Eh Talk 1 Transcript Final

TALK : 1 CONCEPT OF HOMOEOPATHY - I
Hello and welcome ! We are about to embark on a journey together to learn how
to improve our skills in practice. And I really look forward to this series of lectures,
in which you and I together can undertake this journey.
So let’s begin from the very beginning.
I read for you, the words of Samuel Hahnemann, on how Homoeopathy began.
He says and I quote:
"I took by way of experiment, twice a day, four drams of good China (Cinchona).
My feet, finger ends, etc., at first became cold; I grew languid and drowsy, then
my heart began to palpitate, and my pulse grew hard and small; intolerable
anxiety, trembling, prostration, throughout all my limbs; then pulsation in the
hand, in the head, redness of my cheeks, thirst, and in short, all these symptoms
which are ordinarily characteristic of intermittent fever, made their appearance,
one after the other, yet without the peculiar chilly, shivering rigor, briefly, even
those symptoms which are of regular occurrence and especially characteristic - as
the dullness of the mind, the kind of rigidity in all the limbs, but above all the
numb, disagreeable sensation, which seems to have its seed in the periosteum,
over every bone in the body - all these made their appearance. This paroxysm
lasted two or three hours each time, and recurred if I repeated this dose, not
otherwise; I discontinued it, and was in good health." - Samuel Hahnemann
Hahnemann- Law of cure;

So today we will simply talk right from the beginning. The main story started with
Hahnemann and his discovery of the law of cure with his experiment with China
which we just saw. When he tried to find out why Cinchona is a good remedy for
malaria, he experimented, took it himself and it produced symptoms similar to
malaria and this lead to the discovery that a disease will be cured by a substance
that can create a similar state in a person.
Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 1

Remedy produces a state of being;
But what is interesting is that he discovered something that is far beyond and
what he discovered in this law. That was when he did a proving it not only
produced certain effects but it produced changes in the whole being.
It didn’t produce a symptom but it produced an effect on the organism and it

produced a whole host of expressions in the body as well as in the mind. This
discovery was even more important than the discovery of the Law of Similars.
We can summarize it as follows, we can say that any remedy, any substance
produces a state of being rather than it produces specific effects in specific organ
tissues and when it heals. When you find a remedy for a person or a disease you
are not only comparing the effects of the particular organs but you are comparing
the effects of the whole individual.
What you are doing is comparing the state of the remedy that it produces on the
prover with the state of disease in the patient as a whole. You are comparing the
state of mind produced by the remedy with the state of mind of the person. You
are comparing the appetite and the cravings of the remedy with the appetite and
cravings of the patient, the local symptoms of the remedy with the local
symptoms of the patient.
So what you are comparing on the whole is the state on the one hand of the
remedy with the state of the patient on the other.
Concept of Dynamization;
This discovery gets further clear with the concept of dynamization. When
Hahnemann started diluting the remedies with serial succussion, he found that
the effects are more enhanced. These effects were enhanced because of the
effect on the whole state. Slowly the remedy became too dilute to have any local
effect.
Scientifically, beyond the 12th potency there is no material substance at all. The
Avogadro’s number which is 6.02 × 1023. So there is a limit that not even one
molecule of a substance is found beyond the 12th potency.

So at that level, the remedy can have absolutely no local effects because there is
no substance in it, where is it going to affect. It can’t enter into your blood stream
and it can’t enter your organs, there is nothing to enter. So it has to work on a
deeper plane.
Hahnemann who would later call this plane, the plane of the force, the vital force
or the vital energy. And he would say that the whole idea of the disease and the
remedy is dynamic and not material.
At this level the expressions are on the whole being. Every symptom wherever it
may be found in the person at that time is an expression of that dynamic state
whether it is in a proving or in a patient. There are no local symptoms anymore.
Every symptom is an expression of the entire being whether it is the symptom of
the mind or the body, of the general or of the particular.
To my mind if you follow this, if you follow what I am saying right now, then you
are the homoeopath. This is the vital difference between a homoeopath and a
non- homoeopath. If you really see this, then you are homoeopath.
My realization- ‘Potentized remedies have dynamic effect only’;

I started studying homoeopathy in 1977 formally. Before that I knew it because of
my father and I started studying it in 1977. I really worked for it night and day for
years. It was crazy. There was nothing else in my mind. Every time I was just
interested in knowing the truth about Homoeopathy. That was my state. But it
took ten years till 1988, to understand what Hahnemann said.
I remember not far from where I am sitting now, I was driving the car & as I
turned the car, This was after 10 years of studying and understanding, thinking
and just going a little bit crazy. I was turning the car and something hit me like a
flash, which said, ‘Potentized remedies have dynamic effect only’. Then at that
point, everything that Hahnemann wrote became real for me, became my truth.
Because you see when you potentise a remedy and you go beyond the 12th
Potency, really nothing is left. So where can the remedy effect, if not on the
whole being. But this took a long time to understand.

Holistic:
The first concept therefore, when we see this Cinchona experiment of
Hahnemann, if you just go back to the experiment. He found that Cinchona, not
only produced certain local effects of chill or fever but it produced change in the
whole being. His whole sensation, his whole mind state, everything was changed.
Therefore, a disease is not something local, but this is something that is whole &
this idea is the idea of holistic medicine.
I would like to share a small experience with you. And this was in California, I was
giving a seminar there. And at that time, it was a long seminar like 14 or 15 days
we had a seminar. And I developed severe Renal colic. The pain was intense, it
was unbearable. I could hardly stand. I was screaming with agony and it lasted for
a few days. And of course, several remedies, so many types of treatment were
tired on me but the pain was still as bad. At some point, I thought let me try to
just experience this pain and see what it has to tell me. So I just went into the
experience of the pain and I didn’t fight it, I didn’t want it out, I just tried to just
feel what the whole state of the pain was about and I just went into that
experience.
And at a certain point, there was a moment of awareness, when I kind of

recognized the pattern in me of which that pain was an expression. And at that
very moment, I kind of knew that I was healed. And the pain eased within half an
hour and I passed out the stone very very soon. Somebody who observed me,
said to me ‘You must be happy, now that the stone is out.’ and I said ‘I think it’s
completely the other way around. The stone is happy, the stone is out because I
am happy.’

So it’s always your state that precedes the local symptoms or the pain. This was
the LIVE experience for me at that time. This is the principle of Holism that
disease, every symptom, very expression is an expression of the whole affection
of the organism and nothing is really local. And I think that that is really if you see
that then many many things get clear.
Individualistic :
The second and the most important principle that follows this is Individualism.
Which means that if a disease is an affection of the whole being than each
individual has his own specific, peculiar disease. And that even though individuals
may have the same pathological entity may it be diabetes or hypertension or
whatever it is, the expressions of each individual will be so completely different
from the other, that at that point of time you realize that you are not treating
Blood pressure or Diabetes, but you are treating the person.
Yesterday a person called me saying that he has high Blood Pressure. So tell me
about it? I said tell me about your pressure. He said ‘My Blood pressure
fluctuates, it goes up, it goes down. Sometimes it is 170 / 80, sometimes it is 125 /
75.’ I said ‘tell me more about it’. And he says, ‘I feel there is something throbbing
in my head’. I said describe this throbbing and he said ‘I feel it’s like as if the
whole brain is enclouded in a fog and I feel as if I have to pierce through that fog
so that I am able to even see, its a kind of dullness that sets in’.
I just want to contrast this with another patient who has hypertension. He didn’t
even know it. He came to me for some abdominal pain. Just by chance as a
routine examination, I took his blood pressure, it was 230/150. He didn’t even
know about it, he had no clue about it. In fact I think my blood pressure just went
a little bit high and I developed some palpitation when I saw his Blood pressure,
he didn’t have any symptoms.
So you see here there are two people who both have the same pathological entity
Hypertension, but it’s so completely different in their expression that one would
have to say that each one has his own individual disease.

