The Comprehensive Repertory of New Homoeopathic Remedies

I have been asked to review Colin Griffith's Comprehensive Repertory of New Homeopathic Remedies. We know that a Repertory is nothing else but a detailed index of one or many Materia Medicas. Colin's provings of the new remedies is made through the controversial technique of meditative provings. For those reasons I thought it would be a better approach to review at the same time the technique, the Materia Medicas and the Repertory. Therefore, this review might read more as a critical paper than a window and a commentary on a new book.

The Materia Medica is divided into two volumes of more than 1,000 pages in total. It starts with an explanation about who participated and how the provings were made. The methodology is certain to ruffle quite a few feathers: supervision by a homeopath/medium, meditation, correspondence between chakras and remedies, prayers, visualisation ... everything is revealed, no hidden agendas. I can easily visualise some practitioners shuddering in horror and deciding not to open any of those books as it would amount to blasphemy. The only fact that is not clear at the beginning of the book is whether the provers knew what the remedy was or whether the provings were blind, with the name revealed only at the end; this is explained for each remedy, with provers not knowing which remedy they were taking. Then comes a detailed chapter about chakras, their relationship to some positive and negative states, to remedies, miasms and bowel nosodes. This by itself would justify a huge textbook. I kept asking ‘why, what makes you say that, how did you come to that?’ and I am no stranger to the concept of chakras. This might be even more unsettling if the reader has no or very little knowledge about it. However, it seems to be an integral part of Colin's prescribing system.

Whereto from there? I decided that simply reading the remedies and trying to remember their major features so that I could be tempted to use them should any of them spring to mind during a consultation, as we do with the provings of new remedies, was not going to be enough. I needed to trust the system. To do that, in those two volumes I looked for remedies that are already in use, have already been proved or prescribed by others and compared them. If they match, even approximately, the system of meditative proving is correct and should not be dismissed; on the contrary, it should be adopted as yet another tool in the understanding of a remedy ... and nobody claimed that every worker has to use each and every tool available.

My first choice was Latrodectus mactans, as this remedy has been proved many times and is well known and well used. Colin starts with a detailed description of the spider's behaviour and lifestyle, followed by a detailed account of the effects of its bite, on humans as well as a few lines about animals. It is as good as anything I have ever read about this spider. Then comes the Materia Medica, with a warning that ‘Text in italics is quoted from Murphy's Homoeopathic Remedy Guide and O Julian's Materia Medica of New Homoeopathic Remedies’. But what about the rest? What belongs to the meditative proving and what originates from the classic texts we have been using for years? Or is everything coming from meditation? Did conjunctivitis, cataract or glaucoma symptoms (if not the physical effect) appear during the meditative proving? Pericarditis? Atrial fibrillation? Apparently and hopefully not, but it is not written anywhere.

Summarised as a mainly heart remedy, Latrodectus is then briefly compared with other remedies that precede and follow well. Its influence on chakras will be useful for those of us who deal with them. A few cases are described.

Now I am perplexed.

I was expecting a proving, done through meditation about an unknown (to the provers) remedy that could be compared with what is already known about it and maybe enhanced. I just read a nicely presented, well-summarised Materia Medica with nothing new in it except for some esoteric uses and chakra indications. What is the point? What is ‘new’ here? Or is the meditative tool giving the same results as the usual proving?

I had to explore further.

I decided to compare Emerald with the proving made by Peter Tumminello published in his book Twelve Jewels.

Again a very good and detailed description and history of the precious stone. Reading both Materia Medicas in parallel showed me quite a lot of similar symptoms and signs but many differences too. Where does glaucoma and cataract come from? What about throat and bowel cancer? I don't understand that .... I could not find any other Materia Medica of Emerald in my books and homeopathic programmes, so where are those indications coming from? Certainly combining the information, one can gather from Tumminello and Griffith makes for a more complete, wider remedy, especially if and when they will be included in modern repertories like the Complete or Synthesis. I am still very annoyed at not knowing what makes them so specific and precise for some very organic pathologies. I am not saying this is incorrect or false; I simply have no clear idea and I would love more detailed information before trying to learn those remedies in depth, as they of course will not show up in a regular repertorisation, unless I use The Comprehensive Repertory of New Homeopathic Remedies. Maybe I missed the information, in which case I suggest it should be written in large fonts at the beginning of each book, because if it is there, I could not find it.

