Vital Force!

One of the issues, which has made it very difficult for orthodox thinkers to grasp homeopathy, is the concept of the vital force. A unifying field that permeates and imbues material life with energy and health, but which, when limited or blocked, can affect the material well being of the body.

However, this concept is not new and it is not unique to homeopathy. This idea has been written about by many thinkers in other fields, medical and philosophical in the past and in the present.

If we are to try and ascertain how the vital force passes through matter and how it ebbs and flows in health and disease; and how the remedy patterns relate to one another as they mirror these effects and reflect them to us as remedy pictures, then we will have to broaden our perspectives and look at these other theories of the unifying field of Nature.

A MATHEMATICS PERSPECTIVE:

Catastrophe Theory may well help us to understand how the unifying field of vital force actually behaves. Developed by a mathematician, it is used to look at the changes in the behavior of systems, ‘the collapse of a bridge or the downfall of an empire. But it also deals with changes as quiet as the dancing of sunlight on the bottom of a pool of water and as subtle as the transition from waking to sleep’.

These theories are controversial even in mathematics, which has always seen change as slow, smooth and evolutionary. But Nature has catastrophic changes too ‘… the abrupt bursting of a bubble’ or the sudden shift of thought when we get a bright idea!

Catastrophe Theory was developed by a pure mathematician, Professor Thom, to study these sudden events when he was pondering on the order of Nature.

Newton’s calculus enables us to deal with continuous change, and this model of the Universe has molded our thinking for two hundred years. It has allowed us to predict undiscovered planets and to feel certain about the Universe. However, the twentieth century has gone well beyond Newton with the discovery of sudden and discontinuous change in the sub molecular level; electrons have obviously never read Newton!

Professor Thom interestingly believed that though our quantitative grasp of magnitude must not be relinquished, our qualitative grasp of form and geometric order goes much deeper the provision of some kind of picture, at least to the mind’s eye, is of primary importance.

The four fundamental forces science does know about, gravity, electromagnetism and the two forces within the atomic nucleus are ‘mysterious’. Physicists ‘..at best hope for a unifying theory to combine the four mysteries into one’.

Einstein frequently visualized forces as ‘hills’ and ‘valleys’ on a map of space-time. Thom sought to extend our intuitions of form ‘to see that processed and events have a shape of their own’.

Thom believed that we have to grasp the Universe’s ceaseless pattern of evolution and destruction of forms. He developed a topographical representation of this theory, a sort of three-dimensional graph, plus a mathematical formula to express his ideas. Also, he included in his thinking, the expression of continuity of forms of Nature. The branches of a tree, a river delta, a nerve axon and dendrites and the cracks in a wall.

These ‘recurrent identifiable elements’ have what Thom calls ’structural stability’. His goal is to describe the origins of forms, and to do this he has developed a mathematical language. Averages and probabilities founder in attempts to describe life as we see it. Calculus is ‘well behaved’ and ‘obliging’; reality is not.

However, in all aspects of probability and statistical analysis, the appreciation of pattern is fundamental. ‘Something that is not random’ underlies all concepts that require order and determinism for them to have any meaning at all. Science has tried to define a ‘detailed control mechanism’ perhaps located in the genes, ‘but the gap between those first gene products and such complicated end results’ this is the sensitive spot’.

Thom is more interested in their qualitative stability even under quantitative variation. What is striking is the stability, the homeostasis or ecological stability of repeating forms. Thom extends this notion of stability to inorganic systems as well. Based upon internal mathematical consistency, Thom sees Catastrophe Theory generating new forms from other sets of forms, allowing qualitative predictions. He sees it as a language, mathematically correct.

This theory is currently being explored in the social sciences and mathematicians are using Catastrophe Theory to draw graphs to illustrate the difference between sense and nonsense in mathematics.

Thom identified seven qualitatively different types of discontinuity (passing through non equilibrium states) with his new theory, but he states that there are also an infinite number of ways for such a system to change continuously (staying at or near equilibrium). There are other conceivable ways for the system to change discontinuously, but they are unstable and do not contain recurrent identifiable elements. These unstable discontinuous events are only likely to happen once only.

The ’surprising seven’ catastrophic events Thom calls by the colourful names of swallowtail, fold, cusp, butterfly, hyperbolic, umbilic and parabolic.

The stacastic process, which is part of the Law of Large Numbers, depends upon the reliability of large numbers of events, each one based upon the previous event in a cause and effect chain. The pattern emerges with repetition of events and then we can see the pattern within the pattern. Thus pattern is the repetition of events - one implies the other.

