If you've come to this page directly via a search engine, please note this article is mainly for homeopaths and students of homeopathy, so assumes a certain level of understanding of homeopathic concepts and terminology.
This Article originally published in The Homoeopathician, A Journal For Pure Homoeopathy, Vol. III January,1913 No. 1, from page no. 8 to 10.
The Language of the Repertory
By James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D., Chicago, III.
Introductory Note: To many who have not been thoroughly trained in repertory study, the practical value of such work remains uncomprehended. The following article has been prepared to shed light on some of the difficulties that confront those who have not learned to appreciate the immense value of such an index as is afforded in the modern Repertory, and how familiarity with it unlocks the store-house of our materia medica in the future to that rubric or symptom.
Many fail to use the repertory because they think of symptoms in pathological language or because they look for expressions in the language of tradition. It must be remembered that symptoms come to us from lay provers; that sick people are lay people. Both of these express sicknesses in the language of the layman and the repertory must be an index of the materia medica. Every effort to convert either the materia medica or the repertory into the language of traditional medicine must result in total failure. Technical language condenses the thought of a given sickness. That is all that is needed to convey all there is knowable from one physician to another until the question of the remedy comes up, and there the new question comes up: What is the remedy? The answer comes by asking another question: What are the symptoms? The symptoms are the speech of the Patient.
THE physician must study the homoeopathic principles until he learns what it is in sickness that guides to the curative remedy. He must study the materia medica until he learns what is needed to meet these demands.
He must then study the repertory until he learns how to use it so that he can find what he wants when he needs it. It must be admitted that many do mechanical work and fail to realize that any other kind is possible. The physician must read over and over the rubrics in the repertory in order to learn what is in it and how symptoms are expressed. Often he will see a rubric or a symptom that he would not have thought of seeking in that place; he should then settle in his own mind where he would have looked for it; then he should make one or several cross-references to guide him laity and of nature: uneducated nature—simple nature—appealing to an educated physician. The symptoms of a patient have no meaning whatever to an untrained physician—to a physician untrained in the significance of symptoms of the patient, of the prover—hence the repertory is meaningless to him. This explains why so many try to use the repertory and fail: they have had no teaching in our so-called homoeopathic colleges.
All who know how to use a repertory succeed, and not one has ever discarded it. It appears strange that all do not try to find some one to teach them to use it when there are so many willing to do it; it appears strange that they do not desire to know how to use the repertory; it appears strange that they have not learned to note the precise language of the patient, the language of the materia medica, and the language of the repertory.
Physicians who are ignorant in these methods see no difference when the same symptom appears in three different patients in the same family, though one has this symptom at 10 a.m., another at 1 a.m., and another at 4 p.m.; one is better from heat, another from cold, and the third not affected by either, and I have known them to ask very promptly: "What has that to do with it?" Three patients suffer from a similar headache: one is better in the open air, one is better from applied cold, and the third, from applied heat; and again comes the question: "What has that to do with it?" Yet these are only the first and simplest differences to be mentioned.
The inexperienced physician in our art trains his mind to lump and condense and concentrate and this leads in the opposite direction to what is required. We have large groups or rubrics but these are next split up into conditions, circumstances and modalities until every least difference in time, place, degree and manner is brought before the mind so that distinction and individualization may appear. "What has that to do with it?"
I will mention the word "weakness" and even our own students may say: "What a common general symptom to mention," but if he is weak—after eating, must lie down for a while, in hot weather, after stool, after mental and physical exertion, after sleep, who would not wonder if Selenium would not cure such a case? When such a group of circumstances is associated in catarrh of nose, throat and larynx, or carcinoma, and there are desire for open air, lack of vital heat, emaciation in advanced years, extreme sensitiveness to drafts—even warm drafts, there is nothing left for the homoeopathist but to give Selenium.
How can the inexperienced physician work this out without a repertory, properly used? The proper use of the repertory will lead to correct offhand prescribing in simple cases, in from ten to twenty years. The mechanical use of the repertory never leads to artistic prescribing nor to remarkable results. Certain mental characteristics go hand in hand; some characteristics of mind are necessary to good, artistic repertory-work, others are equally prohibitory.
Some minds cannot comprehend that potentization of any given drug is possible in proportion to the homoeopathicity of that drug to a given group of symptoms, and that when the drug is not similar, only attenuation is present. When attenuation becomes potentization is a question that the healing-artist alone can comprehend otherwise than theoretically. The physician who can clearly comprehend this can learn to comprehend the value of symptoms and therefore learn, by the aid of a repertory, to compare the symptoms of his patient; otherwise repertory-work is purely mechanical.
Perhaps a clinical case will best illustrate the subject.
Mrs. S., aged 47, a very excitable—almost hysterical—woman, for many years has suffered— violent occipital headaches.
