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| Hpathy Ezine - February, 2006 | |||||
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Frederik Schroyens<-- Interviewed by Dr. Manish Bhatia |
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Dr. B - Now we would like to talk about the repertories in general and Synthesis in particular. You have been associated with this project since 1983. How did it happen that you started working on this project? FS - At that time when everything was tiny and small, there were only a few homeopaths, say 10 or so who were interested in the software development and I was one of them. And so I took up the responsibility and became the coordinator of the little group and it never ended.
Dr. B - What was the experience like working on this project? That was the first time homeopathic software was being made for Windows. It was a totally new path. How did you feel trekking on it? FS - It was sometimes very hard because I, myself, was not convinced that technology will ever be able to help in homeopathy. In fact at times, I was against the development of homeopathic software. Even after I got convinced, the first years, almost 10 years, there was lots of resistance in the homeopathic community. I was not even allowed to speak about it in certain schools when I was teaching my cases. People told me, don’t speak about computers. It was perceived as commercial! Now that has changed. Now there is no seminar in the world where people do not present the case with computerized case analysis or computerized material medica. But it was a very difficult time while there was a lot of animosity during the developmental years.
FS - First, when we printed the book, it came down to a more usable level… because it was a book, you see, and that really made a change because people said ...ah! This is Kent and for this rubric I have Synthesis …it was a big difference as there were different remedies and there were different results. So that started really changing a lot of things.
Dr. B - Synthesis has come a long way ...9 versions. There has been an increase in quality and quantity at the same time. In the past, there have been allegations that a lot of medicines and rubrics are being added which are not verified. I know your method now, that you first create an empty repertory with rubrics, then a second team adds the medicines and a third team cross-checks everything. But was it like this from the very beginning? FS – No! Because, first I was almost alone, with 2 other people to do all the work. Then a few more and few more came together. The work is so enormous. We do a job and at the same time there is a request for 2 or 3 other projects. The repertory is absolutely not final. We need to do much more work to streamline it, to increase the quality of the index, it has to be done. We have now such a wide range of people using it that I believe that we will reach that level. But it is just such a tremendous job and a lot has not been done. When someone asks me why you have not added the proving of blah blah blah, I reply, Because I can only work for 48 hrs out of a 24 hour day, and because you were not helping us!
Dr. B - Primarily, when you start compiling a new repertory, you add remedies and rubrics from other sources, clinical data, provings, and other repertories from works that have already been done. How do you verify that what is written in those sources is correct? Because in many of such works also, the preferences and biases about various remedies and rubrics have crept in due to the clinical experience of the author. FS - That is a very difficult aspect of the work and we have been doing it in the following way: When there is an author who says that Bellis-p is good for this thing, we will add it with the reference of the author. So people can first check whether this information exists in a book or an article or if it is clinical information. They can go back to this person and ask about the clinical case and verify the information. In addition, by adding the author reference, we are inviting you to verify. You will see that in many remedies in Synthesis, there is not one but 4 or 5 author references. In this way, the knowledge base is increasing and maybe in ten years, there will be a number of remedies that have gotten confirmation from the clinic and will have many references. However, there will be remedies which will never get confirmed. Then it is an aspect of confidence that remedies supported by only one source are not very useful! So, repertory becomes like a mixture of information which is very solid and confirmed by everybody and there is some information which lies there with a question mark. This indication of the references of each remedy is clear and can be used. If you want to use Synthesis with all the confirmed rubrics, you can. When you prescribe your 10 or 20 polychrests and you don’t get anywhere, you say, Show me also all the hypothetical information and you may see new remedies coming up, and then say, I might try this. Dr. B – There has been an increase in the number of homeopathic medicines. We have now close to 4000 medicines. Do you think that there is scope for using that kind of vast information? Most of the homeopaths use less than 100 remedies in more than 95% cases. Then what is the role of those other 3500 remedies that we have? What clinical utility do these new remedies have? FS - First of all, I think it is important to confirm that there are polychrests in homeopathy, and they are still there. So, if someone knows very well the top 100 remedies, he can do a lot. So, anyone studying homeopathy should be encouraged to master the 100 polychrests first. Secondly, I have to say that I have cases with remedies which are not polychrests. I have number of cases with very new remedies that responded in a very spectacular way and where I had been giving other remedies without success. So, I confess that it is my experience that some of the new remedies can bring about an incredible change where other remedies were failing before.
FS - I think there is a problem of availability, that the information is not easily available. There is a proving in a journal; think about it. After one month, you forget a bit about it and after six months you scarcely remember it at all. So, there again, the repertory comes in as a tool. It can work as a reminder when a special symptom comes up. And if we can integrate the provings in the repertory, people may find them more easily. And there will be greater use of the newer remedies. Whether one of those new remedies will prove to be a polychrest is difficult to say. Why was Hahnemann lucky? Hahnemann also proved medicines that did not turn out to big ones. Magnets for example. Every remedy Hahnemann proved did not turn out to be a big one but you are right: Arsenicum, Belladonna all come out to be very big remedies! I think we have the same with new remedies. Some will prove--like chocolate or diamond--to be of use repeatedly and others won’t. It’s difficult to predict.
