Interview Philipe Servais, MD (by Jay Yasgur, RPh MSc : May 2012)

Dr. Servais (1947 - ) is a French homeopath who received his medical diploma in 1973 from the University of Liege (Belgium). He was a civil servant for two years serving as a medic in a Moroccan hospital for two years (1974 to 1975). He has been a practicing homeopath since 1976 and as he becaming increasingly devoted and passionate about homeopathy he opened his ow n office in Paris in 1978.

Philippe has taught for l'Institut national homeopathique de Paris and was secretary general for Homoeopathia internationalis and leader of the study group 'Anastra.' He has served as president of Groupe d'etude d'homeopathie uniciste and France's representative to the LIGA. He translated into French the chapter about Hahnemann in Harris Coulter's Divided Legacy entitled Hahnemann et l'homoeopathie (1993). Under the auspices of the European Committee for Homoeopathy (ECH) he compiled, Le Dictionnaire des termes en homeopathie (1997) and edited Le Larousse de l'homeopathie (2000).

JY: Before we get started I would just like to thank you for taking time in your busy schedule to take part in this interview. Though they appear straight forward, interviews can be quite energy and time consuming.

My first concern involves healing: what was it about healing that caused you to go into medicine and furthermore how did you 'find' homeopathy?

PS: From childhood, I have asked myself many questions concerning the meaning of life and of the suffering that I observed around me. Coming from a non-medical background, my vocation was however early, self-evident. At University, in my sixth medical year, my young wife became ill, suffering recurrent pyelonephritis for an entire year despite months of antibiotics. My stepmother, a pharmacist, keen on homeopathy, took advantage of my having three days of hospital duty to take her daughter by 'force' to her doctor, Dr. Lincz, a friend of Dr. Schmidt and a great homeopath of the time. In eight days, my wife was definitely cured in a way that seemed totally miraculous to me. Discovering, after my meeting with this homeopath, what could be the 'real' medicine, I began, in parallel with the completion of my studies, to study homeopathy. Then I went for two years in a hospital in Morocco to do some medical cooperation work. It was an opportunity for me to treat people homeopathically, with astonishing success, in cases of typhoid as well as of meningitis. Indeed, the hospital often lacked essential drugs like some antibiotics. From there on, my destiny was mapped out!

JY: Over the years I have seen your name mentioned in the literature and read some of your cases [I received a book of Philippe's cases from Bruno Brechemier, MD during the New Delhi LIGA congress, 2011 and I could not put it down!]. Your passion for and deep understanding of homeopathy is apparent. Do you have a particular homeopathic interest or speciality at the moment?

PS: I am currently particularly interested in all the chronic diseases of our time: auto-immune diseases, depression etc.. This is an opportunity to discover what a real cure means and the full extent of the materia medica of which we use only but a small part.

[[another ? Here: You say, 'real cure.' What does that mean to you?]]

JY: Which homeopaths have influenced you - who were your mentors and do you have any favorite authors or books?

My first mentors were Dr Lincz and Dr Schmidt (1). Then, the one who did a lot to open up many possibilities to homeopathy and who brought great rigor into the doctrine was Dr. Masi of Buenos Aires. I met him in 1986 and have followed his teaching with great interest for some time. Early on, in my medical practice, I have worked a lot on the books of Nash and von Lippe in addition of course to the work of Kent.

JY: Would you care to offer your opinion concerning 'new wave homeopathy', i.e., the sensation methodology of the Bombay school (Sankaran) or Scholten's element approach, etc.

PS: Well, in my opinion, there are basically two methods to advance knowledge in the materia medica.

1/ The first one, traditional, is to do a thorough proving of the substance, to record all the symptoms especially including the most striking, the most specific. Using this pathogenesis and its transcription into the Repertory, the practitioner will be able to prescribe. The success of clinical cases will help to expand the understanding of the remedy and to confirm the pathogenetic symptoms.

2 / The second one is, from scraps of pathogenesis, from unconventional successful clinical cases or why not, from intuition, to extrapolate a hypothesis of understanding of the substance and to try to prescribe it to see if this hypothesis is correct. In case of success in several cases addressed with this understanding, and only if this condition is met, the hypothesis becomes a serious proposition. This is what we call making an induction, that is to say, a mental operation going from facts to law, to go from singular given cases to a more comprehensive and general proposal. It is then a proposal that carries a potential truth.

Then, there is in the homeopathic world today, a third method, a new one. It consists in using systematically, outside pathogenesis or clinical experience, the deductive method to try to approach an unknown remedy. Remember that the deduction is a process of thought by which one infers from one or more given proposals that, by virtue of logical rules, a new proposal arises. In this case, one uses a purely intellectual construction of logic to deduce the properties of a substance. This is the method used by the followers of the Mendeleïev table.

