Dr Shiv Dua
Any new idea or concept is a matter of controversy and is subject to criticism. Healthy criticism is always welcome since it is a ladder to acceptance.
“Personal Materia Medica (MM)” is not the MM that we purchase for our personal use or refer to on our computers. Personal MM is the individual MM that we have prepared ourselves in our memory with the help of our knowledge as conceived in practice and is without our knowing stored in our subconscious/memory. Everyone differs in knowledge and experience and hence everyone has made a different personal MM for his or her exclusive personal use. Sentiments/expressions like Love, hate, fright, horror, grieving, regrets, sadness, sympathy, confidence, disappointment, envy, innocence, suspicion and surprise etc. are not recorded in Personal MM because these notions are produced spontaneously upon circumstances. If someone has met with an accident near a cinema hall, every time he goes near this cinema hall, he is reminded the accident he had. He does not recall the accident always. Sentiments are also reminders. Personal MM is an expertise developed thru practical experience and observation. The most important of it is that it is changeable unlike book MM. On each new experience with medicine, the old conception changes. Concept of personal MM is what you deserve most. If you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
Difference between book MM and Personal MM
Book MM as explained in aphor 143 of Organon says that it should not have imaginary symptoms. Personal MM has symptoms that are ‘experienced’. Personal MM is invisible but not imaginative because it exists in our memory. Symptoms of a remedy, we have experienced, symptoms we have innovated, symptoms that are additional to what exist in book MM and symptoms that have been removed from a medicine after finding them obsolete make a perfect personal MM. Book MM prepares the student as a ‘doctor’. Personal MM prepares one a ‘successful doctor’ because he is experienced. Theoretically all the Doctors go thru same rigor of studies in colleges but what makes the difference to be successful in long run is through “Personal MM” which is developed over a period.
Sachin Tendulkar vs Vinod Kambli is perfect example of difference between book MM and “Personal MM. They studied in same school, had same trainer for cricket, played in the same ground together and shared blessing of their coach equally but Sachin excelled. Kamble is known as friend of Sachin. He has not reached the height of Sachin in cricket.
Take a mobile phone for example. Book MM is like ‘sim’ memory’ and personal MM is like memory- card. Data of Memories are interchangeable. Matter from book MM can be sent to personal MM. When we record new data from internet, it can be stored in memory card. When we experience some new symptom that is not in book MM, we store the same in personal MM. Book MM is theory, personal MM is practical experience stored in memory.
Key characteristics of Personal MM
Without good memory, no one can become a homoeopathic doctor. We know that every mind differs and hence quantum of memory differs. With different attitudes, different methods of conceiving, variable approach, and individual methods of prescribing and diagnosing make every doctor different. If there is any similarity between the doctors, it is the basic intelligence by dint of which you have become homoeopaths. Memory has direct relation with the intelligence. According to an article published in journal ‘Nature’, Bernard Devlin concluded that genes account for 48 percent of intelligence and 52 percent of it is through combining of parental care, environment and education. A homoeopath is no exception. His intelligence is both inherited or acquired intelligence. In his acquired intelligence he four qualities that make him/her possess a good personal MM.
These four make a good personal MM in an individual.
Objectivity – It means not getting influenced by personal opinion of others. For example if a doctor asks another doctor as to what potency he uses while giving nitric acid, and if the reply is 200 is the best, the enquiring doctor should not get influenced by this and start using 200 potency in his or her prescription.
Comprehension– It means understanding with intelligence. For example, we must correctly know the origin of the medicine so that its main features are known. If the medicine belongs to vegetable kingdom, it effect on the metabolism would be sober or mild, if it from mineral kingdom, the effect on metabolism would be hard and if it from from animal kingdom, its effect would be destructive if given wrongly. This is understanding the medicine or comprehension.
Reasoning – It means motive, cause or justification. Reasoning is not causation. It is justification. If we give a medicine, we must have at least one strong symptoms of the medicine which could justify the prescription.
Judgment – It is authoritative opinion or a decision. Suppose we have selected three medicines in a case and now one is to be given to the patient. We have to see which medicines fit most to the symptom of the patient. This is decision or judgment.
