In 1998 VCCH commenced a project using the principles of Homeopathy and miasms (genetic inheritance) to further the understanding of chronic disease. This project has involved thousands of hours of research and highlights the role of miasms and how they can be effectively utilised in the clinic.

As the project developed it became clear that facial features play an important role in recognizing a patients' dominant miasm. All these findings, including an understanding of miasms and how to utilise them in clinical practice, have now been published in "Appearance and Circumstance" and "Homœopathic Facial Analysis" by Grant Bentley.

 

 

NINE STEPS TO PRACTISING HOMŒOPATHY USING FACIAL ANALYSIS

 

By Grant Bentley and Louise Barton

 

Homœopathic Facial Analysis (HFA) is the most straightforward and accurate way of determining a patient’s miasm.  It allows for the selection of a remedy that will act in a constitutional way to enhance a patient’s health. It reduces and removes symptoms for long periods of time, using only one or in some cases a few miasmatic remedies given one at a time.

 

The following nine step plan demonstrates how to incorporate miasmatic prescribing using facial analysis into clinical application.

 

ACTION	ANALYSIS	TOOLS	CASE MANAGEMENT
1 – Case taking	3 – Choosing rubrics	5 – Homœopathic software	7 – Potency and frequency of dose
2 – Taking photos	4 – Choosing the miasm	6- Digital camera	8 - Outcome
			9 – Maintaining health

 

 

 

A step by step example of the process of HFA

 

FIRST VISIT

      Case is taken

      Photos taken

      Symptoms charted

      Rubrics chosen from chart

      Miasm selected from photos

      Rubrics repertorised

      Remedy selected from miasmatic group

      Potency and frequency of dose chosen

 

SECOND VISIT AND SUBSEQUENT VISIT

Symptoms analysed

 

1          Good outcome – continue treatment as required

 

2          Poor outcome – repeat the following steps

      Check photos to validate miasm

      Take new photos if first set are unclear

      Check rubrics

      Re repertorise

      Change remedy

 

 

This method has been used on all patients presenting with chronic disease over an eight year period by a number of practitioners in Melbourne Australia.  Using a small number of remedies (about 50 polychrests) results have improved dramatically.  This has been even more so in the last few years as the method has become more streamlined.  The following steps are how we practice.

 

1 – CASE TAKING

 

The aim of case taking is to get the totality of the patient’s symptoms.  It is not about psychoanalysis or putting the patient through a deeply reflective process.  It is about finding a simillimum that will bring about better health. 

 

General classical Homœopathic concepts apply –

 

      Listening

      Removing judgement

      Observing patterns

      Understanding the main complaint – what, when, how

      Checking from top to toe for all physical complaints – current and history

      Ensuring all generals are covered – sleep, appetite, thirst, food (cravings, aversions, aggravations), bowels/urination, menses, perspiration, environmental sensitivity, positions and time factors

 

Special care must be taken when using mental rubrics.  There are two ways ‘mentals’ can be used and they must be chosen very carefully as this is the area where judgment by the practitioner will lead to errors of rubric choice.

 

Emotional responses – use sparingly and only when they are very clear – for example weeping, anger, jealousy are usually very easy to see and can be used as a firm rubric choice

 

Circumstances – asking the patient to give you a biography of their life with an emphasis on important moments is a solid way of determining the energy pattern of their life.  It is not about what they think of themselves or how they would like to be but about what actually happened.  Being factual means the practitioner is working on solid ground.  Examples would be a history of violence (Mind – Violence), a strong concentration on business (Mind – Business or Mind – Dreams of business) or people who spend much of their time alone (Mind – Company aversion to).

 

Another way circumstances provide mental rubrics is by using the emotional state of the people around the patient.  For example a patient who has had three jealous partners – even though they are not jealous themselves, are attracting jealousy to them therefore jealousy becomes an important theme in their life (Mind – Jealousy).  Another example is a patient who tells of a family who is always fighting, (Mind – Quarrelsome).

 

2 – TAKING PHOTOS

 

Photos are taken after the case taking is completed but prior to the analysis.  This is a good time for the patient too as you have gained their confidence through the case taking process.  Detailed instructions for taking photos can be found in Homœopathic Facial Analysis by Grant Bentley. 

 

      Tell the patient about why you are taking photos before the consultation begins

      Have a set way of explaining the purpose of taking the photos

      Use simple terms like group or genetics rather than miasms

      Do not use pathologies when describing miasms

 

Five photos are required –

 

1.      Straight on – relaxed mouth

2.      Straight on – broad smile

3.      Straight on – hair pulled back

4.      Profile left

5.      Profile right

 

      Each image must show the patient holding their head as straight as possible

      All images must be in focus and must fill the screen – ie so the patient isn’t too far away

      The five photos must clearly show the following aspects of the face -  hairline, forehead, eyes, bridge of nose, mouth, teeth, smile, chin and ears

 

3 – CHOOSING RUBRICS

 

After taking the case and photos we do a case analysis.  Symptoms are categorized into a chart as follows

 

MENTALS	GENERALS	PHYSICALS
Fearful ++ Jealousy themes ++ Dreams – vivid + Likes friends +	< night ++ > rest Des coffee +++ Av milk + Burning pains +++ Right sided ++ < summer Constipation - occasional	Sinus – pain, discharge – yellow - occasional Headaches – frontal ++ Knee pain + Skin – eruption itchy – on chin

 

It is easier to determine which rubrics to choose when the whole case is clearly laid out in front of you.  It is important to observe patterns, intensity of symptoms and what is unusual.  Our aim for the repertorisation is to choose between five and eight rubrics that meet the following criteria

 

      The symptom is frequent

      The symptom is intense or distinctive

      The symptom is unusual

 

Mentals	Generals	Physicals
1-2 rubrics	3-5 rubrics	1-2 rubrics

 

 

By ensuring that each of these three areas has some representation (with the majority being generals) the remedies coming through will be certain to cover the case.  Note that general rubrics are always the most important and if your case is mostly mental or physical, it will be more difficult to find the correct remedy. 

