A Celebration of Provings School of Homeopathy

The School, being in its 40th year in 2021, offers this text to the profession as a celebration of its ongoing work in the field of provings. Particulars in the book were seeded by the accumulating proving material that has matured in the garden of the School of Homeopathy. The book’s purpose is to provide you, the homeopathic reader, with an overview of the remedies, providing an engaging walk through a garden of delights – and, being remedies, a garden of suffering too – that you may encounter new agents for the healing of your patients.

Each substance has a core synthesis derived from the provers dairies, a short history of the substance in nature and mythology, themes, rubrics, miasms and a mappa mundi.

AIDS, Antimatter, Arizona basaltic lava, Atlantic herring, Badger (European), Buckminsterfullerene, Desert locust, European mole, Goosegrass, Holly, House sparrow, Indian pipe, Kauri, Labradorite (Finnish), Latex (condom), Lightning, LSD, Meadowsweet, New water, Oak gall, Peregrine falcon, Red campion, Reindeer moss, Serotonin, Slate, Sloth and Southern marsh orchid.

Contents
Foreword    xi
Acknowledgements     xiii
Preface     xv
Proving overviews     xvii
Introduction     1

5-hydroxytryptamine - Serotonin 16
Agathis australis - Kauri 28
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome - AIDS     40
Andricus quercuscalicis - Oak gall     52
Aqua nova - New water     54
Carbo fullerenum - Buckminsterfullerene     76
Choloepus hoffmanni - Sloth     88
Cladonia rangiferina - Reindeer moss     100
Clupea harengus - Atlantic herring     112
Dactylorhiza praetermissa - Southern marsh orchid     124
Falco peregrinus - Peregrine falcon     136
Fulgurite - Lightning     148
Galium aparine - Goosegrass     160
Ilex aquifolium - Holly     172
Spectrolite - Labradorite, Finnish     184
Latex vulcani - Latex (condom)     196
Lava (Arizona) - Arizona basaltic lava     208
Lysergic acid diethylamide-25 - LSD     220
Meles meles - Badger (European)      232
Monotropa uniflora - Indian pipe      244
Passer domesticus - House sparrow      256
Positronium - Antimatter      268
Schistocerca gregaria - Desert locust      280
Silene dioica - Red campion     292
Slate (Welsh) - Slate     304
Spiraea ulmaria - Meadowsweet     316
Talpa europaea - European mole     328

Selection of cases     341
Bibliography     399
Index     405

Book forward, Jeremy Sherr
I am honoured to be writing the foreword to this latest publication from The School of Homeopathy. Misha was one of our first teachers in the London College of Homeopathy, 1980, and had a huge influence on the development of homoeopathy in the UK and beyond. He taught us to think broader, to see further, to use the art of analogy. I have often taught at the School of Homeopathy, enjoying the classes and after-school evenings with Misha, his family and the students. This is the undergraduate school I feel most affinity to, and I am proud to be among its patrons. Many of the School’s graduates have completed the Dynamis program. In 2012 I taught my ‘Dynamis’ program under the excellent management of Mani. After school Mani, Amanda and I passed the evenings with a good chat and meal, a walk with the dog, and a whisky in the pub. Thus, I am a friend of the dynasty, and as a result am closely acquainted with most of the School’s provings, many of which I use in my clinic on a regular basis.

Among these I must mention my good friend, the AIDS nosode, which we frequently utilise in Africa, never for pathological reasons but always based on the proving. This remedy heralds a perfect, harmonious world, and its constricted, constrained and miserable opposite. I have had much success with the invaded acorn, the misaligned LSD, the parasitic moss, the C60 container, the giant kiwi and above all, the diving falcon. There are many more gems to be discovered, and this book will undoubtably facilitate their study.

These, however, are not the only reasons I am pleased to see this book come to light. My satisfaction stems from the quality of the School of Homeopathy provings. It is provings of quality that are used by the profession, that heal thousands of patients and become pillars of our materia medica. Low quality provings, on the other hand, become chicken feed that merely fatten our books, providing rare and occasional contributions.

What differentiates a poor or mediocre proving from one of excellence? While high-quality raw data is imperative, it is the art and science of editing a proving that makes the difference. The precise and demanding work comes after the initial proving, and it is what will separate immature provings from a ripe remedy picture that can be used to heal in a clear and rational way. Conducting a proving, i.e. dishing out a remedy, suffering a little, and recording symptoms, is the easy part. It is in the long follow-up where so many provings get stuck, languishing at the bottom of a hard disk or seeing the light of day in a half-baked form that is of little use to the homoeopath. Hence Kent states, ‘You cannot count twenty-five decent provings since Hahnemann’. (New Remedies, Clinical Cases, Lesser Writings, Aphorisms and Precepts.)

A high-standard proving demands collating into an ‘As If One Person’ schema, followed by editing according to affinity, subject, prover, and chronology. It requires arranging the symptoms to suggest a picture without imposing it, without losing the multi-dimensional possibilities waiting to be discovered, and avoiding the prejudice of over-emphasised signatures, zoomorphism, and one-line essences. A quality proving delicately displays the strange and unexplained, and gives equal weight to physicals, as to emotional and dreams. Finally, it demands a comprehensive substance report and the most precise repertorisation. A united team is needed to produce such provings, and the School of Homeopathy has certainly excelled at this. I must especially commend the work of Peter Fraser, whom I have often wished to headhunt for my own proving team.

Even after all this work, a pure proving will never be an 100% accurate document, but is still merely a suggestion for materia medica. Over many years it must mature from the infantile raw symptoms to a well-edited child, to taking its first independent steps as a teenage remedy. Only many years later, succussed by clinical use and diluted by study, does it become an adult, on an equal footing with the whole materia medica community. There are no short cuts.

I believe this book represents the graduation of the School’s fine provings, each according to its age and stage of development. The School of Homeopathy team has done due diligence and walked the talk. Their provings are matured and have arrived at their destination.

This is a celebration indeed. Congratulations to all involved. The World thanks you for this enormous contribution.
Jeremy Sherr