In the same way, somebody says I have asthma, somebody says I have
rheumatoid arthritis, somebody says I have eczema. But this is just a name. If you
just go one step deeper, tell me about the asthma or tell me about the arthritis.
You hear such a completely different story behind each individual. And that I think
helps us to find the remedy for the individual.
Hologram - Microcosm and Macrocosm;

Now when you combine these two principles, of holism and individualism. Holism
which means that there is only one affection of the whole being at a time and it is
that which expresses in every part in the individual. That every expression of the
individual arises from the one same dynamic disturbance. This is one.
And that each one has his own individual disturbance what we call his individual
disease. If we put these two together, you come to one more thing and that is: if
you examine any one aspect of the patient deep enough, if you take any
expression of the patient and you go deep enough, examine it minutely enough,
then you will get the picture of the entire disease. This is something like a
Hologram where actually every Microcosm, every minute thing is a
representation of the whole macrocosm or the larger picture.
This is one of the fundamental basis of Homoeopathy. And if we lose this basis,
then we lose our foundation. And if we lose this, I think there is no real reason for
us to be even there because the local problems are been taken care of any way by
practitioners of modern medicine. So what is the difference between
Homoeopathy and Modern Medicine.
Homoeopathy v/s Modern Medicine :
Modern medicine and homoeopathy, the difference is simple. Modern medicine

says if your stone is out, you are happy’ and Homoeopathy says, ‘ If you are
happy, then your stone is out’.
I remember one more personal anecdote when I developed a tooth ache. It was a
very intense toothache and I developed a huge abscess on the lower part of my
mouth & It was so big. When I went to the dentist, she said I better take the

strongest antibiotics right away because I would have serious complications. And
then this was a test and I just decided to take help of a Homoeopathic colleague
and just went into that whole experience, and such a local phenomena as a huge
abscess, one would say it is so local, it is an abscess. It has to be treated locally.
But actually when you examine the type of pain and the experience of that
abscess, it was not very different from the experience of the whole. And that
remedy that was indicated turned out to be my remedy and that cured.
Why Hahnemann didn’t publish case:

It’s very interesting! Do you know how many cases Hahnemann himself has
published. It’s very interesting! I think Hahnemann published just two cases in his
entire life.
And why didn’t? He must have seen just hundreds of cases, why did he only
publish two? And I think the reason he didn’t want to publish very simple and I
think he said it also. He said also, ‘If I publish my cases, then the students will say
Hahnemann gave Nat Mur for an asthma case, so they will start giving Nat Mur in
every asthma case. And this is the reason I don’t want to publish cases.’
There is a very interesting story with Hahnemann which I think I should share with
you.
Case from Hahnemann- warts fell off; Chamomilla.

It’s a story of a student, I think his name was Aegeidi, and he went to Hahnemann
and wanted to learn. And he was sitting with him in his practice and Hahnemann
saw a child or a man with multiple warts and Hahnemann took the case. And he
gave a remedy and again he asked him, ‘what did you give?’ He says ‘you saw me
take the case, you saw the symptoms, you should know the remedy.’ That was it.
And the next time the patient turned up for a Follow-up, the warts were almost
nearly gone. Aegeidi couldn’t suppress his curiosity any more, so he stole into
Hahnemann’s room and opened his journal and tried to see what remedy
Hahnemann was giving. The child was given Chamomilla 30 by Hahnemann. Now
it’s so interesting that Chamomilla 30 is the last remedy, you would think of for

warts. But Hahnemann gave it to him because obviously the child needed that
remedy and none else.
This is the kind of vision that we need to develop, that we are not treating warts,
we are not treating the local problem, we are treating the whole being. And the
remedy that covers the whole being will cure the local problems. This is the most
fundamental thing that I think we need to see.
Dr. Prakash Vakil - spondylosis-Nux Vomica.

Early in my years, when I was a student I wanted to study how does Modern
medicine Doctors work. So I went to a well – known allopathic practitioner in
Bombay. He was a famous guy, he had written many books, and he was into
general practice and I wanted to familiarize myself with what was going on. He
said to me Homoeopathy is great because he himself had suffered
from a bad case of severe cervical spondylosis and he had been treated by a
homoeopath in Bombay called Dr. Prakash Vakil and the remedy had really helped
him. And the remedy that helped him was Nux Vomica 200 and he said with this
my spondylosis disappeared and it didn’t come back for years.
Now as a student, it was even difficult for me to imagine that Nux Vomica could
cure Cervical spondylosis. It requires a homoeopathic vision to see that you are
not treating spondylosis but you are treating the person. And that the spondylosis
is an expression of the whole being. And if you find a remedy for your being, you
will find a remedy for spondylosis.
It is this individualization in Homoeopathy that has stood the test of time. So

many ideas came and went. But the idea of Holism and Individualism still works
and still proves itself again and again in practice.
Boeninnghausen’s idea of Generalization :

I want to talk a little bit about Boeninnghausen and his idea of Generalization. The
same idea of Holism and Individualism was taken by Boeninnghausen and looked
at in a little deeper way. Boeninnghausen was a contemporary of Hahnemann and
both of them had a great regard for each other and shared correspondence.

Boeninnghausen took the idea of holism and he made a principle called
Generalization. What is Generalization? Generalization simply means, that every
expression in a part is an expression of the whole, that there is no difference.
Therefore every modality, every sensation, that is experienced in the local part in
reality belongs to the whole. This was the genius of Boeninnghausen, how he
applied Hahnemann’s principle.
The other idea that he came up was concomitants, which means that if a person
has a certain symptom what makes that symptom peculiar in that individual is
what else is with it that goes with it. For example: if you have a case of eczema
that exactly looks like Petroleum or Graphites or Mezereum, then what makes it
individual is the presence of some other symptom in some other part of the
system, and this is what actually differentiates.
This also is an extension of an idea of Holism that in reality, the symptoms of the
Eczema and may be the symptoms of the head or may be the stomach are all part
of the same dynamic disease.
And this is exactly what we do in our practice every day. If we want to

differentiate one remedy from the other, we have to see what else is there that
exists and then we can come to the idea of Individuality.
Boger; His contribution :

Let me talk to you little bit about Boger. Cyrus Boger he took over where
Boeninnghausen left off. The idea of Boeninnghausen was most followed by
Boger. And Boger had a natural successor in Phatak. So there is a lineage from
Hahnemann to Boeninnghausen to Boger and to Phatak.
Phatak - Generalization of the modalities and sensations :

So what is this whole Philosophy here? The main philosophy that was followed by
Boenninghausen, Boger and Phatak is the idea of Generalization of modalities and
sensations. It is the same idea of holism and individualization. It is the idea of
peculiarity and generalization. And here what you see is the generalization of
modalities and sensations.

But this Generalization that Boger and Phatak did was not mechanical. It was to
find out in the local symptom what was is it that is individual, what is it that is
peculiar, what is that sensation or that modality, that is strange and that is not
common to that illness. And when you have found in the local symptom or a
modality or a sensation that was peculiar , you could generalize it , you could say
that this is a part of dynamic illness. This is the whole idea of Boger and of Phatak.
I think it would be good enough to illustrate it with a case.
1] A case of parotiditis: Conium.

This is a case of Inflammation of the parotid gland – Parotiditis. A person comes to
Phatak with pus and swelling in the parotid gland. It has become chronic. And
Phatak asked him ‘ So tell me this inflammation, swelling of the parotid gland, this
pain you have. What makes it worse?’ he says it is very tender if I touch and if
I press it, it is very, very painful.
So Phatak asked him ‘So tell me what position do you take during sleep.’ And the
patient says, ‘I sleep on my affected side, the painful side’. Now Phatak gets a bit
curious here and he says ‘If your pain is worse from touch or pressure, then how
can you lie on the affected side, it doesn’t make sense’. And the patient says
‘Listen, when I lie on the affected side I make sure that my head touches the
pillow and my gland doesn’t touch the pillow, that it doesn’t touch anything. And
this position gives me the maximum relief.’
And then Phatak gets the idea that when he lies on the affected side with the
head touching the pillow, the gland actually hangs down. And then this hanging
down of the gland is giving relief. This is so peculiar, so he takes the rubric from
his own Repertory, ‘hanging down of the part ameliorates’. You could see if you
have the Repertory at your hand, at this moment of S R Phatak’s, then you could
look up to this rubric at this moment. It’s an alphabetical repertory, so you just
have to open it, go to H and there you could see the rubric.
‘hanging down of the affected parts ameliorates’

and under that it is written ,

‘ hanging down limbs aggravates & ameliorates’
‘Hanging down limbs ameliorates’
the main remedy is Conium. And Conium is the remedy known for swelling of the
glands. So that was the remedy the patient got which helped him beautifully.
Importance of detailed inquiry:

