A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica (A Treatise for Homeopathic Students)

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This book is in real sense a key to homoeopathic material medica. Something which is useful for bed-side prescription as well as for quick revision. An introductory note has been added by Norbert Winter which briefs about the utility and structure of the book making it easier for the readers to understand the practicality of this work.

The book is divided into three parts:

1. 203 pages for Repertory and supplemental reference table
2. 291 pages for Materia Medica which is laid out in physiological spheres of activities with modalities and relationships
3. 6 pages for the section of 3 appendices

It has a fascinating layout and concept. Each remedy is presented in concise and clear words. In Boger’s layout you can easily see which remedy affects which specific part of the body. Here, at a glance, this all is available. This book intends to make the general expression or genius of each remedy, thereby helping the prescriber to correct the manner of his practice.

The repertory is too instructive in its own way and many hints can be gathered from its unusual layout. It can also be applied as the "supplemental reference table".

Cyrus Maxwell Boger (May 13, 1861 – September 2, 1935) was born in western Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and then gained his medical degree from Hahnemann College in Philadelphia in 1888. He settled in West Virginia, where he spent the rest of his life. He brought Boenninghausen’s Characteristics and Repertory in the English Language in 1905. He wrote the Synoptic Key and Repertory in 1915 and General Analysis and Card Index in 1931. Boger served as the IHA president in 1904. He was on the faculty of the AFH postgraduate course from 1924 until his death. He died at the age of 74 from food poisoning.

This new fifth edition of the Synoptic Key is herewith submitted to all brothers in the work. Only changes of proven value in co-ordinating and assembling the significant features of seemingly disassociated symptom groups, have been made. Upon these depends almost wholly the final choice of the simillimum. They should reflect a speaking image, as it were, of the correctly indicated remedy. To this end rubrics from my private files have been freely drawn upon. The symptom features of many remedies have been clarified in order to increase their usefulness, especially in precisionizing differentiations. The Repertory is only intended to orient the searcher.

The possibilities that inhere in the contact of the simillimum with the disordered vital force can not be foreknown. It therefore behooves every prescriber to use the utmost care in selecting the curative remedy. It will always remain true, as Paracelsus says in "Erste buch von blatern," chap. 8, 1528. "Just so, Mercury, (etc.),— cures—things Mercuric" only.

The strain which runs through every pathogenetic symptom complex has been called the "genius" of the drug. To give this its proper place in the prescription should be the ideal of every prescriber. To this end is this book written.

**Contents and Sample Pages**