Homeopathy Papers

WISH London Conference – The Meeting Point: A Critique

Written by Lefteris Tapakis

Dr. Lefteris Tapakis critiques a new approach to homeopathy that he sees as purely fantasy and which he believes will undermine homeopathy.

ad300px-wish-sThe WISH conference, that took place in London this June, was supposed to bring different ideas together and to reach agreement in different approaches. “Showcasing concordance within diversity” has been the motto of the organizers.

Unfortunately my impression attending the conference was exactly the opposite of “concordance”. I witnessed indeed the “diversity” and within the “diversity” total confusion. The only bright part of the conference was Vithoulkas’ presence with a video and a Questions and Answers part via Skype.

I am a medical doctor practicing exclusively classical homeopathy. I came in contact with homeopathy in 2002 when I met a Cypriot student of George Vithoulkas. I was amazed by the possibilities that the therapeutic method of homeopathy has and the deep understanding of the human organism in health and disease that knowledge of the theory of homeopathy provides. What impresses me today is not that homeopathy can cure a so called incurable disease, like a Crohn’s or rheumatoid arthritis, but the transformation that we may see after a successful treatment. Homeopathy gives people the opportunity to fulfill the higher purposes of their existence, as Hahnemann writes.

Attending this WISH conference, I heard ideas and practices that were far outside the principles of homeopathy as it has existed for more than 200 years. First of all, nearly all the cases that were presented, even cases with deep pathology, were reported to have had an amazing improvement with just a single prescription. All the ailments, mental, emotional and physical were vanishing miraculously! This opposes our experience in treating patients, which is that patients with deep pathology require a series of correct prescriptions over a long period of time, before we see real improvement.

Sadly, there were many inaccuracies and errors also from a purely medical point of view. A medical doctor who attended the conference commented that Pulmonary Fibrosis cannot be followed by plain x-rays (as was shown on the presentation of one of the speakers), but needs more detailed imaging that can only be obtained through High Resolution CT of the chest.

“Sensational” approaches, intuition, radiations, remedies that counteract such radiations and act like cure-alls, remedy selections by combination of a miasm and a kingdom (like the “leprosy miasm” and the Solanaceaes), prescriptions according to phases, periodic tables etc.are concepts that are totally out of what we can call a science.

I want to disclose to you another example of the level of this WISH conference. A very famous homeopath began his talk by saying that he has no technique of finding the remedy, just like Bruce Lee (the Karate man) had no technique! But then he related some techniques, like grouping the symptoms into the four elements, earth, water, air, fire etc. In a case he presented, he said that this person had no parents, he was adopted. He showed some PowerPoint slides with a figure in the sun with a large shadow and for reasons I did not understand, but because of some relation between the parents, the sun and the shadow, he gave Sol australis 200C. Sol australis is the Australian sun. Five years after repeating the remedy, the patient remained very well. How is it possible that a person stays well for so long after one remedy, even if it was the right one? Was the health of the person so good as to have such a response with only one remedy for such a long time? Doesn’t this person raise any acutes, any fevers, any accidental injuries or dental operations that require another remedy? The only information that the presenter gave was that the patient said that his life has changed after that one single remedy.

The same homeopath presented another case, of a very deep psychiatric disorder. The patient had serious depression, low energy, self-harm behavior (cutting himself with a razor), could not communicate with other people and was isolated. He was, as stated, under psychiatric medication. Based on the symptom that the patient could not “connect” with other people, and based on the assumption that he wanted to open himself (with the razor!) in order to “connect” (!), as the homeopath said, he prescribed Mobile Phone Radiation 12C! Then all the problems were solved, the patient stopped the psychiatric medication, he made friends and after 3 years he was feeling amazing and full of energy!

Are the above statements possible? Can a patient with such a deep mental pathology get “cured” with just one remedy for so long a time? And what remedy? Mobile phone in order to “connect”?(!)

In the website provings.com we can read the so called proving of this Mobile phone remedy. Lactose was placed next to a mobile phone and then the lactose was triturated and potentised up to a 30C. Provers took one or two doses of this and developed 30 pages of symptoms, mostly mental symptoms and dreams! Even if the remedy was real, no single dose of 6C, 12C or 30C can produce so many symptoms. If this was true, every time we gave a wrong remedy, we would create numerous symptoms in our patients. What happens in reality is that only a few symptoms may be produced and only to those parts of patients that happen to be sensitive to that particular substance. Then how can such provings report such a number of symptoms? The answer is: because of pure imagination.

