Re: [H] Susan's question [was: Combos vs. Singles

Aegidi was the contemporary of Hahnemann who tried double remedies

On 21/12/2011 05:55, John Harvey wrote:
> Shannon,
>
>
>> As to why it shouldn't (strictly speaking, per Hahnemann) be
>> considered homeopathic, is simply that he specified giving *one remedy
>> at a time*. From the historical record, it appears that he made that
>> choice somewhat arbitrarily--not because one *can't* use remedies in
>> combination -- quite obviously, one can -- but because there are some
>> disadvantages, and he felt that keeping simplicity was both
>> advantageous, and sufficient.
>>
> Yes, one *can* use any number of medicines at once. One can't do so and be
> practising *homoeopathically*, as you've acknowledged. Hahnemann did not *
> choose* that, and it's disingenuous of you to state that he did. (Where do
> you dredge up such garbage?) Rather, because without knowing the effects
> of the medicine, you can't prescribe it on the basis of similarity to the
> entirety of the patient's state, so no other option was available to him.
> No other option is likely to become available in the near future or ever,
> either, for reasons that have been explained to you countless times in
> pervious iterations of discussions attempting to educate you in this
> matter. (I hear that you led Julian Winston to tear his hair out by
> pursuing exactly this same course of self-contradictory blather about
> "combos" when he was alive! Does it not concern you that you have learnt
> nothing in all the years since despite all the crazes and fads that enthuse
> you?)
>
>
>
> One reason he gave was the vastly increased complexity of prescribing
>> remedies in tandem; this wasn't with reference to "combinations" as
>> we've been talking about them; it was with reference to what... I
>> forget who the contemporary was that had discussed it with him...
>> whoever, referred to as "dual remedies" -- remedies chosen to be given
>> at the same time, complementing each others' effects. (Having been
>> proven only singly, not in tandem.)
>>
> This does shed some light on the origins of the persistent confusions here.
> Complementarity of remedies is something that refers to one medicine's
> effect in continuing and completing the work of another. This means
> actually waiting till the first one has had the chance to exhaust its
> secondary (curative) effect, not waiting merely till the primary effect has
> passed, and not waiting merely long enough to open a second bottle.
>
> Hahnemann was *not* opposed in any sense to prescribing a different
> medicine the second time around. Let's be clear about that. He was
> explicitly opposed to doing so without checking the altered state of the
> patient's derangement -- something inherently impossible, of course, when
> the second medicine does not even wait five minutes for the first to act.
> But his most vehement opposition was reserved for the practice of
> prescribing medicines with no known relation to the patient's entire
> derangement -- a practice he named allopathy -- and prescribing again
> without learning from the consequences of the first mistake. (If that
> sounds as if it describes the practice too of the "homoeopathic" polypaths
> you're so keen to "understand", it's because it does.)
>
> Mixing two or more known medicines does not give you a known medicinal
> agent; it gives you an unknown one. That was the chief basis of
> Hahnemann's objection to polypharmacy of all stripe, under any name, of any
> philosophical origin.
>
> Secondarily, of course, comes the minor objection of the difficulty of
> attempting to understand what the heck happened after the prescription -- a
> task of such subtlety, even after a legitimate prescription, that it
> comprises the chief obstacle that most contributors on this list encounter
> once they have prescribed homoeopathically.
>
> The difficulty of ascertaining and understanding what has occurred in
> response to the effects of *two* medicines -- even two with no chemical or
> dynamic effect on each other -- is of such difficulty that nobody has ever
> claimed to be able to do it.
>
> Yet you suggest complicating the matter further still, with your
> "understanding" (!) that medicines combined in potentised form and
> administered together -- thus altering each other dynamically and producing
> synergistic and antergistic effects ad hoc without foresight, perception,
> or comprehension of the fact by the practitioner -- will self-eliminate and
> that it is possible to rationally interpret that the consequent
> disappearance of the symptom under attack is a curative response.
>
> The problem in making these double leaps of faith is *not only* that they
> remain unfalsifiable and therefore pose illegitimate modes of
> experimentation; it is *also* that *the experiment occurs at the patient's
> expense, without the patient's informed consent, and **very possibly** if
> not certainly to the patient's detriment*.
>
>
>
> Other reasons were more "political": he feared (and I would think
>> probably quite rightly) that part of what distinguished the practice
>> of homeopathy from the practice of the "mainstream medicine" of his
>> day (applies also to ours), was the principle of *single* remedy,
>> chosen to have a deep, subtle and specific effect of causing "the
>> whole" to rebalance -- really amazingly elegant, isn't it! I think
>>
> Actually, that sounds exactly like biomedicine, and not like homoeopathy at
> all. It even describes quite well the prescription of penicillin for ear
> discharge that you called homoeopathic but that was not. Is that because
> you forgot *again* what homoeopathy is while you were writing that
> sentence? Homoeopathy is not a practice that aims to have any
> *specific*effect, and it certainly doesn't aim to cause the whole to
> rebalance.
>
> But if by this you meant what I hope you meant -- that the intent in
> choosing the most homoeopathic (i.e. *symptomatically* similar) medicine is
> to dynamically annihilate the entirety of the natural derangement to which
> it is similar -- then it's an important concept to remember when
> considering the basis for combination prescriptions, which never (because
> they cannot) take into account the entire derangement.
>
>
>
> the power and beauty of that approach (when it is working well) is
>> really something quite special. Maybe that could be replicated with
>>
> skillfully chosen combinations, but Hahmenann made the choice to
> In relation to the proposal that homoeopathy *could* include or *could
> have*included polypharmacy, please see above.
>
>
>> bypass that field of complexity, stating that the approach he was
>> outlining -- using *single* remedies, and changing the remedy only if
>> and as required by the change of symptom picture -- was sufficient,
>> and therefore preferrable to the (far less tested, generally unknown,
>> and still very uncertain and, he felt, ultimately more difficult) path
>> of complexes.
>>
> Do you know better? Was he wrong about that? And did you happen to
> overlook again the *chief* obstacle (hint: read above) to using more than
> one single, simple medicine in a prescription made homoeopathically?
>
>
>
> Sooooo.......... That's why it is not strictly homeopathy -- because
>> of the definition Hahnemann gave.
>>
> To be clear, then: the necessity for polypharmacy's exclusion from
> homoeopathy was a matter of neither politics nor practicality nor
> simplicity; it was not a *rule* arising from *reasons*. It was, and
> remains, the consequence of definition: the consequence of the
> unknowability of the deranging effects of a medicinal mixture on the
> healthy, which homoeopathic practice necessarily requires.
>
>
>
> Will it work as billed? I have no idea! Seems plausible to me that
> You said it.
>
>
>> it *could*, but I would think that individualizing with single
>> remedies would still be preferable *if* it is an available option. Do
>>
> And when is it not an option, Shannon? When is it not possible to take the
> patient's case? What amazing circumstances could conspire to give you a
> moment in which to learn that the patient is threatened with a terminal
> wart but no opportunity to learn more?
>
> Could it be the kids? The television? Perhaps you've encountered a wart
> doubling in size every 15 seconds and realised that there are times when
> there's *no other option* but to prescribe on the basis of that symptom and
> hit it with the combined cannon at your disposal?
>
> John
>
>
>