You give the medicine and he comes back in a few days with quite a sharp aggravation of the symptoms; he has an increased cough, he has a night sweat, and he is more feeble. Now, the homoeopathic physician likes to hear that; he likes to hear of an exacerbation of the symptoms; but this patient comes back in a week, and the aggravation is still present, and is somewhat on the increase, the patient is coughing worse, and the expectoration is more troublesome than ever, his night sweats have been going on; he comes back at the end of the second week and he is still worse, and all the symptoms have been worse since he took that medicine. He was comparatively comfortable before he took that medicine, but at the end of the fourth week he is steadily growing worse. There has been no amelioration following this aggravation, and he is evidently declining; he now cannot come to the office for he is so weak.
This, then, will be the first observation-a prolonged aggravation and final decline of the patient. What have we done? It has been a mistake, the antipsoric was too deep, it has established destruction. In this state the vital reaction was impossible, he was incurable case. The question immediately comes up, what are you to do? Are you not going to give the homoeopathic remedy in such cases? The patient steadily declines. If you are in doubt about such action of the remedies and making the patient worse, you will probably have an undertaker’s certificate to sign before long.
In incurable and doubtful cases give no higher than the 30th or 200th potency, and observe whether the aggravation is going to be too deep or too prolonged. There are many signs in the chest in such cases to make a physician doubt whether he will give a deep remedy when organic disease is present. Of course this does not apply when things are only threatening, when you have fear of their coming, but when you are sure of their being present. In the instance given the probability is that the remedy has been too late, and it has attempted to arouse his economy, but turned to destruction his whole organism. Then begin, in such cases, with a moderately low potency, and the 30th is low enough for anybody or anything.
In 1881, Kent accepted a position as professor of anatomy at the Homeopathic College of Missouri, an institution with which he remained affiliated until 1888. In 1890, Kent moved to Pennsylvania to take a position as Dean of Professors at the Post-Graduate Homeopathic Medical School of Philadelphia. In 1897 Kent published his magnum opus, Repertory of the Homœopathic Materia Medica. Kent moved to Chicago in 1903, where he taught at Hahnemann Medical College.