Out on a limb cases we never would have gotten without the "new" homeopathic thinking - Healing with Homeopathy

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, May, 2002 by Judyth Reichenberg-Ullman, Robert Ullman

5. Repertory extractions: These are books compiled by authors such as Chitkara, Agarwaal, and Retzig which list every rubric (often the mentals) covered in a repertory for a particular remedy as well as pointing out the symptoms covered by that remedy alone. We have found this to be an excellent method to study smaller or unfamiliar remedies by observing those that come up repeatedly. These extractions have helped us to prescribe many remedies successfully for the first time.

6. Understanding remedy families: We used to learn remedies, primarily polychrests, in a rather haphazard way: Sulphur along with Pulsatilla, Ignatia with Lachesis. Perhaps they were taught this way because of a particularly good teaching case or even arranged, perish the thought, alphabetically. Now that we have a more thorough understanding of families such as the milks, Compositaes, snakes, drugs, and metals, it is possible to learn commonalities among groups of remedies and to make finer distinctions and arrive at more satisfying prescriptions.

7. Connecting a remedy with the nature of the substance from which it was prepared. It is not merely accidental that platinum and palladium are often found together in nature and that patients needing Platina and Palladium exhibit very similar symptoms. Nor that horses love to run free in the wild and that patients requiring Lac equinum describe their unbridled joy at galloping blissfully on the back of a graceful thoroughbred. Nor that the folkloric use of certain substances, such as the remedy used in the first case we will share with you, can have a direct application to understanding our patients.

8. Realizing that an individual may need any remedy in our materia medica, or even one that has not yet been proven, rather than limiting ourselves to polychrests. This is not to say we do not frequently prescribe polychrest remedies. We do. However we frequently prescribe smaller remedies. Many homeopaths still believe that most patients need one of about 45 so-called polychrest remedies. Why should so many of the six billion people on the planet need so few remedies?

9. New methods of casetaking: Free association; exploration of the chief complaint to find its link to the kingdom, miasm, sensation, and remedy; inquiry as to the state of the mother during pregnancy; and delving more deeply into dreams and delusions have made casetaking much more fascinating and fruitful.

10. Recent insights into case analysis: These include perceiving the central or core delusion; understanding the compensation of the patient; making use of the dreams, delusions, and fears sections of the repertory; relying on the actual words of the patient; and, in most cases, finding one remedy that lasts for years or life rather than a succession of remedies or layers.

Since we have applied these concepts and techniques, our practices have become much more engaging and exciting. We meet each patient fresh, having no idea what remedy in the world may benefit him or her. And we experience the natural world with endless curiosity realizing that everywhere we look, listen, or touch, we are surrounded by potentially potentizable substances.