Forward to the roots

A seminar review: Dr. Andr Saine in Luebeck/Germany (23.10.26.10.2003)

It is a rare treat to take part in a seminar and live anamnesis with Andr Saine. At a time when students and practitioners alike pay more heed to modern trends, developments, innovations and discoveries than to the core teachings of our homeopathic method, it is all the more important to have someone provide a living link with this tradition. Witnessing the teachings of Andr Saine there is no doubt that this link is very much alive. His journey is an instructive one. He started studying homeopathy in his mid-twenties with teachers like Bill Gray, Robin Murphy and other influential modern homeopaths. But Andr Saine felt that something was missing. He had the good fortune of being at a college that housed many treasures of the early homeopathic literature, and he had the tenacity and commitment to read and photocopy this material extensively. He has made tens of thousands of photocopies (a process which still continues) in order to resurrect a lost world. What came to light from this research was a world qualitatively and essentially different from what we understand homeopathy to be today. Having seen Dr. Saine take a case, select the remedy and manage the case over a long period of time, I would outline the key features as such: The case is taken in a purposeful and interventive style. Details, according to the homeopathic materia medica, are teased out in the minutest detail, in order to confirm a paradox Boenninghausen touched upon when he said that only long experience and extensive knowledge of the materia medica helps recognise what has to be cured. It shows that if you want to find something, you have to know that you are looking for something, and ideally what you are looking for. This approach not only needs confidence, but also fosters confidence by knowing that a natural disease will inevitably reveal itself. By knowing artificial diseases (provings) we can recognise natural diseases. Therefore, the more we accurately know the artificial diseases, the more likely we are to see the salient expressions of natural diseases. In his case taking he examines each chief complaint, medical history as well as family history and then to complete the disease picture, asks, Who is this person having all these problems? The chief complaint is always the starting point, and only if all the elements have been assembled does he go to the next complaint, and so on until all the problems have been clearly investigated. Mind and body are given equal attention (and Andr Saine is equally adapt in both areas to inquire into the important points), and brought together in the analysis and synthesis of the case to reveal the remedy. Long term case management is very dynamic in that remedies are repeated as needed, the potency is usually changed when the patients reaction to the remedy slows appreciably to that potency, or changed to the plussing method when the remedy must be used often, like more than every 7-10 days. The remedy is changed when the law of similar demands it. The latter is the bedrock in all of Saines prescribing (and Hahnemanns, of course): The remedy is repeated (in varying potencies and doses) until new symptoms appear, clearly indicating a new remedy. This remedy is then given. New symptoms can seemingly be innocuous to warrant a new prescription: a strong desire for fruits which wasnt there before with stalling of improvement of other symptoms;

dizziness while turning in bed; change of sleep position, etc. The phenomenological approach, as opposed to a speculative, theorising way of interpreting remedy reaction, comes alive: We prescribe on what we see and observe pure and simple. This might be the reason why Andr Saine never uses intercurrents, whose use very often demands the postulation of a miasmatic block without showing clear symptoms of the indicated remedy (be it Thuja, Medorrhinum, Syphilinum, Tuberculinum, or even Carcinosin and Aids). Andr Saine finds the remedy by first examining all symptoms of the case, including vague and general symptoms which might only indicate location and affinity, or disease tendency, as Boger would have it. He then asks the question, What is most striking in this patient with such and such pathological process? What is most striking in this patient with schizophrenia? With polymyositis? With multiple sclerosis? etc. The most striking symptoms are valued and organised in a totality and the question is asked: What remedy in our reliable materia medica is most similar to this totality of characteristic symptoms (genius of the disease) and also covers best the rest of the symptoms. This is a very simplified version of his case analysis, which is obviously much more complex when dealing for example with dissimilar diseases. It would take too much space to deeply go into this here. After repertorisation a comparative study of the remedies is made based upon the materia medica pura. Andr Saine only uses reliable provings, saying that 80 % of confirmation of rare and peculiar symptoms is from Hahnemann and 20 % from the rest of the profession. He treats almost exclusively cases with severe pathology and structural changes. Over the 4 days we saw a case of temporal lobe dementia, a serious case of meningitis (patient is in a comatose state from septic shock with advanced gangrenous process, kidney failure and in a usually fatal state of disseminated intravascular coagulation); a case with cerebellar lymphoma; a case of psychosis in a seven and half year old girl; a case with severe hemophilia A with AIDS and active Hepatitis C; a case with scleroderma; a case with aortic stenosis and essential hypertension; a case of autism (born with complete agenesis of the corpus callosum); a severe case of polymyositis, etc. The remedies prescribed (in no particular order) were Natrum muriaticum, Ignatia, Staphysagria, Sulphur, Phosphorus, Aloe socrotina, Crotalus horridus, etc. Where remedies like Staphysagria or Ignatia were chosen, he expected an antipsoric to come up during the course of the treatment. He says that he didnt remember finishing a case without using an antipsoric remedy. The cases presented confirm what we all know: A case well taken will guide you inevitably to the remedy. It was always transparent why a particular remedy was given. What also came to life in his cases was the relationship of remedies. There was a degree of predictability which way a particular case would go, again confirming what the early homeopaths had observed so many times. The keywords in Andr Saines case are experience and observation pure and simple. He simply continues the work of experience and observation, and by doing that, confirms the reliability of the Organon and Hahnemanns materia medica as practical tools. Where his experience does not confirm Hahnemann or any other venerable homeopath, he is quite happy to say so (e.g. paragraph 161 of the Organon is not confirmed by him in practice nor Herings so-called law). His hero, in the whole of homeopathic history, is Dr. Adolph Lippe. On Saturday