Compelled to take strong medicines for years.
Occur every few days; never passes a week without one. Continue three days.
Heat and pressure give most relief.
Bowels constipated; for a week has no desire; then takes cathartics.
Says: "I have taken everything."
Stool hard and small, resembling sheep-dung.
Craves open air; cool air.
Heat flushes.
Menstruation absent lately.
Urine scanty and strong.
Eyes have sensation that they do not belong to her.
Cold knees and below knees.
Very tired and excitable.
Over-sensitive; extremely sensitive to touch over entire body.
What are the strange, rare and peculiar symptoms in this patient?
The remedies that have stool in round, hard balls resembling sheep dung that also have strong craving for open air are:
Alum., bar.-c, carb.-an., carb.-s., caust., graph., kali-s., mag-m., nat-m., nat-s., op., sulph.
No desire for stool for many days;
Alum., carb.-an., carb.-s., caust., graph., kali-s., mag.-m., nat.-m., op., sulph., and many others not related to the case.
Occipital headache: Alum., carb-an., carb-s., mag-m., nat.-m., op., sep., sulph.
jarring agg.: Carb-s., mag-m., nat.-m., sulph.
pressure amel.: Mag-m., nat-m., sulph.
heat amel.: Mag-m.
March 4th. Mag.-m. 10m.
April 9th. Mag.-m. 10m.
May 20th. Mag.-m. 50m.
There has been no headache since and she has been in good health. In this case the headache is a common one, but it was what she came to have cured. The peculiar symptom is the one difficult to explain, viz.: stool in hard balls resembling "sheep dung."
It is certainly uncommon; it is not the stool natural to healthy human beings; it is not a diagnostic symptom of any disease. One might wonder what kind of commotion in the intestine could break up a hard stool into lumps so small and tumble these around until they were flat, oval and round and small as sheep's dung; the normal stool and the common stool are quite different Then it must be "strange, rare and peculiar." Now as she so longs for the open air it will be best to eliminate with the above rubric from remedies that have craving for open air; this gives the start. Then taking the next most important rubric, viz., inactivity or no desire for a week what remains can be seen in the anamnesis above. So proceed to the end, taking the symptoms in the order of their importance. The result is a cure.
Most all recent discoveries are verifying what Homoeopathy has been trying, for more than a century, to have the medical profession realize. All Hahnemann has ever asked his enemies to do is to "put the law to a test and publish the failures.
Why do they not do it.
This Article originally published in The Homoeopathician, A Journal For Pure Homoeopathy, Vol. III January,1913 No. 1, from page no. 8 to 10.
The Language of the Repertory
By James Tyler Kent, A.M., M.D., Chicago, III.
Introductory Note: To many who have not been thoroughly trained in repertory study, the practical value of such work remains uncomprehended. The following article has been prepared to shed light on some of the difficulties that confront those who have not learned to appreciate the immense value of such an index as is afforded in the modern Repertory, and how familiarity with it unlocks the store-house of our materia medica in the future to that rubric or symptom.
Many fail to use the repertory because they think of symptoms in pathological language or because they look for expressions in the language of tradition. It must be remembered that symptoms come to us from lay provers; that sick people are lay people. Both of these express sicknesses in the language of the layman and the repertory must be an index of the materia medica. Every effort to convert either the materia medica or the repertory into the language of traditional medicine must result in total failure. Technical language condenses the thought of a given sickness. That is all that is needed to convey all there is knowable from one physician to another until the question of the remedy comes up, and there the new question comes up: What is the remedy? The answer comes by asking another question: What are the symptoms? The symptoms are the speech of the Patient.
THE physician must study the homoeopathic principles until he learns what it is in sickness that guides to the curative remedy. He must study the materia medica until he learns what is needed to meet these demands.
He must then study the repertory until he learns how to use it so that he can find what he wants when he needs it. It must be admitted that many do mechanical work and fail to realize that any other kind is possible. The physician must read over and over the rubrics in the repertory in order to learn what is in it and how symptoms are expressed. Often he will see a rubric or a symptom that he would not have thought of seeking in that place; he should then settle in his own mind where he would have looked for it; then he should make one or several cross-references to guide him laity and of nature: uneducated nature—simple nature—appealing to an educated physician. The symptoms of a patient have no meaning whatever to an untrained physician—to a physician untrained in the significance of symptoms of the patient, of the prover—hence the repertory is meaningless to him. This explains why so many try to use the repertory and fail: they have had no teaching in our so-called homoeopathic colleges.
All who know how to use a repertory succeed, and not one has ever discarded it. It appears strange that all do not try to find some one to teach them to use it when there are so many willing to do it; it appears strange that they do not desire to know how to use the repertory; it appears strange that they have not learned to note the precise language of the patient, the language of the materia medica, and the language of the repertory.
