Different Approaches in Cancer Cases

Dr Vibha Mevada BHMS,CCAH,MCAH

ABSTRACT- Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. Not all tumors are cancerous: benign tumors do not spread to others parts of the body.

Possible sign and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bleeding , prolonged cough, unexplained weight loss and a change in bowel movements. While these symptoms indicate cancer, they may have other causes.

KEY WORDS- Cancer, homeopathy, different approaches.

INTRODUCTION– Cancer is a disease caused by an uncontrolled growths/division of abnormal cells in parts of the body. An abnormal growth of cells which tend to proliferate in an uncontrolled way and, in some cases, to metastasize (spread).

Cancers are a large family of diseases that involve abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body.

They form a subset of neoplasms. A neoplasm or tumor is a group of cells that have undergone unregulated growth and will often a mass or lump, but may be distributed diffusely.

WHO DEFINES-   Cancer is the uncontrolled growth and spread of cells. It can effect almost any part of the body. The growth often invade surrounding tissue and can metastasize to distant sites.

Many cancers can be revented by avoiding exposure to common risk factors, such as tobacco smoke.                      

APPROACHES IN CANCER CASES-

Different authors gives different approaches to deal with cancer cases according to their experience.

1.BURNETT’S  APPROACH

2.GRIMMER’S  APPROACH

3.SARKAR’S  APPROACH

1. BURNETT APPROACH- 

Burnett mention the importance of:

• Seat of action.
• The kind of action.
• The range of action.
• Stop-Spot of the action.

a) SEAT OF ACTION :   About the seat of action Burnett writes-
Hahnemannic medicine in its pristine purity is based on pure pharmacodynamics. It is in fact therapeutically applied pharmacodynamics;its first and deepest groundwork being the principle that given drugs affect given organs (parts) by selfelective preference.

b) THE KIND OF ACTION:  About the kind of action he says,
If we admit that certain remedies do really affect definite organs and parts specifically, we come at once to the question, ‘How?’

What is the quality of such action?
All things considered, the symptoms producible by a drug, give to a certain large extent the answer.

Thus, in pneumonia and phthisis, blood comes from the lungs, and we know from experience that the pulmonary lesion found in consumption and inflammation of the lungs fully explain why it is that blood is extravasated, and a consideration of the lung functions shows why it is cast out by expectoration.

Now, if we examine into the effects of phosphorus on the lungs, we find that it also produces pulmonary lesions like those found in certain cases of phthisis and pneumonia. The homoeopath can foretell, with scientific precision and accuracy, what remedy should be given in your lung disease. How?

By comparing the symptoms of the disease and of drugs, and the drug that symptomatically corresponds nearest to the manifestations of the disease, that drug is the presumptive remedy for the case.

And the morbid anatomy of phosphorism likewise resembles and objectively similar. I have used phosphorus in pneumonia and phthisisscores and scores of times with strickingly curative results; so have thousands more.

We have therefore arrived at a point where we admit that a remedy must not only affect the same part as the disease by special elective affinity, but the symptoms of drug and the symptoms of disease must be like one another.

c)THE RANGE OF ACTION: This is what he has to say about the range of action:

If a normal individual gets chilled and pneumonia followed as a consequence, the disease that we have to deal with has a no longer existing cause: the chill which is over and past. What remains is effect, and has located itself in the lungs- the distressed breathing, the cough, the bloody sputum, etc. These are now the disease from alpha to omega.

Phosphorus administered as a remedy will cure the chill- pneumonia, and their is an end of it; the patient gets quite well, little the worse for it.

If a foreign body- say a little nail- gets into a lung substance, and their set up a pneumonia with distress of breathing, cough, bloody expectoration, etc., here we have a still exiting cause the nail.

Phosphorus administered as a remedy will at first, perhaps, seem to cure this nail-pneumonia, just as it did the chill-pneumonia, but then the affair jibs, retrogrades, exacerbates.

