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VITHOULKAS G., Talks on Classical Homoeopathy - The Esalen Conferences 1980 - Case reports

Publisher’s foreword

Within a year of the publication of GEORGE VITHOULKAS’ “Addition to Kent’s Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica”, we are pleased to bring out this long awaited work of the great Greek guru of Classical Homoeopathy. “Talks on Classical Homoeopathy” was compiled from the cyclostyled material of the transcript of the recording of the Esalen Homoeopathic Conference held in California, USA, in 1980. The work has been divided into three parts. The first part, “Part I choice cases” contains the presentations of select thirty three cases from his vast repertoire, specially chosen by the eminent author.

In Part II, Materia Medica forms the major subject, are twenty seven of the well known remedies and their essential symptomatology mostly verified and identified as what he calls “essence of a remedy”.

The rest of the material will be found to be mainly discussions on diverse topics and is put in the ten s of Part III, Discussions. The reader should be prepared to be exposed to a number of novel and brain racking “jolts”, from the opinions and observations of the great master of the Healing Art.

Editor’s preface to part i

In course of these “TALKS”, GEORGE VITHOULKAS has revealed that the thirty three clinical conditions (cases) for presentation and discussion were selected out of his collection of 60,000 cases. A each is devoted for this purpose, wherein heading mentions the remedy (or remedies) and the clinical condition, for which the prescription was filled, followed by the “postmortem” of the prescription by the learned delegates on “invitation” to do so by the speaker while he is recalling what reasons justified the choice. They were not just to listen passively but “think, think and think” as elsewhere he has pleaded. Page numbers that follow the “symptomatology” Quotes and for the rubrics are of “Kents” Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia” and his “Repertory of the Homoeopathic Remedies” respectively - without which no serious study of Homoeopathy is possible, and which every professional possesses. For at that time (1980), H. Barthel’s “Synthetic Repertory” was not yet published.

From the latter, the : “Remedies and their abbreviations,” being the latest internationally accessible list of remedies, has been used for the spellings of the homoeopathic remedies. For brevity, only, these abbreviations have been used wherever their names occur or are mentioned in the text, except in the headings where their full names are also given. Of the 123 remedies mentioned in the index, it will be noticed that detailed attention has been received by forty two only with most of which every professional is acquainted. A closer scrutiny will reveal the enormous amount of “dissecting the great master subjects the symptomatology of each remedy while” matching with the symptoms of the

individual.

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time and inclination, to undertake its editing, the text would have no doubt been more polished and spruced, but would have lost the vivacity and native humour that glistens in the “raw” transcripts!

It is expected that the scholars and the admirers will appreciate and enjoy this opportunity to VIEW the working of the great healing artist at work!

-B.P. RAO. In memoriam.

Dr. Henry C. Allen was born in the village of Nilestown, near London, Ontario, and was the son of Hugh and Martha Billings Allen. On his paternal side, he was a descendant of that distinguished family of Vermonters of the same name, Gen. Ira Allen and Ethan Allen, both famous in the revolution. On his maternal side, the Billings’ were well known among the Colonial families of Massachusetts Bay, and one of them, the

great-grandfather of Dr. Allen, owned the farm lands on which the present city of Salem is built. After selling this property, the family moved to Deerfield, in the Connecticut Valley and were there at the time the Indians pillaged and ravaged that part of the country.

He received his early education in the common and grammar schools at London, where he later taught school for a time. His medical education was acquired at the Western Homeopathic College at Cleveland, Ohio (now the Cleveland Homeopathic College), where he graduated in 1861, and later from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Shortly after graduation, he entered the Union Army, serving as a surgeon under General Grant.

After the war he was offered and accepted the professorship on Anatomy in his Alma Mater at Cleveland, and it was here that he first started practicing medicine. Later he resigned and accepted the same chair in the Hahnemann Medical College of Chicago. In 1868 he was offered the Chair of Surgery to succeed Dr. Beebe, but was unable to accept. He then located in Brantford, Ontario, where on December 24th, 1867, he married Selina Louise Goold, who, with his two children, Franklin Lyman Allen and Helen Marian Allen Aird, survives him.

In 1875 he moved to Detroit, Michigan, and in 1880, being appointed Professor of Materia Medica at the University of Michigan, he moved to Ann Arbor, where he remained until 1890, when he came to Chicago, where he has since resided.

In 1892 he founded the Hering Medical College and Hospital, of which he was Dean and Professor of Materia Medica until his death, January 22nd, 1909.

Dr. Allen was an honorable senior of the American Institute of Homeopathy; a member of the International Hahnemannian Association; of the Illinois Homeopathic Medical Associations of the Englewood Homeopathic Medical Society; of the Regular

Homeopathic Medical Society of Chicago; Honorary Vice-President of the Cooper Club of London, England; and Honorary Member of the Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio State Medical Societies and Honorary Member of the Homeopathic Society of Calcutta, India.

He was owner and editor of the “Medical Advance” for many years. Besides writing many articles in this and other magazines he wrote numerous books, among which are the following: “Keynotes of Leading Remedies,” lately placed on the “Council List of

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Books” for use in the Canadian Medical Colleges; “The Homeopathic Therapeutics of Intermittent Fever;” “The Homeopathic Therapeutics of Fevers;” “Therapeutics of Tuberculous Affections;” and recently completed the revision of Boenninghausen’s Slip Repertory, which he brought down to date and arranged for rapid and practical work. This his latest work, a treatise on the Nosodes, was completed only a short time before his death, and was the result of years of study, experience, and of proving and confirming the symptomatology of many of the nosodes. His observations are here published for the first time.

FRANKLIN LYMAN ALLEN. Introduction to part I - choice cases

This part consists of 33 s of various cases chosen from his vast repertoire (of 60,000), by GEORGE VITHOULKAS especially for presentation at the Esalen conference.

Addressing and inviting the learned audience for active participation, he says “What I want to transmit to you is not the case, it is the way of thinking.” Every is an example of some aspect of that object. A few of these cases are presented in parts, some incomplete but the theme and object is one and the same: to stimulate thinking in a practitioner when confronting with a patient. Suggestions for remedies from the audience are called forth, who in turn analyse and/or repertorise and put forward their prescription, with arguments in favour of their choice, whenever the speaker asks for it.

Wherever in course of these talks, GEORGE VITHOULKAS has pronounced a “dictum” or “teaching” from his experience relevant to the solution of a problem and worthy of attention, it has been highlighted either in italics or bold face.

Great care has been taken to leave the expressions “untouched”, lest their sparkle be lost and the raw material which a scholar looks for be adulterated with the commonplace “editing”; for GEORGE VITHOULKAS is an original homoeopathic scientist full of convictions reinforced by vast experience of what he practices and teaches; though not all of what he says may be understood except by the very wise. Hence this precaution. “There is no mechanical way in homoeopathy - none. There is just thinking, thinking, and thinking, all the time” he is heard saying.

Practitioners with lot of clinical experience would be delighted to read these similar to what happened in their own practice and similarities of handling. He says for instance, when faced with a patient fast progressing towards a collapse “You are allowed to change 10 remedies within 3 hours in very severe cases, where the life is threatened, to save the patient. So what does it matter which acted”. So practical he is.

