Book Review by Dr Anum Zaheer on Pathology Factor in Remedy Selection

Book Review by Dr Anum Zaheer on Pathology Factor in Remedy Selection

BOOK REVIEW

Book Name:            PATHOLOGY FACTOR IN REMEDY SELECTION
Author:                     Dr. Ashok Borkar
Pages:                       136 pages
Publisher:                Homoeopathic medical publishers, Mumbai
Editions:                   1st edition 2013
Reprints:                  2014

Availability : Available on Amazon

  • About author– Dr Ashok Borkar was born & brought up in the city of Mumbai & got graduated from C.M.P. Homoeopathic medical college, Mumbai. His strong aspiration to serve in rural areas inspired him to start his practice of homoeopathy in a remote village of Goa where no one had ever heard of Homoeopathy. This book is result of his intense study and demonstrates the role of pathology factor in remedy selection
  • Foreward to this book is written by Dr Rajan Sankaran and he admires the author for leaving no fixed rules for prescription.

The book starts with an interesting short story of a golden eagle and which clearly gives out a message, “let the eagle within you soar high into sky”, which can truly inspire any reader.

  • In the preface section he discusses two cases where in he writes about scope of homoeopathy in incurable cases or cases with structural changes. Also, a retrospective journey of author’s failed and cured cases where he observes and points out that prescriptions solely depended upon mental symptoms doesn’t give promising results always.

He also writes about essentials of good prescription, viz., proper case taking, and correct case analysis. To know the miasm we have to understand action and reaction of a person, his perception, reaction to situation, pace of problem and his attitude towards it.

Case discussions are also given, not with just remedy selection but along with his questionnaire for case taking , case approach, method used in prescription like kingdom/ sensation method and potency selection as well. Its evident from his cases that remedy cures the disease because it covers both physical general & pathology.

With reference from writings of Burnette, chapter ‘Curability Of Tumours By Medicine’ he mentions about seat of action, range and spot of action.

  • After every cases discussed, moral of the case is separately provided, starting with simple cases like ovarian cyst to difficult cases like cerebral frontal lobe atrophy, infertility with vitiligo etc, which are explained elaboratively.
  • Sections for importance of diagnosis, queries like how to make sure that rubric selected are correct, understanding peculiarities of pathology are also given separately.
  • Tips from clinical comparative material medica are also given, like staphysagaria causes irritability of senses whereas acid phos causes slowness of senses.
  • Author has praised with examples how pathology is given in Phatak’s material medica.  He also says that, a physician armed with the knowledge of making exact disease diagnosis can make very good prescriptions, but we have to be very cautious while using diagnosis to select remedy because we use it as first rubric. While doing so, it may even end up in exclusion of the right remedy. So more than the name of a disease , it is the process of pathological changes undergoing in the body that should be taken to account while selecting a remedy.
  • Adding cherry to the cake, a section for case taking and case solving techniques is also given where author writes about essentials of a good prescription.
  • The book is rich in teachings from pioneers of homeopathy like BOGER, BURNETTE, CLARK, PHATAK along with their proper references making literature more evident.
  • Later a chapter “ Discussion with Dr Borkar” is given where author unwinds questions like, which literature work is best to find pathological factors, importance of toxicological data, advices to young homoeopath etc.
  • Bibliography is present as a final part and includes word institute of sensation homoeopathy (WISH) and the other song academy is given including their treatment and training programs

The technique he uses and advocates is so simple that any homoeopath who reads this book should be able to apply it easily in practice & produce remarkable results.

Review by:

Dr Anum Zaheer
B.H.M.S., MD (Hom), PGDEMS
Gold Medalist
Homoeopathy Heals, Pune

About the author

Dr Anum Zaheer

Dr Anum Zaheer B.H.M.S. (Gold Medalist) State K.G.K.Homoeopathic Medical College & Hospital, Moradabad, M.D (Hom.) (Gold Medalist), Dr. D.Y.Patil. Homoeopathic Medical College & Research Centre, Pune ‘Quality MD Dissertation in Homoeopathy’ Awardee by Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy (CCRH)-2019.