Great Balls of Fire

Summary

A 40-year-old patient who had suffered from abdominal pain since childhood was treated with several remedies since 1998, but no improvement held. On retaking her case in February 2005 I finally perceived the simillimum. Looking through the case notes of the preceding seven years this remedy picture was present throughout. I had shown “fidelity in recording” but my bias towards repertorisation had on this occasion caused me to miss the full “image of the disease”. Her complaints were strongly abdominal, and the materia medica has no recorded abdominal symptoms for this remedy. I was only able to arrive at the correct remedy by following Aphorism 83 to the letter and by adopting Rajan Sankaran's method of taking the case - that is, to trust the energy in the patient's chief complaint to lead us to the deep level where mind and body speak the same language.

Key words

Hecla lava - Sensation - Build-up - Compilation - Blow-out

References

• 1 Hahnemann S. Organon der Heilkunst. Reprint of the 6th ed. Stuttgart: Hippokrates, 1982 (The Wenda Brewster O'Reilly and Stephen Decker version used this translation: The Organon of the Medical Art). 
• 2 Hahnemann S. The Chronic Diseases, their Peculiar Nature and their Homeopathic Cure. Dresden; Arnoldische Buchhandlung 1828 (Translated from the second enlarged German edition of 1835, by Prof. Louis H. Tafel)
• 3 Sankaran R. The Sensation in Homeopathy. Mumbai; Homoeopathic Medical Publishers 2004
• 4 Vermeulen F. Synoptic Materia Medica 2. Haarlem; Emryss bv 1996
• 5 van Zandvoort R. Complete Repertory in Reference Works. San Rafael; KHA 2005

1 Sankaran's understanding of Kingdoms relates to the deepest sensation at the crisis moment:

• Is there a powerful external other who is doing this to her (victim/aggressor sensation of the animal kingdom),

• Does she feel only one inner sensation throughout - say of tightness with a clear opposite, release (plant kingdom)?

• Or does she feel uncertain of her own capacity to cope, a need for support at this time (mineral kingdom sensation being an inner sense of incompleteness)

2 From the poem: One foot in Eden by Edwin Muir, in Collected Poems, Faber and Faber, London, 1999