Before I start this dialogue, I would like to remond the readers that I have just launched a blog on my website www.lookingbackmovingforward.com for discussions about how we feel about our profession, how we feel about what is discussed in the interviews, for us to share our experiences and to create an international place to meet and chat in the matrix. Feel free to come and visit and contribute your thoughts.
And now for your monthly slice from my book Looking Back Moving Forward (www.lookingbackmovingforward.com). This time I have chosen to give you a taste of Ellen Kramer who is the principal of the College of Practical Homeopathy in London (CPH).
It was a student clinic day when I visited her, but Ellen managed to maintain her focus with me and illustrated, yet again how enthusiasm, dedication and ambition play a large part in the successful career of a homeopath. Ellen fixed her deep and intense brown eyes on me and I knew that hour I would spend with her would shake my classical foundations and leave me breathless.
ELLEN: Looking for totality prescriptions for patients when they are not ready, adds to their problems. It doesn’t help. When people are highly toxic from the drugs that they are taking; the main organs that are affected are the kidneys and the liver. I remember I had a lovely case of a lady who was suffering from hot flushes. She couldn’t go on to Hormone Replacement Therapy because she had had a stroke but she was really suffering with the menopause. She was in a wheelchair so she couldn’t come and see me. So I went to her and I looked at the case and it was a classic Natrum muriaticum. Her stroke had started within a year of her husband dying. Unfortunately it was a complete disaster, her symptoms became much worse; she was in a right state.
Then I went on a classic remedy hunt, I thought it has got to be Lachesis muta, because she is loquacious and all this sort of rot. I gave her Lachesis muta and it just got worse and worse, to the point where I just said to her, “Look, I don’t think homeopathy’s for you. I think you should see a nutritionist and a herbalist, thank you very much, goodbye.” I felt I was just adding to her problems. Now in hindsight, I would never, ever, ever start a case from that perspective. I would actually look at what was presenting. She was on about seven or eight different drugs. She was on blood thinners and drugs for high blood pressure. Now I would have started her off with a detox therapeutic, organ drainage and nutritional support. And then I would be looking at which drugs are causing the main symptoms.
ROWENA: So when you get a patient who comes to you with side effects of Tamoxifen after breast cancer and has had radiation treatment – and has a history of the Pill and Hormone Replacement Therapy – would you give Tamoxifen in potency to start the case?
ELLEN: Yes, you can buy Tamoxifen and give it back to them in potency. It works. I have had patients that come and say that they just want you to help with the side effects of Tamoxifen. I think, “Well thanks for your money, here’s Tamoxifen back in potency.” I tell them to take less of it because they will become more sensitive to its action. Tautopathy gives the patient maximum therapeutic value from their allopathic drug. So they just need to take less of it, otherwise they can go into overdosing. You sensitise the vital force to the drug so they need less of it. You can use tautopathy to wean people off their drugs, so if they are taking Thyroxine, in time they are only taking one Thyroxine a week and the rest of it they are taking homeopathically, and that one Thyroxine a week is enough.
ROWENA: So when you get patients that have come to you for something else and then they tell you that they are on Thyroxine, would you go with the Thyroxine first?
ELLEN: No, not unless it is a problem. If people are on drugs I leave them alone until it becomes a problem. I know if they are on good homeopathy, within about a year the drugs will be a problem. Because the liver starts to clean up; it gets more sensitive to the drug and the vital force will not tolerate a poison any more.
I find it very difficult to understand how people are so hung up on a methodology that suits nintenth or early twentieth century patients. It is just not applicable to twenty first century patients. You get the odd twenty first century patient who you can apply that method to. So it doesn’t surprise me that you get a whole load of homeopaths that say you cannot make money out of homeopathy; there are not enough patients. I just think to myself, good; if that is your belief system, stay there. I don’t believe that, I know homeopathy works; it is just how you apply it. Homeopathy works – it is easy and it is simple. You just have to know the art of application. And the methods are a guide. They guide you to that application. Practical homeopathy is the practical application of different methods according to each patient. So it is the patient who tells you what to do, not you trying to apply something to a patient.
