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Homeopathy 4 Everyone - Editorial |
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| July, 2008 | ||||
A Sad Editor!- Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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| Dear Friends, It has been more than a year since we started an open dialogue through this e-journal, to discuss the various controversial questions in homeopathy and different methods of practice, on an open platform. Over the last one year, we have discussed various facets of homeopathy with the likes of Grant Bentley, Luc de Schepper, George Vithoulkas, Ulrich Welte, Rajan Sankaran, Jeremy Sherr, Jan Scholten, David Little, Isaac Golden, Rudi Verspoor, Peter Chappell, A.U. Ramakrishnan, Alize Timmerman, Beth Rotondo, Nancy Herrick, Peter Gregory, Urvi Chauhan, Miranda Castro, Dietmar Payrhuber and many others. Hpathy is thankful to everyone who has participated in this open exchange of information and experiences. Discussion with all these stalwarts and sharing of information has enriched us all. We have been able to present different, sometimes even contradictory views on one platform. Homeopaths from across the world have shared their thoughts, views and cases, without bothering about the school of thought that they belong to. Something like this has never happened to the homeopathic community before. The effort has been appreciated from every quarter. Still, the editor in me is sad today! When we started the dialogue, some friends warned that we were planning to walk on slippery grounds. I said - "Never mind! Controversies are bound to happen but we'll manage. There is nothing to lose". We never expected the task to be easy and keeping a neutral balance between all these myriad ideas, thoughts, schools, discoveries, the fight between the old and new - has not been easy either. Time and again, I have been criticized for promoting non-classical homeopathy or for taking sides. People have at times even questioned my integrity, knowledge and capability to do what we had been trying to do - to bring together information about all the schools and thoughts related to homeopathy at one central place and to initiate an open dialogue between opposing thoughts. Month after month, in an effort to heal, in an effort to bring together people from opposing schools - I have not just witnessed, but at times, have been dragged into personal feuds and animosities. But I am an optimist by heart and I have always felt that the positive in this, is much more than the negative. And we have carried on! People think that as an editor, I am a judge. I have to judge what is right homeopathy and what is wrong and then I have to publish only that which is 'right' homeopathy. But I personally do not see myself as a judge. I see Hpathy as a facilitator of information. The judgment about what is true and what is false, what is right and what is wrong, lies with the community. The editor in me is sad, not just because I have seen the differences in our community from very close quarters, but also because I see little 'dialogue' or effort to find some uniformity in our methods of practice. While people are now willing to share information through Hpathy, I still see a lot of reservation in engaging in a one-to-one or an open dialogue about specific practices. Homeopathy today is like the conventional medicine of Hahnemann's time. Anyone can come up with any interpretation of our history, any new idea, hypothesis or theory, any method of practice and there is no critical scrutiny by the community. And if you are a big shot, nobody even thinks about questioning your new 'discoveries'. People either follow those ideas or they do not. Everybody is happy in his/her own cocoon. We are a very passive community. There is no central authority to check the validity of numerous claims made by different people. There is no central effort to resolve the timeless questions that haunt homeopathy. People say that homeopathy is an art. And in the name of art, they become free to do anything. People forget that even art has got specific techniques. You do not become an artist by holding a brush. You have to learn to sketch and learn different standard painting styles before you bring your own individuality. The basics are common for all - even in art. But not in homeopathy! You can take the case the way you like, you can interpret any symptom they way you like, you can prescribe any medicine that suits your whim, fancy or school of thought! Isn't it sad? As an individual, I am not against the variety. What appalls me is that there is no effort for verification, validation and integration of different thoughts and new ideas. So the sad editor has vent his woes, now it's time for the sad practitioner in me. As an individual, I am exposed to nearly every thought, every school and every method of practice that is present in homeopathy. I have never followed any specific school of thought and at times I wonder, if I had just chosen to follow someone - Vithoulkas, Sankaran, Scholten, Sherr, Masi, Vijaykar, Dhawle, Ramakrishnan - anyone – would life have been so much easier? You would not need to make your own judgments, you could just follow someone else's ideas. If I leave it here, I am going to get many emails telling me to just follow Hahnemann. In fact, he is the only one I have tried to follow constantly. But Hahnemann left a science incomplete in many ways, many questions remain unanswered. And in an effort to find answers, I have wandered far and wide - and have reached nowhere! I am still at the crossroads - undecided whether to believe in the miasms of Hahnemann that look like bacteria at one time and predisposition to disease at the other, or to understand them as the three miasms of Vijaykar and his cellular defense hypothesis, or the three fundamental miasms and their understanding with facial analysis, or my own effort to understand them through epigenetics, or Sankarans miasms that he defines as patient's reactions, or just join the camp that does not believe in miasms at all! I am still trying to find the most optimum way to take the case - the totality of Hahnemann, the therapeutic approach, the tripod of Hering, the miasmatic approach, the layers approach, the levels of Sankaran, the kingdom first approach, Jung's analytic approach, or do I just cook my own potpourri. I have not read Hahnemann's German case books and I am still undecided whether to believe Little's version of our history, or that of Verspoor's. I am still tying to find what is the valid place of biochemic medicines, mother tinctures and complexes in homeopathy. I am still trying to understand why some homeopaths claim a success rate of 90% and some are modest enough to claim just a 10% success rate. I am still trying to find out why some people are able to present consistent miraculous cures of specific disease like Psoriasis, Vitiligo and Cancer, while the rest of the community keeps having a difficult time in treating such conditions. There are many more questions about vital force, drug provings, interpretation of symptoms, relative value of symptoms, our limitations etc. The list of questions seems unending. As an individual I have experienced and used many methods, but I have failed to give it a cohesive structure. If you close your eyes, and keep practicing what works best for you, there is peace and harmony all around. But if you dare to raise the rug, the dirt and dust unsettles you. My journey continues - as an individual with my patients and as an editor with all of you. I am not sure where this journey will take me. There is only one wish that within this life time, I will be able to see the common thread in this chaos, find the answers to all those questions, be able to cure most of my patients - with certainty! If you have found any answers in your journey, share them with me at editor@hpathy.com Yours in Homeopathy,
-- Chief Editor -- |
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