 

So in our example above we might choose

 

      MIND; JEALOUSY (65)

      MIND; FRIGHTENED easily (162)

      GENERALITIES; NIGHT, nine pm. - five am.; agg. (262)

      GENERALITIES; FOOD and drinks; coffee; desires (51)

      GENERALITIES; PAIN; burning; internally (195)

      GENERALITIES; SIDE; right (225)

      HEAD PAIN; LOCALIZATION; Forehead (430)

 

Note that we try to use rubrics with 40-500 remedies in them.  Even though this will bring us more remedies to choose from we can feel certain that the one remedy we need will be amongst the group.  In the example above fourteen remedies will repertorise.  Once we know our patients miasm our choice will become much smaller.

 

4 – CHOOSING THE MIASM

 

      Facial analysis will always determine the miasm accurately

      Pathology is a poor indicator of miasms

      Psora, sycosis and syphilis are the base of all miasmatic prescribing

      Essence pictures of psora, sycosis and syphilis are incomplete

      All miasms are equal in their potential for destruction

 

 

Each facial feature is influenced by psora, sycosis or syphilis or a combination of two or more miasms. Some facial features are within normal range and will not rate.  Categorised features (about seventy in total) are detailed in both books on HFA

 

Appearance and Circumstance – photos

Homœopathic Facial Analysis – sketches

There are fifteen feature areas on each face

 

1. Hairline
2. Forehead
3. Bridge of nose
4. Eyes
5. Nose
6. Cheeks
7. Mouth
8. Lips
9. Smile
10. Teeth
11. Chin
12. Ears
13. Lines
14. Skin
15. Asymmetry

 

 

These features and their miasmatic classifications come from more than eight years of observation and analysis from thousands of patients – they have been clinically verified and form the basis of HFA.

 

Learning to apply HFA

 

      Practice on at least fifty faces before expecting to be competent

      Use family, friends, patients, television and movies

      Practice taking photos

      Use the HFA book to help in defining parameters

      Chart your results

 

It is important to take your time and judge carefully.  Use the HFA book as a desktop guide – soon you will remember the features well and know when to allocate them and when to leave them out.  Make a simple chart like the following and place the patient’s features in them.  Not every feature is rated as some fall within “normal” parameters. 

 

PSORA (Yellow)	SYCOSIS (Red)	SYPHILIS (Blue)
Down-turned nose Close set eyes Two lines Thin lips Two front teeth Chin – receding Ears – sloped   7 features	Wide nose Teeth – straight             2 features	Hairline – high Asymmetry – nose, eyes Dimples           3 features

 

The patient in this example will need a psoric remedy as their psoric features dominate over their sycotic and syphilitic features.

 

COLOURS

 

Are used to describe the miasms – see Appearance and Circumstance for detailed description

 

      Pathology is not an accurate way to determine a miasm

      Colours are non-judgemental

      Colours are easy to remember

 

For example patients who are dominated by the tubercular miasm can get cancer and patients dominated by the cancer miasm can get tuberculosis.  By removing the pathological tags we remove the disease name from our minds and focus on the true nature of the miasm.

 

5 – HOMŒOPATHIC SOFTWARE

 

Provides the following benefits

 

      Large rubrics are very useful – they cast a wide net and will draw our remedy to us

      Cases can be looked at from more than one perspective

      Saves time

 

We use MacRepertory Complete but any Homœopathic software will be adequate.  The package you choose must contain all the generals as grouped by Boenninghausen and Kent including modern updates.

 

6 – DIGITAL CAMERA

 

      Give instant images

      More accurate than the naked eye

      Catch the patient in the best position

      Allow for many extra images until the information is fully provided

 

WHAT TYPE OF CAMERA?

 

2.2 to 7.2 megapixels

 

The higher the megapixels the more definition.  Definition is helpful for zooming in on teeth or hairlines. 

 

7 – POTENCY AND FREQUENCY OF DOSE

 

Everyone in Homœopathy has different ideas about posology.  We commenced our clinics using Kentian prescribing but have developed the following guidelines from ongoing clinical experience.  We find daily doses of 6C or 30C satisfactory for many patients and can give daily doses for one, two or more months without any aggravations provided there is continuous or sustained improvement. However there are still cases that are given a single dose of 200C or 1M with occasional repeats as required.

 

What about aggravations?

When choosing a remedy from within the patient’s miasm few aggravations are encountered as long as the remedy matches the totality and the potency is low enough to suit the patients sensitivity.

 

 

VCCH POSOLOGY GUIDELINES

	6C daily	30C daily	200C sd	1M sd	10M sd
Structural pathology – long term or very bad	x
Structural pathology – less severe		x
Functional signs and symptoms – daily occurence		x	x	x
Functional signs and symptoms - intermittent			x	x
Allergies – all ages	x	x
Child - sensitive		x
Child – first remedy  (no structural pathology)			x
Child – second remedy or later (no structural pathology)			x	x
Mental symptoms dominant (no sp or strong fss)			x	x
Mentals with structural pathology	x	x
Mentals with functional signs and symptoms		x	x	x
Elderly – structural pathology – long term/very bad	x