By inviting papers on “How I repertorized a Case” I think we were expected to discuss how to repertorize any given case, by citing an example from our own practice.
There need be no hundred and one ways of repertorizing a case. The royal road or the real way to do it, has been already described by competent people or masters of Homoeopathy, and every student of Homoeopathy should study and follow it, rather than imitate my way of doing it, which could hardly come up to the marks, as prescribed by the authors. However, I shall present to you the way I try to follow the standard method and leave it to you to find out how far it falls short of that method.
Before you start repertorizing a case, you must have sufficient data wherewith to work. That is, you have got to take down the case as completely as possible. Take down the patients chief complaints and all other information he can give you about himself and his health. Ascertain about the modalities of his symptoms as regard location, time, duration, intensity, direction, and aggravation and amelioration, etc. Next, note down his generals, i.e. symptoms relating to his whole self, and if prominent his mentals, with their modalities.
By this time you will have sufficient idea as to which way to collect further information and fill in the connecting links in the language of the patient, to help your diagnosis and have a drug picture of the indicated remedy, which by this time might have revealed itself to your mind, if you have a fair knowledge of Materia Medica. And if the trouble be of an acute or subacute nature or an uncomplicated one, you can straight away prescribe. But this presupposes a sufficient knowledge of Materia Medica.
You may have just to look up here and there for a few points in the Repertory or Materia Medica and arrive at the selection of the Simillimum, all mentally, without regular repertorizing. But when the case requires a deeper analysis, specially in chronic cases, or cases that are less straightforward and suggest more than one drug and you have to evaluate and differentiate between two or more drugs, the work is very much simplified by working with the repertory.
In fact it would be almost a Herculean or impossible task to master the vast knowledge stored in Material Medica to bring the whole into operation in the selection of a similar remedy for such a case. Repertorizing is therefore an indispensable art for a Homoeopath. But the better one knows his Materia Medica, the less indispensable it is. I would therefore request my junior friends who are full of energy and youth, to put in more work in studying Materia Medica, so that they will require less often to seek help of Repertories.
For prescribing, every symptom must, as far as possible, be complete and must consists of three factors, namely:- location, sensation and modalities.
Here is a simple case, showing the simplest work – the A, B, C, of repertorizing. A case where neither generals nor mentals were present, but only particulars with modalities. A young girl, aged 18 years, came to me three weeks ago, complaining that her left eye was aching for 4-5 days. This symptom had the following modalities.
(1) > Resting or sleeping
(2) < Opening the eye. (motion)
(3) < With draft (strong wind.)
(4) > With pressure
(5) < Looking in the sun.
(6) Location : left eye.
Take up the handiest of repertories, “Bogers Synoptic Key” and on p. 40 section Eye, under rubric sore, aching of eyeball (i.e. sensation) you find 12 drugs. Place against them those mentioned in one of the chief modalities, say, < with motion (p. 8) and there are 13 drugs give; but you find that only two of them are common. Viz: Arnica and Bryonia
Arnica 1+1+0+0+0
Bryonia 2+3+3+2+1.
All other drugs are eliminated, the toss being between these two only. Arnica gets one mark and Bryonia two for the first rubric, and one and three marks respectively for the second rubric, i.e. < with motion. Now add second modality to this result: > with pressure, and you find only Bryonia comes in with three marks; there is no place for Arnica. You might stop here for the selection of the indicated remedy; but might as well fortify your judgment with other facts relating to the eye.
Take therefore another modality, < with heat of the sun (p.6). You find again Bryonia alone comes in, with two marks. For further evidence, which is now quite unnecessary, look up for the site of election i.e right eye or left eye on p.40, and you find Bryonia only given for the left eye, with one mark.
The diagnosis of the indicated remedy is therefore absolute:- Bryonia getting 5/11 and Arnica 2/2.
Bryonia 12, in 3 doses, 2hours apart, was given and the patient got complete relief.
I wish to present to you another short and simple case but differing from the one. I have just read, in that, in this one, location sensation and modalities alone dont suffice to arrive at the selection of the indicated remedy; but requires in addition an analysis of the attendant symptoms which Boenninghausen calls concomitants and are according to him the fourth essential for arriving at the Simillimum.
You have therefore to collect all the symptoms or facts pertaining tot he patient, besides the prominent or the main complaint for which the patient seeks your advice; or else you will miss the so- called concomitant symptoms and the simillimum slip out of your analysis.
This case is again that of a young girl, aged 15 years. She used to get fits of vertigo, with a fall and unconsciousness, lasting for five to six minutes only; no convulsions or other movements. Vertigo used to occur when looking steadily at an object, or reading or doing needle-work. This therefore was the exciting cause, which could be taken as the modality of the sensation. Vertigo.
Vertigo is associated with the fall, therefore, that is the sensation with a concomitant. Here are now the four requirements: – Location, sensation, modality and a concomitant. I took Kents Repertory. It has got a separate chapter allotted to Vertigo. On p. 100 you get the main symptom with the modality combined; i.e. Vertigo < looking steadily. Add to it the concomitant; Vertigo with a tendency to fall (p.99) and you get the following common drugs:-
Am. Carb. 1+1+1
Arsenic 2+2+2+1
Caust 2+1+0+3
Kali Carb. 2+1+2
Lachesis 2+1+2
Nat. mur 3+2+3+0+2+1
Sarsa 1+1+1
Silica 2+2+3+2+3+3
Spigelia 3+1+12
Sulphur 2+2+3+2+2+3
N.B.:- Rubrics were taken in the following order:- (1) Vertigo < looking steadily. (2) Vertigo with a tendency to fall. (3) Sensitive. (4) Perspires, single parts. (5) Perspires, soles. (6) Perspires, palms.
The girl was said to be of an irritable temper. Slight causes made her to weep; even the ringing of the call-bell used to upset her. This gives another symptom of the highest grade, a mental namely sensitive (p.78).
At this stage, repertorial analysis gives you four drugs out of the ten, standing prominently: Arsenic for 3 rubrics gets 6 marks; Nat. mur gets 8 marks; Silica gets 7 marks; and Sulphur gets 6 marks. So far Nat. mur scores the highest.
But if to this analysis we add an associated symptom (a concomitant) which was revealed during history taking, we find that the result is different. She said that she perspired all the time on palms and soles. In the language of the repertory she perspired in single parts. (Rubric p. 1301, k.). This consideration eliminates Nat. mur. and you get Ars. 7, Silica 9, Spig.7 and Sulph. 9.
Here again there is a toss between Sulphur and Silica, both getting the same number of marks. I therefore collected further help by splitting the last modality into two, as revealed by the language of the patient:- that is, perspiration of the soles and perspiration of the palms. By adding marks for these two rubrics, to the drugs under consideration, you get six marks for Silica; and five for Sulphur. So in the final analysis, Silica gets 15 marks for 6 rubrics and Sulphur stands second, getting 14 marks for the same rubrics.
As no important symptoms other than the above could be found in the patient, I made a halt here; and the patient was given a dose of Silica 30, and this single dose cured her ailment completely.
These are two examples of simple cases, the first showing the A.B.C. of repertorizing; the second, going a step further, – say as far as D. More difficult and complicated cases often present themselves and one feels to be at ones wits end as to how to begin with and select one or two rubrics upon which the whole structure of synthesis depends.
You begin differently and you get sometimes different results and you feel so exasperated and perplexed, that you damn the whole job. But that is no fault of Homoeopathy. It is due to the imperfect knowledge of the technique or the art of repertorizing. The only way out of it is to practise constantly and learn the use and the language of the Repertory.
