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Answers by George Vithoulkas – August 2008

Answers by George Vithoulkas – August 2008

The answers that follow are
not complete. It is not possible to write a whole thesis on each
one as it requires everything that has been said before, but I will
express the basic ideas.

On the other hand these short answers can
inspire serious students to ask more questions such as whether,
in a chronic case, the appearance of an acute condition that may
arise after the remedy, is a good or a bad sign, or when should
such condition be treated and when not, or when will a case need
a series of remedies in a particular order and when will such a
practice confuse the case to such an extent that the patient has
no hope of recovery.

On another level the questions that may arise
from intelligent students can continue the discussion to a deeper
understanding of the problems that we are facing when we practice
serious and not superficial homeopathy.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear Prof. Vithoulkas,

Does homeopathy suggest that one of the elements of our body, such
as Fe, Pb, Zinc, Phos etc. takes predominance in an individual’s
body and then his/her constitution becomes similar to that element?

Mehnaz

Dear Mehnaz,

If a person needs one of these elements (or
any other) as homeopathic remedy then there is a strong possibility
that the metabolism of this element in the organism is disturbed.
There can be many reasons for this. Be aware, however, that any
remedy pattern can develop under any disturbance in the physiology.
As homeopaths we always go by the symptoms the organism creates
under a disturbance and not by the knowledge of the surplus or want
of an element. Any part of the homeopathic remedy pattern is created
by a disturbance in the physiology, in the proving as well as in
the patient.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear George Vithoulkas,

Have you ever treated a case with Myotonic Dystrophy? If so, what
type of success did you achieve and what remedies were used? I know
the remedies would be different in each case, but it would be interesting
to know. My son-in-law has this disease and the only peculiar things
I have been able to note are that all covered parts of his body
are covered with flat brown moles some of which have become infected
and had to be removed; his forehead perspires profusely after eating
some sweets like cheesecake or donuts and he sleeps on his back
with hands in praying position (i.e. fingers interlocked). All other
symptoms are normal for Myotonic Dystrophy.

Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated!!

Thank You…

Stan Doyle

Dear Stan Doyle,

These kind of diseases are very difficult
to treat and the success rate is low. If your son-in-law can be
helped at all it will take several remedies. The symptoms you mention
do not form a clear remedy pattern, I would need more information
to give you useful advice on this matter and preferably see the
patient myself.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear George Vithoulkas,

Thanks in advance for your responses.

1- Can we obtain successful results in the treatment of baldness,
also known as alopecia androgenetica, using homeopathic remedies?

2- Do mental and emotional symptoms aggravate after the administration
of the simillimum, let’s say suicidal ideas or sadness?

Best wishes.

Hector Saenz.

Dear Hector Saenz,

1: Yes, there are cases mentioned in the
literature that show a positive result in the treatment of alopecia
androgenetica.

2: When a correct remedy is prescribed then
the organism will not produce a life-threatening aggravation, but
will shift the aggravation to another level or part.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear George,

1. As a new practitioner I still find potency selection a bit of
a challenge. I have been using some 200c and Q’s, and having really
great success with the Q’s and not so with a single dose 200c. Is
this because, as evolving beings we need more stimuli to cure, or
is it that a single dose is no longer the optimum.

2. You wrote in Hpathy.com: “The high potencies are many
times inactive and you need to try another pharmacy”. What
is your explanation for this phenomenon? Do you know of a way to
find out whether or not a remedy is active?

Best regards,

Ute Seebauer

Dear Ute Seebauer,

1: The selection of the potency depends on
several factors. What you describe is not my experience. Q-potencies
are low potentised remedies with a short action in comparison to
high potentised C potencies which act longer.

