acute treatment of earache in homeopathy

If you go to a patient who is suffering from violent earache, acute stabbing pains in the the ear, and tenderness over the mastoid region, when you first look t it from the homoeopathic standpoint you are completely lost. After a little experience you find that these cases are very satisfactory, you get your relief astonishingly quickly, and often a case which you expect would require incision of the membrane within the next few hours quickly subsides ad the patient is comfortable when you go back in the evening. That is the sort of thing you should be able to do in these acute conditions.
 PAGE 15
 In cases of acute otitis with violent pains all round the the mastoid region there are three or four drugs I want to consider.
 Supposing you take the the case which has come on very suddenly, with a history of the patient having been out in a very cold north-east wind, he is intensely restless, the pains are very violent, usually burning in character. He is irritable, a bit scared, with all the signs of a rising temperature, and extreme tenderness to touch. With that history after a few doses of Aconite the acute inflammatory process which is just starting will have entirely disappeared. That is the type that one hopes for, and which one sees very often in winter.
 You will get another case - usually in children - where there is not the same definite history of chill, although that may be present, but where the pain is even more intense and where the patient is practically beside himself with pain, will not stay still, is as cross and as irritable as can be, again with extreme tenderness, and you get the impression that nothing that the friends do satisfies him. You give him a few doses of Chamomilla and again the whole inflammatory process will rapidly subside.
 The next case has gone a little further; there is much more tenderness over the mastoid region, possibly a little bulging, and the ear begins to look a little more prominent on the affected side. The external ear is very red, often much redder than on the opposite side. There are very acute stabbing pains running into the ear, the condition is a little comforted by hot applications, and the patient is extremely sorry for himself, miserable, wanting to be comforted, probably a little tearful, but without the irritability of Chamomilla, and Capsicum almost always clears it up.
 PAGE 16
 In addition to the three drugs which I have considered, one always has in mind the possibility of a Pulsatilla child requiring a dose of Pulsatilla for the condition. And also one not infrequently sees a case giving indications for Mercury or Hepar sulph., but these I have no time to do more than mention.
 Then to go on to typical acute neuralgias, facial neuralgias, or acute sciaticas, or things of that sort where, you want to get immediate relief. Again you can use pretty well routine methods for relieving these cases.
 Let is consider the acute facial neuralgias, for instance acute trigeminal neuralgia; there are two outstanding drugs for these conditions. It does not really matter which branch of the nerve is involved, you take a case like that, with violent pain coming in sharp stabs, or twinges of pain running up the course of the nerve, coming on from any movement of the muscles of the face, very much aggravated by any draught of air, with extreme superficial tenderness over the affected nerve, which is much more comfortable from warmth, applied warmth, and also from firm supporting pressure. That case, particularly when it involves the right side, almost always responds to Mag. Phos. - nine out of ten will so respond. Incidentally this does not apply to dental neuralgia, these are much more different and they run to quite a number of different drugs.
 If you have the same condition, with practically the same symptoms, the same modalities, affecting the left side, it generally responds to Colocynth.
 The side usually determines the choice, but occasionally either drug may relieve neuralgias involving the opposite side.
 Where you get an orbital neuralgia, with much more sharp stinging pains, "as if a red hot needle were stuck into it" is a very common description in these cases, and the pains tending to radiate out over the course of the nerve, in the majority of cases you get relief from Spigelia.
 PAGE 17
 There is one very useful point about Spigelia; and that is that you sometimes get the statement that, in spite of the burning character of the pain, after it has been touched there is a strange cold sensation in the affected area. That is Spigelia and Spigelia alone.
 These are the three drugs which I find much the most useful in a routine way for facial neuralgias.
 As a rule I use high potencies, but I do not like to go too high because sometimes in these very painful conditions the very high potency aggravates the pain for the time being, for ten minutes or so, and thus causes unnecessary suffering, so in these cases with acute pain I seldom go higher than a 30th potency.

The treasure hunt : a history of Kent's repertory and Kent's own corrections

Ahmed n. currim. m.d. , ph.d.
 (This paper was presented at the LIGA meeting in Washington, D.C. , March 1987).
Introduction
 Ihad already realized, as a medical student in 1972, that the third and later American editions of Kent's Repertory had many printing mistakes. It was surprising that these errors had not been rectified by Dr. Kent. However, on closer examination, I realized that the publication of the third edition appeared after June 5, 1916, the date of Dr. Kent's death. It occurred to me that Dr. Kent never had the chance to correct these errors.
 Logically, I tried to locate the second edition of the Repertory.
 I spoke to Mr. Roger Ehrhart in 1972, while he was still alive, but he could not give me much help. He was the last surviving member of the Ehrhart family, who owned the famous homeopathic pharmacy of Ehrhart and Karl and were the original publishers of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth American editions of the Repertory. It
was not clear if the library of Ehrhart and Karl had the second edition (Kent's own copy, or even an uncorrected one).
 A paper by Dr. K.C.  Mittal in the January/February 1963 issue of the AIH Journal was my first clue to the existence of Kent's own personal repertory. Dr. Mittal reported that this repertory was in the possession of Dr. Pierre Schmidt of Geneva, Switzerland. In June 1972, I had the opportunity to be in Geneva and spoke to Dr. Schmidt about Dr. Mittal's paper and the errors I had observed in Kent's Repertory. He informed me that Dr. Mittal had come to Geneva in 1961 and 1962 and had diligently worked with Kent's own personal copy of the second edition, into which Kent had put thousands of corrections. This copy had been used after Dr. Kent's death by Ehrhart and Karl to prepare the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth American editions. This book-Kent's own personal copy-I will call the "Treasure".
 Dr. Schmidt informed me that, after carefully doing this work, Dr. Mittal had run away from Switzerland, taking the Treasure with him, as well as his own copy in which he had made the corrections.
 Dr. Mittal had copied carefully every correction from the Treasure into his own sixth American edition of Kent's Repertory. In addition, he had copied every correction from the Mind and Generalities chapters into a copy of an Indian edition belonging to Dr. Schmidt, which Dr. Schmidt showed me. This was a specially bound book, with a green cover and special springaction separators between the various chapters. In it were very neatly copied corrections in a very symmetrical handwriting. A facsimile of one such page from the Mind chapter is printed in Kent's Final General Repertory. It is to be noted that the handwriting on this facsimile is completely different from Kent's signature, which also appears in the preface of this book. Thus, the handwriting is probably Dr. Mittal's. Dr. Schmidt informed me that, after carefully doing this work, Dr. Mittal had run away from Switzerland, taking the Treasure with him, as well as his own copy in which he had made the corrections. If this copy could be found, it would be nearly as valuable as the Treasure. I will refer to Dr. Mittal's copy as "MKR" (Mittal's Kent's Repertory).
 In July1972, I also made the acquaintance of Mme. Dora Schmidt Nagel, the wife of Dr. Pierre Schmidt. She is a homeopathic pharmacist as well as owner of Laboratoire Homeopathique de Mme. Schmidt. This noble and gracious lady was the one who later enabled me to find the Treasure.
The search
 In 1973, I finished my studies in mathematics at a university in the U.S.  and began my study of medicine at the University of Brussels. The motivation behind my giving up my profession as a mathematician lay in the inspiration I had received in the study of Kent's incredible Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, Lectures on Materia Medica, and his Repertory. I had a dream and a deep intuitive feeling that homeopathy could perhaps again triumph on the Earth and regain its past glory in the healing of the nations. I hoped that by using the techniques of mathematics and computers, I might play some role in the solution of medical problems. I was further inspired and encouraged by two wonderful friends, Mrs. Audrey Winthers (daughter of Dr. A.H.  Grimmer, who had entrusted me with her father's original manuscripts-a work that will appear soon as The Collected Works of Dr. A.H.  Grimmer) and Joseph L. Kaplowe, M.D. , of New Haven, Connecticut, also a homeopathic doctor.
