Homoeopathic Approach to Cancer

Review

This review was reprinted from the April 2003 edition of Homeopathy in Practice with permission from the Alliance of Registered Homeopaths.

Reviewed by: Karin Mont MARH

I have always enjoyed the writings of Catherine Coulter. For me, she manages to combine familiar elements of our materia medica with meaningful and imaginative insights into the remedies she describes. In A Homeopathic Approach To Cancer, she adopts a different style. Here she concentrates on bringing together the case notes and clinical observations of the well-known Indian homeopath, Dr Ramakrishnan. Over the years, Dr Ramakrishnan has treated literally thousands of cases of cancer, resulting in the accumulation of a unique and diverse mass of data. Catherine Coulter has endeavoured to interpret and collate this information, then present it to the reader in a comprehensible and usable format. The result is an invaluable guide to specifically treating the organic pathology of cancer, which builds upon and extends the work already started by earlier homeopaths such as Burnett and Clarke.

Though originally trained as a 'classical' single-remedy prescriber, clinical experience has led Dr Ramakrishnan to observe that generally, the individuality (as in 'constitutional' prescribing) of the cancer patient becomes less relevant in terms of remedy selection when one is faced with the severity and rapid development of the disease. Because cancer pathology manifests in a 'concrete' (the formation of tumours) and measurable manner, it appears to respond well to a more pathologically orientated prescribing style, one based on our current knowledge of disease and organ-specific remedies. In short, according to Dr Ramakrishnan, successful treatment calls for a more specialised (as opposed to individualised) approach. Also, the swiftly advancing deterioration and lifethreatening character of the disease need to be matched by an aggressive prescribing technique that delivers speedy improvements to the overall pathology.

Dr Ramakrishnan's method is broken down into three main stages:

A remedy is given frequently on a regulated basis (rather than an 'as needed' basis), and often over an extended period of time.
A second remedy also given on a regular basis, and is alternated with the first. For example, this may be an organ-specific remedy given in alternation with a cancer nosode.
Remedies can either be given by the 'plussing method', which works in a similar way to the LM potencies (always stirring the remedy before taking it, in order to slightly increase its healing potential), or by 'split-dosing' (a description of how to administer by both 'plussing' and 'split-dosing' appears in Chapter 3, and is further illustrated by case examples in Chapter 4).

Once the principles of prescribing according to Dr Ramakrishnan's technique have been established, the rest of the book concentrates on individual case studies, with Catherine Coulter often providing helpful and illuminating comments on the choice of remedies and the outcome of the prescription. In the second chapter, the main cancer remedies are identified, then sub-divided into three groups to facilitate referencing:

1. Nosodes, mainly Carcinosin and

Scirrinum.

2. Remedies used in cancers of many types, such as Arsenicum, Conium and Thuja.

3. Organ-specific remedies, including Ceanothus (spleen, pancreas, liver), Terebinthina (bladder), Plumbum iodatum (brain), Hecla lava (bone, bone marrow), Sabal serrulata (prostate), and Hydrastis (stomach).

There are a number of examples given of the successful treatment of cancer. However, the pragmatic approach outlined in this book is equally applicable to palliative treatment, where (for example) metastasis is advanced and recovery unlikely. Pain management in terminal cases is discussed, and also how to support the patient through orthodox medical interventions such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and surgery. Though many familiar remedies are considered, the properties of a number of less usual ones are mentioned as well, such as Euphorbium and Ornithogalum.

A section is devoted to the use of constitutional prescribing, for example when previously successful treatment becomes 'blocked', when metastasis occurs following an apparent cure, in the early stages of treatment, especially when the constitutional remedy has an affinity for the organ/tissue affected and, on a more positive note, when the tumour and associated pathologies have regressed. Cancer prevention, especially for those with a strong familial history of cancer, is addressed in the final chapter, alongside the treatment of pre-cancerous conditions such as lichen Planus and precancer of the cervix. The importance of taking remedies frequently and systematically, in a regulated manner over a prolonged period of time (eighteen months plus), is stressed throughout the text.

In conclusion, this is an invaluable reference work that no homeopath should be without, assuming they are prepared to consider a fundamentally therapeutic approach to the treatment of this complex and challenging disease. Indeed, many of the principles described in the book could readily be adapted to the treatment of a range of other chronic diseases that manifest destructive and ultimately fatal pathologies. By sharing with us significant aspects of his clinical experience, Dr Ramakrishnan has given us a valuable foundation upon which to build a database of knowledge that can help us to treat cancer and other degenerative diseases effectively. Thanks to the literary skill and personal insight that Catherine Coulter brings to collating this information, we have a text that is both practical and relevant to treating one of the most feared diseases known to mankind.

This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.
2 Artizan Road, Northampton NN1 4HU, United Kingdom.

Reviewed by Nick Hewes

A few years ago an unsettling article appeared in The Homeopath, describing five terminal cases of cancer, occurring in patients who had formerly responded well to constitutional homeopathic treatment. The unspoken question for all of us was (and is): "How good is our homeopathy, if our apparent ,successes' eventually fall ill to this dreaded disease?" All along, cancer seems to occupy a special dark place in our collective psyche; for example, at college we were always told not to charge a patient with cancer, because the prospect of a successful outcome was so remote; more sobering still is the loss of several RSHoms in their forties and fifties in recent years, from cancer.

We all recognise the sense of failure and powerlessness in the face of cancer's over- whelming destructive force. It is as if the methods at our disposal are simply no match for this sleeping monster; to be sure, the idea of treating a cancer patient with a single dose of the constitutional remedy, and telling them to return in six weeks for a follow-up visit, has always felt, to me, like asking Sigourney Weaver's Agent Ripley to confront a very hungry alien, armed only with a badminton racket: - there is always a suspicion that we may, in such a case, simply be "pissing in the wind" (sometimes only Anglo-Saxon will do).

This special disease demands a special method, and Dr AU Ramakrishnan's A Homoeopathic Approach to Cancer gives us exactly that: it is a thoroughly coherent manual, based on the author's vast experience of treating malignancy. Having trained with Margery Blackie in the sixties, he experienced "a series of failures in cancer cases", followed by the deaths, from the same disease, of both his brother and sister, "both of whom were homoeopathic doctors". These led Dr Ramakrishnan to develop his famous system of giving two remedies, several times a-day, (one an organ-specific remedy, the other a cancer nosode) alternating on a weekly basis, using Hahnemann's plussing method.

The content of the book is based upon 128 of Dr Ramakrishnan's case- histories; these show the various applications of his method. At the end of each case there is a short commentary. The book needs to be read as a narrative, in order to really absorb the material, although in practice it will be a very useful work of reference.

Clearly and faultlessly written by Catherine Coulter, but based entirely on Ramakrishnan's experience of over 5,000 cases of cancer, A Homoeopathic Approach to Cancer represents quite a challenge to some of our accumulated dogmas: the first sacred cow to be culled is our notion of treating the individual, not the disease: - "The individualization of the patient must yield to the specificity of the disease itself" (p2). This means that, almost always regardless of a patient's constitution, the remedies are chosen on the basis of organ-affinity; so that, in the case of say, breast cancer, only four or five remedies are even considered in the first few months. This could be a hard pill for purists to swallow, but there are classical precedents which crop up here and there: for example, in his preface to the Chronic Diseases, Hahnemann insists that Mercurius is a routine remedy for syphilis:- the constitution of the patient simply doesn't come into it. Perhaps this is because, (as in cancer) the force of the disease is so entirely dominant.

In a similar vein, Jeremy Sherr, in a lecture given in 1 991, suggested that the gross pathology of cancer results in the tumour "dropping-off" the shelf of the patient's constitution, in effect creating a new, "heavier" state; this means that the remedies may then have to be adapted to the identity of the new disease, rather than to the patient's constitution.

Another shibboleth to fall is the notion of discontinuing treatment when the symptoms disappear; Kent sternly tells us: "it is the duty of the physician to wait for the return of the original symptoms" before repeating the remedy (Philosophy, p268), whilst Hahnemann reminds us that when "no trace of the disease, no morbid symptom, remains, and all the signs of health have permanently returned, how can anyone, without offering an insult to common sense, affirm in such an individual the whole bodily disease still remains in the interior?" (Organon, para 8, footnote 5). Ramakrishnan, on the other hand, will often repeat the remedies for weeks, months and even years after the patient has returned to health, often giving a high potency fort-nightly, or monthly, as-long-as the patient is improving. "in the homoeopathic treatment of cancer" he tells us "the prescriber often cannot afford to 'wait and watch'."

