Lesser Writings – C.M. Boger

We are often compelled to choose the remedy from the standpoint of diagnosis, much as this should be avoided because of the numerous pitfalls sure to be encountered….

The original Materia Medica Pura of Hahnemann contains but relatively few conditions of aggravation and amelioration, leaving us to infer that originally they were used much less than now, although Boenninghausen was quick to add this helpful factor to our working knowledge of the remedies. …

In homeopathy we are more particularly concerned with dynamic energy. This dynamic energy Hahnemann called the dynamis, the spirit-like, vital force animating the material body. …

All too often the homeopath expects to be guided chiefly by the subjective, almost entirely neglecting the objective signs. All great prescribers are intuitively close observers of the sign language of disease. …

Only by means of its masterful materia medica, has homeopathy been able to meet every emergency and weather every storm without changing its basis of action. This alone stamps the development of the law of cure as one of the world’s greatest achievements….

Just as the lights and shadows of the mind colour every form and kind of action, so they foreshadow those oncoming storm crises which we call sickness, by changes of mood and disposition. …

The man who deftly prescribes for every symptom phase will be always curing but never cure. This form of shifty prescribing is deceptive in the highest degree…….

If every symptom is a little picture reflected from the central disturbance, a composite picture will most nearly depict the whole. This is what we mean when we speak of the symptom complex or the totality of the symptoms. …

The manner in which sickness advances step by step, be the time long or very brief, is of the highest import, as its evolution always has its own characteristic movement and is peculiar to each individual case….

It is a mistake to get a reaction from but one or two organs; it savours too much of stimulation as we see it in crude prescribing, and always leaves undesirable after effects. When the whole symptom phase is covered by a corresponding, remedy a general reaction occurs….

By eliminating all but the two highest grades of remedies in the large, general and including all the confirmed ones in the smaller rubrics we bring to the fore the largest possible number of characteristics….

Remedially the syndrome of cholera complex points to a certain small group of very active remedies whose pure effects combine suddenness of onset and violence with vomiting and purging….

Associated individuals known as blood kin, invariably carry forward certain predilections to disease, so that by noting the ten or fifteen nearest blood relatives and their complaints, as accurately as possible, we are able to enumerate the relative proportions of the various tendencies present….

Finding remedy key-notes in the patient has been too easy, as compared with corroborating their position by means of the other symptoms at hand….

Those more or less crude substances which act as excitants of the disease are logically best antidoted by the same or a similar acting substance moving at a higher vibratory rate- a higher potency….

Homoeopathy, springing from and preserving the vitalism of the ancients, is the leaven of modern medicine. While pathologists have hunted microbes amidst the myriads of dying, Homoeopaths have calmly cured the sick with infinitesimals….

There was the usual violent gall stone colic and the form of vomiting for which all Homoeopaths give Phosphorus, which soon relieved him….

When the life forces vibrate in an unusual way, symptoms which we may finally call disease, appear; they serve as indices for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, as the case may be. …

In chronic diseases it is useful to pick out the peculiarities of each past illness, combine these with the unusual features of the present complaint and then seek for the remedy which covers the combined feature….

In daily clinical work it has always seemed best to first get a pretty full life history of the case in hand, then look over the objective appearances, and lastly find out what the patient thinks and feels. …

The laws of universal harmony, of which similia is an exemplification, are beyond their grasp because, forsooth, they can not be dissected out, seen under the microscope or grown in test tubes. …

When our late confrere, Dr. H. C. Allen, pointed to the nosodes as the most important of remedies in arousing reaction, he did the greatest thing of his busy life….

The habit of looking too closely at localised symptoms is, in its very nature, confusing and misleading. It makes for therapeutic myopia, and unsettles our confidence in the larger and more embracing things. …

The great weakness in our educational scheme is that we continually hammer into the student the material view of things; then we wonder that so few of our students finally reach real light. We make moles of them and then throw them upon a world of noonday glaring light….

We must learn very thoroughly what Hahnemann taught, and the rest will come to us easily enough. We must also cease to run so hard after all the fads in medicine, and devote more time and energy to learning about the law and its workings….

Only potentization can enable the vibration rate of any substance to closely approximate that of the disturbed vital force and thus make it homoeopathically curative in the highest sense….

The pregnant state so profoundly affects the mental sphere that it furnishes the most reliable indications of all and it is his bounden duty to scrutinize the mind with the utmost care. This cannot be overlooked….

The relative time for the appearance of each symptom naturally varies with the speed of the disease. From this we reason that the earliest mental manifestations are decidedly the most important of all symptoms….

Homeopathy is full of experiences like this, hence it lives nor will it die, in spite of assaults from without and misrepresentation from within. …

The diagnosis should be as accurate as the fitting of the remedy. We must not only diagnose sickness in its larger sense but the comprehension of its picture will most certainly limit our grasp of the remedies from which a choice may be made….

Health is relative, and the subtle juncture of forces which breeds sickness is necessarily evanescent and intangible. Inheritances, surroundings, emotions, vital resistance and much else go to make it up. …

Boenninghausen saw and corrected the tendency of Homeopathy to pay too much attention to subjective sensations while it lacked the firm support of etiologic factors and the modalities, which afford so many objective and distinctly certain criteria….

In infantile and chronic diseases, the state of the nutrition very largely governs the outcome, it may be pointed out that under homeopathic treatment we possess very significant prognostic data in the mental behaviour as well as the cravings of the patient….

Beside the standard works of Hahnemann, those of Boenninghausen, especially his Aphorisms of Hippocrates should be carefully read and studied; it will help the young student over many a hard place….

We should not stop until we have proven a few medicines as carefully as Natrium -mur. and Sulphur, for instance, not that I would imply that the well proven remedies are now commonly prescribed to their limit….

The potency power depends not so much upon the height of the attenuation as upon the vibration rate of the finished product, the latter being estimated imperfectly by the number of strokes used. …

Under its benign sway the diagnosis carries the remedy, which will take you back to health or some other place; we even have a new school of specificists that has shifted the matter upon the other shoulder and prescribes for conditions and clinical symptoms….

Twelve successive successful cases of membranous croup treated with Lachesis encourage me to point out its usefulness to you. Three of these cases expectorated putrescent fragments of membrane, some quite large, and had profound prostration;…

The second prescription is always of the greatest importance, too often we are apt to look for a different remedy, when in fact the new symptom complex is only a variation of the older image, and requires repetition of the former remedy in a different potency….

The first point is an objective one; i.e., does he exhibit a state of exaltation or depression? Next, is he sensitive to heat or cold? Under what circumstances have his symptoms appeared? What organ or combination of organs is affected? And lastly what are his particular symptoms?…

An interesting case shows the selection of the remedy based on its mode of action and affinity for an organ group. Strontium irritates both the kidneys and the intestines and its nitrate combines vasomotor effects….

A detailed collection of proving and clinical symptoms of this under-used remedy. Xanthoxylum is Apprehensive, fearful; starts at every noise or even at shadows; afraid to go to bed alone or in a dark room.Vertigo. Faintness….

Periodicity marks the action of China. Complaints at once take on a recurring type, the same symptoms move characteristically, although not exclusively, in cycles of forty-eight hours….

Aggravation from lying down runs like a red strand through the entire action of this important remedy Belladonna, which Boenninghausen classes among the antipsorics….