Even the changes tend to follow a pattern rather than to occur at random. Thus, a patient normally in group 8 will change more readily to the fifth or eleventh groups than to any of the others. Circulation within this series of three groups is preeminently shown by patients belonging originally to any one of the three. From this fact, the fifth, eighth and eleventh groups are considered to be complementary at least in a clinical sense.
This is further borne out when a patient erroneously receives a drug from one of his complementary groups instead of his own group; the response to the first dose is often quite satisfactory. When the error leads to a drug from an unrelated group, usually there is no effect, or a very transient one. If the drug from a related group brings a good response in the first dose it will, oddly enough, not bear repetition well. It will aggravate the patient or even mix the case.
Besides the group series just mentioned (5,8,11), there are two others. The first of these, more clearly defined than the second, consists of groups 1, 6 and 10. The second series is made up of groups 2 and 7, perhaps also group 4. Some sort of relation appears to exist between the fourth group and the second on one hand and the fifth on the other. the relation between groups 4 and 5 is indeed quite marked. Thus the fourth group is unusual in connecting with two drug series which are otherwise quite unrelated. Observation has not yet allocated groups 3 and 9 to a series, although the re is evidence, so far insufficient, that the ninth group may be akin to the second and seventh.
Normally the group series in patients is a relatively fixed phenomenon in that a patient from one series shows no tendency to move into the groups of another series. The group-series apparently reflect fundamental constitutional types, few in number, which manifest further variation in the individual groups. Acute illness, however, often disturbs the patient sufficiently to throw him not only out of his usual group but out of his group-series. Traumatic and surgical shock have been observed to bring the same effect. These displacements into groups foreign to the patient give way to the normal grouping as soon as the acute condition passes.
Pregnancy is another influence affecting the groupings. Mc- Crae, one of Boyds co-workers, mentions the fact that immediately after conception the mothers group may change. When the change is to a group in the mothers series, the embryo is usually male; when to the fathers group or to one of the fathers series, the embryo is usually female. If conception takes place without affecting the mothers grouping, the child will probably be male. These observations apply where the mother and father belong to different groups, a fact that must be ascertained by the Emanometer prior to conception.
When mother and father belong to the same group identification of the childs sex is no longer possible on these lines.
From the foregoing remarks it will be clear that under usual conditions if the patients group can be determined it is apt to persist unchanged except for the effects of acute vicissitudes. It is also clear that, once established, knowledge of the patients group is of great value to the prescriber since the Emanometer has shown that the patients best remedy will always be from the drugs of his group. On this, therefore, the prescriber may base his surest generalization.
Whereas some drugs may show symptomatic contradictions, or prove effective despite and apparent contradiction (e.g., a cold-blooded drug benefits a warm-blooded patient, as we have seen Psorinum do), the grouping may be accepted as an invariant signpost. How much this simplifies prescribing and repertory work is evident on comparing the relatively few drugs appearing in any one group, even the largest, with the total number of classified drugs. The situation will still obtained after further labors have classified drugs. The situations will still obtain after further labors have classified all materials capable of being used as remedies.
If, however, the Emanometer is alone capable of unlocking the secret of a patients group, of what use are these observations to the prescriber without access to the Emanometer? Here enter analysis and the art of working from details to generalities. Let up postulate a patient for whom the first remedy was prescribed on symptoms alone. Familiar with the Boyd groups but unable to command the instrumental aid of the Emanometer, the physician may base important conclusions on the response of the patient.
The patient reports a general improvement, the kind the experienced prescriber has learnt to associate with the true similimum or something very close to it. If the remedy has been, say, Sulfur from the eighth group, the physician may at once entertain the thought that this patient belongs to the series of groups 5,8 and 11. To settle the exact group the drug is repeated when the effects of the first dose are insufficient to cure the whole case. If the second dose markedly aggravates or fails to touch the patient, it is probable that he did not belong to the eighth group at all but was in one of the complements of the series, 5 or 11. From either of these groups the next prescription may be drawn.
Where the original dose of Sulfur completely cures the case, the group of that patient is almost certainly the eighth. Also, when the Sulfur bears repetition, well and under its influence the patient continues to improve, that patients group is evidently the eighth.
From the repetition of a drug that acted beneficially in the first dose the prescriber may base his surest conclusions regarding a patients group. When well chosen, a drug from the correct group ACTS WELL ON REPETITION, whereas a drug from the incorrect group PRODUCES LITTLE EFFECT after the first dose.
When used along the lines indicated, the groups have been most helpful to prescribers in shortening the path to the similimum. The physician has only to bear in mind that a patient whose group is definitely known presents a generality which, unlike symptomatic generalities, is absolute. Note that no patient belongs to the eighth group in the first, or second, or third, degree-each degree requiring a different position in the total assessment of symptoms. Symptomatic prominence, as indicated by italic or capital type, establishes the perspective of the case. The group generally may be accepted as the foundation on which the case it built.
Evidently the phenomenon of the Boyd groups is the articulation of a fundamental quality associated both with human beings and with inanimate material. Thus far science has been impotent in formulating a theory to fit the experimental facts. We know certain things take place. We do not know why. If the group factor in the patient is regarded as “vital” because it must be increased in intensity by the energy of the right drug, how is it that the drug can itself be shown to possess such a group factor? No drug component could be considered “vital” in a biological sense. If the case of a patient just as in the case of a drug we do not know the sum of biophysical activities relates to the single and characteristic group factor.
Assuming the group factor to reflect the innermost constitution of the patient, why can so many influences alter that group whereas the group of a drug remains fixed? Is this the result of the currents constantly associated with living things-chemical, physical, electrical currents in which the least disturbance may manifest as a shift of grouping? A drug, however, being a stable entity, remains in a fixed group. The final answers probably depend on the construction of an instrument like the Emanometer but freed from having to utilize human reactions as part of the circuit.
So long as the living detector it required he marks the limits of perhaps the accuracy and certainly the objectivity of the apparatus. a completely mechanical detector would compare with the Geiger-Mueller counter or the Wilson cloud chamber used in experimental physics. Such an apparatus might conceivably reorient our present concepts of drug and body energies. It would undoubtedly simplify the labor now necessary in conjunction with the Emanometer. For over twenty years this mechanical detector had been sought. The work still goes on. One day the work of a generation will spontaneously take the right shape in someones mind; the mechanical detector will be born.
Will this happen in our time?.
Classification of drugs according to their electrophysical properties as obtained on the Boyd Emanometer.
NOTES-A patient tends to remain constantly in his own group throughout life as long as the normal balance of health is maintained.
When the health becomes unbalanced from conditions which are not acute, the tendency is to change into a group of a particular series. There are three well-marked series. The most common series is that of 5, 8 and 11. The other series consist of Groups. 1, 6 and 10; 2, 7 and perhaps 9.
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.