Dr Sayeed Ahmad
Experienced homœopathic observers know very well that the burning, stinging, enlarged glands, infiltration, hardness of the part, weakness, loss of flesh in a scirrhus of a mamma will not lead to a remedy that will act curatively, also that œdema of extremities, weakness, albumen in urine and heart symptoms, dyspnœa and anxiety furnish no basis for a remedy for the patient. All know that remedies given on such symptoms are only expected to comfort, and will not restrain the progress of disease nor very much prolong life.
The case is incurable until the case can be taken in a manner to Present what is true of the patient.
It has often occurred that a remedy has made brilliant cures when it suited the patient, even though it was not known to possess a strong likeness of the disease ; but let the likeness be first to the patient and last to the disease. The patient is first and the disease is last.
Study the patient and everything of the patient.
The hip-joint patient has pain in the knee, perhaps some trouble in the uterus, or headache which is said to be due to constipation.
To what is the constipation due ? Perhaps they had not thought of that.
The center of man is his LOVES. When the loves go wrong he is sick in his will, the very center. This we find in dealing with those who threaten to destroy their own life or the life of another.
EXAMPLE :
A faithful, noble wife has no fault to find with her husband in her natural life, but finds herself with an aversion to him, does not want him to touch her. This is a symptom of the innermost of man, it is not on a par with the skin and the toe-nails.
The second point of consideration in the study of the patient is the intellectual functions, the reasoning faculties.
Memory disturbances come next in order in the mind but in study are less important.
Next to the mental symptoms in importance are the PHYSICAL GENERALS. The physical generals cannot be cured with Remedies that do not have the mental conditions.
First of these to be considered is the patient’s relation to heat and cold. He may be very warm, desiring cool things, cool air, cool applications, cool food and light clothing ; or he may want heat, cannot be too warm. He may be so cold that there is lack of vital heat.
His desire for MOTION or REST is the next important physical general. Perhaps he cannot keep quiet, never comfortable unless he is walking. At the same time his shoulder may be more painful on motion of that part ; working the arm from the shoulder, and all that relates to that part, may be worse from motion.
The patient is first before his parts. Again you may have the patient himself worse from motions, and all his aches and pains worse from motion. How he is affected by the air is another physical general. He may be better or worse in the open air. If the patient is a woman, her menstruation must be considered.
Menstruation is a function of the body, and she will say that she is worse or better during menstruation, or worse just before or just after menstruation. The patient as a unit may be worse or better after eating ; himself all over may be better or worse after the rectal evacuation, better after stool ; these are important generals of the body.
As the blood is, so is the love. The colour of the discharge expresses the condition of the blood when there is a deterioration which renders them greenish. The greenish colour to discharge from the vagina, as in cancer, represents the condition of the blood.
When a symptom is common to all or to many remedies it is not important. Hahnemann’s emphasis is upon the symptoms strange, rare, and peculiar. These are most important.
We go first to the generals and then to the particulars, proceeding from center to circumference.
Then we come to the particulars, the thing for which the patient comes to be treated. Most cases of hip-joint disorder cured by me in the past twenty-five years were cured by remedies not in the hip-joint list. By beginning the investigation in relation to the patient, you may find none of the particulars in the remedy selected, but the remedy cures the patient, and the particulars disappear.
Example : Dry hacking cough the patient was steadily emaciating.
Dr. Kent looked at the young man and noticed he had no overcoat on though it was very cold weather. Asking him why he wore no overcoat, Dr. Kent found that he was never chilly, but wanted the cold air, felt better in the open air, wanted to walk and work rapidly. LYCOPODIUM stopped his cough and he increased in weight and was cured.
You can give different remedies in succession without holding to any one, and after years, the patient is no better, they are not curing the patient.
Very sensitive patients should not be given too high a potency. For oversensitives it is best to begin not higher than 1M. This can be repeated two, or sometimes three times, and then a higher potency used. Each potency can be used two or three times with benefit.
