Case-taking template

A case-taking template is the pre-structured document a homeopathic practitioner fills during or immediately after the consultation. The classical sources are ambivalent about templates: Hahnemann's Organon §84 instructs the case-taker to follow the patient's narrative rather than a form, yet §85 prescribes a definite page discipline — each symptom on its own line, white space left for later completion — which is itself a template instruction. The working resolution, stable across two centuries of teaching, is that the interview is patient-led and the record is structured: the template organises what was heard, after it was heard, without steering the hearing.

What follows is a template that follows that resolution, section by section, with the classical warrant for each. The order matters: it runs from the patient's spontaneous account outward to the practitioner's observations, mirroring the §84–§90 sequence.

The template at a glance

Sections 1–2: narrative and complete complaints

Section 1 is deliberately a blank page. Its discipline is negative: no checkboxes, no prompts, nothing that converts open listening into form-filling. Record the patient's expressions, not your translation of them — the rubric translation happens in section 9, and the original phrasing must survive until then so the translation can be checked against it.

Section 2 applies Boenninghausen's complete-symptom grammar to each complaint the narrative produced: where is it, what does it feel like, what makes it better or worse, what accompanies it. The grammar earns its place because incomplete symptoms repertorise badly — a "headache" rubric is near-useless, a "pressing headache in the temples, worse from motion, better from external pressure, with nausea" maps to a small differential. The better-from and worse-from grammar is laid out in detail under modalities.

Sections 3–4: generals and mentals

Section 3 lists the generals as a fixed checklist — the one place the template legitimately prompts, because patients rarely volunteer thermal reaction or thirst unprompted, and the chronic interview is licensed to ask targeted questions once the spontaneous account is finished (§86–§89). Kent's hierarchy of symptoms treats these whole-person symptoms as outranking any local complaint, which is why they sit above the history sections rather than below.

Section 4 splits mentals into reported and observed. The split is Hahnemann's: §90 instructs the physician to record what he himself perceives of the patient's state, since the patient's self-report of temperament is the least reliable part of the record. A patient who reports "I'm fine, just the eczema" while answering every question in a monotone has produced two data points, and the record should hold both without collapsing them.

Sections 5–7: history, treatment, observation

Section 5 takes the longitudinal history that miasmatic analysis reads against — recurring infections, skin history, suppressed eruptions or discharges, family disease patterns. Section 6 dates every prior medication and remedy, because §91–§92 warn that a case under recent treatment presents a mixed image and the record must mark which symptoms are original and which are iatrogenic. Section 7 holds the practitioner's sensory observations from the consultation itself: demeanour, posture, voice, gesture.

Sections 8–9: the striking features and the working plan

Section 8 is the template's analytical hinge. After the record is complete, extract the three to six features that satisfy §153 — "more striking, singular, uncommon and peculiar" — and list them apart from the bulk of the case. This is a copy-out step, not new information; its value is that it forces an explicit ranking decision that would otherwise happen invisibly during repertorisation.

Section 9 is the bridge to analysis: candidate rubrics for each section-8 feature, the remedy differential the repertorisation produces, the potency decision with its reasoning, and a scheduled follow-up date so the second prescription is made against a planned re-interview rather than an ad-hoc phone call.

Acute cases and digital use

For acute cases the template collapses to sections 1, 2, 8, and 9 — the acute interview hunts the characteristic features of the present episode, not the biography (§99–§102). In digital practice the template maps directly onto case-management software: a case record holds the narrative and notes, analyses hold the section-9 rubric work, and a structured case timeline holds the section-5 chronology as dated events. Practitioners who want to keep the template inside a free online repertory and case record have one route to do so without leaving the §84-shaped workflow.

The defensible case-taking template is patient-led at the front, checklist-led only for generals, and analytical only at the end — a §84-shaped funnel from open narrative to an explicit §153 shortlist.

References

[1] Hahnemann, S. (1842) Organon of the Medical Art, sixth edition, edited and translated by W. B. O'Reilly (1996), Palo Alto: Birdcage Books, aphorisms §83–§104, §153, §210–§213.

[2] Kent, J. T. (1900) Lectures on Homoeopathic Philosophy, Lancaster: Examiner Printing House, Lectures XXIII–XXV and XXXII–XXXIII.

[3] Boenninghausen, C. M. F. von (1860) A Contribution to the Judgment Concerning the Characteristic Value of Symptoms, in The Lesser Writings, translated by L. H. Tafel (1908), Philadelphia: Boericke & Tafel.

[4] Hahnemann, S. (1828) The Chronic Diseases: their Peculiar Nature and their Homoeopathic Cure, Dresden: Arnold; second edition 1835.