Kurz Imagine Homeopathy

A Book of Experiments, Images, and Metaphors
1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-3-13-258117-3
Verlag: Thieme
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 328 Seiten, ePub

The art and science of truly successful homeopathic medicine. With the recent resurgence in the practice of homeopathy-whether practiced alone or as a complement to other types of medicine-comes an unprecedented demand for well-educated, highly trained practitioners. What type of education will lead to true success? Can the art of homeopathy be taught alongside the scientific concepts? Generations of homeopaths have mastered such concepts as homeoprophylaxis, genus epidemicus, and constitution, but only the truly successful practitioners have achieved a level of understanding far beyond simply dealing with patients. In this unique book, homeopath Chris Kurz offers a highly effective-and fun-approach to learning and importantly, retaining, all of the important concepts of homeopathy. Using vivid analogies and informal language, Kurz emphasizes the importance of true insight rather than rote memorization. Infusing a student's personal experience with creativity and imagination creates the most fertile ground for discovering and developing true insight and knowledge of homeopathy. Each chapter explores a concept through the lens of an experiment, metaphor, or image. For example, an intense examination of a common lemon brings home the notions of totality and the law of similars; a road map unlocks the mysteries of Miasms, and a game of golf illustrates important issues of case management. The result of years working with students, Kurz's inspirational and thought-provoking approach places the patient at the center of the learning process, as in everyday practice. Imagine Homeopathy is invaluable as a guide for teachers, an introduction for novices and laypeople, and a provocative refresher for seasoned practitioners.

Chris Kurz

Zielgruppe

Medizinische Fachberufe

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kurz, Christian

Fachgebiete

• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Komplementäre Medizin, Asiatische Medizin (TCM), Heilpraktiker Homöopathie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 Introduction
2 Note to Educators
3 The Lemon and the Dolphin
4 Cutting the Wire
5 The Individuality of a Rose
6 A Game of Golf
7 The O-Ring
8 A Map of Disease
9 Invisible Ink
10 The Sunflower
11 The Iceberg
12 The Hammer
13 Solving the Puzzle
14 A Tape Recording
15 The Dam
16 A Well-Guarded House
17 Above and Beyond

Leseproben

3 The Lemon and the Dolphin

The law of similars
The totality
Case taking
Keynotes and characteristic symptoms
A context for the law of similars

Hahnemann was not exactly what you would call a diplomatic, round-about kind of person. He did not mince words and would get to the point right away. That is also why he devoted the beginning of the Organon to defining the centerpiece of homeopathy, which has since come to be known as the law of similars. “Let likes be cured by likes” is the English translation of what Hahnemann put in succinct Latin as “simila similibus curentur."

Many have taken this statement on which to hang their cases against homeopathy, since what it says appears to be completely illogical: if someone suffers from a disease, he may be cured by a medicine which has the power to produce just such a disease in a healthy subject.

Should not the exact opposite be true? If you are too cold you do not need more of the same but rather the opposite, namely heat. If a piece is bent to the right you give it a good whack to the left. Banging it on the right some more is not going to straighten it. All this seems true enough and is in fact the basis of common medical practice. If your heart beats too fast you need something which has the primary effect of slowing it down. A person with a high fever requires a drug which has the power to reduce the body temperature. The underlying pattern seems to be that one should be looking for something opposite to the patient’s symptom. This is the law of opposites, or “contraria contrariis” in Latin.

It is easy to see how, with the emergence of homeopathy, the stage was set for the conflict rattling at the basic tenets of medical thinking. It is either “simila similibus curentur” or “contraria contrariis.” There seems to be no middle ground between these two camps.

The Meditation

I would now like to invite you into a little meditation. You will need a lemon for the full experience but in case you are reading this book at an inconvenient time with no lemon at hand, take a look at the picture on page 14 and join in the meditation.

Take five to ten minutes to investigate the lemon inside out. Look at it, feel it, poke it. Cut it in half, taste it, smell it, study it in any way imaginable. I am sure there will not be too many surprises since this is only an ordinary lemon just like the ones you have squeezed the juice from or cut into slices many times before. But it is important that you refresh your memory and paint a vivid image of this lemon before your mental eye. Close your eyes and become a lemon.

Once you are satisfied, come back out of your peel and try to name as many properties as you can think of which make up the whole of the lemon. Jot them down on a piece of paper, one after the other. Do not be too analytical or too critical about this. You should have at least ten items on your list, the more the better. Your list may begin like this:

    roughly 5–10 cm in size

    yellow peel

    wrinkled peel

    citrus-like smell when scratching peel

    …

The Totality

There are so many features that make up a lemon, for example, its size, weight, and color, the texture of the peel, the smell when you scratch the peel. Then there is the color of the inside of the fruit, its taste, the shape of its pips, the amount of juice, etc. By the sum total of all of these you can recognize a lemon and tell it apart from other things.