The routine, continuous repetition of the remedy, after all signs of the illness have apparently abated, suggest that the beast is not gone, but only sleeping, and must be kept in its ]air by a frequent administration of the remedy. Those of us (like this author) who have been brought up on the Kentian methodology of 'Single remedy, wait and watch for aggravation, amelioration and relapse before repeating', will have to take on what is generally known as a paradigm shift! In this case, however, perhaps we have to bow to Dr Ramakrishnan's vast experience.

The third doctrinal 'doffing up' concerns, of course, the perennial issue of the single remedy; in case after case, Dr Ramakrishnan will add a third remedy to the first two alternating remedies, especially when distressing symptoms like pain and vomiting occur. Normally this remedy will be organ-specific, and given in a lowish potency on a 'take-as- needed' basis.

The most important thing, beyond dogma, must be: "Is the Ramakrishnan method of aid to suffering humanity?" A few glances at his amazing results would have us answering in the affirmative (e.g. success rates of 68% in cervical cancer, 74% in bone cancer, 80% in cancer of the oesophagus); which means that, in the case of this destructive disease, we may have to sometimes depart from our cherished ideals of treating the individual constitution with the single remedy, based on the portrait of the symptoms before us.

In any case, the book comes across in a positive light: - the story of a man who, having found his normal methods wanting, has gone away, and calmly and assiduously developed a wholly new way of working, over a period of about 25 years. There is never a sense that he has an iconoclastic axe to grind.

Lastly, the Ramakrishnan method, if taken-on, asks many questions of us on a purely prosaic, practical level. For example, if we have to give remedies daily or weekly, sometimes for years on end, we may have to reconsider the question of how we charge people. At the moment, most homeopaths charge a fee for the consultation, not for the remedies, but this may need to change somewhat, in those cases where patients are provided with large amounts of medicine.

A second question concerns the issue of long-term follow- up; in normal constitutional treatment, when a patient gets well, you stop the treatment (that is one of the great joys of being a homeopath). In the Ramakrishnan method, however, patients are encouraged to follow-up for years, even after a full recovery has been made, so that the alternation of the remedies can continue. That presents us with a real difficulty. Last year, for example, I used the Ramakrishnan method with a patient who'd recently had surgery for breast cancer (alternating Conium with Carcinosin on a weekly basis); she rang up after six weeks to say she felt so much better after the treatment, that she'd decided to cancel the follow-up. I was quite happy to have helped the patient at that time, but now I would be in a quandary about how long she really needed to go on with the treatment. One ends up thinking:- if you can't see the piece of string, how on earth can you tell how long it is? Or:- has the alien gone away, or is it only sleeping? (Which takes us back to paragraph 8 of the Organon.)

The third practical difficulty would be that we need to improve some of our skills in examination and diagnosis. It is obvious that Dr Ramakrishnan is constantly examining the patient, focussing especially on the site, size and hardness of the tumour; also, he sets great store on the use of conven tional investigations, such as scans, in order to assess a patient's progress after treatment. For us to take on the responsibility of this kind of work, perhaps we need to develop more aptitude and confidence in our examination techniques. Maybe we should look at the German model, where every student of alternative medicine undergoes a training course in anatomy, physiology and pathology, before engaging in their chosen field of holistic practice.

There is no doubt that the Ramakrishnan method will lead to change for some of us; but that may not be a bad thing, for as Vega Rosenberg said once, the place that really kills you is the comfort zone.

All-in-all, this book is a touching and modest account of Dr Ramakrishnan's steadfast fight against the ultimate 'many-headed hydra'. One cure alone would make it worth the purchase price.

The Homeopathy
Winter 2000, Number 84

This book review is reprinted with permission from Homeopathic Links.