He has been accused of being fanatic or crazy. That it is unfair and unkind would be clear from his remarks/advice. “You give him (a pneumonia patient) the remedy and within 24 hours, there has been no change at all, it is better that he be given antibiotics.” A fanatic would never have said that!

In the conversational style that these talks have been delivered, there are bound to be some digressions arising out of the questions from the audience not pertinent to the case. They have been allowed to stay in smaller print (8 pt. preferably), wherever they occur, instead of assigning them a separate place or , lest their contextual worth be reduced! On the whole, an attempt has been made to limit the “editing” to the minimum.

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It is hoped that a perusal of these cases would give a seasoned practitioner a consolation for what he might be regretting as mistakes in his practice and find condoned here in; the tyro, a boost to his confidence, and fuel to his enthusiasm.

Introductory words: materia medica and its correct use

We are going to talk about a level which presupposes certain knowledge. I would like you to speak out when I ask questions so (that) I will understand the level of your

knowledge and can best communicate with you. Because I may say something that I take for granted that you know and it will be like Chinese. I shall give you Materia Medica in a certain way, which I feel is needed sometimes. It can be used sometimes, but not always. Our Materia Medicas are quite sufficient and I don’t think we need more. I shall try to give you quite a lot of materia medica in the way I have understood it through the years so that you may apply it more easily. What I want you to do in studying some remedies, which I shall give you now, is to write in one page a resume of the essence of each of them. I want you to study why each of these remedies is valid, is usable, is reliable. They are Anacardium, Cuprum, Iodum and Natrum Carbonicum. From our Materia Medicas we take that part which is really reliable and usable. The materia medica is tremendous. Not all the material can be used, especially for study. How do the

homoeopaths go about it when the material is so much? They have found a way to extract from the materia medica that which is valid and usable and reliable, and they apply it. And that is where you see a difference in a person who is a very good prescriber without even knowing so much materia medica versus another who knows very much materia medica but is not a good prescriber. I saw that in India, where I studied. I had teachers who would teach the materia medica, and the Indians are very good at learning by heart a lot of information. But when it came to prescribing, they could not take the information which they had in their minds [brains] into practice. So what I am going to teach you is the way to use the materia medica correctly, efficiently. When we talk about

homoeopathy, we are talking about a science and an art. It needs the awareness of the doctor at any moment, especially in moments of crisis. You are doctors and you are going to face hard cases. If a person comes to you, they have full trust in you and they will say, “I don’t want anything else but homoeopathy.” Then you will find yourself in a very difficult situation because you don’t know what to do. You know that everything you may do, may spoil the health of the person and yet you are not in a position to prescribe correctly. There you need all of your awareness.

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High fever without symptoms Phosphorus

(phos.) Case

I shall start with just such a case (which “will need all your awareness”). This is the child of a couple who were both MDs. They knew about homoeopathy and the child was treated homoeopathically since birth. This is a good teaching case for many reasons: One is that unless we have given a constitutional remedy to a person, they are not really

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healthy. I had been seeing the child all along. He was then four years old. He had

developed a fever accompanied by certain pains which radiated in the abdominal region. That was all. The child developed pain and had high fever for a few days before they consulted me. They said, “We cannot get any symptomatology. He complains about pains in the abdomen with the high fever.” What did I prescribe? You are going to be faced by such cases and I want you to know what I am going to do. I tried, of course, to get some more symptoms. There was heat, perspiration, but nothing special. Don’t be afraid to speak. I prescribed wrongly, so you needn’t be afraid of your ideas.

Response: sometimes cases that have nothing to offer in symptoms can be given Sulph. George: This is an idea. Are there any other ideas?

Response: Constitutional remedy repeated.

George: That is another idea. If we had found a constitutional remedy. I said that I had been prescribing all along, but I did not tell you that I had found a constitutional remedy. You will see here, as this develops, how important it really is, to have given the deeper remedy. I have been giving remedies and the child was okay. He had tonsillitis,

diarrhoea, and that all along until he was four years old. I had not found a constitutional remedy. It appeared later.

Question: Had you been treating the parents?

George: Yes, I had been treating the parents and they did not have anything special in their history. There was high fever without symptoms.

Question: What about the examination of the child’s background?

George: The parents were both MDs. They had auscultated. They had seen no rales, rhonchi, and they could not locate anything special in the abdomen.

Question: Was there a sore throat?

George: A little bit. The tonsils were not swollen and no glands were enlarged.

Question: What was the character of the pain? Did he bend double or was the abdomen irritable?

George: There were no modalities. What I ask you for, is a remedy. We suppose that you have examined the patient and have not found any more symptoms. So you have a high fever, without symptoms. Which is the remedy? It is the remedy which is mentioned in Kent’s Materia Medica. It starts with F.

George: Ferr-p. is the remedy which is usually prescribed when there is a fever without any attendant symptoms. Sulph. is correct also. When you don’t have any

symptomatology, there is a paucity of symptoms as we call it, and we give Sulph. But why didn’t we give Sulph. in this case? There is always a reason for giving a remedy-at least you have certain reasons. Sulph. is given when there is a paucity of symptoms. Which means that you have been treating someone constitutionally or for a chronic ailment for the second time. And you have taken away his symptoms, but the person does not feel at all well. Symptoms which are not prominent and do not give you the idea of a remedy, may make you think of Sulph. But this is not so in an acute case. You will not prescribe Sulph. in an acute case because there are no symptoms. Sulph. is a good remedy which you may need to use appropriately later. I prescribed Ferr-p. in this case and, as you can understand, nothing happened. On the third day the parents decided to give antibiotics. They did not wait long. I think it was one day he had the fever, the second day we gave the Ferr-p., and another two days when the parents gave the antibiotics, so this was the fourth day. We found a definite diagnosis. They gave antibiotics for four

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days and then discontinued it. The child remained better for a week.. Then the fever and the pains returned. With a relapse there was a swelling of the cervical and sub-maxillary regions.

There was not much prominence to these glands, however. There was a shortness of the pulse, together with redness which was prominent, and inflammation. There was now thirst present. I did not find any other symptoms, and I could not elicit any from the parents. Doctors are very bad at giving symptoms for themselves or their family. Nothing! I then prescribed another remedy, which, of course, was wrong again. Could I give something? There was stiffening in the abdomen. The cervical and sub-maxillary glands were swollen, and there was thirst; the thirst was not marked, but it was definitely increased. I prescribed Bry. We have tonsillitis and thirst: Bry.! But this does not always work. (Laughter)

This did not work. The child’s fever was constantly high without remission. After Bry. I prescribed Sulph. and then Puls. because they told me that the child had developed some fear of the dark. The child was red with fright. The thirst had gone away by giving Bry. and Sulph. Now the child was warm and crying, and I prescribed Puls. A few more days passed and the child was worse. The fever continued and all of the symptoms became worse. The pediatrician was consulted and said that this was a mononucleosis. I do not know the logic. Penicillin was prescribed to protect. Usually in mononucleosis they don’t give anything, but this was given to prevent a possible streptococcal pneumonia or something like that.

Response: Was there a monospot test done?

George: Yes, the test did not show very clearly that it was streptococcus. The child was given Penicillin for a week. See how we mess up cases? We need the help of allopathic medicine. This is a fact attributed to two factors: first because of my inability to prescribe correctly; secondly because of the anxiety of the parents to have the child treated and become well immediately.

