Homeopathic Approach to Cancer

From the Book

A Homeopathic Approach to Cancer is a clear, concise alternative medicine reference that introduces Dr. Ramakrishnan's method.

This book details 126 different cases, covering 25 types of cancer, in a comprehensive format and presents documentation that illustrates how homeopathy has been successfully used in the treatment of cancer.

The book's procedural analyses and observations on methodology interspersed throughout the text will help guide the practitioner to correct prescribing.

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Author

A. U. Ramakrishnan, MBBS, MF Hom, PhD

(1942 -    )

Dr. Ramakrishnan was born November 2, 1942, in Thirupathi, India. He is an internationally known medical doctor from India. One of his teachers was Margerie Blackie. He travels the world lecturing on homeopathy and treating difficult cases.

Some areas of his expertise are Cardiac Disease, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Epilepsy, Arthritis and Diabetes. He is also the homeopathic physician to the president of India

Dr. Ramakrishnan has been presenting papers at International Congresses since 1981.

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Reviews

From
HOMEOPATHY TODAY
Reviewed by Richard Moskowitz, MD, DHt

I've been eagerly awaiting this newest offering from the pen of Catherine Coulter, not only for its well-chosen words and apt phrases, or its fresh insights and seasoned wisdom, all of which we've come to expect, but above all for its subject matter, "the big C," the very symbol and archetype of potentially fatal illness, which most classical homeopaths in this country are either wary of treating in the first place, or have had rather limited or disappointing results when they venture to do so.

Take me, for instance. After 27 years in practice, I've been able to provide good symptomatic relief to patients on chemotherapy or radiation, had good results with general constitutional support and first-aid remedies for pre- and post-op surgical care, and even had a few cases of dramatic and long-lasting remission or improvement.

But on the whole, using the single remedy chosen by the totality of symptoms, I've not been able to help patients consistently to shrink their tumors, to prevent recurrences, or to correct precancerous lesions.

Furthermore, both my direct personal experience with Vithoulkas and Sankaran and extensive familiarity with the writings of Kent, Boger, et al., confirm my sense that even these great masters have not fared all that much better in this respect.

Yet on some level I have always known that there has to be a simple and practical way to help cancer patients more reliably using homeopathic remedies according to the method we already know to be valid.

This book offers and indeed systematically elaborates just such a method, one almost disarmingly easy for an experienced homeopath to use, and indeed so much so as to challenge us all to re-examine what we do and how we do it in a much humbler spirit.

Unlike Ms. Coulter's previous books, both the language and intent here are practical and businesslike, rather than artistic and imaginative, her main roles being those of scribe and theoretician of the scattered case notes and random observations of Dr. Ramakrishnan, a distinguished Indian M.D. homeopath whose experience, augmented by her own, encompasses several thousand cancer cases over the past 25 years.

In undertaking this herculean feat of organization, condensation, and synthesis, her primary purpose is simply to identify and formulate his working methodology as clearly and systematically as possible.

This task she has certainly accomplished a clear and readable style, but the finest tribute I can pay to her book, and the fairest measure of its success, is to say nothing further about the literary qualities that have already made her famous, and get down to the often unglamorous nuts and bolts of its content, and how we can use it to improve our work with our patients.

I should perhaps add that the conceptual basis of Ramakrishnan's approach is not nearly as new as it may appear to the average American reader. In fact, it harks back to a style of homeopathic practice that is still widely prevalent in Europe and elsewhere, one that is fact much older than the Kentian method that I and most classical prescribers of my day were taught and still use, including Dr. Ramakrishnan himself.

Eminent and respected homeopaths like Hughes and Burnett in the Nineteenth Century, and Clarke and Eizayaga in the Twentieth, have long advocated the use of organ-specific remedies chosen on the basis of more narrow pathological indications, with less emphasis on elabo rate individualization based on personality traits, as favored by some leading teachers today.