But I do know my Gemmotherapic Remedies pretty well. Colin Griffith has proved quite a few of them:

Acer Pseudoplatanus (Campestre), Aesculus Hippocastanum, Betula Pendula, Carpinus Betulus, Corylus Avellana, Fagus Purpurea (Sylvatica), Fraxinus Excelsior, Ilex Aquifolium, Quercus Robur in volume 1, Malus Domestica (Sylvestris), Olea Europea, Rubus Fructicosus, Sequoiadendron Giganteum (Sequoia Gigantea) in volume 2 (in brackets are the denominations found in the book Dynamic Gemmotherapy).

Looking at Corylus Avellana, there are many similarities on the physical indications like hemorrhage, and the mental ones as a nervous system balancing remedies. The mind symptoms are unique in Colin's Materia Medica, but once more it is not revealed whether this comes from the proving or from any other source. I would venture that the origin of the mind symptoms is the proving, as I have extensively researched that remedy earlier on, as well as all the other Gemmotherapic ones.

The parallelism of the symptoms is even greater for Quercus Robur. It appears that many of the physical indications found in Colin's work are borrowed from the herbal traditional indications and not found through the provers' symptoms and signs. Nothing wrong with that, but it would be nice to attribute the origins of information to where they belong. Or maybe, again, I missed it....

There are definitely many similarities between the Gemmotherapic Materia Medica and Colin Griffith's Materia Medica. Using the clinical experience gathered from years of Gemmotherapic prescriptions shows the validity of Colin's work. By extension, and I realise that I am walking on thin ice here, I would say that it also vouches for the usefulness of the other remedies. Nevertheless the two books lack the clarity of what belongs to the meditative provings and what has been gathered from traditional uses and other more modern indications.

This brings me to the original purpose of this writing, the repertory that will allow the homeopath a practical approach and use of the new remedies—376 pages, starting with some welcome explanations in the introduction. Fourteen newest remedies have been added since the publication of the Materia Medica Volume 2. A short, condensed text about each of them is found in Appendix 3. Finally I got to read in the Introduction, when talking about serious symptoms of pathologies like AIDS or cancer, that even though some meditative provers felt some symptoms like nausea and others even had rashes, nobody developed any real disease; nevertheless, Colin writes that some of the sensitive provers have ‘sensed or seen’ those serious pathologies and/or their expressions. What is still missing is the clarification of whether everything that is written in the Materia Medicas and the Repertory comes exclusively from the meditative provings, or whether there has been a combination with other sources. A good example of this is the rubrics ‘Thrombocytopenia’ in the Blood section, with the only remedy being Latrodectus mactans. That very specific pathology exists in other repertories and is confirmed by the toxicology of the venom. Therefore, it is important, at least to me, to understand if several meditative provers have been able to ‘sense’ this pathology. If that information is clearly given and repeated along the other remedies, this would lead to the unavoidable conclusion that a meditative proving is a valid tool, not to be lightly discarded.

The Repertory itself does not follow the classic design that we are used to, but the sections are listed alphabetically, the same way Robin Murphy has designed his Repertory. This will certainly ruffle the remaining feathers of the more traditional homeopaths but is a welcome relief for those who are more clinically oriented and have sometimes to navigate between multiple sections to cover one single presentation. A very useful addition is that with each list of new remedies in each rubric, there is also a list of comparable ‘old’ remedies in brackets. All along the three volumes, Colin is adamant that the new remedies and the new Repertory are not here to replace the well-known ones, even though they can be curative on their own. Many new remedies and new rubrics cover situations that did not exist or were barely relevant a few years ago, Fukushima Soil being the perfect example.

The Repertory is easy to use. The alphabetical design makes it clear and without any fuss. Although I have been spoiled by using almost only computerised repertories, adding a glance into this one will not take a lot of time and might certainly enhance prescriptions and outcomes.

Despite the lack of transparency I keep writing about, I find the whole work inspiring and practical. I would imagine (and hope) it appeared obvious to Colin Griffith that we would realise all the symptoms reported both in the Materia Medicas and the Repertory originate from the meditative provings. But I would like to have that in writing, in the books. Yes, I know, I am a professional nagger.

Until then, my gut feeling, and the parallel with the Gemmotherapic remedies, is that I trust what I read. I will use and recommend the Repertory and the new remedies, integrating them as much as feasible into my current practice.