Materia Poetica

Review

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the Homeopathic Academy of Naturopathic Physicians

Reviewed by Peter Wright, ND, DHANP

Homeopaths love books, and we have many categories of books to choose from: repertories, materia medica, therapeutics; books of philosophy and theory, methodology, cases, history, biography, psychology, pharmacology, research; dictionaries, encyclopedia, extended and condensed, illustrated guides; books for beginners, intermediate and advanced prescribers, skeptics, parents, pet owners, Christians ... Materia Poetica belongs to a different category: it's unmistakably a gift book.

It will be fun for students learning remedies, no doubt, and a welcome review of keynotes for others. Chatroux's verses are dense encapsulations of 101 of our medicines, from Aconitum to Zincum, personified with typical symptoms, especially essences, generals, and the Strange Rare and Peculiar. The information is credited to the author's training at the Hahnemann College, as well at the well-known works of Boericke, Gibson, Kent, Morrison, Phatak, Sankaran and Vermuelen.

The poems are rhymed and metered, although not strictly. Many of the portraits may evoke the practitioner's sympathy, and most of us will find a few nuggets worth learning or recalling in nearly all of them, not to mention numerous grins. This book may not win many poets over to homeopathy, however. It's a book for the converted-obviously the book to buy for the homeopath in your life, or for yourself when you just need a gift.

Materia Poetica is an undeniably beautiful object! Tastefully designed in a small format, with many wonderful print illustrations, mostly of the botanical kingdom, from the Lloyd Library in Cinncinati, a ribbon bookmark, and a warm forward from Nancy Herrick. Someone you know needs this book.

SIMILLIMUM
Winter 1998
Volume XI, Number 4

This book review is reprinted with permission from The American Homeopath.

Reviewed by Willa Esterson, CCH

As a professional instructor of beginning-level homeopathy, I am always searching for new ways to enliven the study of materia medica. We are all aware that being a homeopathic student can be an overly cerebral, mind-numbing and, fun-killing endeavor. Students easily go into a state of overwhelm from the vast amount of information. Lou Klein has wisely reminded us, when speaking of case analyses, that when we get into that numb, overwhelmed, tuned-out state we are unable to prescribe effectively. Students are also unable to learn effectively under these conditions-it's got to be alive and fun for quality learning to take place.

Therefore, I was so delighted when Sylvia Chatroux, a good friend who is in her last year of study at Hahnemann College, let me know about her inspiration to write a book of poetry for her senior project. Her normal level of exuberance was even more intense as she described the love affair she was having with writing poems about remedies. She told me she literally could not stop herself from writing more and more of them and was considering publishing them as a book with the beautiful name Materia Poetica.

I was even more delighted when the first batch of poetry arrived in the mail for my review. The poems are lively, fun, unpretentious, and full of humor - just like Sylvia.

Many of the poems accurately cover major themes and keynotes of homeopathic remedies. I proved this to myself on several occasions by lecturing first on a remedy and then reading the poem afterward to the students as a light-hearted reinforcement of the information. "Bryonia" is an example:

BRYONIA

There seems to be a paucity
Of color in your case
A dryish disposition
A nondescriptive face
I tried to ask a question
But you'd rather be alone
You snapped and barely answered
And told me to go home
No wonder you're so thirsty
Your lips are cracked and dry
Warm milk is what I'll bring you
To the place in which you lie
I know your head is smarting
And you don't want to move
And if your tummy's aching
At McBurney's point
That's to be expected
That and stiffened joints
I'm sorry that you worried
About the rent that's due
The food bill on the table
All this has troubled you
Just sit there super still
Hot compress at your side
Dreaming about business
You're dry and dry and dry.

Other poems reflect more of a mood with less emphasis on information, such "Anacardium":

ANACARDIUM

Low down
Low spirit
You kick the dog
You stamp out bugs
With a cruel intended force
You were pushed around
Told you were no good
And this you believe
Constantly you try to be someone
Cursing, ugly
The devil on one shoulder
The angel on the other
You crawl through life
Pulled from side to side
Who are you who lacks a heart?
Amoral, no esteem for anyone
Always searching for something to eat
Or someone to put down
Anacardium, like a bug yourself
Wiggling in pain.

The students I shared these poems with loved them and will be among the first to purchase the book when published. Sylvias poetry brought in that necessary sense of fun and vitality to our studies. I strongly recommended this book to anyone who loves poetry, materia medica, and/or teaching. Homeopathic students who would enjoy experiencing materia medica from a more artistic part of their brain will especially appreciate Sylvia's contribution to our literature.

The author is currently a student at the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy in Point Richmond, CA.

The reviewer, Willa Esterson, is a graduate of Pacific Academy of Homeopathic Medicine and Jeremy Sherr's Dynamis School. She now lives, practices and teaches in Santa Cruz and is founder of the Caduceus Institute of Classical Homeopathy.

The American Homeopath 1998

This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy

Reviewed by Julian Winston

The use of verse to describe homeopathic remedies has been around since 1882 when A.L. Monroe wrote his Materia Medica Memorizer-45 remedies described in verse. Dr. Monroe looked upon his effort as a way of instilling the keynotes of a remedy in the mind of the student:

Proud as a queen, yet greatest depression
Large things seem small, mistrust and suspicion
A head, as to menses, much dark clotted blood
Thus often for women, hysterical, good;
Indurated and fallen the womb we do find,
Neuralgias and pains that are cramping in kind
And "putty like" stools serving bowels to bind.

In 1930, V M. Kulkarni wrote Homoeopathic Materia Medica in Verse, where he says:

Our Aconite has full domain
O'er inflammation with much pain
Congestions all which cause great dread
And hemorrhages of blood red ...

Then, right after World War II, someone at the London Homeopathic Hospital, who preferred to remain nameless, penned a few verses under the nom de plume of "Patersimilias." We find Mercurius as:

Hark to the tale of Mercurius Billy,
His head feels sore and his limbs feel chilly.
His memory's weak and he looks quite pensive,
His teeth are loose, and his breath's offensive.

A few years ago, some limericks were posted on the HomeoNet Internet site.

Arsenicum album-my med
I need it-I move bed to bed.
My fever goes higher
as I hug the fire
and my nose is becoming so red!

Now, we have an offering by Sylvia Chatroux, and what an offering it is! A medical doctor who trained at the Hahnemann College in Albany, California, the author says:

"I wrote this collection of poetry with a passion that seems to come with the study of homeopathy. The words, at times, came out of my pen effortlessly as if in a gift. At other times I struggled as if looking for a small puzzle piece. Either way this poetry has been enormously fun to write."

The book, beautifully arranged and composed, is a small hardback. It contains poems about 100 remedies, and is illustrated with 18th and 19th century woodcuts of some of the subject plants.

But it is the poems which are the most delightful of all. As with the remedies themselves, each poem is unique in its special way.

Which one to share with you in the review?

The "want ad" of Lachesis?
"I want to talk your ear off, as I slither next to you."

The brazen start of Hyoscyamus?
"If you strut into my office, naked as can be..."

Podophyllum?
"Did you hear a loud explosion, coming from the too..."

Sepia ?
"Sepia hiding in her room, sadly weeping, past her bloom."

Sulphuric acid?
"Did you really pull the flush before you did your thing?"

Baryta carb?
"Is this a child in a woman's body? Smaller than average, she feels mocked..."

Each one is an insightful gem. The one that struck me was this-which ties the remedy to the flower itself-the rose that blooms at Christmas:

Helleborus niger
Helleborus is staggering
Unless he concentrates
Here the brain is foggy
And stuporous of state
And when I tried to talk to him
The reply confused and slow
There's dullness in his essence
A sluggish undertow
I could not tell if he could see
Indeed as though impaired
It seems he's lost his sense of taste
Completely unaware
Here's a rose of rare beauty
Ignores the seasons'time
Blooms amongst the snowflakes
Its own internal rhyme
Where other flowers do not wait
This one takes so long
Appears absorbed, can't concentrate
Indifference is its song.

This collection of poems is not as much "fun" as some of the earlier works. The descriptions of the remedies are often deep and somewhat dark-a feel of remedies you do not often get from reading the lists of symptoms in the materia medica, nor from "essences" of the remedies distilled into a lecture.

Poetry is like a distillation of a distillation - a very pure view, short in length, and right to the heart of the matter.

The size, the price, the presentation, and the subject make this the ideal gift for the homeopath in your life.