Resonance: The Homeopathic Point of View

By Richard Moskowitz

Resonance is a systematic treatise on the homeopathic point of view in medicine. Encompassing both philosophy and method, it considers in detail how homeopathic physicians think of health and disease, what they look for in the patient, how they conduct the interview, how they evaluate the effect of the treatment, and how they prepare and study the medicinal substances that they use. But it is not a "how-to" book that instructs students in how to proceed, or which remedy to prescribe for what condition, and even the first-aid applications are discussed as special cases of the general viewpoint, rather than as recipes to be followed blindly.

The Introduction, "Who Needs Homeopathy?" addresses the prior question of why homeopathic medicine is both useful and necessary at this particular juncture.

Part One, "Fundamentals," traces the origins and conceptual basis of homeopathy, and consists of three chapters.

The first is devoted to the basic principles of the method: vitalism and the "vital force," the "law" of similarity, and its corollaries -- the so-called "totality of symptoms," the definition and scope of homeopathic medicines, the single remedy, the minimum dose, and the evaluation of improvement and worsening.

The second discusses two specialized techniques which are peculiar to the method, namely, the pharmaceutical preparation of medicines, and their experimental administration to healthy volunteers, or "provings," as they are generally known.

The third elaborates on the all-important approach to the patient, including the interview, or case-taking, with its method of elucidating the symptoms and then ranking them for remedy selection; the details of administration and dosage of remedies, with the proper regimen to be followed during the treatment; and the evaluation of remedy action at the follow-up interview, with indications for what to do next, as well as long-term case management.

Part Two, "Remedies," begins with introductory remarks on the homeopathic study of medicinal substances in general, and then gives concise but detailed accounts of important individual remedies, organized in four chapters.

The first describes a number of representative plant remedies, and concludes with a discussion of a new way of understanding plant families and how it can be used clinically in difficult cases.

The second proceeds analogously to the remedies of the animal kingdom, and concludes with discussions of snake, insect, and mammalian remedies, to elucidate the importance of family relationships in locating the animal remedies as well.

The third and fourth are devoted to the mineral remedies, with some basic constitutional types, including various salts and acids of the same "family" groupings, and other elements, such as ferrous, precious, and heavy metals.

Part Three, "Ailments," is concerned with how homeopathic methods can be applied to the study and treatment of particular diseases and com-plaints, beginning with a general discussion of the subject as an important issue in itself, and divided into three chapters.

The first is devoted to acute conditions, including first aid and the concept of self-care, and its application to the treatment of injuries and common domestic ailments...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 9, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462804559

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Copyright © 2000 by Richard Moskowitz, M.D..

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Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION:

PART ONE:

FUNDAMENTALS

CHAPTER ONE.

Principles.

CHAPTER TWO.

Techniques.

CHAPTER THREE.

Patients.

PART TWO:

REMEDIES

INTRODUCTION:

The Study of Remedies.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Plants.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Animals.

CHAPTER SIX.

Minerals.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Minerals: Salts, Metals, and Acids.

PART THREE:

AILMENTS

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Acute Ailments: Illnesses and Injuries.

CHAPTER NINE.

Ailments of Limited Scape.

CHAPTER TEN.

The Chronic Diseases.

EPILOGUE:

Homeopathic Research.

APPENDIX:

Historical Development.

NOTES

I dedicate this book

to my wife, Linda Sklar,

for whose love, intelligence,

wisdom, and practical help

I am deeply and forever grateful.

FOREWORD

In the last decade American homeopathy has grown and flourished to an extent undreamed of when I stumbled across it in the 1970’s. The profusion of excellent guidebooks already available for first aid and self-care has stimulated me to try to convey a feeling for the breadth and majesty of the homeopathic viewpoint as a whole, which encompasses a wide range of useful applications to the practice of medicine in general, including the treatment of chronic states as well.

In essence, the finished product represents the logical outcome of years of trying to explain homeopathy to a largely disbelieving public of students, patients, relatives, and friends. Notwithstanding the wealth of testimonials and success stories, which generate more demand for our services than the small number of trained professionals can possibly satisfy, the basic principles of homeopathy remain unfamiliar enough to most people that merely telling strangers what I do for a living always threatens to spill over into a lecture. In that sense, my literary ambitions and editorial standards for this book amount to collecting and organizing the things I’ve been saying to people all along.

