Is the Blues treatable via homeopathy? Let’s repertorize the problem and find out!

A Case of the Blues
Taken by Jerry M. Kantor, Lic. Ac., CCH, RSHom (NA)

MIND
Blamed but he don’t care.
Certain, ain’t gonna be no one’s dog.
Has got ramblin’ on his mind.
Tired of livin’ but scared of diein’.

Delusion: She can make a dress out of a feedbag, and make a man out of you.
Delusion: Is a poor boy, ‘long way from home.
Delusion: Is getting’ ready for the Cypress Grove.
Delusion: Cannot seem to find his walkin’ shoes.
Delusion: Is a candy man (Merc. Sol).
Delusion: That the Devil made him do it.

RELATIONSHIP
Another mule is kickin’ in his stall.
His wife got a fistful of gimme and a mouth full of much obliged.

FOOD AND DRINK
Everything tastes like the Blues, especially, Blues was in his breakfast and in his bread.
Craves a pig foot and a bottle of beer.

HEAD
Filled with a notion that he should throw himself in the river and drown.

LARYNX
Hollers, (Concomitants: jumps and shouts).

FACE
Cannot show it in town.

MODALITIES
Better from: a spoonful of whiskey; light from the Midnight Special shining down on him.
Worse from: working for the man.

EXTREMITIES
Knee bones shakin’.

VERTIGO
Worse from: being low down and dirty.

CHEST
Downhearted.

CHILL
Every now and then a cold chill comes over him.

MALE
Most of the time has got his mojo workin’. Hoochie Coochie. Full grown man.

FEMALE
Meanest woman in town.

SKIN
Tendency to be buckshot when he stands still, but cut when he runs.

VISION
Some of these Alabama women, they all appear to look like section men.

HEARING
A black snake moan. That his wife done left him, and his girlfriend, too. A lonesome train whistle blows.

Remedy Possibilities: Lachesis, Lycopodeum, Sulphur, Lac Caninum, Mercurius,  Kali Brom, Psorinum. But we must accept a real possibility that there just ain’t no cure.

Posted on October 20th, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Humor | No Comments »

Let’s discuss the well-known Curse of the Bambino.  This refers to the Boston Red Sox’ inability to win a World Series after basically giving away to the New York Yankees, and for a piddling amount of cash, Babe Ruth, who as it would turn out would become widely recognized as the greatest player in the history of baseball. In 2004 with the Red Sox’ miraculous come from behind playoff win against the Yankees, and their subsequent rout of the National League’s St. Louis Cardinals the infamous Curse was finally, and after 86 years was put to rest. How did this come about? Homeopathy provides the answer.

The power of the curse was not mystical. Rather, it represented an entrenched fear and its related behavioral rigidity. States of stuckness of exactly this sort are routinely identified by classical homeopaths as underlying disease states in their patients. But “remedy states” need not be cured by homeopathic remedies alone. Homeopathic “behavior” can also do the trick.

The fear underlying the Curse of the Bambino was that team management might again some day commit an error as serious as giving away Babe Ruth, the great Bambino. The associated rigidity is: beware of making any baseball trades that are even remotely suggestive of this possibility. When installed as a core front office belief a fear such as this delimits managerial flexibility, creativity, and thereby places the team at a disadvantage with respect to other teams in the trading marketplace.

There exists a shibboleth in baseball that the value of even a handful of good players cannot equate that of a single great player. The reason for this is that truly great players are irreplaceable while many even very good players can be readily exchanged for others having equal value. Avoidance of any such trade would be fully in keeping with the fear and associated rigidity of the Bambino Curse. Now, homeopathy teaches that “Like Cures Like.”  Thus, the homeopathically recommended way out of the dilemma is to indeed engage with the original error, but to perpetrate a micro-dosage of the mistake. Yes, facing the demon once and for all is better than doing nothing.

Nomar Garciaparra the Red Sox shortstop had been anointed the greatest Red Sox player since Ted Williams by no less a luminary than Ted Williams himself. Yet in 2004 General Manager Theo Epstein was inspired to trade the inimical and  irreplaceable Garciaparra for three talented but lesser lights: outfielder Dave Roberts, and infielders Orlando Cabrerra and Doug Mentkiewicz. The day on which the trade was announced talk show radio hosts went berserk. The trade was denounced in the newspapers as another Babe Ruth giveaway.

