by Charles Wansbrough (published on Olne.net 15/12/01)

In an interview with Massimo Mangialavori[i], he was asked how he managed to use such a wide range of remedies and how he had managed to obtain so much information about their use.  His reply: ‘My real problem at the beginning was to try to develop a model of thinking that could allow me to do this. ---What I do is to gather together all the possible information. So in the Juniperus case, it was clear as a hypothesis in my mind that the patient could need a remedy close to Thuja. This was my hypothesis. I had other information that I gathered, because this plant was known in ancient times, and we have information about its toxicology and pharmacology- - its known to affect the kidneys etc.----------So I had prescribed Thuja successfully. So I try to take a look around this, to make an analysis in the repertory that could suggest which other possible remedies are close to it. I investigate in the botanical field, in the pharmacological field, in the toxicological field and often one finds a connection.’

  In essence his model, which he further elaborates on in the interview, consists of approaching the entire Materia Medica from the viewpoint of a Kingdom approach. He groups similarities and differences between remedies in families and species, and then, after accumulating sufficient evidence as to the role of a closely related remedy about which little is known homoeopathically, he makes a speculative assessment which may lead to a good prescription.  

  It is of interest that presented with such a vast materia medica, it would be logical to develop a model of thinking very close to the above as the only possible way in approaching the overwhelming number of very poorly proved remedies. The thinking behind the approach, which is common to all major thinkers in the homeopathic fraternity, is one primary assumption. This is, that all relationships that are assumed to exist in the natural world within taxonomic groupings also play an equally important role amongst their subtle components. Even if this assumption was not entirely valid, and it can be argued that the relationships that exist in the plant kingdom may not be quite what was assumed due to recent work on reclassifying plants from their genetic perspective[ii], it still represents the only logical model that can be used to access the ever increasing wealth and detail accumulated from recent provings. This approach is also far easier to use within and with the animal kingdom, as their behaviour and their ways of reacting and relating can be understood with greater clarity. It is far easier to project and speculate anthropocentrically relative to the animal kingdom than it is relative to the plant kingdom. Moreover, the primary assumption of ‘taxonomic similarity’ is far easier to apply to the animal kingdom. For example, in the sub-order Serpentes (i.e. Snakes) there are 18 families with a total of 2700 species of snake all together. Yet in one plant family alone, for example the Asteraceae (Daisy family), to which the well-known remedies, Arnica, Chamomilla and Bellis Perenis belong, there are estimated to be over 25,000 species. So, though a huge disparity exists between the animal and plant kingdoms, we are forced to use taxonomic protocols to sort through the vast amount of remedies that now exist in order to evaluate the role of very small remedies.  I wish to turn now, towards my own evolution in developing a model that uses this as a point of departure  towards a ‘Post-classical methodology’.

  MY OWN EVOLUTION

In a previous article in The Homeopath[iii], dated summer 2000, I discussed in detail a technology I had purchased from an American called Patrick Richards with the object of its research potential in the homeopathic community. I will only very briefly mention its salient features since the object of this article is to discuss an evolving clinical protocol. Patrick Richards, an engineer, designed an instrument to balance air temperatures to enable a more efficient management of energy. It also appeared to alter the magnetic field in the environment and cause changes in photon emission. Patrick then made further explorations using photography in the field and found that when polaroid photographs where taken in this altered field they often produced anomalous images of the subjects – either fuzzy or with multiple images.  After twenty years of research, Patrick concluded that people suffering from health challenges usually produced fuzzy or distorted images when photographed whilst healthy individuals produced clear and ‘normal’ photographs.  A further development revealed that when photographing subjects holding a correct remedy or appropriate medicine for their condition within the field, totally clear images were produced. Essentially, my role together with a colleague was to evaluate its efficacy in finding appropriate remedies for patients. I have discussed elsewhere the trials and tribulations that I underwent in trying to evaluate and effectively use the technology. My main aim in this article is to elaborate on a model of thinking that has helped me function effectively using this technology.

