Suggestion as to Method of Study and Use of the Following Analysis.
Take first the twenty-two rubrics and memorize the group of remedies found under each one, paying attention first to the generals. After you have become familiar with your list of remedies then learn the particular circumstance of the remedy under each rubric. This will give you ground work of these remedies that will be of use to you in the daily work of prescribing for your acute cases.
After you have become familiar with the above symptoms you may broaden your knowledge of each remedy by reference to the materia medica. It has been my experience (as well as that of my students) that a few minutes’ study each day will soon give you a comprehensive knowledge of the remedies that will be in shape to use at the bedside.
Take, for example, a cold patient, one who is shivering with the cold, and, although covered by blankets, cannot get warm. We find this patient having burning pains; he may be thirsty or not, there may be oedema of mucous membrane with stinging pains. There may be scanty urine or any number of symptoms referring to a particular organ or to disease condition, which might lead you to think of Apis, but the fact that your patient was cold would rule that remedy out and turn your thoughts to a remedy found under the first rubric, Cold and aggravation from cold. Here you would find that one of the twenty-six remedies given would be the one which would be homoeopathic to the patient in hand.
Take another example of a patient with throbbing pains. The first though of the majority of our men when they hear throbbing pains mentioned is Belladonna, but fourteen remedies in our list of forty have throbbing pains, and Aconite, Calcarea carb., Phosphorus, Pulsatilla and Sepia all have this characteristic pain in a higher degree than overworked Belladonna.
We will know at least from this analysis that one of our fourteen remedies will be indicated, but must individualize more closely to find the one remedy. If the patient who exhibits the throbbing pains is worse after midnight think of those remedies that have an aggravation after midnight, and we will at once see among these ten we have Bryonia, Calcarea c., Phosphorus, Sulphur and Silicea.
Here we have five, any one of which may be the remedy to help your patient’s throbbing pains. We learn that the patient is chilly, that the pains are worse from warmth, but that she desires very cold drinks. This at once lets us know that Phosphorus alone of the above remedies will be the one which the patient requires.
Many other examples could be cited as to the use of the preceding scheme, but to those who will look to this work for assistance it would not be necessary, and the student who begins to get a usable knowledge of our materia medica from this analysis will find that his learning of the remedies by this method will enable him to discriminate, individualize and differentiate his remedy and patient quickly, accurately and with an ease which will astonish him.
