We talk, in class and in conventions, about evaluating symptoms, meaning symptoms of the case in hand at the time. We talk more vaguely of values of remedies, in regard to their size, frequency of use, origin and preparation, relationship to other remedies, length of action, care of them in our offices, etc., etc.
It seems to me there should be a real effort to bring evaluation of remedies into a more definite picture of them, to make this subject as sharply defined as is the evaluation of symptoms. Hence this attempt. Not that I am good one to do it. Like many another, I am feeling my way, but now doing it no paper.
Young students are apt to regard remedies as of equal value. When Homoeopathy is comparatively new to them, they think of remedies as one would think of so many apples shaken up in a basket. These differ in size and shape but one is as important as all the rest in food value, and that is what apples are for.
Very well, you will say that remedies are for curing people of their disorders, that is what all remedies are for, so you will wish to play the matching game. You will pick out, from all the remedies with which you are acquainted so far in your studies, the one which, in your opinion, fits best the symptom list before you. You will work hard at this game-and you will be disappointed, discouraged, apt to doubt the law of cure. Why?.
To put it in one sentence: because remedies are every bit as individualistic as people. To play the matching game puts our work on a mechanical basis; to individualize both patient and remedy puts it on a dynamic basis where Homoeopathy belongs. This raises the study of Homoeopathy from the undergraduate field into the post graduate field, where it should be, for it is as much a specially in medicine as any other specialty, and on a higher grade level than most of them.
In evaluating the symptoms of the patient the student is taught to discover thereby what kind of person the patient is, how deep seated are his ailments; which of them (or tendencies to them) he probably brought with him into this world; which are due to his environment, social life, sex life, philosophy of life; which are due to prior drugs producing drug suppressions, etc., etc.
In evaluating the symptom picture of a drug which has been proved on healthy humans, the student is shown, in judging the practical value of that drug, whether it has been thoroughly proved or only partially proved, whether it deals with superficial symptoms or deep chronic ones, whether it serves the oversensitive emotional patient or the phlegmatic, apathetic one.
There are all grades between these extremes, with drugs best fitting each grade, and there are as many ways of grouping drugs for homoeopathic study as there are ways of grouping patients for the same sort of study. a drug only partially proved may show by the symptoms brought out that it must remain in a half-way stage, that a thorough proving of it probably would not reveal many more valuable symptoms, that is, that it belongs to rather superficial pars of a patient and not to his whole basic economy. (I may be wrong in this. It may be wise to undertake to perfect provings of all partially proved drugs and let the result decide what the place of each one should be. Many surprises might be in store for master provers in such an event.) At any rate, at present, partially proved drugs most often are useful in partially revealed cases or in patients so nearly well that symptoms are few; superficial and transient.
Fully proved, deep acting remedies may be best for the above described cases if they are a very good fit for the few symptoms obtained and also fit the personality of the patient being considered.
At any rate, it is a mistake to prescribe a superficial remedy, or a deeper remedy in the case of few symptoms, with the idea of lopping off or canceling those symptoms, for such procedure leads to suppression and not to cure.
There are other ways of giving value to remedies. We can group them as to botanical origin; chemical origin; animal origin, including animal discharges; common names of remedies placed opposite the medical names; basic remedy and its complementary remedies; those that follow each other well in unlocking doors in deep seated ailments. This last has enabled a few of our best prescribers to know beforehand the succession of remedies in certain cases.
Another method is that of concomitants, proper environment and atmosphere. Remedies not otherwise thought of as similar, are made so by grouping them in this manner. Often the best known, widest used polychrests become bedfellows with rarely chose remedies when viewed thus.
Another fruitful way of looking at remedies is found in thumbing through repertories, a rewarding adventure for our few idle moments! One exclaims, “I didn’t know that remedy had 3rd grade in this symptom.” “I would have suspected this remedy to be marked 3rd grade and here it is in plain type.” “I wouldn’t suspect that remedy to have this symptom, but here it is in 2nd grade.” This sort of information is all through the repertories “free gratis.” Many a surprise awaits the student of this phase of homoeopathic study.
Especially the prescribers of the early days with few test books and more time for study, had the habit of making notes in the margins or in loose-leaf fashion jotting down valuable comments as they went along. Here is still another source of gaining knowledge of remedies.
These things need evaluation in the student’s mind. It will not do to give all the aspects we study the same importance. With experience, which carries the highest value in Homoeopathy, one learns, every day to evaluate one’s work. The time come when that work seem to be done almost intuitively but this only proves that there is a background of long, serious study.
There is nothing in medicine which pays higher dividends than the study of Homoeopathy, its philosophy, its case-taking, its materia medica and its valuations.
I am not by any means proficient in all that I am trying to point out to others. I wish always that I had more time to know remedies before I had to pitch in using them. The early teachers used to require their students to spend an hour or two hours every day on materia medica (and Dr.Hubbard does it today). I wish I had had this chance before being catapulted into a most lonely practice. I wish I had not made the devastating mistakes that I can see now, looking back. I wish the results of long experience could be handed on to younger generations without making each new comer begin at the beginning. But perhaps there is enough gained by the student in beginning “all over new” to make this the ordained procedure. I am sorry, though, for the patients who suffer from our mistakes.
I am convinced that this deep chronic work is going to become the means of saved Homoeopathy from oblivion, also that it is to be the patients receiving this treatment at the hands of our best prescribers who are going to convince the world of the value of such treatment and so make Homoeopathy the medicine of the future. The laymen are to make the message telling not the very busy homoeopathic doctors.
And what is more important in the doctor’s part of this set up than thought knowledge of our remedies and how to use them?.
May we make a real crusade our of present opportunity and may the whole world find health at the end of the trail!.
Illustrative Cases.
A case was sent to me for criticism and help, which resulted in the following: The number of symptoms selected for repertory study was ten with various degrees of generals. The total number of remedies resulting from the study amounted to twenty. All but four of these might be reckoned chronic remedies with various degrees of depth. There seems almost nothing to go on with from here; the patient was give twelve remedies, apparently with little consideration of their relations to each other or to the patient as a whole. This is exactly what I used to do in my early struggles to work into good prescribing for chronic patients. It is very much the basket-of-apples type of work and this is the reason for giving it at the beginning of this series.
GROUP I: Cases which need only one or at the most two remedies but have some depth and are easy to treat after their remedies are discovered.
Case I: A German woman, single, 54 years of age, in Germany during both wars working hard and carrying such heavy weights that she now has a much enlarged heart.
Two bicycle trips across the country with heavy loads, carrying very large heavy suitcases long distances; later over here sending out 22 lb. packages for people in Germany, carrying them to the P.O.
Exam : heart action good but heart which enlarged, extending nearly to left axillary space and to right fairly near other arm.
Obliged to rest after any exertion now; sometimes to stay in bed two weeks to be free from palpitation.
Cannot climb stairs without much dyspnoea, etc.
Been working where everyone smokes and cannot stand that well.