Now this case also brings us to the Focus of the importance of detailed inquiry. I
have studied with many masters of Homoeopathy and each one had a different
style of practice, each one had a different philosophy. Each one had a different
tool that he used. Some used the Materia Medica, some used the Repertory, etc.
etc. But there was one thing common in all these people and that is that they
would go into the inquiry to find out what is it that is peculiar in that individual.
What is it that is strange, what is it that they have not seen it before. And that is
the common thing between all these masters. So the importance of a detailed
inquiry cannot be emphasized enough.
2] A case of myoclonal jerk: Nitric acid.
I would like to share with you a case, some cases that will illustrate this.
One of my patients, very early on was diagnosed with myoclonal jerks. What
happened to him was that when he would hold the tea cup, he would just hold
like this, his hand would jerk and the tea cup would just fall from his hand. So this
was his problem that he would be getting jerks in his hand.
I treated him with many remedies but to no avail and then I said let me now really
inquire into what is it that is really going on over here. So I asked him ‘Tell me
when do these jerks happen, do they happen the whole day.’ He said, ‘no no it
doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen the whole day, it happens seldom’. ‘So when
do you notice it? Is it in the morning, afternoon, evening, night ?’ He said ‘It’s
usually in the morning. I said ‘in the morning’. ‘So tell me when in the morning,

every morning?’ He said, ‘no no, not every morning but especially in those
mornings when I have to get up early’. ‘What do you mean by this? When you get
up early?’ ‘ If suppose my usual waking time is 6.30 and for some reason for some
reason if I have to go to the airport early to pick up somebody who is coming by
the early flight and I get up at 4 or something and then that time onwards, my
hand would jerk.’
Now again here we could take the modality :
jerking from loss of sleep or aggravation from loss of sleep.
But you have to wait a little bit. Again I asked him,’ so tell me you get jerks when
you get up early. How long do these jerks last?’ He said ‘no it only last for about 1
or 2 hours in that early part of the morning. Otherwise after that for the rest of
the day, I don’t have any jerk’. ‘ So tell me you get up at 4, you have to pick up
somebody at the airport and then your jerk lasts for 1-2 hours after that. In that
1-2 hours, how is your state, how are you?’ and he says ‘ at that time I am drowsy,
because its still not my time to wake up’ I said okay. So here you are not fully
asleep, you are not fully awake, in that intervening period, that’s when you get
the jerk. He said ‘that’s exactly. This is the same thing happens at night when I
have to pick up somebody from the airport, my usual sleeping time is something
from 10:30 – 11, but if I have to go at 12 to the airport and I am feeling drowsy,
then in that state, my jerk comes’.
So again here you can open the Repertory of Phatak to the Rubric ‘Sleep’ and
under sleep there is an interesting rubric,
‘Sleep, half asleep, when agg’,
It is given half sleep evening aggravates, afternoon aggravates, before , during,

falling to aggravates and after that
‘ Sleep, half asleep aggravates’.
And there are four remedies, Camphor, Nitric Acid, Sabadilla and Valeriana. And I
choose for him out of these from some other symptoms, I got a clue to Nitric acid
and this remedy after this remedy, no more jerks and no more breakage of cups.
So this kind of investigation into the peculiar is something that I learnt very early
on.

Investigation of peculiar in the case :
3] A case of vitiligo: Calcarea carb.
I will tell you a case of another Homoeopath, he was from a city called Valsad.
And he had a case of a child with Vitiligo.
One day this child’s sister, she came into the house and the child must have been
about 8-9 years old and the sister little bit older, may be 13 or 14 and she vividly
described the situation in her school. She said we were in the biology class and we
dissected a frog but unfortunately the frog had not got enough of chloroform or
anesthesia, so with his abdomen open, the bowels out, it just jumped out of the
tray and it was flopping about. And the boy heard this and he developed a very
intense reaction. He couldn’t speak for a few days, he couldn’t eat for a few days,
and then he was scared, really afraid. Something happened to him, it really
affected him a lot. The other symptom that the Homoeopath noticed was that the
vitiligo/ white spots or Leucoderma around each spot there was a dark line as a
border. And so here was also an investigation.
And you have the rubric, this is in Kent,
‘Mind, horrible things, sad stories affect her profoundly ’
Or
‘Mind, fear which is excited, after hearing of cruelties’
and also you have the rubric,
‘Skin, discoloration: white, with the dark borders.’
And when you see these rubrics, you get it very clear that it is Calcarea carb.
This is the kind of work that we used to do earlier. We used to simply investigate
the cases, find the most peculiar symptom whether it was the mind or body and
then come to the remedy.
I’ll give you one more case from early practice.

4] A case- Is Indira Gandhi good or bad: Calcarea sulph.
This is a case of my colleague Dr Jayesh Shah, very good friend of mine with
whom I worked for many years and still continue to do so. He had a case of a child
with vitiligo. And when the parents were asked to describe the nature of the child.
They said that she is very much affected and offended if somebody does not
agree with her opinion of anything.
For example: in those times the Prime Minister used to be Indira Gandhi in India.
And there was an argument, Is Indira Gandhi a good Prime Minister or a bad
Prime Minister? Now the child felt, Indira Gandhi is a good Prime Minister,
somebody said no we don’t agree with you, she is a dictator, she has destroyed
this country. This girl was so affected by this difference of opinion that she
completely developed an aversion to this person and says ‘I don’t even want to
look at his face. How dare he speaks like this and why does no one appreciate my
opinion or what I say? Why does everyone think that my opinion is not good.’ This
is what she said.
Now this is so simple here. We can go into any number of theories and say this
person is egoistical or this person cannot do this or do that. Or we can go into
some system or some miasms or some kingdoms. But at that time, we didn’t have
any one of these concepts. So I think life was a little bit simpler. And Jayesh simply
went to the Repertory and he went to the mind section, you can see this in Kent
Repertory also or any of the bigger Repertories.
The rubric,
‘Mind, hatred; persons of, who do not, agree with him,
and you find the remedy Calcarea sulph and another rubric,
‘Mind, lamenting, because he is not appriciate’
Again you find Calcarea sulph and you go into the Skin and you see the main
symptom of the child
‘Skin, discoloration, white spots’
and you see Calcarea sulph again. So this child did beautifully on Calcarea sulph.

Why am I speaking of all these cases? Because I think that before we go on to
complicated theories and systems and concepts and themes and miasms and Sub
kingdoms and sensations and so forth, we must be grounded, founded and solidly
based on the fundamentals of Homoeopathy which are the ideas of Holism, the
idea of individualism, the idea of peculiar symptoms, the concept of
generalization, the concept of concomitant and the hunt for the peculiar. The
search for the peculiar and then locating through the Repertory the exact
expression of that peculiarity in the Materia Medica or to generalize that
peculiarity, the sensation or the modality and look for that in our repertories.
This is what really is our solid foundation. If we can do this then our work is really
well founded and on that we can really build an alephs of all modern research and
ideas. But if we lose this fundamental idea, then I think the building we built is
very shaky, it’s almost like on the air and not properly founded. Therefore, I want
to spend the first few talks just revising for myself and for you, these fundamental
ideas.
Let me start from my very first case.
5] The case of my grandmother: Alumina.
It was a case of my grandmother and her symptom was that whenever she would
eat or swallow, the food would get stuck somewhere into the oesophagus and
then she would have to vomit it out and she became very weak and exhausted.
And one food she simply couldn’t stand was potatoes. And she had almost
completely given up hope and I didn’t know one word of Homoeopathy at that
time but I knew a little bit of Repertory. So I looked for the symptom,
‘Throat, choking, esophagus, on swallowing’

&
‘Generalities, food, potatoes aggravate’
And I came to the remedy Alumina. She was about 77 or something age when I
had given her this remedy, she didn’t need another remedy and she died at the
age of 100, she completed a century, just with a few doses of Alumina. I had no
concept of remedies at that time. And yet this is the result. This is what I saw and I
learnt to trust rubrics from the Repertory, I learnt to trust that if the exact
peculiarity was found in the remedy, then the remedy had high chance of cure.

And this is what still stood me in good stead all these years. I am still practicing
this as my fundamentals. And everything that comes is a development and
addition on this foundation.
I want to recall some more cases from my very early practice.
6] A case of severe abdominal pain with coldness in the stomach: Elaps.

I was house physician in the Homoeopathic hospital here. And there was
admitted there a woman with duodenal ulcer. And she was to be operated a few
days later, because her pain was very intense. And one night I was called to see
her, with the pain she wanted some acute remedy.
And I said to her, ‘Tell me what type of pain you have here?’ She said ‘I have
burning in if my stomach’. I said ‘What gives you relief of the burning of the
stomach?’ and she said ‘if I drink something cold, I feel better in the burning’.
Now this is completely common and nothing strange about it.if you are Burning, it
should generally be better by cold.
But a long training in Homoepathic Case Taking from my teachers made me ask
that one extra question that made all the difference. And that question was ‘What
happens to you when you drink the cold drink?’ and then she said ‘When I drink
something cold, I can feel it goes through my throat into my oesophagus and I can
feel it cold and cold and cold and ice like coldness in my stomach.’ This was
peculiar. Everybody says my burning is better by cold, but a very few people will
describe you a sensation of something cold descending down into the throat and
then becoming like ice in the stomach. And I had the Repertory at that time and I
looked :
- ‘Stomach; coldness ice- like, after cold drinks’.

