Page 12 - Winter 14

Repertorise with intelligence – The minimal syndrome of maximal value or Hering's Three-legged Stool* by Jacques Millimann, France
A few remarks before you start
A small remedy seldom used is nothing but a badly known remedy. This may happen because it has not been completely fully proven or has not been used very often. Nevertheless, it can be very useful or/and even life saving. For such a remedy, therefore you sometimes find that there is only a handful of rubrics in your repertory (Eichhornia crassipes: 28 rubrics; Kalium telluricum: 22 rubrics). On the contrary, a polycrest will have thousands of rubrics (ex: Sulph: 19839 rubrics; Puls: 14763 rubrics). Thus, if you repertorise with many symptoms, you will most likely find a polycrest. To avoid this trap, there is a simple way: Use Hering’s tripod or the minimal syndrome of maximal value and the paragraph 153 of the Organon.
The technique
You don’t need very many symptoms but they must be:
1 Complete, which means with good modalities
2 Reliable, which means well observed or
repeated, underlined in the anamnesis
3 Well understood and well interpreted
4 Physiologically and pathologically independent
Then your prescription has a solid base.
Let us study this a little
1 A complete symptom has good modalities, with the simultaneities, and if possible, with its aetiology, its periodicity as well as time and/or weather conditions.
2 Asymptomisreliable,whenitisobjective,in other words when it is actually observed or reported, or when it is subjective, i.e. when it is underlined during the anamnesis. Of course, it has to be the most striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar symptom (Organon §153), that is very characteristic of the patient. A little tip may confirm your inclination: a good rubric in the repertory has a long title and contains few remedies.
3 Thesymptomshouldbewellunderstoodand its significance correctly interpreted, according to your patient’s species. For instance, when a man frowns he may be reflecting or worrying about something. When a cow frowns, she can be dehydrated. A dog that frowns may have tetanus! Eating your own faeces is a symptom of heavy mental overload in humans. In dogs it may just be the consequence of a guilty feeling and in a rabbit it is a normal and physiological action (caecotrophy).
4 The symptoms must to be physiologically independent. For instance diarrhoea and vomiting result in dehydration and this can be found in a variety of symptoms or rubrics: • Thirst (576 remedies) with several more
or less interesting possibilities (increased, extreme, unquenchable, for large quantities, small quantities often ...)
• Sunken eyes (130 remedies)
• Skin dryness, perspire cannot (75 remedies)
• Old age, premature (48 remedies – the
skin is dehydrated)
• Urination suppressed, retention of urine
(186 remedies)
In this case, of course, looking prematurely old would here be the best choice, as long as the symptom can really be observed in reality.
Clinical examples – Hering’s Three-legged Stool: a cow with mastitis At7pmthecowisstillallright.At9pmtheleft back quarter of the udder is fiery hot and red. A cold, dry, north wind has been blowing for the whole afternoon. When we open the door, the cow panics and tries to jump through the wall. Her temperature is very high (41.5 degrees) and the cow irradiates heat.
This gives us three 3 nice different symptoms:
1 Air, cold dry aggravates (42 remedies) 2 Sudden manifestation (68 remedies) 3 Inflammatory fever (64 remedies)
Aconite is prescribed and the same morning her temperature had fallen to 39.5 degrees and the cow gives 16 litres of milk.
Another example: the bench has one leg and a large plank, a Parvo case
Then you may have a very reliable and solid symptom and another peculiar one. A black miniature schnauzer is brought to me, because he has vomited watery black and stinking stomach content. He has a very strange expression, which I could not recognise until I saw that his pupils had very unequal size. With these 2 symptoms you get the rubrics:
1 Pupils unequal (33 remedies) 2 Vomiting black (63 remedies)
The dog was too quiet to receive Argentum nitricum or metallicum. The teeth and gums were too normal looking for the obstipated Plumbum. A look into Voisin’s Materia Medica showed that Cadmium sulfuricum has black, watery, bloody stinking stool and the body is cold as ice. The rectal temperature showed hypothermia at 36.7 degrees. I have found what was at least a good Simile and within a couple of days, the little dog was cured.
Last example: for a good balance, the one- legged milking stool used in Swiss farms
This kind of stool (used for milking cows in Switzerland) has only one leg, but the human sitting on it uses a leather strap and her/his two feet firmly planted on the ground for good balance. In a non-symbolic language, this gives us a very solid wooden leg (the symptom) with human feet planted in the Materia Medica. In practice, it amounts to say that the unique symptom used to search the repertory must be seriously reliable and with seriously reliable and understood modalities.
The first clinical example: In Kent’s Repertory chapter Genitalia female page 743, you can read: “Prolapsus uteri, straining from: Aur ++”. Some days after having read this, I was called out to a Charolaise heifer. After a painful calving, she went on pushing and pushing till the whole entire uterus prolapsed. Immediately after my arrival I gave her a few granules of Aurum 5 CH on her gums and began cleaning the purple and swollen mass, which was the uterus. As I carefully pealed off the placenta, I was surprised to see, how this big organ got firm, pale pink, and smaller and smaller. So I could reduce the prolapse even without an epidural injection! Some other vets, being aware of this case, made the same experience with the same success.
Another interesting example is that of Rodilardus, a cat that was brought to my practice in a big open basket by Matthieu and his mother. As I asked: “What is the matter?”, the young boy answered: “Rodilardus pees Jelly!”. His mother said that the cat would pee a few drops everywhere and when the cat was standing a little longer, the urine turned into jelly. I put my hand under the cat’s belly and lifted her out of the basket. As soon as I lifted her, she began purring and stopped, when I put her on the table, where she remained with her back curved upwards. I lifted her again and the purr started as soon as her whole weight rested on my hand.
The diagnosis was obvious: nephritis with a very albuminous urine, one single real symptom with some very gode modalities: pressure ameliorates (therefore the purr), bending double ameliorates too, of course because it increases the pressure Inside the abdomen. Perfect: this belongs to the quintessence of the Materia Medica of Colocynthis.
2 granules of Colocynthis in 5 CH and the day after Rodilardus was healed. Two months later the cat was still very fit.
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* This principle states that while prescribing a medicine, three leading symptoms of that medicine should match the symptoms of the patient. Just as a stool with three legs is more stable than a stool with one leg, medicine given on the basis of at least three key symptoms is more reliable than that treated with one symptom [Ed.]