Reviews for A Homeopathic Approach to Cancer
Catherine Coulter Dr. Ramakrishnan
From
HOMEOPATHY TODAY
Reviewed by Richard Moskowitz, MD, DHt
I've been eagerly awaiting this newest offering from the pen of Catherine
Coulter, not only for its well-chosen words and apt phrases, or its fresh
insights and seasoned wisdom, all of which we've come to expect, but above
all for its subject matter, "the big C," the very symbol and archetype of
potentially fatal illness, which most classical homeopaths in this country
are either wary of treating in the first place, or have had rather limited
or disappointing results when they venture to do so.
Take me, for instance. After 27 years in practice, I've been able to provide
good symptomatic relief to patients on chemotherapy or radiation, had good
results with general constitutional support and first-aid remedies for pre-
and post-op surgical care, and even had a few cases of dramatic and
long-lasting remission or improvement.
But on the whole, using the single remedy chosen by the totality of
symptoms, I've not been able to help patients consistently to shrink their
tumors, to prevent recurrences, or to correct precancerous lesions.
Furthermore, both my direct personal experience with Vithoulkas and Sankaran
and extensive familiarity with the writings of Kent, Boger, et al., confirm
my sense that even these great masters have not fared all that much better
in this respect.
Yet on some level I have always known that there has to be a simple and
practical way to help cancer patients more reliably using homeopathic
remedies according to the method we already know to be valid.
This book offers and indeed systematically elaborates just such a method,
one almost disarmingly easy for an experienced homeopath to use, and indeed
so much so as to challenge us all to re-examine what we do and how we do it
in a much humbler spirit.
Unlike Ms. Coulter's previous books, both the language and intent here are
practical and businesslike, rather than artistic and imaginative, her main
roles being those of scribe and theoretician of the scattered case notes and
random observations of Dr. Ramakrishnan, a distinguished Indian M.D.
homeopath whose experience, augmented by her own, encompasses several
thousand cancer cases over the past 25 years.
In undertaking this herculean feat of organization, condensation, and
synthesis, her primary purpose is simply to identify and formulate his
working methodology as clearly and systematically as possible.
This task she has certainly accomplished a clear and readable style, but the
finest tribute I can pay to her book, and the fairest measure of its
success, is to say nothing further about the literary qualities that have
already made her famous, and get down to the often unglamorous nuts and
bolts of its content, and how we can use it to improve our work with our
patients.
I should perhaps add that the conceptual basis of Ramakrishnan's approach is
not nearly as new as it may appear to the average American reader. In fact,
it harks back to a style of homeopathic practice that is still widely
prevalent in Europe and elsewhere, one that is fact much older than the
Kentian method that I and most classical prescribers of my day were taught
and still use, including Dr. Ramakrishnan himself.
Eminent and respected homeopaths like Hughes and Burnett in the Nineteenth
Century, and Clarke and Eizayaga in the Twentieth, have long advocated the
use of organ-specific remedies chosen on the basis of more narrow
pathological indications, with less emphasis on elabo rate individualization
based on personality traits, as favored by some leading teachers today.
Indeed, it would be fair to say that this more medically-oriented style has
always been the most popular one with homeopathic physicians the world over,
and is so still among members of the LIGA [International Homeopathic Medical
League], for example, and especially in Europe, Latin America, and the
Indian subcontinent, where the newer schools of Vithoulkas Sankaran,
Scholten, Mangialavori, et al., are widely regarded as "elitist" or
"illuminist" interpretations that fail to address the often ugly,
unedifying, or inelegant realities of advanced organic disease as commonly
seen in clinical practice.
As it happens, Ramakrishnan himself is at some pains not to take a
doctrinaire position on either side this ongoing and wholly legitimate
debate. National Vice-President of the LIGA for his country, and official
Physician to the Prime Minister of India, he is a good classical prescriber
who still uses the single remedy in the minimum dose whenever possible,
giving the remedy and then waiting for it to act.
As he says in his Introduction, he adopted a more proactive and aggressive
approach to cancer only after the deaths of two close relatives from the
disease and his own inability to save them using the best methods available
to him at the time.
