15 March 2011


Chaque année, le jour anniversaire de la naissance d'Hahnemann, le C.E.H (Comité Européen de l'Homéopathie) et le L.M.H.I. ( Ligue Mondiale de l'Homéopathie) organisent une journée de l'homéopathie dans un pays différent. De préférence un pays où l'homéopathie est sous pression.

Symposium at the occasion of the International Homeopathy Day, Croatia,  2011

GLOBAL HOMEOPATHY

Ladies and Gentlemen, dear colleagues and friends,

In these weeks, homeopathic physicians and patients  around the world celebrate not only the birthday of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy, but also the great benefits this therapeutical method offers to humanity.

GLOBAL HOMEOPATHY refers to the fact that today Homeopathy is practised by hundred of thousends of medical doctors in all continents. Since 200 years millions of patients are treated, all over the world, with a therapeutical method which has never changed in its fundamental statements in all these years, offering a safe and effective treatment for acute and chronic diseases.

In many countries all over the world homeopathy has gained official status. It has been officially recognized by the governments as a system of medicine or medical speciality in countries in Central and South America (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico), Asia (India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) and Europe ( Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain and United Kingdom). In some of these countries homeopathy has been integrated into national health care systems, namely in Brazil, India, Mexico, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom.

In India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Mexico, the legal standing of homeopathy is equivalent to that of conventional western (allopathic) medicine, many practitioners are certified in both, homeopathy and allopathic medicine, and the primary care provider for many patients is a homeopathic doctor. In India alone there are around 180.000 homeopathic doctors working.

Several National Medical Associations have recognised homeopathy as a therapeutic medical method ( Germany, Austria, Latvia, France, Italy, Switzerland, United Kingdom). In German, e.g. homeopathic remedies, as well as the consultation fees of homeopathic medical treatments are reimbursed by some public and all private insurances.

Over the past decades homeopathy has benefited from growing demand both from doctors and from the public in the majority of the countries in the world.

China is the latest country to open doors to Homeopathy. In the last year J.T. Kents Repertory, one of the most fundamental working books in Homeopathy has been translated into Mandarin, the most spoken language in the world. The translation of the Organon of Hahnemann is in process.

It is of high interest that especially in countries with low income millions of patients, living in difficult economical and social conditions worldwide, are in homeopathic care. The costs for homeopathic medicines in Asia, Africa and South America amount to just a few cents. This is one of many reasons why the World Health Organization is demanding that Complementary and Alternative Medicines, that means also homeopathy,  should be integrated into national health systems.

Listening to these facts and considering also that the prevention of diseases is one of the highest goals of WHO and of many governments in the world, we conclude that there exist enough reasons for all political and health authorities around the world,to integrate homeopathy as a complementary and alternative therapy into their national health systems, well knowing that homeopathy offers everything a medical therapeutical system should offer: a safe, low cost, efficient, preventive, indivdual and to the whole person oriented treatment. Whenever the right homeopathic medicine is taking influence over the totality of the patients disorders, it always influences the patients disposition to suffer certain diseases as well. This way a homeopathic treatment is able to reduce, to change or remove completely a child´s disposition for recurrent respiratory infections, recurrent Otitis media, hay fever or food allergies among others.

Unfortunatelly more and more western national health systems and health insurances have the tendency to a rigid handling of the medical care , structuring units of diseases with fixed time limits and fixed costs in the patients treatment, limiting also the physician  in his therapeutical options. In other words, a bronchitis or pneumonia should be diagnosed and treated in a certain time limit; therapy and costs for the treatment are defined in advance.

This means  that on one side the patient as an individual will be reduced to a small unit of physical and local disease and on the other side the physician is manipulated by health insurances obligating him to apply a therapy defined in advance. Such procedures cause –as we know- dissatisfaction in both – in patient and physician.

