Donald Macfarlan An attempt has been made to develop a definitive scale by giving the highest value to those symptoms which occurred most frequently among the provers, with decreasing value to those symptoms appearing less and less frequently. The advantage of this is obvious. Readers will search in vain for the keynote of hot, burning soles. This symptom did occur among the provers but without sufficient frequency to place it in the scale.
A RE-PROVING OF AURUM METALLICUM. For quite a few years now I have steadily been making provings. The following symptoms have been collected over a period possibly of thirty years. In no case did the provers know they were making a proving. I believe this to be essential as it removes the suggestive sphere which is very potent in life.
It seems an act of impertinence to prove a drug which has already been proven by Hahnemann. As a matter of fact, however, every reproving should be of value, as it is a process of precisioning and delimiting. On one side is the Law of Similars. This is like charity. It never faileth. By a reproving we are attempting to get out the symptomatic indications in the same category.
The headache is dull frontal and constant, matutinal and following sleep. It may be sharp generalized and through the eyes. Puffy eyelids and hazy vision. Blood-shot eyes and a desire to close them. Ringing in the right ear but on stooping over a hollow pumping in both.
The following observations were all made on people who did not know they were making provings. This is most important. The imaginative factor is thus eliminated. Here are my results. The proving was made from the sixth potency of Agnus castus.
Urine betters puffiness under eyes. Amelioration by vomiting. Amelioration by epistaxis of the headache, the cardiac palpitation, and the shoulder pain. Sleep is prevented by frontal, sharp, intermittent headache, by sneezing and by mental activity. For the last year or so, Drs. Donald and Douglas Macfarlan (Philadelphia) have made a re-proving of Lachesis, in the 30th potency, on a host of male and female provers.
The following proving of Ruta was made from collected observations. As with other potentised drugs I write up, under the different heads, my findings over a period of years, a mass of data is gradually built up. In passing I have often made a short proving on one human being. The health and well being of that person in always enhanced.
At this meeting I would call your attention to a drug which should focus attention favorably, as it has been prescribed often in the past for fulminant disease, and oftentimes with tellingly curative effects. In our country, abdominal ills frequently have yielded, while in Great Britain there seems to be a tendency to include severe sciaticas as well. The following symptoms have been collected gradually and recorded in a large book which I keep just for that purpose.
This work consisted in new kind of re-proving. Various types of both sexes were subjected to the influence of a definite drug in a definite potency. Parenthetically I might add that dilutions is a bad term, as it is quite misleading and inaccurate as well. I firmly believe that the provings should be made without the provers knowledge. Then nothing is imagined.
The following observations were made on provers, absolutely incognizant of the fact they were making a proving. How much better such are than those fully cognizant ! This way nothing is imagined. They are hit as if by a natural disease and these symptomatic mirrors tend to occur mentally when its analogue comes along in the office or at the home of a patient.