HOMEOPATHY CHEATS

(PALLIATION? YES, YES! NO, NO!)

A great Urdu poet says: ‘Every self-seeker has worn the garb of a connoisseur of arts and beauty, thus the respect and prestige of the real visionary or connoisseur has thus been discredited’   [Her bulhawas ne husn prusty shaar ki, ab abruay shaivai ahli nazar gai]

Every mercenary calls himself a homeopath, and every concoction or nostrum passes as homeopathic medicine.  Market is full of such nostrums.  Homeopathic stores are scintillating with colorful packets of such patent medicines. They have also now adapted the marketing strategy like the allopathic pharmaceutical houses. Now their Reps come to you to exhort you to buy their patent preparations for all the diseases that man is heir to.

Ours being an unethical world, motivated by greed and aggrandizement, we feel no compunction in doing long term harm to mankind for short term petty gains. Such cheats abound in our rank and file.  They call themselves professors, having delivered trite lectures, full of clichés and borrowed ideas, or call themselves MD, which every body know what it is. They head homeopathic institutions by wearing a solemn and pious look, and fleece their students by extorting a full year’s fee in one go, in advance; and never bothering if the student ever comes to classes for the full year. They give full support to them in solving their question paper, when the exam comes.

One remembers sitting at the clinic-cum-medical store of such a principal of a homeopathic institution. He was attending his morning clinic when a lady came for consultation. She was relating her case very clearly and intelligently. One witnessed that the ‘learned doctor’ prescribed two or three concoctions of Reckeweg’s R-Nos. with some bio-chemical salts and two or three powders of homeopathic medicines. It was an occasion for downright nauseating repugnance. The doctor lost for ever, from his sloth or ignorance, an opportunity to cure that patient; who had come to him singly for homeopathic treatment. He absolved himself of the duty that destiny had bestowed upon him. He showed that he was anything but a homeopath. He betrayed her trust. God knows what pathy he was applying to her; for homeopathy verily it was not!

Then there are specialists in homeopathy. Some claim being specialist in arthritis, some in asthma, others in gastric ailments, urinary or renal troubles or diabetes etc. The fact is that there is no categorization in homeopathic education. There is no specialized teaching in homeopathic institutions. This is downright cheating. Homeopathy overrules all such categorization or classification, as far as homeopathic education is concerned. There can be self-ascription (or self-imposed limitation) for a special field or a chosen role by a homeopathic practitioner, as chronic diseases, acute diseases, or some lady-doctor can confine herself to ladies, or children’s treatment; but she can’t become a Pediatrician thereby, nor a Gynecological specialist, in the accepted sense of the word. I’m famous for arthritis, or especially for backache and spinal problems in one city, and for Hepatitis in another city, but I’m specialist in neither of these. The simple fact is that your patients become your emissaries in the trouble in which they were benefited by you. (Mind you I’m using the word ‘benefited’ not ‘cured’. Cure is an uphill task.)

I’m aware of the pathologic school in homeopathy; as I’ve myself talked on this, in my paper, read in Asian Homeopathic Conference, at Genting, in Malaysia, Oct. 2009, entitled: PITFALLS IN HOMEOTHERAPEUTICS 

http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/pitfalls-in-homeotherapeutics

I myself am proponent of this school; Dr. Burnett being the torch-bearer of this school. But he is first a prophet of homeopathy, then anything else. It is his involvement with the pathology of diseases, that gave us so many nosodes, and so many specifics in homeopathy. He inspired an era in homeopathic history, and is a faultless guide for eternity in homeotherpeutics.

Dr. Burnett’s mention brings me to the subject of Palliation; for he did both; palliation and cure. But he served the patients, and thus the mankind, in the best of his knowledge, skill and practical wisdom. But Palliation is a titillating subject, sometimes a bogy to be sneered at or anathematized. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of a true homeopath. But it is a fact that if a vice or a bad custom persists for decades, even scores of years, and get currency among the people, the logical corollary follows that that custom or vice works, or serves the purpose for which it is being done and perpetrated.

 I have discussed this subject at some length in one of my old articles, entitled: HOMEOPATHY WORKS ANYWAY:

http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/homeopathy-works-anyway

I’ve discussed the subject of Palliation in full detail and from all angles. Nothing is left untouched there. Then in my last article: “Congestive Heart Failure: Calling a Spade a Spade:

http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/congestive-heart-failure?xg_source=activity

I touched this subject again in the context of a concrete pathologic situation. Though my affirmation of the desirability and aptness of palliation in trying situations and incurable and multi-faceted cases, I do also affirm that sloth overtakes the palliators and spoils their career as a good practitioner. Palliation does haveits place but compound nostrums with pathologic disease names never.

