Our little RAT remedy name problem, again = Blessed be zoological detail

[alpha_panthera1]

= was sub-thread to "Mouse proving ?"
question./
Dear Melanie,
I am afraid it seems you did not get my point. You just posted info
from others and did a typo by dropping one syllable; that can be
corrected quickly and politely without much noise, and that is then
all there ever is to be done about it. So no-one has/had any intention
to scold you. ( And, by the way, there was no much chance to get
confused from your word, even if there had not been any context to go
by : there does not exist any word "sor" or "soris" in latin to get in
the way. Only other intended meaning could perhaps have been "Sanguis
sororis" , surely an interesting remedy, or "Sanguis
solis" , a bit vague, but nevertheless very poetic
... ) You were the only one to reply to that request for a
while and provided some interesting inf., good thing for the list and
rest relaxed. -
Mr Shah et al., acc. to your supplementing inf., did a
proving ( hopefully well ) of an animal stuff that I agree looks
interesting. He most probably gave the right species name, there was
no chance to make any mistake with the latin, so no-one is going to
blame him either for anything to do with this issue. Both our posts
show we agree that it is to be preferred, for the sake of clarity and
in agreement with long homoeop. and earlier pharmac. tradition, to
indicate in every remedy name when it is taken from a specific body
part or liquid of an organism rather than the whole. No disagreement
here either, and this improvement should be made here and in similar
cases and become established practice in
general.
The big BUT is to come now. You write ( Mrs., I think, the one with
the dolphin, if I recall correctly ? ) Herrick "did same remedy
proving". Please tell us, did she a) get the already made hom. rem.
from the Indian team and then did a proving herself, or b) get the
idea and went hunting for another rat in the Bronx or wherever herself
etc.? - The point is, it would have been another species, most likely.
And do you per chance know if they ( either, whoever ) took blood from
a living or dead animal ? I bet that matters also.
/
And now the reason why I got angry in my previous post ( which may
have shocked you a bit, but was exclusively aimed at you-know-now-whom
): They ( new team ) messed up the latin and zoology in one
ill-adviced strike. I was sure this became apparent in my last post,
but it seems it did not. " Sanguis soricis - Blood of the Rat", you
write again. And I assure you a second time: that ain't not so. I
offer you hereby a bet in the public of this honourable forum ( =
latin for "market place", with bystanders and all ), say "The complete
writings
of Samuel H." in hardback edition, bound in vegetable leather, with
golden decor. and everything. Take it ? ( I mean the winner, either
side, would become richer, and people watching us, right ? ) - I knew
it when I read it, but I looked up two large Latin lg. dict.s, online
and old book. And I checked again, to be absolutely sure, some sites
and esp. books off the zool. shelf of the local Univ. libr..It is as
much of a fact as there could be: "sorex", from which the genitive "of
the/a ..." is derived, is not and was never and will never be the word
to be used for the creature known as "rat" in English. And that's it.
I understand there may be some slang or colloquial use or something,
for I spotted there were some rat poison vendors online that used the
word, whoever may whenever have started
to abuse it in such way for whatever reason; but even in several
"proper" English dictionaries that was not given as a correct meaning.
And then, you are not supposed to base your science terms on any local
slang, are you ? In short, they fabricated a pseudo-latin rem name.
Sanguis is
right. Sorex,
-icis means a shrew. I made it clear that a
shrew is an animal of its own merit, and yourself you are as close or
far in taxonomic distance from the rats as the poor little shrew is.
And it had its latin name for centuries, and there never was any
debate on this. And if per chance some laudable homoeopath is going to
do a proving of a drop of shrew blood in some ten years' time, how is
he supposed to baptize it ? "Sanguis shrew, but this time really" ?
That's what upset me. One look into a good textbook and you get it
right, but no, hom.s are so above things they need not ask an expert,
better do-it-yourself ? If you have ever looked into a zool. journal,
they are spending so much ink on debating naming issues and who in the
18th, 19th, 20th cent. referred to what with which, sorting out past
confusions costs so much effort, and today even hom.p.s discuss which
spider and plant stuff may be the right one to go with such and such
proving text etc, if there isn't proper
care in all steps of obtaining the database we have to rely on, then
there will be an ever-increasing mess.It is a matter of principle, not
of being "pedantic" versus, mmh, "free and openminded", but
precision. Sloppy input, poor results; eternal
law.
And my personal issue involved is always also showing proper respect
to those dear creatures that are, after all, supposed to provide us
with all sorts of healing stuff from out their bodies, and for free of
course. So apart from conservation-mindedness, which on the long run
would be in the best interest of humans in general and healers in
particular anyway ( half an Amazone forest lost, half a materia medica
gone forever ), they ought to pay respect in all regards,
acknowledging identities included
!
Do you ( meaning all, not Melanie ) have an idea how many rodents and
similars there are ? Just some critter, one like the other ? There are
a full 1700 species, Man, makes as many lacs, sanguines etc for as
many troubled souls, pains, delusions and delusion nuances and trouble
varieties... The one family Muridae ("Mouselikes"), i.e."true mice" in
the taxon. sense, comprising Old World mice and rats, has ca. 450
species. The New-World-Mouselikes ( sister-group to hamsters etc. )
are an additional 340 species. The one genus "Microtus", voles,
looking very much like "true mice", from
yet a different family, has 45 species alone, e.g. all over Europe and
16 in N.Am.. The gerbil-likes family has another 70 species in Asia
and Africa and so on ... The true rats, genus rattus, are 55 species,
of which two were spread by humans worldwide, but there are even true
wild rats in Australia ( long before humans ). Sure they are all
interesting and different, both in nature and in provings, don't you
think so ? And there are outstanding beauties among the mouse-shapeds
( like some striped African ones ), good for beauty trouble ? All
differ in biochemistry and behaviour, in "spirit" etc., hence in
potential rem symptoms. We are only beginning with discovering.
-
And
the shrews, again, they are Insectivores, no rodents at all, cousins
of hedgehogs. Family soricidae has 268 species, lacs, sanguines etc.;
Genus sorex ( the "TRUE" one ) alone with 64 species in Eurasia
and N.America, there are the ornate shrew, and the duskey, pacific,
smoky, vagrant and other shrews, Sorex minutus ( in earnest) and s.
minutissimus ( the "lesser" and the "least", no joking ), and then
megasorex, microsorex, soriculus, blarinella, cryptotis ("hidden ear")
etc etc.
Summary: Taxon. distance between house rat and brown rat : like wolf
and coyote. House mouse and H.rat: like wolf and fox, or gorilla and
chimpanzee. Rat and shrew, alias pseudo-sorex and sorex, like we
humans and either dolphin, cat, deer or elephant. Please respect the
shrew, I love him/her/it ( had a close encounter while sleeping under
the stars in the spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, aged 17, swore
eternal friendship, hence this effort ) !
Regards,
Panthera
--- In minutus@y..., USAHomeopath@a... wrote:
proving
the
just like
blood or

