Analysis of symptoms Homeopathy

- BENERJEE.P,

After you have finished the examination of the patient and the recording of symptoms, you have to see if you have painted a life-picture of your patient-exactly as he is. Because, this only was your object in preparing the record. If the record you have prepared is not such a life-picture, but is only a lifeless catalogue of disease-names, of general symptoms, without any particulars definitely to mark out those generals, it is of no use. Unless you have an exact life-picture of your patient, such as a perusal of that record would bring before your mind's eye only that particular patient and none else, and unless you have the particulars of the general symptoms, it is literally impossible for you to make a prescription. The general symptoms will only suggest to you all the ten or fifteen remedies that have them, but no one single remedy. It is only the particulars that may lead you from the ten or fifteen remedies having the generals, to the one particular remedy that is indicated. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to catch hold of the particular peculiarities of the patient as also of his general symptoms. It is really very very difficult to get such a complete picture, and the difficulty is, in most cases, attributable to two things-(1) the callousness of the patient due to a long course of suffering, which renders him gradually used to his uneasy sensations and feelings and on account of which he considers those sensations and feelings as usual and natural for him, and (2) want of thorough knowledge of the physician in the Materia Medica. If these two difficulties in the way of prescribing are not there, and if, yet a complete life-picture full of particulars is not available, no successful prescribing is possible. There is no help for it. If symptoms, such as would lead you to the remedy, are not there, what can yon do? The symptoms are your only guide; they are the language of Nature that call for the remedy, and if they do not call for any remedy (by means of their particulars), nothing can be done. It is no use having pages of symptoms without having a case.

 The examination of the patient and the recording of the case have not yet placed you in a position for prescribing, because there are yet some more things to be considered. It has been made clear that the object of the recording is to paint out a picture of the patient, but in the whole array of symptoms, there may be some symptoms that do not help the painting of the picture. Just as in a tree, there may be parasites that are in no way part and parcel of the tree, similarly in the group of symptoms that have been recorded, there may be some symptoms that have not any bearing on the picture drawn. These symptoms have in fact no connection with those symptoms that go to make up the patient, and as such they have no utility in the process of prescribing. The patient in hand is the particular patient either with those symptoms, or even without them. And these symptoms have no use for the purpose of prescribing, and as such, they should be eliminated from the picture. But how to recognise and distinguish such symptoms? How to understand that some of the symptoms in the case are like parasites on the tree, unconnected with the patient, as he is?-Yes, there is certainly a method for distinguishing such symptoms, but it depends to a large extent on the keenness of the physician's intelligence and power of observation. The history of the patient from his birth as also the history of the parents as recorded by you, will show when and how "Psora" the prime disease came to be implanted on him, and how this "Psora" gradually manifested itself in this shape and that, until at last it assumed its present shape. It will be sufficiently clear to the intelligent physician how this Psora was at first in the patient, like a seed, and how gradually it shot into a small plant with one or two leaves, and how gradually it grew still further into more leaves, and then into branches, and then into more branches, until at last it assumed the shape of an umbrageous tree. If you can trace out the gradual growth of Psora in your patient in this way, from its first manifestation to its present multifariousness, you will find that there are some symptoms that have not thus grown out. (How and why such symptoms at all come and remain on, will be explained later.) You will find that these few symptoms have come somehow to be in the patient and that they have remained there without any subsequent development. And these are the symptoms that are unconnected with the main malady, or more correctly, with the patient as you have painted out his picture in your record. These are the symptoms that are like parasites on the parent tree. And you have to leave them completely out of your account, while making your prescription. If these symptoms were at all connected with the patient's case, they would not have remained exactly as they were in the beginning, that is to say, when they appeared first, but would have continued developing and developing, just as the other symptoms have developed from their first manifestation to their present magnitude. When, however, you have selected the right medicine ignoring these superfluous symptoms, and when your patient will be improving under it, these superfluous symptoms will disappear quite of themselves, as the patient gradually improving, there will be no suitable soil for their existence in him. No new prescribing for the removal of these parasitical symptoms is ever necessary.

