ABSTRACT: Homoeopathy is a unique system of medicine based on individualization and symptom similarity of the patient. It treats every sickness of a man as a whole and individualised entity, for analysis and selection of indicated remedy need deeper understanding of Homoeopathic remedies in each case, the best way to understand homoeopathic materia medica is kingdom approach; plant kingdom remedies are the bigger source to be studied through family themes by group study. The knowledge of plant remedies according to their family themes has expanded the use of many unused remedies with much more accuracy and simplicity.
Key words: Materia medica, kingdom, plant remedies, family themes.
INTRODUCTION:
Homoeopathic drugs are prepared from different sources, namely plant kingdom, animal kingdom, the mineral kingdom, nosodes, sarcodes, imponderabilia and synthetic sources.
Major natural sources are:
Plant kingdom- Various herbs and plants, either whole or their specific parts like flowers, leaves and roots etc.
Animal kingdom-Various insects, animal products and venom of snakes etc.
Mineral kingdom-Elements and compounds like metals, salts, alkalis and acids etc.1
Homeopathic practise consists of the knowledge of homoeopathic materia medica and how to use it.2
The homoeopathic materia medica is too vast to be memorised, but it can be understood thoroughly if study through kingdoms.3
HOMOEOPATHIC KINGDOM APPROACH
The knowledge of classification of remedies according to their kingdom has expanded the use of many unused remedies with much more accuracy and simplicity. The approach in any given case now would be to come to the kingdom, then the subkingdom and then to the source to which the patient belongs. One takes the case and come to its core, the essence and the most central point in the case and then one knows automatically whether it is a problem with structure, survival or sensitivity.
Our remedies are derived from the natural world of plants, minerals and animals. The whole aim of the practitioner is to understand and find the source of that remedy as expressed by the patient. The art of arriving at the correct prescription has relied heavily on knowledge of materia medica and mechanical repertorisation. Both of these tools are essential but are greatly helped using recognition of the themes or patterns running through a case and a remedy.
One of the most radical concepts developed by Sankaran is about the kingdoms. Patients who required a remedy from the plant, animal and mineral kingdoms, describe themselves and their symptoms in a quite different way.
This ‘pattern recognition’ in turn benefits not just from themes and essences but from a system or map of these patterns. With the new work on kingdom classification, such maps have been developed which we believe more reliably lead the practitioner in the direction of the simillimum. Each kingdom has its own language, its own themes and its own sensitivities to situations.
PLANT KINGDOM
The plant kingdom presents more of a mystery to the homeopath. From the very beginning, when Hahnemann did his first proving on cinchona bark, plants have been widely represented in the materia medica. They have been studied from their known effects, from their toxicology and from proving’s, but never very systematically. There were no maps.
Sankaran hypothesised that each plant family had its own unique expression of that sensitivity. He studied the individual families, and came to the conclusion that it was possible to classify them according to their sensations and reactions.
According to Sankaran, the basic quality of a plant is sensitivity. Plants grow, but do not move under their own power from place to place. They stay in one place and must be sensitive to the environment in order to adapt to the changes around them. People who need plant remedies are often soft, sensitive, attempting to adjust to the people and environment around them. They are passive, emotional, easily hurt and changeable.4
The basic issue of plant families is sensitivity and reactivity. Each family must have its kind of sensitivity. People who need plant remedies are often soft, sensitive, attempting to adjust to the people and environment. They are passive, emotional, easily hurt and changeable.
