The dynamics and methodology of homeopathic provings
- The dynamics and methodology of homeopathic provings (G. Bedayn)
Zizia is the newest offering from David Kent * Warkentin's Kent Homeopathic Associates. It is the next step in the amazing phenomenon of electronic-information retrieval systems for the homeopath.
Developed by KHA's Jennifer Cunningham, Zizia does very fast searches of any combination of words (rubrics, symptoms, sentences, etc.) in over 125 volumes of homeopathic books and leading journals, from an electronic library that rivals the finest traditional libraries in the world. It includes many of the modern favorites; Morrison, Sankaran, Scholten, Sherr, van Zandvoort, Zaren, and more. I find it is easy to use, the controls are simple and few. If you can put coins into a parking meter, you can operate Zizia, it's that easy.
For the past one hundred and fifty years, homeopaths have struggled with having to access too much information. Constantine Hering would go through whole pints of ink, filling entire stacks of notebooks as he collected the endless data for his practice and publications. This is our inherited predicament.
I recently spent two days going through my entire library searching for significant quotes on "palliation." My eyes ached deeply in their sockets. Jeremy called and told me to check out Zizia, so I called Kent Associates and they sent me a prototype, loaded with four books, to test. I greedily loaded the program and selected query from the control bar on the left of the display then typed in "palliation," and selected "all" (books) and instantaneously had the first (of many) listings highlighted right there on the page of the book it was in. I could scroll around and jump pages and go back and forth, easily. It was a delight to use; so simple, so fast, so BIG. "Next, Open, Save, Table of Contents (per book), Page marker, sentence hi-liter," and a few more useful tools are included in the friendly vertical- left control bar.
Zizia differs from ReferenceWorks by not having the latter's analysis capability (graphs) and by being about one half the cost. Zizia is much faster and currently has many more books and journals. Zizia requires a CD player but does not require the big hard-drive of ReferenceWorks. Zizia is considerably easier to use than ReferenceWorks, and has richer language-searching capabilities.
A very interesting feature of Zizia is called "Links" which allows the user to create their own cross referencing system. For example: The student is doing a paper on a small remedy and finds a piece of information in one book that seems to be particularly interesting, then they find another in another book, and so on. Each time, they can keep a very simple record by creating a file-like link that holds the collection in a certain way so that during future reference the relationships will jump out ( a hand waves to you or a passage comes up in color!) when that subject is accessed. New "remedy essences" are sure to form from this very simple process of linking the most valuable information from all the sources. For example: If one does a Zizia search in the pre Vithoulkas literature for the remedy Agaricus, one could easily put together its "essence" that Vithoulkas discovered, and the sources are over 100 years old. You can link concepts between books, between journals, between specific authors, between your case notes, and jump back and forth between. Links is an interactive record of your work for future reference, stored in a very accessible way. This is the new wave, interactive homeotech, and as always is the question for KHA, I can't help wondering, "What's next..."
KHA has included 1400 choice articles from the finest journals of the Golden Age of Homeopathy, along with selected modern journals. The Hahnemannians are very well represented, along with their brilliant prescribing and writing. Priced at $1,500 this is a highly productive tool for the homeopathic student, practitioner, and educator -and like all other offerings by Warkentin, it's going to expand...
The heart of Zizia is a powerful new engine considered by national reviewers to the best text-management tool ever built. It is as robust and bug-free as you would expect from this competitive industry's leading type-application.
While you can print out your notes, graphics, patient information and more, the only shortcoming I can see with Zizia is that you can't export or print materia medica or the results of searches, as they are permanently attached to the CD for copyright reasons. I am confident that KHA will be able to remedy this, soon.
KHA has gone through some recent restructuring. With the new in-house addition of "born to the job" Vice President and Director, Shanti Norris, Warkentin is now able to do what he does best (play around with computers...). I give Zizia and KHA staff-support a nine-out-often rating (I'm not sure what a ten looks like, yet.)
