Massimo Mangialavori
Seminar March 24 – 26,2000, in Augsburg/Germany“The Arsenicums” For years I had wanted to attend a seminar of Massimo,
after having read an article written by him in ‚Homoeopathic Links‘. Now finally everything matched: I had time to visit his 3 days-seminar about the ‚Arsenicums, a topic which he had already presented
a couple of weeks before in the US.
About 70 homoeopaths were present in this room, many of them equipped with their lap-tops – their constant ‚clickety-click‘ was like the humming of bees, calming
down and rising again, when interesting symptoms, observations and explanations were offered.
Massimo is a very nice guy, open, vivacious with vivid explanations. Though his Italian English made it
sometimes a little bit difficult for the German auditory to understand every term used, most of us soon got accustomed to his pronounciation – but once again I saw the difficulties, when people of
different mother-tongues try to argue in depth in a third language. The subtleties can’t be transferred so easily.
First he presented the general themes of the Arsenicums, such as
- Loss
- No shell, not protected, no trust, not supported, not safe (even at home, with the family; therefore prefers toys, object, can’t invest much emotions)
- Suspiciousness
- Future
- Sensitiveness (alert)
- Restlessness – fruitless occupation-escape
- Censoriousness , carefullness, rationality, conscientious about trifles
- Exertion
- Lying
- Offensiveness of discharges
- Burning
- Desquamation
- Dryness
- Thirst
(General themes can also be found by combining the rubrics of {Ars, Ars-i, Ars-a} or {Kali-ar, Nat-ar, Aur-ar, Fer-ar, Calc-ar} Then he introduced the following remedies step by step:
- Arsenicum sulphuratum flavum
- Arsenicum metallicum
- Arsenicum album
- Ferrum arsenicosum
- Cuprum arsenicosum
- Aurum arsenicosum
- Arsenicum iodatum
For each remedy he presented 2 different cases. He told us his first impression of the patient, the behaviour, the manners, the clothing - or , as in the 2 cases of horses, descriptions of coat,
eating behaviour etc.
In our hands we had in printed pages the exact words of the patient during the first consultation which then were read aloud by different participants. Through different notations
it was quite easy to distinguish the spontaneous remarks of the patient from the answers that were given to Massimo’s questions – which he inserted during the reading.
So it was interesting for me
to see what sort of questions he had used to get further informations from the patient. Mainly these were :
- What do you mean?
- Can you tell me more about it?
- Can you remember when it started?
- What else can you tell me?
- How did you feel about it?
Very open questions, not trying to move the patient in a certain direction. He didn‘t put much emphasis on the modalities during the interview.
After having read one case he asked us about our
impressions, about what was interesting in this case. Then the next case followed. - Afterwards we tried to find out what the 2 cases had in common. And so, slowly, the specific themes for each remedy
were emerging.
Still more interesting were the follow-ups, which unfortunately were not printed, but only told by Massimo – though the Italian text could be followed on the big screen. The precise words
of the patients, weeks and months after receiving the remedy (sometimes several prescriptions of the same remedy involved with the same or a rising potency) gave us even more hints to the nature of the
remedy prescribed.
The potencies used ranged from C30, C200, 10M to LM1, LM3, LM5, and were often given daily in the beginning for several days. Afterwards placebo was given, sometimes for a long time.
As an example: Arsenicum sulphuratum flavum Themes:
- Service
- Sacrifice, but without sympathy, without real compassion
- Overwork
- Untidiness
- Fanaticism
- Complaining
- Congestion
- Escape
- Eating
- Respiration
Rubrics:
- MIND, anxiety, faintness after
- MIND; lamenting, alternating with laughing
All these remedies of the Arsenicum family were well presented. Massimo really has the ability to make those families alive, to show what the members have in common and what
differentiates them from the others. Back to Articles |
