For checking what a remedy substance actually is: its source, properties and behaviour, including the influences you may meet in a “never well since” history.
Frans Vermeulen’s Source and Substance holds 4,275 remedies, equivalent to about 8,000 book pages. Remedies carry three working parts: a Materia Medica section that records how, when and by whom the symptoms were obtained (for example provings, self-experimentations, clinical or toxicological sources); a Cues & Clues section of special features of the substance that can help remedy selection and differential diagnosis; and a Close Relatives section for the other members of its botanical or zoological family.
What else is covered depends on the kind of substance. For plants: main constituents, close botanical relatives, and other uses such as flower essences and herbalism. For animals: distribution, body plan, diet and behaviour. For minerals: compounds and alloys, occurrence, chief ores, properties, applications, and medicinal and toxicological uses.
Remedies are sorted into eleven categories, from animals, plants and minerals to nosodes, sarcodes, imponderables and pharmaceuticals. An extra 228 summaries and original reports cover hard-to-find provings, self-experimentations and poisonings.
Because the entries describe how a substance behaves in nature, the book can be searched for a patient’s characteristic language against that background, or used to check the pharmacological and toxicological properties of a substance named in the history. The publisher’s page has screenshots.
