Some of you will remember Patricia as Gilroy’s mother.
Gilroy
She’s also Toni’s mother as in “Toni Won’t Eat” and “It’s No Day At The Beach For Toni!”
I have said to people many times, “You should take Robin Murphy’s course!” Well, Patricia actually did! Half way through, however, Robin Murphy died, leaving us all in a fright and at loose-ends!
Patricia is here to report on what happened to Robin Murphy’s course. So, without any further ado, I give you, the one and only:
Ms. Patricia Hittner O’Connell!
Thanks, Elaine. Here’s how it all began. I was standing in the homeopath’s office, holding my feverish child.
My three-year-old had an ear infection—again.
I desperately wanted to avoid yet ANOTHER round of antibiotics.
The homeopath gave him one dry dose of Cina and told me that’s all he needed. (Not to worry, because that was his “Constitutional” remedy!)
Back home, my son’s fever spiked! He wasn’t eating or drinking.
In fact, all he wanted to do was sleep. Instead of getting well, we were looking at an emergency room visit.
Then the phone rang. I forget how or why she called, but, the call was from another homeopath, trained by Dr. Robin Murphy.
We’d been communicating online and I had given her my number. I told her what was happening with my son.
“Let’s see what we can do,” she said. “What do you have in the house?”
I had purchased a few remedies on each of my recent trips to the health food store.
I now owned about 10-15 of them in the 30X potency. I told her what was in my small collection.
“Okay, put some Ferrum Phos in water and give it to him.”
I did as she said.
Very quickly my son felt cooler.
“Give him another dose,” she said.
He continued to improve. I don’t remember how many doses he had. But within an hour he was looking much better and I knew he was getting well.
Antibiotics averted!
From that point on I became very interested in homeopathy! Or, more specifically, homeopathy as practiced by Robin Murphy and others who prescribe in accordance with the 6th edition of the Organon. (This is in stark contrast to the high-potency, dry dose, wait-and-see approach based on the totality of symptoms from birth to present that landed me with a prescription for Cina for a middle ear infection.)
I bought Dr. Murphy’s Materia Medica and Repertory. (There are now newer versions of these books and I have them too.) I taught myself how to use these tools when needed.
I treated our family and our dogs. I’d sometimes recommend remedies to friends. But, years later, with my children grown and more time on my hands, I enrolled in Dr. Murphy’s school.
Like everyone else, I was shocked and saddened by his untimely passing last November.
Naturally, I assumed that was the end of the school and the end of my formal education. (I planned to continue studying on my own.)
However, Dr. Murphy was married to a homeopath! His wife, Judith Toscano, ND, accepted me into her school, which she had long envisioned as a separate online branch of Lotus Health Institute. Her online curriculum is also based upon Dr. Murphy’s books and lectures.
“His legacy is going to live on,” said Dr. Jude, when I interviewed her for this article.
Dr. Jude’s practice is called Lotus Wellness Cottage. The online curriculum is offered through Lotus Online Courses. Certificates are awarded by Lotus Health Institute.
You can read more about the enrollment process here at the Lotus Wellness Cottage website:
https://www.lotuswellnesscottage.com/
https://www.lotuswellnesscottage.com/lotus-online-courses—course-information–costs.html
The total cost for the clinical homeopathy certificate program is $3,650. This includes books and three foundation courses, which would total $450 if you’re not a student.
Students get discounts on the foundational courses and Dr. Murphy’s books.
One thing that’s different from Dr. Murphy’s clinical homeopathy program is that every student needs to take these three foundational courses – Homeopathy 101, 102 and 103 and pass a test – before they can continue to study Dr. Murphy’s modules. This is a good thing because every student comes with a different level of knowledge.
Graduation requirements also include submitting 10 cases. The first five are submitted at the end of Module 2. The other five are submitted with Module 6. There are eight modules in the clinical homeopathy certificate program, designed to be completed in two to three years.
Before graduation students must also write a research paper and mail in a copy of a homemade remedy, from a material of their choice.
Student support is excellent. Everyone has easy access to Dr. Jude (as she is called).
Dr. Jude and Robin celebrate his 71st birthday.
They can reach out to her with any questions and they can schedule personal 30-minute consultations after each online module. She also runs two private Facebook groups, one specifically for students and graduates. There are also twice monthly student support calls on Zoom.
Dr. Murphy’s lectures are now online instead of on CD. It’s still possible to access his various lectures by purchasing them separately without enrolling in the school.
In addition to being an excellent homeopath, Dr. Murphy was also a good teacher.
He stressed over and over again that you need to treat the top layer – what’s right in front of you. Otherwise you probably won’t see good results.
Take the case of my son. (Yes, he was stubborn, obstinate and capricious. He had digestive issues. Perhaps he was wormy too. But all the Cina in the world was unlikely to help his acute ear infection that day.) In fact, his vitality sank after he took that one dose of Cina, setting us on a near collision course with the emergency room!
