Symptomatology



Boenninghausen’s Therapeutic Pocketbook.- Boenninghausen’s famous Therapeutic Pocketbook was devised primarily to deal with just such cases. The materia medica contains a great number of incomplete symptoms. Until Boenninghausen’s time this constituted one of the greatest obstacles to successful homoeopathic prescribing. Boenninghausen first conceived the idea of completing these symptoms partly by analogy, and partly by clinical observation of curative effects. He discovered that many if not all of *the modalities of a case were *general in their relation, and were not necessarily confined to the particular symptoms with which they had first been observed. The “aggravation in a warm room” of Pulsatilla, for example, might first have been observed as applying to a headache. Boenninghausen assumed that this modality applied to *all the symptoms – *to the patient himself, in other words; and that this modality, once discovered in relation to any particular symptom of Pulsatilla, might be used to complete all other symptoms of Pulsatilla which, up to that time, had been incomplete in respect to their modalities. Experience proved this to be true.

Out of this grew the idea that all other combinations of symptoms might be thus made. By classifying the characteristic features of medicines in certain general relations to each other, in such a way that one part could be used to complete another, the prescriber might always be able to construct a related totality, even with apparently fragmentary symptoms.

Starting with the basic idea that every symptom is composed of the three elements of locality, sensation and modality, and that fragmentary symptoms may be completed by analogy or by supplementary clinical observation of the curative effects of similar remedies, Boenninghausen, in his Therapeutic Pocketbook, distributes the elements of all symptoms, pathogenetic and clinical, according to this analysis, into seven distinct parts or sections which, taken together, form a grand totality. (1) Moral and Intellectual Faculties; (2) Locality or Seat of the Symptoms; (3) Morbid Conditions and Sensations; (4) Sleep and Dreams; (5) Circulation and Fever; (6) Modalities, Etiology, etc.; (7) Concordances. Each of these sections is subdivided into rubrics containing the names of remedies arranged alphabetically under the symptoms to which they correspond.

Of this arrangement he says: “Although each part ought to be considered as a complete whole, it never yields, however, more than a part of a symptom, which receives its complement from one or many of the other parts. In odontalgia, for example, the seat of the pain is found in the second, the nature of the pain in the third, the exacerbation or diminution of pain, according to time, place, or circumstance in the sixth; and that which is necessary as an accessory to complete the description of the malady, and warrant the choice of medicines, must be sought in the different chapters.”

By this method, as Dr. Wm. Boericke observes: “a remedy is selected for a case that is found possesses in its symptomatology marked action (1) in a certain location, (2) to correspond with the sensation, and (3) to possess the modality; *without necessarily having in the proving the very symptom resulting from the combination. It is to be inferred that a full proving would have it, however. For instance, a patient with a tearing pain in the left hip, relieved by motion, greatly worse in the afternoon, would receive Lycopodium, not because Lycopodium has so far produced in the healthy such a symptom, but because from the study of its symptoms as recorded in the materia medica, we do find that it effects the left hip prominently (locality); that is pain in various parts of the body are “tearing” (sensation); and that its general symptoms are relieved by motion and aggravated in the afternoon (modality).”

The experience of nearly a century has verified the truth of Boenninghausen’s idea enabled us, in the use of his master-piece, The Therapeutic Pocketbook, to overcome to a great extent the imperfections and limitations of our materia medica.

In constructing a materia medica from the materials of the provings, all the symptoms of the different provers of the same drug are collected under the name of the drug. The second step is to distribute the symptoms thus collected under the names of the various parts, organs and functions of the body affected by the drug. This localizes the phenomena of each drug and gives the materia medica its anatomical and physiological structure.

When all the symptoms have been collected and arranged in this form under the name of the medicine, it represents a sick man, whose likeness may be met almost any day in the actual world. The drug symptoms are in fact disease symptoms, artificially induced. In other words they are symptoms of a drug disease. The significant thing is that drug diseases or poisonings accidentally or internationally produced, *are similar to natural diseases – so similar that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish them. A person poisoned to a certain degree by arsenic, or camphor, or veratrum album, for example, presents an appearance so similar to one suffering from cholera, that any one but an expert might be deceived. If this is so strikingly true of the gross and violent phenomena produced by poisonings, it is equally true of the milder, finer and less obvious symptoms which result from proving drugs in small or moderate doses.

Language of the Materia Medica.- The symptoms of the homoeopathic materia medica, experienced by the provers, are expressed in plain and common terms. The language of everyday life is used, not the technical language of the medical profession. For this reason, the homoeopathic materia medica is enduring. It is not subject to the influence of the transitory theories of general medicine, with its constantly changing terminology and bewildering array of newly invented names. So long as common language endures, the homoeopathic materia medica will be intelligible and useful to every person who can read and write.

It is enduring also because it is a record of the facts of actual, voluntary experience, in a sphere and under conditions open and common to all men. In other words, the “experiments” of homoeopathy are made by men, upon men, for men under the *natural conditions which belong to the everyday life of all men.They are not necessarily conducted in elaborately equipped technical laboratories, nor by using and abusing poor, dump animals, “whose only language is a cry,” who are often forced to give up their lives, under unspeakable torture, to bolster up the theory, or satisfy the curiosity of some cold-blooded man of science. While knowledge gained by vivisection may be valuable to the surgeon, it is unnecessary for the physician. The homoeopathic way of determining the effects of drugs by giving small doses of single, pure medicines to intelligent healthy human beings, who can observe and describe their feelings, is the only way to obtain reliable knowledge of medicines for use in healing the sick. It is safe to say that nothing of any real therapeutic value has ever been learned by experiment upon animals that could not have been learned better, more simply and more humanely by harmless experiments upon human beings; while the knowledge gained in such experiments on human beings is equally valuable for use in the treatment of sick animals.

Stuart Close
Stuart M. Close (1860-1929)
Dr. Close was born November 24, 1860 and came to study homeopathy after the death of his father in 1879. His mother remarried a homoeopathic physician who turned Close's interests from law to medicine.

His stepfather helped him study the Organon and he attended medical school in California for two years. Finishing his studies at New York Homeopathic College he graduated in 1885. Completing his homeopathic education. Close preceptored with B. Fincke and P. P. Wells.

Setting up practice in Brooklyn, Dr. Close went on to found the Brooklyn Homoeopathic Union in 1897. This group devoted itself to the study of pure Hahnemannian homeopathy.

In 1905 Dr. Close was elected president of the International Hahnemannian Association. He was also the editor of the Department of Homeopathic Philosophy for the Homeopathic Recorder. Dr. Close taught homeopathic philosophy at New York Homeopathic Medical College from 1909-1913.

Dr. Close's lectures at New York Homeopathic were first published in the Homeopathic Recorder and later formed the basis for his masterpiece on homeopathic philosophy, The Genius of Homeopathy.

Dr. Close passed away on June 26, 1929 after a full and productive career in homeopathy.