This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.
Ambra grisea - The Road to Homoepathic Practice Volume I
by
Michael Thompson.
Reviewed by Robin Logan
1996, Doghaus Publications, 41 pages,
soft cover
It is Michael's view that few of us can be experts in the whole materia medica but all of us can become experts in a few of our remedies. By sharing our areas of expertise we can all learn from each other and increase our knowledge in a way not possible independently. This book is devoted to the remedy Ambra grisea and is based on Michael's in-depth study of the remedy and clinical verification of his ideas and findings. By becoming more aware of the remedy he has used it much more frequently than the average practitioner and by reading this book we are all likely to duplicate that experience.
He starts by presenting nine cases with repertory graphs and then goes on to discuss each element of the Ambra grisea picture in the materia medica chapter. This section is impressive - if we studied every one of our remedies in this much detail we would greatly improve our knowledge and our results. I like the way he has broken the picture down into its component parts, for example: embarrassment, business, conversation, music, sex, abuse, old people, cough etc. I particularly like his style for its conciseness - he distils each section down to what is essential which is refreshing. Unlike some modern materia medica writings, there is a distinct lack of padding and 'waffle' here which makes the book useful as a desktop reference. No doubt, a more verbose author could have written a book five or six times thicker and proportionately more expensive, but it is unlikely that much of practical use could have been added. We need many more such monographs (booklets on the materia medica of one remedy) as they allow for more detail than one book containing hundreds of remedies can accommodate.
As you might expect from the former MacRepertory representative, each aspect of the remedy and all the cases are usefully illustrated by MacRepertory graphs. The chapter after 'Materia Medica' is 'Repertory Additions' which is a combination of what Michael considers to be reliable and speculative additions, based on his cases and Referenceworks searches. The speculative ones, in my opinion, would have been best omitted. The rest of the booklet is devoted to chapters on sperm whales, ambergris and the aquatic ape theory as put forward by Lyall Watson. There are some comparisons drawn between ambergris and amber (also compared by Vermeulen in his Synoptic Materia Medica 2) which struck me as strange as amber, as far as I am aware, is the resin from fossilised trees and has nothing to do with whales but maybe that isn't the point. My only other criticism is an unfortunate number of errors in spelling and punctuation.
All in all this is a book worth buying and is a small investment considering the number of unsolved cases it could help you to resolve, using an important but often overlooked remedy.
THE HOMOEOPATH
Number 64, 1997