05/10/2025
Dr. Adolph Lippe on the importance of single symptoms...
"The importance of a single symptom becomes most apparent when we detect in the patient a single characteristic symptom corresponding with a similar single characteristic symptom observed in the proving of a drug. To illustrate this position I will, first, quote a case from my own case book in which an objective symptom indicated the truly specific remedy.
This case was one of very malignant “ship fever.” The patient had been sick nine days when I found him in the morning, lying on his back, perfectly unconscious; eyes wide open, glaring, and fixed on the ceiling, pupils dilated; cheeks red and hot; mouth wide open, the lower jaw hanging down; tongue and lips dry, black and cracked; picking of bed coverings; pulse 200. The pathological condition was most certainly approaching paralysis of the brain. Now if I had followed the advice of retrograding physicians, I should have gloried in having found in this pathological condition the important single symptom. Should I then have administered Morphine, or Helonia, Hydrastis and O***m in alternation, by the spoonful, drop, or more?
The unconsciousness in this case reminded me at first of Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, Muriatic acid, O***m, Rhus tox., or Stramonium. The eyes indicated Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, O***m, or Stramonium. The tongue and lips of Arsenicum album, O***m, or Rhus tox.. The picking of the bed-clothes of Arnica, Arsenicum album, Hyoscyamus, O***m, or Stramonium. The hanging of the lower jaw of Arsenicum album, Lycopodium, or O***m. Not being able to select a remedy, I further examined the patient and found that he had passed urine involuntarily all night, but this single symptom again left me to choose between Arnica, Arsenicum album, Belladonna, Hyoscyamus, or Rhus tox.; but upon still further examination I found on the sheet of the patient, that the urine involuntary discharged, had made a large deposit of red sand, resembling brick dust. Here was the objective symptom characteristic of the case and of the remedy. I now concluded to give Lycopodium, therefore I dissolved six pellets of the 200th potency in half a tumbler full of water, and had a spoonful, every two hours, put in the open mouth of the unconscious patient. When I saw him again, at 2 P.M., I found him with his eyes and mouth firmly closed in a natural sleep and in a very heavy perspiration. He finally recovered fully and enjoyed perfect good health for many years."
Source: Homœopathic Physician 1883; 3: 149-155.
