When a case has been fully and properly taken it is time to evaluate the symptoms in the order of their importance. Prior to such an appraisal, the taking of the case, the manner and method employed to obtain the symptoms of case, is most vital in importance. Symptoms obtained without the Hahnemannian technique are of doubtful value and may be false and misleading. Any and all given symptoms must represent a statement of facts; and these facts must be brought fort after the manner of judicial procedure.
The patient tells his story without interruption, unless he is loquacious and wandering, when he must be carefully guided to his task with an indirect line of questioning by the physician. Direct questions tend to suggest and the patient may answer without sufficient thought. Any question answered by “Yes” or “No” is of doubtful value to the homoeopath.
Sometimes the physician may be compelled to ask three or four indirect questions to ascertain the verity or sureness of one symptoms. To illustrate: in order to know to what temperature group the patient belongs the physician will ask, “How sensitive to cold are you? How are you affected by a hot room? how does the suns heat affect you? How much clothing do you require to keep warm?
How are you affected by changes in the weather? What can you say about the temperature of your hands and feet?” In this way the physician can with certainty ascertain to which group his patient belongs. Is he a cold patient with deficient vital heat, or is he warm blooded and made worse by over heating, or is he one who is sensitive to both extremes of temperature?.
The mental and emotional symptoms may be obtained in a similar way: “How easily moved to tears are your? How does music affect you? How does noise or light affect you? How does darkness affect you? How restless are you? What can you say of your memory?” Thus, when symptoms are obtained this way they are genuine and reliable and constitute facts which can be fitted to the facts of the Materia Medica.
When the symptoms of a case history are obtained properly, then the physician may begin to appraise and weight the relative value of the symptoms for the selection of the homoeopathic remedy.
The writer has followed the general outline for the grading and evaluating of symptoms devised by Dr. James Tyler Kent and has found that method logical and concise and most helpful in the selection of the needed remedy.
In that plan there are three classes of symptoms as follows: General, which relate to the patient as a whole, such as his bodily reaction to environment, his mental and emotional states, his aversions and desires, his body secretions and discharges. PArticular, which relate to organs and parts. Common, which are common to the provings of many remedies, or to disease conditions (diagnostic).
These three groups of symptoms are each made up of three grades: first, second and third. Thus, the first grade generals are those that are rare and peculiar, or those to the will, the loves, the hates, the fears, the desires and aversions belong to the loves, the hates, the fears, the desires and aversions belong to the first grade.
The second grade generals are those pertaining to the rational mind or intellect; the body reactions to environment; the physical appetites; the sexual symptoms; the body secretions and discharges, because such are elaborated by the organism as a whole; the modalities as to time and condition of aggravation and amelioration. The third grade generals are the common symptoms found in disease such as headache, malaise, fever, chill, sweat, etc.; or those symptoms common to the provings of many remedies. Common symptoms may be expressed in general symptoms of the patient as a whole, or they may be found in the particular parts of the body.
The high grade particulars are those that are rare and unusual, such as inflammation with little or no pain, thirst without fever, itching skin with no eruption. The modalities constitute the second grade particulars and the common symptoms the third grade.
This is but a brief outline of classifying symptoms for remedy selection. But all the teachers and master prescribers from Hahnemann down have stressed the unusual and rare symptoms as the ones of importance, because they are characteristic of the sick patient as well as of the remedy he needs for his cure.
This subject has been presented many times by much more proficient teachers and prescribers than I am, but I bring to you my humble efforts and trust we may have some discussion of his very vital subject so that all together we may bring forth better and simpler means to reach the desired goal, a surer and quicker way to find the similimum.
In his book The Collected Works of Arthur Hill Grimmer, Grimmer spoke out against the fluoridation of water and vaccinations. Grimmer wrote prodigeously, Gnaphalium, Homeopathic Prophylaxis and Homeopathic Medicine and Cancer: The Philosophy and Clinical Experiences of Dr. A.H. Grimmer, M.D.