The Soul of Remedies
SANKARAN R.,
For a long time I hesitated to write a book on remedies because I am well aware of the dangers inherent in such an undertaking. In the first place, there is a strong possibility that the reader, especially if he is a beginner in the field, might become fixed on these remedy pictures and forget that every remedy has a wider range and greater scope than any one individual can see or describe. Not realising that these pictures represent only one version, only one view of the remedy, he might wrongly imagine that he had seen the whole. I also realise that an idea imperfectly communicated which might easily be corrected in a "Live" teaching situation, is far less easily rectified when it has been committed to print. Finally there is a danger that the reader's Materia Medica may be narrowed down to the limited number of remedies described here; it may create a tendency to try to fit all patients into one of these pictures; thus young practitioners might fail to make the unprejudiced search through the Repertory or the more complete Materia Medica which the best prescribing requires.
However, in the last two or three years, my books "The Spirit of Homoeopathy" and "The Substance of Homoeopathy" have achieved some popularity. These books, written to introduce students of Homoeopathy to my line of thinking are not, and were never intended to be, texts of Materia Medica. Nevertheless some readers found the ideas on various remedies presented in these books useful in practice, though somewhat inconvenient in form, since using the index to check a particular remedy often obliges one to look in several different places. A number of readers have attempted to reorganise this material so as to allow for easier reference, and it seems that some of these attempts have almost made it to publication. However, as I read through a few of them I found many gross errors which would have conveyed quite erroneous ideas, incorrectly purporting to be my own.
It was at this point that I decided that I might as well write a book in my own style to convey my own experience. The material presented here has been observed and confirmed in my own practice; it is material I am sure of. I have not included remedies of which I have little experience or knowledge. I have attempted to convey the innermost feeling or the basic delusion of the remedy while connecting the situation, source, miasm and kingdom. The rubrics and physical symptoms cited are ones which I have observed repeatedly and often used to confirm the remedy prescribed. These ideas have helped me in my clinical practice and I wish to share them with the profession.
As mentioned above, most of this material can be found in my previous books: this presentation, however, should be easier to use.
There is a common misconception to the effect that I stress mental and emotional symptoms to the exclusion of physical symptoms. This is, I repeat, a misconception. If I often seem to speak exclusively of the mental/emotional state, it is because understanding this requires some degree of insight into the patient as well as into the remedy and it is more difficult than noting physical symptoms. Nonetheless, in practice I give a lot of importance to the physical symptoms, to the meaning of the pathology, and to the modalities which have to be matched with those of the remedy. Giving a remedy solely on a vague idea of the mental picture is a prescription for failure. Such an approach is risky and certainly not one that I follow nor recommend.
The ideas presented in this book are not superficial: they are not mere hints. I have tried to bring out the innermost feelings of the remedy and it is not easy to discover these in patients other than by artistic case-taking which delves deeply into such things as the patients delusions, dreams, hobbies, etc. What appears on the surface may be quite different from what is actually inside. For example, I had a case in which the expression was one of stage fright, but I observed that, in that situation, the patient's reaction, tremendous panic and fear, was as if he was about to be killed.
My idea of understanding a remedy is to grasp the connection that ties together its myriad symptoms: the basic delusion, its source (kingdom), the miasm to which it belongs, its symptoms - all must be understood as aspects of a single whole if we are to even begin to truly understand a remedy. It is my attempt to trace out these connections that distinguishes this work from other Materia Medicas. I believe, for example, that the "connecting link" in Sepia is the feeling that she is forced to do something against her intention. In the section on Sepia I try to show how this "link" connects every aspect of the remedy. This has been confirmed by me in practice time and again - I do not believe it is mere theory... and yet the reader must remember that this is Rajan's experience and not necessarily the final word.
Similarly, the understanding of miasms presented here, for example, the theme of sycosis as being "fixed" is not traditional. It is merely my own understanding and someone else's view might well be different. A complete discussion of my understanding of miasms is presented in "The Substance of Homoeopathy" and is not reported here. In many cases I have described the "situation" of the remedy under discussion. Let me note here that the situation of the remedy is not necessarily the actual situation of the patient; it is rather the situation in which he (unconsciously) perceives himself to be. Thus, when I say the Magnesium is an orphan, it means that the patient feels like an orphan though he may, indeed, still have living parents. People set up situations according to their perception of reality. Magnesium muriaticum, for example, feels that his friends will betray him and so avoids people. This only reinforces his feeling of being friendless.
