PLACE OF PATHOLOGY IN HOMEOTHERAPEUTICS

[FUTURE OF HOMEOPATHY LIES IN RECOGNIZING THE LEADING POSITTION OF PATHOLOGY]

(A CRITIQUE OF CLASSICAL HOMEOPATHY-5)

During my ‘juvenile ‘ period, at the beginning of my infatuation with homeopathy, there were many plausible and implausible statements or edicts, floated by the votaries of the profession, to propagate and, at the same time, to deliver a rude jolt to people’s scientific sensibilities, and to project homeopathy as a totally inscrutable system of medicine. One of the edicts was: (it was even inscribed on the walls in their clinics.):

“Your pathology is no concern of ours, and what we prescribe, is no concern of yours.”

Another flowery edict was:

“A homeopath wants to know pathology to exclude what belongs to pathology among your symptoms, and prescribe on what belongs to you as an individual.”

Now, pray, what are the symptoms belonging to the individual? Yes, they are:

Craving or aversion of foods as sweets, or salt, or spicy, highly seasoned foods, etc.;
Cravings or aversion to meat, eggs, fish, milk or other diary products, or some specific aversion or intense craving for something;
Indigestion or diarrhea from certain foods as milk, lettuce, etc.;
Thirsty or thirstless;
Sociable or asocial.
Quarrelsome or submissive;
Suffering from excess of heat or cold; etc., etc.

As I’m growing and ‘graying’ in the homeopathic practice, some bitter realizations came to me as an apportionment of my practice, among the legion bounties that homeopathy has bestowed on me. Time and again I’ve been giving went to my bitter experiences; as, for example, my article: Calling Spade a Spade, (An article about congestive heart failure):

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

And in my chapter in the Gleanings, entitled ‘BACK’, in which I spoke of ‘Cervical Spondylosis’, from which I’m suffering these days. Let’s have a little discussion on this:

My presenting symptom was an intolerably tearing pain in right arm, with severe cramps in the radial muscles, with numbness of the hand, especially the fingers, specifically the tips of the fingers.
Hard pressing was only helpful mean to allay the severity, but not relieving the pains totally.
Warmth also was a solace.
Lying on painful side was comforting but only for minutes, then restlessness would compel me to change posture;
Colocynthis, Mag.phos. did nothing. then
It dawned upon me that the pain was ensuing from a vertical area, between the inner edge of the right scapula and the spine.
Chelidonium came out as indicated with strong symptoms of numbness of tips of fingers of the right hand, and the scapular location. But it also did nothing.
I rang my physiotherapist. He asked me to raise my arms and put my hands flat on my occiput. I told him that much instant relief occurred by so doing, from which he informed me that it was Cervical spondylosis.
X-rays confirmed his diagnosis.

Now this is the case. Considering it without knowing the pathology that was causing it, led nowhere, homeopathically speaking. Let us consider now that the homeopath, I mean our classical stalwart, agrees to acknowledge that this arm pain is actually caused by the cervical spondylosis, what will he do? According to his philosophy we should disregard all the right arm pain symptoms as caused by the pathology, and try to find the symptoms that belong to the individual, with all his personal traits. He will proceed according to the seven-point agenda detailed above, and will note down, my liking as to foods and drinks, as to my being thirsty or not thirsty, my tolerances as to food items, weathers, heat and cold, my gregariousness or unsociability, etc., etc. But when I’ll see that the good doctor has no concern, nor any regard for my arm, the pain of which is killing me, I’ll salute the messiah and depart. His strategy of putting wax on the head of a crane in the hope that when the wax will melt, from the heat of the sun, and flow down to its eyes to blind him, then will he catch hold of him. This is tantamount to satisfy his theory with total disregard of the patient’s immediate and imperative need. What the patient wants is the non-conditional and immediate solution and resolution of his suffering and excruciating pain.

