Second Chapter WHAT IS HOMEOPATHY? According to statistics issued by the World Health Organisation, homeopathy currently runs second in the list of most widely used methods of treatment in the world, behind the traditional Chinese and Indian cure. Third comes the herbal treatment, and only in the fourth place is what until now we have considered to be the only way of treatment. Homeopathic cure is applied in the world not only by medical doctors, but also by homeopathic specialists, the practitioners who had not studied the classical medicine, but who may (but not necessarily have) gained a diploma from a College of Homeopathy. Qualified practitioners usually attend postgraduate courses of various duration and aims. The Medical Faculties, perhaps with some exceptions, offer no regular courses in homeopathy. The medical and the 'non-medical' homeopaths collaborate reasonably well (though not always without conflicts), studying each others' books and magazines. Homeopaths without the classical medical education are now more active in the scientific studies, in the development of new computer programmes and in publishing, than their medical colleagues. Homeopathic practice of "non-medics" is allowed in the United Kingdom, in Germany, in Ireland, in Sweden, in USA, in India and in many other countries. Current European statistics show that in the United Kingdom, 16% of the populace use homeopathic treatment (including the Royal Family), in Belgium 56%, in Denmark 28%, in France 32%; while currently there are no exact figures available from Germany, these could be estimated as similar to those of France, in Holland 31%, in Sweden 15% (the information comes from the British Medical Journal, July 1994). A large percentage of the populace also use homeopathic treatment in Italy, in Austria, in Spain etc., as well as in all other countries. In India some 100 million people favour homeopathy. There is a large interest in the homeopathic treatment in South America. According to the latest information, even president Clinton is a homeopathic patient. In the world of music, for instance, homeopathy was publicly endorsed by the famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin and by the rock star Tina Turner. The interest in homeopathy in the last twenty years has been constantly growing. One of the few countries in the world, where homeopathy was unknown and officially banned, along Rumania, Hungary and Poland, was also my own country. The country whose inhabitants' average life-span is one of the lowest in Europe. It exceeds only the countries just mentioned. Although in the last four years we have published many speciality and popular books, even though our doctors (and non-doctors) absolve the basic courses with lectures by foreign homeopaths, missing here is the tradition. Our ancestors happened to be peculiarly disinterested in homeopathy. The first homeopathic books were published only in the recent years. Absent is the long lasting deep experience, both on the part of the doctors and of the patients. But already, things are on the move. Homeopathy is not an easy method, despite of having, as we will presently see, a relatively simple, and under certain circumstances (provided that we accept its basic premises) easily understandable philosophy. This philosophy however does not quite agree with everything that we have learnt at school. It becomes understandable to those people in particular, who themselves have experienced the fantastic effect of the treatment on their own person (on their personal psychology, their livers, prostate, gall-bladder, tonsils etc.) Personal Experience This process of understanding can be rather painful and I went through it myself. At the beginning of the Eighties, when I was in my early thirties, I suddenly noticed that my health condition was slowly but steadily declining. The psychological tension, which I attributed to the work load and to the general anxiety caused by "the communists", by the accommodation worries, by my bosses at work, was followed by a chronic cold and by more and more problems. I had made the round of visits to various medical specialists. Two minor operations followed (without bringing any relief). The doctors eventually told me that I should resign myself to having such problems, that they are of a chronic nature, that I would never get rid of them, but that it would be possible to more or less keep them in check through the use of various medications. I do not want to talk of the exact nature of the problems, but beside the chronic cold there were also more serious things. The only consolation that I could get from the medical specialist was that "he had it too" (however, he was thirty years older than I). The vision of being gradually poisoned by chemicals held no appeal to me; I bought myself a book on herbal treatment and started to collect herbs. I prepared herbal teas and also urged my family to drink them. I had the opportunity of trying out the curative properties of various herbs on my children - we lived at Smichov (an industrial zone of Prague, trans. note) and illnesses, from colds to bronchitis, were our daily guests. This herbal era was interesting and important to me for several reasons. It marked the change of my attitude to life - I took things into my own hands, I realised that health is something that one creates