Ninth Chapter GROUP EXAMINATIONS For the past four years, every second Wednesday of the month, I have been meeting with a group of homeopathic doctors. Altogether perhaps twenty attend, on the night there are about ten to fifteen present. Early on I was leading the examinations, and the doctors listened, nowadays the situation has been changing. Many of them have gathered a rich experience from their practices and the group examinations are beginning to gain the character of collective effort. Some have reached, despite of a relatively short period of practice, remarkable results. The doctors invite to our regular meetings their problematic cases, when they are not sure of a remedy that should be prescribed. In some cases they have already prescribed a remedy, but the development after its application does not quite follow their intentions. Such problematic patients we then examine as a group. The Interview The homeopathic examination is called an interview. This is true to its nature. The patient describes his or her problems, and early on the homeopath does not interrupt at all. He only invites more talk. He urges the patient not to leave out any "trifle", any detail. He is busy taking notes, and later returns to some points of the patient's description to ask for details. To a homeopath it is valuable that the patient describes his troubles through his own words. The Materia Medicas also use simple words in their descriptions, avoiding the so called medical terms, which might be strongly suggestive of a particular allopathic diagnoses. If the patient, endeavouring to please or save time, for instance says: "I had a laryngitis", it is necessary to correct him and ask what was really wrong with him. Then the correct answer might be: I had a sore throat, more so in the morning than at night, the temperature was 37°C, I felt tired, ...etc. The patient must relay his entire history of health, should mention his occupation and his position, the homeopath would ask him about his hobbies, his fears, his desires, his dreams, he is interested in the outer influences that may effect the illnesses and complaints (heat, cold, movement, etc.). The examinations in our group proceed as follows: I conduct the interview with the patient, the others ask the supplementary questions, then I suggest the remedy, and in the end we discuss it. We refer to the repertory and the Materia Medica, mostly using Pulford's and Kent's. Finally comes the verdict about the remedy that will be applied. During those four years, the group has seen a fair number of patients, and we were able to observe a number of cures of seemingly incurable conditions. At the same time many of these people knew nothing of homeopathy to start with, and were just clutching at those proverbial straws. Mostly they had no idea, why the homeopath questions them about so many unimportant things. I recall one beautiful case of Lycopodium. It was a young attractive woman, a musician by profession. As she sat down on the chair, she bore an expression of defiance. It said that she was not to be coaxed too easily, and that she was not at all sure about this humbug about homeopathy. Nevertheless, she began to talk about the state of her health and her biggest problem, as she stated, were the gynaecological discharges persistent for the past nine years, which had got worse after the childbirth two years ago. The discharge was white, itchy, accompanied by pains in her vagina. The itch and the pain often made sex impossible for her. The discharge always became worse about a week after menstruation. At the same time she felt pains on the right side of her abdomen, which went on for about six years. She sometimes suffered from headaches, mostly when the atmospheric pressure was low. Before menstruation acne would appear. The skin on the right forearm became rough and dry, it had begun on the right arm and later had appeared also on the left arm. The lady was then invited to talk about her entire health history. She said that she went through: whooping cough, pneumonia, recurrent infection of the middle ear, influenza, constipation. It was then essential to establish her psychological profile. In this area the patients themselves are never too revealing, it is necessary to ask selective questions. The questions must not be suggestive and they must not invite straight answers, yes or no. Naturally, the questions must be related to the notions and areas that are described in the Repertory and the Materia Medica. The interview should also not follow the lines of any particular remedy, which we might perhaps "suspect". All too easily we could convince ourselves into believing something that is not true. The questions should by no means be urgent, the patient must answer them freely and without any pressure. Thus we found out that: she liked to socialise, but did not feel well in a large company of people. She suffered from a stage fright before public performances. In the morning she was usually morose, irritable, and wanted to be left alone. She was competent at school, wanting to be an achiever. Sometimes she could get angry and may "blow out". She was sensitive to smells. She cried in her sleep. Much important general information can be gained from the eating habits. She said that she preferred hot food and hot drinks. She liked sweets. She mentioned something that is described in the Materia Medica as a key symptom: even after a small amount of food she had a sense of fullness in her stomach. Very important general information, which helped to ascertain that the remedy was Lycopodium, was the sense of chilliness, but also intolerance to heat, to hot sunshine. I only recount the information, which during the talk with the patient I had considered to be valuable in our search for the similium. Naturally, her disclosure also contained much useless information. The patient was invited to talk first of her problems not because they would be most important to the diagnoses, but simply because she herself gave them importance. Once she had begun to talk, it was easier to communicate with her and gain the more substantial information. The most important information was: the sense of fullness in the stomach after a small amount of food - a key symptom (Pulford. M.Med.), the development of symptom (rough skin on right arm) from right to left - a key symptom, more symptoms on the right side (abdomen, skin) - a general symptom. The mental characteristics and the related eating habits perfectly fitted into the remedial picture. All the key, mental and general symptoms described were compared with the Repertory and the Materia Medica and thus the remedy was basically found. It was only necessary to determine that the pathology, which brought this woman to us, agreed with the remedy, that the remedy was capable of curing it. For instance, fluor, the discharge, is mentioned in the Repertory in connection with one hundred and forty remedies. Among them, in the second (a lesser) degree, is also Lycopodium. Similarly with the stomach pains and headache. She was given one dose of Lycopodium D 400, and she had left. The Control Examination Five months later the lady came for a control visit, looking just as defiant as