The following extracts from a letter by Dr. Boger throws more light on the subject:-
The Moon Phases refers exclusively to cured cases and was undertaken in order to determine the relative standing of the remedies in this respect. Very little has heretofore been done along this line. The results are entirely clinical and are to be valued as symptoms belonging to the drug according to the number of confirmations obtained. As one can see Phosphorus shows the most decisive result in this respect. So that now I look upon the full moon as pointing strongly, but not exclusively to this drug; the other symptoms in a given case must accord with the choice, or it is not a Phosphorus case. In other words, the moon table is a strong confirmatory symptom evaluator in the final decision, as to the remedy to be chosen. One can almost use it to start the search for the similimum.
As the table grows the different drugs are automatically taking their correct positions in the table. I am giving here a very recent illustration. A frail child was attacked with whooping cough, which in a few days suddenly developed in a violent pleurisy. Such cases are very dangerous both soon and eventually. Therefore there was nothing to do but to find the exact similimum at once; this proved to be Lycopodium which most happy aborted the whole thing in a few hours; the trouble passed away fully with the advent of a prodigious sweat. With this fine result I was justified in adding one more point to Lycopodium in the table showing the last quarter; but when all of the figures in the other three phases under Lycopodium are compared, the last quarter does not stand out, so prominently after all, but when many such results are added to the scheme, it will most certainly show which is the predominant time phase of its action and that counts for much.
That is the way the table has been made up, from my daily work, my records and a few well-marked ones in the journals. Obviously these can not be traced to their sources just now, but in the main, the prescriptions have been made in the usual homoeopathic way and determining their moon date in a new procedure which I am glad to say is showing good and exclusive results in quite a large number of remedies.
Born in Western Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and subsequently Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. He moved to Parkersburg, W. Va., in 1888, practicing there, but also consulting worldwide. He gave lectures at the Pulte Medical College in Cincinnati and taught philosophy, materia medica, and repertory at the American Foundation for Homoeopathy Postgraduate School. Boger brought BÅ“nninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory into the English Language in 1905. His publications include :
Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory
Boenninghausen's Antipsorics
Boger's Diphtheria, (The Homoeopathic Therapeutics of)
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica, 1915
General Analysis with Card Index, 1931
Samarskite-A Proving
The Times Which Characterize the Appearance and Aggravation of the Symptoms and their Remedies