“Judgment” is key driver in personal MM. Here is a short story to prove the point.
There were three medical students going out on the road. They saw a man walking ahead of them. He was limping, walking slowly and at times, stopping. They were final year students. The first student asked the other two to guess as to what was the reason for this man’s unnatural gait. The second student guessed. ‘It is some injury on his knee or leg that has changed his gait’. The third student guessed, ‘no, it is hydrocele that has changed his pace’. Now was the turn of first student. He finally declared, ‘well both of you are wrong. I can bet that it is due to piles’. They could not reach any decision and approached the man who was limping and walking. They told him that they were medical students and wanted to know the reason as to why he was limping. ‘What have all of you guessed?’ said the stranger. The students told him the conclusions of injury, hydrocele and piles. The stranger laughed and said, ‘well, all of you have failed to guess my problem’. In fact, I could not control my stools and have spoiled my pants. Now I am trying to balance the stool so that it does not fall out till I reach my home’.
So, if judgment of selection of remedy is right, everything goes right. A doctor who judges best in his selection of remedy is best homoeopath
How to build good Judgment
Judgment requires knowing all the three medicines we have selected in a case. For knowing we have study the medicines individually. For this we have to select some books to study. We should have two books with us to study medicines. ‘Leaders’ of Nash and Allen’s Keynotes. Select 40-50 medicines and read them in Nash every day turn by turn. Now take Allen keynotes and start reading the same medicines every day. It is a long term plan. Continue it and one day you will master those medicines. You can now do acute –prescribing without the help of any book. Better continue study of medicine as and when you get time in between gap of two patients. Good judgment comes through study of medicines. One must snatch some time each day to study medicines. This would strengthen our memory in our personal MM.
Group of medicines and personal MM
It is impossible for any one to memorize the symptoms of all the medicines in our book MM. But beauty is that we all remember a group of remedies related to a disease. If I ask a doctor as to what is the group of medicines that cure piles, he/she can answer with number of medicines without any discomfort or referring to the MM. Now if I ask another doctor the same question, he/she will also answer but with a difference.
There will be difference of medicines in both the cases. For example one may include aesculus and the other may exclude it. Some may cite five medicines; some may name ten medicines for piles. Everyone has a different set up of memory even for disease-wise group of medicines. This also means that everyone has been taught differently in different institutes. Their teachers have been different having different views about remedies. Moreover, the student has individual capacity to conceive according to his/her ability. This difference of conception is not knowledge received from the teacher but one’s personal capacity to absorb. Memory is sharp in recollecting group of medicines. It means we have stored it in our personal MM. We have faded memory of symptoms of each medicine and hence it is not in our personal MM until we experience it in our cases. Memory developed during studies does not make personal MM but it is made during practice after experience. All life lessons are not learnt in colleges, life teaches them everywhere.
What influences or does not influence Personal MM?
Symptoms that influence Personal MM are pains, old and new symptoms, resembling symptoms, obsolete symptoms and additional symptoms. Medicines that influence personal MM are favorite medicines and theory of single medicine. Features that do not influence Personal MM are potency decision, specific medicines and frequency/repetition of medicines. Now we shall discuss the above one by one.
Understanding symptom
Reading the symptoms of medicine in the book is not understanding symptoms. We interpret them in different ways individually. I remembered to had started my thesis of ‘symptomology in Homoeopathy’ in HMD with these lines ‘Your dealings and behavior is your introduction’. From how one deals and behaves we can find out the symptoms. One person can be defined in tens of interpretations. Our most difficult job is to compare symptoms of body with symptoms of medicines. A patient has few physical and narrated symptoms but the MM book has many more symptoms as proved by the prover of remedy. The prover might have different constitution than that of our patient. We are trained to resort to totality of symptoms. Patient’s totality is not totality of symptoms in book MM. What should we do? Even if few symptoms of the patient bear similarity from total symptoms of MM, medicine is supposed to work and will work in majority of cases.