 Now, it is necessary for us to ascertain the causes of such symptoms that are like parasites on the parent tree. The first and foremost of these is allopathic medication. Though we know that, allopathic medicines have not the power of curing the patient, it is an undoubted fact, that they possess the power of creating new symptoms. Allopathic physicians think that it is the fault in some organ that makes some other organs faulty and the man sick. They hold that it is the liver that has caused this, and it is the kidney that has caused that. And with this novel idea of disease, they go to correct the particular organ held responsible, by continuous medication, and thus they bring about in it some functional disorder first and structural disorder then. This is a daily affair, and there would not have been much trouble if the process had stopped here. As ill luck would have it, it is pursued with a vengeance, as it were, till at last some new organ is faultified. Thus one organ after another is made to bear the brunt of the treatment. If the liver has caused the fever then a purgative must be necessary, and if the purgative brings on dysentery due to excessive secretion of bile then this dysentery again will be treated in the same blessed method. Thus, they bring some symptoms and then some more again. If, now the patient comes to you, you will find that some of his symptoms have been thus created, and that they have no connection with the main malady. The second cause of such superfluous symptoms is at times, an intervening acute disease. When there is an acute disease breaking out in a chronic patient, the chronic symptoms are suppressed for the time being, and they re-appear only when the acute symptoms have passed off. If the record of the patient is prepared before the disappearance of the acute disease, the acute symptoms may seem interwoven with the chronic symptoms. But in reality, they have no connection with the chronic condition of the patient. If you wait for some time in such cases and allow the acute symptoms to pass off, you will find the chronic symptoms standing out again in all their prominence. Acute symptoms can never fully intermingle with the chronic symptoms, and as such, treatment of acute and chronic symptoms at the same time with the same medicine is impossible. It is the mixing up of chronic symptoms only that creates a complexity and requires a medicine for breaking up that complex knot. As soon as the right remedy is directed against this knot, it is untied at once and the different chronic symptoms are separated one set from the other and are then cured. If, therefore, there are any acute symptoms in your record, they should also be completely left out of account, while making your prescription. Besides the two kinds of superfluous symptoms, described above, there are others too.

 It will happen at times, that in the same chronic patient two or three chronic pictures appear alternately. This is a highly complex matter and let me illustrate it by an example: Suppose, in a chronic patient that has come to you for treatment, there is fever. Suppose this fever is of a peculiar type. One day he is completely free from fever, the next day he gets fever, on the third day also there is fever again but it is much less than that of the second day, and on the fourth day the patient is quite well. Suppose this is the cycle. If you examine the patient more closely, you will find that the fevers of the second and third days are not of the same character; perhaps the fever of the second day has some symptoms, while the fever of the third day has quite a different set of symptoms. In such cases, you have to take into account the more severe of the two fevers ignoring the other altogether. If the fever of the second day is more severe than that of the third day, include this in your picture of the case as recorded by you and prescribe your medicine on that; or if the fever of the third day is more severe than that of the second day, include this in your picture and then prescribe the medicine indicated. The less severe one of the two fevers has no value-has no bearing on the chronic case before you. If the more severe one of the two fevers is taken account of, it is well enough, and the less severe one will disappear automatically.

