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What on Earth is Homoeopathy?
- Esoterics, Shamanism, Alchemy.... an art, or a motor for the science of tomorrow?
The stimulus that gave rise to the following thoughts dates back to a talk with Jörg Wichmann, the guest editor of this edition of the Links.
Discussing which kind of articles might fit into the concept of this edition Jörg expressed that he thought that the current controversy on homoeopathy should be reflected in more detail, being just as essential to our discipline as the articles on new or unknown remedies.
The current discussion about homoeopathy takes place under two aspects:
- First the discussion between different schools and the significance of new developments in their different approaches.
- Secondly the controversy about the question: into which cultural and philosophical context does homoeopathy belong? In this discussion it has been suggested to view homeopathy either as an art, as part of alchemy , or Shamanism (f.e. Wichmann, Links 4/2001, P.202, Naumann, Links 1/2002 P. 10) or see it as a science (Scholten Links 1/2002, P.15).
Looking at these two aspects and discussing them over the past month I became aware that the way we perceive our field will influence the way we till our land and either take or simply waste the chances given by new developments.
So the following article deals with four questions:
I. Shamanism, Alchemy, Science ? : Homoeopathy seen in the context of different models explaining the world
II. Could science play a clarifying role in the actual debate amongst different homoeopathic schools?
III. Can modern physics provide the missing link in explaining the effects of homoeopathy
IV: Meet the own prejudice: Alchemy and Homoeopathy?
Ad I. Shamanism, Alchemy, Science ? : Homoeopathy seen in the context of different models explaining the world
During cultural evolution mankind has gone through certain stages of development.
Each period is linked to a new approach of explaining the world as experienced and observed by its contemporaries.
Shamanism can be seen as one step in cultural evolution:
In our evolutionary ancestors, i.e. in monkeys there are many features of a simple consciousness reaching the level of 2-3 year old children. But there are no features of selfconsciousness. Monkeys can be trained to use a symbolic language of about 200 words to express themselves. But there is no backround for reflecting on questions which arise from the awareness of the own self or the own finiteness.
It is from the beginning of the history of man that self awareness arises as a new feature in evolution. From what research can reconstruct, the onset of a specifically evolved human culture and of tradition starts with the first artistic expressions like cave paintings and with funeral rites in the Neanderthal Man . From what we know today, in the historical process this very first archaic conscience evolves into the magic conscience, where daily observations such as fire, wind or thunder that influence the individual’s life, are explained by supernatural powers and spirits. In medicine this led to healing processes known f.e. as Shamanism.
This period is followed by the mythological period, where the world is explained in various myths, such as the Vedda, the Greek mythology etc.
Around 450 years* BC the mythological view of the world is questioned by the reflections of Sokrates as well as the empirical observation and systematic understanding of natural phenomena in Aristotle’s fundamental work.
In Europe the next development begins with the spread of Christianity into the cultures of Greek and Roman mythology - a process of several centuries.
In the middle ages Christianity undergoes a period of rigid dogmatism, known as the Scholastic phase. This period is followed by the Renaissance, which reconnects with Greek Philosophy and later leads to the period of Enlightenment which triggers the fascinating rise of Science.
All these approaches until today are part of daily life in different cultures in different parts of the world.
Despite all their differences they share the feature, that they give a congruent model tallying in itself as an answer to the question of how a certain perceived phenomenon is caused and thus can be explained:
The impressive myths of the God Thor throwing his hammer in anger and the elaborate mathematical calculation of physical energies discharging in a storm are derived from the same source: the curious wondering about the cause of a thunderstorm.
In the following article I want to highlight the potential of homoeopathy in the context of modern science and quantum mechanics.
This does not necessarily mean, that Homoeopathy can’t be seen as a method of healing compatible with the experience of Shamanism or a mythological understanding of the world. A person trained to see and understand the world in such a way may perceive a context or a structure I am not trained to see or not at all aware of and thus cannot fully assess.
Anyway a good doctor will always conscious- or subconsciously use some of the healing mechanisms that have been developed to a special art in Shamanism.
II. Could science play a clarifying role in the current debate amongst different homoeopathic schools?
Science never uncovers any finite truth, nor can anything ever be proven to be true by a scientific approach.
Scientific work consists of observing certain phenomena as precisely as possible and
deduce a theory explaining these observations.
This theory is a hypothetical approximation of reality, which in a second step undergoes falsification by trying to prove the hypothesis wrong. The more difficult this falsification turns out to be, the better is the original theory’s approximation to reality or truth.
For example an early ornithologist observing swans in many different places might conclude that all swans are white. This holds true until the first black swan is seen. This leads to a revised hypothesis which can reach a step closer to reality: “there are white and black swans, but the vast majority is white” ( Karl Popper, Philosophy of science )
Seen in this context, where is homeopathy standing today?
Homeopathy today is a melange of classical techniques such as repertorisation and study of Materia Medica. These are mixed with new approaches of all kinds and with studies of the so called old masters. Until now no real quality criteria have been developed and agreed upon in homoeopathic education and practice. Thus it is difficult to estimate the value or insignificance of a new method as well as to discern a useful and qualifying learning from predecessors from pettifoggeries.(see Jan Scholten, Links 1/2002.).
As yet there are no clear accepted landmarks for homoeopathic practise and the Materia Medica has grown with enormous speed in the past decade and thus became more confusing for the practitioners. During the last years nostalgia for the so called old masters became a more common way to cope with the vast increase of knowledge and new remedies. (see f.e. Andre’ Saine, Links 2/01).
- Hahnemann, Kent , Boeninghausen or von der Lippe may have had many qualities you could call avant-garde, evolutionary or even revolutionary. In their days they were completely up to date or even ahead of their contemporaries, but in their own time they were one thing surely not: old masters.
F.e. Boeninnghausen`s work is based on the most modern developments of his time in the fields of biology: the systematic cataloguing of plants and animals, which strongly influenced his homeopathic work.
Modern developments in homoeopathy:
Naturally today - living after Freud and C.G. Jung, and being familiar with the existence of the subconscious and the basics of psychology and psychosomatics - will influence new approaches henceforward if they are up to date.
Homeopathy at present evolves with immense speed systematising the materia medica in the so called kingdoms with the works of Scholten for the periodic system and Sankaran: with the systematic analysis of plants and parts of the animal kingdom. These approaches take into account and develop further the current knowledge of psychosomatics.
Secondly during the last years Sankaran and with him his colleagues from the Bombay school has worked on the refinement of casetaking and has developed it to unprecedented mastership:
Starting with the exact history of the main complaint the history is taken in minutest detail.
This method of casetaking is based on the empiric observation that the main complaint – be it acute or chronic – like the tip of an ice-berg is the most visible expression of the disturbance of the vital force that contains and links the physical and the mental dysfunction (for details see Rajan Sankaran: An insight into plants, Bombay 2002).
The so-called generals usually connect the main features of mental and physical symptoms.
F. e. silicea has the innermost perception that the person’s wellbeing depends on fulfilling a specific image others see in him. In the mental sphere there is a tremendous fear of criticism (with the specific sensitivity of not having succeeded to fulfill this given image) and in the general sphere there is fear of needles.The criticism for these patients has the same pinpointing qualities as the piercing needle.
The casetaking continues from the starting point of the main complaint to understanding the main core of the vital disturbance which in the mental sphere is expressed as the central delusion.
The process of understanding the core of a case is by simply letting the patient lead you into his inner world. The most direct way offered by the patient is following his path from the main complaint along to the very meaning this complaint has in the context of his life.
Again the most direct path - yet rarely used - is to follow the exact expressions of the patient, not adding a single term or expression not mentioned by him. This path is to be followed until you reach the core of the case, with which all given symptoms are connected. This is the essence of the case where the central delusion and the characteristic symptoms together express the vital disturbance. (See figure 1)
Many of our homeopathic prescriptions are based on repertorisation of a superficial understanding of the case, the prescriber not being aware that the various symptoms given by the patient are still expression of an outer layer of the vital disturbance. Thus an essential step towards a successful prescription of a of a simillimum is often missed: the understanding of the connecting deeper level. This is possibly the reason for many prescriptions failing or being merely palliative. (See figure 2 )
What I described so far of the new developments in homoeopathy is the result of my personal observations on my leading question since the first day I studied homoeopathy:
Is there a more successful and consistent way of prescribing then the jumping from remedy to remedy in the treatment of one and the same patient, which I often saw during my training and during the time of my own first prescriptions? Coming from a scientific background I was looking for a congruent and more systematic method of prescribing
With this question constantly on my mind I observed the work of different practitioners and teachers from different schools over the years.
As written in “Changing Tides - a New Era in Homoeopathy” in more detail (published in Links 3, 2001 p.182, by the same author) I observed that the prescriptions of the Bombay group were highly consistent amongst different prescribers of the group, much in contrast to what I had seen from other of homoeopaths working together as groups . Secondly I also observed that the success rates using a single remedy throughout years, for whatever disease the patient developed, were exceedingly high, once this remedy was clearly identified.
