This book review is reprinted from Volume 20, Winter 2007 Edition, with permission from Homeopathic Links.
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The AIDS Miasm: Contemporary Disease and the New Remedies

Peter Fraser
Winter Press, Softcover, 337 pages,
ISBN 1-874581-231

Reviewed by Dr. J. Rozencwajg, MO, PhD, NMD, New Zealand

The AIDS Miasm appears to be this century's emerging miasm, as much as Cancer was the twentieth century one and Tuberculosis that of the nineteenth century.

Peter Fraser's approach in explaining and teaching it is a very original one; he starts in Part 1 by explaining the chronology of the different miasms through technological evolution and the progress of communication methods up to the electronic age characterized by a disappearance of boundaries, which is also the main characteristic of the AIDS miasm. Clever.

In Part 2, he goes through the full picture of AIDS (the Miasm, not the disease), dissecting the main characteristics: connection, disconnection, indifference, dispersion, instability, extremes, confusion, feminization, vulnerability, infection, lack of confidence, boundaries and obstruction; each one of those chapters is divided into related subsections.

But the originality lies in the fact that this is not an ex-cathedra expose of Peter's understanding and knowledge of the miasm; he simply puts together the parts of provings from the AIDS group remedies related to each section. So when he writes about Isolation or Death or Debauchery, you can read in the prover's words what the remedies have brought up in regard to those subjects. This means that while getting the detailed picture of the miasm, you also learn about each and every remedy. And that is an absolutely remarkable way of teaching!

At the end of the book, not only do you have a feel for the miasm, but you have learned a lot about the remedies, their resemblances and differences, their relationships, as if you read their materia medica, albeit in a disconnected sequence (which is very fitting as this is a main characteristic of the AIDS miasm...); now the next step would be to read the materia medicas or the provings of each remedy as a whole.

Although I was a bit unsettled by this unusual way of writing when I started, I ended up enjoying it very much: it is alive, not a catalogue enumeration of symptoms and signs boringly listed one after the other.

I have one reservation though. On page 16, Peter uses the example of the Fall of Troy and the narratives of the Iliad and the Odyssey; but he names the main character of the Odyssey... Odysseus, whereas anyone who has properly read it knows it is Ulysses. The confusion appeared in Mangas and other cartoons transposing the Odyssey into galactic adventures. Am I nitpicking? Well I am a purist when it comes to literature but I kept asking myself: "If Peter did not read the Odyssey and refers to it, did he really read all the provings he refers to, so can I trust the extracts to be genuine?" I did a few spot checks with the provings I do have in my library and could not find any error, but this is still nagging me. On the other hand, this is the only flaw I could find in the book.

One useful addition to a subsequent edition would certainly be a Repertory of the AIDS Miasm.

Please read it: it is worth it and very enjoyable.