- ‘Stomach; coldness internal, as if ice water was rising and descending through
a cylindrical tube’.
And the remedy was Elaps corallinus. At that time, I didn’t even fully know what
Elaps corallinus was. This was like 30 yrs ago. I didn’t even know what it was. That
it was a snake I vaguely knew. But nothing more about it. And yet I gave her Elaps

on these symptoms and the next morning when I saw her the pain was already
relieved and by the next evening it was gone. And then she asked him, ‘Do I really
need this surgery?’ and I said ‘No I don’t think so. Go home and if you get a pain
then come back.’
I remember she was a vegetable seller. She used to sell green vegetables. And for
months afterwards she would give me a gift of a few vegetables. She would bring
it to my office and leave it for me as an acknowledgment, as a gratitude for
helping her. And from those vegetables I knew that she was alright and she didn’t
need any medication afterwards.
Now what is interesting of course, is the symptoms that I learnt at that time
through this kind of a repertory work are so clear and so etched in my memory
and these are the symptoms I still use as confirmations in many patients by
whichever means I may come to the remedy. I tell you, in Elaps cases , even today
in almost every case of Elaps I saw I found this confirmatory symptom that when
they drink something cold, it goes right through their throat with a very cold
sensation. And I know the other symptoms of Elaps as well, which is stomach pain
better by lying on the stomach. The only remedy is Elaps. ‘Desire for oranges and
especially desire for cold buttermilk.’
In India, we make a kind of Yoghurt drink called Lassi. It is basically yoghurt

sometimes mixed with water and usually with a lot of sugar and served cold. And I
still find that patients who need Elaps absolutely love Lassi. This is given in the
Repertory. Desire for sweetened buttermilk. All these beautiful confirmatory
symptoms, that you learn the hard way through cases, they still form the
cornerstone of my practice. They still form the ground on which I stand. If I have
that symptom, I am sure it is Elaps. And usually these confirmatory symptoms are
there.
Let me tell you of one more case from the same house physician times.

7] A case of peptic ulcer, better by stretching: Plumbum.
Another male patient, he came with peptic ulcer and again he was posted for
surgery & he had severe pain. I was again called in to see an acute emergency
situation at night. I went there, I was still young I was in my 20’s and not with too
much experience. So what I had learnt from my teachers was that just observe,
observe and observe just till you get the peculiar symptom and don’t stop till you
don’t have it. And here I saw this man, he was lying in the bed in his hospital ward
and his hands were holding to the bed post and his legs were holding the other
bed post and he was just pulling himself from both sides as hard as he could. That
was the only thing that could relieve his pain.
I think in Medieval times, they used to torture people by tying their hands and
legs and they would get horses to pull their legs so that their body could be
completely stretched. And that exactly was his posture. And when I observed that
I looked in Phatak’s repertory, so let’s get a little bit familiar with the repertory. It
is given in the rubrics under abdomen, right in the beginning of the repertory, in
the first few pages.
‘Abdomen, stretching with’
and the only remedy is Plumbum. And if you read the Materia medica, you find
Plumbum has the modality that he has to stretch during abdominal complaints.
And that’s the remedy that helped him. Again he never needed the surgery
afterwards.
8] A case of woman aggravated by drinking sugarcane juice: Arsenic.

I would like to tell you of the first 2 -3 cases I had in my practice.
The first case was, of the very first case in my practice, private practice was of a
woman who came to me with recurrent allergies and colds. And her symptom
was that she would get worse if she drank sugarcane juice. In Bombay, you get
people who squeeze out the juice out of sugarcane and they give it to you to
drink. And if she drank that she had trouble. Normally they mix a lot of ice in it, so
I thought it must be the ice that causes a problem. But when I questioned her

carefully, she said listen even if it is without ice I am in trouble. This I know for
sure. So then I had Phatak’s repertory to rescue. Under food and drink, you have a
rubric
‘Sugarcane juice aggravates’.
And the only remedy given is Arsenic. And that’s the remedy that helped her. And
isn’t it great when your first case is a success because then probably the only time
in your life, you have 100% success in your practice.
9] A case of renal failure with an uncommon symptom: Mercurius.

I want to tell you, about another case, the second one that came into my practice
this time it was a tough one. He was a man with renal failure. His one kidney was
transplanted and this kidney had been rejected. His serum creatinine was going
up rapidly and every week he tested his serum creatinine, it was few points
higher.
This was a huge challenge. And when he came into my practice, I was so young
that one look at me and he lost all faith in me and he became completely unco-
operative and his only motive was to get out of the clinic as fast as possible. But
since he represented now my 50% of my practice, I was not willing him to let go ,
so I just sat with him since I had all the time in the world. So I sat with him, took
his case again and again till he realized he better tell me something that was of
interest to me.
And after much Case Taking, he told me there’s one thing I have to tell you, he
says ‘my semen is bloody.’ Now I told him listen you are, your kidney is
transplanted. You are on immuno-suppressants, you have renal failure, so may be
one of these things is causing this, bloody seminal discharge. He said ‘not at all.’ I
said ‘How do you know?’ He said ‘I consulted a top most nephrologist in the
country and he told me that my blood in the semen has absolutely nothing to do
with my renal problem, because they are completely different systems.
I remembered the words of Kent, he had said in some point, that if you don’t
know what is peculiar in an individual just send him to an allopath and find out
which symptom is completely meaningless, which symptom has absolutely

nothing to do with the pathology and then you have your peculiar symptom. So
that’s what I did. I took the rubric: this is in the Kent’s Repertory, those times we
have Kent’s Repertory.
‘Genitalia; seminal discharge, bloody’.
And I choose for him, the remedy Mercurius and it did really wonders for him
because every week after that his creatinine dropped and dropped after
Mercurius and he lived for many more years.
10] A case of migraine with a peculiar sensation: Pulsatilla.

I remember a case from my early days in my practice was of a girl with migraine.
She had a severe migraine headache. I asked her ‘How did it start?’ and she said it
started after my brother threatened to destroy my marriage. My brother was
disgruntle with something and he said I will not leave your marriage be peaceful. I
will come and I will finish it. And she said she got really scared when he
threatened that and soon after her headache started. I said ‘can you describe this
headache to me please?’ And she said its ‘as if something is pulling my eye balls
backward. This is how I feel.’ And then I took these rubrics:
‘Head; pain, fright after’

Again from Kent and
‘Eye; pain, drawing: backward, the eyeball’.
The remedy that was common was Pulsatilla and that did her really really well.
11] A peculiar posture and modality in a coughing boy: Theridion.

I often like to tell a case of a young boy must be in 6 or 7 years old who came to
my office with his mother, he had a cough. He had a chronic allergic cough and it
was quite bad, he was coughing and spasms of cough. And I gave him Drosera, I
gave him Spongia, I gave him what not in my desperation I must have given him
many of the known common remedies for cough but no avail. And then I said
what can I do here? and I said today we are going to sit here, the mother, boy and
me and find the peculiar symptoms. Because until that time, none of us are going
home. I had enough with this cough and I had to solve that way.

The mother was rather a woman with loud voice and she was telling me you know
my son, he has this cough and the cough is not going, and gets up in the morning,
he gets up in the night, it was like a shrill voice. And the boy told her, ‘Quite
Mummy, quite. I feel like vomiting, be quite’. That was my first symptom. And the
second thing was I observed that every time the child coughed, his knees would
go up and his head would go down bend forwards, this way just almost bending
double with the cough. And I asked the mother, when he lies down also does it
happen? She said ‘yes, exactly. when he lies down again the kind of jerks his body
together with the cough.’ And then you see that I had looked at the Repertory
section, and I had to start searching.
You see I didn’t know where would it be found. And if you don’t know where it is
going to be found, you have to search. And in those days, because we used books
and not software, you had to turn the pages of the book and you had to read each
rubric one after the other. And this way, we learnt a lot of rubrics that were not
applicable to the case but that we could apply in some of the other case later. At
least we became familiar with the various rubrics. And I seriously suggest that
those of you who have not turned pages of the repertory or the Materia Medica
in the book form, that you must do so because I found that that’s what remains
really good in memory.
So the rubric here was: and I think Kent is a tough task master because this cough
symptom he put right at the end of the chapter on cough, so that I had to read
almost every rubric of cough till I got to:
‘Cough; violent spasmodic jerking of the head forward and the knees upward’.
This is the rubric. And the remedy given is Theridion.
Also Theridion is very sensitive to noise, especially shrill noises and it is given in
the rubric:
‘Stomach; nausea, noise from’
And this remedy did good to the cough. And he never had a cough after.
I remember also, just see this is the way we used to practice. It’s so interesting
and how applicable it is even today. We should not forget.