[USAHomeopath@aol.com]

Dear Panthera,
Thank you for your thourough investigation of the rat problem. I am
forwarding your comments to both Michael Quinn (Hahnemann Pharmacy, and John
Morgan (Helios Pharmacy) as they do much of the naming of new remedies, and
to Nancy Herrick, who can perhaps enlighten us as to the exact name and
creature that her remedy was made from. I am also forwarding the David
Warkentin, who lists the rats as Rattus n and Rattus r, but the text mentions
Sanguis soricis. Hopefully, some of these great minds will enlighten us.

I post below the information from Wichmann's site.
http://www.homoeopathie-wichmann.de/hei ... mmalia.htm
Sincerely,
Melanie Grimes

1 Mus musculus - (Mus-m)
Hausmaus / House Mouse
Proving: Klaus Löbisch

2 Rattus norvegicus – (Ratt-n)
Wanderratte / Common Rat
Syn.: dt.:Wasserratte, engl.: Norway rat
Proving: Nancy Herrick
3 Rattus rattus - (Ratt-r)
Hausratte / House Rat

= was sub-thread to "Mouse proving ?"
question./
Dear Melanie,
I am afraid it seems you did not get my point. You just posted info
from others and did a typo by dropping one syllable; that can be
corrected quickly and politely without much noise, and that is then
all there ever is to be done about it. So no-one has/had any intention
to scold you. ( And, by the way, there was no much chance to get
confused from your word, even if there had not been any context to go
by : there does not exist any word "sor" or "soris" in latin to get in
the way. Only other intended meaning could perhaps have been "Sanguis
sororis" , surely an interesting remedy, or "Sanguis
solis" , a bit vague, but nevertheless very poetic
... ) You were the only one to reply to that request for a
while and provided some interesting inf., good thing for the list and
rest relaxed. -
Mr Shah et al., acc. to your supplementing inf., did a
proving ( hopefully well ) of an animal stuff that I agree looks
interesting. He most probably gave the right species name, there was
no chance to make any mistake with the latin, so no-one is going to
blame him either for anything to do with this issue. Both our posts
show we agree that it is to be preferred, for the sake of clarity and
in agreement with long homoeop. and earlier pharmac. tradition, to
indicate in every remedy name when it is taken from a specific body
part or liquid of an organism rather than the whole. No disagreement
here either, and this improvement should be made here and in similar
cases and become established practice in
general.
The big BUT is to come now. You write ( Mrs., I think, the one with
the dolphin, if I recall correctly ? ) Herrick "did same remedy
proving". Please tell us, did she a) get the already made hom. rem.
from the Indian team and then did a proving herself, or b) get the
idea and went hunting for another rat in the Bronx or wherever herself
etc.? - The point is, it would have been another species, most likely.
And do you per chance know if they ( either, whoever ) took blood from
a living or dead animal ? I bet that matters also.
/
And now the reason why I got angry in my previous post ( which may
have shocked you a bit, but was exclusively aimed at you-know-now-whom
): They ( new team ) messed up the latin and zoology in one
ill-adviced strike. I was sure this became apparent in my last post,
but it seems it did not. " Sanguis soricis - Blood of the Rat", you
write again. And I assure you a second time: that ain't not so. I
offer you hereby a bet in the public of this honourable forum ( =
latin for "market place", with bystanders and all ), say "The complete
writings
of Samuel H." in hardback edition, bound in vegetable leather, with
golden decor. and everything. Take it ? ( I mean the winner, either
side, would become richer, and people watching us, right ? ) - I knew
it when I read it, but I looked up two large Latin lg. dict.s, online
and old book. And I checked again, to be absolutely sure, some sites
and esp. books off the zool. shelf of the local Univ. libr..It is as
much of a fact as there could be: "sorex", from which the genitive "of
the/a ..." is derived, is not and was never and will never be the word
to be used for the creature known as "rat" in English. And that's it.
I understand there may be some slang or colloquial use or something,
for I spotted there were some rat poison vendors online that used the
word, whoever may whenever have started