night we were treated to a slide show concerning Lippe and his times. Why Lippe? Because he was without doubt the most accurate prescriber in the history of homeopathy. As Dr Walter James once said Lippe was successful beyond belief. In 1879, when challenged by the editor of the Medical Advance to publish his mandatory report to the Board of Health, he reported no deaths of acute disease during the last two years, in spite of having the busiest practice of all physicians in Philadelphia and going through several epidemics, he wrote, After diligently applying the law of the similars to the cure of the sick, and following diligently the teachings of the Master some forty years, and for over thirty years having only used the higher and highest potencies, and by law, which is strictly enforced, being compelled to report every death occurring in our practice to a Board of Health, and attending to as large a general practice as any other medical man in this city, and having had some of the gravest cases which have occurred in this community to treat, we may now report, that since the 12th of January, 1877, we have not lost a single solitary case of an acute diseasenot one of the many cases treated of typhus, typhoid fever, pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlet-fever, cholera-infantum, erysipelas, etc.; and we now, even at the risk of being charged with boasting, give from our reports to the Board of Health, in the city of Philadelphia, a correct copy. What was the recipe of his success? He famously said in 1886 it is close to 50 years since he first read the Organon and that after having read it more than a hundred times he was just starting to comprehend it. Nobody in the history of homeopathy has been more vociferous when it comes to the importance of adhering to the teachings of Hahnemann. In his talk on Lippe, which showed Andr Saines passion, integrity, humour and deep knowledge of homeopathy, it became clear that he continues where Lippe left off. In 2005, we can expect the publication of Lippes best writings, about 850 out of 3,500 pages, accompanied by an exhausting review of the history of pure homeopathy as experienced by Lippe (about 500 pages), which gathers one part of Andr Saines research over the last 20 years. Andr Saine also intends to relight the torch of the International Hahnemannian Association founded by Lippe for the dissemination of pure homeopathy. The main goal is to unite all those homeopaths, who work according to Hahnemann (and the other great Hahnemannians, Lippe, Hering, Bnninghausen, Dunham, Guernsey, etc). Andr Saine is very clear that we need a definition of what homeopathy is, based on Hahnemann, and that those who work in different ways, should admit to it and call their method with appropriate name rather than continue to misrepresent homeopathy. This is a great challenge to our profession and a great opportunity to review our own practice in the light of the original teachings. A revival might well be on the way. It seems that we might go forward to the roots. Before we continue with breathtaking speed in our drive for innovation, why dont we see what our predecessors really did (esp. those before Kent), and only modify where the emulation of these practitioners does not yield results. I wonder how many of us can honestly say that they have studied and put into practice Hahnemanns teachings (Organon, Materia Medica Pura and Chronic Diseases) and can say: This method is outdated and does not work. This seminar in Luebeck was organised by the Gesellschaft homoepathischer Aerzte in Schleswig-Holstein und den Hansestaedten (the association of homeopathic doctors in Schleswig-Holstein and cities of the Hansa). This was the 5th time that Dr.

Saine visited Luebeck. He will do so again in October 2004. The seminar language is English. Ralf Jeutter (can be contacted on : rjeutter@yahoo.de) Websites related to this article are: www.homeopathy.ca www.grundlagen-praxis.de