DR. F. K. BELLOKOSSY (Denver, Colo.]: There are many pitfalls, especially if we dont take the case completely. We may question a patient and in the course of the questioning decide on the remedy because the first symptoms may be so clearly indicating one remedy, and if we dont proceed with questioning, we will not find those symptoms that may contraindicate that same remedy to which we were first turning in our mind.
Hering said that we must take all the symptoms. In order to do that it is very bad if we hurry; therefore one has to go through the whole questionnaire. If that is not done, one can miss the remedy. Often a peculiar and strange symptom may lie in some particular symptom, and if we dont question, we wont get to that symptom.
I made such a mistake not long ago. A patient had such symptoms that I saw immediately he was a Phosphorus patient, but when he came back after I gave him the remedy, he had no results, and I questioned more, and I found that the patient was an Ignatia patient, and that mistake was made because I didnt question him long enough.
Some remedies may be given because they are so strongly indicated by some symptom, but there are other symptoms in that same case counterindicated, and we must then evaluate in that way to get at the right remedy.
DR. HENRY R. SACKETT (St. Petersburg. Fla.]: I have had some very interesting schoolteachers. One was mentioned here. One would declare that these two schoolteachers in their thirties were of the purely Pulsatilla type, but I knew both of them well enough to know that it wasnt matter of drugs, homoeopathic or otherwise; it was a matter of their programme, which I happened to know was not scientifically correct, and I asked asked each to write out her programme from the time she got up in the morning until she went to bed at night and let me have it. That was to include what they ate and when they ate it, and what they did and when they did it.
After I got those, in each case I revised their program 100 per cent because it was 100 per cent wrong, and I gave them a new program and told them to report in a week. I didnt give them anything and in week they were perfectly well; in other words, knowing your patient, knowing the patients occupation, knowing the patients surroundings, is extremely vital. That hasnt anything to do with drugs at all, any more than a person who puts on too many pounds because he or she eats too much. That isnt matter of drugs. That is a matter of common sense. Eat less and take off the extra twenty-five pounds.
DR. C. SEAVER SMITH [New Haven, Conn.]: The schoolteacher case reminds me of two things. I have so many schoolteachers that among themselves they call themselves “The Smith Club”.
I have one who turns her head to the right, so I have her sit at my right, in other words, at the right side of my desk so she has to turn my way when she does talk. I would be interested to know it if you remember the remedy for Miss Jones. It might help me with her.
A method I have effective in obtaining the particular remedy is to have them tell me the next time, the second time they come in, of any symptom that they have forgotten to tell me. Frequently in interviewing a patient, the patient is so nervously upset that he or she forgets to tell you the symptoms, and it is very difficult to dig out the particulars, and they can come back frequently the second time and tell you a symptom which is key to the remedy, and if you ask why they didnt you that symptom the first time, they will say, “Oh, I have had that so many years, I just didnt even think of it”.
DR. EDWARD C. WHITMONT [New York, N.Y.]: There are a few remarks I should like to make. To us the importance of the evaluation of symptoms seems perfectly self-understood, but I have followed the writing of continental, particularly self-understood, but I have followed the writing of continental, particularly of German, Homoeopathy, which has reached a height of popularity now, but you would not believe how much confusion there is concerning proper case taking.
Any principle of what symptoms to accept and what not, any systematic way of going about it, seems to be apparently unknown. It is still controversial whether there is any point in taking a case, not from the clinical but from the symptoms end standpoint; the result, of course, is mixing of remedies. The majority of those homoeopaths will not even believe that a high potency really acts. The most experienced ones say that, if you get your remedy exactly, the high potencies will be effective, but apparently a great number of the men are not able to get the exact similimum because they have not been taught case taking from generalities; the Kentian principles seem to be practically unknown outside of the English-speaking countries. This is a fact we are rarely aware of.
We are highly privileged to have Kents method at our disposal. However, as a challenge to our method, we must also remember that the remedies that are not polychrests and are poorly proven cannot be prescribed by the Kentian method; and this applies to quite a number of the less known, less thought of remedies. Also, when sufficient generalities, modalities and so forth are not available in a case, the exact Kentian method cannot be used.
DR. GRIMMER [Chicago, Ill.] (closing): Thanks you for your discussion. Dr. Bohn presented something that every homoeopathic physician meets, especially in the mental states, severe abnormalities of mental conditions. Then we cannot take too much consideration of what the patient says, but we can observe what he does. Sometimes that will tell us more than anything he may say. We sometimes have to go back, and we always should go back, into the antecedents, his friends, his relatives, the close ones who have observed him from the beginning of his trouble, and have seen the things that he had, maybe in early childhood, which are very guiding sometimes in some of these obscure cases.
If you go back along the line, you will pick up something that will be quite guiding. I am glad the doctor brought this out, because we have those stumbling blocks in many conditions that we meet with. Hahnemann tells us then to go back and study those things in their beginnings. If we can get the beginnings of our troubles, sometimes the whole thing is simplified.
Dr. Bellokossys remarks about going into the case very deeply are correct, but I know when I was only a student in homoeopathy at Dr. Blackwoods Clinic-he had a big general clinic and used to assign students to certain patients who came in-I was given an Irish lady to take care of, and after I got through examining her, she came out boiling mad and said, “It is worse than going to a father confessor, the way they ask questions,” but I found her remedy and she forgave me afterwards for asking so many questions!.
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.