In short: Constitutional prescribing is choosing one remedy for the whole person, on temperament, build, general reactions to heat, cold, weather and food, and characteristic mental state, rather than for the presenting complaint alone. The word "constitution" means three different things depending on who is speaking: Hahnemann's physical constitution among the circumstances of a chronic case, Kent's constitutional state that the chronic remedy must fit, and the French school's morphological biotype. This guide sorts the three, sets constitutional prescribing against acute prescribing and the genus epidemicus, and links each classic picture to the free text where it can be read in full.
Everything below is education for qualified homeopaths and serious students, not self-treatment advice. The constitutional pictures are not restated here: each has its own remedy guide with a "Constitutional Type" section and its entries in the free classical materia medica library. This page owns the concept and routes you to them; the vocabulary is defined in the glossary.
What "constitution" means in homeopathy: three uses of one word
Hahnemann: constitution as a circumstance of the chronic case
The phrase "constitutional remedy" does not occur in Dudgeon's translation of the Organon or in the Lesser Writings. What Hahnemann wrote, in §5 of the Organon (Dudgeon's translation of the fifth edition), is that the physician investigating a chronic disease must consider "the ascertainable physical constitution of the patient (especially when the disease is chronic), his moral and intellectual character, his occupation, mode of living and habits, his social and domestic relations, his age, sexual function". §94 repeats it for the chronic case: occupation, mode of living and diet, domestic situation, scrutinised for what maintains the disease. Constitution here is one item in the anamnesis, not a label for the remedy; the Organon guide maps §5–6 and §83–104 in context.
The remedies the nineteenth century meant by "constitutional" were the antipsorics of The Chronic Diseases, whose remedy chapters are free to read in Tafel's 1896 translation of the 1835 edition, for instance Sulphur and Calcarea. Nash, in Leaders in Homoeopathic Therapeutics, calls Calcarea "another of Hahnemann's constitutional remedies which, as Farrington says, 'may come into use, in almost any form of disease'", and opens his Silicea chapter with "another of our invaluable constitutional remedies": a deep-acting antipsoric fitted to a patient's general make-up.
Farrington: the general character shared by drug and patient
Farrington's Clinical Materia Medica keeps two older senses. The symptomatology section of his Lycopodium lecture begins: "First of all, we will study the constitution, that is to say, the general character of the drug", the character that drug and patient share. His Sulphur lecture uses the sense of an acquired state: when a disease is suppressed, "there is formed a constitution or dyscrasia" (Farrington, Sulphur).
Kent: the constitutional state and the chronic remedy
Kent is the source of what most English speakers now mean. In the Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy (1900) he writes that "it is an important thing to know the constitutional state of a patient before prescribing", and that "nothing in particulars can contra-indicate generals". A remedy that has carried a patient through years of chronic treatment may be repeated "on a paucity of symptoms" precisely "because it has demonstrated itself to be the patient's constitutional remedy". The constitutional remedy is therefore the deep-acting chronic simillimum chosen on generals and mentals, and Kent's Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica, free to read at /materia-medica/kent, supplied the remedy pictures that became the "types" (see reading Kent online, legally free).
Vithoulkas: a remedy for the present state, not a lifelong label
George Vithoulkas, author of The Science of Homeopathy (first published 1978; Grove Press edition 1980), has questioned the term itself. In his paper "The question of the 'constitutional' remedy" he argues that most contemporary chronic cases need several remedies in sequence, that the indicated remedy shifts as the picture changes, and that it is often impossible to say which deserves the label; the useful question is which remedy fits the present state (source: vithoulkas.com, 20 September 2026). Whichever way the term is read, the practitioner's defence is the totality, not the label.