 If there are more than one chronic miasm in the system, there is no end of complexities and no end of symptoms; and there may be superfluous symptoms in the case due to still other causes than what have been enumerated above. But the fact remains that for the purpose of prescribing, they have little or no value. They are only like parasites on the parent tree. Uproot the tree, and the parasites will wither of themselves.
 If you remember one thing, the above will be still more intelligible to you. Our object is to select a remedy to fit the picture of the case. The more clear and well defined the picture the easier is the task of selection. But the picture of the case depends to a large extent on the patient's way of putting it, and we have no hand in the matter beyond exercising our discretion and judgment so as to eliminate those symptoms of a superfluous and parasitical character. It is this elimination that proclaims a Homœopath. If you can do this successfully, and if no correct selection can yet be made, it is no fault of yours, but it is the fault of the patient who was not given you a case though he may have given you pages of symptoms.
 I can however, try to give you some idea as to how the picture of a case has to be found out from an array of symptoms and how the correct medicine has to be selected and fitted to it. It is this: When we prescribe for an acute case what do we actually do?-We examine the case and at once arrive at the conclusion that it is "Bryonia", and this means that the picture presented by the patient is similar to the picture of the proving of Bryonia as given in the Materia. Medica. The symptoms in the patient have appeared and gradually developed into details, first manifesting themselves in this organ or part of the body and then in that, exactly in the same way as they appeared and gradually developed in the provers of Bryonia. It is therefore, that Bryonia is selected. It may of course happen that in the patient in our hand, there are some more symptoms besides those of Bryonia. But what do we do in such cases?-What we do is that, we do not for the present mind those few foreign symptoms and administer Bryonia straight. And this brings about cure in most cases, and the few foreign symptoms referred to above then disappear of themselves i. e. without the use of any other medicines. If however, in some cases, those foreign symptoms do not go simultaneously with the cure of the Bryonia condition (on which condition the first selection of Bryonia was based), we then select another remedy on the totality of the symptoms still persisting, and so on until the patient is completely cured. Thus, one, two or three or even more medicines may be required in curing an acute case. This is in brief the mystery of selecting medicines in acute cases, and the mystery of selection in chronic cases is also exactly the same. Your chronic patient must look like proving the medicine which you are selecting for him, just as the acute patient for whom you selected Bryonia, was looking like a proving of Bryonia. If your chronic patient for whom you have selected a particular remedy is a picture of the proving of that remedy, your selection is absolutely correct,-there is no mistake in it and it must cure your patient. Thus, the medicine which you are selecting for your chronic patient to-day, would have been the medicine for him 10 years ago when the first disorder in him began, and it will be the medicine for him 10 years hence, because he has only been proving the same medicine from the beginning and if there be any such symptoms, as do not belong to that medicine they must be only side-issues i. e. superfluous symptoms. As more days are passing the more symptoms of the same medicine are only coming out in their details. Thus, if you carefully study up a chronic case, you will only see in the picture of it-and that invariably-that the patient is only developing over a long period of time symptoms after symptoms, similar to those of a deep acting medicine in a prover. Just as in an acute case you have to make your selection of Bryonia or Gelsimium finding in your patient a picture of a short course (say 5, 6 or 7 days) of proving of those medicines, ignoring the few superfluous symptoms, so in chronic cases too, you have to make your selection of the medicine on the proving as the picture is showing it. The only difference is that, in an acute case the process of proving as presented by the patient covers a short period of time, while in a chronic case this process covers a much longer period of time, say 5, 10 or 15 years or even more. If the troubles of your chronic patient began with the suppression of some skin lesion, and if that skin lesion was only a picture of the proving of Arsenicum, then he must have been proving Arsenicum throughout, up to the time he comes to you. Arsenicum was his medicine when he had the skin lesion only, Arsenicum is his medicine to-day when he has so many more symptoms, and Arsenicum will be his medicine 10 years hence, (if however, he is alive till then), when he will have still more symptoms, because the original trouble (skin lesion) being a proving of Arsenicum, he cannot be proving anything other than Arsenicum. There may be superfluous symptoms of a parasitical character, as explained before, coming on gradually for this reason or that, but they do not matter. They have no bearing on the selection. Besides these parasitical symptoms, there may even be greater complexities due to combination of miasms, but yet these complexities too can only be simplified by the medicine the picture of whose proving the patient is showing. It comes to this, that the physician who finds in the record of his case, from the beginning to the end, the picture of the proving of a particular medicine, in spite of superfluous symptoms and in spite of complexities due to knotty combination of miasms, is the true seer and true Homœopathic physician; and it is he alone who can select the right remedy, untie the knot and bring about real cure.

 The greatest difficulty in effecting real cure is however experienced in many cases, but the most trying are those, (1) in which there are combinations of miasms and (2) in which the patients are not patient but are constantly in the habit of changing physicians at short intervals. I will however take thisup presently.