12] A case of cough aggravated by looking up: Lycopodium.
I saw a Homoeopath, a lean thin young person. He must be about 17-18-19 years
old, a young boy, very thin fellow with a bad dry cough. And he came to the office
and what is interesting is for some reason he looked up at the fan, may be with
the fan on or off . I found it interesting that when he would look up he would get
the cough. So it became a little bit of a joke, because I made him do many times.
‘okay look up again’ and he would just do …. And then I understood that this was
peculiar. I went to the cough section again :
‘Cough, bending, head backward agg.’
And the remedy there was Lycopodium which was interestingly is another rubric:
‘Cough, dry, emaciated boys in’
I am deliberately reading a bit slowly these rubrics and repeating it. So that you
might have an opportunity to quickly look into your Repertory and see that thing
actually imprint because when you see that it just goes into your memory.
13] A case of a boy who saw cupboards falling on him: Carbo veg.
I want to recollect a case of a young boy of about 10years of old. He was the son
of my former compounder, the man who makes medicines for me. And
interestingly he has a younger brother and both the kids developed high fever.
And the fever lasted for some time and they lost appetite and it went down and
whatever. And they became weak. So ultimately because they were not eating
adequately and not eating much, & especially the boy was quite bad. So we
admitted him in the hospital and did the test and it was positive for typhoid fever.
So this was a typhoid case.
And he was slowly going into a kind of sleepiness which was not very nice to see.
So I asked the parent for history. So they said, the history is like this: That the boy
went to school and he had not carried a particular note book with him for some
reason which was not really his fault. And the teacher she reprimanded him ‘Why
didn’t you bring this book? And why …’ and she was scolding him like this. The boy
didn’t say anything. He didn’t show any reaction. He came home and he slowly

developed fever. He didn’t say anything about the teacher, he didn’t react much.
He just went into a kind of fever, the temperature didn’t go high. It remained
moderate like 102- 101 low grade kind of a fever. And in this state, the boy was
also by nature, a little reserved, a little dull, not very expressive at all, didn’t speak
much.
So at some point, they said he went into a kind of delirious state and in this
delirium, very, very slowly he said, ‘The cupboards are all falling on me. There
were cupboards on both sides of the room, they are all falling on me. The
cupboards are falling on me’. And then he said, at some other point, he said ‘I feel
there are two fairies, and these two fairies are fanning me. This is what I see’ and
… all this was also stated in a very quite & reserved way. Not very expressive at
all and then he slowly started sleeping into a kind of sleepiness.
So what to do here. This was an interesting story. And I said. What do we see? We
see that There is a lack of reaction. It’s not even though it’s typhoid, it is not going
very high, he is not expressing anything. But he is going slowly into himself. And
secondly there’s a rubric:
‘Mind; delusions, walls, falling, inward’
In this case it was not the walls but the cupboards which were in the walls which
was like the walls for him, they were falling inwards. And the remedy there was
Carbo vegetabalis which of course is a remedy which shows a kind of dullness or
lack of reaction. And the main modality of Carbo veg is the relief from fanning
which is what he saw. The two fairies were fanning him. And we gave him Carbo
veg, he was given no antibiotic, no anti – typhoid medicine and within two days
you could see he developed an appetite, he sat up, he became more reactive, and
he started, he actually walked out of the hospital ward after 2 or 3 days. And now
of course, we .. it’s more than 10-12 years this case was done and he has done
very well. He is now studying engineering.
So you can see how interesting when you go into that rubric,
‘Walls falling inwards’

and you see the remedy Carbo veg .. you are not prescribing just on that one
symptom. This is what we have to understand. It’s risky to prescribe on one
symptom, I don’t advocate it at all. But to study the peculiarity of the case, to

study what was strange in that case, to go into that rubric , then you locate the
remedy and then you see sometime that the remedy covers the whole being with
the exact state of the person. The fanning, the lack of reaction, the typhoid state.
Later on we will study that Carbo veg is a typical remedy from the second row of
the periodic table. The idea of the second row of the periodic table is the idea of
labour and this is where the walls fall inward and that you need to come out,
number 1 you need air, you need fanning, and you need to react, you need to
move and not have lack of reaction. And we will ultimately see that Carbo veg
falls into the Typhoid miasm. But all this is much later, the fundamental is how do
we understand the peculiar, how do we see in the Materia medica. How do we
see it in the Repertory? And that is a really big step for us.
14] Case of a boy who flew kites: Nux Vomica.

Now in India, of course we get an opportunity to treat very acute cases, acute
infections. Here was a young boy who had typhoid and malaria together; both the
test were positive. He had very high fever. And of course he was losing his
strength. Everyone was worried and it was a typical situation.
I went on a visit to the boy’s house. I remember he was two buildings away from
my practice. And I am standing there and a host of relatives like 20 relatives all
around looking at what I am doing and what am I going to do there. And I say
what can I do? I say to the boy and the parents, do you remember any dreams
from this boy, just at the beginning of fever or during the fever. I think it requires
a lot of guts to do that. To just go into this case with typhoid and malaria and the
boy nearly sinking and you say what dreams did you get? It requires I think quite a
courage of conviction. But we had it because we know, if we find the peculiar, we
can do it. If we don’t ,we can’t. so we don’t have a big choice here.
So the interesting dream of that boy was that he is flying kites and in India, we
have a kite flying festival where you fly a kite and somebody else flies a kite and
somebody else flies a kite and your idea is to fly your kite higher and to cut the
other guy’s kite. This is a kind of a game and this is what he saw. He saw he is
flying kites, the other guy’s are flying higher and he is cutting those kites and this
was his dream. And it was a good dream for him. It was like a good situation.

So I took all the symptoms and I didn’t know how to take this one and I taught
about this and said this is competition. He is really competing. And if it is
competition, where can I look for in the repertory. Remember I didn’t have the
concept of kingdoms at that time or of some kingdoms like Plant or Minerals or
nothing. So for me, competition had to be a rubric not a kingdom, isn’t it
interesting. And I thought which rubric is in the Repertory that could talk about
competition. And I thought it had to be the rubric jealousy. Because from jealousy
is when you have a rival and you are there & competing and then you are jealous
in a way, isn’t it. So I took jealousy as the rubric.
Incidentally, do you know the difference between the rubrics jealousy and envy?
The difference is as follows:
Jealousy means to be vigilant of your rival. Jealousy means you are jealous of
someone else and you want, you are competing with somebody else, you want to
be better from somebody else. Like it’s typical of a boy and girl situation. So the
girl is jealous of another woman who is getting that man’s attention. So this is
jealousy. Whereas envy means to wish for the possession or the quality of the
other. But not really have any competition with that person.
For example: you can say, I am envious of Bill Gates. I am envious of his wealth. I
am envious of the brain of Albert Einstein… something like that. But it doesn’t
mean that you are in a rivalry with that other person. This is the difference. So
there are two rubrics in the repertory, jealousy and envy. They are similar but this
is the difference. So jealousy I thought more suited this case and I chose that
rubric:
‘Mind, jealousy’
And with another symptoms of the case I came to the remedy, Nux Vomica which
really helped out and was a beautiful result here with that case.
15] A case of boy with abrupt speech: Tarantula.

So let’s talk about another case. So here is a child who came with cough. By this
time, you must have realized that my clinic was a coughing factory, I have told you
so many cases of cough. But in any case, that was how it was. And this case again

I gave him Drosera, and I gave him Cuprum, and I gave him Spongia, and all
Antimonium tartaricum, Ipecac, you name it and it didn’t work, went on and on
and on, this recurrent cough. So those times I had only one choice, come here we
sit down today, I normally call these cases right in the end of my practice and I
was ready to sit with them for the whole night, need be till I found the peculiar
symptom.
So the mother was sitting, the child was sitting, he must have been about 5-6
years old and mother was telling the story and suddenly the child was looked at
me and said, ‘ Hey Sankaran, why is my cough not getting better. Hey Sankaran’
like this. And the mother got nervous and she said ‘ Oh, please Doctor, forgive my
child for his rudeness.’ I said ‘no it’s absolutely fine.’ And now I got my peculiar
symptom. And what was the peculiar symptom, it was in Mind there were two
rubrics:
One is abrupt, so you will have it in Kent
‘Mind, Abrupt’
If you see there are only two remedies. I remember it from my memory. ‘ Abrupt’
- Tarentula, Natrum muriaticum.
And then the other rubric,
‘Mind, threatening’
‘Hey Sankaran’ this is a threat.
So when you combine abrupt and threatening, you find the remedy Tarentula.
And that was the remedy for the child.
Just as a liitle aside, what is the meaning of the word ‘Abrupt ‘.
We have to understand. Incidentally, I taught repertory in my college for many

years, and that’s what I had to teach. I had to teach the meaning of each rubric
and try to understand what exactly it means. And for that many a times we have
to understand words. If you just take the word ‘Abrupt’ means ‘to cut from’, rupt
is coming from Latin word, which means to cut, just like to interrupt or rupture
etc., it’s all the same root and ab is from. So abrupt means to cut something from.
So I am speaking and the child is right in the middle of the conversation between

the mother and me comes ‘Hey Sankaran’ just cuts something in the middle. So
this is what abrupt means. And interrupt means to cut something in the middle.
Inter in the middle, rupt to cut. So it’s so interesting, the origin of the words.
So now you see how the idea of holism and individualism is working on the basis
of peculiar symptoms.
That’s what Hahnemann wrote in the aphorism 153 of the Organon :
‘ …. that the rare, strange , peculiar symptoms will indicate you the remedy’
because they show the entire state of dynamis of that particular person.
Now let’s take it a little bit forward:
We see this abrupt and threatening, we combine these two rubrics, we come to
Tarantula and I treated it will Tarentula and it was good.
But now with the knowledge we have right now, when we look a little bit more,
what is Tarentula.
Tarentula is a spider and when we study the qualities of a spider we understand

