Liga Medicorum Homoeopathica Internationalis
Sorrento, Italy—September 27, 2019
Let me first begin my presentation with a quote from Hahnemann:
“The physician’s highest calling, his only calling, is to make sick people healthy—to heal, as it is termed.”
Preamble
Cancer has reached an epidemic level to the point that with the latest estimates half of the people will hear in their lifetime, “You have cancer,” while only a decade ago it was 1 in 3 persons.[1]
Cancer is now the primary cause of death in many countries, now exceeding heart disease.[2]
Homeopathy has a long record of successfully treating patients with cancer.
The homeopathic treatment of the cancer patient requires for obtaining predictable favorable results much knowledge and excellent clinical acumen.
By increasing our expertise to treat cancer patients with homeopathy, we improve our skills to treat all other patients presenting with difficult conditions.
As homeopathy offers a most effective approach to treat patients with cancer, in fact, likely one of the most effective, it is our duty to master this art and make it available to the public.
Introduction
James Tyler Kent has greatly influenced the direction homeopathy took in the 20th century.
He taught that localized symptoms were not important to find the remedy.[3]
He also taught that local treatments were inconsistent with homeopathy.[4]
Further, he taught that most patients with cancer were incurable.[5]
In hindsight, his teachings prevented the acquirement and development of strategies to successfully treat with homeopathy patients with cancer.
Like Kent and several generations of homeopaths since, I found that homeopathy could be successfully used to palliate patients with cancer, improve their well-being and likely prolong their lives, but only a small minority would end up cured under homeopathy.[6]
Paradoxically, at the same time that Kent was practicing, writing and teaching, other well-known homeopaths were reporting excellent results in the treatment of patients with cancer, such as Cooper, father and son, Burnett, Clarke, Schlegel, Jones and Peterman (and later Jackson. Even Schlegel in his 1908 book on the nature and treatment of cancer remarked that Kent was unduly too pessimistic about the homeopathic treatment of the patients with cancer.
Like Hahnemann these practitioners were resourceful and with ingenuity they were able to find their way out in order to treat their patients with cancer with increasing success.
Kent knew that he was limited and that solutions to current difficulties of homeopathy would one day be found, but only in the long future, “While Homeopathy itself is a perfect science, its truth is only partially known. The truth itself relates to the Divine, the knowledge relates to man. It will require a long time before physicians become genuine masters in this truth.
“Now, when Homeopathy is hundreds of years old, and little one grow up into the knowledge of it and observe and practice it, our successors will acquire knowledge that we do not possess now. Things will grow brighter as minds are brought together and men think harmoniously. The more we keep together the better, and the more we think as one the better. It is pity that differences should arise among us when we have so perfect a truth to bind us together.”[7]
I will now share a brief summary of my own journey in resolving difficulties in the treatment of patients with cancer
First, I discovered homeopathy in the fall of 1976 and began studying it in the spring of 1977 under Joseph Bonyun, a third generation Kentian practitioner. Soon came my first patient, which was a three-year old St. Bernard dog that had been suffering from advanced cherry eyes that were covering about two thirds of one eye and almost completely obstructing the other one.
With only book, Boericke’s Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica, I found similarity in Staphysagria for the dog’s eye condition.
I gave the dog one or two doses of Staphysagria 30C, and lo and behold, the cherry eyes, which had been growing relentlessly since the dog had been a puppy, began improving. Within a few weeks the tumefactions, which are the results of prolapse glands, had regressed by more than 80% from their original size and remained so for the rest of the dog’s life. This sudden regression in a condition that can only be partially remedied by surgery made me continue testing the efficacy of the principle of similars with the sick, and forty-two years later I have yet to be disappointed by its amazing power.
In the early 1980s, I discovered the writings of the Hahnemannians and that Lippe was the indisputable leader of the American school of homeopathy, and at the same time I disillusioned with the modern teachings of homeopathy.
For many years, first as a student I interned and later as a doctor practiced in my father medical clinic, which essentially specialized in the natural treatment of patients with chronic diseases and many with desperate conditions.
He was an excellent clinician and an extraordinary mentor.
So early in my career I began treating patients with difficult conditions, such as autoimmune diseases, like multiple sclerosis, ankylosing spondylitis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.
