Julian Winston posted the below message on the Lyghtforce mailing list:
Paul Herscu has just released a new book about provings, which
includes the proving he did of Alcohol. Had 114 provers over 5 years.
It is solid and looks like a very useful remedy.
But the first part of the book is amazing. The sub-title offers an
insight into his approach: "How understanding provings offers an
essential foundation to successful patient care."
When you take a case, you are often presented with a long list of
symptoms. Your successful outcome depends upon your ability to pick
from the list those symptoms that are characteristic of the patients
disease.
On the other side of the coin, when you do a proving, you are faced
with a listing of symptoms from the provers. Are they all important?
No! The skill in doing a proving is to be able to select from the
myriad of symptoms those that are characteristic of the remedy. Says
Paul, "Learning which symptoms to include in a proving enhances your
ability to do the same thing in case taking... by not understanding
provings, we have created mistakes that Hahnemann was trying to rid
us of by creating a more perfect or pure materia medica of the drugs
via the proving."
The problem that he sees is that the "threshold" for what IS a
symptom has dropped so low that we are seeing extraneous "noise" as
symptoms of the proving.
Says Herscu: "The threshold has dropped so low that a great deal of
background noise is no longer being filtered out...The true symptoms
of the substance is buried within the multitude of symptoms from the
lowered threshold... Having numerous people who did not take a
substance or who took placebo develop the same symptoms as the ones
who took the remedy is not a demonstration of our interconnectedness;
rather it shows that the filters are so porous, and the threshold is
so low that the experiment is faulty."
He goes on, "If you take the proving substance and then your wife is
in a car accident, maybe the accident is part of the proving... this
sort of thinking may seem humorous to some,, but it is not;
especially when these symptoms then make it into our materia medica
and repertories, making the tools of our trade full of misleading
information, ultimately making the practice of homeopathy, already
challenging, that much more difficult."
"Once the 'noise' is included in the repertory, there is no easy way
to extricate it.... we have included so many symptoms that all the
remedies begin to look alike."
As for using Doctrines of Signatures as an indicator, Herscu says:
"Provings arose in part, from attempting to eliminate the doctrine of
signatures! It is ironic at best, though sad to me personally, that I
see the homeopathic profession bring this back. Homeopathy was
created as a science to draw us out of darkness. I cannot believe
there are those who want to go backwards. It is a refutation and a
rejection of the spirit of homeopathy. It breaks the direct line to
Hahnemann."
Paul discusses 13 "Misconceptions." The big one to me is is the
last: That it will not impact your practice. If the threshold is so
low, what is the implication in practice? Where does a case history
end? "If the patient's husband fell should the patient take Arnica?
If you look out the window and see a certain bird fly by, should you
give that remedy?
Says Paul: "One mirrors the other. If your borders are not tighter,
if your threshold is not high enough, then your analysis of patients
will eventually follow suit. One will mirror the other. I have seen
my colleagues go through this for many years. It winds up as a
painful process to all involved, at the end. The problems are so
numerous that it will take a long time to correct."
Long ago I found that it was really worth paying attention to what
Paul says. He is extremely conversant with the historical homeopathic
literature. He is, above all, a clinician. His thinking is incredibly
clear. I am amazed that not more people have taken up his model of
Cycles and Segments-- it makes the understanding of case analysis so
much clearer.
This book, aside from being a great proving of a much needed remedy,
asks some difficult questions. It remains to be seen if anyone is
bold enough to attempt doing what Herscu is suggesting. If every
symptom that everyone gets (whether they took the remedy or not) is
admitted into the literature as a true symptom, then we have lost the
ability to distinguish between placebo and remedy and the world of
provings will continue down the uncontrolled track they are often on
and, with the filters being so porous, homeopathy itself will be the
major loser.
Needless to say, I think this could be one of the most important
books in the "new" literature.
JW
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Edit: Just wanted to make clear that the above does not reflect personal opinion but was re-posted from a discussion that is now taking place on Lyghtforce. (As if any of you would have thought I was gifted enough to even arrive at such conclusions
!!)
[ 21. September 2002, 19:32: Message edited by: gpm ]