or destroys oneself, something for which everyone is solely responsible. I familiarised myself with a large number of extremely interesting herbs, which we habitually crush under our feet, without knowing their names and their relevance to us, humans. I became convinced that it is possible to make do without chemicals. At the same time I also discovered that while the less severe acute ailments could be easily cured by herbs, the chronic diseases have remained almost untouched. At this point a friend, who had studied homeopathy at the London College of Homeopathy, announced that he had failed his examinations, and that he had given up the studies. He sent me all his homeopathic books together with his notes. It was a munificent gift. Fifteen or twenty books, some of which had more than thousand pages. Still, at the time I did not at all believe in homeopathy. I viewed it as a total nonsense. The first objection: Homeopathy insists that it can cure chronic illness. However, "chronic" in the classical terminology is a synonym for "incurable". If homeopathy were so great, why wouldn't I have heard about it before? Why wouldn't my former medical practitioners have known about it? The second objection: In homeopathy everything is so highly diluted that there is practically nothing left in the remedy. What is it, that would make it work? The magic? The faith? A placebo? It so happened that my problems worsened at the time and I had immersed myself in the books after all, laboriously finding one remedy (which was so much more complicated, because at the time my English was not very good). The herb happened to grow in the garden of our weekender. I prepared a tincture from it, bought myself some distilled water and some spirits from the chemists shop and set about diluting the tincture. As I could not, due to a hopeless lack of facilities, use the standard procedures as described in the books, I had developed my own, simpler system. A few years later I found out that the same system was invented decades before me by Korsakov, and that it had made him famous among the homeopaths. And I began to use the unbelievably diluted remedy. I honestly had not held any high hopes for homeopathy, but like a man drowning I clutched at any straws. Amazingly, this straw gave out quite a solid support. There was a marked improvement and thus I was drawn in. From then on, no child in our family with a bronchitis would be hanging about any stuffy waiting rooms. All was cured by homeopathy at home. While prior to this, the children would miss on the average a hundred, to a hundred and fifty hours at school, now their absences were cut down to one tenth of this. When some problems appeared, after taking the homeopathic remedy they quickly subsided. None of my colleagues and friends could avoid a homeopathic interview nor find the strength to refuse my homeopathic prescriptions. And some of them had brought their friends to me. Often incurably ill, still they became healthy, when given a homeopathic remedy. The strange sounding word became a friendly sound to them. So.... ... What is homeopathy? Similia Similibus Curentur The fundamental principle of homeopathic treatment is the axiom similia similibus curentur, the like is cured by the like. Perhaps you have heard the old English saying "eat the hair of the dog that bit you". It is often quoted by drunks, who thus rationalise using a small amount of the same alcoholic drink as they did the previous night, to overcome the hangover. In reality they are natural homeopaths. The principle of homeopathic treatment was known thousands of years ago. The Greek physician Hypocrites in 400 BC used remedies with similar effects to cure diseases. Curing the like by the like was the famous alchemist of the 16th Century, Paracelsus, who lived for a long time in Bohemia. And the method was more or less applied by whole generations of healing women, witch doctors and natural therapists. This is what basically happens: we know, for instance, that the deadly nightshade, Belladonna, will make a healthy person turn red, cause an instant fewer, a headache, a sore throat, sweating. If we give Belladonna to someone who is ill with similar symptoms, he could be quickly cured. Caution, however! Belladonna is poisonous. Therefore it is necessary that the dose be as small as possible, while still effective, so that we do not harm the patient. Otherwise the remedy could have dangerous side effects. Infinitesimal Dilution We have thus arrived at the second fundamental principle - the need to use as small a dose as possible. The founder of scientific homeopathy, the German practitioner Samuel Hahnemann, of whom there will much talk later, had developed a peculiar diluting procedure. He topped up the basic substance, the tincture of a raw remedy (the remedy dissolved in spirits), let's say Belladonna, with ninety nine parts of distilled water mixed with spirits. He shook it up thoroughly and he transferred a mere one hundredth part of the vial's content into another vial and again mixed it with ninety nine parts of water and spirit. And this he repeated ten times, thirty times, or even two hundred times. Our reason tells us that nothing of the basic substance could be left in the water. Some contemporary scientists say the same thing. The homeopaths say something else: the more diluted the