Aids: The Homoeopathic Challenge

Jonathan Stallick is now well known in the homoeopathic community for his pioneering work with patients with HIV/AIDS. This book is a summary of his experiences and insights - a frequently provocative exploration of the subject, covering: .Psychological and social issues. .Medical inforamtion .Sample cases .Materia medica uf useful remedies (including the AIDS nosode) .Homoeopathic therapeutics .Case management .Emotional issues facing the practitioner AIDS:The Homoeopathic Challenge is the first book of its kind. Although primarily aimed at homoeopaths, for whom it will be an essential manual, it will provide much useful information for other therapists and all those working the HIV/AIDS field.

• Author: Jonathan Stallick
• ISBN: 9780952853107
• 120 pages
• Paperback
• Printed in United Kingdom

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Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths, from 'The Homeopath' magazine, Spring 1998 edition. Reviewed by Jan Scolten.

This book is called AIDS, The Homoeopathic Challenge. Maybe I would have called it AIDS, A Homoeopathic Challenge, for there are many homoeopathic challenges, like cancer, MS, autism, psychosis etc. That the author used the word 'The' signifies how much the author is connected with the AIDS problem and his wish to find solutions in that area. AIDS is, for sure, a challenge. People with AIDS are often near death and have special therapeutic needs.

The prescription of more than one remedy at the same time will be abhorred by many homoeopaths. But where does the rule stating that doing so is wrong come from? Hahnemann said in § 273 of The Organon: "In no case under treatment is it necessary and therefore not permissible to administer more than one single medicinal substance at one time." But at one time he tried it himself, keeping this practice to himself for political reasons.

The second part of this paragraph is an incorrect conclusion; when it is not necessary to go to London for example, it does not mean that it is not permissible to go there. The first part says that it is not necessary to prescribe more than one remedy, but it is not substantiated at all. The only evidence would be that we could cure all patients with only one remedy at a time. Let us look at the rule itself as it stands on its own, having no ground or evidence to substantiate it. In this, the rule of unitary prescribing is in big contrast with the real laws of homoeopathy like the law of similars and Hering's Law of Cure. So why shouldn't we prescribe more than one remedy? There's of course one practical objection to prescribe more than one remedy and that's the difficulty in evaluation, which remedy did what? But in extreme cases like AIDS it is less important to know which remedy did what, and according to the author is far less important than the urge to heal fast. Besides, many AIDS patients have many suppressed venereal diseases, lots of intoxications with antibiotics, AZT, many other medicines and recreational drugs like poppers, LSD and ecstasy. All these diseases and drugs can imprint a layer in the patient, needing the drug in potency. So we urgently need pictures of those medicines and the author gives a start for the picture of those remedies like AZT. One could say: 'A chaotic case needs chaotic prescribing'.

The book evokes a similar discussion for other rules in homoeopathy such as the frequency of repetition of remedies and the rapid changing or alternating of remedies.

The chapters on AIDS itself are clear and concise. The Materia Medica is compact, clear and adapred to AIDS. The cases are the most valuable part of this book, giving a good picture of the way the author is using homoeopathy and how much homoeopathy can do for AIDS patients. This book is a must for homoeopaths treating AIDS patients, but it also evokes a rethinking of many of the 'rules' in homoeopathy.

Second review: Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths, from 'The Homeopath' magazine, Summer 1997 edition:

Reviewed by Helen Cohen:

This book is, in my view, a hypocritical and unprincipled work which, although it raises important questions, is a futile exercise that proves nothing and achieves nothing.

In the best style of the twentieth-century political demagoguery mixed with a trendy X-Files type of conspiratory paranoia, Stallick, with the help of Kenneth Metson, presents himself as a brave hero fighting the homoeopathic old guard of puritans and fear-inducing tyrants. The words "dogma" "rigid technique", "fixed idea", "narrow-mindedness" abound. Throughout his book (and the interview with Robin Logan in The Homoeopath), the only proof of authenticity Stallick offers is the statement "according to my experience". The poorly articulated arguments against the use of single-medicine pre­scription, a practice the author disdainfully refers to as the "desperate search" and "Holy Grail method", convey the understandable mental struggle of a novice. We have all tried the frantic method of jumping from one remedy to another; it happens to everyone in the first few months or years of practice, when their knowledge of materia medica is superficial. Neither the "courageous" Lisa Monck nor Jonathan Stallick invented this "brave new method". Incompetence is as old as the world.

One could argue that there is, indeed, one legitimate reason for a homoeopath to seek a relatively quick change in prescription when treating AIDS patients. Apparently, in the absence of a full immune response, the invading viral substance mutates very rapidly. During the first few years of HIV infection, in spite of the very vigorous attack on the HIV virus, some of the organisms are not destroyed, and are thus allowed enough time to evolve into a different particle that requires the creation of a different antibody.

