The Substance of Homeopathy

Review

This book review is reprinted with permission from Homeopathic Links.

Reviewed by Beat Spring

"I like to share what I had the joy of discovering for myself" - indeed this book reads like a personal notebook of a man on his quest for more and more knowledge. And Sankaran, who combines a very clear thinking mind with a free and creative spirit, has substantial insights to share. His searching mind seems to move in two directions - an attempt to find order in the vast pool of knowledge:

- a big section is dedicated to the miasms, which Sankaran presents with a new, deeper an exciting understanding.

- another major section deals with the 'natural order of drugs'. He presents the common theme of the mineral, plant and animal kingdom. The keyword for the plants being 'sensitivity', for animals 'competition' and for the minerals 'structure'. He relates the homoeopathic characteristics of the minerals to chemistry's periodic system (in this making a link to chemistry) and illustrates this with case examples and materia medica.

In both the miasms as well as the natural order of drugs, the background of his reasoning is not a philosophising for its own sake, but rather the attempt to find new ways to practise homoeopathy even more efficiently.

The other direction seems to be aimed at expanding present knowledge:

- a proving of music (different ragas proved in seminars in different continents; these ragas come on cassette with the book) is presented, as well as new (group-) provings of snakes.

- bothered with the question why different homoeopaths come up with different prescriptions for the same patient, Sankaran concludes that we are still prescribing for the symptoms and offers more ways on how to approach a case to really get to its depth.

This book is a gem, for the experienced homoeopath as well as for the beginner. For the student it offers a glimpse into the wide range of possibilities homoeopathy has to offer after the basic skills have been learnt; for the experienced it may be a welcome stimulus to expand their own framework and find new challenges to learn, experiment and grow. The only task which is left to the reader is to distinguish what has been born from long experience and thinking, and what is just a new experiment waiting to be validated in future. "I present these ideas and concepts with the hope that they will be studied with an open mind, yet critically. The ideas in this book are neither complete nor final."

This book invites one to enter upon an exciting journey, a journey tin which one may play with possibilities and search for the truth beyond dogma and limitations.

Homoeopathic Links - Summer 1994

This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.

This book arrived just before the copy date so there has not been time to commission the comprehensive review it deserves. This book follows on from The Spirit of Homoeopathy published two years ago. In it, Sankaran discusses his understanding of the miasms, including 'lesser miasms' like the leprous and malarial ones, and the link between remedies sources and their symptomatology. His concept of the use of the Periodic Table is discussed at length as is the idea of understanding compound remedies by studying their component parts. He also covers some of the other subjects presented at recent seminars like music provings and the difference between remedies and patients belonging to the different kingdoms - plant, animal, mineral and nosode. This book should have a very enthusiastic reception, it is a denser, in some ways more mature book than Spirit, and contains a lot of excellent materia medica. Concepts are illustrated with numerous case examples.

Eight or nine years ago how those who attended Rajan's first seminar in this country recognised him as an exceptional teacher. His seminal lecture on the 'central disturbance' from that time is reproduced at the beginning of the book and his concept of 'disease as delusion' is elaborated on in a lot of detail. Whether you agree with his ideas or not, Rajan provides plenty of food for thought in his latest book - I look forward to studying it in more detail.

The Homoeopath No.53 1994

This book review is reprinted from the British Homoeopathic Journal Vol 83, Number 3, July 1994, with permission from Peter Fisher, Editor.

Attenders of his seminars will be familiar with the underlying themes that run through Dr Sankaran's work: The idea of disease as delusion and healing as awareness, the light he has shed on delusions and dreams in the materia medica, the emphasis which goes with this on treating the central disturbance, especially as shown by the mental state of the patient. These concepts, first presented in book form in The Spirit of Homoeopathy, are, as its title suggests, fleshed out in this second volume, which is longer than the first, amounting to about 300 pages.

The book is divided into four sections. The first briefly reviews the points presented in The Spirit, the second applies the concepts of diseases as delusion, and situational materia medica, to the vexed question of miasms. In doing so, Dr Sankaran lifts the topic out of the realms of metaphysics or hypothetical toxins, by presenting miasms as behavioural responses to perceived difficulties or threats. For instance, psora is when a person sees their situation as one that can be overcome with a struggle; in sycosis he sees himself as too weak or flawed to overcome it and having therefore to try to cover up the weakness; and in syphilis the situation is seen as so hopeless that only despair or desperate action is worthwhile. In addition, there are other perceived situations, which can be represented as the acute, tubercular, leprous and ringworm miasms, for instance. The value of classifying in this way is to narrow the choice of medicines to those which are applicable to the patient's miasmatic position. A case which presented features of Stramonium (acute miasm) and Silicea (sycotic miasm) but where Aethusa matched both miasms, particularly illustrates this. A number of histories are given to illustrate the analysis of cases miasmatically.

In the third section, the focus shifts to the classification of medicines according to their origin in the mineral, animal or plant kingdoms, the main emphasis being on the minerals here, with the introduction of the Periodic Table of the Elements, a theme whose time seems to have come in the homoeopathic world. Dr Sankaran shows that when you analyse medicinal substances by their horizontal and vertical groupings in the Periodic Table, a remarkable coherence with the materia medica appears, and light is shed on the less well-known elemental medicines. There is obviously much scope here for further study to elucidate the many elements still unused. Finally in this section, a few animal and plant substances are discussed, and throughout, illustrative cases are given. Throughout the book, provings of Ringworm, Bacillinum, Iodum, Calc. sil., Mur. ac., Naja and Cann. ind. are also described, mostly conducted at seminars in various parts of the world. As with cases and materia medica, special emphasis is given to the dreams of provers, as dreams show the uncompensated basic feeling most clearly. This section concludes with a chapter on the use of the Ragas of Indian classical music in healing according the law of similars, and includes some provings of musical pieces, too. This is consistent with the idea of disease as delusion and healing as becoming aware of one's delusion: anything which can provoke awareness can be used, including music, psychotherapy, or even stories and films.

In the final, shorter, section, a number of ideas relating to homoeopathic philosophy are brought together, touching on the nature of healing and the relevance of homoeopathic thinking to other areas of life.

The book itself, which is privately published, has quite a few errors of typing, punctuation and syntax, and is not very strongly bound. I am sure my copy will be in pieces before the year is out. All this gives a 'hot from the press' impression, and indeed Dr Sankaran says he was eager to present these ideas quickly to stimulate further research. It is regrettable that he has substituted the ugly 'coped up' for the standard English word 'compensated'. Such gripes apart, the book makes extremely stimulating reading, and is surely a tour de force of clinical observation and inductive reasoning, which succeeds in integrating homoeopathy more with natural science, and also with art and philosophy. Its practical value will only be determined when it has been tested out over some years in clinical practice and research.

RICHARD LAING

Volume 83, Number 3, July 1994
British Homoeopathic Journal