Why not! But, as before, remedies discovered in this way will only have 'homeopathic value' after the confirmation of the proposed hypotheses by pathogenesis or at least by a number of successful clinical cases. The danger in spreading and generalizing such a method is that inexperienced homeopaths could believe that logical reasoning (without checking for specific symptoms in the patient) can be a reliable and safe way to prescribe, when it is only a proposal for a pure experimental technique in homeopathic research designed only for confirmed homeopaths with perfect knowledge of the classic materia medica! This method of research in itself does not bother me, I take issue against its widespread use in clinical practice and even more in homeopathic education.

Another deductive method is the one that applies to the vegetal world. There, far more than for the mineral world with the Mendeleïev table (which has the merit of a rigorous scientific classification), the random result seems to me to be the rule. Given what is known about the morphological classification of plants, the premises used (by family groups) seem very approximative to me and the deductive access therefore of little merit.

Yet another deductive method is the one which consists in imagining the specificity of a mineral compound from the knowledge we have (or believe to have) of the two simple elements that form it. Every experienced homeopath has, one day, with a patient who improved slightly with Sulphur and Calcarea, tried to prescribe Calcarea sulfurica! In most cases, unfortunately, this reasoning does not work, which makes sense since the compound itself has its own idiosyncrasy that can not be reduced to the pure juxtaposition of the two elements that structure it. By this method, we arrive unfortunately (legends quickly become truths in the homeopathic world!) to fanciful descriptions of remedies, that do not correspond to clinical reality. Do not forget that a lapse of two years minimum is necessary before confirming a healing power of a remedy in a chronic illness.

JY: What are your thoughts concerning the concept of miasm and how much emphasis do you place on the client's miasm and what is the role of patient susceptibility in this aspect?

PS: Today, I seek above all the patient's true simillimum. I only use the classical miasmatic approach if I fail to obtain a satisfactory result, if there is some kind of barrier that prevents the profound action of an appropriate remedy. My approach of cases rather refers to the miasmatic approach as defined by Dr. Masi, primary psora, secondary psora, egotrophy, égolysis, etc. which allows a remarkable analysis of clinical situations (2).

JY: Are you involved with education: what is your role, do you teach? Also, talk a bit about your experiences with LIGA, as you have served as France's National Vice-President?

PS: I have always taught because I believe that the "old" have a duty of transmission of homeopathic knowledge. In addition, sharing a clinical experience is equally useful to me as to the students. Regarding the LIGA, it has been eighteen years since I'm involved with it. I think it is essential that homeopaths around the world, coming from different cultures, meet, compare their practices and stand together against the might of the official western medical world.

JY: I agree with you on these two points, we must mentor the young homeopath and create links across the globe. Thank you Philippe for your time, all the best and continued good fortunes in your life and work.

A Case of Cuprum metallicum

Philippe Servais, MD

(This case is from his book which is a compilation of several cases presented during one of Philippe's teaching seminars. It includes some of the discussions he was with the attendees)

Claudine, when I meet her in my office, has 24 years old. She comes with her “mommy” and for a long time she will come with her “mommy”. She lives alone with her “mommy”, her father died a long time ago. To give you the ambient, she looks at me a bit from underneath, she really does not trusts me, she doesn’t dare watch me directly, she is ill at ease, she is shy. I will also care of her mother, though in a very episodic rhythm, without following her correctly. From the beginning, without asking them any question, I decide to make a cheap price for these people that seem to me quite modest. It will take many years to learn the truth at the roundabout of a conversation.

She always spoke about this tiny apartment in the court that she took care of; she had to take out the bins, etc. I thought she was a doorkeeper. I discovered after many years that in fact she owned both of the buildings, which would be about fifty flats. She lived on the ground floor. In fact, she was the owner! But truly, she had her hair like that, with always the same dress, with her daughter a bit like this, etc.

Therefore the daughter is 24 years old, she works in a company that deals with show business. She sees in the offices many well-known artists of the time, but she takes absolutely no vanity from it. In fact, this young woman has a whole lot of problems –this was in 1984 – and unfortunately, it will take me seven or eight years to be able to find her remedy. By the years 90—92, her asthma from childhood will have worsen. She had become dependant to cortisone. The life of Claudine was the office, the house, the cabin of the doorkeeper and her animals. She has a passion for animals. The mother was annoying, but her daughter, fortunately, has her two dogs of whom she takes care passionately; She nearly only talks about them. She has no personal life outside taking care of her dogs and being on her mothers side.

