A QUESTION.
I. A young man woman complained by phone of a steady ache and tenderness to touch on the right rib an inch or so from the 4th or 5th costosternal articulation with the desire to stretch the torso backward, and thus relieve it. She had it some years ago, she said. Then I remembered having treated her for a moderate scoliosis and anaemia with scanty symptoms fifteen or so years before which, I see by looking up her record, was corrected with Med. 200, Bac. 200 and Puls. 1000. The other symptoms now present, although not necessarily associated with this chest pain were;
Hoarseness mornings.
Cough every half hour.
Scratchy throat (takes cigarettes on formal occasions only): scanty, stringy, tenacious expectoration.
Easily flushed from hurry, exertion or excitement.
Desire flushed from hurry, exertion or excitement.
Desire for deep breath.
Nothing else.
O, these little cases that have such slight characterization to interest one! I suppose almost any remedy might be given and doctor and patient get on together somehow. Yet the patient wants relief; and the prescriber likes to feel some certainty of good selection, especially when he may feel lacking in spiritual perception. So this time out came Boger’s concentration of Boenninghausen, the Cards and General Analysis, to see what they would do.
The synthesis; figure taken from the General Analysis.
Cards show three Larynx Voice Cough
Sticky Redness Exertion. Excitement Respiration Bones
Pressure
remedies Phos. 3 3 3 3
1 1 3 2 1 9-19.
Puls. 1 1 3 2
2 3 2 1 7-15.
Sul. 1 2
32 1 3 3 7-15.
Enumeration, Phos. largest; value of symptoms, Phos. greatest; missing symptoms, Phos. least; characterization, Phos. strongest; effect on prescriber, good; time consumed, 7 minutes. Phosphorus 30 4 d., 1 every two hours, cured.
II. Single girl of 27, a tall, slim, talkative blonde; the report by telephone. She described the condition as white lumps of pin-head size coming around the vulva, so I understood. These itched much; she was wont to dig them out, leaving bleeding sites which soon healed normally. The lumps were rubbery, not easily crushed.
Menstruation was dark, offensive and protracted. No other symptoms were obtainable, it seemed.
Merc. sol. 10M. was given, the only excuse being “itching pimples on the (female) genitals.” (Knerr). Nevertheless, several weeks later the girl reported that although she had thought that she was feeling well before, that she had been feeling still better since taking the medicine. But the lumps were still erupting.
By questioning (over phone) I found that they had now assumed a cauliflower appearance at the apices and that they were situated about the orifice of the vagina. The same menstrual symptoms persisted and the patient did not feel as bright mornings as before. Of course experience would have pointed out the right remedy, which the reader probably knows already.
However, just that experienced had not come to me and probably the darkness was worse because of the scanty phone report. So I made a list of the fourth and fifth grade remedies from External Genitals in the Boenninghausen Pocket Book, seventeen in all. Then I became tired, so I selected five from Condylomata and played up the menstrual symptoms for a throw. Here is the result:.
Exter. genitalia Condylomata Menses dark. Menses
long. Menses off. Aggravation Morn.
Ars. 4 4
1 3-9
Calc. 4 4 2
5 4-15
Nit. ac. 4 5 4
5 4-18
Sep. 5 4 3 4
5 5-21
Thuj. 5 5 2
3-21.
Nitric acid looked queer there without a tendency to flow. However, Hahnemann and Hering give metrorrhagias of sorts, besides its known haemorrhagic capacity. Not being satisfied with the result, I looked at Orifices, General Analysis, Boger, and found Calc. not there, Sepia low and Nit. ac. very high. Now the curtain was aside and the peculiar, striking and characteristic recognized. Of course Nitric Acid made a clean sweep: the 10M. used.
This provides the background for a little play:.
Scene, nowhere. (Enter two nonexistents who for want of designation may be called Doctor Socrates and Dr. Plato).
Dr.Socrates(yawning):We;;, I tried to humanize it.
Dr.Plato (rather tartly): It cannot be done. It is all very interesting but tell me this’ what proposition goes off into the far spaces of error as that of the mechanician” What misses the vital essence more completely than the manipulations of the calculator?.
