If the physician does not work this scheme out on paper he must do it in the mind, but if he becomes very busy and sees a large number of cases it will be too much to carry in the mind. You will be astonished to find that if you put an epidemic on paper you will forever be able to carry the knowledge of it in mind. I have done this, and have been surprised to find that after a dozen references to it I did not need it any more.
Now you may say, how is this in regard to typhoid fever? It is not a new disease, it is an old form. The old practitioner has unconsciously made an anamnesis of his typhoid cases, he has unconsciously written it out in his mind and carries it around. It is nor difficult to work out the group of typhoid remedies, and from this group he works. The same is true with regard to measles, certain remedies correspond to the nature of measles, i.e., when studied by its symptoms and not by name.
Of course, every now and then will come up a rare and singular case, which will compel you to go outside of the usual group. Never allow yourself to be so cramped that you cannot go outside of the medicines that you have settled upon as medicine, say, for measles. All your nondescript cases of course will get Pulsatilla, because it is so similar to the nature of measles, but it does not do to be too limited or routine, but be sure in administering a remedy that the indications are clear. Every busy practitioner thinks of Ailanthus, Apis, Belladonna and Sulphur for malignant cases of scarlet fever, and yet he has often to go outside of that group.
So the physician perceives in the disease what it is that constitutes the curative indication.
This presents itself to his mind only when he is clearly conversant with the nature of the sickness, as, for instance, with the nature of scarlet fever, of measles, of typhoid fever,- the zymosis the blood changes, etc., so that when they arrive he is not surprised; when the typhoid state progresses he expects the tympanitic abdomen, the diarrhoea, the continued fever, the rash, the delirium and unconsciousness. These things stand out as the nature of typhoid.
When, therefore, he goes to the Materia Medica he at once calls up before his mind this nature of typhoid, and so is able to pick out the remedies that have such a nature. He sees in Phosphorus, Rhus, Bryonia, Baptisia, Arsenicum, etc., low forms of fever, corresponding to the typhoid condition. But when the patient jumps away out of the ordinary group of remedies, then it is that he has to go outside of the beaten track and find another remedy that also corresponds to the nature of typhoid fever.
By these remarks I am endeavouring to hold up before you that the physician regards as the curative indications of disease. First he sees the disease in general as to its nature, and then when an individual has this disease this individual will present in his own peculiarities the peculiar features of that disease. The homoeopath is in the habit of studying the slightest shades of difference between patients, the little things that point to the remedy. If we looked upon disease only as the old-school physician sees it we would have no means of distinction, but it is because of the little peculiarities manifested by every individual patient, through his inner life, through everything he thinks, that the homoeopath is enabled to individualize.
“If the physician clearly perceives what is curative in medicines, that is to say, in each individual medicine.” Here again he progresses from general to particulars. He cannot become acquainted clearly with the action of medicines individually until he becomes acquainted with the action of medicines collectively, proceeding from a collective study to a particular. This is to be done by studying provings.
Suppose we were to start out in this class and make a proving of some unknown drug. It would be expected that you would all bring out the same symptoms, but the same general features would run through this class of provers; each individual would have his own peculiarities. NO 1 might bring out the symptoms of the mind more clearly than NO.2; No. 2 might bring out the symptoms of the bowels more clearly than No.1; No.3 might bring out heal symptoms very strongly, etc., Now if these were collected together as if one man had proved the medicine, we would then have an image of that medicine. If we had a hundred provers we would go through the whole nature of this remedy and perceive how it affected the human race, how it acted as a unit.
What I have said before about studying the nature of disease must be applied the study of the nature a remedy.
A remedy is in condition to be studied as a whole it is on paper, the mind symptoms under one head the symptoms of the scalp under another, and so on throughout the centre of the body in accordance with Hahnemann’s schema We may go on adding to it, developing it, nothing which of the symptoms or groups of symptoms are the most prominent.
A remedy is not fully proved until it has permeated and made sick all regions of the body. When it has done this it is ready for study and for use. Many of our provings are only fragments and are given in the books for what they are worth. Hahnemann followed up in full all the remedies that he handed down to us; in these the symptoms have been brought out upon the entire man. Each individual medicine must be studied in that way, as to how it changes the human race.
To understand the nature of the chronic miasms, psora, syphilis and sycosis, the homoeopath must proceed in identically the same way as with the acute. Hahnemann has put on paper an image of psora. For eleven years he collected the symptoms of those patients who were undoubtedly psoric and arranged them in schematic form until the nature of this great miasm became apparent. Following upon that he published antipsoric remedies which in their nature have a similarity to psora. To be a really successful physician the homoeopath must proceed along the same lines in regard to syphilis and sycosis.
Now, when the physician sees, as it were, in an image, the nature of disease, when he is acquainted with every disease to which we are subject and when he sees the nature of the remedies in common use, just as clearly as he perceives disease, then on listening to the symptoms of a sick man he knows instantly the remedies that have produced upon healthy man symptoms similar to these. This is what paragraph 3 teaches; it looks towards making the homoeopathic physician so intelligent that when he goes to the bedside of a patient he can clearly perceive the nature of disease and the nature of the remedy. It is a matter of perception; he sees with his understanding. When a physician understands the nature of disease and of remedies, then it is that he will be skilful.
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.