 During my years as a medical student, I had many occasions to speak of the problem of Kent's repertory with Mme. Schmidt. Her gracious help and encouragement in my days as a medical student were truly instrumental in my success at completing my M.D.
 In 1978, Mme. Schmidt wrote a letter to Dr. Mittal and gave it to me to present to him when I went for a three week vacation to India. Mme. Schmidt told me that it was Dr. Eugene Alonzo Austin, a beloved student of Kent, who had passed on the Treasure to Dr. Schmidt in 1939, when the latter physician had traveled to the U.S.  to learn homeopathy with him. However, Kent's corrections, which Dr. Austin had earnestly urged be incorporated into the repertory, were never incorporated into the post-war editions (the fifth and sixth American editions).
 Finding Dr. Mittal in India was difficult; he rarely stayed in one place. After zigzagging from Delhi to Lucknow to Delhi to Amritsar, I finally located him and presented him with the letter from Mme. Schmidt. This opened the doors of my search.
 Dr. Mittal had cut up the Treasure into bits and pieces, some of which he carried on his person and some of which were hidden in a village.
 I spent one whole evening talking with Dr. Mittal. He told me that indeed he had taken the Treasure. It was agreed that every effort would be made by Dr. Mittal and myself to have Kent's corrections incorporated into the repertory. However, I did not personally see either the Treasure or Dr. Mittal's repertory (MKR). Dr. Mittal informed me that he had been pursued by Dr. Pierre Schmidt and Dr. Diwan Harish Chand, who had called upon the services of Interpol to retrieve the Treasure. He said that he had been constantly harassed and threatened and was fleeing from these people. However, the Treasure was never found. In fact, Dr. Mittal had cut up the Treasure into bits and pieces, some of which he carried on his person and some of which were hidden in a village. Dr. Mittal informed me that his copy, as well as the rest of the bits and pieces of the Treasure, were kept in another town, of which he would tell me on another occasion when I returned.
 During this visit to India, I also met with Dr. Diwan Harish Chand at his home in Delhi. I saw a copy of the Indian edition belonging to Dr. Pierre Schmidt that was mentioned in the introduction, and also several hundred bits and some pages of the Treasure.
The return
 After the visit in February 1978, there was sporadic correspondence between Dr. Mittal and myself. In 1980, I had occasion to return to India for vacation, and again, after considerable effort, I was able to locate him. Together we traveled to the small village of Rampur, where he told me he had hidden his copy of the repertory together with the remains of the Treasure. I endured the discomforts of a slow, long train journey. At Rampur, the head of the family and Dr. Mittal conferred by themselves and then told me that I would have to return another time. The books were hidden in a small wood hut in the fields and the 14-mile trip by motorcycle was not possible at this time. In vain, I explained that I had limited time and that I had come all the way from the United States. After much persuasion they asked me to return in seven days. It was with great discouragement that I returned to my home in Bombay.
 Despite this setback, I vowed to try once more before returning to America. I left Bombay and met Dr. Mittal in Delhi. We again journeyed to Rampur. This time Dr. Mittal asked the man to produce his books and, after a lot of argument, a large bundle wrapped in a large dirty cloth was produced and its contents dumped out onto the ground. Among them was Dr. Mittal's copy of the repertory, another Indian edition of the repertory, a copy of the first edition of Kent's Repertory published in 1899, and two volumes of lectures on Materia Medica given by Kent and typed by his students. These Dr. Mittal bade me take back with me to the U.S.  In addition, he entrusted me with thousands of pieces of the Treasure that had been cut up.
 With this, I departed for Delhi and from there, back to the United States. At the stopover in Frankfurt I phoned Mme. Schmidt and with joy told her of the recovered treasures:
 1) The MKR;
 2) Several thousand pieces of the Treasure;
 3) A copy of the first American edition of Kent's Repertory;
 4) A two-volume set of lecture notes on Materia Medica. These lectures were given by James Tyler Kent in 1897. They contain remedies not found in Lectures on Materia Medica and also show different aspects of the classical remedies. The volumes belonged to Mary Florence Taft and were inscribed as a present to Betty Prescott Dolbease and Louis Prescott Dolbease. These lectures, together with lectures given by Kent at the Dunham Medical College in 1902, will be published as a book entitled Unpublished Materia Medica of Kent, to appear in 1999;
 5) A typed paper written by Dr. Mittal entitled, "The Importance of Kent's Repertory in the Clinic and Practice," which was delivered at the International Congress for Homeopathic Medicine (LIGA),
 Dusseldorf, Germany, September 1962. I have expanded, edited, and converted this paper into a book, Guide to Kent's Repertory.
Examination
 Since 1980, I have reviewed the material entrusted to me by Dr. Mittal. There are several thousand cut-up pieces of the Treasure in Kent's own handwriting. I have spent several hundred hours identifying hundreds of these to see where they fit in the third and later American editions of the Repertory. I also compared these with the MKR. I have found that the MKR has the exact corrections of these several hundred bits.
 There are also 44 almost complete pages of the Treasure (22 double-sided sheets), easily identifiable as being from the chapter on Extremities. One easily recognizes the handwriting of Dr. Kent and it is clear that it is quite different from the handwriting on the facsimile page appearing in the 1980 Indian Edition. This latter handwriting seems to be that of Dr. Mittal. The agreement of the 44 pages as well as the bits of the Treasure with the MKR safely leads us to the conclusion that the MKR (Dr. K.C.  Mittal's copy of the Repertory) is a true and correct version of the Treasure (Dr. Kent's personal copy of the Second Revised Edition).

An interview with Jeremy Sherr, FSHom

Becoming a homoeopath is a process of personal potentisation. We begin as mother tinctures and slowly raise our consciousness by succussion and dilution. Succussion is akin to the hard grind of study. After a period of being knocked about comes a phase of dilution, of realisation, as we let ourselves go and our consciousness expands.
 AH: You have become known for your many provings. Do you feel that these are your main contribution to Homeopathy?
 JS: The provings are a very important part of my work, but I would not say that they are the main thing. My main efforts have been in post-graduate education.
 AH: What are the guiding principles of your post-graduate education?
 JS: As you know homoeopathy is a life long study. When a student finishes school, this is just the beginning of the journey. The schools put a lot of time into teaching basic principles and materia medica, but there is much
more to be learnt. We can go deeper into every aspect of homoeopathy-philosophy, materia medica, cases. Homoeopathic learning is not linear, it is more like a spiral, we come back to the same paragraphs and remedies again and again, each time from a higher perspective. Becoming a homoeopath is a process of personal potentisation. We begin as mother tinctures and slowly raise our consciousness by succussion and dilution. Succussion is akin to the hard grind of study. After a period of being knocked about comes a phase of dilution, of realisation, as we let ourselves go and our consciousness expands. Too much dry study becomes boring and mechanical, while too much dilution leads to theorising and speculation. Homoeopathic education should consist of a fine balance of both these processes. As we become dynamised by succussion and dilution, our perspective changes. With each rising potency we perceive finer aspects of cases and remedies, we see things in a simpler and more profound way.
