Dr. J. T. Kent's Clinical Cases: Observations

Your doubts are answered. The single medicines work effectively. Higher potencies do cure acute and chronic diseases. Medicines may have to be changed when the symptoms take a turn. Medicines need no repetition until they exhaust their action.  Homoeopathy revives a terminally ill case. These and much more are evident in the Clinical Cases. The Clinical cases I am referring to here are from Dr. J. T. Kent’s “New Remedies, Clinical Cases, Lesser Writings, Aphorisms and Percepts”.


Those were the days when there was no repertory software. Then again Dr. Kent is the author of Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica. His knowledge wouldn’t come as a surprise at all. Yet, the way he explains it, is so mesmerizing. The first case itself caught my heart.

It is a case of pain in abdomen or suspected tumor in a 40year old female. After relating the history of the patient, he is principally trying to differentiate between murex and sepia. The words of the master Dr. J. T. Kent himself: “The cutting pain in the uterus has been found under curare, murex and sepia, but Murex is the only one producing a cutting pain in the uterus going to the left mamma. The all-gone empty feeling in the stomach is characteristic of Murex, Phos. and Sepia. Throbbing in the uterus belongs only to Murex. The dragging down is common to both Murex and Sepia, but the sexual teasing only to Murex. Both have a yellowish green leucorrhea. Pain in sacrum is common to Murex, Sepia and many others. “Enlargement of bowels” is found in Allen under Murex, not mentioned in Minton’s Uterine Therapeutics. The pain in Murex goes upward and through, worse while lying down. In sepia the patient is better lying down, and the pains go around. Murex 200 one dose was given.”

Dr. Kent dwells on Tuberculinum and adenoids in detail. He states probably a hundred cases of adenoids were cured by tuberculinum.  There is an interesting case of breech presentation which got corrected after a dose of pulsatilla. (The drug was given after individualization). There are no short cuts, there are no blind prescriptions, there are no set of remedies for a disease, which is what you will realize once you go through the book. The cases explained are varied, eczema, anemia, cancer, rheumatism, to name a few.

All the cases described in the book were treated with single medicine, no matter what the case, condition or the status. He has followed up with other remedies as and when the case required. There is a case of chronic arthritis in a 38 year old female, started with Sulphur, then Calcarea, Lycopodium and finally Rhus tox. The medicines were changed after they had exhausted their action, and when the symptomatology called for a change in the drug.

The potency selection deserves a mention as he himself notes in his lesser writings that the selection of potency is a matter of experience and observation and not as yet a matter of law. This statement he confirms in his clinical cases. He gives tarantula cubensis in 12x for a case of a bubo in groin; Murex 200 for a case of suspected abdominal tumour; tuberculinum in 10M and then increasing the potency subsequently for enlarged glands in the neck, so forth and so on. Alas, he makes no explanation about the choice of the potency. For us lesser mortals, standing on the threshold of homoeopathy it would have been a boon, the wish made larger on seeing the beauty of the curative process.There are yet more to observe and learn from the notes of Dr. Kent. Repeated readings and an open mind is what we need to grasp those simple words explaining a huge curative process, the success of homoeopathy.