Lots of good suggestions!
It makes a lot of sense to go with one stage at a time -- great idea! That might (or might not) make it easier to actually understand a bit better Scholten's hypothesis about the essence of each stage.
I think the discussions would be most useful and interesting if we were willing first to assemble some primary data on which to base them: cases, rubrics, proving themes.
Regarding salts, I think Scholten's way of proceeding, starting with the basic remedy each time, makes a lot of sense, from a standpoint of understanding the essence of each stage and mineral. (I have to admit when I saw Andy's list of Natrum salts I was instantly intimidated
) -- although it was fascinating to actually see how many there are! (Thanks, Andy).
So if we, for instance, started with stage 8, and compared Ferr-met with Plutonium, that would be fascinating.
This would logically lead us to group 15 next -- Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Arsenicum, Antimonium, Bismuth (another interesting grouping). And before going further, again, logically, it would make sense to look at Ferr-ar and Ferr-p.
From there, it would make sense to look at Group 16 (oxygen, acids, Sulph, Sel, Tell) or else group 11 (Cupr, Arg, Aur -- Cupr-p, Arg-n)....
In creating his "family sensations," Sankaran did some fascinating computerized repertory searches to find what the remedies in each family shared. I would think it would be interesting to do the same sort of thing with the Periodic Table stages. Scholten describes his lists of attributes, but it would also be interesting to see for ourselves (and would probably make the results stick better in our minds).
Most interesting, too, would be studying cases -- at least a couple from the literature, but also, hopefully, at least a couple from our group. What would we see in common in comparing several cases for each remedy? What stands out, if we compare cases, as the clinical signs that could alert us to consider each remedy?
Annemieke, what would you think about proceeding in this way? How would you go about collecting and presenting the data? What deadline would you set? Once we had the data assembled, people who were interested in the discussion could request the file via download, and then we could formulate the questions we'd like to discuss, and do so.
I'd be happy to volunteer to do the computer search for Stage 8, for rubrics common to Ferr-met and Plut-nit (There are no rubrics for Plut-met, so we'll eventually have to tease out the separate attributes of Stage 8 and Stage 15 - nitrogen), along with a summary of Scholten's attributes for Stage 8. (Would they match??? Stay tuned!)
Do we have volunteers to search for a couple of interesting published cases for each remedy in EH? in another program? in seminar notes? Does anyone have a Ferr-met or Plut-nit case of his or her own? Can someone find the main proving themes and most important keynote rubrics from provings of each remedy? (There'd be some really interesting historic research, I assume in Chronic Disease and Materia Medica Pura, for Ferrum.).
Rosemary
