Sometimes you must be like a detective, you must make deduction. Once there was a lady who came to me. I was treating her husband and her mother and I was knowing that her family was absolutely harmonious. She liked her husband she liked her nice children, she had a nice mother. She was not working in an office. She was at home. Now I thought to myself what can it be? It can be only one thing. It must be a lady, a maid, of course, perhaps putting the water in the flower vases so much that it fell on to the carpet a little or perhaps she put no milk in the tea, giving trouble all the time.
Ofcourse, I thought this lady cannot tell her husband because he will be annoyed so she keeps it to herself. I said to her, ” It is of course that lady who is making trouble for you doing this and that.” She said, “How do you know?” It is exactly so.” This is very curious and this is so when you see it in the left eye. Now if you have a flattening at 6 o’clock (position) instead of at 12, it is something else, it means that the patient has flat foot. So you must give her something to put in her shoe. If the patient does not tell you this it is very difficult to know.
But by looking into the pupil only, you know this at once. Now when you put a light into the pupil from sideways or so the pupil at once contracts and a normal pupil contracts and remains contracted as long as there is light. Instead of this if you see the pupil always contracting and dilating, what is this? This is found is a vagosympathetic patient. Such patients have alternating troubles. They have alternate constipation and diarrhoea and their characteristic moods are always either up or down, like the pupil, always up and down never at the centre.
So you see there are so many things to be learnt by looking at the pupil I have not the time to describe them all today. There are at least 10-12 diseases which can be diagnosed only by looking into the pupil. This science is called Iris Diagnosis. Unfortunately, most of the books written on the subject are quite bad. The only reliable book is by Dr. Sinabe in German.
Now you have had a look at your patient and then you are beginning to note the general symptoms. You are beginning to take the symptoms of th stomach, the desires the cravings etc. When a patient has a desire e.g. for salt, for namak as I told you, it is not sufficient if he says “Yes I like salt”. This is not a symptoms No! There are people who prefer adding salt before eating they add salt before tasting the food. This is a desire for salt.
There are patients who cannot go the whole day long without a piece of sugar or chocolate or something sweet in their pocket because they love sweets. This is a desire this is a craving. But when the patient says (in a dull unenthusiastic voice) “Yes I like this I like that,” this is not a symptom. He must say that eagerly with force. As they speak it must show on their faces – what they like and dislike. So you must be very careful about this and you will be helped by the way they answer. this cannot be weighed in writing. Only you can underline (the symptom) once or twice if they really seem to be very typical.
By the way, it is no use asking the patient things that are not in the repertory that will not help you to find the remedy. If the patient likes almonds, for example, it is very nice but because it is not in the repertory it is no use asking this question.
So there is salt, sugar or sweets fats, and sour things that you must absolutely know because they are in the repertory Now, you also have butter, cheese, eggs, mild, meat etc. but funny to say, patients do not show so much craving for these but the four things I mentioned first important. You know eggs are very important in our country because we eat many eggs but there are only 3,4 remedies given in the repertory. So in the repertory when there are only 3,4 remedies e.g. Ferrum, Calcarea c., etc., we cannot go very far. our remedies have not been proved enough to bring out all those cravings. so it is up to you to please try and add to our repertories by making provings and trying to find out new symptoms. So do not find fault with Hahnemann and other. Please try yourself to do better.
Now we come to thirst what about thirst especially when there is fever? Suppose the patient says, “Oh, I never drink (water) when I have fever”, it is absolutely not interesting because everybody with fever is thirsty. But in a case when you expect people to be thirsty if they are not then it is very interesting if they say, “Yes when the weather is very hot, I drink much water,” please remember that everybody does so. So please put this in the column of pathognomonic symptoms and take the other one “when it is very hot I never drink,” This is a symptom you at once put down in black letters or gold letters. This is important.