that one of the main survival quality of the spider is suddenness. That they have
to be abrupt or sudden in order to be effective. They cannot be slow because they
are not so fast so fast movers. They are just sitting in one place and without any
notice, they got to go and trap the person. This kind of suddenness of movement,
unexpected movement is very typical of spiders.
Very typically if a spider person is sitting, and somebody just walking across the
room, he would simply have an impulse or simply do it to, just put his foot in the
middle and is tripped over over and falls flat on his face. This is a kind of
impulsiveness, a quickness, an alertness, a restlessness, a mischievousness … all
this is a part of the spider and these are the rubrics in which you will find
Tarentula. Impulsive, quick, abrupt, alert, violent, mischievous, cunning and
deceitful.
So later on, when we do study the Kingdoms, you will see how all these rubrics
fall into place. And how they are actually the expression of the source itself. But

that doesn’t mean that we should neglect the rubrics. It’s from there the whole
story starts.
And then later we will study that the snakes are different from the spider.
Because the snake by its nature is not abrupt, it’s not impulsive, but it’s deceitful.
And it’s deceit as opposed to a spider deceit is that it’s deceit is that it’s long
planned. That it will remain hiding for a long long time, and wait for its
opportunity to attack.
Unlike that of a spider, that can get an impulse and do something on an impulse.
A snake will not do something on an impulse, it will wait. For a snake you have to
think on a larger classification of reptiles. And one typical of a reptile is of course,
the alligator or the crocodile.
When you see or read a little about about crocodile, you know something about
the crocodile then you see that the whole story of a crocodile. It is sitting there,
looking like a rock not moving and waiting for the opportunity. It’s not impulsive
but very planned. And that we will see that it’s the main difference between the
two. But all this comes much later when you start seeing rubrics as an expression
of the whole of the remedy and the remedy as an expression of the source.
But what’s happening sometimes now a days we go little bit too much out of the
way and we all only want to know the kingdoms and not the solidity of the rubrics
and the repertory and I think if we do that I think we can really miss out on a lot.
16] Case of urinary tract infection- Cantharis.

I will give you an example:
Here is another case of a young girl, she was about may be 12 or 13 years old,
who came with a very severe case of urinary tract infection and she was very
heavily on antibiotics. And it would get better and again she would land with
heavy antibiotics and so this went too long and the parents ultimately brought
her to see me because they wanted a more long lasting solution.
Now when I asked the mother about it, she said the pain is so much the burning,
the burning, the burning is so much that every drop of urine is like fire and the girl

has to literally cross her legs and tighten her muscles and she shrieks with pain
with every drop of urine.
When I asked her about the mind state, she said I am very competitive and she
always wants to get better than the other people. She always stands first in her
class and if someone beat her to that then she would be very angry. And I said
describe this anger and she said, ‘I just want to break their head like a coconut’.
That was her expression. ‘ I want to break their head like a coconut’.
And I said, ‘do you have any fears?’ And she said ‘Yes, I am very afraid of the
dark. And from my dining room to my wash basin, there is a passage that is dark
and not lighted; I am very scared to go into that passage after dinner’. So I asked
her describe this. So now I could have easily taken the rubric, ‘Fear of dark’ and
you know what I could have missed the remedy because it is not there. Just to go
one step deeper, I said, ‘describe your fear in the dark’. And she said, ‘I am afraid
in the dark because there may be a witch there’. I said ‘describe this witch?’ And
she says ‘no I can’t see the witch, so I can’t describe it to you’.
So again here, I could have taken the rubric, ‘Mind; delusions, imaginations,
spectres, ghosts, spirits, sees’.
But no, go further. I said ‘Describe this witch’. She said ‘I feel this witch will come
and that she will just choke me suddenly’, like this . I said ‘Describe this choke me
suddenly’. Now here again, I could have taken the rubric, ‘delusion choked’ I
would have been wrong again. So ‘Describe me this choke’ and she said ‘I can feel
it in my throat, as if the hands of the witch are icy cold, and they are just choking
me’.
And here we come to that end of the narration, to the end of that peculiarity and
I took the rubric,
‘ Delusion as if she is choked by icy cold hands’
and the only remedy is Cantharis. And of course, Cantharis is a great remedy for
urinary tract infection and burning and it did her beautiful. I followed her up for
like 5 yrs later and she was perfect, never needed antibiotics again.
Rubrics become meaningful later when we understand the kingdom approach;

Now when we look back into this case, you can see that even though she was
prescribe on that one symptom, ‘Delusion, choked by icy cold hands’ and the
urinary burning and the infection , you see that when you look back in the
retrospect that she had all the features of animal kingdom. She has
competitiveness, she has the desire to kill the competitor, she has the desire to &
feared to get killed herself by the witch.
You see all qualities of the insect. You see the burning pain. You see that in many
insect remedies- stinging and burning, like you see in Apis for example.
And the second quality of the insect is sudden death; suddenly something comes
and kills you, the sudden death. And then you see in most insect remedies, a kind
of shamelessness. ‘I will just take and break her head like a coconut’, this straight,
frank, undisguised form of expression, is very typical of insect remedies.
So you see she has features of the kingdom and the subkingdom and the
peculiarities, all this you see much later. But you understand that, when you come
to a remedy with a peculiar symptom, you are actually seeing an expression of the
whole being. It’s so interesting when you study the cases from both the angles
and you see that both come to exactly the same point. And then you see that if
you have your left hand and your right hand with you, your left brain and your
right brain with you, your repertory and your system with you, then what a
beautiful combination that is and what confidence it gives to you in your practice.
And that’s exactly what I want to emphasize throughout this course, that we can’t
afford to neglect one side or the other.
17] Case of a boy angry with the goddess- Lyssin.

Most of you have probably read or heard about my landmark case, which was a
case of Lyssin. Without going into too much details, it was a boy with eczema
from head to toe. And when I asked his mother to describe it. She said that the
itching comes in so violent paroxysms that so sudden and so severe that he just
wants to bite himself and just stab himself with a knife and he gets into a rage,
that he went & tore the picture of the Goddess to whom he was devotedly
attached before.

And I came to Lyssin with the rubrics
‘Mind; impulsive, stab his flesh with the knife he holds’
And
‘Mind; delusions, he has suffered wrong’
He always felt that the goddess is doing something bad to me, even though I don’t
deserve it. And the interesting thing is- the rage in paroxysms.
‘Mind, cut, mutilate, slit, desires to, others’
Now when we look at this whole story here, you see that what is interesting in
this case, why is it a landmark case for me. Because he had eczema and he had
been treated by many Homoeopaths before nobody had given him Lyssin. Simply
because I think because Lyssin isn’t found in the skin section of the Repertory. It
doesn’t have one symptom. But when you study the dynamis of the case, you see
his itching or his rage, both come in paroxysms and with great violence. And that
is the dynamic generalization in his case.
‘ Violence in paroxsyms’.
And of course when you see what Lyssin is :
Lyssin is the mad dog. And what the mad dog does when it gets mad is to bite and
tear the very human to whom he is devowedly attached or loyal too. And that is
what we see in Lyssin. So you see much later on all these symptoms, these mind
things, you are able to see in the context. But it’s very important to know them
before.
Dr.Sarabhai Kapadia; keynotes.

I want to talk to you a little bit about one of my teachers. His name was Dr
Sarabhai Kapadia. And I used to go to his clinic, for a few years and learn what I
could. You see in those times practitioners were not giving seminars, there were
no lectures, and they simply used to sit and practice and they saw many many
cases, many successful cases but they never speak of them.

18] Case of molluscum contagiosum; Agnus castus.
I would like to tell you one case with Dr Sarabhai Kapadia. It was a case of a boy,
must have been a boy of 5-6 years old and he had Molluscum contagiosum.
Molluscum Contagiosum is a disease, it’s a viral warts, you get many many viral
warts and they have an umbilicus in the centre. And generally, the modern
medical Doctors don’t have much to do with it. They say you have to cauterize it
but too numerous sometimes to be cauterized.
And Dr Sarabhai sat with the child, and he could have given him, Causticum, Thuja
or some wart remedy. But they don’t look at the wart. He wanted to know what is
peculiar here, and so he kept asking over and over again,. He said what is it, the
mother said ‘There is nothing, there is no modality. It’s just like a wart, no
modalities here. And he said ‘no, we should ask’. So he kept asking, ‘tell me about
his appetite, his thirst, his stool, his sleep, his sweat and so on and so forth. And
finally after half an hour later, the boy started scratching his head and Dr.
Sarabhai pointed it out and he said, ‘you didn’t tell me this symptom, that he
scratches his head’. The mother said’ no, no he has nothing in his head. No
problem in his head, he is simply sleepy and when he is sleepy, he just scratches
his head.
And Dr Sarabhai said that’s what is peculiar he told me. We looked in the
repertory,
‘Head, itching scalp, sleep on falling to’.
And the remedy was Agnus castus. Now Agnus Castus is a remedy which is in the
Materia Medica, it’s represented as a remedy for old people who had so much sex
that they can’t get an erection any more. Something like this.
And Dr Sarabhai chose this remedy to give to this young boy with molluscum
contagiosum, and I saw the follow up with the entire thing completely disappear.
This is that story how do you search for the peculiar. I am not advocating here,
that you should prescribe on one symptom. But I am definitely saying that along
with looking at what could be the kingdom or the sub kingdom or the Miasm, it is
very important to look at what are the peculiar symptoms in a case and where

can we find them in the Repertory. Because often that has a solidity that the
system could lack at times. You have to be very very well balanced and also to see
the integration of the two is very important.
19] Case of glomerulonephritis-Hepar sulph.

