THE SYMPTOM TOTALITY


Much has been written about, and great stress laid on, that greatest of all requisites to an accurate homoeopathic prescription, the symptom totality; but little seems to have been known, or really understood, as to just what that totality embraces. If such has been known it was never clearly, intelligently and concisely presented.


Much has been written about, and great stress laid on, that greatest of all requisites to an accurate homoeopathic prescription, the symptom totality; but little seems to have been known, or really understood, as to just what that totality embraces. If such has been known it was never clearly, intelligently and concisely presented.

It is our frank opinion that the man or woman proficiently competent to teach materia medica has not yet arrived upon the scene. Our students are turned loose into the materia medica as a stranger into a dense primeval forest and there left to grope his way, each to find his path alone with neither guide, compass, nor definite instructions as to just where to go or just what to look for; and we expect him to read and mentally digest this dizzy maze.

Our materia medica makers have shown a greater desire to accumulate symptoms than a desire to know and teach just what those symptoms mean and how they should be classified that we may have a better understanding of their relative importance. Let it be understood that this criticism is in no way to be construed as destructive or reflectionary, but to point the way to real construction.

You will note that the true drug pathogenesis is so mingled in with the reactionary results of that drugs pathogenesis that it takes years of practical study to be able to divorce them and discover just what symptoms truly and positively indicate the drug. Masses of symptoms, irrespective, are or may be all right if you wish merely to find a similar remedy, but it is quite another thing if you wish to find the exactly similar remedy.

There are certain elements absolutely necessary to the complete symptom totality. The uninitiated believes it to be the complete list of symptoms gathered from the patient, plus nothing more. The brightest minds of our school even to date take that same mass plus the rare, strange and peculiar, plus an approximate regulated dose. But neither of those express the true totality.

The accurate prescriber must have the true totality, which may even consist of but two essentials, that rare, strange and peculiar distinguishing mark of the drug, plus the exact amount of drug potential; or in addition to those only such other essentials as are produced directly by that drugs primary pathogenetic action on the healthy human body, not only on one individual alone, but in all individuals, as no drug can remove a pathogenesis, drug or disease, that that drug cannot produce. The distinct totality that any single drug can produce is very small, limited and distinctly individual. It takes an extremely intelligent, accurate, and a very acute observer to find and prescribe the indicated remedy. Occasionally very accurate prescriptions are made, but very, very few with knowledge a priori.

There has been this lack of knowledge, on the part of all the masters, of the necessity of distinctly separating the true drug pathogenesis from the bulk of the symptoms brought about by the drugs action lighting up latent predispositions into activity and thereby producing an endless train of symptoms not related directly to the drug itself but to the individual alone. Were this not true every individual taking that particular drug would give the exact same list of symptoms in toto, but experience proves that they do not. So you see how foolish it is to use those symptoms to attempt to find the similar remedy, or to enclose them in the symptom totality.

When the true symptom totality is removed by the similar remedy all the other symptoms brought about, or dependent on that drugs true pathogenesis will disappear, since the cause of their activity will have been removed.—A. PULFORD.

Much has been written about the status of homoeopathy in our own country and throughout the world in general, but what good does mere writing and talking do if no action results?.

At its annual convention in Cleveland this year the American Institute of Homoeopathy devoted considerable time to the lack of unity and action among the homoeopaths of this country, and many noble plans were proposed to rectify the existing lack of interest. In his 1931 annual address the President of the International Hahnemannian Association stressed the need of gathering together the scattered efforts of the many individual homoeopathic practitioners and societies into one compact, harmonious whole–a gearing up of homoeopathic power for the purpose of accomplishment. The Mid-West Homoeopathic News Journal for July 1931 has a long editorial advocating the same, with definite suggestions. The homoeopaths of Calcutta, India, have already taken action.

In the United States there are over 10,000 homoeopathic physicians, between sixty and seventy general, sectional, state, county and local homoeopathic societies, and six homoeopathic medical journals. We believe that some plan of action could be worked out whereby the scattered, and often antagonistic, efforts of all could be united into a powerful instrument by means of which the standing of homoeopathy could be vastly improved.

