Repertory of Hering's Guiding Symptoms of Our Materia Medica

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The order of arrangement, or method of classification, followed in the compilation of this repertory is the one inaugurated by Hahnemann, developed, perfected and used by Hering throughout his entire Materia Medica work, viz: the anatomical, or regional division into forty-eight chapters.

It is only alphabetic arrangement possible that will not scatter and separate what should be collective and contiguous. Each chapter is alphabetically divided into sections and rubrics sufficient to allow full scope for analysis of the matter contained therein without destroying consistency as a whole. Like to a fugue, a musical composition in which the lesser parts repeat the motive of the entire composition, repetition is progress by evolution or development, or, as expressed by Hering in the introduction to his Analytical Therapeutics, The comprehension of general principles, ruling the whole in every part, enables the mind to find the way through thickets of endless varying symptoms."

The division of the page into double column is deemed most convenient for the eye and is most advantageous to economy of space.

The section word is repeated down the columns in preference to the customary-, which, like all marks of abbreviation, ciphers, signs, etc., are apt to become confusing and are not as space-saving as might be supposed. The words right and left, better and worse, etc., etc., to avoid possible error, are printed out in full.

The rubric word, or heading to each paragraph, printed in somewhat bolder and blacker type and followed by a: (colon), applies to each symptom in the paragraph, that is, the black-letter word is to be mentally repeated for every sentence rounded with a semicolon. It will be observed that the symptoms under each rubric follow in alphabetic order.

The four marks of distinction, I, II, I, II, have the same significance as set down in Guiding Symptoms, i, the lowest, a single light line, designating an occasionally confirmed symptom; II, a double light line, a symptom more frequently confirmed, or, if but once confirmed, strictly in character with the genius of the remedy; I, a single heavy line, symptom verified by cures; II, a double heavy line, symptom repeatedly verified. These degree marks tally in the main with the four styles of type used by Boenninghausen in his Repertory. I have also made use of them in giving prominence to the relative values of remedies occurring in groups, under a general rubric, like dysmenorrhoea, restlessness, rheumatism, etc.

6, the Greek "theta" standing between the cured symptom and the pathological condition, or the physiological general state, throughout the Guiding Symptoms, is dispensed with here; mainly for the purpose of economizing space, by enclosing the pathological or physiological term in parentheses; it is to be remembered that the presence of the term by no means shuts out of the usefulness of the symptom in other forms of disease. The prescriber has to deal with both objective and subjective facts, but should always bear in mind that individualization is the life of therapeutics.

**Contents and Sample Pages**