If the main thing in the plant kingdom is sensitivity, then each family must have its own kind of sensitivity. Remedies from a particular family share at least one common sensation or type of pain. The sensation could be expressed in four different ways viz. as the sensation itself, as a passive reaction, as an active reaction, or as compensation. Despite the common feeling or sensation, there is a wide difference in the pictures or symptomatology of the various remedies in the same family. This difference is because they belong to different miasms. 5
Overview of group study:
Group study is one of the most important and easiest ways of studying materia medica. Group study tells us the basic infrastructure and basic qualities and properties of the remedies in one particular group based on which finer differentiations can be made. Understanding of homoeopathic materia medica requires much study, experience and insight in order to come out of the maze of collection of symptoms. Number of medicines in homoeopathic materia medica is more than 3500 and it is very difficult to study and remember all the characteristics by individual study of drugs. In the study of Materia medica a new concept came ahead, i.e. group study. Group study is the first step to understand each remedy to its fullest aspect. Group study gives us the most of the generals and some very important particulars of the remedies included in that group. Group study implies the extract of all common characteristics of the remedies included under that group with common elements. Most of the common traits are generals and particulars are very few. Most of the group characteristics are at mental and physical generals’ level. Through group study it is very easy to deduct theme of the combination of remedy The main advantage of the group is we get the separate themes of both composing elements as well as the combination of themes.
COMPOSITAE FAMILY
Composite or daisy or sunflower family is also known as ASTARACAE. Different remedies of this family have been employed in various clinical conditions by different schools of medicines since ancient times. There are about 60 remedies of this family mentioned in our Materia medica, some being well proved and some partially. It is one of the large families widely distributed throughout world consisting of most highly evolved dicotyledonous plants. They are annual or perennial herbs, shrubs and rarely trees. They are mostly cultivated as ornamental plants, food plants or grow as weeds. They are approximately 900 genera and 19,000 species of family.
IMPORTANT REMEDIES:
1. Artemisia – Artemisia abrotinum
– Artemisia vulgaris
– Artemisia absinthium
– Artemisia maritima
2. Achillea millifolium
3. Anthemis nobilis
4. Arcticum lappa
5. Arnica montana
6. Bellis perennis
7. Carduus marianus and Carduus benedictus
8. Echinacea angustifolia
9. Eupatorium erfoliatum, Eupatorium purpurium
10. Erigeron canadensis
11. Gnaphalium polycephalium
12. Inula
13. Lactuca virosa
14. Matricaria chamomilla
15. Solidago virgaurea
16. Senecio aureus
17. Tanacetum vulgare
18. Taraxacum officinale
19. Tussilago 6
Each plant family had its own unique expression of that sensitivity. He studied the individual families, and came to the conclusion that it was possible to classify them according to their sensations and reactions. why different remedies from the same family have such differing symptomatology. It seemed that the sensation was common to the whole family but that it was expressed in differing degrees of pace, depth or desperation. In other words, different plants of the same family belonged to different miasms. It was this breakthrough which initiated the development of a chart of the botanical families and the remedies related to the miasms.
| COMPOSITAE FAMILY REMEDIES ACCORDING TO THEIR MIASM | |
| Acute | Arnica montana, Calendula officinalis |
| Typhoid | Chamomilla |
| Malaria | Cina, Eupatorium perfoliatum |
| Ringworm | Taraxacum officinale |
| Sycosis | Senecio aureus |
| Tubercular | Abrotanum |
| Cancer | Bellis perennis |
| Leprosy | Lactuca virosa, inula, Lappa arcticum |
For every sensation there is an equal and oppo- site reaction, both in physical and emotional expressions. The reaction can be either active or passive, or in some cases can be seen as compensation.
| SENSATIONS, REACTIONS AND COMPENSATIONS OF COMPOSITAE FAMILY | |||
| Sensation | Passive reaction | Active reaction | Compensation |
| Injured, Hurt or insulted, Shocked, burnt or scalded, Fear to be touched, hurt or approached | Numb, anaesthetic, stupor, catalepsy | Insulting, hurting, others, cruel, violent strikes | Tough guy, can take all the beating, protective of others 7 |
Compositae family themes: injured, hurt or insulated, shocked, fear to be touched, hurt approached.
Thus, the proposed sensation of family compositae is injured, both at physical as well as mental level, insulted, hurt (injury perceived at mental level), fear of being approached, touched ( as that aggravate the sensation of being injured) shocked, burnt or scalded and hence the reaction of being violent, cruel, insulting, harsh (active reaction since their perception is being injured and insulted, they also inflict that back on others.
