Every one of us would wish to help the patient as rapidly as possible who
is facing such a complex of problems, and I don't suppose that many would
wish to make the patient wait for a week or a month till the next visit in
order to address the next problem, one on another "level".
I wonder whether it occurs to you, though, that you are solving a
nonexistent problem: that in striving to exercise the wisdom of Solomon in
discerning -- as no other has done before you, least of all Irene or
Shannon, to whom I have chiefly directed my remarks concerning the
stupidity of arbitrarily dividing the patient into various whimsically
discrete diseases -- the effects of various simultaneous medicines, you are
striving to overcome a hurdle that is purely artificial: the limit of the
office consultation.
I'm always amazed that polypharmacists should ever pose the ticking-bomb
scenario.
Torture apologists use the argument that if there were a ticking bomb in
some major city and the only way to find out where it was was to torture
somebody, then it becomes morally justifiable, even compelling, to do so.
That argument is based squarely on ignorance (of the reliability of
information that emerges under torture); on unimaginativeness (concerning
the other ways to obtain the information, the F.B.I. having been
consistently far more successful in obtaining information from criminals
than the C.I.A. though its approach is diametrically opposed to the "beat
it out of them" approach); on an *inclination* to hurt others; and, I'm
sorry to say, on sheer lazy convenience.
Though it's perhaps an unfortunate analogy, there may be lessons here in
considering the legitimacy of the ticking-bomb argument that Shannon,
Irene, and other polyphamacists frequently indulge in, which culminates in
the accusation that *not* prescribing everything under the kitchen sink for
the very ill patient for whom one has not discovered "the" homoeopathic
medicine would mean a preference for doctrine even at the expense of the
patient's life.
It's pure comic farce. The ticking-bomb torture argument fares no worse
than the ticking-bomb polypharmacy argument, whose seeming plausibility
dissolves instantly upon application to it of any least amount of critical
thought. Once you do apply it, you realise:
(a) that neither you nor the person posing the argument has yet faced a
patient who has approached with death threatening from several different
"levels" (e.g. injury, emotionality, measles, and eczema);
(b) that neither has yet faced a patient unable to deal for five minutes
with the emotions, the measles, the recent fall, and the eczema -- for if
anything were quite so urgent, it must be the fall itself, and in that
case, it will have just occurred and demand immediate treatment without
consideration of the other matters;
(c) that a patient does not turn up to an appointment at his or her
homoeopath's office unable to walk, unable to talk, unable to bear the
receding measles, and unable to live for five minutes with an eczema of
long standing -- and is unlikely to turn up in a condition in which he or
she is not able to do all of those things just as well this afternoon as
this morning;
(d) that a homoeopath who is genuinely concerned that the welfare of a
patient is under imminent, dire, or even severe threat will not be
satisfied to prescribe the contents of the entire pharmacy and merrily send
the patient on his or her way in order to see the next patient in dire
straits; and
(e) that there is an alternative to doing so.
Now, you haven't put the ticking-bomb scenario here yourself; but the case
you have put is not far from it.
• We have the requisite patient crippled on many levels.
• We have the requisite faith in our own ability to discern -- as no other
physician in 2700 years of polypharmacy has managed to do -- the exact
effect of each of our medicines on the various parts of the patient.
• We have the limitation of having to send the patient away before
assessing the effect even of a medicine acting to overcome the effects of
injury.
• And of course we have the ringing accusation of doctrinal bigotry against
any who would stay prescription of the entire pharmacy if that prescription
would help the patient as freely asserted.
