Homeopathy (Humorous)

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Saved from a Good Thing?

I try to give you good ideas. Here are some to chew on.

A gorgeous woman should perhaps be protected and saved from display by good customs.

Samuel Hahnemann (ca. 11 April 1755 – 1843), founded homeopathy in the 1700s. There is not much back-up for his healing system from the sciences. So let us entertain ourselves a bit, accordingly, for, sound and fertile proficiency sometimes shows up in humour that helps (someone).
"There's always help in the alternative remedies: either they help the one who tries them, or some others that make a living along with these things" - not to forget pharmacies who sell them.
Erich Fromm (1900-80), disciple of Sigmund Fromm, explains in his book The Heart of Man: Its Genius for Good and Evil (1964) that you can be saved to and saved from. That is easy to grasp. But try and sort out what kind of help or salvation could be involved when someone says "saved" or "helped", and you could be on the way of being informed.
So if a gorgeous woman smiles sweetly to you at a convention and asks, "Are you saved?" and it is not her trick to embarrass you and thereby keep you off her, there and then you should perhaps improve on Fromm's idea substantially, ask such as, "Saved next to whom, or what? Tonight?"
Hope to get fine data to these additions too: "who or what? How why and when? How far can it be substantiated?" Examples:

Saved from? Saved to? Saved by? Saved against? Saved amidst? Saved at? Saved before? Saved next to? Saved toward? Saved underneath? according to? Saved because of? Saved on account of? Saved wholly or in part, my dear?

Thus we get: "Saved before who or what? How why and when? How far can it be substantiated?" You can enlarge on each "saved-question above as seems fit to you. Needs differ. Was it homeopathy or Jesus or nothing or something else? "Helped" can replace "Saved" above, and there you go . . .
You may decide to keep your questioning within bounds too. Yet, it is a good thing to learn how to ask questions, also for journalists. Rudyard Kipling tells along this line:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.
From a poem in Kipling's "Just So Stories"

Journalists the world over are taught this poem to remember the interrogative pronouns that are capitalised in the poems. Yes, it can be a good thing to learn how to ask questions.

Anecdotal Evidence

Journalists like to tell stories, and stories of cures are most often called anecdotal evidence in medicine.

When someone tells, "I was helped (my life was saved) by homeopathy," it could be worse health and possible death that is referred to. But don't guess, try to make sure what is meant, and how well documented it is too. The idea is that homeopathy helped, even though it cannot be proved adequately most often. That is how it is.
I for my part can say: "I was saved from alarming alliergies - now I have none, according to blood tests. What was I "saved to"? To eat meat and peanuts to my heart's content, perhaps. But was it really homeopathy that helped? What if the intertwining effects of added diseases caused me to look healthy, and had I become like Montgomery Burns in the Simpsons? In one episode he was diagnosed. The medical expertise told him as a result that he looked well because a score of diseases kept one another at bay in him. It is a joke.
Or was it something else that had caused the cure in my case? Answer: In single cases we cannot prove anything. Single cases - impressive as they may seem - carry no proof power in science. They are taken to be anecdotal evidence, which may be interesting to hear of, but is not impressive to a scientifically trained mind. And that is not a joke.

Either a homeopathic remedy works or it doesn't. How can you tell?

Nearly twenty years back I experienced that either a homeopathic remedy worked in my case, or didn't . . . If it worked, its possible effects might have mingled with other tendencies and influences - some harmful, some helpful. It's often like that in real life: It is a complex web. Three options emerged:

Getting worse, helped anyhow?

Even if you got worse, the remedy could theoretically, have hindered that you got much worse.
Although you got much worse right after the intake, the remedy could have been completely ineffective in itself. White sugar is often said to have such healing propensies. Therefore it is suitable as a placebo.
And then again, you can't know if there was no deep and helpful effect of that medication either. Some remedies are said to be slow- and deep-acting. We find that note in primers in homeopathy, for sure. Realising this, there is the theoretical option that even if you got violently worse right after the administration, without that stuff you might you could have got frighteningly worse without it. Who can tell?

Is it not odd that these basic facts for one singular trial are so little highlighted?