Already in 1987, I published a paper on the outcome of the treatment of the patient with multiple sclerosis. This paper is still as pertinent today as the results are more or less the same.
Over the years, I have shown that it is relatively easy to deal with patients suffering with infectious diseases, even the most serious cases, such as centenarians on their last breath with advanced pneumonia, or the case of an unconscious man on the brinks of death with immune deficiency, pneumonia, meningitis and liver and kidney failure, and who was on morphine and high doses of prednisone.[8]
I have also shown that it is relatively easy to successfully treat patients with autoimmune[9].[10],[11] and psychiatric diseases.
Not long ago the real limits of homeopathy laid for me in the successful treatment of patients with PD, ALS, late stage cancer and genetic diseases.
In the last decade, I have shown that it was possible to successfully treat homeopathically patients with PD through the use of high fluxion potencies.[12]
I have been applying these same high fluxion potencies to a patient with ALS who has shown continuous improvement since initiating treatment on July 1, 2019.
Regarding patients with genetic diseases, I don’t think it will be possible to reverse their genetic predispositions in cases presenting with 100% penetrance.
However even in these cases, we can observe a great normalization of function, e.g., in a recent patient with retinitis pigmentosa and patients with cystic fibrosis.
However, I felt for a long time that the real challenge was in the treatment of the patients with cancer in the advance stages, i.e., in stage III and IV, as they have been the most challenging cases in the past and were now so prevalent.
More than 20 years ago, I reviewed the literature on the homeopathic treatment of the cancer patient.[13]
About five years ago, likely because of the diagnosis of my youngest with likely the most known fast-growing cancer, I returned to the subject by focusing specifically on the works of the ones who claimed the most success in the homeopathic treatment of the patients with cancer, namely Cooper (father and son), Burnett, Clarke, Jones,[14] Peterman,[15] Schlegel and Jackson[16], with the goal of incorporating some of their strategies.
Here are some quotes from some of these authors that we should remember as outstanding keynotes of their works, understanding and experiences about the treatment of patients with cancer:
“A tumor is a vital growth which is the product of a diseased organism. It is not the disease but the result of it.” Cooper
A reminder that Cooper insisted that cancer was a disease much more easily acted on by remedies than many other less formidable maladies.
To his critics from the homeopathic community, Burnett responded, “If others can, let them come forward with their clinical evidence; and, if their results are better than mine, I will sit at their feet; if, however, mine are better than theirs, let them sit at mine; but facia, non verba.” Curability of Tumors by Medicines 1901
“I still think that it takes about two years to get rid of cancer and the susceptibility to develop it, particularly if the cancer has extended: a period of two years should be given to a course of constitutional treatment, in order to eradicate the taint.” Clarke
“The cure of the tumour-state and the removal of the tumour is, as a rule, much more easily brought about when no operation has been performed.” Clarke
“It is quite probable that during my lifetime I have seen more cases of genuine cancer than any other physician and have made more permanent cures. Of those cases which I have taken before any form of treatment had been used I have cured 95%.” Jones
“I have cured 75 per cent of 200 cancer patients in my forty-seven years of practice …” Peterman 1915
Results:
The great majority of the new patients whom I have seen in the last 2-3 years came with cancer, usually in the late stages with much suffering and little hope of survival.
I can now say that by pursuing the basis of treatment described here, which includes newly incorporated strategies, my success rate has greatly improved with each passing year, month and week.
All patients respond, but not all make it.
However, an ever-greater proportion of patients are recovering, and for the first time in my practice I witness a systematic favorable response in patients with stage IV cancer.
I don’t have statistics, but I could say that my current results approximate the ones reported by Peterman, which is close to a 75% recovery rate (and close to 100% curative rate).
However, these results have to be viewed in the perspective that we have different populations of cancer patients, as mine comes, as a rule, with late stage diagnosis and most of my patients are also followed by conventional oncologists, some with their and some without their treatments, while theirs mostly came with cancer of the breast, stomach and uterus with unknown status regarding metastasis, as radio-imaging didn’t exist, was not precise like the ones of today or was not often used.
Regardless, what I have to report today is that I have obtained so favorable curative results in patients with late stage cancer in which in the past the treatment would have been palliative, and I am reporting there is real hope even for the ones with the worst prognosis.
