Mastering Homeopathy 1: Accurate Daily Prescribing for a Successful Practice - Jon Gamble
Every practitionery wants to hear their patient say "I'm better". Sometimes, our mission in finding the correct remedy, in the first consultation, can be daunting or impossible. Consequently many talented homeopaths give up practice before they succeed, for the lack of good clinical knowledge. In this intensely practical book, Jon Gamble offers his colleagues a distillation of his many year's prescribing experience. Armed with practical tools which work, practitioners will find greater prescribing success. 'Mastering Homeopathy' is a contribution to homeopathic practitioners and their patients, enabling them to experience the power of homeopathy with surprising ease. This book helps to bring homeopathy out of the shadows.
Author: Gamble Jon
Printed in Australia
Reprinted with the permission of The Society of Homeopaths (from "The Homeopath" magazine Spring 2005 edition):
Reviewed by Alastair Gray:
It's an average Monday morning for me. I have, spread out on my desk, the array of cases still unsolved, left over from the previous week's practice days. It is carnage. I am pulling my hair out. There is a man with insomnia and IBS. There is a woman with absent libido after a termination. There is an 11-year-old with eczema on his wrists. What is characteristic about these cases is that I have prescribed at least six remedies to them over the past year. There have been some changes and movements. But they are all unresolved. It's hardly aphorism two: gentle, rapid and permanent. There comes a time to admit that the strategy you have adopted in a certain situation has to change. One of the things I have clarity about in these three cases is that I have been prescribing remedies on a still unclear profile of the totality of the patient and the symptoms. There is still a lack of definition in the case. It's like wearing someone else's glasses while looking at an archery target and trying to hit the bull's eye. My strategy today involves reaching for Jon Gamble's new book.
My first experience of Jon's clinical work was a case in 1998. I had successfully treated a woman for her asthma. She was moving back to the UK from Australia but her child came down with an ear infection. Qantas was refusing to allow the child to fly. I gave this and that over the next week. Nothing. In desperation I sent her to the Children's Ear Clinic and the mother later mailed me from London thanking me for the referral. The ear had resolved immediately with a therapeutic medicine prescribed by Jon on the basis of the pathology.
In Mastering Homeopathy Jon has provided a therapeutics book that addresses so many of the conditions presented at a busy homeopathic practice. There are chapters on children: ears, tonsils, headaches and others; women: Candida, mastitis, cystitis and others; general conditions such as allergies, chronic fatigue and glandular fever, skin conditions, hyperthyroidism etc. The practical advice and the remedies suggested are beyond useful. I am thinking of the cases of pterigyurff, which came to my practice and went unresolved, of cases of warts, which came and went, that could have benefited from the suggestions made here. What is also presented, and before any suggestions for medicines, is information on the clinical presentations of each condition and a differential diagnosis.
But what excites me most about the book is the immediate thing it does better than other therapeutic texts. First is Jon's clarity in describing what we are doing when prescribing therapeutically. In some cases, we are looking to create change in the health, structural and functional change, through understanding the pathology of the symptom and prescribing accordingly. It is identifying those pathological changes, which may have come about due to the chronic disease, which will help us begin, and quite possibly complete the cure.
Also useful are the tables, which are laid out for quick reference. The section on posology is really valuable. It is especially valuable for a practitioner like myself who was not trained in any of the more therapeutic and pathological systems. The practical advice, nutritional and otherwise for acne, preventing ear infections and asthma are excellent. There are clear influences from the files and teachings of Parimal Banerji in India and Alan Jones, but this remains an original and creative work.
What about what's not there? In the men's health section we just have benign prostatic hypertrophy. I want more. What about the rest of the conditions that our gents turn up with in the clinic? It begs for a volume two.
I have loved reading and reviewing this book. It is a book that says what it is going to do and then delivers it. We know that therapeutic protocols are not successful every time. But what they do provide is another tool and a measure of flexibility in practice when one apptoach is failing you. Its value lies in representing a different strategy to employ. Its value is when there is not the opportunity, in a leisurely way, to delve into a larger totality of symptoms; or where the indicated remedy has failed you; where you are attempting to establish a ballpark of possibilities for your patient. Its value is often in needing to establish a result quickly.
I can think of 20 philosophical reasons why thetapeutics books have their limitations. I can't think of one practical reason. And I know for sure my patients don't care. They want to get better. I can think of plenty of sinusitis cases or herpes cases that wete resolved by remedies other than the therapeutic suggestions made here. Thetapeutics alone is not enough to run a successful practice, but it is a hugely beneficial tool to have.
Mastering Homeopathy is not highbrow philosophy. Its therapeutic suggestions are not necessarily curing our patients aphorism nine style, 'for the highest purpose of our existence'. But it is practical, accurate, useable and user-friendly. It's on my desk now. The therapeutics texts of Lilienthal, Dewey, Morrison, Kansal and Clarke are in danger of being relegated back to the bookshelf.