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Concordant Materia Medica - Millenium Edition (3rd Edition) by Frans Vermeulen
Preface to Millenium Edition
This Millenium edition of the Concordant embraces both an extension and a revision of the second English edition. Phatak's additions have been replaced by the original ones, mainly coming from the texts of Hering, Clarke, Kent and Pulford. Yet the general idea behind the Concordant has remained unchanged. What I wrote in 1994 as an introduction therefore still applies:
"This book contains the maximum number of reliable Materia Medica facts in the minimum space," Boericke writes in the foreword of his celebrated Materia Medica.
Given the number of good Materia Medicas available, I feel it is time that the maximum number of reliable symptoms was extended, without resulting in an extra metre of book space on every homoeopath's bookshelf.
With this aim - the compilation of a complete but portable Materia Medica - I began by asking myself which authors I should include. The information and the sources they used would have to be reliable and should not be just a duplicate of the work of others. Experience shows that many Materia Medicas are almost identical, although there is no objection to this as long as they complement each other and provide nuances and complete symptoms.
This is how I arrived at my plan to compare the writings of a large number of authors in order to gain a more complete symptom picture. Completeness is not a question of quantity, of more symptoms per remedy, but of quality, of a detailed examination of each symptom. Preferably, therefore, with a clear description of localization, sensation, modalities, pains extending and concomitant phenomena. Taken separately, not one of the authors satisfies this criterion, with the exception, of course, of Hering's ten-volume Materia Medica. If, however, one uses a single basic text - in this case Boericke - and then supplements it with the observations of other authors, thousands of pages of symptoms can be reduced to a handy format, which is the aim of this book.
After painstakingly comparing numerous Materia Medicas to discover which ones complement each other, I arrived at seven which met this requirement. By omitting repetitions, I was able, as it were, to paste the various descriptions together. Having gone through 3807 pages of text written by the seven authors below, as well as Clarke's Dictionary and Kent's Repertory, I was finally left with the repetition-free symptoms that are contained in the pages of this Concordant Materia Medica.
The authors I decided on are T.F. Allen, Boericke, Boger, Clarke, Cowperthwaite, Lippe, and Pulford. I have used the following Materia Medicas: I include a brief biography of each of the authors I opted for:
[Sources: Harald C. Gaier - Thorsons Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Homoeopathy, 1991
Jay Yasgur - A Dictionary of Homoeopathic Medical Terminology, 2nd ed., 1992]
Timothy Field Allen [1837-1902]
Eminent U.S. homoeopath, born in Westminster, Vermont. Son of a physician. Also renowned as an organist and composer. Ran his homoeopathic practice in Brooklyn, New York. In 1867 he became professor of Anatomy at the New York Homoeopathic Medical College. Four years later [1871] he was appointed professor of Therapeutics and Materia Medica. He was also Director of a Homoeopathic Insane Asylum in Middletown, New York, which for decades was a centre for the research and treatment of mental disease according to scientific homoeopathic principles.
Major writings:
The Encyclopedia of Pure Materia Medica, 12 Vols. [ 1 874-79] A General Symptom Register of Homoeopathic Materia Medica [1 880]
A Handbook of Materia Medica and Homoeopathic Therapeutics [I 889].
William Boericke [1849-1929]
Eminent U.S. homoeopath. Born in Austria. Studied for one year at the Vienna Medical School, before settling in Ohio. Graduated from the Philadelphia Medical College in 1876. Soon afterwards he moved to San Francisco where he worked as a homoeopath for more than fifty years. He was co-founder of the Pacific Homoeopathic Medical College and Hahnemann Hospital in 188 1. This was incorporated into the University of California, where he became the first professor of Homoeopathic Materia Medica and Therapeutics, a post he held for thirty years.
Major writings:
The Twelve Tissue Remedies of Schussler [ 1 888]
Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica [Ninth Edition-1927].
Cyrus Maxwell Boger [1861-1935]
U.S. homoeopath. Student of von Boenninghausen; worked ceaselessly from early 1933 to his death in September 1935 on the translation, compilation and augmentation of Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory. His outstanding contribution to the homoeopathic system was the coordination and compilation of significant features of seemingly dissociated symptom groups in his A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica. He sought out the so-called genius of the drug by focusing on differentiation.
Major writings:
Additions to Kent's Repertory
Time of the Remedies and the Moon Phases
A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica [Fourth Edition - 1931]
Allen Corson Cowperthwaite [1848-1915]
U.S. author and minor poet as well as homoeopath, born in New Jersey and graduated as MD in 1869 from the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia. For eleven years he was professor of Materia Medica and Gynaecology in the Homoeopathic Medical Department of the State University of Iowa. As a Doctor of Law he made a significant contribution to homoeopathy's position in fundamental medico-legal issues.