In addition to being headstrong, my son had gas and bloating, no doubt aggravated by the many rounds of antibiotics for his previous ear infections. (Lycopodium, Bacillinum and a Bowel Nosode were some of the remedies that later helped him.)
But what needed to be addressed the day he was sick, in order to prevent even more antibiotics, was the ear infection.
“Your son needs an ear infection remedy,” I remember the Murphy-trained homeopath telling me. “The ear infection is what needs to be cured.”
Dr. Murphy’s approach was so simple. So practical. And it made so much sense.
After the ear infection healed, we worked on the next layer. By the time he entered kindergarten my son was pretty healthy. By the time he was seven or eight, the food sensitivities were gone too.
This is the amazing potential of homeopathy when each problem or layer is treated separately—just as Dr. Murphy taught.
If you’re thinking of a formal education in homeopathy, I highly recommend Lotus Online Courses. You will learn homeopathy in accordance with the 6th edition of the Organon, the way it was practiced by Dr. Murphy.
Dr. Jude, who runs the school, is an excellent homeopath too, with a great respect for the more sensitive ones among us, the people who are easily aggravated by remedies.
Students will see how to look for layers in each individual case. They’ll learn to perceive the state of the person being treated. That’s what needed to happen with my son’s ear. We couldn’t move forward with anything else until the ear infection was treated.
The homeopathic education at Lotus Online Courses is very thorough. The focus is on resolving a person’s Chief Complaint and raising their vitality.
It’s a results-oriented system, designed to get the patient well, not for them to keep coming back for drawn-out psychological sessions. Yes, sometimes emotional symptoms predominate. That would be the first layer to treat. But if someone has a sore throat, it makes no sense to focus on their relationship with their mother. Take the case of the sore throat!
One of the highlights of the program is Dr. Murphy’s Keynote Materia Medica lectures in which he paints a picture of the most widely used remedies. It’s much easier to recall the keynotes of Pulsatilla when it’s needed if you already have a vivid image of Pulsatilla in your mind.
The remedy images he portrays are unforgettable. Like the severe constipation of Alumina. I’ll never forget Dr. Murphy’s description of someone putting on a sweat suit to work up the courage to use the commode after not having had a bowel movement for several days. All the straining, and, in the end, only a small plop is heard in the bowl. No one who hears this lecture will forget that Alumina is the remedy for obstinate constipation.
Dr. Murphy’s lectures cover intercurrent prescribing as well as Tautopathic and Isopathic prescribing. I don’t think I could effectively practice homeopathy without this important knowledge.
Throughout the program he busted various “myths in homeopathy” as he called it. One of them is that the wrong remedy or remedies will spoil your case. He told us about one of his old cases, a man with a horrible itchy rash. It was a desperate case and this man needed relief. The top remedies didn’t work; so, Dr. Murphy tried different ones, one at a time, until finally, the 38th remedy worked!
Another myth busted.
Last but not least, students are taught to make their own remedies from scratch.
They’re also taught to graft remedies that can be easily shared with other people.
Was there anything I didn’t like about the curriculum? Not really.
However, students who are Catholic (like I am) or evangelical should be aware that Dr. Murphy occasionally shares some of his Eastern/New Age religious philosophy, which, for me, didn’t detract from the program at all.
I didn’t have to share his religious beliefs in order to learn from him the best way to practice homeopathy, something I firmly believe is a gift from God.
I also believe the school itself is a gift. You can learn remotely from your home at your own pace. You can graduate with the confidence you will be able to help many people, at a time when so many people desperately need your help!
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Thank you, Patricia. So, bottom line is, Robin Murphy’s course lives on through his wife, Dr. Judith Toscano. Use the links above for more information. And as usual, I encourage everyone to take Robin Murphy’s course! The following is a farewell to Robin by Sharum Sharif, ND I found in Jay Yasgur’s “In Memoriam” written for the AIH:
_________________________
Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom
Elaine takes online cases. Write to her at [email protected]
Visit her website: https://ElaineLewis.hpathy.com
Thank you for sharing this Elaine. Many people, including myself have wondered what would happen to Robin Murphy’s school. He contributed so much, teaching in his very special way, and giving us the legacy of his groundbreaking repertory, his M.M. and so many articles and transcribed lectures. I’m glad he will live on through the school.
Thanks, Alan. Yes, good that someone was able to impart this information.
COMMENTS TO THE TEXT “After Robin Murphy, what now?” (hpathy, june 17, 2022)
This text illustrates its arguments using as examples the acute diseases: otitis, sore throats. And just like a desperate mother looking for an emergency room, the colleague seems to accept, without thinking too much, anything that promises relief for her child. In other words, the idea of the text is: remedies for diseases.
