superfluous in many. Eye-specialists! Yes, they should be there. So is with the heart-specialists. Neuro-, and orthopedic specialties have their genuine merit. But Hematologist? One is left wondering. A patient of mine, after suffering with Dengue fever, two years back, has his platelet count permanently disturbed. He consulted a Professor of Medicine. He prescribed some liver medicines, and told him if those medicines did not bring any change, then he would ask him to consult a hematologist. I was left wondering: ‘the hematologist might refer, in his turn, to a plateletogist’!!

Allopathy is a mighty scientific system of palliation. Its methodology is determined, settled and organized. They can boast of success in some 95% of cases, which a homeopath would judge as palliation. Palliation is not an anathema for the allopaths; they prize on it instead.

With this target they handle any and every disease, and come out with flying colors. Homeopathy cannot cure nor handle many therapeutic situations and entities. I’ve never seen any case of Diabetes (Type-II or Type-I) as cured by homeopathy. Similar is the case in many multi-faceted diseases as CHF (congestive heart failure), independently or superadded on the diabetic base.

Advancement in surgery has solved many problems, as e.g. Phaco surgery of the eye for the cataract, laparoscopic removal of gall-bladder, and sufferings of gynecological ubiquitous problems. Burnett did fight with cataract and cholelithiasis. But in both the diseases the modern man would not opt for Burnett’s detailed therapy. Nobody would like to bear the torture of vomiting gall-stones, when few moments’ laparoscopic operation would liberate him from the troublesome and uncertain life. I’ve handled gall-colic episodes of a gentle lady for full 20 years, but ultimately she had to undergo laparoscopic surgery, and 20 more years  have elapsed after that surgery and she is quite healthy and living a useful and vigorous life. Fifteen years ago I felt cataract developing in my eyes. I opted for the Phaco surgery. A half hour’s operation changed my outlook on life. My vision is 6/6 now. 

The surgical interventions are usually seen by homeopaths with censure. As far as palliation is concerned they might tolerate it as sometimes inevitable; but when it causes suppression, they totally deem it devastating. The surgical removal, of some pathological accretions, as renal or gall calculi, (or by means of litholapaxy or lithotripsy), or some pathological growths that hinder some body functions that lead to palliation. And when some natural function or flow of the body is arrested by surgery or from any other cause, as e.g. cessation of menses in a young woman owing to hysterectomy; or the arrest of the development of exanthema in an exanthematic fever by strong anti-pyretic medication that leads to suppression. But the fact is that people have lost the sense of distinction between cure and palliation, and suppression. People do not bother about this distinction. They are happy with the abrupt disappearance of the painful and distressing suffering. The ideal of cure is quite stranger to them. They are concerned with the immediate redressing of their suffering. Hysterectomy at the nexus or nears the time of menopause does not cause so much concern or perturbation. But sometimes one has to evaluate between the pros and cons of such an action. 

The penchant for palliation should not prompt one to confuse immune response with idiopathic phenomena. Any fever that occurs with some local infection should not be taken as, so to say, an idiopathic disease, but as an immune response of the body; and therefore should be upheld and not killed by anti-pyretics. It is only because of the advent of the antibiotics, that this practice of killing fever became fashion. Before the invention of this weapon, lowering and killing fevers with the anti-pyretics used to prolong the duration of infectious disease: hence the prolongation of the misery of the patient. So the immune response should not be taken as an idiopathic phenomenon. The immune response should be bolstered up instead of mitigating or killing it. Most of my acute patients, usually with ‘strep throat’, come after already having taken one or two doses of Paracetamol, for lowering or killing the fever. That increases the difficulties of a homeopathic physician. Read my article: Worship and Venerate the Fever:http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/worship-and-venerate-the-fever

Homeopathy and Allopathy are two streams of therapeutics, distinctly flowing their own ways. They may somewhere make a delta down the stream, but ultimately they’ll flow their own separate ways. Followers of these systems should not talk disparagingly of each other. Homeopathy is full of insight, and Allopathy is full of technology and boldness of its application; and it is ordained by the Destiny that the upper hand be given to technology. The medical mysticism of Homeopathy is destined to flow deep without making superficial ripples. But Homeopathy is here, as a hard rock, to stand abidingly, befriending humanity by bestowing true cure.