The Foundation of the Chronic Miasms in the Practice of Homeopathy

by Henny Heudens-Mast. This was my first introduction to Homeopathy and I devoured this book in a couple of weeks (and it was during finals!). "But Homeopathy isn't Chinese Medicine!" you say. I'm one of those people who thinks that all medicine can be Chinese Medicine if approached in the right way. Yes, even surgeons!

But what HH does in this book is describe the way she watches a patient, the way she categorizes them according to the miasms, and then tries to stimulate their vital force in order to expel disease. Although the categories of the miasms don't correspond to the 5 phase elements or the 6 Qi in a one-to-one manner I'm sure something could be gleaned from overlaying the two systems.

For example, the Tuburcular Miasm (dissatisfaction, lack of tolerance, changes everything, does harmful thing to one's self, solace in the mountains) smacked of Pericardium and maybe what is known as Yang Ming disease (Large Intestine and Stomach Networks).

What struck me most about this book was HH's methods. She often instructed her students to take no action if change was underway, and to only prescribe when it was clear what was happening was a roadblock to health as opposed to seeing a symptom as a beneficial "healing crisis."

The book has the best of both theory and application: true cases applied to the theory and decisions made on theory, study, and deep knowledge of the nature of life.