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adapted from Kent's Lectures on Philosophy
The patient is growing weaker, the symptoms are growing stronger.
The true homoeopathic aggravation, I say, is when the symptoms are worse, but the patient says, "I feel better."
Observe whether the patient is incurable. If so or in doubt, give no higher than the 30th or 200th potency, and see if the aggravation is going too deep or will be too prolonged. Prepare to antidote if there is too strong of aggravation.
An aggravation can last for many weeks and then the patient can show slow improvement. If then after three months you repeat and you get the same effect, it means that the patient was almost incurable. This may last for several years while repairing the tissue damage that had started.
An aggravation is quick, short and strong with rapid and long improvement of the patient. This is the best result to see.
Surface changes will occur, such as abscesses, away from critical body areas such as the liver, the kidneys, the heart or the brain. Distinguish these two areas.
Aggravations here will be within hours in acute cases and several days in chronic cases.
With no aggravation you have matched the potency perfectly, an unusual situation. However, a slight aggravation is confirmation that you have just stepped just outside that perfect area and is more satisfying.
Did the patient spoil the action of the remedy? Has he been on a drinking binge or hit the office coffee pot without thinking? Has he handled chemicals or been around ammonia fumes?
Either the remedy was only a superficial remedy, and could only act as a palliative, or the patient was incurable and the remedy was somewhat suitable. Reexamine the case to determine which is the right one.
If the remedy wasn't correct, it is the best thing for the patient if the symptoms come back exactly as they were, but very often they come back changed, and then you must wait through grievious suffering for the picture. The patient will be more patient and have more confidence if the doctor confesses on the spot that his selection was not what it ought to be, and he hopes to do better next time.
If it is too short an amelioration in acute cases, it is because such high grade inflammatory action is present that organs are threatened by the rapid processes going on.
If it is too short amelioration in chronic diseases, it means that there are structural changes and organs are destroyed or being destroyed or in a very precarious condition.
Patients who have physical impairments that impede the remedy action from completing can only be palliated and this will be the best you can do.
Oversensitive patients are often incurable.
Such patients are most annoying.
You will often cure their acute diseases by giving them the 30th and 200th, and you will relieve their chronic diseases by giving them the 30th, 200th and 500th potencies.
Healthy provers are always benefited by provings, if they are properly conducted. Note changes in current symptoms so as not to corrupt the proving data.
Sometimes a patient forgets they have had a symptom and that is all it is but entirely new symptoms indicate an incorrect remedy. The more new symptoms you have the more likely it is incorrect. They should be left to pass away with the action of the remedy.
It is quite a common thing for old symptoms to appear after the aggravation has come, and hence we see the symptoms disappearing in the reverse order of their coming. The more that appear the more curable is the condition.
While change is occurring, no new remedy should be given. If old symptoms return after having disappeared, repeat the remedy.
Antidote immediately if the direction of cure moves the wrong way e.g. rheumatism to heart complaints.
When diseases go from center to circumferences, going out from the centers of life, out from the heart, lungs, brain and spine, out from the interiors, upon the extremities, it is well.
Eruptions upon the skin and affections in the extremities are good signs.
