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Photo by Jim Craven Dr. Sylvia Chatroux -- an M.D. and homeopath -- has written a book of poems based on homeopathic remedies. A patient, Jana Knittel, left, waits in Chatroux's Ashland office. Physician pens homeopathic poems Graduate school project turns into two books of poetry with medical theme By BILL VARBLE Here's something you don't see every day: a book of poems about homeopathic remedies. And something else: a doctor becoming a homeopath. Sylvia Chatroux is the second, and now she's gone and produced the first. Dr. Chatroux, a family practitioner based in Ashland, has been studying homeopathy at the Hahnemann College of Homeopathy in Berkeley, Calif., at the same time as she practices conventional medicine. After four years of study, she needed a student project to graduate. Ergo, poems about homeopathy. "It just came to me," she says of the idea for the book. "I'd been studying and going down to Berkeley for my classes. My adviser said I could do it, and the poems just started to come.'' Her adviser said she'd need at least 40 poems to complete the project. Chatroux (rhymes with "true"), 42, started writing the poems in August of 1997. By August of this year she had a finished copy of the cloth-bound "Materia Poetica" in hand. It's not 40 poems, but 101, each on a homeopathic remedy such as berberis, nitric acid, sulphur and veratrum. It's available at Bloomsbury Books, natural food stores and elsewhere for $18. Once the muse came, the poems wouldn't quit. "I literally couldn't stop," she says. "I read them to my family and friends. I got a lot of encouragement." The title is a play on the "Materia Medica," a famous book dating back to the 19th-century founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann's theory was that disease is an imbalance, and health can be restored by a remedy of animal, vegetable or mineral origins, the effects of which are similar to the symptoms of the illness. This is the homeopathic principle, "Like cures like." Another linchpin of homeopathy is potentiation. This theory holds that the matter or herb used as a remedy becomes more powerful the more it's cut, even to the point where only an infinitesimal amount remains. Some swear by it. How does it work? "Nobody really knows," Chatroux says. "The theory is it moves the energy in the direction of healing." The charm of these poems lies in bringing to life the personality of the remedies. For example, a poem on theridion, a remedy made from a spider, goes in part: "The orange spider/Can't take noise/It causes vertigo/It causes teeth to ache/It causes pain to flow ... " Chatroux explains, "If you came to me with these symptoms, I might give you theridion." Most doctors disdain homeopathy as beyond the pale of science. How many accept it, let alone use it? "Very few," Chatroux admits. She says her interest was sparked by seeing more and more patients dissatisfied with conventional medicine. Then a homeopath in Ashland had good results treating one of Chatroux's daughters and encouraged her to find out more. "It's been really fascinating," she says. "I use both." Chatroux isn't one to stick to the path well-trodden. Originally from New York City, she was a stone carver before she went to medical school at Stoneybrook School of Medicine on Long Island. Her first goal was to become a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. She switched to surgery, then family practice. "It sort of blended everything together," she says. She completed her residency at Case Western Reserve University Hospitals in Ohio and began practicing in Ashland five years ago. She says the medical community has been supportive. "Of course, not everybody knows yet," she adds. At last count the muse wasn't passing out medical metaphors to just everybody (although the American poet William Carlos Williams was an M.D.). But Chatroux isn't finished with the field. Her next book is already gestating. It will be called "Medica Poetica." She figures she's already covered the remedies; this one will cover the illnesses. 'Hypericum' Hypericum, I've given you To those with shooting pains You really have a way with nerves With injuries you're famed Consider it for punctures Where nerves are passing through It may be used for Tetanus Preventing it to brew I find it interesting to note St. John's wort is now the rage For depression it is taken The tincture of our age Depression follows injury This is often true And if the pain shoots up the limb Hypericum's for you! -- A sample poem from Materia Poetica Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA