PLEASE NOTE THE COVERS OF THESE BOOKS ARE DARK GREEN AND MANY OF THEM HAVE WHITE MARKS ON THEM WHICH IS HOW THEY HAVE BEEN SUPPLIED TO US AND IS A PRODUCT OF THE WAY THEY ARE PRODUCED.
Numerous homeopathic professionals have for a long time been asking me to write 'my materia medica.' They feel that the information I have provided in various courses over the years should reach a wider audience. To date this information has been available to only a limited number of homeopathic physicians. I have postponed this Herculean task for many years in order to create the necessary circumstances to do justice to such a tremendous job, namely, to communicate my experience, knowledge and understanding of our materia medica.
When these requests began, as early as 1975, I did not see any reason to write such a book as I felt I had little new to add to the existing voluminous amount of information concerning our homeopathic remedies and their pathognomonic pictures.
Subsequently I was persuaded by my best students, as to the importance of publishing a complete materia medica, one that would contain all the information and understanding that I have accumulated over my last thirty years of practice.
Because a real need exists for the information, I have decided to publish Materia Medica Viva in separate volumes instead of waiting for the entire work to be completed.
I have structured the Materia Medica Viva in order that the information will be used for both study and reference. The Essential Features are the part of the remedy that should be studied by the student. The rest should be used only for reference in studying a case.
1. Essences - The essential features which I consider the heart of the remedy in which I give mostly my own experience and my understanding of the remedy. In this chapter I have tried to capture the uniqueness of each remedy, the peculiarities that cause one remedy to be different from another, so that the student may be helped in understanding the remedy in its essence and the way it differs from others. This part is the one that the students should study.
2. Generalities and Keynotes - The second part gives generalities and keynote symptoms on different systems. This part is only for reference when you study a case.
- Author: George Vithoulkas
- ISBN: 9789608742901
- 2581 to 2794 pages
- Paperback
- Published in 2009
- Printed in Greece
Reprinted with the permission of The ARH, from "Homeopathy in Practice" Journal, Summer 2010 edition. Reviewed by Jemima Kallas MARH.
Remedies covered: Hepar sulphuris calcareum, Hyoscyamus niger, Hypericum perforatum, Ignatia amara, lodum, Ipecacuanha, Iris versicolor.
There is such a rich array of materia medica: factual, psychological, and therapeutic, via families, through cases. What are the unique qualities offered by George Vithoulkas in his Materia Medica Viva (volume 12) to persuade the homeopath to clear their shelves and part with £360 (to date)? The answer is: the Essential Features that gather up the essence of each remedy; and the profusion of cases with which he illustrates the remedies. In addition, each listing includes a conventional section of physical particulars, and this is followed by a more thorough list of remedy relationships than is carried by most MM.
Like the best teachers, Vithoulkas gathers up the facts in the light of his own experience and observation, occasionally broadening this to include a quotation from Kent. There is no speculation and there are no theories. The facts are familiar to the experienced practitioner and vital for the student, but what makes them vivid is the feel of the first-hand experience that lies behind them. This is what makes this very factual MM spring from the page. The Essentials sections of each remedy are fuller and more polished versions of the original 53 Vithoulkas essences, and they offer priceless guidance on the stages of physical and mental pathology within each remedy.
These, writes the author on his website www.vithoulkas.com are:
... the essential features which I consider the heart of the remedy in which I give mostly my own experience and my understanding of the remedy. In this chapter I have tried to capture the uniqueness of each remedy, the peculiarities that cause one remedy to be different from another, so that the student may be helped in understanding the remedy in its essence and the way it differs from others. All the sections, other than the cases, are scattered with words highlighted in bold, which means that a quick skim of the bold gives the keynotes of the remedy. Volume 12 contains seven remedies and 213 pages, which allows between 14 (Iris) and 48 pages (Ign, lod) for each remedy. The format is running text that is divided into sections and sub-sections.
The Essentials constitute a well-paragraphed overview of the remedy that covers Mind and Generalities plus some other characteristic important to that remedy but not to the others In the case of 'Hyoscyamus. there is an additional section devoted to children; for Ignatia. there are small additional paragraphs to cover the teenage years and the Ignatia adult; Ipecac has a separate section on its emotional picture. The overviews are followed by the physical particulars that, says Vithoulkas, are reference material to be used only when studying a case. This section follows the same order as a classical repertory (head / vertigo, eye / vision ... to chill / fever / perspiration, skin); this is in smaller type and uses bold type to pick out keynotes. The next heading is Relations, which is a short section that includes causations.
Finally come several pages of cases preceded by the listing of the pathology that the remedy could cover, similar to those in, for example, Clarke or Murphy's Lotus. Vithoulkas has been extremely generous with his cases. Hyoscyamus comes with 43 specific cases plus the summarised characteristics of typical Hyos cases under the headings: grief, jealousy, onanism, insanity, delirium, cholera, rheumatic endocarditis, typhoid fever, and scarlatina; Iris versicolor has 18 cases, Hepar sulphuris calcareum 33.
The cases are summaries stretching from two dozen words to a substantial paragraph that are drawn, mainly, from the 19th century (Lippe, Clarke, Boenninghausen, Haehl etc). It is extremely useful to be able to scan case after case resolved by a remedy, even if the 19th century style is distracting and analysis of the choice of remedy is usually lacking; the anatomical detail involved in recording a physical symptom is a lesson in itself. The cumulative effect of skimming two or three dozen cases for each remedy builds a practical and evidence-based totality.
However, I was disappointed that there was no reflection of the prescribing and dosage of our own century, no feeling of the kind of cases that come to us now, the immediacy of the patient's words and the sense that the core of the case lies in these words. These are practical materia medica cases: symptom-based and without emotional interpretation but the sheer weight of examples adds up to living materia medica. Just scanning the title of each case allows something of an overview of the remedy: for example, the Ipecac's 31 cases include three of intermittent fever, and examples of nausea during pregnancy, post-partum haemorrhage, uterine haemorrhage, chronic coryza, choroiditis, spasms, anguish and pain in pit of stomach, retained placenta, epistaxis, and several cases of vomiting or asthma.
I do have problems with this excellent volume of materia medica though. To begin with the trivial, someone failed to run a basic spell check, so there is diarrhea and diarrhoea, hemorrhage; a few capital letters missed, and some uncertain spacing m the layout.
More importantly, other than the names of those who provided the cases, there is no information on sources and nothing on how Vithoulkas made his decisions on what to include, and which materia medica have influenced his choices. This may be in volume 1 or it may be reserved for the final volume. Some of this may be online. Much will be familiar to those who download the extensive library of podcasts and videos. But this is a book, and it should be able to stand up as a complete work of reference on its own.
Vithoulkas has made himself invisible. This is a fine characteristic because it allows the facts to speak for themselves but it also feels like a waste, particularly because he includes none of his own cases.
Finally there are the questions of relevance and cost. Vithoulkas published the first volume of this mammoth project in 1992, before the digital age had got fully into its swing. Personally, I prefer to take down a volume from a bookshelf and leaf it - even 12 volumes (and J to Z still to come). How much is this true of the current generation of homeopaths? Would they, perhaps, prefer to download their Materia Medica Viva and probably pay rather less than the £360 that would acquire the current 12 volumes, plus postage?
Anyone of deep pockets who has not yet built up their materia medica collection, buy it! Referring to other authors for remedies from J to Z will be a reminder of how much you enjoy and appreciate the first half of this work.