Eventually, more and more new viruses are left behind, and more and more T cells are destroyed, so that other parasites can take advantage of the weakened organism. Perhaps what makes AIDS such a complex, haphazard disease is that it does not remain a single disease throughout time. Every instant a different mutated viral protein begins to multiply, there exists an entirely new toxic entity, on top of which the normally harmless opportunistic parasites add their own pathology. The most intuitively rational and logically obvious conclusion need not plunge us into the tenacious swamp of an ideological battlefield. Possibly, in treating AIDS patients, the regular homoeopathic routine of prescribing on totality and waiting for a long time is not appropriate, not because this method is "dogmatic" or "cowardly", but simply because the very totality changes at a much faster pace. Obviously, this is no argument against the 'classical' approach!

However, Stallick's method of prescribing by the days of the week {Carcinosin 10M (Mondays), Tuberculinum 10M (Tuesdays),

Syphilinum 10M (Wednesdays) is absurd.at a time are better than one, so it is repeating certain medicines in a certain order, singly or in groups, is even better. The reason those of us who, because we resist this easy assumption, belong to the ideologically retrograde camp of 'classical' prescribers, preferring to treat patients in the time-honoured fashion, is not because we fear offending dead authorities or lack abilities to think creatively. Nor do we wish to exercise Big-Brother control over a rising new guard of fearless thinkers. We choose single-medicine prescription because that is the only way we can study our drugs. We cannot study them in groups and we cannot study them in sequences; we do not have a method for such studies. Unfortunately, we possess no methods whatsoever of ascertaining the actions of various medicinal substances other than trying them on people and recording the results.

The one way for us to know if patients need Pulsatilla and not Lachesis is if they demonstrate the pattern of symptoms that the medicinal substance Pulsatilla produces or cures and that Lachesis does not. And that is exactly the method Hahnemann called homoeopathy — not "dogmatic" homoeopathy, not "layered" homoeopathy, not "intuitive" homoeopathy, not even "classical" homoeopathy — just plain homoeopathy I now begin to appreciate the old mans paranoia and seething anger about the possibilities of dissent, as he must have had a very clear sense of how easy it is to destroy his life's work. Anyone with a minimum of common sense would certainly appreciate it when we say: "Why tinker with something that works so well?" And if something that works so well for so many people and for such a long time does not work for you, why not examine the possibility that you might not be doing the right thing — examine it long before launching an attack on either the method. Stallick even compares 'classical' homoeopathy with classical hard sciences.

Like many scientifically illiterate New Agers, he is apparently under the impression that Einstein and Bohm were scientific insurgents who rose against Newtonian dominance. Present-day engineers still use classical mechanics, thermodynamics, and chemistry, rather than Schrodinger's equation, in their daily efforts to build our bridges, heat our furnaces, mould our plastics, and draw electrical cables across the continents. Hahnemann sought precisely the same practical foundations; he attempted to incover the permanent laws of health and disease, the laws hat existing Nature, analogously to the classical laws of physics discovered by his contemporaries. To label Hahnemann's laws "dogma" or to claim that homoeopathic principles are either non-existent or unimportant is beyond udicrous for anyone seriously considering himself to be a homeopath. No self-respecting physicist, would ever say such hings about, say, the laws of Newton or Ohm. Stallick turns is arguments around in such a way as to show that he is not really attacking Hahnemann's doctrines, but rather, "in the spirit of Hahnemann", he is rising against someone else, some unidentified evil revisionist (Kent, perhaps?) who reformed the 'true' Homoeopathy and thus engendered the 'rigid dogma'. How familiar that line of argument is! Had Dr. Hahnemann risen from his grave, Kenneth Metson assures us, he would definitely "congratulate" the author for the "courage of his convictions". Well, now I am persuaded!

In fact, Stallick and his supporters, in their uprising against the restraints, of homoeopathic zealotry, never do manage to produce one sound argument against the validity of single-remedy prescribing.

Homoeopathy, as envisioned by Hahnemann, is a medical science with its own laws, principles and strict methods of data collection and observation. Contrary to what our critics claim, homoeopaths do not rely on anecdotal evidence, as psychologists do, for example. The testing of drugs on large numbers of healthy people and collecting and storing a permanent data base for each and every medicinal

substance is the essence of homoeopathic scientific method; that is precisely what the 18th century rationalist mind of Samuel Hahnemann devised. We do publish and read individual clinical cases, but we cannot permit such anecdotes to change our methods or engender new speculative theories; otherwise, homoeopathy would be just as inferential and unscientific a study, inaccessible to rational investigation, as Freudian or Jungian analysis are. Homoeopathy, on the other hand, can do far better than that. We only accept clinical accounts from our published case histories when enough evidence accumulates that certain medicines repeatedly cure certain svmptoms: however, we would still differentiate this data from provings.

Science relies on hard, reproducible data; that is, on the evidence that many people can observe. We cannot reproduce the sequential' and the inspirational; we cannot test it, therefore; we cannot confirm it, ergo it is not homoeopathy.

Call it whatever you want: the Intuitive Use of Diluted Substances or Clairvoyance Assisted Ideologically Innovative Non-dogmatic Prescription of Therapeutic Poisons - but do not call it homoeopathy.

There is a place for intuition in homoeopathic practice, but it applies in an entirely different way. We use our intuition when trying to decipher an individual case history, and this kind of intuitive thinking is based on knowledge directly from the principles after years of study. If Stallick and his colleagues and mentors do have something important to teach us they are more than welcome to do so. Contrary to their accusations, we have no fear of new knowledge.