The homeopathy glossary and dictionary

A working homeopathy glossary defines the vocabulary that recurs across Hahnemann's Organon, Kent's Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, and the software interfaces that surface those terms at the point of prescription. The entries below — potency, rubric, modality, simillimum, repertorisation, miasm — are the terms a practitioner needs at hand during case-taking and analysis.

Core terms

Potency

Potency is the count of serial dilution-and-succussion steps applied to a mother tincture. The decimal scale (X or D) dilutes 1:10 at each step; the centesimal scale (C or CH) dilutes 1:100; the fifty-millesimal or LM/Q scale (introduced in the sixth edition of the Organon) dilutes 1:50,000 with a single succussion per step. Standard prescription notations — 6X, 30C, 200C, 1M (= 1000C), 10M, CM (= 100,000C) — name the dilution count, not the dose.

A 30C is not a stronger 6C; the potencies act on different planes. Low potencies (3X–12X, 6C) suit acute, gross, predominantly physical states; medium potencies (30C, 200C) suit defined emotional and general states with a clear simillimum; high potencies (1M, 10M, CM) act on the constitutional and miasmatic level and are reserved for cases where the totality is well taken. The slash notation "30/200" denotes split-dose dispensing across two potencies; it is not a fraction.

Rubric

A rubric is a single symptom heading in the repertory hierarchy. The full path — section; chapter; rubric; sub-rubric — encodes the symptom's location, modality, and concomitant. Mind; ANXIETY; before sleep differs analytically from Mind; ANXIETY; on falling asleep and from Sleep; SLEEPLESSNESS; anxiety from. The remedy list under each rubric is graded: Kent's gradation runs from grade 3 (Bold/Capitals) through grade 2 (Italics) to grade 1 (Plain); Boenninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket Book uses a similar three-tier grading derived from the strength of the original observation.

Modality

A modality is anything that makes the symptom better or worse. The classical four are time, temperature, position, and motion; the working list extends to weather, food and drink, mental state, periodicity, laterality, and the company of others. Modalities of the patient as a whole (the "general modalities") outrank modalities of a single particular symptom in the analysis — a worse-from-cold patient pulls the case toward a different remedy family than a worse-from-warmth patient even when the chief complaint is identical.

Simillimum

The simillimum is the single remedy whose totality of characteristic symptoms most closely covers the totality of the case. It is not the remedy that covers the most rubrics; it is the remedy whose drug-picture, including its peculiar, rare, and characteristic symptoms (Organon §153), matches the patient's peculiar, rare, and characteristic symptoms. A high-scoring polychrest that misses the strange/rare/peculiar is not the simillimum.

Repertorisation

Repertorisation is the process of mapping the rubrics taken from the case to the remedies covering them, and ranking those remedies by some combination of coverage (how many of the case rubrics each remedy appears in) and weight (the sum of the remedy's grades across those rubrics). Kentian repertorisation weights the mentals and generals heavily; Boenninghausen's method uses the generalised symptom — sensation, location, modality, concomitant taken as separable axes — and is more forgiving of cases where the patient cannot articulate a complete symptom. Software collapses these methods into selectable analysis modes; the practitioner still chooses which rubrics enter the grid.

Miasm

A miasm is the constitutional substrate that, in Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases, accounts for the relapse and recurrence pattern of chronic disease after the acute simillimum has acted. The original three are psora (the substrate of itch, deficiency, and functional disturbance), sycosis (the substrate of overgrowth, excess, and warty/catarrhal manifestation), and syphilis (the substrate of destruction, ulceration, and perversion). The 20th-century classical revival added tubercular (psora-syphilis hybrid, characterised by restlessness, change, and desire for travel) and cancer (multi-miasmatic, characterised by long suppression and breakdown of resistance).

A miasmatic prescription targets the substrate rather than the acute layer — Sulphur, Psorinum, and Tuberculinum for psora and tubercular states; Thuja, Medorrhinum, and Natrum sulphuricum for sycosis; Mercurius, Syphilinum, and Aurum for syphilis. Miasmatic analysis enters the case after the acute simillimum has cleared the presenting layer or after the case has returned with the same complaint a third time.