His thoroughly pragmatic attitude seems to boil down to, "This has been my
experience with cancer so far; this is what has worked the best; so give it
a try if you want to."
What I take from that is just what we already know, that healing pertains to
individuals, requires an ad hoc decision in every case, and is therefore
irreducible to a single protocol, rule, or formula.
The apposite quote from the Organon would of course be Hahnemann, Paragraph
I and footnote, "The physician's high and only mission is to restore the
sick to health ... not to construct systems [or] hypotheses." Amen to that.
In Chapter 1, "The Homeopathic Approach," the authors justify their
modifications of the classical approach on the basis of two considerations
that, however plausible or even self-evident they may seem or turn out to
be, must still be regarded as hypotheses in need of further proof, namely,
1) that measurable, concrete pathology like cancer calls for a less subtle,
less individualized, more pathologically-oriented style of prescribing,
featuring the old notion of specific remedies for specific diseases, and
others with particular affinity for certain tissues, organs, or regions of
the body, as in the organopathic tradition just alluded to; and
2) that the life-threatening character of the disease generates an authentic
urgency, a "race against time," which requires a more aggressive dosage
schedule than simply giving one or a few doses of a single remedy and
waiting for them to act.
We may therefore take the present volume as, in effect, the authors' joint
endeavor to make the best possible case for these claims, although it will
doubtless require the concerted efforts of a whole generation of prescribers
to persuade the homeopathic community as a whole, let alone the public at
large.
As it has evolved thus far, Ramakrishnan's method comprises three basic
adaptations of the classical or " unicist" model, based on the single remedy
and the minimum dose:
1) The remedies are given at regular, specified intervals, not on an "as
needed" basis, and repeated over long periods of time, almost always for
months at a time.
2) Two remedies are given weekly in alternation, usually an organ-specific
or more general cancer remedy followed by a cancer nosode.
3) Remedies are administered by "plussing," according to specifications
provided in the text, or by the "split-dose" method in early cases, such
that each weekly dose is split into four and taken within a single day, from
waking till bedtime.
The remainder of the book is largely given over to individual case reports,
most of them followed by Ms. Coulter's helpful comments on the choice of the
remedies and other individualizing features pertaining to that instance.
In Chapter 2, the main cancer remedies in Ramakrish nan's practice are
listed, subdivided into three groups:
1) nosodes, chiefly Carcinosin and Scirrhinum;
2) what he calls "wide-spectrum cancer specifics," Conium, Thuja, and
Arsenicum album, used in cancer of many types; and
3) organ-specific remedies, such as Aurum muriaticum natronatum (cervix,
uterus, ovaries), Ceanothus (spleen, pancreas, liver), Hekla lava (bone,
bone marrow), Hydrastis (stomach), Lycopodium (lung), Phytolacca (breast,
parotid), Plumbum iod (brain), Sabal serrulata (prostate), and Terebinthina
(bladder), to name a few.
In Chapter 3, general rules are formulated for the use of the Plussing
and/or the Split-Dose methods, again with illustrative cases. Chapter 4, by
far the longest (80 pages), gives cases of many types of cancer that have
responded favorably to remedies given in this fashion, including several
sites where conventional treatment has had the poorest record, such as
brain, esophagus, lung, stomach, pancreas, and ovary.
The authors' pragmatic, down-to-earth approach is equally evident in the
later chapters. Chapter 5, for example, discusses palliative treatment in
more advanced cases where metastasis has already occurred, or where the
disease has spread too extensively for remedies to offer any realistic hope
of cure.
Using the same methodology as before, they report unexpectedly good results
even in this group, both in length and quality of life. Chapter 6 continues
in similar vein with remedies for pain control in advanced and terminal
cases, including some not discussed before, such as Euphorbium and
Ornithogalum.
