I expected to see crepe on the door. I did not dare to call, though I was very much worried about it, so I drove past; but there was no crepe on the door. I drove home again that way, although it was quite a distance out of the way, and still there was no crepe on the door; but standing in the door-way was the grandmother, who said: “Doctor, the baby is all right this morning”. Then I began to feel better, thinking I had not killed it. Perhaps some of you have been in the same state of mind.
That little child did not need any more medicine. After that I had quite a number of Podophyllum cases and the 30th did the work to my astonishment. It was different from anything I had ever seen; the cures were almost instantaneous, it seemed as if there would be no more stool after the first dose of medicine. I did not always give single dose. I used that 30th all the season, and then made up my mind that if the 30th of Podophyllum was good other 30th would also be, and I ought to have as many of them as possible. I made a good many 30th by hand, and finally succeeded in making up one hundred and twenty- six remedies., some of them in the 200th potency, and these I used. Then I procured a set of 200th and higher and practiced with them. I followed on in this way and in a few years I discovered that by giving higher and higher potencies the remedies seemed to operate more and more interiorly.
I found that a chronic case that would be relieved by moderately high potencies would only improve for a matter of weeks, but on the administration of much higher potencies the work would be taken up. and in that way the same patient could be carried on from one potency to another. If I give you the conversion of one patient with me from time to time you may understand better what I mean. I saw this patient for the first time some fifteen years ago, when he was stoop-shouldered and had a fairly phthisical aspect. He had a catarrhal state of the chest, and it looked as though it might end in phthisis.
On his symptoms he received Sulphur about 6 m. He was violently aggravated by this dose of medicine, all his symptoms were made worse, and he came back to the office saying that the medicine had made him sick. I had attained knowledge of the aggravation from a similar remedy. so I gave him sugar. At the end of another week he came back and told me he was better. much better, that he did not want me to give him any more of that first medicine, but he wanted more of the last, as it had made him so much better. So I kept him on the medicine which pleased him for a period of probably six or seven weeks.
One time he returned and told me he did not want that last medicine, but he wanted that medicine that helped him so. By that I knew enough to give him another dose of Sulphur. Within the next day or two he ran in and said, “You young rascal, you gave me that medicine that made me sick in the first place,”: so he got sugar again and went on this time for five or six weeks, or perhaps longer. Then he came am again saying, “: Now, I do not think you understand me, for I am having my old symptoms back. I wish you would study my case again,” So I went all over his case and he got another dose of Sulphur 6 m. He reports this time, “Well, I do not feel any better; I am just about the same.” He was not stirred up this time, you see.
I waited a little longer and saw no relief from the last dose. Here are all the symptoms calling for Sulphur, shall I give him crude Sulphur? I cannot give a remedy that is not indicated. The experience of the older men says “Go higher”. I gave him sulfur 55 m., and in a few days he came beck upon me, saying, “You rascal, you gave me that first medicine again I don’t want that stuff.”: Finally I got him cooled down, gave him some sugar and assured him that he would be better in a few days, and he went on for six or seven weeks with great improvement. After a while I explained to him that where the remedy did not act I had to give him something to stir him up. Of course I did not say anything to him about sugar.
When you have learned what your medicines will do it is a good thing to say to the patient, “Do not be alarmed or astonished when such and such things happen.” Otherwise they will get alarmed and go off and perhaps get another doctor. The 55 m. of Sulphur relieved that patient in a couple of doses, far apart, and then ceased to relieve him any more. Next he received the c.m. which worked just as the other potencies had done, and finally he got to the mm. which acted just like the c.m. and from that potency he went on being restored to health.
When you see these things you have a confirmation in them of the doctrines of the law. Experience does not lead to these things, but principles which thereafter are confirmed by experience. When a patient has been carried up through a series of potencies he will often remain unaffected by that remedy in a lower realm of potency or in the crude, unless he is overwhelmingly dosed by it, and then he will be poisoned.,
The third proposition in this paragraph is that medicines will not act creatively, or in the way to turn the body into order and turn off disease, unless potentized to correspond to the degrees in which the man is sick. Such as are sick in a middle plane are sick from that plane to the outermost. Such as are sick in the interior planes are sick throughout to the outermost. When the disorder is in the very depth of his physical nature then it is in the form of chronic disease, i.e. all there is of him is sick, and of such there is no tendency to recovery but a continued progress. Such is the order of psora, syphilis and sycosis.
The nutritive plane is entirely in the outermost, that is, in the tissues., Assimilation goes on in the tissues. It is simply in the realm of tissues and ultimates that crude drugs operate; they can only disturb ultimates, and the inharmonious condition is the harmony of ultimates, the outermost plane. Of course, if the outermost of the physical is disturbed the whole economy suffers, and the body ceases to furnish a good instrument to be operated upon by the powers within; but a true disease, with periods of prodrome, progress and decline or continuance, cannot be implanted upon the economy except it be by a dynamic cause.
And hence necessarily man cannot be cured except by drugs attenuated until they have become similar to the nature or quality of disease cause. Disease cause and the disease-curing drug must be similar in nature; unlike causes would not produce like effects. We can arrive at similar causes by studying the effects that are similar. When we examine into a case and find a certain group of symptoms and in the effects produced by a certain drug we see like symptoms, we have a right to presume that the quality or nature in both is similar.
The causes must be similar if the effects are similar in nature and quality. When the physician goes to the bedside he asks himself, Do I know a remedy that has produced, upon a healthy man, symptoms like these? He must pass judgment upon the symptoms, he must be an artist in application and capable of discerning the finer shades of difference and similitude.
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.