Homoeopathy versus tricks

In this blog I will explain some of the essential facts about homoeopathy. These are also described in ‘Homoeopathia Pura’ and ‘Philosophy and Medicine’. The first book is available in bookshops and over the Internet. This article offers a theory about homoeopathy. This theory in not based on modern clinical theories (you cannot find any justification for homoeopathy within this sphere) but instead on an old Greek philosopher: Aristotle. He gives you an insight into nature that has been lost since Descartes. I will discuss some remarks made by these philosophers. At the same time I will discuss the book by Dr Ernst and Mister Singh in which the authors fail to justify homoeopathic medicine, practically and theoretically. This is because they tried to study it from the clinical point of view. (I will publish this article in three parts).

I shall begin with some theoretical information.

1. I discovered it around 1964. Doctor van‘t Riet made me aware of the treatment I was looking for. He taught me the treatment for the unity of the living person. Splendid! Soon enough, I had to defend myself against attacks from different sides and above all from a peculiar accusation, i.e. that it is not scientific. Homoeopathy has been practised for two hundred years, but has also been abused for two hundred years by homoeopaths who do not understand its proper nature; and attacked for two hundred years by clinicians who want to extinguish it. These medical doctors accuse homeopathy of the worst crime for academic people: not being scientific. So I prepared myself to defend homoeopathic medicine against the false assaults. I joined the philosophical army.

2. In the meantime, the attacks were always repeated with the same arguments. But it takes time to prepare oneself against untrue attacks. Now, after many years of practice and study I think I am prepared to unmask and disentangle the nonsense that people have said about homoeopathic medicine. And see, Doctor Ernst and his comrades enter the scene misusing the concept of truth as reflected by their ignorance of the basic laws of homoeopathic science. Some forty years ago, there was much criticism of homoeopathy. I knew the way to answer it, but I was not prepared enough to refute it. It needed further study. Now after forty years, the critics are the same and I think I am capable of answering all of the nonsense that is written about homoeopathy. For this reason, I wrote two books in Dutch: ‘Homoeopathy Pura’ and ‘Philosophy and Medicine’. For the second book I am looking for an English publisher. The first has been translated and can be obtained in bookshops.

‘Homoeopathia Pura’ is, in contrast to ‘Philosophy and Medicine’, not scientific but more of an introduction for patients and clinical doctors. It informs them about the basic essentials of homoeopathic medicine. The book describes some characteristic parts of the human being, of the body and its tension field, which could not be discovered in the way in which the clinical doctors are studying the living human being. It also studies homoeopathic medicines, how they are prepared; what the best way is to get a diagnosis with the use of the Repertory of Kent in combination with the use of the ArmTest Procedure III. After reading it, you will understand the way a normal homoeopathic doctor practices and may begin to study ‘Philosophy and Medicine’.

3. This blog, however, will also help you to be aware of the wrong ideas about homoeopathy. For instance, there are the incorrect ideas in the book by Doctor Ernst and his associate Simon Singh, journalist. In their book ‘Tricks or Treatment’, they demonstrate their absolute lack of understanding of the basic principles of homoeopathy. I will make this clear in my extensive criticism of their book. But first, I will follow the easy way that is more understandable for patients. After this first criticism I will try to give more information about the nature of living creatures, especially man. This may be a good introduction to the next commentary on ‘Tricks or Treatment’. These Tricks are really antics, full of misunderstandings. It is, and I must emphasize this, scientifically and homoeopathically a book that does not demonstrate any comprehension of homoeopathic nature, however positive the clinically-based critics may be. My commentary, however, makes use of some of the subjects incorrectly discussed in the book. That which is wrong with it can be converted into real truth and real science that homoeopathy itself includes. I will try to make the all-embracing and forgotten nature of its Aristotelian philosophical base and structure clear.

The English Blog starts with an initial criticism of ‘Tricks or Treatment’. The book has the nerve to nullify all of the treatments that do not belong to the clinics or that are not justified by clinical laws. I will restrict my criticism to the theoretical and the homoeopathic part of the book. I am well informed in both subjects. In this first criticism I will focus especially on the way clinicians do homoeopathic provings. They do not show any comprehension for the subject they are dealing with.

‘Tricks or Treatment’, a first impression.

