In short: A Concise Repertory of Homoeopathic Medicines (S. R. Phatak, 1963) is a one-alphabet, two-column repertory built on C. M. Boger's Synoptic Key and the Boenninghausen–Boger method: about 1,971 main rubrics, 393 medicines and three grades, according to the published reviews. Its companion, Phatak's Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Medicines (1977), arranges every remedy in the order the repertory rewards, generalities and modalities first. Similia does not include Phatak's repertory, but the Boger line it worked from, the Synoptic Key repertory and the BBCR, is among Similia's seven free classical repertories, and Boger's Synoptic Key and General Analysis are free to read online.
This is education for qualified homeopaths and serious students, not self-treatment advice for the public.
Who was S. R. Phatak?
Shankar Raghunath Phatak was born on 6 September 1896 in Maharashtra and died in 1981 (source: homeopathy360.com, 20 September 2026). He took his MBBS at Grant Medical College in 1924 and moved to an entirely homeopathic practice in 1932 after reading Osler's history of medicine (source: homeobook.com, review by Dr Geethu K. A., 20 September 2026). The same review calls him an ardent follower of Boger, and that is the fact to hold on to: Phatak was not a Kentian. His works, available in English, Hindi and Marathi, carry the Boenninghausen–Boger line into Indian practice.
Three titles matter here: a Repertory of Bio-Chemic Remedies (1937), A Concise Repertory of Homoeopathic Medicines (1963), conceived while he was teaching (source: homeobook.com, article by Dr Ami H. Chandarana, 20 September 2026), and Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Medicines (1977). The Concise Repertory is the one that travelled: its reviewers recommend it for beginners and for bedside use, the name turns up in the source lists of later works such as Murphy's repertory, and several commercial programs bundle it; for most Western practitioners it is a name they have seen cited and never opened.
What the Concise Repertory is based on
On Boger. The homeopathy360 review describes the book as an alphabetised re-working of Boger and Boenninghausen, primarily based on Boger's Synoptic Key and working on the same philosophy (source: homeopathy360.com, 20 September 2026). A second review widens the list of sources to Boenninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket Book, Kent, Boericke and Clarke's Dictionary (source: homeobook.com, article by Dr Ami H. Chandarana, 20 September 2026). Phatak did not re-prove anything: he took the generalist material of the Boenninghausen school as Cyrus Maxwell Boger (1861–1935) had digested it, cut each rubric down to the remedies he was prepared to stand behind, and re-filed the whole in one alphabet.
The parents are free to read. Boger's A Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica was first published in 1915 and expanded through 1931; it combines a generalist materia medica of 322 remedies with a compact repertory and a summary of Boger's analytical method, and the full text is on Similia at Boger's Synoptic Key. His General Analysis (1931), the methodological companion covering 263 remedies, is free to read in the same library. Behind both stands Boger's 1905 Boenninghausen's Characteristics and Repertory (BBCR), organised into roughly 53 chapters over about 464 medicines with five typographic grades; our guide to the Boenninghausen–Boger method and the BBCR explains the complete symptom and the grand generalisation that Phatak inherits.
The edition history, as the reviewers give it: first edition September 1963, second October 1977, third 2000 and a fourth, revised edition in 2005, the last two from B. Jain (sources: homeopathy360.com and homeobook.com, 20 September 2026). A B. Jain printing of 2001 runs to xviii + 477 pages (source: archive.org catalogue record, 20 September 2026): slim, next to a Kent.
How the book is organised
Everything the reviewers describe about the plan of the book points one way: speed of lookup over anatomical context (sources for this section: homeopathy360.com, and homeobook.com reviews by Dr Divya P. P. and Dr Ami H. Chandarana, all 20 September 2026).
- Two columns, one alphabet. Every heading, mental, general, particular, pathological, clinical or modality, sits in a single alphabetical sequence that opens with "Abdomen, affections in general" and closes with "Zygomae".
- 1,971 main rubrics and 393 medicines, on the reviewers' count; Dr Chandarana adds 9,375 single-remedy rubrics and 66,155 remedy occurrences. These are the reviewers' figures, not ours.
- Three grades by typeface: CAPITALS for the first grade, italics for the second, roman for the third.
- Modalities graded by scope. A general modality, one that belongs to the whole patient, is printed AGG. or AMEL. in capitals; a modality of a part appears as Agg. or Amel. in lower case. This is the Boenninghausen distinction between generals and particulars made visible on the page.
- Desires, Cravings and Aversion are three different things. Desires is a mental rubric, Cravings covers food and drink, and Aversion holds both kinds. A student who looks for a food craving under Desires will find nothing; it is filed elsewhere.
- Causations are filed under aggravations, and a group of "never well since" rubrics carries its own sub-headings.
- Cross-references are given after "see" in brackets, and directional rubrics (ascending, diagonal and the like) are gathered at one place rather than scattered under each part.
- Indian food items (chillies, tamarind water) appear in the food and drink rubrics, and the reviewers credit the book with clinical rubrics that Kent lacks, giving acromegaly and arteriosclerosis as examples.