Presuming no medical or technical background beyond that of the educated, inquisitive lay reader, I have emphasized method and process to do justice to the basic and often disconcerting questions that patients and students like to ask. Resisting the growing remand for a fixed body of information to be learned by rote, I have tried to present homeopathy as a living philosophy of healing and patient care, to help bring to an end its long and partly self-imposed exile from the rich languages and cultures of medicine, science, and common speech.

On the other hand, since so much of the fascination and excitement of studying homeopathy lies in the detailed knowledge of remedies and the actual experience of using them, I have devoted most of the text to materia medica and popular clinical applications like first aid and self-care, with suitable guidelines for readers to begin using the remedies for themselves without fear of doing harm.

Among the growing number of titles on homeopathy for the general public, including several published in recent years, this one thus occupies a unique and somewhat intermediate position. Intended as a treatise for a skeptical, intelligent lay audience, it could also serve as an introductory text for students and committed homeopaths, while the final sections will probably appeal mainly to health professionals, whether homeopathic or otherwise. But it is not a how-to book and does not tell the reader what to do, how to proceed, or which remedies to use in a given situation. My primary intention is simply to discuss and illustrate how homeopaths think about health and illness as thoroughly and systematically as I can, examining the most important aspects of the enterprise, including difficult and controversial questions that tend to be left out or glossed over. Even first-aid and self-care applications are presented as special cases of the point of view, rather than recipes to be followed blindly.

INTRODUCTION:

Who Needs Homeopathy?

When I began studying homeopathy in 1974, neither the sleepy little town where the course was held nor the advanced age and semi-retired status of the instructors augured well for the future of the movement. By the time my wife and I moved to Boston eight years later, no homeopathic physician had prescribed in the area for twenty-five years, as if a whole generation of active, full-time practitioners had never materialized. With no full-time schools, clinics, and teaching hospitals to its name, and very few local pharmacies to send patients to, American homeopathy seemed obsolete and unlikely to survive much longer.¹

Today, against all odds, reputable schools and training programs for physicians and allied health professionals are thriving as never before, while homeopathic ideas and products enjoy growing popularity and visibility both in the media and at the retail level. After generations of aging and decline, this surge of interest in a method nearly two centuries old is so improbable that it is only fair to ask why Americans seem ready to discover it now, as if for the first time.

To that little conundrum should be added the deeper mystery of homeopathy itself. Its basic claim that medicines have healing power over the same array of symptoms they can elicit in healthy people is far from self-evident, to say the least, and has never been proved or disproved in the same way that ordinary scientific hypotheses are expected to be. Still less has anyone ever satisfactorily explained how a dose too minute to be detected chemically could possibly have any effect on a patient, let alone a beneficial one.² Confronted at every turn with riddles like these, I can’t help feeling a little uneasy when patients seem prepared to swallow them whole without comment or demur.

Finally, homeopathic theory and practice have changed very little in an era when technical achievements like surgical anesthesia, blood transfusion, the germ theory of disease, and the detailed anatomy and physiology of the human body have transformed how we live and think almost beyond recognition. If homeopathy cannot match or even keep up with these developments, why should we bother to resurrect it today, when the same forces that once defeated it now control the entire health care system? Before attempting to explain it, then, it seems appropriate to ask a more basic question: Who needs homeopathy?

Why Patients Seek Homeopathic Treatment.

The short answer is to be found among the reasons our patients give for coming to see us, which turn out to be much the same as those reported by other alternative practitioners. One is simple curiosity about other philosophies of healing, coupled with the natural instinct to try a gentler approach first, before their conditions worsen to the point that drastic methods are called for. Seriously and chronically ill patients, on the other hand, are more likely to seek homeopathic treatment as a last resort, after conventional methods have failed or created even worse problems of their own.

Common to both groups is the assumption that natural methods will at least be less harsh and dangerous than drugs or surgery, coupled with a healthy skepticism about their effectiveness. Much the same mix of feelings are expressed by patients wanting evaluation and treatment of strange ailments as yet undiagnosed, and by many with no pressing complaints at all, who seek both a suitable physician and a healing approach that feels more congenial than the prevailing one. In short, the growing interest in homeopathy is no ignorant repudiation of science as such, but simply a faithful indicator of public dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of the medical system.³

Why I Became a Homeopath.

