ince we learned to know homeopathy and its materiae medicae, it seemed strange to us, that the remedies are always put into alphabetical order and that often it is not even recognizable what kind of substance it really is, that we are using.
During the last few years fortunately the question which natural substances we are dealing with and how they are related towards each other, has found more interest among those working with homeopathy. As in nature - as far as we understand it - there is nothing arbitrary, we have to suppose that with the further developement of our knowledge there will be a certain kind of structure to be found amongst homeopathic remedies, which will not be independent of the natural relationship among the substances as such.
We will only be able to systematically observe these similarities between different remedies as long as the natural order of relationships among animals, plants and chemical substances is known to us. The alphabetical order obviously does not encourage this. For this reason we have put the remedies into their modern scientific order. To avoid misunderstandings we wish to state clearly that we are not of the opinion that an homeopathic system of remedies and their relationship could be simply identical with this scientific order. But as a kind of working basis for further studies and observations the natural system will help us more than an alphabetical one.
In the following survey you will find all homeopathic remedies mentioned in the common works of Hahnemann, Kent, Allen, Clarke, Hering, Boericke, Mezger and also in the more summarizing materiae medicae of Phatak, Vermeulen, Murphy. Besides this we have added most of the plants generally used in herbalism as well as the plants used by Edward Bach. We have tried to include the fast increasing number of proved or unproved new remedies, but certainly missed some of them.
Despite all our efforts there will be several mistakes and incompletenesses. And we are grateful for any corrections, suggestions, additions and criticism.
For important advice on the subject we thank pharmacist Brita Gudjons; Kathleen A. Kron, Chairperson of Systematic Section of the Botanical Society of America; Jeremy Sherr; Massimo Mangialavori; Magister Robert Müntz of Remedia Pharmacy, as well as many others that cannot all be mentioned.
A special thank to Frank Kuhlmann for offering a huge collection of material and summaries.
And thanks to all those who have contributed their provings and have spared no effort to conduct and elaborate all those homoeopathic remedy provings.