Basis of treatment
Before explaining what made the difference for this increased success, I will review the basis of treatment.
1- Meticulous case taking, which means to obtain:
2- Shrewd case analysis:
3- Optimal posology: consists of always adapting the posology in order to obtain a maximal positive, continuous response with minimal or no aggravation, which means to be keen to always aim for the:
4- Timely follow-ups:
But what made the difference?
From going from mostly palliative to mostly curative results in less than five years in patients with late stages of cancer.
1- The use of an upgraded materia medica and repertories: which are concrete and practical results issuing from the Materia Medica Pura Project (MMPP) and which has played a great part in this march to solve the problem of cancer.
– Monographs are created, which contain all the reliable information that can that be found about a remedy, that is all the provings, toxicology, cured cases and clinical experience, and which leads to the creation of the genius of the remedy.
– Additions to the repertory are made, which could be several thousands for each remedy.
– For a number of years now, we have been are adding about 10,000 additions to the repertory every year.
We have thus created in the last five years a great number of monographs of remedies that are often used in patients with cancer. The prescription of these remedies becomes much more accurate.
When some of these remedies had insufficiently been proven, we began proving them and this would include Scrophularia nodosa, Cundurango, Scirrhinum, Hydrastis, Ornithogalum, Lobelia erinus, Aconitum lycoctonum, Sempervivum tectorum and Symphytum.
The Conium monograph, which is over 500 pages and has more than 300 cases, from which close to 3000 new entries were made to the repertory, a 44% increase of entries, has been a turning point, as the new knowledge acquired from this monograph has permitted us to identify Conium when it is indicated, which has so far been the majority of the cancer patients presenting in our office.
Also a new proving and a new monograph of Cundurango has helped recognized the indication for this remedy when it would have impossible before.
2- The use of the higher fluxion potencies, i.e., the h-potencies, has greatly facilitated the treatment of patients with advanced cancer.[18]
To produce these higher fluxion remedies, we take the highest Fincke fluxion potency of a remedy that we have and put it back into fluxion, which increases their potencies by about 5M for each hour of fluxion.
The use of these h-potencies has greatly been beneficial, as now we can meet the aggressiveness of the malignant growth with a proportionate posology, as Hering had suggested, the posology must match the aggressiveness of the disease.
In some patients, the potency is changed every few days in order to meet aggressiveness the disease.
3- The application of the indicated remedy in water to the skin to increase efficacy of the patient’s response to the remedy, as pointed out by Hahnemann in the 1837 Preface to 3rd edition of his Chronic Diseases, in which he recommended patients to rub one sixth of their body each time they take the remedy by mouth,
Preface to the third volume of the second ed. of The Chronic Diseases—1837
d in paragraph 285 of the Organon:[19]
4- The use of local applications over lesion sites: As a profession we have accumulated a large experience on the use of local applications, particularly in cases of injuries and wounds.
The used of local applications over cancerous sites has been used forever in medicine as well as in folk medicine.
I noticed that the two Coopers, Burnett and Clarke would use locally Scrophularia when it was also used orally. Eli Jones would also use Phytolacca locally and reported favorable success.
I tried it and can report that the local uses of remedies over cancerous lesions has been a real blessing for greatly mitigating the pain from metastases and increased healing, which often turn their case around.
Later scans have showed diminished size or disappearance of tumors where the local remedy had been applied.
It is as if the oral remedy triggers a general response and the local applications to the tumor side triggers a local response.
There is another clinical positive impact of using local applications, which is quickly we can know if the remedy that has been given though oral route has a high degree of similarity.
I have already prepared another paper on local applications, which I will likely present at our next meeting.
5- The better use of intercurrent remedies: The quicker acute intercurrent conditions and mishaps are addressed the better it will be for the case, as it was recommended by Hahnemann in Chronic Diseases:[20]
“This method of allowing the patient to be acted upon by smelling the potentized medicine has great advantages in the manifold mishaps which often obstruct and interrupt the treatment of chronic diseases. The antidote to remove these mishaps as quickly as possible ….”
6- The use of remedies in alternation:
I have confirmed what Peterman had previously reported, which is when the chronic remedy is stopped to make place for the one indicated for the intercurrent disease or mishap, the chronic condition, and in this case the cancerous condition, gets worse.