Between Foolish Belief and Just as Foolish Distrust: Fit Research

If we think that lush postcards are typical of daily life at a place, it may not be the case. A gilded postcard view may not be fully representave. Fine photos that are highlighting, are often used to attract tourists. Anecdotal proofs and showcases can do much of the same for customers; that's how "jungle drums" work. Some appear to profit from them, others fall victims of unfounded hearsay.
There is no reason to become a fanatic. There are methods of documentation that may grow on top of individual cases. Professor Olof Lindahl has hammered out such a way in a book of his. [Cf. Læl]
Anyway, the day we learn to be carefully reserved, like good scientists are supposed to, we function much better than gullible ones. There is a proverb, "Twin fools: one doubts nothing, the other everything (Ap 166)." If we are uncertain and not well enough informed about a matter to form a mature or adequately founded opinion, tell so. That could the beginning of some improvements.
One stubborn error is to imagine that if you were ill, got homeopathic remedies or other help, and later got well, then it was due to the remedies. But just because one thing follows another in time, it does not mean that the first thing caused the second, or caused it fully. Below is an outlook that could change your attitude about so-called "outcomes" or results of such as homeopathic medicines.
At one point in time we are given a remedy, and then we get better, remain about the same, or get worse afterwards. The over-all idea is:

If we get better, it may not have been the remedy that caused it. Or maybe it was. Or we could have become far better without it, or not as much better without it.
If our health remains the same, we are prone to think the remedy did not work - but that is a fallacy, at least theoretically. If we remain the same, the remedy could have helped tremendously if we were heading for "doom and gloom" without it, perhaps without know it. In such a scenario, we may be prone to say, "The remedy did not help at all," even though it helped tremendously. It is also possible - although not very likely at all times - that we remain about the same, and think the remedy did not help us, while it actually harmed us without our knowing. That happens if we are slowly poisoned and deranged, or if we were actually improving unaided, and the remedy took us down. Think about it. A remedy may help, not work, or harm - these three options are there. In single cases you cannot tell what causes what either. That is a problem in single cases, and as patients we are just that - single cases.
If our health goes down after we get a remedy, we are perhaps polite and say, "Well, it did not help." However, how can we be sure. The remedy could have helped, had no effect, or actually dragged us down - and it is not easily found out in single cases.

In any single case, whether improving, remaining the same, or getting worse, one may think, "Could have been better, the same, or worse anyhow, and the medicine could have helped, been ineffective, or harmful at the time."

That sums up things very simplified, leaving out fluctuations and other complications. The value of placebo effects are to be counted in too, in actual life.
It is when single cases are compounded that side effects of some medicines are seen. Thus, we cannot rest content with what just seems to help (or hurt). We need to think deeper in some cases, at any rate.
Outcomes can hopefully be measured. And it may be a very good idea to write a diary from the cure you are undertaking. Maybe - maybe not - some patterns stand out.
Good statistics is a formidable help, but it does not always go well to deduce from an average account (statistical figures) to an individual case. They may not match, not completely - just as there is no average person to find either.

We Do Not Need to Jump to Horrible Conclusions

Scientific research is not geared to individual cases, but to averages calculated from dozens of single cases.

We need not rush to conclusions from what we read or hear, or think the remedy harmed us when it actually helped (theoretically possible), or helped us when it did not work at all. The latter option is what most common-sense scientists settle on in general about homeopathic preparations. The questions abound, then: What treatment was tried out, how well were the preparations "geared" to the problems, and are there not better procedures, better remedies, far better diagnosing to work with?"
This and that has to be well ascertained, and even this hypothesis: "You got better so fast that you got sick!" Actually, in homeopathic theory this phenomenon is counted on, and termed a "homeopathic first worsening", and considered good if controlled enough.
Repeat: One can't actually prove effects of a remedy in a singular case, but a suspicion may be well founded - perhaps also optimism and a beginning confidence.
So, some ideas look horrible at first sight, but win the day later, and vice versa.
Stress and hassles may kill, and stress stems from awkward coping also. Medical doctors estimate that over fifty percent of all bodily diseases have to do with psychosomatic influences, and let me add that stress is a major one among them. [Hi 515]

