Cancer: It’s Homoeopathic Concept And Treatment
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 2002 Jul / Aug VOL 4 NO 4.
Prof Dr L M Khan
[Ed: When I read this article, the feeling which I got was that this is a general approach to life in general and all diseases, not just Cancer in particular. It could very well be applicable to HIV-AIDS or even heart. That is why I decided to include this in the general section in the IHD issue. I am sure it will help all of us to clear up some concepts of disease and more importantly our attitude to disease. If we can pass this on to our patients, then our battle is truly won]
Introduction
Disease is as old as life itself. Man has been blessed with a divine
mind to think, analyze and to achieve solutions. He has always striven to find
new means and ways to relieve as well as prevent sufferings.
History of medicine dates back to 5000 BC ie about 7000 years. Through these
ages medicine has been a tale of moulding and remoulding of the concept of
disease, its diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. From a brief historical review
of medicine, we perceive 2 distinct streams of thought, one concerned with the
understanding of disease or Rationalism where the crux of the thought is
materialistic (any material tool from the field of physics, chemistry or
biochemistry etc may be used).
And the other concerned with dealing with the sick individual through
Empiricism, in which both the Vitalist and materialist ie to say qualitative
aspects, go hand in hand.
We, as homoeopathic physicians, believe that cancer as an illness is a condition
of involvement of the patient as a person and not merely a condition involving
particular part of the body with tagging of a nosological diagnosis.
What is Cancer?
From Latin meaning Crab: from Greek Karkinos. This, very etymological
definition analogically conveys the phenomenological concept of cancer. Just as
the crab exerts a vice-like grip on the host, so does the cancer. Etiologically
speaking, experience has shown that the vice-like grip over the psyche,
resulting in emotional suppression, has often found a vent in the form of an out
growth in the soma, which we may term as cancer. Moreover, once cancer engrafts
itself upon the system, it profoundly shackles the nutritional growth of the
individual, resulting in a state of cachexia. Similarly in the emotional sphere,
it leads to melancholy and depression. Thus we can appreciate that the very
conception of the term cancer encapsulates its holistic essence.
It is interesting to note that the earliest English definition of cancer
appearing in 1601 "Cancer is a swelling or sore coming of melancholy blood
about which the veins appear of a black colour spread in the manner of crayfish
claws".
The latest definition: Cancer is a group of diseases characterised by
uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells causing damage to the healthy
parts.
By the combination of various phenomena, one type of cell becomes able to
disobey or escape from the control of mechanisms that usually keeps cells
growing in their normal, orderly way. (the key to understanding the nature of
cancer is to find out what normally keep our cells in order - and how some
cells are able to escape from that regimentation.)
Even a superficial comparison of the two definitions can show the variability in
the understanding of the Cancer over the last 4 centuries. From the earliest
records as found in the history of medicine, we find that cancer was not always
supposed to have strong origin or relation in the state of mind. But with the
influence of Cartesian principle in medicine, it became less and less important.
The Patho-physiology of Cancer:
Let us first glean through the patho-physiology of cancer in terms of
cellular biology. The 30 trillion cells of the normal body live in a complex
interdependent manner. Indeed normal cells reproduce only when instructed to do
so by other cells in their vicinity. Unceasing collaboration ensures that each
tissue maintains a size and architecture appropriate to its body’s need.
Cancer cells in contrast violate this scheme. They became deaf to the usual
controls on proliferation and their own internal agenda for reproduction.
Modern cellular biologists believe that cancer cells are not strong and powerful
but weak and confused. They do not attack or destroy but simply overproduce.
Their self-organization is impaired; therefore they grow bigger than healthy
cells and reproduce the same, break loose from original mass and travel to other
parts of body to form new malignant formation- what we call metastasis.
Besides this in today’s scientific world, the body of literature with regards
to molecular basis of cancer- etio-pathogenesis is growing in gigantic
proportions. But in fact the human cancer chromosome - or whatever typology
one might care to apply (genome, DNA molecule) - is the modern vestige or
replica of the regenerative trait, once so essential to the organism’s
survival and adaptation, but which now may become life threatening. Further
discussion on various breath-taking genetic research works are however well
outside the preview of our discussion.
Scientific achievements of the modern medical world in the fields of genetic,
biochemistry and cellular biology are acceptable to us, but standing on this
platform we may probe deeper into what actually caused unregulated proliferation
of cells and genetic dis-programming. Here stress upon the background
development of cancer, by emphasizing the role of the immunological apparatus of
the body. The immune system functions as a policeman capable of filtering the
abnormal cancer cells and not allowing malignant condition to gain a foothold.
However, it is merely a policeman working under the watchful supervision of a
government - the psycho-neuro-endocrinal axis.