Now comes the question of sleep. You know in sleep we have been able to add different symptoms which you do not have in your repertory. ( In my repertory, I have put down the metal symptoms of Dr. Gallivardin, a Frenchman who studied all his life only mental symptoms only by the mental symptoms. It was his hobby to study mental symptoms and pick out the remedy only on the mental symptoms. No other symptoms – only mental symptoms! He cured so many cases, you cannot imagine. Patients were cured even without their knowing that they are taking the remedy because the remedy was given in the wine, even in the coffee and the milk and it worked beautifully. Of course, we say coffee antidotes the remedy but the coffee is in a crude state while the dynamised spiritiualised state of remedy is something quite different. But it acts still, even with coffee.
Among the symptoms I have added in my repertory is Adultery. We have remedies to induce a man to quit his mistress and come back to his wife. We have also remedies to wean away people who are drinking whether it is wine or beer. I have added all these in my repertory.
So the first thing is interesting about the sleep is that many patient complain of sleeplessness. About sleeplessness, it is interesting to know which time he is sleepless. Now comes the kind of sleep whether the sleep is heavy or if he sleeps like the cat, or the dog who hears with one half of the brain while the other half is sleeping. There are people who tell the things that were spoken all the night though they were in a slumber, which is really not a sleep. It is not normal. This is not repose this is not refreshing. Because it is the grace of God to have the sleep this time when the body is free from the soul and is retiring and resting in the night. But nobody has been able to explain what is sleep. Nobody knows what it is. We have had many theories but nobody is satisfied with them. But anyway with homoeopathy we can help this sleep.
Now, it is very important to know what you do while you sleep some people with eyes open. You may ask the patient but the patient does not know. It is mother or the father who tells you, “Yes the eyes are always open.” In some others when they sleep, the saliva is running. Some others have jerks and give kicks around to the mother or to the husband. It may be twitching it may be jerking it may be shocks you must make out the differences between them it is not so easy.
What is interesting is while the patient sleeps he may be doing different things. He may be rolling his head this way or that. He may do funny things with the hands when he sleeps. He may sleep always with his feet crossed. The remedy as everybody knows, is Rhododendron. Now there are patients who sleep in funny positions, square in the bad. Some others can sleep only on the left side, in spite of heart disease which is very interesting – only on the left the side with hear disease!
This is just a symptoms to which the homoeopath gives high consideration because we will not expect somebody with palpitation to sleep better on the left side. And now some put their arms up above the head. Some people sleep like that, like Hitler. Now, when people sleep like that there is some trouble with the liver. Ask them, enquire of them. But in children it is normal please. In adults it is not so Now there are people who put their hands and feet always apart like Psorinum. They cannot sleep with their limbs close. Some like their head high. Some like the head low. Now, so much for the question of position in sleep.
I had just a patient for whom I could not see what remedy was to be given She was a young girl of 14 years age. Can you imagine? She weighed 65 kg at 14 years of age! She was myxoedematous. When she was younger something had happened to her in the school which she was not able to describe. Her teacher had come at her with a pen and the girl had become very much frightened. Since then she has been becoming more and more obese. She had been to every gland specialist and had taken every treatment with no result.
She had also another symptoms. She was always tired. She would come from school and go to bed. And it is a life which horrified her mother to see a girl coming home like that. I interrogated her much and got out one more symptom in everybody which is so peculiar so extraordinary that when you find this symptoms it leads you to the remedy. I call this the cardinal symptom, the pilot symptom. It is very rare that you find other symptoms fitting in with the remedy indicated by this cardinal symptoms.
Dr. Schmidt was introduced to the results of homeopathic treatment during the 1918 flu epidemic while living in London. There he met both J. H. Clarke and John Weir.
In 1922 he came to the United States and began his studies with Alonzo Austin and Frederica Gladwin, who had been a pupil of Kent's. He became the first graduate of the American Foundation for Homeopathy course for doctors. Returning to his native land he set up practice in Geneva, Switzerland. He was responsible for reintroducing classical homeopathy into Europe, teaching several generations of physicians, including Elizabeth Wright Hubbard.
Dr. Schmidt helped edit the "Final General Repertory" of Kent, and translated the Organon into French. In 1925, he was one of the main founders of the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathic Internationalis (LIGA).