Preparation of medicinal solutions

I’m often asked about preparation of remedies for dosing, especially in connection with use of LM potencies.  I’ve quoted David Little’s article on Solutions Large and Small below in full.  You can read the original here.  David also describes the experiments he carried out.

 

Solutions Large and Small
Preparation of the Medicinal Solution

The question of how to make a medicinal solution has been raised. Our research group uses the Hahnemannian Standard as discussed in The Chronic Diseases and The 6th Organon of the Healing Arts. The reason for this is twofold.

Aphorism 273: If something is not necessary it is not permissible…

just another IKEA philosophy statement…

As I think people reading this blog are aware, I have no patience with those who relegate the Organon the status of philosophy, and thus consigning it to dusty shelves rather than using it as a manual of practice. It’s a bit like calling the instruction leaflet you get with your IKEA kitchen / bookshelf / cupboard “the IKEA philosophy statement”, and not referring to it when you try to build the darn thing.

Empathy in case-taking

This article was prompted by a discussion with a colleague regarding an old post of mine, entitled “What We Know and What We don’t Know”. Our discussion took us into the subject covered by Dr. Gary Weaver’s original post, on “The Realities of Practice”. In his article, amongst other things Gary set out a prescribing process for a busy clinic where 40-100 patients may be seen a day by splitting up case-taking between one prescriber and two or three nurses or advanced students.  The main symptoms of the case are elicited by the prescriber’s assistants.   The patient is then brought to the prescriber for further questioning, analysis and prescription. This kind of clinic is more common in India, and much less common elsewhere. Many, if not most of us work privately with patients, and I don’t know if any such volume clinics exist in the West.

The point, however, is that clear symptoms may be taken by the assistants within 20 minutes, and that deeper investigation and analysis should not take the prescriber longer than a further half an hour, often much less.

On Idiosyncracy, Provings and Campbell’s soup.

No, this is not an advert…

On Idiosyncracy, provings and Campbell’s soup.

I was working with a nutritionist a long time ago, and our conversation turned to a recent scandal about food-poisoning from Campbell’s soup. There had been an uproar at the time, and the company countered with a statement that the risk was only one in ten thousand. “That’s all very well,” countered the nutritionist, “but it doesn’t help if you’re the one…”

Organon Audios: Aphorisms 1-9

This is a new project – opinions please…

(and for the observant, there are at least two misread words…, I know…)

The cheapest and most effective homoeopathy course

warning: this post may make you think…

I have seen so many queries on the internet about the best school to study homoeopathy. About the costs of effective foundation courses. But if someone sincerely wants to study and afterwards practice homoeopathy – their best initial option for true foundation studies is to avoid the schools altogether.

So what’s the cheapest and most effective way to study homoeopathy?

Who’s who? Who’s Hughes…

The Chronic Diseases provings are annotated by Richard Hughes.  Many of the notes relate to Hughes’ view of Hahnemann’s work and methodology.  Should we accept Hughes’ notes at face value?  Take them with a grain of salt?  Ignore them altogether?

Viewed through Proving: Calcarea Carbonica, holistically speaking…

Someone spoke to me recently about a friend who seemed to have had many extreme medical interventions.  “he’s had to go through so many operations,” my friend related, “but he is better after every operation.”
“Until the next one…” I prompted
“Well,” my friend explained, “the next operation is always for something completely unrelated…”

Is there such a thing as a body part or system that is unrelated to the rest of the organism?  One of the most interesting things I find in provings is when we see demonstrations that this is clearly not so.  Often an aggravation or amelioration can be seen to affect the whole organism, not just the part or system one would expect to be affected.  Sometimes we see this in provings, sometimes we see it clinically, and the concept formed part of the basis for Boenninghausen’s therapeutic pocketbook, where he generalized modalities.

Silly old duffer? Really?

I’ve always hesitated to post this clip in case there are some (and there always are some…) who will take it seriously. Harold’s night-time soliloquy on the way Hahnemann is perceived by many in homoeopathy is intended to be sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek.

It feels ridiculous to have to “get” people to read the works of the founder of homoeopathy.  Some seem to perceive it as being required to read Beowulf in order to understand the basics of English Literature.   Hahnemann’s works are not an antiquated form of homoeopathic writing that should be read to show you are an educated homoeopath, and for no other purpose.  They contain in so many instances the best instructions you will ever get on how to prescribe and how to manage cases.

Organon: Aphorism 1

I’ll be presenting Aphorisms from Hahnemann’s Organon (6th edition) here, sometimes with commentary.    Emphases, italics etc. are mainly mine.

What I find consistently interesting in Hahnemann’s writings is the mix of what sounds like overweening arrogance at times, coupled with a sincere and deep humility.  Hahnemann never professes to understand exactly how homoeopathy works.  He presents an option later on in the Organon as to a possible theory, but states that it’s a possibility.  He repeats over and again in his writings, and in one of my favourite paragraphs in Chronic Diseases, which I’ll probably reproduce here as I manage to put it into every blog project and course I ever teach, that he doesn’t know how it works.  He has some ideas, but he never presents them as a final explanation.   The most important thing is not how it works, but how to work it.  It’s a method, aimed at achieving an objective – i.e. cure.

Aphorism 1:

The physician’s high and only mission is to restore the sick to health, to cure, as it is termed. [1]

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[1] His mission is not, however, to construct so-called systems, by interweaving empty speculations and hypotheses concerning the internal essential nature of the vital processes and the mode in which diseases originate in the interior of the organism, (whereon so many physicians have hitherto ambitiously wasted their talents and their time).

Nor is it to attempt to give countless explanations regarding the phenomena in diseases and their proximate cause (which must ever remain concealed), wrapped in unintelligible words and an inflated abstract mode of expression, which should sound very learned in order to astonish the ignorant – whilst sick humanity sighs in vain for aid.

Of such learned reveries (to which the name of theoretic medicine is given, and for which special professorships are instituted) we have had quite enough, and it is now high time that all who call themselves physicians should at length cease to deceive suffering mankind with mere talk, and begin now, instead, for once to act, that is, really to help and to cure.