Book Review by David Witko
The
second edition of Dr Pravin Jain’s welcome book on Pediatrics is now
available to all practitioners interested in improving their skills with
children’s case taking and prescription. Improving significantly on the
first edition, this is a beautifully printed hard backed book of 223 pages,
with text clearly shown and very easy to read. Let us briefly examine the various aspects of this book: Dr Jain stresses the importance of case taking in pediatrics. He clearly explains the importance of observation and interpretation of information received. He itemizes al of various aspects that are crucial to a well-taken case, for example, Ailments from (Causation), Constitution and Traits of our little patients, History (Mothers, Obstetric, Feeding), Generals and Mentals. Whilst explaining these aspects he sprinkles very useful lists of remedies throughout e.g. Remedies for bad effects of vaccination, Remedies for those who eat well but still lose weight or are too thin, Sleep position and disposition etc. It is when Dr Jain starts to explain how he views the Mental aspects of pediatric case taking that you begin to see some strikingly different ideas. He has taken studies of temperamental characteristics and created a grouping under three headings, namely: Sociability, Activity, Destructibility It is not the intention of this review to explain in details these groupings (you must buy the book to understand this information) but I must stress that the understanding of this is the key to the importance of this entire book. With this grouping Dr Jain categorises children in a way that enables you to easily match corresponding remedies, quickly and easily. He even provides a quick visual flowchart of the groups along with associated remedies. Finally Dr Jain explains that you need to determine how the little patient in front of you reacts to a ‘harsh stimulus’. He considers this to be the final differentiating point in arriving at the required remedy. According to him the four basic emotions that may be seen are Anger, Jealousy, Grief and Fear and we need to understand if and how our patient reacts in these ways. Interestingly, after providing the theoretical aspect to his work Dr Jain then presents a case of Rickets. On the surface this seems to be a well indicated case of Chamomilla : Desire to be carried, Hot, angry, demanding little boy and Chamomilla 200c was given after a period of several months. When a severe pain the knee occurred the patient was then referred to an Orthopedic Doctor who diagnosed Rickets. Dr Jain then presented the patients timeline showing how his problems had started with a bad reaction to vaccination through to rickets. Dr Jain also suggest that the remedy he prescribed, Chamomilla, had actually made the situation worse by ‘suppression’ forcing the disease to internalise. He then re-presents the case using the material in this book to arrive at a completely different result, namely Tarentula. One month after prescription the patients x-rays and blood counts had returned to normal. Over a period of one year the patient was gradually restored to good health. The second part of the book is a comprehensive materia medica of pediatric remedies. Information has been standardised as much as possible to correspond to the material presented in this book. Thus you will find for each remedy the list of its Grouping and Differentiation fight at the top of the information for handy reference (Dr Jain calls this the Axis). After this are printed the Life Situation, Causation, Mind and Generals for each remedy Wishes? I wished Dr Jain had included a word index at the back of the book I also wished Dr Jain had helped us understand Acute disease in children side by side with Chronic disease I also wished to have visual case examples – and the good news is that Dr Jain already has plans to produce a DVD containing cases that clearly illustrate the grouping/axis approach to pediatrics SummaryI commend this work to all serious homeopaths. Everyone should examine the unique Grouping/Axis approach outlined in this book to see if they find it useful and more accurate in helping select the appropriate remedies to use. This book already has a place on my bookshelf!
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