The Homoeopathic Herald 1952 Apr Vol 13 No 1

The vegetable kingdom has many mysteries to offer to us, interesting mysteries about their growth from a small seed to a sturdy plant, about their flowering, the different shades of colour, the arrangements and shape of the leaves and so on. But apart from all this external beauty, so to say, a plant has some internal beauty as well, the beauty we cannot see. If we probe deeper, a plant may give us some of its hidden mysteries, such as its healing power. A plant may indeed be your friend in need. Let us take for example the case of Tulashi which is common throughout India.

Homoeopathic medicines are usually derived from four sources, viz., the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the mineral kingdom and animal diseases. The drugs in the original form prepared from the above sources are mother tinctures or triturations. These are usually diluted with alcohol or sugar of milk. A more accurate name for dilution is potentization, because the peculiar process of diluting actually increases the potency of the drug.

The sensory nerve supply of the eye is from ophthalmic division of the trigeminal nerve, whose branches besides the eye, also supply the teeth of both upper and lower jaw by its maxillary and mandibular division. It also supplies branches to the supraorbital region, face and nose. Thus any trouble involving any one of these branches reflexly causes irritation and as a consequence watering of the eyes.

Thus the origin of the illness may be in the mind; it may be in the vital; it may be in any one of parts of the being. One and the same illness may be due to a variety of causes, it may spring in different cases from different sources of disharmony. But to whatever an illness may be due, material or mental, external or internal, it must before it can affect the physical body, touch and pass through another layer of the being that surrounds and protects it. This subtle layer is called in different teachings by various names viz., the etheric body, the nervous envelope.

Least noise. Shrill sounds. Motion (vertigo and nausea). Exertion. Walking. Stooping. Rising. Morning. Evening. Night. Sun. Right side. Left side. Climaxis. Puberty. Talking. Riding in a carriage. On closing eyes (nausea, vomiting). Others walking over the floor (head). While lying. Touch. Pressure. On ship – board. Ascending. Descending. After washing clothes. Cold. Coition. After stool. Sea – travelling.

The delicate child, with silky hair and waxen skin, who develops severe headaches upon application to school work, severe nosebleeds, the tendency to take cold, sensitive to every breeze, emotionally unstable, is not manifesting a series of unrelated conditions; and we must recognize it before the X-ray reveals a lesion if we are fair to our healing art and to the childs future.

Individual symptoms, though by themselves are not very characteristics, but when grouped together their summation creates a sumtotal picture which sometimes assumes such a great importance as to justify to neglect some other symptoms which though very characteristics by themselves, yet when put against the sumtotal picture produced by other symptoms are eclipsed, by the latter.

Some are of opinion that there can be nothing more paradoxical than the fact that Hahnemann the promulgator of the medicine of Experience should end in being an enthusiastic sponsorer of a highly speculative theory like the Psora theory. Some note that it is remarkable how extremes meet in Hahnemanns mental organisation. In his homoeopathic law, we have the principle of extreme individualisation, whilst the Psora – theory is an illustration of the opposite extreme of generalisation. But this is not the only instance of swinging of the pendulum to the other extreme by Hahnemann.

Hahnemanns genius and intuition led him to discover this mysterious dynamical plane, the seat of health and disease, the two conditions which baffle all analysis and defy all attempts at naming and classifying. But, any way, a name has got to be given for this original diseased – condition for expressing and communicating our ideas and Hahnemann, according to the usage of his days, picked up the term “Psora” and used it with a special connotation and denotation to which we devoted so much time and so many pages in our journal.

Here is one symptom of Secale that is of inestimable value: “great coldness (objective) of the surface yet the patient can not bear to be covered.” This is oftenest found in cholera and cholera infantum, but it is also found in senile gangrene. The feet and toes may be objectively as cold as an iron wedge, but the patient is distressed beyond endurance by having them covered.

The CHAIRMAN remarked that this was the type of paper where the meeting would like to have a psychiatrist among the speakers. It was the type of work so closely associated with psychological treatment that he believed it was only one stage further on when they could expect a large number of psychiatrists to give serious study to Homoeopathy! The paper showed Homoeopathy in its best colours.