Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths, (from "The Homeopath" Journal Spring 2004). Reviewed by Steven Cartwright.
There is no doubt this book has been a labour of love - it is impressively presented, clear and well researched, and stands as a more than satisfactory replacement for earlier works such as Lilienthal's Homoeopathic Therapeutics, or Kichlu and Bose's Descriptive Medicine, to which it bears a necessarily striking but updated resemblance. The idea behind the book - that is, the notion of homoeopathic therapeutics - is, I am sure, one well known to homoeopaths. What Dr Rahmathullah has done is to bring together some 700 complaints or diseases ranging from the traditional to the more modern - for example, autism, repetitive strain injury, chronic fatigue syndrome and attention deficit disorder, to name but a few - and made lists of suggested remedies for each particular illness or condition. Chapters are titled by organ, system or pathological condition.
Criticism that some conditions e.g.: motor neurone disease and Tourette's syndrome, whilst carrying explanations, are lacking their corresponding lists of remedies, but these are few and far between. On the whole this is an excellent book of its kind.
However - and this is a big however (and some might say a personal issue) - the idea upon which this book, and all therapeutics, are based, is to my mind, fundamentally flawed. It is a fantasy which we are all, unfortunately, drawn into: the idea that a simple and dependable relationship exists between certain diseases and certain remedies. It would be a gift from heaven if, when a patient walked in with a certain complaint, we could turn to the book under review, peruse the list of remedies given, and thereby find the remedy that matches, knowing that in prescribing it the complaint will resolve.
Boenninghausen realised this when he proposed the whole idea of generals. These are in some ways what I would call qualia, or the qualities of the case. It is in the qualities of a case that we will most reliably find the appropriate remedy, not in the complaint itself. Agreed, I could accept that the compendium under review is not a dictate -rather a guide - and that if the case does not fit any of the listed remedies under a particular condition, one can always think again. But what is the value of a guide that may lead one in the wrong direction?
At the heart of homoeopathy is a schism between those who see illness as a disturbance of spirit/ consciousness/being, with all the unpredictable and individual effects that can have on the body, and those who take the more pragmatic view that there must be a relationship between complaint and remedy if there is similarity of symptoms. I suspect however that the fuel driving this latter view is the need to believe in a link between remedy and complaint, rather than there being any real evidence for the validity of that approach. All the evidence in fact points to the relationship we seek being between patient and remedy, rather than between complaint and remedy. The implications of this oft-stated truism still have not dawned fully even after 200 years, because it begs one fundamental question: what determines similarity? Anyone who has asked this question will find the answer as unsettling as it is profound (and I think a worthy and fertile subject for discussion in this journal).
This book has been difficult to review, not because it falls short in itself - as a compendium of the therapeutic approach it is excellent - but because it appeals to a need in us for a neat relationship between remedy and complaint. This is fortunately (or unfortunately), to my mind, a fallacy, because it bears little resemblance to the reality of homoeopathy. For those who like the therapeutic approach I heartily recommend this book - you will find much of value in it. For those who, like myself, seek to understand and utilise the deep rules upon which homoeopathy rests (in order to be truly able to practise consistently and reliably) the search must go on.
Reprinted with the permission of The ARH (from 'Homeopathy in Practice' Journal, Winter 2004 edition). Reviewed by Meg Brinton MARH.
What a labour of love! This beautifully printed and bound book has 44 chapters (arranged alphabetically from 'Abdomen & Groins' to 'Women's Complaints'), each of which is subdivided into between five conditions (Chapter 27, 'Men's Complaints') and 22 conditions (from 'Apoplexy' to 'Unconsciousness' in Chapter 5, 'Brain, Nerves & Spinal Cord'). The author includes over seven hundred human diseases, and has separate chapters on emergency, toxicity, and food and nutrition. All cancers and cancerous conditions are grouped in one chapter for easy reference. Each condition is described in a shaded box, which is easy to spot in a hurry, and remedies are listed for each illness or condition. The Preface explains what motivated the author to write the book, the table of contents navigates you quickly to the subsection you need, and the index at the back is also invaluable and accurate.
The Reference lists 52 authors (of 65 books) from Y.R. Agrawal's Diseases of Hair and Nails to George Vithoulkas's Essence of Materia Medica. Most of the books are well-known homeopathic materia medicas and therapeutics books, but there are also various medical and general dictionaries, and three encyclopaedias. I immediately wanted to pile up the 24 of the books on the list which I have collected over the years, to see how much space I could save on my shelves -though this book itself is quite large (215 x 155 x 60 mm, and weighs 1.5 kg or 3 lbs!) But it doesn't work quite like that. For instance, I couldn't find Taraxacum in any of the conditions listed for it in Boericke's Materia Medica. In his Preface, Shaik Rahmathullah says that 'Although Hering's Materia Medica had been an important source material, materials were also drawn from many ether equally noteworthy sources, the list of which can be found at the very end of the book.' The words 'drawn from' are important, because we mustn't fall into the trap of assuming that everything in each of the 65 books is in this one. If so, let's face it, the book would run to many large volumes and would not be so user friendly. As it is, one colleague remarked that it would be handier in two volumes.
Would I recommend this book? Well yes, I would. It arrived only just too late for the last issue of this journal, so I have been able to give it a good system test. Of course there are many consultations where you would not think of reaching for a therapeutics book, and there are many homeopaths who do not consider the therapeutic model to be useful to their practice of homeopathy, so this book will not be useful in every situation or to every homeopath. However, it is an excellent therapeutics book.
But do remember it's only as good as the information it's drawn from, and it doesn't contain many less common or newer remedies. For example, there's no mention of Sol, which has its own chapter in Foubister's Tutorials, though Tutorials is listed in the References. Also, Rahmathullah has a three-paragraph description of Radiation Sickness with ten 'Useful remedies' (no further individual information), which is surely somewhere that Sol deserves a mention. Two other general additions that would be useful, but would result in an unwieldy tome, would be the identification of sources per entry, and an overall alphabetical list of remedies.
I don't mean this to sound overly critical - rather my intention is to identify what information this book does, and does not, contain. It's a book I now like to keep as near as my favourite repertory and materia medica for quick access when the need arises, because it's great for directing me towards the 'obvious' remedy. However, I know it doesn't include all the remedies I may wish to consider. So although it will replace my copy of Kichlu and Bose's A Text Book of Descriptive Medicine (and it's about the same size), I think I'll be hanging on to my other books - although I may move them to the top shelf.
This book is expensive, but if I'd bought it some years ago, it would have saved me a lot of space and money.
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