Constitutional types: Grauvogl, the French biotypes and Kent's remedy pictures
Grauvogl's three bodily constitutions. Eduard von Grauvogl's Text Book of Homoeopathy (Shipman's English translation, 1870) distinguishes the hydrogenoid constitution, a body with "too great proportion of water", recognised because the patient "feels worse in cold, in damp weather, and in the rain", after baths and from living near water; the oxygenoid, in which the tissues' resistance to oxygen is diminished, with "want of albuminates and fat"; and the carbo-nitrogenoid, in which the influence of oxygen is retarded, the patient feels best in the open air, and cold and damp bring no aggravation. Grauvogl ties the last to psora. Clarke's Dictionary still files remedies this way: Natrum sulphuricum "was Grauvogl's leading anti-hydrogenoid" (Clarke, Natrum sulphuricum) and Thuja is "Hahnemann's typical antisycotic and Grauvogl's hydrogenoid" (Clarke, Thuja); Hale works through all three groups when classifying Picric acid (Hale, Picric acid); the Thuja guide shows the hydrogenoid general inside a remedy picture.
The French biotypes. In France and Italy, biotypological schools merged with homeopathy so that a morphology could be correlated with a family of remedies (Marino, "Biotypology I: scope and history", British Homoeopathic Journal 1999). The Swiss homeopath Antoine Nebel proposed the original triad, phosphorique, carbonique and fluorique, early in the twentieth century, and Henri Bernard soon added a fourth, the sulfurique, for the individual of balanced build (source: afis.org, 20 September 2026). Building on Nebel and Léon Vannier, whose La Typologie et ses applications thérapeutiques appeared in 1955, Bernard related the embryonic endoblast, mesoblast and ectoblast to the carbonic, sulphuric and phosphoric constitutions, each linked to a build and a set of disease susceptibilities (Marino, "Biotypology II: modern concepts", British Homoeopathic Journal 1999). Its honest limit is that a build predicts a family of remedies at best; the prescription still rests on the totality.
Kent's remedy pictures. When an English-speaking practitioner says "a Sulphur type", the referent is neither a body type nor a biotype but a remedy picture, a synthesis of provings and clinical experience. Kent records that "Hering called the Sulphur patient 'the ragged philosopher'" and that Arsenicum, "the typical fastidious patient", "has been called 'the gold-headed-cane patient'" (Kent's Sulphur lecture). These are pictures of remedies, and one patient can need different pictures at different times, which is Vithoulkas's point and also Nash's: "no physician would be justified in prescribing Nux vomica on temperament alone, be the indication ever so clear. The whole case must come in" (Nash, Nux vomica).
The classic constitutional pictures and where to read each one
The pictures below are the ones most often meant by "constitutional types" in English. Each row gives one classical cue, quoted from the free entry, and sends you to the full picture; the free library holds every other remedy's constitutional section one click away.
| Remedy | One classical cue (author, from the free entry) | Full picture | Free sources |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sulphur | Quoted in Nash: "lean, stoop-shouldered persons, who walk or sit stooped; standing is the most uncomfortable position" | Sulphur guide | Nash, Kent |
| Calcarea carbonica | Guernsey: "the real leucophlegmatic constitution", with "a large head, large features, pale skin with a chalky look" | Calcarea guide | Guernsey, Kent |
| Lycopodium | Farrington: "emaciated persons who are muscularly weak; the mind, however, is well developed" | Lycopodium guide | Farrington, Kent |
| Pulsatilla | Hering, quoted by Nash: "Sandy hair, blue eyes, pale face, inclined to silent grief with submissiveness" | Pulsatilla guide | Nash, Kent |
| Sepia | Farrington: "Sepia is tearful, depressed, but easily irritated and excited, or indifferent" | Sepia guide | Farrington, Kent |
| Phosphorus | Quoted in Nash: "Tall, slender persons of sanguine temperament, fair skin, blonde or red hair; quick, lively perception" | Phosphorus guide | Nash, Kent |
| Natrum muriaticum | Nash: "Melancholy, depressed, sad and weeping; consolation aggravates" | Natrum muriaticum guide | Nash, Kent |
| Silicea | Nash: "The Silicea subject is weakly, with fine skin, pale face, lax muscles" | Silicea guide | Nash, Kent |
| Staphysagria | Nash: "very sensitive to slightest mental impressions; least action or harmless word offends" | Staphysagria guide | Nash, Kent |
Two cautions. Every cue is one line from an entry that runs to pages; it identifies a picture, it does not prescribe it. And the cues are generals, which is what makes them constitutional: Nash's Calcarea is "constitutionally fat, over-fat or strongly inclined to obesity", but the chapter goes on to the particulars that decide a case. Nux vomica and Arsenicum album have the same structure on their own guides.