You will probably agree with me that however long your list might be, it is by no means exhaustive. By using chemical analysis, for example, we could begin to include the amount of each and every chemical compound found in the object of our investigation. That would easily add many hundreds of items to the list. We might just as well decide to use a microscope and describe the cell structure in minute detail, which would contribute another big bunch of properties. And there is no end in sight.

Within the five letters of a lemon we have encountered what we call its “totality.” On one level it is almost impossible to describe a lemon in minute detail, yet on another it is almost trivial. Otherwise we would all be completely lost on our next shopping trip. This is a common experience with all totalities. In fact, in everyday life we often tend to think in totalities. Pretty much every object that surrounds us is a totality. From lemons to carrots, from chairs to chandeliers, from you to me including everyone in between. Incidentally, other words for totality which you might encounter are gestalt, quality, or entity.

It is fortunate that our thinking is well adapted to working with totalities. If I just say “fruit, yellow, tart, juicy” I bet you will discover pretty quickly that I was thinking of a lemon. We do not need complete information to identify a totality. Our mind works well with incomplete information and, by filling in the blanks, conjures up a rich, detailed, and life-like image which we recognize immediately.

In order to relate the lemon to homeopathy let me turn to § 6 of the Organon:

The unprejudiced observer, even the most sharp-witted one–knowing the nullity of supersensible speculations which are not born out in experience—perceives nothing in each single case of disease other than the alterations in the condition of the body and soul, disease signs, befallments, symptoms, which are outwardly discernable through the senses. That is, the unprejudiced observer only perceives the deviations from the former healthy state of the now sick patient, which are felt by the patient himself, perceived by those around him, and observed by the physician.

All these perceptible signs represent the disease in its entire extent, that is, together they form the true and only conceivable gestalt of the disease.

As instructed by Hahnemann, the physician needs to make a list of all observable symptoms just as you compiled the list of all lemon symptoms, so to speak. But it is not any individual symptom that is important to us; it is the entity which gives rise to all our observations in total that we seek to recognize. This is what Hahnemann calls the gestalt or totality of the disease. As such it is an elusive concept since we cannot nail it down on paper or teach it to a computer. If, however, we use our brain’s capability to think in entire images, we can accept the notion of a totality as the complete and entire image which is hinted at by an incomplete list of individually observable properties. Suppose you wanted to teach someone what a lemon was. Would you give him your list from before or would you rather just hand him a lemon? I bet that showing him a lemon has a much better chance of success.

In the previous experiment you actually went through the very process of a homeopathic patient interview (just allow me to neglect the fact that your patient was a lemon). During such an interview we see the gestalt of the disease sitting right in front of us and we cut it up into little bits and pieces which we write down on paper; these are called symptoms. If we are not careful we might end up with useless bits and pieces and no chance to recognize the totality, which expressed them, ever again. In order to make us see the whole we have to be careful what we write down. Let me give you an example.

Fig. 1 With just the right set of identifying features, our brain is able to recognize the underlying totality and fill in the blanks. Despite its lack of details, you will probably agree that this sketch shows a lemon.

Suppose you were allowed three statements to characterize a lemon and you chose the following:

    fruit

    edible

    has seeds

What are the chances of someone recognizing these as symptoms of a lemon totality? If, on the other hand, you put down:

    sour

    yellow

    juicy

the likelihood of guessing right is much higher, simply because these three properties are more characteristic of a lemon than the previous three.

It requires some experience and practice to take a good case which retains the characteristics of the disease totality. To help you focus on what is important, try asking yourself this question: “What makes this person unique?”

Have you ever been to one of those tourist places where street artists offer to draw a quick sketch of your likeness? The artist is trained to zoom in only on those features that are characteristic of you and distinguish you from everybody else. Anybody who knows you would recognize the totality which sat model for the drawing. And that is exactly what a good homeopathic interview should be like: the totality of the disease is expressed by the symptoms you notice and choose to include in your transcript.

There has been much misunderstanding about what exactly the expression “totality of symptoms” means. Some interpret it as being all symptoms, an exhaustive list of all observable changes caused by the disease. In the light of the previous discussion it is clear that no list of symptoms can ever be equivalent to the thing itself. The emphasis is not on the quantity of symptoms but on choosing those among all possible ones that make...

Über Autor(innen)

Chris Kurz