“Here is a chance to study the much-disputed alternation of remedies.” Peterman
Often in patients in extremis, e.g., one remedy addresses the physical symptoms, such as pain and nausea, while another one addresses the patient on the emotional level.
It is common for patients to respond well to a remedy for all the chronic symptoms, but not for the ones related to the side effects of chemo (Nux-v., Aloe, Phos., Sulphur, etc.) or radiotherapy (Phos.).
I have had patients who responded well to an “antipsoric” remedy regarding their general symptoms, such as moods, energy and sleep and associated with an enhancement of all the functions of the body, but without affecting the symptoms related to the cancerous process.
When the remedy is switched to one that affects the cancerous process (e.g., Symphytum), the symptoms related to the lesion diminish, while the older general symptoms of the patient remain unchanged.
7- The use of hematological tests to monitor tumor activity: The use of simple but very sensitive hematological tests to monitor progress, such as,
These blood tests are so sensitive that activity of the cancerous process can be detected much before any scans and their velocity can be monitored, which provide important information to the clinician about the course of treatment.
As a great proportion of cancer patients may not have any symptom from their tumor and these may not be palpable to monitor response, e.g., in brain, bone or pancreatic cancer.
Measurements of the velocity of tumor activity can also be extremely useful to clinicians to quickly evaluate whether their treatment is effective or whether any changes effected by the patient is good, neutral or harmful, such as lifestyle changes, i.e., nutrition, meditation, exercise, etc.
8- Developing greater expertise in the use of supportive approaches:
Limitations
The greatest limitations to the successful application of homeopathy in patients with cancer are:
Future directions
As we work with a law of Nature, we should never despair and always search for the homeopathicity in any case, even the most desperate.
Like Hahnemann we must use our ingenuity to continue moving forward to resolve the cancer problem.
Future directions for the profession as a whole would be:
Future directions for the MMPP are:
1- We will continue to develop our materia medica through the creation of new monographs and provings and upgrading our repertories.
2- We now need to test whether the use of remedies in potencies in local applications will be more, less or as efficacious as the use of the tincture applied in an ointment or the infusion oil that we have currently been using.
3- We have just begun testing the efficacy of the arborivital preparations compared to the centesimal, fluxion or h potencies. Single drops of the arborivital tincture were given by Clarke at about 10-day intervals and three-week intervals by Le Hunte Cooper.
4- We have to learn how to better use of nosodes as intercurrent remedies as cleverly as Burnett and Clarke did.
“But here the difficulty of finding a remedy which shall be homoeopathic not to the symptoms due to the presence of the tumours, but to their causation.” Burnett
“Of all the remedies for cancer, in my experience, the nosodes form the most important class, and the use of them ought to be more familiar than it is to homeopaths themselves.” Clarke
5- We have to learn how to pull patients out of cachexia, i.e., when the serum albumin and protein are much below normal.
Giving bone broth in cachexia patients should be considered: “It will not do to let the vitality get too low, and some patients can only maintain their vitality on an animal dietary.” Clarke
Eli Jones reported having successfully used Strychninum sulphuricum in low potencies to pull patients out of cachexia.
I will like to leave you now with aphorisms from Julius Herman Peterman in order to honor the legacy one who has long been forgotten by the homeopathic community, and to honor as well the legacy of all the other homeopaths who have participated to the growth of homeopathy but their names have also been long forgotten:
“I am still holding on to pure and simple Hahnemannian homeopathy.”
“All is ours in medicine. Its right use is through homeopathy, pure and simple.”
“The well-directed homeopathic treatment is the only way to cure.”
“I go to my severest sufferers with the same confidence in my remedies as to a patient with chills and fever.”
“The remedies must be selected on the totality of the symptoms, not as cancer remedies only.”
“A careful study of all the symptoms and conditions of the patient will be absolutely essential in order either to determine the nature of the disease or to decide upon the appropriate remedy.”
“Treat the patient is the law. Simple! Safe! Sure!”
“When type [picture] changes, another remedy, correct and compatible, is used until a new one is needed. Advances are made, step by step.”
“I have never found fault with homeopathy, the faults were mine.”