Dr.S.(rousing himself): My dear Doctor Plato, you do not appear to be in your usual good form this morning. Do you appear to be in your usual good form this morning. Do you realize that you have descended from the pure reason to which we are accustomed to the uncertainties of mere analogous evidences” But
I will couple on to your thought although to me it appears to be clothed with exaggerations. Of course the answer to your question must be, in all these categories, yes. As you have guard so jealously, be found wrapped up in a synthesis? and may it not be unfolded by the presentation to the eye of the values of its components and also, though less so, of the totals of the competing remedies?.
Remember, Doctor Plato, that the wise prescriber does not necessarily award the judgment to that remedy having the largest figures per se, but (a) one’s knowledge of and experience with materia medica and practices and (c) to the qualifications gained from the texts of provings.
In this way the remedy blossoms out just as it does in the clear cut schema which does not need the repertory.
Dr.P; You have missed my point entirely. It is not the process that I object to, it is the thing itself. It is my contention that the repertories serve the part of a baby walker. Instead of studying materia medica for dear life, extracting the genius and the categories out of each remedy, the student, who often is also the physician, scuffs about with the repertory under his arm like a crutch and feels that he must depend on it at every step or whenever he comes to a title rough ground.
Dr.S: But it does not act that way : I have explained that already.
Dr.P.: I contend that it does.
Dr.S.: It does not.
Dr.P.: It does.
Dr.S.: You are crazy.
Dr.P.: So are you.
Dr.S.: Now see here; we have gained some reputation for accurate dealing with causes and effects; we must preserve that reputation. The thing to do is to submit this question to the I.H.A.; and if there is anything left of the I.H.A. after the members get through with the question, we may come to a settlement.
Dr.P.: All right, all right! But you will see that it will re4solve to nothing.
Exeunt subito. (A loud noise is heard outside).
Finis.
DISCUSSION.
DR.W, E.LEONARD; Your Socratic-Platonic dialogue is an excellent portrayal of the struggle that often goes on in the mind of the homoeopathic prescriber. A between natural indolence and the vain desire to be able to generalize upon our experience with remedies, there is always the demonstration by the repertory, mathematical and perfect, if you please, provided you
could be sure of the validity of all the rubrics. Granting always a lack of thoroughness in collecting ALL the symptoms, I have as often fallen down with the repertory as without it.
Therefore I would side with Plato in regarding the repertory as more or less of a crutch.
An old medical friend of mine made it a practice to read over at least one whole remedy per diem. The result was an uncanny skill in using them.
DR.GRACE STEVENS: The use of the repertory is often overdone. Real success with it depends, after all, on the right selection of symptoms to form the schema and the power to choose the right one from the several remedies which appear in the study. The knowledge of Materia Medical is the thing!.
DR. ADRIAN A. POMPE: It is very seldom indeed that I ever make a prescription without restoring to Kent’s Repertory. On trips out, I always carry the 2nd edition since I have the third in my office. I refer to it as my consultant to the patient. Some appreciate it and some think one doesnt know much, which is no doubt correct. The repertory is a crutch, but often sufficient in itself with a little use of gray matter.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: What a wonderful world this would be if we could only supply a complete workable replica of the brain with the transfer of knowledge, if any.
It is like making calls at night. Dr. D.T. can just smell the house where he is to go and make a call and go right to it, no matter how dark the night. While I could reach Europe or S.A. on the same trip more easily than I could find that home in the dark. Dr. Hayes is imbued with that same sense in finding the right remedy and in using the repertory. His successful work demands and commands the admiration of us all.
Dr. Pompe thinks a man should be fortunate to have so many repertories, yet I do not feel so. With the most full card repertory yet attempted, it has failed me more than once, even when the case was so “well taken” that it ran down to a single drug.
The longer I live and the more accurately I try to practice real homoeopathy the more convinced I am that unless we touch the constitution with our drug, we are only removing or suppressing symptoms.
Born in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA on 20 Oct 1871 to Royal Edmund Hayes and Harriet E Merriman. He had at least 4 sons and 1 daughter with Miriam Martha Phillips. He lived in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, United States in 1880. He died on 20 July 1952, in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, at the age of 80, and was buried in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States.