In Chapter 7, constitutional remedies are discussed as a complement or
alternative to the usual method when the total symptom-picture clearly
indicates them, for example,
1) if the tumors have regressed to the point that plussing is no longer
required;
2) if the treatment has stalled at a certain point and a more
closely-fitting remedy is called for to reactivate it;
3) if metastasis occurs in the wake of an apparent cure;
4) from the beginning, if the constitutional remedy has special affinity
with the organ or tissue affected; or
5) occasionally without any other remedies or nosodes, in very early cases
(e.g., carcinoma in situ) or slow-growing cancers (thyroid, etc.).
Special problems, such as prescribing for acute ailments that arise in the
course of treatment, are also discussed herein.
Chapter 8, on the role of conventional diagnosis and treatment, offers
useful techniques by which homeopaths can collaborate with and even assist
their allopathic colleagues. Remedies are suggested for radiation,
chemotherapy, and pre-and post-operative care, along with strategies for
using remedies between radiation treatments or rounds of chemotherapy.
Valuable lessons are embedded in many of these cases, such as the woman with
metastatic ovarian cancer in lungs, bladder, and mesenteric nodes, who lived
a good- quality life for years with all her lesions, illustrating the often
radical discrepancy between the totality of symptoms-the ordinary language
of how patients feel and function-and the technical language of
abnormalities, the basis of conventional diagnosis and treatment.
In the final chapter, the important subject of cancer prevention is
addressed at some length, including
1) protocols for the treatment of those with strong family histories of
cancer;
2) longer courses of the usual cancer treatment to prevent recurrences;
3) optional use of tissue salts for long-term maintenance; and
4) protocols for reversing documented precancerous lesions, for example,
leukoplakia of the oral cavity, cervical dysplasia, or elevated PSA without
observable lesions of the prostate, using the same repertoire of remedies
and dosages already developed.
This concluding chapter I found particularly valuable in addressing the
common and valid concerns of patients we all see every day.
Like any other text of therapeutics, this book will inevitably attract the
same sort of contempt and vituperation that so-called "pathological
prescribers" have always endured, not least from the pen of Hahnemann
himself.
But the most important caveat raised by the book, as the authors themselves
clearly acknowledge, is that, while seeming deceptively easy for even a
novice to find useful remedies to try in a particular case, the method
requires experience and skill to obtain consistently good results, and will
thus inevitably be misused at times.
As usual, the peculiar or individualizing features of case and response will
make the difference, for example, by indicating one remedy rather than
another, or dictating when the remedy should be changed. To some extent,
these often subtle distinctions can only be felt and shown, but never wholly
taught.
That is part of the reason why it behooves homeopaths and indeed anyone
treating patients with cancer or potentially fatal illness to pay even more
care and attention than usual to their ongoing relationships with their
patients.
It is also why this book will ultimately be most useful for experienced
homeopathic physicians and other health professionals, and why lay
practitioners and patients, if they use it at all, must do so on their own
responsibility and at their own peril. In either case, such work should
include regular checkups by the oncology team, and should be conducted with
their approval whenever possible.
Nevertheless, since the approach outlined in this book is still a lot easier
to use and promises to be a lot more effective than the one most of us were
taught, I'm more than game to try it, and I would encourage other
experienced practitioners to do the same. If it works, as I believe it will,
it may also open up new directions for the use of homeopathic remedies in
treating other serious pathology with organ damage, like multiple sclerosis,
cirrhosis, advanced renal disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease,
and the like, which are equally difficult to help consistently at present.
It turns out that these are just the sort of conditions for which homeopaths
like Chand and Ramakrishnan in India, Eizayaga in Argentina, and others in
Europe and Latin America have long advocated similarly medically-oriented,
organopathic strategies, albeit often differing in their details.
Precisely because American homeopathic physicians have been so effectively
marginalized for so long, and are veritable babes in the wood at treating
folks with this level of sickness, we have the unique opportunity and
indeed, dare I say, the duty to integrate these two often hostile and
seemingly irreconcilable strands of the homeopathic tradition into a new
synthesis that can pass the test of time.
The present volume gives plenty of detail for trained, experienced classical
prescribers to begin to treat our cancer patients more effectively, and I
hope and expect that those of good heart and open mind will use it in that
spirit.
Homeopathy Today
November 21, Volume 21, Number 10
Reprinted with permission from the
National
Center for Homeopathy