When you see a case like that where the fever is high and steady for many days, you have to have great psychological endurance and tell the parents, “No, do not give anything”. If that child had been left without antibiotics, eventually he would have developed a clear picture. Then the remedy could have been found, no matter what stage might have been reached. During the stage just before death there will be a come back (Laughter)

So then there were seven days of Penicillin. The fever went down. The child remained without high fever for six days after the Penicillin was finished. Then again the whole picture of symptomatology came up. Fever, enlarged glands, pains in the abdomen as soon as any food or drink was taken. Antipyretics, anti-fever medications, did not affect the high fever at all. This was given after the Penicillin when the fever started again. I did not prescribe but waited. The symptomatology was consistent and the fever was high. The abdominal pain occurred immediately after eating or drinking. The child had no appetite and had lost weight. There was thinness and exhaustion in the appearance. I had tried to take symptomatology on the make-up of the child from the mother. She said that the child was “quite brave” and according to her understanding the child would express less than what she felt. Stoic.

In a few days they gave antipyretics and the child developed measles. Now I don’t think that this was measles from the beginning. It was perhaps a mononucleosis. I do not know.

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The tests showed some white blood cells—you know, the mononucleosis cells—in greater number. Then the child developed the measles, which is a continuation of the whole story in another version. I do not think it was measles from the beginning. So the measles was allowed to run its course. I tried to prescribe during the measles because it was a very severe case. The child was covered with eruptions. There was exhaustion and suffering. We tried to relieve this by giving a remedy. At that moment, according to the symptomatology which I thought she had, I prescribed Sulph. again. Then the measles improved — the next day, as regards the eruptions. She was more quiet then, but it took another three days, which is the natural course. This showed me that I had not done anything so far. Because the parents are MDs .. voom! ... what is going on? There were consultations with pediatricians. What is going to happen to the child? What are we going to do? Take Sulph. Take this. Take that. Nothing! Then we come to the last stage and now we know that it is measles. Whether we give a remedy or not, the measles will go away. You see the situation. Then the fever went down. The rash and eruptions slowly disappeared. This was on the fifth day. The abdominal pains came back as the child would eat — this was around the umbilical region. The child was exhausted. They again called the pediatrician and I went again to see the child. So I went and now the story starts! (Laughter)

The child was dehydrated to the extent that the lips were cracked with even small evidence of blood coming from the lips. The child was lying down and looking at the father in a fairly “mellow” way, as if to say, “What is wrong with me? Save me!” There was a melodramatic attitude to the child. She would not talk. She would not complain. When I pressed the head forward, the Budzinsky sign was positive. They called the pediatrician again. There was stiffness of the cervical region and the child had started to complain of headache. The fever was not high. It was 38.3°C. The highest fever one can reach is 41 degrees Celsius. It was elevated but not high. The child no longer had the strength or vitality to produce a high fever.

I did not like the situation and the pediatrician asked that the child be prepared to go to hospital. The father cried and there were all sorts of reactions. There can be an

encephalitis or meningitis after measles, which is very precarious. I could see no remedies. However, the child needed intravenous saline - some fluids. This occurred at night. The next morning the child was taken to the Children’s Hospital. They did a cervical spinal puncture in the hospital and said that it was meningoencephalitis (virus) and there was nothing to give at the moment. They were advised to wait before giving Hydrocortisone. The damage is perhaps more in such cases The parents phoned me from the hospital in the morning and I told them I was coming. I went to the hospital.

As you can understand, the mother and father knew the diagnosis and what it meant, being MDs. The fever is not very high but the child appeared a bit a stupefied and complained, when she could speak, about pain in the head.

The assistant professor, who had examined the child, said that he had never seen a child with meningoencephalitis dehydrated to such a great degree. (The child had already been dehydrated since the previous day.) According to him, this was very serious. The child was to stay in the hospital ten days for observation.

Examination at this time revealed the following symptoms: dryness and peeling of the lips, tremendous dryness of the tongue; tongue felt as if it was sandpaper. This is after the child has taken saline intravenously all night. This is very important. All night. I came

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there about 11 o’clock in the morning. Still the dehydration was tremendous. Dehydration was especially noted in the center of the tongue. The base of the tongue was discolored deep brownish. The child was almost comatose, but was aware. The child was very quiet. The mother told me that the child was ‘really brave’ because during the venous or spinal punctures, she had not complained. There was discoloration of the face. This was the symptomatology. See what you can find. The child did not complain of thirst either because she was not in a state to ask for water or because she was taking saline

intravenously. This is information which comes only from observation. I left this until the end in order to show you that if you are not observant enough you will not be able to find the remedy., And that is where the “art” comes and blends with science. We have this symptomatology which is doubtful and it will not give us the remedy. Any suggestions? Response: Nat-m.

George: Nat-m., very good. Chin.? Yes, there is logic in that. Op., yes. Stram.? The picture would have to be much more violent in such a case. The pain. The child would cry.

Response: But is the painlessness of complaints usually painful?

George: The child is not completely painless. She complained in the abdomen and head. I shall give you the key now. I noticed that the mother was sitting next to the child. The child was here in bed and the child was holding the mother’s hand.

Audience Member: Phos.

George: Wait! Don’t jump to conclusions.

So I told the mother to take away the hand. She slowly did so and the child started crying. She again held the child and the child stopped. I said for her to pull it out again. She pulled it out and the child cried again. This was repeated. Then I was sure about the remedy, but why? What was the remedy? I went to the repertory. I looked and saw: “Dryness of the tongue in the center”.

Responses: Acon., Ant-c., Amm-c., Mang., Arum-t. (in the two), Arg-m., Lap-a. Another Response (from several): Phos.

George: Capital there? Response: Yes. Others?

Responses: Sil., Stram., Sul-ac.

George: So, this is the rubric. Definitely because the dryness is so much that we can rely on that rubric. And then again, on the tongue there is a discoloration, brownish and the center. The tongue is like that and the discoloration is here which is very very prominent. It is not exactly on the base, you see? Neither is it on the tip.

Response: Arn. (2) Ars. (1) Bry. (2), Canth. (1), Colch. (2), Crot. (2), Eurp-pur. (2) Hyos. (1), Iod. (1), Lac-c. (2), Nat-p. (1), Phos. (2), Plb. (2), Pyr. (1) Vib-o (1).

George: Now out of these two rubrics, what do we have? We have Colch., Crot-h, Phos. These are reliable symptoms, very strong and very reliable. Now, which of the ones are the remedies for the child? One. The child is very afraid to stay by himself. He wants someone to comfort him. But the mother says the child is very brave. The child did not speak. This child was punctured several times and did not speak. It was fear! It was tremendous fear that made the child speechless - literally. The mother was interpreting this and giving me all this time a symptom which was exactly the opposite of what was happening. There is one more point that makes it absolutely Phos. Who will be able to tell me from what I have said? The homoeopath must take into consideration anything,

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anything! When you enter the room, whatever they tell you, is important. So who can tell me?

Response: Fear of the dark and the fact that she was so quickly dehydrated. George: Yes? Why?