Indeed, it would be fair to say that this more medically-oriented style has always been the most popular one with homeopathic physicians the world over, and is so still among members of the LIGA [International Homeopathic Medical League], for example, and especially in Europe, Latin America, and the Indian subcontinent, where the newer schools of Vithoulkas Sankaran, Scholten, Mangialavori, et al., are widely regarded as "elitist" or "illuminist" interpretations that fail to address the often ugly, unedifying, or inelegant realities of advanced organic disease as commonly seen in clinical practice.

As it happens, Ramakrishnan himself is at some pains not to take a doctrinaire position on either side this ongoing and wholly legitimate debate. National Vice-President of the LIGA for his country, and official Physician to the Prime Minister of India, he is a good classical prescriber who still uses the single remedy in the minimum dose whenever possible, giving the remedy and then waiting for it to act.

As he says in his Introduction, he adopted a more proactive and aggressive approach to cancer only after the deaths of two close relatives from the disease and his own inability to save them using the best methods available to him at the time.

His thoroughly pragmatic attitude seems to boil down to, "This has been my experience with cancer so far; this is what has worked the best; so give it a try if you want to."

What I take from that is just what we already know, that healing pertains to individuals, requires an ad hoc decision in every case, and is therefore irreducible to a single protocol, rule, or formula.

The apposite quote from the Organon would of course be Hahnemann, Paragraph I and footnote, "The physician's high and only mission is to restore the sick to health ... not to construct systems [or] hypotheses." Amen to that.

In Chapter 1, "The Homeopathic Approach," the authors justify their modifications of the classical approach on the basis of two considerations that, however plausible or even self-evident they may seem or turn out to be, must still be regarded as hypotheses in need of further proof, namely,

1) that measurable, concrete pathology like cancer calls for a less subtle, less individualized, more pathologically-oriented style of prescribing, featuring the old notion of specific remedies for specific diseases, and others with particular affinity for certain tissues, organs, or regions of the body, as in the organopathic tradition just alluded to; and

2) that the life-threatening character of the disease generates an authentic urgency, a "race against time," which requires a more aggressive dosage schedule than simply giving one or a few doses of a single remedy and waiting for them to act.

We may therefore take the present volume as, in effect, the authors' joint endeavor to make the best possible case for these claims, although it will doubtless require the concerted efforts of a whole generation of prescribers to persuade the homeopathic community as a whole, let alone the public at large.

As it has evolved thus far, Ramakrishnan's method comprises three basic adaptations of the classical or " unicist" model, based on the single remedy and the minimum dose:

1) The remedies are given at regular, specified intervals, not on an "as needed" basis, and repeated over long periods of time, almost always for months at a time.

2) Two remedies are given weekly in alternation, usually an organ-specific or more general cancer remedy followed by a cancer nosode.

3) Remedies are administered by "plussing," according to specifications provided in the text, or by the "split-dose" method in early cases, such that each weekly dose is split into four and taken within a single day, from waking till bedtime.

The remainder of the book is largely given over to individual case reports, most of them followed by Ms. Coulter's helpful comments on the choice of the remedies and other individualizing features pertaining to that instance.

In Chapter 2, the main cancer remedies in Ramakrish nan's practice are listed, subdivided into three groups:

1) nosodes, chiefly Carcinosin and Scirrhinum;

2) what he calls "wide-spectrum cancer specifics," Conium, Thuja, and Arsenicum album, used in cancer of many types; and

3) organ-specific remedies, such as Aurum muriaticum natronatum (cervix, uterus, ovaries), Ceanothus (spleen, pancreas, liver), Hekla lava (bone, bone marrow), Hydrastis (stomach), Lycopodium (lung), Phytolacca (breast, parotid), Plumbum iod (brain), Sabal serrulata (prostate), and Terebinthina (bladder), to name a few.