It is like having tools in a toolbox the classical method is one method. I really understand where Kent was coming from, because I would say in observing people, eighty percent of their sickness comes out in mental and emotional stuff. Now, the simple question is this, can I cure that now? If I can, there are no drugs, there is no suppression, there are no obstacles to cure – and then a Kentian totality prescription will work.
If you have a mental/emotional causation, you can see that their pathology is coming out of that, but they have spent twenty years on Amitriptyline and have got loads and loads of other stuff, or their diet is so appalling they are nutritionally depleted, can you give them that? No, you cannot. Unless you want to enjoy a good aggravation, and then tell your patient it is a healing crisis when it is not. It is inappropriate prescribing because you don’t understand what you are doing. Okay, if you can see it is coming out of a mental/emotional causation, there are no obstacles to cure, and if you go back to the Organon, what did Hahnemann say? He says remove the obstacle to cure. What is it that needs curing? What needs curing is the cause of those symptoms. If you can cure that straight away, then what we call here at CPH ‘the whole patient methods’ will work.
If there are obstacles to cure, then you are basically looking at what we call ‘part patient methodologies’, that is, organ drainage, tautopathy, aetiology, sequential, nutrition, cell salts and polypharmacy. Those are your toolbox and you will get a result with your patient.
ROWENA: Everything you have said makes perfect sense. I think if somebody sat down with you who practised in a different way to you, if they heard that, they would understand it. But I am wondering if people attract what they can treat; do you know what I mean? Because I do think that there are a lot of classical homeopaths who have very successful practices and they don’t practise the way you do, so I am wondering if they just attract those patients that they can help. I am not saying that there is some that they cannot but…
ELLEN: Listen, what you do in life is you get what you are open to learning, and I am very happy for people to do that. I think, if that works for you, it works for you because you are a great homeopath. It didn’t work for me; it didn’t work for loads of my patients.
ROWENA: It doesn’t mean that you are not a great homeopath.
ELLEN: No, I had to find a different way of getting round the problem. So wherever people are and what they do in homeopathy, I applaud them. But I know that what I do works for me and I am very, very, very busy. When I was at my practice in Islington, which I have cut down to once a week now, the receptionist used to say to me, how can you see seventeen people in a day? How do you do it? I can do it because I know exactly what I am looking for. I know how to apply different methods to different people, so everybody who comes to the door, as far as I am concerned, is my teacher. They teach me homeopathy and I just have to be sharp, sharp, sharp, on how I apply homeopathy, and if they come to me and I think that all they need for the first month is nutritional changes; that is what they get. And I am happy for them to go away and make those dietary changes.
ROWENA: How do you know that they need dietary changes? Is there a questionnaire that you give?
ELLEN: No, I can tell by the symptoms they are presenting that they are depleted in all sorts of things.
ROWENA: And that you had as part of your training in homeopathy as well?
ELLEN: No, I picked that up, I had to. Most people are so fearful. If they get it wrong they think it is the end of the world. Do you know, when I was a student I used to go to tutorials and they used to say, “You did what?” I said, “Yes, I did that.” “You aggravated what?” I said, “Yes, I did.” I aggravated everybody; I spent a good year as a student aggravating everybody who came into contact with me.
I used to dread eczema patients as I had the worst aggravations with them. I had one mother who brought her husband with her, shouting at me because their daughter came with two bits of eczema on her elbows and was covered from head to foot in it now. She looked like somebody had taken a blowtorch to her, and that was on Sulphur 12C, once a day. What did that mean? That meant that I had inappropriately prescribed. I didn’t understand what was going on; I didn’t see that the cause was the vaccinations.
ROWENA: But Sulphur is worse for vaccination so it might have been the right remedy. So did you go with the vaccines in potency?
