Confronted with this paradox, a homeopath needs an answer and, like always, when we question one aspect, the whole shaky edifice of homeopathy trembles. There are many ‘Holy Cows’ in homeopathy (which the late homeopath Joerg Wichmann addressed bravely in articles in Homeopathic Links decades ago).
I must admit I bought the story of viruses as well, though being not too concerned about their existence, as ‘it is the terrain, not the pathogen’ that makes a person sick, isn’t it? Béchamp understood it, Pasteur admitted it on his deathbed, medicine held on to the mistake for profit. Therefor I treated viruses more or less as bacteria; a healthy person lives in happy co-existence with all of them (fungi included). A disturbed environment allows for opportunistic overgrowth that must be restored to balance by an alert immune response. If that proves not be sufficient, external help is required. Regular medicine attempts to kill the pathogen, homeopathy attempts to enhance the healing response.
It wasn’t always clear whether the patient suffers from a bacterial or a virus ‘infection’, usually the viral came with less fever, less excretion and lasted some 10 days, while the bacterial attack usually was more severe, yet over its peak after 5 days. Very general features but important for regular medicine, because it made no sense to prescribe antibiotics when there were no bacteria (which didn’t stop them prescribing them anyway)
Covid19 changed everything. Suddenly viruses were deemed extremely contagious and deathly. ‘Experts’ in ‘virology’ were the new popstars in the media. Until a few scientists, who slipped through the cracks of omnipresent censorship, claimed that nowhere in the scientific literature there was proof to be found of the existence of viruses. The laboratory tests that resulted in the sample decay, gave the same result when it contained ‘viral matter’ or not and must therefore be attributed to the procedure. Viruses never been isolated and didn’t meet any of the Koch’s postulates.
What are those ‘virologists’ (quite oddly specialists in a non-existent phenomenon) then looking at? They must see something in those microscopes!? Other than computer generated protein sequences?
Could it be exosomes, particles in our cells acting like garbage men, are confused with viruses? Exosomes act when there is too much toxicity in the cell by pushing it outside the cell into the blood stream. Exosomes multiply quickly, leave the cell and enter other cells to clean up the garbage too. The toxins in the bloodstream will make the person feel ill until the toxins are excreted by perspiration, mucous, diarrhoea, vomiting, while suppressing the appetite and forcing the patient to rest. In other words: not a dangerous external pathogen attacking us, spreading to everybody else around us, but our own internal cleansing mechanism at work.
But that doesn’t answer our question: why do remedies like Influenzinum, Rotavirus, Herpes Simplex, Herpes Zoster, Ebstein Barr Virus, Morbillium, Variolinum etc work?
The answer might be in the word ‘work’.
Everything works: a sauna, a hug, a cup of coffee, an Aspirin, a massage, a hike, rest, hot tea with honey, music, laughing, supplements, fasting, etc
There is a reason why I start with a few premisses and definitions in every seminar or lecture. So many times I’ve seen cases in seminars or read cases in articles where the remedy ‘worked’. Predictably, every remedy does ‘something’, as it, according to Hahnemann, has the potential to alter the state of the person. Whether that is perceivable or not, depends on the strength to overpower the natural disease (which is the state). In a few clear aphorisms he explains what happens when two dissimilar diseases meet in a person: the state of the person he considers the ‘natural disease’, and the homeopathic remedy is the ‘artificial’ or ‘dissimilar disease’. In short: when the first is stronger, nothing will be felt, is the latter is stronger, it will overpower the person temporarily and after it ran its course, it will leave the person as before. This is what happens when the remedy is ‘dissimilar’, in other words not similar to the state of the person.
Still, it ‘works’, doesn’t it? For a period, symptoms (which are expressions of numerous states, reflected in our repertory rubrics with hundreds of remedies) are ‘gone’. When they reappear and don’t yield to different potencies of the same remedy, we can be sure the remedy was a dissimilar disease and therefor not curative.
But it worked. It did something.
We can do better. It comes down to the essential difference between an effect and a cure. I wrote about that ad nauseam. While most remedies have effect (do something) only the one (s) that is (are) capable of bringing about resonance -and as a result coherence- will cure.
This brings us to the question: can non -existent remedies (like viruses) cure? The answer is simple: look around. The literature is loaded with cases of Luna, Berlin Wall, Light of Pluto, Sol, Mobile Phone, Vacuum, Mesmerismus, Stonehenge, Tempestas, Solar eclips and none of these ‘exist’. They are all concepts, symbols loaded with meaning, because we are meaning giving creatures. I wrote extensively about this amazing faculty for symbolizing and how it permeates every level and detail of our life, in “The Charm of Homeopathy” (2005) .
Viruses belong to that category of remedies: they are symbols. In most people minds, they equal bacteria and do more or less the same thing: they are transmitted by humans or animals, contaminate, multiply and make the system sick. The immune system wins the fight and eliminates them or loses, then as a result the person or animal dies. None of this is actually true. But it doesn’t matter. We believe it to be because we are told to.
Therefor if we experience changes in our body, disease symptoms for which we deem viruses responsible, a similar ‘remedy’, which is a concept, will resonate and bring back harmony.
The most unsettling of this observation is that when it is true for viruses, (and the above mentioned remedies) , it must be true for all remedies…..