substance, the more pervasive and deeper the effect on both the psyche and the body of the patient. And they prove it every day on millions of patients. Perhaps one of the main hindrances lies here, this is why so many people cannot digest the theory of homeopathy. Such people's basic premise is that the human life and the whole world around us have essentially been scientifically fully explained, that all that is left is to put the outstanding mysteries into the already prepared drawers. Except that it does not work. Maybe that the fault is not in the mysteries, but in the unsuitable drawers. There is also a need to invent new drawers, homeopathic ones, for instance. Holistic Approach The third fundamental principle of homeopathy is its peculiar conception of disease and health. A homeopathic remedy should never be prescribed according to the name of a disease, to a strictly limited localised pathology. It is prescribed in accordance to the summary of all psychological and physical characteristics of the person. This is called the totality of symptoms. Imagine, that a patient with a case of tonsillitis comes to see a homeopath. He has a sore throat, a risen temperature. Such a description would probably be enough for an orthodox practitioner, who would prescribe antibiotics. However for a homeopathic prescription we need to know a lot more. A homeopath knows all too well that there is a quinsy and that there is a quinsy. There could be soreness on the right side with one person, or on the left side with another, one would not stand out hot drinks, another one cold drinks, one is followed by a headache, another one is not, a third one is accompanied by constipation. One patient has only a slightly risen temperature, the next one has 40° C. In addition to this there are psychological differences. One patient just wants to lie down motionless, another one would not stay in bed at all. One is excitable, another is sluggish. The homeopath could classify some sixty or hundred different kinds of quinsy, according to their peculiarities and the specific courses of illness. And for each, he would use a different remedy. If the remedy is properly selected and administered, the quinsy with the soreness of throat, the swellings and the fever should be gone within two days. And in the case of a child that repeatedly suffered from quinsy, this assures that the illness would not be back for a long while. The patient's disposition towards quinsy has been removed. Such an approach to diagnosis has been called individualisation by the homeopaths. Hahnemann depicted this with a lofty sentence: "I don't cure diseases, I cure the person". He implied that the prescription is suited to the complete picture of the person, from head to heel, including the characteristics of the mind, the emotions, the social conduct. The actual description of the localised disease plays, even though it may sound quite astonishing, only a relatively small part. The homeopath's task is to improve the overall health condition of the person, to increase his or her immunity, consequently the various diseases are eliminated. They are removed by the organism itself. The improvement is always discernible in other areas than the actual disease, which had made the patient go to see the homeopath. With this comes even the possibility of curing the diseases described by the orthodox medicine as incurable - the chronic diseases. It is almost unbelievable to how many diseases the orthodox medicine affixes the term chronic, thus openly admitting that it cannot cure them, that it can only somewhat slow down their progress. It does not have to be the AIDS, just an ordinary chronic cold, chronic cough, chronic kidney inflammation, chronic pneumonia, arthritis or chronic pains and disorders of the joints, chronic skin diseases including the eczema, all kinds of allergies, the diabetes, the haemophilia or chronic non-clotting of blood, the genetic disorders - chronic discharges, impotence, psychological problems such as insomnia, constant fear, anxiety... We could go on and on for a long time and I bet that any reader who gives it an objective thought would admit, that either he or she or someone near them, suffers from a chronic disease. Even more probably, there is no one around them who is completely free of chronic ailments. Particularly disturbingly, most children nowadays suffer from some chronic ailments, either minor or severe ones, which previously was not the case. While even a serious acute disease allows the organism to repair the damage and restore its health, in the case of a chronic disease the organism is powerless, the damage is lasting and irreparable. Thus even a minor chronic disease is always a signal and a strong warning. It points to an overall weakness of the organism. The chronically ill patients can be reliably and regularly helped only by homeopathy. The aim of homeopathic treatment is not to ease the pain, reduce discharge or bring down the fever, as does the orthodox medication - though naturally homeopathy also achieves this. Its reachable goal is to cure the entire disease, to completely eliminate it, so that the patient does not need any further treatment, no other medication, orthodox or homeopathic. In the case of an acute illness (such as influenza) this can be achieved within hours. With a chronic disease, within months