Minutus

Here's a link to a brief tutorial about the cycles and segments on Whole Health Now. I think it's very good. My question is though, when you can't ask the patient, for example a young child, an animal, or a mentally challenged person, how can you know how the cycle goes, or if everything solid is on a physical level, and mental/emotional are conjecture, like in an animal, how do you cycle just physicals?
http://www.wholehealthnow.com/homeopath ... demos.html
Thanks,
Susan

Hi Susan,

Many years ago, I read a cycle in one of Herscu's journals on Apis the
cat. He had a bladder infection. I don't remember the details, but
he didn't pee. Got excited in some special way. Didn't drink. Acted
like he was in pain. Then he started to swell. Each of those would
be a segment. Each segment contained several rubrics indicating
modalities and also related physicals to M/E. It worked fine for the
cat. Later they found a bee in the cat's litter box.

There were other examples with children. There appears to be no
problem. Anyway. no one is going to tell you their "cycle." You have
to figure it out. But you have to first assume that there is some
sort of step by step process go getting ill.

Best,
Ellen

Hi Ellen,
Thanks for your reply. The cat example seems clear to me. I listened again to the tutorial, and I guess when you can ask the patient questions like "when this happens, then what happens next" OR you can observe this, like your example with the cat, it would seem like a good construct. But I guess I just can't figure it out like we were talking on the other thread, with my dog, since the same symptoms have gone on so long, and I can't see one leading to another. I can't find direct causal links like the cat example.
The tutorial reminded me about the questioning though, which I think is most helpful, when they can be asked or observed.
Thanks,
Susan

Dear Ellen -- the correlation you suggest between cycles and MM is
interesting. I wonder, indeed, if it's possible to deduce the remedy's
cycle from comparing different MMs and strong symptoms of a remedy. It
occurs to me right now as I'm writing to wonder to what segment in Nat-m
"desire salt" would belong. What else in Nat-m is analogous? I've read
somewhere that in later stages of Nat-m, that goes away. Two segments of
Nat-m would be the opposition of "closed," averse to consolation, and the
later stage symptoms of "shameless," out of control.

Rosemary

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you
will what you imagine and at last you create what you will."
~George Bernard Shaw

Speaking of Nat-m I've been intrigued by this Biblical
correlation, the story of Lot's wife. (Forgive me if I don't remember
it all accurately!) When Sodom and Gomorrah are about to be destroyed,
God tells Lot, said to have the only "righteous" family in the entire
city, the only ones worth saving (sheesh, talk about friends in high
places!), to take his family and flee, and they are cautioned not to
look back. Lot's wife, probably understandably overcome at being
hauled so suddenly from her home, does look back, and is promptly
turned into a "pillar of salt." I remember as a kid (and still)
thinking "That's weird, why a pillar of *salt*?) Nat-m and grief,
looking back, stuck in the past, unable to move on. What an image!!

And craving the crude substance which, in potentized form, could free
them. Isn't it odd?

I'm trying to think of other remedies that exhibit a craving for the
"crude substance" they are made from: Cann-i can; Saccharum (sugar)
can (hah, who can't?); Sepia probably not so much...

I'm interested to hear that in the later stages of nat-m the taste for
salt disappears. How late a stage would that be? When pathology gets
a strong grip more and more of the characterizing symptoms disappear;
is that part of this situation, or different?

Shannon

I think "desires salt" has only been recorded as a cured clinical indication of Nat mur, it was never a definitive symptom that was first produced in a proving and later cured. Maybe it is in there somewhere, but I never could find any hint of "desires salt" in the original provings of Nat mur (not listed in Hahnemann's CD, or Jahr's Symptomenkodex, or Hughes' Cyclopaedia, or Allen's Handbook, or in the rubrics of the early repertories of Boenninghausen) - which could give comfort to those of us who've never been able to get any real confirmation of a Nat mur prescription after questioning a patient about salt cravings...
The original Nat mur provings were mostly done in lower potencies, some were merely crude doses of dilutions of salt in water, and all of those provers report a repugnance or at least an *aversion* to salty liquids. (No wonder!!) Thirst became unquenchable of course. Appetite was lost in some cases but remained the same in others. Taste for bread, soup, coffee, milk and beer was markedly affected and was experienced as sour, flat or bitter especially when combined with fatty or rich foods which produced heartburn.
Does anyone have a reputable proving source for the "desires salt" symptom, perhaps it came out in a later high potency proving? The earliest reference I can find is Hering's Guiding Symptoms but in there it is listed only as a secondary cured clinical indication (single mark) i.e. not from a proving, and I think, most other MM authors (Farrington, Kent, Vithoulkas etc ) have merely copied and used this as their source.
Chris.