Remedies will seldom be found in the lists of all the particulars ; you must omit some, but be certain to omit the particulars and not the generals.
Start with the most important, proceed to the less and less important, on to the least important.
You must get at the thing that is at the bottom.
The man himself is prior to his organs, more interior than his organs. The condition of the organs is the result of disorder more interiorly.
You become expert in the use of the repertory, increasing from year to year, as long as you live. It is a life work, a beautiful work, worth living to perform.
In the woman the menstrual symptoms, of all particulars, are nearest to the generals ; they are close to the life of the woman.
Sexual symptoms, especially desires and aversions, are analogus to loves and aversions.
The condition of the blood is analogus to the loves. Few remedies have recorded the condition of the blood, that it will not coagulate, but it is a high grade symptom. It is common for blood to clot, and rare for it not to clot.
The study of man as to his nature, as to his life, as to his affections, underlies the true study of homœopathics.
The more interior first, the mind, the exterior last, the physical or bodily symptoms.
The doctor who violates the law also violates his conscience, and his death is worse than the death of the patient.
Removing symptoms may not restore health to the patient. Curing the patient will remove the symptoms and restore his health (Organon No. 8).
We must be guided by the symptoms that are strange, rare, and peculiar.
However, some of the common symptoms may become peculiar where their circumstances are peculiar — i. e. — Trembling before a storm, or during stool, or before menses, or during urination, is rare and strange.
Weakness is also common if constant, but it comes only before menses, or before stool, or during a storm, it is at once quite uncommon, and changes the view of the case.
Chilliness, if constant, is common to many people, but if comes only before or during menses, before or during stool, or while urinating, or only when in bed in the night, or only while eating – then it is strange and peculiar, or uncommon.
The mental symptoms, composed of his reasoning powers, loves and hates, and memory. And then his general bodily symptoms and their circumstances, such as worse from cold, from warmth of every kind, from weather, wet and dry, from motion or rest, time of day, etc. These are of highest importance when they apply to the whole body.
The pain in the shoulder was worse before a storm. DULCAMARA cured at once.
Cold air may aggravate the patient but ameliorate the headache.
The patient is often better by motion, but his parts, if inflamed, are worse from motion.
Parts are better by heat when the patient is better from cold, and vice versa. The headache is better from cold, and the body is better by heat.
If we do not consider these circumstances, we do injustice to the Patient and his parts.
Common symptoms alone will lead to failure of the prescription.
We might as well attempt to prescribe for nervous dyspepsia, gastritis, jaundice, gallstone colic, enteritis, constipation, or a bilious temperament. The beginner often fails because he has secured only the common symptoms.
Many cases coming for advice express the particulars, and fail to give the symptoms that characterise the patient. This must be one of the most frequent causes of failure with the young physician.
Example :
With menses too late or suppressed or scanty, the patient weeping, with aversion to fats, nausea, vomiting, weight after eating, the young man will say PULSATILLA at once ; but wait a moment.
The patient is very chilly, likes the house, never needs the open window, is worse from motion, wants to keep very quiet ; now you change your mind and give her CYCLAMEN. Or, if she is better in motion and in open air, and craves it, and is too warm, then PULSATILLA. The physician cannot be careless, and cure as Hahnemann did.
I (Kent) seldom administer medicine until the paroxysm has been completed. When the first dose is followed by a perceptible aggravation, a second dose should never be administered until the amelioration, which follows the aggravation, has ceased.
An amelioration that begins forthwith also demands that all medicine be stopped, but such amelioration is seldom so striking as when the amelioration has been preceded by a slight aggravation. Immediate amelioration often indicates the absence of deep-seated disease.
The law seems to fail where the selection has been perfect, and the potency suitable by meddling with the action of the remedy. This fault is a common one and depends upon ignorance of the philosophy of Homœopathy.
A deep seated trouble changing under the action of a remedy, coming to the surface, though the suffering be increased ten fold the remedy must not be disturbed or the cure may never be realised. Though the patient say “I am so much worse, just see how I suffer”, he must have sac lac.
