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Before
I start this dialogue, I would like to remond the readers that I
have just launched a blog on my website
www.lookingbackmovingforward.com
for discussions about how we feel about our profession, how we feel
about what is discussed in the interviews, for us to share our experiences
and to create an international place to meet and chat in the matrix.
Feel free to come and visit and contribute your thoughts.
And now for your monthly slice from my book
Looking Back Moving Forward (www.lookingbackmovingforward.com).
This time I have chosen to give you a taste of Ellen Kramer who
is the principal of the College of Practical Homeopathy in London
(CPH).
It was a student clinic day when I visited
her, but Ellen managed to maintain her focus with me and illustrated,
yet again how enthusiasm, dedication and ambition play a large part
in the successful career of a homeopath. Ellen fixed her deep and
intense brown eyes on me and I knew that hour I would spend with
her would shake my classical foundations and leave me breathless.
ELLEN: Looking for totality prescriptions for
patients when they are not ready, adds to their problems. It doesn’t
help. When people are highly toxic from the drugs that they are
taking; the main organs that are affected are the kidneys and the
liver. I remember I had a lovely case of a lady who was suffering
from hot flushes. She couldn’t go on to Hormone Replacement
Therapy because she had had a stroke but she was really suffering
with the menopause. She was in a wheelchair so she couldn’t
come and see me. So I went to her and I looked at the case and it
was a classic Natrum muriaticum. Her stroke had started
within a year of her husband dying. Unfortunately it was a complete
disaster, her symptoms became much worse; she was in a right state.
Then I went on a classic remedy hunt, I thought it has got to be
Lachesis muta, because she is loquacious and all this sort of rot.
I gave her Lachesis muta and it just got worse and worse,
to the point where I just said to her, “Look, I don’t
think homeopathy’s for you. I think you should see a nutritionist
and a herbalist, thank you very much, goodbye.” I felt I was
just adding to her problems. Now in hindsight, I would never, ever,
ever start a case from that perspective. I would actually look at
what was presenting. She was on about seven or eight different drugs.
She was on blood thinners and drugs for high blood pressure. Now
I would have started her off with a detox therapeutic, organ drainage
and nutritional support. And then I would be looking at which drugs
are causing the main symptoms.
ROWENA:
So when you get a patient who comes to you with side effects of
Tamoxifen after breast cancer and has had radiation treatment –
and has a history of the Pill and Hormone Replacement Therapy –
would you give Tamoxifen in potency to start the case?
ELLEN: Yes, you can buy Tamoxifen and
give it back to them in potency. It works. I have had patients that
come and say that they just want you to help with the side effects
of Tamoxifen. I think, ”Well thanks for your money, here’s
Tamoxifen back in potency.” I tell them to take less
of it because they will become more sensitive to its action. Tautopathy
gives the patient maximum therapeutic value from their allopathic
drug. So they just need to take less of it, otherwise they can go
into overdosing. You sensitise the vital force to the drug so they
need less of it. You can use tautopathy to wean people off their
drugs, so if they are taking Thyroxine, in time they are
only taking one Thyroxine a week and the rest of it they
are taking homeopathically, and that one Thyroxine a week
is enough.
ROWENA:
So when you get patients that have come to you for something else
and then they tell you that they are on Thyroxine, would
you go with the Thyroxine first?
ELLEN: No, not unless it is a problem. If people
are on drugs I leave them alone until it becomes a problem. I know
if they are on good homeopathy, within about a year the drugs will
be a problem. Because the liver starts to clean up; it gets more
sensitive to the drug and the vital force will not tolerate a poison
any more.
I find it very difficult to understand how people are so hung up
on a methodology that suits nintenth or early twentieth century
patients. It is just not applicable to twenty first century patients.
You get the odd twenty first century patient who you can apply that
method to. So it doesn’t surprise me that you get a whole
load of homeopaths that say you cannot make money out of homeopathy;
there are not enough patients. I just think to myself, good; if
that is your belief system, stay there. I don’t believe that,
I know homeopathy works; it is just how you apply it. Homeopathy
works – it is easy and it is simple. You just have to know
the art of application. And the methods are a guide. They guide
you to that application. Practical homeopathy is the practical application
of different methods according to each patient. So it is the patient
who tells you what to do, not you trying to apply something to a
patient.