2: The fact that sometimes potencies are
inactive can be due to bad potentisation in the factory which did
not use the correct method of potentising, or due to antidotal factors
during the transportation or storage of the remedy. I do not know
of a way to find out whether a remedy is active other then giving
it to a patient. Once a remedy has acted well, I mark the bottle
so that I know in the future that the remedy is active when giving
it to another patient.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear Dr.Vithoulkas,

I’ve been in homeopathic treatment for a long time without relief,
and if you don’t mind,I would like to ask you for advice. I’m a
woman from Argentina. I’m 56. For almost six years I’ve suffered
from chronic nasal obstruction. This disease began with a secretion
of white mucus in my throat from posterior nares, only at night
without obstruction. I tried to get rid of that mucus in the morning.
Then, my nose obstructed gradually and permanently until now. The
rhinoscopic exam didn’t show polyps. Two years ago, a doctor prescribed
a throat culture. The result was Neisseria and Candida. He gave
me an antibiotic (Gentamicine) without improvement.

Since then, I’ve visited more than 25 homeopathic doctors, who
gave me medicines such as: Natrum Muriaticum, Ignatia, CalcareaCarbon.,
Phosp Acid, Staphysagria, Lachesis, Calcarea Phosphorica, Hydrastis,
Sepia, Silicea, Causticum, Kali Carbon., Phosphorus, Carcinosin,
etc, without relief.

I wondered why I always was asked about my personal experiences,
my childhood, my youth, my life at this moment, as if homeopathy
was a psychoanalysis. One of them even made me tell him my whole
life story. He gave me Carcinosin for the problems with my father
in the past, but these are not my troubles in the present. They
never asked me about my most important disease: my nose obstruction.
They never gave me a diagnosis, a name of the disease. They based
their choice in the mental symptoms only, but the characteristics
of my main problem remained.

Is this the right way to make homeopathic prescription?

Thank you very much.

Susan

Dear Susan,

It is true that a lot of contemporary homeopaths
erroneously put too much emphasis on the psychology of the patient
when selecting a remedy. Not every patient has a mental or emotional
disturbance so one has to be careful with this approach. There are
cases where only physical generals lead to the correct remedy. In
homeopathy we do not often use the name of a disease to prescribe
a remedy but we concentrate on the peculiar symptoms in a case.
In some cases a diagnosis is needed to make a prognosis and to be
able to select a correct remedy. The symptoms you mention resemble
Kali bichromicum, but to be able to prescribe a remedy with confidence,
a lot of other information is necessary.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear Prof. Vithoulkas,

1: In case taking, sometimes a patient says that he likes hot/cold
things but does not eat these as it aggravates his condition. Now
in repertorizing how do we can analyze this rubric. Shall we take
it as “desire” or “aversion”?

2: How can we understand the primary and secondary action of a
remedy?

3: In Tuberculosis or some other relevant cases sometimes I cannot
differentiate between Tuberculinum & Bacillinum. What is the
best time to apply these medicines in such diseases?

Thanks for help.

Dr Anwar.

Dear Dr. Anwar,

1: this information can be taken as ‘desire’
and ‘aggravation’.

2: this subject is too complicated to explain
here; in my video course I have talked about this. Read Hahnemann’s
Organon and Kent’s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy.

3: I have written about the difference between
Tuberculinum and Bacilinum in my Materia Medica Viva. The alteration
of these remedies should not be done as a routine, it is best to
prescribe remedies according to the symptoms the organism produces.

George Vithoulkas

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Hello Sir,

I am studying in my 3rd yr.

Kent’s 8th observation says, “Some persons prove every remedy
they get.” He explains that such people are incurable and they
will die with it. In such cases we should prescribe in lower potencies
like 30th or 200th. But my professor is not satisfied with this
answer. So what should we do if we get such idiosyncratic patients?

Thanking you,

Kavita Savant.

Dear Kavita Savant,

I have explained this subject in the full
course I have given, which is offered as video course in many countries
now. This situation can be seen in very sensitive individuals and
indeed they should not get a potency higher then 200K to start with.
As Kent explains it is often a constitutional state that the patient
is born with. It is the way in which the organism functions, therefore
it is not something that can be cured. Maybe you can read chapter
29 of Kent’s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy and see if
things will become clearer.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear Prof Vithoulkas,

Thanks for your new explanation of homeopathy with modern views.
I have gone through your “The Science of Homoeopathy”.
In management of the patient who comes from the orthodox treatment,
and is very much dependent on that medicine, you state that the
medicine should not be stopped immediately but slowly withdrawn.
In another section you said that antibiotics and cortisone are antidotes
of homoeopathic medicine.

If cortisone antidotes homeopathic remedies, how can you slowly
phase in remedies? Won’t they just be antidoted?

Thank you

Dr S Hasan

Dear Dr. S. Hasan

The question you ask is not easy to answer
in a short way. I have talked about this extensively in the full
course that is now presented worldwide on video. In short I can
say that, yes, these medicines can act as antidotes. Therefore the
treatment of those who take these medicines is very difficult. Firstly
because they suppress the original symptoms of the organism and
make it difficult to find a correct remedy and secondly because
the remedies action is restrained. To overcome the latter it can
be useful to start with lower potencies in frequent repetition.

George Vithoulkas

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Is it proper to give a booster dose of TETANUS TOXOID after cases
of severe injuries or should we rely on our medicines like LEDUM
PAL or HYPERICUM? Is there any danger in giving these remedies routinely
after cut injuries if proper symptoms are lacking?

Prateek Mishra

Dear Prateek Mishra

By giving potentised tetanus you are not
protecting from tetanus. Giving the anti-tetanus serum is a matter
of judgment according to the situation. In homeopathy we avoid doing
anything routinely as we help the organisms individual response
to stresses. There is always a danger in giving remedies routinely
for small things, as they can interfere with the constitutional
treatment. Neither Ledum palustre nor Hypericum perfoliatum are
remedies typically used for ailments from cuts. For this, Calendula
officinalis or Staphisagria are given if you have to make a causal
prescription. Read about these remedies and the one’s you
mention in Kent’s materia medica and you will find examples
of how to recognise certain situations.

George Vithoulkas

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Hello George Vithoulkas

This is regarding the case of a 61-year-old male patient suffering
from chronic lumbago. CT scan of the lumbar spine suggests L4-L5
disc degeneration. The symptoms are right sided, there is no radiation
of pain and the modalities are aggravated by stooping, lying on
painful side, turning in the bed, rising up and better by heat application.

What is the scope of Homoeopathy in such cases and what would be
your line of treatment?

Kindly enlighten me on this as the acute remedies were not of much
help to the patient as spinal compression is persistent and is a
maintaining factor.

Thanks and regards

Dr. Deepa

Dear Dr. Deepa

Cases with mechanical problems have very
little success with homeopathy. One can of course always try but
the prognosis is poor. If there is a possibility to help then sometimes
remedies suiting the local symptoms work, but if they don’t,
then it is necessary to take the constitutional symptoms into account.
Did you try Kali-iodatum? In such cases the remedy -whatever it
may be – has to be given repeatedly.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear George Vithoulkas

I am somewhat confused about the term isopathy. In our community
there are many people who at some point in their life got hooked
on marijuana and even after years of abstinence you can tell the
damage caused by the drug.

I just had a case of an eight year old, which seems to have had
prenatal damage from marijuana and in this case, it was the father
– not the mother – who used to smoke. The symptom picture of this
boy matches cann-i quite well; this is how I even came up with the
idea that the boy could have been harmed by the smoking father.
Now employing the drug that made sickness begin is isopathy and
raises eyebrows in the homeopathic community. But I truly wonder
why?

Delete the rest of the letter:(From my point of view, an isopathic
remedy, where it matches the case, is only given because this very
substance acted as the exciting cause for the disease. We need to
find a remedy most closely producing these symptoms and being vibrational
on a level as close as possibly to the disturbance of the vital
force itself. Where the patient became sick from emotional abuse,
this remedy may be lyc or nat etc, as there is no potentized ‘abuse’.
But where a physical substance made someone sick, there is a way
to dynamize the substance and employ it homeopathically. Could we
get any more similar?!