A more detailed answer is provided by the autobiographical state-ments and life histories of homeopaths and other like-minded physicians, many of whom choose to give up more prominent, lucrative, or respectable careers for the sake of approaches still regarded as unscientific if not heretical by the bulk of the profession. Why do they do it?

My own core beliefs and attitudes about doctoring grew out of my experiences as a medical student in the 1960’s, long before I had ever heard of alternative medicine.⁴ The practical dilemmas I encountered on the wards of a large city hospital impelled me to study philosophy before going into practice and have continued to shape my career ever since.

First, the often glaring discrepancy between how patients really feel and function and how we expect them to behave as specimens of their disease taught me to trust our subjective feelings and intuitive hunches at least as much as the objective measurement of the abnormalities we were trained to substitute for them.

Second, clinical practice soon convinced me that drugs powerful enough to control life functions automatically pose a significant threat of destructive force, one that is multiplied exponentially when the treatment must be continued over extended periods of time.

As a result, my first priority as a physician became simply to avoid invasive diagnostic procedures, elective surgery, and chemical drugs for long-term maintenance as much as possible. I began investigating older, more traditional methods like acupuncture, herbal medicine, and home birth, all of which are effective only to the extent that they are compatible with the individuality and self-healing capacity of the patient. Training myself not to order people what to do or how to live has also taught me how to cultivate their self-awareness and enlist their active participation at every stage.

From that point of view, conventional drugs and surgery are best held in reserve as extreme measures for special situations, exemplifying a type of causal thinking that is far too rigid to accommodate the richness and complexity of human illness, in which all aspects of experience are represented, a wide variety of influences are discernible, and patients tend to respond more or less uniquely and unpredictably to them.

Even before I had seen it work in a patient, homeopathy offered just the kind of elegant and systematic philosophy of health, illness, and the art of medicine that I had been searching for all along. Ideally gentle and non-invasive, it uses tiny doses of natural remedies artfully chosen to match the individuality of the patient and thus assist the self-healing capacity. Conducive to building non-adversarial relationships based on consensus and mutual respect, it also suggests holistic models of medical research that could be of great benefit to the profession as a whole. Quite apart from its practical value in diagnosing and treating the sick, it merits a respectful hearing and careful study as a patient-centered approach and a humanistic style of doctoring.

The Bottom Line: Does It Work?

On top of that, my career itself bears witness to the effectiveness of the method, which has helped me practice family medicine for twenty-six years without needing to write prescriptions or refer patients for surgery except as a last resort. Having used remedies successfully in every phase of pregnancy and childbirth,⁵ and in many other acute and threatening situations, I have seen them save life, ease the pain of death, and give dramatic, long-lasting relief in situations where conventional methods had failed or seemed totally inapplicable. Two examples from long ago come immediately to mind.

The first was an eight-pound baby girl, born covered with thick, green meconium, who took one gasp and then breathed no more. Brisk suctioning produced only more of the same. At this point the child was limp, white, and motionless, with a heartbeat of 40 per minute, responding feebly to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but unable to breathe on her own. I put a few tiny granules of Arsenicum album 200 on her tongue, and she awoke with a jolt, crying and flailing, her heart pounding at 140 per minute, her skin glowing pink with the flame of new life. The whole evolution took no more than a few seconds. After a night in the hospital to be on the safe side, mother and baby went home in the morning with no outward sign that anything untoward had happened. Experiences like these are etched for all time in every practitioner’s mind.

The second was a 34-year-old R. N. with severe endometriosis since her teens. After four surgeries to remove large blood-filled cysts from her bladder and pelvic organs, and several courses of male hormones to suppress the condition, she came seeking only to restore her menstrual cycle, having long since abandoned any hope of childbearing. While quite painful at first, her periods had become scanty, dead, and dark-brown as a result of so many operations and years of hormones and oral contraceptives in the past.