Professor Yehudah Levi

In North America and Western Europe, ten percent of the population of the world consumes fifty percent of its energy. (...)
The real danger to the Earth lies in this excessive consumption. (...)
This over-consumption is also manifest in our use of raw materials. It can even be found in our dietary habits. ... People are well aware of this.
The root of the problem lies in a selfish world view which inflates personal consumption beyond the essential. (...)
From the explicit prohibition against the destruction of fruit trees, our sages deduced that it is all the more forbidden to destroy the fruits themselves. (...)
One of the treasures of nature is beauty; this, too, should be preserved. (...)
Spoiling the landscape ... is clearly against the spirit of the Torah. (...)
The beauty of the environment is an important factor in the quality of life.
(As for a well planned city,) no generation has a right to change it as it wishes. The present generation is not the sole master over it. Rather, the future generations are equal to them in their rights. (...)
Cities originally surrounded by a wall can produce an urban population cut off from the surrounding fields and from agriculture altogether. At the same time, the greenbelt laws eliminate the possibility of the unchecked expansion of a city into a monstrous megalopolis. If there is a need for additional homes, a new city must be established. (...)
Sages expanded these laws to also prohibit psychological disturbances, such as possible exposure to a neighbour's observation, noise, and so on. [It helps to remove] the cause of the noise (...)
Particular nuisances (are) smoke, sewage odours, dust and similar aerosols, and vibrations. (...) These four nuisances are forms of pollution which are a source of great concern to this day. (...)
Aesthetic damage, such as littering in public places, is also included (...) This is where the Torah steps in. It comes to eliminate the prime cause of conflict by providing a (...) vision of an ecological paradise ... [Reference]

Learning More from Jews

What drives a person to rebukes? It seems to me that there are three reasons one would rebuke or criticise.

One is the obvious reason; that would be to alter a particular behaviour. ... Shimshon Rephael Hirsch, "Rebuke imposes on every member of the Jewish community generally not to remain silent when they see their Jewish companion’s big or small sins." Likewise in the realm of interpersonal relationships, one is obligated to allude to misdeeds.
The second reason for reprimand may be in order to avoid what the Talmud calls "silence is equivalent to acquiescence ." ... The Talmud goes on to explain that even after that initial objection the owner must declare his disapproval at least once every three years. It’s not enough to object once or twice, there must be a consistent voice of disapproval. ... Similarly when it comes to rebuking someone for a religious or social fault.
The third reason for reprimanding is less obvious ... we tell people of our disapproval of their behaviour ... to show them that we care. [Note: Shortened. Here's the reference]

The rabbi words add up to this: There is much to consider. There is much more to say about individual responsibility for one's own health here. And seriousness may rob much that matters to a mature educator, such as joie de vivre, joy of living.
It should be OK to get allied with "faith, suggestive impulses or coincidence" if helps, says Dr Lindahl and others. "So long as it helps" is the better key. To your own ulterior benefit, assert often "When in doubt, win the trick". [Edmund Hoyle] Instead of folding your hands in dire troubles, consider and act tentatively first, according to the proverb, "A thing done right today means less trouble tomorrow [Ap 588]." Pharmacy-obtained homeopathic sugar carrying Latin names, can be all right for not too serious and awkward self-help or home treatment.

Suck It Thus

Homeopathic remedies consist of sugar and next to nothing else. With high potencies their one and only substance is sugar (glucose and sucrose). Perhaps we may find they are aura organisers.
According to the British pioneer-investigator Malcolm Rae, the "strength" of a homeopathic remedy is well aligned with its somewhat old-fashioned name "potency". He has devised a scheme to use for comparisons and the like. The scheme he ended up with, is shown in a book he co-authored. [Ims]
Substances are macerated in alcohol or crushed into a fine powder, and next diluted to so-called infinitesimal quantities while shaken rather sternly over and over according to a scheme that stems from Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.
Mind it is not proper to use speculations about "infinitesimal doses" where there' is nothing at all but sugar. Let facts come first.

Technicalites

There are things that do not make homeopathy easy:

Lots of Latin names.
Quite uncertain boundaries for nearly each remedy described by symptom pictures attuned to it;
Unproved symptoms for each remedy.