or years, depending on the overall condition of the patient. In reality it is the gradual installation of harmony within the organism, within the mind and the physical organs - the restoration of health. Disease Develops Throughout the Life While to a homeopath the chronic diseases are not necessarily chronic (incurable), in homeopathy the term chronic disease is important, in a somewhat different context. The third distinctive characteristic trait of homeopathy is the theory of chronic disease. It is a completely new view of both the disease and the state of health. The individual and the local problems of a particular person (colds, flues, headaches, insomnia... etc.) are recognised as an indication, as symptoms, of a distinctive inner pathological inclination of the person, of a single chronic disease, continuing from their birth to death. Only when this chronic pathological inclination is eliminated, outrooted, the patient is really cured. Hahnemann called this chronic inclination the miasma, while recognising three basic types of miasma: psora, syphilis and sycosis. However, the majority of contemporary homeopaths maintain that our era brings about a large number of miasma (miasma means corruption), so this categorising has lost some of its meaning. Also the recognition of the miasma influences the prescription only little, as the correct remedy is always suited to the totality of symptoms. More proper is the term chronic disease, constitutional disease, derived from this is the constitutional remedy. Let's have an example. The medical history of a particular person shows roughly the following progress: in childhood repeated colds, later bouts of bronchitis, in adulthood arthritis, becoming chronic. At this stage the patient visits a homeopath and after careful examination of all psychological and physical characteristics of the present and the past, during the interview, it is found that the nearest similium, the most similar remedy, is Lycopodium. Its symptomatic picture is the closest to this pathology. When given Lycopodium C200, for instance, the chronic decline of the person is checked. The problems with joints, which came last, slowly disappear and in the reverse order, back come some symptoms that the patient had earlier. These returning symptoms come in a milder form than the original illness, and after a while they disappear without any further treatment. At the end of the treatment, which may last even for years, the patient is completely cured. The experience may be described as "the sense of health as never before known", "the psychological and physical comfort". At the same time the patient shows a high immunity against all kinds of diseases, even directly after taking the remedy, with the exception of his or her previous complaints, within the current of already mentioned symptoms in the reverse order. Such symptoms that come in the reverse order, occur only occasionally and temporarily. The inner constitutional disease, bearing all the basic characteristics of Lycopodium, had been "outrooted", activated were the person's self-defensive healing powers, owing to the correctly applied constitutional remedy Lycopodium. The self-defensive capacity then persists even in the state of health restored after the treatment. The chronic disease, the constitutional disease, in its separate physical manifestations, is also called Lycopodium. It bears the name of the remedy that cures it. To kick-start this healing process, carried by the organism itself as a reaction to the remedy, one dose of the remedy of a high potency (C 30 or higher) is often enough. The Laws of Cure The treatment and the return of some previously encountered problems are subjected to the rules called the Hering's Laws of Cure. They were defined by the 19th Century German and American homeopath Constantin Hering, who observed the effects of homeopathic remedies on patients. The curative process should progress: a) From the inside out. This means that in homeopathic treatment first cured are the inner deeply fixed problems, such as serious psychological problems. Later the "curative wave", the restorative reaction to the remedy, moves towards the surface - from the mind to the emotions, then to the physical organs, while first recuperating the brain and the inner organs, and last the skin, the hair, etc. According to this principle, first to recover are the organs most important to the human life (such as the brain, the liver, the kidneys), later the less important peripheral areas (rashes, warts, colds, loss of hair, etc.). b) The curative process is effective from above to below. For instance with an eczema that covers the entire body surface - first it recedes from the face, then the neck, later from the body and finally from the limbs. c) The symptoms regress or temporarily reappear and then spontaneously recede in the reverse order to how they originally appeared. Thus the latest troubles disappear first, the oldest last. The process described by the Hering's Laws is usually the result of a single dose of a remedy of high potency. The Hering's Laws are very important when observing the developments in a case. If it develops differently, for instance if first were to disappear the lesser symptoms, such as the rash, and the inner symptoms, such as the headache, remained unchanged, this would be a warning