Miasms of the New Millennium: NewInsights into the Ten Miasms by Nancy Herrick, PA and Roger Morrison, MD

Fig. 1 7”x10”; quality hardback, 535pp; $75.00, ISBN: 0-963-5868-5-0, www.herrickmorrison.com.

Herrick N, Morrison R. Miasms of the New Millennium: New Insights into the Ten Miasms. Dishman C, ed. United States; 2014; 531 pages; ISBN: 9780963536853; Hardcover; English

‘Our goal in creating this book is to communicate the important aspects of each miasm and to bring these ideas to life for the reader through clinical cases. As you read the chapters, we hope you will identify many of your own cases (or perhaps yourself) and that this will bring vital clues toward finding the curative remedy. However, we want to caution the reader against forcing square pegs into round holes. If the miasm is not clear in a case, you should not base your prescription upon a partial picture of the miasm, but rather depend upon some other aspect of the case…Dr. Sankaran [Rajan] is the genius whose insight gave us the ideas for this entire work. However, though this book is based upon Dr. Sankaran's work, many of the insights and observations come from our personal experience. Some of these concepts are “human specific” rather than the core sensations that Dr. Sankaran emphasizes’.-x, xi

The homeopathic powerhouse husband and wife duo of Herrick and Morrison (Nancy and Roger respectively) combined efforts to produce this important reference on miasms, a subject which many of us, no doubt, hold close to our hearts ([Fig. 1]).

Roger Norman Morrison (b. 1954) spent his formative years in Tennessee and graduated from the University of Tennessee Medical School in 1978. For several years, early in his professional life, he practiced emergency medicine. Morrison read an article about homeopathy but, like many, readily dismissed it. Later, he reconsidered, and while still in his medical training, attended his first homeopathic seminar which was held in Athens, Greece at George Vithoulkas' Athenian Center for Homeopathic Medicine.

‘He began studying Greek, and in 1982 went to Greece to work in the clinic with Vithoulkas. He returned to the United States in May of 1984, and with Jonathan Shore, Nancy Herrick, Peggy Chipkin, and Christine Ciavarella established the Hahnemann Clinic in Berkeley [and the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, California]’. -Julian Winston, Faces, p. 355.

Morrison was one of the founders of The Hahnemann College of Homeopathy, which was established in 1985. He has written numerous articles in addition to his books.

Nancy Ann Herrick (b. 1947) is a physician's assistant graduating from the University of California in Davis, class of 1981. Nancy heard her first lecture about homeopathy in 1972 shortly after receiving a masters' degree in psychology and child development. So influenced, she began homeopathic studies on her own in 1974 and began her clinical practice at the Hering Family Health Clinic. She was one of the founders, in 1975, of that clinic located in San Francisco, California. Ms. Herrick received an honorary doctorate from American Medical College of Homeopathy (Phoenix, Arizona, United States) in 2011.

This monograph consists of a dozen chapters, ten for each miasm plus a 15 page introduction, ‘The Historical Evolution of Miasms’ and ‘Remedies and their Miasms’ of 32 pages. This last section consists of three subsections: ‘Miasms in Relationship to Families and Kingdoms,’ ‘Index of Remedies’ (grouped according to the ten miasms) and ‘Animal Remedies and their Sources’ (grouped according to the ten miasms). There is a small index. The book is completely set in a sans-serif font with a liberal use of bold and italic fonts throughout to provide adequate emphasis.

Each of the chapters is identically set up: there is a brief discussion of the disease, its physical manifestations, themes of the particular miasm, confirmatory symptoms and a differential diagnosis followed by a language-of-the-patient section. This last section (language-of-the-patient) consists of several cases (in the Ringworm section there are three). What follows this chapter are three sub-chapters each containing a mineral case, a plant case and an animal case. Thus, each miasmatic chapter contains three sub-chapters.

To get a flavour of how a case is presented, I chose a rather short one, ‘A Case of Graphites,’ which is the first of three Ringworm cases included in the Ringworm's chapter, language-of-the-patient:

This was a businessman in his mid-fifties who spoke in clear, practical Ringworm language. He brought his wife in to see us for rheumatoid arthritis, and she was completely cured. he knew that eventually he would come to see us as well.

