Proving of Thiosinamine: author's reply

Abstract

I would like to respond to Vithoulkas' criticism of the Thiosinamine proving. The proving makes no attempt to make something out of nothing. None of the provers knew what they were taking, and all of the provers were coded so no one knew if they received the remedy or placebo. Even I, as coordinator, did not know until the end of the proving. Provers and their supervisors were asked to accurately record their symptoms during the proving period, which is what they did. Each prover was asked to make special note of symptoms which were new to them during the proving, as well as any symptoms which were of greater intensity than normal and return of old symptoms. In particular, symptoms not experienced before were of greater signi®cance. The provers had their cases taken one month prior to the proving and their symptoms monitored. So it was clear that the symptoms provers experienced during the proving were different to symptoms experienced prior to the proving. As coordinator it was my duty to re ̄ect the experiences of the provers accurately. What resulted was their accounts. It was not for me to start picking out what I thought was a symptom or not a symptom, if a prover felt it was strange or unusual for them then it was my duty to record it as such, as a whole. For brevity, I will not pick out every point Vithoulkas has raised, only the most important. Regarding the issue of `waiting' in isolation `waiting for something to happen with the proving' is not so signi®cant, but when this was repeated several times, combined with the fact that the proving date had been delayed, it became of signi®cance. It also came up as a symptom in a patient to whom I later prescribed Thiosinamine. Vithoulkas writes `When, in a proving, you have the same or similar symptoms with placebo as with the remedy the logical conclusion should be that such symptoms do not belong to the remedy, but rather to environmental, circumstantial or psychological conditions (hysteria, suggestion, anxiety, etc) but surely not to the remedy!' It is very easy to dismiss any proving on `environmental, circumstantial or psychological conditions.' This is a generalised statement, which means little in itself. The fact is that this proving followed strict guidelines along the lines of those recommended by Hahnemann. Jeremy Sherr's `The Dynamics and Methodology of Homeopathic Provings' is a guide to proving methodology frequently used by the homeopathic community. In the foreword, Dr Edward Whitmont states: `An important innovation in Jeremy Sherr's work is his calling attention to the unconscious dynamics by acknowledging that the placebo effect upon participating provers closely duplicates the effect of the actual proving substance.' Jeremy Sherr states `for a clinical drug trial, placebo has three major bene®ts: It distinguishes the pharmocodynamic effects of a drug from the physiological effects of the test itself. It distinguishes the drug effects from the ̄uctuation in disease that occur with time. It avoids `false negative' conclusions, ie the use of the placebo tests the ef®cacy of the trial itself. In fact placebo testing is not invariably used in classical drug trials. In relation to homeopathic proving, certainly the ®rst point may be relevant Ð the use of placebo does in theory distinguish the effects of the proving process. The second point does not apply as provings are invariably made on healthy volunteers, and of course in homeopathic proving does not need testing for ef®cacy Ð our long tradition of proving has served us well, mostly without the use of placebo! Sherr adds `Furthermore it is interesting to note that placebo provings occasionally seem to produce similar symptoms, thus casting further doubt on the use of this medium in provings.' The production of similar symptoms in placebo to the proving remedy is a common phenomenon, whether it is due to `collective consciousness' or any other mechanism, the term `collective consciousness' was only a suggestion as to the process that might be happening. `Provings do not conform to Cartesian thinking, as the experimenter is part of the experiment. Considering most, if not all, nineteenth century provings had no placebo or crossover, it is interesting that they have stood the test of time and proved clinically ef®cient in thousands of cases.' Thiosinamine was prescribed based on physical pathology that was already described (scar tissue or adhesions) these mental and emotional symptoms were sometimes also present. I came across these cases long after the Thiosinamine proving. From a separate source the Bach Flower description of Mustard (Sinapis arvensis) has remarkable similarity to the Thiosinamine proving picture. All of this suggests to me that discrediting the proving based on the fact that the placebo had similar symptoms to the provers and that this suggests that hence the proving showed `environmental effects' is a discredit to the hard work of all those involved in the proving. It suggests furthermore, that we need to be more open as to the effects of provings and placebo. I would be delighted for Vithoulkas to do an independent proving of Thiosinamine then we could truly compare the differences and similarities.