You remember Dr. Holcombe wrote a very meagre repertory on Sensations As If. It is one of the choicest things, as far as it goes, that there is. When you get stuck on something that you cant find, it helps you out. I am trying to complete that thing and make it up to date and I hope to do it. It will take time. You cant write a repertory in a hurry. It is not possible. It must be molded and gotten together and indexed and cross-indexed, and it is a great task, but if you will bear in mind this – I think Dr. Pulford finds that fault, no repertory is a final analysis. Absolutely there isnt a repertory on earth which has ever been made or ever will be made that will be the final analysis, but they are a great help in getting us down somewhere near the similimum.
Then, when you have come somewhere near the similimum, go back to your materia medica, to your pharmacology, your provings and you can get results without hunting so far.
DR. ALFRED PULFORD: What do you do when you run down to a single drug?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: Go to the materia medica just the same way and verify the symptoms.
DR. A. PULFORD: Why not do that in the beginning?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: Because you dont know enough – or rather, I dont. I have repertorized a great many cases and I dont think I ever repertorized a case that I did not go back to the materia medica before I go through and made a check-up on myself.
Bear in mind that every symptom has three parts, location, sensation, and limitations which are aggravations or amelioration, and the concomitants attached and tied to it. When you have those, you can get somewhere with a repertory because you can check up on those peculiar symptoms or your symptoms that have those peculiarities, and every symptom, to be complete, has those peculiarities. Many symptoms are not complete and never can be made complete except by analogy. Then you can get somewhere near a cure, but I do want to urge the use of all repertories.
Personally, Dr. Dixon says I am married to Boenninghausen. I get results, I know that, from Boenninghausen, and once in a while I get something I cant get from Boenninghausen and then I go to Kent and then to some other special repertories and, above all others, Allens Symptom Index. You will find some of the rarest, choicest symptoms there. You can hunt until the crack of doom anywhere else and you wont find them, by sticking to one altogether to the exclusion of all others.
DR. A. PULFORD: When you get down to one, what will you do for the rest?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: Sometimes the repertory will bring you out. Take Sulphur, that is a remedy that will come out ahead in a great many cases for the reason that we know all about Sulphur and it is in every rubric that it can possibly stick its head into. If I dont think that valuation is right, I change it. The valuation of the remedy is worth considerable in the repertory. That is one reason I find fault with Kent.
DR. A. PULFORD: When you come down to one drug and it covers every symptom that you want, what will you do?.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: Give it, if it covers everything.
DR. C.M. BOGER: The doctor speaks of location. Now there is one effect in the Materia Medica Pura, and you will frequently find the location a symptom entirely out of joint, so to speak. It will be given as a concomitant under some symptom of the abdomen. Suppose you have a symptom of the abdomen in which the patient also has pressure on top of the head. You wont find the pressure on top of the head under the rubric “Head” at all. It is a concomitant under “Abdomen,” and yet that “pressure on top of the head” is the leading symptom for that case. It has the greatest importance in the whole case for that particular case.
If you are going to pick up the materia medica and hunt for “pressure on top of the head” for your remedy, you will never find it because it is in some other section.
I had this strongly impressed upon me several years ago. An old woman, eighty-two years of age, who suffers from chronic Brights disease, had that particular symptom, “pressure on top of the head”. In that connection with the urinary system I found her remedy under Natrum mur. was all right, and since then I have had another case, a case of acquired epilepsy. By “acquired” i mean not congenital, a case in which the patient also had the same symptom, urinary symptoms of a severe type and I gave Natrum mur. in that case and, after having a number of epileptic attacks each week, she hasnt had one since sometimes in December.
You dont always find the leader for your case under the section of the body in the materia medica where you are hunting for it and that is a very misleading thing.
DR. H.A. ROBERTS: It is under concomitants.
DR. C.M. BOGER: It is in some other part of the pathogenesis. Take the “pains in increasing headache, decreasing gradually”. I dont think you will find that under Phosphorus, but you will find “pains increasing and decreasing generally” under another part of the pathogenesis, yet that is a pretty good indicator when the rest of the symptoms agree.
Before we leave that phase of it, if you have any questions, I will try to answer before the close.
As to the current repertory system, I don;t say this because I constructed, one. I didnt construct it because I never heard of another one. I have Fields and several others, but I finally concluded that those in existence are too cumbersome, too hard to handle, too large, and I would just as soon take up the materia medica and hunt for the remedy the old-fashioned way as use any of them, so I constructed a card system which you all know.
The pint I want to make is this: If you use a card system like the one I use, it will come nearer to doing your own thinking for you than anything else you have ever done. It comes nearer being a thinking machine than anything else and it is built on the thinking machine system, as all the punch card systems are, the calculating machines. It will add a column of figures quicker than you can do it, and this is on exactly the same principle.
In those systems it is usual to run the remedy down to four or five remedies and then look the case up in the materia medica. My own experience has been that I rarely pick out the remedy with the highest grade showing through the cards. That is rarely the indicated remedy. Generally it is the one that comes second or third in the list and then, if there still is some doubt after consulting the materia medica and some case are hard to run down – I had one the other day I had to think over a day or two before I could reach a conclusion as to the remedy I could give – I use Gross Comparative Materia Medica to finish the job.
I mean to say you cant always run down the remedy out of the materia medica; you have to use your repertories and books on comparative materia medica, to finish the job.
CHAIRMAN SPALDING: May I say a word, not with the idea of closing the discussion or emphasizing any particular repertory? I think the discussion has pretty well shown why the student is confused when he hears the diverse views of men who are masters in the field of prescribing. They get results in different ways. One is married to Boenninghausen, one doesnt use any repertory, one uses a card system, one uses a single repertory, such as Kent, yet they all get results and the problem comes in a short post-graduate course whether you are going to confuse the student with a whole lot of repertories or try to emphasize one or two or three and make him familiar with them so he can work the thing out.
Personally, I am different in that I get results from Kent; at least my patients appear to be cured, some of them, and it is easier for me to repertorize than depend on my knowledge of materia medica. That is personal testimony, but I have the utmost charity for the other fellow who uses Boenninghausen or some other system, or no system, as long as he gets the results in a homoeopathic way, and takes the case, not just words, but getting the symptoms, getting the case and individualizing the patient is the whole key to the entire matter.
What is the meaning of the word potency? No man can practice homoeopathy until he comes to a proper meaning of that word. It does not mean the drug. We see that in the drug which God put there for the relief of the sick and suffering, not the drug; experience has fully demonstrated this as a fact; it is not that which makes them sick, it is the immaterial forces which prevail. We should know nothing about them unless we see the effect. You can no more get hold of that which cures in the remedy, than you can the cause of disease. In a case of scarlet fever, where the indicated remedy was given in the 30c and 200th and both failed, the five millionth cured the case speedily, which proves that which cures is not the material of the drug. Potency is not a mere mechanical division of drug particles, but some element that is released and intensified in preparing your potency. – P.P. WELLS, M.D., 1886.
