Editorial: mapping the Mammals

As editors of an online journal, always trying to bring together coherent and useful issues, it is a great surprise and pleasure to be simply handed a whole series of articles for publication. The following series is the work of Ghanshyam Kalathia and a group of homeopaths from various parts of the world who have studied closely with him. In general, Interhomeopathy strives to be an online database for homeopathic case material, providing examples of good case-taking and the results in practice. In this case, however, we could not resist the opportunity to share this material with you: a study of the world of mammals in relation to homeopathic remedies. The various mammal groups are described and differentiated in such a way that we learn to recognize them in the behaviour of our “Mammal” patients, fine-tuning the general themes of Mammals down to the specific family and even the specific animal. The differential diagnosis with other kingdoms, for example the various series of the periodic table, are also helpful in practice. Relatively few cases are provided, as this was not the aim of the study, but we and the authors hope that it will stimulate many homeopaths to further explore this material in practice and to prescribe the Mammal remedies with even greater accuracy. Deborah Collins

We are a small group of international homeopaths and students. We study homeopathy together as the ‘Homeopathic Online Study Forum’.

We believe that everything has a specific energy pattern and this is also true in homeopathy. According to the homeopathic perspective, each group of remedies has a specific energy pattern. Mammals have cooperation, coordination, team effort, and are capable of caring. We made use of this ‘mammalian energy’ in our study of mammals and the result is this series of articles.

Our journey began when we collected information about mammals from provings, materia medica, cases and natural history from Google. The collected data was approximately 10,000 pages long; from this, we did a precise editing and prepared the material in a way that is easy to understand. We are most thankful to colleagues and teachers whose work was immensely helpful. There is a long list but we are especially thankful to Rajan Sankaran, the Joshis, Jonathan Hardy, Nancy Herrick, Patricia Hatherly, David Warkentin, and Jörg Wichmann.

In the first article, we map the mammals by presenting their well known general themes and their classification according to order, suborder, class and family. Classification gives us an exact idea as to where each specific mammal and its co- relations are placed within the class of mammals. It also helps us identify how many of these remedies have available provings or materia medica.

Subgrouping is a useful tool to differentiate the Mammal remedies and helps us to identify the subgroup themes and specific source themes during case taking. We were able to elicit the sub-group themes of nearly twelve groups, but still many subgroups remained untouched because there are only a small number of known remedies in them. Out of the twelve groups, we present four subgroups, which we have fully explored, each in a separate article.

Let’s journey together and try to enjoy the “primitive and vulnerable” energy of the Marsupials, the “docile and submissive” energy of the Bovidae. Let’s fully feel the mammalian energies, so we can experience the “cunningness and loyalty” of the Canidae, and the “power, strength and independence” of the Felidae.