One day abruptly, her mother makes a cerebral haemorrhage and dies. She completely decompensates. At this time, I hadn’t found her remedy yet, therefore I help her a little, I found circumstantiated remedies. She explains to me that somehow she will be able from now on to open herself a bit more and enlarge her horizons.

And there is more about money… It’s a managing agent that cares for her properties. She says that she is totally unable to manage the buildings but she has the luck, maybe, to have a honest manager. Her mother already had this manager. This makes that money comes in and leaves her with no financial problem. She had also stopped working for a time because she had been fired. She says, “I will finally open myself”. That is understandable since her mother had so much authority and was so bothering. She will build in the court a house for her dogs. This will make groan all the building but she doesn’t care, she is the owner. It will allow her to have other dogs. At the present time she has at least nine!

In fact her life will be happier, she will bloom in the middle of her dogs. However, , dogs of course are a problem when you have asthma… I must say that neither the mother, nor the daughter were never very clean… I have never been to their place, but visibly, cleaning must be done once per month or every two-month, with the dogs! And the dogs have all the privileges, they come and watch TV, they go in the bed. I can imagine the horror it must be.

From the moment I found the remedy, her asthma and chronic bronchitis completely cured. She carried on aging and one day she told me: “I met a man”. Ah! I had never thought that a man would finally arrive, but in the end… I saw this man that came to pick her up, he is a brave Algerian that visibly at the age of 40 has never done anything of his life and who had found someone to take care of him. She says, “I don’t know if he loves me, but in the end he is nice”. This is the word of the remedy: “he is nice”.

On day she calls me: “I’m pregnant”. I didn’t think this could happen. She absolutely wants to see me right now because “we must make a choice”. In fact she was really asking herself if she was going to keep the baby or not. She tells me “I love children, for a woman to have a baby is a great thing, it’s an opportunity I have”. I agree, but there are the dogs, you will have to make some small rearrangements. She responds: “never doctor, I rather abort then separate from one of my dogs”. Somehow I was a little shocked.

Finally, she went on with her pregnancy, she gave birth, she arranged things so she would arrive late at hospital, which made her give birth at home, in catastrophe, in Paris. Because she has some sort of naïve position towards life, she is not informed – it was to the extent I had to explain how her body was made – acquainted with nothing, with absolutely nothing. She tells me the baby is all right. The father that by the way has nothing else to do takes good care of the baby. Like this, she takes care of the dogs and him of the baby. But she really likes the baby.

Does this bring you to mind something?

A speaker – Why did she come at the first place?

Philippe Servais – For the asthma.

A speaker – Do you know why she likes so much her dogs?

Philippe Servais – Of course, I repeatedly asked the question. She says it’s because she has always liked animals. Animals are not like men, they are pure. Men don’t interest her, animals yes. Not only dogs, she likes all the animals.

She is someone that never had a social life; that somehow refused every contact with the world because she thought they had been difficult experiences. Invited by co-workers, for example, she went once, then she never went again, it does not go well, she doesn’t feel all right. She therefore lives in a totally closed up universe.

From an external point of view, she is a very shy person. She even told me she arrived at my office just on time to be sure she would not be in the waiting room with somebody else, it makes her unease. She is someone that always apologizes, and even said once:” please excuse me to ask you to take care of me?” In other words, am I worth it?

She is someone that during childhood has never been able to find her place, for example with her father. He died when she was young, but she never managed to have a relationship with him. Yet he was nice, but she didn’t know how to react with him. She is a person that could have been promoted in her job, but she refused every promotion because she didn’t know how to fit in the new situation she was. She is not a social person, but para—social, completely shifted.

A speaker –Cuprum?

Philippe Servais – Yes. You must take care with animals because in my opinion this often brings us on wrong paths.

Do you know Cuprum a little? There is in Cuprum a whole dimensions of shyness, of difficult sociability, of impossibility to meet with others, but there are some symptoms in the Materia Medica, some very interesting pathogenesis: there is a delirium “he is picking vegetables” and a second delirium “he is re-bottoming chairs”. This is one thing. Secondly there is another delirium: “he is the commander of the army, and making a speech in front of his troops, during his speech he starts to shudder, which is awkward for a general!”

This means that at one end he is in very simple things, very humble, he re-bottoms, he gathers vegetables, and on the other side, he is a general, a chief, he commands but he doesn’t stick to his play because at some point he starts crying. This means that he is not himself called into command , he is not on his seat when he is a general, when he orders. In fact the problem of Cuprum is that he doesn’t know where is his proper place, and where he is in relationship to the place he longs to obtain. He will have the tendency to go towards a pathological humility, with which he is searching the right behaviour. If being a general is being in egotrophy, and being nothing is being egolitic. There is this difficult balance to find.