  There is in no doubt that the technology can be shown to work empirically, but if one is to abide by the stringent standards of coherence, this meant that at each therapeutic session, one would have to find that remedy that elicited the closest similitude to the patient. In other words, in order to prove the efficacy of homeopathy, by taking on the technology and abiding by its rules, I would also have to prescribe with extreme accuracy to effectively gain a clear picture and thereby be absolutely sure of the best remedy at that particular time. This was by my standards a tall order! 

  Suddenly, I was faced with the daunting task of having to go from a standard repertoire of some 100 to 200 remedies, about which I might have some patchy knowledge, to having to face the whole materia medica in its overwhelming entirety. My primary assumption was that polycrests would help out in many cases, but this turned out not to be the case.  Instead, we found that we had to prescribe with extreme accuracy to obtain the results that classical homeopathy expects from its best cases. Two problems arose with regard to using the technology to find the best remedy.  The first was that the actual mechanics of taking a case, taking photographs, and finding the remedy in a certain time allocated, was frankly too difficult for one individual to process all at the same time, so I invited a colleague to join me (Kieran Linnane) and we began to take and evaluate cases together.  The second problem arose from the daunting task of how to process all the information that presented itself and yet to be able to find the best remedy in the allocated time.

  CREATING A PROTOCOL

My assumptions were similar to Mangialavori’s - that remedies which were closely related by genus and species would have similar subtle signatures. So, I created a workbook of all the kingdoms in the materia medica, divided out into taxonomic groups, each webbed clearly so that I could see, for example, every other snake related to Lachesis, in the family Crotalidae, as below:

  Bothrops lanceolatus (Fer-de-lance viper)  Bothr:

Cenchris contortrix (Agki-contortix)  Cench:

Crotalus cascavella (South American rattlesnake) Crot-c:

Crotalus horridus  ( American rattlesnake)  Crot-h:

Lachesis muta  (Surukuku snake)  Lach:

Toxicophis pugnax (Agki-p Mocassin Snake)  Agki-p:

  The animal kingdom was then divided into five sections which consisted of: Insects & Spiders / Reptiles / Sea Creatures / Birds / Mammals

  The mineral kingdom was divided into Scholten’s  main divisions.

The main problems arose with the plant kingdom, which was divided into sections.  Firstly I took into consideration the Orders; then I divided the flowering plants into Monocotyledons and Dicotyledons which were separated into their respective families, genera and species. Since the total number of plants being used which are mentioned in various materia medicas amounts to over 800 plants, I was forced to design a further method of division so I could study and evaluate the whole corpus of plants quickly.  I came up with the solution of using the doctrine of signatures and of assuming certain differences according to their types and toxicology. I divided the plant kingdom into a Tree section, which became subdivided into soft and hard woods. I subdivided the flowering plant sections into families and then subdivided them into categories by colours indicating hallucinogens, toxic plants, and climbers. Then I took most of the large plant families like Sweet Pea family and Rose family and created webs of these families together with their salient features in a series of mini-webs which I use in my clinical practice. I continued to divide and subdivide the materia medica into a web which allowed me an accessible Birdseye view of different domains which I might consider for prescribing purpose.

  The next task lay in assessing not the materia medica, but the number and quality of cured cases which I could find in the journals to act as a prescribing database.  To that end, I surveyed some twenty years of previous journals and collected all the cases so that they could be put into a database for ease of access and readability. For example, by going through a large collection of journals, I managed to collect some 150 cases of different plants that had been written up as examples of classical cases. This as a percentage of the entire plant kingdom is about 20 per cent, which indicates that there is a vast amount of work to be done in this area. I continued to collect all the cases I could find on all kingdoms. For example, over eighteen different birds have been potentised but only 25% of these birds has a case appertaining to its use, and over 24 Insect remedies have been potentised but I could only find reference to a mere 12% as cases written up. This process of collecting cases and putting into webs was a method I devised which would help speed up my own assessment of a situation when I had to search for a remedy. So far, the purpose of accumulating such a large database, which has been far more adequately created by computer programs such as Reference Works, was to create some sort of effective guideline to aid my thinking processes in finding the best remedy for the patient. What became very apparent after proceeding with this method, was how I had applied a totally analytical process which had somehow been embedded in my psyche over the many years of practising  homeopathy. The method, in essence, was the ‘modus operandi’ that an analytical approach would take, and I thus armed myself with the following analytical tools:

1. Reference works
2. The Repertory
3. Taxonomic webs created of the entire materia medica
4. Twenty five years of cases in an accessible database
5. Diagnostic technology that gave clear feedback on whether the remedy prescribed was correct.