I wish to reiterate once again that a good Homoeopathic practitioner does not try to fit the patient to a particular remedy, but seeks first to clearly understand the patient and then to find the appropriate remedy through repertorization, the study of likely remedies in various Materia Medicas and review of the experiences of other homoeopaths with those remedies. Rather than trying to see what part of a considered remedy does fit the case, he must see what does not fit and must remain skeptical. The prescriber who would grow in skill must be able to recognise what does not fit and resist the tendency to "force" a fit. In this way he will be led to consider another remedy which might look similar but is not. This is what I try to do and if you do the same you may be able to develop pictures of lesser known remedies.
This book is meant for those who have read "The Spirit of Homoeopathy" and "The Substance of Homoeopathy" because it is those earlier works that most fully express my understanding of the Organon and Materia Medica. Without an understanding of my ideas on such things as case-taking, classification of remedies according to kingdom, miasms, etc., this book will not be of much benefit. This work may be used as an adjunct to the previous works but not as a substitute for them. The reader who attempts to use this book without understanding the fundamental concepts may easily find himself lost without a compass.
Finally let me repeat that the reader must bear in mind that this book is based on the experience of one homoeopath amongst the multitude and should be taken as "notes along the way", not as the final word. Used in this way it may be of value.
acknowledgement
I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the work done by Dr. Digish Doshi and
Dr. Rashmi Jaising. They are mainly responsible for painstakingly collecting the material from the earlier two books and putting it into its present form, after discussion with me regarding my ideas on the remedy.
I am grateful to Mr. Michael Zelnick who has gone through the text and put in finishing touches and Mr. T.D. Anthony has been patient with us during the typing.
Note
Rubrics
Usually from Synthetic Repertory.
Occasionally from Complete Repertory.
Where marked from Kent's Repertory
Phatak
Refers to Phatak's Concise Repertory.
There are also symptoms from Phatak's Materia Medica.
The rubrics and symptoms mentioned at the end of the remedy are those I see as the main rubrics of the remedy and which I use for confirming the remedy.
For a long time I hesitated to write a book on remedies because I am well aware of the dangers inherent in such an undertaking. In the first place, there is a strong possibility that the reader, especially if he is a beginner in the field, might become fixed on these remedy pictures and forget that every remedy has a wider range and greater scope than any one individual can see or describe. Not realising that these pictures represent only one version, only one view of the remedy, he might wrongly imagine that he had seen the whole. I also realise that an idea imperfectly communicated which might easily be corrected in a "Live" teaching situation, is far less easily rectified when it has been committed to print. Finally there is a danger that the reader's Materia Medica may be narrowed down to the limited number of remedies described here; it may create a tendency to try to fit all patients into one of these pictures; thus young practitioners might fail to make the unprejudiced search through the Repertory or the more complete Materia Medica which the best prescribing requires.
However, in the last two or three years, my books "The Spirit of Homoeopathy" and "The Substance of Homoeopathy" have achieved some popularity. These books, written to introduce students of Homoeopathy to my line of thinking are not, and were never intended to be, texts of Materia Medica. Nevertheless some readers found the ideas on various remedies presented in these books useful in practice, though somewhat inconvenient in form, since using the index to check a particular remedy often obliges one to look in several different places. A number of readers have attempted to reorganise this material so as to allow for easier reference, and it seems that some of these attempts have almost made it to publication. However, as I read through a few of them I found many gross errors which would have conveyed quite erroneous ideas, incorrectly purporting to be my own.
It was at this point that I decided that I might as well write a book in my own style to convey my own experience. The material presented here has been observed and confirmed in my own practice; it is material I am sure of. I have not included remedies of which I have little experience or knowledge. I have attempted to convey the innermost feeling or the basic delusion of the remedy while connecting the situation, source, miasm and kingdom. The rubrics and physical symptoms cited are ones which I have observed repeatedly and often used to confirm the remedy prescribed. These ideas have helped me in my clinical practice and I wish to share them with the profession.
As mentioned above, most of this material can be found in my previous books: this presentation, however, should be easier to use.
