The Question of Homeopathy PDF

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The question of homeopathy Believers in homeopathy often advance the following three viewpoints which, as an analysis of the medical situation, are incomplete and misleading: (1) They contrast homeopathy with modern technological medicine as if these were the only two forms of medicine to be conside...

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The question of homeopathy Believers in homeopathy often advance the following three viewpoints which, as an analysis of the medical situation, are incomplete and misleading: (1) They contrast homeopathy with modern technological medicine as if these were the only two forms of medicine to be considered, whereas in reality there are several other forms of medicine (both traditional and modern) which, to make the analysis complete, must also be taken into account. (2) Following upon this, they imply that homeopathy and modern technological medicine constitute a unique pair of opposites, on the grounds that homeopathic medicine is, precisely, homeopathic, whereas modern medicine is allopathic. However, the antithesis “homeopathy—allopathy” is misleading since, except for homeopathy, all forms of medicine, including all forms of traditional medicine, are allopathic (except, of course, acupuncture which is non-pharmacopeial). It is therefore misleading to imply that allopathy is a uniquely distinguishing feature of modern medicine, and the main reason for its undesirability. (3) Homeopaths imply that homeopathy is a traditional form of medicine, whereas, as we shall indicate in greater detail below, its two principles (i. massive dilution and ii. the systematic use of “likes”), are of modern origin, and are not to be found anywhere in earlier forms of medicine. * *

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The three fundamental varieties of medicine may be classified as follows:

(1) Modern technological medicine (one should never call it “orthodox medicine”!) (2) The various systems (one must always speak of them in the plural) of traditional medicine (3) Homeopathy

This classification has the merit of making a clear distinction between homeopathy and traditional medicine properly so called. Homeopathy as such was first formulated by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755—1843) at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. Though some have sought to attach his views to certain precedents and predecessors, his specific twofold concept (the systematic belief that “like cures like” and the alleged “potentiation” of pharmacopeial substances by massive dilution) is entirely novel. Hahnemann himself rightly claims originality. Further references to these two “principles” will be made in what follows, but firstly let us have a closer look at traditional medicine. As mentioned above, there are at least four forms of traditional medicine. Each form is the practical application of a different set of ancient and venerable cosmological principles. These are as follows:

2 (1) Ayur-Vedic medicine (India) (2) Acupuncture (China and the Far-East) (3) Spagyric medicine (Greco-Arab, or Greco-Persian) (4) Shamanistic medicine (Tibetans, North American Indians, and other Hyperborean peoples) Since we are concerned here only with cosmology, and not with metaphysics or spirituality, we do not include in this classification miracle and prayer: miraculous healing, and healing resulting from prayer (in both of which the author of these lines is a strong believer). Let it be said again that all forms of traditional medicine are allopathic — except, of course, acupuncture, which is non-pharmacopeial. That is not to say that the principle that “like cures like” is not recognized by them as an exception (even modern medicine does this); but here, as elsewhere, “the exception proves the rule”, and the “rule”, not surprisingly, is allopathy. As for the second principle of homeopathy, namely that the action of pharmacopeial substances can be potentiated by massive dilution — a process (also involving pulverization or “trituration” and shaking or “succussion”, said to increase drug activity) which homeopaths call “dynamization” or “potentization” — it is nowhere to be found. Hahnemann himself writes: “Homeopathic dynamizations ... were unknown before me.” If, in this way, one questions the two “principles” of homeopathy — if one fails to see in them either intellectual foundation or traditional precedent — the supporters of homeopathy change tack and say: “But it works!” If one shows any skepticism in this regard, the supporter will then report anecdotally a large number of cases known to him (or drawn from the vast homeopathic literature) in which improvements, immediate or delayed, great or small, were observed following homeopathic treatment. At this point it is important to remember that, in order to avoid the post hoc propter hoc fallacy1, claims for the success of any kind of medical treatment (be it modern, traditional, or homeopathic) must be able to withstand severe scrutiny in terms of the following four criteria: (1) The healing power of nature A very large number of diseases will get better without any treatment. This is the effect of “the healing power of nature” (vis medicatrix naturae). In any given case, it is hard to tell whether a recorded improvement is simply due to this rather than to the medication administered. (2) The oscillatory nature of all phenomena Everything under the sun is oscillatory. In the field of medicine, all diseases are subject to fluctuation, to “ups and downs”, to remissions and relapses. If treatment (modern, traditional, or homeopathic) happens to be given immediately before a natural remission (something which in the nature of things happens quite frequently), credit is often wrongly attributed to the treatment prescribed. No physician (be he modern, traditional, or homeopathic) offers any objection to this! (3) Basic supportive measures (Good nursing) Virtually all diseases (even cancer) show improvement when basic supportive measures (e.g. excusal from work or school, rest in bed, good nursing, etc.) are instituted. Since some of these _____________________________________________________________________________ 1 “After this, because of this.” The conclusion that, just because B follows A, B is due to A.

