Homœopathic Links 2009; 22(3): 161-163
DOI: 10.1055/s-0029-1185960
INTERVIEW

© Sonntag Verlag in MVS Medizinverlage Stuttgart GmbH & Co. KG

Go Back to the Future!

An Interview with Dr. Prafull VijaykarRajesh Bhide
Further Information

Publication History

Publication Date:
25 August 2009 (online)

Dr Prafull Vijaykar, MD, is director of Predictive Homeopathy in Mumbai, India, and author of several books in which his system of analysis of case-taking and follow-up is fully explained (see www.prafullvijayakar.com).

My first interaction with my old teacher Dr Vijaykar was around fourteen years back. I was a second-year student at the homeopathic college in Mumbai and he used to be the honorary visiting physician in the morning OPDS. Students would take the case and present their study to the respective doctors. My turn was with Dr Vijaykar.

I happened to take the case of an elderly lady with severe chronic cough and weakness. I spent around an hour taking the history and was presenting it to Dr Vijaykar. I had just started to relate the clinical symptoms and the patient was sitting right in front of Dr Vijaykar; incidentally she coughed. The moment he heard her coughing, he said “this is Stannum metallicum, give her 200 C one dose and she should be fine in a month's time.” I followed up the case for several months and was surprised to see her improving within a few weeks: the cough disappeared, together with a remarkable improvement in her weakness. She also gained weight, her appetite improved and one could see that she was getting her health back.

Such and many more, in fact innumerable, cures were effected by Dr Vijaykar, on the basis of no more than observation and listening and acutely observing the patient's every move.

If you happen to hear him in seminars, you always hear him saying “homeopathy is easy! It is mathematics!”

We always argue with him saying “it's easy for you because you have the knowledge. You know how to differentiate one remedy from another on the spot in few minutes; you know which symptom to take as an eliminating rubric. You know the miasm of the patient just by looking at his appearance and body language.”

“Well”, he argues back, “it was not easy for me either, 20 years back!” He has indeed come a long way. He practised allopathy for eight years after he graduated, then homeopathy – but with mixtures and combination remedies and mother tinctures and etcetera! But then he converted himself and now he practices the “right” kind of homeopathy. Today he is one of the busiest homeopathic practitioners in the world. The statistics of cases in his clinic make simply astonishing reading:

15 to 16 hours work in his clinic. Around 15 new cases every day. Around 200 follow-ups every day. In a normal working day he will typically treat and cure patients of several dreadful diseases such as Sturge-Weber syndrome subdural hematoma hydrocephalus vitreous retinopathy cerebral palsy all stages of cancers and many other advanced incurable pathologies. 75 to 80 % success rate with first prescription. 85 % of cases cured with polychrest remedies.

When he is not in the clinic he is mostly busy teaching all over India and abroad. Along with his colleagues, who are basically his trained students, he leads the Predictive School of Homeopathy.

I personally do not believe in the concept of “school of thought”. I believe in individual teachers. Every school represents a different platform from where we can dive into the infinite world of homeopathy. They all claim to be the best ones and to be unique! But in reality no one is the best and no one is the worst either. They are just the way they are. They all have something to teach and something incomplete.

I sense something in Dr Vijaykar's thought process which appears new and at the same time not new! An artist discovers a new shade of a colour which already exists and a scientist invents a totally new colour. There are two ways to progress as far as gaining knowledge is concerned: qualitative expansion and quantitative additions.

The first one is the job of an artist. He expands in quality with the facts which are already available. And a scientist adds his new experiences to the existing material.

Someone presents a case of Natrum muriaticum and brings out a picture no one has heard of before! And someone presents a case of a remedy no one has even heard of. For homeopathy what is the most pressing need today: to bring out more remedies, more miasms, more additional aphorisms to our age-old Organon or to bring out the hidden beauty of the words and concepts which already exist but which we fail to understand because we lack that creativity and the ability to read in-between the words.

Dr Vijaykar's work, in my understanding, is the work of an artist. He is not inventing any new miasms, nor is he adding any remedies to the existing ones!

His whole accent is on understanding the mechanism of process of cure and suppression – the journey of disease and cure, what happens AFTER the remedy is being prescribed. The following interview was conducted in an effort to understand his thought process and to glean his views on current homeopathy. I am sure this immensely knowledgeable master who is known to have cured thousands of cases of advanced pathologies has lots to share …

Rajesh: Good morning Sir, you have come a long way from being an allopath, a mixopath and are now a very successful homeopath. How did you end up here? What are the necessary qualities for becoming a good homeopath?

Vijaykar: I would say I have been consistently ready for change. To change for the better, plus openness to all other sciences. Not being dogmatic about just what's given in the Organon and our philosophy. In fact studying the Organon in the light of modern medicine. The whole effort is to work in collaboration. To fill in what's lacking. The birth of homeopathy itself occurred because of such thinking. It was discovered by Hahnemann who originally was an allopath. Since he was so frustrated with the shortcomings of allopathy, he felt intensely the need to have a science which would be mathematically perfect and based on laws and principles. So you see homeopathy was not discovered to treat cough and cold! It was discovered to treat irreversible and incurable pathologies for which the old school had no cures.

