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| Hpathy Ezine - October, 2005 | |||||
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David Little<-- Interviewed by Dr. Leela D'Souza |
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| Leela: Hi David, Welcome back! It seems that almost every homeopath with a connection to the internet has read the first part of this interview. I have been reminded again and again how wonderful it was. Someone even called it a “homeopathic gift”! But I think we’re in for a more significant treat this time! Isn’t it great that through the internet, homeopathic thought can be moulded to slowly reach a common platform worldwide? Different views are openly discussed in this medium, in terms of what is best for the future development of our system of healing. I realize it has been close to your heart, to help create a generation of homeopaths with a strong foundation in homeopathic principles so that homeopathy can become a clear, complete alternative system for healing people, especially for the poor. David: The WWW has completely changed my life! In my early years in India I was very isolated from the worldwide homoeopathic community and only interacted with my Indian colleagues. As all my work in India is free, I had to leave my family and go to the West to make any money. I would teach Homoeopathy and osteopathic manipulatory technique (OMT) and Craniosacral therapy (CST) until I saved enough money to fund my clinic and feed my growing family. In the mid 1990s I spent a few years on Maui, Hawaii and went onto the internet to share my experience. This is when I joined the early homeolist when there were only a few hundred people involved. At this time I had written ‘Hahnemann Advanced Methods’, which helped stimulate a resurgence of interest in the Organon and establish serious research with the LM potency. On my return to India in the late 1990s the WWW finally reach my village area and I was able to get online from India. This changed my life because I was able to keep in touch with the worldwide homoeopathic community without leaving Asia. I set up a website and through my online course I have been able to fund my research and free service as well as take care of my family while living in the remote Himalayan areas. This has been a great blessing to me as it has allowed me to go global while staying at home!
David: Yes, the WWW has put me in constant contact with my peers and opened up channels of information never before possible. It has put me in touch with homoeopaths from every continent and many countries. It is a source of classical material and a testing ground for new ideas. It is a wonderful place to share your research because there are a number of persons who show you your mistakes. It helped me learn how to form up ideas and express them in a clear manner. In this way, some of your worst critics become you best allies! I am sure Hahnemann, Boenninghausen and Hering would have loved working on our computers and the worldwide web!
One area we hadn’t brought up earlier was Hahenmann’s perception of miasms and how he developed this concept. Could you talk to us about this? David: Surely. 1828 was a watershed year for Homoeopathy as it marks the midpoint in Hahnemann’s career. From 1810 to 1828 Homoeopathy was based predominately on the ideas of Simila and individualization with the matching of the symptoms of the individual with the symptoms of the materia medica. As of yet, Hahnemann's writings on aetiology were based mostly on refuting the allopathic reductionist view of causation. At this time, the Founder emphasized the central role of the totality of the symptoms and the need to assess each and every case on its own merits. This has led some homoeopaths to claim that one does not need to know anything about causation or the nature and stage of the disease state affecting the patient. They claim that all one needs to look at is the presiding symptoms. This, however, is an over simplification of a much more complex situation. Even in this early period Hahnemann had pointed out the importance of understanding the nature of the disease state and explained that there were specific causations related to infectious miasms. Simply recording the symptoms without understanding their long-term significance is not sufficient when choosing a remedy that is truly curative or managing a case over a long period. From 1828 to1833 the Founder introduced the most sophisticated causal doctrine in medicine. During this period Hahnemann pointed out that as long as humanity has existed it has been exposed individually and collectively to diseases with moral and physical causes. The idea of "individual and collective" now became central to Hahnemann’s view of disease and treatment. The individual disorders are based on a personal cause or mixed aetiologies that affect the patient in a unique manner. Under these conditions no two persons manifest the exact same symptoms or syndromes.
David: Yes, collective disorders are based on diseases of a common cause and similar symptoms that affect a homogeneous group. The collective disorders found in Hahnemann's writings include traumas, environmental induced disorders, endemic nutritional diseases and infectious miasms of a fixed character. Hahnemann found that his ideas of Simila and individualization were not complete without an understanding of diseases of common causes and collective miasms which must be studied by taking a group case. This was the number one reason for Hahnemann's failure to cure the chronic miasms with early Homoeopathy and why he wrote the Chronic Diseases which integrated the collective anamnesis in the 5th and 6th Organon. Collective disorders are rarely consistently cured by individual remedies unless by good fortune rather than science and logic.
