A NEW BASIS FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DRUGS USED ON THE HOMOEOPATHIC PRINCIPLE ALUMINUM AND PHOSPHORUS


A NEW BASIS FOR THE COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DRUGS USED ON THE HOMOEOPATHIC PRINCIPLE ALUMINUM AND PHOSPHORUS. A close examination of the pathogenic symptoms of the two remedies reveals a striking similarity, even word for word correspondences, in the mental sphere, as well as in other symptoms. I shall try to make this clear by a tabulation. The mental symptoms of Phosphorus are elaborately classified under appropriate headings by H.A. Roberts in his Study of Remedies by Comparison.


As this article is mainly inspired by the two papers read by Edward Whitmont, M.D., before the Bureaus of Homoeopathic Philosophy and Materia Medica and published in the March (EDWARD WHITMONT, M.D., The Law of Similars in Analytical Psychology, The Homoeopathic Recorder, LXIV: 9: 23 off (March, 1949)) and April+(EDWARD WHITMONT, M.D., Phosphor, The Homoeopathic Recorder, LXIV: 10: 258ff (April 1949) 1949, issues of The Homoeopathic Recorder, a knowledge of the matter contained therein will be helpful and even necessary to appreciate what follows, though the treatment herein is made as independent as possible.

The learned author of the above articles acknowledges his indebtedness to Jung’s psychology and probably for that reason his papers are prefaced with an apology; but it is only right to point out that that would be considered entirely unnecessary in India, the home of Vedanta and other systems of philosophy much deeper and vastly more comprehensive than what may be available to the ordinary western reader. I followed with great profit and intuitive delight the ideas expounded in the above two papers in which is found a marvellous correlation of facts from such varied topics as Raja Yoga, Physics, Metaphysics, Biology, etc., to make Phosphorus stand revealed in its own inner light.

The learned doctor says that we have to admit that our Materia Medica confronts us with a maze of recorded observations which still seems to defy any attempt towards a logical arrangement whereby this multitude of symptoms can be arranged and classified on the basis of correlation between inner (generals and mentals) and outer (particulars) as a guide for the application of the Law of Similars and suggests a method of psychological understanding, illustrating it in the case of Phosphorus.

If so far any method has enabled us to have a picture of the remedies and remember them in their daily application, it is the knowledge we gain of them by a comparative study. This comparative study is naturally grouped under various headings, such as genus and species, chemical content, modalities, etc. While some sort of similarity is to be expected and is also observable between remedies under the first two headings, modalities do not appear to be governed by any general rule, even slight differences accounting for marked dissimilarities. On the other hand, totally different substances without anything apparently common between them exhibit strikingly similar modalities in their provings. Many such examples will be easily recalled.

With the inauguration of the Atomic Era in which the atom itself is split up and new arrangements of atoms are made possible synthetically,it would appear probable that new links between substances hitherto not apparently connected in any manner may be revealed. News is to hand that with the giant new Harwell Cyclotron scientists have found it possible to convert Aluminium into Phosphorus.

This information should be of interest to homoeopaths also and the question arises, “What is there that is common between the two substances that it should be possible to convert the one into the other?” No satisfactory answer would be forthcoming until Dr. Whitmont’s method of exploring the inner regions to explain the outer manifestations is applied.

A close examination of the pathogenic symptoms of the two remedies reveals a striking similarity, even word for word correspondences, in the mental sphere, as well as in other symptoms. I shall try to make this clear by a tabulation. The mental symptoms of Phosphorus are elaborately classified under appropriate headings by H.A. Roberts in his Study of Remedies by Comparison. As Aluminium does not figure as a remedy in that work, I shall extract the corresponding symptoms from standard works by Clarke, Hering and Kent:

Phos. (H.A. Roberts) Alumina.

Fear, apprehension, anxiety. Anguish and anxiety as

Anxiety: filled with gloomy foreboding if one were threatened

as if about to die; about future. with a fatal accident.

Fear and dread of death. Apprehensions.

Presentiment of death.

Anxiety about the

future.

Disposition to be

frightened.