At end 19th -beginning 20th century,
this role of cancer causation was thoroughly and scientifically investigated by
great physiologists like Walter Canon and Claude Bernard. In
health, the constancy of internal environment (internal milieu) in relation to
the external circumstances (external milieu) was maintained- homoeostasis. But
under circumstances of severe stress, stimulation of the sympathetic nervous
system and release of hormones particularly ACTH, results in inhibitory
influences on the immune system response through interplay of a host of
biochemical and physiological reactions. Thus the entire body system is exposed
to the vagaries of abnormal cell proliferation.
This holistic concept of stress in cancer causation was further strengthened and
enlightened by the brilliant work of Hans Selye.
Thus the key to the cancer is the understanding of the
psycho-neuro-endocrino-immunological axis.
The Medical Philosophies of Cancer:
Plato in one of his dialogues notes ‘Hippocrates, the
Asklepiad, says that the nature of the body can only be understood as a whole,
for this a great error of our day in the treatment of the human body, that the
physicians separate the soul from the body’.
Subsequently Virgil defined health as ‘Mens sana in corpore sano’ i.e
A sound mind in a sound body.
Galen’s treatise on tumours, De Tumobis, noted that melancholic women (who
presumable had too much Black bile; Greek melas chole) were much more
susceptible to cancer than other females. Galen believed that melancholic state
increased the proneness to cancer.
Then as early as 1701, at which time, the English physician Gendron,
emphasized the effect of disasters - trouble and grief- in the causation of
cancer. 80 years later, Burrows attributed the disease to ‘un-eased
passions of mind with which the patient is strongly affected for a long time’.
Other authors such as Nunn, 1822, emphasized that emotional factors
influenced the growth of breast tumours & Stern noted that cancer of
the cervix was more common in sensitive and frustrated individuals.
In mid 1800s Walshe’s "The Nature & Treatment of Cancer"
called attention to the influence of mental misery, sudden reverses of fortune
and habitual gloomings of the temper in the development of cacinomatous matter.
Towards the end of the 19th century, another English
physician, Snow, reviewed more than 250 patients at the London cancer
hospital and concluded that loss of a near relative was an important factor in
the development of cancers of breast and uterus.
Evans, a Jungian psychoanalyst in the 1920s pointed out that many cancer
patients had lost a close personal emotional relation just before the onset of
illness.
The Homoeopathic Perspective:
Believe that illness is a condition of involvement of the patient as
a person, whereas disease is a condition involving particular part of the body
or tagging of nosological diagnosis. Eric J Cassel1
accepts this concept. The echo of the same concept, which flourished 200 years
ago in the writings of Hahnemann, was re-echoed in the writings of Arthur
Kleinman, Leon Eisenberg & Bryon Good2.
Unfortunately, the medical profession has lost the sight of the important
distinction of these two concepts. Our contemporary approach has been largely
the important influence of the 17th century. French
philosopher, Rene Descartes’ concept dominated medical thought well
into the present century. Descartes viewed the human body as a machine. Illness
occurred when some part of this machine broke down. In order to repair the
malfunction, it would be necessary to learn more and more about the function of
even the smallest working parts and this was the province of medicine. (Galileo
had proven that scientific methods were capable of providing mechanical
interpretation of the physical; Hobbes developed the
mechanical/materialistic view of life and Descartes merely extended this thought
into the field of living beings). Thus, according to the reductionist, mechanist
hypothesis of modern medicine, there is no illness without structural or
patho-chemical alteration characteristic of specific disease. But clinical
insight allows us to perceive that one can be ill without having a disease.
As homoeopathic physicians, we believe the holistic approach and give importance
to accessory circumstances, culture, religion, medical anthropology etc. We
appreciate the imbalance and fragmentation that pervade our culture which play
an important role in the development of cancer.
Homoeopathic physicians as well as many modern research workers have realized
that neither carcinogenic substances nor radiation nor genetic predisposition
alone provide an adequate explanation of what causes cancer. For the
homoeopathic physician, these questions consist of complex mutual understanding
of miasmatic, faulty, chaotic zygote with the entire above factor, through
genetic information; biochemical extracts from polluted environment-radioactive
influences, atomic waste product and other accessory circumstances including
psychological stress. Cancer is now believed to be a consequence of an attack
from inside (miasmatic influences) & outside (accessory circumstances) in
mutual understanding; resulting in breakdown found inside the patient as a
person.
It is fortunate that the conscientious physicians gradually believe that
cancer is a systemic disease- a problem that has localized but having the
ability to spread and involve the entire organism. In this respect, a radiation
oncologist, Carl Sinonton & a psychotherapist, Stephanie Mathews have
developed the same holistic approach as believed by Hahnemann3.
Modern research workers have come to believe that if the immune system is not
strong enough, the mass of faulty cells will continue to grow. If the immune
system is strong enough, they catch hold of the abnormal cells and destroy them
and sometimes at least encapsulate them so that they cannot spread. This has
been the basis of the newly emerging field Psycho-neuro-immunology