In the course of the treatment her menstrual flow became fuller and richer, and within six months she was pregnant. By the time I next saw her for a different ailment eight years later, she had had two healthy children after uncomplicated pregnancies and normal vaginal births, and had remained in good health ever since. While no one can attribute such an outcome to a remedy or indeed to any other agency in precise, linear fashion, my patient has never stopped thanking me for it, which is reason enough to honor and be grateful for a process by its very nature catalytic and persuasive rather than forcible or compulsory.

Furthermore, it would be a great mistake to impute these happy endings to any unusual skill of mine, since they are entirely comparable to what every experienced prescriber has seen or could easily duplicate, and I could just as well cite other patients whose conditions were far from hopeless, who believed in the remedies and in me, but whom for whatever reason I was unable to help.

Finally, I am deeply grateful that homeopathic remedies are avail-able without prescription, and that the knowledge of how to use them is readily accessible to everyone with or without professional training. This state of affairs I take as further proof that self-healing and self-care are fundamental elements of our experience, and even a political and human right, which no government or medical bureaucracy can justly abridge or take away.

Remedies as Placebos: a Double-Edged Sword.

I do not believe and have never taught that homeopathy is the only way to heal people or the best way for everyone. But the usual argument that remedies are merely placebos cuts both ways. In the first place, it is plain wrong, since the method also has an impressive track record in the treatment of animals, newborn babies, and comatose patients, for whom the influence of suggestion is presumably negligible.

Second, if giving placebo or natural remedies or doing nothing at all can accomplish the same result as suppressive drugs or crippling surgery, then it is at least highly questionable which method works better, and who of sound mind would not prefer the cheaper and safer alternative, at least to begin with.

Third, it is certainly true that when homeopathic remedies succeed, our patients rightly feel that they have healed themselves, and may even wonder if they might not have done so on their own without any help at all. But to my mind this delicious quandary is hardly cause for complaint. I can think of no higher compliment to pay to a medicine than that its action cannot easily be distinguished from a gentle, spontaneous, long-lasting cure requiring no further treatment.

Indeed, I would argue, the irony lies wholly on the other side, that this optimal response is relegated to the placebo side of the equation, while drugs are considered effective only to the extent that they can overpower the basic physiology of as many patients for as long a time as possible. It is absurd if not contemptible to boast of standards that prize brute force over elegance of fit, and subordinate healing the patient to manipulating virtually every identifiable biological function artificially and more or less at will.

The Homeopathic Phenomenon as a

Legitimate Object of Study.

However precise and useful it may be in extreme circumstances, the ideal of technical mastery tends to work like a straitjacket in restraining not only alternative methods but also medicine and surgery themselves, by insisting on standards too rigid to accept any but the most punishing treatments, and too old-fashioned to make use of the most promising trends in contemporary science.

What J. Robert Oppenheimer once told a group of psychologists is even more relevant for the medical community:

We inherited at the beginning of the century a notion of the physical world as a causal one, in which every event could be accounted for if we were ingenious, a world characterized by number, where everything interesting could be measured, [and] anything that went on could be broken down and analyzed. This extremely rigid picture left out a great deal of common sense which we can now understand with a complete lack of ambiguity and phenomenal technical success. One is that the world is not completely determinate. There are predictions you can make about it, but they are purely statistical. Every event has in it the nature of a surprise, a miracle, or something you could not figure out. Every pair of observations taking the form we know this and can predict that is global and cannot be broken down. Every atomic event is individual: it is not in its essentials reproducible.⁶

Historically, the basic argument against homeopathic remedies has always been not that they don’t work, which would require careful and unbiased study, but merely that they can’t work, that their use flatly contradicts the atomic theory of matter and therefore does not warrant serious consideration. That homeopathy does challenge some deeply cherished scientific beliefs I freely admit. But two hundred years of experience with it furnishes ample reason for a serious, dispassionate investigation of the method on its own terms, free of the rigid standards that are themselves so much in question.

From Copernicus and Galileo to Darwin and Freud, the history of culture has repeatedly been enriched by scientific discoveries that were considered repugnant or impossible by leading thinkers of the time, because they presupposed major paradigm shifts in our knowledge of the natural world, and in how such knowledge can be acquired and verified.⁷

In future generations, even if homeopathy as currently practiced becomes obsolete, the easily verifiable phenomena on which it is based and the more comprehensive ways of looking at health and illness that have resulted from it will continue to stretch the envelope of what we can perceive, and thereby contribute to a more integrated and wholesome medicine of humanity. In that spirit of inquiry I have tried to write this book, and will feel amply rewarded if I can interest my readers enough simply to consider this extraordinary idea and try it for themselves.