Fear of death without

thoughts of suicide.

Depression, Sadness, Melancholy. Humour morose, sad. Air

Mental depression with fearfulness, sorrowful and morose;

timidity and great fatigue. Dejection, presentiment of death,

thought she would die; sadness

alternates low-spirited. Trifling

with mirth and laughter. things appear unsurmountable weary of life ;

full of hypochondriasis;

gloomy forebodings. Humour changeable, at.

one time bold and at.

another timid.

Obstinate and

contradictory humour.

Hot vertex after grief. Paroxysms of Apprehension.

anguish when alone or in stormy Intolerable ennui.

weather. Melancholy with sudden tears Peevish and whining

or involuntary laughter. Sadness and with heat of ear lobes;

anxiety return at twilight. crying against his will.

Irritability, anger, excitement. Disposition to be angry.

Irritability of mind; excitable, Sufferings follow anger

easily angered, vehement, from which (H).

he afterwards suffers.

Indifference, apathy. Indifference, apathy.

Apathy, and indifference even to his Dullness.

own children. Alumina patient is in a

Stupid, dumb, dazed. dazed condition of mind.

(K.M.M.)

Indolence or Activity. Great vivacity of

apprehension

Mind overactive; great flow of alternating

thoughts difficult to arrange; lively with indifference and

impressions followed by heat as if deprivation of sight

immersed in hot water; great and hearing.

indispositions to mental or physical Flushes of heat.

exertion; disinclined to study or Distraction,

converse, he answers sluggishly, inadvertence and incapability

moves slowly. Brain fag from mental of following up ideas.

overwork or constant eyestrain. Great general fatigue,

even after short walk;.

after speaking.

Other mentals. Aversion to company.

Zoomagnetic condition.

Aversion to being alone.

Dyspnoea on attempting to think.

Delusions and imaginations. Sensation as if

Excited imagination, clairvoyant. consciousness were outside

Thinks that some thing is creeping the body.

out of every corner. Thinks that a Delusions of visions.

horrible face is looking out of every Illusive sensations as

corner. if some part of the

body

Delirium erotic, loquacious. The had become larger.

innocent believes himself obscene. From Confusion of mind,

unhappy love; from alcoholism. Fancied confusion of ideas and

himself in several pieces which he could thoughts.

not adjust. Delusions of grandeur and When he says it, it

riches. seems as if another.

person has said it.

Must change himself.

into another before he

can see or hear.

Fancies(of exaltation).

Confusion. Distraction,

No capacity for mental work as if inadvertence and incapability

he could not grasp a thought. to follow.

Absence of ideas.

Unable to collect his senses in morning Mental symptoms worse

on rising. in morning on waking.

Sense of expansion and bewilderment in Confusion of mind, a

brain with vertigo. benumbing of conscious-

and appears to be in a

kind of stupefaction of

his intellect, a mental

sluggishness.

Absent minded.

Memory generally quick. Weakness of memory.

(K. Rep).

It would be interesting to pursue this comparison and contrast under the other headings also but considerations of space and the fear of making the article unwieldy deter me. The results may be summarized thus: A repertorial study of the two remedies indicates that all the rubrics in which Alumina figures are also present in Phosphorus but in a higher grade, the single exception being under “Alternating moods” in which Alumina scores a first grade with Phosphorus but in the third. The mental picture presented by both is too close for the similarity to be ignored and while the difference in grade suggests that one may be chronic of the other, the difference in their modalities suggests that one may prove to be also a complementary of the other. Alumina: upper left and lower right; Phos: upper right and lower left. Alumen desires cold drinks like Phosphorus but Alumina desires hot drinks.

The striking similarity, nay, identity of many of the mental symptoms suggests the inference that the inner spheres of both these remedies have a certain fundamental unity. Is it this inner identity that enables the one to be transformed into the other? Is it this individuality, which, surviving even the bombing of a cyclotron during the transmutation of the one into the other, gives power and efficacy to our potencies even when pushed to such unimaginable heights as the MM and MMM?.

MAYAVARAM, SOUTH INDIA.

S Rajagopala Iyer