Theme: Learn to Live with It. Resigned.

‘I planned on coming down and seeing you next spring, but then it popped into my mind that this was one of the few years we’ve ever hit our deductibles on insurance, so this would be a good year to do it. That's why I'm coming down now, because it's been so much worse than it's ever been, and we have hit our deductibles. I thought it was a good financial time to get this done'.

He has a pragmatic Ringworm approach to his treatment. He can wait until an opportune time to come for treatment. There is not the urgency seen in earlier miasms.

‘I’m always plugged up'.

‘I’m always' is primarily Ringworm and Sycotic language. What is remarkable to these miasms is that it is continuous. Not that Tubercular, Cancer, and Leprosy won't have persistent complaints: in these deeper miasms the issue is no longer the persistence of the condition but what the condition is doing to them. It's ‘killing, destroying me, suffocating me.’ That is what becomes the issue, not the fact that it is more or less permanent. Persistence as the main, noticeable characteristic of the condition is usually found in Sycotic and Ringworm miasms.

Theme: Slowly Progressive. Slowly recedes.

‘My sinuses are always plugged up. periodically, I cough a lot to get things out of my lungs. I itch a lot. my scalp, my ears, my nostrils are all really dry. They get really sore and red. Today is a good day, but it sounds as if I’ve had laryngitis. On the questionnaire I filled out, it asked about psoriasis, and I don't know if that's what it would be called, but in the worst times my scalp, around parts of my head, gets really flakey. Right near my nose and across my forehead the skin gets dry and flakey, especially near the hairline'.

He has multiple irritating skin conditions all around his face and head. His symptoms go up and down but never quite disappear.

‘I’ve had two children. My oldest girl was married and is going through a divorce right now. My oldest son was married and divorced. He's happily married now. They both have had struggles'.

‘I don’t get stressed. I really don't. Frankly, I don't believe in stress. I think that's something people use as a cop-out, and I'm not saying there isn't some concern out there. I think that everybody thinks everything is stressful now. I don't buy it. The more stress -what people would call stress- the better I respond. If I'm up against time, if I'm up against hard-to-do-things or impossible things, I perform better. I realize most people don't, but I do. I go until the fire is right there. I don't tend to get real excited'.

This has likely been the patient's approach to life since he was a child. It is easy for him to say that he does not get worked up over things, because he is Ringworm and not typhoid miasm. He does not recognize stress, which to him is a cop-out for other people. He is in the successful side of his remedy state, though many Graphites patients are not. Here we need to concentrate on what he states he doesn't feel: Life is not a struggle for him -but who brought up the idea of struggle? Also look at what he projects onto his children: He says about his kids, ‘They have to struggle.’ Struggle is a very good word for the Ringworm miasm. They will use the word with regularity. Here we also see similarities to Psora.

‘Theme: Learn to Live with It. Resigned’.

Any fears or phobias?

‘Oh yeah! No phobias, but I cannot handle spiders. Spiders drive me up the wall. I call my kids in to take care of the critters. Snakes I can handle, scorpions. In fact, in July we went on an outing with the Scouts in the west desert, and we found rattlesnakes, tarantulas, and scorpions. None of those bothered me. But you give me a spider on the wall of my tent and I just go into high speed. I just can’t take spiders. I understand -I saw a special on TV once several years ago- somewhere there is a course that can teach you not to be afraid of spiders. I don't care. They showed where people put their hands in these aquariums filled with spiders, and they are just crawling around. No. I'll just keep my fear of spiders.

He accepts the limitation. It is not a problem for him. Sycotic miasm also has this characteristic of accepting limitations. The difference is that Sycotic patients feel guilt and conflict about their acceptance, whereas in Ringworm, agreeing to limitations is not a big deal. They are accepting of themselves and their foibles. Graphites is not in the rubric ‘fear of spiders,’ but this extract is more about how he accepts the fear rather than what he fears. In the successful state, Sycosis is very cheerful; but in the failure sate, they are very tense. Ringworm is a lighter miasm'. –pp. 181-183).

There are a total of six Ringworm cases in the 36-page Ringworm chapter. For comparison, the Sycotic miasm chapter contains ten.

