Bogers Synoptic Key in the form of cards and accompanying General Analysis in my opinion is by far the best of repertories. It seems strange that it has not come into popular use. It has been mentioned in the literature only causality. Some writer in the Pacific Coast Journal mentioned it a year ago or so as his preference, but that is the only instance of its use known to me. I have shown its operation to three or four; they nodded and went their way.
I had a short illustrative account in the Homoeopathic Recorder for February, 1933 (of which a few reprints remain) and the writer was prepared to follow this with a series of case illustrations showing various ways to use it, but as for some reason only the first was published the project was abandoned. I recall, however, that Boger himself was much pleased with what had been worked out and said that it had suggested to him still further ways to manipulate this repertory. This flexibility according to the peculiarities of problems is one of the main features of the invention.
But before discussing this repertory especially I would like to talk about repertorization in relation to our materia medica in general. Certainly we use repertories less as we become more acquainted with the pathways through the materia medica, those pathways with verifications and signs by which we have been guided before, and those trails which we recognize as guiding in their nature, that is, beholden to the individual remedy whether used before or not. In one way or another one must ultimately make ones own path through the materia medica forest and this should be accomplished as steadily and rapidly as possible.
It seems to me that present methods of training are not as thorough or as extensive as they might be. If we could have less “science” and more medicine I think it would be better. The pursuit of materia medica is, or should be, a life work in itself. Contrary to the common conception or practice, at least, it is the vertex of medicine, an intensive art, directed to and with great possibilities of cure.
What about other arts requiring close application? It takes five years of more for a talented student of music to play the finer works and fifteen, more or less, to qualify for the public platform. There are almost as fine nuances in materia medica as in music. And the performances today? Well, its time to be going along with our subject.
The study of materia medica should be intensive, and in accord with the principles of prescribing and the higher physiology and pathology, that is, the balance, imbalance and direction of forces. With the exception of us few antiquated numerals in the homoeopathic camp these are almost entirely ignored.
In practice a lively pursuance of the quest will pull one away from any tendency toward routinism, sending one along new paths through the unknown, through which, even today with our boasted skill, we have made but little more than a clearing. It is safe to say that the powers of homoeopathic materia medica hold as great possibilities for improvement of the race in its present status of being as any influence that has ever been revealed.
And it is an enterprise in which if the medical profession were coordinated every physician would be making “great discoveries”, not the noisy kind that comes and goes suddenly like Belladonna pains, but adding to his own art, and to durable therapeutic knowledge; and to an extent that we can hardly realize even with our present semblance of efficiency. How many suspect, for instance, that Podophyllum is a very potent remedy for certain injuries of the spine ? or that 11 p.m. is a very strong, a primary indication for Silica? All careful prescribers uncover used that their fellows have not known. There are great unknown resources even in our familiar remedies.
I mention this to emphasize the recognized fact that the possibilities of materia medica knowledge and especially of the paths that traverse its fastnesses are above considerations of repertorization. The reason that materia medica is paramount is that a homoeopathic remedy is an entity, at once a unit and a representation of sick individuals, having identity, form, proportion, intensities, relations, all the dynamic qualities that are the replica of sentient beings. Provings, when understood, unmask this truth.
This being so, the dependence on repertorization or emphasizing it at the expense of thorough and everlasting study (discovery might be the better word) of remedies is the wrong approach to its understanding; and although is sometimes seems unavoidable it is the wrong approach to the patients remedy.
Students are always being told, and rightly so, to study and compare remedies after the repertorial choice has been made. But the writer believes and it is true in his experience that the freshness and continuity of remedy personality, its essential part, is liable to be lost or faded after going through the repertorial headache. Although many useful points may be acquired with observant use of rubrics one is not so likely to erect any life-like personal complex from them even with the best care in attaching values to the remedy notations. Qualities, relations and intensities are not so naturally associated in the repertory; they are more arbitrary and fragmentary and easily may become offset from the picture; therefore, off the patients center of gravity.
Values are apt to be brought together in the repertorized scheme that have a different relative value in the patient. So, although the warp is there, the woof with its colorings may be disrupted. The repertorized schema is but a cross section and too often, especially with problems not suited to repertory study at all, becomes mere symptomatic hash. When one sees that, he should turn from it, study the reason and seek in the materia medica. There, with skillful reference, ye shall find if thou knowest what of quality to look for.
It seems to me that one may be at times too much influenced (I know that I have been) by the repertory result; that too much dependence on the repertory with its lack of joining symptoms in vital relation and in Kents the gross error of excluding concomitants may tend to inhibit remedy acquaintance both in number and quality. Although one must consult the text to differentiate the few remedies that have survived the repertorial test, yet, I think, repertorization is a crude approach toward that significant totality that inheres somewhere in every patient and his remedy. For myself I can say that my best results have been attained by diving into the complex sans mechanism, often making the choice from clues or features not in the repertory.
Ones interest in the art of discovering remedy genius should overcome most of the difficulties of size and time met with in the materia medica. I admit though, that in the present low requirements in materia medica the young student may, with repertory use, acquire sooner a tolerable skill in the use of homoeopathic medicines. In the face of present unfortunate training possibilities, that would seem to be its best utility excepting, of course, the indispensable indexing.
In concluding this part of the subject I would say: Take to repertorization as a confession of failure either to uncover the central and reactible features of patient and remedy or to properly evaluate what is at hand or of a too limited acquaintance with remedies, either numerically or their individual scope or both.
As to Bogers Repertory, Boger was many years bringing this work to its present state. He added new rubrics with caution and only as his personal work needed them. This mad it more practical and guarded against including less pertinent rubrics. No repertory can ever be complete or perfect but Boger did a wonderful job. One would not suppose that a few rubrics like Moistness, Yellow, Discharges ameliorate (suppression), Loose, Relaxation, Inactive, etc. would take the place of so many other considerations but they do and there is reason behind it.
In this way: Analysis, as I understand it to apply to provings and to patients, is a resolution of the data into the simple elements of the individual complex. This is what Bogers repertory points toward. Compare it with a great part of Kents, for instance. Chopping up symptoms and regions and laying the pieces up in piles to the extent that Kent did does not help analysis in the philosophical or homoeopathic sense.
Boger made a serious attempt (although in my opinion the object can never become fully realized) by selecting and theoretically consolidating influences or conditions that hold sway over sick individuals, to unite analysis and synthesis in one rubric, usually expressed in one, two or three words. His degree of success in this, as the unavoidable clumsiness of repertory procedure goes, is one of the items that helps to make his repertory superior.
Bogers Repertory is the quickest, usually requiring less than ten, sometimes five minutes for a solution. And it is, in my opinion, the safest in that it is more likely than any other to include the desired remedy in the final group. The best remedy is as likely to be included at the start and less likely to be dropped out on the way.
Born in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, USA on 20 Oct 1871 to Royal Edmund Hayes and Harriet E Merriman. He had at least 4 sons and 1 daughter with Miriam Martha Phillips. He lived in Torrington, Litchfield, Connecticut, United States in 1880. He died on 20 July 1952, in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States, at the age of 80, and was buried in Waterbury, New Haven, Connecticut, United States.