The New Synoptic One (First Edition, August 2004)

Introduction

Synoptic Materia Medica, affectionately known as the Silver Book, dawned with a shimmer of light that pierced the darkness of prescribed materia medica reading in 1992. Until this time, student and practitioner alike had to face the dense impenetrability of 19th century Latinate language to understand their late 20th century homeopathic medical art.

Synoptic One lightened this lugubrious penumbra with a glimmer of hope as lambent as its silver cover.

The book had originally grown out of Frans Vermeulen's need to structure the vast amount of homeopathic data into simple, straightforward remedy pictures for students of the Dutch, Finnish and Irish Schools of Homeopathy. He found it dismayingly difficult to compose a coherent picture from fragmentary and often contradictory information.
However, the man is a luminary, and he has a mission. Our patients and we homeopaths are the beneficiaries of his task.

After 9 reprints in 12 years, the Silver Book was in need of revitalization. The New Synoptic One was born, some 300 pages longer, looking remarkably like its sister, but more mature. The remedies are the same, with the inclusion of Bambusa.

In this updated book Frans Vermeulen has as ever aimed to give homeopaths a clear, concise materia medica that can be used as handy reference, while containing all the key characteristics, essences and nuclei of the chosen remedies. He has maximised the information and sources available in as few precise words as possible. This synthesis is a concentration of information from many sources - the ancient and the modern, and including material from the late Pierre Schmidt's extensive library that took a week for four of us to comb through. However, to fully understand the works of modern authors, you are encouraged to follow up their ideas in their own books and lectures. We are living in times of exciting advances in Homeopathy. Frans is re-translating, correcting and restructuring information so that it is easier to categorise and access. This has resulted in 21pp. of Repertory additions, which are reproduced in full in this book. There is much new thinking on the relevance of the Kingdoms and Miasms. Rajan Sankaran has introduced the idea of Vital Sensation to the plant remedies. We are conversant with Jan Scholten's work on the Periodic Table. Massimo Mangialavori has extended our ideas about Families of remedies, continuing work bravely begun by previous generations.

Many ideas from living homeopaths find a place in this book making it a tool at the cutting edge of homeopathy.

Frans Vermeulen's aim in this book of materia medica is to structure some of the vast amount of information currently available to homeopaths, while making it a neat and enlightening reference tool. We hope it will help you to find the similimum for your patients.

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