I’m a pediatrician. And in pediatrics we know that the use of medication in otitis and sore throats is unnecessary most of the time, as they are self-limiting diseases that improve with, without and despite medication and doctors. That is, most of the time pediatricians prescribe antibiotics because that is what they have to offer to desperate mothers, but that does not mean that this conduct is really necessary.
For this type of mechanistic thinking (disease = remedy) homeopathy and allopathy would be on the same level. Both offer something for children with fever. But in fact, the two systems are not comparable. In epistemological language: the two systems of medicine are incommensurable, that is, they use the same words with totally different meanings. Healing in Homeopathy is not the same as healing in allopathy; it is not to cure an ear infection, or any other acute illness, but to cure the tendency to become ill. And that is the quest of classical Homeopathy: the medicine as similar as possible to the totality of the altered state of our patients.
Focusing our study on acute diseases is like focusing on emergency medicine: most of the time a desperate race to put out small fires that in 99% of the cases go out on their own within 7 to 14 days. It is not for nothing that Hahnemann said that the touchstone of medicine is chronic disease, one that begins and persists without a predictable end.
When the colleague quotes the frase: “your child needs an ear infection remedy” – she throws away the homeopathic philosophy and attests her commitment to a reductionist philosophy, typical of allopathy – remedies for diseases. Sorry to my fellow reductionist homeopaths, but it’s not the ear infection that needs to be cured. We are really talking about totally different research programs, our concepts are not comparable, our homeopathies have different philosophical bases.
Classical homeopathy offers much more than that. It offers a cure for the sick and not for the disease. And here what I call “the sick” does not have the same meaning as what allopathy calls “the sick.”
When the colleague says that, in the face of a sick child, “it makes no sense to focus on
the relationship with the mother”, she belittles the search for the remedy of
wholeness, that throughout history has proved to be extremely efficient – as evidenced
by the experience and publications of great classical masters.
This attitude of ridiculing classical homeopathy shows the colleague’s adherence to allopathic philosophy. To say that something that actually exists “does not make sense” is wishful thinking, an unscientific stance. Doesn’t make sense to whom?
To put it bluntly, for any homeopathic physician committed to classical homeopathic philosophy it makes perfect sense to focus on the relationship with the mother if that is the main theme of our patient’s illness.
Another regrettable moment in this text-and which exposes its weakness-is when the colleague says that she does not know if she could practice homeopathy without the knowledge of intercurrent prescribing, tautopathy and isopathy. Now I and thousands of other homeopaths, firmly grounded in homeopathic philosophy, can testify that none of this other knowledge is necessary if you seek the medicine of wholeness. In 15 years of daily homeopathic practice I have never needed to use any of these methods. Again using epistemological language: Would the colleague need these other methods if she was committed to the Classical Homeopathy research program?
This text is a clear evidence of what Clarke said: the bridge is higher on the homeopathic side, and it is very easy for the convert to slip back into allopathy because he does not have well-established principles. It is really a danger when a homeopath knows the indications of dozens of homeopathic remedies without first knowing the basis of Homeopathy very well.
Hello Ruy, thanks for reading the article and commenting. You have raised possibly the biggest issue there is in homeopathy! People literally do not know when or whether to take a constitutional case. Many think you take a constitutional case no matter what, and you seem to be saying that too. And yet those very same people will not hesitate to give Arnica after an accident. Clearly, this is a contradiction. Both can’t be right! If a constitutional case must always be taken, then it must be taken after an injury too! And if not, then there is something wrong with the edict that a constitutional case must always be taken!
I am going to let James Tyler Kent have the last word on this:
“The Examination of the Patient”
from Kent‘s Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy
“When an individual is suffering from a dangerous crisis, a serious accident or emotional trauma, or a virulent acute miasm [an infection], the treatment of choice is the acute remedy or acute inter-current.
“After the acute state has subsided, the underlying fundamental cause must be removed by complementary constitutional treatment to prevent reoccurrence and complete the cure.
“No remedy is exclusively an ‘acute remedy’ by nature. A remedy becomes acute or chronic depending on the strategy of the homeopath and how he applies the remedy. Deep acting remedies like Arsenicum, Mercury or Sulphur are often used in acute diseases if the symptoms of the acute layer call for them.
“The key in such situations is not to mix the acute and chronic symptoms together in one grand totality as this confuses the case.”
P.S. Treating an ear infection does not mean you’re doing allopathy. The case of the ear infection has to be taken. There is no remedy, per se, for ear infection. For example, it’s Belladonna if the ear is red, hot and throbbing, it’s Chamomilla if the child is screaming inconsolably and won’t let you examine the ear, it’s Aconite if the case came on suddenly with exposure to cold/dry winds. Patricia got lucky that she had Ferrum phos. at home. It’s our remedy for “the first stage of inflammatory processes”–Farrington. T.F. Allen says, “Inflammation of the internal ear…” Clarke says, “Ear, affections of”. Murphy: “The early stages of febrile conditions.” And it was obviously spot-on.