Spices such as rosemary, oregano, sage and above all pepper can make even boring dishes interesting; they make eating exciting and vivid. Enthusiasm and zest for life, the desire for pleasure, spice and excitement, and the fear of boredom are therefore also typical features in the remedy picture of the plants to be presented in detail and with numerous case examples in this Materia Medica edition. SPEKTRUM takes the two families that are so similar in homoeopathic terms, yet botanically quite different — the Lamiaceae (mint family) and the Piperaceae (pepper family) — as teaching examples to examine overlaps and differences in the current homoeopathic application of plant systematics by different authors. How do the themes of a plant family in Jan Scholten’s system relate to the vital sensation in Rajan Sankaran’s? Can the plant developmental stages according to Michal Yakir be compared with Scholten’s complex system of stages, phases and subphases, and that again with the miasms as the main coordinates in Sankaran’s plant schema? Such questions are not to be argued theoretically but answered through contributions from homoeopathic practice.
Enthusiasm, zest for life, pleasure and excitement, as well as boredom and emptiness, are typical features in the remedy pictures of the Lamiaceae and the Piperaceae, which are presented in the new issue of SPEKTRUM “Spice of Life”. Our authors demonstrate overlaps and differences in these two homoeopathically so similar yet botanically distinct families, the mint family and the pepper family. In the compilation of contributions SPEKTRUM presents the application of Scholten’s plant theory, Rajan Sankaran’s vital sensation and miasms, and the plant developmental stages as understood by Michal Yakir.
For the first time two titles appear on a single issue of SPEKTRUM. To the spicy Materia Medica theme is added a comparison of the three modern plant systems in homoeopathy:
Jan Scholten and Michal Yakir, inspired by the theme of this issue, have personally contributed to the flavour of the current edition. In this way SPEKTRUM reflects the exciting developments in homoeopathic systematics. Michal Yakir describes the evolution of plants from her perspective and how she relates them to feminine and masculine aspects of human individuation. Angelika Bolte and Jörg Wichmann complement Sankaran’s sensation method with Yakir’s ordering of plant evolution, and in a new combination bring out the differences between the Piperaceae and the Lamiaceae.
In his overview article Jan Scholten explains the remedy codes in his plant system in relation to the current development of the systematics. With co-author Martin Jakob, Scholten — presented exclusively in this issue — has made a fine adjustment to his plant system. His division of the Lamiaceae into the subfamilies Lamioideae and Nepetoideae furthermore makes the application of phases and subphases fundamentally clear to the reader.
Two new Lamiaceae provings, thyme and ground-ivy, round off the issue. For his instructive overview of the “king of spices”, Christian Weidl himself tested some little-known pepper remedies in self-experimentation and supplemented his homoeopathic knowledge with insights from Ayurveda, folk medicine and cultural history.
In any case, this edition of SPEKTRUM offers entertaining inspiration and many incentives to discover previously unknown ways to the simile and to understand and apply new ideas. Boredom is certainly out of the question.