At times when homeopathy is characterized as pseudoscience, a sham, quackery or nonsense, it is our responsibility to preserve and promote the scientific character of homeopathy. When real knowledge is confused with fantasies, assumptions and projections, the result is disastrous. The student cannot discriminate the real from the unreal and when she tries to apply these things she will be disappointed and in the end abandon homeopathy. Being a homeopathic practitioner, and especially a teacher, carries a very heavy responsibility. Those who claim to be teachers have to be aware of this. Either intentionally or not, the so called teachers of these ideas give ground to the skeptics and enemies of homeopathy by providing the argument that homeopathy is not a science. They are undermining homeopathy from the inside, pushing it towards obsolescence.

About the author

Lefteris Tapakis

Lefteris Tapakis M.D works as a private homeopathic practitioner in Athens, Greece. He has been studying homeopathy since 2003 and considers it the best therapeutic modality. He is currently collaborating with professor George Vithoulkas in the expert repertorization project known as VithoulkasCompass.com.

10 Comments

  • I agree with you in every way the many “new methods” completely unscientific just give homeopathy a worst reputation and for new homeopaths pure confusion… The new authors should be aware of this and every homeopath should think carefully about this, it is worrying that a numerous amount of books are being published every year about new methods that have no scientific validation or even correct grammar or citations.

    • Thank you Dr Javier. Indeed the situation is worrying. It is good though that some voices are being raised and there many objections to these “modern ideas”.

  • As always, voices against those things can be only from the doctors which knowledge is great But, field of vital energy is so great that some things are possible, even if they are not logical- as we see ( of course, I dont,t think on remedies from mobile phone etc), and so the field of possible manipulation is also the great. As I see, today everything depends from the one,s honesty

  • DEAR DR,
    IT IS SAID HOMEOPATH MAY FAIL BUT HOMEOPATHY NEVER FAILS. THE SUCCESS OF HOMEOPATHY DEPENDS ON FULL UNDERSTANDING OF HOMEO SCIENCE BY DR AND TO SOME EXTENT ALSO BY PATIENT. PATIENTS DONOT KNOW OR NARRATE THEIR SYMPTOMS AND PROBLEM WELL. WE SEE MANY PATIENTS ILLITERATE AS WELL AS MOST EDUCATED TELL US IN ONE WORD THEIR DISEASE FOR EXAMPLE NOSE IS RUNNING OR EAR IS RUNNING OR FEVER FOR LAST 2 DAYS OR MANY MOTIONS FROM NIGHT ETC ETC. IF YOU ASK CERTAIN QUESTIONS THEY WILL SAY ‘CANNOT TELL/DID NOT NOTICE ANY SYMPTOM WHICH IS HELPFUL FOR DR IN TRACING THE CORRECT REMEDY. IN SUCH CASES WE ARE HELPLESS HOMEOPATHY STATED TO HAVE SHORT COMINGS LIKE ASKING Q AFTERQ, TAKES LONGER TIME IN CURING, AGGRAVATIONS ETC ETC. ANY HOW I DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO GO WITHOUT MEDICINE. IN THESE CASES WE USE VERY IMPORTANT REMEDY OR COMBINATION OF REMEDIES COVERING HIS DISEASE LIKE ALLOPATH. EVEN WHEN THE PATIENTS ARE ASKED TO COME AGAIN WITH ALL SYMPTOMS NOTED WELL AS REQUIRED BY HOMEO-PRINCIPLE, THEIR RESPONSE IS STILL NEGATIVE. TO MAKE HOMEOPATHY POPULAR WE HAVE TO FIND 2 OR 3 SYMPTOMS IN A REMEDY TO MATCH THEM WITH DISEASE IN PATIENT
    THANKS
    DR SHEKHAR

    • Dear Dr CDGUPTA,
      Thank you for your comment. Indeed homeopathy is very difficult to master. It needs dedication and adhesion to the real pronciples. Unfortunately many of us seek for easy shortcuts with often negative results.