I expected my results to be impressive, or at least far better than any previous prescriptions that I had made in the past ten years, and this turned out to be the case. Yet, in trying to assimilate and apply the classical homeopathic model I came up against its limitations.  

PROBLEMS WITH THE ANALYTICAL APPROACH

In trying to evaluate the effectiveness of the technology, it became clear fairly early on in my evolution that in using the technology we had to abide by the rules of coherence, which meant that we always had to try and find the best remedy for that patient at their appointment. It was the only way we could evaluate how effective clarity corresponded to the best prescription given at the time. But in doing this and abiding by this rule, I found myself having to explore all methods possible in order to gain ‘clarity’. Yet I still applied the principals of ‘classical homeopathy’, that is to find the best single remedy that would produce the maximum amount of cure with the minimal aggravation possible. This principal holds up very well in using the technology; problems arise in how to search for and find that remedy which will produce the clarity necessary to produce a definite change in the state of health of that individual.

  Problems arose using the analytical approach alone. Our evaluation procedure consisted in taking a case for about an hour, and then in the next hour we hoped to find the best remedy for the patient. We limited ourselves to a possible ten photographs, which would be equivalent to ten prescriptions as after that we tended to lose focus and, if we could not find the correct remedy at the first session, would ask the patient to return for another session. As we evolved over time, and in order to obtain ‘clarity’ in our prescriptions, we had to evolve away from a purely analytical approach, towards a process in which ‘intuitive intelligence’ began to play a far greater role in our ‘modus operandi’. The findings and ‘modus operandi’ was as follows:

We found that in evaluating a case one of the most profound lessons we had to learn was that of how to master ‘the state of an unprejudiced observer’. It was a hard lesson in learning to listen carefully and set aside most of our preconceptions about remedies. We learnt to remain circumspect in our process of evaluation and after some three years of training with the technology, we have learnt to recognise when we do not recognise a remedy, which amounts to 70% of cases walking into our clinic. This immediately releases from our prejudices and leaves us free to search for a possible remedy without loosing focus in the process.

In searching for a correct remedy, we found that the only possible methodology in processing such a large amount of information was firstly in establishing into which kingdom the remedy fell and then evaluating into which order or family it possibly came from. This remains in my mind the only possible method of analytically using the vast material at our fingertips. So it was always essential to establish a prescribing domain before deciding on a possible remedy. 

In evaluating cases, I found that the taxonomic webs, together with a certain amount of natural history vis-à-vis whatever remedy was chosen, was essential in searching for a possible new remedy - not that different to what Mangialavori describes in his interview when evaluating an unknown remedy. This ‘modus operandi’ has helped me endlessly in prescribing some unproved remedies. For example, a musician, who was suffering from problems with pericardititis that was in essence arose from performance anxiety, was shy, had a tremendous sense of ‘ not wishing to make a fool of himself’, was fairly academic with spiritual aspirations and seem to fit tidily into the early stages of  ‘the mineral kingdom’, very much a Silica typology, though something did not seem to fit too well into this analysis. After trying a number of different mineral remedies we found ourselves perplexed because of a certain central theme that revolved around ‘his need to avoid any situations that led to his being perceived as foolish’ yet most of his thinking seem to revolve around much ‘new age philosophy’.  This combination of spiritual or transcendental qualities led me to think of the Bird domain, but which bird, and using metaphor as an ‘ exercise in lateral thinking’ I decided on ‘Meleagris Galloparvo’ (Turkey) a bird which I felt represented his central theme. To my astonishment the remedy went clear, and on his return, the most salient features of the  remedy was ‘ to liberate his way of thinking’ he felt a much greater ability to express himself to others. His pericarditis improved about 70% and a year later I have taken him up to LM7 and feels he is doing very well.

