HOMOEOPATHIC RESEARCH



11. Application of Research in Meteorology, Climatology, Dietetics to Homoeopathy.

A great many of the homoeopathic modalities, very often the decisive ones in choosing drugs, concern weather changes or food studying the influences of weather and climate upon constitutions in connection with the study of remedies. Modern research in the field of food allergy could be applied to the food symptoms of our drug pictures.

12. Following up of the Literature in Geology, Mineralogy, Physical, Botany, Zoology, Physiology, to Corroborate and Integrate the Facts in Connection with Homoeopathy.

The formation of study groups, consisting of homoeopathic physicians and experts in the above mentioned field, would promote a broader approach to the problems of homoeopathy and lead to an integration of all facts of natural science in the light of a real homoeopathic philosophy.

II. HOMOEOPATHIC RESEARCH REQUIRING MONEY.

1. Experimental Work with Homoeopathic Drugs on Plants.

It is a distinguished feature of homoeopathy that it need not resort to cruel experiments of animals. Homoeopathy is, in every sense, a human method of cure. The basic reactions of life, ad such, towards potentized drugs can be studied also in plants. A practical application of this principle could be made by experimenting with potentized fertilizers. The effect of the nutritional minerals salts of the soil in potentized form upon the growth and development of plants should be studied and applied to practical use. The homoeopathic law of cure is a basic of life and it therefore should be applicable also in the treatment of plant diseases.

2. Publications.

Publication of a book called Practical Experiences in Homoeopathy. The most valuable practical experiences of our best prescribers, the essence of a life-long practice, should be preserved for the benefit of future generations of homoeopathic physicians. It should be the duty of every homoeopathic practitioner of experience to review, in a critical way, his experiences in homoeopathy and to transmit them to other homoeopathic physicians. A collection of these contributions should be made and published once, or at suitable, intervals, if possible, like the allopathic series of the Year Book of Medicine.

3. Encouragement and Support of the Homoeopathic Research Done with the Boyd Emanometer by Boyd, in England, and by Stearns in this Country.

The Boyd Emanometer is a tuning device analogous to a radio circuit. Through its variable resonance characteristics it can be made to tune in separately the components of complex body and drug energies. As a detector a human subject is used in series with the Emanometer terminal electrode. The subject functions to record the presence of energies by an abdominal reflex which is specific for each type of energy. The reflex is elicited under manual percussion, when the normal abdominal note becomes dull due to the presence of an energy component. The dullness on the abdomen varies in location and shape according to the different components, but is fixed in these respects for any one components.

The source of energy in the circuit may be a drop of blood from the patient and also drugs, especially in potency and vaccines. It can be shown that changes in the distribution of intensities amongst the components of an individual always precede and accompany ill health. Therapeutically, the Emanometer is useful in selecting the drug which, when placed in circuit together with energy from the patient, restores the normal distribution of the latter. Clinical improvement or cure follows this normalization. The energies do not show the usual electromagnetic characteristic and their nature is at present unknown.

4. Pfeiffers work, applied to Homoeopathy.

Pfeiffer pours 10 cc. of a 5 percent-20 percent copper chloride solution on a smooth glass plate so that the surface is covered with a thin film of the liquid. The solution then is allowed to crystallize in an undisturbed room of even temperature (28). Crystallization takes place within 14-18 hours. The crystallization patterns is changed in a characteristic way by adding of plant extracts or solution of salts, metal salts, extract of animal or human fluids, such as saliva, urine, tissue extracts of diluted blood.

Each specimen produces its own characteristic configuration, different from the formation produced by any other species as well as from the control plates of pure copper chloride. Pfeiffer produced crystallization pictures with low and higher potencies, up to the 30th potency, of various remedies. The method should be tried with a view to produce a visualization of the effect of high potencies. Furthermore, it could be checked, whether the blood of a diseased person and the corresponding remedy with the greatest simile relationship produce similar crystallization patterns. Thus, a visualization and experimental confirmation of the simile principle could be obtained.

NEW YORK, N.Y.

The author would appreciate any suggestions and cooperation as to the program outlined above.

DISCUSSION.

DR. GREEN : Dr. Gutman wrote me some time ago that he was going to present a paper before this body which would incorporate his ideas for homoeopathic research. He thought it might form a basis for the Bureau of Research in the American Foundation for Homoeopathy. Also, I understand Dr. Pfeiffer very far from Philadelphia. They are experimenting with soils and with the treatment of plants with fertilizers. I think he is trying to coordinate that Philadelphia. At any rate, something may come out of all this that will be I for one am very glad that something of this sort is on the way.

Incidentally, I think there is a good bit of homoeopathic philosophy in the work of the anthroposophists, although they have a medical department of their own and say that homoeopathy is elementary and that we have not gone anywhere near far enough.

DR. MOORE : I wonder if there is anything anywhere on the treatment of plants for plant diseases by homoeopathy. Does anyone know of anything ?.

DR. GREEN : I think this will develop into that.

DR. SUTHERLAND : I can answer that in part. Dr. Stearns has done a little work at the Spring Valley summer place of the Anthroposophical Society. They are using, I think, potentized Arsenicum on their potato plants. They method. I think, Dr. Stearns initiated that form of experimentation that was carried on under his direction by some of the people at the Spring Valley place. It was interesting and it really worked out.

I have forgotten just what the method was, but I think the seed potatoes were treated with the potentized remedy, and they had a control group of ordinary potatoes : and Arsenicum group potatoes came up and were free from bugs. The potato bugs just did not like it.

DR. MOORE : They have a number of different things that bother potatoes besides the bugs, fungi and one thing or another that must be taken care of.

DR. SUTHERLAND : I think they were dealing chiefly with the potato bugs. Of course, they are quite a curse. The standard form of insecticide for that is Paris green which contains arsenic. I think that particular substance gave them a lead as to what to do.

DR. GREEN : At the Spring Valley farm and at this one near Philadelphia, these people make their own fertilizers. They do not use any commercial fertilizers. Therefore, those things that they use are free from drugs and, on that basis, would give a clear field in which to give potentized homoeopathic remedies to plants and see what would happen.

DR. MOORE : I remember Dr. Hayes saying he had some homoeopathic remedy in cut flowers, with the result that they stood up very nicely and very much longer, but he repeated the experiment the next year and it did not work. It is a matter of technique.

DR. ARNOLD : This is very interesting. It reminds me of Dr. MacKenzie and his vaccines, highly potentized, just subjecting the potato, before it is planted, so that it is immunized against the insects.

When I was a boy on th farm, Paris green preparation of arsenic was the popular anti-potato-bug remedy.

There are great possibilities from the treatment of plant life as well as the human.

DR. KAPLOWE : New Haven offers quite an opportunity for the study of the effects of homoeopathic remedies on plant life, because we have an agriculture experiment station there, quite a big one. I think it is run not only by the university but by the government. I have called them up many times and asked them why it is that my Japanese beetles still continue to thrive and the grass dies, while I spend dozens of dollars for arsenate of lead in an attempt to kill the beetle. We have quite an epidemic of the Japanese beetle.

I began to think that I would like to try the effect of potentized remedies on the development of plant for the destruction of parasite life. If anyone here knows where I can obtain these potentized remedies in massive enough forms in order to try it on plant life, I might suggest that the experiment station try it.

William Gutman