It is hardly necessary to go into the data available for further proofs of the activity of snake venoms; our homoeopathic provings preceded by many years the acknowledgment of the allopathic school that venoms in minute doses were exceedingly efficacious in many serious conditions, especially those showing great derangement of the vascular and nervous systems.
That forms of defence, such as spider venoms, sepia, stings of bees and insects, and many other natural weapons, have been found effective in causing and treating bodily discomforts may not be denied by those who have observed their action.
Thus we may pass on to a consideration of plant life as a source from which we may expect to derive useful remedies. We expect, and find, great reaction from all those growths which manifest, in their natural states, the power of protection through defence by poisonous properties. Thus we find all members of the *Rhus family exceedingly active, both in their crude state and in potentized form, affecting strongly the human organism in countless ways.
The list of plants that strongly affect the human organism ranges through all forms, from the forms that approach the animal development in their power of capturing and devouring insects, such as the *Drosera and *Sarracenia purpurea, to the lowliest and hardiest growths, such as *Sticta pulmonaria, and is almost endless. To do more than glance at the long list of possibilities that open to the homoeopathic physician through this source would be a task far too long for one chapter. We may take ourselves at once to the observation of those substances that may be most truly said to be non-living, yet which must enter largely into the composition of the living, and that encompass us.
Even more deeply acting than the venoms, we find the mineral and chemical elements. Plant life, through its power of simplifying these substances readily, form the closest relationship to the mineral kingdom, for here the elements are often absorbed and made available for ingestion into the animal, directly or in new combinations that render them even more active. Thus we see the reasons for *Pulsatilla’s strong action on the human economy. Dr. Underhill tells us that *Pulsatilla is one of the most effective chemical laboratories known, assimilating the mineral content and elements in the soil and rebuilding it into a most deep-acting and complicated influence upon the human organism.
The most cursory glance at the chemical elements of our most common plant remedies must reveal how deeply bound these are to the chemical elements of light weight–far below the atomic weight of those known to be radioactive– and these may be classed as those written of by Millikan (to quote again from the same source we have quoted above):
…. *For the great majority of the elements, such as constitute the bulk of our world, are in their state of maximum stability already. They have no energy to give up in the disintegrating process. They can only be broken apart by working upon them, or by supplying energy to them. Man can probably learn to disintegrate them, but he will always do it “by the sweat of his brow.”
But having thus disposed of the process of atomic disintegration, and found it completely wanting as a source of available energy, since the radioactive elements are necessarily negligible in quantity, let us next see what there is to be learned about the process of *atom-building as a source of energy….
Millikan goes on:
…. the recent experimental work on cosmic rays, have just thrown a flood of light on the process going on in this universe in which we live. For first Dr. Cameron and I have recently found three definite cosmic ray bands, or frequencies, of penetrating powers, or ray-energies, respectively, about twelve, fifty and one hundred times the maximum possible energies that are, or can be, obtained from any radioactive, that is, any disintegrating, process. The highest frequency band has so enormous a penetrating power that it passes through more than 200 feet of water or eighteen feet of lead before becoming completely absorbed, while two or three inches of lead absorbs the hardest gamma rays. This discovery of a banded structure in cosmic rays shows that these rays are not produced, as are X-rays, by the impact upon the atoms of matter of electrons that have acquired large velocities by falling through powerful electric fields, as we earlier suggested–the fields necessary to produce frequencies as high as those of the highest observed cosmic rays are equivalent to 216,000,000 volts–but that *they are rather produced by definite and continually recurring atomic transformations involving very much greater energy–chances than any occurring in radioactive processes.
*Taking Einstein’s equation and Aston’s curve as a guide there are no possible atomic transformations capable of yielding rays of the enormous penetrating power observed by us, except those corresponding to the building up or creation of the abundant elements like helium, oxygen, silicon, and iron out of hydrogen, or possibly in the case of the last two elements out of helium.. observed cosmic rays are the signals broadcast throughout the heavens of the births of the common elements out of positive and negative electrons.
Thus we find that in the birth of, say, two of our common earth elements, iron and silicon, we find tremendous powers liberated in the heavens. (For convenience Millikan in this article speaks of magnesium and aluminium as coincident with silicon, because of their close atomic weights.) We all know their effectiveness when energy is released by long trituration and powerful succussion. Chemical analysis of some of our common plant remedies reveals the presence of one or more of these common earth elements, assimilated, broken into a form that supplies life-energy to the plant. We find in a cursory examination of *Lycopodium clavatum that it contains aluminium. Consider what this element, that has a powerful effect upon animal tissue and animal energy when its powers are released by reducing it to the form of the homoeopathic potency–consider, I say its profound effect after its assimilation by the plant, its energies there partially released for effective reaction, and that in turn undergoing a further breaking up and disintegration by the process of trituration and potentization.
The history of the *Lycopodiaceae may be of still further interest in giving us the reason for its effectiveness. Among the old forms of life–those forms which have existed longest upon the earth–we find the mosses, and of these this family is a hardy member. It is probably one of the oldest living forms of earthy plant life (that is, dependent both upon soil and water). It has persisted past all changes in circumstances and conditions, and probably has changed its form less to meet changing conditions than almost any other form of life except possibly the *Equisetum, another of the early surviving forms. This tenacity of life, adapting itself to circumstances without conforming, bespeaks a tenacity of energy that, when released, must powerfully effect that which it touches.
*Equisetum hymenale contains silicon (in the form of oxide) and magnesium; in analysis the amount of silicon may run from 7.5 per cent. to 41.2 per cent. If at their birth these elements register such tremendous energy as the cosmic waves reveal, what effectiveness must we expect when it has been assimilated, broken down, first in plant life and then by trituration and potentization even in minute quantities?
When animal, vegetable or mineral substances are potentized they are rendered more potent because of the breaking up, disintegration of thin atomic relationships, that place them in a form where they are directly upon the dynamic force of the individual. That is, in their disintegration their energy is liberated by releasing the radioactive power. Through the radioactivity exerting itself upon the vital energy of the individual the potency is made effective.
Thus we are forced to recognize different forms of energy–the discharge of different energies or rays –from what we have considered as inanimate metals and elements. We find that they respond energetically in much the same way as plants and animals; not alone in their simple states do we find this response, but again and again as they are assimilated, broken down and rebuilt in different forms of life, from the simple assimilation and complicated rebuilding of the plant to the profound reaction on all living substance when they are in potentized form.
We recognize that elements having high atomic weights are radioactive; they give off, spontaneously, rays of different velocity and penetrating power, and in their radioactivity, their dissemination of energy, they are themselves changed. Einstein expresses this change when he says: “The change of mass equals the change of energy. As they vary energy vanishes with the mass and so they are equal.”
