Wednesday 30th, January 2013

Dear subscriber,

beside commencing the OCR process on The Homoeopathic Physician (within Project HomeoPublish, made possible by a few generous donations – wink, wink, say no more), updating remedy information in Project Remedies, there has been a certain amount of nodding and head-scratching here for the past two weeks with regards to our beloved Project ObjRep. Why?

Looking at the visitors statistics, the majority of people seem to be positively scared of any text longer than two paragraphs of text. And while peppering the text with nice pictures somewhat ameliorates the panic attack, the topic of Project ObjRep simply does not fit in the two-paragraphs category, which means most people don't read it and, consequently, don't know what they are missing.

It does not take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that a majority of homeopaths (if those visiting our web site are considered a representative sample) COULD NOT have read any major Hahnemann's work – with his elaborate sentences, extravagant footnotes not rarely exceeding the length of this newsletter (and no pictures!), such a feat would be impossible.

So, to overcome this limitation, we have decided we would serve a nice little case for you to solve and then point out the advantages of using Object Repertory to do the same. The case is real (not made up), short, the symptoms are clear and there is no doubt the similimum can easily be found. We shall be very honored to receive your solution (submit via this form) – you can just write the remedy name or, preferrably, offer an explanation as to why you consider this the best solution. The correct answers will enter the DRAWING from which one lucky WINNER of Mercurius homeopathic software with Complete Repertory 2013 and Materia Medica Pack 4 will emerge – courtesy of AEON GROUP and Roger van Zandvoort.

We will publish your results in our newsletter (together with the correct solution), so take your time before you fire up your remedy – if you fail, a worldwide and international shame will be your fate, forever recorded in the archives of Legatum Homeopathicum. Just joking, the results will be anonymous, so you have nothing to worry about ;-) Please ask your friends-homeopaths to join in!

Eds.

The Prize Case.

Man, 36 years old, married, two children, came down with the following acute symptoms:

Strong pulsating pain in the forehead that pulsates in harmony with heart pulse, ONLY on motion. When he lies still in his bed, there is no pain, but when he moves, however slightly, such as turning in his bed, his heart pulse accelerates immediately and the pulsating headache in the forehead presents itself. When he stops moving, the headache slowly subsides and disappears (in a matter of minutes). Pressure of hand ameliorates the headache somewhat. Beside these symptoms, he feels weak and experiences a bruised aching soreness in his thighs (as is common in influenza-like diseases), as if muscles were overexerted by hard exercise (they were not). Around this time, some of the members of his family were also sick with various acute diseases with cold or flu-like symptoms.

Submit your solution via this form. The deadline for submitting the solution is February 22nd, 2013 23:59 UT (Greenwich time).

Question for André Saine

Q: What exactly are the “characteristic symptoms” so emphasized in the old writings (as pertaining to remedy selection) and how do they fit in the “totality of symptoms” as a basis of prescription? What makes a symptom “characteristic”?

A: Characteristic symptoms are the symptoms that tend to occur rarely, and/or are very striking, peculiar, and/or unusual. After taking a case and having fully examined a patient, the physician must then ask the following question... Read the answer »

If interested, you can submit your own questions here.

Recommended article – of the character of characteristic symptoms

While proofreading OCRed articles of The Homeopathic Physician (anyone care to join in?) I have dig up an article, authored by P.P.Wells, that makes a great follow-up on André Saine's answer regarding the characteristic symptoms. The author discusses the exact same point, in relation to paragraphs 18 and 153 of the Organon – well worth pondering upon. Read here.

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