Response: Phos. is so thirsty

George: Exactly! This was the first time in my life I had seen a child become so quickly dehydrated. When Phos. wants to take water all the time, what is that? It is a

predisposition to dehydration. So this predisposition of the child with Phos. was confirmed by the fear of being alone. Now we are absolutely sure. But the parents had given me only two or three symptoms. What I observed, was that she was SO MUCH dehydrated. And the child did not want the hand to be taken away. There was a fear to stay alone. Of course, I did not speak. I didn’t explain anything. I turned to the mother and said: “When do you want your child to be well?” The afternoon or tomorrow

morning? “Now we are so sure that this Phos. is absolutely right. She looked at me and at the father and said, “Are you joking?” I said that I was serious. When do you want it, tonight or tomorrow? If you want the child to be well this evening, give Phos. 50m. If you want this by tomorrow morning, give Phos. 10m. It was interesting that the parents knew homoeopathy. The mother saw the condition of the child and said: “50m? Isn’t that too high?” She affected me. You always have to take everything into consideration. May be, it is some intuition.

For the mother? And I said, “Okay, give the child Phos. 10m”. What happened? Response: The fever came back? (Laughter)

George: Wait until you hear the whole story.

They immediately brought one dose at 2 o’clock - around 1.30 to 2 o’clock in the

evening. This was one dose of Phos. 10m. By 8 o’clock they phoned me in an exhilarated state that the child was propped up in bed, the dehydration was completely gone, the tongue was absolutely normal, the cracking of the lips was almost not visible after four to five hours. The child said: “I would like to eat some ice cream.” (laughter) And then the night went by and the next morning at 10 o’clock they phoned me. The fever had started rising again. I said, “Give another dose of 10m.” Another dose was given at 10m. and this was by 10 o’clock. By 11 o’clock the fever was down and the child was better. By 12.30 or 1 o’clock (noon time), the fever was again up. The fever started coming up and the child again complained of headache. By 1 o’clock the next day I said, “Give a dose of 50m.” This child took a dose of 50m. From that day to this-one year- the child has not had a cold or anything. She has never felt so well. The whole thing was that we never gave Phos. in all these four years as a constitutional remedy. We prescribed the

constitutional remedy during the acute attack, fortunately because it was so severe, and the constitutional remedy held the child up. It not only took away the symptoms

immediately, but this child left the hospital the third day!

There is another interesting question, which you will answer easily now. You see, what happened actually, was that on the third day the child developed large, oozing nodosities on her legs which were red. Erythema nodosum.

Audience Member: That would make me nervous.

George: They said, “Oh, now we will have to give the child Penicillin.” They said, “Now there is a terrible streptococcus and we will have to give Penicillin.” And they took the child and made an examination and the count was 2,500, which is quite high. They said

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that if the child did not take the Penicillin, she would have definitely complications. With erythema. nodosum, with the tests so high, the child has no fever. She is in good

condition. Her spirits are back. The child’s parents are doctors and what are you going to do? Of course, you know the answer now, but I said, “I take the whole responsibility.” I said, “Leave that child with that Phos. 50m. Do not give anything at all.” If the remedy had worked so well, it will definitely take care of the whole thing. Do not be misled and leave the child when you think a remedy has taken care of it. Like with the measles. You give Sulph. and something is working. But you know that it does not work. When I prescribed during the measles, I prescribed Sulph. The parents said, “This is helping.” But we expect much more drastic effects in Sulph. in such cases. And when they say that the patient is a little bit better, you know that it has done nothing. So, do not think that the remedy has acted where it has not and let the child go home.

I take responsibility. You can take the responsibility only when you know that you are absolutely sure. Here the effects are so dramatic that nobody can deny the fact.

This is teaching case 1: If I had found Phos. and had given it from the very beginning this child would never have gone through all this suffering.

Response: How do you know that?

George: We know that from similar cases. Of course, that is a very good question. We cannot test the child on both conditions at the same time. But from similar cases, when we have seen children developing, where acute diseases are slightly affected. Whereas another child in whom you have not found it, you have not really helped. Again, if the child had not taken so many antibiotics two or three times and another series of Penicillin — so the whole system of the child went down. So eventually measles developed into meningoencephalitis. That is why we must have a weak organism to develop a serious condition. We make it weak. We helped the child go into the encephalitis by giving all the antibiotics during homoeopathic treatment. Of course, the homoeopathic treatment did not make the child weaker, but it did not help either.

Response: How do you know that? Digression

George: It did not help. You cannot help with the homoeopathic remedy once you prescribe in this way. You prescribe one remedy and you wait. There is no harm at all. Otherwise we would have no proving. A proving is done with the idea, as Hahnemann said, of helping the person. The provings are helping a person finally. What is a proving? A proving is a remedy given which is not the exact remedy which the person needs and therefore is not a cure, but it is a remedy which is close enough to produce

symptomatologies. That is how a proving is done. You give a remedy which is close enough to the sensitivity of the patient, not the exact remedy, but close. Then produce an aggravation of the symptoms - a proving - and that is considered a good thing to do. If you want to prove a remedy every three months and your health is good and you can get some benefit from that, you can do it. Hahnemann suggested this to his students and he was doing this himself. There is no danger from that. The danger comes from the kind of homoeopathy which is given, say, in the morning. Mag-C. 200; at noon, Calc-c. 1m; and in the evening Graph. 1m. And in the morning we have another course where Ant-c. 200m. is given, then Gels. 10m; and then Phos. 200m. On the third day we have another scheme and then we repeat it again. We start from the first day. Who knows what is

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happening? If that person continues to take all these remedies for six months or a year, you have a person who is proving. God knows what!

Question: What do you think would have happened if you had given a lower dose of Phos.? Would it just have taken longer?

George: Again that is good question. You have to remember that the more clear the case is, the higher you can go, and the more immediate will be the effects. Even in organisms which are exhausted and which are weak.

If you read all the literature, you will see that all the good homoeopaths who were living around the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were very good and they gave very high potencies. If we had given in that case 200, before we reached 50m, where the child needed action, it would have taken us 3, 4 or 5 days. If we give that with little effect, then you have to wait for the return of the symptoms, repeat 200, then 1m, then 10m and then 20m. It appeared that the child NEEDED 50m. It was by chance - I would not say completely chance - that I said, “Do you want your child to be cured tonight?” There is a possibility that if I had ordered 50m the child would not need repetition of any other remedy. And that was proven (confirmed). When she took the 50m there was a beautiful recovery.

Question: Why did you repeat the 10m, instead of going ahead with the 50m?

George: That is a good question. When you have started with one remedy and it has an effect, do not discontinue it immediately and jump to another. When you have given a remedy and it has acted beautifully in one potency, try it again in the same potency before you jump to the higher potency. This is a general rule for acute and chronic cases. Question: Even when the case has not been antidoted, you would still repeat the same potency? If there was just a relapse?

George: In that case ... I am absolutely clear about it ... but in order to gain time I do that. That means that in a case where there is a relapse, before the person has any time to do anything to spoil it, I jump one. But sometimes I have found, as I told you, that a 200 which had acted in a duodenal ulcer, in the relapse I went up to 10m and it did nothing. Then I repeated 10m and there was nothing. Then I had to go back to 200, and this worked.

Audience Member: Kent says that you give the same potency twice all the way up, as long as there is action.

