G.H Bidwell: How to Use the Repertory.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
DISCUSSION.
DR. JULIA M. GREEN: The name of my paper was little bit changed in the program and I am talking to you a great deal more about the making of repertories than of the use of them, though the combination was in my mind.
DR. C.M. BOGER: This discussions of repertories and origin leads us into a good many bypaths. If you will read the preface in Jahrs Handbook of Materia Medica, and if you read the lexicon in German, you will see that Jahrs Handbook with its repertory, and Boenninghausens Antipsorics came out within two years of each other.
It is an impossibility for two men to construct repertories practically identical in the rubrics within two years of each other. I cant prove this, but I take it that they have their common origin in the regional repertories, scattered through t he lexicons. There are repertories scattered all through them and they are almost identical with the repertories in Jahr and Boenninghausen, at least the main features of them are, and, while the rubrics are very much smaller, all the remedies mentioned in those rubrics are also present in both those repertories.
As Dr. Green said, repertories are generally a repetition of some previous one, or the result of combining two.
Then, coming to later times, we have Kents Repertory, which is word for word a repetition of Edmund J. Lees Repertory published in 1888 by the Homoeopathic Physician. All you have to do is go and get a copy of these repertories and you will soon see. There are remedies in Kents repertories which are not in Lees, but all of Lees are in Kents every one of them, and the rubrics are not so large, but almost as large, and many are just the same, absolutely the same.
As to the compilation of repertories, I think that every man should construct a repertory for himself, even if it is just a little one, not any larger than the one I have here in my pocket. Possibly you all have a copy. Even if you havent anything larger than this, construct it after your own ideas and then you will know where to find what you need, because every mans mind works a little differently from other minds.
There is still another matter I want to mention in that connection. The Post-Graduate School in Boston hopes to have me teach Boenninghausen and Kent practically. I am free to say I cant work their methods as well as I can work my own, and I think the same is true of other men. Every man works his own method best and every scholar that you teach will modify what you tell him, and this thing of following anything verbatim is all wrong in teaching, absolutely. If a man cant think for himself, he will never make a good doctor, least of all a homoeopath.
As to repertories, Dr. Green has very well shown in what way, I think, repertories should be constructed and she has shown Boenninghausens method and then Kents, in a measure. I am free to say I have never been able to follow Kent literally at all, but Kent less than Boenninghausen. I had Lees Repertory long before Kents ever published and never could make great use of it and when I got Kents I didnt make so much more use of it, at that.
If there are any questions you would like to ask about repertories now, I will answer to the best of my ability.
DR. C.L. OLDS: Lees was not a complete repertory, was it?.
DR. C.M. BOGER: Not complete, it had head and mind and vertigo, but the manuscript for the rest was thrown into somebody elses hands. That is enough to show where Kents came from. There is a complete copy somewhere.
DR. A.H. GRIMMER: This is not only a broad subject but also one of vital importance to the homoeopathic profession. Kents Repertory, as I understand it, as Kent claimed, was founded on a different scheme and he claimed by following that scheme and having the rubrics, the remedies following the rubrics alphabetically, there would be no need of an index to it. It was self-indexed.
If there were enough cross-references, that would be literally true. This is the great fault with Kents Repertory. It needs more cross-references.
It is a question, as Dr. Boger said, of getting used to one method or one system or one authors idea about repertories. If you attempt to use Kents Repertory and Dr. Bogers, for instance, it would only lead to confusion. If you follow Dr. Bogers method or repertory, or Boenninghausen, you must conform to their construction of the book. If you follow Kent, to be successful you must know how the repertory was built and follow that construction.
From what I can see, Kent classified system from generalities to particulars. In generalities he grouped in one broad group mental and physical generalities divided into the symptoms that fell under those parts. There is where you must look for them. For any particular that you want to find in Kent, you have to look under that particular organ or part of the body, where it is listed. Of course it is an attempt, nothing more than a compilation, but it is an attempt to get the whole materia medica together. It is a huge, massive, and painstaking affair. It is a tremendous affair for one man to do, search the literature to bring out symptoms, even to make the attempt to classify our symptoms, and there are bound to be some errors and the need for a great many additions, but I think on the whole, after you get to know the construction of it, you will find it is the most complete repertory that we have.
DR. CHARLES L. OLDS: Dr. Greens paper, I think, is a very valuable one. I think that we will find in the future that we will have occasion to refer to it a great many times when we want to know what each repertory is teaching us, but there was one repertory that Dr. Green failed to mention. Probably she has never seen it and I think very few of you here have ever seen it, and that is Hahnemanns own repertory or index. It is rather surprising perhaps. This was published, as I recall it, in 1805, in Leipzig. That was five years before the edition of The Organon. Perhaps we would rather call that an index than a repertory because it is an index. Each symptom is put down carefully, alphabetically. I think there are something like three hundred pages in it. It is in Latin.
I wonder if sometime in the future it would not be a good thing for the Association to publish that book. Of course, there us nothing new in it as far as the symptoms themselves are concerned, but it does show the form of mind that Hahnemann had, which is perhaps a very valuable thing for us to know, and if that time should come that we want to publish it, I shall be very glad to translate it. I have done considerable work of that kind and it is not a particularly difficult thing.
DR. CHARLES A. DIXON: I should like to say a word in regard to this. I am a Kents Repertory man and I dont know much about any of the others. Fortunately for me, when I was available for a repertory, Kents Repertory was available for me. All repertories were more or less closed books to me until I took the Post-Graduate Course in Washington. I think I was in the third or fourth class. There Kents Repertory was taught under Dr. Gladwin, who loved and thoroughly understood it.
It was a revelation to me and it has been the making of my Homoeopathy, as you might say; so while Dr. Boger says he cant get much out of Kent and he likes his own best (and I am proud of him for it), yet I have never been able to compile a repertory for myself in which I would have any confidence, and I have been very glad to tie to Dr. Kents.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: Dr. Green, I think, spoke about our card repertory. We didnt finish it. The dust got down on my lungs – the dust, I mean – and I came pretty near passing out, so I quit it, but not only for that reason but also for the simple reason that I have gone back to the primary pathogenetic symptoms of the drug.
No man would make a prescription covering every symptom listed in the materia medica under that drug. He picks out the rare and plain symptoms which are peculiar to that drug alone. Now the repertory is the whole thing. It gives you back just what you put into it. If you get the wrong things in, you get the wrong things out. If you put the right things in, you know before you repertorize your drug that you cant get away from it, so I have lately gone back, as close as I could get it, to the primary pathogenetic symptoms of the drug. The drug produces itself, not in reaction but directly.
I bought seven copies of Kents Repertory and I wouldnt be without it as an index. It is indispensable to us, but I never rely on prescribing on it. We have three repertories, Kent, Boenninghausen, and Knerr. Kents is the most readily available and the least, to me, reliable. Boenninghausen is less available but more reliable. Knerr is the least of all available and the most reliable.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: Repertories are tools, nothing else. It has been said in order to understand a repertory properly, you must know how to use that tool.
I believe I have forty-three different repertories in my office, that is, including the old repertory of the materia medica as it is called, and the special repertories, that is, special repertories of parts, and I am now trying to get together a special repertory.