Let’s try to visualize it in the context of a hypothetic case, which can be tackled in many ways even in homeopathy. Take a case of a man suffering from: ‘twitching of the right corner of the mouth’.  Repertory shows in italics Bry. Chel. Ign. Mag.Phos. and Opium.  The possibilities in prescribing are:

1. Any remedy from among the mentioned five may be found indicated.
2. The history of the patient may reveal his right-sidedness, and the past occurrence of right palsy. That brings forth Causticum, as the possible candidate.
3. A palliator may think of prescribing Mag. Phos., and Kali. Phos. (Thank him if he does not add some nostrums to it!)
4. Another prescriber may feel like prying behind the scene, and finds strong family history of Tuberculosis, or some strains of Cancer; and prescribes Tuberculinum or Bacillinum or some cancer nosode with faultless results.

This is Homeopathy, if you are prepared to take pains. If one is not prepared to take pains and whet his acumen, there are many popular ways to do homeopathy (the so called!)

I remember a famous homeopath (?) of Lahore, who had a small clinic, and large clientele, and people would stand in the street, blocking the traffic, waiting for their turn. Naturally one becomes inquisitive. Prying behind the dispensing counter, one finds that Reckeweg’s R-Nos., Pantarken’s preparations and many other bottles standing in the shelf. In a 4 to 8 ounces plastic bottles filled with water in which few drops from one or the other mentioned bottles, according to Doctor’s prescription, are added and shaken and dispensed, with rote-like instructions.

Then one remembers an old ‘homeopath,’ from some other city than Lahore, who would contribute a series of articles, under the title ‘UNFORGETTABLE’ ( Naqabal-i-Framosh), in a famous homeopathic magazine of Lahore, with graphic details of his clinical exploits, as to how he cured patients with bagful of medicines. When one got surfeited, one wrote an article under the title ‘UNBEARABLE’, (Naqabal-i-Bardasht), which the Editor published after whetting it sufficiently. It saved the readers of the magazine from further torture.

Even now there are people in the profession to whom people flock in numbers four scores and twenty. They would come very early in the morning to get in the queue among the first few fortunate. It reminds me of an episode, or rather anecdote, heard during my ‘infancy’ as a homeopath. A homeopath of UK came to Lahore to visit a famous homeopath in the city. When he visited his clinic and found scores of people in the reception, and finding that every patient who goes in the office of the doctor comes back in five to ten minutes, with the prescription in hand. He decided not to see the doctor.  How can a homeopath give consultation to so many patients in one sitting? But that homeopath of yore was a real homeopath. Poly-pharmacy and patents were not in vogue in those days.

I’ve cited concrete examples of palliation by 3 doctors who were very popular as far as the size of their clientele is concerned. We can reject the first one as he was totally unprincipled, albeit very successful. People thronged to him as his palliation worked, and did not cause long chains of side effects. The other two can be reckoned as homeopaths, although not classical. Their popularity reveals their success as palliating doctors. They simply prescribed many remedies at a time. Their way of practice, though illegitimate, reveals some perennial problems which homeopathy faced in the first decade after its birth. These are detailed as under:

• First there was the problem as to single remedy be applied or more than one can be used; because it was thought that sometimes there were cases where single remedy did not cover the case; two or more did. Sometimes even masters had to face it
• Then there cropped up the problem of alternation, which slowly and slowly entered into cyclic prescriptions, where more than two remedies, sometimes sets of multiple remedies were prescribed in cyclic order, to be dispensed every few hours. Then this practice ended up into combination, or mixing up the selected remedies (as in our modern times).  This mixing up became the raison detre for the pathologico-therapeutic preparations, the so-called patents.
• The third ticklish problem was ‘single dose or multiple doses’; i.e. the repetition of doses.  The palliators usually do not limit repetition. They go on repeating even when all the symptoms have already subsided or allayed.

In the bedlam of present day homeopathy, I sometimes feel that the classical homeopath is a bird of a rare breed, perched on a solitary twig in the jungle of modern homeopathy, and singing the hymns from the Organon; and another bird, of the same feathers, sitting far away on another solitary branch in the same jungle, responds in the same sweet hymns. This Book of Psalms is nowhere around in the modern homeopathic clinics; poor Organon! A useless document in the new brave world of homeopathy. How can a rusty coin get into currency? Even old homeopaths feel themselves wary of putting this coin into their pockets.

“Uncle what are you saying ‘giving one dose and waiting for ages to judge its action’?” No. New generation doesn’t have patience to wait. They would rather commit suicide than to wait. Nor they need to wait. They have patients who already are taking from half to one dozen medicines daily, which they can never relinquish. Theoretically and practically no similimum, in such cases, can be found, nor will act in such cases. They are fit cases for palliation in the best of ones knowledge and skill. It is here that I’ve enquired ‘Palliation? yes, yes; no, no?’  The answer is: neither yes, yes, nor no, no; i.e. neither we wholeheartedly welcome it, nor we reject it outright.  The answer is simply and soberly yes. Only in case of incurable and many-faceted cases, and in cases that are stabilized by massive and continuous medication, nobody, in his sane mind, should ever think of curing such cases. Treat such cases creatively, like Burnett did. Never use nostrums of compound medicines. Use your brain, for which increase your knowledge. Read Burnett! Make him your guru!! He will open up vistas in many an uncharted field.