My editorial, under the above caption, brought from one, whom I consider competent to judge, the following: “How can we get the primary symptoms from the patient? Why not explain more definitely your distinction between the similimum, and the similar remedy, and define more lucidly the primary pathogenetic symptoms? Why not give a few cases as illustrations of the difference?”.
When Dr. D. T. Pulford and I issued our little Monograph on Aconite we thought we had made all that plain. But it seems that it went over,or stopped in, the heads of all, save four, of those who either received a copy of the Monograph, or who read the reprint in the Recorder. In spite of the fact that we offered to send a copy of that Monograph, that cost us ten cents, for the sum of five cents, merely enough to cover postage, that all might profit by it, but one doctor took enough interest in the matter to send for a copy. Of the few who took enough interest to write us, none seemed to sense the real reason for its issuance, its simplicity, or what it was all about.
Before I say more on the subject of symptom totality let us thoroughly understand each other. This article is not written in destructive criticism, nor to attempt to belittle anyone, but to bring out our weak points and show them up, both in ourselves, and in our work, that we may rectify our mistakes and profit thereby, and also to add to the sum total of medical knowledge, and thereby put homoeopathy on a firmer foundation, upon a scientific plane, instead of continuing it, as the allopaths are doing theirs, a bungling art. Every one of our earlier masters did the very best he could with the knowledge, means, and funds at his command. But instead of aiming at concerted, united effort, each seemed content to go his own way, with no unity of purpose.
The main effort seemed to concentrate on not how accurate, but on how large a Materia medica he could produce, or compile. Perhaps, under existing circumstances, that was the best thing to do as it gave us more proven remedies than we might have had otherwise. But, symptoms were noted, collected, and piled in, irrespective of value or classification, whether primary, secondary, or merely parasitic. All were neatly jumbled up, chaotic and gnarled, with the unfortunate results that our extremely rich materia medica, instead of being an intelligent compilation with some degree of order and discrimination, became merely a dizzy maze with neither head nor tail, a dense forest to be approached and explored without guide or path, a snarl to be unravelled and disentangled each and every time we approach it to find a remedy.
It is no wonder that those who have no curiosity, or are not enamoured of our cause, find no interest in it; that the student finds it a nightmare and approaches it with a shudder, and with misgivings; and that none of us is ever sure that we have the right remedy. To the uninitiated this is bewildering in the extreme. He has nothing definite to guide him, nor to look for. Thus he is obliged to forsake that which should be, and truly is, an exact science, for the blundering method of allopathy, or to report to symptom and keynote prescribing.
There is an accurate method of drug selection, and it is this method that every honest physician should and must strive for. For medicine, contrary to our common beliefs and admissions, is an exact science and not the bungling art that its espousers have always presented to the public. It is by no means a hit and miss expedient. “All the principles of homoeopathy are logically, systematically and indissolubly bound together.
There is nothing contradictory in any portion of it, and the attempt to separate one part from another would cause the whole edifice to crumble to the ground.” “In seeking for progress in our science we should never forget that it is the imperative duty of each and every one of us to bear his portion of the burden.” This recalls Hahnemanns “Any person having to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, and neglect to make himself thoroughly master of the same becomes a crime.”.
In writing this and calling your attention to more accurate methods, I refer you to the letter of V.R. Murty on page 537 of the July 1931 issue of the Recorder, who has given additional proof. The greatest of all reasons that homoeopathy is an exact science is that it imperatively demands that each and every prescription shall bear the characteristic mark or stamp of the drug, which mark or stamp appears in the pathogenesis of every drug, in every disease, and in every individual, and which distinguishes that drug from every other drug (as Kent truly said, “The personal stamp is upon every disease and upon every proving.”); and shall include the primary pathogenetic symptoms of the drug; and be accompanied by the exact amount of potential energy. This represents, in final, the exact symptom totality.
Those will indicate the drug in all cases, independent of all other symptoms, whether considered by us important or otherwise. For it is on the primary action of the drug that all the rare, strange and peculiar symptoms are brought out. When the primary pathogenesis is removed, all the other symptoms, which are of necessity dependent thereon, must and will disappear. The primary pathogenetic symptoms of each drug are distinct in themselves, or in their combinations, from those of all other drugs. While all the other symptoms, important or otherwise, as we elect to evaluate them, may be equally important, and common, to many other drugs, which we will illustrate below.
In reply to our critics query, “How can we get the primary symptoms from the patient?” let us first state that before we can boil an egg, we must first get the egg. Since we have never taken the pains to sift and classify and learn which are the primary pathogenetic symptoms of each drug, how are we to know just when we have found them? We are meeting and collecting them daily in our work, but as we are unacquainted with them we are just as frequently passing them by. There is but one way to collect and learn these most important of all symptoms, and that is, to prove each drug on at least 100 provers of equal sensitivity to that drug, and collect all the symptoms of, and from, each prover.
The symptoms that are constant in every prover will be found to be those belonging to the true primary pathogenesis of the drug. The rest of the symptoms belong not to the drug but to the individual, and will vary with the individual latent predispositions aroused by the drugs primary action. That should explain more lucidly what I mean by the primary pathogenetic symptoms. It matters little whether these primary symptoms develop early or late, just so they are produced by the drug direct. We must never forget that a drug will not remove a pathogenesis it will not create; if it did, allopathy and not homoeopathy would be scientific.
Homoeopathy would then be useless and superfluous. From long use, by accurate, acute, trained observers, many of these primary pathogenetic symptoms have been unconsciously discovered in the more thoroughly proven remedies, like Aconite, etc. But how many of us know even those? Very few, we fear. This is the very reason that I made the statement that no one to date is in a position to properly and understandingly teach materia medica.
Many, many times all of us have elicited the essential primary symptoms, together with the characteristic mark or stamp, of a drug, but not having a selected proving of that drug, or not being thoroughly acquainted with that drug even though it had been thoroughly proven, we have passed the similar remedy by for that, which in our ignorance of the true facts, we consider “the most carefully chosen remedy”, the similimum. And, when these “most carefully chosen remedies fail to act” we immediately start out to complicate matters by giving a non-indicated, deep acting remedy to “arouse a reaction”.
This is nothing less than a temporary expedient, not always born of intelligence. To continue this method and not attempt to find the proper remedy through continued proving is a short sighted idea on our part. It may help us to get by, but it hurts us in the end and is at the same time both criminal and an injustice and an injury to homoeopathy, because we have bungled the job. No one to date can honestly lay claim to having made a perfectly accurate prescription with an undisputed knowledge before hand of having done so. He feels in his own mind that he has done so, but he cannot possibly explain the exact reason why.
To be able to explain, he must know exactly the characteristic mark or stamp of the drug used, the primary pathogenetic symptoms of that drug (for no drug will nor possibly can remove a pathogenesis the like of which it cannot artificially produce), and give the exact amount of potential required. He can be assured of the first two essentials, if he cares to, but time and experience have not, as yet, been able to accurately define the third. But even that knowledge is not unattainable.