The phosphorus is homeopathic to the pneumonia per se but not to the nail. The nail is here typical of any material still persisting cause such a weak heart, valvular disease, microbes, etc.

Supposing the pneumonia to be caused by still active and multiplying microbes, the phosphorus would play the same part here as in nail pneumonia; it could not get rid of the nail; it cannot get rid of the microbes.

d) STOP-SPOT OF THE ACTION: What he write about the stop spot of the action of a remedy is really made us sit up and take notice, because we never really thought in these terms.

The stop-spot of the remedy is that spot in the morbid process beyond which it cannot go. Thus in the treatment of nail-pneumonia by phosphorus, the action of the phosphorus is spent or stopped at the spot where the nail is its stop-spot.

2. GRIMMER’S  APPROACH-

In applying homeopathic remedies to cancer cases we proceed along the usual lines taught by Hahnemann and his loyal followers as far as we can.

Here, as in every case of chronic disease, we must stress the necessity for the fullness and most complete personal and family history that is possible to obtain .

When the pathologic change known as cancer develops and grows with symptoms that are commonly the result of such change, we have little to guide us for the selection of the homeopathic  remedy from a strictly symptomatic viewpoint.

The homeopathic treatment of cancer consists:

• FIRST: first in the selection of some specific remedy found in the Hahnemannian group that includes all three of the miasms in its symptomatology (together with the group specially related to trauma in its numerous forms).

• SECOND: the removal of all irritants that may act as exciting or activating cause.

• THIRD: in the homeopathic selection of the proper diet, avoiding food that irritate the patient and giving those that agree with and nourish him, such food to be based on the needs of each patient rather then for a diseased condition.

• AND LAST: the buoying up of the patient’s moral and mental status, appealing to his intelligent cooperation in all things, inspiring courage by explaining the certain but orderly processes by which disease comes under broken law and goes under restored law brought about with the homeopathic specific and the intelligent effort of the patient to live in harmony with these lawful processes of nature.

3. SARKAR’S  APPROACH–
   He treat cancer as layer ladder pattern and prescribe on present state, for prescribing on state he use keynotes of remedies.

a). ABROTANUM-   – “Metastasis” is the keynote of this remedy.

b). ACONITUM LYCOCTONUM-

• This remedy is primarily used in Hodgkin’s disease and has an affinity for the glands.
• The patient who needs this remedy cannot tolerate any kind of food.
• Specifically, the patient does not like pork, onion, or wine.

Rubrics that represent this remedy include:

• Glands: axillary
• Glands: cervical
• Glands: inflammation, chronic, glandular swellings

c). ALOE VERA:  – The keynotes of this remedy are ovarian, uterine or breast cancer + increased hunger. d). ANILINUM  – This remedy is specifically used in cancers of bladder, urethra or urinary passages, along with a history of tobacco use.
e). CADMIUM SULPHURATUM

• This remedy is used for cancers especially.
• Without this remedy it will be very difficult to control malignant vomiting and fevers.
• This remedy is between Bryonia and Arsenic.
• This remedy is used especially in gastric cancers, where ordinary symptoms are like Arsenic but no restlessness.

CONCLUSION
Homeopathy has always inspired hope and courage in its practicians and patient alike, because it taught the advantage of working in harmony with the laws of nature of which the therapeutic law of similars is but one.

Because of these facts, homeopaths are better equipped to combat this sinister and implacable force that threatens to destroy the race.

These forces and the knowledge that we work in unison with the restless throb of universal order inspires us to face with confidence this baffling medical problem agitating the world today.    

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Borker A, 2013, Pathology factor in remedy selection,1^st edition,Mumbai, Homeopathic Medical Publishers.
• Chitkara H.L., 1992, Best of Burnett, 1^st edition, New Delhi, B. Jain Publishers.
• Grimmer H., Grimmer’s workEdited by-Ahmed N. Currim, nov 20,1996.
• Sarkar S., 2013, Just You See, 1^st edition, Mumbai, Homeopathic Medical Publisher.