This form of active imagination together with ‘intuitive focus’ takes time to develop but we have found it to be far more efficacious in finding and searching for new remedies.

Up to this point, most ‘classical prescribers’ would accept the aforementioned without any problems but we found that the technology was so accurate and the information so overwhelming that we had to devolve from a purely analytical mode and train and extend our ‘intuitive intelligence’ into the realm of dowsing. We found that practising using the technology allowed us a window of opportunity in which we had to bring both our analytical and intuitive methods to a fine focus, for at times it was clear that we had no idea what the remedy might be, in which case we searched using the pendulum as a guide to help us find the remedy. I do not use dowsing to find the remedy, I use it to search the different  prescribing domains. I have found myself unable to use ‘dowsing’ to just find a remedy, partly due to the vast analytical baggage that I have absorbed but also due to the fact that any of these methods can be used to confirm one’s own prejudices. Using the pendulum, or muscle testing, is an art in itself and one in which the individual must be firmly centred in the state of ‘the unprejudiced observer’ in order not to bias the outcome of the process. The way I use this method is as a way of focusing, for sometimes I am very well aware that the remedy is totally unknown to me and after a certain number of photographs one can easily lose concentration and thus the case.  For example, one patient was rather spaced out but the usual ‘suspects’- Cannabis indica, ‘Ayahausca’ and some alkaloids from the Solanaceae family - were all tried but with little success. All the hallucinogenic or narcotic plants are marked in red in their respective families in my workbook. The Apocynaceae family consists of some narcotics with alkaloid properties. One of the remedies marked there was an unproved remedy, Tabernanthe iboga (a drug used to wean people off heroin).  I decided it was a possible remedy for our patient and I dowsed to find out whether it was accurate enough.  The pendulum confirmed my idea which was then further confirmed with the technology. It was a complex case but Tabernanthe iboga was the major remedy in the case that produced the best results. In some ways I regard ‘dowsing’. or any such methods, as a means of training ‘intuitive intelligence’, and even possibly in evolving a more ‘unprejudiced mind’ which can be allowed to give some creative input into what I regard as an overwhelmingly analytical process.

CONCLUSION

I believe that homeopathy can only evolve towards far greater heights in prescribing efficaciously if we learn to not only acknowledge the value of ‘intuitive intelligence’ but to marry it effectively with our preponderantly analytical modes of education. My own research using the technology has shown, at least very effectively to me, that it is virtually impossible to register, absorb and maintain some sort of focus on the ongoing new provings being done at regular intervals without classifying and engaging effectively our ‘intuitive intelligence’. For example, recent provings include Musca domestica (a proving done by New York School of Homeopathy of the domestic fly) and Diomedea exulans (a recent proving of Albatross by the Scholten group) both of which are not even yet available in pharmacies which, together with many of our unproved remedies, overwhelm most of our homeopaths, unless there is clear methodology by which we can possibly apprehend this amount of information. We began with materia medica in Hahnemann’s day, a veritable ‘Internet’ of information, which with its ever-increasing information has maintained clarity and definition thanks to the imposition of the ‘classical methodology’. But the repertory can only keep on increasing in the number of remedies up to a certain level of clarity after which the signal to noise ratio will begin to rise exponentially. In other words, as the number of remedies increases in repertories, the degree of nuance and subtlety between different remedies makes distinction between those remedies almost impossible. I have personally found that the Repertory and Reference Works are both tools least suited to an evolving ‘Post-Classical methodology’. They are counter-intuitive and represent a methodology and a way of processing information that harks back to linear logical formats that are virtually impossible to use intuitively. In my own practice, I have both computer programs and have found myself hardly ever needing to use either, yet I feel I obtain and clearly see even unproved remedies if I use the method proposed above.  Moreover, I suspect all great masters of homeopathy use ‘intuitive intelligence’, they just do not acknowledge it fully or perhaps are even unaware of the immense processes that eventually lead their minds to prescribe an unknown or small remedy.