It is like having tools in a toolbox the classical method is one
method. I really understand where Kent was coming from, because
I would say in observing people, eighty percent of their sickness
comes out in mental and emotional stuff. Now, the simple question
is this, can I cure that now? If I can, there are no drugs, there
is no suppression, there are no obstacles to cure - and then a Kentian
totality prescription will work.
If you have a mental/emotional causation, you can see that their
pathology is coming out of that, but they have spent twenty years
on Amitriptyline and have got loads and loads of other stuff, or
their diet is so appalling they are nutritionally depleted, can
you give them that? No, you cannot. Unless you want to enjoy a good
aggravation, and then tell your patient it is a healing crisis when
it is not. It is inappropriate prescribing because you don’t
understand what you are doing. Okay, if you can see it is coming
out of a mental/emotional causation, there are no obstacles to cure,
and if you go back to the Organon, what did Hahnemann say? He says
remove the obstacle to cure. What is it that needs curing? What
needs curing is the cause of those symptoms. If you can cure that
straight away, then what we call here at CPH ‘the whole patient
methods’ will work.
If there are obstacles to cure, then you are basically looking
at what we call ‘part patient methodologies’, that is,
organ drainage, tautopathy, aetiology, sequential, nutrition, cell
salts and polypharmacy. Those are your toolbox and you will get
a result with your patient.
ROWENA: Everything
you have said makes perfect sense. I think if somebody sat down
with you who practised in a different way to you, if they heard
that, they would understand it. But I am wondering if people attract
what they can treat; do you know what I mean? Because I do think
that there are a lot of classical homeopaths who have very successful
practices and they don’t practise the way you do, so I am
wondering if they just attract those patients that they can help.
I am not saying that there is some that they cannot but…
ELLEN: Listen, what you do in life is you get
what you are open to learning, and I am very happy for people to
do that. I think, if that works for you, it works for you because
you are a great homeopath. It didn’t work for me; it didn’t
work for loads of my patients.
ROWENA: It
doesn’t mean that you are not a great homeopath.
ELLEN: No, I had to find a different way of getting
round the problem. So wherever people are and what they do in homeopathy,
I applaud them. But I know that what I do works for me and I am
very, very, very busy. When I was at my practice in Islington, which
I have cut down to once a week now, the receptionist used to say
to me, how can you see seventeen people in a day? How do you do
it? I can do it because I know exactly what I am looking for. I
know how to apply different methods to different people, so everybody
who comes to the door, as far as I am concerned, is my teacher.
They teach me homeopathy and I just have to be sharp, sharp, sharp,
on how I apply homeopathy, and if they come to me and I think that
all they need for the first month is nutritional changes; that is
what they get. And I am happy for them to go away and make those
dietary changes.
ROWENA:
How do you know that they need dietary changes? Is there a questionnaire
that you give?
ELLEN: No, I can tell by the symptoms they are
presenting that they are depleted in all sorts of things.
ROWENA:
And that you had as part of your training in homeopathy as well?
ELLEN: No, I picked that up, I had to. Most people
are so fearful. If they get it wrong they think it is the end of
the world. Do you know, when I was a student I used to go to tutorials
and they used to say, ”You did what?” I said, “Yes,
I did that.” “You aggravated what?” I said, ”Yes,
I did.” I aggravated everybody; I spent a good year as a student
aggravating everybody who came into contact with me.
I used to dread eczema patients as I had the worst aggravations
with them. I had one mother who brought her husband with her, shouting
at me because their daughter came with two bits of eczema on her
elbows and was covered from head to foot in it now. She looked like
somebody had taken a blowtorch to her, and that was on Sulphur
12C, once a day. What did that mean? That meant that I had inappropriately
prescribed. I didn’t understand what was going on; I didn’t
see that the cause was the vaccinations.
ROWENA:
But Sulphur is worse for vaccination so it might have been
the right remedy. So did you go with the vaccines in potency?
ELLEN: I did all of that, but what I didn’t
understand was the relationship between the skin and the bowels.
