IMPOTENCY
George: I think somebody asked yesterday why did I prescribe Staph. The reasons why I prescribed Staph. in that case … you see, from the impressions that the interview gave, would you say that this man was preoccupied with sex quite a lot?
Response: Yes.
George: Therefore, he has a heavy (strong) desire but there is no capacity. What was interesting is that feeling of the brain not taking part in the sexual act. The feeling was mostly on his occiput. It was one year before l decided to give a second remedy. The reason I waited was because we did not have a complete picture again. The picture would not be developed. What I found out was that he had desire, but no erections, but at the same time there was something which was not moving behind the brain. Can anybody remember from Staph. “a feeling in the occiput’ how it is described? There was a solid feeling in the brain, and it was not “moving”. This was behind – inside. Staph. gives a sense of weakness in thinking, in performing, in his feelings, weakness generally. It is a feeling that “something is holding the brain” and it is on the occiput. Staph. is one of the main remedies for impotency. What are the others ?
Response : Lyc. Nux-v., Agn., Arg-n., Graph.
George : But this one has a certain type of impotency. This sort of impotency, if we didn’t have anything more to go on, would suit one of these other remedies. The person was not aggressive. He cried because he could not have sex. We have to take all this into consideration. The feeling that the brain was not moving along, “the brain did not take part”, gives you the idea of how he felt. One does not always have to say the word. One will say there is a stiffness in his leg. Another will say that something is holding the brain, mostly on the occiput Another will say that a hand is holding the brain and it cannot move. Another will feel as if there is a ball in his brain. It does not matter so much how he describes it. Here is that immovable feeling of the brain as though something material is there something absolutely solid. You are entitled to take a chance. In this case we took a chance and it worked. Otherwise how long are you going to wait? Of course the man was so well that he came for one year without seeing any difference. Every month he came and there was no difference in the sex apart from the initial expression that he was about 20% better in regard to sex. He felt so well otherwise that he kept on coming. We kept him a long time. This is to show you how careful we are in prescribing a remedy.
Question: In that situation here, why rule out Lyc.
George: Why?
Question: He has the anxiety, apprehension about sex ….
Question: But wouldn’t you expect to see some other confirmatory signs ?
George: Not even that. With the Lyc. it would be quite a different story. The impotency of Lyc. is quite a different story for quite different reasons. A Lyc. is usually a man who has had a lot of sex with a lot of women.
This is typical of Lyc. When he has a lot of sex,then he usually finds out that a marriage has with it all the responsibilities and all the bad things of life, together with the possibilities of having sex any time. In Lyc. the psychology is, “Oh my God, now I am going to have sex all the time with that woman”, and that takes away all of his energies and all of his urge. We can expect to find this in the previous history of the Lyc. He wanted his own wife and he had the desire, but he could not. This is a wide difference. For me it is quite clear. I would immediately rule out Lye. from the story. It is not just the same impotency – the story is telling you the whole thing. It tells you so much, that for me,you cannot mix them up. For me it cannot be Lyc. for the first prescription. It cannot be Agn. It would take along time for me to explain that. I can give you the whole picture, otherwise I will leave it in half. You will say, “Why not Graph, or that,or that or that? Why not Ma-v.?” If you have these pictures in your mind,if you have the constitutional types in your mind, and you say, “which one would you prefer ?”, it is a matter of colours. You will see the color of Staph. more easily than anything else. But of course you have to know the colors and the other colors as well.
Question: Is Staph. postulated on the fact that there were months and years of frustration and dissatisfaction ?
George: Yes, bumf course, if there was no frustration and there was no … we would not know the case about his life. Did he say anything ?
Answer: No.
George: He said that for seven years he had lost his potency, ability and things like that. He did not give the details of his life. Also, if you see the type … he talks about his wife. A Lyc. would say, “You know, I tried with my wife and it didn’t work. I thought then that perhaps I was tired of my wife and I tried some other woman.” You would hear that story in 90 percent of the cases. They will not stay too long without having sex. He has been enjoying it in a fairly superficial way. They are the high livers, these Lyc.- they remain unmarried because they find that life is good and very nice without the responsibilities of marriage. That is why high living is associated with liver drugs, and there is a particular face which you will see in high livers. It is a particular face, with deep furrows, and skin which is darkish. There are few furrows, but they are deep.