Having studied thoroughly the systems of Sankaran and Scholten as well as the art of casetaking has not only changed my daily work, it also profoundly changed the rate of cured or clearly ameliorated patients in my own clinic.
Scientific data can clarify the discussion:
During the past 2 years the homoeopathic community has been involved in intense discussions on the benefit of these new approaches, as also reflected in the Links.
Here a scientific approach could play an important clarifying role:
Prominent homoeopaths like Vithoulkas or Andre Saine discredit the described new approaches as misleading, without giving clear data supporting their opinion. This strongly influences the current perception of homoeopaths of their own working field. For true advancement, we could leave the realm of opinions and turn to controlled studies which compare different approaches as objectively as possible. If in surgery different schools of surgeons would promote different surgical techniques and state that being operated by another method for the same disease might lead to a higher failure or even death rate, it would be most natural and in the interest of the patients to have studies carried out to see which method is the most suitable. Why not have clearly defined studies in homoeopathy with f.e. 100 patients for each of these schools coming for treatment with defined or various complaints and followed up for a time span of at least 2 years. Possible evaluation criteria might be: How many remedies were used? Which level of cure is achieved and maintained over the given time. The WHO gives a definition of health also well adaptable for homoeopathic cure:
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”…and is characterised by “the ability to live harmoniously in a changing environment”…
The suggested studies might free the homoeopathic community from futile schlammschlachten and clearly highlight the most effective way of achieving homoeopathic healing.
III. Can modern physics provide the missing link in explaining the effects of Homoeopathy - Homoeopathy : a trigger for the science of tomorrow?
But homoeopathy might well set standards for the science of tomorrow. One of the biggest strengths of our method is the otherwise unknown refinement of the observation of illness as well as the observation of the process of healing.
Jörg Wichmann states in his article:” Defining a different tradition for homoeopathy:
“Homoeopathy has been a forerunner of modern medicine as well, since Hahnemann and other early homoeopaths started to apply precise observation to medicine and to collect and compare structured experience.”
But homoeopathy until today is not aware of the enormous potential sleeping in the collected material of profound observations.
Until today allopathic scientific medicine is perceiving the organism in linear functions, mostly analysing individual organs or subfunctions and treating them accordingly. Many of the homoeopathically observed phenomena do not match these simple linear scientific models.
- In astronomy from the early days of exploration of the cosmos until the days of medieval Scholastics the observation throughout the millenia had led to the homocentric conception of the world seeing the planet Earth in the centre of the universe with the planets fixed to spheres revolving around it.
But Kopernikus and Galileo Galilei and later Newton rendered account to the fact that some of the observed exact planet movements did not match the given model.
Putting together exactly those parts which did not fit, led to a completely new perception of earth and mankind in the cosmic context. As we know the acceptance of this process was so painful that for decades complete denial and revocation was the answer to the new comprehension.
What does this have to do with homoeopathy?
None of the allopathic medical disciplines including psychiatry has yet developed the observation and perception of the patient as a whole, nor in such an exactness and depth as homoeopathy: In normal consultations a patient on average will give one single symptom if the doctor he sees is a specialist, 2- 3 symptoms, if he goes to a general practitioner and 8 symptoms if he goes to an acupuncturist.
The list of symptoms given by one patient to describe his entire state during homoeopathic consultation may reach tens to hundreds.It is due to the precise recording of the exact words of the patients during case-taking and provings that a very complex picture of disease and healing has been documented over a period of more than 200 years.
As pointed out in part II of this article disease can possibly be understood as a dysfunction that can produce tens or hundreds of symptoms all linked to the vital disturbance.
Provings have given evidence that any materialised structure if potentised and applied to provers - who don’t know which substance they are taking - produce a state where the symptoms of the prover are again linked in a central point. If a remedy is given to a patient produces exactly the same symptoms including the central disturbance as does the disease then we see the healing effect which Hahnemann called the simillimum effect. On the other hand the partial palliative cure reached by a homoeopathic medicine that ameliorates the state only in some of its symptoms has an effect that is more like the action of an allopathic drug.
The domain of allopathic treatment is the chemical level of reactions in our body.
Scientists estimate that in one cell in a living organism more than a 100 000 chemical reaction take place per second. No chemical reaction is fast and precise enough to modulate and coordinate all these reactions within one cell or even within billions of cells in one organism. From what we know today only physical phenomena like light or waves could meet the criteria of coordinating all these chemical reactions.
