Barbrae said:
No, I actually don't disagree with leela. I do think that those symptoms that fall under the heading of psora can indeed be suppressed or left alone enough to transcend to syph. Many of us say syphilis when describing the miasm instead of the syphilitic miasm. Hahnemann didn't believe the STD was passed on through the ancestorial tree either, I said that. You are egtting hung up on the STD, the syph miasm (what is passsed on) has nothign to do with syph other than somewhere sometime someone had it - the STD is not the miasm and the STD is nto what is passed on.
I've been reading this with mounting incredulity, but I don't suppose we'll get much further untl Barb has time to return to the thread.
First, as an aside, I understand that syphilis (the regular STD) can in fact be vertically transmitted (infection passed from parent to child, acquired
in utero) and that a child who is conceived from a mother (or I understand a father) who has syphilis is likely itself to be infected. However, whether that has anything to do with what Hahnemann wrote, I have absolutely no idea. So far as I know, none of the other conditions that have given their names to the "miasms" can be vertically transmitted.
However, my main point in posting here is to signal that I still don't have the faintest clue what Barb is talking about. She uses words, but she gives us no idea what she means by them.
First, one might imagine that the "miasms", however they were named, are simply convenient homoeopath-speak for certain collections of symptoms, useful in selecting the remedy perhaps. But then we learn that one set of symptoms may lead to another. In what way? We know how chicken-pox may lead to shingles, for example, or endocarditis to aortic thromboembolism, but is that the sort of thing Barb is talking about? How can we tell, because we have nothing else to define these "miasms" other than as collections of symptoms, so no rational reason why one set might lead to another.
Then we learn that a patient may have a miasm because it is inherited. So is it a metaphor for genetically-determined disease susceptibility? This seems much at odds with the definition of the maism as a collection of symptoms, and many homoeopaths deny this interpretation. And what is the connection between the miasm and the STD of the same (or similar) name? Sometimes Barb seems to be saying there is none, then again I think she might be saying that the miasm is an indication that one of the patient's ancestors had the actual STD infection. Which, as BSM remarked, is quite likely for most people if you go back far enough.
The main point at issue is that when I read what Hahnemann says about miasms, it means nothing to me. I literally have no clue what he is talking about, no clue about what observations he is trying to explain, and it all just sounds like a bunch of words strung together in an attempt to sound profound. So when Barb, who does in some respects speak the same language as I do, indicates that she believes at least part of this stuff to be true, I have some hopes she might be able to explain what she means in terms I can understand.
But no. Even though she does reject some of the theory, when she starts to explain what she thinks about the bits that she believes in, she simply retreats to copying out what Hahnemann said. This is where the semi-rational homoeopaths, like Barb, start to look even sillier than the complete lunatics like Albert. At least Albert lived in a self-consistent world. It might have been pure imagination, but he really did believe that his explanation of the way things worked was the true one, and because he never allowed himself to slip into accepting the slightest little factoid relating to what is now known about biochemistry and physiology and pathology and medicine, it was all one story.
Homoeopaths like Barb, on the other hand, are caught in a cleft stick. On one hand they see they have to agree that bacteria and viruses cause a lot of disease, and that genetic susceptibility accounts for a lot more, and that insulin is necessary to save the life of a type I diabetic for example. But then they still think they can say these words like miasm and syph and sycotic and psora and suppression and so on, and mean something by them.
News flash. They don't mean anything. They are as devoid of meaning as your sugar pills are devoid of active ingredient. The fact that you feel using these terms allows you to better select between the 3000 or so identical bottles with different labels doesn't confer any legitimacy on them. If you accept what biochemistry and physiology and pathology have to teach you, you at least have to be able to explain what you mean in terms which relate to these true and valid ways of describing the workings of the body.
Barb, given how seriously at sea you appear to be in all this, dosn't it give you even a moment's pause on the question of whether all you're doing is providing a sympathetic ear and a kind word?
Rolfe.
.