HOW TO TAKE THE CASE AND TO FIND THE SIMILLIMUM (By E.B. Nash)
Many failures to select the right remedy for the sick are due to a failure to select the line of properly taking the case. We might as well under take to recognise a person by looking at his hand, or hand and foot, as to cover the case with the appropriate remedy from a few symptoms when there are many to come into the complete picture.
Oftentimes in a case half reported the very symptoms that are most important, so far as the selection of remedy is concerned, are left out. This is specially true with the homoeopathic method of prescribing. It is so natural for a patient to think that if he tells us that he has a cold, or indigestion, or rheumatism, that we ought to be able to prescribe for him forthwith, and strange to say, I have met more than one physician who seemed to have no better conception of Homoeopathy than this; and evidenced it by asking such questions as, “Doctor, what is your best remedy for diphtheria”, or rheumatism, etc.
There is, of course, only one proper answer to such a question, from a homoeopathic standpoint, viz., the indicated one.
Dr. Constantine Lippe once told me of a chronic recurrent quinsy of years’ standing which illustrates this point recumbent Her family physician, in New York, had repeatedly failed to relieve it, and finally told the patient that the only way was to “grin and bear it”, as there was no remedy. The patient asked permission to call in Dr. Lippe when she was coming down with another attack, and it was readily granted, with the remark that he would like to see what Homoeopathy could do with such a case. So Dr. Lippe “came, saw and conquered”, aborting the attack with a dose of Mercurius vivus, that being the clearly indicated remedy. When the regular came to see the result, of course he was astonished and promptly called on Dr. Lippe and asked the usual question of a regular doctor : “what is your remedy for quinsy?”
“But you did with Mrs. L. over there what I have not been able to do at all; what did you give her?”.
“Oh, I gave her Mercurius, but the next case might not need that at all.”
Then the doctor proceeded to instruct the regular in the art of prescribing. But the doctor answered with a sigh, “I am too old to go into all that.”
There is no other way, and no cure ever was (except accidentally) or will be made in any other.
Homoeopathy claims to be able to find the remedy in accordance with the law of nature as invariable as the law of gravitation, and abundant clinical results have proven the claim to be well founded.
The name of a disease may be helpful so far as calling to mind a class of remedies that have been found curative, but the symptomatology of the case in its entirely, and especially in those symptoms which are peculiar and characteristic, in correspondence with the remedy which in its pathogenesis has the same, must decide which ONE of the class is the true similimum.
But some one will object, I cannot wait to hunt down a case like that. Life is too short. I answer: “Then you will wait for your cure, and life may be too short for that.”
Of course, recovery may come (no thanks to us), but cure never.
Then if Similia Similibus Curantur is true, the taking of the case in the entire range of its symptoms is of first importance.
Where shall we begin.