sign, the case does not develop according to the rules, and it is necessary to look for a more appropriate remedy, better suited to the patient's pathology. The currently used remedy probably only has a suppressive effect - this is one of the biggest hindrances known to homeopathy. We will therefore return to it in another place. Materia Medica Important is the description of the effects of individual remedies, found in the book called the Homeopathic Materia Medica. This book is an essential tool of the homeopath. By comparing the symptoms displayed by the patient with the symptoms described under the individual entries in the Materia Medica, he chooses the similar remedy, which is capable of curing the patient. There are currently many Materia Medica books, by different authors. The classical Materia Medica books, the foundation of the homeopathic knowledge, were compiled by the so-called proving. Homeopaths administered various substances of vegetable, mineral, animal or other origins, turned into homeopathic potencies, to healthy persons. Such substances caused specific changes in healthy people. None of the participants would have known what they were given. Their task was to carefully note the changes of their normal state of health. Owing to a large number of such provings, the pictures of remedies were described in the Materia Medica. The symptoms that the remedy causes in a healthy person, it can also cure in the sick person, similia, similibus curentur. The Materia Medica describes the effects of remedies on the psychology and the physical organs. Comparing an actual case with the Materia Medica, the homeopath then finds the suitable remedy. We must add, that the effects of a properly conducted proving do not last very long and the participants are not in any danger. Homeopathy is not Materialistic The aim of the above was to give the most condensed information, so that from the very beginning we can have an idea of what is homeopathy, what our main topic is all about. It was a working definition of homeopathy. We will dwell on the individual points at more length. I must add that the definition is embodied in the very name of this method, given to it by its founder Samuel Hahnemann. Homeo in Greek means the same, pathos translates as suffering, disease. The remedy is capable of causing symptoms of the same disease in a healthy person that it is capable of curing in the patient. The homeopaths give the disease the same name as to the remedy that can cure it. From what we have said so far it should be obvious that homeopathy introduces a completely new outlook on both health and disease, and on the ways of how to restore or maintain health. This outlook is very different from the established and well known models, either from the point of view of the orthodox medicine, or of the natural sciences, which tend to view the man as a mechanical toy, set in motion by amalgamation of the physical causes. Homeopathy, which uses in treatment the non material potencies of a substance, holds that the fundamental health sustaining principle and the field from which the inclinations towards pathology originate, are something different. Samuel Hahnemann in his Organon of Medicine, the fundamental work of homeopathy, in the § 9 states this: "In the state of health the spirit-like vital force (dynamis) animating the material human organism reigns in supreme sovereignty. It maintains the sensations and activities of all the parts of the living organism in a harmony that obliges wonderment. The reasoning spirit who inhabits the organism can thus freely use this healthy living instrument to reach the lofty goal of human existence." Homeopathy is thus the only idealistic standard method of treatment operating en mass, which is verifiable by experiment and proving that "the idealistic" is not a synonym for impractical. On the contrary, it shows that while the orthodox science of health and disease has reached certain boundaries, which it cannot traverse (chronic diseases), it is precisely the idealistic homeopathy that is closer to the reality of human existence and the correct and practicable way to prosperity. The fact is that homeopathy, within the polarity idealistic contra materialistic, finds itself quite obviously on the opposite side to the material science, but also on the opposite pole of opinion held by the majority of population. This is also the reason why, without any valid arguments, it is often marked as the heretic discipline, neglectful of the existing academic principles, and why so many people, who could otherwise benefit from it, do not accept it - homeopathy infringes on their personal philosophy. While we presently witness the change of the model of the world, while we observe how the materialistic natural science, which in the 19th century was held to be the man's saviour, instead became the man's destroyer and slaver (the arms race, the on-going pollution of the environment, but also of peoples' inner values, the corruption of organisms by prescription drugs), we also witness the ascent of the new way of thinking, of a new age, of new values, which are closer to the human inner being, and which are linked to the ancient traditions. Homeopathy belongs here.
[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents] © Jiri Cehovsky, 1994 |
poslední aktualizace: 30.08.2006 |
||