dear david

i am pleased you wrote that because the article quoted above seemed to me as if herscu is just pointing out the importance of physical generals [it's an undisputed skill of a good practitioner to be able to identify them], and how they might, speculatively, relate to the mental state.

the example of how to solve a case by confirmatory opposing symptoms was bizarre:

"In the materia medica he asks us to find the opposite. For example, in Thuja, the person feels a duality - a sense of not knowing about themselves/disgust within (the chief complaint), but the opposite is the fixed ideas they maintain."

This is a stretched and rather subjective interpretation of the term 'opposite.'