All things oppose haste in prescribing. In very grave disease haste is a common error, more frequently with the second prescription than the first. Many doctors suppose that a diphtheria demands a medicine immediately because “something must be done.” This is an error, many a life has been saved by waiting and waiting.
For example:
A Little girl was suffering from a severe attack of diphtheria and the mother had treated it four days with Mercurius 3x and Kali bich. 3x, in alternation. She was poor, and therefore I did not refuse to take the case- which was then in a very bad state: nose, mouth and larynx full of exudate.
After a long study the child received Lycopodium cm. one dose, dry, which cleared out the exudate front nose and fauces, but did not touch the larynx.
I dare, not tell you how long I watched that child before I saw an indication for the second remedy which it would have needed had the Lycopodium been given the child first took sick. I waited until the poor child was threatening dissolution when I saw a little tough yellow mucus in the mouth. Kali bich., cm., one dose, cleared the larynx in one day and there was no further medication necessary.
The first prescription is made with the entire image of the sickness formed. (People usually send for the doctor after there can be no doubt of the sickness to be treated.)
The doctor watches the improvement of the patient and the corresponding disappearance of the symptoms under the first prescription, and when the case comes to a standstill he is uneasy, and with increasing fidgetiness he awaits the coming indication for the next dose of medicine.
This fidgetiness which comes from a lack of knowledge unfits the physician as an observer and judge of symptoms; hence we see the doctor usually failing to cure his own children. He cannot wait and reason clearly over the returning symptoms.
While watching the prescriptions of beginners, I have, observed very often the proper results of the first prescription. The patient has improved for a time, then ceased to respond to any remedy.
Close investigation generally reveals that this patient improved after the first dose of medicine, that the symptoms changed slightly without new symptoms, and the new “photo” seemed to call for some other remedy, when of course, the remedy was changed and trouble began. Constant changing of remedies followed until all the antipsorics in the CHRONIC DISEASES had been given on flitting symptom-images, and the patient is yet sick. This is the common experience of young Hahnemannians trying to find the right way. Some of experience make lesser blunders and some make few, but how many have made none? All of these blunders I have made, as I had no teacher, until I blundered upon the works of the great Master.
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.