Boenninghausen once offered a prize for a “treatise” concerning the greater or lesser (characteristic) value of the symptoms occurring in a disease, to aid as a norm or basis in the therapeutical selection of the remedy”. After three years of silence on the part of the homoeopathic world, Boenninghausen himself attempted to give what he considered a somewhat adequate answer. His reply was founded on Hahnemann’s instructions in Paragraph 153 of the fifth edition of the *Organon; or, as Boenninghausen puts it, this paragraph “contains the proper, true kernel of the answer….. and deserves to be first premised.”
In seeking for the specific homoeopathic remedy, i.e. in this juxtaposition of the phenomena of the natural disease and the list of the symptoms of the medicines, in order to discover a morbid potency corresponding in similitude to the evil to be cured, the more striking, particular, unusual and peculiar (characteristic) signs and symptoms of the case should be especially and almost solely kept in view; for there must especially be some symptoms in the list of the medicine sought for corresponding to this, if the remedy should be the one most suitable to effect the cure. The more general and indefinite symptoms, such as lack of appetite, headache, weariness, disturbed sleep, uncomfortableness, etc., in their generalness and undefinedness deserve but little attention, unless they are more especially pronounced as something of a general nature is seen in almost every disease and in almost every medicine.
After this quotation from the *Organon, Boenninghausen continues:
It is seen, however, that it is here left to the physician to judge what is understood by the *more striking, particular, unusual and peculiar symptoms, and it might, indeed, be difficult too furnish a commentary to this definition, which would not be too diffuse and therefore easily understood, and on the other hand would be complete enough to be properly applied to all these cases…..
It is obvious that Hahnemann never intended his directions to be taken that we do keynote prescribing; while his instructions were not give undue weight to the most general or symptoms it is to be remembered that Hahnemann never slighted any of a case in making a prescription. He had the genius of giving each symptom its true place in the picture without distorting the totality. While it is inconceivable that Hahnemann ever did keynote prescribing, it is also beyond our knowledge of Hahnemann’s thorough mind that he eliminated the chief complaints in building up the symptom-image.
Our way, too, must lie in the golden mean between these two points, the one two general and the other too individual to assure us to a true totality. If we can find a remedy that has the “more striking, particular, unusual and peculiar (characteristic_signs and symptoms of the case” and in addition covers the chief complaint as well, we may consider ourselves as having a sound basis for the prescription of the *simillimum.