Acute, chronic and constitutional: which prescription, when
Hahnemann draws the line in §72–73. Acute diseases are "rapid morbid processes" that "finish their course more or less quickly, but always in a moderate time"; chronic diseases begin with "small, often imperceptible beginnings" and "are caused by infection with a chronic miasm". §73 adds that the acute diseases of individuals, brought on by chills, excesses and emotions, are "generally only a transient explosion of latent psora". §5 makes the same distinction from the physician's side: the exciting cause of the acute disease, the fundamental cause of the chronic. The constitutional remedy answers the second; the acute remedy answers the first.
When the constitutional remedy also covers the acute. Kent's rule is that the acute symptoms "fit into and are established and formed by the constitutional state", so "the Calcarea patient will need an acute cognate of Calcarea when he is sick with acute symptoms". If the acute totality lies inside the chronic picture, the chronic remedy or its cognate covers it. Kent also warns against changing the remedy for every indisposition: a patient under constitutional treatment gets a prescription for a cold "only when it is not an ordinary one".
When it does not. A distinct acute totality calls for its own remedy, after which the case returns to the chronic remedy. The classical "chronic of" pairs record exactly this traffic: Nash writes "Silicea is the chronic of Pulsatilla" in the Silicea chapter, repeats it in the Pulsatilla chapter, and gives Kali sulphuricum the same one-line heading, "The chronic of Pulsatilla" (Nash, Kali sulphuricum). These are observations from practice, not a rule.
Intercurrent prescribing. When a well-chosen constitutional remedy stalls, the classical schools interpose a nosode or a miasmatic remedy and then return to it. The reasoning belongs to the miasms guide and the nosodes guide; an intercurrent is a detour, not a change of constitutional remedy.
Polychrests and constitutional remedies are not synonyms. A polychrest has a wide sphere and can act constitutionally or acutely; Boericke's Sulphur entry says both in one sentence: "Often great use in beginning the treatment of chronic cases and in finishing acute ones" (Boericke, Sulphur). The student guide to the top remedies covers the polychrests as a study set; the constitutional question is whether the whole person matches the picture.
Genus epidemicus: prescribing for the epidemic, not the individual
The Latin label does not appear in Dudgeon's translation of §100–102; what Hahnemann gives is the procedure. In an epidemic the physician must "regard the pure picture of every prevailing disease as if it were something new and unknown" (§100). The picture cannot be had from one patient: it takes "a close observation of several cases" (§101), and the totality is "ascertained from the sufferings of several patients of different constitutions" (§102). §241 applies the same logic to epidemic intermittent fevers: "each single epidemy is of a peculiar, uniform character common to all the individuals attacked", and that character "guides us to the discovery of the homoeopathic (specific) remedy suitable for all the cases".
Hahnemann's own examples are historical, cited as doctrine and not as claims about any modern outbreak. His essay "Cure and Prevention of Scarlet-fever" (1801, in Dudgeon's Lesser Writings) is built on Belladonna; his 1831 cholera papers name Camphor for the first stage and a preparation of Copper (Cuprum) or Veratrum album for the developed disease.
The relation to constitutional prescribing follows from §102's phrase "of different constitutions". The epidemic remedy is chosen for the epidemic's own picture and, for its duration, overrides the individual's chronic remedy; §242 adds that once the first paroxysms are left uncured the latent psora may take over, and the case is again a chronic one. In practice the epidemic totality is a cross-case exercise: several cases recorded and repertorised side by side in case management (tutorial: create your first case and analysis).