Two limitations come from the same reviews: mental symptoms are scattered through the alphabet rather than gathered in a Mind chapter, so a mentals-first analysis is awkward, and there is no comprehensive remedy index. Phatak's own preface, as the reviewers report it, is candid that the book is not a substitute for the exhaustive repertories of Kent and Boenninghausen.
One alphabet versus chapters
Most repertories are chaptered: Kent's Repertory runs in 37 sections from Mind to Generalities, the BBCR in roughly 53, and Murphy's arranges its chapter names alphabetically but keeps chapters underneath. Phatak has no chapters, only headings in one run. For a beginner this is the fastest possible lookup, because you need no map of the book, only the word, and it removes the commonest error in Kent: the wrong chapter. What it costs is context: in Kent a rubric sits among its neighbours and its sub-rubrics show how fine a distinction can be made; in Phatak the neighbours are alphabetical accidents. That is why it works as a first pass and a revision tool, and why its author sends the reader on to the larger works.
Phatak's method: modalities first, then generalise
Phatak's rule for using the book, as the homeopathy360 review reports it, is to give first importance to the modalities, and within them to the causative modalities first, then the time modalities, then the postural ones, and to apply generalisation, reading a modality observed in a part as a characteristic of the whole patient (source: homeopathy360.com, 20 September 2026). This is Boger's doctrine, not a novelty: the grand generalisation by which a "worse from first motion" in one knee becomes a general of the case, and the reason the AGG./AMEL. typography matters: the capitals tell you which modalities may be generalised with confidence.
Two statements from the book's front matter, the preface and the how-to-use note, as the homeobook reviewer paraphrases them, complete the method: the remedy lists were deliberately reduced to a minimum by careful selection, which is why a Phatak rubric is short where a Kent rubric is long; and repertorisation is not to be mechanical, because the totality of symptoms is qualitative, not numerical (source: homeobook.com, Dr Divya P. P., 20 September 2026). A remedy that appears in five short Phatak rubrics is a lead to be read, not a winner.
The same principle governs the materia medica. In the book's hints for beginners, as Dr Geethu's review reports, Phatak writes that a drug's marks of identification are "found in its GENERALITIES, MODALITIES and MIND" (source: homeobook.com, review by Dr Geethu K. A., 20 September 2026). Read that sentence once and both books make sense: the repertory gets you from a modality to a short list, and the materia medica opens each remedy with the material that answers the same question the other way round.
Phatak vs Kent vs BBCR vs Boericke's Clinical Repertory
"Which repertory is best" is the wrong question; the four books below answer different ones. Figures for Kent, the BBCR and Boericke are those stated in our guides to those works; the Phatak figures are the reviewers'.
| Phatak's Concise Repertory | Kent's Repertory | Boger's BBCR | Boericke's Clinical Repertory | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year | 1963 (4th revised ed. 2005) | 1897 | 1905 | Bound with the Pocket Manual's ninth edition, 1927 |
| Arrangement | One alphabet, no chapters, two columns | 37 head-to-foot chapters | Roughly 53 sections | Alphabetical clinical and therapeutic headings |
| Grades or entry form | 3 (CAPITALS, italics, roman) | 3 (bold, italic, plain) | 5 typographic degrees | Remedies listed with brief differentiating indications |
| Scale | ~1,971 main rubrics, 393 medicines | ~68,000 rubrics | ~464 medicines | Around 1,400 remedies |
| Philosophy | Boger–Boenninghausen: modalities first, generalise the particulars | Mentals and generals first, then particulars | Complete symptom and grand generalisation | Orient by condition, then individualise |
| Best use | Fast first pass, modality-led cases, exam revision | The full chronic totality and fine sub-rubrics | Concomitant-rich, modality-driven or fragmentary cases | A bedside shortlist for a named complaint |
The family resemblance is obvious: Phatak and the BBCR share a method and differ in size and arrangement; Kent differs in method; Boericke's clinical repertory differs in purpose. Our pillar on the homeopathic repertory covers the major works and the arithmetic of analysis.
Phatak's Materia Medica of Homoeopathic Medicines (1977)
The materia medica is the half of Phatak that Western readers more often meet. Dr Geethu's review gives its shape (source: homeobook.com, 20 September 2026). It is built on Boger's Synoptic Key and Boericke's materia medica with Phatak's own clinical experience added, and it covers 413 remedies in alphabetical order from Abies canadensis to Zizia. The preface, as the review reports it, sets out three aims: to simplify Boger's sometimes ambiguous terminology, to keep his most important symptoms, and to add useful clinical symptoms from other materia medicas that Boger left out.
Each entry follows one order:
- Generalities: the sphere of action, the pathogenesis and the key points of the drug gathered together.
- Modalities: all the "worse" and "better" conditions compiled in one place.
- Mind: the important mental symptoms in a single paragraph.
- Particulars: the regional symptoms from head to foot.
- Complementary and related remedies at the end.