Scientific experiments in biophysics have shown that living organisms are a reservoir of electromagnetic waves.
Experiments in biophysics show that a disease produces a persisting pattern of a so-called “standing wave” with a specific wave pattern in the whole organism.
On the other hand scientific experiments on the physical properties of water have shown
that water as well has a storage capacity for information in the form of standing or persisting electromagnetic wave.
If an information is added to water and the water is moved with high speed it builds up so-called soliton molecules that store the information by a certain formation in space and a characteristic oscillating activity.
Long before knowing these modern scientific data, the well known homoeopathic procedure of succussion met exactly these criteria.
It was derived empirically by Hahnemann in his experiments.
Possibly a disease with its characteristic vital disturbance is also characterised by an electromagnetic standing wave, which can be reduced or blotted out if an exactly corresponding wave is applied to this organism in form of a homoeopathic remedy. This might be the physical correlate to the action of homoeopathy:
The mechanism that could explain this can be made visible in an experiment with 2 tuning forks:
If the tuning forks have the same characteristic tone which means the same wavelength then the wave of one tuning fork can be absorbed or enhanced by the other tuning fork, thus either enforcing the original oscillation or absorbing it. The correspondent phenomena in homoeopathy is most likely an aggravation if the remedy enforces the original pattern of a standing wave (figure 3a) .
Amelioration of the disease would be achieved if the waves of the diseased organism and the wave of homoeopathic remedy match exactly but are in opposite phase and thus erase each other (figure 3b).
(For details see Popp, Homoeopathy, a critical appraisal, edited by E. Ernst and E.G. Hahn, Butterwoth-Heine, Oxford1998, pp145-152, and Popp, personal communication)
IV: Meet the own prejudice: Alchemy and Homoeopathy
Working on this article and reflecting the hypothesis that homoeopathy could be seen in the context of alchemy (Wichmann, Links 4/01) I started reading on alchemy, as the only fact I “knew” about it was: that it is some predecessor of chemistry using complicated successions of heatings of obscurely named materials mainly to gain gold in the16th century.
But as I learned reading through the Encyclopaedia Britannica, alchemy or “the art”, as it is called in India, China, or Arabia, like astrology represents a millenia old attempt to discover the relationship of man to the cosmos and to exploit this relationship to his benefit.
Astrology is more concerned with the relationship to the stars and the solar system, while alchemy deals more with terrestrial nature. In China alchemistic thoughts are recorded in about a hundred books that are part of the Taoist canonical writings.
The described empirical observations of the homoeopathic healing process (part II and III of the article) might reveal new discoveries of the relationship of man and cosmos:
The empirical observation of provings, of disease and of healing points to the conclusion that a specific state in a living organism seems to correspond to an information that is preserved or expressed as a characteristic pattern in another materialised structure. Seen in the light of Sankaran’s and Scholten’s work these characteristic patterns of information of a materialised structure, -be it an element, a plant, an animal, or a nosode – seem to be organised in a systematic order in the periodic system as well as in plant and animal families.
This information seems to be highly specific for this kind of materialised structure, - alike the leitmotif (main theme) of a piece of music, which is characteristic for the whole composition.
- Possibly this is a condition for materialisation: a kind of main topic or melody or theme which is taken out of Creational Totality, - or Brahma as it is called in the East or Infinite or Omnipotence as called in the West.
Europe as well as the Arabic world has a long tradition of designing windows with coloured glass which is arranged in a certain pattern or a whole window scene. Maybe our vital state in its healthy parts is like a view through such a coloured glass, through which light falls and is fragmented and seen according to the motive of this window.
In its healthy and unhealthy aspects a specific main theme could possibly be a conditio sine qua non - a precondition of creation and materialisation of structures in the universe.
What we see as the delusion in a personality in his healthy aspect might be a specific theme as part of totality, - in its unhealthy and disease causing aspect it is like a deformed or distorted fragment of totality or a polluted window scene.
This is where homoeopathy seems to act, when the similimum is given: The clearing up of the window.
As healing proceeds sometimes even the freedom grows to open the window from time to time and let light itself fall in.
Actually modern brain research suggests that many actions and mental processes can be predicted if all the conditioning factors are known.
Unpredictable moments are possibly specific to the human brain and may even there be rare, corresponding to a phenomena of real inner freedom.
Possibly these are moments where we simply open the window of our inner to the outer world and to the incoming light without any filters or pictures ahead.
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