But what is the reality? The reality is:
(a) that nobody is forcing you or any other homoeopath to treat the patient
at all;
(b) that no new patient, freshly injured and desperately ill on several
"levels", is going to approach a homoeopath in the first instance,
particularly in an office appointment;
(c) that no physician in 2700 years has been able to state the positive
effects of medicines on human health except singly;
(d) that, for very good reason, no physician has yet written convincingly
of the ability to discern with certainty which medicine of the recipe
prescribed acted in which way upon which illness in the patient;
(e) that the homoeopath's opportunity to assess the effects of a single
medicine in relation to something as acute as an injury from a fall on the
same day is constrained by nothing more than the homoeopath's own
capricious decision to send the patient on his or her way;
(f) that it will be possible to assess the effects of a well-prescribed
medicine suitable for the early discomforts and threats from such a recent
injury within a very short time of prescribing it, whereupon the physician
will *not only* have the freedom to prescribe a medicine for the patient in
his or her (at least, possibly) somewhat improved state *but also*, given
accuracy of that prescription, find the patient in less urgent need -- and
therefore be better able to prescribe without reliance upon the uncritical,
emotive thinking that accompanies ticking bombs;
(g) that, besides the impossibility of assessing even retrospectively their
indistinguishable secondary effects, the other chief insurmountable
obstacle to rational simultaneous prescription of several medicines *in
homoeopathic practice* is the impossibility -- despite your very grand
assumptions of having overcome this small obstacle that has proven too much
for 2700 years of your predecessors in medicine -- of predicting their sum
positive (primary) effects even with reasonably full and accurate knowledge
of their individual primary characteristics; and, as a final nail in the
coffin,
(h) that we do not know well even in isolation the primary effects of the
medicines whose properties in acting together we presume we may understand
-- meaning that there is no foundation for beginning to realise the dream
of understanding their simultaneous effect.
The illogicality and ignorance inherent in the process of polypharmacy is
not changed one whit by the presumption -- convenient, but absurd and
unfounded -- that one medicine will act at only one "level" and another
only at another. This is the kind of allopathic self-delusion
Hahnemann repeatedly warned homoeopaths as well as his early allopathic
colleagues not to fall into.
When the logic of polypharmacy proceeds to its absurd conclusion, then we
find the likes of Shannon's claims that it is possible to proceed from
"cure" to deduce pathogenesis and thereby to prescribe homoeopathically,
completing a full circle of materia medica and clinical "verification" with
exactly the same basis as Cullen's explanation of the action of Peruvian
Bark in intermittent fevers: uncritical wishful thinking and egoistic
self-promotion in the (sincere) guise of concern for the patient.
Medicine is an art, certainly; but in homoeopathy, if that art is not based
upon rigorous science, then we have lost the basis of the art, and we can
practise nothing more than allopathy. Wouldn't you agree?
John
On 2 January 2012 14:40, Dr. J. Rozencwajg, NMD. <jroz@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> Very nice theoretical ranting, John, and for once in plain English, thank
> you.
>
>
>
> That a second remedy should not be given without assessing the effect of
> the
> first one is absolutely evident, and valid in any form of medicine, it is
> called interactions in pharmacy.
>
> But this is valid for remedies that are supposed to act at what I would
> call
> for the time being "the same level of energetic intensity", meaning that in
> the imaginary patient I presented, I certainly would treat his emotional
> status right away, ALONGSIDE a physically oriented treatment AT THE SAME
> TIME to relieve the physical pain (different levels!).
>
>
>
> That is called helping the suffering of a fellow human being, that is my
> job
> my calling, and not applying to real life situations philosophical
> discourses that have theoretical values but practically are hurting the
> people who come to ask for help and relief.
>
>
>
> By that time his measles would have been almost finished. I would then keep
> this in mind and assess later on if he managed to go through the whole
> measling" or if he is in a NBWS situation....that is for later.
>
> When his emotional and physical upheavals are taken care of, the deeper
> treatment whose external expression is the chronic eczema will be attended.
> And while this is done, any acute, sub-acute or flare up of a chronic
> situation will be attended immediately with the needed remedies.
>
>
>
> Most of us are not dim-witted automatons who cannot differentiate between
> the action of very different remedies.
>
>
>
> Can your majesty grant us that we know what we are doing????
>
>
>
> Yes, I certainly do not follow strictly and rigidly whatever H, and Kent,
> and Hering, and Dunham, and Clarke, and Boenninghausen, and Vithoulkas, and
> Herscu, and Sankaran, and Scholten, and Vermeulen, and others have taught
> and written............I happen to have a brain of my own, I happen to
> interpret and adapt other's teachings and findings to my understanding
> based
> on my studies and my experiences (which I keep publishing, wait for the
> next
> one on miasms and constitutions, now if you ever read that one, I suggest
> you use some prevention as it might give you a stroke and a heart attack
> while you go in a frenzied spat of rage and fury.......).
>
>
>
> Have you ever been a patient yourself, John? Have you conducted or
> participated in a proving, even an accidental one? Or are you a theoretical
> professional pontificator?
>
>
>
> Joe.
>
--
"And if care became the ethical basis of citizenship? Our parliaments,
guided by such ideas, would be very different places."
—Paul Ginsborg, *Democracy: Crisis and Renewal*, London: Profile, 2008.
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