PART ONE:

FUNDAMENTALS

CHAPTER ONE.

Principles.

Homeopathy is a philosophy of health and illness and a method of healing the sick employing minute doses of medicinal substances. In its use of remedies to assist and enhance the natural self-healing capacity, homeopathy exemplifies the vitalist tradition in medicine, whose teachings are beautifully summarized in the aphorisms of Paracelsus, the great Renaissance physician and alchemist:

The art of healing comes from Nature, not the physician . . . 

Every illness has its own remedy within itself . . . 

A man could not be born alive and healthy were there not

already a Physician hidden in him.¹

Evoking a venerable philosophy of ancient lineage, these sayings may be interpreted roughly as follows:

1)   Healing implies wholeness. Derived from the same root as whole, the English verb to heal literally means to make whole [again], and represents a basic property of all living systems, implying a concerted effort of the entire organism that cannot be achieved by any part in isolation.

2)   All healing is self-healing. As an intrinsic function of the organism, healing occurs automatically and continuously throughout life, and tends to complete itself spontaneously with or without outside help. In other words, all healing is self-healing, and the proper rôle of drugs or surgery, and of professional or other designated healers of any kind, is simply to facilitate the natural process which is already under way, not to alter, interfere with, or substitute for it.

3)   Healing applies only to individuals. Healing is thus always possible but also inherently problematic, even risky, and may always fail to occur. That is because it pertains solely to individuals in concrete, here-and-now situations, rather than to abstract diseases or principles. To put it another way, healing is inescapably an art, and can never be and should never be reduced to any technique or formula, however scientific its foundation.

The Law of Similars and Its Implications.

The homeopathic notion of using medicines or physical agencies to reproduce or imitate the symptom-picture of the illness is likewise an ancient one, appearing frequently in the Hippocratic writings,² and even the testing of medicines on the healthy had already been proposed by a number of physicians in the eighteenth century.³ But the elaboration of these options into a systematic philosophy and method of healing was the singular achievement of Samuel Hahnemann, M. D. (1755-1843), a noted chemist, pharmacologist, and author of a standard textbook for the preparation and use of the medicinal substances of his time.

In 1790, while experimenting with Peruvian Cinchona, the source of quinine, Hahnemann curiously decided to take a dose of the bark himself, and soon felt cold, numb, and drowsy, with thirst, prostration, and aching in the bones, a syndrome he immediately recognized as that of the ague, or intermittent fever, which it was then being used to treat. Allowing the dose to wear off, he took a second and a third to make sure, with exactly the same result.⁴ Inspired by this extraordinary coincidence, Hahnemann began to investigate other medicines one by one in the same way, testing them on himself, his colleagues, and his students, and recording their detailed responses to each. In his characteristically methodical fashion he discovered

1)   that each medicinal substance produces a distinctive combination of signs and symptoms in healthy volunteers, and

2)   that medicines whose symptom-pictures most closely match the

illness to be treated are the ones most likely to initiate a curative

response, by virtue of that correspondence.⁵

Coining the term homeopathy for his method of choosing remedies with the power to simulate the illness as a whole instead of opposing this or that symptom with superior force, he proclaimed it as a universal law of healing with medicinal substances: Similia similibus curentur, or Let likes be cured by likes.⁶

Sounding improbable to most people, and profoundly mysterious even to homeopaths who use it every day, the Law of Similars makes perfect sense if we remember that the outward manifestations of illness must already represent the automatic self-healing mechanism at work, in which case the similar remedy would need only to assist and strengthen such efforts to lead them to their proper conclusion. In clinical medicine, familiar examples include

1)   fever and cough, now generally recognized as immune-system responses to infection, promoting the expulsion of undesirable organisms from the blood; and

2)   other common pathological symptoms, e. g., inflammation,

tumor formation, hypertension, and the like, now widely understood as exaggerated versions of normal homeostasis.