4. For thirty years, I had a private homoeopathic practice. Many times I was astonished by the opposition to this medical science. It’s hard to believe that doctors could deny the action of homoeopathic remedies. Patients of good homoeopathic doctors would know better. What is the argument against us? We get an answer from the German–English medical doctor Dr. Edzard Ernst and his co-author Simon Singh in their book ‘Tricks or Treatment’. Their opposition to homoeopathy is nonsense. But perhaps you will be surprised to know that there were positive reactions in some journals with regard to this book. I wasn’t. I have read many negative reactions to homoeopathy and through practice and study I have developed an effective answer for them. For the aforementioned gentlemen, I also have arguments.

5. ‘Tricks or Treatment’ is a peculiar book. The authors use the words ‘truth’ and ‘science’ to negate the action of alternative medicine. I think they apply ‘truth’ incorrectly; that what they called true is not true; their truth with regard to homoeopathy is a simple lie. Nor do they understand the proper nature of homoeopathic science. I will try to explain my point.

Truth means saying what something really is or what really happened. If you take a ball in your hand and say, “this is a ball”, then your statement is true. Saying “this is a cube” is not true. There are many statements such as these, even in medical diagnosis. If you say: this is a broken bone, or measles, or a stomach ulcer, it can be true or false. However, when stating about a patient “this is a sulphur picture”, it may be true or not true for the homoeopath only. For the clinician however, it will always be untrue, because for him there is no such diagnosis as a sulphur picture. Why would a doctor make a nonsense statement such as this? What does the doctor know about homoeopathy? I will give you the answer with the help of the research described in ‘Tricks or Treatment’. It is research that is labelled homoeopathic. But this is not true. It is clinically formed research.

6. The research described in the book is about a group of a hundred calves with diarrhoea. They split the group in two. One group of the animals got Podophyllum, the other a placebo, a pill with no medicine. If the Podophyllum would act on the animals in the Podophyllum group, there would be a lot of animals cured as a result. But there were none. Statistically, there was no improvement in comparison to the placebo group. The conclusion of the researchers: homoeopathy does not work. But everybody who knows a little bit about homoeopathy will know that the result is what you would expect because the experiment is not done homoeopathically. In this experiment it is impossible to have a positive effect, because the experiment is set up clinically and not homoeopathically. What’s wrong with it? The error. During a homoeopathic consultation, homoeopaths look for the typical symptoms that fit an individual as a whole, the patient’s picture, the mosaic of symptoms that indicates a specific remedy. They are not restricted to one symptom but are looking for one or more mosaics of symptoms fitting one or more remedies. They will compare this picture with several remedy pictures and, using the law of similia, they will give the remedy that fits most closely with the symptoms of the individual. Different patients with diarrhoea that have a different mosaic of symptoms will need different remedies.

This datum applies to the study on calves with diarrhoea. The remedy that has to be given to a calf must have the same mosaic of symptoms as the calf itself. Only then it is possible to get a true result and a correct answer. However, after giving all of the calves in the medical group the same remedy, for example Podophyllum, only the animals that have the Podophyllum picture will be cured. The possibility of this happening is small. Consequently, the same rule of similia must be applied to both animals and people. Therefore, for animals and men, apply the same rules.

7. In homoeopathic diagnosis we have to deal with the law of similia. A remedy must have a mosaic of symptoms similar to the mosaic of symptoms of the calves. The clinical doctor in this research, however, takes one remedy that fits one symptom and gives this remedy to all the calves. In these cases the authors use the word ‘truth’, but in fact they are ignorant about the subject. They repeat the word ‘truth’ and, if we want to stay polite, every time we must exchange it for ‘ignorance’.

In this study, we found neither truth nor a correct science. The application of the same remedy is a clear sign of the ignorance regarding homoeopathy itself. There has been no study for the fitting mosaic, which would be homoeopathically correct, but only a study and application of one remedy that may help only in some cases. This is not a homoeopathic way of handling the situation, but a clinical approach. In the clinical approach, the procedure is the following: one physical defect, one and the same remedy for all. In homoeopathy, every individual has to be treated separately.

In a nutshell, this book is a farce. There is neither truth nor science adapted to homoeopathy in this book. For more about homoeopathy and science see the site:

www.pmc-phil.com.