3 measures frequently accompany any medical treatment, it is difficult to know how much of any improvement observed should be attributed to the medical treatment in question — especially since factors (1) and (2) are also operative. (4) Autosuggestion A final (and rather unimportant) factor to be considered in connection with all medical treatments is autosuggestion or the “placebo effect” — the fact that a patient, who believes he is receiving an effective treatment, may sometimes, because of this belief, experience an improvement when in fact he has been given no active treatment at all. Treatments (active or inactive) deriving from all systems of medicine (modern, traditional, or homeopathic) can gain kudos from the placebo effect. There is nothing wrong with this. One simply has to know that it exists. It should be recalled, however, [1] that the placebo effect is not lasting, and [2] that it occurs only in a certain percentage of people. * *

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Now many medical treatments do work. But, to prove that they work, one has to be able to deal convincingly and unambiguously with objections based on the four factors listed above. These four factors (or at least the first three) are stiff tests; but they inhere in the nature of things and are realistic and necessary. There are technical means for investigating efficacy — in the face of these four factors — and the principal one is known as the “double-blind controlled clinical trial”. Such controlled trials have been carried out many times and never have they shown any efficacy on the part of homeopathy. Over a large number of years, the supporters of homeopathy have never been able to offer any objective and irrefutable proof of efficacy — and this in spite of highly-placed patronage in some non-medical circles. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Royal Family believes — or believed — in homeopathy, but homeopathy never caught on in any English-speaking country. For that matter, it did not gain much acceptance in other countries either, although it did spread to India in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (to the detriment of Ayur-Vedic medicine), at the same time as did theosophism (to the detriment of traditional Hinduism), both of them as a result of Western imperialism. All physicians (modern, traditional, and homeopathic) are glad to “profit” from any or all of the four factors mentioned, when these work in their favor. The first three factors are always operative (and sometimes also the fourth), and for this doctors — and patients — are grateful. But the homeopath seems to go one better. When the patient improves, he says: “I told you so.” When the patient gets worse, he says: “You see how strong homeopathic treatment is? This is the badness coming out!” The homeopathic physician cannot lose! Homeopaths love to assert that homeopathy works “in animals and children”. Their point here is that “animals and children” cannot possibly be the victims of autosuggestion, and therefore, if homeopathy works — or appears to work — in them, this proves its efficacy. Unfortunately, for their case however, however, autosuggestion is the least of the objections that homeopathy has to face. It is the weakest and most uncertain of the four criteria. Before it come the other three, which are much more significant. When patients, who have received homeopathic treatment show an improvement in their condition, it is difficult in the extreme to demonstrate that it is not due to the healing power of nature and/or a naturally occurring remission. In most diseases, and in all forms of medicine, these two factors are often the main reason for recovery or improvement, and it is obvious that they are equally operative in the homeopath’s two favorite categories: “animals and children”.