“Each one receives the remedy and the potency that he needs, as much attention being given to selection of the potency as to the remedy. I often begin with the lower and follow with the higher; sometimes following the opposite course.”
“Improper habits of living express themselves in the pathological changes found in cancers (tuberculosis ditto). Let us work (not seek) to eradicate them by regulating the bad habits of life to the proper channels of living sane and reasonable.”
And the last words are to the master:
“When we have to do with an art whose nature is the saving of life, negligence in learning is a crime” (Hahnemann 1835), or physician, dare to know!
[1] Ahmad, A. S., N. Ormiston-Smith, and P. D. Sasieni. “Trends in the lifetime risk of developing cancer in Great Britain: comparison of risk for those born from 1930 to 1960.” British journal of cancer 112.5 (2015): 943.
[2] Yusuf, Salim, et al. “Modifiable risk factors, cardiovascular disease, and mortality in 155 722 individuals from 21 high-income, middle-income, and low-income countries (PURE): a prospective cohort study.” The Lancet (2019).
[3] “In cancer-patients, incurability depends upon the fact that few symptoms except those of the cancerous tissue-change are obtainable. The sharp pains, the ulcerations, and the anemia are symptoms of the ultimate disorder. Finding symptoms that preceded this period is necessary for gaining any curative results. Ultimates do not indicate the remedy for the patient.” J. T. Kent. Private Discussion. The Homeopathician 1916; 6: 27.
[4] “The external application of the remedy is inconsistent in the light of the doctrines of sickness and cure.”(Editors: J.T. Kent and Julia Loos)) in Deck 1913 Deck HL. Scrophularia nodosa. Homoeopathician 1913; 3: 148-150.
[5] “Of course we do not want to teach, nor do we wish to have you infer, that a patient with a well advanced cancerous affection, such as scirrhus, may be restored to perfect health and the cancerous affection removed. We may comfort that patient, and restore order at least temporarily, so that there is freedom from suffering in these malignant affections. Most patients that have cancer are really in such a state of disorder that only a temporary cessation of “hostilities” can be expected; and one who goes around boasting of the cancer cases he has cured ought to be regarded with suspicion. Do not dwell upon the cancer, for it is not the cancer but the patient that you are treating. It is the patient that is sick, and whenever a patient is sick enough to have a cancer his state of order is too much disturbed to be cured.” J.T. Kent. Carbo animalis. Journal of Homoeopathics 1903; 7: 1-4; and reprinted in his Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica in 1911.
“Many times our remedies furnish us the greatest known palliation in cancerous affections. Homeopathy should at all times furnish a degree of palliation in cancerous and other incurable malignant diseases of the stomach. This palliation will bring more comfort to the stomach than can possibly be brought about by Morphine.” J. T. Kent. Kreosotum. Journal of Homoeopathics 1898; 2: 329-334; and reprinted in his Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica in 1911.
“Why is cancer incurable? In other words: What must be discovered, to lead to the cure of cancer? When a case has been cured, why was it possible when other cases, and most cases, have resulted in failure? It is true that in some cases there are hold-over symptoms enough to lead to the remedy, but in most cases there is nothing discoverable but the malignant growth and its associated features of hardness, stinging pains, ulceration, enlarged glands and the tendency to involve the surrounding parts in its own development. A neophyte could say that such a growth is malignant, without the aid of a microscope. Then, in most cases, the paucity of symptoms is the present state of the situation. … In patients with cancer or tuberculosis, we may be quite certain of their ultimate recovery, if old symptoms return after administration of the remedy. These patients seldom have the vital reaction strong enough to develop former symptoms, hence they are incurable.” J. T. Kent. Address of the President. Why is cancer incurable? The Homeopathician 1913; 3: 3-5.
[6] “Old cancerous ulcers are greatly restrained in their growth, that is, the constitutional state is much improved, the patient himself has more endurance and the ulcers will take on healing. In cancerous affections that would kill in sixteen months the patient will live five years with Calcarea, if Calcarea is indicated. That is something, and many times that is all that can be expected in a cancerous growth.” J. T. Kent. Calcarea carbonica. Journal of Homoeopathics 1901; 5: 207-223, and reprinted in his Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica in 1911.