The unified field of the vital force and the way this field behaves as it passes through matter must surely occupy our minds from now on.

Source: Catastrophe Theory, a revolutionary new way of understanding how things change, page 9, Alexander Woodcock & Monte Davis Pelican Books ISBN 0 14 02 2250 2.

April 10th is the 254 birthday of Dr. Hahnemann

Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann, M.D. (10th April 1755 - 2nd July 1843)

Hahnemann was among the first to apply scientific principles to the study of pharmacology and his legacy includes many practices that we now take for granted in medicine, including reducing dosage to a level that is less toxic yet still curative, testing the effects of drugs on groups of healthy persons to determine toxicity rather than just relying on clinical anecdotes, and limiting treatment to one medicine at a time. He was also an early proponent of hygiene and sanitation, and diet and exercise as bulwarks against disease and among the first to treat mental illness as a disease rather than a failure in morality.

Dr. Hahnemann was the primogenitor of several modern medical approaches. He held that, the treatment of insane patients is cruel and harmful and advised a humane treatment for the insane. He cured several insane patients with homeopathy, and gained popularity then on. He quickly discerned that poor hygiene was an essential contributor in causing the spread of diseases. His success with cholera and typhoid fever was in part due to this recognition. Hahnemann also accented on the importance of nursing, diet, bed rest, and isolation of patients during epidemic diseases. He described `Noxious` principles as the precursors of certain disease states.

Hahnemann`s three major publications highlight the development of homeopathy. In the Organon of Medicine (revised six times), he brushes up with the fundamentals. In Materia Medica Pura, he illuminates the exact symptoms of remedy provings. In his book, The Chronic Diseases, Their Peculiar Nature and Their Homoeopathic Cure, he demonstrates how the natural diseases become chronic in nature when, suppressed by improper treatment.

Dr. Hahnemann treated thousands of difficult and chronic cases that defied the best care from Allopaths all over Europe. His popularity fanned out to such an extent that physicians from Europe and America came to him to discern the new science and art of healing, called `Homeopathy`.

Image by: WasWoWashington

Dr. Shigeaki Hinohara

At the age of 97 years and 4 months, Shigeaki Hinohara is one of the world's longest-serving physicians and educators. Hinohara's magic touch is legendary: Since 1941 he has been healing patients at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo and teaching at St. Luke's College of Nursing. After World War II, he envisioned a world-class hospital and college springing from the ruins of Tokyo; thanks to his pioneering spirit and business savvy, the doctor turned these institutions into the nation's top medical facility and nursing school. Today he serves as chairman of the board of trustees at both organizations. Always willing to try new things, he has published around 150 books since his 75th birthday, including one "Living Long, Living Good" that has sold more than 1.2 million copies. As the founder of the New Elderly Movement, Hinohara encourages others to live a long and happy life, a quest in which no role model is better than the doctor himself.

Here are few highlights of what Dr. Hinohara says:

* Energy comes from feeling good, not from eating well or sleeping a lot. We all remember how as children, when we were having fun, we often forgot to eat or sleep. I believe that we can keep that attitude as adults, too. It's best not to tire the body with too many rules such as lunchtime and bedtime.

* Always plan ahead. My schedule book is already full until 2014, with lectures and my usual hospital work. In 2016 I'll have some fun, though: I plan to attend the Tokyo Olympics!

* When a doctor recommends you take a test or have some surgery, ask whether the doctor would suggest that his or her spouse or children go through such a procedure. Contrary to popular belief, doctors can't cure everyone. So why cause unnecessary pain with surgery I think music and animal therapy can help more than most doctors imagine.

Principles of Dilution

The different forms of dilution:

1) Hahnemann's centesimal Dilution, where an active principle is diluted in 99 times its own volume of liquid, is potentiated to obtain a solution with a potency of 1CH. A drop of this solution is taken and diluted in 99 times its own volume of liquid and shaken: producing a solution with a potency of 2CH, and so on.

2) Hahnemann's decimal Dilution, where the active principle is diluted in 9 times its own volume of liquid, follows the same process, providing titrated solutions in DH.

3) Korsakov's Dilution: the process is the same, except that a single flask is used for the preparation. Instead of taking a hundredth of the solution obtained at 1CH, 99 per cent is discarded and the remaining 1 per cent diluted. At each new stage traces of the previous dilutions remain. This method would make it possible to obtain remedies which would have a more global effect than that obtained using Hahnemann's dilutions, and which would present fewer problems.