Today I treat all the so-called hopeless and given-up cases with a success rate of as high as 75 to 80 % and that also with just simple polychrest remedies. One day in my clinic provides enough material for an 8-day seminar! I rarely see cases of patients with simple pathologies like eczemas, allergic bronchitis, mental depression etc. I believe if the world wants to know the real potential of homeopathy, homeopaths should expose themselves to such incurable, hopeless, complicated cases where every “-pathy” has failed, of course with sound knowledge and consciousness. It's an insult to homeopathy when it's used to treat simple cases!

Rajesh: So the most important quality a homeopath should have is the readiness to change?

Vijaykar: Absolutely. Today we have advanced technology, the books of scholars from all over the world, the study of genetics. I use and apply all of it in my practice.

I have used the study of genetics to understand miasms in a whole new way. When I apply it in my practice, every case becomes so simple. And not only genetics but also all the sciences which help us understand man as a whole. After all we treat the man in disease and not disease in man! We have to understand the internal mechanism of man.

It is necessary to understand:

How he is developed? Embryology How he functions? Physiology What happens in disease? Pathology What happens in cure? Immunology How he is different from others? Genetics

All this together constitutes the idea of Individualization. It is the basis of our prescription.

Rajesh: why do you give so much importance to miasms? Can one not practise without studying them?

Vijaykar: You may not be able to give the results the way I am giving, in advanced pathologies. And note that Hahnemann himself has provided this connection. He could not go further since he did not have the modern gadgets to study man in as detailed a way as we can today.

Miasms

Rajesh: in your books and seminars you always seem to stress there are only three miasms. And you give scientific explanations at the genetic and cellular level. Can you explain in a bit more detail?

Vijaykar: Every cell has GOD in it. G for generation, O for organization, D for destruction. If you look at this from the homeopathic point of view, you will see three miasms. “Dust to dust, every man must!” The moment we are born, we start our journey towards death. I try to see what defence mechanism my patient is using to save himself. Miasms are nothing but defence mechanisms.

Psora represents the physiological defence which is just at the functional level. It means defence brought about by the cell or organism by promoting natural or normal healthy functioning in the cell or tissue. For example, if a bacteria or fungus attacks, the first step the cell may take is to promote production of certain already present antibacterial agents secreted by it on the cell wall like lysozymes in mucus membranes or unsaturated fatty acids on the skin epithelium, or producing free fluid in large quantities so that the bacteria or fungus is washed off, or by using the primary defence mechanism of inflammation. Or by increasing or decreasing the pH of the cytoplasm. The sole aim is to make the bacteria die its own death by temporarily changing the biochemistry.

When this fails there is a switch in the gears of defence. After the limits of reversible physiological changes are exceeded, certain changes take place in the genes, which include irreversible changes in the morphology or the structure of the cell. Accumulations start taking place in the cell wall or cytoplasm. The cell wall starts thickening by excess accumulation of lipids, proteins or glycogen simply to protect the cell from irritation. This is Sycosis… polyps, warts, cysts, tumours, atherosclerotic plaques, deposition of pigments and minerals. On the mental level there is an accumulation of power, money, and egotism basically to create a facade to hide the internal weakness.

When both these mechanisms fail, the cell switches its gear of defence to defend or to save the whole organism by destroying a part of it. This is Syphilis, the miasm of destructive pathologies like gangrene, necrosis, ulcers, and fractures. On the mental level it can be seen in extreme behaviour, something out of control.

Many times we also have two miasms combined: cancer, for example, is sycosyphillitic:

First accumulation then destruction.

So, you see, pathologies develop in such a systematic manner: there is an order even in the disorder! No disease is without a precursor or a follower. Most ailments are the result of an individual harbouring a tendency to a particular disease. No disease falls from the sky. It is mostly the result of a chain reaction. Hahnemann considers the discovery of miasms more important than the discovery of homeopathy itself. You may read Aphorism 74 and the introduction to Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases.

Hering's law

Rajesh: I know you have written a lot about the importance of Hering's law of cure, but can you please briefly tell us here why it's so absolutely necessary to follow it in practice? You also have made your own addition to the law that cure should follow from the more to the less destructive miasm.

Vijaykar: Our science is unique only because of this law of cure. Homeopaths who don't follow it or don't give importance to it, these people I don't consider homeopaths. They are dangerous for the spread of proper homeopathy.

