EDITORIAL


Students reflect the quality of what is put before them and if this stops short of being ideal their disappointment inclines them toward empiricism and lowers their aims many will awaken to the actual need of a really curative therapy and may begin to investigate pure Homoeopathy, realizing that at best the refinements of their previous work either have a sharp edge that cuts both ways or are brutal beyond belief.


Through years of trial, struggle and repression Homoeopathy has nevertheless had a hand in bringing forth many of the ablest minds of our time. These sos of its care have an inborn right to a continuance of the same helpful methods that have proven so valuable and good in the past.

The shifting various of general medicine have had a distinctly demoralizing effect upon those among us who were poorly grounded in its actual work and many have been swept from their morning by a tide that moves at once every where and nowhere. This instability has also discredited it in the public eye which does not easily see the finer shades of difference between spurious and genuine therapy.

Students reflect the quality of what is put before them and if this stops short of being ideal their disappointment inclines them toward empiricism and lowers their aims many will awaken to the actual need of a really curative therapy and may begin to investigate pure Homoeopathy, realizing that at best the refinements of their previous work either have a sharp edge that cuts both ways or are brutal beyond belief.

Great opportunities repeat themselves but seldom, but to care for the more or less matured mind is the greatest of our opportunities;l let us grasp it firmly with both hands that are above all clean and firm in the right-C.M.BOGER.

“STRANGE,M RARE AND PECULIAR SYMPTOMS”

A pupil,well along in Homoeopathy, has recently told us that one of his stumbling blocks is the “strange, rare, and peculiar symptom. He wants to know that such a symptom is,with examples,whether it may be both a general and a particular,how it effects the evaluation,whether it is equivalent to a keynote, etc.

A “Strange,m rare and peculiar” symptom may be or two kinds. It may be a symptom which is weird,fantastic, heard of, rarely found,such as “sensation in a non-pregnant woman of something alive, jumping about in the abdomen”, or “sensation of the whole body being brittle”.

The second class is that it symptoms which though no fantastic in themselves are unusual, expected and even contrary to what you could rationally predicate in a given condition,for instance, “laughs and sings when in pain”; “thirst for cold during chilly stage only, with no thirst during fever”. This latter type, as you will see from the two above examples is peculiar because of the juxtapositions, it is the concomitance that is queer, “,laughter with pain, thirst with chill”.

Such a symptom can be a mental, a general or a particular; in the nature of things it can not be a common symptom. As and example of such a mental, take “sensations if she were double in bed”, or “:constantly washing the hands”; as a typical strange general take the well known Camphor symptom, “desires heat during the hot stages and cold during the cold stages”, or “thirsty with aversion to water as a rare particular take “empty sensation inside the head”, or “:blueness of the nail during chill”,. or “temporary blindness which passes off as the headache develops”, nor “epistaxis brought on by washing the face in cold water”.

A “strange rare and peculiar” general ,such as “chilly but aggravated from heat”, outranks other ordinary generals of the same class,unless there is a general which runs through so many particulars that it is tit is the leading features of case for instance the case has “suicidal on waking”; “homicidal impulses on waking” “chilliness only on waking”; “restless when he wakes in the mornings. Here it is the aggravation on waking in the morning which is the most marked symptom,and it outranks, for repertorising purposes,even the mental,s suicidal and impulses, because these are modifiers of the patient state on waking rather these are modifiers of the patients state on waking rather than his constant condition. Among particular symptoms, ones. Angina pectoris with pain extending up into the occiput would take preference over heart pain extending down the arm, because the former is more strange and usual. The strange mental symptoms may often be of less value than the peculiar general of particulars. This is especially true in neurasthenic cases which often invent and embroider symptoms.

In the realm of mentals, especially, we must be sure that a symptom is viridical as we said in a former lecture. Some wise Homoeopaths claims that in mental cases it is safer to repertorize by strange and prominent generals and particulars, and to consider the myriad mental symptoms only as part of the general picture when choosing from the materia medica study of the few remedies that come out highest from the repertory study. As a rule, then, we select the generals and the particulars which are most peculiar, provided always that they are prominent features of the case.

