03/25/2026
Adolph Lippe MD on the importance of the relationship of remedies for prescribing...
"A progressive way to find the curative remedy can be pursued, even when our best repertories do not assist us. We again resort to the illustration manner. There are very rare chronic cases of illness in which it seems almost a hopeless ask to find the similar remedy.
A few prominent symptoms may be covered by a remedy and they vanish after it has been taken for a short time; a new set of symptoms sets in, and you can cover only a few of them, and the same unsatisfactory results follow.
In the case alluded to, which might be diagnosticated chronic meningitis, some symptoms predominated. The headache was worse when lying down; relieved by remaining in a sitting position; when the pain increased a sensation like the globulus hystericus was complained of; all the coverings of the neck felt too tight and were constantly loosened; fullness, pulsation, and beating in the head.
Glonoinum, Belladonna, Gelsemium, had given relief at times; Lachesis only caused aggravation. Belladonna had given out; so had the repertories. It now seemed as if a remedy related to Belladonna in its sick-making actions had to be found.
We took up the little work of the indefatigable Bœnninghausen on Relations, and finally came to Sepia. All other related remedies did not correspond with the case before us. There were found what we had been looking for in the four hundred and seventieth and four hundred and seventy-first symptoms in the fifth volume of Hahnemann’s Chronic Diseases. No 470—Pressure in the throat, no matter how little it is covered; No. 471—Pressure in the throat in the region of the tonsils, as if the handkerchief were tied too tightly around the neck.
To our not small astonishment, we found, for the first time in this case, all the symptoms of the patient under Sepia, and the benefit she received from this remedy was as astonishing as it was unexpected. In no other way than by examining the relative remedies to the one which had most benefited her could we have been enabled to find the similar.
It is not often that the repertories give out, but they did in this exceptionally singular case, and we call out our colleague’s attention to a progress forward to find the remedy. The materia medica of our school is, as we have shown, progressive, and we may further progress if we enter earnestly upon the study of the relationship existing between the proved drugs.
If we progressively develop our healing art, we cannot be persuaded either into distrusting and abandoning the great inheritance left us by the master in his Materia Medica Pura and Chronic Diseases, nor into declaring that the law of cure, Similia similibus curantur, is also not reliable, and that progressive abandonment of logic and principles, as well as general progressiveness backward into misnamed liberal and scientific planes, demands from every “physician” a condemnation of sectarianism and an entire reliance upon his own illogical judgment when to administer remedies according to the law of the similars and when to apply palliative treatment only."