Reviewed by Richard Moskowitz, USA

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 a potentially fatal illness, which most classical prescribers in this country are either wary of treating in the first place, or have had rather limited or disappointing results when venturing 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, have 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 shrink their turnouts, prevent recurrences, or 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 had not fared 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 than by 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-examme 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 organisation, 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 in 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 Dr. 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, in 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 elaborate individualisation based on personality traits, as favoured 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 still so among members of the LIGA, 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 of 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 Scripture would of course be Hahnemann, Paragraph I and footnote, "The physician's highest and only calling is to make the sick healthy ... not to construct systems [or] bypotheses.'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 individualised, 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.

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 endeavour 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 individualising features pertaining to that instance.

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

1- Nosodes, chiefly Garcinosin m and Scirrhin m;

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 Au rum muriaticum natronatum (cervix, uterus, ovaries), Ceanothus (spleen, pancreas, liver), Hekla lava (bone, bone marrow), Hydrastis (stomach), Lycopodium (lung), Phytolacca (breast, parotid), Plumbum iodatum (brain), Sabal serr lata (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 pp.), gives cases of many types of cancer that have responded favourably to remedies given in this fashion, including several sites where conventional treatment has had the poorest record, such as brain, oesophagus, 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 a similar vein with remedies for pain control in advanced and terminal cases, including some not discussed before, such as Euphorbium and Ornithogalu.

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

1- If the turnouts 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-qual ity 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, using Garcinosinum as an intercurrent

2- Longer courses of the usual cancer treatment to prevent recurrences

3- Optional use of tissue salts for long-term maintenance

4- Protocols for reversing documented precancerous lesions, e. g., 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-alled '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 individualising features of case and response will make the difference, e.g. 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 behoves 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 check-ups by the oncology team, and should be con ducted 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 MS, cirrhosis, advanced renal disease, COPD, 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 marginalised for so long, and are veritable 'babes in the woods' 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.

Homeopathic Links
Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2002

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the American Institute of Homeopathy
Reviewed by Wilson, MD, DHt, Jaquelyn

Being a family doctor in California who has been especially interested in non-toxic cancer treatments, the words Cancer and Homeopathy caught my eye on a flyer announcing a June cancer conference featuring Ramakrishnan, an Indian medical doctor and homeopath with extensive homeopathic experience treating cancer.

Realizing that I would be sailing with friends in the British Virgin Islands during the exact Cancer conference days, I called the conference organizer and asked where l could buy the book,A Homoeopathic Approach to Cancer, mentioned in the conference flyer. She was very helpful and told me that the Washington Homeopathic Pharmacy in Bethesda, MD mail orders it. I immediately phoned the pharmacy, charged the $39.95 to my Visa card and the book, arrived in three days.

As I marveled at the technology of both easy book ordering and easy wrapping recycling, I recalled the statute in the California law that prevents me as a licensed medical doctor from prescribing for cancer in a patient any thing but radiation, surgery or chemotherapy. I wondered if the new 2000 California comprehensive law in complementary medicine had changed that. A quick call to my California health attorney dashed my hopes. She said that the specific statute law supersedes the new comprehensive general law in complementary medicine. If I wanted to keep my medical license, I had better not treat anyone with cancer in California with non-toxic homeopathic medicines unless I am part of supervised clinical research team.

As a physician, it does not feel good to be legally restricted from treating people with cancer with homeopathy when it is estimated that one out of three people will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime and about 500,000 people will die from cancer in the United States each year.

However there is no law in California against reading this 198-page book, A Homoeopathic Approach to Cancer. I sat down under the trees in my yard and read the entire book that same day ... nice to have the time to do so thanks to my self-funded sabbatical.

The two authors, Ramakrishnan and Coulter, are seasoned homeopaths and their book has wonderful new homeopathic information which again excited my passion to treat patients with cancer. This book is based on Ramakrishnan's clinical experience from his patient records of 1974 to 2000 during which time he has treated more than 5,000 cancer patients in India.

My own past frustrations in treating a few cancer patients decades ago, using a classical homeopathic approach with monthly repetition of the dose, were laid to rest when I read about Ramakrishnan's similar failures. This is why in 1993 he changed to plussing the dose daily and alternating the medicines weekly which gave good results. Ramakrishnan's prescribing methods are ever changing to improve outcomes which now range from 38% to 86% success depending on the patient and type of cancer. Included is his latest treatment protocol developed in 1993 that consists of two homeopathic drugs plussed in water; one given daily by mouth for one week followed by one appropriate nosode given daily for the second week.

