Repertorization in such cases should be based on characteristics in other sphere and must be in the detection of causal factors if the successful medicine is to be found.
Dr. Whitmonts attempt is to be commended. His paper is an inspiration, and I look forward to seeing it published, and having an opportunity of scrutinizing it more closely.
DR. MARION BELLE ROOD (Lapeer, Mich.]: I should like to ask Dr. Whitmont, remembering some of his very charming papers on Phosphorus and on Calcarea carb., showing the tendency of Calcarea to oval shapes, and so on, the shape of the oyster shell, which is related to it, and the corresponding mental states which is some other example, say rock salt, which makes a cubic structure in its crystal, and shows radiation in the infra red which it emits and equally absorbs-where are you going to correlate those facts with the consciousness of the patient who needs salt, Natrum mur., for his long-lasting grief, a fact so well-known to every homoeopath and even recognized, it seems to me, symbolically.
Lots wife was turned to a pillar of salt for looking backward and mourning for the past. Just where does Dr. Whitmont locate the consciousness, which is studied so elaborately by the psychiatrist and his psychology, with what, so far as I know, only homoeopathy has contributed to medicine, some correlation between the drug provings and the emotions of the conscious self?.
DR. A.H. GRIMMER [Chicago, Ill.]: All I want to do is to thank Dr. Whitmont for bringing this to us. It is a very deep and well- thought-out paper, and it goes to the very heart of things in homoeopathy. There is nothing I can add to what he has said. I thoroughly endorse it because he touches on things that are so vital. Unless we take those things into consideration, many of our mental states, many of our mental wrecks, we will be unable to help. He gave us key to that in this paper.
I should really feel more like discussing if I, like Dr. Schmidt, had a little more time to read it over and think it over. There is a lot of meat to it. I thank the Doctor for bringing it to us.
DR. EDWARD C. WHITMONT (closing); If I attempt to answer Dr. Roods question, I am afraid we will spend some time here; however, I should like at least briefly to attempt this. The correspondence is there and the correlation lies in what we might call a law of correspondences.
You see, if we go back to the comparison of the spectrum, this comparison is more than a comparison. I think it is an actual basic phenomenon that we have caught here, that is really a practical working hypothesis. In the spectrum you have different levels. You have, you might say, the radio wave, the light, and you have the gamma rays, and the all the certain phenomena in common, yet perform these phenomena, as it were, in different languages. It is, in other words, as though you said the same word in French, and in Chinese, and in English. It has the same meaning but it sounds entirely different, and to the one who is not initiated in languages, it will look like three different words, but the meanings of those words correspond.
Now, the language of chemistry, of biology, and of the psyche are three different languages but corresponding phenomena occur in them, and you might compare that situation with the one when you strike a tuning fork. You hear the tone, but another tuning fork, having the same tone an octave higher, will also start vibrating; however, not with the same intensity. A tone struck on one level will always meet a relation in the octaves. These are the correspondences.
Now. A certain entity on the chemical level may mean all that we know, lets say, about the activity of Sulphur, the yellow shade, the oxidating power, and so forth. The same phenomenon in the language of biology you will find in disturbed oxidation processes and congested circulation. Maybe congestion and oxidizing will always burn up products, and you find cases so typically in slag, and so forth. It is the same phenomenon on a Psychologie level which means a person never finishes anything, who has a hundred thousand ideas but never can burn them up sufficiently. You have, three times, the same thing but expressed in three different languages.
Another example: When you go back in scientific endeavors-and this is not my finding, but Jung found this out in the alchemistic literature of the sixteenth, fifteenth, fourteenth, etc., centuries-you have a treasure chest of correspondences but in an undefined and undifferentiated way. For instance, the alchemists call Sulphur the miliary architect and maker of a thousand things, and speak of a Sulphur the miliary architect and maker of a thousand things, and speak of a Sulphur being, and if you take that, you find Mr. Sulphur of our Materia Medica. It is perfectly there in the alchemistic writings, but they did not say it applies to a psychological state. They said: “These are the properties of Sulphur.”
For the alchemists there was a revelation of a certain basic symbolic happening that is as applicable to the psyche as to biologic correspondence, and “the proof of the pudding is in the eating,” and the eating is the fact that Jung has stated this alchemistic symbolism, and has shown that very precise symbols do occur in modern dreams; that many dreams cannot be interpreted at all unless the key of occur, too, in our dreams, but ascribed to our consciousness; in other words, those whatever-you-may-call-them, pictures, images, or what not, are synonymous terms which you may just as easily translate into biologic or chemical or psychological happenings, just as this (indicating) which you may call aqua, or water, or wasser, three different sounds, but they mean the same thing; they sound entirely different.
As to the thing you mentioned, to give another example, the salt, the pillar of salt. We may say it is probably meant symbolically. Lots wife looked back. She could not step forward into the the new era, into the new realm that was open. She looked back upon the past. That is what it symbolically means, and anyone frozen to the past becomes a crystal. Now you know typical Natrum mur, is, the patient who has the symptom of not being able to look ahead, not being able to tear himself from the past, overcoming grief and catastrophe. Natrum mur. like Lots wife, is shackled to the past of experience, cannot move forward, onward. It is manifest in the infra red you mentioned, and we compare the infra red in our spectrum to the beginning, to the instinctual psyche, and interestingly enough, the Natrum mur. (I think I have worked it our in the paper) belongs in the evolution of the animal to the area of psychofication.
You do not find the Natrum mur. for instance, in plants. You find it, but in the level where the plant life reaches animal life; in other words, it is precisely in the infra red sphere of our biologic spectrum; in other words, you see, if you just take enough time, and gather enough material, and have something of a key, it is all there.
We have thousands and thousands of facts, unrelated because the key is lacking, but they are there for the asking and, quite specifically to your question, if you would study the material in Jungs work, you would find a treasure chest for homoeopathic work, particularly for homoeopathic correspondences between animal and psychic life.
Now, there is one point I want to add. What brought me to this paper is that it has a very practical side for us. You remember that Herings law says that the progress of cure is from above downwards, and from the more vital to the less vital, and we automatically or silently have adopted the custom of including in this “from the mental to the physical.” Kent, at least, does so. Now, this is not always correct. The progress of cure may be from mental to physical, but it may also be from physical to mental; in other words, suppression may work upon the mental side or from the mental side. It works both ways, and that is, in practical case work, sometime a very important thing to remember and, of course, it does work that way because it depends just where the storm center starts whether it will move upward or downward.