And after all what kind of consequences does this have for the patient´s health and for his disposition to suffer certain diseases ? What happens with the cause of his disease ?... and the effects on his environment ?...will he be healthier after such a treatment ?

It is of course the intention of most of the medical specialities and of every physician to put the whole human being in the focus of attention. Neverthless most of the medical colleagues focus the attention only on partial aspects of the patient, it means on diseased organs or functions. Even if a family doctor tries to see the whole patient, that means not only his headache, but also the relation this headache has with a dissapointment he experienced in his family, the influence of certain weather conditions on his headache, his food allergies or the relation of the headache with his yearly gastritis etc., he usually lacks of possibilities to offer holistic solutions to the patients problems.

In contrast, Homeopathy considers the individual patient as an integrated whole, including the physical, mental, emotional, social, environmental and any other aspects of the total person. A homeopathic diagnosis is a systemic one including information, not only about the patient's actual complaint, but also about the patients constitution, emotional and mental make-up, and the way he deals with physical, emotional and mental influences/ stress in his/her life.

This means that a successful homeopathic treatment e.g. of  a child with a generalized atopic eczema includes not only the symptoms of the dry, scaly and itching skin on arms, legs and head, aggravating in the summer heat and whenever his father is travelling overseas. The homeopathic diagnosis includes much more than this, it covers also his sleeping disorder and the nightmares of the boy, his constant feeling of being neglected and not taken serious, his headaches in the summerheat, pains in knees during the night and the fact that he is weeping easily when critized or when he feels excluded from the activities of his friends. And such a treatment is also characterized by an enormous transdency due to the fact that the right medicine not only cures the eczema, but also influences positively this boys mental and emotional make-up, helping him to be less critical with himself, being emotionally much more stabil and confident in his abilities, opening doors for the realization of all of his qualities. Further we know that an adequate homeopathic treatment reduces his allergic disposition, facilitating his future living conditions enormously.

This is personal medicine in its purest presentation.

One of the main reasons why Homeopathy expands its influence more and more over the globe, playing already an important role in many national health systems, is the fact that homeopathy not only moves the patient in the center of its attention, but also offers practical approaches and GLOBAL solutions for the totality of the patients disorders.

Homeopathy understands disease as a privation, as something  the patient is not provided with any more, with other words he lost the free possibilities of development and realization in his life. When talking about the "vital force", the life-giving element, Hahnemann formulates these thoughts in the § 9, Organon, as follows: „...in the healthy condition of man...our ...mind can freely employ this living, healthy instrument for the higher purposes of our existence." These higher purposes of our existence he defines also as a „pure and permanent enjoyment" of life itself.

This means that beyond the physical and functional disorders the patient is relating during the case taking, a homeopathic medical doctor tries to find out ...which is the existential conflict, which is the main obstacle or what hinders a certain patient substantially to find fulfillment and satisfaction ? Which is the central behavioural disorder or the main symptom explaining often other symptoms of the patient ?

And GLOBAL HOMEOPATHY means also that the same principles and fundaments of homeopathy are applied around the world, in every office or clinic where medical colleagues follow the instructions of Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.

As essential fundaments of Homeopathy we consider the Law of Similars (Similia principle - Similia similibus curentur), the Homeopathic Drug Proving on healthy human individuals and the special understanding of health and disease in homeopathy.

One of the main reasons why homeopathy has never lost its importance in the medical world and the reason why homeopathy never experienced changes in its fundamental statements,  is precisely the timeless character of the laws of nature described by Hahnemann in his Organon, which is the fundamental teaching book in Homeopathy.

Through his years of therapeutical experience the founder of Homeopathy was able  -to define the naturally existing relation on which his method of cure is based, as a law of cure or even as a natural law.

And in the § 31, of the Organon, 1st edition, Hahnemann continues:

"The big homeopathic law of curing, ...is based on the law of the human nature drawn on careful trials and pure experience...that a disease can be eradicated and cured only by a similar disease".