ELLEN: I did all of that, but what I didn’t understand was the relationship between the skin and the bowels. Vaccines produce an incredible level of toxicity, they weaken the liver, the liver governs the digestive system, and the large intestines become extremely sluggish, and so on. You give something like Sulphur, which is a big liver remedy and it stimulates the liver. Then if the lines of elimination are blocked, where is it going to come out? It is coming out in the skin. So when you see eczema you know that the lines of elimination are blocked, that is the bowels, and that is why this stuff is coming out in the skin. You can see the cause, the toxicity from the vaccine, so what are you going to do? You need to start with the bowels first, you need to get those bowels moving; you need to get the bowels clean. So a healthy bowel movement is every time you eat your main meal, within half an hour to an hour or so, you should want to pass a stool. That is a healthy bowel movement. Most people are constipated.
ROWENA: So then what do you recommend?
ELLEN: You have to put them on to a complex carbohydrate, high roughage diet. Encourage them to eat more fruit, cut out refined carbohydrates and get them off dairy products and excessive wheat. And that is what I do; you know. Patients come in, they bring their kids with their skin and I say, “This is where we are starting. Before we go into energy medicine we have to start with what is not physically functioning properly, and we start there.”
ROWENA: What happens if it is an emotional causation that is causing their bowels not to move?
ELLEN: If it is an emotional causation and there is no obstacle to cure, then you can go and do your classical case. If there are no steroids, for example, you can go straight in with your classical case, and guess what; you will get an excellent result. But I have seen very few children who have come to me that way. I have teenagers that come to me for acne, and I sit there and I say to them that we are going to start with opening their bowels.
ROWENA: And you do that via the diet?
ELLEN: Dietary recommendations and I use a lot of tinctures.
ROWENA: Specific to the organs?
ELLEN: Specific to the organs to get them to function properly. I look at what organs aren’t functioning, what ones I need to nourish with different tinctures, and then I use diet and recommended supplements for them. So I start with where the patient is. I don’t delude myself that I know the answers but I think, “This is going to be interesting.” But I have got the tools, so nothing is a great challenge, and if I do get an aggravation I think, “What did I miss?” And most people are so busy telling me how unsafe homeopathy is, and I say to them it is because they don’t know how to use homeopathy. They do not understand how to use homeopathy; that is why they think it is unsafe.
Homeopathy is a safe system of medicine; it is gentle, it is effective, and you get excellent results. If you are not getting the results, it is because you are not applying it properly and you do not understand how to apply it. And that is it. It is not the tool you are using that is at fault. It is not the patient. It is the person who wields the tool that lacks the knowledge. And so people learn homeopathy, and they take with them from their course all the fears and they never move beyond those fears.
And there is nothing to be afraid of when you are dealing with patients in homeopathy, because you should have an insight into vital energy that doctors don’t even understand – they have no concept of vital energy. You are in a fantastic position. You cannot even begin to come close to the incompetence of your local GP when it comes to irritating and suppressing the vital force. Even if you were the most useless prescriber on this God’s earth, all you would do is have constant aggravations, and if you are so stupid you cannot actually look at your aggravations and learn from them, then you deserve to stay stuck, poor and fearful.
Thought provoking don’t you think? I would very much welcome a worldwide discussion on the issues raised by Ellen. If you visit the blog on my website, www.lookingbackmovingforward.com, you can make your contribution and also receive a ten percent discount if you buy the book.
Long live homeopathy!
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Rowena Ronson graduated from the London College of Classical Homeopathy in 2001 and registered with the Society of Homeopaths in 2003. She runs a private practice from her home in Bushey, Hertfordshire and has developed a specialist interest in the area of cancer as she has been treating patients at Cherry Lodge Cancer Care, a complementary health centre established by Barnet General Hospital for several years. She is a qualified teacher, with a background in training people in inter-personal skills and has taught homeopathy for both the London School of Classical Homeopathy and Purton House, where she was module leader and lecturer for personal and practitioner development. She also has worked for the Society of Homeopaths as an education adviser.
