Are Provings Acute ?

[J.VENKATASUBRAMANIAN]

Hi All,

Hahnemannian's post about provings being of acute nature ( I think
this is not the first time he said that) set me thinking.

We bother at just `symptoms' and don't pay attention to this. I
remember some writings of old masters which are given in the order
they struck my mind – and not necessarily in the order of importance.
1. Kent says in his MM , that many of the provers of drugs like
Silicea developed long term effects and some carried them all their
life.
2. Boger on causticum " acts long , very long"
3. Iswardas Tarkas In his Select MM of Hom drugs: part 1,Page
2: Acetic acid: " The only drug known to have developed a true
cancer cell, burning"
4. Constantine Hering: The symptoms that show late in a proving
have the best therapeutic value.
5. Hahnemann's son, Frederick, already injured in the carriage
topple up in child hood, became rebellious and separated from his
father- The last two acts attributed to his proving of Mercurius.

Now what do we infer ? The first symptoms brought about violently
makes one think that the provings are acute nature. Even in crude
poisoning, if the patient survives, he carries long term effects. I
know two cases where the people in question gulped polydol, a
pesticide, and after stomach washes, were saved from death. But
both ( one a young man of 20 and the other a 60 year old) developed
an alternating state of exhilaration and depression. Last enquiry
about a few months back confirmed the continuity in the older man.

I am just confining this to `provings' and not the secondary MM
references. In a given case we take up the symptoms and choose the
corresponding image from the materia medica. Now what do we do ?
differentiate the proving symptoms on the basis of their appearance
in a prover ? Here the basis is set in aph 153. We need the
signature of the drug ( characteristic). For example, Ars's burning
is used both in acutes and chronic ones. Aconite, the acute
typified, has been successfully used in chronic cases (some where in
Luc's book, Hahnemann revisted).

Take an acute case: If a patient displays some characteristic of
Causticum like stool better on standing, in a case of fever , with
convulsions and threatening paralysis will you hesitate to give
causticum- the chronic personified ?

The conclusion seems to be : Provings are symptoms and are to be
treated as such. Right or wrong ? The castle of secondary MM's such
as Boericke's were built on provings for tackling chronics with
inputs from the clinic. Provings were used as building block in all
subacute and chronic cases.

All inputs appreciated. Thanks
venkat

[muthu kumar]

Venkat-
That was a good post. At this point it is necessary to clearly
differentiate a few things.What I meant in that statement is that in
Homeopathy whether we have extended provings or not, we definitely
have acute provings. We have acute provings for all remedies whereas
we do not have such extended provings for many medicines. So we
should not have a problem in finding medicines for acute states.
1) Here we are only talking about duration ( quantity) and not
quality; Hahnemann's Chronic diseases are chronic from the start (
by quality).

2) Proving medicines by their very nature and because of the context
of the proving and methodology are not continued for a long period
of time. (Hering was supposed to have suffered from Lachesis
provings for a long time.)

3)For Homeopathy there are only symptoms and their characteristic
nature. It does not matter whether it has been there for only a few
days or been there for a few months.
From this point of view Aconite can also be used for chronic states
as long as there is symptom similarity. That is what Clarke also
mentions in his MM. Even though the pathogenetic symptoms might have
all symptoms, in practice people find out that certain symptoms
occur freq. in combination ( thus some of them resemble diagnosable
disease conditions - Bell and Scarlet fever for example) and given
the total sphere of a drugs action a particular group of symptoms is
more likely to occur more frequently in practice and drug prescribed
for that more.

4) Over an extended period of time it is difficult to control other
influences in provers lives and so cannot decide for sure what the
changes are due to. Related to this point I think this is the reason
why sometimes we have the difficulty in prescribing for chronic
diseases. Because we do not have artificial chronic( proving)
disease that is similar to a natural chronic state since such
chronic provings are rare.

5)Whether acute or subacute still we prescribe on symptoms. It is in
the really chronic ill states that there is a problem and which led
to some of the miasmatict theories.

My view of chronic disease is prescribing on patterns. Symptom
similarity is paramount whatever it is - but in chronic apart from
symptoms we need patterns over a period of time to see how the
person has reacted to various things at various stages of life and
see if there is a common thread. And this common thread of reaction
to illness would provide the key to chronic treatment.

In summary - is chronic proving possible - yes; do we have such
provings for our medicines - not for most of them - So we cannot
make use of these in treating chronic states.
--- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "J.venkatasubramanian"
wrote:
importance.
their
I
developed
appearance
burning
in
with
such
all

[muthu kumar]

Venkat- This is a good post.

What I meant in that statement is that in Homeopathy - whether we
have extended provings or not, we definitely have acute provings. We
have acute provings for all remedies whereas we do not have such
extended provings for many medicines. So we should not have a
problem in finding medicines for acute states.

That is why all medicines are acute medicines ( including Chronic
personified Causticum). Theoretically any medicine might be needed
for an acute condition.

At this point we need to clarify that we are only talking about
acute and chronic from a duration view point and not from a
miasmatic vs non-miasmatic view point.

A drug is miasmatic or non-miasmatic based on the characteristic
symptoms it produces and not based on duration. So an alternate way
of saying this is all drugs treat all non-miasmatic states (whether
of short duration or long duration as long as symptoms agree) but
only some of the specific medicines out of these are applicable to
miasmatic states. Though some people have classified drugs based on
duration ( acute, sub-acute etc.) I do not think that this
classification is relevant at all.

But given the context of proving and methodology followed we have
symptoms only over a short period of time ( but Hering was supposed
to have had the proving symptoms of Lachesis for a long time). Over
a long period of time there is always the question is it really a
drug picture or whether other influences have taken over- so getting
a pure MM at that point becomes difficult. That is why we have
difficulty prescribing for chronics since we do not have such
extended documentation...
-- In minutus@yahoogroups.com, "J.venkatasubramanian"
wrote:
importance.
their
I
developed
appearance
burning
in
with
such
all