That way Homeopathy can be defined as a method of medical practice, aimed at methodologically improving the level of health of an organism by the obligatory administration of proven and potentised medicines, which are individually selected in accordance with the law of similars, as described by Samuel Hahnemann in its Organon of the Healing Art.

In many experiments Hahnemann discovered that a substance, capable of provoking symptoms in a healthy organism, acts as curative agent in a diseased organism in which the same symptoms are manifested. The Law of Similars,"let likes be cured by likes", is the most important fundament of Homeopathy.

In his Organon of Medicine, Hahnemann writes in the § 25:

Pure experience teaches us.... that we will remove rapidly, permanently and radically the totality of the symptoms of the whole disease present, and change it into health, by choosing a remedy which in its action on the healthy human body has demonstrated its power of producing the greatest number of symptoms SIMILAR to those observable in the case of disease under treatment...."

Homeopathy is rooted in experiment and careful observation. In fact, the earliest systematic study of the action of medicines in medical history is the Homeopathic trial, called proving. Homeopathic pathogenetic trials are a type of research, in which compounds are tested on healthy human volunteers in order to observe as many effects as possible, at a non-toxic level.

If finally the similarity is great enough between the patients symptoms and the symptoms found in the drug proving on healthy human beings, the original disease or complaint does not recure after discontinuing the administration of the remedy.

Individuality of the patient and of the selected homeopathic remedy constitute two more essential corner stones of Homeopathy due to the fact that life, health and disease are in their „essence" unique. Everybody experiences grief, joy, anger and of course all pathologies, diseases and symptoms individually – being always different from those other individuals might experience." In other words: "...every human being has to be seen and understood in his whole reality he is living every day. Because it is exactly this reality which is essentially different from every other reality we know."(Heidegger)

In the same way „Every medicine exhibits peculiar actions on the human organism, which are not produced in exactly the same manner by any other medicinal substance of different kind" as Hahnemann writes in his Organon.

One of the most challenging aspects, is the fact, that Homeopathy, considers a disease as something that shows itself directly in the patient´s symptoms and belongs to our real world, that it is something, that we are living, experiencing and suffering. The homeopathic physician takes the patients symptoms in the sense that what shows itself is the disease itself. To the contrary, conventional medicine tries to find the cause of disease in the area of something that does not show itself directly, that is, in the area of that which is measurable and calculable.  This means that in conventional medicine the treatment of a Pharyngitis is based on the identification of the pathological agent (e.g. a streptococcus) and in homeopathy directly on the individual expression of the patients symptoms, like the type of pain, or in the modalities of the throat pain, or in the accompanying symptoms of the patients disease like changes in the mood, perspiration, weakness or sleepiness etc.

CONCEPT OF HEALTH AND DISEASE

Thus, homeopathic prescribing is based on the symptoms belonging to the dynamic aspect of disease rather than the material aspect.

Generally speaking, the first symptom of disease (= dis-ease) is a feeling of uneasiness. Later on, disease starts revealing itself through a succession of symptoms.  As the disharmony progresses, more definite indications start appearing, first in the form of subjective symptoms, like abnormal sensations and complaints, then followed by objective symptoms ('signs'), like disordered functioning of affected organs and systems, and later on even structural alterations in the tissues and organs, detectable by means of tests and other measuring procedures. Subjective and objective symptoms together furnish the 'external' evidence of disease. In homeopathy these very symptoms point to a curative remedy.

As homeopathy stimulates the self-regulation mechanism, it is easy to see that, in principle, all illness can benefit from homeopathic treatment.The therapeutic possibilities, of course, depend on the extent to which the organism is able to recover. If a disease process has come to an end and the tissue damage has become irreversible, homeopathy will only have a palliative effect.

Homeopathy is unique and is clearly distinguished from other branches of medicine such as Anthroposophic Medicine, Homotoxicology, Phytotherapy and others.

