
Past Features

The Challenge of Doing Provings
Volume 11 Issue 2
By Peter Fraser
The way that we have historically come to an understanding of a remedy’s picture is not as well-known as it should be. It is important to appreciate how remedy pictures are arrived at since the ways that have been used in the past are the same ways that are available to us now. We need to know the process, not only so that we can follow it in working with remedies that have not yet been assimilated into the secondary materia medicas, but also so that we can understand the limits of our knowledge about all remedies, new and old.
It is often thought that the information we find in the materia medicas has come only from detailed and well conducted Hahnemannian provings of potentized remedies, but this is not so. Only a small proportion of information comes this way. Many of the provings were either toxicological reports of the crude substance or were conducted by an individual or a very small group, often over a very short time. Much of the information comes not even from provings at all but from traditional or experimental usage and all of it is tempered greatly by clinical experience.
Knowledge is only truly useful when we also know its extent, its accuracy and the limitations and uncertainties of the information.

The History of Provings: A history and perspective on homeopathic provings
Volume 11 Issue 2
By Frans Vermeulen
Homeopathy is based on facts, not on theory. Homeopathy is generally believed to be a science, though many understand it as science bridged to the arts. This article explores the the age-old question of objectivity versus subjectivity. In this in-depth, historical exploration, Vermeulen asks penetrating questions testing the foundations of the science of homeopathy. After all the greatest enemy of any science is a closed mind.

Alligator mississippiensis: A Proving
Volume 11 Issue 1
By Todd Rowe, M.D
A proving of American Alligator (Alligator misssissippiensis) was performed in Phoenix Arizona in the fall of 2001. The proving was conducted by the Society for the Establishment of Research in Classical Homeopathy (SERCH). This was a full Hahnemannian proving.