Of paramount importance, however, in this conception of totality is the necessity of matching up what is prominent in the complaint with what is prominent in the drug selected. Thus, “burning pain” is a sensation of a number of drugs but especially of Arsenic, Phosphorus and Sulphur. Now, if this were a special complaint of the patient, it should be a special factor of that drug’s pathogenesis.
Depression is seen under numberless drugs but is particularly marked under the heavy metal group-such as Aurum. If the symptoms are matched according to degree, in this way often an abbreviated totality suffices, as every practical Homoeopath knows.
Mention should be made here of other factors that go to make up the totality of symptomatology although possibly these should come up under the chapter on Applied Homoeopathy.
Etiological Factors – The immediate cause of the patient’s illness, if determinable, or its exciting factor, may be a great aid in the selection of the remedy. Thus, there are many cases which owe their onset to exposure from cold and damp. Drugs such as Rhus, Natrum sulph. and Calcarea come to mind.
Again, the Traumatic Etiology of Arnica has been verified many times. Such causes may even be quite remote but deserve serious consideration especially in Chronic cases. In passing, it might be remarked that present day tendencies regarding patent medicines and often misguided physiologic medication may also be casual factors. Apparent antidotal Homoeopathic drugs have a field here. (Nux vomica, Hepar, Bryonia, etc.)
The totality in acute diseases is simpler. Much of this investigation is necessarily dispensed with. The physician recognizes the symptomatology and the case is quickly disposed of. Epidemic conditions come to his aid here for rapid and usually successful prescribing. This will be further taken up under the chapter on ” Applied Homoeopathy.”
Single Remedy
The Homoeopathic practice of using a single drug and noting its effects rather than multiple prescriptions whose ultimate effects may only be surmised is so logical both from a scientific and practical point of view that modern medicine tends to this direction. It is the one beneficial reform universally conceded to Hahnemann by the most fervent opponents of Homoeopathy. Poly- pharmacy has had its day, and a colorful one it was. We have in the Homoeopathic prescription no use for directives, correctives, or adjuvants, as such.
The single remedy does not mean a simple remedy. All chemical salts are compound substances, as are also the juices of plants like Opium and Belladonna. But all are single remedies and used as such in Homoeopathy. Any single substance, which has been proved upon the healthy as an entity and its pathogenesis known, can be administered.
Alternation or rotation of remedies is reprehensible since it leads away from accurate and definite knowledge of drug effects and sooner or later to poly-pharmacy which is the most slovenly of all practice. Since we have no provings of combinations of drugs, it will be impossible to prescribe them with scientific accuracy.
In some cases, tissue salts are given on deficiency indications and at the same time the totality is met by another Homoeopathic remedy, for instance : Kali phos, and Ignatia. But this is because indications for the tissue salts are largely clinical and their mode of action subject to some controversy. (See Tissue Remedies.).
American homeopath - Ann Arbor - Michigan.
Son of William Boericke.
Books:
A Compend of the Principles of Homeopathy.
Homoeopathy