High Potency Disease
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2000 Nov / Dec VOL II NO 6.
Berkeley Digby RSHOM
Registered Homoeopathic doctor
It is said by some that schizophrenia and severe mental illnesses do not respond well to homoeopathic treatment. I have had a lot of experience in treating such cases over the last ten years. Since my return to South Africa, I have had several cases which I have treated in unusual ways with good results. Even in very extreme, established cases I have had few failures. However, success is possible provided you use the appropriate methods.
Mental pathology should be regarded in the same way as physical pathology. If a disease is deep and entrenched in the physical, we will give repeated doses of remedies in low or middle potencies to slowly reverse the pathology. There may be tissue damage which is not reversible. Working within those limitations, repeated doses over a long period of time can yield good results. Sometimes we need to put a patient on a remedy for life.
For example, I have cases of myocardial ischaemia, with irreversible myocardial damage and cases of emphysema where I have given the patients remedies for lifelong use, with no adverse effect or proving. Some cases of osteo-arthiritis may need remedies like Rhus-tox, Rhododendron, or Dulcamara for many years. Hypertension is another condition that needs sustained and constant treatment over long periods.
The same applies to the mind. Mind and emotions may have scars and irreversible lesions, which need life long prescriptions.
Children usually need few repetitions for miraculous changes of their emotional state. It all depends how deep the 'disease groove' is. I have a case, which has been on one dose of Pulsatilla 10 M daily for the last 18 months. She has such a deep recurring Pulsatilla state and she has done very well on it. When she first came to me she needed Stramonium for several months on a daily basis. Underlying the manic and murderous Stramonium state was Pulsatilla, which emerged clearly after sometime. Perhaps underlying that is Silicea, also a remedy for 'splitting apart' in schizophrenic states.
There has been a steady progress with very few hiccups so far. I have another case of a woman who was very manic. When she first came to me I put her on Veratrum-album 1M daily. She has been on it for six months and is doing very well. She had just come out of a mental hospital when I started treating her and she was on heavy allopathic medication. She stopped all such medication within weeks of starting my treatment. She needed Arsenicum-album at one stage. For a while I gave the two remedies at the same time and phased out the Arsenicum as the symptoms receded.
I have another case of severe anxiety attacks who has been on Argentum- nitricum 1M daily for 3 months and is getting better and better.
In the past I tried to treat these cases in the Kentian style of one dose and wait and have lost many cases that way. If the mental case is intense and deeply rooted it takes months and months, if not years, of repeating high potencies to balance it out.
You often find two or three remedies in these cases, where one illusion or mental emotional distortion is knitted into another. For example, the underlying inadequacy of Lycopodium gives rise to a Lachesis need to over-express, to prove themselves by over projection. Lycopodium inadequacy may also become an Anarcadium state, where mania and schizophrenic symptoms are present. The manic schizoid tendency would not disappear until Anarcardium is followed by Lycopodium. Stramonium and Pulsatilla have this relationship, as does Aurum and Lachesis, or Nitric acid and Thuja. You may be moving from one to another over several years, slowly progressing.
In cases where there is fairly deep emotional disease, but is not intense, I give the remedy in high potency once a week or once every two weeks for months before the next visit. I have at times, given a remedy in high potency once a week and middle potency on weekdays. For example 1M once a week and 30c on weekdays where there is a mixture of fairly entrenched emotional and physical pathology.
Because of the sensitivity of one or two provers, we are told not to repeat certain remedies like Lachesis and Thuja. I have repeated these remedies time and again for weeks and months on end with no harmful effects.
I think there is far too much fear of high potencies. A high potency disease needs a high potency remedy, and not only one dose of it. I am sure that people who are committed to the conservative classical tradition lose many cases that they could have cured had they kept a better grip on the case. We need to break away from such fear. There is too much suppression of creativity and ideas in homoeopathy. We need to free ourselves up and take our science forward. We need to develop ways of using homoeopathy that really work in most difficult situations. Above all we must share our experiences so that we can learn from each other.