 This process is a bit like the process of cure during homoeopathic treatment. Similars and provings, like succussion, provide a learning experience, whereas the simillimum provides an expansion of consciousness akin to dilution. After a good remedy the patient might have the same problems as before, but he sees them from a different point of view, they become smaller and less significant.
 For this reason it is important to have periods of continuous education with one teacher, so that the student can be potentised to a higher degree. It is a bit like the old system of learning by apprenticeship. This is especially important in clinical work. It is of little benefit to see a case taken with no follow up, or with one follow up. The true nature of treating chronic disease, of the second prescription and case management, can only be demonstrated in long-term case work, a minimum of three years.
 Once the students have mastered a particular approach, they can adapt it to who they are, to their own individual style. Then it is beneficial to have a period of integration and rest before learning another approach.
 I put a lot of emphasis on philosophy, but I believe that philosophy should have practical application. I like to say that we should have our head in the clouds with our feet firmly on the ground, and hopefully, keep the two connected.
 AH: How do the provings fit in?
 JS: The reason I do so many provings is that they are an essential part of homoeopathic education. I would go so far as to say that a homeopath who has not experienced a collective proving has not yet fully become a homeopath. It is a right of passage into our profession, it completes the circle. Every class I teach is asked to undertake a proving, and until today every class has agreed. After the proving the students are always amazed at the difference in their homeopathic understanding. There is an enormous leap of perception and ability. As a direct result of the proving, materia medica, philosophy, repertory and technique become clearer and more precise. An added bonus is that the class becomes a much tighter unit, which is important for the future of homoeopathy as well as for the fun factor.
 Our sensitivity as provers is not a matter of how loud the symptoms shout, it is a matter of how well we listen to whispers.
 AH: How many provings have you done?
 JS: Hmmm not sure- about twenty. Ten have been published: Androctonus, Hydrogen, Chocolate, Adamas, Eagle, Brassica, Germanium, Neon and Iridium (proved by the Darlington Collective). I have recently published the proving of Plutonium nitricum, which includes a toxicological materia medica and repertory of radioactive substances. I have quite a few other provings in various stages of production. The noble gases are nearly ready to go- Helium, a new Neon, Argon and Krypton. Salmon is more or less finished, as are Yew tree and Olive. Next in line are Gallium, Polaris Americium and Jade. Lots and lots of work, but I have many helpers. Without them this work would be impossible, and I would like to thank them all.
 AH: What needs to go in to a proving to make it complete?
 JS: The proving itself is only the initial and easy stage, the pregnancy. The important factors at that stage are organisation, intention and awareness. It is important to use provers and supervisors who have spent some time together. Close supervision is essential, as are group meetings. Otherwise, provers tend to miss an incredible amount of symptoms. Proving symptoms are, and should be, very delicate and fine sensations. Provers often mistake symptoms for their normal sensations, but once they are supervised they realise that these are highly unusual events for them. Our sensitivity as provers is not a matter of how loud the symptoms shout, it is a matter of how well we listen to whispers. Most homoeopaths, over the course of their homoeopathic treatment, have done many provings of their 'constitutional remedies', but they attribute these proving symptoms to life events, bad luck, aggravations or 'everything coming out'.
 Most provings never make it to the next stage, they get lost in the bottom of someone's hard disk. It is after the proving that the real work begins, and it can take years. On my Web site I have a database of current provings (www. dynamis. edu). There are nearly 900 now, but I think only about 5% have been published. People aren't prepared for the amount of work needed to complete a proving. After the proving comes the extraction, sifting the valid symptoms from the invalid symptoms, uniting them into one person format, arranging and editing. Most of my provings go through 40-50 edits. It would be a lot easier to publish the provings as Prover 1 day 11, day 21, day 31 etc, but really they should be united to 'as if one person' in order to reflect the totality.
 The symptoms are then arranged in hierarchical order, i.e.  pain upper extremity, pain shoulder, pain arm, elbow, wrist, hand, etc, each with modalities in alphabetical order and following chronological development. Then come the various types of pain-burning, cutting, lancinating etc, each with its sublocalities, modalities and chronology. It's very tedious, especially with sections like extremities and head. After that the Generals must be extracted from the particulars- times, modalities, pain types. For instance, if there are sharp pain in the abdomen head and elbow, we can enter sharp pain as a general.
 After this everything must be arranged in themes. This is where dreams are most difficult as they contain many themes and can be interpreted in a variety of ways. The next stage is to repertorise the proving, which is a very lengthy and delicate process. In the early provings I tended to repertorise every little symptom, but I found that I had flooded the repertory with Hydrogen. This has happened with other people's new provings too-often the first proving, where the homoeopath is over zealous and keen to represent every minor nuance. But we need to maintain a balance with the rest of the repertory. I became a bit more careful, so that Germanium is probably under repertorised.
 The next stage is the layout and publication. So it is no wonder that many provings don't see the light of day. The problem is that those people that the proving gets stuck with can tend to become ill. I have seen it many times. Once the force of a substance is unleashed by the proving, it doesn't like to be blocked. The remedy must be used.
 In the near future I hope to publish whole provings on the web, both my own and from others, so as to simplify the publication process.
 AH: What are the most common pitfalls in provings?
 JS: One problem is the desire to fit the proving into a central theme to match the substance. Another is finding the fine balance between including nothing and including everything. Too much conventional science will kill a proving. For instance, some homoeopaths feel that for a symptom to be valid, it should appear in at least three provers. What this achieves is a flat proving with only common symptoms and no peculiars, no character. The materia medica and repertory are composed mostly of symptoms experienced by single provers, for instance the haughtiness of Platina, the isolation of Camphora, the divine vengeance of Kali-brom. By definition peculiar symptoms are experienced by single provers. An interesting side effect is that the more peculiar a symptom, the less points it will have in the repertory, so that we cannot infer that a bold type symptom is always more important than a low type symptom.
 By definition peculiar symptoms are experienced by single provers. An interesting side effect is that the more peculiar a symptom, the less points it will have in the repertory, so that we cannot infer that a bold type symptom is always more important than a low type symptom.
 On the other hand we should be careful not to include incidental occurrences that happen during the proving and do not really belong to it. It is often difficult to tell what is proving and what is not, especially as a proving cannot produce a symptom that is not potentially part of the prover. It is a very fine balance. In the end it is safer to include a controversial symptom so that it has a chance to be confirmed or denied clinically. Time and again I have been amazed that symptoms which I was very skeptical about were later confirmed as important parts of the proving. For instance, the desire to live in the country of Chocolate seemed to me to be an incidental and unrelated symptom, but it has proved to be an essential part of the remedy. With every proving I do, I trust the symptoms more. Homeopaths who participate in provings are not out to cheat or invent symptoms, they are generally trustworthy. The process works.
 Another issue is the amount of doses. It seems that the less a prover takes, the more powerful the proving will be. Retaking the remedy often weakens the proving, as Hahnemann himself observed.
 AH: What about the placebo provers?
 JS: All those who have undertaken provings have found that placebo provers get symptoms that are highly related to the proving. This is because a proving is an artificial epidemic. Once the infecting dynamic force takes hold of the group, it will effect everyone who is involved. This is because of the proximity principal. It is similar to a bottle of Arnica that has one tablet left inside. If we fill it with sac lac all the tablets will become Arnica. A strong dynamic force will affect a group of people who are connected in some way, either by physical proximity, or by spiritual proximity, or any other connection. This is why provings are much more powerful in a group that is united in some way. When a class has studied together for a while, they begin to develop a communal vital force. When you infect this class with a proving, it is as if you have connected it to a powerful amplifier. This is the reason that provings with random groups of unconnected provers are less impressive. Once the proving force is unleashed, anyone in the group circle can get infected. Of course, this depends on susceptibility, but the force is very strong. An epidemic of cholera will affect most people, regardless of individual susceptibility. In fact, it has been a recurring observation that placebo provers or non-participating members of the group can develop the most powerful symptoms. I have often observed this in people who have a strong fear of taking the remedy and avoid it somehow, they seem to get the strongest effect, often in a curative manner. It seems that the more you try to block the force, the more it will get you. Nevertheless, I do not include the symptoms resulting from the placebo experience among the proving symptoms of the remedy as a proving is a pure scientific document. These placebo symptoms may be included in an anecdotal section for those who are interested.