Major writings:
Elementary Text-Book of Materia Medica [1880]
Disorders of Menstruation [1888]
Text-Book of Gynaecology [1888]
Text-Book of Materia Medica and Therapeutics [1891]
Adolphus Graf zur Lippe-Weissenfeld [1812-1888]
After Constantin Hering, this nobleman was the most outstanding homoeopath in the U.S. He was born on the family's estate near the old town of Gorlitz, lower Silesia, Electorate of Saxony and studied Law in Berlin. He then emigrated to the USA and studied medicine at the Allentown Homoeopathic Academy, Pennsylvania, After graduating he joined the Hahnemann Medical College, Philadelphia, where he was made professor of Materia Medica in 18861. Lippe was the most forceful polemicist of the period on the advantages of high-potency prescribing.
Major writings:
What is Homoeopathy?
Key Notes [the section Red Line Symptoms is a supplement compiled in the 1970s from Lippe's writings in homoeopathic journals worldwide during the third quarter of the nineteenth century - now also incorporated in his book by the publishers.]
Text-Book of Materia Medica.
Alfred & Dayton Pulford [c. 1920]
U.S. homoeopaths, father and son.
Little is known of the Pulfords, except for the fact that they carried out provings with new remedies and added interesting new symptoms to existing remedy pictures.
Constantin Hering [1800-1880]
At the very moment Karl Gottlob Hering played the organ of the church of Oschatz, Saxony, to usher in the new century, his son Constantin was born shortly after midnight. "On the following day, when there was snow on the ground, the parents believing in the hardening process, the child was carried out of doors. My grandmother told me that the child was blue when he was brought into the house. My father, who had lost his first-born son, said: 'This one must live! The other one was weakened by too much coddling!"' Blue at the outset, but live he shall. Hering's ancestors were Moravians who spelled their name Hring. After a flourishing period the Moravian kingdom had been subdued to the Bohemian dynasty in the Middle Ages and from 1526 onwards had been ruled by the Habsburgers. In the 19th century the territory merged into Czechoslovakia. Following a three years' study at the Surgical Academy of Dresden, Hering studied medicine from 1820 to 1826 at Leipzig University. He attended Hahnemann's lectures, but didn't join the exclusive group of students surrounding Hahnemann. It was Hering's opinion that to make a thing ridiculous is the nearest way to killing it. In his student days he wrote a satire, "Allopathy versus Homoeopathy," against Hahnemann. Hahnemann was never confronted with it because the theatrical manager of the town couldn't get his company to play it. They were all confirmed believers in homoeopathy! Wisely, Hering never told Hahnemann about this. The very fact that he wrote a stage play reveals much of Hering's nature. He was passionately fond of music and the theatre, and wrote several libretto's and fairy tales. With the exception of one short novel, none of this work was ever printed or put on stage. Not much of a success, the short novel "went for waste paper." "While at this period of his life he had a strong inclination to adopt literature as a profession, he was providentially moved to vary his course and devote his talents to medical authorship in the service of Hahnemann and homoeopathy", as his son-in-law Calvin B. Knerr revealed later.
Hering, nicknamed "Buffalo" by his friends and "the damned Dutch" by his allopathic enemies, started his homoeopathic career in Germany. Being initially very sceptical about homoeopathy - "I almost came to the conclusion that the whole business was nothing but a swindle" - he became "mad to discover the boundaries between the true and the false in homoeopathy." His enthousiasm grew. "I became a fanatic. I went about the country, visited Inns, where I got up on tables and benches to harangue whoever might be present to listen to my enthusiastic speeches on homoeopathy. I told the people that they were in the hands of cut-throats and murderers. I made many cures. Success came everywhere. I almost thought I could raise the dead."
For someone who, shortly before, wrote an article entitled Homoeopathy is dead! this transformation was almost like a death-bed repentance. He had come to a dead-end when making a post mortem upon the exhumed body of a suicide. An infection, received when making the dissection, threatened to end his life prematurely. A few drops of Arsenicum - the revival remedy - "in ridiculously small doses" saved him. "I still have the finger; it is the same with which I write this, and more than all I have devoted my entire hand, body and soul, to the cause which Hahnemann gave to suffering humanity. His teachings had not only restored my bodily health but gave me a new purpose in life."
In 1827 Hering was sent to Suriname, to make zoological and botanical researches and collections for the museum of the King of Saxony. In Suriname he made collections for one year and then devoted himself to the practice of homoeopathy. His famous monography on chesis was one of the results of this six years' stay in the tropics. Hering returned in 1833 for a short while to Saxony, and then set off for North America to settle in Philadelphia.
In due time Hering's house became a meeting place of homoeopaths and artists. This "Round Table Group" gathered on Sundays in the back room, with Hering in the centre of the circle. Here, over coffee and cigars, lively conversations about various subjects were held. [Hence that regularly recurring proving symptom "aversion to smoking his accustomed cigar."]
In Philadelphia Hering developed into the "Father of American Homoeopathy."