George: Yes. This is a general rule. When a remedy has acted, do not give up the potency immediately. Try it once. If there is a relapse, go one step higher.

Audience Member: That is interesting, because I have seen the opposite quite frequently in my practice. As I said before, I was trying to follow Kent’s dictum on that. If they were not on top of your things that would antidote, if I repeated it, it would not work. George: Anyhow, you cannot avoid losing sometimes, especially with chronic cases. Because there are no clear indications which will tell you to repeat the same remedy, the same potency, or go one step higher. There are no such indications which I can give you to work with where you will avoid repeating the first potency. A good strategy is to go up. You have given one remedy in a chronic case in a potency. Then he comes in after six months and says, “I have relapsed.” You may go to 50m. If that does not work, then go back to 10m. Usually that 50m will cover the case and will work. So you can avoid the one step. You have 10m here. Then there is a relapse and you give 10m. Then there is

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another relapse and you use 50m.

If you go from 10m to 50m immediately, you have nothing to lose. Sometimes, but seldom, you will have to come back to 10m. But there are other old master homoeopaths who would say, “Never change your potency as long as it is working even a little.” They say, “Even if it works for one month or twenty days, do not give it up. Then you can go higher.”

Audience Member: I just wanted to say about the Phos. I had read somewhere about higher fevers, other than Ferr-p., in a child with a normal disposition and no change in high fever, that phos. will often work.

George: That is interesting, but in this case I had just simply lost the remedy. It is not that there were no symptoms. If you remember that at a certain stage the mother said, “The child has fear of the dark which has developed.” Then she had developed thirst. So that means that I had lost track of the remedy. The symptoms were there. I do not believe very much in blind kinds of prescriptions. In desperation you may have to do it

sometimes. But it is blind. And never, never ask the mother if she wants the child to be better by tonight. There are so many suggestions concerning different remedies that you can give blindly, like Thuja, like Sol., like Sulph., like ... and now Phos. Which one? What you can do is to change the pattern a little bit. If you leave it alone it will come back. Always on the same level. You are working on the same level. You cannot make a person change his level of health with a homoeopathic prescription. With allopathic prescriptions you change the level. You see, he had skin eruptions. Now he has anxiety, fears, and all these mental changes and changes in levels of health. Real changes! Whereas with the homoeopathic remedy you cannot do that. You cannot make a person change their level. He is on the same level, but changing the symptoms. He more or less stays on the same level. You prescribe one remedy and there is no harm at all.

Question: If you suppress with an inappropriate homoeopathic remedy, will that not change their level even if their energy goes down?

George: That will not change the level. If you suppress, you will see the suppression in a while, and then it will come back by itself. But if you don’t wait, you will give the wrong prescription. If he says, “I feel worse”, and you give another remedy, and in the evening another remedy. This means the wrong kind of prescription. It has to be done for a long time. In France or Germany, you can go into a pharmacy and take a bottle of Cimx and take it for a long time. This kind of prescription you can take with different remedies and you cannot do any harm. You take for three months, or one month, 3, 4, or 5 remedies every day in different potencies, probably some of them will be close and will do something. Kent was talking about that same thing about doctors who would prescribe high potencies haphazardly, and too many at the same time. There can be real trouble! There can be no trouble in giving one remedy and waiting for one month to see in a chronic case.

If we have time I will relate a very dramatic case in which during the course of treatment I made a mistake. You will see that the suppression was dangerous. The life of the person was in danger. Still there was nothing fatal. I have never seen trouble arising from a homoeopathic prescription in my practice, and I have seen, more or less calculated from the number of files, about 60,000 cases so far. This is quite a lot.

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Question: By that you mean a permanent lasting ...

George: Permanent and lasting. Because I follow this system of treatment. I shall relate a case to you, if I find it again, and you will see what happened by the wrong treatment. Question: If you give the wrong remedy by mistake, what would you do? Immediately give the right remedy? Wait for a week or so?

George: How do you know when you have given the wrong remedy? Question: You picked up the wrong vial or something?

George: Oh, the wrong vial? Just give the right remedy without hesitation. You can give the right remedy immediately. There is no problem there. In a remedy that has been given by chance, it is very seldom that it will have any relation to the case. It is like taking nothing.

Audience Member: I did that once, and it turned out to be a very excellent remedy. George: That was definitely by the Higher Powers. It happens sometimes that things are organized by higher intelligences. He can walk inside and tell you the remedy sometimes. 2

Kidney infection (pyelo-nephritis) Pulsatilla pratensis

(puls.) Case

I want to give you another case. This case is to justify my giving you Materia Medica in the way I am going to give it to you. This is to prove the value of knowing the Materia Medica and knowing the essence of a person.

A married woman, age 35, said that she had not been feeling well for the last few days. She was feeling tired and she was “in a bad psychological state”. The day before she was seen, she had developed a fever and felt very tired. She had chills and had fever during the night which went up to 40 degrees C. - this was a very high fever. She had great pain in both kidney areas and this was very sensitive to percussion. She had urinary urgency. There were pains in the extremities, worse in the calves. There were cutting pains in the abdomen with grumbling.

What is your diagnosis?

Response: Pyelonephritis. Kidney infection.

George: She had no thirst, although she said she was usually thirsty. She had no aggravation by heat or cold. There were no more symptoms. Can you work with this symptomatology and find a remedy?

Question: You said that she was in a bad state psychologically?

George: She felt bad psychologically and for a few days she had a feeling of not being well. There was not a description of her psychological state at that moment - that came later on.

Question: What kind of person was she?

George: I shall give that to you later on. You will see how difficult it is to get a remedy without symptomatology unless you have the essence of the person. This essence was given to me by her husband.

Audience Member: Puls.

Another Member: I had a patient just like this. It worked with her. It was terrible. Reviewing: Thirstlessness, pain in the calves, pain in the kidneys, tiredness.

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George: Nobody has found the remedy so far. Do you have any other suggestions? Audience Member: Nobody would try to find a remedy with just this much information. George: You do not have much most of the time. This is where you need to understand the person in order to be able to prescribe with with this limited symptomatology. The failures which we have in homoeopathy are because of lack of symptomatology or because we do not know how to take it. I insisted on finding out the psychological state of the woman. I wanted to know how she felt. So the husband was brought into the picture and he said that on the previous night he had gone to the house and found the woman with a high fever. “She was much more sentimental than usual. She sort of cried and was a bit ‘mellow’.” She told him that she needed tenderness especially that night. She had a feeling inside that was a bit melodramatic that this disease was going to be fatal. So what is the remedy?

George: The last phrase I said has confused you? Before the last phrase it was Puls., But the last phrase, I know, has confused you.

What I prescribed was Puls. I was absolutely sure that this was right; therefore I

prescribed 50m in one dose. This was a urinary tract infection and involvement higher up in the kidneys, which is going to last five to six days. I prescribed Puls. 50m in the evening and the next morning there was nothing. There was no fever. There was no pain. The urine was normal. The person got up and did some work. Of course, she was still tired the next day, but the following day this was gone. Now, why didn’t I give Acon. in that case?

Response: The suddenness.

Response: It was not just an inflammatory state.

