AUSTRALIAN
HOMOEOPATHIC
ASSOCIATION
(NSW Branch)

The 6th Australian Homoeopathic Medicine
Conference 2008

John Maitland

An Historically Successful and Valid Path to the Similimum – Symptom and Organ Sequence

Abstract
There is a stream of homœopathic practice in which evidence and efficacy have always been pre-eminent. Practitioners such as Hahnemann, von Boenninghausen, Hering, Boger and Compton Burnett were so successful precisely because their practice and thought was evidence based. Their work is still relevant for to-day's practice and in neglecting them we have lost effective ways of identifying the simillimum.

One such idea is the significance of the sequence in which organ systems are affected when considering a patient's symptoms. This insight was developed in detail by A.W. Woodward in his Constitutional Therapeutics. The clue to the idea's significance came when considering how to identify the simillimum among remedies with many similar symptoms.

Woodward argued that remedies as well as patients are unique. However, unlike those homœopathic schools that differentiate remedies through analysis of Mind symptoms, Woodward was able to define a remedy's uniqueness when he discovered that each remedy always seems to affect the body's organ systems in a set sequence. For example, Arsenicum always affects first the Gastric system, then Cutaneous followed by Spinal, Respiratory and Mental systems. The formulation of this theory was based on an analysis of poisonings and numerous cases in Hughes and Dakes’ “Cyclopaedia of Drug Pathogenesy”.

The implications for identifying the simillimum are clear. If a patient's asthma symptoms (the respiratory system) are the primary symptoms, Arsenicum will not be the simillimum. The remedy may give some relief but it is not the simillimum. Arsenicum will be the simillimum only if digestive, cutaneous and spinal (nervous) system symptoms (in that order) precede the respiratory symptoms.

Woodward's analysis identifies 33 remedies with valid organ sequence, and a further 50 in which the sequences were helpful in prescribing but which he considered required further provings and clinical tests. Hahnemann's “Materia Medica Pura” is a fruitful source for exploring the importance of symptom and organ sequence because the pathogenetic sequences for each prover's symptom picture can be identified. The presentation will illustrate this and provide a number of cases to demonstrate the application of this approach to identifying the simillimum.

Biography
John has conducted Clinics at Campbelltown and Picton (NSW) for 12 years. He developed and delivered a unique History of Homœopathy Course at the former Sydney College of Homœopathic Medicine for eight years and has contributed papers and book reviews to Similia and Homœopathic Links.

He has been a member of AHA(NSW) Executive Committee and was its representative on AHA National Council for a term. He participated in the drafting of the National Competencies.

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