Viewed through proving: a sideways look at Oleander

Hahnemann writes about Oleander: “It will be found to be if not a complete remedy yet an indispensable intermediate remedy in some kinds of mental derangements, e.g. absence of mind, and in certain kinds of painless paralysis, in eruptions on the head, and some external head affections.”

Viewed through proving: Nitric-Acid without borders

When I studied Nitric-Acid in school, much was made of its action on margins of orifica – around the mouth, lips, everywhere, as Farrington puts it “wherever skin and mucous membrane come together”.  This description appears in Farrington’s Clinical Materia Medica, first published in 1887.    Boger also presents this symptom in his Synoptic Key, published in 1915, and Phatak in his Materia Medica, published originally in 1977.  However, although the remedy does have ulcers, warts, fissures etc. in every conceivable place (and some inconceivable places), the proving itself does not bear out the centrality of this action, and other materia medica noticeably do not stress it.

This is another example of a bias which much has been made of and which has led to a mistaken perception of a remedy personality – and Nit-Ac is often presented as a remedy describing people who have problems with margins, emotional difficulty with borders and people invading their space.