One can of course say that the team’s improved chemistry due to the three new players, each of whom went on to play significant roles in the Red Sox’ 2004 triumph that lifted the Bambino’s curse. I would argue that it was Epstein’s fear-dispelling moxie that did the trick, thereby liberating the team to perform at its optimal level.

Posted on August 14th, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Health, Humor, Perspective | No Comments »

Welcome to my new blog!

These are days when truth often takes a terrible beating at the hands of perception so on occasion, let us seek some degree of redress. It will be my intention to live up to a self-imposed dictum, “Truth in Healing and in Health.” Over the next few months I hope to address a number of topics from this perspective, including: vaccinations, autism, and the politics of health care. I will also be critiquing articles such as The Itch (The New Yorker) as well as introducing innovative uses of homeopathy as in marital therapy. In the minute category of homeopathic humor you may also expect to see unusual features such as “A Case of the Blues,” and the proving of some “unsual” remedies such as Bovinus Foetor.

But for today, let’s talk briefly about the role of the FDA in relation to homeopathic remedies. By way of beginning, here is a multiple choice question: What is the official status of a homeopathic remedy? A) a drug; B) a nutritional supplement; C) a placebo; D) an herb.

Give up? Ok, be honest, how many of you picked A) a drug?  Yes, this is the correct answer. As opposed to general perception, homeopathic remedies have more legal status than either nutritional supplements, placebos, or herbs. If you got it wrong no need to feel bad. Hardly anyone at the FDA can answer this question correctly either. Or, if any official at the FDA does know it, he or she is not likely to admit the fact. Here is how it works: in 1938 the FDA was a good deal smarter than it is today. In this year the agency grandfathered homeopathic remedies included in the HPUS into its drug category. Moreover, the FDA said something even more surprising by today’s standards: It averred that an as yet, non-existent remedy would be declared kosher prospectively, just so long as it went through the rigors of HPUS’s proving rotocols! Even more significant is the fact that the FDA at that time was able to grasp a philosophical notion: genuine principles are not true here and there, or now and then. They are ALWAYS true. Of course, there is one more quirky feature of the drug that is a homeopathic remedy. Although the principle that Like Treats Like is indelible, in other words, always true, this also means that a homeopathic remedy is a drug ONLY when it has been prescribed in accordance with the Law of Similars. So Arsenicum Alb is a drug when I prescribe it for the fastidious, anxious, perfectionist patient in my office. But it is NOT a drug in the foolish event that I should choose to self-administer Ars (being myself, somewhere in the vicinity of Bufo, Anhalonium or Pulsatilla).

Is there a possibility that the FDA at some point will carry out its threat to subject homeopathic remedies to an inquisitorial process? Not likely, as this would only call attention to the decision the agency made in 1938 and which would have to be overturned. Doing so would also place strictures on the freedom of physicians to titrate, manipulate the strength of their own pharmaceutical prescriptions.

Now for some great mysteries. What is the status of over-counter-homeopathic remedies? I have no idea. On the one hand, they are empty products for which one must nevertheless make attach a single clinical indication. “Empty” though they are, you will not see Medorrhinum or Tuberculinum on any pharmacy shelf even in a low potency because here, the FDA chooses to assert that the few impossible to discern molecules of these nosodes sufficiently determine the “controlled substance” status of these “dangerous” remedies. Patent laws suggest that natural substances are not patentable, either singly or in combination. So, what Agency official has permitted this to take place, or determined how many remedies may effectively be combined into a single, commodifiable “remedy?” (Assuming that we are sensitive only to a single ingredient, why not combine ALL remedies into one giant saltlick that any sick individual can go and lick from…)

I am sure there are perfectly reasonable answers to these and many other questions. But the Land of Oz where they may be heard does not appear on my GPS, and someone took my ruby slippers to the local Goodwill.

Posted on August 1st, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Humor, Perspective | 1 Comment »

The author demonstrating the homeopathic rebound, what goes down must come up! Bungie jumping off of the Bloucrans Gorge Bridge in South Africa, the world’s highest bungie jump launch site!

Posted on July 28th, 2008 by Jerry Kantor
Under: Humor | 1 Comment »