Studying the Materia Medica

Similia includes an integrated Materia Medica section where you can read and search across multiple sources to study remedies and confirm prescriptions.

What your plan includes

• Free: browse the remedy list and read the 21 classic books. Choosing Semantic or starting a keyword search opens the upgrade window, unless the account owns a premium book that includes it (see below).
• Pro: keyword and semantic search across the classic books and Jan Scholten's books, plus the taxonomy filter, Relations, and highlights and notes. Other premium books are included according to your edition or add-ons.
• Premium books and add-ons (for example Murphy, Pitt, Mangialavori, Saine, Vermeulen or the Jeremy Sherr Provings) can be read and semantically searched by the accounts that own them. Without Pro, keyword search is also open to owners of Saine's Summaries, Saine's Monographs or the Jeremy Sherr Provings. It then searches the premium books the account owns, not the classic books. Owning only other premium books, such as Pitt, The Lacs, the Vermeulen Prisma volumes or Vermeulen Plants, does not open keyword search without Pro.

Basic workflow

1. Open Materia Medica.
2. Select a remedy from the list, or type part of its name or abbreviation in the remedy filter ("Start typing a remedy name").
3. To search inside the texts, choose Keyword (words and phrases) or Semantic (symptoms in your own words) in the search box.
4. In Keyword mode, use Match: (the sliders icon on phones) to set how close the words must be, then click Search (the magnifier icon on phones) or press Enter.

The remedy list and the Coverage column

On larger screens, the Materia Medica browse table lists remedies with a Coverage column. Coverage is the number of Materia Medica sources that contain the remedy, so a remedy covered by more sources has more material to read. It can include sources you have not unlocked. Vermeulen's, Scholten's, Pitt's and Saine's books each count as one source, while each classic book (for example each of Lippe's three books) counts on its own. Hovering the value shows "Covered by N sources". You can sort the table by Coverage to find the best-documented remedies first.

Remedies you have not unlocked

The remedy list also shows remedies that appear only in books on sale that your plan does not include. Clicking one opens an Available in list naming the books that cover it. Each entry has an Unlock button that opens its purchase options; books sold together share one entry. Opening a locked book's page shows "You don't have access to this source yet" with See unlock options, rather than an error.

Each premium add-on also has one free sample remedy you can read before buying, marked Free sample. Add-ons that hold several separate books in Similia (for example Pitt or the Vermeulen Ultimate Prisma Bundle) have one sample per book, and the Jeremy Sherr Provings sample shows only part of one proving. The add-on's page in the Shop links to the samples under Read a free sample.

Search modes

The search box has two modes, Keyword and Semantic.

In Keyword mode, Match: sets how close the words must be:

• Words in sequence: the words appear next to each other
• Same sentence: the words appear in the same sentence (the default)
• Anywhere in remedy: the words appear anywhere in the remedy text

Keyword search matches the beginning of words, so "throb" also finds "throbbing". It also handles hyphenated terms. When you enter several words, a remedy must contain all of them, as set by Match:.

If the Semantic option is missing

In Settings → Work mode, Manual hides the AI tools that find rubrics and remedies for you, including semantic search in the Materia Medica. In Manual mode the search box has no Keyword / Semantic toggle and runs a keyword search, and the Match: options stay available. To bring Semantic back, choose AI-assisted in Settings → Work mode. If Semantic was your last choice on this device, it is selected again.

Semantic Search for Materia Medica

Semantic Search finds remedies whose texts match symptoms described in your own words. It searches only the sources your account can open: the classic authors and Jan Scholten's books with Pro, and the premium or add-on sources the account owns. These include Murphy, Richard Pitt, Mangialavori, Meditative, Griffith, Hatherly (The Lacs), Saine (Monographs and Summaries), the Jeremy Sherr Provings, and the Vermeulen books you own.