The international platform for homeopathic medical doctors is the

LIGA MEDICORUM HOMOEOPATHICA INTERNATIONALIS

The LIGA founded in Rotterdam 1925,  represents at this moment 75  countries worldwide and has aproximately 10.000 members.

WHAT ARE THE LIGA´s PURPOSES ?

The aim of the LIGA is to unify every homeopathic physician and all homeopathic medical associations of the world under one nominal head .With the help of a LIGA representative in every country as a link between the national association and the LIGA, the main purpose of the LIGA can be realized:

The development and securing of good quality homeopathy worldwide and the creation of a link between homeopaths with medical diplomas and also between societies and persons who are interested in homeopathy.

The goals of the LMHI have international interests

Contacts and common working projects with International Health Organizations  such as the WHO

Contacts and common working projects with other International Homeopathic

Organisations such as the European Committee for Homeopathy, GIRI (Groupe

International de Recherche sur l´Infinitesimal)

Political support and mutual assistance, respectively, in political and legal  challenges to homeopathy in those countries where the Liga´s aid is solicited by the representatives of the national homeopathic organizations.

Educational help is offered through the LMHI – ECH Homeopathic Medical

Education Standards, Examination Standards and a LMHI Diploma

In the area of Research a working committee promotes high-quality scientific homeopathic research presentations at the LMHI Congresses worldwide. Recent   publications are: "Research in Homeopathy" and "Evidence based Homeopathy".

 

•The LMHI is further acting as coordinator for the international dissemination of  homeopathically pertinent media items and for international communication among  homeopathic and allied researchers and research projects. Using for these  purposes the new LMHI website (www.lmhi.net) , the Liga-Letter and the  electronic LMHI Newsletter, as well as the communication through the National Vice Presidents, the connection between LIGA and the member Countries and the annual LMHI Congress.

At the end of my presentation one word in regard to the

QUALITY OF THE HOMEOPATHIC PRACTICE

Homeopathy requires special knowledge and skills to be mastered. It takes considerable training because the therapeutic objective as well as the practical approach to illness differs widely in homeopathy as compared to conventional medicine. For this purpose, LMHI and ECH developed a common curriculum which reflects the situation of the homeopathic training as found in most of the countries worldwide. This document presents the minimum standards of education and training in homeopathic medicine for medical doctors, pharmacists, veterinarians and dentists.

Furthermore, homeopathic doctors should be able to combine the knowledge and skills in homeopathic practice with the knowledge and skills in the practice of conventional medicine. Since homeopathic treatment often needs to be prescribed within a broader care plan including an awareness of the need for conventional medical diagnosis, prognosis and treatments, qualifications should be at the same high level as in conventional medicine. A full medical education ensures the necessary clinical competence required, especially if homeopathy is applied as an alternative to conventional treatment.
In conclusion, homeopathy is a low-cost treatment, suitable for all ages, which offers help and cure in acute and chronic diseases and considering the whole person homeopathy improves physical and emotional health.

In this half an hour we talked a lot about individual medicine and about the individuality of the patient which should be respected and treated in every case, neverthless we should not forget that the wellbeing of every individual depends essentially on the wellbeing of everybody. And –being part of medicine- homeopathy is able to contribute quite a lot to the wellbeing of humanity.In this should be founded our central idea of global medicine.

Dr. Ulrich D. Fischer
LMHI Past President
ECH Vice President
Grünwälderstrasse 10-14
79098 Freiburg
Gemany

Commentaar van de UNIO

En Slovenie l'an dernier comme en Croatie cette année, cette journée fut un grand succès. Des contacts avec les gouvernements nationaux ont été noués par des représentants nationaux épaulés par des représentants du C.E..H. et du L.M.H.I.

L'importance de ces journées, qu'il ne faut pas sous estimer réside dans la défense de la notion que l'homéopathie est une médecine, et non une "C.A.M." à savoir une médecine "complémentaire" et "alternative".