Hi,

It's easier with you dog because you can see if he is bothered by the
chronic symptom next. I guess the assumption is that even chronic
symptoms don't dominate our lives all the time. We notice them or are
limited by them only sometimes. That's a pretty sensitive call for
most people who hardly notice how they feel at all.

I remember a Mercurious patient I had once a long time ago told me
this long involved story of his troubles. He didn't say that he got
upset because of some evil thing that was done to him, he told me the
event. I had to see that that kind of event was frequent in his
story. Then see that his reaction to each event was similar. Had a
similar interpretation and similar behavioral reaction. So that would
be the next segment. I kind of get lost because the next event is not
something that was told to me as a consequence of the previous segment
except the problem seems to blow up. It gets more problematic. In
that sense his reaction also progresses. Maybe at one stage it was
purely M/E. Then later it becomes a physical symptom. I guess the
opposite is possible, but in terms of trouble for the Vital Force,
things become worse. Then things settle down. He leaves home. Quits
slitting his wrists to watch the blood. But then a new cycle starts.
It is not at all the same set of events because his environment has
changed. But he is the same person and starts a similar cycle with an
entirely different set of "cause." I had to make a interpretive leap.
It was not an interpretation that he made. But the cycle worked out
very nicely. Also, his life pattern took on a coherence that it
lacked in his telling of it. The time and cause for the reaction
are different, but if they are the same reaction and the product of a
"cause" in the previous sequence then they belong together in the next
sequence. There needs to be lots of similarities between the causes
too. That makes up for 2 segments. Like Theresa said, px is
exhausted sick and recovers. Then one cylce is done.

I have not heard the lecture yet. So this is probably not a necessary
explanation. Or wrong.

Blessings,
Ellen

Hi Ellen,
It's interesting isn't it. I think with repetition, it will get easier to see. It seems to me from looking at the overview when you open the cycles and segments, and reading his explanations, putting the patient into the moment of his chief complaint, and then asking him what happens next, making that the next segment, putting him in that 2nd segment, and asking what happens next and so on is how he puts it together. It seems the patient has to be in the moment of the problem and his reaction to the problem sets up the next segment. Like an example- Person's anxious, which makes him eat sweets, which gives him a stomach ache, which makes him feel guilty, which makes him think no one likes him, which makes him anxious again. There's one complete cycle, and then he looks for other areas in their life that they compensate and how. So a different event happens, which causes the same or different emotion, and chances are they will compensate in a similar way- eating or something, and the rest of the cycle will repeat. Same cycle, just different segments.
So with a dog whose been constipated his whole life, and it never changes, nothing makes it better or worse, I can't ask what's next, and I don't see a what's next, Of course I can speculate- he holds on to things- toys, stool, me, etc lol, but can't confirm, and not sure where it leads, without more speculation.
Does that make any sense? Maybe I have it all wrong, it's what I got from it.
Susan

Hi,
We all have those permanent problems. But we still have ups and
downs, things that happen to us and that we react to. That's where
the cycle comes in. It's like are deep chronic problem is a rock at
the bottom of the ocean. The waves above are what the homeopath looks
at as symptoms.
Best,
Ellen

Shannon & Bob Nelson wrote:


Phosphorus loving cold fizzy sodas containing phosphoric acid.
In my own very Nat-mur mother's example, her salt cravings disappeared in her early 30s around the time she was on a year's course of cortisone treatments. In her mid 30s she stopped craving the sauna and then around 40 she lost her ability to sweat altogether. Without ameliorations from sweat, she became far more emotionally suppressed, rigid and brittle, and increasingly difficult to live with. It took another 15 years to be diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes and then five more for the allopathic meds to fail to control them.