{"id":56473,"date":"2022-12-26T09:17:57","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T09:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homeobook.com\/?p=56473"},"modified":"2022-12-26T09:26:08","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T09:26:08","slug":"historical-and-critical-study-of-evolution-of-repertory-in-homoeopathic-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homeobook.com\/historical-and-critical-study-of-evolution-of-repertory-in-homoeopathic-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"Historical and critical study of evolution of Repertory in homoeopathic practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Hemantha Mrudhula. D<\/strong><\/p>\n

ABSTRACT<\/u><\/strong> :
\n<\/u><\/strong>Study of history is essential because it provides inspiration for the present and aspiration for the future. History reminds us of our past regarding the activities of the workers involved in the particular field. There by the posterity are inspired to go a long way to achieve the goal. Repertories have helped conscientious homoeopaths in their struggle for selection of the right remedy.The utility of the repertory has even led to its computerization. Therefore it is interesting and instructive to know the origin, progress and the present status of repertory. As we all are aware of the fact that history\/evolution aims to reconstruct a record of human activities, to achieve a more profound understanding of them. Evolution springs from an outlook that is very new in human experiences; their assumption, that the study of evolution is natural; inevitable human activity. History\/evolution outlines regarding the existing knowledge and search for new relevant data and creation of hypothesis.<\/p>\n

History and evolution is a review of accomplishments and errors ,which was built on the best of the past. Studying them helps to make best use of the available literature to understand the present and future trends.<\/p>\n

INTRODUCTION<\/u><\/strong> :<\/strong><\/p>\n

To meet the challenge of the exploding Materia Medica, the Homoeopathic Repertory was born .Imagine somebody trying to select a remedy from the ten volumes of Allen’s Encyclopaedia. This is well nigh an impossible task. Master Hahnemann himself consciously felt the need for an indexing of this growing pool of information.Hahnemann realized the limitation of human mind to remember all the symptoms and felt the need for an aid to retrieve the facts. He was also posed questions regarding finding out similimum from many similars.<\/p>\n

In the Preamble to Materia Medica Pura, he wrote \u201cFor the convenience of treatment we require, merely to jot down after each symptom all the medicines which can produce such a symptom with tolerable accuracy, expressing them by a few letters (For ex. Ferr., Rheum, Chin.. Puls.) And also to bear in mind the circumstances underwhich they occur, that have a determining influence on our choice and proceed in the same way with all the other symptoms, noting by what medicine each is excited. From the list so prepared we shall be able to perceive which among the medicines, homoeopathically covers most of the symptoms present, especially the most peculiar andcharacteristic ones- and this is the remedy sought for.’ Here he has shown how Repertorization can be done. This laid the foundation of the present day Repertories.<\/p>\n

GROWTH OF REPERTORIES<\/u><\/strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Early repertories (Pre.Kentian Era) : 1805-1896<\/li>\n
  2. Middle age ( Kentian era) : 1897-1972<\/li>\n
  3. Recent repertories (Post Kentian Era) : 1973-till date<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    MAIN CURRENTS<\/u><\/strong> :<\/p>\n

    Two main schools of repertorial thought eventually developed — the ‘Literal’ and the ‘Analogical.’<\/p>\n

    Literal :
    \n<\/strong>Hering and Jahr were two of those biased towards the literal. They believed in recording each symptom in its entirety, as closely as possible to its description in the provings or clinical cases. This method resulted in a large amount of very specific rubrics containing a relatively small as possible to its description in the provings or clinical cases. This method resulted in a large amount of very specific rubrics containing a relatively small number of remedies. An index of this kind is very precise, and remedies can be narrowed down quickly, but it suffers from being inflexible if the symptoms of the case do not exactly match those of the index. This literality of inclusion also led to very, very bulky books.<\/p>\n

    George Heinrich Gottlieb Jahr produced his ‘Jahr’s Manual’ in 1834. This combination materiamedica and a repertory, separately titled, ‘Systematic Alphabetical Repertory’, was based on Hahnemann’s work. The following year, on the other side of the Atlantic, Constantine Hering edited and translated Jahr’s Manual’. His Repertory to the Manual was the first repertory published in english language. It may have been the first, but by 1841, A. Gerald Hull had revisited Jahr’s original – retranslated, revised and edited it, and published the result as the ‘New Manual of Homoeopathic Practice’. ‘Hull’s Jahr’, as it everywhere came to be known, was the most commonly used repertory of the period. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science Movement, was alleged to carry only two books – The Bible and ‘Hull’s Jahr’.<\/p>\n

    Analogical :
    \n<\/strong>The journey towards the analogical model began with Clemens Maria Franz von Boenninghausen in the mid 1830\u2019s. After creating his first two repertories- The Repetory of Antipsoric Medicine’, ( Published in 1832, it had been the first repertory to appear in print) and the later ‘Repertory of Medicines that are not Antipsoric’, he started work on the project of constructing a new concise general repertory, using the same basic format as the first two. He found, however, that like Hahnemann’s Symptom Lexicon, it was becoming much too big and clumsy, and so decided on a new approach . Boenninghausen believed that remedies had certain aspects symptoms, their characterising dimensions, that were not limited to single symptom ,but ran right throught the picture. Hahnemann, Hering, Jahr and others had recognised and included these characterising dimensions in their works, but it was Boenninghausen who divided up the symptoms into their parts, and in 1846 published his ‘Therapeutic Pocketbook (For Homoeopathic Physicians, to be Used at the Bedside of the Patient and in Studying the Materia Medica Pura)’. This is the book that gave rise to the so called ‘Boenninghausen Method’.<\/p>\n

    Underpinning this analogical school of thought is the concept that complete symptoms can be built by analogy from the combination of the parts, reflecting the totality in a flexible way, and resulting in a repertory with far fewer, more generalised but more flexible, partial rubrics<\/p>\n

    Alongside his move to complete generalisation, Boenninghausen also drastically reduced the number of mental symptoms in his repertory because he felt that they could easily be misinterpreted by beginners.<\/p>\n

    EARLY REPERTORIES<\/u><\/strong>: 1805 -1896<\/strong><\/u><\/p>\n

    1805<\/strong> : Fragmenta de viribus medica mentorum positivis <\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n