What is a homeopathic repertory in simple terms?

An index of symptoms with the remedies known to produce or cure each one. The materia medica is organised by remedy — everything known about Sulphur in one chapter; the repertory inverts that, organising by symptom: under 'Fear of thunderstorms' you find every remedy associated with it, graded by how strongly. Practitioners use it to move from a patient's symptoms to a shortlist of remedies, which they then verify in the materia medica before prescribing.

What are rubrics and grades?

A rubric is one indexed symptom entry — for example 'Mind; Anxiety; night' — with its list of remedies. Grades express how strongly each remedy is associated with that rubric, traditionally shown typographically: bold (highest), italic, and plain type, with some modern repertories adding a fourth level. When several rubrics are combined in an analysis, the grades act as weights in the remedy totals.

Which homeopathic repertory should a student start with?

Kent's Repertory remains the standard teaching instrument: virtually every course is built on its structure, and its logic — from Mind through the body regions to Generalities — is the grammar every later repertory speaks. Start with Kent, learn to find and combine rubrics fluently, and add a modern repertory like Murphy's or the Complete once the classical structure is second nature.

What is the difference between Kent's method and Boenninghausen's?

Kent's repertory favours the specific: detailed, particular rubrics combined into a totality that leans on mental and general symptoms. Boenninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket Book works by generalisation: modalities and sensations are treated as characteristic of the patient as a whole and can be combined across body parts. Boger later fused the two currents. In practice the methods complement each other — many difficult cases open under one approach after refusing the other.

Are paper repertories obsolete?

For learning, paper still teaches structure like nothing else. For daily practice, digital repertories have effectively won: search across every chapter in seconds, combine rubrics without bookkeeping, and — with semantic search — find rubrics from modern clinical language without knowing the classical phrasing. The book and the software contain the same scholarship; the difference is retrieval speed and analysis power.

The Homeopathic Repertory: Structure, Major Works & How to Use One (Complete Guide)

Every serious tradition builds itself a great index. Law has its citators, medicine its diagnostic manuals — and homeopathy has the repertory: a two-century project to organise everything the materia medica knows, symptom by symptom, so that a practitioner can travel from a patient's picture to the remedies that match it.

This is the pillar guide to that instrument: what a repertory is, how its rubrics and grades actually work, how the major repertories differ, and how repertorisation fits into real case work. Where a topic deserves its own deep dive, we link to one — this page is the map.

What a repertory is (and why it exists)

The homeopathic materia medica is organised by remedy: open the chapter on Pulsatilla and read everything provings and clinical experience have recorded about it. That's perfect for study and verification — and hopeless for the direction practice actually runs, which starts from a patient. No one can hold the contents of hundreds of remedies in mind while listening to a case.

The repertory inverts the materia medica. Its unit is the rubric: a symptom entry — "Mind; Fear; thunderstorm, of" — followed by every remedy associated with that symptom. Find the rubrics that correspond to your patient's characteristic symptoms, combine them, and the remedies that run through them surface as a shortlist. The repertory doesn't choose the remedy; it narrows the field so the materia medica can decide.

Rubrics, grades and the arithmetic of analysis

Three mechanics carry the whole system:

Structure. Repertories are organised in chapters — in Kent's arrangement, from Mind and Vertigo down through the body regions to Sleep, Fever and the great catch-all, Generalities. Within chapters, rubrics run from the general ("Head; Pain") to the exquisitely particular ("Head; Pain; bursting; stooping, on"), with sub-rubrics refining location, modality and time.

Grades. Not every remedy in a rubric is there with equal force. Traditional typography encodes confidence: bold for remedies repeatedly confirmed, italic for well established, plain type for recorded. Modern repertories add a fourth grade. In analysis, grades become weights.

Combination. Repertorisation proper: select several characteristic rubrics, sum the remedies across them (counting both coverage and grade), and read the resulting ranking — not as a verdict, but as a well-informed shortlist. The craft of choosing which rubrics deserve that power is the subject of our beginner's guide to repertorisation.

The major repertories, briefly

Boenninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket Book (1846). The first great repertory, built on a radical idea: modalities and sensations characterise the whole patient and may be generalised across body parts. Small, disciplined, and still startlingly effective in modality-rich cases.

Kent's Repertory (1897). The monument. James Tyler Kent's Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica organised the literature into the chapter logic that has dominated teaching ever since, with an unmatched Mind section and a philosophy that leans on mental and general symptoms. Our full guide to Kent's structure walks through it chapter by chapter.

Boger's Boenninghausen's Characteristics (1905). Cyrus Boger's synthesis of the Boenninghausen current with his own clinical genius — pathological generals, time modalities, causation. The Boenninghausen–Boger method guide covers when this line of attack beats Kent's.

The Complete Repertory (1990s–present). Roger van Zandvoort's ongoing project to correct, source and extend the Kentian inheritance — today one of the largest and best-maintained repertories, with additions drawn from across the literature. Explained here.

Murphy's MetaRepertory (1993–present). Robin Murphy's pragmatic modernisation: alphabetical chapters, clinical language, rubrics reorganised for speed at the desk. The Murphy vs Kent vs Complete comparison sets the three side by side.

The deeper point: these are not competing brands but schools of analysis. Kent generalises upward from particulars; Boenninghausen generalises modalities; Boger compresses; the moderns consolidate and correct. Strong practitioners eventually use more than one.

Repertorisation in a real case, in five steps

Take the case fully — the case-taking discipline decides everything downstream.
Select characteristic symptoms: the striking, singular, peculiar features — mental and general symptoms, strong modalities — not the diagnosis's common symptoms (§153 of the Organon is the classical warrant).
Translate to rubrics, choosing the right level of generality: too broad drowns the analysis in polychrests, too narrow rests the case on one fragile entry.
Combine and rank, letting grades weight the totals.
Verify in the materia medica — the shortlist's top candidates must be read as whole remedy pictures before anything is prescribed. The repertory proposes; the materia medica disposes.

Paper to pixels: what changed and what didn't

Digital repertories changed retrieval, not scholarship. Search replaced page-turning; automatic totals replaced pencil grids; semantic search now bridges the last gap — the translation from a patient's modern words to the repertory's classical phrasing, which was always the steepest part of the learning curve. What didn't change: the analysis is only as good as the symptom selection, and the final step still runs through the materia medica and the practitioner's judgment.

If you want to feel the mechanics rather than read about them, Similia's free online repertory ships the classical works discussed here — Kent included — with search, grades and analysis in the browser; the premium tier adds Murphy and the Complete Repertory for practices that need the modern layer.

Where to go next

Start with the Kent structure guide if the chapter logic is new; the repertorisation how-to if you're ready to run cases; the method comparison if you're choosing a daily instrument; and the materia medica vs repertory guide if the division of labour between the two books isn't yet second nature. The repertory rewards exactly the kind of study it was built from — patient, cumulative, and endlessly cross-referenced.