Repertorizing by pathology

Treat the patient and not the disease. - J. T. Kent

When the symptoms of the patient have altered to a great deal and there is new pathology, this system can be very helpful. It's based on the affinity of a remedy with a region or system of the body and used mostly in acute situations. Knowing what the cold symptoms are doesn't require a two-hour case taking session. But in all cases, knowing the patient will confirm the acute remedy.

When the symptoms of the patient are extreme enough to produce pathology that's had a chance to develop over time, you generally won't find that many symptoms in the repertory to match. You just don't go to the repertory to look up a tumor. The provers of the remedy go only so far in their sacrifice for documenting symptoms and the proving administrators would not push the proving to the point that would endanger the prover.

Without characteristic symptoms of the patient you have to use something else. One area to study would be the spheres of action of the remedy that would produce a list of remedies. Also, therapeutic texts work with this type of problem and use the word therapeutic or physiological in the title. A number of authors have written short works on a survey of one particular disease which may be useful in developing a list of possible remedies to use in an eliminative method also.

Kent on pathological prescribing

The dropsical condition, or acute Bright's disease, must be associated with the psoric state and the symptoms then will lead you to a constitutional remedy.

If you have in view simply the Bright's disease, you will make a mistake. You will fall into prescribing for ultimates if you have but the name of the trouble in mind, for instance giving Apis, which the books say is such a wonderful remedy for Bright's disease, following scarlet fever. It is a great mistake for anyone to fit remedies for complaints or states.