In Chapter 3, general rules are formulated for the use of the Plussing and/or the Split-Dose methods, again with illustrative cases. Chapter 4, by far the longest (80 pages), gives cases of many types of cancer that have responded favorably to remedies given in this fashion, including several sites where conventional treatment has had the poorest record, such as brain, esophagus, lung, stomach, pancreas, and ovary.

The authors' pragmatic, down-to-earth approach is equally evident in the later chapters. Chapter 5, for example, discusses palliative treatment in more advanced cases where metastasis has already occurred, or where the disease has spread too extensively for remedies to offer any realistic hope of cure.

Using the same methodology as before, they report unexpectedly good results even in this group, both in length and quality of life. Chapter 6 continues in similar vein with remedies for pain control in advanced and terminal cases, including some not discussed before, such as Euphorbium and Ornithogalum.

In Chapter 7, constitutional remedies are discussed as a complement or alternative to the usual method when the total symptom-picture clearly indicates them, for example,

1) if the tumors have regressed to the point that plussing is no longer required;

2) if the treatment has stalled at a certain point and a more closely-fitting remedy is called for to reactivate it;

3) if metastasis occurs in the wake of an apparent cure;

4) from the beginning, if the constitutional remedy has special affinity with the organ or tissue affected; or

5) occasionally without any other remedies or nosodes, in very early cases (e.g., carcinoma in situ) or slow-growing cancers (thyroid, etc.).

Special problems, such as prescribing for acute ailments that arise in the course of treatment, are also discussed herein.

Chapter 8, on the role of conventional diagnosis and treatment, offers useful techniques by which homeopaths can collaborate with and even assist their allopathic colleagues. Remedies are suggested for radiation, chemotherapy, and pre-and post-operative care, along with strategies for using remedies between radiation treatments or rounds of chemotherapy.

Valuable lessons are embedded in many of these cases, such as the woman with metastatic ovarian cancer in lungs, bladder, and mesenteric nodes, who lived a good- quality life for years with all her lesions, illustrating the often radical discrepancy between the totality of symptoms-the ordinary language of how patients feel and function-and the technical language of abnormalities, the basis of conventional diagnosis and treatment.

In the final chapter, the important subject of cancer prevention is addressed at some length, including

1) protocols for the treatment of those with strong family histories of cancer;

2) longer courses of the usual cancer treatment to prevent recurrences;

3) optional use of tissue salts for long-term maintenance; and

4) protocols for reversing documented precancerous lesions, for example, leukoplakia of the oral cavity, cervical dysplasia, or elevated PSA without observable lesions of the prostate, using the same repertoire of remedies and dosages already developed.

This concluding chapter I found particularly valuable in addressing the common and valid concerns of patients we all see every day.

Like any other text of therapeutics, this book will inevitably attract the same sort of contempt and vituperation that so-called "pathological prescribers" have always endured, not least from the pen of Hahnemann himself.

But the most important caveat raised by the book, as the authors themselves clearly acknowledge, is that, while seeming deceptively easy for even a novice to find useful remedies to try in a particular case, the method requires experience and skill to obtain consistently good results, and will thus inevitably be misused at times.

As usual, the peculiar or individualizing features of case and response will make the difference, for example, by indicating one remedy rather than another, or dictating when the remedy should be changed. To some extent, these often subtle distinctions can only be felt and shown, but never wholly taught.

That is part of the reason why it behooves homeopaths and indeed anyone treating patients with cancer or potentially fatal illness to pay even more care and attention than usual to their ongoing relationships with their patients.

It is also why this book will ultimately be most useful for experienced homeopathic physicians and other health professionals, and why lay practitioners and patients, if they use it at all, must do so on their own responsibility and at their own peril. In either case, such work should include regular checkups by the oncology team, and should be conducted with their approval whenever possible.

