Repertories : Boger’s especially Royal Elmore Swift Hayes, M.D. Waterbury, Conn. (1871-1952) Presented by Dr Robert Séror

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Repertories
: Boger’s especially
Royal Elmore Swift
Hayes, M.D. Waterbury, Conn. (1871-1952)
Presented by Dr Robert Séror

Read before I.H.A., Bureau of Homoeopathic Philosophy,
June 16, 1938.)The Homoeopathic Recorder, January, N° 1. 1939, pages 12
to 24.

Boger’s
Synoptic Key in the form of cards and accompanying General
Analysis in
my opinion is by far the best of repertories.

It seems strange that it has not come into popular use.

It has been mentioned in the literature only casually.

Some writer in the

Pacific
Coast Journal mentioned
it a year ago or so as his preference, but that is the only instance of
its use known to me.

I have shown its operation to three or four ; they nodded and went
their way. I had a short illustrative account in the

Homoeopathic
Recorder for
February, 1933
(of which a few reprints remain) and the writer was prepared to follow
this with a series of case illustrations showing various ways to use it,
but as for some reason only the first was published the project was
abandoned.

I recall, however, that

Boger
himself was much pleased with what had been worked out and said that it
had suggested to him still further ways to manipulate this repertory.
This flexibility according to the peculiarities of problems is one of
the main features of the invention.

But before discussing this repertory especially I would like to talk
about repertorization in relation to our materia medica in general.

Certainly we use repertories less as we become more acquainted with
the pathways through the materia medica, those pathways with
verifications and signs by which we have been guided before, and those
trails which we recognize as guiding in their nature, that is, beholden
to the individual remedy whether used before or not.

In one way or another one must ultimately make one’s own path through
the materia medica forest and this should be accomplished as steadily
and rapidly as possible.

It seems to me that present methods of training are not as thorough
or as extensive as they might be. If we could have less
“science” and more medicine I think it would be better.

The pursuit of materia medica is, or should be, a life work in
itself. Contrary to the common conception or practice, at least, it is
the vortex of medicine, an intensive art, directed to and with great
possibilities of cure. What about other arts requiring close application
?

It takes five years or more for a talented student of music to play
the finer works and fifteen, more or less, to qualify for the public
platform. There are almost as fine nuances in materia medica as in
music.

And the performances today ? Well, it’s time to be going along with
our subject.

The study of materia medica should be intensive, and in accord with
the principles of prescribing and the higher physiology and pathology,
that is, the balance, imbalance and direction of forces.

With the exception of us few antiquated numerals in the homoeopathic
camp these are almost entirely ignored.

In practice a lively pursuance of the quest will pull one away from
any tendency toward routinism, sending one along new paths through the
unknown, through which, even today with our boasted skill, we have made
but little more than a clearing.

It is safe to say that the powers of homoeopathic materia medica hold
as great possibilities for improvement of the race in its present status
of being as any influence that has ever been revealed.

And it is an enterprise in which if the medical profession were
coordinated every physician would be making “great
discoveries”, not the noisy kind that comes and goes suddenly like

Belladonna
pains, but adding
to his own art, and to durable therapeutic knowledge ; and to an extent
that we can hardly realize even with our present semblance of
efficiency.

How many suspect, for instance, that

Podophyllum
is a very
potent remedy for certain injuries of the spine ? or that 11 p. m. is a
very strong, a primary indication for Silica
?

All careful prescribers uncover uses that their fellows have not
known. There are great unknown resources even in our familiar remedies.

I mention this to emphasize the recognized fact that the
possibilities of materia medica knowledge and especially of the paths
that traverse its fastnesses are above considerations of
repertorization.

The reason that materia medica is paramount is that a homoeopathic
remedy is an entity, at once a unit and a representation of sick
individuals, having identity, form, proportion, intensities, relations,
all the dynamic qualities that are the replica of sentient beings.

Provings, when understood, unmask this truth.

This being so, the dependence on repertorization or emphasizing it at
the expense of thorough and everlasting study (discovery might be the
better word) of remedies is the wrong approach to its understanding ;
and although it sometimes seems unavoidable it is the wrong approach to
the patient’s remedy.

