Strange, Rare and Peculiar Symptoms
NATIONAL JOURNAL OF HOMOEOPATHY 1998 Mar / Apr VOL VII NO 2.
Dr E B Hubbard
The Crux of Homoeopathy
One of the prime tenets of Homoeopathy is the importance of spiritual factors: "From within outward, from above downward." In accordance with this principle the mental symptoms are of the greatest import. This does not mean that some peculiarity of the mind that is not prominent should outrank a flagrant general symptom. If the mental symptoms do not speak for themselves, unmistakably, the true Homoeopath should realize that in this individual, as in many of our remedies, the trouble is centered in a more outward and physical plane, at least at the moment.
On the other hand many very marked aberrations do not at first strike the mind of a physician who is being consulted for a definite pain in some locality, and they may be of such a nature that the patient himself is unconscious of them. Every expert practitioner of our art must be a good psychologist. He must read the character of the patient and scent out the failings and warped attitudes that may be at the root of many bona fide bodily ailments.
Granted that the patient presents symptoms in the sphere of the mind and that the doctor values this high, how is he to use them in repertorizing his case?
Let us take up first the problem of the usefulness of these features in acute conditions. We are all awake to the importance of the intense fear of the Aconite patient, of the irritability and fault finding of the accountant who needs Nux, of the irascibility of the Chamomilla baby, of the pitiful gentleness and craving for sympathy of those who need Pulsatilla even though their normal state is critical and dry-eyed. What is more difficult to perceive, is the guidance given us by what we are accustomed to think of as the chronic, mental symptoms of the drug, in acute conditions calling for it. Who has not seen, or rather heard the loquacity of a Lachesis angina? Or been startled by the abruptness of an unhappy girl needing Natrum-mur after an unfortunate love affair?
For the best success in prescribing acute mentals should never be disregarded, often they will be the deciding factor between two remedies, both of whose modalities fit reasonably well.
In chronic cases the realm of psychological traits is far richer and more suggestive. The physician knows the temperaments of his remedies and in clear cases can fit them with beautiful precision to the patients before him on mentals alone, but the majority of mankind is more complicated than this. From some remark that they let fall, form some comment of the family, from some ill-concealed uneasiness or characteristic reaction to a skillful question, form something which crops out during the physical examination, the discriminating Homoeopath can select his remedy or groups of remedies for study almost with certainty but many states of mind require interpretation.
Is the patient before you silent and uncommunicative because he is a brooding introvert, or because he is timid, or has he a laugh up his sleeve? Such a decision may make the difference between studying Nat-mur, Puls or Lach or is this same individual reserved because of some hidden mortification which may call for Staph, or through a haughty pride of the Plat, variety, or is he one of the 'stiff necked' people needing a limbering dose of Lyc?
If on the other hand, your patient be excessively communicative, is it the loquacity of Lach, or Calp-p, is it the lack of mental modesty of Phos, is it the hypochondriasis of Ign, or the egotistical philosophical garrulity of Sulph?
If the mental symptom which you see do not appear in the repertory even under any of its synonyms, what then? You must be very sure that your choice of so important a rubric is a just one. Often your patients will not confide in you, do what you will, yet you may know that their lack of reaction or other symptoms are due to psychic causes. These you must feel out and sense and often give the remedy for, without making the patients aware either that they have them or that you know it. Do not forget the unspoken influence of sex difficulties: your Con, your Orig, your Lyc, and your Apis. In handling any case where the patient has a marked character defect be it jealousy, vengeance, temper, obstinacy or what not, use that as a symptom and your chronic remedy will often change the life of the whole family.
Above all, remember the grading of the mentals: first, those having to do with the love of life; next such as affect the creative instinct and love of other human beings; thirdly, those which pertain to traits of character, to desires and aversions, and fourthly, those concerning emotions which are thwarted or suppressed.
Do not let the patients mislead you. Have infinite patience, tact and intuition and con over again and again the section on Mind in Kent's Repertory and then your patients, homoeopathy, and yourself will be rewarded.
Timing in Prescribing
Every good mechanic knows the importance of timing in your car's engine. If the cylinders do not synchronize there is loss of power. In diplomacy timing is of the most vital importance. To philosophers, as well as to athletes, rhythm, which is really timing, is paramount.
A beginner in Homoeopathic prescribing may take his case magnificently but may have no sense of chronology, for the sequence of cause and event. Always put dates opposite the illnesses, operations or catastrophes in the patient's history. After a while you get a sixth sense of how one thing follows another, you see the life of the patient and even of his forbears and progeny as an organic whole. Try to connect the ills to which he is heir with seasons, periodicity, time, meteorological phases. Learn to sense how each little man swings in or out of the master rhythms of the universe.
This same perception of timing applies to the physical examination. It is not sufficient that a man's heart shows no gross organic disturbance on an electro-cardiograph, one must, with more senses than we give ourselves credit for, enter into the rhythm of his pulse, his breathing. We must understand the metabolic rhythms of eating, digestion and elimination and use such means as will help us determine where the lag is or where the spurt in physiology. We must observe with instruments, with our eyes, ears, noses and fingers, the delicate aberration of human functioning. We must realize how tiny a change in phase or current or magnetic field may have an apparently disproportionate counterpart in health and harmony.
We must somehow pervade the patient with a sense of the necessity of order and rhythm, then we are ready to come to the giving of our healing agent, the similar remedy. An old professor of mine used to say that curing is like peeling an onion, you must begin at the top layer; and it is a sound principle of homoeopathy that, in an untreated case which requires an acute prescription, the most recent symptoms are the guide to the remedy that you should start with.
When you have taken a chronic case from birth on, you should be able to see what remedy this human being needed as an infant, as a child, at puberty, in young adulthood, in maturity and age. At some time in the complete cure of a personality you may, as it were, work back to the basic remedy needle or element lacking many years before, but if you give this substance prematurely you will put your timing off. Only the nosodes can be given with profit, either first or intercurrently, as timing regulators. To borrow a botanical analogy, the nosodes are like the genus and the remedy the species.