Vaccines produce an incredible level of toxicity, they weaken the
liver, the liver governs the digestive system, and the large intestines
become extremely sluggish, and so on. You give something like Sulphur,
which is a big liver remedy and it stimulates the liver. Then if
the lines of elimination are blocked, where is it going to come
out? It is coming out in the skin. So when you see eczema you know
that the lines of elimination are blocked, that is the bowels, and
that is why this stuff is coming out in the skin. You can see the
cause, the toxicity from the vaccine, so what are you going to do?
You need to start with the bowels first, you need to get those bowels
moving; you need to get the bowels clean. So a healthy bowel movement
is every time you eat your main meal, within half an hour to an
hour or so, you should want to pass a stool. That is a healthy bowel
movement. Most people are constipated.
ROWENA:
So then what do you recommend?
ELLEN: You have to put them on to a complex carbohydrate,
high roughage diet. Encourage them to eat more fruit, cut out refined
carbohydrates and get them off dairy products and excessive wheat.
And that is what I do; you know. Patients come in, they bring their
kids with their skin and I say, “This is where we are starting.
Before we go into energy medicine we have to start with what is
not physically functioning properly, and we start there.”
ROWENA:
What happens if it is an emotional causation that is causing their
bowels not to move?
ELLEN: If it is an emotional causation and there
is no obstacle to cure, then you can go and do your classical case.
If there are no steroids, for example, you can go straight in with
your classical case, and guess what; you will get an excellent result.
But I have seen very few children who have come to me that way.
I have teenagers that come to me for acne, and I sit there and I
say to them that we are going to start with opening their bowels.
ROWENA:
And you do that via the diet?
ELLEN: Dietary recommendations and I use a lot
of tinctures.
ROWENA:
Specific to the organs?
ELLEN: Specific to the organs to get them to function
properly. I look at what organs aren’t functioning, what ones
I need to nourish with different tinctures, and then I use diet
and recommended supplements for them. So I start with where the
patient is. I don’t delude myself that I know the answers
but I think, “This is going to be interesting.” But
I have got the tools, so nothing is a great challenge, and if I
do get an aggravation I think, “What did I miss?” And
most people are so busy telling me how unsafe homeopathy is, and
I say to them it is because they don’t know how to use homeopathy.
They do not understand how to use homeopathy; that is why they think
it is unsafe.
Homeopathy is a safe system of medicine; it is gentle, it is effective,
and you get excellent results. If you are not getting the results,
it is because you are not applying it properly and you do not understand
how to apply it. And that is it. It is not the tool you are using
that is at fault. It is not the patient. It is the person who wields
the tool that lacks the knowledge. And so people learn homeopathy,
and they take with them from their course all the fears and they
never move beyond those fears.
And there is nothing to be afraid of when you are dealing with
patients in homeopathy, because you should have an insight into
vital energy that doctors don’t even understand – they
have no concept of vital energy. You are in a fantastic position.
You cannot even begin to come close to the incompetence of your
local GP when it comes to irritating and suppressing the vital force.
Even if you were the most useless prescriber on this God’s
earth, all you would do is have constant aggravations, and if you
are so stupid you cannot actually look at your aggravations and
learn from them, then you deserve to stay stuck, poor and fearful.
Thought provoking don’t you think? I
would very much welcome a worldwide discussion on the issues raised
by Ellen. If you visit the blog on my website, www.lookingbackmovingforward.com,
you can make your contribution and also receive a ten percent discount
if you buy the book.
Long live homeopathy!
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Rowena Ronson graduated from the London College
of Classical Homeopathy in 2001 and registered with the Society
of Homeopaths in 2003. She runs a private practice from her home
in Bushey, Hertfordshire and has developed a specialist interest
in the area of cancer as she has been treating patients at Cherry
Lodge Cancer Care, a complementary health centre established by
Barnet General Hospital for several years. She is a qualified teacher,
with a background in training people in inter-personal skills and
has taught homeopathy for both the London School of Classical Homeopathy
and Purton House, where she was module leader and lecturer for personal
and practitioner development. She also has worked for the Society
of Homeopaths as an education adviser.
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