What matters for us is individuality. There are many ways to ascertain individuality. I am giving two major interpretations as per my personal MM recording in my subconscious.
- A patient who is in a hurry, does not wait for his turn, wants to return to his home/office will give minimum symptoms to doctor.
- A patient whose hair are not combed or had not a timely hair cut, has not shaven, has not used hair dye since long, his shoes are not polished, nails are not cut will give maximum symptoms to doctor
Record this in your personal MM.
New and old symptom
The symptoms of medicines written in MM are old enough. The reason is that they do not coincide with present day era. We believe in what we read. Our minds are prejudiced that whatever is written in MM is authentic. Do we remember that the era in which these books were written and medicines were proved has dramatically changed? Now we are in progressive era. Phones have become wireless. Distant viewing and conferences are viable. Mobile phones and internet has given us opportunity to widen our thinking. Science has reached a new height but our medicines have not attained new values or changes. What is the impact of this?
Our speakers in seminars show the old versions of medicine and its application. The repertization of a case is from old repertory. Has any speaker given us clue of some new symptom of a medicine and by dint of which has he solved any case. Speakers are shy to tell what they achieved in experience with medicine. Success with old symptoms written in MM is not an achievement.
There should be entry of new symptoms in personal MM if experienced. How? Here is what we should do.
Obsolete symptoms
How old symptoms of medicines are to be replaced by new symptoms? New entry of medicines is upon proving new symptoms. This is not an overnight job. But we have some obsolete symptoms in our books which can be erased. Sometimes the given symptoms of a medicine in book MM become obsolete and still the medicine works. This is the beauty.
Let us have an example. General uncleanliness of the body is an important symptom of capsicum. When a patient with capsicum symptoms like bleeding piles, thirst after stool, cough with pain in distant part of body etc. is enquired about his general cleanliness of body, the patient refuses to be unclean. Naturally we have not enquired directly about his uncleanliness and simply wanted to know whether he takes regular baths or whether he likes to clean the body if it gets dirty due to pollution or taking part in some games etc. Still the patient would not agree that he allows his body to remain unclean. He may also say that he takes bath daily. If the patient tells a lie, we can observe his clothes, his palms, nails and its cleanliness. Amazing, we find they are also clean. The reason is that he is compelled to be a clean – personality to his office mates including women. He is a tem leader in a multinational company. So his profession is not allowing him to be unclean.
Now there is another great symptom of capsicum- the home sickness. The patient says he is not homesick. The reason is his laptop. He goes to ‘skype’ and enjoys talking with his family and seeing them too.
This anomaly confuses us. All the symptoms of capsicum are there except ‘uncleanliess and homesickness’. We ignore these symptoms and give capsicum basing upon other symptoms. And the patient gets well. This has been experienced by many of us. You must have experienced such obsolete symptoms in many remedies. So, old symptoms written in MM do change with the change in life style of people. The era has changed when the remedy was proved and the relevant symptoms have become obsolete.
Now capsicum in my experience becomes innovative medicine. This is our ‘additional knowledge’ and can be stored in our personal MM. Since you have experienced it, this makes automatic entry in our memory of personal MM.
Pain, a great symptom.
While discussing about group of medicines, we talked about how group of medicines over the name of disease is easy to recollect. We talked about piles. On the name of this disease, one doctor prescribes aesculus, the other prefers nitric acid to the same patient with same symptoms. Why? Again question of understanding symptom
There is severe pain in rectum with prolapse after stool. It is in both aesculus and nitric acid. This is what the patient tells. He would not tell pain as sensation of full of sticks as in aesculus. He will not tell violent ‘cutting’ pain as in nitric acid. He will say, ‘ Bahut zayada dard hai doctor sahib’. Even if we insist to tell the type of pain, he will not speak the language of MM. There are 118 types of pains like stitching, throbbing, cutting, piercing, digging, drawing, griping, gnawing, crushing, crippling etc. as coined by Boenghausen. How many of us give a remedy on description of pains? None. We take help of its locality and modality. Pain is a great symptom provided it is identified by modality and locality.
Understanding pains.