George: The husband described the case. She was melodramatic and she needed tenderness. She was frightened. All of this suggests the Puls. type. Never mind the symptoms which we may find if we go to the repertory and we look up chronic urinary infection and see Agn.

Response: In talking about it, how strong were her symptoms?

George: You see, you will have to take it in the context. The husband said: “She was so (very, very) melodramatic and needed tenderness and she was crying”. Take the whole scene and you will see a person who is very soft and tearful. We have the type in Acon. where there is agony, anxiety, restlessness, heat, which is much more. Then out of all this high fever and heat, she imagines that she is going to die. This is a completely different set-up. The essence is completely different. This gives you the impression that something really bad is going on. She was soft. The symptoms may be strong, but the whole attitude was low. The Acon. demonstrates anxiety. When it reaches that state which says, “I will die tomorrow at 12 o’clock”, it is a different thing. You cannot mix them if you know the essence of one from the other. This is where the kind of homoeopathy and the kind of materia medica that we are speaking about is of value. It is the little things. Here is a demonstration of how much sensitivity you need to receive the information and process it through your mind and give out the right answer. Of course, for the last state you need to know your materia medica. I know that all of you are very sensitive because you have come into the homoeopathy. This fact is a guarantee that you have sensitivity in dealing with another person, but you need to know this process and bring out the right

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Audience Member: Presentiment of death is Puls.

George: But it is another thing. It is not predicting the time of death. Puls. gets into that mellow state. She has a fibroma, right? She has been to the gynaecologist and he said, “You have a fibroid tumor the size of an orange”. Now it is a peculiar state in Puls. where she will go outside and pity herself - in a nice way. How can I describe this? She will say “O, poor me!” but it is not hard. It is something soft. “Ah, I am going to die”, and that brings tears. “The doctor is not right, this is cancer”. It is not a fear. “I am going to die and this is nice because there will be crying people and all that”. This is the type of person. She may be quite educated.

She may be quite intelligent. But we are talking about pathology now. It has nothing to do with that state where the education of the person or the understanding and the awareness of the person comes into play. It comes from a pathological state. She is not like that. You give her the remedy and forget about the dying and the philosophy and the processes and the flowers that will be brought, how much they will cry, and she

remembers all the nice things that she has done with her husband. Now she is going to die. It is not in the context of fear or agony. In that context, I am not going to give a remedy which will help the psychological make-up.

Audience Member: Wouldn’t you even consider Acon. when there are no chest, heart, respiratory symptoms? Acon. to me has a kind of center of gravity in this region-chest. George: I’ll tell you a case which will give you the perspective of what we are saying. It is not always so. In the next case I am going to give you the whole perspective. Because I may be misleading you by telling you that there is always underneath a kind of essence which you have to find out. This is not always so. You may need Acon. when you go into your car from Esalen and go a distance of four miles to your house. You have been perspiring and you open your windows. A draft comes in and before you have gone the four miles you have stiffness and there is pain in the cervical region. SO SUDDEN! But you do not have the psychology of Acon. You take Acon. and within 3/4 of an hour your head will return to normal. But there again we have once trace of Acon. - the intensity of what has happened in so little time. There is an element of the essence passing through, but not involving the mental state. You do not need the mental state and you cannot have the mental state always. You have to prescribe on the tendencies of the remedy. Acon. HAS SUDDEN AILMENTS. The suddenness becomes the essence of the physical level. This is used for routine prescribing when you get stiffness from exposure. But the

essence is there in our case. If the suddenness is not there Acon. is not going to help. You need Caust. for stiffness; you will need Calc-p.; you will need Cimic. When the cervical region and the margins of the trapezius muscles are painful and consistent, there are different remedies indicated. You can analyse the case and give accordingly, but that case which I have described to you in going from here to your house, which is only four miles, and you come out suddenly stiff, this is Acon. You don’t need to have the element of fear of death and you cannot develop this so suddenly.

3

Nonsuppurating enlarged glands Bromium

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(brom.) Case

This is the case of a four-year old child who has dark hair and dark complexion. This is the child of another doctor. The child developed fever and had swelling of the

submaxillary glands, worse on the left side. The gland on the left side was as big as a walnut. The child was warm. She would ask for water and that was the only thing which she could take. She would ask to step on the cold floor. The child’s constitutional remedy was Sulph. What would you prescribe in that case?

Question: Did she take only water because she was sick?

George: She did not have an appetite and did not want any food. The temperature was 40 degrees C. for three days. This illness was unusual for her. She was quite well in fact. Sulph. would usually cover her symptomatology. She had taken Sulph. perhaps three times during her previous history. She liked to walk on the cold floor and she would go out of bed to do so. She would also sit on the cold floor.

Question: How sick was she?

George: Not very sick. She got up from the bed. The fever was high, however, and she was not feeling very strong. She did not want to eat, but she did get up from the bed and would walk and sit on the floor. She became sick after my prescription.

Question: I don’t think I would give her a remedy at this time. Responses: How about Sulph.? Lach.?

George: I made the usual mistake, of course. Knowing that Sulph. has helped her, and she is warm, seeks the cold floor, she is thirsty, and I don’t have any more symptoms - I gave Sulph. This is an interesting observation that we have to make. First, that while Sulph. was helping her constitutionally, now this was not so. I gave Sulph. and the next day they said that may be she was a little better because the fever was down. With this description you know that the remedy has not worked. The father wants to say that she is better. He phoned the next day to say that the fever was even higher.

Question: How much Sulph. did you give?

George: I believe I gave 10m high potency because so far I had given up to 10m. I had given the highest potency about six months previously.

Question: So two days after the Sulph. the fever is higher?

George: I gave Sulph. in the morning. That evening or late afternoon the father

telephoned to say, “Most probably the Sulph. is acting because the child is better because the fever is now 38 degrees C” I said to wait. I had anxiety because I knew it was not right. The next morning the father telephoned to say that the fever was again high, but there was no symptomatology that I could obtain. I said to wait. By the evening of the next day the father said that the child was having a very high fever, was in bed, and she did not know what was wrong with her before she got into this state. The parents said that she had a kind of dissatisfaction in not knowing what was wrong with her. She did not want to communicate. She had an aversion to be spoken to. When she was asked

something, she would shriek. When the parents would ask a normal question, she would shriek. The glands had grown bigger and were stone-hard. I asked about any tendency toward suppuration. Did he see any pus forming or redness? He said there was none. I asked did he auscultate and he said yes. This was a phone treatment. The father said that she was going into a coma. This is by telephone. If you talk to a doctor and he says the

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child is going into a coma, you tend to believe it.

I told him to take the child to the hospital after giving the child the remedy. What was the remedy I prescribed with this symptomatology? We do not have very much essence here. This was July in Athens. Usually the temperature is very high. She didn’t want anything to eat. The record does not say anything specifically about thirst. Do not think that I just gave the remedy before giving that prescription. I was thinking and looking through the repertory for about 3/4 of an hour. She did not want to be spoken to and she did not want to communicate, even with the parents. And when she did communicate, she would shriek at them. She no longer wanted to be on the cold floor. The child stayed in bed now and did not get up. Another thing: the skin very dry. There was no perspiring in spite of the high fever.

Question: What about Con.? I don’t know anything about the mentals, but there are these stone-hard glands.