 Provers will sometimes experience the symptoms via friends or family, while nothing seems to happen to them personally. I remember one instance during the Salmon proving, which was, of course, double blind. A few days into the proving, this guy's girlfriend takes a strong aversion to him and smears the whole house with baked salmon. It was everywhere- in the bed, bath, remedies, and VCR. She totally "salmoned" him out, but he himself experienced no personal symptoms, apart from fishy smells.
 AH: Can provings be dangerous?
 JS: Of course they can, people do suffer. But generally most provers benefit. After every proving I have asked each member of the group how they felt they were affected. The statistics seem to be that about 80% feel better or that they have learnt something. 5-10% feel worse, and 10% feel nothing. But we cannot take a proving lightly. They often go on for months and sometimes years. The most important factor is to take the case of each prover and sift out those with a low dynamic factor, those who can't 'bounce back' from life's events, be they physical or emotional. If they tend to get stuck on issues for a long time and in a bad way, they shouldn't prove.
 AH: Some homoeopaths feel that provings are not valid.
 JS: Strange, isn't it. The whole concept of homoeopathy is based on provings. Without them it does not exist. We use our classic remedies every day, and all that data comes from provings. So I find it difficult to understand how any homoeopath can invalidate them. It is possible that they feel that the proving protocol isn't tight enough, or doesn't fit their idea of a protocol. If that is the case, they should produce provings and cases according to their methodology to validate their opinion.
 Any examination will show that most new provings have a much, much, tighter methodology than the old ones. Many of the old provings, especially the later ones, were extremely loose, with no double blind, no placebo, no sifting and editing of symptoms, no supervision and poor detail on the mentals. Many of them were casual affairs. Kent said that since Hahnemann you could not count twenty-five decent provings, yet these homeopaths don't hesitate to use them. There is no comparison of quality, yet they will use the old and shun the new. So it is a prejudice, a fear of change and renewal. But without new provings homoeopathy will stagnate. Some homoeopaths feel that we have enough remedies already, but if our patient needs a newly proved remedy this is no excuse.
 The best proof of provings is in the pudding, and by that I mean cured cases. I have received clinical confirmations of my provings from hundreds of homoeopaths with thousands of cases from all over the world. Successful cases that had not been cured with other remedies. What else could I wish for-it is a wonderful feeling and the ultimate validation of the homoeopathic process. How and why anyone would deny these successes is beyond me. Homeopaths are putting a lot of hard work into these provings, and getting great results. Nuala Eising, Rajan Sankaran, Nancy Herrick, Lou Klein, Bernd Schuster, Anne Schadde, Misha Norland, Steve Olsen, Jurgen Becker and many others. Interesting that it is often those who have done no provings that protest the most. Yet it is true that we should be very careful when incorporating new data. It is important to keep a high standard and to confirm the process clinically.
 AH: Which of your remedies seem to be used most?
 JS: The more they are published, taught and repertorised, the more useful they are. People tell me of many wonderful cases of Androctonus (Scorpion) and Hydrogen. Next in line are Chocolate, Diamond, Salmon and Plutonium. But the most amazing of all has been Germanium, which I would not do without. Interesting, because it was a difficult experience.
 AH: Why does Germanium seem important?
 JS: Probably because it is a remedy that produces extreme lack of importance, which is very important. It fills a huge gap in the materia medica. One of the main ideas is a lack of self-esteem and feelings of failure, which are so common today. There may be a lot of suppressed anger and suppressed emotions, they just can't come out, yet all external influences seem to flow inwards. This is the principle of a semi-conductor. There may be anxiety about the opinion of others, easy offence, estrangement and alienation. Take a common case of dyslexia for instance. Though the kid is probably very bright, he feels stupid and a failure, worries about everybody's opinion of how inadequate he is, which results in a lot of suppressed emotions. Of course, this is only one example, and it should not be used routinely. But the picture is a very common one.
 AH: Many people have difficulty reading provings.
 JS: I can understand that, but studying provings is by far the best way to know materia medica, because you get the exact unabbreviated symptoms. It is often that word or expression in a proving that will lead one to the remedy. It is much easier if they are arranged in convenient themes, or when the master prover explains it, because they understand the concept. This is why I produced the videos of Androctonus, Diamond and Germanium, so that people without access to my seminars would get to use the remedies.
 AH: What about learning new remedies from cases and families?
 JS: This is interesting and useful, but provings are much more precise. One proving is like twenty cases, each from a different point of view. In a proving there is no doubt about the prescription. The problem in forming remedy pictures from cases rather than provings is that the remedies the pictures are based on may often be similars and not simillimums. We cannot be sure that the whole case relates to the remedy. Both methods are useful, but the best is a proving followed by cases.
 AH: What is the relationship of provings to epidemics?
 JS: They are essentially the same things, one artificial, one natural. This is why I teach epidemics at the same time as I do a proving. Epidemics are a conflict between the collective and the individual. The force of a collective disease is usually much greater than individual susceptibility, so that most people will be affected. For example, you are going about your life peacefully, and your only concern is your unfinished PhD. Suddenly, there is a change of regime. The fascist right wing party comes to power and institutes martial law. This is going to affect your life, because the collective has more power. Some it will affect greatly, some less, but it will touch everyone's lives. You will probably forget all about your PhD while you spend time cleaning guns and barricading your house.
 This is also the connection between stronger dissimilar disease and epidemics. A stronger dissimilar disease is usually an epidemic, which knocks the individual over, suspending his private life, and disease until it blows over. It looks like an unfortunate and unrelated random event, but we all belong to some collective and are affected by it (unless we are a noble gas!).
 AH: What is the importance of understanding epidemics?
 JS: The subject of epidemics is essential. Until now homoeopaths have been dealing with the individual, we had to master that part of the craft. But now we need to move to a higher level, to the level of the community. Once viewed from the collective point of view, individual prescriptions reach deeper and further. This can be seen clearly in family dynamics, for example in the case of a difficult child. True cure can only be achieved if the child is viewed through the collective of the family, bringing the parents' issues into account, and possibly treating the parents too.
 The subject of epidemics is essential. Until now homoeopaths have been dealing with the individual, we had to master that part of the craft. But now we need to move to a higher level, to the level of the community. Once viewed from the collective point of view, individual prescriptions reach deeper and further.
 The knowledge and technique of treating epidemics are about to become essential to the homoeopath, because epidemics as we once knew them are about to return. The big infectious diseases have been suppressed by allopathy, and have gone into hiding for decades, but they cannot be suspended forcefully for an indefinite period of time. When they resurface, they will, unfortunately, be more violent and more difficult to suppress
 The real doctrine of treating the individual via the collective was pioneered by Hahnemann in his system of treating epidemics. His discovery is totally radical and was a stroke of pure genius. No other system of medicine, as far as I know, has such a sophisticated method of treating epidemics.
 AH: What is so special about this system?