There is a sensitivity seen on things which are hard and soft because hard things are perceived as causing injury, and soft things being opposite hard, given soothing feeling.
COMPOSITAE FAMILY DIFFERENTIATION:
SONACEA: The main sensation of solanaceae family is sudden violence, rage, out bust, splitting, bursting, explosive, jerking, and shooting. This family has important physical symptoms like strokes, apoplexy, sunstroke and some other themes like violent, terror, being pursued, murder, snakes and ghosts. All this speaks of sudden violence, sudden danger ans also fear of sudden death and the reaction to this is fright or flight response, escape, panic, spasm, convulsions or anesthesia, stupefied, etc.
PAPAVARACEA: The main theme of the papavaraceae family is of intense suffering, pain, agony and a hell like state, this kind of suffering is often connected to the experience of death and dying, the death agony and the half alive, half dead state, like being buried alive. In papavaraceae family sensitivity to extreme pain , intense suffering killing, heat, cold or burning and opposite to that is numbness or hibernation or an anesthetic state as understood. In the compositae family the main sensation is being injured at physical, mental level.
THEALES: The vital sensation in the family theales is smashed, punctured, penetrated followed by a shooting violent pain and that produces spasms and convulsions. The injury is especially to nerves or in the form of crushed lacerations. The pain is as if something is smashed in to a part that is rich in nerves. The wounds are stab, penetrating, smashed and punctured in the family theales where as in compositae the wounds are blunt and there is soreness. Anything that has pierced and punctured and gone till the nerves call for the family theales and not compositae.
UMBELLIFERACEA: In umbelliferacea family, there is unexpected attack, sudden blow or big injury. The sensation is sudden, huge, violent, big blow, which is unexpected. It is a violent attack mutilations, riots, accidents, cruelty all come up suddenly without notice, so the response to this sensation is convulsions, rage and violence as the attack is violent the response too is violence. Umbellifaracea family comes close to compositae family with respect to injury but what differentiates it is the word unexpected and violent which is most important aspect of umbelliferacea.8
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION: Every homoeopathic physician should be thoroughly knowledgeable about the different ways of case analysis based on individual expression to find appropriate simillimum, based on plant kingdom themes and their family expression give you broader sense to select appropriate Homoeopathic remedy in each and every case, for achieving this goal one must need systematic way is to analyses through kingdom and family themes by application of Rajan Sankaran sensation method. Homoeopathic materia medica should understand by constant comparison and differentiation only. This review surely improve our prescribing ways of compositae family remedies.
REFERENCES:
- Partha, M. P., & Mandal, B. (2001). A Text-Book of Homoeopathic Pharmacy. B. Jain Publishers.
- Yuan, H., Ma, Q., Ye, L., & Piao, G. (2016). The Traditional Medicine and Modern Medicine from Natural Products. Molecules (Basel, Switzerland), 21(5), 559.
- Evans, W. C. (2009). Trease and Evans pharmacognosy E-book. Elsevier Health Sciences.
- Scholten, J. (2017). Introduction to the Plant Theory. Homœopathic Links, 30(02), 079-085.)
- Sankaran, R., Sankaran’s schema. 2011, India: Homoeopathic Medical Publishers.
- Patil, J. D. (2006). Group Study in Homoeopathic Materia Medica. B, 55-56
- Owen D, Principles and Practice of Homoeopathy,Similibus India,Elsevier Ltd 2007 Pages from 290-300
- Synergy homeopathic software
About the Author:
Main author: Dr.G.Lakshmi Narasaiah, M.D.(Hom)
Ph.d. Research Scholar,
Lincoln University of College, Malaysia.
Co-author: Prof.(Dr) G. Chandra Sekhara Rao.
M.D.(Hom), Ph.d, & Guide,
Lincoln University of College, Malaysia.