4 As for the third factor (the effects of good nursing, bed rest, excusal from work or school), this is also operative — and indeed particularly operative — in the case of children. Even in the case of autosuggestion (the placebo effect), though this may be inoperative in horses and infants, it is just as possible for it to be operative in older children as it is in adults. But, in any case, as already emphasized, this is the least significant of the four factors concerned. One of the differences between modern medicine and traditional medicine (and we are not speaking of homeopathy) is that the various forms of traditional medicine are said to take into consideration “the whole man”, and not merely the disease. This is entirely consonant with the traditional and cosmological point of view. Homeopathy also makes the claim that it takes into consideration “the whole man” and boldly ventures to compare itself in this respect with traditional medicine. The least that can be said here is that this claim must be scrupulously scrutinized convincingly demonstrated — i.e., not merely asserted — and this has never been plausibly done. Homeopathy is hard put to when asked to prove, either theoretically or practically, that any results that follow its use are due to anything other than the four factors mentioned. One may therefore wonder why it continues to have any following at all, however small. The reason may be as follows: At its birth at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, homeopathy got off to a good start because of the state of medical science at that time. The “allopathy” of the day consisted to a large extent of emetics, purges, and leeches, which not only did not work, but were sometimes harmful. Now the first principle of medicine is primum non nocere (“first and foremost do no harm”). On this basis it is clear that, when no treatment (i.e., in this case, homeopathy) followed upon bad treatment (i.e., purges, etc.), the change could not but be experienced as an improvement. This gave homeopathy both a boost, from which it is still benefitting. Anecdotal evidence, and the hopes of sick people, do the rest. Another factor favoring homeopathy is the entirely understandable passion of the “traditionalist” (and the “ecologist”) against modern technology. Beyond any doubt, modern technological medicine is like all the other branches of modern technology: electricity, aviation, television, computers, to mention some obvious examples. It is crude by definition and, besides its therapeutic content, may have harmful effects for the individual (side effects) and on society (over-population and the preservation of the weak). In the crude way of modern technology, however, it is “effective”. Most traditionalists, like non-traditionalists, use electricity, aviation, computers, etc., not only because today there is scarcely any choice, but also because they too, in spite of their negative aspects, cannot afford not to take advantage of their “crude efficacy”. The traditionalist’s understandable passion against modern science is not, however, an excuse for lack of discernment vis-à-vis dubious forms of medicine. We have a right to refuse technology (with due proportion and right reason), but we do not have a right to systematic and persistent error. It is important to be aware that there is no monolithic unanimity amongst homeopaths themselves. From the time of Hahnemann’s immediate successors onwards, there have been major divergences amongst them. Amongst the more rational of Hahnemann’s successors were Foster and Quin (mid-19th century), founders of the first London homeopathic hospital, both of whom seriously questioned the “potentiation by dilution” theory; Kent (1849-1916), on the other hand, was one of the more extreme members of the “pseudo-mystical” faction, who believed that “dynamization” (with succussion and trituration) released “immaterial and spiritual powers”. The beliefs of this latter faction appear to form the basis of most homeopathic practice of the present day, though here too there are divergent schools. A further point is this: it is bad enough that a believer in homeopathy, when he is ill, should insist on having nothing but homeopathy for himself (which, in fact, means no treatment). What

5 is really serious, however, is when a sick child, who may urgently require some effective modern treatment, is denied by an adult (his parents, for example) anything other than homeopathy. This means in effect that the child is being left without any treatment, apart from any general supportive measures (good nursing) which may accompany the homeopathy. * *