Students are always being told, and rightly so, to study and compare
remedies after the repertorial choice has been made.

But the writer believes and it is true in his experience that the
freshness and continuity of remedy personality, its essential part, is
liable to be lost or faded after going through the repertorial headache.

Although many useful points may be acquired with observant use of
rubrics one is not so likely to erect any life-like personal complex
from them even with the best care in attaching values to the remedy
notations.

Qualities, relations and intensities are not so naturally associated
in the repertory ; they are more arbitrary and fragmentary and easily
may become offset from the picture ; therefore, off the patient’s center
of gravity.

Values are apt to be brought together in the repertorized scheme that
have a different relative value in the patient. So, although the warp is
there, the woof with its colorings may be disrupted.

The repertorized schema is but a cross section and too often,
especially with problems not suited to repertory study at all, becomes
mere symptomatic hash.

When one sees that, he should turn from it, study the reason and seek
in the materia medica. There, with skillful reference, ye shall find if
thou knowest what of quality to look for.

It
seems to me that one may be at times too much influenced (I know that I
have been) by the repertory result ; that too much dependence on the
repertory with its lack of joining symptoms in vital relation and in Kent’s
the gross error of excluding concomitants may tend to inhibit remedy
acquaintance both in number and quality.

Although one must consult the text to differentiate the few remedies
that have survived the repertorial test, yet, I think, repertorization
is a crude approach toward that significant totality that inheres
somewhere in every patient and his remedy.

For myself I can say that my best results have been attained by
diving into the complex sans mechanism, often making the choice
from clues or features not in the repertory.

One’s interest in the art of discovering remedy genius should
overcome most of the difficulties of size and time met with in the
materia medica.

I admit though, that in the present low requirements in materia
medica the young student may, with repertory use, acquire sooner a
tolerable skill in the use of homoeopathic medicines.

In the face of present unfortunate training possibilities, that would
seem to be its best utility excepting, of course, the indispensable
indexing.

In concluding this part of the subject I would say :

Take to repertorization as a confession of failure either to uncover
the central and reactible features of patient and remedy or to properly
evaluate what is at hand or of a too limited acquaintance with remedies,
either numerically or their individual scope or both.

As to

Boger’s Repertory,
Boger was many
years bringing this work to its present state.

He added new rubrics with caution and only as his personal work
needed them.

This made it more practical and guarded against including less
pertinent rubrics. No repertory can ever be complete or perfect but
Boger did a wonderful job.

One would not suppose that a few rubrics like

Moistness,
Yellow, Discharges ameliorate (suppression), Loose, Relaxation,
Inactive, etc. would
take the place of so many other considerations but they do and there
is reason behind it.

In this way : Analysis, as I understand it to apply to provings and
to patients, is a resolution of the data into the simple elements of the
individual complex.

This is what

Boger’s
repertory points toward.

Compare it with a great part of

Kent’s,
for instance.

Chopping up symptoms and regions and laying the pieces up in piles to
the extent that

Kent
did does not help analysis in the philosophical or homoeopathic sense.

Boger
made a serious attempt (although in my opinion the object can never
become fully realized) by selecting and theoretically consolidating
influences or conditions that hold sway over sick individuals, to unite
analysis and synthesis in one rubric, usually expressed in one, two or
three words.

His degree of success in this, as the unavoidable clumsiness of
repertory procedure goes, is one of the items that helps to make his
repertory superior.

Boger’s Repertory

is the quickest, usually requiring less than ten, sometimes
five minutes for a solution.

And it is, in my opinion, the safest in that it is more likely than
any other to include the desired remedy in the final group.

The best remedy is as likely to be included at the start and less
likely to be dropped out on the way.

Another feature, very important, is that judgment must be used in the
selection of the first or basic rubrics.

This care should be taken at the start. This is where the headwork
comes in to save so much time. It is a practical extension of

Boger’s
idea of synopsis.