How to use it

1. In Materia Medica, select Semantic in the search box.
2. Type a symptom and press Enter or Tab to add it as a separate entry. Repeat for each symptom.
3. To remove the last symptom, press Backspace on an empty input. To remove any symptom, click the × on it.
4. To search only certain books, select them in the Filters list (see "Choosing which books are searched" below). With nothing selected, every source you can access is searched.
5. Click Search, or press Enter on an empty input.

Reading results

• Results are ranked by how strongly remedies match your symptoms across the searched sources. Each result shows a relevance percentage and how many of your symptoms it matched.
• Click a source name on a result to open that book at the remedy with the matched passages highlighted. To move from one highlight to the next, use the up and down arrows in the reader.

Reading in your own language

The classic books are translated into 17 languages: German, Spanish, Turkish, Portuguese, Russian, French, Dutch, Hebrew, Polish, Bulgarian, Hindi, Romanian, Japanese, Italian, Greek, Chinese and Bengali. To switch the app to one of them, use Change language in the avatar menu (in the main menu on phones). Classic books then open in the translation where one is available. Keyword search also looks in that translation and highlights matches in the translated text, so type your search words in the app's language. The flag button in the remedy header switches that remedy between the translation and the English original. Premium and add-on books are not translated and are searched in their original language.

Highlighting and taking notes while you read

With Pro you can highlight passages in a Materia Medica book in six highlight colours, attach your own notes to them, and write notes for a page as a whole. Your own notes can also be linked to a remedy or family so that they appear as a source alongside the classic authors when you read that remedy. These notes live in the My Notes tool.

Source and author controls

Choosing which books are searched

The Filters list decides which books are searched, in both Keyword and Semantic mode. It sits beside the results on larger screens and above them on phones.

1. Select the books you want under Modern authors or Classic authors. Selecting books also narrows the remedy list to the remedies they cover.
2. To select or clear every classic book at once, use All / Clear next to Classic authors (All classics / Clear classics on phones).
3. To clear your selection, select All Authors. With nothing selected, every source your account can access is searched. All Authors also clears the current search, its results and any taxonomy filter, so select it before you enter a new search. To widen a search without losing it, deselect the books one by one instead.

The line under the search box (for example "Searching 3 of 12 sources") shows how many sources are selected. Under Modern authors, books on sale that your account does not include appear dimmed, and selecting one opens its unlock options. If you have linked notes to remedies in My Notes, My notes also appears as a source.

Some authors are grouped into dropdowns where several books belong to the same author, such as Pitt, Boger, Lippe, Hahnemann, Scholten and Vermeulen.

Author priority

You can reorder Materia Medica author priority in Settings → Author priority. Free accounts can reorder the classic authors too, and premium authors appear when the account has access. The setup wizard that opens on your first sign-in also asks for up to five preferred authors. You can run it again from Settings under Tours & tutorials.

Remedy and taxonomy filters

You can narrow Materia Medica search by:

• specific remedies, with the Remedies button in the search box ("Limit to remedies")
• author/source, in the Filters list
• remedy taxonomy, including kingdom and family, with the Taxonomy button (Pro)

These filters help focus searches on a remedy group or a botanical, mineral, or animal family. On Free, the Kingdom and Family columns of the remedy list show a lock.

Relations between remedies

A remedy's Relations section (Compare, Complementary, Antidotes and so on) lists related remedies by their abbreviations, and needs Pro. Each recognised remedy is clickable: it opens a small preview with Open in Materia Medica, which takes you to that remedy's own Materia Medica page. Entries that do not match a known remedy are greyed out. To choose which books feed Relations, go to Settings → Relation sources.

Using the Materia Medica offline

Offline mode (Beta) is part of a paid Pro plan and is never available during a free trial. In the installed app with offline mode turned on, you can read and keyword-search the books downloaded to the device without a connection. Semantic search needs an internet connection. Offline, choosing it shows "This needs an internet connection. It works again as soon as the connection returns." Run the search again once you are back online. See "Using Similia Offline (Beta)".

Public author and book pages

Similia has public Materia Medica author/book pages and a library catalog. These pages help users inspect available sources and read public classic material outside the app.

Updated on: 11/10/2026