EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE REMEDY
The remedy having been given it will affect the case in one of the following ways:
1. The remedy causes no change-either the remedy or the potency is incorrect.
2. Steady rapid improvement takes place without any aggravation.
(a) In such cases the remedy and potency have been exactly similar to the disease force.
(b) It may also mean that the disease has not been deeply rooted.
N.B.: There may be an almost complete removal of the symptoms, yet if the patient is not conscious of the elasticity of returning health it has been no cure, but only palliation.
3. A sharp short aggravation followed by quick improvement, and in this case the improvement is usually long lasting.
4. A long aggravation and final slow improvement.
This occurs chiefly in weakly patients, and there is great danger in repeating the remedy too soon.
5. A long aggravation, followed by slow decline of the patient.
These cases are incurable and only short-acting remedies should be used.
6. A sharp aggravations, but the improvement that follows is very short lasting, especially when a deep-acting remedy has been given.
These cases are usually incurable.
7. Rapid improvement, but soon followed by an aggravation.
If the remedy was the similimum the case is incurable, but if the remedy only corresponded superficially it may have acted palliatively.
8. The amelioration lasts a normal time, but a new group of symptoms appear and under another suitable remedy they disappear for the normal time and another new group of symptoms appear, yet, in spite of the removal of group after group, the patient steadily declines. This is especially observed in the old and feeble and such cases are incurable.
9. New symptoms appear (not the return of old ones which have been experienced long before the remedy was given.)
(a) If the new symptoms belong to the pathogenesis of the remedy, the remedy is the correct one and must be allowed to act. If the new symptoms are not known to belong to the pathogenesis of the remedy and yet the case rapidly improves, it is probable that further provings will show that they really do belong to it.
(b) If the new symptoms are due to the natural development of the disease, the probably the remedy has been wrong and has produced no effect.
These new symptoms may be due, however, to a natural crisis of the disease, such as epistaxis in typhus, and must not be interfered with.
(c). If the new symptoms, though numerous and violent, do not belong to the natural development of the disease (and the patient does not improve), then the remedy is the wrong one.
10. An aggravation followed by the return of old symptoms. This is a very favorable state of affairs, and must not be interfered with, for no remedy is homoeopathic to re-action. When the symptoms finally settle, if these old symptoms still persist, they must then be prescribed for and are of the highest grade in the choice of the next remedy.
11. There is improvement, but it takes the wrong direction. For example, an ulcer of the leg heals up under the action of the remedy, but haemorrhage from the lungs comes on. This shows that the remedy only corresponds to part of the case, viz., the ulcer, and has really done harm.
12. In some patients we get a proving of every remedy given. They are over-sensitive and very difficult to cure.