I remember one case of a child who was admitted in the homoeopathic hospital
with acute glomerulonephritis which followed an infection of the skin. She had
eczema, and the eczema had got infected and she developed acute
glomerulonephritis as a result of it. The urine stopped completely and she
became bloated up and she was hospitalized.
It’s very interesting the parents had immense faith in homoeopathy and even to
my own surprise. The pediatrician who came to the Hospital literally begged the
parent to give at antibiotics, but they said no, we trust Homeopathy and that’ sit.
So it made the task really very challenging for me.
So I went and sat with the child in the hospital , and I said ‘ tell me, keep telling
me something whatever you know the child tell me.’ And after some time it
emerged that the child would not look at her paternal grandmother. She didn’t
want to look at her. She said ‘this woman should not come into my room. I don’t
want to see her. Everybody else is ok but this one, no’. And also it turned out that
during her pregnancy, the mother of the child had a lot of friction with her
mother in law, which was the grand mother of the child.
So this one peculiar symptom I completely understood. And then I start, this was
a starting point for me. I took the rubric,
‘Mind; aversion to certain persons’
And then I studied those other remedies and from the symptoms I came to Hepar
sulph.
The result was dramatic. She came out of the whole story within two days. And
now not only it helped her of course with her nephritis but it helped her with her
skin problem. And now it’s about 15 years later and she is absolutely fine with
both the skin and the kidneys.

Earlier, we saw a symptom
‘Mind; Hatred for persons, who do not agree with him’.
Very similar to
‘Mind, aversion to certain persons’
and you see the Remedies are also very close. Hepar sulph , Calc sulph. Because
Hepar sulph is Calcium sulphate, but it is heated to such a degree, that the miasm
changes. Whereas Calcarea sulph, is more a ringworm miasm. Hepar sulph we will
soon see is the Syphilitic miasm. So interesting, when you start looking at the
rubrics and the remedies and how they relate to each other.
Dr.Koppikar.
I want to talk to you, little bit about one of my other teacher his name is Dr S P
Koppikar. He is from Chennai. A very senior homoeopath, he died a few years ago
at the age of 90- 92. And he was a close friend of my father. I want to tell you a
little bit about the spirit of the learning into those times that he wrote to me
once and he said that I am coming to Bombay, can we meet? I said sure we can
meet and he said what are you doing here in … what do you do? I said ‘ Sir, we
have a meeting on Monday nights in my house, my colleagues come, Jayesh
comes and some other 8 -10 colleagues we meet at 8:30 at night and we discuss
cases till 4:30 till late morning.
And this we were doing for many years and Dr Koppikar who was at that time in
his late 70’s or early 80’s, he said can I join, I want to learn too. And he actually
joined in. He came and sat the whole night. We were completely exhausted and
he was completely alert. This was unbelievable, and learnt and learnt and learnt
and kept his mind open for the whole of his life. This was the spirit. I don’t know
sometimes, we are little nostalgic about the golden days of the past but this is
one of the things I am nostalgic about. These Monday meetings at night and with
these colleagues and with Dr Koppikar sitting there and joining us and telling us
about his experiences. And wanting to learn from us, people who are like 1/3rd his
age, I mean this is something else and I think that’s what makes a man young,

when he is still open, still willing to learn and still seeing more and more to do and
learn. OK.
Case of asthma-Nat sulph.

He told us of a case of Asthma. He was a man with asthma, he was his friend. And
he treated him for several years without much success. And one day he paid a
social visit to his friend’s house, in the evening and the friend’s wife said, ‘Your
friend has not come home from work, he will be there in 10 minutes. So Koppikar
waited and the friend came and he sat down and took off his shoes and took off
his socks and he started to scratch his toes. And Koppikar looked at him and said,
‘You didn’t tell me this your toes scratch.’ He said ‘ No it don’t really scratch, I just
have a habit when I come home, I remove my shoes and socks, and I feel a little
itchy and it’s nice to scratch them.’
And then Koppikar looked in the rubric,
‘Extremities; Itching, toes, evening, on undressing’.
The remedy was Natrum sulphuricum, which is of course a great remedy for
asthma, and that cured the case.
I want to come back to the present time.
Dr. Amar Nikam;

A few Sundays ago, I attended a lecture by colleague of mine here in Bombay, his
name is Dr. Amar Nikam, he is from a city near Bombay called Pune, he runs a
homoeopathic hospital there and he treats several difficult cases with
Homoeopathy.
He gave an example he showed a video case of a woman ; he presented a case of

a woman with Aids, it was a full blown case of AIDS. And the woman had
suppuration from her head to her toes, so many pustules and so many ulcers. The
pus was there and above the pus there were scabs, and we saw the picture of the
woman and it was a quite site to see and she was given antibiotics after
antibiotics, with no success and obviously she had AIDS and it was not effective.

So Dr. Nikam was consulted on the phone, and he took some symptoms. And the
symptoms, he got were all her problems were aggravated at night, secondly her
eruptions started on the left side and they went to the right side, and the third
was that there was this pus with scabs on top of the pus.
On these three symptoms he gave, the remedy Merc.iod.rubrum -30, just one
single dose. And we saw the follow up on video, couple of days later, she is
already looking much better, and in two weeks all her ulcers and scabs are gone,
and in a few months her CD4 count has significantly gone up. The result is
remarkable.
That’s what he did. He generalized; what did he generalized the direction, left to
right, he generalized the modality night aggravation, and then he took a local
characteristic symptom, which is pus with scabs on top of it and finally he chose a
syphilitic remedy for a pathology, which is destructive.
Basic homoeopathy :
So this is Basic level homoeopathy, this is Foundation Homoeopathy. You can see
by how generalizing the modalities, how generalizing the sensation and looking
into the peculiar of the case, you are able to choose a remedy. This basic level
homoeopathy, is something that we should never forget. And it’s much better to
do it sometimes than going on a wild goose chase and chase some sensation
which you or some patients starts imagining.
Sometimes, we take a sensation and go completely, out of context … ‘Ok, you are
telling poking, tell about poking. Poking, poking, poking, poking , poking , poking
… and we just go on and on and the patient looks at you and sees a lot of
expectation on your face and builds the whole story sometimes.
So instead of doing that sometimes it may be better to have your basis solid with
symptoms, modalities, with generalities and sometimes this is more reliable, and
best is when both of these come together then you really have it.
Now we go a little one step more which is:

Interpretation of the expression into the rubric form;
20] Case- do not give me strong medicines; Thuja.

Here is a case of a man, who says to me, ‘Doctor don’t give me strong medicine,
because my whole system reacts badly reacts strong medicine. You know other
people may take it, no problem. But my system cannot take strong medicine, so I
don’t mind if you heal me fully but don’t give me this strong medicine, please
don’t do that.
How to understand this? This is the peculiarity of the patient. It’s not directly
available. You don’t find it sometimes the exact rubric in the repertory,
sometimes. You may find this own but sometimes. So what to do? In this case,
you have to see, what exactly, is he experiencing, what exactly is he saying here?
Now he is not saying that the medicine is not too strong, he is not saying don’t
give me a strong medicine alone, he is saying ‘Other people may take a strong
medicine but my system cannot take it’. That means my system is not as strong as
other people’s system and hence cannot take it and it will not sustain it. So it’s
like be careful with me, I am delicate, I am fragile, I am you know cautious, I am
not tough, you know I can break. And that is the exact feeling of Thuja, and here
we have the rubric,
‘Mind; delusion, body parts, delicate ’
And that’s what you see in Thuja people. They say ‘You know I can’t eat this, this
will affect me, I don’t want to eat that, and I don’t want to touch that. I can’t eat
spicy food, if I eat dahi (yogurt) something will happen. Which means for
everybody it’s ok but for me, it’s not ok for me because I am delicate, handle me
like glass. And that’s what I see in. Later on, we will see of course that this is the
main quality of the Conifers in the Plant Kingdom. But at this point, we
understand the Conifers, the brittleness, how does it express in the people. So we
have to sometimes, take the peculiar expression of the patient and know how to
represent it, in a rubric form.