Let us return to aesculus and nitric acid. Suppose the patient tells that he has pain and prolapse of rectum.
This is aesculus. But if the pain is prolonged and with prolapse. It is N-acid. If the patient tells that his pains are prolonged, only then one can judge but this is not possible. On the question of pains best is to enquire about bleeding and non-bleeding nature of piles. Both the remedies have bleeding. Now ask if the bleeding is less or profuse and also about tolerance of pain. This can be easily told by the patient. In aesculus, the bleeding would be very less due to strain on the haemmoriodal veins and pain would be severe. In nitric acid, the bleeding would be profuse due to fissures but pain could be tolerated. When discharges occur, the pain gets less.
This experience of asking to the point questions to the patient comes after experience. This ‘to the point’ quarry should be recorded in our personal MM.
Favored or favorite medicines
Some times the symptoms of a medicine go direct to our mind and appeal us much. This is the reason many of us have a favorable medicine which we prescribe frequently even if the totality of symptoms is not there. How this ‘liking’ is developed. For this we have to return to Book MM. During the frequent referring of MM, we start relying on authenticity of some medicine especially when we have tasted success with it in our cases. Now what happens when success is tasted? We start liking this very medicine. When we like something, we favor its use even when the totality of symptoms do not warrant for its use. This is against aphor.257 which forbids favoritism. It also says that it is found to have good results. In that case the doctor misses use of rare remedies that may have been appropriate to use.
If you tell a boy not to pluck mangoes from the garden, he will do it to have taste of mangoes. This is natural. We know use of favorite medicine is prohibited, we use it since we taste success. We do it in acute cases only and our reputation increases in success. Today is the period of commercialism. If you do not believe in it, do not give favorite remedies. If we go on getting success in our cases, we do enter in our Personal MM. If the success is followed by failures, it should be erased from personal MM.
Single remedy
These days we hear about use of single remedy in our seminars. You have heard many homoeopaths in seminars showing complete cure of a long standing disease by single dose of a remedy of 30 or 200 potency. In support they produce documents, slides and videos of a patient. Everybody has right to claim success. Audience has right to encourage. Rarely such claims are challenged. Truth is something else. Single dose of a remedy rarely cures a long standing disease. The surprise is that we see all familiar faces in the seminars time and again. How is it that they only get success with single dose and not others?
As per aphor 280 of Organon, if a single dose is giving beneficial results, it is to be continued in gradually ascending magnitude. Again aphor 281 says that if the disease exists, high potency should be given. This aspect is neglected in many seminars. As per aphor 171, in non-veneral chronic diseases that arise from psora, several anti-psoric remedies are to be given one after the other to cover remaining symptoms of the disease.
Single dose
On single dose, I quote E.B. Nash, ‘Rarely will a case come out so clearly that the cure can be performed with one remedy. Successions of remedies are needed and here is where the so-called complementary remedies are skillfully applied. About chronic and acute diseases, he says, ‘The old saying used to be and is also sanctioned by Hahnemann that acute diseases generally tend to recover but not the chronic diseases. There is much truth in it. None but the true homoeopathic physician realizes the importance of thoroughly taking and working out such cases. There is always need to give two or more medicines in chronic cases. Rarely does one remedy works in rare cases’. How can single remedy go on working when its action of duration has ended. You may not agree with me but think over it.
Giving single, two or multiple remedies are not recorded in personal MM since the choice is variable. Choice is upon experience. We shall talk about this experience later.
Resembling symptoms
Resembling symptoms are mostly found in medicines having drug affinities of each considered medicine. Affinity is relationship. Let us consider symptoms of Ant-C. You will recall them from book MM such as loss of appetite, desire for pickles, headache on taking bath, thickly coated white tongue, alternate diarrhea and constipation etc. and so on. We shall take up resembling symptoms of AC in sul, puls and ipec. Although ars, brom, bismuth, hep, sep and merc have also some resembling symptoms with AC. Lips are dry in all these medicines. No stools alike in all these medicines. White coated tongue is in all the four. Two of them also have resembling symptoms. Bad smell in nose is in puls and sul. Loss of appetite is in AC and sulpher. We identify them by differences . Sulpher has white tongue but its tip is red. Puls has white tongue with mucous. In modality, both AC and puls are worse from heat and evening. They are better in open air. AC is better during rest but puls is better in motion. Resembling symptoms confuse and confusions do not get entry in our personal MM. Best is to consult MM on your table or computer for solving resembling symptom- confusion
Additional symptoms
Additional symptom of a remedy is what we experience during practice and what is not written in book MM. When found, it goes direct to the personal MM. This is a key point of personal MM. See the example. By mistake, once I gave AC to a patient who had cracking in the middle of lower lip (Puls). AC has lips cracking at the corners of mouth. But the beauty is that the patient got cured with AC. Now what is the impact of such an anomaly?
I tasted success with AC and started giving AC to all my patients of lips cracking irrespective of different locality.
This means that AC has an ‘additional’ symptom of lips which is cracking in the centre. This has gone into my personal MM but it can change if the forthcoming experiences fails in curing cracks in centre of lips. In the same way you might have experienced additional symptoms of a remedy. It is indeed recorded in your personal MM.
Additional knowledge
We discussed that obsolete symptom of a medicine is our additional knowledge. Now see another example.
Suppose a patient has aggravation of pains on movement (bryonia, nux and ars.). Another patient is having amelioration of pains on movement (rhus tox, puls, lyco and ferrum).
One fine morning we get a patient who tells that he has pains that aggravate on movement and on rest. What do we give? We think of Phytolleca that has symptoms in between bryonia and rhus tox. But see how medicines defy our conceived rules due to this experience. During my practice of more than three decades, I have cured such patients with RT. Whenever there is little doubt about narration by the patient, I do not hesitate to break rules and give both RT and Bry. RT 200/TDS and BRY 200/HS. The relief comes after 3 days after which it is replaced by SL. The theory of single remedy is good but at times, I prefer to violate the rules. After all cure is our primary aim. I am here to tell my opinion. But you are free to have your different opinion.
A case of additional knowledge
When I was writing this talk on my computer, a patient Mr. A , m/52 years of Faridabad consulted me in my clinic. Following is his history as recorded on page five of my patient document dtd 20.10.11-
20.10.11- Pain left shoulder and left side of neck when moving the head sidewise and pain during rest at night as well. He was on allopathic pain killers since a week but no relief. Occipital pain <thinking and pain< lying on occipit, constipation normal, Thirst normal, salt, sweet, desire normal. He was given RT200/tds and Bry200/hs for three days. 25.10.11- Relief of pain. Medicines discarded. He was given S.L. in place.
After three days he returned to thank me. Additional knowledge makes a good entry in our Personal MM.
Dil se dawa dijiye
Let us ponder over the justification of giving both RT and BRY. We have another medicine for the above symptoms. It is Paris quardrifolia. It has symptom of thinking aggravates. Thinking aggravates the pain has 21 remedies but Bry and RT are not in this list. If we go by symptom, lying on occipit aggravates the pain, it has ten remedies. Bry is there but RT is not in the list. (Reference: Phatak’s repertory). Not once but many a times my personal MM has proved success in such cases. In many cases location and modality works but ignoring all such parameters, best is to give the medicines that appeal you much as per your personal MM. Rare remedy occasionally works, not always.
‘Voh dawa deejiye jo dil kehta ho’, is an old saying. ‘Kabhi kabhi dimag se dil achha kaam karta hai’. You will find success with this type of prescribing provided your personal MM also permits. Permission is always based upon your experience. Personal MM is ‘Dil se’ as well.
Itching to innovate
Every one has some type of itch. Some itch for success, some for money and some for innovations. Itching for innovation is what we, in homoeopathy, need. We are having many experiences with medicines. Experience the medicine and then attempting to achieve something is ‘itch’. To do something new is ‘itch’. Itch or ‘khujali’ is essentially with each one of us. ‘Khujli and chughli’ na bhi chaho to ho jati hai’. We do it but we do not reveal it. Years pass by and we go on doing this ‘khujli’ of finding additional and new symptoms of medicines. We store all this itch in our personal MM. Advantage is that with this new itch, we do not need consulting any MM for acute diseases. Many of us are not consulting any book MM for prescribing in acute cases. Let me reveal the type of itch I have innovated during my experience time. Your itch during practice is valuable and you must reveal the same in scientific sessions of monthly meetings so that every one gains by your experience.
Itch –my experience
In almost seventy percent of cases of vertigo, I have been prescribing conium 30 without going in for modalities. Conium is my first medicine. Some one from you must have read my article in vital informer a few years back. It was a case of a person who came to my clinic with the body support of his wife. He could not walk independently. He had vertigo on standing, on starting to move and on walking. His cat scan and other tests were normal and he was in the hospital for a day before coming to me. He was given conium 30, six doses in a day and next day he returned to the clinic driving his car by himself. Some times you experience miraculous results of a remedy and it is here that you start believing in its efficiency. Conium has vertigo on lying down and when turning over in bed. After this case and later in many cases I witnessed the wonderful results of conium. Now I give conium to all vertigo cases as my first medicine. Very rarely it fails. Try it and you will find the truth.
So conium is my ‘khujali’ medicine for vertigo. One thing you must remember that before giving conium to all vertigo patients, you must check his blood pressure. If it is on lower side, do not hesitate to give conium. It will work wonderfully.
Similarly, in all cases of constipation, I give nux and sulpher to start with. Nux three times a day and sulpher in the morning. This works well in the first week but does not cure constipation completely. Now I change the medicine on changed symptoms. In all cases of patients who have taken lot of allopathic drugs, I give Nux as first medicine. Nux is a clear case of ‘khujali’ for most of us and many of us give it. The beauty of this type of ‘khujali’ is that it is not written in any MM and still we follow it. It is because some senior writers have mentioned this after they experienced success in it. If I am not wrong, the pioneers of such an anomaly were E.B. Nash, R.B. Bishambhar Das, R.P. Chatterjee and J.N. Shingle. Nux is now stored in my personal MM as antidote of allopathic drugging.
I again repeat that it is my itch and you need not care about this itch. You may have difference of opinion over this issue. Itch is the primary entry in our personal MM since it is earned by experience. Experience is what personal MM is made of.
Potency decision –not in personal MM
Suppose we give Natrum mur 30 to a patient for sun headache and it does not work, this failure is not recorded in our personal MM but a faded memory remains for some days. Mostly we register success in cases more in personal MM. Within these ‘some’ days, if some other patient reports same problem, the failure of Natrum mur 30 comes back to mind. This time we give NM 200 and the case gets cured. Now this success is recorded in our personal MM with a bang. We come to know NM 200 potency works well instead of 30 potency for sun headache. Why this decision? Because nothing succeeds like success. But the fact remains that potency decision is a staggering decision depending upon the type of patient, nature of disease, age and vitality of patient besides your very liking. Hence potency does not get registered in our personal MM.
Specific medicines-not in personal MM
Like potencies, Specific medicines are not entered in our personal MM. The method of giving specific disease- wise medicines instead of adhering to totality of symptoms is very much common for all of us.
For example: If Stool slips back, we give silicea. Ineffectual urging for stool is Nux, Lyco, or sul. Even soft stool needs effort to expel, it is Alumina. Slender long stool expelled with difficulty is Phos. And so on we prescribe specific medicines.
Busy doctors who have a long queue of patients waiting outside their clinics cannot resist prescribing specific medicine for specific symptoms of the kind as mentioned above. It might be their first medicine before going in for detailed treatment. Their success is not granted and hence Specific medicines are not included in personal MM.
Frequency/repetitions
Frequency is not written clearly against each medicine in book MM except a few medicines like belladona and aconite. Some deep medicines do not require repetitions. There are many conceptions we have learnt from books.
