THE REPETITION OF THE REMEDY
The medicine must not be repeated until the action of the last dose is fully exhausted. In other words, there can be no fixed time as to when to repeat; each case must be judged on its own merits.
In acute cases it is comparatively easy to determine when the last dose has exhausted its action by means of the general appearance and mental state of the patient, and also to a less degree by the pulse and temperature.
In typhoid fever in vigorous patients Kent usually gives the remedy in water every few hours for several days, because it is a continued fever, but on the slightest sign of reaction stops the remedy.
On the other hand, he does not repeat the remedy in continued fever in a feeble patient.
In remittent fever reaction will appear in a few hours, and one dose is sufficient.
But in chronic cases it is not so easy, for it is the rule and not the exception to have sharp, short exacerbations interrupting the improvement, and we must be sure that the exacerbation is a permanent and not a mere passing one.
In chronic cases we known that the dose is still acting as long as old symptoms return, or, if the symptoms continue to disappear in the reverse order to that in which they originally appeared, or if they pass from internal organs to more superficial parts, or if they go from above down.
More cases are spoiled by too frequent repetition than from any other cause, and it must be remembered that an acute case may show no improvement for three days and some chronic ones for sixty.
When the vitality is very low, as in collapse, it is dangerous to repeat the dose. But when there is a lack of response to the remedy after allopathic drugging, which is really due to a sluggishness and not to a want of vitality, it is necessary to repeat oftener.- (K.)
Incurable disease requires more frequent repetition of the short-acting remedies for palliation, and it is not advisable to use as higher potency than the 200th.- (Kent, Journal of Homoeopathics, Nov. 1897.)
Some antipsorics have also an acute action, and when indicated in acute diseases behave exactly like the short-acting remedies.
When the remedy corresponds very closely to the disease the symptom, after a reasonable time, will come back exactly the same or perhaps with the omission of one or two. In such cases all we have to do is repeat the same remedy and potency until it fails to act, when another potency must be used. Unfortunately in chronic diseases is it rarely possible to select a remedy that corresponds with perfect accuracy to the disease, and consequently when the symptoms return they are some-what changed; and frequent repetition of the original remedy will confuse the case, for it is possible of suppress symptoms by the too frequent use of even high potencies.