Physicians who are ignorant in these methods see no difference when the same symptom appears in three different patients in the same family, though one has this symptom at 10 a.m., another at 1 a.m., and another at 4 p.m.; one is better from heat, another from cold, and the third not affected by either, and I have known them to ask very promptly: "What has that to do with it?" Three patients suffer from a similar headache: one is better in the open air, one is better from applied cold, and the third, from applied heat; and again comes the question: "What has that to do with it?" Yet these are only the first and simplest differences to be mentioned.
The inexperienced physician in our art trains his mind to lump and condense and concentrate and this leads in the opposite direction to what is required. We have large groups or rubrics but these are next split up into conditions, circumstances and modalities until every least difference in time, place, degree and manner is brought before the mind so that distinction and individualization may appear. "What has that to do with it?"
I will mention the word "weakness" and even our own students may say: "What a common general symptom to mention," but if he is weak—after eating, must lie down for a while, in hot weather, after stool, after mental and physical exertion, after sleep, who would not wonder if Selenium would not cure such a case? When such a group of circumstances is associated in catarrh of nose, throat and larynx, or carcinoma, and there are desire for open air, lack of vital heat, emaciation in advanced years, extreme sensitiveness to drafts—even warm drafts, there is nothing left for the homoeopathist but to give Selenium.
How can the inexperienced physician work this out without a repertory, properly used? The proper use of the repertory will lead to correct offhand prescribing in simple cases, in from ten to twenty years. The mechanical use of the repertory never leads to artistic prescribing nor to remarkable results. Certain mental characteristics go hand in hand; some characteristics of mind are necessary to good, artistic repertory-work, others are equally prohibitory.
Some minds cannot comprehend that potentization of any given drug is possible in proportion to the homoeopathicity of that drug to a given group of symptoms, and that when the drug is not similar, only attenuation is present. When attenuation becomes potentization is a question that the healing-artist alone can comprehend otherwise than theoretically. The physician who can clearly comprehend this can learn to comprehend the value of symptoms and therefore learn, by the aid of a repertory, to compare the symptoms of his patient; otherwise repertory-work is purely mechanical.
Perhaps a clinical case will best illustrate the subject.
Mrs. S., aged 47, a very excitable—almost hysterical—woman, for many years has suffered— violent occipital headaches.
Compelled to take strong medicines for years.
Occur every few days; never passes a week without one. Continue three days.
Heat and pressure give most relief.
Bowels constipated; for a week has no desire; then takes cathartics.
Says: "I have taken everything."
Stool hard and small, resembling sheep-dung.
Craves open air; cool air.
Heat flushes.
Menstruation absent lately.
Urine scanty and strong.
Eyes have sensation that they do not belong to her.
Cold knees and below knees.
Very tired and excitable.
Over-sensitive; extremely sensitive to touch over entire body.
What are the strange, rare and peculiar symptoms in this patient?
The remedies that have stool in round, hard balls resembling sheep dung that also have strong craving for open air are:
Alum., bar.-c, carb.-an., carb.-s., caust., graph., kali-s., mag-m., nat-m., nat-s., op., sulph.
No desire for stool for many days;
Alum., carb.-an., carb.-s., caust., graph., kali-s., mag.-m., nat.-m., op., sulph., and many others not related to the case.
Occipital headache: Alum., carb-an., carb-s., mag-m., nat.-m., op., sep., sulph.
jarring agg.: Carb-s., mag-m., nat.-m., sulph.
pressure amel.: Mag-m., nat-m., sulph.
heat amel.: Mag-m.
March 4th. Mag.-m. 10m.
April 9th. Mag.-m. 10m.
May 20th. Mag.-m. 50m.
There has been no headache since and she has been in good health. In this case the headache is a common one, but it was what she came to have cured. The peculiar symptom is the one difficult to explain, viz.: stool in hard balls resembling "sheep dung."
It is certainly uncommon; it is not the stool natural to healthy human beings; it is not a diagnostic symptom of any disease. One might wonder what kind of commotion in the intestine could break up a hard stool into lumps so small and tumble these around until they were flat, oval and round and small as sheep's dung; the normal stool and the common stool are quite different Then it must be "strange, rare and peculiar." Now as she so longs for the open air it will be best to eliminate with the above rubric from remedies that have craving for open air; this gives the start. Then taking the next most important rubric, viz., inactivity or no desire for a week what remains can be seen in the anamnesis above. So proceed to the end, taking the symptoms in the order of their importance. The result is a cure.
Most all recent discoveries are verifying what Homoeopathy has been trying, for more than a century, to have the medical profession realize. All Hahnemann has ever asked his enemies to do is to "put the law to a test and publish the failures.
Why do they not do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment