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| Hpathy Ezine - August, 2008 | ||||
| Your Questions - August, 2008 -- Answers by George Vithoulkas |
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| 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
----------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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, Calc.Carbon., Phosp Acid, Staphysagria, Lachesis, Calc. 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------- 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
If you want George Vithoulkas to answer your queries, send them to us at editor@hpathy.com. Title your mail as 'Question for GV - Your name' To subscribe to George Vithoulkas' newsletter, click here.
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