We would suggest one large, central American Homoeopathic Medical Association and one state society in each state and territory; the larger body to be controlled by delegates from the state organizations; the state associations to have an annual meeting in preparation for the annual all American meeting.

BUT—first several things must of necessity be done.

1. Intolerance, individual and collective, must be done away with. Intolerance is one great cause of failure in any line, homoeopathic as well as any other.

2. The individual must practise homoeopathy, low or high potency, it matters not, but he must practise homoeopathy, and there is only one kind of homoeopathy which is the homoeopathy of Samuel Hahnemann. This does not include serum therapy, vaccine therapy, specifics, or any of the unhomoeopathic methods of treating disease. The homoeopathic society is for the real homoeopath.

3. More individual effort must be made. Surely there are those among our homoeopathic practitioners with intellectual and scientific ability approaching that of the great minds of the masters who have gone. If not homoeopathy is already dying. Homoeopathy was not completely worked out by Hahnemann. He thought out the principles. His followers added their bit. We must add ours also, and we fear this is not being done.

4. Politics and personal antagonism and destructive criticism must go by the board. They spell doom.

We suggest one delegate from each now existing society to work out some definite plan of action. The reason so many so- called homoeopathic societies are failing is due to two things– they are not homoeopathic and they accomplish no definite results. Action in accordance with the above suggestions may mean complete dissolution of many large societies, or a working over, a re-creation, into a better form. Why hesitate if it means the advancement of homoeopathy in the United States? The rotten limbs must be chopped off the tree, even if they go to the root. A healthy root will grow and flower again. At the end of another year are we to hear the same old story–no progress. Unless creative action results all discussion, all effort, is in vain.–E. B. L.

Real homoeopathy has withstood every assault from without as well as within and has gained rather than lost. The advances of general science have added to, instead of taken from, its strength, while its advocacy by men incapable of grasping its essential meaning has not injured it as much as one might suppose. We see misfits in every walk of life and our profession has its share. Its intrinsic merits have enabled homoeopathy to do this in the face of a relentless and growing commercialism which is debasing and threatening the very foundations of medicine.

When we note what the fathers in homoeopathy accomplished with but the scantiest therapeutic equipment, as compared with that of today, we should be heartily ashamed of ourselves, especially of the way we have aped the old school to our own un- doing. We have gained nothing by imitating a method wherein results bear no sort of relation whatever to the outlay involved, be it either in effort or money.

Upon reflection we must soon conclude that when the spirit is left out of our efforts or they are founded exclusively upon materialistic thinking, the fruit is bound to be dead sea apples. Just as long as we try to wring knowledge of acute life from test tubes, microscopes and cadavers, will we fail miserably to grasp the real genius of how life animates matter. Disintegrating substances no longer speak the language of life, the very thing we must learn if we wish to become healers of the sick.

When you can once perceive how life integrates concrete things and thereby pictures for you what she means, you will have taken the first step toward understanding her actions and you will quickly come to know how to aid her efforts toward stabilization. This is a concept of life acting and expressing itself as a unit. What disturbs one part affects the whole hence true readjustment moves from the whole to the particular, from the general to the specific, centrifugally.

Allan D. Sutherland
Dr. Sutherland graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia and was editor of the Homeopathic Recorder and the Journal of the American Institute of Homeopathy.
Allan D. Sutherland was born in Northfield, Vermont in 1897, delivered by the local homeopathic physician. The son of a Canadian Episcopalian minister, his father had arrived there to lead the local parish five years earlier and met his mother, who was the daughter of the president of the University of Norwich. Four years after Allan’s birth, ministerial work lead the family first to North Carolina and then to Connecticut a few years afterward.
Starting in 1920, Sutherland began his premedical studies and a year later, he began his medical education at Hahnemann Medical School in Philadelphia.
Sutherland graduated in 1925 and went on to intern at both Children’s Homeopathic Hospital and St. Luke’s Homeopathic Hospital. He then was appointed the chief resident at Children’s. With the conclusion of his residency and 2 years of clinical experience under his belt, Sutherland opened his own practice in Philadelphia while retaining a position at Children’s in the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department.
In 1928, Sutherland decided to set up practice in Brattleboro.