Question: Is her picture that she is just lying there moaning and when you would ask a question she should shriek and then she would moan again?

George: The parents would ask her what was wrong and she would scream or say to leave her alone.

Question: Does anyone have a copy of Kent?

George: Suppose that we cannot make out anything from the mental state of this child. I shall read you from Kent: “This remedy has running through it a tendency to infiltrate the glands. The glands become hard but seldom suppurate. They generally remain hard. The glands of the neck - the parotids, the sublingual and the submaxillary - are enormously enlarged and very very hard. The process of inflammation is not the violent kind seen with Bell.” You have a few days before the child became sick. We gave Sulph. and waited. It is hot weather. The whole economy is over-heated. That runs through that remedy. It is hot weather and confinement to a hot room and it was after going from cool to heat that the symptomatology developed. It is a hot season in Athens-July We have a child with fever and enlarged glands. Does this prescription tally with the

symptomatology of the case, pathologically speaking? Quite a lot? Where do you start looking?

Response: I was looking at the hard cervical glands that were swollen. George That is what factor?

Response: Page 474 - external throat.

George: Where else are you going to look to see exactly the symptomatology of this child with the submaxillary glands, more prominent on the left side?

Response: Swelling on the face.

George: Yes, swollen face. Parotid, submaxillary glands, hard. This is the first place you must go and look in such a case. Page 394. [Arum-t., Brom., Cor-r., Vesp.]

Response: Brom., Cham., Calc. are other remedies.

George: So you take some hints from the repertory and then you have to go to your Materia Medica and see what it says about Cor-r., Vesp.

If we eliminate we see only Brom. (bold). Swelling of the sub-maxillary glands, left side, higher on the right side and hard underneath. This eliminates the other two.

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George: Another interesting thing is that the gland is not painful. Response: You did not say that.

George: The child would complain. This is a psychological state and there is no pain. PAGE 23

Response: Was this gland not like usual swollen glands? They are always hard. George: It was quite hard. It was characteristically hard.

Response: That is the whole case - the stone-hardness?

George: With no tendency to suppurate. And remember the heat in the middle of the summer. I took all this into consideration. Does it give you the right remedy? You see, we have shrieking - the pathological one in Bor. Is it Bor.?

Response: I started out thinking that the shrieking and moaning were the main things. I found Sil. being the only remedy that indicated shrieking when spoken to. It had the multiglandular characteristics and intense heat. It virtually has everything. It has the dry skin without perspiration.

George: Sil., has been suggested. This is a good remedy, but in Sil. you would usually have had a lot of perspiration. It is not usual for Sil. to have dryness of the skin without perspiration. The second thing is that the child was quite warm. It is very seldom you will find a Sil. who is warm-blooded. Suffering from warmth. Usually Sil. suffers from cold. This type of person usually does not want to be spoken to. Here is a reactive child who is almost malicious. The parents want to help and they ask, “Do you want this? or that?” She would act maliciously in a way. For all these reasons it will take you away from Sil. in spite of Sil. being a remedy that would come down if you repertorize. Therefore I withheld myself from giving Sil. and I gave Brom. I would look through the repertory and Kent’s lectures (on Materia Medica) and when I read that portion I thought that was the answer to the remedy. This is a case that if we can remember the state of that child as it was described, we can apply it to some other case and see if it works and then again confirm it, and confirm it until we have the mental picture of Brom. But here we are stuck as far as essence is concerned. We cannot do anything. We do not have the essence of that remedy, yet that essence does not fit the essence of Calc., of Puls. with Sil. We had hard glands but this did not fit altogether. Clam. is close. But if you describe Cham’s mental state if is so much more agressive with moaning and groaning. It is so much more prominent. It is a matter of intensity. Perhaps it is similar, but a degree or so less to what we describe here. Quite similar, but less. Again I don’t take my mind away from the pathology. That is where I want to conclude. The pathology, which is on the physical level, has a great importance now, but I am lost with the mental state and I don’t know where to go.

The pathology takes great importance and I tried to find a remedy which had this pathology prominent.

Response: That is why we did not think of Bry.? It doesn’t have the induration - the hardness.

George: It can have, but not as prominent as Brom. Here we are having the large, hard glands which were growing, but yet without a tendency to suppurate. You will not see redness. You will not see the associated pain. I prescribed a dose of Brom. A dose of 10m.

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George: Calcp, yes. That is another good remedy to give to children of that type -groaning, complaining, they don’t know what they want. But again Calc-p. is very close to Cham. The intensity is quite severe. This did not give the intensity of Cham., Calc-p. It was not that mental picture. Again you will see shrieking in children and you will think Bor. They shriek terribly, especially when there are infections on the brain, in the meninges. That runs through Bor. very much. But in this case we had to take into consideration the pathology. That was the essence we had. This was what I read from Kent.

He took the child to the hospital and as he got into the car, he gave the child the remedy. They tried to give the powder and the child refused. As they were battling, some of the powder went into the stomach and some was left in the paper. The hospital was about half an hour away. Within one minute the child said: “Give me the rest of that”. And she took the whole powder then. That meant that the remedy had acted from the moment it touched the lips and it changed the psychology of the child. The psychological state was changed within two minutes. By the time they arrived at the hospital she was another child altogether. The fever had dropped already within half an hour. Finally, they did not admit the child to the hospital but they returned home. The next day the child was perfect. Here again - where is the essence? The idea is related to the hot climate and a child suddenly develops hard, stony glands, with no tendency to suppurate and with no pain. In our mind the child’s state is a Bromium-state. You can remember this as a Bromium-state and apply similar states to Calc-p., and Cham., but they are less in intensity.

These are not every day cases. These are cases which you can miss. We all miss them. If I had not thought so much, I would have given easy prescriptions. The father was one of the doctors working at the center, and this was the child.

Question: Did he get into trouble because of the Sulph. or was this unrelated? George: No. That was a case of glandular fever.

PAGE 25

Question: In the cases you have been describing to me, I am pretty reluctant to give acute remedies in a person who I am constitutionally treating and this had reinforced that idea. Is that what you are going to do?

George: No. I am trying to show you mistakes which I make and you can make. Question: You do prescribe acutely to people you treat constitutionally?

George: Sure. We shall discuss this in length. Somebody has asked that question about acute prescribing while you are treating constitutionally. This is a big question and we shall go into it. Who is not allergic to poison oak?

Response: That does not mean that we are not afraid of it.

George: Who will touch it and rub it without any effects? Only three [types of] people. There are really an overwhelming majority affected by it. This is interesting. We have to explain that phenomena.

Response: We have seen a lot of people who have been very sick. There are some who get it just where they touch it. And then there is another group of people who touch it and then get a secondary reaction and get it all over. It is not from the oil, but a reaction to that. And those are the people who are really sick.

George: So in this case we must treat exactly what we say in the proving. IN ORDER TO PROVE A REMEDY YOU HAVE TO HAVE A PREDISPOSITION TOWARDS THAT REMEDY. You have to have a predisposition. Now here is a case that

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demonstrates how a predisposition is created. By taking small doses of poison oak, by the pollen in the air, through the years that you lived by these plants, you have taken small doses which have created a predisposition.

Question: What percentage of people who don’t live in a poison oak part of the country are not allergic for it?

