Minutus

http://hpathy.com/clinical-cases/a-plut ... eel-safer/

http://www.interhomeopathy.org/plutoniu ... nner-light

http://hpathy.com/clinical-cases/a-plut ... eel-safer/..

Jean

Hi,

Thanks Jean for those cases.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate just to lay out the discomforts that I feel from those case reports.

My question is: How does Liz get a whole case from the little bit of information to given to us? Obviously, she knows a lot more than we do. Also I would see her report was a pretty good one. What bothers me is the use of a single quote is a key symptom. Patient says one quote. "She feels safer separating from herself. Is the patient explaining herself? This one has been through lots of psychoanalysis, so no doubt she's absorbed many of the interpretations of other people. I would be very wary of just hanging on her words.

Liz is very kind to differentiate between other remedies. How would I ever be able to perceive the difference between transforming yourself into another identity the way of alumina separates from himself and the plutonium way of losing empathy for himself having a separate mind and body from other forms of experience. Most people lack empathy for themselves. Buddhists meditators spend much of their time trying to cultivate empathy and they start with themselves as the most difficult arena. Okay, I can see that this case is not becoming a baby separate from the world that rules out Olibaum-s. Why not in Anacardium? Very nice people can need Anacardium.

I read a lot of Liz's book and it seems like so many remedies fit her different categories. It's often very difficult to differentiate between them. The patient's relationship with the all powerful whatever seems to be the key distinguishing feature.

The second case by Fayeton seems to entirely depend on Jeremy Sherr's mythically based interpretation of the fall of Pluto into hell. In these psychological cases, it seems that you need a guru to make some beautiful mythological description. Tight muscles, a bad back: these kinds of symptoms are not going to distinguish the case. For the homeopath, the patient's experience trying to read the Bible under the influence of LSD makes you jump to the conclusion that the patient has lost his " inner light."
Honestly, I don't I know if anybody has an inner light? Much less patient who is using LSD. Is this the same as a dream rubric? Should we advise patients to take drugs so that we can hear about their unconscious mind?

Then, there is the question of the kind of proving that were done. Jeremy Sherr relies on the students in his school. On the surface that seems like an ideal situation. But is it? How do you prevent students from talking to one another about their symptoms? The other programming is done in German, so I lack access also. What kind of proving was that?

Who is going to be willing to do a proving on a radioactive substance? Perhaps, only students.

Let's pretend that I can just accept that the practitioner knows much more than I do. In that case, I want to know more about how long, into how much stress did the remedy hold up to. Mangialavori has gone down to a two year time limit for cases to be used as proof of clinical validity. I think that time is important, but also holding up under stress is important.

Best,
Ellen

Ellen Madono

Hi Ellen,

I feel your pain! These sorts of questions are why I like to read LOTS of cases of a new remedy, preferably from various users and authors. And also why I was hoping to find someone *here* who has used it.

But as far as whether to rust Jeremy's proving, because it was done by his students -- his proving methodology is I believe the most rigorous of anybody's, for what that's worth… In many cases I think the value of rubrics is to help us get a "feel" for a case and a remedy; trying to use any in isolation from the whole picture won't work.

Sigh, struggling on…

Shannon

Hi Shannon,

Will Taylor was telling us about a proving done by Jeremy using students taking a seminar on the beach producing symptoms of playing in the sun. I guess if he is up front about the setting, its ok.

Will also said that he organizes the symptoms of a proving by sorting them into piles based on themes. If they don't sort out into something that makes sense, he thinks there is something wrong with the proving. He loves Chocolate and Falcon (Perigrne...) done by Jeremy Sherr because they make so much sense.

About reading cases, if case reports do not include how long the remedy worked and under what type of conditions, the usefulness of the case reduces for me. This has come out through studying Mangialavori cases and his form of analysis.

Falcon and such rx are interesting because they involve a basically healthy bird. Not a deeply poisonous bird. Many of our current patients are like that.

