Dr. David Little Interview extracts

This is recommended for reading by all who have taken the role of prescribers at ABC Forum.

Pankaj Varma

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Here are extracts from an interview with David Little, an American Homeopath who spent time in India watching how homeopathic doctors have to work in India.

It is a very interesting interview.

This is for all those who have no knowledge of the extent of homeopathic development in this sub-continent.

Source: http://hpathy.com/homeopathic-interviews/david-little-interv....
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Leela: Yes, our professors advocated yoga therapy while on homeopathic treatment. So we do advise our patients who are open to it, to take advantage of opportunities available around them and learn at least the various techniques of relaxation and meditation. I see most people benefiting from this.

Do tell us some of your early experiences with practicing homeopathy.

David: I was originally trained in the tradition of James Kent and American Homoeopathy and I was used to 1 to 2 hour appointments in a one-on-one situation in the West. When I came to India all this was to change radically! At this time, my emphasis in case taking was on the psychology rather than the physical diseases as many of my patients in the USA were suffering from emotional difficulties related to dysfunctional relationships. I was using high potency Cs in the single dry dose and waiting and watching for a relapse of symptoms before contemplating any repetition. In these years everything was very dramatic. The cures were dramatic. The aggravations were dramatic. The successes were dramatic and the failures were dramatic. TOO dramatic! I was led to believe that in many cases the idea was “no pain – no gain”. I remember telling patients that aggravations were a good sign but I was never really comfortable with the idea.

Leela: Ahh, this reminds me a lot of my own early homeopathic days as well. My first experience of homeopathic aggravation was of my own, very sensitive dad, aggravating badly after 2 doses of Bryonia 200C. He was in agony, which initially due to my ignorance, I did not take seriously! It was only once he was given Nux Vomica 30 (which thankfully antidoted in a few minutes), did I realize what agony he was going through. I was really upset that these 2 doses could cause him so much of pain. Since then I have had this deeply uncomfortable feeling about anyone going through aggravations especially the sensitive ones.

So you were saying ….

David: Yes, when I first came to India I remember treating a few patients successfully and then suddenly a long line of patients appeared in the mornings. How was I going to treat all these people? I was used to seeing 4 or 5 patients in a day not 15 or 20. At the same time, I had to treat the most virulent acute miasms and the most chronic degenerative diseases I had ever seen. This was the first time I treated typhoid, malaria or tuberculosis and those near death. In the West most seriously ill persons are in the hospitals under the care of the allopathic doctors, but in India they were all on my front porch! I realized immediately that the methods I was using were not going to be appropriate for these cases under these conditions.

Leela: Isn’t this really exciting to see? That homeopathy is a system of medicine with “teeth”? It fascinates me how gently we can heal even serious disease conditions with homeopathy. It does take a leap of faith and courage with a good background of learning and experience though. But it is well worth the leap! Especially if one has committed support and team work.

David: Right, so I knew I had to make some changes and I had to make them fast. I realized that the diseases I was seeing, and the conditions in which I was seeing them, was very similar to what Hahnemann, Boenninghausen and Hering experienced in the 19th century. For this reason, I decided it would be best for me to start my studies all over again and return to the basics. This, of course, brought me back to the Organon and Chronic Diseases as well as introduced me to Hahnemann’s Lesser Writings. At the same time, I started studying modern pathology books so I could understand the nature of the diseases I was now seeing.

I thought that I best return to “beginner’s mind” but with the advantage of my years of experience. I knew I had to open up to new possibilities as well as old little known realities. I began to study the repertory and materia medica day and night so that I knew exactly where to find information on the most proven 300 remedies. More knowledge was the only way I could treat so many patients in a day. I was going to have to get to the most similar remedy much faster than I had in the past.

Leela: Where did you experience the Indian homeopathic practice first-hand?

David: I decided that I best tour the country and see how the Indian practitioners worked under the weight of such a patient load and treated such a wide variety of acute and chronic complaints. At this time, I studied with a Doctor Isaac who was the head of a homeopathic collage and hospital in Kerala, South India. I was absolutely thrilled to see a full homoeopathic hospital and out patient clinic in operation. I knew there used to be homoeopathic hospitals in the USA but they closed before I was born. During the first days in the outpatient clinic I suffered from severe culture shock as I watched Dr. Isaac and his students treat around 100 out patients and then do the hospital rounds in the afternoon.

Leela: Our readers would love to hear more of what you call the ‘culture shock’ of your Indian experience.

David: Dr. Isaac would sit at his desk with no repertory or materia medica with a long line of patients in front of him and a few chairs around his desk. He would quickly assess the patients in the line, prescribe a remedy, and then say “next”. Occasionally, he would pull a person out of the line and make them sit next to him so he could question them further at the same time as he continued to ask questions to those in the line in front of him. It was obvious that these were cases he wished to give a closer look. At times he would reach into his desk drawer and pull out an old battered copy of Kent’s Repertory and look up a few rubrics. As soon as he was satisfied he would write down the prescription and excuse the patient.

In this manner he would sit with a long line passing in front of him and 3 or 4 persons in chairs around him. Once in awhile he would tell the nurses to admit a certain patient in the hospital ward. In this manner he would examine several cases at once. As I looked around at the masses of suffering patients seeking help I wondered how anyone could treat so many cases effectively. I was used to taking 1 to 1-1/2 hours during a first consultation and now I was expected to prescribe in around 10 minutes!