Three typographic grades mark the weight of a symptom (the reviewer lists capitals, italics and roman), and a six-page index lists medicines useful to surgeons, pre- and post-operatively, across specialities. One reading convention trips up newcomers: items separated by semicolons each read back to the head word, so a run of phrases after "Fears" is a list of separate fears, not one compound symptom.
The 1977 text is in copyright, so none of its entry text is reproduced here; what you can read for free is the source it condenses. Open the same remedy in Boger's Synoptic Key and in Boericke's Pocket Manual and you will see the two ancestors of a Phatak entry side by side: Boger opens Nux vomica with the REGION, then a block of WORSE and BETTER modalities in graded capitals, then the generals and the mental picture; Boericke gives the sphere of action, the head-to-foot regions, and closes with the Modalities, Relationship and Dose lines. Phatak's arrangement is Boger's, with Boericke's clinical detail folded in.
A worked study exercise
This exercise teaches the method rather than the page numbers and reproduces none of Phatak's text. Take a single symptom idea, say a complaint that is markedly worse in the early morning.
- Find the idea by its word in Phatak. Because the book is one alphabet, the modality is looked up as a heading in its own right, and its scope is read off the typography: AGG. in capitals if it is a general of the patient, Agg. in lower case if it belongs to a part. Note the grade of each remedy; do not copy the list out, the point is to see how short it is.
- Open the same idea in the two free Boger repertories. In Similia, search the time modality in Boger's Synoptic Key repertory and the BBCR. Compare rubric length and grades: the BBCR's five degrees give finer resolution than Phatak's three, and the Synoptic Key's rubric is the one Phatak started from.
- Check Kent for the same idea. The equivalent lives in Kent's Generalities chapter as a time rubric, and the list will be longer. Ask which remedies Phatak dropped: the answer is usually his selection rule, not an omission in the source.
- Read the candidates in the free texts. In Boger's Synoptic Key, Nux vomica's modality block opens with "WORSE EARLY MORNING" in capitals; in Boericke's entry the Modalities line begins "Worse, morning, mental exertion, after eating". A remedy carrying the modality at first grade in the repertory and in capitals in the materia medica is a candidate to read in full; one in roman type in a single rubric is a lead to be checked.
Run this on three or four modalities and you will know what Phatak's grades mean and where his short lists come from. For the procedure that surrounds it, from case-taking to the confirmation read, see our beginner's guide to repertorisation.
Where to read Phatak, and the PDF question
Searches for this book are dominated by "pdf", "free download" and "online free", so here is the honest answer: both Phatak titles are in copyright. Phatak died in 1981, and section 22 of India's Copyright Act, 1957, protects a published literary work for sixty years from the beginning of the calendar year following the author's death (source: indiankanoon.org, 20 September 2026). The scans circulating on document-sharing sites are unauthorised, and the archive.org copy is a controlled lending-library scan, not a download. No free PDF exists that the publisher has released.
Legitimate routes are three. The current print editions of both books are published by B. Jain in New Delhi; buy them from any bookseller. The Concise Repertory is also bundled into several commercial repertory programs; Hompath Firefly's product page, for example, lists Phatak among its ten repertories (source: hompath.com, 20 September 2026). The third route is the one this guide has pointed at throughout: read the public-domain books Phatak condensed, which cost nothing and contain more than his abridgement.
Similia does not carry Phatak's repertory or the text of his materia medica on any plan. The one Phatak-derived element in the product is his remedy-relationship notes, which the Pro Relationships view merges with Clarke, Boericke, Knerr and Pitt. What the free plan includes is the parent line.
Using Phatak alongside a free online repertory
If you own Phatak, keep it on the desk for the alphabetical first pass and confirm every rubric in its sources online. Similia's seven free classical repertories are Kent, Boericke, Boger's BBCR, Knerr's repertory of Hering's Guiding Symptoms, Boger's Synoptic Key, and the Sensations As If repertories by Ward and Roberts, with AI semantic repertory search across those seven, so a modality typed in plain words finds the classical wording in each book. That is repertory search only: materia medica semantic search requires eligible paid access. The same rubric can be compared across two repertories in one view, which is the Phatak-to-Boger check in the exercise above.
The free plan also covers the reading half: 21 classic materia medica books readable online without an account, Boger's Synoptic Key and General Analysis and Boericke's Pocket Manual among them, plus basic case management capped at 3 new cases and 3 analyses per month, with no credit card or time limit. The free homeopathic software page lists exactly what the plan covers.
Where Phatak fits
Phatak's Concise Repertory is good for three things: speed, because one alphabet needs no map; modalities, because the AGG./AMEL. typography makes the Boger method visible; and exam study, because short rubrics reward memory. It is not exhaustive, and its author said so: treat every short list as a lead to confirm in Kent or the BBCR and then in the materia medica. The free next step is to open the Boger line it worked from: search Boger's Synoptic Key repertory and the BBCR in Similia's free repertory, and read Boger's own text at Boger's Synoptic Key while you have Phatak open beside it.