Notation and shorthand

Abbreviation conventions differ between Kent, Boericke, Boenninghausen, and Phatak; cross-reference any unfamiliar shorthand against the source repertory's preface. The companion abbreviation lookup and potency converter cover the working cases.

Related terms in brief

• Aggravation, homeopathic — a brief, expected intensification of existing symptoms following a correctly chosen remedy, distinct from drug-proving aggravation and from disease progression.
• Antidote — a substance or remedy that interrupts the action of another remedy; classical antidotes include camphor for most vegetable remedies and coffee for several polychrests.
• Centesimal scale — see Potency.
• Concomitant — a symptom that accompanies the chief complaint without being a direct part of it; Boenninghausen treats concomitants as first-class analytic data.
• Constitution — the patient's stable physical and mental type, used to narrow the remedy field in chronic cases.
• Drug picture — the totality of symptoms produced by a remedy in proving and confirmed in cure.
• Hering's Law — the direction-of-cure principle: from above downward, from within outward, from more important to less important organs, in reverse order of appearance.
• Keynote — a peculiar, characteristic symptom strongly associated with a single remedy.
• Mother tincture (Ø, MT) — the alcoholic extract from which potencies are prepared.
• Nosode — a remedy prepared from diseased tissue or pathological discharge (Tuberculinum, Medorrhinum, Syphilinum, Psorinum, Carcinosinum).
• Polychrest — a remedy with a broad action across many organs and constitutions (Sulphur, Calcarea carbonica, Lycopodium, Phosphorus, Pulsatilla, Sepia, Natrum muriaticum).
• Proving — the systematic administration of a substance to healthy provers to elicit and record its drug picture.
• Repertory — the indexed cross-reference from symptom to remedy; the inverse of the materia medica.
• Sarcode — a remedy prepared from healthy glandular tissue or secretion (Thyroidinum, Adrenalinum, Insulinum).
• Strange, rare, peculiar (SRP) — Organon §153; the class of symptoms that most strongly individualise the case and the remedy.
• Totality of symptoms — Organon §7; the complete characteristic picture on which the prescription rests.

Red flags during case-taking

Several presentations require prompt assessment outside the case-taking room before the constitutional prescription is finalised: sudden severe headache with neck stiffness or focal neurology, chest pain with radiation and diaphoresis, acute abdomen with rebound tenderness, haemoptysis, melaena, suicidal ideation with a plan, and infant fever with petechial rash. Note the red flag, secure the assessment, and resume the case from where the acute layer was cleared.

A symptom is unreliable when the patient cannot reproduce it; date and quote the original report rather than the recalled version, and weight symptoms the patient experienced and described above symptoms the patient believes about themselves.

References

• Hahnemann, S. (1842) Organon der Heilkunst, 6th edition; English translation by Boericke (1922), Philadelphia: Boericke and Tafel.
• Hahnemann, S. (1828) Die chronischen Krankheiten, ihre eigenthümliche Natur und homöopathische Heilung, Dresden and Leipzig: Arnoldische Buchhandlung.
• Kent, J. T. (1900) Lectures on Homeopathic Philosophy, Lancaster, PA: Examiner Printing House.
• Kent, J. T. (1897) Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica, Lancaster, PA: Examiner Printing House.
• Boenninghausen, C. von (1846) Therapeutisches Taschenbuch, Münster.
• Hering, C. (1879–1891) The Guiding Symptoms of our Materia Medica, 10 vols., Philadelphia: Estate of Constantine Hering.
• Boericke, W. (1927) Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica with Repertory, 9th edition, Philadelphia: Boericke and Runyon.
• Clarke, J. H. (1900) A Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica, 3 vols., London: Homoeopathic Publishing Company.
• Vithoulkas, G. (1980) The Science of Homeopathy, New York: Grove Press.
• Sankaran, R. (1994) The Substance of Homoeopathy, Bombay: Homoeopathic Medical Publishers.