Editorial May '07

Editorial May '07

It is beautiful the way homeopathy is now in a strong evolutionary phase and moving towards revealing the whole of its possibilities. Much new information on remedies and even new techniques for eliciting patient information as well as remedy information is being developed and refined.

As homeopaths though, during this intense evolutionary process it is easy to feel overwhelmed with new developments and new information. When homeopathy was in its initial and classical development phase the same feeling must have been felt. At that time, a number of techniques were developed to deal with all the new information, not the least of which were Repertories that translated symptoms and some concepts into rubrics. More information was added to Repertories to the extent that today we have some that are chock full of individual symptoms. On the other hand, our current repertories are not completely reflecting how we are accessing and organizing new information or reflecting the current evolution, (with the exception of Jan Scholten’s Repertory of the Elements which is just a start).

This month’s Interhomeopathy has a number of plant cases with some practitioners using plant family information leading them to choose a specific remedy in that family. The use of plant families is somewhat analogous to Boenninghausen’s method of general to specific utilized in his repertory. Of course, his method was restricted to homeopathic “symptoms”. Though when you think about it, these so called symptoms are not really “symptoms” defined only through a prism of pathology. They refer to general states, sensations and even positive qualities that allopathic medicine or the medicine of the time would not associate with treating disease. This long time distinguishing feature in homeopathy is important as a traditional foundation for much of what we now do in modern evolving homeopathy.

We now have been successfully grouping information in general categories to better understand and even utilize proven and unproven homeopathic remedies. Scientific categorization helps in this regard especially in plant families. Not only that, it explained to me why 25 years ago I might have difficulty in distinguishing various members of say the Ranunculaceae family for a particular case, even though at that time I was not thinking in this way.

At the moment we have disparate places where we store the information particularly general information. I have it in various programs and files on my computer as well as in various books. Even in reference computer programs the information has not been amalgamated or organized completely. Some technology has been introduced to refine searches and classify them into groupings and various kingdoms and families.

We can demonstrate the general categorization through cured cases and enjoy the use of these general concepts even though they are not easy to find. Our next step is to recognize the value of general classification enough that it will be brought together in a standardized, coherent, and more organized fashion. This will require more complex computerized repertories of general concepts and families amalgamated with specific “symptom” rubrics available in current repertories.

Louis Klein
Vancouver / Canada
lklein@homeopathycourses.com


PS
Some weeks ago I was requested by the editor of the internet magazine; ’ homeopathy for everyone’ (www.hpathy.com), settled in India, if we were willing to ask our readers to join the discussion about the theory and practice of homeopathy.
We decided to offer our co-operation because our aim is the same one, namely ‘to bring homeopathy, free and easy, to everybody who is interested’.
His appeal was ‘Let us work together in harmony for the growth of homeopathy.’
In the last article of this edition, ‘ Homeopathy-Exploring The Boundaries’, you will see what is the focus of this international dialogue and how to participate.

We offer you this time three Paeonia cases, so that you can recognize the essense of the remedy.
And two cases with HNP (Hernia NP) for comparison. Each did very well on a totally different remedy.
I hope you will enjoy this issue again.

Anne Wirtz
Amsterdam / NL
park@annewirtz.demon.nl