 JS: The amazing thing about Hahnemann's method is that it brings both into account, the individual and the collective, but in the right sequence. Hahnemann understood that when a disease is collective, be it epidemic, endemic or sporadic, it becomes a whole entity, a giant organism. It is a bit like prescribing for a hive of bees. It would be ridiculous to prescribe for each bee separately, we need to understand the nature of the hive first. But we cannot give all the bees the same remedy, because there are workers, soldiers, a queen etc, and they are all essentially different. Trying to prescribe for each bee separately would be ignoring the collective, the larger totality. Prescribing for the collective only would be ignoring the individual, which is not in accordance with homoeopathic thinking.
 There are basically two ways to treat an epidemic. One is in serial and one is in parallel. The serial system is to treat each patient as they come along, and to hope to get closer and closer to an accurate prescription. The chances of finding the right remedies are much reduced. In a difficult epidemic there will not be much success with this method, because each patient is only a small part of the totality. It is difficult to perceive the whole, just as if we were trying to treat a patient by prescribing for his fingernails one at a time.
 The second system, prescribing in parallel, is to take the case of many patients, and then combine all the generals and particulars until they become more and more defined. For instance, one patient has a sore throat, the next has a sore throat at night, the next has cutting pain in the throat, the next has cutting pains in the throat at 3 AM, the next has throat pain at 3 AM. It becomes clear that cutting pain in the throat at 3AM is the common denominator. This is similar to seeing one patient over many consultations and coming to know the precise nature of their disease. Once enough symptoms are collected we can find the few remedies that make up the genus epidemicus.
 We may then think that it would be right to give a combination of these remedies to all the persons suffering from the epidemic, but this would be crude and imprecise. We now go back to the individual and find out which of the remedies suit them according to the peculiar symptoms. Thus the individual prescription is made via the collective eye. If we were to prescribe a remedy that is not part of the genus epidemicus, it would help the individual to a certain extent, but suppress the epidemic, just as if we prescribed for a person's knee without taking the whole case. The knee may get better but the patient would be suppressed.
 The knowledge and technique of treating epidemics are about to become essential to the homoeopath, because epidemics as we once knew them are about to return. The big infectious diseases have been suppressed by allopathy, and have gone into hiding for decades, but they cannot be suspended forcefully for an indefinite period of time. When they resurface, they will, unfortunately, be more violent and more difficult to suppress. A homoeopath who will attempt to treat these epidemics in series, i.e.  one at a time, will have limited success at best. Imagine trying to take the cases of a million people, one by one. These teachings about epidemic theory should become a part of every curriculum, in a practical as well as a theoretical way.
 There are quite a few ramifications to the homoeopathic doctrine of treating epidemics, most significant of which is the nature of miasms. I will not discuss miasms here, as this knowledge is useless until a homeopath has worked with quite a few epidemics and practised for quite a number of years. Suffice to say at this point that studying miasms without reference to Chronic Diseases is like seeing the movie "Prince of Egypt" and imagining that you know the Bible.
 Another ramification is in the treatment of individual pathology. If we prescribe only for the psychological or general picture, it is akin to finding the genus epidemicus and not proceeding to individualise. In treating a single case we should often follow the sequence of treating epidemics, i.e. , collecting the particulars (including mentals), forming a totality, choosing a group of remedies, returning to the main characteristic and selecting a particular remedy from the group that covers the totality. This keeps ones feet on the ground without losing the overview.
 Another result of the epidemic concept is political and commercial. From the political point of view we can devise a system of government that respects the individual while taking the collective into account. This system would not be an anarchy nor a democracy, which is a dictatorship of the majority, but a combination of the two.
 Commercially, it is time for homeopaths to move into corporate prescribing. This may be done in various forms. One could take the case of a company as a whole, and prescribe for management and interested individuals from the viewpoint of the totality. One could take on a company as a wholesale project, for instance, treating any interested workers for one day each week. It would be easy to prove that homoeopathy can reduce work loss, increase satisfaction and productivity, promote creative harmony. Once we have the statistics from one company, it would be easy to convince others. This would take homoeopathy to a higher lever of social involvement and provide occupation for more homoeopaths, who could consequently treat more people. Naturally, one would hesitate to treat the Pentagon, as this demands a miasmatic approach. But treating the Apple computer company could be fun!
 Finally, we must develop the homoeopathic answer to epidemics, posidemics. This means working collectively in research. There are many collective diseases that will not be solved correctly unless we unite forces by collecting large numbers of cases from many practitioners and searching for the common denominators and remedies. Epidemics like AIDS and anorexia need a collective approach.
 AH: Prescribing by kingdoms has gained much popularity lately. What are your views on the kingdoms?
 JS: Understanding kingdoms is very useful in prescribing, but it is important not to use this doctrine too simplistically. We cannot say that what looks like an eagle is always an eagle. Helium also looks like an eagle; Hyoscyamus looks like a wolf, Cimicifuga like a caged rat. Brassica produces the flat-billed platypus. Marble looks like a cat. Isopathy, or what I call WYSIWYG homoeopathy [What You See Is What You Get-ed.], is a cruder form of similarity. The world of analogies, or simple substance, is not linear.
 AH: What is your future vision for homoeopathy?
 JS: My dream is that we will have full time, six-year homoeopathic medical schools, which teach true medicine from a homeopathic and holistic point of view, using the best teachers available. The colleges we have today are great beginnings, but they are insufficient. In the fourth and fifth years, students would treat in hospitals, and would visit third world countries for practical experience. In the sixth year one could teach miasms. All we need is collective goodwill and sponsors and this will become a reality. Then we can make a real difference to the world.
 AH: Finally, what other projects are you working on?
 JS: I've nearly finished two books. One on the nature of the syphilitic miasm, which is a collection of essays on syphilitic remedies. I wrote it in a somewhat different mode, experimenting with various literary styles, so I call it 'The Joys of Syphilis'. The second is on the homoeopathic classification of disease, a philosophy book. Of course, The Dynamis School is working towards publishing Dynamic Provings, Volumes 2 and 3 in late 2000.

Gangrene of the lung and homeopathy

Gangrene of the lung
 Lachesis mutus
 Case
 Iwas recently sent for in haste to come out in the country and see a woman with "lung fever." Obeying this hurried summons at 10:00 PM, I found my patient a little old woman, old and withered even for her seventy years; a face full of restless distrust and anxiety, and every movement characterized by sharp, short jerks. The history of the case was as follows: Has not been well for the last two years, a general failing in health. In November last she contracted a severe cold, and has coughed more or less ever since, expectorating "yellowish matter." Some two or three days previous to my visit she had taken a fresh cold due to sudden chilling after being overheated. Pain in the left chest developed which finally drove her to bed. A physician was summoned, and then another; the latter prescribed, but said it was useless to go on with the case as the woman could not get well at her age.

 It was then I was called and found my patient presenting the following picture: Lying in bed flat on the back, unable to lie on the left side; must lie on the back or right side, but any movement caused agonizing pain in left chest, causing her to scream aloud. Breathing quick and shallow; flapping of wings of nose. Cough causing distressing pain in left chest, between the third and fourth ribs -during cough she grasped that portion of the chest. Expectoration of mouthfuls of thick, yellow pus: in quantity, some three of four ounces in twenty-four hours. Sleepless, she had opiates. "Fever" every afternoon from 3-4pm, lasting until late in evening: throws all covers off and wants windows open. Intense restlessness during fever, throwing arms and legs about. Thirst "awful" -unquenchable.
 Upon making a physical examination, which was very difficult to make, as the patient strongly objected, an area of dullness was found over the site of acute pain. viz., between the third and fourth ribs on the left side and a few inches from the sternum. Percussion seemed very painful, and so a detailed examination was impossible. Prescribing upon this picture, I gave Lycopodium cm, one dose. The next morning she said she was better; had slept better; pain was decidedly less, cough and expectoration about the same. That afternoon the fever came at usual time, accompanied by restlessness, etc. and the following morning she complained of more pain again. Lycopodium cm was repeated. Day after day the case went on; sometime a little better and yet with a gradual decline in strength and increase of symptoms. The fever came faithfully each day, always sometime the late afternoon, 3-5pm.
 The restlessness grew worse, until it was something dreadful to behold; she would fling an arm here, then the other somewhere else, and off would go a leg in one direction and the other away off some other place: quick, sharp, darting movements, quick as a flash. The fever was of a continued type, its time of aggravation in afternoon and the pulse corresponded. She grew distressingly irritable, occasionally very angry: discarded me many times over; hated her nurse, distrusted her: distrusted me; refused absolutely to tell her symptoms when I questioned her; insisted on being kept informed as to her husband's doings; though really too weak to move her head from the pillow, if she heard a door open downstairs she would make an effort to raise herself up and strain every nerve to listen to what was going on. Kept close watch over things in the room: if a pillow was missing: "Where's my feather pillow: what have you done with it?" "How many table napkins have you got down stairs? Go fetch them and let me see," and so on, so suspicious and distrustful. All this time the cough kept on, expectoration profuse, of yellowish pus, which began to grow greenish in hue and to have a horribly offensive odor; was stringy and difficult to get rid of; the mouth became literally covered with aphthous patches: the tongue was glazed and parched; dry and shiny in the highest degree. She complained of a dreadful taste and awful soreness in the mouth. Sleeplessness worse before midnight. Breathing rapid. Refused absolutely to allow me to look at her chest, as she claimed that I "punched" her and made her much worse.
 During these three weeks I prescribed remedies as the case seemed to me to indicate them; Arsenicum, Phosphorus, and Pyrogen, but evidently my perception was at fault. Nothing touched her, until after a thorough re-study of the case, at a time when death seemed almost inevitable, Lachesis opened up before me, and I gave it in the cm. potency, one dose. It covered the suspicious disposition, the character of the restlessness, the darting, rapid movements, intense heat with intolerance of clothing, and demand for fresh air, the glazed tongue and aphthous mouth, and last, but not least, the suppurative process in the left chest with gangrenous character and peculiar characteristic expectoration; green and horribly offensive, actually putrid.
 I gave her the Lachesis and then came the tug of war. Away she went down into the very gate of death, but not to pass through, thanks be to our homoeopathy. Twelve hours after the administration of the remedy I was called early in the morning with the word that my patient was dying. I hastened to the house and found her supported in bed by her weeping husband and two somewhat terrified nurses. A violent coughing spell had aroused her, and with the gagging cough she was bringing up mouthfuls of the vilest stuff, green, putrid smelling pus; the stench was truly horrible, permeating the whole room. After this attack subsided she lay back in an exhausted faint. As consciousness returned she was given some nourishment, after which she went quietly off to sleep, and rested more peacefully than for days. Twelve hours later came just such another time when more of this stuff was ejected, and from that time on the patient made a rapid and uninterrupted recovery. In two weeks time she was sitting up in her room, sewing, could eat and sleep well and enjoy life generally. No cough, occasional expectoration of a whitish mucus.
 During the time of the recovery, some two weeks, the parotid glands became very much swollen, presenting an appearance of mumps; first the right side and then the left; as the left side commenced to swell the right-sided swelling commenced to decrease. As quickly as these glands showed signs of swelling the aphthous patches in the mouth began to clear up, the tongue grew moist and soft and the dreadful, unquenchable thirst became a horror of the past.
 At thirteen weeks since first seeing her, this patient was attending to all her household duties: caring for her garden, visiting her neighbors, etc., and proving herself as meddlesome an old lady as ever.
 Since the above case was reported, I have seen many evidences of the sound cure of this patient. It is a daily occurrence for her to walk two or three miles, and this oftentimes in inclement weather.
 -Dr. S. Mary Ives, Middletown CT,
 October 28, 1901
 Mary Ives was a pupil of Kent in Philadelphia in 1895. In 1946 she was still living and practicing in Middletown.

Interveiw with Martin Miles, FSHom (UK)

Martin Miles is the author of "Homoeopathy and human Evolution" and the soon-to-be-published "Homoeopathy, the Path of the Light"
 This interview with Martin Miles took place in Galway, Ireland, July 5, 1977, after his lecture at the Conference of Homoeopathy. I was very impressed by some of his insights and felt them worthy of a larger audience.
 -R.J.
 AH: So, Martin, the Society of Homeopaths began in your house; when?
 Miles: This began in my flat in 1976, 1977. A small group of us, about half a dozen at the time; we had a teacher, we were all based in South London, and when he passed it was obvious we had to do something with the future of Homeopathy; the torch had been passed in a sense. We had just formed the European Union and there were rumblings of legislation to threaten the existence of Homeopathy, which there always had been domestically, but domestically it had always survived and politicians had been sensible enough to
maintain integrity, but when European legislation began to come in it could become very different. So what we wanted to do was revive Homeopathy and spread it. We got together with the idea of starting a society which is what we did, going through various formal and political structures. We thought of making it into a charity and that was no good, so it's kind of a trust that is owned by the board who run it. That's roughly the kind of structure it has now. So we formed it. I was the first chairman and we did different things around various aspects and after that myself and Robert Davidson, one of the other members, started the first College of Homeopathy, the very first. There were no other colleges, no educational platform at all for Homeopathy. It existed as a remnant.
 AH: Did you bring people in? Vithoulkas?
 Miles: No. Vithoulkas was probably still an engineer. This was years before Vithoulkas began teaching. So we started the first college, and with that we had an influx of students.
 AH: Like the roads...
 Miles: Yes, the more roads you build the more traffic you get. So, we had an influx of students, they went through three years of education and at the end of that we naturally wanted to maintain some form of contact, so they joined the society, and what we did as administrators was to offload the administration on to them and they then became the administrators of the Society, and so on and so on.
 And the various colleges grew up like mushrooms because people who came out of our college wanted to teach and start colleges of their own. They came from all parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and they went back and began teaching and practicing, and getting good results. You know, here's a very beautiful, dynamic system of medicine that worked. It was all very exciting, we wanted to create a renaissance and it had arrived, and the whole thing really mushroomed from there. It's as if a whole generation of people were born for it, and there were those who sparked it off, which was our small group and it went from there.
 We were able to do this in England because of Common Law, which over many centuries, has given us an enormous amount of freedom. So, anyway, we have this thing called Common Law; whatever you want to do, you can do it, provided there isn't a statute that says you can't. Which meant then, that people could always practice Homeopathy, or herbalism or acupuncture, whereas in the rest of Europe it was the opposite. They had a thing called Napoleonic Law which means that whatever they want to do, they can't do it unless there's a statute that says you can. It's for that reason that so much of what we're engaged in is outlawed in other parts of Europe.
 AH: You are thought to be on the cutting edge in England because of your use of nosodes and meditative provings. When and how did you come to that idea and of working so closely with the nosodes?
 Miles: I've worked closely with nosodes for many years, always given a lot of nosodes. That's not in any way tied up with the idea of meditative provings. Meditative provings was an idea that was put to me and a group of others by a psychic about five or six years ago. The psychic works with us, and it was organized, I must say properly organized, with some of us who have been meditating and are used to meditative practices for many years. I grew up in a school of that kind of teaching since I was about 25, so it was no stranger to me.
