The symptoms of the organs and parts taken by themselves give an imperfect or one sided view of the case. They fail to give the symptoms of the patient in such a form as to present a perfect view. There is something lacking. Many cases coming for advice express the particulars, and fail to give the symptoms that characterize the patient. This must be one of the most frequent causes of failure with the young physician.
This can be illustrated by the study of discharges. Discharges are common to inflamed mucous membranes of ear, nose, throat, trachea, vagina, etc., and as such each is only a particular, but the part or the inflammation does not cause it to be green, bloody or viscid. Therefore this must be due to some change in the whole economy which makes it general, and increases the value of the symptom from common to peculiar, and therefore changes the view of the case. Laudable discharges are natural and common. Therefore, let me repeat that if the part is inflamed there will be discharge, but that does not cause the colour.
So it is with blood when it is fluid and fails to clot; it is peculiar.
The symptoms that characterize the whole mental and bodily states sometimes present such a view that the remedy may be seen at once; again, all the foregoing classes of symptoms are necessary to furnish a view of the past and present. When such a complete view presents itself, the prescription becomes easy.
If prescribing is to be made easy, it is to be done by securing such a perfect view of the whole case as would be expressed by saying that “The sole basis of the homoeopathic prescription is the totality of morbid signs and symptoms,” as Hahnemann taught so many years ago. It will be seen, therefore, that carelessness in taking the symptoms, as well as in viewing the symptoms after they are noted, must lead to indifferent results. Remember that is net the totality of the symptoms taken by a nameless or ignorant physician that constitutes the basis of a homoeopathic prescription, but the totality of all the symptoms the patient has.
With menses too late or suppressed or scanty, the patient weeping, with aversion to fats, nausea, vomiting, weight after eating, the young man will say Pulsatilla at once; but wait a moment. The patient is very chilly, likes the house, never needs the open window, is worse from motion, wants to keep very quiet; now you change your mind and give her Cyclamen. Or, if she is better in motion and in open air, and craves it, and is too warm, then Pulsatilla.
The physician cannot be careless, and cure as Hahnemann did.
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.