This book review is reprinted with the permission of the American Institute of Homeopathy
925 E. 17th Avenue
Denver, CO 80218

The Spirit of Homeopathy
by Rajan Sankaran
267 pages
Homeopathic Medical Publishers 20, Station Road
Santa Cruz (West)
Bombay 400 054, India
Reviewed by Karl Robinson, MD

The level at which author Rajan Sankaran practices homeopathy is a very high, subtle level, one that places ultimate value on mental and emotional symptoms. He details his methodology in his new book, The Spirit of Homoeopathy. It is exciting reading and will make any good homeopath a better one. One of Sankaran's main points is that in every sick person there is a "Central Disturbance" which must first be perceived by the doctor and then treated by the most similar homeopathic medicine. "This is the law of disease," writes Sankaran, "there can be no affection of the parts without the affection of the whole. There can be no disease in the organs without central disturbance." Getting at this central disturbance is not so simple and Sankaran devotes chapter after chapter to giving us hints about how to elicit it. Often this central disturbance will reveal itself in dreams, yet he suggests not using the Dream section per se but interpreting the dream in terms of the Mentals, especially the Delusions.

One of the hardest things any homeopath faces is knowing what a patient means when he or she says something. Sankaran suggests not taking what the patient says at face value but continually probing deeper and deeper until the underlying feeling or mental state is brought to the surface. I was able at once to employ this methodology with a 50 year old patient whom I have treated for over 12 years. On this particular visit I asked her a question I had never asked before, "What is the worst scenario you can envisage for your life?" With only a few seconds hesitation she replied, "Being abandoned." I was about to write down "Forsaken," which is a clear symptom found in the Repertory, when I decided not to accept her answer at face value. "What does that mean to you?" I asked. "What's underneath your fear of being abandoned?" She replied, "I feel unprotected." Puzzled, I asked what she meant. "If I were alone there would be no one to fight off monsters," she said much to my amazement. Considering her age and how long I had known her, I had never heard her say anything like this before. I pushed her for details. Monsters, it turned out, meant something evil. "I'm afraid of some slimy, yucky, powerful, cruel thing," she said. As she was in my office that day complaining of the skin on her right foot peeling off, I turned to the Extremities section of the Repertory where I found Mancinella in italics under "Eruptions, sole of food, desquamating." Mancinella also has "Fear of being taken by the devil" and "Fear of ghosts." I gave her Mancinella , and six weeks later she returned to say her fear of monsters had disappeared, a tendency to scary dreams had ceased, and her foot was improving. Had it not been for Dr. Sankaran, I would most certainly have missed Mancinella.

Since then I have been having more and more interesting interviews with my patients as I probe deeper and deeper, looking for hidden fears and delusions. Sankaran suggests that we can use the Delusions section much as we use any mental symptom. In other words the patient does not have to be actively hallucinating in order to use a rubric from the Delusions section.

Also thanks to Sankaran, I have a new understanding of remedies such as Stramonium, Lyssin, and Lac caninum and have now used these and other so-called "small" remedies to great advantage.

I heartily recommend Sankaran's book and believe that, if we master his methodology, we can prescribe more remedies with greater certainty and obtain better results.

About the Reviewer: Karl Robinson practices classical homeopathy in Albuquerque, NM and Dallas, TX. He is the managing editor of the JAIH.

JAIH December 1992, Vol. 85, No. 4