| I received this book for review long back but was not able to
review it, as this is a huge book and going through new provings
is a very time-consuming and meticulous task.
Proving new drugs in homeopathy
is always a difficult and time-consuming work. There are very few
homeopaths today who are willing to carry on with the work done
by Hahnemann, Allen and Hering. There is plethora of information
about new homeopathic drugs these days but very few have come through
hands which can be relied upon. It is wonderful to see the Dynamis
School has such passion and comittment for such a difficult work.
Dynamic Provings vol I gave us many useful medicines. Sherr continues
his work with the same zeal in volume 2. Dynamic Provings volume
2 is a welcome addition to the collection of new provings.
Dynamic Provings, Vol. 2 contains 841 pages of pure proving data,
which after proper editing and clinical verification will enrich
the homeopathic materia medica. The provings this volume contains
are:
Brassica napus: Rape seed, 54 pages - 11 provers
Cygnus columbianus bewicki: Bewick Swan, 60 pages - 8 provers
Cygnus Cygnus: Whooper Swan, 224 pages - 21 provers
Olea europaea: Olive, 70 pages - 18 provers
Onchorynchus tschawytscha: Pacific Salmon, 156 pages -
25 provers
Salix fragilis: Crack Willow, 54 pages - 7 provers
Taxus baccata: English Yew Tree, 114 pages -16 provers
Taxus brevifolia: Pacific Yew Tree, 92 pages - 14 provers
The provings of Bewick swan and Crack willow
were conducted by Penny Stirling and the Pacific Yew by Jake Kiakahe
and Richard Pitt, the rest are by Sherr and the Dynamis School.
Brassica napus has previously appeared in Dynamic Provings
Volume I. Fresh material has been added to this proving from the
'Magic Prover', who didn't participate the first time round. Her
experiences and insights make the remedy more useful and exciting
to read.
All the provings follow the guidelines given by Jeremy in his previous
works. Jeremy says ‘All the provings were Hahnemannian,
fully-supervised, double-blind and placebo-controlled’.
Each of the provings has a few pages of introduction to the substance
and some of its dimensions and natural relationships. These serve
as a good starting point towards exploring the medicine further.
After that Sherr has included a new tool, which is a collection
of significant symptoms of that remedy on one page, to enable a
concentrarted overview. He calls it 'As If One Person'. This new
aid will again prove handy in analyzing the maze of symptoms and
understanding the outlook of the people concerned with conducting
the proving.
But not all the provings have the same level of richness and depth.
The proving of Salmon is probably the best in this work. I personally
feel that the difference in the provings can also arise from the
size of the prover-pool. While Salix has been proved by only 7 provers,
Salmon has been proved by 25 provers. This great difference in the
number of provers makes it a bit difficult to compare all the new
provings for their quality and consistency. When provings are being
done by the same school, I think the number of provers for each
proving can be kept relatively constant.
Editing proving data is a Herculean task and for the most part
the work is well edited. There are still some provings that can
do with better editing to make them more readable by removing repetitions.
There is another question that comes up. Although the provings were
double-blind, is the ‘prover no. 32’ idiosyncratic to
be giving excellent provings for everything? This probably needs
more review by the editors.
In all, Jeremey and his students have done wonderful work by doing
and compiling these provings. If not all, some of them will prove
to be of great clinical aid in many cases. Cases of Onchorynchus
and Brassica can already be found in our literature. The
book is beautifully printed on rich gloss paper and will add beauty
and value to the book-shelf of every homeopath interested in new
provings.
|