How to Take the Case and to Find the Simillimum by E.B. Nash

Originally published: 1907. Many failures to select the right remedy for the sick is due to a failure along the line of properly taking the case. The name of a disease may be helpful so far as calling to mind a class of remedies that have been found curative, but the symptomatology of the case in its entirety, and especially in those symptoms which are peculiar and characteristic, in correspondence with the remedy which in its pathogenesis has the same, must decide which ONE of the class is the true similimum. Eugene Beauharnais “E. B.” Nash (1838-1917)

Introduction

Homoeopathy claims to be able to find the remedy in accordance with the law of nature as invariable as the law of gravitation, and abundant clinical results have proven the claim to be well founded….

Location

Here I have named a few remedies that have a particular affinity for these locations in the chest, and in all these cases, this is generally in connection with lung troubles, and further examination will disclose the one remedy most appropriate….

Sensation

Different sensations like burning, sticking, stitching, cramping, throbbing, numbness etc with their appropriate remedies….

SUMMARY CASE TAKING

The symptoms which go to make the choice of the remedy often stand outside those that go to make up the pathology of the case….

Modality

What aggravates or ameliorates? The time and circumstances that affect the symptoms are vital to individualize a case….

Causes

Boenninghausen’s includes Causes (like fright, exposure to cold or damp air etc) under the head of modalities, but they ought in my opinion to be separated, as they often equal in importance the other three (location, sensation, modality)….

Constitution and Temperament

Constitution and temperament must certainly come into the totality of the case. This method of taking the case is the one adopted by Boenninghausen, and the outcome was his celebrated Therapeutic Pocket Book….