A year ago our Dr. Royal Hayes clearly demonstrated Cuprum to have been the epidemic remedy for the late scourge of flu. The word however came too late for the overworked prescriber and the homeopathic death rate of under 2% still remained much too high.
That acute illnesses bear the hall mark of time and place was Rademacher’s idea of a genus epidemicus; the thought has a peculiar Paracelsian flavour. He added organ testing, physiopathological speculations and a general test and try out method. At the same time he elevated human judgement and the simple remedy above precedent and a scholasticism so stupefying that it had put doctoring on about the same plane as involuntary manslaughter. Hahnemann’s ideas caused him to lose himself in the bog of specific medication. We now call this Eclecticism; whatever that may mean.
Extraneous influences, ethereal, telluric or what not, clearly can call forth only what is pre-existent in the human organism; epidemic symptoms therefore mean that certain external forces have contracted corresponding internal, even if latent ones. This helps us to under-stand susceptibility.
Rademacher experimented to find the epidemic remedy. We, with the aid of the law of similia and our provings can find it much more quickly, especially by gleaning the characteristic from among the pathologic-diagnostic symptoms; a method that grows rapidly easier as case after case adds its quota. The earlier cases are generally the more severe, thus obscuring the finer indications, which peculiarities are then as yet relatively few.
In 1863 Brückner asked Boenninghausen to cure him of a recurring affection, at the same time giving the history, as well as the status praesens of the disease. The latter however, declared himself unable to choose the remedy with certainty because of the “absence of all characteristic (individualistic) indications.” He added “For many years the taking into account of the sickness of the individual, with his isolated, more or less abnormal peculiarities has been my highest aim; and only afterward do I search among the concurrent remedies for the one seemingly best related to the (general) nature of the illness. To this method, also fully approved of and in his last years exclusively followed by the deceased Hahnemann, I believe I can ascribe many uniformly good results.” In the same epistle he says that medicines which have the requisite outstanding symptoms but barely noted or even not at all are often the most-helpful, while in Vol. 67 pp. 115 of All Hom. Zeitung he says “A single symptom of such character and apparently complete, is ordinarily of much greater import than a long array of general sick signs such as are to be found in almost every patient as at-every proving.” From the peculiar constitutional symptoms shown by Brückner from time to time rather than ‘his recent illness Boenninghausen finally chose Causticum. He usually repeated the 200 daily for about two weeks.
Those more or less crude substances which act as excitants of the disease are logically best antidoted by the same or a similar acting substance moving at a higher vibratory rate- a higher potency. The symptoms of Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases were mostly obtained from provings made with the 30, and in prescribing on these indications we get the best results by far by using still higher potencies. Swann was a great advocate of this method. Lately Radium burns and Primrose poisoning have both been rapidly cured with the same drug in a high potency, after the failure of other medicaments.
To some of you this may look like an easy way out of what is often a difficult situation; in fact serologists have already tried their hand at it, but their results would hardly satisfy a Hahnemannian. The point overlooked by all isopathists is that the elicited symptoms are in every case a mixture of the general drug reaction plus the psoric, idiosyncratic or personal element. If this were not so Rhus tox. High would invariably cure poison ivy poisoning, etc., etc., which we know is not always the case, but an isopathic success depends upon whether psora at the time happens to be latent or active. The use of antitoxin is perhaps the most prominent example of the same thing; its relative success depending almost entirely upon the fact that the psoric miasm is in the incubation or latent stage in childhood, when the tissues are undergoing the most active metamorphosis.
In a larger sense cure depends not only upon reaction but still more upon the kind of reaction, hence the experienced prescriber soon learns to recognise suppressive, palliative, curative or eradicative action. He therefore either takes the measure of the present symptoms and gives the remedy indicated thereby or writes out the whole life history of the patient, with such individualistic particulars as appear from time to time, and prescribes thereon. The former method has encouraged the use of the lower potencies and frequent repetition, while the latter leads to the use of single or but few doses and the very highest potencies.
Born in Western Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and subsequently Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He moved to Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1888, practicing there, but also consulting worldwide. He gave lectures at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and taught philosophy, materia medica, and repertory at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Postgraduate School. Boger brought BÅ“nninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory into the English Language in 1905. His publications include :
Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Boenninghausen's Antipsorics
Boger's Diphtheria, (The Homoeopathic Therapeutics of)
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica, 1915
General Analysis with Card Index, 1931
Samarskite-A Proving
The Times Which Characterize the Appearance and Aggravation of the Symptoms and their Remedies