This has often been practiced before by skillful repertorists in
making a short schema when desirable, but it is especially convenient
with

Boger’s
because of his masterly selection of terms for his rubrics (cards) .

It is of especial use with conditions having a paucity of symptoms.
With many such problems the best remedy will be run out considerably
beyond the others. That remedy, if any in the group, is practically
certain to be the right one.

With some problems, if too many cards have been taken out, I
eliminate some that can be safely dispensed with, of course in reverse
order of their significance. In doing so I watch for the holes in front
of a light and when several or a sufficient number for the particular
case light through, it is enough.

Sometimes I make a separate pile of these lesser values and calculate
them separately. Sometimes I make a third pile out of more particular
symptoms, especially such as may have been added from

Kent’s
repertory.

Sometimes I estimate the values of these piles separately, at other
times I add the first two ; or one may add to the basic calculation
certain cards only of the lesser groups, according to their merits and
the (symptomatic) nature of the patient.

In these extended selections one must be careful in admitting values
so as not to put false weight on certain features of the problem.

To avoid this I sometimes ignore all or some of these extended values
as given and mark each one to the lowest degree. When symptoms with
their values are taken from

Kent’s
repertory one must be careful about accepting the values as given or
false weight may accrue.

I often change these values to agree with the patient or with former
experience. The schema must be fitted to the patient, not the patient to
any repertorial schema.

When the closely competing remedies have missing symptoms it is
easier with

Boger’s
repertory to decide to which remedy to give this negative weight. This
is because the rubrics of this repertory are so potent.

The cards of

Boger’s
and Field’s
repertories are interchangeable so we may use as much or little of
either as desired.

But of course, as always, care must be used in appending

Kent’s
or Field’s
rubrics to Boger’s
so as not to carry the Kentian
faults over into Boger’s
form and to avoid the undue influence of less essential or less
controlling elements in the calculation.

Both

Boger’s
and Field’s
repertories can be made to cut down their own time one-third or more by
indicating the values around the holes as one goes on with its use.

This can be done by marking a black circle, for instance, around
first value holes, red circles around second value holes and green ink
circles around the holes of least value, or small figures at the side of
the holes if preferred.

When taking the cards from the pack they will be taken out by the
name of the rubric.

When replacing them, replace by number. It works faster and saves
time and wear.

Once in a while a problem may be worked out by the book alone (the

Synoptic
Key, not
the General
Analysis), especially
those which present a very few strong peculiar regional symptoms with
little else expressed. But I have seen few such instances.

As the prescriber becomes used to this repertory he will tend to run
out the number of rubrics (cards) farther than at first, that is, it
will take more cards to cover up all the holes.

This shows that the user has gained judgment as to what to use and
what to ignore. And it will often be found that the missing notations of
closely competing remedies may be found in the materia medica or that
the nature of the remedy accords with it, or the opposite, that it is of
significant negative value.

The reader may think after reading all this that the less seriously
he takes his repertory work, that is, after having become familiar with
it, the better he will get along with materia medica ; and this is true.

Nevertheless,

Boger’s
Synoptic Key
is a great little work, stamped with the genius of dear old Boger
himself.

He was a real

German,
as simple and natural as a child, but in mind and mastery of our
philosophy and art, a giant.

Discussion

Dr. Hubbard :

I
would like to start the ball rolling by saying that if we were all as
intuitive as Dr. Hayes
we could follow this suggested method even better than we now can.

This general subject is very dear to my heart and I am interested to
hear Dr.

Hayes.
My temperament works well with the Boger
repertory. I suppose choice among repertories is a very individual
matter, as all things are in homoeopathy.

I shall go home and restudy my

Boger
cards, which I have and confess to not greatly using. I do agree with
him that the older we get (and I am beginning to get old now) the less
rigidly we do repertorize the majority of the cases, I think because our
knowledge of patients and of remedies becomes deeper and broader, but I
was quite struck with his remark that to use some repertory in a case is
a confession of failure. In that case I think some of us still fail
faithfully and long!

I would be glad to hear an expression of opinion from our members as
to just how much they use the repertories, and just what values they
find out of them.

