GRAY AREAS IN HOMEOTHERAPEUTIC

When I wrote “Gray Areas In  Homeotherapeutic” I expected an intensive discussion, from the senior and serious clinicians, because the problems dealt in that article were of daily occurrence in clinical practice of homeopathy. To my dismay the response was meager; and what scant response that I got was in the vein as if I had committed some sacrilege against homeopathy.  Then I wrote a sequel to that article. Now after a long time Dr. Ranga Sai has dealt with those difficulties in a matter of fact way. I’m thankful to him for that. At least he has discussed the problem in a befitting manner. For the benefit of all I am answering to Dr. Sai in the form of third blog, on the same topic.  

1. I wrote in that article that some medicines are prescribed without paying heed to their known modalities; and the example that I gave was of Hep.Sulph. It is one of the coldest remedies of the materia medica; but when used to abort a pre-suppuration furuncle or boil, it is given in a very high potency, e.g. 1M or 10M. to any patient irrespective of his being a cold or a warm patient. According to Dr. Sai modalities are ‘not a major deterrent if you are giving the remedies in lower scale.’ According to him pathogenetically the pathology should match. But we were talking about aborting the suppurative process. Hep.Sulph, in lower potencies, promote suppuration, and discharges the pus. Now the promotion of suppuration was in Hep.Sulph’s pathogenesis, but the abortion of suppuration, with high potencies, was a clinical deduction, or a practical finding.

Dr. Sai says, ‘but our purpose is to address WHY these boils are coming in the first place.’ Dear Doctor, this Why is a very weighty and a gigantic question, not to be dealt with by you or me. We can’t lift that rock, or the glacier, of which it is a small tip. These recurring boils, say, are in a diabetic patient, of some 15 years’ standing, with all the complications, incidental to such cases; e.g. hypertension, hypertrophy of the heart, arthritis and many many other minor or major complaints; and the patient is taking some 8 to 10 different medicines, every day for as many years. (I’ve discussed such situations in my pervious blogs). So Doctor, don’t think of such a feat. We can’t do much by way of cure. They have surpassed that stage. No one should dare to destabilize such a patient.  Only try to mend the nook and corners of such cases. Your ‘cure enthusiasm’ won’t work here. These cases are beyond cure. You will find all the miasms jumbled up in such cases, beyond your power of disentangling them. You cannot even delve to the level of miasmata because a powerful artificial drug-miasm keeps you from reaching there. These are hugely burdened cases with drug toxins. Theoretically speaking if you ever succeed in separating individual miasms, you could not tell one from the other. Every single miasm would be camouflaged by the drug miasm. So ubiquitous is the drug miasm! Without de-toxicating the system from the drug effects, which is well nigh impossible, you cannot think of curing such a case.

These cases are for palliation only. Sometimes you address a skin problem, sometimes frozen shoulder or any other arthritic complaint. Sometimes you are treating some dyspeptic symptoms, sometimes a toothache. You can go on serving them in a piecemeal fashion. In this way the patient will be divided between you and the allopath. You can go on taking one complaint after another till you will feel that, for most of the daily complaints, the patient is under you. You are also doing the palliation; but your palliation is far superior to the allopath; and the patient feels more comfortable. .

c)   Your idea of repeating the same medicine, before the next menstrual cycle, but in a higher potency, seems to be a sane idea, but not without trepidation, unless we find it working. If the repetition complicates the case, you’ll curse your stars for repeating it. What will be the result of repetition, who can tell?

d)   Your recommendation for using higher potencies for children, a la Dr. Borland, because, as you say, they are safer.  According to your dictum “the higher the potency, the safer it becomes.”  The cause for this, according to you is that higher potencies have “little of the material quantity.” You must be knowing that the question of ‘material’ ends when the Avogadro’s number is reached. Even in the 15^th. C potency (let alone the 30, 200, 1M, etc.) there is no material of the drug is left. For further discussion I’ll give you the trouble to read my blog on ‘Sensitivity problem’. Here you adduced another dictum, i.e. ‘greater the susceptibility, higher the potency,’ ‘that’s so simple,’ you say. But it’s not that simple, I say, and refer you again to the same blog.  Your way of dealing with higher potencies gives an impression as if higher potencies are superficial as compared with the low ones. The reality is vice versa. After crossing the Avogadro’s limit the medicine acquires another level of reaction, which cannot be materially measured.

e)   About the ‘asymptomatic pathology,’ I’ll request you to read more to broaden your horizon. You’ll get a plethora of information, and much food for rumination.

1.  In habitual abortion the problem is not so much of the constitution etc. of the patient, as it is to get the live child in the lap of the mother. Out of thirty cases, e.g. if you get positive results in one case, allopathy, with its modern gynecological advances and techniques, can succeed in twenty cases; even more, if the patients cooperate and bear the expenses. One such case was also alluded to in one of my blogs.

Dr. Sai began his post with the sentence: ‘Hope my answers clarify your doubts.’ Please Doctor they were not my doubts, but the enumeration of ‘some’ of the practical difficulties that every homeopath encounters in his daily clinical practice.

Dr. M. A. Usmani                                                Jan. 16, 2010