There is a common misconception to the effect that I stress mental and emotional symptoms to the exclusion of physical symptoms. This is, I repeat, a misconception. If I often seem to speak exclusively of the mental/emotional state, it is because understanding this requires some degree of insight into the patient as well as into the remedy and it is more difficult than noting physical symptoms. Nonetheless, in practice I give a lot of importance to the physical symptoms, to the meaning of the pathology, and to the modalities which have to be matched with those of the remedy. Giving a remedy solely on a vague idea of the mental picture is a prescription for failure. Such an approach is risky and certainly not one that I follow nor recommend.
The ideas presented in this book are not superficial: they are not mere hints. I have tried to bring out the innermost feelings of the remedy and it is not easy to discover these in patients other than by artistic case-taking which delves deeply into such things as the patients delusions, dreams, hobbies, etc. What appears on the surface may be quite different from what is actually inside. For example, I had a case in which the expression was one of stage fright, but I observed that, in that situation, the patient's reaction, tremendous panic and fear, was as if he was about to be killed.
My idea of understanding a remedy is to grasp the connection that ties together its myriad symptoms: the basic delusion, its source (kingdom), the miasm to which it belongs, its symptoms - all must be understood as aspects of a single whole if we are to even begin to truly understand a remedy. It is my attempt to trace out these connections that distinguishes this work from other Materia Medicas. I believe, for example, that the "connecting link" in Sepia is the feeling that she is forced to do something against her intention. In the section on Sepia I try to show how this "link" connects every aspect of the remedy. This has been confirmed by me in practice time and again - I do not believe it is mere theory... and yet the reader must remember that this is Rajan's experience and not necessarily the final word.
Similarly, the understanding of miasms presented here, for example, the theme of sycosis as being "fixed" is not traditional. It is merely my own understanding and someone else's view might well be different. A complete discussion of my understanding of miasms is presented in "The Substance of Homoeopathy" and is not reported here. In many cases I have described the "situation" of the remedy under discussion. Let me note here that the situation of the remedy is not necessarily the actual situation of the patient; it is rather the situation in which he (unconsciously) perceives himself to be. Thus, when I say the Magnesium is an orphan, it means that the patient feels like an orphan though he may, indeed, still have living parents. People set up situations according to their perception of reality. Magnesium muriaticum, for example, feels that his friends will betray him and so avoids people. This only reinforces his feeling of being friendless.
I wish to reiterate once again that a good Homoeopathic practitioner does not try to fit the patient to a particular remedy, but seeks first to clearly understand the patient and then to find the appropriate remedy through repertorization, the study of likely remedies in various Materia Medicas and review of the experiences of other homoeopaths with those remedies. Rather than trying to see what part of a considered remedy does fit the case, he must see what does not fit and must remain skeptical. The prescriber who would grow in skill must be able to recognise what does not fit and resist the tendency to "force" a fit. In this way he will be led to consider another remedy which might look similar but is not. This is what I try to do and if you do the same you may be able to develop pictures of lesser known remedies.
This book is meant for those who have read "The Spirit of Homoeopathy" and "The Substance of Homoeopathy" because it is those earlier works that most fully express my understanding of the Organon and Materia Medica. Without an understanding of my ideas on such things as case-taking, classification of remedies according to kingdom, miasms, etc., this book will not be of much benefit. This work may be used as an adjunct to the previous works but not as a substitute for them. The reader who attempts to use this book without understanding the fundamental concepts may easily find himself lost without a compass.
Finally let me repeat that the reader must bear in mind that this book is based on the experience of one homoeopath amongst the multitude and should be taken as "notes along the way", not as the final word. Used in this way it may be of value.
acknowledgement
I wish to acknowledge with gratitude the work done by Dr. Digish Doshi and
Dr. Rashmi Jaising. They are mainly responsible for painstakingly collecting the material from the earlier two books and putting it into its present form, after discussion with me regarding my ideas on the remedy.
I am grateful to Mr. Michael Zelnick who has gone through the text and put in finishing touches and Mr. T.D. Anthony has been patient with us during the typing.
Note
Rubrics
Usually from Synthetic Repertory.
Occasionally from Complete Repertory.
Where marked from Kent's Repertory
Phatak
Refers to Phatak's Concise Repertory.
There are also symptoms from Phatak's Materia Medica.
The rubrics and symptoms mentioned at the end of the remedy are those I see as the main rubrics of the remedy and which I use for confirming the remedy.
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