This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy
Nature and Human Personality: Homeopathic Archetypes
by Catherine R. Coulter
Quality Medical Publishing, Inc.: St. Louis, MO, 2000, softback, 210 pages
ISBN 1-57626-117-4.
Reviewed by Julian Winston
What? Another book? Why didn't I know it was coming? Oh... it's not really a new book ...
In her latest work, Catherine R. Coulter has done an impossible task and has abridged her "portraits" of 12 of the most common remedies she has written about in her 3-volume Portraits of Homeopathic Medicines. These condensations retain the essential flavor of her previous works including her magnificent narrative style and the use of literary and historic figures to bring the remedies to life.
Although the criticism can again be raised that we really don't know if Mozart would have been helped by Calcarea or if Sherlock Holmes needed Arsenicum (how can you give a remedy to a fictional character?), Coulter explains in the introduction that "Historic and literary figures portray human characteristics in concentrated (or archetypal) form; and because they have become familiar parts of our cultural heritage, any allusion to them suggests to the reader a host of associations that bring the remedy's specific personality into clear focus."
The chapters read as smoothly as her original works. Lycopodium is but 15 pages in this book, compared to 45 pages of a slightly more condensed typeface in her larger work. Having heard Coulter present these remedy portraits as lectures before the books were written, I can only marvel that she was able to abridge them as well as she has.
The remedies covered in this work are: Phosphorus, Calcarea, Lycopodium, Sepia, Sulphur Pulsatilla, Arsenicum, Lachesis, Silica, Nux vomica, Natrum muriaticum, and Thuja.
Each chapter opens with a beautiful small illustration of the remedy source. "Who could have understood these so well as to do such appropriate illustrations?" I wondered. Checking the front of the book gave me the answer: Alex Coulter, her son, was the artist.
While the text has been so well condensed from the larger works, an addition is offered in the form of a handy synopsis that follows each chapter. These synopses cover the following: Principal Regions Affected (Head, Chest, Digestion, etc.), Generalities, Modalities, and Guiding Mental Symptoms. The information in these synopses can be found elsewhere, but the pulling together in one place makes them chock full of information and well worth the price of the book.
On the down side, without further guidance and training, some might consider these portraits enough to prescribe upon. Although the author's knowledge of materia medica shines through as in her other works, the abridgement has removed many of the references from Hahnemann's provings. The book could be very useful as a guide, but the information within should not be taken as whole cloth-a well taken case, referenced to materia medica study is of primary importance, and the information in this book is but a piece of the larger puzzle-but perhaps the piece, in some cases, that may complete it.
The book provides good information (with the above caveat) and gives a flavor of Catherine Coulter's further writing. If you are not sure you should get her three volumes, read this one-it is a good taste.
Homeopathy Today
February 2001, Volume 21, Number 2