Dr. Grimmer :

I
enjoyed Dr. Hayes’
paper very much because it open_s up some field for discussion
and difference of opinion and we know an honest difference of opinion
sometimes does us all good.

I think before we condemn any repertory we ought to know how it is
constructed and the background back of it.

I must confess that I haven’t used Dr.

Boger’s
repertory very much because I was trained to use Dr. Kent’s
repertory and I was trained to understand how the repertory was built,
and unless you know that, unless you know how to follow it after the Hahnemannian
manner of taking general groups of symptoms first and then going to
particular groups, you can very easily get into a maze.

A great many people have opened up the repertory and, without
knowing, have thrown it down in disgust, saying they couldn’t find head
or tail, it was too big, there was too much of it. But if you take your
cases carefully and if you learn the relative value of symptoms, you
won’t find Kent’s repertory so hard to handle. You must know the
symptoms that are really guiding.

Of course, that is true with any form of prescribing. The best
prescribers prescribe on the high-grade symptoms, the mental and moral
states, the reaction of the patient to environment, heat and cold, etc.,
aversions and desires.

Take those groups, and you don’t have to use so many of them. Three
or four general symptoms will frequently lead you to, the three or four
remedies you want to study more carefully in the materia medica.

The old masters, many of them, would only turn to one or two pages in
the repertory, and they had their remedy from study and from a thorough
knowledge of the relative value of symptoms. You can take some cases and
they will give you page after page of symptoms, and you have no case.

That doesn’t mean a thing to a prescriber. You can take other cases
with three or four symptoms and you have a picture of a sick patient and
that is what you must have if you are going to have a repertory.

Dr. Lewandowski :

I do not know the origin of

Boger’s
Synoptic Key. However, it stands alone as a short, snappy road to a
short repertorization of cases.

In spite of that I have gathered information that in

Kent’s
repertory, with knowledge and wisdom gathered throughout the entire
nation, Kent
compiled his repertory after making intensive and extensive inquiries.

On the other hand, C. M. Boger, from what I learned, practiced in one
community and his book is purely a personal experience, and oftentimes
because of that fact may lead one astray from the straight path of
correct prescribing.

Many times I have repertorized a case with exactly the same symptoms
both from

Kent’s
and C. M. Boger’s,
and found a big variance. In many cases I have found Boger
omit a drug which was in very bold type in Kent’s.

I am led to believe that what I have heard is probably correct, that
C. M.

Boger
has confined most of his information to his own community and did not
seek beyond the confines of his practice to compile his Synoptic Key.

However, in spite of that, I do hold a great distinction for what the
repertory stands for. In view of that fact I am oftentimes afraid to
depend on it entirely, without at least substantiating it by a larger
repertory.

Dr. Roberts :

Dr.
Boger^‘s
repertory is good if, you know how to use it. I have used it some ; I
have it in my office along with about sixty other repertories, and Boger’s
repertory to me is not as valuable as some of the other repertories.

Repertorization means the finding of the unusual symptom and getting
the valuation of the symptom, because you realize we don’t need to
repertorize a great many of our cases, but chronic cases particularly
require it-a few acute cases need checking up by the repertory.

We have in

Boger’s
repertory a compilation of remedies of highest rank from Kent’s,
from Boenninghausen’s,
and from some of the other repertories, taking about twelve of the most
important remedies in each of those, those that have shown the largest
relative values. That is all right so far as you are going, but they
omit those remedies of lesser value in that rubric.

Doctor, I have talked to Dr.

Boger
myself about it several times, and I said I thought he was making a
mistake, that he didn’t include the remedies that are less frequently
used, not valued as much as the others, for when I come to the point
where I repertorize a case I want to know the whole materia medica in a
repertorization, and the only way you can get it is to take an
unabridged dictionary, if I might so express it, not an abridged one,
because some of those remedies will come through with only one of the
lowest valuations, one of the second valuations, and when you get
through you have skipped, perhaps, the very thing that you want because
you have skipped that one low valuation and your sum total doesn’t work
up. That is my objection, primarily, to Boger’s
repertory.

