Use of Homeopathy in patiative care

Use of Homeopathy in paliative care

ZNIBER Mohamed el Amine

Green River College

7 August 2016

Author Note

This paper was prepared for English 128, Section DEA, taught by Professor Walter Lowe

Thanks

After writing this research, I am convinced that this paper is far from a solitary work. Indeed, I could never accomplish this final paper work without your support Professor Walter Lowe. I want to thank you for the confidence you granted me by agreeing to supervise this final work, for your crystal clear advices and for all the hours you devoted to conduct this research. I would also like to tell you how much I appreciated your availability and your unfailing respect about the tight deadlines to review all my documents. Finally, I was extremely sensitive of your human qualities of listening and understanding throughout this work.

Sincerely grateful

Zniber Mohamed El Amine

History of Homeopathy

The principle of homeopathy can be stated today as follows: "Any pharmacologically active substance capable of causing in weight dose in a healthy individuals similar symptoms, can suppress similar symptoms in the individual patient, provided they are used in small doses. Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician born in 1755 in Meissen in Saxony, a toxicologist and pharmacologist, settled as a doctor at 24 years old. Very quickly disappointed by the lack of effective therapeutic results and the limits of the medicine of his day (use of aggressive drugs), he decides to quit. To live, he translated various works until, reading medical material of the Scottish physician William Cullen, he was confused about the explanations given on the action of Cinchona, commonly used to treat swamps fever. Then he has the brilliant idea to experiment on himself and his family to know the real effects.

1) The finding of Hahnemann

Hahnemann at that time in good health notes that the low dose of cinchona gives him fever. This fever is in all aspect comparable to the marsh fever (malaria) fighted by the same quinine to a weight dose.

2) The hypothesis of Hahnemann

He reverses the phenomenon observed on himself and imagine the possibility of healing the sickness by small doses of quinine. Then he establishes the following hypothesis: "Would a substance depending on its dose, be able to cause in a healthy individual symptoms of the sickness and then remove similar symptoms in a sick person? " To test this hypothesis, Hahnemann begins systematic testing of pharmacological substances to the healthy individual, looking for their "pure effects". All the observations made for each of these drugs is its pathogenesis. He eliminates all "recipes" of that time corresponding to mixtures and administered only single drugs at various dosages. He conducts his first test on himself, his family and friends, and on patients, using small doses of substances that, in large doses, occur in healthy individuals the same symptoms as those seen in the sick. Noticing that he often gets temporary aggravations at the beginning of his treatment, He reduces the amount of drug given to patients: Leading him to the process of successive dilutions of the drug. He then realizes that these dilutions, far from diminishing the therapeutic efficiency, enhance subject to vigorous stirring between each dilution, what he calls "dynamic". Clinical confirmation is provided by the cure of most of his patients. He knows a success, which earned him honors and a reputation that exceeds the boundaries of his country. Homeopathy is growing, but soon Hahnemann is exposed to the pessimism of some doctors and pharmacists. From 1811 Hahnemann published the results of its own tests on the healthy individual. Twelve years of experimentation were necessary for the hypothesis of Hahnemann to be translated into a confirmed methode. It is based on the principle of similarity that can be stated as follows: "Every individual patient can be cured by small doses of the dynamic substance that causes at high doses in healthy individuals, similar symptoms to those presented by the sick."

The definition of homeopathy by the popular expression "fight fire with fire" is an incorrect shortcut certainly, but carries the idea.

Personal experience and Claim

I had a cold one-day, and I was curious about using Homeopathy this time to cure it. A priori, we place our trust in a medical procedure when it has been scientifically proven. Imagine a new anti-inflammatory supposed to cure and relieve sciatica. To prove its effectiveness, the method is simple: we deliver the new molecule to a thousand patients a placebo or neutral to a thousand others, then compares the results ... If there are no such studies, or if the drug has not shown its superiority to the placebo, we can raise doubts about its usefulness. With homeopathy, things get complicated. This large-scale test method cannot be applied to this famous medication. Why? Just because their effectiveness depends on the patients and prescription are then customized for each patient: a cold go away with Belladonna in a patient while for another, Nux will be recommended. In fact everything will depend of the type of cold (with or without fever, with or without sore throat, runny nose or stuffy, etc.) and the characteristics of each individual. Although this medicine use a lot of placebo. As far as I remember this medicine cured my cold. I was totally satisfied and I continue to use this medicine now and then.

Some recent studies claim that Homeopathy is unefficient. Certainly, the conventional medicine that we use make us earn three months of life expectancy per year, but we still suffer from diseases that occur without knowing why: cancer, leukemia, and cardiovascular or neurological accidents, affecting even young subjects. But there is no fate; there are specific causes for these phenomena. When we will find them, we will prevent these diseases or even eliminate them. It's the same for diseases of aging. For now, we do not know our biological limits; already at the time of the pharaohs, Ramses II would have lived almost 100 years ... Today, more and more people live longer, but they live poorly:  joints or heart problems, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's... and the actual medicine doesn't give us a clear answers. For a century, it mainly focuses on successfully dealing with crises through surgery or large highly active drugs, but remains powerless in the case of chronic diseases. Faced with these diseases, people are down into deficit and this will last: long hospitalizations, multiple treatments and sometimes ineffective with more expensive drugs. The model of the pharmaceutical industry, which so far has been to extract an active principle of a natural product to make a synthetic product, patent it and sell it, is less and less sustainable. We must therefore review our entire health system, and open it to alternate medicine like Homeopathy. It is my claim to find out if the homeopathy is suitable, scientifically and economically to a certain type of population. Well-understood and well prescribed, homeopathy can accompany the best palliative care in adapting to the reactions and symptoms of each patient, in a comprehensive and personalized way. The absence of medicinal interaction with other treatments provides security for caregivers and for the sick. The speed and fidelity of its therapeutic action, the absence of side effects and the dosage pleasant and very low cost make homeopathy the best-suited complementary medicine to give palliative care. To support my claim, I will find a way to link Scientific’s articles and actual studies of the subject.  I will consult Medical books. I will use other source of knowledge like current statistics of epidemiology. To be as objective as possible, I will include research from both proponents and opponents of the Homeopathy, and compare one to another to draw a conclusion.

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