Then again, either he is the chief, either he is insignificant. He must find the balance between the two. The key symptoms that should bring Cuprum in mind are: humility, responsibility with difficulty to assume the responsibilities or how to assume them; tranquility, I am well where I am; to stay at the place he is. You will often find a decompensated Cuprum coming to see you because they are receiving a promotion at work. They are calm, they have the skill required, they are very laborious, and extremely conscientious.

We give them a new task and at the moment were they start doing it, where the level of responsibility is higher of what they think their capacities are, they decompensate and get ill. I think there is something that allows to remind what is Cuprum. I presented this case, because I find it extraordinary.

What is copper? It’s the gold of the poor. It is not gold, it looks like gold, but is doesn’t really has a value. Moreover, here you have a fortune: a lot of gold owned by these poor people that live in the doorkeeper cabin.

.

Claudine, in fact, is at ease with her dogs. What she believes is her place, it’s the level on which she thinks she is, there is her balance. The child cannot put her on an other level: the child is on the level of the dogs, at this time she does not reject him. Humility makes us think about other remedies, of course, find ones place, his right place, which other remedy does it calls you to mind? Some people in their lives never find their right place, it’s therefore a thematic. This doesn’t call another remedy for you?

A speaker – they want to aim higher, for example?

Philippe Servais – Not necessarily aim high, to find their right place. I had a man that was an engineer of a good level and that was put to retirement. Arrived then what often happens with men, total decompensation. Before, he said: “I am interesting in this and that. It’s not a problem I am going to live, retirement is great!” Retirement came and it was total decompensation. It wasn’t a social, a financial problem or even of acknowledgment, not at all. This to the extent that not only he decompensated physically, he did a small heart accident, his wife told me “he aged. In a year, he took ten years even mentally. I have the feeling I have an old sluggish senior that cannot think anymore, he really is not going well”. I tried to understand why. He did not have the humility problematic of Cuprum. In fact, he had fantasized many things to do, but when retirement came, he found himself alone with his wife. There were grandchildren and children that were next to them, in their environment, but he had become lost, maybe because he was a man that neither had the experience nor the competence to play with his grandsons. Moreover, he is also an intellectual; therefore, it did not passion him. He thought he would be interested in scholar things and he said “what is the point of giving interest to that, there is no sense? In all cases, I am not going to be brilliant on this subject, I am just going to get busy”. Briefly, he was totally decompensating.

The remedy that got him out is Aloe. Because Aloe also has a problem to find the right place, to find the relationship with earth that allows him to be where he must be. The problem of Aloe is the problem of the first chakra. There is were is the problematic of Aloe.

What I understood though very simple –and it’s superficial I admit – is that the difficulty to find the right place in Aloe is not at all the same as in Cuprum. In Cuprum it’s at the level of hierarchy that must correspond, whether in Aloe it is not this at all, it’s a problem to find his function, to find the right place in terms of finding his function.

A speaker – But this person, she didn’t have a so important responsibility!

Philippe Servais – No, she did not take important responsibility. She did not want to accept them; she just wanted to stay at her place. Though she had the money, she could change her life, live from her rents in a nice house near the Mediterranean, everything was allowed. She had millions, but she just stayed at her place. She just made a cage for her dogs…

A speaker – It’s her humility that made you think of Cuprum?

Philippe Servais – Yes, this is what made me think about it. I told myself : “she is in an incredible humility

She looks her age. Physically, she is perfectly all right. She gave birth to the child. I definitely think that the Cuprum dose I gave her at the beginning of her pregnancy made her take the decision not to abort because she told me she took the remedy when she thought she would abort; she had felt better. She had a better mental; she gave birth to the child.

I was quite scared as I thought: maybe in this situation the children care services should be warned? Maybe the child was living in terrible conditions, and then I felt that the danger went away with another dose of Cuprum.

With Cuprum she assumed the whole of her pregnancy, she gave birth… at home, but well, it’s in her logic. She takes very good care of her child; she is doing everything that I thought impossible for her to do with a child. She brings him up correctly, she understood the relationship she had with her friend, therefore she understands her friend is even more childish than she is and that he is dependant of her. She admitted it, meaning that she refused to live with him, still, he is there part time. She keeps him a bit distant, he is nice to the child and the child has a father. Now, she starts going out to the country to walk with the child. Sometimes she even forgets about the dog, well… the dogs come in second.

