Why are post involving medicines (or quackery)on this sub-forum?

HOW HOMEOPATHY WORKS Part 1

The healthy immune system recognises and then responds appropriately to a disease agent. The disease is overcome, and usually without symptoms. (Exception: Epidemic disease agents, which can significantly stress even the Healthiest immune system.)

When the immune system is in a weakened state, either as a result of environment/lifestyle factors, or through genetic inheritance, the disease agent may not be overcome. Symptoms present, indicating failure, but in a pattern unique for each type of fault (i.e. this person's immune system fault).

There are nearly always many symptoms occurring, an outward expression of failing immune system activities, and these symptoms need to be carefully gathered up so that the most appropriate medicine (i.e., the one with exactly the same symptoms) can be found.

A Homeopathic medicine, unlike disease agents, produces its characteristic symptom pattern in ALL PEOPLE. Each medicine has :

(1) a unique "total symptom pattern" associated with it, and,

(2) a smaller group of symptoms which are "specific" to, or "peculiar" to, it.

Anybody can take a Homeopathic medicine and, provided some simple precautions are taken, predictable symptoms will result. For this to always happen, the medicine must be acting more deeply than just at the level of generation of individual symptoms. It acts on a process or processes which bring about this pattern of symptoms.

Symptoms are known to be associated with immune system activities, so it is inferred that the medicine also acts at the level of immune system activities.

How does the medicine work?

1. Administration:

The medicine with the closest matching symptoms is given to the patient in a dose that induces a marginal increase in ALL the common symptoms between the patient's disease and the medicine's documented symptoms.

At the moment this occurs, remarkably, healthy immune system activities resume in the patient, and the disease resolves in the time it would normally take to resolve in a healthy person.

2. How?

We can only speculate (but there are so many clues, a likely mechanism should be possible). The medicine produces the same symptoms as the disease agent, so is the medicine a mimic of the disease agent? But the medicine contains no disease agent! Could it act by "re-triggering the same kind of immune response in the patient as the disease agent did", to get things going again? A kind of re-enforcement or restatement of the disease because the immune system had lost its way?

Or, this would not necessarily be a re-triggering of STEP 1 (the immune response), but of any failing step of immune system processing, identified by the pattern of symptoms which results when the faulty step fails.

The medicine seems to be JUST THE SIGNAL to trigger a specific immune system activity(ies) because it happens in ALL people.
The disease agent does not produce this pattern of symptoms in all people.

Homeopathy ONLY WORKS when the matching IS TO THIS PATIENT'S SYMPTOMS, not the symptoms known to be associated with the disease agent.

So, the Homeopathic medicine is believed to act on A FAULTY STATE OF THE IMMUNE SYSTEM, which it overcomes by inducing repetition or reinforcement of that step.
In his later work on the chronic diseases, Hahnemann devised a way of accelerating the cure of chronic diseases. These diseases can take months or even years to fully resolve after the medicine has been administered. By dose repetition at short intervals, Hahnemann was able to PUSH the cure forwards, shortening recovery time to a matter of weeks. This was accomplished by using the Q-potencies (developed near the end of his life). Normally, diseases cannot be PUSHED in this way...doses at short intervals cause symptom aggravations which interrupt cure.

Although there is good symptom matching between medicine and patient's disease, giving the appearance of similarity, the medicine is fundamentally different from the patient's disease.

The patient's disease is a group of symptoms; outward manifestations of failing/failed internal immune system activities...very real changes in the body.
The medicine is nothing but a signal that initiates the very same outwards presenting symptoms.

End of Part 1.

I need another cup of coffee.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Big Blue,

Just read your post.

Re. cancer and Koch's postulates, I was surprised myself, but will include details of this from Mitchinson's Pathology tomorrow. The book is up-to-date.

Must buzz off.

Tim

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Timokay: Sorry to repeat myself, but I would still like to know whether you and Hahnemannian are arguing from the same position.

There have been several quotes from Hahnemannian which I will relate:

These follow Hahnemannian's more general trend of asserting absolute truth of homeopath and an associated absolute belief that the mechanism of homeopathy is rooted in some relatively new fields of highly theoretical physics. (Vacuum energy &c.)

On the other hand, Timokay's stated view so far is that homeopathy is a direct way of dealing with the immunological processes of the human body, and that the belief in its effectiveness comes from experimental evidence rather than from any true understanding of its mechanism.

Is this a point on which the two of you disagree? Or am I not understanding your position?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Originally posted by timokay
The first step is to repeat the Medicine "Provings" (where each medicine is tested for all the symptoms it produces) under double-blind placebo-controlled conditions. Do you agree that this use of scientific method might open doors? [/QUOTE] No. Skip straight to the statistical survey to find out if it actually works. "Provings" prove nothing because they are completely subjective. People will describe the same symptoms ina variety of ways. It is completely up the the docotr to decide if this is close to the intended effect. The statisical proof will demonstrate beyond a doubt that SOMETHING you are doing has positive effects. Otherwise, who cares.