Hi Divina,

You make some good points.

"How valuable is an observation made on material never read?

My secondhand observations of these particular authors' works are valuable to me because it saves wasting time on areas of study that I personally consider not useful to me. If at any stage I feel differently, I will access them.

For me, homoeopathy is a vast area of study and I try to keep the complexity out of it by following established guidelines.

Your experience may be different but when I finished my studies, I didn't really know how Kent differed to Hahnemann, in what areas, or if it even mattered. I didn't know the first thing about applying the Concordance chapter in Boenninghausen's Repertory or why it is invaluable. I didn't understand the historical progression of Hahnemann's method or why it is even relevant. I'd never read Chronic Diseases but I'm sure I used some paragraphs in footnotes for assessments. I didn't know how to correctly administer LM potencies and caused some unnecessary aggravations. I didn't know what role innate temperament and constitution played in case-taking. In spite of this, I passed exams quite well and came out with a sound grounding in... Vithoulkian essence prescribing.

My apologies if I appear dour or grouchy, but it is not uncommon for me to receive patients from "experienced" practitioners (one of whom lectured me), and have the task of unravelling a mismanaged case. Yes, I realize every practitioner has their share of these referrals, but the point I have always tried to make is that because the same basic mistakes seem to be such a common occurence, I suspect that homoeopathic education could do well to focus more on the fundamentals. Something, or a lot, is missing.
For you, this something may be Scholten's or Sankaran's new way of looking at remedies.
For me, I find that a case can be lost at any stage from
(a)lack of symmetry, or
(b)poor repertorization, or
(c)incorrect dosing, or
(d)mismanaging a second prescription.
This seems to concur with listening to other homoeopath's stories and reading posts on the Net.

Many advances have been made to our Materia Medica in the area of psychology. However a lot of other information and tools are being disregarded as well. I don't hear of provings being conducted in the context of noting the innate diathetic constitution and temperament of the prover. A tubercular taint in a sanguine person who proves a remedy will evoke different symptoms from a choleric, phlegmatic or nervous constitution proving the same substance. This sort of information was recorded by early homoeopaths up until Kent decided it was unnecessary. Now we apparantly have provings where you don't even get to ingest a substance. You just have to 'BE' in same room with others and your vote counts.

I believe more focus on homoeopathic fundamentals would provide a platform from which anyone could discern the value of EVERY contribution to homoeopathy since Hahnemann. As well, when international homoeopaths stand up and trash Hahnemann at seminars we could question the soundness of their education and understanding of the fundamentals.

"How many "sacred cows" are we going to accept unquestioningly?"

Indeed!