before, if not angry. I asked her: "Has anything changed?" And she said: "Nothing at all. Everything's the same as it was." We stared at her with some consternation - somewhat unused to such a negative attitude. I quickly looked into the notes from her examination, to find why she had come to us five months ago in the first place. "Aha! What about those painful discharges?" I asked her. "The discharges... ?" she hesitated a little. "Well, those discharges ... true, I don't have them any more. For about three months." It was then revealed that there were occasional small discharges, but without the accompanying pains and the itch. Finally she agreed that there was an improvement of about eighty percent. So we felt a little relieved - eighty percent in such a short period with such a long lasting problem, this was not at all bad. With chronic diseases the most optimistic theoretical estimations are, that for each year of their duration at least a month of treatment is needed. It could be much longer, depending on the overall state of the patient. We had begun to smile pleasurably. "But... you know, I don't think that the improvement would be just through that little pill of yours," she had brought us down again. "And, pray, what would it be, if no other medication could do anything for you before?" "You see... I went to this alternative medicine centre one day, to inhale some oxygen. I think that it was the oxygen that did it." She attributed her cure from the chronic disease to a one-time inhalation of oxygen. According to her, those who inhale oxygen, pilots or mountaineers, could never get ill - they have hit upon the universal super remedy. We had not tried to argue with her on this point, and asked her to come in six months for another control. When she came for the third time, she was very sweet. She had not been inhaling any oxygen since, the discharge was gone completely and she was also cured from the stomach pains and headaches. And she now admitted that it was this one pill that did it. The non-understanding of principles of homeopathic treatment and especially of the necessity to prescribe in accordance to the patient's overall state is sometimes overwhelming. At the same time it is entirely logical, as up to now the under the term treatment the patient understood the elimination of a particular localised symptom. The Case of Sweaty Hands Once a doctor brought to "the Group" a girl with her mother. The girl had a peculiar problem. The palms of her hands would sweat profusely. So much so, that they were constantly wet, leaving stains on anything she had touched. The girl was about to go to school, and it had worried her mother that she would not be able to work with the school books. "Could you give her something for that sweating," the mother demanded and only reluctantly she agreed to a complete homeopathic examination - an interview, to determine the overall state of the patient. Sweaty hands could only be the result of the overall state of the organism. During the examination, however, much more serious facts had emerged. The girl had a bronchial asthma. The asthma had been treated by the local doctor as well as by a stay in a spa. From the spa, after a month long stay, the girl had always returned in a worse condition, with a stifling cough and once even with an enduring high temperature, from which she had not suffered before. The main treatment administered in the spa were supposed to be the ice-cold showers. The girl was stubborn, she particularly liked hard boiled eggs, she was completely intolerable of watching television news, full of cruelty... Shortly, she had many characteristics, including the sweating and naturally the asthma, that belong to the constitutional type Calcarea Carbonica. We gave her this remedy in the potency C 200 and with it the advise that the remedy was prescribed on her overall state. That we were going to give her the entire treatment and that the more serious matter was understandably her asthma, which had to be cured first. In connection with this case we also realised that the allopathic treatment does not take into consideration the patient's individual reactions, and how often it unconsciously harms the patient. Calcarea Carbonica happens to be extraordinarily sensitive to cold connected with moisture. All illnesses of Calcarea Carbonica begin or deteriorate during the autumn or winter cold rains and fogs or in cold damp rooms. The spa with its cold showers, this was a factual anti-treatment to this girl. There was nothing that could have harmed her more. A year passed by, and the same doctor had asked if he could bring his little patient with her mother for a control. The mother was supposed to have had some misgivings concerning the development of the treatment. Indeed, on Wednesday the mother with her daughter came to the gathering, and she was very unhappy. Homeopathy had not fulfilled her expectations. The girl attended school and her hands were still sweating. Perhaps a little less than before. Even the teacher had already complained about the bad state of her books. "And what about the cough, about asthma?" I asked her. "Well, that's a lot better, my daughter has not suffered from that any more, for a long time, for many months she had not coughed ... but this sweating of the hands, it's terrible. You have to do something with that. You had promised me that the sweating would stop." The mother simply forgot all about the original instructions, to her the elimination of asthma was the good hand of fate. She would not think about it much. After all, there was no asthma any more, why bother about it? She had not come in the first place for a remedy against asthma (allopathically mostly incurable, and not reacting at all to the allopathic treatment in this case), she wanted a remedy that would stop sweating of the hands. We had failed in our task. Once again I had explained to her that only when the serious inner problems are cured, the lesser symptom, such as sweating of the hands, can have its turn. And again I told her that she had to wait, till results of the therapy become discernible on the condition of school books. The mother was not too happy to hear this, and she had left, still grumbling. Connected with this case of Calcarea Carbonica is another event, regarding the girl's symptom in a reverse order. Her doctor, who told us the story, had introduced it with these words: "Would you believe that the symptom in a reverse order could save the person's life?" The girl used to go to her school by a firmly established route, always passing a news stand on a busy street. She would set out at a pre-set time, and always at the same time she passed by the news stand. However one morning she had a sore throat, it was a symptom she used to have before, the symptom in a reverse order (some patients even use a diminutive, such as a "reversie"). So she had stayed at home. At the very second when she should have passed the news stand, a fully loaded lorry with a drunken driver had speeded in and killed not only the seller inside, but also several people on the footpath. One of the doctors present had remarked: "What a coincidence."
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