Clinical Case Examples
This section gives case examples which show the particular features of both the Complete Repertory and the Repertorium Universale.
Menstrual headaches
Rule: rubrics and remedies from specific pain subrubrics should always also appear in the general pain subrubrics of that specific section.
[L M Kenyon MD (Buffalo, NY). “Curative Effect of Hamamelis”, American Homeopathic Review, Jun-Jul 1860, p412]
“Perhaps the following case, showing the curative effect of Hamamelis virginica, may be interesting to your readers. Mary F, aged fourteen years, has always enjoyed tolerable health until within the last eighteen months, when she menstruated. The first time, there was considerable pain in the head and back for several days preceding it, accompanied by nausea, vertigo, etc. I gave her Hamamelis sixth and thirtieth dilutions in alternation, two doses of each in the twenty-four hours, which was all the medicine she got during the month following, except a few doses of Arsenicum for the dyspnea when it was troublesome. When the next month came round, she menstruated regularly and had no more bleeding; and from this time, she went on rapidly to a perfect recovery, using no other remedy but the Hamamelis.”
In Kent, Hamamelis is not included in the rubric Head; pain; menses; before, though it does appear in Head; pain; bursting; menses; before. By adding Hamamelis to the general pain rubric, it comes into consideration for cases such as this where the quality “bursting” is not specifically mentioned.
Clinical case of sciatica
[C.M. Boger. Clinical case of Sciatica from C M Boger, Collected Writings edited by Robert Bannan. 1994. Churchill Livingstone. p43-44]
“Mrs. J.K. aet. 42. For six weeks has had stiffness and aching in lumbar region on rising or sitting down. Now confined to bed by throbbing, quivering, soreness, numbness and shooting pains down right sciatic nerve to foot, which feels as if she were stepping on a ???? and the thigh as if lying on rocks; pains agg. on outside of thigh. Aching in right calf on standing and right sole burns. Menses profuse, with backache and hydroae or aphthae. Leucorrhea causes itching. Sleeps in catnaps. Easy fatigue in hot weather. Thirsty. No appetite. Nervous, weepy and restless. Hot flashes. Aggravation: Morning and evening. Pressure of clothes. Before storms. Trifles. Amelioration: Rubbing. Motion. Heat, locally.
Dec 26 1929. Rx. Lachesis 200 one dose. Better in five days and in ten days entirely well.”
Repertorising the case using only the Kentian sections of the repertory, taking either the sciatic symptoms themselves or the more general symptoms (as in the illustrative repertorisations), gives results which are next to useless. The curative remedy is barely in the reckoning. Characteristic symptoms such as the aphthae and hydroae (though Boger doesn’t mention the location of the latter) during menses and weariness during hot weather are not recorded in the repertory so can’t be included.
Sciatic symptoms
General symptoms
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However, using Bönninghausen’s technique, complete symptoms can be constructed from their parts. This can be done either by separately listing rubrics for each partial symptom, or by constructing combined eliminatory rubrics for each complete symptom. The repertorisation below presents a much clearer picture of the curative remedy.
Sciatic symptoms, Bönninghausen repertorisation
Bönninghausen's own case of ileus (intestinal blockage)
[A Case of Ileus, from Aphorisms of Hippocrates, C M von Bönninghausen. In Homeopathic Physician, June 1887, p188. Translation Dr A McNeil, San Francisco]
“We hope the kind reader will pardon us if we speak on this one occasion of ourself, and our never-to-be-forgotten teacher and friend, Hahnemann. It was toward the end of March, 1833, when we were attacked by this disease (ileus). The right ileum was the seat of the uncommonly painful suffering, which continued fourteen days. Four physicians, of whom our honoured friend, Medical Counselor Dr Aegidi, at that time Physician-in-ordinary to the Princess Friedrich of Düsseldorf, only lives and can testify to this truth, hastened to our rescue and to counsel each other, but in vain. We first, in the middle of the last fourteenth night, full of inexpressible torment, had the good fortune ourself to discover the remedy which had hitherto never been administered for this disease. This was Thuja to which we were directed by the circumstances that only the uncovered parts sweat, and that profusely, while the covered parts remain dry and hot – a symptom which belongs only to Thuja, and is overlooked even by C W Wolf. A pellet of Thuja 30 brought relief of the pains in five minutes, and in ten a profuse movement of the bowels, followed immediately by a refreshing sleep, from which we awoke next morning as if newly born. We were taking a hearty breakfast, which was relished very much, when our four friends came into the room, full of joy and surprise, and still more astonished when they heard the remedy that had done it.”
(Bönninghausen wrote to tell Hahnemann. The reply advised him to look at Conium and Lycopodium in “restoring the activity of your intestines”. Bönninghausen delightedly relates how, responding to the changes in his symptoms, he had already taken those very remedies – Conium two days after writing to Hahnemann and Lycopodium just the evening before he received the reply – and that every trace of the condition had since disappeared.)