Pieter-Michel Constant, retired homoeopathic doctor, active philosopher





8. I will now discuss some remarks about homoeopathy and its nature, and give a short reflection on ‘what it is’ and why it is difficult for a clinician to understand its nature and its reality. Clinicians tried to fit homoeopathic theory into clinical science. As part of modern science, it is based primarily on the physical Cartesian structure. As a result, it is lacking insight into the Aristotelian nature of homoeopathy. Therefore, first I have to describe the difference between Aristotelian and Cartesian physics.

The Aristotelian nature of homoeopathic science in comparison to Cartesian-based clinical science. Homoeopathy has not been invented, it was discovered. Inventing means that an inventor makes something new that did not exist before. By inventing something, nature has been changed and the inventor gets credit for what he has made. A discovery, on the other hand, means that one finds some qualities in nature that have never been known before. The discoverer gives information about the characteristics of nature itself, what it is, how it develops, how it originates. One of the most important almost-forgotten discoveries is that of substance and its Aristotelian distinction of matter and form . Every subject has two layers that occupy the same space; they are synlocant.

9. Now we need some history. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists began to eagerly search for the smallest particles. This is still going on today. Chemists, physicists and biologists etc. were all searching for it as if it was the ‘Philosopher’s Stone’. Everyone found the smallest unities (molecules, atoms, genes, etc.). However, in addition to the knowledge of smaller and smaller particles in nature, there are other phenomena worth considering. One of them is the research performed by Hahnemann who found the wholeness of the individual living being different from that of the non-living creature. I call it the law of the unity. Along with this, he discovered another phenomenon; it is the law of the similia. The law of the similia expresses the similarity between the symptoms found in the patient and those that the remedy brought about by experiments on healthy people. Characteristics of nature, the wholeness and the similia express themselves in a way not explained by all of the discovered particles. Both laws, homoeopaths will agree, are still true and observed in every thorough homoeopathic investigation. It is the heart of homoeopathy. But unfortunately, Hahnemann had some other expressions that did not correspond with the inventions of the scientists or with those of the hard core of homoeopathic theory. The wholeness, the unity of the individual substance and three other laws really belong to this core. His discovery, however, was not in keeping with the spirit of the age I have just described. On the contrary, it was fully in opposition to it. The clinicians demand that homoeopaths justify their laws with help from clinical theories. Until I found this theory by Aristotle, there was no theory to explain the homoeopathic laws. The practical-thinking homoeopaths can do without a theory; they have enough proof from their daily homoeopathic practice. But the clinicians want the theoretical clinical theories as a base for homoeopathic science. They require that homoeopathic data fit within the clinical theory and that it becomes understandable thanks to the structure of their scientific theory. This means that they wanted you to find the explanation of homoeopathic laws in the theory of modern physics. This is impossible. If you split up the unity of the whole, you lose the wholeness. Only particles remain and the wholeness cannot be justified by this science of parts.

10. There is more. I learned from Aristotle that there are two different layers in the substance, the unity of living and non-living things. Synlocant(!) we find the form, a layer that justifies the unity of things, and the layer of the matter that, as it turns out, exists of many kinds of particles (molecules, etc). Therefore, Aristotle discovered the distinction between matter and form. Matter is the basic layer that has the molecules. Form has the qualities. In the non-living it is the consistency and in the living there are the faculties of the soul. Both have their own scientific approach. Modern sciences such as chemistry study nature with the help of fragmentation; it is a division into parts, with the help of mathematical constructions. Its practitioners discovered the molecules. The form is studied with the help of distinctions, for instance the faculties of the soul. Both have their own medical way of approaching the patient. We have seen the Cartesian way of matter in the clinic and the Aristotelian form that is represented by homoeopathic medicine. Both have their own ontological conception, although united by the unity of the substance. But still both conceptions differ in a fundamental way. So there was and is much conflict with each other...

The fight is still continuing and the party of fragmentation is still winning. Every particle that has been found has made a hero of its discoverer. This, however, doesn’t mean that the Unitarian doctor is not in the right. On the one side, the scientist splits the whole and will never find the unity; on the other side the homoeopath had no theory of his approach to nature until recently. Because it was lacking theoretically, the clinician rejected the homoeopathic data of practice. He thought his system was absolute. Every medical system has to submit itself to this absolute theoretical system. But why should I, as a homoeopath, submit my theory to a theory that is limited in itself. There are many medical approaches, why should I make the clinical approach the reigning hero? Because it has many blind spots to the reality of other approaches and is lacking in the knowledge of its own limitations, which is the reason for its self-exaltation?