In the first aphorism of the Organon, Hahnemann speaks of the mission of a physician, it is REstoring the sick to health. The letters RE means going back to where it was i.e. health. The disease travels from the less important organs (embryological origin – ectoderm) to the most important level (the level of the mind of the cell – the basic cell code!). If we refer to embryological books we can say it travels from the ectoderm to endoderm to mesoderm and finally to neuroectoderm. Now when we find the genetically constitutional simillimum, the cure should take place in the exact opposite order. My addition to Herring's law of cure would be that cure should take place from the more destructive miasm to the less destructive miasm. This indicator helps me enormously in judging the direction of symptoms. I will explain with a simple example. If I am treating a patient of hemiplegia (a syphilitic pathology) and after a few weeks the patient starts developing diabetes mellitus (sycotic) I will not interfere since I know it's going in the right direction. I expect the psoric symptoms to come up in a few weeks as, for instance, skin eruptions or, at the mental level, anxiety. Of course by this time the paralysis has been cured completely. But one has to be watchful if it's getting cured or suppressed! You have seen my hundreds of cases of such advanced pathologies and how beautifully they come back to health.

Rajesh: Sir, many homeopaths are keen to follow this Law but sometimes it's so confusing! For example asthma disappears and dry cough and sneezing starts, now is this from down upwards? Good or bad? Diarrhoea stops and psoriasis starts. Is it the exteriorization of diseases? Or the situation in which mental symptoms are better but the patient feels physically weak?

Vijaykar: This is the tricky part and here one must have knowledge of embryology and genetics! After years of experience I have formed a chart of suppression where one can see how the disease travels and how the cure should take place.

Just to briefly answer the examples you have given: asthma disappearing and the dry cough and sneezing starting is a very good sign. It's the inside-out direction. Where diarrhoea stops and psoriasis starts is a bad sign; it's not exteriorization of disease but a frank suppression. The disease has shifted from endoderm (2nd level of mesodermal connective tissue) to 3rd level since psoriasis although expressed on skin (the epidermis) is actually due to pushing up of keratinocytes by a problem in the dermis (dermatome origin), hence it's deeper.

Where mental symptoms are better but the patient is still physically weak, it is absolute suppression. The body has to follow the mind! In the follow-ups the first thing I look for is the patient's generals getting better. Weakness (if any) has to improve. Mind and Body function together. In health there is balance. So when we say this patient is cured, we cannot leave him alone with just his mind better and with the body that is weak.

New remedies

Rajesh: you have cured a number of cases of so-called advanced pathologies treated with simple polychrest remedies, but in the last few years there seems to be a big fuss about adding new remedies to the existing materia medica since there are newer pathologies; in other words, just as the funda, the world around us, is changing, we have to change too! Do you think the new remedies will bring a “revolution”?

Vijaykar: Adding new remedies to the existing materia medica because there are newer pathologies and because the world around us is changing … this is the way of allopaths!

When they discovered penicillin in 1950, they claimed it as a wonder drug and henceforth no one would ever die of infections. But soon it got outdated and then came tetracycline, then oxytetracycline, chloromycetin, ampicillin, coxacillin and now the 4th-generation antibiotics. They explain that the world around is changing so the bacteria itself is changing, it's undergoing mutation. That's why it cannot be killed by the same drugs.

Rajesh: let me ask you a practical question: what do you do when you fail even after using all the widely known remedies?

Vijaykar: You have to try and try and try. It has to match. If it doesn't, then I am going wrong somewhere. Every remedy should be learned in its Psoric, Sycotic, and Syphilitic pictures. With polychrests, one can see symptoms and signs of all the three miasms. So you have a much wider range of symptoms from the prescriptive point of view. If I am treating insanity or schizophrenia, I will find a syphilitic mental of the patient and match it with the physical. Otherwise it's just palliation!

Rajesh: so one can practise using only polychrest remedies?

Vijaykar: I insist you can! Homeopathy is alive not because of lesser known remedies but because of polychrests. Lesser known and new remedies are used and proved by homeopaths who have no capability or ability to use the polychrests. It is only to hypnotize the younger generation.

Rajesh: so are you totally against it?

Vijaykar: I am against the way they are mushrooming! No matter what the remedy is, show us the results with the right direction of cure.

I have used remedies like Chocolate, Granite, and Lapis alba with great results. But that is not the first thing I go and look for when I treat cases, if you know what I mean. They should not dominate our attention. I rule out the possibility of widely known remedies first. As I said, in my practice 80 % cures are with polychrests and the results speak for themselves.

Rajesh: Sir, I know we can talk and talk without exhausting the subject and you have an ocean of knowledge and information. But finally can you please sum up and conclude…

Vijaykar: Never drift from the teachings of our Master Hahnemann. He has told us to go back to the future! Restore the sick to health. We should evolve for the higher purpose of our existence. And, to accomplish this, readiness to change is most necessary. Change for the better and simplicity. Everything is there in the Organon. We must develop an eye to read it, to read in between the lines, understand it in the light of modern medicine. Then this youngest and the latest science of therapeutics will offer answers and permanent solutions to as many as 1400 diseases mankind suffers from.

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Dr. (B.H.M.S), London (UK) Rajesh Bhide

URL: http://www.yes4homeopathy.com

Email: meinbombay@yahoo.com