I question her regularly about the respective place of the dogs and the child! Visibly the dogs are being pushed back by her son! With Cuprum, she understood for example that the dogs could not enter the room anymore.

It’s an extraordinary story. She humanised her life. However, we are not at the end of the story, I will have to tell it again in ten years. For now, we are there.

NOTES:

1) Lincz & Schmidt

2) One of Masi's beliefs was that we could not become ill if we were not already ill on the soul level: the soul is sick. He felt that the patient could be more completely healed if our treatment was focused on this deep level.

“there is always identity [Servais prefers the term 'similitude'] between the meaning of the lesion and the existential attitude of man; disruption of the hierarchically lower is impossible without the disruption of the hierarchically superior; the physiological and affective problems are derived from the metaphysical problems of the human being even if he is not conscious of the fact; what says the patient by the mental symptomatology (intellectual and emotional), he also says it in his bodily illnesses."-Masi (as translated by Servais).

'Original sin' was not a term he used to explain 'soul illness' or even psora but he did think that illness was very deep and since it was so penetrating that it goes without saying it was present on the other levels (physical, emotional and mental): 'any condition is thus to be understood on all levels simultaneously.' This notion is in agreement with the ideas of Sankarn, Vervarcke and several others. Perhaps one can see this in the 'Cycles and Segments' work of Amy and Paul Herscu.

Furthermore, Masi argues that the 'soul illness' ('spiritual symptomatology') could be found in the provings but it is obscured by the physical and emotional symptoms which are more readily observed. Masi suggested one could look deeply into the proving data to find the spiritual information. He felt that ...there is only one 'primary psora' (primary suffering) for a studied remedy and only one remedy for a primary psora. Each primary psora is thus specific to a given remedy (and individual). 'All humans that have the same simillimum remedy therefore have the same primary psora.'

It is very unlikely that the patient, in the amamnesis, can describe the true 'soul illness' ('unconscious primary psora') but instead describes symptoms in the other three areas (physical, emotional, mental). It is as if the soul illness is imprinted as symptoms recognizable to the patient, e.g., craves salt, afraid of spiders, never drinks water, etc.

Masi goes on to propose three ways in which the patient, the organism, reacts and adjusts to stress and strain.

1) “The flight away (inhibition, inability, irrational fear etc…). Dr. Masi calls this the Egolysis NO [Psora] ! but [Syphilis]

2) Destruction or aggression. This is the Alterlysis. [Syphilis]

3) Domination that can deny his problem and involves some 'construction'. This Egotrophy may be frank (he imposes with authority) or hidden (he imposes insidiously, deceitfully, by seduction or manipulation).” [Sycosis]

The patient's successful reaction to the stress/strain produces habits and as these habits become more and more ingrained chronic illness begins to develop. When patients habits can no longer deal with the stressors (environment) on the mental or emotional levels-when he can no longer increase his egotrophic psychic reaction-then he 'increases the mass' on the physical level. It is as if the psychic symtoms build up to such a degree that they spill over into the physical sphere and the psychosomatic connection becomes evident and solidifies. The same process exists for the "lytic" reaction (egolytic or alterlytic) but this time in the sense of destruction.

*Much of the material from this note comes from Servais' article 'Doctrinal Focus' which he specifically translated for this interview.

3) In this case, perhaps one can see a certain rigidity ('she just wanted to stay at her place,' etc.) which calls to mind it's opposite Ferrum: Cuprum is more yielding and flexible. It seems she requires a more flexible attitude in her relationship to life, which can be 'awakened' by Cuprum. Interestingly enough, this case reminds me of a chapter in Robert Bly's book, Iron John. Here he describes these two substances in poetic terms perhaps providing helpful insights for the homeopath. Furthermore, if one wanted to probe even deeper into the psychology of this case, a family constellation could be done for this patient. For information in this area I would suggest Bert Hellinger's body of work, e.g., Love's Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships (1998), as an initial introduction to this field. Anneke Hogeland's 'Family Constellation Therapy: Implications for Homeopathy' (HL, 23:1, Spring, 2010, pp. 24-26) is a short piece in which Anneke explains the family constellation rationale and blends it with homeopathy.

The anthroposophical discussion of the Fe-Cu dynamic is a topic for future reflection. In the meantime, the reader may wish to read some of the late L. R. Twentyman's MD thoughts on Ferrum (http://www.anthromed.org/Article.aspx?artpk=378) and Cuprum (http://www.anthromed.org/Article.aspx?artpk=377). Other anthroposophical references of interest include, The Nature of Substance (1966, Hauschka, R.), The Secrets of Metals (1973, Pelikan, W.) and Living Metals (1974, Mees, L. F. C.).