As a group the concomitants contain many anomalous and peculiar symptoms. They are often so distinctive of a remedy as to render the name of the disease under which a peculiar symptom may occur of little moment. Nevertheless the modalities, mental accompaniments and duration of an unusual symptom govern its position. When these go to make up an harmonious picture it becomes a true characteristic otherwise it has only a negative value.
Sometimes the affected organ seems overwhelmed by the impact of the disease and the vital powers can find expression through the concomitants only; then they become of supreme importance as the almost sole guide for the selection of the remedy.
The value of a concomitant is often fixed by its age. The acute or more recent ones are of course the most guiding, for within their genesis lies bound up the type of the similimum. Remedies suitable for acute vital disturbances stand in an accessory relation to the constitutional or antipsoric drugs.
They are capable of correcting the irregular expenditure of energy which may temporarily be imperilling the life of the patient but are mostly impotent to remove the great fundamental dyscrasias which they nevertheless have the power to uncover or arouse into activity. To combat the latter we have the great antipsorics of Hahnemann and unless we have at least some comprehension of the correlative relation of the two classes we may find ourselves opening a Pandora’s box. The alternator and mixer, owing to the spurious teaching so long prevalent, often has the embarrassment of finding himself in this predicament, that is, if he is capable of seeing it.
The presence of an old constitutional symptom belonging to the miasms, although it may be peculiar, should not mislead us into following it during an acute illness, unless because of its malign presence the drug, pictured by the recent sickness fails to act.