The author's important work will broaden your knowledge of this fascinating subject and you will no doubt acquire many useful and beneficial points from the numerous cases (86) which were thoughtfully included.

Notes:

• 1) Nancy has written: Animal Mind, Human Voices (1998; ‘There is a moment where homeopathy becomes something much greater – a reflection of the mystery of life. Nancy Herrick has skilfully, amazingly captured that moment in her provings. I believe that her work represents the cutting edge of homeopathy’. - David Kent Warkentin) and Sacred Plants, Human Voices Provings of Seven New Plant Remedies (2003; ‘Nancy's book on Sacred Plants opens up a vital area which has not received enough justice so far. Like her book on animal provings, this one too shows her painstaking research into each plant, followed by a detailed proving which is grouped according to themes and then made accessible by accurate indexing into rubrics…’ -Rajan Sankaran).

Roger has written Desktop Guide to Keynote and Confirmatory Symptoms (1993; ‘This book has never been in my library. It sits on my desk in my consultation room for ready access, and I refer to it frequently throughout each and every day of homeopathic practice. The Desktop Guide replaced my copy of Boericke's Materia Medica with Repertory on the day I received it in the mail. I find it far more useful than Boericke, more relevant to clinical practice... He has compiled and distinguished the most important symptoms of nearly 300 remedies…’ –Dean Crothers, MD), Desktop Guide to Physical Pathology (1998; ‘This is a book that took some courage to write and badly needed to be written. Although wholly contemporary in feeling and style, it speaks to the dilemma of busy homeopathic physicians in every time and place: how to keep doing quality work under pressure of time, reputation, and ever more difficult and demanding cases to come up with creditable prescriptions without delay’. Richard Moskowitz, MD) and Carbon: Organic and Hydrocarbon Remedies in Homeopathy (2006; ‘…even without the new ideas on analysis, the 649 pages of materia medica on the organic compound and carbon remedies consolidated in this book, makes it a “must have” resource’. (Randall Bradley, Simillimum, Summer/Fall 2006).

The couple produced two educational DVD video series: ‘Hahnemann College of Homeopathy Foundation Course’ (37 DVDs) and ‘Miasm Video Seminar’ (20 DVDs). These are also available from their web site.

They are currently working on their next project, a three-volume reference tentatively entitled Clinically Verified Materia Medica.

When I exchanged emails with Dr Morrison on February 3, 2023, he offered these comments on this forthcoming work:

‘It started out as a simple updating of Desktop Guide (my blue book). I started adding info from cases and over time this became a bigger and bigger interest. After already spending three years on it I scrapped the whole thing and started again using only symptoms which had been found in clinical (cured) cases. Nancy and I had been collecting cured cases from every seminar we attended, every journal we received and from all of our students over a forty year period’.

‘When you work from memory of your own cases, plus what others say about remedies, there is an echo chamber effect. Each person simply repeats or at best reinterprets information from older masters and older books. By the new technique, I take all the decent cases I find from all sources and study them together. Say I find eighteen Kreosotum cases from all sources, This lets me see what people are actually prescribing upon but also much ancillary data -the food cravings, subtle mental aspects, phobias, etc. (by the way, six of the Kreosotum cases had fear of airplanes -who would have guessed?) When you see the cases one after the next you find a ton of similarities you would never guess. Identical dreams, identical descriptions of a pain syndrome, etc. -especially in larger remedies (like Argentum nitricum) you might have 60 or even 100 cases to compare. Then you can begin to find info about the children -different than the teens, -different than the adults. The work involved is crushingly difficult but the results are spectacular -I already use the book to help in prescribing and I can’t wait to have it finished -just for selfish reasons of improving my practice results'!

‘You also find things missing - supposed keynotes which simply do not exist in clinical practice. So the whole thing allows for a much more accurate picture of the remedy. No opinion, just actual data. Not perfect data but better data. I was even able to clarify the data somewhat statistically -what percentage or number of Belladonna cases were violent and which types of violence were most frequent’.

‘I’ve been working on this for ten plus years and I'm about half-way done and hoping to publish the first third by year's end. Each of the three volumes will be about a thousand pages. It's very dense and tedious work...'

Publication History

Article published online:
07 August 2023