Mangialavori points out that we should be investigating remedies that have usage in traditional (from the past, not necessarily popular) medicine. That should give us some hints too.

I am less sure about mythology. How the Greek myths of Pluto got applied to the periodic tables is unclear to me. Why is that myth a valid forms of information? Inspiration as opposed to information?? I can see something like Merc., because it has a long clear history. But Plutonium?

Best,
Ellen

Ellen Madono

Hi Ellen,

(Below)
Ouch, that sure doesn't sound good! Do you happen to know what the remedy was? I wonder if it was just an "exercise" and not a published proving. That would be my hope!
He meaning Will? Sounds like a great way to examine a proving!
Oh, I very, very, very much agree with that!!!! I get SO frustrated by all the write-ups that give a wonderful result -- at first follow-up, but then no further follow-up given. To me that is… well, not *quite* useless, but an extremely flawed report. Yet it does seem to be the norm, and what a shame. I've had and seen and produced enough "flash-in-the-pan" great results myself, that I am not impressed by single-visit follow-ups.
And yet -- and I also think this is fascinating -- as is explored in the write-up of the proving (at least I *think* that's where I read it, though it could have been commentary from elsewhere, possibly even Will), the proving was made from a *captive* bird. I don't remember whether that bird had been injured, or whether it was just raised in captivity, but it was one or the other.

And the themes of the remedy very much reflect the life-situation of being (literally or so-to-speak) "trained to the glove".

Similar to the proving of e.g. elephant milk, where the proving reflects not only species characteristics, but also species current life circumstances. So much food for thought!
Oh yes!
Hm, why more valid for one than for the other?
In any case, I share your question about that kind of connection -- one way that I find it useful to use, though, is as a simple mnemonic device; a way to model and thereby remember *patterns* of remedies. Without getting too attached to the idea of why that works, or the exact natures of the connections. A whole lot of that (exact natures of connections) IMO in the end falls into the category of "who really knows".

But if using it as a mnemonic (and based on that we would ALWAYS keep re-checking with the case itself), I find it useful.

Thanks!
Shannon

Hi Shannon,
​Funny how mnemonic devices take on a life of their own. Say you are a well known guy like J Sherr, what you say holds more weight than you may have intended. I like it that Mangialoavori specifically lays out his criterion for ​cases. Also, according to Manigolavori, symptoms too are "fundamental" if they apply to the whole family, or "Important" for that remedy but not for the whole family, etc. Themes are above symptoms and are much more than rubrics. Rubrics are not divided up that way. Within a specific rubric, the remedies that are there may have very different uses of the rubric. We have to keep our heads straight about which are rubrics, and which are symptoms having limited specific application. Mnemonic devices tend to be at the theme level, but they also could be very specific to a particular remedy.
Themes (and mnemonic devices) are noted in traditional medicine, religious and spiritual teachings, cultural habit.... That's where they have a broader sweep than just a theme that we discover in homeopathy. If it is the myth of Pluto combined in the naming of the periodic table, it seems to me that we are not going very deeply into traditional thinking. After all, those radioactive substances were identified and named quite recently.
Ellen
Ellen Madono

Just musing about this part:
It does seem that very often names are reflective of more than one would have thought. In the case of Plutonium it doesn't seem *too* strange to me, to have named this new, and (in a way) strange, powerful and even threatening element after the God of the Underworld. It still kind of feels like that to me. And in unleashing Plutonium into the world…

In any case it is a *type* of lateral thinking / analogy that's very standard to homeopathy: noting correspondences between symptom picture and characteristics of the source of the remedy. We should never be complacent and make *assumptions* on that basis, yet to maybe surprising degree, the correspondences do seem to be there, and not to make *some* use of them would (I think) be just as much of a mistake, as would over-reliance on them.

I the end the aptness of these analogies and lines of thinking will be determined by the degree to which they allow the remedy to be correctly chosen and applied.

And I do SO miss "the old days" when there was MUCH more sharing and exploration of specific cases...