Today’s The Day, Elaine Turns 100!

Elaine makes a very special announcement!

Ladies and gentlemen, the big day is here!  I’ve been waiting ten years to be able to say this and now, at long last, today’s the day!  (OMG!  That’s a song by Maureen Gray from 1961!  Today’s the daaaaaaaaaay, that you’re going awaaaaaaaaaaay….)

Now where was I?  I seem to have gotten side-tracked.  Oh!  Yes, today is the big day!  Do you know why?  I’ve been longing for the day when I would be able to say:

I have posted my 100th case in the hpathy ezine!

Hooray!!!!!!

Thank you, thank you; please, hold your applause ’til the end!  And do you know why this is exciting? Because I get to add up all the remedies and see which one is the winner; the star, the Most Valuable Player in Homeopathy!  Aren’t you dying to know which one cured the most cases?  I can’t wait to see!  So hold on, I’ve got a lot of counting to do!  I’ll be right back!

******************************

Boy, was that ever time-consuming!  I actually made a graph to show you the distrubution of remedies but I must apologize because apparently it couldn’t be pasted as made 🙁  All the bars are 2 points behind what they should be, and the last 4 remedies didn’t even make it onto the screen–Ranunculus, Silica, Heckla Lava and Thuja–each solved 1 case.  But the color coding is correct, so go by that.  The blue line = 11, the red line = 9, the yellow line = 5, the aqua line = 4 and so on.  

Here it is, everybody; the Winner, The Most Valuable Player in homeopathy with 11 cured cases……..

                                Rhus tox!!!!!

 

 

We have to also give a shout-out to our second place winner, with 9 cured cases, let’s hear it for Gelsemium!!!  And coming in with the bronze medal, in third place, with 5 cured cases, we have the ever-popular Belladonna!!!  And since all three of our winners were plants, let’s hear it for the Plant Family!!!!  Alright!  So, Rhus tox, poison ivy to you, apparently cures more cases and has more indications than any other remedy!

What can we say about Rhus tox?  It looks so innocent, doesn’t it?  What cases did Rhus tox cure in our top-100?  Well, here they are:  coughs, colds, sore throats, flus, allergies, sciatica, leg cramps, neck pains, shoulder pains, toothaches, stiffness, stuffy nose….and as Shana just said, “If it’s supposed to cure poison ivy, how come it cures all those other things?”  And so to answer your question, I don’t know!  But it makes us wonder, what do these illnesses have in common?  Why does Rhus tox cover them?  So here’s the interesting thing. Clearly, these illnesses have nothing to do with each other, so what does that tell us?  It should tell us that in homeopathy, we don’t pick remedies based on the name of your illness, because….three people can have the same illness, but one has it a “Bryonia way”, another has it a “Nux Vomica way”, and the third person has it a “Rhus tox way”, and that is what we are here to find out today, what IS the Rhus tox way?  Here are the elements of the Rhus tox cases that led to its numerous prescriptions:

 

Left-sidedness

Hot bathing, hot showering, hot drinks or hot applications ameliorated

Water, dampness or rainy weather aggravated or were the cause of the illness

Motion ameliorated

Being outside ameliorated, worse for being inside

Worse at night, better during the day

Sensation of tightness

Spraining, straining, over-lifting or sensation of that

Worse after sleep

Worse morning on waking

Brain fag, can’t think

Tendency to cry

Worse cold weather

And then there were some symptoms of Rhus tox that I never heard of before, like frequent yawning and coppery taste in the mouth.

***

So what does all this mean?  It shows the kind of information that matters in a homeopathic case!  How does one acquire this information?  Does one just let the patient talk and talk hoping he’ll magically blurt all this information out? Actually, no.  You have to ask pointedly about: the Sensations, Location, Modalities, Concomitants and Etiology.  Feel free to use my questionnaire (https://hpathy.com/homeopathy-papers/a-flurry-of-questions-presenting-your-acute-case-to-a-homeopath/)  And let me be clear that you don’t have to have all these things in the same case in order to give Rhus tox!  Just to give you an example, in the quiz “Coughing Up Pennies”, here’s what we had to go on that led to Rhus tox: Coppery taste in the mouth when coughing, yawning though not tired, muscles sore and tight as if she had been gardening, and cough worse in the morning on waking. That was it.

So there you have it, folks, Rhus tox, our hero!  See you again in 10 years.  (Will Rhus tox still be in the lead?  Will Gelsemium pull out in front?  Stay tuned!)

_________________________

Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom

Elaine takes online cases!  Write to her at [email protected]

elaineLewis.hpathy.com