to abuse it in such way for whatever reason; but even in several
"proper" English dictionaries that was not given as a correct meaning.
And then, you are not supposed to base your science terms on any local
slang, are you ? In short, they fabricated a pseudo-latin rem name.
Sanguis is
right. Sorex,
-icis means a shrew. I made it clear that a
shrew is an animal of its own merit, and yourself you are as close or
far in taxonomic distance from the rats as the poor little shrew is.
And it had its latin name for centuries, and there never was any
debate on this. And if per chance some laudable homoeopath is going to
do a proving of a drop of shrew blood in some ten years' time, how is
he supposed to baptize it ? "Sanguis shrew, but this time really" ?
That's what upset me. One look into a good textbook and you get it
right, but no, hom.s are so above things they need not ask an expert,
better do-it-yourself ? If you have ever looked into a zool. journal,
they are spending so much ink on debating naming issues and who in the
18th, 19th, 20th cent. referred to what with which, sorting out past
confusions costs so much effort, and today even hom.p.s discuss which
spider and plant stuff may be the right one to go with such and such
proving text etc, if there isn't proper
care in all steps of obtaining the database we have to rely on, then
there will be an ever-increasing mess.It is a matter of principle, not
of being "pedantic" versus, mmh, "free and openminded", but
precision. Sloppy input, poor results; eternal
law.
And my personal issue involved is always also showing proper respect
to those dear creatures that are, after all, supposed to provide us
with all sorts of healing stuff from out their bodies, and for free of
course. So apart from conservation-mindedness, which on the long run
would be in the best interest of humans in general and healers in
particular anyway ( half an Amazone forest lost, half a materia medica
gone forever ), they ought to pay respect in all regards,
acknowledging identities included
!
Do you ( meaning all, not Melanie ) have an idea how many rodents and
similars there are ? Just some critter, one like the other ? There are
a full 1700 species, Man, makes as many lacs, sanguines etc for as
many troubled souls, pains, delusions and delusion nuances and trouble
varieties... The one family Muridae ("Mouselikes"), i.e."true mice" in
the taxon. sense, comprising Old World mice and rats, has ca. 450
species. The New-World-Mouselikes ( sister-group to hamsters etc. )
are an additional 340 species. The one genus "Microtus", voles,
looking very much like "true mice", from
yet a different family, has 45 species alone, e.g. all over Europe and
16 in N.Am.. The gerbil-likes family has another 70 species in Asia
and Africa and so on ... The true rats, genus rattus, are 55 species,
of which two were spread by humans worldwide, but there are even true
wild rats in Australia ( long before humans ). Sure they are all
interesting and different, both in nature and in provings, don't you
think so ? And there are outstanding beauties among the mouse-shapeds
( like some striped African ones ), good for beauty trouble ? All
differ in biochemistry and behaviour, in "spirit" etc., hence in
potential rem symptoms. We are only beginning with discovering.
-
And
the shrews, again, they are Insectivores, no rodents at all, cousins
of hedgehogs. Family soricidae has 268 species, lacs, sanguines etc.;
Genus sorex ( the "TRUE" one ) alone with 64 species in Eurasia
and N.America, there are the ornate shrew, and the duskey, pacific,
smoky, vagrant and other shrews, Sorex minutus ( in earnest) and s.
minutissimus ( the "lesser" and the "least", no joking ), and then
megasorex, microsorex, soriculus, blarinella, cryptotis ("hidden ear")
etc etc.
Summary: Taxon. distance between house rat and brown rat : like wolf
and coyote. House mouse and H.rat: like wolf and fox, or gorilla and
chimpanzee. Rat and shrew, alias pseudo-sorex and sorex, like we
humans and either dolphin, cat, deer or elephant. Please respect the
shrew, I love him/her/it ( had a close encounter while sleeping under
the stars in the spanish Sierra Nevada mountains, aged 17, swore
eternal friendship, hence this effort ) !
Regards,
Panthera
--- In minutus@y..., USAHomeopath@a... wrote:
proving
the
just like
blood or
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Yo