As for potencies, go gently. That is, start with low potencies (low numbers) if you are no expert. You may step up the potencies later. It generally takes time - months at least.
Also, it is a "golden rule" that low potencies are for acute problems, and high potencies for long-lasting, more chronic and delicate diseases and disturbances. But start gently in these cases too, to reduce the risks of ruffling the health of the patients, among other things. Refrain from administering potencies above D200 or c100 as an amateur. Just go gently til you have lots of experience. Safety first, in other words - adhere to basic "rules" from a 200-year old tradition to be on the safe side.
Then keep your head above the confusion as well: What you get - speaking of chemical ingredients that matter over and above the dosage D6 - is sugar pills carrying different Latin names, and shabbiness should not be welcome.
The codes D6, D30, D200 speak for dosages - quite harmless. In English-speaking countries you're likely to meet with C instead of D. Thus: c6, c30, c100 - Replace "D200" with "c100" and feel happy about it, if you don't mind. As for CM. it can be largely the same, more or less.
As a self-tester or self-helper - choose the term you like best - What to do on your own and far from an estiblished "know-all":

D 6: Try 6 small, round pills (or 2-3- tablets) three times a day for at least 6 weeks.
c12 or D12: Similarly: 6 sugar pills three times a day. Space them out as best you can. Further, I would strive to drop "D6".
c30 or D30: 10-12 sugary pills twice a day is best, or maybe you can do with once a day, with less severe symptoms - I don't know. Suck them carefully morning and evening to allow the "faith" inside them the "full, spaced-out time" to do their work, thank you.
c100 or D200: About 12 pills every third or fourth day for c100, (two times a week).
As for D200, try each 5th day (quite ideally). If you have troubles with that, a severely faltering dosage - once a week - may be better than not at all, but I would not bet on that.
CM: Once every second month, and up to two or three times should be enough. Empty the whole glass for one dose. Suck well, slowly. Use ten minutes for it.
Special aid: Always try to back up the "heavy CM" with such as c100 (or if not had, get c30 or D30) of the very same remedy. Thus: start a round - or "cure attempt" if that feels better - by imbibing the CM stuff, and follow up by sucking c100 or D200, or c30 or D30 for many weeks after it - mre than four, it is suggested, and not less than three, if you can get to it. Now, this quite traditional way of dispensing was devised to lessen some special troubles or pains. You may try it out.

Homeopathic potencies over and above D30 (slightly less than that, really), contain nothing of the original substances. There's nothing but alcohol and "alcohol diluted in alcohol", or "water diluted in water" if we talk of chemical components. Avogadro's constant in chemistry shows it to be the case.

Homeopathic Nosodes

In 1980-81 a Danish government official informed me, "Even if there shouldn't be one molecule left of anything but sugar (or alcohol) in the D30 potency, still there have been found dangerous bacteria or toxins!" She talked of homeopathic nosodes; they are homeopathic remedies too, prepared from microbes or virus that give us chicken pox, measles, and so on.
So, in some provings referred to by a Danish public servant that surveilled these matters, there were found bacteria in some of the homeopathic nososes of the D30 "strenght" - that dilution called "potency". This was so, even though the theoretical average (according to Avogadro's constant) indicated they were gone. But since microbes cluster and and don't behave mechanically, we do get such surprises.
Avogadro's constant (Avogadro's number) give us a rule of the thumb that is most welcome, but not perfectly descriptive for real life practice.

On Homeopathic Literature

There are many books on homeopathy, some old ones, some more modern. To survey new ones, try Amazon.com. Homeopathic literature may give us details that fit, but may be terribly weak in theory. It is also good to know that it is not clear-cut about what symptoms each remedy covers. There are differences of opinion among homeopathy authors.
Still, be allied with the helpful placebo effect from "Autosuggestion, belief, goodwill, coincidence" [Lnp]

Smartness

To reduce remedy costs to a fraction, learn to make your own homeopathic remedies from those you buy at the pharmacist. It is easy to do, and all right too. [LINK]

Literature
Ap: Mieder, Wolfgang, main ed.: A Dictionary of American Proverbs. Paperback ed. Oxford University. New York, 1996.
Dp: Fergusson, Rosalind: The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs. Penguin. Harmondsworth, 1983.
Lpv: Schelderup, Vilhelm: Legekunsten på nye veier: akupunktur - biofysikk - helhetsmedisin. Cappelen. Oslo, 1980.
Boericke, William and Oscar: Homoeopathic Materia Medica. 9th ed. Boericke and Runyon. Philadelphia, 1927.
Lindahl, Olof and Lindwall, Lars: Laegevidenskaben i nyt perspektiv. Reitzel. Copenhagen, 1979.
Vithoulkas, George: The Science of Homeopathy. Grove Press. New York, 1980.
Voegeli, Adolf: Heilkunst in neuer Sicht, 7. Aufl. Haug. Heidelberg, 1991 (orig. 1955)
Voegeli, Adolf: Homoeopathic Prescribing. Thorsons. Wellingborough, 1976.

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