[7] J. T. Kent. Difficult and incurable cases. Palliation. Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy. Lectures XXXVII. Journal of Homoeopathics 1900; 4: 192-194.
[9] The Homeopathic Treatment of the Multiple Sclerosis Patient. Transactions of the First Session of the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians, Portland, Oregon. http://www.homeopathy.ca/articles_det13.shtml
[10] Prescribing for Cases with Serious Pathology. Simillimum 1997; 10 (1) (Spring): 3-24. http://www.homeopathy.ca/articles_det32.shtml
[11] Tackling Patients with Severe Pathology. Conference before the American Institute of Homeopathy, Cleveland, Ohio, October 19-21, 2018.
[12] André Saine. An Important Advance in the Homeopathic Treatment of Patients with Serious Pathologies—A Practical Response to the Debate on LM Potencies. Paper presented before the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathica Internationalis on August 29, 2015 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
[13] Cancer and Homeopathy. A four-day seminar, Costa Rica, February 23-26, 1998.
[14] Eli Jones wrote in 1911, “It is quite probable that during my lifetime I have seen more cases of genuine cancer than any other physician and have made more permanent cures. Of those cases which I have taken before any form of treatment had been used I have cured 95%.” Eli G. Jones. Cancer—Its Causes, Symptoms and Treatment. Giving the Results of over Forty Years’ Experience in the Medical Treatment of this Disease. 1911: 12.
[15] Peterman wrote in Aug. 1915, “I have cured 75 per cent of 200 cancer patients in my forty-seven years of practice,” Julius Herman Peterman. Correspondence. Medical Advance 1915; 53: 459-461.
[16] Allan D, Sutherland one of the editors of the Homoeopathic Recorder wrote in July 1941 in a footnote to one’s of Jackson article, “Dr. Jackson has treated almost 1200 cases [with cancer we supposed, as all the cases presented by Dr. Jackson in this article are patients with cancer] in the past twelve years, 92% of which have been cured. Most of these cases had been declared hopeless by former physicians.” W.E. Jackson. Treatment—over and under. Homoeopathic Recorder 1941; 56: 24-38.
[17] Julius Herman Peterman. Correspondence. Medical Advance 1914; 52: 1555.
[18] André Saine. An Important Advance in the Homeopathic Treatment of Patients with Serious, Progressive and Intractable Pathologies with Preparations Beyond Fincke’s MM Continuous-Fluxion Potencies. Paper presented before the International Coethen Experience Exchange—16—Coethen—September 23, 2016.
[19] Paragraph 285: “The cure of very old diseases can be speeded up by daily rubbing (on back, thighs, lower legs) with the same medicinal solution found to be beneficial when taken internally. But one should of course avoid treating in this way parts affected by pains, spasms, or cutaneous eruptions.”; and in Chronic Diseases in the Preface of the 3rd edition (1837): Hahnemann recommends that the patient rub one sixth of the body each time they take the remedy by mouth for speedier cure): “But if the diseased organism is affected by the physician through this same appropriate remedy at the same time in sensitive spots other than the nerves of the mouth and the alimentary canal, i.e., if this same remedy that has been found useful is at the same time in its watery solution rubbed in (even in small quantities) into one or more parts of the body which are most free from the morbid ailments (e.g., on an arm, or on the thigh or leg, which have neither cutaneous eruptions, nor pains, nor cramps)—then the curative effects are much increased. The limbs which are thus rubbed with the solution may also be varied, first one, then another. Thus the physician will receive a greater action from the medicine homeopathically suitable to the chronic patient, and can cure him more quickly, than by merely internally administering the remedy.
“This mode of procedure has been frequently proved by myself and found extraordinarily curative; yea, attended by the most startling good effects; the medicine taken internally being at the same time rubbed on the skin externally. This procedure will also explain the wonderful cures, of rare occurrence, indeed, where chronic crippled patients with sound skin recovered quickly and permanently by a few baths in a mineral water, the medicinal constituents of which were to a great degree homoeopathic to their chronic disease.” Samuel Hahnemann. The Chronic Diseases. Translated by Louis Tafel 1904: 265-266.
[20] Samuel Hahnemann. The Chronic Diseases. Translated by Louis Tafel 1904: 220-225.