[USAHomeopath@aol.com]

Thanks for clearning this up Nancy, I"ll pass this info on.
Melanie

In a message dated 11/15/02 10:21:01 AM, RMandNH writes:

>

[alpha_panthera1]

Dear Melanie and all,
you are welcome. I mean you and this issue
managed to kick me completely out of my schedule and make me devote
again half a day at least to advanced muridological studies to be well
informed on all backgrounds and facts and shades. But then it was
interesting and I refreshed and learned anew a number of things. What
you write now and post from Mr. Wichmann seems to indicate that I
sensed right that Shah and Herrick did indeed do provings from rem.s
gained from two different species. If that is so then I would point
out that this definitely needs to be made clear in literature, rep.s
and rem. name ! Species differences do matter in all
regards.
A piece of additional inf.: The true rats have their evolutionary
centre in S.E.Asia. They reached adjoining regions on their own,
including Australia, but not Europe, Africa or the New World. The
house rat,
Rattus rattus, originally from Southern Asia and s.China, a natural
climber, followed man and made its home in the upper part of his
buildings and ships. It
was spread probably from southern India by sailing merchants ( genet.
research shows that ); the
Romans brought it to Europe in
antiquity ( they did a lot of trade with India ! ). Reached c.Eur. 2nd
cent. A.D., England 5th/6th c.A.D.,
America 16th cent., also Africa, where it spread widely, although
other "non-true rat-type species" exist there as well. It was the
Plague rat and formed, up to the 20th cent., 90% of the rattine ship
population.
The "brown" rat, named "rattus norvegicus" ( probably due to some
misunderstanding ), comes from the colder regions of central Asia. Is
larger, more massive, likes humid environments and diggs burrows.
Reached, by whichever means, Europe much later; documented first in
10th cent. ( but only rarely ), UK 1730, N.Am. mid-18th
cent.. Slowly, then increasingly managed to drive out and displace the
house rat in many parts of the western world, not much by fight, but
due to changes in human lifestyle and modes of building houses and
ships. Wood gone, underground dweller in favour. In most parts of
Europe,
except the south, the HR has become a rare animal. The vanishing of
the plague disease has got much to do with this fact ! In India,
however, and other parts, the HR is still the "common rat", so using
that as name for rattus n. is quite "occidocentric", to be
precise.
/
I should expect that the provings should show some differences, like
"underground existence" would only be a zoological characteristic of
RN. RN surprised and almost shocked scientists by its ability to
happily survive on pacific islands where nuclear tests were frequently
performed. Any hint to rem power ??! The one trait that is undeniably
sympathic is that females would adopt orphaned youngs and nurse and
raise them like their own, while some socially living apes would not
do that ! Please keep such facts hidden from proving participants
'till after all results are edited, but if it should happen to somehow
be reflected, good potential may rest therein for our use. - Did we
expect to ever bless the rats ?!
Sicerely,
Panthera
--- In
minutus@y..., USAHomeopath@a... wrote:
and John
remedies, and
and
David
mentions
us.
http://www.homoeopathie-wichmann.de/heilmittel/hei
lmittel_e4/z_Mammalia.htm
 Â
herself
likely.
from
...

