I think those are the essentials to bear in mind. I should like to see this Society or some other allied homoeopathic society take up the matter of food provings.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: I want to speak particularly in emphasis of the people susceptible to certain foods as being the chosen vessels for the proving of the food, for this reason: The proving of a potency of the food will often produce absolutely unsuspected symptoms in that individual.
Dr. Hubbard refers to my proving of Lycopersicum, tomato. I proved Lycopersicum because I was particularly susceptible to it; I couldnt eat much if any. If I did, it produced a very free urination, very profuse, and a diarrhoea. When I proved the remedy in high potency, I could not believe my eyes, for the reason it produced nothing of that kind at all, but it did produce a congestive condition, very much similar to the condition of influenza, with a rise of temperature, even to the point of delirium.
Being a member of the Solanum family, associated with the Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, and that class of remedies, it produced an entirely different picture from what I expected. At first I would not believe that it was that. I thought it was simply a “happenstance”, and I had taken a severe cold or something of that kind.
Finally I took it in the 200th potency and pushed it to the point where I wished I hadnt. I became unconscious of what was going on around me. I became violently delirious. Fortunately, I had at my elbow, Dr. Phillips, who is a homoeopath, and I told him what I had done. I was conscious enough to do that. I said, “Watch it.” I was in bed for over three days with the effect of it.
This is a valuable point, because often you will develop something that you will least expect. I think my case is no exception to other susceptible patients. You dont know what is in a remedy until you prove it.
DR. C.L. OLDS: How much did you push the potency?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: What I did was to prove it in the 30th first. Once it was in the fall, and I took a very severe cold apparently, and I said, “That is just a happenstance.” I forgot it. I took a record of it, but I forgot it. Along in the spring of the year, about the first of March I think, I began again, and lo and behold, I got another severe cold.
DR. C.L. OLDS : Did you take it frequently?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS : I took it two or three times a day. Then in June, when I thought there was no possibility of taking a cold, I began with the 200th potency, and I produced a slight cold, by taking it three times a day. I got rather reckless and I took a dose for two hours, once in fifteen minutes. The result of that was I went to bed.
DR. E.B. LYLE : What was the effect on your susceptibility to tomatoes?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: I still cannot eat tomatoes.
DR. B.C. WOODBURY: Didnt you get a strain of symptoms very much like Rhus?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: That was part of it. You will find the proving in the transactions.
CHAIRMAN PULFORD : Is there anything further? Dr. Lyle, would you like to say anything?.
DR. E.B. LYLE : I cant say anything about it at all. I think this paper had better be referred, with all the rest of the suggestions given, to the about-to-be-born committee on dietetics, for their perusal.
Sepia and Calcarea are frequently complementary and necessary after each other, and are mentioned here to correct the baneful and erroneous idea that the complexion and type can be relied upon in choosing between remedies. If such were the case, it would be possible to change the thin, scrawny, nervo-bilious irritable brunette into a fat, flabby, flaxen haired leucophlegmatic blonde with a few doses of Sepia. It is only when the temperamental condition and the peculiar complexion of the patient result from disease, and form a part of the morbid group of symptoms to be treated that they are of value in making a choice between remedies – W.H. FREEMAN, M.D., 1908.
Three things are necessary : Time to take the case, of which one man has as much as another; skill, of which every man has a little; and the similimum, which cures according to the law. – G.C. EMMERSON, M.D., 1908.
