REPORT OF AN UNFINISHED CASE ILLUSTRATING
TWO IMPORTANT FACTORS IN
HOMOEOPATHIC PRESCRIBING.
(a) the taking of the case;
(b) the technique of finding the remedy.
The business of the physicians is to make sick people well, an axiomatic statement which will be agreed to by physicians of any or all shades of opinion. Next to making sick people well, the finding our of what ails them, is the most important step. Patients do get well without the aid of medicines or physicians and they frequently of importance in bringing about recovery or cure, but is the object of all intelligent physicians in the treatment of their cases.
Among homoeopathic physicians there has been much discussion as to what constitutes the totality of the symptoms and by many, a totality of the subjective symptoms alone, has been understood. A moments reflection will show such a conception to be false. The true symptom totality includes anything and everything which can be predicated as abnormal of the patient. Hence nay departure from the physiological normal standard of health, whether organic or functional in character, becomes a part of the symptom totality of the case.
That its counterpart may or may not have been recorded in the provings of drugs, does not detract from the truth of the statement. As a matter of fact, a true totality is seldom obtained in any case. Further more, the provings of drugs have but in a few instance been carried far enough to produce objective organic changes. But even in those cases where such changes have been recorded if by no means follows that the drug producing them will be the remedy to cure them, when found in the clinical case.
Disease results or pathological end – products are arrived at after a longer or shorter period of physiological disturbances, but the latter takes different courses in various individuals. This explains the reason why certain pathological states, e.g., hypertrophied tonsils, cannot always with certainly be cured, by the internal remedy. Unless the underlying constitutional bias of the patient be revealed, therapeutics endeavors in such cases will be futile. Prescribing becomes a matter of guesswork.
It is a matter of common knowledge among us that Baryta carbonica is a good remedy in the treatment of hypertrophied tonsils; but it is also the experience of all of us that the remedy fails again and again. And it will do so unless we have a true Baryta case, which means one in which the constitutional symptoms as well as the local conditions correspond. To treat a Lycopodium child with Baryta, simply because the presence of enlarged tonsils suggests the latter remedy, is wrong in principle and non – productive of results.
The case to be reported is presented with the purpose, first, of demonstrating a properly taken case from the prescribers standpoint. No matter how elaborately a case may be presented from the pathologic, bacteriologic, diagnostic and pathognomonic stand – points. it is impossible for the prescriber to select the needful remedy for the case, unless it has been presented from the homoeopathic side also. This means not only the numerical totality of the symptoms, but also and of far more importance, a totality of quality. The symptoms of the patient himself rather than those of the disease itself, are to be considered. In a word, the patient behind the disease be treated, rather than the disease itself.
Secondly, the case is presented to show the futility of successful prescribing in many instances, of which this one is an example, without repertory analysis and study. A surgeon would be lost without his cutting instruments and clamps. They are his tools with which he works. His theoretical knowledge is useless without them. So with the careful homoeopathic prescriber. He is lost many times, without a knowledge of and the ability to properly use the repertory. The latter is his most important tool.
The great storehouse of the vast materia medica cannot be penetrated without it. Upon his ability to correctly analyze for repertorial study, the difficult cases presented to him, depends the amelioration or cure of such cases, for without such analytical study, he too often is left to flounder aimlessly about in a sea of therapeutic uncertainty and bewilderment.
After much treatment of various kinds at the hands of several physicians Miss X, age 32, was referred to me by her last physicians in the hope that her curative remedy might be found. The symptoms are here given precisely as originally taken, after careful interrogation, with an avoidance of leading questions as far as possible:
American Homeopathy Doctor.
Rabe graduated from the New York Homeopathic Medical College and trained under Timothy Field Allen and William Tod Helmuth.
Rabe was President of the International Hahnemannian Association, editor in chief of the Homeopathic Recorder, and he wrote Medical Therapeutics for daily reference. Rabe was Dean and Professor of Homeopathic Therapeutics at the New York Homeopathic Medical College.