As we go to press, the program is available only for IBM compatible computers with Windows 3.0 or newer. For a "bells and whistles" brochure contact:
Kent Homeopathic Associates Box 39, Fairfax, CA 94978 415-457-0678 dwarkentinigc. apc. org
Developed by KHA's Jennifer Cunningham, Zizia does very fast searches of any combination of words (rubrics, symptoms, sentences, etc.) in over 125 volumes of homeopathic books and leading journals, from an electronic library that rivals the finest traditional libraries in the world. It includes many of the modern favorites; Morrison, Sankaran, Scholten, Sherr, van Zandvoort, Zaren, and more. I find it is easy to use, the controls are simple and few. If you can put coins into a parking meter, you can operate Zizia, it's that easy.
For the past one hundred and fifty years, homeopaths have struggled with having to access too much information. Constantine Hering would go through whole pints of ink, filling entire stacks of notebooks as he collected the endless data for his practice and publications. This is our inherited predicament.
I recently spent two days going through my entire library searching for significant quotes on "palliation." My eyes ached deeply in their sockets. Jeremy called and told me to check out Zizia, so I called Kent Associates and they sent me a prototype, loaded with four books, to test. I greedily loaded the program and selected query from the control bar on the left of the display then typed in "palliation," and selected "all" (books) and instantaneously had the first (of many) listings highlighted right there on the page of the book it was in. I could scroll around and jump pages and go back and forth, easily. It was a delight to use; so simple, so fast, so BIG. "Next, Open, Save, Table of Contents (per book), Page marker, sentence hi-liter," and a few more useful tools are included in the friendly vertical- left control bar.
Zizia differs from ReferenceWorks by not having the latter's analysis capability (graphs) and by being about one half the cost. Zizia is much faster and currently has many more books and journals. Zizia requires a CD player but does not require the big hard-drive of ReferenceWorks. Zizia is considerably easier to use than ReferenceWorks, and has richer language-searching capabilities.
A very interesting feature of Zizia is called "Links" which allows the user to create their own cross referencing system. For example: The student is doing a paper on a small remedy and finds a piece of information in one book that seems to be particularly interesting, then they find another in another book, and so on. Each time, they can keep a very simple record by creating a file-like link that holds the collection in a certain way so that during future reference the relationships will jump out ( a hand waves to you or a passage comes up in color!) when that subject is accessed. New "remedy essences" are sure to form from this very simple process of linking the most valuable information from all the sources. For example: If one does a Zizia search in the pre Vithoulkas literature for the remedy Agaricus, one could easily put together its "essence" that Vithoulkas discovered, and the sources are over 100 years old. You can link concepts between books, between journals, between specific authors, between your case notes, and jump back and forth between. Links is an interactive record of your work for future reference, stored in a very accessible way. This is the new wave, interactive homeotech, and as always is the question for KHA, I can't help wondering, "What's next..."
KHA has included 1400 choice articles from the finest journals of the Golden Age of Homeopathy, along with selected modern journals. The Hahnemannians are very well represented, along with their brilliant prescribing and writing. Priced at $1,500 this is a highly productive tool for the homeopathic student, practitioner, and educator -and like all other offerings by Warkentin, it's going to expand...
The heart of Zizia is a powerful new engine considered by national reviewers to the best text-management tool ever built. It is as robust and bug-free as you would expect from this competitive industry's leading type-application.
While you can print out your notes, graphics, patient information and more, the only shortcoming I can see with Zizia is that you can't export or print materia medica or the results of searches, as they are permanently attached to the CD for copyright reasons. I am confident that KHA will be able to remedy this, soon.
KHA has gone through some recent restructuring. With the new in-house addition of "born to the job" Vice President and Director, Shanti Norris, Warkentin is now able to do what he does best (play around with computers...). I give Zizia and KHA staff-support a nine-out-often rating (I'm not sure what a ten looks like, yet.)
As we go to press, the program is available only for IBM compatible computers with Windows 3.0 or newer. For a "bells and whistles" brochure contact:
Kent Homeopathic Associates Box 39, Fairfax, CA 94978 415-457-0678 dwarkentinigc. apc. org
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