This cycle is repeated and a sense of well-being and shrinkage of the malignant tumor is expected in 6-8 weeks if the protocol is working.

The book is laid out in nine chapters plus an appendix of Frequently Asked Questions with Answers and a four-page index. The first three chapters cover the Homeopathic Approach, the Principal Remedies Used for Cancer and the General Rules for the Application of the Ramakrishnan Method.

Chapter 4 enumerates the Types of Cancer that have responded well to homeopathy and their most appropriate remedies which are rather few. The next section includes two chapters on Assistance and Palliation in cancer cases that lie beyond homeopathic healing and information on Pain Control with homeopathy and the advanced and terminal stages of cancer and what remedies to use.

Each of the next three chapters addresses different issues in homeopathy. Eleven pages are devoted to Classical homeopathy and the Ramakrishnan method including the place of constitutional prescribing in cancer treatment and treatment of acute ailments during the plussing method and a discussion of potencies.

Chapter 8 discusses how homeopathy and western medicine can work together to aid cancer patients.

The final chapter is on Homeopathy in Cancer Prevention and how to counteract a family history of cancer, prevention of recurrences, and treatment of precancerous lesions of the oral cavity, prostate and cervix plus other precancerous skin conditions.

Coulter has thoroughly examined the case reports of Ramakrishnan. She carefully wrote them up using no extra words, interpreted and organized them so that those less experienced in homeopathy could gain this invaluable knowledge. There are 126 case reports of patients with all types of cancer entwined through the chapters providing human examples that anchored the homeopathic information in my mind. These abbreviated case reports are summaries of the patient's history, course of allopathic treatment which was often used, plus the detailed report of the homeopathic prescription and clinical outcome. Most of his cases are documented week-by-week and month-by- month until tests show everything perfectly normal or death. Many follow-ups span several years.

In patients whom Ramakrishnan thought had a good chance to do well, viable as he termed it, there is much documenting of changes for the better from the homeopathic prescribing. In six to eight weeks, many malignant tumors shrank on repeated MRI or CAT scans after a few dollars of daily oral homeopathic medicines, both prescription and over the counter drugs. The homeopathic medicines most often used are from the small number of cancer nosodes, the wide-spectrum cancer specifics like Thuja, Conium and Arsenicum album and the organ-specific remedies like Lycopodium for lung cancer which are cursorily discussed in the case reports. The authors urge the practitioner to confirm all prescribing by consulting basic homeopathic texts which they list in the bibliography.

This book is deceptively simple, reads like a cook book approach but one does need to be well versed with homeopathic methodology and know individual medicines to make valid choices for each patient. Patients may try to use this as a self-help book but would be advised to consult with an experienced practitioner for help.

The case statistics of specific cancers are displayed in small charts that compare Ramakrishnan's results with specific cancers before he used the plussing method (before 1993) and after using plussing. For example, viable patients with brain cancer had a 37% success rate pre-plussing compared to 70% using the plussing method.

I only have three suggestions for improvement. First, it would be helpful if all these charts that compare results pre and post plussing were collected on one page and presented at the beginning of the book in chapter 4 as well as in their respective chapters.

Second the index is not detailed enough. To find information related to breast cancer, it is indexed under Types, not Breast or even Cancer. And last, to enable the clinician to retrieve therapeutic information more efficiently, a spreadsheet of cancer types with their organ specific medicines would be a helpful addition.

This book is a most welcome addition to the existing homeopathic cancer literature and a much-needed beacon showing a homeopathic way of treating cancer patients successfully that can be incorporated into practice. Its case reports show that homeopathic treatment individualized for patients with cancer and repeated daily can clinically help many patients in a timely and non-toxic manner. Ramakrishnan's methodology can cause the disappearance of malignant tumors on cat scans and MRI's which may mean a cure for many patients.

After finishing this book, I felt motivated to research this new methodology. Who knows what it will do for you. It certainly deserves to be read and placed on the reference shelf of anyone who practices homeopathy. Hopefully a curious oncologist will read it too and embrace diversity.

Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy
Volume 94, Number 4, Winter 2001-2002