[alpha_panthera1]

When confused wether to believe my memory or "homoeopathic
authorities(?)" I used first an old, thick, 2 vol. book dictionary off
the libr. shelf. Then an additional online search.
-> Charlton T. Lewis / Charles Short : __"A Latin Dictionary"__ (seems
to be a standart in Anglo-quarters ) has:
"Sorex, icis m.( 'o' can be long or
short, depending on lit.quote ): "a shrew-mouse"; its noise was of ill
omen." + 5 ref.s to class. latin
authors.
No mention of rats anywhere. ( note that "mouse" here is colloquial
usage, but zool. incorrect as I need not repeat. ) I think that
"rattus" was never used by Romans either, but is a late latinisation
by scientists. They probably used "mus" to refer to either mouse or
rat, which after all was only starting to spread in Europe in their
time ( see my last post on rattology ).
But what really counts here is
that "sorex" was and is and will be unmistakably occupied by the shrew
since Linne introduced its scientific name in the 18th.century. Even
if
someone came up with some latin quote of sorex = rat in contrast to
what I knew and found, and even if that would have been the standart
latin term and Zoologists would have got it all wrong for centuries,
to which I don't see any evidence, it is no good idea for homoeopaths
to do naming in divergence from or contrast to
biologists.Don't you think so
?
--- In minutus@y..., USAHomeopath@a... wrote:
Norvegicus
from the
naming of
not really
was a

[alpha_panthera1]

Dear Melanie,
thanks for your additional information. But, as often, this my again
open new questions. Apparently now the latin was, if anyone's, not
Nancy Herrick's fault. I posted on this in my last mail, and if I find
time I may do another essay on homoeo-latin in general, for which I
gathered interesting material yesterday, but need to edit that.
Now I am looking at the species question. Do you know
whether and where Jayesh Shah published his own results, or was Nancy
Herrick's chapter a compilation of both their results ? ( I knew her
book by title, but haven't read it. ) She says here that Mr. Shah's
animal was "of the same species". I would not be sure. As I wrote in
my rat mail yesterday ( written before this post of yours appeared ),
the "common rat" in India in general is the "house rat", r. rattus,
i.e. "the other species". Bombay being a port city, there may, however
be a sizeable r.norv. population ther as well or instead. "from the
gutters" does not clarify this. Did the Indian team describe precisely
what they or their auxillary troups had got ? ( and dead or alive ? )
What you posted before from Wichmann's site does clearly contradict
what you posted N.H. as writing. So still an open question to
me.
Also she writes enlighteningly hers was from a "white pet". That again
makes a difference to a wild one, even if town dweller and even in
case they were of the same species. Lab. rats were beginning to be
bred, exclusively from r.norv., in the 19th cent., and are a product
of conscious human selection over generations; the more recent pet
population goes in turn back to those. May make a difference in
results ( e.g. all domestic animals have considerably shrunken brains,
no joking, that's in the zool lit., and all are tamer and often show
different reproductive behaviour from their wild ancestors etc.), I
would not rule this out, hence it would best be marked in
the name as well. Otherwise if tomorrow someone did a proving from a
beast from a garbage pile in, say a place in the UK, and the day after
someone from a "really wild one" in Mongolia, and they perhaps get
overlapping, but somewhat distinct rem. "pictures", what are we to do
?
Sincerely,
Panthera
--- In minutus@y..., USAHomeopath@a... wrote:
Norvegicus
from the
naming of
not really
was a