THE REPETITION OF THE DOSE

THE REPETITION OF THE DOSE

By C M Boger 

Edited By: Dr. Ravinder S. Mann

From

Foreword to The Boenninghausen’s Characteristics Materia Medica and Repertory

Medicines, by proper (higher) potentization, develop a continually widening, quicker and more radical sphere of action which stretches far beyond all pathological forms but never outgrows their own true characteristics. This should, however, not lead us into straining at conclusions and making blind applications of this postulate.

A single dose of the properly selected homoeopathic remedy will in a short time so transform the character of a disease as to cause it to show indications for a different remedy. The common experience that the continued thoughtless and injudicious use of the same medicine often does more harm than good, and that two very similar remedies do not follow each other well, has its origin in this fact.

The primary and secondary action of many drugs repeats itself alternately, hence, as long as this happens, the one (first) dose has not exhausted its action.

In diseases like small-pox, scarlet fever, etc., which generally attack man only once, every repetition, particularly of the higher dynamization, only tends to prejudice or retard the cure, whereas, in other diseases it regulates itself by the extent of their liability to recur.

In every attack, one minute dose of the rightly chosen remedy, if allowed to quietly expend itself, not only accomplishes everything to be expected of medicine, but when the same drug is, after a long time, again given, as evidently the most applicable remedy even for another disease, it disappoints us, and will only act after a sufficient time has elapsed for the former dose to have finished its work.

In chronic disease the action of the truly legitimate (similar) remedy must be left undisturbed if we wish to attain success.

External manifestations are in no ways indispensable to the existence of chronic disease; on the contrary, the more the external (vicarious) symptoms are disturbed or repressed, the deeper do they take root and flourish internally. It follows from the dynamic nature and constitution of every real disease that it is never purely local, but always finds its genesis in the immaterial life force, therefore in the whole living organism, and can only be rooted out as fast as the increasing vital reaction displaces the primary drug action; most rapidly towards the end. (Abstracted from the Aphorisms of Hippocrates, VII, 12.)

In conclusion it may not be useless to call to memory, in an abridged form, what my worthy friend, Dr. J. Aegidi, says in the Archive of Homeopathy (XII., I., 121), which coincides entirely with my own experience. After the administration of the carefully selected (according to the similarity of the symptoms) remedy, as early, at the latest, as after the lapse of eight days (in acute sickness often already after a few hours), one of two events certainly follows either.

A. The state of the illness is changed, or

B. It remains the same.

A change in the sick condition embraces three events, either:

1st. The condition is ameliorated,

2d. It is aggravated, or,

3d. The disease alters its symptom complex.

In the first case one sees the medicine's beneficial action penetrating deeply and it were, therefore, hasty not to wait the fullest extent of the amelioration. Here, at least, haste is useless, mostly harmful, and only then, when the improvement comes to a visible standstill, is it advisable to give a second, third or fourth dose of the same remedy, especially, however, only as long as a lessening, but not essentially changed symptom complex still points to it.

In the second event we see the state of the sickness becoming worse; particularly do the characteristic symptoms heighten their intensity without changing or transposing themselves, the so-called homoeopathic aggravation. Here the remedy has overcome the affection in its essence and for a while nothing further is to be done unless perhaps entirely too important complaints make the application of a proper antidote necessary, which on most occasions is found in a second, and, if possible, still smaller dose of the same medicine.

The third instance concerns an alteration of the symptom complex and is evidence when this happens that the remedy was not fittingly chosen and must be exchanged for a suitable one as soon as possible.

When, notwithstanding, the carefully chosen remedy and the patient's faultless diet, the sick condition, on the contrary, is not at all changed, as in the case mentioned under B, the cause usually lies in want of receptivity, which we must seek to remove either by repeated small doses or by medicines recommended for deficient reaction.

By following these rules we have the pleasure of assisting the sick to recovery in an incomparably shorter time than has commonly been possible under the former evil treatment where the physician lacked a fixed rule of practice. (From the Preface of the Antipsoric Repertory)

The repetition of the dose is determined by the nature and force of the response elicited; this response reveals the actual status of the patient in proportion to the accuracy of the prescription. The speed of the reaction is naturally governed by the course of the individual affection plus the vital reactive power of the individual. Hence, it follows that a quick relief in chronic disease bodes no good, if the remedy has been properly chosen.

No second dose should be given as long as the relief progresses, even though slightly. The amelioration is apt to show itself in the mental state first; the mind becomes more tranquil and the suffering is more easily borne, although its intensity may as yet not be lessened.

In a real cure the symptoms recede from above downward, from within outward and in the reverse order of their coming; all other ways are irregular and open to the suspicion of being mere palliations calculated to destroy the natural symmetry of the manifestations, hence to complicate and render the disease intractable.