Materia Medica

This is saffron, a brightly coloured spice with a distinct flavour and deep yellow colour. It’s also recognised for its medicinal effects particularly for depression and anxiety. In homeopathy Crocus Sativa is known for women and menstrual or perimenopausal complaints. So let’s have a look at the remedy picture.  There can be sadness, but this alternates with happiness, laughing and joking. Crocus Sativa people may give you whiplash with their rapidly changing moods, from violent aggressiveness to remorse. They can …

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As a country we’ve been pretty focused on petrol recently, so let’s turn this focus to the homeopathic remedy.  It’s a remedy that has a major affinity with the skin, particularly for extreme dryness and cracking of the skin. The skin can be rough and itchy, may become red and raw looking and injuries (or where it has become scratched) get infected and take a long time to heal.  The irony of this is that many commercially available creams are …

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Nux Vomica is one of our polychrests, a remedy with a wide sphere of action, and an excellent remedy to have in your first aid kit!  Nux Vomica is the poison nut- it is made from the seeds of the Strychnine tree. The tree is found in India where the bark and seeds are used as fish poison. Nux Vomica is a member of the loginaceae family, along with remedies Ignatia and Gelsemium. All of these have strychnine as an …

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A few weeks ago I shared a post about Cannabis Indica and Cannabis Sativa, one of the interesting thing when I was looking at the two remedies, was the note from Roger Morrison that he could only find 3 documented modern cases of cannabis sativa, compared to 36 modern cases or case reports for cannabis indica. This was really interesting and made me think about why – many of our homeopathic remedies are made from poisons or substances that have …

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In homeopathy we have a wide range of remedies- from large “polychrests” that have many symptoms across all parts of the body, to smaller remedies that seem to be quite specific for different organs or parts of the body.  Dr. James Compton Burnett, was a Medical Doctor turned Homeopath in England in the late 19th century. He was an excellent Homeopath and a prolific writer. Burnett often utilised low potencies, in the decimal (x) range, low centesimal (c) range or …

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Last year I did a new thing, and created two sequence remedies.   But let’s start at the beginning. I heard Ambika Wauters on Eugenie Kruger’s Homeopathy Hangouts Podcast, then reached out to her and watched some recorded lectures about her colour and sound remedies. I read her book (the new version with the sound remedies included), then sourced the remedies from Jo Douglas at The Natural Therapy Clinic in Tauranga. Each of the sound remedies corresponds with a colour …

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It is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, and so an opportunity to reflect on the Māori language, and this year I am taking time to reflect on remedies through a holistic Māori lens.  I have discussed Te Whare Tapa Wha before, (you can read the post here), it is my favourite holistic model of health. For a quick recap, it describes the four walls of a meeting house, all are equally important for health.  Taha Wairua- Spiritual (and this …

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Last week was World Breastfeeding week, so I want to discuss two important remedies that are to do with breastfeeding: Lac Humanum, and Lac Maternum. Both of these remedies are made from human breastmilk, but there is one key difference. Lac Humanum was made from the breastmilk of one woman, and Lac Maternum from the breastmilk of 9 Women at different stages of their breastfeeding journeys, from day 3 to 10 months. Lac Humanum has a theme about finding your …

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Natrum Muriaticum (abbreviated as Nat Mur) is sodium chloride, or common salt. Found in every kitchen, it is an essential mineral for life, and homeopathically it also has a wide range of symptoms and is one of our polychrest remedies.  Nat Mur is one of Schuessler’s twelve tissue salts, as well as a remedy we use in much higher potencies homeopathically.  As a tissue salt, 6x potency, it is used for fluid balance. This means that too much moisture or …

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This Friday we have a public holiday for Matariki. This is sometimes called Maori New Year, and is marked by the appearance of the Matariki cluster of stars in the sky. In Europe these stars are known as the Pleiades, but here, they are Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea, the eyes of Tāwhirimātea, the god of the wind, who threw his eyes into the heavens in anger, after his siblings separated Ranginui, the sky father from Papatūānuku, the earth …

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Bellis Perennis is the daisy, part of the Asteraceae family like Arnica, and sometimes called the common, lawn or English daisy to distinguish it from the cultivated forms of the daisy.  Like Arnica, Bellis Perennis is a remedy for trauma. Specifically to trauma of the abdomen, reproductive organs, or spleen.  It has an affinity for the reproductive organs so is particularly useful for after childbirth to support the uterus reducing back to a pre-pregnancy size. Even during pregnancy, if there …

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It’s Pink Shirt Day, a day dedicated to anti bullying, so I thought I would discuss a remedy that is really useful for bullying – for either party. Lycopodium is a remedy made from the clubmoss. These plants are some of the oldest on earth, 410 million years old, and 300 million years ago there were club mosses that reached 100 feet, or over 30m in height. These days though, Lycopodium is a moss that looks a bit like a …

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Easter is a time where we celebrate with chocolate and decorations of chickens and bunnies celebrating the new life of spring – even though in New Zealand, like the rest of the southern hemisphere we are actually in autumn. Keeping with that theme I would talk about a rabbit homeopathic remedy. Lac Oryctolagus Cunicilus is made from the milk of a white rabbit and was proved by New Zealander Claire Bleakley in 2002. Mammals are the only types of animals …

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Yesterday I talked about provings, today I want to share about the remedy itself that I helped prove.  Ganoderma Tsugae is a mushroom -Reishi is the Japanese name, and in China it is called Ling zhi.  The Reishi mushrooms are found all over the world – Ganoderma Lucidum, Ganoderma Tsugae and Ganoderma Sichuanese describe different forms of Reishi mushrooms. However when buying them they can be mislabelled, often those labelled Ganoderma Lucidum should more correctly called Ganoderma Sichuanese (although fortunately …

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Yesterday I talked a bit about sugar and the effect in the body. Today I want to discuss the sugar remedies, as there are a few of them, and then I will talk about the remedy I use most.  There are two main forms of sugar – that from Sugar Cane (which is the form of sugar that Chelsea Sugar Works imports over a hundred thousand metric tonnes of each year), and sugar made from Sugar Beet, which is primarily …

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In September for Te Wiki o Te Reo Maori (Maori language week) I did a post on New Zealand native remedies. I wrote about four, and then I had a number of people point out other remedies that I had missed and didn’t even know about! So this is the follow up, with a few more remedies.  If you missed the first post you can find it here. First of all I want to start with the oldest New Zealand …

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This is a remedy a colleague suggested for a case of mine earlier this year (thanks Anne!) and shared some materia medica with me. Since then I have used the remedy again and again with amazing results, so I really felt it was a remedy I needed to share.  The remedy Apple Tree is Malus Sylvestris, and the write up is found in Madeline Evans’ Meditative Provings vol.2.  There is also the remedy Malus Domestica, aka Malus Pumila proved by …

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Dr Edward Bach’s work with flower essences was groundbreaking, and his technique has been used all over the world to extract the emotional and spiritual healing properties of flowers and plants.  His original work he called “The Twelve Healers” which he published because they were so effective, even knowing his work was not complete. He went on to discover 26 other flower essences bringing the total number of Bach’s Flower Essences to 38.  Flower essences are usually fixed in brandy …

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It is quite well understood now that the gut is not only important in its own right, but also is important for immunity, general health and mental health. Dr Edward Bach was very much ahead of his time when he identified the Bowel as a leading cause of disease.  When he started working with the bowel he cultured faecal samples and then classified them based on the way they fermented different sugars. From this he came up with seven different …

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It is Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, and so an opportunity to reflect on the Māori language, and for me, time to reflect on remedies that we have from New Zealand. There aren’t many of them. There are obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi to protect our tāonga, including Rongoā rakau, our plant medicines. New Zealand native species are legally protected, and would require resource consent from the Department of Conservation, and also discussion with iwi for appropriate measures …

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Sometimes Pulsatilla is dismissed as a women’s remedy, for hysterical, changeable girls, women who cry too much, those who need to rely on others. Children who cling, and whine when they are sick, babies who cry when they are put down. However, that is prejudice coming in, misogyny in some cases, and it is terribly unfair to others who may well benefit from this amazing polychrest. It is also a result of using text books that are over 100 years …

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The diamond is made from carbon atoms, that have been compressed and heated and in doing so form the hardest mineral in earth, only another diamond can scratch it. They have a high value and are seen as a symbol of beauty and love- diamond is the symbol of the 75th wedding anniversary. In Homeopathy we have two remedies made from diamond, with slightly different pictures. Adamas was made from diamond dust procured from a jeweller in London and was …

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