Bönninghausen's case of ileus
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A case of toothache
[A Case of Toothache, from Aphorisms of Hippocrates, C M von Bönninghausen. In Homeopathic Physician, April 1887, p116. Translation Dr A McNeil, San Francisco]
“An instructive example of the selection of the homeopathic remedy
is the following, which is an instance of the utility of an old theological
vs. memorialis, in the treatment of a frequently returning toothache,
as should be done by a homeopathic physician.
“Quis? Anna, a girl of some twenty years
Quid? complains of a violent toothache
Ubi? in a hollow, upper back tooth, on the left side
from which she has suffered a couple of months. In this general description
there is not the remotest clue to the selection of the curative remedy,
as more than half of all the proven drugs meet the conditions expressed.
On further researching …
Quibus auxiliis? for the concomitants of the patient we discover an anxious,
timid, lachrymose disposition; stomach easily disordered, particularly
by fatty food; disposition to mucous diarrhoea; anxious palpitation of
the heart in the evening when in the house; falls asleep late; evening
chilliness, particularly in the back, with heat of the head and coldness
of the extremities.
However important and, in a certain measure, indispensable these symptoms
are, yet the chief indications which are expressed in the above-mentioned
verse are expressed by the words Cur? Quomodo? Quando?
Cur? refers to the often very important exciting cause or anamnesis, which
in this case is stated to be a cold arising from wet feet, by which the
menses, which were then flowing, were suppressed, and have not appeared
since.
Quomodo? refers to the nature of the pains, which are in this case twitching,
tearing, and at times pulsating and stitching in the above-mentioned hollow
tooth. They extend up the cheek to the eye, the temple, and the ear of
that side.
All the foregoing are less important than the final Quando? Which must
have the aggravations and ameliorations according to time, attitude, or
situations and circumstances, in order to make a certain and undoubted
selection of the remedy.
Quando? When, as in this case, the most painful period
is in the evening till midnight, when the pains are aggravated when sitting
quietly in a warm room, on becoming warm in bed, and especially by lying on the
painless (not the painful) side, and by hot or very warm food, and, on the contrary,
are ameliorated in the morning and forenoon, when working in the open, cool air,
and when cold water is held in the mouth the pains are considerably lessened or entirely cease.
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“Every homeopath knows that Pulsatilla and no other is the right remedy, which, administered in the smallest dose, not only removes with certainty the entire suffering, together with the concomitants, but with proper diet in the following days brings permanent cure.
“This is the way, with the assistance and guidance of a sufficient familiarity with the homeopathic therapeutics, by which, in every kind of mental and physical complaints, the correct choice of the remedy can be reliably made. The physician is not thus misled into the dark regions of supposition and hypothesis, where the scanty ray of light proves in the end an ignis fatuus. Such a procedure as ours may not demand any profound and astonishing scientific knowledge, but one may easily see that a rich and extensive experience, acquired by a wide knowledge, is indispensable to select from over one hundred remedies for toothache the only one which can cure, and that, too, in a disease that allopathy so seldom cures.”
Intestinal colic
[Case by E.W. Berridge (1870). Homoeopathic Physician, August 1881, p380.]
Mrs __ complained of intense pain, as if bowels were drawn together, beginning in stomach, going downwards to abdomen; chiefly on left side; it begins one and a quarter hour after food, and attains its highest two hours after food.The pain is relieved by bending double, and especially by sitting bent before a fire, also by food, and by erectations; worse in cold weather or a cold room, the pain concentrates itself around and above navel. This has lasted for more than three weeks. She has taken Nux with only temparary relief.
The curative remedy, Manganum, cannot be found using Kentian-style rubrics. For example:
Abdomen: Pain; drawing; together
Stomach; Pain; extending; downward
Abdomen; Pain; eating; amel.
Abdomen; Pain; warmth; amel.
Abdomen; Pain; eructations; amel.
Abdomen; Pain; cold; taking, from and as from
Abdomen; Pain; sides; left
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We can use the Bönninghausen approach with Repertorium Universale
Constrictive pains about navel
Abdominal symptoms relieved by bending double
Abdominal symptoms relieved by warmth
Abdominal symptoms relieved by eructations
Abdominal symptoms relieved by eating
Abdominal symptoms worse by cold
Abdominal symptoms left side
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E.W. Berridge's comments: "This case was worked out from an enlarged copy of Bönninghausen's Repertory, and clearly shows the absolute necessity of a collective of the conditions belonging to every symptom of an organ, such as I have adopted in my own Eye Repertory. The provings of Manganum show "distressing sensation in stomach, ceasing after dinner", but not "contractive pain" relieved by the same; thus demonstrating that the conditions of one symptom often apply equally well to others; sometimes being perhaps of universal application. It affords also another illustration of the value of clinical symptoms to fill up the gaps in the pathogenesis of our remedies; many of the above conditions are not to be found as yet in the provings of Manganum but have been discovered and added by Bönninghausen."