In other words, homeopathy differs from conventional medicine not so much its interpretation of these phenomena as in its subtler and more elegant method of correcting them. Whereas pharmaceutical drugs and surgery are potent technologies designed to control abnormalities by the application of superior force, by opposing or counteracting measurable excesses or deficiencies in the immune or defense system, homeopathy utilizes the gentler influence of the similar remedy to fine-tune the mechanism and help it to complete its work as promptly and efficiently as possible. Entirely compatible with our ordinary lived experience of illness, the Law of Similars feels out of step mainly with our impatience to replace subjective feelings with a disease category to be fought or a set of abnormalities to be corrected.

As a disciplined way of thinking about the fundamental questions of health and illness, homeopathy also qualifies as a philosophy in the more technical sense that its basic principles all follow deductively from a simple axiom like the vital force and the seemingly counterintuitive Law of Similars, neither of which can really be proved, very much in the spirit of Bertrand Russell’s whimsical definition:

 . . . The point of philosophy is to start with something so obvious as not to seem worth stating, and to end up with something so paradoxical that nobody will believe it.⁷

As a basic rule or guideline of medical science, however, the Law of Similars must also be judged like any other empirical generalization, and to stand or fall by the same test of clinical experience, namely, how well it works in the treatment of the sick.⁸ Its status as the defining principle of a logical system simply means that it is not subject to conclusive proof or disproof by itself, independently of the others, like ordinary scientific hypotheses, but rather by continual re-evaluation of the consistency, relevance, accuracy, and predictive value of the system as a whole.

Provings.

In Hahnemann’s classic formulation, the Law of Similars postulates a point-for-point correspondence between the signs and symptoms that medicinal substances can provoke or elicit in healthy people and those they can help to cure in the sick. By thus defining what it means to be a medicine, this basic duality also provides a method for investigating the therapeutic powers of each one on healthy volunteers that is both wholly experimental and almost ideally safe and gentle as well.

Using minute doses sufficient to produce symptoms but far below the threshold of organic toxicity, and keeping a detailed record of the physical, mental, and emotional responses of each individual ingesting it, provings yield a composite portrait or symptom-picture of each medicinal substance that is uniquely characteristic of it and recognizably different from that of every other substance.⁹ When homeopaths describe or try to define the characteristics of a particular remedy, they implicitly refer to the sum of observable responses of all the people who have ever taken it, a Gestalt or ensemble that must be studied as a whole and for its own sake, not merely as a weapon against a particular disease or abnormality.

Moreover, what qualifies as a medicine is defined equally broadly to include any substance with the power to alter human health in either direction, to cause disease or cure it, to elicit symptoms or relieve them, so that the distinction between medicines and poisons becomes one of degree only, of the dosage and the individual sensitivity of the patient.

In his typically painstaking fashion, Hahnemann completed and published detailed provings of more than ninety medicines in his own lifetime, a truly heroic achievement.¹⁰ With more than two thousand remedies in use by homeopaths today, provings have always been the lifeblood of the method and its most distinctive contribution to medical science, with important applications in pharmacology, ethnobotany, toxicology, and industrial medicine.¹¹

The Homeopathic Materia Medica.

By far the most numerous in the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia are the remedies of plant or vegetable origin, including roots, leaves, flowers, barks, fruits, resins, and their various alkaloids and extracts, which may be roughly subdivided as follows:

1)   poisons that can kill or intoxicate (aconite, cockle, hellebore, hemlock, henbane, ignatia, jimson weed, Nux vomica, poison ivy, tobacco, water hemlock, yellow jasmine,etc.), including many utilized in conventional medicine as well: belladonna (atropine scopolamine), coca (cocaine), curare, digitalis (digoxin, digitoxin), ergot (ergonovine, ergotamine), ipecac, opium (morphine, codeine, papaverine), pilocarpine, physostigmine, etc.;

2)   medicinal herbs: aloe, chamomile, comfrey, echinacea, eyebright, ginseng, golden seal, hawthorn, mistletoe, mullein, peyote, poke root, skullcap, tansy, witch hazel, yarrow, yellow dock, etc.;

3)    foods, beverages, and spices: cayenne, chickpea, chocolate, coffee, tea, garlic, hops, mustard, oats, onion, nutmeg, pepper, radish, rhubarb, rosemary, sage, thyme, wild yam, etc.;

4)    fragrances, resins, oils, and residues: amber, charcoal, kreosote, petroleum, turpentine, etc.;

5)    flowers, trees, and shrubs, both wild and domesticated: aspen, bittersweet, buttercup, daisy, delphinium, juniper, marigold, meadow saffron, peony, rue, tiger lily, etc.; and

6)    mosses, lichens, molds, mushrooms, fungi, and derivatives: club moss, Amanita muscaria, penicillin, streptomycin, tetracycline, etc.

