If an allopathic physician was to come in and listen to the long examination of a case by a homoeopath he would want to know what it was all about. He does not see anything in it, because he has not a knowledge of true materia medica. The homoeopath’s purpose is to transfer a man’s sickness to paper and so find the image of the sickness in the Materia Medica. The allopathic physician could not do that; he could not put the image of the sickness on canvas so that he could fit the picture to the Materia Medica, for he would not know one of our medicines with which to compare it.
The unprejudiced mind then comes from sound understanding, and a sound understanding comes from education. The education we are now talking about is an education in Homoeopathy, becoming acquainted with all the doctrines step by step. After being taught how to give attention and what to give attention to fidelity is necessary. This faithfulness would never be shown by one who had not removed all his prejudices by opening his mind to the principles and doctrines.
Here we work together; we all work after the same fashion. Take everyone of the students that goes through here for a year, and you will find that he has the ways of the school and carries the stamp of the school. Just as the stamp of Harvard or the stamp of Yale is upon every student that comes from either of these institutions so the stamp of the Post Graduate School is upon every student that goes through its curriculum with faithfulness and earnestness.
What we are now about to consider is the plan for the faithful and careful examination of a case. It is our purpose to cure the case, and it is necessary for this purpose to bring the patient’s symptoms in the very best possible way before the mind. This is a long and tedious study, and there are many difficulties in the way. Disease must be brought our in symptoms, with the end of its becoming a likeness of some remedy of the Materia Medica.
All the diseases known to man have their likeness in the Materia Medica, and the physician must become so conversant with this art that he may perceive this likeness. You will find at first it is not an easy matter and that, to become expert, requires the continual application of patience. All the senses must be on the alert in order to perceive that which is similar, and most similar. Now we come to the directions to the physician for discovering and tracing out the image of the disease.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.