Strange,rare and peculiar” symptoms often become keynotes although not all keynotes are strange symptoms,for instance, “hunger art 11 a.m.” is a keynote of Sulphur but it is not a “strange, rare and peculiar symptom which is also a keynote of Calc., Alum., and Nit.ac. “craves indigestible things like,e chalk, earth,and slate pencils”.

The individualization which is so essential a part of Homoeopathy is greatly helped by the understanding and use of “strange, rare and peculiar” symptom, which Hahnemann, himself, especially stressed. It is needless to say that if strange symptom, found under only a couple of remedies,are permitted to eliminate they may mislead the student,for instance, we had a case which kept telling us that this twitching was worse during eating and then he sat down at the dining table. This symptoms is to be found in the Kent Repertory under only one remedy, Plumbum,which was not at all the remedy for the whole of this case. These strange symptoms are often difficult to elicit as patients feel ashamed of telling anything so peculiar, so inconsequential or absurd, yet especially in simple people they will crop out, and especially where they are generals they prove of enormous value as parts of the totality of the symptoms-E.W.

WHAT IS THE ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE HOMOEOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA AND THE ALLOPATHIC MATERIA MEDICA?

In the first place, the homoeopathic materia medica is a compilation of actual symptoms produced on the healthy or normal human (not animal) body, by each and every drug or remedy, all either verified or verifiable; while the allopathic Materia medica is a compilation of individual opinions supposed to be the result of personal experience. Nature (Homoeopathy)O fever varies; persons (allopathy) do vary, and widely at that ! The homoeopathic materia medical individualizes, while the allopathic materia medica generalizes. Let us take pneumonia as am example:

Here allopathy treats the disease,Homoeopathy treats the patient. Here is allopathy up to date, an of dizzily approved medical treatment of lobar pneumonia: “For relief of pain, morphia grains, 1-4; toxemia, 4-8;toxaemia, 4-8 ounces of alcohol daily;cardiac weakness,alcohol,. camphor,caffeine, strychnine and digitalis; respiratory weakness, expectorant drugs, and morphia if you wish; for insomnia,paraldehyde, chloral hydrate and trional; and (if the patient should happen not to respond to all of this oxygen”. the above method”in extremely favorable cases” should cure in two weeks.

Now let us see how Homoeopathy works in pneumonia by ignoring the disease e and caring for the patient: Right lower lobe and right inner lobe affected; general aggravation at 3a.m. irritable, irascible, quarrelsome, impatient,fearful, oversensitive; sense of a heavy load in and on the chest, pleura dry and rubbing like two pieces of dry rubber rubbing over each other; sharp, stitching , cutting pains in area affected,worse on every attempt at inspiration (deep); respiration rapid and superficial slight oedema beneath eyebrows; temperature 103 to 104; sleepless, and what little sleep he did get was full of troublesome dreams, etc., But one single, simple remedy could possibly be intelligently prescribed for that case,and but two doses sufficed to resolve and restore the whole affair, in 7 days, to a normal condition. Some difference, dont you think?.

Homoeopathy, the personification of intelligence, acts in a simple and a refined manner,doing its work in a modest and effective way. Allopathy, on the other hand,the personification if ignorance,acts in a superficial,spicular manner, too often provings itself more of a menace than a blessing to the sick. Never rely on a diagnosis, as the allopath must,for it is but a guess at best, and a name,and names are to often deceiving and misleading. On the other hand,symptoms re constant and unchangeable,hence the erraticalness of the allopathic materia medica and the constancy of the Homoeopathic materia medica. The homoeopathic materia medica is based on science which with undefined wells knowledge;l while the allopathic materia medica is based on empiricism, which when defined spells ignorance. If we know we have neither reason more necessity to experiment. Experimentation has to grope its way in the dark to find his determination when he has a definite daylight guide to point the way and specifically guide him to that destination,his motive for his choice would be interesting to learn-A.PULFORD.

Allan D. Sutherland
Dr. Sutherland graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and was editor of the Homeopathic Recorder and the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.