Spectrum Materia Medica,
Volume I Monera: Kingdom Bacteria and Viruses
By Frans Vermeulen Publ.; Emryss Publishers
There is so much to say about this book it’s hard to know how to begin! In fact this is a beginning for Frans Vermeulen, the beginning of a planned series of volumes – called Spectrum – of materia medicae on the kingdoms. This means not three but five volumes. Why five and not three? Frans explains that the current understanding in taxonomy is five kingdoms (or six if you include minerals as living organisms) rather than just animal, plant and mineral. Scientists now include Monera, Protista, Fungi, Plantae, Animalia and Mineralia.
This is complex but Vermeulen understands his subject well and succeeds in being clear and precise. This is not a book about taxonomy and classification but a materia medica. It is mind-blowing to discover how many remedies (more than one hundred) we have from the bacteria and virus kingdom. Many remedies here are new to me and may be useful or possibly will never be of use but many of the better known remedies such as Syphilinum or Lyssin are given the Vermeulen make-over providing much background information to the remedies which is truly informative. Apart from the remedies, this book is worth buying for the introductory chapters which give a necessary overview and critique of the ways of classifying and associated problems both in science and homeopathy.
Classifications in Homeopathy are a problem for one reason among others in that when we talk of the snake family, spider family and crustaceans we are inaccurate. We are mixing a sub-order (snakes), an order (spiders) and a class (crustaceans). Also, remedy abbreviations don’t follow clear rules.
Getting to know about bacteria and viruses has never been appealing in society generally, nor in homeopathy due to the bad press they have suffered. Frans humorously informs us; “Bugs bug us; we have bad names for them: creeps, germs, parasites, in short they are disposable. Flowers have powers, animals have spirits, stones are healers but bacteria and viruses are killers. Animals we domesticate, plants we cultivate, bacteria we exterminate.” Out of one hundred trillion cells in the average human body, only ten trillion are truly human. The other 90 trillion are nearly all bacteria. Within our own bodies we are outnumbered nine to one! Another recently published book informs us that we wouldn’t have sperm if it were not for bacteria. So now you see they are not such bad guys and have a bigger role in health and disease and evolution than we could have imagined. As homeopaths we now have a whole new world, a kingdom opened up to us. Thanks to Frans and the work of the giants whose shoulders he stands on, these remedies are now a clearer and sharper tool for healing.
However, surely using disease-causing agents to treat disease is wrong. Isn’t it wrong to treat the same with the same –Isopathy? Isn’t it wrong to assume that these organisms are the cause of disease, the fallacious germ theory of disease? So what is the point of this book? Well I’m not going to do all your thinking for you but you will find some helpful comments within these pages and where Frans doesn’t want to provide the answers for us he points us to informative websites where we can find the answers for ourselves.
This is a fascinating volume. The history of disease, medicine, religion and vaccines is charted here, how the evolution of mankind mirrors that of the microbe, the meaning of disease names and associated mythology. The connections between these organisms can be easily seen from the maps of the bacterium and viruses he provides. Did you know that Polio and Foot and Mouth are connected? That Ebola virus and the measles belong to the same family? This book is so intriguing it’s, let’s say, infectious!