Minerals in Plants 2

Recensie

This book review is reprinted from The Homoeopath with permission from Nick Churchill of The Society of Homoeopaths.

Reviewed by Francis Treuherz

Here's a funny book: - after the contents page, and an introduction of 4 pages, the rest of the book comprises column after column. Half the pages are headed by the name of a plant, below which the relevant elements are listed, whilst the remaining half of the book reverses the process: - that is, the name of the element is given first, followed by a list of those plants which contain that particular element. The columns give us figures which are both numerical and relative stated as deviations from the norm. At first glance this would seem to render the book unreadable.

But since it is written by the well-known Dutch pioneer homeopath, our foremost scholar of group analysis, with a relaxed and benign teaching technique, Jan Scholten, I must persevere.

After the reading the introduction, however, all becomes clear. This is a reference book.

The introduction itself is set out like a scientific paper brief and classically structured. It comprises the following headings: purpose, analysis, plants, elements, literature, layout, discussion, consistency and reliability of measurement, part of plant, season, climate, results and conclusions whether striking or confusing. The book is in good English, although there are occasional infelicities of language, such as the use of the term 'layout', when 'structure' would probably have been more suitable.

The main purpose of the book is to enlarge the knowledge we have of the relationship of plant families (and individual plants) and elements. Jan has already taught us much about the periodic table, which systematically divides elements into columns and series. If we know the amount and proportion of elements in plants we may begin to look at plant families more systematically, and relate their healing potential to what we know of the healing properties of elements from which they are made. The research was commissioned in Canada, and was performed in more detail and with more depth than the previous volume from 2001 .

There are some aspects of authorial choice which are unclear, but perhaps familiarity with the book will clarify these. For example, some plant remedies chosen for analysis, and some elements also, are obscure in the sense of being unproven or little known or used. (Perhaps this book will help bring them into use.) Another mystifying incongruity is that the title of the book uses the term 'minerals', and yet the contents page refers to 'elements'.

There are three more publications which I wish to mention as useful in this area of our development. John Emsley has written an amazing reference book, Nature's Building Blocks - An A-Z Guide to the Elements (Oxford 2001) which is an encyclopaedia of information written in a fine literary style about each element with myth and medicine and social and cultural knowledge as well as the more usual scientific information. The equivalent botanical volume is Flowering Plants of the World by John Heywood (Oxford 1979) which has some great diagrams as well, showing the relationships of plant families. Then there is www.synergycreations.com which has a periodic table program downloadable free, with a payment of $15 for all the features. Jan Scholten actually uses all these.

Wishing to test the book, I perhaps simplistically look for Aurum as a constituent element; but perhaps gold is not found much in plants (not as much as it is needed by patients!), since it is not even listed. So I try again: Conium is a well known plant remedy; I wonder if it has much lead in it, thinking that this may perhaps explain its symptomatology of leaden paralysis. Not especially! It does, however, have an unusual proportion of Argentum; I wonder why? I must confess that this book has a value which I have not yet fully discovered, due to my own lack of understanding. I try again... Aha! Hyoscyamus, I find, has a high lithium content, and we know that barking madness runs through both of these remedies. Now it begins to make sense.

Lastly, it is possible that our knowledge of mineral content may also help us also learn more about the little-known plant remedies, so that we might be able to prescribe them simply from the elements they contain. Verbena has a great deal of iron for example, and is known as 'Eisenkraut' in German. So this book has a great future. It is thoroughly researched, well laid out, and worth studying.