Women are more mild-hearted than males; and they cannot bear the scene that their doctor ever fall sick. One such sweet lady patient exhorted me to visit a certain Reiki lady practitioner, as she got her lumbago redressed within two sittings. I visited the lady. I told her that I was suffering from Cervical Spondylosis, to which she replied that she did not bother about the pathology of the case, nor is it necessary for her to know it; and that her concern was to tune my vital force to the universal force, from which it was at that time distracted. She started session with me by making me lie down on the bed and putting her hand under my nape of the neck. Now and then she would ask me if I felt some heat along my ailing arm. I told her that there were no such feelings. And during the whole session I was asked about my new feelings, to which, I’m sorry, I could not respond in affirmative, in spite of my strong desire to oblige her, because I could not feel any difference. I came back and that evening and night was shear agony for me, because of pain. Next day I was reminded of a patient of mine who is herself qualified allopathic doctor and pathologist, who had confided in me that her husband was established REIKI master and author of many books on Reiki, and ran a Reiki teaching institution. She got an appointment for me. I found the man quite sensible and devoted. He gave me a long session, in which I felt plus/minus feelings, which I conveyed to him. At the end he forbade me to go for physiotherapy. The following night was terribly full of suffering. I had to use painkillers with his permission. But I decided to give him another day. On reaching there, the next day, I asked him a question, for which he was not prepared. I asked him that if a person had worn a very tight ring on his finger, owing to which his finger became cyanotic with pain, “will you start giving him Reiki to establish equilibrium between the warped vital force and the universal force? Will it cause cyanosis to disappear?” He got the point and kept silent. I came back without having any further session.

Therapy is not beautiful, empty words, nor coining grandiose phrases or sentences, nor hatching far-flung theories, nor mystifying people with spiritual concoctions. Therapy is based or bolstered up on concrete and verifiable facts, resulting in alleviating sufferings and restoring health. When pathology is not taken into account, people commit ridiculous follies that put to shame even the confirmed fools. How can one make the cyanosis of the finger disappear without first removing the constricting ring? How can a homeopath deal with pain in the arm, caused by the cervical sponylosis, without understanding the spondylotic processes and the degenerating phenomenon of the bones? Without the solid knowledge of pathology one cannot determine how to proceed therapeutically, and when to declare definitely whether a disease can be dealt with therapeutically or not. For example, by knowing the process of spinal spondylosis, he will never claim that he could ever cure this ailment. It is a case for palliation and prolonged physiotherapy, unless the acute symptoms of pain got subsided; then, and only then, will the patient come to know how he could spend his life peacefully and usefully. [I asked my orthopedic physician what prospect I had; he replied “99.9%”]

The cure mania of the fundamentalist, among the ‘classicals’ is an ideal that has lost its substance. It is an empty cackle now. The sooner they shed it the better; and the saner they would look. The word ‘CURE’ is not predicative of disease, in homeopathy, but of the patient. It is the patient who is cured and restored to health. A high ideal, and quite elusive, that every busy physician practically knows.

Hahneman has already given precedence to pathology over everything in prescribing for diseases. His theory of miasms is, in fact, a theory of ‘generalized pathology’. According to him a homeopath must first determine the active miasm in the chronic patient, and then consult the relevant remedies to that miasm, and choose, from those remedies, the one that is most near to the personality and pathological traits and the temperament of the patient. Dr. Burnett, affirming the Hahnemann’s miasmatic theory, has asked the practicing physicians to be completely conversant with the pathologic physiology of the diseases in the usual sense. For this we have to enrich our materia medica, and re-determine the pathologic field of every deep-acting remedy. Re-read the original provings and try to determine the drift of the symptoms in the provers to specific pathologic entities. And search for the records of poisoning, if any, which can give some definite pathogenetic symptoms of that remedy. Read my articles on Dr. Burnett, from my Resource Page:

http://www.homeopathyworldcommunity.com/page/usmani

Entry Nos.47 and 48. Relevant to this we can also get much material from authors like Cowperthwaite, Farrington, Boericke, Clarke, Blackwood, et al.

Our example here is ‘Cervical Spondylosis’. It is a syco-syphilitic disease. The degenerative process is syphilitic and the growth of osteophytes is sycotic. And this wedding of two miasms is well-nigh incurable.

Homeopathy is down to the earth a scientific therapeutic. The mark of science is prediction and predictability. Homeopathy can predict a possible treatment of any queer disease, that may occur in any area on the globe, only by reckoning and collecting its symptoms. Hahnemann could predict a possible treatment of Asiatic choleramuch before it had ever landed on the European soil. He told that Verat. Alb. would cure and it did.

Let us throw homeopathy in the field with a challenge of being thoroughly scientific therapeutic and let people check and test it as such. Don’t hatch crippling theories of ideals or ideal cures. Keep to the simple tenet or principle of homeopathy (Similia similibus curenter), intact and unadulterated, which all criteria of science can vouchsafe as purely scientific and solid theorem.