One morning Dr. Isaac looked at a patient, asked him a few questions, and then wrote down Calcarea. I said, “Why are you giving him Calcarea?” He told me to take the patient aside and interview him more closely and see for myself. I took the patient aside and began to ask him questions. In no time out came symptoms like cold head sweats, coldness in spots, the desire for eggs and meat, longing for fresh air, the fear others will notice their decline, etc. I was quite surprised and went back to Dr. Isaac and asked him, “How did you know?”

Dr. Isaac looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes and said that after 40 years of sitting at his desk “patients were no longer just people standing in line. They were remedies waiting to be given!” I decided that I would do the follow ups on his new cases so I could see how well these patients were doing on remedies chosen so quickly. To my great surprise most of these patients were responding quite well to the first prescriptions. Those that were not doing well were taken out of the line in the outpatient clinic and put in the chairs next to Dr. Isaac. Now he would take their cases more carefully and give his second prescription if necessary. In this manner Dr. Isaac cured 10,000s of patients who came from far and wide to see him.

Leela: This must have been his honorary (free) work at the government hospital right? Did he practice privately as well?

David: Dr. Isaac also ran a private practice at his home on the weekends. Here the case load was much lighter and we had more time to examine each patient. He was treating a good number of mongoloid children and getting great results! I examined youths that were in their teenage years who did not even look like mongoloids. If one looked very, very closely one could see certain physical signs like high cheekbones and the Mongolian lids but nothing more. They were all doing very well in school and considered absolutely normal by others. These persons had been his patients since childhood.

Leela: How interesting!! Mongoloid Children leading a near normal life! This is what I was talking about with a colleague earlier. There has never been any clear documentation done in India of treatment of these types of (incurable) cases that make up a confident reference point for the young homeopath today. How did Dr. Isaac explain this improvement?

David: He told me that the key was to begin treatment when they were infants and stay with them throughout the early growing years and puberty. If this was done they would live a normal life. Those who came later in life showed significant but less dramatic improvements. I looked at the records of these cases and found no new fancy tricks or unusual remedies. Most cases were resolved with remedies like Bartya Carbonica, Bartya Muriaticum, Calcarea, Bufo, Phosphorus, Natrum Muriaticum, Medorrhinum, Syphilinum, etc. The major teaching I learned from Dr. Isaac was to learn the major characteristics of the most proven 300 remedies very well. In this manner one can do good work under even the heaviest patient load under the worst conditions.

Now it is 25 years later and I understand what Dr. Isaac was trying to teach me all those years ago. Now, I can work under the most difficult conditions with a large number of patients when necessary. I have treated up to 50 patients in one day with my assistants. Sometimes I hardly have time to look at the repertory or materia medica and must use my inner experience alone. I do not do my best work in such demanding circumstances but I can do good work because I have learned the basic materia medica very well.

Leela: We were constantly reminded in MedicalCollege to read and re-read the Materia Medica of the commonly indicated remedies every day of our professional lives. It was the only way to be an efficient homeopath.

Today we have computer software that makes the job easier for us. We tend to rely less on that ‘inner experience’. I think as homeopaths this reliance on our inner experience based on solid, factual Materia Medica, should be an aim to achieve in our homeopathic development, as we understand remedies and their symptomatic expressions.

David: The computer is a blessing. It allows the homoeopath to access and assess a great amount of data very quickly and easily. The digital medium is perfectly suited to a large data based system like Homoeopathy. I remember the old days when one had to depend on repertory sheets to assess the numerical value of rubrics. Much of ones practice was dependent on one’s study of the materia medica and how well they recognized the leading 300 remedies. We had to concentrate on learning the golden characteristics of the remedies and understanding how to observe them in various forms in patients. The repertory was often used to confirm a few important symptoms rather than to base ones entire case upon.

Leela: Yes many of our senior professors knew the Materia Medica like the back of their hands! They could tell you which page of Lippe or Boericke to turn to, to look for a particular characteristic symptom of a remedy! “Check page 352, in the top right hand corner, 6th line …”

David: With a computer today, it is much easier to find the smaller remedies one might have overlooked due to the difficulty of dealing with so much information mechanically. Nevertheless, the old computer maxim “garbage in – garbage out” was never more applicable. One must be very careful to judge the characteristic value of the symptoms they choose so that the symptoms they collect are of a high quality. It is much better to use a smaller number of characteristic rubrics of a high quality than collect a larger number of poor quality rubrics in the name of a false totality.

It is so easy to use 10 or15 symptoms of rather poor quality and come up with fictitious answers. One must be very careful to judge the characteristic value of the symptoms they choose so that the symptoms they collect are of a high quality.

Many homeopaths are forgetting how important it is to study the materia medica daily. There is a tendency to think of case taking solely as electronic information gathering and sorting rather than an application of the experiential materia medica to our patients. One must remember that the symptoms of the materia medica found in the repertory have been divided, redacted and redistributed. The original images and their complete symptoms with locations, sensations, modifications and concomitants have been broken up for easy indexing.
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Re: Please help me doctor From PANKAJ VARMA on 2010-05-05
About Dr. David Little:

David Little was born in the USA in 1948 and has been a student of Homœopathy since the early 1970s. His first teacher was the late, great Dr. Manning Strahl and he was a colleague of the late Dr. Harimohan Choudhury. He has studied Homoeopathy in the USA and India. He started HOE, Homeopathic Online Education in 1999.

You can read more at:

http://www.simillimum.com/hoe/about.php