How to take and repertorise a constitutional case
Take the case on §83–104. The case-taking guide walks through the structured approach with a printable form that includes a constitutional-assessment step; the chronic case needs the circumstances of §5 and §94 recorded as carefully as the complaint.
Rank the symptoms. Two classical hierarchies serve a constitutional case. Kent's ranks mentals, then physical generals, then particulars, on the principle that "one strong general can overrule all the particulars you can gather up". Boenninghausen's complete symptom and grand generalisation, explained in the Boenninghausen and Boger method guide, lift modalities and concomitants out of the particulars and treat them as generals. Both suit constitutional work: Kent for the mental core, Boenninghausen when the case speaks in modalities.
Choose rubrics that describe the person, not the complaint. Generals first (temperature, thirst, food desires and aversions, sleep, weather), then mentals, then only the characteristic particulars. The remedy guides list the rubric families behind each picture, for example Generalities; WARM; bed; agg. and Mind; INDOLENCE; aversion to work for Sulphur, Mind; CONSOLATION; agg. for Natrum muriaticum, Stomach; THIRSTLESS and Generalities; AIR; open; amel. for Pulsatilla. Exact wording differs between repertories, so check the path in the repertory before relying on it; the complete repertory guide explains the chapter structure.
In Similia. Build the totality in the repertory: Similia Free includes seven classical repertories (Kent, Boericke, Boger's Boenninghausen repertory, Knerr, Boger's Synoptic Key, Ward and Roberts) with AI semantic repertory search, so a rubric can be found from a plain-language description (tutorial: search symptoms in plain language). Record the case and its chronic follow-ups in case management, which on Free is capped at 3 new cases and 3 analyses per month. On Pro, Notes-to-Rubric and AI case analysis propose rubrics from the consultation notes, and cases and analyses are unlimited; AI-toolkit operations use credits (tutorial: turn notes into rubrics). Confirm the shortlist in the materia medica; the 21 classic books are free to read.
Follow-up and the second prescription
Read the response along the direction of cure in the Hering's law guide before touching the prescription. Kent's counsel for a remedy that has proved itself constitutional is to leave it alone while improvement continues, "even if the symptoms have been changed", and to change it only when "the curative action" can no longer "be maintained". Potency, repetition and the LM scale are classical posology for the practitioner and belong to the potency selection guide and the LM/Q potencies guide; nothing on this page is a dosing instruction.
"Find your constitutional type": why quizzes, finders and lists mislead
The search results around this topic are full of questionnaires, finders and "constitutional remedy lists"; the German version of the query is literally "which type am I?" and the French one asks for a "profil homéopathique test". A questionnaire can sort a handful of generals, warm or chilly, thirsty or thirstless, into a family of candidates; that is a legitimate first pass, and the remedy finder guide explains the three tools that share the name. What no questionnaire can do is weigh a strange, rare and peculiar symptom, observe the mental state, take a history of suppressions and causations, or notice that the person needed Pulsatilla last year and needs Silicea now. Nash's line about Nux vomica settles it: the whole case must come in. A list of constitutional remedies is a reading list, not a prescribing tool, and Similia offers no self-typing widget.
Study path
Constitutional prescribing is learnt by reading pictures and testing them against cases. Start with Kent's Lectures in the free library, reading Sulphur, Calcarea and Lycopodium together so that the contrasts Farrington and Nash draw become your own. Then take a chronic case on the §83–104 form and build the totality in the repertory, where the seven classical repertories are free to search and the 21 classic materia medica books free to read; AI case analysis is available on Pro. The materia medica versus repertory guide explains why the two steps stay separate, and the free homeopathic software page sets out what the Free plan includes. The pictures are one click away; the method is the part you have to practise.