11. So we have found:

The unity of substance: this thing (stone etc.), this living creature (plant, animal).

The substance has two layers, the matter and the form.

Non-living: matter is the basic structure (the molecules of the stone), form its consistency.

In the living: anatomy and physiology are its matter and the faculties of the soul are the form.

Matter: the ever more-divided part.

Form: the one part that gives unity with its distinctions.

Now let’s look at the difference between the practice and theory of two medical systems: the clinical and the homoeopathic.

12. The clinical approach to a patient.

The practice of the clinical approach to the patient seems to be the search for isolated pathological abnormalities: anatomical parts, parts of the hormonal or genetic system. The parts they seek are malfunctioning parts that have to be treated by them. In all aspects, chemically, physically and physiologically, everywhere there is the same method of diagnosis: a local, isolated abnormality that must be made visible and is always partial. Visible, because of the philosophical dogma that invisible entities do not exist; partial because the unity of the living is an unknown item of which its own way of existence is denied. A patient is regarded as a conglomerate of parts and particles and one or some of them are malfunctioning. The doctor’s job is to act on these isolated abnormal structures. We cannot deny that the results are partly amazing and partly shocking.

The theory of the clinical approach. A massive system of laws and theories gives the rules according to which the therapy has to be done. In this case, the individual approaches of patients are isolated from each other also.

Conclusion. This medical system is a totality of local individual theories and laws linked with practical approaches. The totality of a system such as this is just the sum of these individual theories and practices and no more. The living object is no more than the sum of its parts. If there is an entity that coordinates these individual activities of the living being, it is united with all of those parts of the living. However, this entity cannot be justified nor repudiated with help from these isolated existing parts. The clinician rejects its existence because of an unjustified overconfidence in his own system and the impossibility to justify it within his theoretical system.

13. The homoeopathic approach to the sick person.

All of the expressions of homoeopathic medicine indicate the existence of a unity. The diagnosis concerns the unity of the individual patient. The homoeopathic remedy has its symptoms in all of the regions of the patient. The therapy is one remedy at the time. The field of activity may comprise symptoms in all or many different regions. Different remedies are given one at a time, at intervals that depend on the case that is treated.

The theory of homoeopathy is based on the data obtained through practice. Hahnemann discovered that after giving a homoeopathically prepared remedy, symptoms appeared all over the patient. They are not restricted to one special part of the body. A second remarkable symptom is that potentiating a remedy makes its influence more effective, although, through the special preparation, there is nothing left of the original substance. To find an explanation for these phenomena, around 1964 I started the study of philosophy and found two things.

First, I found the explanation for both of the phenomena. It is Aristotle who, four centuries before our Christian era, had discovered the unity of living and non-living things. We call this unity the substance. He discovered within the substance two fundamental regions, two layers, namely the matter and the form, both present at the same place. We say that they are ‘synlocant’. The matter is the basic layer that turned out to be the modern molecular region. There is nothing wrong with it. The form is a kind of tension field in the living and non-living and will be united in the living with the vegetable faculty. In the living, from plant to human being, we have the vegetative processes. Aristotle discovered the faculty that has a governing function with regard to these processes. I call it the steering or governing layer. Because of the data we employ in homoeopathic practice, I have concluded that the tension field will be united in the living with the vegetable faculty. The latter is not identical with the vegetative processes, but these processes are governed by it.

Second, there is nothing wrong with it, except one thing: unity is in the blind spot of the clinicians. This means that the characteristics of the unity cannot be recognized by modern scientific research. They cannot justify the expressions of the unity of the body within their theories or practice. Therefore, they deny its existence and so homoeopathic medicine does not exist for them. This is mostly because an idea that prevails in modern philosophical thinking, which is the hypothesis that if something cannot be observed by scientific observation, this means that it does not exist. Therefore, the modern mind will reject the existence of the human intellectual soul, angels, God or whatever. This is true even more so because modern science is not able to justify the existence of things that are not observable by the senses or instruments. It provides the borders to the possibilities of science. Unfortunately for the clinicians, there is homoeopathy.

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There will be more next month.