Homœopathic Catechism

Julia C. Loos, M. D., H. M., Harrisburg, Pa.

This catechism embraces the subject of the science and art of healing as treated in Hahnemann’s Organon and the lectures at the Philadelphia Post-Graduate School of Homœopathics. It is deemed that anyone who can fully and comprehensively respond to this list of queries has a good working knowledge of the principles of Homœopathy and their application. The sections refer to The Organon.

§ 1–2.

1. What is health?

2. What is disease?

3. What are symptoms?

4. What is man, in his internal; in his external?

5. What is the duty of the physician?

6. Name the Three Injunctions (Hahnemann’s).

7. State two opposite views of the relation of bacteria to disease, to show what are bacteria.

8. What is the fundamental difference in the teaching of Old School and Homœopathy, the point where they divide and go in opposite paths?

9. State the Three Directions of Cure.

§ 3–5.

10. State the Three Precautions (Hahnemann).

11. What are curative indications of disease?

12. What is the proper method of conducting a study of any disease?

13. What is an anamnesis?

14. What is the order of a Homœopathic investigation?

15. What is a proving; how conducted?

16. What is the effect of drugs on healthy man; how do they alter his position in the scale of development?

17. What is the proper place of experience in the practice of medicine?

18. State the direction of disease manifestations; of disease action.

19. Define miasm; acute miasm; chronic miasm.

20. Define stages of disease.

21. Name Three Chronic Miasms.

22. How is every curable disease made known to an observer?

23. What is the Science of Healing?

24. What is the Art of Healing?

25. Prove that acute diseases depend for their development on the state of man’s health.

26. What is the basis of all contagion; of all cure?

27. Prove that bacteria do not constitute the poison in poisonous discharges.

28. What is the only authority, properly admitted in treating the sick?

29. What is the basis of all acute diseases?

§ 6-7.

30. What pictures the image of sickness?

31. How is the totality of symptoms obtained?

32. Of what value, in selecting a remedy, is the knowledge of tissue change?

33. What is the target at which the prescription is aimed?

34. Define local and symptomatic treatment. What is the objection to prescribing for individual symptoms or groups of symptoms?

35. What is the result in the body of disease if allowed to progress?

36. When may disease results be removed mechanically? Why not before?

37. What are indispositions? How do they differ from miasmatic diseases?

§ 8.

38. What are proofs of a curative action?

39. What does a physician acknowledge by use of adjuvants?

40. State the objections to the use of two remedies for one case of sickness at the same time.

41. To what extent is it possible to abort diseases of a definite self-limited course?

§ 9–16.

42. State the properties of simple substance.

43. State the Three Parallels (Hahnemann).

44. What is aura?

45. Define susceptibility.

46. Define Homœopathicity.

47. What is death?

48. What is the result (in the body) of cure?

49. What is the relative value of knowledge gained by symptoms and that gained by physical examination; what relation does the second bear to the first?

§ 17–34.

50. What constitutes a cure?

51. Who first made a full study of Psora; of Sycosis?

52. Define anti-psoric, anti-syphilitic, anti-sycotic remedy.

53. What is the only method of gaining a complete knowledge of drugs?

54. In what forms are they used? What is the aim in drug study?

55. Mention three possible methods of adjusting drugs to disease. What is the effect on the patient when each is discontinued?

56. In any given case of sickness, upon what does the power of a drug depend?

57. State the ground of a homœopathic physician’s objection to the use of morphine in case of pain; of chloroform in labor.

§ 34–162.

58. What is the philosophy of using one dose of remedy only?

59. What difference is there in susceptibility to natural disease (contagion) and to drug action?

60. In what three ways is a remedy homœopathic (3 modes of Homœopathicity)?

61. When two dissimilar diseases are present in an individual at the same time, what influence have they upon each other (3 forms)?

62. How are antidotes to drugs to be selected?

§ 78–82 and Chronic Diseases.

63. Describe Psora according to the following outline: Origin of name, of disease, manner, time, frequency of contagion and possible immunity, what tissue affected in each stage, time of prodrome, particulars as far as known, early manifestations, later manifestations, latest symptoms, those appearing in offspring, method and effect of treatment in different stages, by old school and by homœopathic treatment, some appropriate homœopathic remedies.

64. Describe Syphilis, following above outline.

65. Describe Sycosis, following above outline.

§ 87–99.

66. State the Three Qualifications or Three Requirements (Hahnemann’s).

67. State in detail the proper method of taking a case.

68. What are keynotes? State the proper and the improper use of them.

69. Name the Three (common) Mistakes (Hahnemann).

§ 105–145.

70. Outline Hahnemann’s course in study and exposition of principles of Homœopathy.

71. What is the difference in the results obtained from provings with crude and potentized drugs?

72. State the difference between a proving and a poison.

73. What is idiosyncrasy? How may it be cured (2 degrees)?

74. What difference in the effect of substances taken into the body on (a) nutritive plane and (b) dynamic plane?

75. What care must be observed in furnishing drugs for proving?

76. How is a proving conducted?

77. By what is a proving confirmed; by what verified?

78. In what two ways may immunity from disease be gained?

79. What may be the difference, in similarity to the disease, between a curative and a prophylactic remedy?

80. Of what importance is differentiation in Homœopathy? Give some synonyms.

81. What constitutes a true specific?

§ 147–153.

82. Define characterizing symptoms.

83. What is the effect of the homœopathic treatment on chronic diseases in drugged cases?

84. What is the best treatment for indispositions arising in the course of chronic (constitutional) treatment?

85. Define particular symptoms; general symptoms; common symytoms, as applied to remedies and to diseases.

86. How are symptoms in a record to be estimated in seeking the remedy and using the repertory?

87. What class of symptoms contraindicate or determine the prescription of a remedy?

88. Explain the grading of symptoms.

§ 154–173.

89. What is a homœopathic aggravation?

90. Under what circumstances is the aggravation slight; under what is it severe?

91. What is the significance of an early aggravation in acute disease?

92. What is the length of time of homœopathic aggravation in favorable cases, in acute disease; in chronic disease?

93. When is it proper to repeat a remedy?

94. Under what circumstances must a repetition be avoided?

95. How far may drugs be potentized and still be medicinal?

96. Under what circumstance is it proper to give a larger dose (lower potency) after a small dose (higher potency) has been administered?

97. Under what circumstances is it proper to give a smaller dose (higher potency) after a large dose (lower potency) has been administered.

98. What constitutes a true homœopathic prescription?

99. What is a one-sided case?

100. State all the possible conditions following the administration of the remedy and state their significance (twelve observations).