21] Case of lady with fear of surgery-Aethusa.
Another case:
One lady patient is very afraid of surgery, she said ‘I cannot go for surgery’. So
‘Tell me about it?’ She says ‘The main fear for me is anesthesia. If I would take
anesthesia, I am afraid that I might never come out of it. That is my fear.’
So how to use this as a symptom? The rubric is,
‘Mind; fear, sleep, to close the eyes lest he should never wake’
Because anesthesia is a kind of sleep into which you go. So here is a rubric mind,
is afraid to close his eyes in sleep, lest he should never wake up. And so the
remedy here is Aethusa, which is the remedy for the patient.
Let’s take another case here, similarly how to interpret, how to understand and
yet this interpretation should be in such a way that, it doesn’t distort the
meaning, it has to be don every delicately.
22] Case of a boy who gave the wrong papers; Bufo.

I saw a boy who was mentally challenged, who couldn’t keep up to the studies.
But he was tall and not intelligent as children of his age. He was mentally
challenged and they used to tease him and they used to climb up on chair, they
used to just hit on his ears from behind and they would run away. And this boy
would become malicious and he said ‘Oh I will teach these guys a lesson’. Then
what he did is, he went to the class teacher’s room and he stole the question
papers of the examination and he copied these question papers and distributed
this to all the classmates and they studied those answers and got excellent marks
in the examination. And then what the boy did was the next examination, which
was the more important one, he just made up his own paper, and he said this is
the paper and he fooled all of them , they just prepared for all the questions and
all of them did miserably. And he was so happy, so happy ‘ I taught them a lesson,
now I taught them’.

And then you see how to understand this. You have the rubrics,
- ‘Mind; Deceitful, sly’. ( since he deceit them out maliciousness )

- ‘Mind; Malicious, vindictive’.
-‘Mind, Childish behavior, body grows, but’. ( I will teach them )
And when you find in the rubrics, you find the remedy, Bufo especially under the
rubric, ‘-
‘Mind, Childish behavior, body grows, but’.

So he grows tall in his body, but his mind is childish.
And when you understand this rubric of Bufo, you also understand it’s most
favourite symptom in the Materia Medica, which is ‘Desire solitude to practice
masturbation’ What does this rubric mean? It simply means that the boy’s
physical and sexual development is quite ahead of, is quite strong but then , there
is no adult control on his impulses and therefore he keeps seeking solitude, in
order to give vent to his sexual impulse. It is the same as ‘Mind, Childish
behavior, body grows, but’ so you are able to see the same thing expressed in
different ways and how to understand it in patients.
I want to finish this with one more example and that is with one of the example
of, one of my teacher’s again which is Dr B N Chakraborthy.
Dr.B.N.Chakraborty; Knowledge of Materia Medica.

One more teacher of mine, Dr. B.N. Chakraborty a famous homoeopath, he was
from Calcutta. And I went and attended his practice. But I want to tell you, how I
came across him. This was the time when I was a house physician at the
homoeopathic hospital and we had in the wards, there was admitted a patient,
who was an old man and he had very painful boils and ulcers in his mouth
recurrently. And we admitted him and I was at that time it was like the star of the
hospital, my dean, my teachers were very proud of me and I was their star and
they wanted to show me as their protégée.
So I was asked to take the case and Dr B N Chakraborthy, this well known
Homoeopath from Calcutta , he was coming to take the rounds of the wards and

I took a very, very detailed case. Worked out a full reportorial chart and with
peculiar modalities, dreams, sensations, cravings and aversions and everything. I
prepared a typical reportorial chart. And I had come to the remedy Phosphorous.
And B.N. Chakraborty came to the wards and he made me read the whole history
and he heard 8 pages of it. And he said,’ May I have a look at the mouth of the
patient. And he looked at the mouth of the patient and just made an expression
and said ‘Tell me when you get up in the morning and you put your foot on the
ground do you get a lot of tenderness in the soles’ and he said yes. And this is one
symptom I never asked or never thought of asking. So I asked the patient, ‘Why
didn’t you tell me this symptom?’ This was so common to me, it’s been going on
since so many years, and it’s normal. And this was so funny. And then Dr B N
Chakraborthy looked back at him and said, ‘Tell me, how many times, had you
had gonorrhea?’ I was quite shocked. He was an old man and why he was asked
about gonorrhea. And the patient said, ‘Just 3 times, Sir. And I said, ‘My God, in
my whole history I didn’t ask this question.’ It pinches. And then Dr B N
Chakraborthy, he said, I think Phosphorus is a good prescription but if it doesn’t
work just give him Medorrhinum’ which meant he wanted me to give him
Medorrhinum. And that’s what I gave him and the patient did very well. But I
asked Dr Chakraborthy, ‘How did you know it, how did you simply know it was
Medorrhinum?’
And he said, “You just look at his mouth, you see inside his mouth there are ulcers
on the tongue and in the buccal cavity and there are blisters in the inner surface
of lips and cheeks and the skin is peeling in patches. Just have a look at this and
this is typical of Medorrhinum.
And that is what you read in Allen’s Encyclopedia:
“Very sore mouth, extremely sore ulcers on tongue and in buccal cavity, like
blisters. Blisters on inner surface of lips and cheeks, skin peeling off in patches.”
And he had seen it and he knew it. So this is the kind of familiarity with the
Materia Medica and which is also something we shouldn’t ever dare to lose,
because this is solid. And this is how they studied Materia Medica and the
Repertory.

So we are slowly coming to an end, of this first talk. Just a little may be a little
rambling about how I saw it in my developing years. My teachers, the repertory,
the Materia Medica and above all the solidity of Homoeopathy, the solidity of our
Repertory and our Materia Medica that we should never ever lose. And this is this
solidity that later on we are able to understand much better. The brittleness of
Thuja, the aversion and the hatred of Hepar sulph, the abruptness of Tarentula
and etc. We will be able to understand it much later on. But what we really need
to do is to stay with our solid fundamentals.
So that’s it for today my friends
And if you have any questions, if you have any comments, if you have any cases to
share, any rubrics to share, most welcome. The lesson will be now, in a couple of
days, we will put the entire transcript of this lecture for you to read. It will also be
found in the Archives section, the whole lecture you can see it again if you like or
if somebody has missed it they can have a look and in the forum, you will find
answers to some of your questions that you have asked.
And let us know, please do write, keep in touch and
Au revoir, Good bye, Auf wieddersen, Sayonara.

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TALK : 1 CONCEPT OF HOMOEOPATHY - I

So let’s begin from the very beginning.

Hahnemann- Law of cure;

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 1

It didn’t produce a symptom but it produced an effect on the organism and it

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 2

My realization- ‘Potentized remedies have dynamic effect only’;

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 3

And at a certain point, there was a moment of awareness, when I kind of

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 4

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 5

Hologram - Microcosm and Macrocosm;

Homoeopathy v/s Modern Medicine :

Modern medicine and homoeopathy, the difference is simple. Modern medicine

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 6

Why Hahnemann didn’t publish case:

Case from Hahnemann- warts fell off; Chamomilla.

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 7

Dr. Prakash Vakil - spondylosis-Nux Vomica.

It is this individualization in Homoeopathy that has stood the test of time. So

Boeninnghausen’s idea of Generalization :

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 8

And this is exactly what we do in our practice every day. If we want to

Boger; His contribution :

Phatak - Generalization of the modalities and sensations :

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 9

I think it would be good enough to illustrate it with a case.

1] A case of parotiditis: Conium.

‘hanging down of the affected parts ameliorates’

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 10

‘Hanging down limbs ameliorates’

Importance of detailed inquiry:

2] A case of myoclonal jerk: Nitric acid.

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 11

Now again here we could take the modality :

jerking from loss of sleep or aggravation from loss of sleep.

‘Sleep, half asleep, when agg’,

It is given half sleep evening aggravates, afternoon aggravates, before , during,

‘ Sleep, half asleep aggravates’.

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 12

3] A case of vitiligo: Calcarea carb.

And you have the rubric, this is in Kent,

‘Mind, horrible things, sad stories affect her profoundly ’

‘Mind, fear which is excited, after hearing of cruelties’

and also you have the rubric,

‘Skin, discoloration: white, with the dark borders.’

I’ll give you one more case from early practice.

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 13

‘Mind, hatred; persons of, who do not, agree with him,

‘Mind, lamenting, because he is not appriciate’

‘Skin, discoloration, white spots’

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 14

Let me start from my very first case.

5] The case of my grandmother: Alumina.

‘Throat, choking, esophagus, on swallowing’

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 15

I want to recall some more cases from my very early practice.

6] A case of severe abdominal pain with coldness in the stomach: Elaps.

- ‘Stomach; coldness ice- like, after cold drinks’.

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 16

In India, we make a kind of Yoghurt drink called Lassi. It is basically yoghurt

Talk 1 Concept of Homoeopathy – I 17

‘Abdomen, stretching with’

8] A case of woman aggravated by drinking sugarcane juice: Arsenic.