 AH: Were you following an Indian teacher?
 Miles: No, it was nothing like that. It was a Western occult system that has existed for thousands of years.
 AH: Like the Golden Dawn?
 Miles: Yeah. It's the Druid Order. It's the same kind of thing, it's just another vehicle for it, it doesn't matter what you call it.
 AH: So when you mentioned Stonehenge in your lecture you were talking from experience.
 Miles: Yes, and it's so interesting. When you go to Stonehenge to perform a ritual, at first, when you start doing it, it's so difficult to understand. You struggle with it. Then over the years as you play this ritual, which is a piece of theatre, and as you act it out it evokes all sorts of things both in you and outside you and the whole thing begins to enfold you and you begin to understand the meaning of it, and the magnificence of what you're doing, and you realize that you are renewing a covenant with your creator. It's a very personal thing. Anyway, I have a long history of that sort of thing, so the suggestion of meditative provings was very exciting because I knew what meditation was, I knew what it could do, and I knew that if it was well organized and professionally done with the right people it would be successful. Which is exactly what it has proven to be.
 AH: How do you conduct it?
 Miles: We have the psychic who runs the group more or less. The group is about twelve of us sitting around in a circle. She sets the meditation and we take the remedy. The remedy has already been prepared by Helios .
 AH: So the substance has been pre-determined. Take me through it. Let's say Berlin Wall.
 Miles: When the Berlin Wall went down, a piece of it was brought back here, as many pieces were, there were lots of raiders taking bits of the wall, it occurred to one of the members of the group that it might make an interesting remedy. So he brought a bit of the wall to the psychic and as soon as the psychic saw it she recoiled in horror. She looked at it energetically and it was absolutely horrifying. We knew then that we had to make a remedy of it and we did.
 AH: So you all took a pellet?
 Miles: We all took a 30c of Berlin Wall and we sat down to meditate.
 AH: And what happened?
 Miles: The result is documented in "Prometheus," a Homeopathic journal we publish. It's a baseline remedy for the new age. It's like the wall and everything the wall stands for. A lot of the wall was made up of the rubble of Berlin after it was destroyed, and of course there's a long history before that of all the things that went on there; and then it became a wall and a lot of people were locked in, locked out and a lot died trying to escape to something that was freedom for them. So it became not just a German issue but something that divided the soul of a country. It marked the end and a beginning; the end of the holocaust and the beginning of a new age. It's a remedy that underlines that. So it's a remedy that is useful for people who consider themselves spiritual, moral and emotional refugees; for people who don't belong anywhere or who feel rootless or abused. Walled in, walled out, divided, schizophrenics, forsaken; people with all kinds of horrific baggage that can be described as the worst emotional traumas that we have in our new age. It's a good baseline remedy for that sort of thing.
 AH: So you would sit in a circle and these feelings would come up?
 Miles: No, it's not so much feeling, you get it through your head. You're given knowledge and ideas. Yes, it's true, you do get feelings, and a lot of the members of the group got different aspects of the remedy. One person may get something completely different from another.
 AH: Do physical symptoms come up? Do people feel tightness, itching?
 Miles: Yes, they do get that sort of thing but they also become aware that a particular remedy might be good for some pathology without actually feeling that pathology itself because it would be too extreme. But yes, we do get physical sensations.
 AH: How is it recorded?
 Miles: It's scribed, written down. The meditations are written down as they are delivered. We have two people in the group who write it down with pen and paper. We tried to use all kinds of devices, much like the one you're using now, to record, even sophisticated, expensive devices, and as soon as we got into the circle, they wouldn't work. So we have two members who, for their sins, have shorthand, and as people deliver their meditative reports, they scribe it. At the end, when we have a list of the reports, the shape, the information, the remedy is extracted from that.
 AH: How long do the symptoms last with the provers? Does it stop, is it a discrete event?
 Miles: It doesn't stop. There are lasting effects, but it's not the same as for people who are afflicted by a conventional proving. Some people have things that last for months after a conventional proving. We may be unwell or depressed in some way for one to three or four weeks at a maximum; or it could be for just that day and we just go lie down. After the meditation we have to be quite sure that we close down properly. You can't just get up and walk out. All your vehicles are in a very loose state and most people of course are not in their bodies, because when you meditate you go out of your body, as you should do; and we're getting quite good at this. So you have to do exercises to make sure that you come in properly and even when you do that, you go out into the everyday, often aggressive world, and it's very difficult to handle after that. So you have to ease yourself back. It's not a good idea to go out and negotiate a commercial lifestyle immediately after.
 AH: You mentioned, in your lecture, that there had been a change in remedies, that they don't seem to have the power or focus that they once did. You tied it into evolution. Can you talk about that?
 Miles: We stand at the brink of a new age and a new millennium and it's pregnant with meaning and possibility. There's so much going on, I certainly feel it where I live and others around me have felt the same enormous change in energies. You have to be involved in energy if you're involved in this kind of thing. Enormous changes in energies and their effects on people have taken place over the last few years, the last few months and from week to week. You can almost feel it from day to day. It's reflected in the kinds of things that go on in the world, in your own country and abroad; we see so many things happen to people and it's happening very rapidly. More so, the shape of life is changing so much, if you go back 20 years it's totally different at that time, and of course most of our remedies were in the 19th century when the habits, issues, requirements of people were totally different. There has been so much change in 100 years it's breathtaking to try to document it; yet we're using the same remedies that were vibrating then at a certain rate when the needs of the people now, the issues, are totally different.
 So, there's a schism there automatically, if you think about it, and this is repeated in the way the remedies work. Twenty-five years ago, when I started in Homeopathy, the remedies seemed to work well. I got spectacular results with single remedies and classical prescribing, like other people did, my colleagues, who started at the same time. Over the years this has eroded and gotten less and less, and the people who are coming to you now in your practice are different, they're different types of people, different issues, and you prescribe the remedies and they don't last as long. You can burn out a 10m in a few hours, whereas years and years ago a 10m would last for months or years, and there's lots of evidence and documentation that illustrates that. I don't find, these days, that a remedy will last much longer than 12 weeks at the most. The effect of it you may see last longer, but the remedy itself burns out quickly with the pace of life.
 AH: Do you think it has to do with vaccination?
 Miles: I think it has a lot to do with vaccination, we have more vaccination now than we ever have. It's extremely destructive and carcinogenic and I think it's responsible for a very large amount of criminal behavior we have in our society; especially when you consider the effect it has on the immune system and the thymus gland. We vaccinate children, destroy the thymus gland, push them out of their bodies, they become frantic, extremely upset, they no longer know who they are or what they're doing here. So their behavior becomes impossible. Not only that, but when the thymus gland is abused in that way, you get a lot of amorality. There's a lot of amorality and motiveless crime around and if you look at the chakra system and endocrinology you can see how invasive and destructive vaccination is on these areas of the body. We've had children die in our practice from vaccination. What happens is the children are vaccinated and die 24 - 40 hours later. The doctors say it has nothing to do with vaccination because of the time lapse and they don't document it as a statistic, and when the statistics come out, no recorded deaths from vaccination!
 AH: You said you've done provings on various substances that had effects on the thymus gland; would you elaborate?