David: Our constitutional remedies are miasmic and multimiasmic remedies. This means that in many cases they are capable of curing miasms as part of the overall constitutional picture. There are cases, however, where a specific miasm poses an obstacle to the cure by such means. In these cases one must study the symptoms from the miasmic perspective and utilize anti-miasmic treatment. This means one needs to do a differential diagnosis of these symptoms. If the symptoms of the patient are expressed in a unique constitutional portrait I use the constitutional remedy first. If the symptoms are expressed in terms of the collective characteristics of a miasm I use the anti-miasmic remedy first. If one is using the constitutional remedy first and the case seems to move forward but then the remedy stops acting it may be a sign that the patient needs a chronic intercurrent remedy which might be an anti-miasmic remedy from the plant, mineral or animal world or nosode of the offending miasma. Such a remedy either moves the case forward or resensitizes the patient so that the constitutional remedy starts acting well again. Sometimes one may have tried several remedies that seem well selected but they will not work until the underlying miasm is treated. One should understand that not all cases can be approached in the exact same manner and be flexible in their clinical methods. Hahnemann clearly pointed out that miasms were based on the inherited and acquired effects of infection. His detailed study includes observations of predisposition, heredity, susceptibility, the moment of infection, the prodromal stage, the primary stage, latent stage and secondary stage. This makes Hahnemann the Father of modern epidemiology! He presented the most detailed study, of what are now called auto-immune diseases and immuno-deficiency disorders, ever written. Many degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, allergies, asthma, etc., are now considered autoimmune disorders. Immuno-deficiency is thought to play a serious role in cancer and AIDS. Most of these disorders are considered incurable by allopathy. What is incredible is that Hahnemann's teachings are much more expanded than their modern counterpart in these disorders and even provide effective remedies for curing these states. Leela: I fully agree! It’s the hope we offer our patients with so-called “incurable diseases”. But I do know that among us homeopaths there is a great deal of confusion in perceiving miasms. What has been your impression in this regard? David: Today there are some who do not understand what Hahnemann meant by miasms in his original context. Some believe that miasms are everything BUT the inherited and acquired affects of infections. One very well known teacher explained during a seminar how a child had contracted a "miasm" from watching too much television! Others have spiritualized the miasms to the point that they have very little to do with day to day clinical realities. It is interesting to speak of a "moral decline" and a "fall from grace" but how can we forget how to treat soft tissue infections, Tb and venereal diseases? Others have gone so far to say that what Hahnemann called miasms
“don't even exist”. I wonder if they think that acute
infectious diseases like typhoid, cholera and ebola and chronic
infections like malaria, leprosy, tuberculous, gonorrhea, syphilis
and AIDS are figments of the imagination? These infectious diseases
still kill millions of people and their negative effects are passed
down through the generations. This is a medically verified fact. Leela: Isn’t it amazing that Modern Medicine with its detailed documentation of infectious diseases and their effects has verified the concept of inherited Miasmatic traits and tendencies? What lead Hahnemann towards fully developing this concept? David: Hahnemann published his early research in these areas in 1817 when he began his study of psora, which reached its completion in 1828. The is no greater place to assess the difference between Hahnemann's early concepts and mature Homoeopathy than a study of aphorism 5, 6 and 7 of the 1st through 4th Organon when compared with aphorism 5, 6 and 7 of the 5th and 6th editions. Unlike early Homoeopathy, Hahnemann's advanced system involves a deep study of Causa, co-incidental befallments, miasms as well as the symptoms and their attendant circumstances. These 3 paragraphs represent the advances made in the Chronic Diseases in a nutshell. The motto of the Chronic Diseases is Cessanto Causa - Cessant Effectus, which means if the cause ceases the effects ceases. Without rooting out the cause there will be no end to the symptoms in the long run. In the early Organon treatment may have been the simple matching of the presiding symptoms of the patient to the symptoms of the materia medica. But now the practitioner has to assess every significant event of the complete case history. This includes a study of the exciting and fundamental causes, the chronic miasms as well as attendant circumstances like the condition of the physical constitution, the character of the intellect and emotional disposition, personal and social relationships, the occupation factors, habits, life style, aging factors, sexuality, etc. On this basis, one has to assess the nature of the signs, befallments and symptoms of the body and soul as all these present the only conceivable Gestalt of the disease.
David: In individual disease one uses the personal anamnesis to find the personal remedy. In collective diseases one uses the group anamnesis to find specifics for a homogenous group. Examples of personal medicines include the constitutional remedy while the group remedies include specific anti-miasmic medicines. These collective remedies include the acute and chronic genus epidemicus remedies discovered by a collective study based on the symptom expression in many patients. This is because one patient alone cannot offer the complete portrait of a collective disease. The idea of group specifics may also be applied to physical and mental traumas, group poisonings, collective environmental induced diseases and endemic nutritional disorders. It can even be applied to "group hysteria, war fever and mass psychosis". The idea of individual and collective mental and physical causes has yet to be given the full study it deserves. This is one of the most important aspects of Hahnemann's advanced methods.
Earlier we had discussed about your investigation into various potency scales, and how Hahenamnn developed in his thought and application of posology with every edition of the Organon. Do tell us a little more about your clinical trials with various potencies. David: The first phase of my clinical trial was to experiment with the medicinal solution of the C potency and the ideas expressed in aphorisms 246 and 247 of the 5th Organon. In aphorism 246 Hahnemann says that whenever a remedy causes a "perceptively progressive and strikingly increasing amelioration" the remedy should not be repeated. This is similar but not the same as what he said in the 4th Organon as there is added emphasis on the words progressive and increasing. If one gives a single test dose and the reaction is an observable, progressive, strikingly increasing amelioration there is no need to repeat the remedy because the remedy is already moving toward cure in the fastest possible manner. This is because the repetition of the remedy under these conditions may cause aggravations and relapses that only slow down the cure. This is the best case scenario, but unfortunately, it does not take place all the time. In many cases the patient only responds to the remedy with slow or little improvement. By the rules of the 4th Organon and the dry dose, one still cannot repeat the remedy until the duration of its action ceases and there is a relapse of symptoms. |
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