The ulcer may close and a diarrhœa appear as intractable as the ulcer. This shows that the proper disease has no tendency to recover.
Nature operates under fixed principles. Now it must be known first of all that diseases recover from above downward from within out and in the reverse order of their coming. When the phenomena of disease do not follow this circumscribed limit of directions the disease is growing worse or at least progressing.
It is so common for a patient to return after a correct prescription saying, “I am much worse today”. The physician must now look into the case. If the new symptoms are such as were noticed in the early progress of the disease the cure is certain if properly conducted.
If the new manifestation is felt on deep organs that have not heretofore been touched or given rise to symptoms, the disease may be known to be deep seated and most likely incurable.
Sharp aggravations after a prescription the direction being from within out is a sign of speedy recovery.
Following a prescription for chronic rheumatism, if heart symptoms intervene the patient never will recover.
If the acute symptoms following a careful prescription are prolonged, the recovery will be slow.
The law will fail to be of service to him who knows not how to apply it.
When you do not know what to do, why do you do anything ?
The great mistake rests in the ambition to do something. No man should consent to do a wrong as a substitute for an unknown right way. Be sure that you are right, then go ahead.
When we have to do with an art whose end is the saving of human life, any neglect to make ourselves thoroughly masters of it, becomes a crime. (Hahnemann).
There are physicians who call themselves homœopaths, but are so only in name, as they do not follow the methods worked out by Hahnemann.
The name of the disease does not reveal the symptoms in any case of sickness ; the symptoms are the sole basis of the prescription.
The intelligent physician does what law and principles demand and nothing more ; but the ignorant one knows no law and serves only his wavering experience, and appears to be doing so much for the patient, in spite of which the patient dies.
You cannot depend on lucky shots and guess work, every thing depends on long study of each individual case.
Science ceases to be scientific when disorderly application of law is made.
The physician spoils his case when he prescribes for the local symptoms and neglects the patient.
It is better to do nothing at all than to do something useless ; it is better to watch and wait than to do wrong.
Large doses really aggravate the disease, high potencies aggravate the symptoms of the disease.
A man who cannot believe in GOD cannot become a Homœopath.
Repeated doses may suppress the symptoms but will not cure ; you are getting only the primary action, the curative action is not at work.
It is worse than useless to give a second dose until the effects of the first dose have ceased.
Pathology has no place in an effort to select a medicine for the sick.
When a remedy has benefited a patient satisfactorily, never on your life, change your remedy, but repeat that remedy so long as you can benefit the patient. Do not regard the symptoms that have come up.
Never prescribe for a chronic case when you are in a hurry ; take time. Never give a dose of medicine until you have duly considered the whole case.
A keynote prescriber is but a memory prescriber ; he has memorised only and has not made it a part of his understanding.
Such prescribers are almost useless and it is among them that we find “falling from grace”.
If a cure is made in the course of two or three years it is indeed a speedy cure. It takes from two to five years to cure chronic diseases.
In advance phthisis with pathological symptoms, if you prescribe for the old symptoms which should have prescribed for some years before, you kill your patient.
A sycotic is never cured unless a discharge is brought back.
Treat the cause and not the effects of disease.
The mind symptoms, if you can know them, are the most important. If the pathological symptoms seem to contra-indicate a remedy, and the mental symptoms to indicate it, these are to be taken.
In cases without symptoms, the patient must be kept on sac lac until you can discern some general, such as aggravation of symptoms in the morning, or at midnight. If the patient is only “tired”, without guiding symptoms, you may know that it is liable to terminate in some grave disorder. Consumption, Bright’s Disease, Cancer, or the like.
The healthier the patient becomes the more likelihood there is for an eruption upon the skin.
Never leave a remedy until you have tested it in a higher potency if it has benefited the patient.
Reference : “New Remedies – Clinical Cases Lesser Writings Aphorisms and Precepts” of J. T. Kent.
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