 Miles: Berlin Wall is one of these. There's a lot of darkness of the past contained in the thymus gland. It's one of the mysterious areas of the human body, and it's the root of syphilitic karma. Syphilis has its root in the thymus gland and all the darker and unpleasant behavior that we have indulged in, in the past, is lodged there. We carry it with us from one life to the next, because it's an issue that we have to deal with at some time. It doesn't just disappear. So it's held in the thymus gland, and this comes out from time to time for various reasons. At the moment there's a lot of energy being pushed into the heart area and the thymus area. There's a necessity for the thymus to be cleared and treated properly for all this dark syphilitic karma to come out. And the thymus being the gateway to the heart, the heart will open and the psychic gateway to the heart, and you'll get all the natural love that people have to come out and the darkness will be gone. I've seen this working with people, working with the thymus gland, working on the heart deliberately, doing that. Everybody is blocked in this area. I've never seen a human being who, to some degree or another, isn't blocked in this area. Now is the time, evolutionarily speaking, that we need to clear this.
 Berlin Wall is a great remedy. You know there was an experiment in your country some years ago, where they investigated a number of executed criminals and every single one had persistent thymus glands. The gland is supposed to shrink at puberty but if it remains persistent-enlarged, active so to speak-all this dark syphilitic behavior comes out; amoral, criminal behavior comes out. Until recently they thought it atrophied completely, but it doesn't. They know that now, with the advent of AIDS, that t-cells are produced in the thymus gland. Now, back to the criminals.
 The thymus gland is a psychic reception center for the heart. It's the front door. If you want to get in to the heart center or out of the heart center, you want to express through the heart, you have to do it through the thymus gland to a great extent. It's all messed up, it's mucky, it's dark and it needs to be cleaned up. I get these people in my practice, they're very troubled. The typical sort of person who walks along anywhere these days.
 AH: Oak, there's the remedy Quercus.
 Miles: Yeah, Quercus is different, and it didn't have much of a proving. So we took a fresh cutting from an oak tree from a forest in Southern England and proved it with a full Hahnemanian proving as well as a meditative proving. We held several circles on this remedy. It's a major remedy. We took it and I must say, it turned us inside out. If you asked me now to document the symptomatology and experiences I went through, I couldn't. It was such a roller coaster. It was for most of the group, I think, a transformational experience. We were being used. We were being transformed or fitted, if you like, for the next stage. We were being worked on that way. We had to take this huge remedy, this mighty polychrest of the new age, Oak. We all sat around and said, "My goodness me, Oak, why hasn't that been done before." It's an obvious thing for people living in this country to do. It's been so important and such a magical thing for us. We took the remedy for quite a long time, a 30c every day for weeks and months. We took it that way because it's a slow moving remedy, and the way it moves, my God! We went through some of the most traumatic experiences to clear ourselves. We went with it.
 A lot of our lives were transformed, aspects of our lives fell apart. Myself, I went through enormous traumas. We all came out safely though, and were ready to get on with the next step.
 AH: You said Oak will create problems for those who smoke, and to get around that you recommend taking Rainbow.
 Miles: Now, I haven't actually done this myself, but a number of the group have.
 AH: Have you explored making remedies from other Sacred Druid trees?
 Miles: We haven't done them all. We've done Oak, Copper Beech, Holly, CrackWillow, Bay Leaf and we've got new information on Thuja. But there's a list of stuff, it's stacked up waiting for us to do it, there are so many wonderful trees we need to do. The realization of the need now is so much greater than the amount of organization we're able to put into it.
 AH: How frequently do you do the provings?
 Miles: We do it once a month. There are two groups, so every two weeks. We take a month off in the summer, we allow ourselves that, in August.
 AH: There have been conversations about provings, critical ones, where taking part in provings has been seen as dangerous for some of the participants who were not too well settled in themselves; marriages break up that seemed to be OK, that sort of thing. I wonder if when you do a meditative proving it has a more benign effect?
 Miles: We have not had the traumas in that way because it's properly choreographed from upstairs. We're not people who just sit around in a circle and imagine or think that we get receivings about remedies. We have enough psychic ability in that respect to be able to hold conversations with the people who make contact with us. So, it's done on a pretty knowing and conscious basis. It's not something that has so many question marks over it. I know it has for a lot of people. Their idea of meditation is, you know, people who may want to do the Maharishi trip for a while and then get tired of it. That kind of mass appeal system coming from the East is not what we are doing. Mind you, there are Eastern influences in the system, but it is a system that has been practiced in the West for a long time.
 AH: Which makes it a very good fit for Homeopathy.
 Miles: Yes. You see all these teachings that have been a part of the East for so many thousands of years, have also been a part of the West. The difference is in the East it has been open, it's been more overt, both in its teaching and its acceptance. In the West it's been mainly the property of the esoteric schools and in the Middle Ages, the Alchemists. In Europe people have always had to be careful about what they did and what they taught and what they practiced because history shows that Europe has a long history of tyrants, both in the political as well as the religious sphere. The whole truth, the whole esoteric truth of Christianity was soon ripped out of it in the first and second centuries by the Catholic priests who wanted to make it a power trip, and they did; they took all the truth out of it and fed the people rubbish, which is what we have today. So, in the West it's rather different, it's had to be conducted in a rather clandestine way. The last group of people who had a great deal of open esoteric knowledge would have been the witches; and you see what happened to them, burned at the stake by the Puritans. So, you have to be very careful.
 In recent history, the Golden Dawn, has become quite well known by default. Now you see, the Aquarian age is a time for all of us, when everybody has to learn this kind of stuff and use it for themselves.
 AH: Which is why there's such a proliferation of books.
 Miles: Proliferation of books, renaissance of Homeopathy, and all the teaching that is now coming to light is all to be used, it's there for a reason, and it's why Stonehenge has become a temple of contention; whereas years ago no body went there, almost. That marks a difference in consciousness, just that alone, an enormous difference.
 AH: To bring us back to Homeopathy, you had said that aggravations appear differently, can you talk about that, as well as Hering's law. Does it retain the same structure?
 Miles: Yes it does because when Spirit manifests, it manifests from the inside out, from above downwards. That law still holds good. I see that in the new remedies and it's a great guide, with one difference. With the old remedies, they would work on the mental and emotional first, and then you would start to see shifts in the physical body; that's what we've come to accept as the process. But a lot of these new remedies work in the opposite direction. You get shifts in the physical body first, then it goes into the emotional and then the mental. You want to be aware of that because when you start to get shifts in the physical body you think, oh, the remedy might be coming to an end and it's time for a new remedy, when it is actually the beginning. So they work rather differently in that respect. I haven't noticed huge aggravations, there have been some, but nothing that would be markedly different from the past, in fact I would say there have been less aggravations with these new remedies than with the old ones. In fact, there are some new remedies that don't produce any aggravations at all; Emerald is one of them.
 Another thing about Oak, it will always work, it will always do something. You know if you get the remedy wrong, it's not quite right, it can go through the aura of the patient and not do anything. Oak never does that, it will always do something, some way, how ever often you give it, whatever potency, it will always work; which is quite a remarkable thing.
 AH: It is known for being the chief tree in Druid cosmology.
 Miles: Chief tree, as most important, fairest and strongest of the trees. The most important in Druid terms. Never mind the storm blowing, it will stand up.
 AH: Is there anything else you want to say, anything about potencies?
 Miles: We use the standard scale. Most of the provings have used 30's, and in practice we use the standard scale, though some of us use 100's.
 AH: Any words for America?
 Miles: God Bless America. It's the future, it's the land of the future, it's the melting pot for all of us.
 Martin Miles has just published another book, Homoeopathy, the Path to the Light. Look for it at your favorite bookseller.