Nevertheless, since the approach outlined in this book is still a lot easier to use and promises to be a lot more effective than the one most of us were taught, I'm more than game to try it, and I would encourage other experienced practitioners to do the same. If it works, as I believe it will, it may also open up new directions for the use of homeopathic remedies in treating other serious pathology with organ damage, like multiple sclerosis, cirrhosis, advanced renal disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and the like, which are equally difficult to help consistently at present.

It turns out that these are just the sort of conditions for which homeopaths like Chand and Ramakrishnan in India, Eizayaga in Argentina, and others in Europe and Latin America have long advocated similarly medically-oriented, organopathic strategies, albeit often differing in their details.

Precisely because American homeopathic physicians have been so effectively marginalized for so long, and are veritable babes in the wood at treating folks with this level of sickness, we have the unique opportunity and indeed, dare I say, the duty to integrate these two often hostile and seemingly irreconcilable strands of the homeopathic tradition into a new synthesis that can pass the test of time.

The present volume gives plenty of detail for trained, experienced classical prescribers to begin to treat our cancer patients more effectively, and I hope and expect that those of good heart and open mind will use it in that spirit.

Homeopathy Today
November 21, Volume 21, Number 10
Reprinted with permission from the National Center for Homeopathy

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Contents

Introduction: Dr. A.U. Ramakrishnan -- xiii
Introduction: Catherine R. Coulter -- xv

The Homeopathic Approach
Treatment of the Individual -- 1
Treatment of the Specific Disease -- 2
Dr. Ramakrishnan's Method Defined -- 2

Principal Remedies Used for Cancer
The Cancer Nosodes -- 5
Wide-Spectrum Cancer Specifics -- 6
The Organ-Specific Remedies -- 7
Method of Administration -- 11

General Rules for the Application
of the Ramakrishnan Method

Types of Cancer That Have Responded Well
to Homeopathy and Their Most Appropriate Remedies
Brain -- 25
Oral Cavity -- 29
Larynx and Vocal Chord -- 32
Thyroid and Parotid Gland -- 35
Esophagus -- 39
Mediastinum -- 42
Breast -- 45
Lung -- 48
Stomach -- 53
Pancreas -- 56
Liver -- 60
Colon -- 63
Rectum -- 67
Bladder -- 70
Prostate -- 72
Ovary -- 75
Uterus -- 78
Cervix -- 81
Bone -- 84
Leukemia -- 88
Hodgkin's Lymphoma -- 93
Melanoma -- 97
Skin -- 100

Assistance and Palliation in Cancer Cases
that Lie Beyond Homeopathic Healing
Vocal Chord -- 104
Esophagus -- 105
Breast -- 106
Lung -- 107
Stomach -- 111
Pancreas -- 111
Liver -- 116
Colon -- 118
Ovary -- 119
Uterus -- 122
Bone -- 125
Leukemia -- 126

Pain Control in the Advanced and
Terminal Stages of Cancer
Principal Remedies Used -- 129
Prototypal Case Example -- 131

Classical Homeopathy and the Ramakrishnan Method
The Place of Constitutional Prescribing in Cancer Treatment -- 137
Treatment of Acute Ailments During the Plussing Method -- 145
The Potencies -- 148

Homeopathy and Western Medicine
Surgery -- 155
Post-surgical Follow-up and Follow-through -- 161
Needle Biopsies -- 164
Chemotherapy -- 164
Radiation Therapy -- 168

Homeopathy in Cancer Prevention
Counteracting a Family History of Cancer -- 171
Prevention of Recurrence -- 171
The Schuessler Tissue/Cell Salts -- 173
Prevention in Precancerous Conditions -- 175
-- Precancer of the Oral Cavity -- 175
-- Precancer of the Prostate -- 176
-- Precancer of the Cervix -- 177
-- Lichen Planus and other Precancerous Skin Conditions - 178

Concluding Remarks
Appendixes: Frequently Asked Questions and Answers -- 183
Glossary of Medicines Mentioned in the Text and their Common Names -- 189
Bibliography of Works Cited -- 193
Index -- 195

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