In the last few weeks we have received several requests to sign petitions on behalf of homeopathic projects. One petition received (requested from several sources), was to ask the United Nations to recognise world homoeopathy day. Another one was to support a petition in France to prevent the banning of homeopathic medicines. Yet another was to support a project in Africa, and another was to support a charity clinic.
On the face of it these would seem reasonable requests and quite innocuous. Yet a little reflection opened up a whole can of worms in a moral and ethical sense.
Firstly, in the West the majority of the current new graduate practitioners do not practice homeopathy in accord with the tenets of Samuel Hahnemann’s directions. I would go further in state that the majority of practitioners who have been through the private schools and colleges have not been taught Hahnemannian homoeopathy. In vogue today is the practice of the Sensation method as promoted by Rajan Sankaran and personality prescribing according to the Greek school. Both of these methods are based on the incorrect Kentian/Swedenborgian philosophy that is in direct conflict with the medical practice as defined by Hahnemann.
The Sensation method is a hodgepodge of crude psychology, bad medicine, interpretive analysis of scientific results in the materia Medica, and use of the doctrine of signatures.
The Greek school has adhered closely to the protocols as defined by James Tyler Kent, and in doing so has made personalities of medicines to define characteristics of people as opposed to using the materia Medica for collecting and matching symptoms of the nature of the disease as opposed to the person.
For us to support a petition for a world homoeopathy day, it would mean a support for the majority who practice homeopathy in the West in an incorrect manner, and therefore to the detriment of the patients that they claim to serve.
For us to support a petition to save the manufacture of remedies in France, firstly, we would like to address the issue of why France predominantly practices polypharmacy. We would also like to know why the largest supplier of homeopathic preparations Boiron is not at the forefront of this issue. Whilst it is very obvious that any ban on remedies would affect us as well, I still wonder if the availability of them is of benefit in the hands of non-Hahnemannian homoeopaths to any great extent.
As for supporting external projects or charities, a quick look at the persons involved and their leaning towards practices as mentioned above would preclude us from offering financial support. Homoeopathy is based on the law of similars, and is very forgiving even in the hands of poorly trained individuals but who managed to give a medicine capable of producing a similar reaction in the person and thus elicit a curative response from time to time.
Sadly, as those people deviate more and more from the Hahnemannian principles and into the interpretive type of homeopathic case taking, even these cures become part of a distant memory.
We also face the very real problem of homeopathic practice being regulated by individuals and groups who have seized power and been made into a quasi legal body acceptable to governments and thusly regulated by them according to their own tenets of operation. On this basis in the United States and Israel, a graduate cannot get onto the register of homoeopaths without passing an exam which contains questions pertaining to the Sensation method approach. Also in joining a Register a potential member is required to accept that there are many methods of practising homoeopathy and must support the right of any other member to practice as they see fit.
For all the above reasons the IHM generally do not offer financial or moral support to “homoeopathy”as practised today. We very clearly see that the profession has degenerated to the exact same position of false practice and lack of ethics and adherence to the proper principles of practice as in the beginning of the 20th century when it all but disappeared from mainstream usage. There has always been antipathy from medical bodies and the pharmaceutical industry but that is no excuse for practitioners to abandon the very clear instructions and methodology outlined for the practice.