The next largest group are the mineral remedies, which may be classified more or less as follows:

1)    metals: copper, iron, gold, lead, mercury, nickel, osmium, palladium, platinum, silver, tin, titanium, uranium, zinc, etc.;

2)    metalloids: antimony, antimony tartrate, arsenious trioxide, bismuth, germanium, etc.;

3)    salts: chlorides, bromides, fluorides, iodides, carbonates, nitrates, phosphates, silicates, sulfates, etc., with sodium, potassium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, barium, and various metals;

4)    acids: boric, fluoric, hydrobromic, hydrochloric, nitric, phosphoric, sulfuric, etc.;

5)    elemental substances: hydrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, iodine, chlorine, bromine, fluorine, selenium, tellurium, etc.; and

6)    constituents of the earth’s crust: silica, aluminum oxide, ores, rocks, lavas, mineral waters, etc.

As yet the smallest group are the remedies taken from the animal kingdom, including

1)    animal poisons: jellyfish, honeybee, wasp, Spanish fly, mosquito, black widow, brown recluse, and other spiders and tarantulas, scorpion, eel toxin, frogs and toads, cobra, rattlesnakes, coral snake, viper, bushmaster, and other snakes, lizards, etc.;

2)    secretions and extracts: coral, cockroach, leech, sponge, starfish, ambergris, cuttlefish ink, musk, beaver, skunk, ox bile, milks of various mammalian species (dog, cat, cow, horse, goat, lion, tiger, dolphin, human),etc.;

3)    hormones, metabolites, and glandular and tissue extracts, or sarcodes: estrogen, cortisone, thyroid, parathyroid, insulin, adrenaline, cholesterol, spleen, blood, saliva, urine, placenta, dog and cat hair, etc.; and

4)    disease products, or nosodes: cancer tissue, tuberculous abscess, syphilitic chancre, gonorrheal discharge, yeast, pus, measles, toxins of diphtheria, botulism, and tetanus, rabies, polio, and other pathogenic viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites,extracts, and vaccines.

In fact, the technique of provings can be used to investigate the medicinal action of any substance whatsoever, including traditional and folk remedies as yet unproven (several thousand in the Indian and Chinese pharmacopoeias alone); major pharmaceuticals (Prozac, Valium, penicillin, other antibiotics, etc.); and toxic chemicals and commercial or industrial products and wastes (dyes, paints, solvents, insecticides, car exhaust, acid rain, cigarette smoke, etc.). Ultimately, the homeopathic materia medica is as vast and limitless as the creation of the earth and its transformation and breakdown by planetary and cosmic forces, including human action.

The Vital Force.

As shown above, the Law of Similars is intelligible only insofar as the signs and symptoms of the illness can be identified with the defense or immune mechanism of the patient, and the similar remedy is chosen to facilitate the natural process by calming its excesses and strengthening its deficiencies.

In words sounding almost prophetic today, Hahnemann recognized a unified bioenergetic field in the complex array of activities and functions that distinguish the living organism from a dead body. Calling it the vital force to emphasize its purely dynamic character, he incuded in it the full range of sensations, movements, and internal processes of self-healing and self-preservation.¹² Homeopaths similarly redefine illness as an energetic disturbance of the organism as a whole, and study the aggregate of signs and symptoms as its true outward reflection or mirror image, and hence the most faithful portrait of illness available to the physician, the internal state being hidden and unknowable apart from it.¹³ In exactly parallel fashion, the action of medicines is fully and directly observable in the ensemble of clinical manifestations they can elicit in provings on the healthy.¹⁴

Whatever terminology we use to designate it, the vital force or something like it forms the conceptual basis of the