From experience we have more of notions. For example, Lyco when given in single dose works better than nux given three or four times a day. Similarly we find that among burners, sulpher given in single dose works better than arsenic or apis in frequent doses. Such experienced facts are stored in personal MM after we experiment with it on our patients. Generally we do not fare well in using any stable method and hence do variations in frequency and repetitions.
About repetition, there is a general rule. In acute cases, doses should be repeated every 1,2,3 or 4 hours. In fatal illness, every 10, 15 and 20 minutes, the potency being increased after two unsuccessful doses and in chronic cases, once or twice a week.
Respected medicines
We have very respectable Indian medicines in the MM that could be used on patients provided we read their culture carefully. We have Neem, Jamun, Arjun chhal, Brahami, Amla, Babool, Peepal, Barh, Ghrit Kumari and Kalmegh etc.in India. They are respectable plants religiously and people offer prayers to many of them. Dr. P. C. Majumdar, A.C. Bhaduri,D.N. Roy, S.C. Ghosh, K.K. Bhattacharya and others of Bengal and Assam proved these plants and called them respectable medicines. (K.N. Basu’s book Bhartiya Aushdhawali ka sankshipt Bheshaj Tatava’, (HahnemannPublishing House, Kolkatta)
Homoeopaths in Bengal use these herbal medicines. We know them by Latin names. All herbal medicines of Indian origin are respectable and most of us do not use them. Once we start using them, we can reach a new height of achievement. There is need for entry of Indian drugs in our personal MM.
Spice in your life
Not only Homoeopathy, every Profession or business becomes boring after some years. A stagnation point comes when doctor feels like leaving the profession since it becomes a routine. It turns monotonous. At this juncture, one has to find ways to bring spice in profession. Variety is in many ways.
In the clinic, change setup of furniture, color of curtains or wall pictures. Introduce computer. Steve Jobs says on computers, ‘you go to your TV to turn the brain off-you go to the computer when you want to turn your brain on’.
If you are coming to clinic from your residence on one fixed route, change it. Come by other alternative route for some days. If you are driving car, go to clinic on bike. If you are not having any weekly off, start it or at least make one holiday essential on last day of month. People are out of budget on last day of month and visit doctors less. This way you can divert your time to your family. Or you can invent many ways to enjoy and break the monotony in the profession.
In clinic practice, you have better methods to invent. First week, start giving medicines in thirty potency to all your patients. Watch the results and record the success rate. Next week, start giving medicines in 200 potency to all your patients. Again record the results and the success rate.
Similarly bring variation in medicines. First fortnight, give single medicine to all your patients. Next fortnight, give two remedies at a time. Third fortnight, give multiple remedies at a time. Compare which method brought you most of success. Even if you have not decided which method is best, you will know the results of using different methods. Innovation or creative ideas come when experiments are conducted. Such derived at conclusions would enhance entries in our personal MM.
Conclusion
Before concluding I would pay my respects to all senior homoeopaths and my colleagues here. It is the experience that speaks truth. Experience is what is written in personal MM. Personal MM is practical, creative and innovative. One must possess this and with pride it should be revealed to all. Late Dr. Rastogi had this quality. He had a vast personal MM from which he used to quote in his speeches. I remember he had talked from this SDHA platform about rare remedies without referring to any documents. It was his unique collection of memory.
Please recall our last Kent lectures seminar. We had enjoyable acquaintance and encounter with Dr. S. Haque whose tips were most favoured one by the audience. These tips are always floating in his mind. He has a big volume of tips based upon his personal MM. Such doctors become very popular since their tips work as well. I remember that one of the organizer of conference hall wanted some medicine for stiffness and pain of his knees. I was talking with Dr. Haque then. He collected a piece of paper and a pen to write some medicines. This was without any help of book or any enquiry of pains. Naturally he has deep knowledge lying in his personal MM.
Be your own boss in your clinic to learn from within you which is reverence to formulating your personal MM. You are the learner, the guide, and the caretaker. Believe in your capacity and what ever you do will be success.
Thank you.
Abstract of the talk and discussions on 13.11.11 in conference hall of Nehru Homoeopathic Medical College, New Delhi with honored members of South Delhi Homoeopathic Association.(SDHA).
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