b. The UNDERSTANDING which includes delusions, delirium, hallucinations, loss of time sense, mental confusion, etc., and some mental pathological conditions such as idiocy, imbecility, insanity, hysteria, mania, etc.
c. The INTELLECT which includes concentration, memory, mistakes in writing and speaking precocity, etc.
d. Certain OBJECTIVE symptoms such as biting, desire to hide, grimacing, etc.
2. PHYSICAL GENERALS.
a. Constitutional types which include such rubrics as dwarfishness, emaciation, lack or excess of vital heat (cold or hot blooded), obesity, blonde or brunette (rubrics from earlier edition of Kent), sensitiveness, lack of reaction, etc.
b. Suppressions-emotions, discharges, eruptions, diseases, pathology, etc.
c. Menses, habitual type and recent changes in type, aggravation or amelioration before, during or after menses.
d. Other discharges, type, better or worse from, etc.
e. Modalities of the patient as a whole including time, periodicity, seasons, moon phases, temperature and weather (scattered in numerous places), bathing (dread of bathing should be put under mentals), rest, motion, position, external stimuli (touch, pressure, clothing, light, noise, etc.), eating and drinking, coition, etc.
3. PATHOLOGY including disease diagnoses.
4. OBJECTIVE SYMPTOMS.
5. VERTIGO, FAINTING.
6. SLEEP, Dreams, see mentals.
7. CHILL and FEVER.
8. PERSPIRATION.
9. STRANGE, RARE AND PECULIAR SYMPTOMS. This should be placed here because, when present, they are of great value in pointing to the patient.
All of the rubrics should be classified, combined, deleted, arranged alphabetically, and scattered rubrics brought under one heading.
The second volume will contain the PARTICULARS anatomically arranged under anatomical locations, systems and organs. The missing systems, such as circulatory, nervous, locomotor, etc., will be added and the rubrics belonging under them reclassified in their proper places. Certain regions such as neck, breast, etc, will be separated for readier reference. Certain rubrics such as sinuses, pulse and glands will be rationally placed. All of the pain section rubrics and rubrics on sensations should be carefully gone over and standardized.
As all Repertory users know, this revision is a gargantuan task and I shall spare you the wealth of detail. Dr. Lyle and I have been working on this project and hope to have the manuscript for presentation at next years meeting of the Association. Constructive criticisms and suggestions are eagerly solicited both in the discussion and by letter. It is impossible to fit a repertory to the needs of every individual mind but it is hoped that the proposed revision will at least make a workable and lucid reference book for a larger number of homoeopaths.
BOSTON, MASS.
DISCUSSION.
CHAIRMAN J.W. WAFFENSMITH: I want to thank Dr. Wright for this valuable paper. It shows a very fine sense in repertorial analysis. And I also want to take advantage of this opportunity to thank the doctor for the series of articles in the Recorder which I have appreciated very much. The paper is open for discussion.
DR. E.B. LYLE: It may be of interest to the Association to know that in the last number of the British Medical Journal [The British Homoeopathic Journal, Vol. XX, April 1930, p. 11-0. Dr. Frank Bodman has an article on partial-I dont know just what to call it-I will call it revamping of the general section of kents Repertory, which is very good. It is discussed by a number of very prominent homoeopaths in England and is well worth everybodys reading if they are interested in this particular subject.
Dr. C.M. BOGER: The practical difficulties of working with a repertory is a thing that I want to talk about a little bit. I have had a little something to do with repertories, and I have found in my won work that most repertories are deficient in this respect. You can rarely get a rubric and then the concomitants belonging to it. That is a very great fault. That is only found in Boenninghausens Characteristics (Boger) and in the British Cypher Repertory, Often I am obliged to go to me or the other to get my concomitants and the case is often solved only in that way. They are not found in Kent or in any repertory that we edit. It is easily enough seen that a concomitant may be found in some other place, but that is like looking for ten needles in a haystack and hitting on the right one.
Then there is another thing. Take the section on the MIND, You cant find the aggravations from the mind in general under any repertory that I have ever seen. I have it in my private copy. The aggravations found are applied to individual rubrics or to symptoms at most, but the general aggravations and ameliorations are not found in one section. When you want to take a case from particulars to generalities or the reverse those two features are essential, absolutely essential, to generalities or the reverse those two features are essential, absolutely essential, and you stop right there if you havent those two features. You must hut some other place for what you want.
If Jane Smith has a very prominent mental symptom and I havent an possible way of finding her aggravations of the mind, what must I do? I have to look under aggravations and ameliorations in general, then the various rubrics, to find what I want. I flounder around there, and the job is endless. How much shorter it would be if you had a chapter on aggravation and amelioration of the mind itself.
Those are two very knotty problems for repertory users and cannot be easily worked out unless you have the British Cypher Repertory and this requires a knowledge of their abbreviations and how they work them. I would suggest to these two doctors, if they want to perfect their repertory, that they incorporate The Cypher Repertory because that is pure gold, every bit of it, and very much to be depended upon. I find things there that I cant find any other place, and I couldnt do without it.
DR. W.W. WILSON: Is that still being printed?
DR. C.M. BOGER; No, you have to get second-hand copies. They are difficult to get.
There are other points about repertory that I should like to answer if somebody would ask the questions, being concerned in the manufacture of repertories.
DR. G. ROYAL: I should like to make one suggestion also, and is that when you get at these different sections, you arrange them according to the value of symptoms. That is the trouble with Kent especially in his Materia Medica. I said to him once, “Why dont you put in an index, and why do you have something flap right along with not one single symptom differentiated from another”? He said, “A man with brains wont need it” I sat down.
I think you ought to have your symptoms arranged by numbers, numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., or emphasized by being put in italics, or something like that, especially for the student.
DR. C.M. BOGER: I think the lack of an index is a dreadful drawback.
DR. E. WRIGHT: I should just like to say that those are grand suggestions from Dr. Boger and Dr. Royal. I expected that at least two-thirds of the present company would jump down the throats of the children for their temerity in hoping to abridge Kent, and I had hoped that same of you would say whether you thought it would be of any practical help to abridge it. I want to say that we have no intention of superseding the present Repertory.
DR. C.L. OLDS: I think this is a wonderful project and I think the doctors have a great deal of courage to start a thing life this. I suppose they hardly have a conception of the immense amount of work involved I hope they will be successful.
ABIES CANADENSIS
ESSENTIAL: Gnawing, hungry, faint feeling at epigastrium, tendency to overeat. If appetite is gratified distention of stomach and abdomen and palpitation follow. Craves meat, pickles and other coarse food. Irritable and dizzy.
IMPORTANT: Right lung and liver feel small and hard. Pain under right scapula. Lies with legs drawn up Shivering as if blood were cold water. As if uterus were soft.
CLINICAL: Any disease which includes the above essentials, PROLAPSED uterus from defective nutrition, funds sore, better pressure (compare: Calc, phos., aching in uterus: Helon., tired backache; Lac. deft., throbbing frontal headache and obstinate constipation, and Nat. hyp, soggy, heavy uterus).
MISCELLANEOUS: Compare Abies nig.-A. and D. PULFORD.
