From the discussion of “A New Remedy”, by C.L.Olds, M.D., at the I.H.A., June 1929.
I believe that the question of polarity is destined to make our homoeopathic prescribing far more exact than we now realize. It will solve many of these question of potency, and it will tell us why many remedies, apparently similar, do not give the response that is expected.
We have taken our cases carefully, given our remedies along the approved lines, and have been disappointed in the results. Sometimes we have attributed it to external causes, such as the inhalation of camphor, to the ingestion of other drugs, or to other external interferences, but I believe that polarity is the answer. I have experimented a good deal with this subject for the last two or three years and have confirmed over and over the fact that within a minute after giving a remedy the polarity of the patient is changed. There is an almost instant reversal of polarity.
At one time I had case which seemed to show that at last I had found a break in my theory. The patient was feeling very badly and I could not get the correct reaction. I suggested that perhaps his polarity was down, and sure enough it was, way down. We gave him a dose of Nux vomica which was indicated by his symptoms. We then tested his secretion within a minute and his polarity was completely reversed. The reactions were now correct.
In addition to the negative and positive polarities, there are two other polarities that are recognized by scientists. These I have been able to bring out in the blood specimens and in our homoeopathic remedies. I have divided a large majority of our remedies into four groups according to their polarity, negative, positive, neutral and bipolar. A patient with a positive polarity will require a remedy from the group of negative remedies, the symptoms, of course, agreeing; one with a negative polarity, a remedy from the positive group, those with bipolar into the negative state which his nearer normal. Most normal cases, or cases that are approaching normal, register a negative polarity.- A.H.GRIMMER.
To the Editor of The homoeopathic Recorder:
The potency question is inseparable from, and a vital part of, the homoeopathic law.
Just what do we understand the term remedy to apply to? The substance which contains the potential, or the potential contained therein? Is it the container that we are pleased to call the “drug” or remedy? Is it not the potential contained therein that is the real remedy? Does not every so-called “drug” contain an individual potentiality? If not, what makes one drug differ from another?.
What makes dead plants inert? If potency is of no consequence shy it is necessary to grind crude minerals and metals, if not to free their potentiality or power? In the “scientific” explanation of the disappearance of he “drug”, are we sure the it is not the drug container and not real potential or remedy that gradually disappears from view? Just what do we understand by potentization? Can you lend power to an already existing power without changing that power? Is not out method of so-called potentization merely an amplification or expansion of that power to convey just enough of that power to cope with the patients needs?
If the “drug” you select happens to be a plant, dead and dried, you have the drug, then what makes the drug practically inert? The drug you thought you selected is still there. If it is not true that each individual therapeutic agent represents a different and fixed potential, why is it that tea is not as potent as Nux or Opium? Is it not true that each therapeutic agent represents an individual fixed potency or power, which when freed to operate on the healthy human body produces signs or symptoms peculiar, and fixed, to the sphere of that agent, representing the result of a fixed force which always operates the same, so that no other “drug” force can take its place, which signs or symptoms are used for what?
Is it not to help you to select that same agent again? Here, then, have we not a potency producing signs to direct us explicitly to the same potency again? How would we find that proper potency in any other manner? If this be true what if “POTENCY PLAYS NO PART IN THE SELECTION OF THE REMEDY” FROM BEGINNING TO END POTENCY PLAYS THE ALL MOST VITAL PART IN BOTH THE SELECTION AND ACTION OF THE REMEDY. IT IS THE remedy itself.
Our idea of so-called potentization is merely amplification or expansion of the ALREADY EXISTING POTENCY. WE MERELY SELECT AND NOT MAKE THE POTENCY. We merely grade it to the patients requirements at the time. Potency is like confined steam, both of them have to be released before they can exert their force. Potency is power or force and it is force the creates disease; therefore, to eradicate disease, force must be met by equal force, and each therapeutic agent represents a force that, when indicated, matches the force producing the disease. Thus, when the two meet they kill each other off, and the more the force is free and amplified or expanded, the greater the energy displayed, which accounts for the greater curative power of the higher potencies WHEN INDICATED. By this we mean when the remedy is positively indicated.
If the proper and higher potencies “cut no figure” why should the statement be made the “Few doctors can afford the time necessary for such work, if it is to be properly done”. Our own little modest practice, where days of 70 and 80 patients are no strangers to us, allows us to take time to do it to the best of our ability.
Of the low potency men cited one has made real noteworthy contributions to homoeopathy, namely, Dr. Timothy Field Allen. He is often referred to and quoted for the value of his observations, but even he did his best work after soaring just a little in the potencies. On the other hand Kent supplied us with a materia medica that was a distinct contribution, and our first and most logical philosophy of homoeopathy. James B.Bell gave us the one really reliable monograph with explanatory notes and guides to the selection of the right remedy. Henry N. Guernsey gave us reliable obstetrical hints.
Yingling gave us the only reliable Accoucheurs Manual we have. Boger gave us the only Synopsis of Materia Medica, a most valuable contribution that very few of us either do, or are able to, appreciate. Farrington gave us to a splendid Clinical Materia Medica. Of the three men who complied out most unabridged materia medicas, Allen, Clarke and Hering, one cannot claim that they were consistently low potency men. It may be true that the bulk of the material for out materia medicas was furnished by low potency men but only for the very reason that the field of higher potencies had not been explored and was practically unknown, but it has remained for the exponents of the higher potencies to explain and put on the finishing touches.
The potency and its potentization are part and parcel of the homoeopathic law, although not yet entirely understood, and must positively be reckoned with in the selection of the remedy. The atomic and molecular disappearance of that we understand as the “drug” is but the material disappearance of the real remedys container. What we consider raising the power or potency of the real remedy by potentization is a mere amplifying or expending of the remedys area of action by so thinning the coat of its container that the restrained power may the more easily free itself. Thus the less restraint created by reducing the bonds of our method of so-called potentization, the more free is the remedy to exert its force and so it becomes more powerful, deeper and more rapid in its action and the results are more final and permanent so that fewer repetitions are required.
Our efforts are merely to arouse the members of the homoeopathic profession to establish a method by which to arrive at some degree of accuracy. If this “intolerance” we are sorry. Poor old Hahnemann was intolerant because he wanted to set the prejudiced allopath right. Poor old Galileo was intolerant because he wanted to set the good people right about the rotundity of the earth, and so it goes.
Medicine is like painters most of us can select the color and the quality of the paint, but few of us have the ability to apply that paint to defy criticism. Ignorance and ancient superstitions are both hard to pull away from, but made easier as intelligence and a desire for conviction displace them. “What is needed is less of this so- called scientific medical knowledge and more critical thought”.
In due time we hope that some men will come into the medical arena with sufficient intelligence and persistent energy to settle the right potential energy required long, long “before the sun cools off”.-A. PULFORD.
To the Editor of The Homoeopathic Recorder:
Referring to Case I. by Dr.Boger in the October Recorder where the symptom “impulse to move and laugh when in pain”, which was cured by Hura, I would like to report a somewhat similar symptom cured by Nux v., although the complex of symptoms in the two cases was quite different. About fifteen years ago I was called to man suffering with nephritic colic.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.