“Beautifully written and organized…destined to become a classic text.”
Comparative Materia Medica: Integrating New and Old Remedies
This book offers an original perspective on comparative materia medica, incorporating information on newer and less understood remedies within the framework of well-known remedies. It clarifies and systematizes our study of materia medica, allowing us to navigate the complexities of materia medica study more effectively.
There are thirty-six chapters, each one focusing on a well-known remedy, giving an initial summary and utilizing a three-stage development for each remedy – Intrinsic, Compensated, Decompensated – that relates to the three fundamental miasms of Psora, Sycosis and Syphilis. Each remedy is compared and discussed within this framework, weaving comparisons with many other remedies in the process. Understanding how to relate and compare remedies is essential in the development of homeopathic knowledge and this book explores comparisons and relationships from many perspectives – constitutional, mental, pathological, miasmatic, keynote, organ affinity etc.
There are discussions of remedies from all realms: animals such as insects, birds, mammals and sea remedies; common and unusual mineral and metal remedies and plant and other vegetable remedies, including fungi. Remedies from the bacteria and virus families and other imponderabilia are compared, always looking at possible connections to well-proven and documented remedies. A Comparative Materia Medica offers a bridge; it allows for the exploration of new areas of homeopathic knowledge, and seeks to ground our existing knowledge into a coherent pattern so the practice of homeopathy can be objectively applied and verified.
The Author: Richard Pitt
Richard Pitt has practiced homeopathy for over 30 years, initially in the U.K. and then the United States. He was director of a homeopathy school in San Francisco for 12 years and taught homeopathy throughout the country. He has been active in many homeopathic organizations, including the Council for Homeopathic Certification, the largest certifying body in North America, the California Health Freedom Coalition, which established a health freedom bill in California and the California Homeopathic Medical Society. He has written three other homeopathy books: a homeopathic travel guide, The Natural Medicine Guide for Travel and Home and its companion book, a Natural Health Guide for Travel and Home and also a study of tobacco, Tobacco, An Exploration of its Nature Through The Prism of Homeopathy. He was also editor of an online homeopathic journal, the California Homeopath for eight years and has written extensively for many journals. He has spent many years traveling, especially in India and parts of Africa and has worked on homeopathic projects in three African countries for over eight years. He was Educational Director of the Kenya School for Integrated Medicine, based near Mombasa, Kenya for five years and ran a European Union funded Public Health project, working with the Kenyan Ministry of Health. He is now living between Spain and the UK and writing a Therapeutic Guide to Homeopathic Medicine, based on his years of clinical experience in various African countries.
Richard Moscovitz MD
It is a wonderful book for beginners, I think: it’s easy to read, succinct and economical, and it covers many of the remedies most frequently prescribed, rather than emphasizing the unusual ones that we love to parade at our conferences. Also it follows in the old tradition by taking them one by one, alluding to families, but not going off on tangents like the Periodic Table, miasms, and families, splendid though they are; so it gets the student started on the same path that we all started and still need to start on, i.e., no shortcuts. Yet there’s plenty here for experienced prescribers, too.
Nancy Herrick DH(H), PA & Roger Morrison MD
Comparative Materia Medica by Richard Pitt is an overview of the entire body of new work that has been done in the last fifteen years in homeopathy. It will guide the studious homeopath where they need to go to pursue their studies in whatever topic strikes their interest, be in mammals, fungi or metals. It may show you where your homeopathic deficiencies are and what you need to study next. We recommend this book for an overview of the exciting whole new world of homeopathy. Thank you, Richard.
Andreas Bjorndal
Reading this book is like getting the experience of Richards more than 30 years of practice and broad experience around the world. This is a great book for students as well as practitioners that wants to update their knowledge to the latest development. The book is unifying, broadening and sharing. He manages to cover the main Idea of every remedy nicely as well as give you the main landscape of the picture. The most important is how he manages to broaden your understanding and search to the updated extensive world of contemporary Materia Medica.
Peter Fraser
This readable and reliable book updates and modernizes the incredibly useful concept of the Comparative Materia Medica
Fran Treuherz RSHom
This book joins the slim ranks of books on homeopathy which one can call literature, like the materia medica of Margaret Tyler or Roger Morrison. There is none of the railway timetable style listings, nor is it suitable for reading on short journeys. This is for a long ride or a comfortable armchair. The only heaviness is the 527 page length. The main body of the materia medica takes us into the feelings – and the science – of each remedy and its themes and a range of other remedies which may be considered. Richard goes deeply inside the remedies and displays all the finesse possible of a well-read homeopath with over 30 years’ experience under his belt. I am for once lost for the right words to describe the depths of this beautiful work. Go for it now.
Lucy Vaughters, CCH, PA-C, MA-T
This is the book I wish I had had 20 years ago, and hope every homeopathy student has now. Beautifully written and organized. Thank you for this enormous gift to homeopaths and our patients. It is destined to become a classic text.