"It was very largely on account of his imperturbable equanimity and steady dynamism that homoeopathy experienced an extraordinary flourishing period on that country for about seventy years [until about 1910]. Yet Hering contributed above ail to homoeopathy's permanent foundations in a way that quite transcends national boundaries or linguistic groupings."Gaier, p. 235
Quotes: Calvin B. Knerr - Life of Hering.
Hering's Condensed Materia Medica and Guiding Symptoms
The Condensed Materia Medica was published at about the same time as the first volumes of the Guiding Symptoms. The title reflects the purpose of the book: "to give in a condensed form, to the student of Homoeopathy, such absolutely necessary material as would enable him, in a comparatively short time, to gain knowledge of such important leading symptoms and conditions as are characteristic of each remedy."
The arrangement of the Condensed hardly differs from that of the Guiding Symptoms. Both have 48 chapters. Regarding the gradations, however, there is a great difference. Guiding Symptoms almost swarms with symptoms indicated with I or 11, while in the Condensed these are used sparingly. In the Guiding Symptoms I or 11 designate symptoms verified by cures, while in the Condensed they indicate characteristics which in Guiding Symptoms are marked with I 1.
Reference works
I have used the following from the above reference works:
I.- The full text of "A primer of Materia Medica" by T.F. Allen.
2.- The full text of "Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica" by Boericke.
3.- The full text of "A Synoptic Key" by Boger, supplemented with the Materia Medica part from "Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory."
4.- Clarke's entire text is not fully included. That would have exceeded the scope of this Materia Medica. The relationships between homoeopathic remedies is a complicated and particularly vexatious business. In his "Relations", Clarke often produces excellent differentiations which sometimes, in my view, border on the sublime. To make it easier to look up these relationships, I have adapted Clarke's text so that the remedies are listed in alphabetical order. The remedies listed by other authors are also alphabetical for each author, which also applies to the antidotes, follow-up remedies, complementary remedies, etc. In addition, Clarke provides information about the modalities at the end of his "Characteristics" - in other words, he lists the circumstances and/or complaints to which the relevant modalities apply. I have also included this section. [They may be a repetition of symptoms given by Hering]. Lastly, the basic text is enriched with typical symptoms mentioned by Clarke but by none of the other authors.
5.- The full text of "A Text-Book of Materia Medica" by Cowperthwaite, except for the "General Analysis" and "Therapeutics" rubrics. I found the description of the remedies in his Appendix [from page 805] to be identical to Boericke's description of the same remedies. Cowperthwaite added this Appendix to the tenth edition of his Materia Medica, published in 1909. Boericke's Pocket Manual originates from 1901, which leaves little doubt as to who paid whom the compliment.
6.- The full text of "Key Note & Red Line Symptoms" by Lippe.
7.- The full text of Pulford's "Graphic Drug Pictures". Pulford divided his text into a general text and a section he called "Clinical". The latter is comparable to Cowperthwaite's "Therapeutics", with the important difference that Pulford includes many more subjective and characteristic symptoms and gives more space to the modalities. Cowperthwaite's outline of illnesses and clinical circumstances adds nothing to the symptom overview, unlike Pulford's work. Whoever takes the trouble to wade through the chaos of commas and semicolons used by Pulford to further the causes of codification and grammatical correctness will be regularly rewarded with real pearls of wisdom. Of all the Materia Medicas I scrutinized, I found that Pulford's book - undoubtedly intended to be serious - made me laugh the most, despite the chaos [or perhaps because of it]. After adopting and correcting Boericke's text, I went through the other Materia Medicas by remedy and by rubric in a fixed sequence. Pulford was the last author I consulted for the contents of the rubrics. This is because he does not list any separate rubrics - instead, he sums up all the symptoms from the mind to the soles of the feet in one sentence, sometimes of unimaginable length. Over 90% of all the symptoms were already mentioned by the other authors, so that only valuable peculiars and modalities were worth extracting from Pulford.
8.- Mental symptoms not listed or incompletely described by the other authors were extracted from Kent's Repertory. Where appropriate, I also included local symptoms from Kent. For more detailed information I here and there used his "Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica."
9.- From my own "Synoptic Materia Medica", I took what I thought were relevant "contemporary symptoms". I also elaborated on the "Desires" and "Aversions". In this edition they are placed under "Food & Drink"
10.- "Condensed Materia Medica" and "Guiding Symptoms" by Hering.
Summary
I have used codes to simplify searching for and assimilating peculiar, individual symptoms exhibited by patients and remedies.
Meaning of the symptom codes:
& together with, in combination with [concomitant symptom] alternating with [alternating symptom] extending to, moving to, shifting to causes, leads to
Codes for the various authors
I Boericke
2 Boger
3 Lippe
4 Allen
5 Pulford
6 Cowperthwaite
7 Kent
8 Clarke
9 Vermeulen
10 Hering
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