Question: When he felt a little better he said, “You can prove this by my wife,” so that maybe his wife was a little concerned about it too and he was feeling somewhat humiliated by it. May be that was why Staph, was the best.
George: Sure. You see the man tries for seven years to be with his wife and he cannot. He likes his wife. He thinks about sex and he likes sex. He is very much concerned. He does not tell a story that he tried outside of the marriage. That, for me, is a Staph. case.
I don’t know if these things make sense to you. When it comes to treating patients and you miss them, you will see that you will need that information. You are desperate and you don’t know what to do. And so you will need that information. For a good homoeopath it is 95% correct and 5% incorrect. From there we go down to 80% and 50% and so forth. 75% is about normal. When they give me a case like I gave you yesterday, if I reach 75% with that, it is quite high I can tell you. I really wanted to ask you something. I brought out a lot of files and I brought out the most difficult cases. They are difficult for a particular reason, you know. Sol was thinking with your permission that we should talk a little bit about the cases and make them more easy. Then I may tell you where I distorted the case after that.
Response: We want them the way they are.
We want the real world!
George: I could give you the personality of the doctor who took the case and their experience.
Response: If you could give the case as it is, then we would all start tearing our hair out, then you could say, “Well, what if you know this”, then maybe we would change our prescription – like you have been doing.
George: This was the real thing,what l did yesterday. It was given at the end of the interview. I led you into eliminating Plat. I led you astray because someone would have spotted it from the very beginning and spoiled the whole thing. Usually what would have happened without the last information? We have repertorized, but some of you- all of you -must HOMOEOPATHY leant; o think and telly that information with that information. I have been doing that because they give me strongest problems. The moment you can solve such cases and you do not have the discrepancies of the different prescribers, you can get a much better case and it becomes much easier for you. Once you have learnt the way to think, this will happen, and you will learn not to trust immediately. He says, “I am such a nice man. I am very sympathetic. I am very easily moved.” You have to sit back and penetrate and take the rest of the case and sec whether this information you see tallies with what he says. So what is right and what is wrong? You may discover for the moment by putting different questions to the person but you must find out which Is the REAL information. It is very usual for a human being to give false information. But ask his wife, or his children, or the people around him and they will tell you. You still have to “know” in order to confirm which remedy. This element of self and ego is prominent there. You must become shrewd observers. VERY SHREWD!
Question: While you are talking about that l wanted to point out that when we learn to take cases deeply and thoroughly, we end up filling pages and pages and talking hours and hours and there are massive amounts of information, but if you see the cases that George has taken personally, most of the cases are done on one side of one page, maybe a full page or a page and a half. Ile distills it down.
George: Both ways serve a different purpose. Your cases, which are taken so thoroughly, can be used later for adding up informational details. There is a lot which is useless in that information -a lot! But otherwise you might have left out something useful. Now you have it because you have recorded everything. But at a certain period of my prescribing – in the beginning I had two hours for every patient. Then it became one hour and then it became three quarters and then half an hour. Then there was a time when I had to see four patients at the same time. Four doctors were taking a case at the same time and I had to go in, quickly review the case, look at the patient ,and ask one or two questions each time. That whole thing could take ten minutes. So in ten minutes I would see a patient Now I don’t see patients at all.
Question: Do you do all of the prescribing ?
George: No. In the cases which I present, half of the prescribing was done by me and half by the doctor. But there are doctors who do not give me any cases at all. They keep on going but once they have a problem, maybe when the patient has come 3-4 times without any change,then they ask me to see the case. The older ones do not want to tire me.
Question: As far as writing down the cases, it would make logical sense to me to make the error on the side of writing down too much information initially. Then with more experience, then you can see how much you have wasted, and leave this out in later cases.
George: Exactly. I was writing to the same degree in the very beginning. I would still find when I would go to the materia medica that I had left out something. There was information that was told by the patient, but I did not take care of that. I said, “this is the whole thing”, and there I was, I had left it out. With the experience that I have in teaching, this is an exceptional group. I really hope that it will keep on. It seems to me that everyone of you has an exceptional personality and abilities which are also exceptional. So, we are going to change the world,you know.
(Laughter)