I do believe that all repertories are good in their place. We are all
really waiting for the right kind. Sometimes some cases are more
applicable to one repertory than they are to others.

Once in a while I get a case that I repertorize by

Kent.
You may say that is natural, because most everybody in this room
probably uses Kent exclusively, but I don’t.

The most absolutely sure repertory in this world is

Boenninghausen’s.
As has been said, it is nearly fool proof. You get symptomatic and
numerical totality. Not only do you get absolute totality, but you are
going to get evaluation along with it.

Boenninghausen

was
the first one to evaluate remedies, and his valuation in five different
evaluations is a very valuable thing for us to follow up.

I think we all tend to rely on some repertory, and everyone has his
own ideas of how he can work best.

Dr. Farrington :

I
am one of those who does not depend exclusively on Kent.
If the symptoms of the case are sufficiently characteristic, I usually
use Kent because I can repertorize my case more quickly.

Like Dr.

Grimmer,
I was brought up with Kent’s
repertory. I started to subscribe for it and took it as it came out.
When the symptoms are more or less common I turn to Boger
or Boenninghausen.

I think Dr.

Roberts
is right, that Boger’s
repertory is somewhat limited and does not contain remedies which, in
the unusual case, you may need.

Especially is that true of the Synoptic Key itself. If you
want to work out some cases with that, or even at the bedside if you
undertake to refer to a rubric to refresh your mind, very often you will
find the remedy that you know ought to be there and you think the
patient ought to have is lacking. The last edition is much better in
that respect than the earlier one.

I don’t agree with the essayist that you admit failure when you refer
to your repertory ; when you consider the enormous amount of symptoms
that are involved and the long list of remedies, the long intricacies
and various phases, any one of which may be the one you need, I don’t
think you are admitting failure at all.

I think you are simply admitting that you are human. It is impossible
for any mind to grasp the entire materia medica, just as much as it is
impossible for any human mind to be able to enumerate the various phases
of sickness in the various constitutions that will come to him for him
to prescribe for them.

I don’t believe that

Boger’s
repertory is fool-proof and I don’t believe that Boenninghausen’s
is, either. In other words, we may not all be fools but, as I say, we
are human.

Take for instance

Boenninghausen.
He deals in generalities, but when you come to a remedy that has two
general phases, as for instance where part of the symptoms are worse by
motion and part of the symptoms are relieved by motion, unless you watch
yourself you are going to be led astray. I understand that if you know
how to use Boenninghausen
you can get around that.

I wish I could remember some of the things my father said regarding

Boenninghausen
years ago. It is quite an extensive review and some of these days I am
going to look it up if I ever write on repertory, and give some of his
suggestions. One is on this matter of the bi-phasic qualities of remedy.

I think probably Dr.

Roberts
would like to get up and answer me on that question. I see him looking
at me. For the beginner, and those not quite well up on repertorization,
I think it is a fact.

The older men didn’t have any repertories.

As he says,

Boenninghausen
was the first one that evaluated the various symptoms as to their
importance. They, in my estimation, depended more on experience in their
own practice and the impressions on their minds of remedy individuality,
and prescribed not so much on the symptoms as the almost intangible
thing that they saw in a patient.

Moreover, most of them were provers themselves.

They had felt the action of the remedy in their very tissues, and
they understood remedies a great deal better than we do.

We can not go back to those days very well and we don’t have to, but
among the three thousand remedies we have in the pharmacy and the
millions of symptoms we have to deal with we have got to use a repertory
some time.

Dr. Dixon :

I
haven’t arrived at the stage where I can do without the repertory. I may
when I grow up. I hope so.

Our discussion here points significantly to the fact that we are
individuals and pick our own best instrument to help us out of our
troubles.

I don’t think it was a significant statement at all of Dr.

Roberts
when he said he used Boenninghausen
because it was foolproof. That man is no fool, and I agree with Dr. Farrington
when he says he doesn’t think it is fool-proof.

We can all make mistakes, and I guess we all do, and probably I am a

Kent
man because I had intensive training in Kent.

I suspect that Dr.

