When their own original symptoms appear in the proving the effect of the remedy upon any one of these chronic symptoms is simply noted, whether cured or exaggerated, or whether or not interfered with; but when the symptom occurs in its own natural way, without being increased or diminished, it may be looked upon as one of the natural things of that particular prover, and hence all the natural things of the prover are eliminated.
Generally if a remedy takes a marked hold of a prover all the chronic symptoms will subside, but when a proving only takes a partial hold it may only create a few symptoms. These few symptoms, when added to the symptoms that the other provers have felt, will go to make up the chronic effect of the remedy, which may be said to be the effect of the remedy upon the human race. Now as to the method.
After the master prover deals out these vials, each prover takes a single dose of the medicine and waits to see if the single dose takes effect. If he is sensitive to that medicine a single dose will produce symptoms, and then those symptoms must not be interfered with; they should be allowed to go their own way. In the proving of an acute remedy, like Aconite; the instructor, who knows something about the effect of the medicine, may be able to say to the class: “If you are going to get effects from this remedy you will get those effects in the next three to four days.” It will not be necessary to wait longer than that for Aconite, Nux Vomica, or Ignatia, but longer for Sulphur or some of the antipsorics. If we were attempting to prove a remedy like Silicate of Alumina, the master-prover would advise the class not to interfere with the medicine for at least thirty days, because its prodrome may be thirty days.
It is highly important to wait until the possible prodrome of a given remedy is surely passed. If it is a short-acting remedy, the action will come speedily. We must bear in mind the prodrome, the period of progress and the period of decline when studying the Materia Medica as well as when studying miasms. The master-prover will usually be able to indicate to the class whether they should wait a short time or a long time before taking another dose, and from this the class will only know whether the drug to be proved is acute or chronic.
If the first dose of medicine produces no effect, and enough time has been allowed to be sure that the prover is not sensitive to it, the next best thing to do is to create a sensitiveness to it. If we examine into the effects of poisons, we find those who have once been poisoned by Rhus are a dozed times more sensitive than before. Those who have been poisoned by Arsenic are extremely sensitive to Arsenic after they allow the first effects to pass off. If they continue, however, to keep on with the first effects they become less sensitive to it, so that they require larger and larger doses to take effect.
This is a rule with all poisonous substances that are capable of affecting the human system markedly. Now, when the time has passed by which the prover knows he is not sensitive to that remedy, that he has not received an action from the dose (and perhaps in the class of forty you will not get more than one or two that will make a proving from the 30th potency) to make the proving and to intensify the effect, dissolve the medicine in water and have him take every two hours for 24 to 48 hours, unless symptoms arise sooner. By this means the prodromal period is shortened. The medicine seems to be intensified by the repetition, and the patient is brought under the influence, dynamically, of that remedy. As soon as the symptoms begin to show, it is time to cease taking the remedy.
No danger comes from giving the remedy in this way; danger comes form taking it for a few days and then stopping it, and then taking it again. For instance, say you are proving Arsenicum; you find that you are not all sensitive to it, and after waiting thirty days you start out again and take it in water, for three to four days, and the symptoms arise: mow wait. So long as you discontinue it, it will not do any damage.
Now, the symptoms begin to arise; wait, and let the image-producing effect of Arsenicum wear off; let it come and spread and go away of itself; do not interfere with it; if you do interfere with it, the interference should be only by a true antidote; you should never interfere with it by a repetition of dose. That is one of the most dangerous things. If the Arsenic symptoms are coming and showing clearly, and at the end of a week or ten days you say: “Let us brighten this up a little, and do this thing more thoroughly,” and to accomplish this you take a great deal more, you will engraft upon your constitution in that way the Arsenicum diathesis, from which you will never be cured.
You are breaking right into the cycles of that remedy and it is a dangerous thing to do. At times that has been done and provers have carried the effects of their proving to the end of their days. If you leave this Arsenical state alone it will pass off entirely, and the prover is very often left much better for it. A proving properly conducted will improve the health of anybody; it will help to turn things into order. It was Hahnemann’s advice to young men to make provings.
Another portion of the class will not get symptoms, no matter how they abuse the remedy, and if it be Arsenicum they will have to take a crude dose of it to get any effect, and then the symptoms given forth are only the toxic effects, from which little can be gained. The toxicological results of poisons are provings of the grossest character: they do not give the finer details. For instance, you give Opium in such large doses that it immediately poisons; you see nothing but the grosser, overwhelming symptoms; the irregular, stertorous breathing, the unconsciousness, the contracted pupil and the mottled face and the irregular heart. The details are not there, you only have a view of the most common things.
The reproving of remedies is of great value. The Vienna Society did not fully endorse Hahnemann’s provings. This society thought it impossible that such wonderful things could be brought out upon the sensations of people. The society did not endorse the 30th potency that was recommended by Hahnemann for proving. So this society gathered itself together and resolved to prove remedies, and to test the 30th potency, and it so happened that the society was honest. Natrum mur., Thuja and other remedies were proved, and W–was honest enough to say that although his convictions were decidedly against the proving he had to admit that the symptoms gathered from the 30th potency were very strong.
The Vienna Society demonstrated by these reprovings that the polycrests of Hahnemann had been fully proved. Their provings of the 30th of Natrum mur. was a wonderful revelation of them; but W–, in spite of this result, held on to his prejudices. He acknowledged that he was wrong; but he continued to use potencies lower than the 15th. He could not get his mind elevated to the 30; his prejudice was too strong. Dunham says of some of these, that in spite of the fact that they had seen better results from the 30 and higher potencies even, when they were so prejudiced they could not bring themselves to a state of yielding. As Dunham humorously expressed it, “they are ossified in their cerebral convolutions as well as in their bony structure.” That is to say, their minds were inelastic, they could not expand. We talk from appearance when we say the eyes are closed;it is the mind that is closed, the understanding that is closed.
Read $ 107-112.–When the patient is under the poisonous influence of a drug it does not seem to flow in the direction of his life action, but when reaction comes then the lingering effects of the drug seems to flow, as it were, in the stream of the vital action. Then the symptoms that arise are of the best order, and hence it is necessary in proving a drug to take such a portion of the drug only as will disturb and not suspend, as it will flow in the stream of the vital order, in the order of the economy, establishing slightly perverted action, and causing symptoms, without suspending action, as we would, for example, with a large dose of Opium.
When a state of suspension exists in the dynamic economy, then we have a beclouding of all the activities of the economy; so giving a large dose of medicine to palliate pains and suffering is dangerous. We have a suspension of the vital order when we give a medicine that does not flow in the stream of the vital influx, Homoeopathy looks towards the administration of medicines that are given for the purpose of either creating order, and then always in the higher potencies, or fro the purpose of disturbing, and then in the lower potencies.
We should never resort to crude drugs for provings, unless for a momentary or temporary experiment. It should not be followed up, and no great should be put upon the provings that are made from the crude medicines. The only at best give a fragmentary idea. Unless the proving that has been made with strong doses becomes enlarged with the symptoms from small doses the information remains fragmentary and unless. If we had only the poisonous effects of Opium, we would be able only to use it in those conditions that simulate the poisonous effects of Opium, like apoplexy.
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.