UNFOLDINGS FOR AMSTERDAM

Meeting Room Program

At the 53rd Congress of the LMHI in Amsterdam, there will be several special separate meetings at which professionals from various disciplines are invited to work together on setting standards for the following areas: data collection systems, provings, homeopathic education, homeopathic good manufacturing procedures, and the like. Introductory overviews of the anticipated issues for discussion in the several topics to be discussed were included in the October, 1997, issue of the Liga Letter.

Meeting on homeopathic education

The following is a letter from General Secretary for Education, Dr. César Cremonini, inviting those interested in homeopathic education to participate in this crucial work.

"Dear Colleague:

The League that inherited the Hahnemannian ideals through the work and efforts of its founders and of those who assumed responsibility for more than 70 years, to assure that it would be a faithful guardian of those principles, at this time, is trying to bring up to date its strategies in all areas: those of pure investigation, comparative investigation in publicity, in cybernetics, as well as the Educational field. That is the reason for this new meeting on the topic of Education to take place during the League's Congress in Amsterdam (on Wednesday 29 April 1998).

As always your opinions and those of your organization or school will be very important in order to fulfill the objectives.

The suggested topics to be discussed are:

1. New techniques to improve the teaching of Homeopathy.
2. The LMHI International Committee for Education.
3. Minimum required for a Standard program for Homepathic Education.
4. Minimum required for a Standard program to update Homeopathic School professors.
5. Other topics.

The League is in the process of formulating Standards on an international level, following the accepted norms of the World Health Organization and other well-known international Organizations for the minimum requirement for Post-Graduate Education. We are sure that your ideas or those of your Organization, without a doubt, will influence the betterment of the levels of those standards, in order to prepare us for the inevitable insertion of Homepathy in the plans of Academic Education and of World Health, an insertion that will come about, inevitably, from the changes and needs of Science and the people in the new Century that is approaching.

That is why it is so important that you participate in this Meeting in Amsterdam. We will be waiting for you and your ideas.

Dr. César Cremonini"

Meeting on homeopathic provings

The following is a overview submitted by David Riley, M.D., for the prior consideration of those who plan to attend the special meeting in Amsterdam on homeopathic provings (on Wednesday 29 April 1998).

David Riley has conducted many homeopathic drug provings in the past seven years and will lead a discussion of provings with Jeremy Sherr, Harry van der Zee, Jean-Pierre Jansen, Gio Meijer, Reinhard Flick, and George Lewith. The panel will examine the historical guidelines for homeopathic drug provings dating back to Hahnemann and contemporary scientific guidelines for research methodology. Current and proposed methodological aproaches to homeopathic drug proving design, data collection, and data analysis will also be reviewed.

Some provings have been done using a research methodology based only on the historical guidelines for homeopathic drug provings outlined by Hahnemann, others rely primarily on contemporary scientific research methods and others blend both. One pharmacopœia, the Homœopathic Pharmacopœia of the United States (HPUS) has published a set of guidelines which includes a general outline for a scientific methodology, while respecting the historical precedents of homeopathy. One of the critical areas of all provings, regardless of design, is the symptom selection process. Some symptoms from provings in the 1800's initially appeared unimportant, but were later clinically verified and are now keynotes. Other symptoms experienced by many provers are general in nature and do not appear to assist in the individualization process of a homeopathic prescription.

Ideally, the demand for useful clinical information can be integrated with contemporary scientific research methods, providing results which are both useful to practitioners and scientifically valid. Short of that, exploring different proving methodologies with experts in the field hopefully will lead to consistency within the field of homeopathy so that results from different provings can be compared.

David Riley. M.D.