The Similimum – JT Kent’s Lesser Writings

Dr Pooja

It is one of the Lesser writings of Kent, in which he says a similar remedy is a curative agent, whereas a remedy with a suitable potency to the patient is a Similimum.

Similimum – the remedy indicated in a certain case because the same drug, when given to a healthy person, will produce the symptom complex most nearly approaching that of the disease in question.

• Many says that the only thing necessary is to find the name of an agent capable of causing similar symptoms on the healthy and the similimum is that agent,

Kent says -I cannot accept that as the teaching of the master. 

• These perverters of truth claim that the self-same agent will cure in any dose or any potency.
• My statement is that-similimum, the curative power or force, is not essentially the curative drug.
• The similimum may be found in Aconite 200^th where Aconite 3x has failed. 
• Then Aconite is the curative agent but not the similimum, but Aconite 200 is the similimum. 
• When Aconite tincture cures, and cures permanently, I believe it does so because it is the similimum. 
• I have recently seen Arsenicum 200 fail in a case, so clearly indicating Arsen, 200 is known to be genuine and had for years served well; the 10M cured promptly. 

The remedy was Arsenicum, but the similimum was Arsenicum 10M. 

• I have seen this same Ars 10M cure when 3x, 6x, 30, 60, and 200 had failed.
• After selecting remedy, choose a suitable potency to cure, than only it is called as similimum. 
• A friendly doctor said to me few days ago in my office that he was curing a case of psoriasis with Ars 3x. He stated that the patient had been taking it off and on for a year, and that when he stopped the medicine the disease seemed to come back. 
• If lower potency selected and repeated, as often has to be, the over action spoils the case and sometimes precludes the possibility of a cure.
• If the remedy is homoeopathic to a given totality, a single dose of high potency may cure the whole case. 
• Knowledge we gain while using a high potency if a given case leads us slowly but surely in the way of success.
• One drop of Aconite root may cure the Aconite mental picture in one person and fail in many, and 200 may cure the case in few hours. 
• I had once under my care a patient whose symptoms were like those of Sulphur.  As I had not advanced in knowledge beyond the 6x, I gave that remedy in the potency named with what seemed to me astonishing relief. 

Finally, Sulph 6x failed to give continued relief, I compared Sulph with the patient, and Sulph seemed still indicated, but it would not cure, I must change.

I changed and changed, and finally the patient changed, I spoiled my case, and felt like “cussing” somebody for it. 

Nobody to blame but myself, some 3 years later same patient came back to me, I opened my eyes, I knew how to develop a case and cure it. 

He took Nux 2M for few weeks with the improvement, but the same old burning on top of head and soles, the same 11am hungry stomach; same itching, and same “not very well myself” all there. These symptoms had never met similimum. 

The famous Sulph 55M one single dose and S.L made astounding changes that lasted for nearly two months, when the returning of symptoms were the signal for another dose. 

Three dose cured the case permanently. Sulph 55M was the similimum, Sulph 6x was not the similimum. 

• There is nothing new in these facts, but it seems so strange that there can be found a man with brains too small to comprehend it or too dishonest to own it or too skeptical to believe it. 
• Pure homoeopathy has continued to grow and will continue to grow, and educated, thinking people of the world will support it just as rapidly as they are made acquainted with it. 
• The similimum may be found in the lowest attenuations, but is positively found for all curable diseases in the high and highest genuine potencies. 
• Homoeopathic physicians use the word similimum. The similimum might be called that remedy that has cured the patient, but in advance of curing that case it is only what appears to be the most similar; a medicine cannot be called the similimum until it has cured. 
• Similimum is the medicine that cures the symptoms present, eradicates them completely.

  References:

1. Kent J T, Lesser writings clinical cases, new remedies, aphorisms and precepts. The similimum, 14^th impression 2019, B Jain Publishers Noida, U.P.(India); 426-429.
2. Kent J T, Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy. Idiosyncrasies, Reprint edition june 2010 New Delhi, Indian books and periodicals publishers; 179-183.     

Dr. Pooja
PG Scholar
Dept of Organon of Medicine & Homoeopathic Philosophy
GHMC&H Bangaluru