4) Quinquagentamillesimal Dilutions:

Historical overview -
In 1948, Dr Pierre Schmidt of Geneva and Dr Jost Künzli of St. Gallen put the finishing touches to the translation of the 6th edition of the "Organon of the Medical Art". Whilst they were translating this work, their attention was particularly attracted by § 270 on the subject of quinquagentamillesimal dilutions, which until that point had not been studied in depth.
In his § 270, Hahnemann describes very clearly the preparation method and also ways of administering quinquagentamillesimal dilutions (also known as fifty thousandths, or LM/... or Q...). He deals with the results of experiments and observations he has gathered over the course of the five years leading up to his last edition of the "Organon". In it, he describes a new method of potentiation that allows him to repeat doses of medication, sometimes over a very long period of time, particularly with chronic diseases, whilst avoiding the problems he has observed with centesimal dilutions.

Doctors Schmidt and Künzli decided in February 1949 to manufacture their own LM dilutions. Künzli would go on to make the remedy known as Sulfur on his own; later, with Pierre Schmidt, he would manufacture many other remedies, each of which would require about 30 hours' work.
Several other doctors of that time tried to manufacture LMs, none of them really followed the method of preparation described by Samuel Hahnemann. This inevitably gave rise to different remedies and therapeutic results that could not be compared.

Amazing Human Ovulation!

Gynecologist Dr Jacques Donnez spotted a human egg emerging from the ovary a 45-year-old Belgian woman and filmed the whole process. It is the first time a human ovulation has been recorded in detail and Dr Jacques Donnez saw it in progress during a routine hysterectomy operation.

Human eggs are produced by follicles, fluid-filled sacs on the side of the ovary, which, around the time of ovulation, produce a reddish protrusion.

The egg comes from the end of this, surrounded by a jelly-like substance containing cells.

The egg itself is only the size of a full-stop, and the whole ovary, which contains many immature eggs, just a couple of inches long.

Be patient and watch this short movie clip.

Here is the link, please copy-&-paste it on your address bar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNK6h1dfy2o

This one is about Love!

Interesting Vet Stories from Homeopathic Pioneers

DISCUSSION

Dr. Hastings: We have had, for a number of years, a fine cat in our family. About five years ago it was reported that the cat was not eating anything at all. I found that somebody had clipped the smellers off close. The cat refused to eat for three days and gave great signs of drooping. It occurred to me that these smellers were extremely sensitive and probably supplied with nerves, so I gave her Hypericum, and in one hour she took her food.

Dr. F. Powel: I have a patient who had a horse that had been over-driven. The urine was entirely suppressed, and the horse was in great agony. This condition is considered fatal. I decided that Hyoscyamus was the remedy, and gave him four powders of the 200th. In six hours the urine came and the horse recovered.

Dr. Taft: I had a case of a horse that was injured by a nail in the foot. The veterinary surgeon said it would die. I asked for the privilege of giving medicine, and gave it Ledum. A member of the family was taking lessons in Christian Science and treated the horse at the same time. I do not know which of us deserves the credit, but the horse was cured.

Dr. Bell: Almost always horses coming from the country to Boston get a fever, with coughing, profuse catarrh, swelling of the glands of the neck. The remedy is Silicea; it cures them in almost every instance.

Dr. W. L. Morgan: About four years ago the stableman came after me, early in the morning, saying my horse was very sick. I found the horse's head stuck straight out and under the jaws and forelegs swollen so that he could not get his head to the ground. On inquiry I found that a horse in the same stable was having pinkeye and was under a veterinary. I gave Bell. 200 and put him in a box stall. In the evening I went to the stable again and saw that the horse was beginning to want to eat. We gave him a little green grass and he ate. In two days he was in condition to use.

Dr. Rushmore: A valuable cow in some way got loose in the stable and thus had access to the feed barrel. When my attention was called to her she was lying prostrate on the ground. Eyes dull, tongue stretched out of her mouth, and cold. I placed a few pellets of Carbo veg. 200 on her tongue and she got well rapidly. I would not have risked a dollar on her chances of recovery.

Dr. Kent: I have just one dog story. This dog had become too much interested in a cow that was going through the process of labour. The dog persisted in his attention until the cow turned on him and hooked him through the hind leg. It was a puncture wound and stiffness followed its healing, so he was no longer able to pose as a ten-thousand dollar dog. It seemed to be chronic stiffness. I sent a dose of Ledum which restored him to usefulness and to his proper places as a prize dog.