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We are aware of the wonderful array of traditional arts (for example, architecture, calligraphy, painting, sculpture, poetry, rhetoric, weaving, and the so-called minor arts) and traditional sciences (for example, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy)2; we are also aware of the great traditional wisdom-systems (such as Pythagoreanism, Platonism, Palamitism, and Thomism). However, in the case of traditional medicine in its various forms (and here again, we are not talking of simply of homeopathy), one is compelled to say that it one of the least certain of the traditional sciences or arts. It cannot be compared to architecture, for example. If the architecture of a building is faulty, the roof will fall down! On the other hand, if a medical treatment is ineffective, the patient may not immediately die; indeed, because of the vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of nature) and the play of relapses and remissions, he may actually improve! In this connection, Frithjof Schuon writes: We do not have for the traditional sciences an unmixed admiration; the ancients also had their scientific curiosity, they too operated by means of conjectures and, whatever their sense of metaphysical or mystical symbolism may have been, they were sometimes — indeed often — mistaken in fields in which they wished to acquire knowledge, not merely of transcendent principles, but of physical facts ... One cannot, when all is said and done, deny that the purpose of medicine is to cure, not to speculate, and that the ancients were ignorant of many things in this field in spite of their great knowledge in certain others; in saying this, we are far from contesting that traditional medicine had, and has, the immense advantage of a perspective that includes the whole man; that it was, and is, effective in cases where modern medicine is impotent; that modern medicine contributes to the degeneration of the human species and to over-population; and that an absolute medicine is neither possible nor desirable, and this for obvious reasons. But let no one say that traditional medicine is superior purely on account of its cosmological speculations and in the absence of particular effective remedies, and that modern medicine, which has these remedies, is merely a pitiful residue because it is ignorant of these speculations; or that the doctors of the Renaissance, such as Paracelsus, were wrong to discover the anatomical and other errors of Greco-Arab medicine; or, in an entirely general way, that the modern sciences, chemistry, for example, are no more than fragments and residues. (Esoterism as Principle and as Way, Perennial Books, London, 1981, pp. 192-193.) _____________________________________________________________________________ 2 It is good to recall here that, in traditional civilizations, it was said: “Every art is a science, and every science is an art.” And in the words of the 14th century Parisian architect Jean Mignot: ars sine scientiâ nihil (“Art without science is nothing” or “No art without science.”). This is like a paraphrase of Frithjof Schuon’s phrase: “No activity without truth.”)

6 This statement is merely a recognition of the inevitable limitations of the various forms of traditional medicine. All of these forms, nevertheless, are intellectually respectable and, in practice (especially in their traditional context), at least partially efficacious. Quite other is the case of homeopathy. Homeopathy is not a form of traditional medicine, but the invention of Samuel Hahnemann, which is lacking in both cosmological foundation and traditional precedent. The evidence advanced in favor of the efficacy of homeopathy is as high as Mount Everest, but every shred of it is “anecdotal”. The nature of this type of evidence is well understood in legal circles. Amongst other things, it inevitably raises the post hoc propter hoc question, and does not constitute an absolute proof. For this reason, anecdotal evidence is insufficient to secure an irrebuttable decision in an English or an American court of law. On the basis of all the considerations reviewed in this article, it is concluded that homeopathy (in contradistinction from the various traditional medicines) is strictly zero. * *

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During Prince Charles’ term as honorary President of the British Medical Association (1982-1983), he urged this body to undertake an enquiry into the various forms of “alternative medicine”. The BMA agreed to do so and directed its Board of Science and Education to set up a working party for the purpose. In May 1986 the working party published its report entitled Alternative Therapy. This report contains extensive sections on homeopathy, which constitute an important and informative review of the history, beliefs, and current status of this form of medicine. The working party’s findings regarding efficacy were entirely negative. Not one positive result was elicited. (For a postscript, see next page.)

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Postscript and envoi The evidence in favor of homeopathy is as high as Mount Everest, but not one shred of this evidence would carry conviction in an American or English court of law. Anecdotal evidence may indeed be suggestive, but, as jurists (and also philosophers of science) know, it does not constitute absolute proof. If anecdotal evidence happens to coincide with reality, all well and good; but if it does not coincide with reality, it remains no more that an unproved assertion, and is powerless to convince. This is why the content of anecdotal evidence must, in all cases, be proved by other means. In the case of homeopathy this has never been done. No reasonable man can accept unproved assertions. Lenin asserted that communism was “scientific” and the only way to a perfect human society; Hitler (in total contradiction to all Germans from Meister Eckhart, Albertus Magnus and Baron von Leibnitz, to Goethe and Schiller) asserted th...