Potencies Discussion


Potencies Discussion.       Question: What is the explanation of antidoting high potencies by using low ones? In tuberculosis, for instance, Sulphur is occa…


      Question: What is the explanation of antidoting high potencies by using low ones? In tuberculosis, for instance, Sulphur is occasionally too deep-acting, and a less similar remedy may work up to a stronger totality so that better results may be possible.

Kent: The correspondence doctrine of series and degrees comes near to mastering the question of using potentization. The crude drug and the potentized remedy are opposite in action.

In proving a remedy, of one of the elements that exists in the body (Sulphur, for instance, helps make up the body), the prover takes crude Sulphur until it produces a proving. He is unable then to appropriate it from the food to build up the body, being cloyed with it. The symptoms of the Sulphur patient indicate that she needs it, but she is not able to appropriate it from the food. Each resembles the other.

Give the patient with symptoms of Sulphur the potency; if you give it cruder than it is in the natural body, etc., it only makes her worse. The higher potency of Sulphur restores order and she appropriates it from the food, not being fed enough to poison her.

There are distinct degrees from the potency to the crude form; according to the excitability of the patient, she reacts to the 200, 500, 1000, and so on, these being only illustrative. If a given remedy will make an individual react and appropriate that which is needed and help to appropriate from the blood that which is taken, the reaction may be to 5m, and though not eaten it is in the blood.

Degrees are in sevens, as in octaves of music. If you strike too high she is not sensitive, it is not sufficient. Keep to the mild potency so long as it works. It is not well to jump too many degrees. From the crude to 10m there is a range of degrees in the ordinary person. You do not go from the first to the last, in music, it does not preserve the chord, you take the thirds and fifths. You can repeat the series, beginning with the lower potencies, and do good work.

The patient will recognize these series. Too high a potency gives an unnecessary aggravation, and then will not perform the best curative action.

The best action is the slight aggravation, as in the first few hours in the acute disorders.

The ideal is the one that gives no aggravation but amelioration. We do not seek to produce an aggravation, that is not the best, not the longest curative effect.

No law is established for aggravations and ameliorations.

Only by study of records in practical experience, can we see the best action in patients.

Question.-Can you give too deep-acting potency to be curative; would a less similar give safer results?

Kent:-The cruder approaches the opposite and antidotes; the low potencies approach in degrees to the higher potencies. In the Sulph. patient who needed Sulphur ten or twenty years ago, and today it would kill her; Nux vomica, Pulsatilla, Senega, palliate but cure. I have seen Sulph. and Phosphorus act so strongly that I have regretted it. In lung cases, consider whether she has lung space enough to make recovery probable. If she can bear it, give it in a low potency, but do not give it if there is no lung space enough to warrant it.

Question.-I have a mentally deficient child, whose mind becomes clearer every time I advance in the plane. She has had BARIUM SULPH. It is an unusual case. Would you go to the bottom, and recommend the series, or higher to mm?

Kent:-There you may be going into trouble and confusion. One patient may run up safely, but ninety-nine cases would not have any action in those high potencies. The object is to keep the patient under the influence of the remedy the longest time possible; to follow up with just enough difference to react, to reach the best-acting plane.

From experience, I am led to use of a series from 1m to Dm (5cm) including 10m, somewhere near 50m, and CM.

Other potencies are given, to observe what action is forthcoming. You encourage the patient to become over-sensitive by using the highest potencies, instead of going low to begin again.

As a rule, two doses (sometimes three) in the same plane give the best results. It has become almost routine, as the records indicate that the third dose in the same potency gives -no effect.

It is a mistake to mix degrees and the different makes. If Allen, Ehrhart, or Kents has been started, stick to the same series and the same scale.

James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician. Prior to his involvement with homeopathy, Kent had practiced conventional medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He discovered and "converted" to homeopathy as a result of his wife's recovery from a serious ailment using homeopathic methods.
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.