Roberts
is Boenninghausen
because he spent his life with Boenninghausen
and he has it at his elbow all the while, and more power to him !

But what I want to stress is the fact that I can’t do good work
without a repertory right at my elbow, and if we would all use it on
practically every case I am not afraid but what we would raise our
standards above what they are-any man’s, I don’t care how intuitive he
may be, if he tries to practice medicine without it.

take the well-known characteristics of remedies, like the 3:00 a. m.
aggravation of

Kali
carbonicum. If
we have a 3:00 a. m. aggravation all materia men think of Kali
carbonicum. They
don’t think of the other remedies in the rubric of Kent’s.

There are twenty-one, I think, and although that may be an
outstanding symptom of the individual case you are working up, yet it
isn’t every time that

Kali
carbonicum is
going to come out your remedy. It may be some obscure remedy in that
rubric that I myself wouldn’t think of if I didn’t refresh my knowledge
by going to the repertory.

Dr. Roberts :

I wish to correct Dr.

Farrington
to this extent : Samuel Hahnemann
used Boenninghausen,
the first edition.

There have been seven of them, and another one coming along, so they
did have access to repertories and used them.

Dr. Kaplowe :

I
don’t know very much about Boger
or Kent.
I have used Boenninghausen,
naturally, because Dr. Roberts
taught me how.

That is about the only method I use. I feel that his repertory is
based on deductions and facts and is perhaps one of the greatest
generalizations we have in, shall I say, the world.

It is based, of course, on the concept that an aggravation in one
part of the body, or a condition which will aggravate one symptom, is
liable to aggravate the entire being.

That may be wrong in some cases, but in most cases it is right. There
may be a confusion sometimes as, for example, Dr.

Farrington
said, the aggravation by heat, let us say, of the headache, but you will
find that the whole man, the whole individual, may be, aggravated by
heat too.

However, if you find that the entire man as a unit is aggravated by
heat, he feels worse in general, but his headache is better, then he is
aggravated by heat.

Dr. Farrington :

I am not talking about particular symptoms.

Dr. Kaplowe :

I don’t know whether I made the last point clear. but I should say
that if the entire man as a unit is made worse by heat but his headache
is not, or let’s say it is ameliorated by cold, I would consider the
effect of the modality on the whole man.

Some day, Dr.

Hayes,
I will come up and learn how to use Boger. I would like to do that.

Dr. Hayes :

It seems that everybody here seems to feel the need of using a
repertory, and each one seems to have a favorite. There are about forty
points that came up that I would like to discuss. It may be worse than
repertorizing a case to try to remember them and go through them. I
can’t do it.

I heard a couple of words used here twice that I don’t like to hear
applied to a prescriber, and they are the words “intuitive” or
“intuition”. It seems to smack of something clairvoyant, and I
don’t think there is anything of that sort in the case of prescribing
without a repertory and getting the right remedy.

If we accept the word “intuition”, though, as being a
quality, I would say that it is simply the knack of observing, of
forming a judgment on small evidence and forming it correctly and
consciously.

Some people might arrive at that conclusion unconsciously, but that
would seem to be because they did not observe the processes of their own
minds, so I think we might well study ourselves and then we won’t be so
enthusiastic, perhaps.

I notice that when

Kent’s
repertory is attacked a little bit there is always a comeback among a
whole lot of workers. There are a whole lot of people who seem to be
tied to it and I don’t know whether they have anything else to use or
not.

One doctor spoke of

Kent’s
repertorization being based on a wide practice.

How about

Boger
?

Boger

had an
immense practice and a practice with all kinds of illnesses.

I know that personally because I have been in his office and know
about his practice.

Basing it on country-wide experience, so-called, is just a little
fantastic.

Another thing, if this repertory is based on country-wide practice,
then also was

Lee’s,
because Kent
took Lee’s, so Lee’s
must have been based on country-wide practice.

Numérisation, vérification, coloration, mise en page, illustration,
pour mes archives et mon site.

Samedi
4 mai 2002.

Copyright
© Robert Séror 2002
Photos Copyright © Homéopathe International 2002

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