FS - Yes it is a worry and a concern. I have and my team has always worked for quality with version 2, 3, 4 and 5. But then as soon as the book was published with version 5, this tendency has come up in the community that more is better. People were telling me …Listen! I don’t care if the remedy is confirmed in the rubric or not, it should be there to make me think of the remedy, it should just be there. So far teachers were saying, just put it there, put it, put it! And when this demand for quantity became stronger, we had to find a solution and the solution we have found is in Synthesis 7. We introduced the repertory views. You can look at Synthesis with all the information and also look at Synthesis with less but more reliable information. We have at that time given more stress on adding more information more quickly and you are right that there was a jump from version 5 to 6 to 7. We have given more information more quickly but only after we have provided the homeopathic community with the tool to get rid of the quantity if they wanted, to look at the Synthesis repertory view like a content view where only more confirmed, more reliable information is available.
Dr. B - But doesn’t it happen if you add a particular remedy or rubric to Synthesis which is not well confirmed, just by being part of such a work, gives the information a level of credibility/authenticity? People consider it reliable because it is there in Synthesis. FS - Yes. That is a danger and I am happy you ask this question because this is not our purpose. Our purpose is to be an index, a synthesis of what is happening in the homeopathic community and to label it in certain way …to label it in a way, for example, we would indicate whether certain information is derived from classical provings or any other type of hypothetical proving. Then people can decide if they want to use that information or not. The solution is in making the information available as precisely as possible. The solution can not be in me deciding whether this information is reliable or not. Because wherever I will draw the line, there will be some people who will agree and some people who will disagree. So I'll get killed either way. So the solution is not to take the authority for this big decision. The only solution I find is to be as transparent as possible, and that is possible in Synthesis. Dr. B - What future do you see for Synthesis? FS - Well, the version 9.1 has been released. This is a big leap, a big achievement, so version 10 is not coming up as soon as next year. We have to work a little bit further and take some more time before releasing version 10 because version 10 should be more special, and so the goals we have for the moment are mostly on the level of quality. We are collecting lot of information for correcting certain things like duplicate rubrics and clarifying language issues; because of the translations, we got a lot of demands for corrections of certain rubrics and we are having more information from reliable sources, from old sources which are not yet available in Synthesis. We are working since long but I don’t think that still all the knowledge from our classics is in Synthesis.
FS – Well! Kenbo is an approach on how to proceed in the analysis of the case and offers assistance in how to bridge the gap between the language of the patient and where you need to go with your prescription, and so there is the language of the patient and there is this very big work that my team is doing and Kenbo will be using that to lead the practitioner in a more easy way towards the conclusion.
FS - We have to work on the details and it is our goal to find the best possible solution for the homeopathic community as a whole.
FS - I don’t think so. The repertory will become more and more an index, a starting point to go somewhere, the starting point to go to material medica, like you look at a certain rubric and see that both Pulsatilla and Nux are jealous and I wonder what is the difference, and then jump off from the repertory rubric to investigate the jealousy of Nux and jealousy of Pulsatilla. If I see a small rubric and see that it is from the proving, I will move to the proving. I may see an unexpected remedy in a rubric and I see that it is from a case and I will move to the case. So the repertory will evolve like an index, a starting point to go to the source information.
FS - Well, if this is one rubric in the whole repertorization it can be useful because it may highlight a small remedy. The big rubrics are big, not exactly because they contain big remedies but also because they contain small remedies. Say you have taken some another small rubric of that small remedy and that remedy suddenly pops up because it is also present in your big rubric.
FS - Yes, First I would like to state that I and my team are not
working on our own. We are very much involved with the community.
We have hundreds of people who are collaborating with us and we
let ourselves be influenced by whatever the people are requesting
and saying. We have exchanges in many ways. It is a question of
standards. They will be set mostly in a way that they did not exclude
each other. If I can give the example of quality and quantity, what
has to be the standard? It’s like ten years back this was
a major issue. Whether we stay with quality and we see some other
repertories jumping in numbers or do we add more quantity as well.
The solution is choosing between 2 standards – quality and
quantity. In evolving a technology where both were possible. I believe
again that we must mention the technology or way. Different things
are possible at the same time. Dr. B - You have written a couple of books also. Is there any other work that you are working on at present? FS - No my focus is still on the repertory. I feel there is still too much to be done on the repertory to increase the quality, to streamline the information, to make information more easily available. So I think for the next few years I will focus on the repertory until I feel that it has reached a certain point, then I may imagine other things but at present my focus is very much ion the repertory.
FS – Well! Every day is not as happy as the other day, if you understand what I mean. I can tell you when the deadline is there, and we have to fit in with the desktop publishing team, which has taken 6 weeks to work, the paper has been bought, the printer has reserved the machines, we can not just stop any time. So we have to finish in time. So every time we have a deadline of any version of Synthesis, I can tell you it is a hell of a life.
Dr. B - In general, what future do you see for homeopathy in the current times? FS – Well! You know the war is going on Europe, in US especially and my expectation in fact is that something will happen that will make this war appear to be very unnecessary. And that there will be very much greater acceptance of homeopathy in the Western health care system, like it is already the case in India. And that homeopathy will be understood to be really very important, almost first level in health care. This is my expectation.
Dr. B - Thanks you so much Frederick for this wonderful interview. It was a pleasure to meet you in person and talk to you in detail. |
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