  • Dear Lefteris,
    thank you for your critique. I am inclined to agree with you simply because my experience of how patients respond to homeopathy is more similar to yours rather than to those of the new masters. The question is, is our experience different because we are bad homeopaths? Or is our experience different because we are honest homeopaths? Or is there another option?
    I am not sure, but like you, I myself would also like to ask these new masters how come their miraculously cured patients never got sick from anything more mundane during and after the treatment course? Maybe subsequent illnesses are not mentioned because they do not require treatment due to the miraculous remedy being so good. But even if we supposed that the vast array of susceptibilities had been eradicated by one remedy, can one remedy completely take away even the entire psoric susceptibility? This would indeed be a miracle.
    I am inclined to think that a certain amount of the improvements we see in those miracle cures are due to placebo. There are many people who just need to regain their trust in the healing powers of their body. This can be immensely powerful and bring about a cure in itself. There is no doubt that homeopathy works better in certain societies, cultures and mental attitudes and in my opinion this is due not only to the lesser miasmatic depth these people display, but also to the greater degree of trust in the self-healing powers of the body that certain people have. Also, just as some patients are hysterical and claim no remedies work for them (and indeed they do not) , some people are hysterical and every remedy works like a miracle for them (and indeed it does). Lucky ones indeed.
    However, there is a danger to let personal issues interfere with this critique of the new masters. Envy, jealousy, poor self-esteem, dogmatism etc can all play a part here and one must be vigilant not to close the door to the possibility of miracle due to such issues.

  • Dear Maria,
    On 14th July, I was preparing for a journey to Paris with my family. We were flying the next day, noon. I was going to attend the LIGA homeopathic congress, and my wife and one-year-old son to accompany me for holidays. That day, the 14th July, my little boy raised his first high fever, 41 degrees Celsius. It was noon, and hot here in Athens and, getting out of our attention, he lied and slept on the floor in a place that there was some draft. He must have stayed there for some time before seeing him and taking him to his bed. About two or three hours later he woke with high fever. His skin was very hot to touch, without perspiration. His hands and feet were also hot. The whole afternoon and evening the fever was not falling down. The thermometer showed over 40 Celsius (over 104 F.). At night, he could not sleep, was very restless in bed, tossing around, moaning. He was breathing quickly and his heart rate was very much accelerated. He was suffering. I decided to give him a dose of Aconitum 200C. The result was immediate. In a few minutes he stopped moaning, the restlessness was much less, the heart rate calmed down and he slept quietly. He was still hot. Early in the morning I checked again his temperature, this time was 39. I gave him one more dose of Aconite. The fever went down in about two hours I think after this second dose. By noon when we were in the airport it was like nothing happened. He ate and he was calm and joyful. No other dose was needed.
    The action of the homeopathic remedy looks indeed like a miraculous one, especially in acute cases. A simple classical case of Aconitum, yet an impressive one. In chronic cases the story is different. Some cases do well on one remedy for a very long period of time. Some others need many remedies one by one before reaching to more permanent results. When these results come, it is just wonderful. The experience homeopath can not only choose the right remedy, but also make the right prognosis and know what to expect after a prescription. The theory given by Prof. Vithoulkas of the Levels of Health gives us such tools to make a correct prognosis.
    About the new masters: I don’t reject what they say without judgment. In fact some of them say correct things. For example I liked very much the Melilotus case presented by Sankaran: a prescription based on the solid principles of classical homeopathy. But, as a scientist, I cannot bypass my logical mind and accept a cure by Mobile phone remedy that was given because the patient could not connect! Nor I can believe a prescription of a snake remedy just because the patient was making a gesture with his fingers like a cobra! Sorry but I cannot accept such nonsense.

    • Dear Lefteris,
      yes of course we see one remedy working in acutes.
      To be fair to J Sherr, I believe he did say that he did not choose “Mobile Phone” because the patient said he felt disconnected, but because there were several rubrics that applied. The “disconnected” statement by the patient was just an interesting little detail, I remember Sherr saying.
      Regards
      Maria

      • Dear Maria,
        My concern is that many students instead of looking for a remedy that better fits the symptoms of a patient, will try to look for cobra gestures and things like that and at the end lose the case, either acute or chronic.
        I don’t remember the Mobile phone prescriber giving any other explanation for his prescription. Mobile phone was coming perhaps 20th or even lower in his repertorization – he had put a few rubrics from this Q rep, 5 or 6 if i remember well, all big rubrics. He said this No, the other No, the next errr No, Mobile Phone yes!

  • Dear Dr. Tapakis,

    Amen, I am so tired of hearing of one dose miracles or of precribing yellow because the patient was wearing yellow and carried something yellow. It makes us look so foolish. What scientist would ever give us credence? I am a relative beginner (about 8 years ) and I find homeopathy wonderful, challenging and difficult. I haven’t had any one dose cures except for acutes – now that may be because I am not experienced enough but I agree with you that difficult case usually require more than one remedy and also diffferent potencies.
    Kathleen

Leave a Comment