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 a biological effect in their crude form. There are remedies made from foods, but they are not used as often, or maybe it is just that I don’t know them so well! So I decided to do some investigating.
I wondered if this a case like Mithradates VI of Pontus, who took small amounts of poison frequently until they no longer had an effect on him. (He later tried to kill himself with poison after his kingdom was overthrown, but it was ineffective). It is still called Mithradatism today if you take small amounts of poison to build a tolerance.
However, non-poisons (foods) don’t generally have adverse effects for most people, and there are so many nutrients that have a synergistic effect in our food that are necessary for life, and you would not necessarily have a reaction from eating a new food, so it is not a case of tolerance.
We do have remedies made from foods, but many of them have small, quite specific pictures. Here are a couple of fruit remedies I found when I went searching (and I’m sure there are others I have missed, an opportunity for another time.)
Musa sapientum is a remedy made from banana flowers (which you can eat, as well as the banana itself). The remedy, as described by Clarke, on proving had constipation and a feeling of fullness around the anus – and bananas definitely cause constipation for some people. There was rumbling in the abdomen and flatulence, which made me think of the effect of high fibre if you normally have a low fibre diet. Interestingly it also had a curative effect for bleeding haemorrhoids in a case where other remedies had failed. There was also a dry, rough and astringent taste and feeling in the mouth, followed by an increase in saliva, which made me think of the time one of our banana bunches fell down before the bananas were fully grown. We moved it to the shed to ripen, and they did turn yellow, however when we tried to eat them they had a strange taste- astringent probably describes it- and left the mouth dry, tacky and strange for quite a while after eating. I didn’t notice an increase in saliva afterwards, but this makes sense as a secondary reaction to that drying sensation. The other, non gastrointestinal symptoms, were a dull headache, and discharge of mucus with urine and a full aching pain in the bladder are interesting as I have no reference for these symptoms with eating bananas.
Having verified that the few side effects from bananas are seen in the remedy, I started to think about strawberries (because I know some people have reactions to them, and also that there is a remedy). I decided to consider this the other way round, first look at symptoms and then see if this is in the remedy. Strawberries can cause allergic reactions for some people- itching and tingling in the mouth, gut upset with nausea, and a rash or hives. Strawberries also contain salicylates, for people who are intolerant they can cause respiratory problems including nasal inflammation or a blocked nose, and asthma, and gastrointestinal symptoms like pain, diarrhoea and gas. So let’s have a look at the remedy, fragaria vesca, the wild, woodland or alpine strawberry.
Fragaria vesca the remedy has symptoms of allergy – a swollen ‘strawberry’ tongue (pink with white spots like a strawberry), and skin rashes that are red or petechial (a darker non-blanching red), very itchy, and can come with swelling of the whole body. Clarke describes other allergic type symptoms, such as a reddish-blue face, bloating, violent colic and vomiting, and more severe allergy symptoms like a feeling of suffocation, as if having a heart attack, a small intermittent pulse and heart failure causing weakness and exhaustion, and distension of veins in the neck. There are also some really interesting symptoms – Lippe mentions Fragaria for tapeworms and ‘pain in chillblains during the hot season’, and Clarke mentions gonorrhoeal discharges in men and a decrease in breast size and drying up of breastmilk in women.
So while Boericke states for strawberry allergic reactions to give Fragaria in a high potency, it could be useful for any severe allergy, as homeopathy works on “like treats like”, not necessarily using the same substance that caused the reaction. If you had time to do a comparison, Carbolic Acid or Apis may be useful – but if you have Fragaria vesca on hand, it would definitely be appropriate to use.
So my conclusion is that the reason we don’t have these remedies from benign substances is because they don’t produce as many symptoms which can then be ‘cured’ by using the substance in potency. There are still some effects but the picture is small and often quite specific.
There are food plant remedies with a wider sphere of action- I’ve written about Apple Tree before, which has a big trauma picture, and there is also Diospyros kaki Creveld, which is a persimmon tree, but specifically the one that survived the Nagasaki bombing at the end of World War II, and so has a huge trauma and radiation picture – this is more likely to be the effect of the bombing, rather than the persimmon.
Animal remedies are also interesting – there is Lac Vaccinum (cow’s milk), and Lac Vaccinum defloratum (skimmed cows milk), both of which have a wider symptom range than the two fruits above.
Interestingly, there are also flower essences made from fruits and vegetables- the biggest collection from Lila Devi in Sierra Nevada mountains in California. Flower essences work on a mental emotional level, so it is very interesting to see what the indications for these are. Banana essence is for calmness, humility and emotional balance, and Strawberry essence is for dignity, self-respect, inner grounding, and supporting confidence. I haven’t tried these (and they are a long way down my list of things to do), but if you have tried them I would love to hear more.
If you know of other food remedies, please let me know and I will add them to a list and do a new post sometime soon.
For more information about Mithradates: https://www.culturefrontier.com/mithridates-vi-of-pontus/
For the fruit flower essences: https://spirit-in-nature.com/about/
Image is the banana palms in my garden, including an early banana flower.