George: Many. If you had come from Greece, like me, it would be the other way around. Only three people will get a reaction, and the rest will not.

Response: So chances are that I would not get a reaction to it. I have never been around poison oak before.

George: Most probably. But from your skin, I judge that you would get it. PAGE 26

Response: I react to nettles.

George: Everybody reacts to nettles. This man comes from Norway. I don’t believe he would have an effect. If it gets too bad for me, I will take a remedy.

Question: But every time a person reacts to poison ivy, it is not necessarily a proving of it. You get Anac. symptoms in one and Sulph. in another and Led. in another all from the same exposure.

George: That is true. On the other hand, because it is a crude proving with mother tincture qualities, you will get the type of reaction in different degrees. If you could see the eruptions that poison oak creates, it is exactly the type of eruptions you see and recognize. These three different types of people develop different kinds of skin eruptions. There are definitely different types of skin eruptions.

Question: Why do such a wide variety of remedies cure in a proving like that? George: Because poison oak just stimulates an organism. The organism produces a reaction.

(Reaction depends on the predisposition)

YOU CANNOT ALWAYS FORESEE THE TYPE OF REACTION THAT THE ORGANISM WILL TAKE BECAUSE THAT IS PREDETERMINED BY THE PREDISPOSITION AND THE SENSITIVITIES THAT THE ORGANISM HAS. A stimulation of a person who has a weak stomach, may create a picture of gastritis. The same stimulation on a person who has a weak liver, may disturb his liver. Another one may have his skin disturbed. Another one may go to an inflammation. This depends on the predisposition.

Question: George, I can understand that part of it, but what about the fact that the person can express a different remedy feeling - a different essence altogether. Why is it that a different remedy would cure? I can see why it might affect a different part of a person in a predisposition.

George: You see you have an organism and you stimulate him with a stimulus, whatever it is. There is a reaction. This is the symptomatology which is not determined by the stimulus, but it is a combination of the stimulant with the organism. So what you are asking is that since we have the same stimulus, why don’t we always have the same reaction. The reaction is not determined by the stimulant per se. It is a combination of the two.

Question: It does not matter whether that stimulus is potentized or a crude substance?. PAGE 27

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than with potencies. It is the difference between a poison and a potency. A poison, if it is big enough, will definitely create the same effect. We have unlimited possibilities with the organism if we increase the dose. If we give Ars. in a high dose in a mother tincture, we have created a particular set of symptoms, in which we are not interested as

homoeopaths. Because the symptomatology will always be the same. We take a few symptoms of the poison, but most of the symptoms that we use, are taken from higher potencies. Why? Because WHAT WE TRY TO FIND OUT IS THE SENSITIVITY OF THE PERSON. What is the predisposition? And these sensitivities and predispositions can only be discerned if we stimulate very mildly. If you stimulate mildly and you have no reaction, you have no sensitivity. I can increase the dose - make it cruder - and I can have definite effects from any human organism. I am not interested in that. I am trying to find the final sensitivity - the individuality - of each organism. To find that, I use fine energies because I am stimulating a fine part of the organism. I am not stimulating the body with chemical reactions. So what is valid for me is that which is produced if I stimulate with fine energies and that organism gives out a reaction. Then I really have a particular disease which I can relate to the remedy.

Question: Does that mean that some place between those extremes that you mentioned -the crude poisoning and -the potency - you can get a variability of reactions, depending on the predisposition of the individual?

George: Oh yes. You give a certain amount of any drug and you will poison. You reduce more and more. You will get less and less reaction eventually and then there will be no reaction.

You get another group of people who will keep on with the reaction. You will get yet another group of people who have severe reaction. It is that group of people who will give the essence of the remedy.

Question: Is that middle group of people then the people who are sensitive to the poison oak? They can respond to the Anac.

George: No. The most sensitive people to the poison oak are the third group. We have to take into consideration the symptomatology. The crude drugs do not give reliable

information. I may be able finally to get a reaction. My reaction, is not reliable, assuming the particular sensitivity on the particular drug with that particular person.

PAGE 28

If I take a high potency and I am not allergic, it is not going to affect me at all. If I get a reaction and it is a BIG reaction, this third group, will most probably be cured by a great degree by Astac. high.

Question: As a constitutional remedy or the treatment for their reaction?

George: In acute prescribing, I don’t know what is happening constitutionally. It might be Astac. as a constitutional remedy as well, but I presuppose that these people have a kind of miasm. These people have already a predisposition to be able to be affected by this remedy so much. So by exposing themselves constantly in the atmosphere, they superimpose kind of miasm which going to be taken away by a Rhus-t. or Crot-t.

4

Abuse of salt, chancre sore on lips Natrium muriaticum

(22)

(nat-m.) Case

Question: I have a patient who took salt tablets every day for a long time and he

developed a great proving of Nat-m. Then he took some Nat-m. successively and then got much worse. He has been that way now for several years. Would you then give Nat-m. high?

George: High, Yes! You see these people who are very sensitive to poison oak, if they are exposed to a quantity which is sufficient enough, they may have a reaction that may kill them, but if you give them a 200 potency of Rhus-t. it may cure them. That is why Kent said in one of his lectures that people who use low potencies, get away from killing the people, because they are bad prescribers. If they had really found what was indicated and they gave it in a low potency, they would kill the person. The same thing with Rhus-t. A little bit of Rhus-Rhus-t. will create that, because they are very sensitive. The same thing happens if you gave Lycps. low. You don’t give it low, or you kill somebody.

You cannot imagine it. I should have some prescriptions of the French doctors to show you.

Question: Could I ask you again, if someone is tested through potencies - they were given potencies frequently over a long period of time...

George: And has created a picture of Nat-m. That person took 6x and created great aggravation. If he had taken 200, he might have been cured.

Question: But suppose he had taken 30 or 200 frequently over six months - every day for six months - and had Nat-m., then would a higher potency cure?

George: If he had taken what potency? Response: 200, say for six months.

George: That is another thing. He took pure salt mother tincture in great quantities and created a picture of Nat-m. I say in this case that he may take 10m and be cured. Now you take a hypothetical case where somebody takes 200 for one month. What happens? In this case we have to explore the possibilities. The first possibility is that nothing would happen because the person is not at all sensitive to Nat-m. That is why we cannot prove the value of high potencies to the medical profession.

PAGE 30

Response: There is no statistical stability.

George: Yes. But out of that group you will get two who will develop a

symptomatology. These people will develop quite a floral symptomatology. Whether you will give a 50m potency to counteract the one-month-taken of 200 depends on whether the picture which they have created looks like m. now. If the picture looks like Nat-m., then 50m. or a cm. will antidote the 200.

Response: This is confusing me now because I had a case very much like that. He was a German automobile mechanic and he had a chancre sore on the lips. He went to a

homoeopath in New York who gave him Nat-m. as a constitutional remedy. The chancre sore became aggravated and then got better. Then it came back after a month or two. “Instead of wasting the money to go back to the doctor I will just go to the health food store and start taking 6x.” So, as it says on the bottle of tablets, he took it every day. It first got worse and then better for a short period of time. Then it became worse again and the 6x no longer worked. So he went back and he started taking 12x every day. Then he got access to the remedy and the same thing happened. He kept getting worse and worse.

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