A toxin such as cann-i does not cause a miasmatic/constitutional
disturbance of the individual, such as would create the desire for
drugs to begin with. And this – in my eyes – is the underlying miasm
that after the consequences of the drug abuse are dealt with, still
needs further attention, i.e. an anti-syphilitic remedy may have
to be found that matches the totality of the case.

So there is the common opinion that isopathy is not proper homeopathy
and then there is my belief, that in some cases, we can not only
treat homeopathically, but we even have the possibility to administer
an isopathic-homeopathic remedy.

Would you mind giving me your point of view on isopathic treatment?)

Regards,

Ute Seebauer

Dear Ute Seebauer.

In homeopathy we search for the remedy that
produces symptoms similar to those the organism produces in its
defense against a disease-promoting disturbance. Isopathy does not
take into account the individual reaction of the organism. If a
patient has symptoms of Cannabis indica then the remedy can be used,
no matter what the reason is for these symptoms, because the remedy
is homeopathic to the disturbance present in the organism. If someone
has Sulphur symptoms after using marihuana then we give Sulphur.

Recreational drugs can create a miasmatic
layer. As you yourself write the child has symptoms of Cannabis
indica although the father used it and not the child. This means
that the disturbance is transferred genetically and this is one
of the main qualities of a miasm. Of course there can be other miasmatic
tendencies underneath as you assume correctly.

George Vithoulkas

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Dear Prof. Vithoulkas,

I have been taking allopathic medicine for high levels of triglycerides
and low HDL for the last two months. One of my friends advised me
to take Ginseng 1X and Crataegus Mother Tincture as adjuvant to
allopathic medicine. I have been taking these medicines together.

Can two homeopathic medicines be taken together?

I will be grateful for your help in this matter.

Best regards,

Naresh Kumar

Dear Naresh Kumar,

The remedies you mention are not homeopathic
remedies but herbal remedies. This is not a field in which I have
expertise, so I cannot advise you on this. Concerning homeopathic
remedies, I can say that it is not advisable to treat someone with
more than one remedy at a time, as it will be unclear which remedy
acted if something changes and it will not be possible to continue
the treatment intelligently. You can read in chapter 18 of my book
‘The Science of Homeopathy’ my ideas about the handling
of remedies.

George Vithoulkas


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About the author

George Vithoulkas

George Vithoulkas is an Honorary Professor of the Moscow Medical Academy, Professor in the Kiev Medical Academy, Honorary Professor at the University of the Aegean, Greece, Collaborating Professor in Basque Medical University (2001-2004) and Doctor Honoris Causa of "Doctor ViktorBabes" University of Medicine and Pharmacy of Timisoara in Romania. In 1995, he established International Academy of Classical Homeopathy in Alonissos, of which he is the director. In 1996, he was honored with the Right Livelihood Award (also known as Alternative Nobel Prize) "for his outstanding contribution to the revival of homeopathic knowledge and the training of homeopaths to the highest standards".

1 Comment

  • Dear Sir Isopathy I have developed a Very strong hypersensitivity to chemical perfumes my nose lining burning for days after short say 30 minutes exposure to women wearing them it is becoming quite a problem. I was thinking of trying potentized mixed perfume available to me in Scotland. Cannot decide potency thinking of one dose of 12c . My mother in her latter years was very sensitive to smell s also my uncle= family trait. I have in the past used a 30c one dose to antidote herbal tea same herb potentized and it worked the herb stinking out on breath a clear up of the symptons. I am a homoeopathic hypersensitive the one Kent wrote about . the q potencies are brilliant but a homoeopath gave me a viscious proving of them as she did not understand the 6 7 8 9 glass method Hahneman the master

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