This blog argues that both allopathic and homeopathic medicine have a place in medicine today.
I am not a musician, but I am told that a good violinist can – within limits – continue to play on three strings should the fourth break. The words of the song “three wheels on my wagon and I’m still rolling along” come equally to mind.
What I wish to argue is that modern western medicine is playing on three strings. There is a missing dimension. Substantially this comes about because the entire focus of medical science is on the material world. Consequently most people today perceive the world only in material terms. All things can be seen, we just need the right technology (e.g. electron microscope and beyond).
Of course there is an obvious flaw here as our emotional life which finds expression in beauty or grief or love is anything but material. This is resolved by stating that our feelings are derived from a material source, such as variations in brain chemistry.
The three major strings (therapies) of modern western medicine are surgery, chemotherapy (all drug therapies) and, radiotherapy. Put crudely it is cut, poison or burn. That there is huge competency in these therapies is not in question; after all billions of dollars are spent annually in pursuit of refinements.
This philosophy is clear: the solution to disease is fundamentally surgical or chemical (drug). There is a material problem that needs a material solution.
Let’s consider the matter of joint replacement.
Friends who have had hip replacements or such like are justifiably impressed with outcome. The diagnosis from patient and surgeon alike is that hip was “worn-out”. A bit like some component in your car.
This is interesting because living bone is not the dessicated remains found in an archeological dig, but made of living cells; were it not so, broken bones would not heal. In fact your cells are in a continual dynamic state of death and renewal. So it is not the hip that is “worn-out” but the ability to self-repair. What drives that? And who is researching this? [answer: barely anyone]
Materialist science is not without its critics and I have mentioned the Galileo Commission before. In my March 22 blog I quoted a notable American homeopath in the early years of the 20th century:
Most of the conditions of the human economy that are called diseases in the books are not diseases, but the results of disease. To call a group of symptoms a disease of one part, and another group of symptoms a disease of another part, is a great heresy….. Organic disease is the result of disease
Lectures in Homeopathic Philosophy, Lecture IX Dr James Tyler Kent
This is a little challenging, but what he is saying is that your pathology (organic disease) is the result of a non-material disturbance (untuning) of the life force that animates you.
So long as science has a purely material focus, the ultimate potential of the healing arts is constrained.
Last month I introduced you to Dr Samuel Hahnemann. He set out the principles of homeopathic medicine and the monument in his honour in Washington was the first to a non-American. His genius has been rather forgotten.
photo: Carol M. Highsmith, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Hahnemann’s most famous work is The Organon of Medicine a book still in print some 180 years after his death in which he writes:
When I speak of disease as a tuning or untuning of the human economy, far be it from me to attempt a metaphysical explanation of the inner nature of disease in general or of any particular case of disease. I am merely pointing out that the diseases obviously are not and cannot be mechanical or chemical changes in the material substance of the body, that they do not depend on a material disease substance, but are an exclusively dynamic, spirit-like untunement of life.
Organon of Medicine, Dr S Hahnemann. Footnote to aphorism 31
Such is the title of a well know BBC television series. It is a good question and one I touched in my blog of June 2021 which I illustrated with an image of another BBC icon of years past Mr Blobby.
We are in fact mostly water – at least two-thirds. And when you add in the rest of the ‘soup’, we are really more fluid than solid.
Dr Rudolph Steiner – a notable polymath from the early years of the 20th century – described the human being as a column of water. He is probably best known today for his views on education (Waldorf / Camphill schools).
Everyday – though we are oblivious to the fact – thousands of cells die and thousands of new cells replace them.
We are as a stream flowing through life.
Something must drive this.
The vitalist philosophy – to which Hahnemann, Steiner and others subscribed – perceives a life or vital force as the ‘driver’, though it is invisible.
Without this the body reverts to the elements (death).
Which is the latin for “not welcome”, nicely encapsulates the scientific materialst view on the concept of any vital or life force. Francis Crick (co-discoverer of DNA) assuredly was not a fan:
Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism
Of Molecules and men (1966) Francis Crick
None doubt his brilliance, but Hahnemann, Steiner and others were brilliant also.
So you just have to choose your ‘poison’, but…
A familiar phrase from BBC’s Dad’s Army. Unfortunately, there is a tendancy today to denigrate by name calling fine minds past and present who do challenge conventional wisdom. In short, “permission to speak” is denied.
Here are some examples:
Steiner’s views get a pasting on Wikipedia (Anthroposophy)
Dr Malcolm Kendrick, discusses the death of medical research in his recent blog.
And finally:
Dr Tom Cowan MD from over ‘the pond’ who challenges convention and is shunned in equal measure (see quote below).
Progress cannot be made in biology, Cowan argues, until we recognize the fact that our cells are composed primarily of structured water, and that water is subject to influences from outside the cell: “. . . light and all the various frequencies, energy forms, wavelengths, sounds, colors, thoughts, emotions and other emanations that come to us from the universe.” Wellness occurs when we provide our cells with all that is noble and perfect—nutrient-dense food, sunlight, clean air, pure water, a coherent and native electromagnetic atmosphere, truth, freedom and love—not by poisoning them with vaccines and drugs.
https://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/breaking-the-spell-by-thomas-s-cowan/#gsc.tab=0
Allopathic AND Homeopathic Medicine: Time to replace the fourth string on the fiddle?
Just a thought…
Have a good Christmas
Disclaimer: I am a qualified professional homeopath and not a medical doctor. The NHS has many resources, and seeking the opinion of your GP is always of value.
Dibden Purlieu, Southampton