Repertory and Case Taking in the Second Year — the case, and a second repertory

The second-year course in Repertory and Case Taking — HomUG-R-II in the NCH curriculum — is one of the shortest syllabi of the year on paper. Its CBDC course content has two chapters, one for each term. It would be a mistake to read that brevity as lightness. What the two chapters ask for is practical: the first year taught what a repertory is; the second year puts a case in front of the student and a second repertory in their hands.

**Term I: case taking.** The first chapter is the demonstration of homoeopathic case taking in simple, acute and chronic cases, together with the instructions the Organon gives regarding case taking.

That short description holds three ideas worth drawing out.

The first is the word demonstration. Case taking is taught here by showing, not only by describing. A student watches a case being taken, and learns from the way questions are asked and the way answers are recorded as much as from any list of rules.

The second is the range: simple cases, acute cases and chronic cases. These are not the same exercise. The syllabus names all three so that a student sees early that the method adapts to the case in front of it.

The third is the tie to the Organon. In the same year, the Organon course reads aphorisms 83 to 103 on case taking and aphorism 104 on record keeping, and studies symptomatology, analysis and evaluation of symptoms, and the totality of symptoms. The two subjects teach one act from two sides: the Organon supplies the principles and the reasons, Repertory and Case Taking supplies the demonstration. A second-year student who reads them together will find each clearer for the other.

**Term II: the repertory and disease.** The second chapter is the correlation of the repertory with disease and pathology. It has three parts.

It begins with an introduction to Boericke’s repertory. In the first year, the student met Kent’s Repertory in structure — its chapters, its correlation with the Hahnemannian anatomical schema, its rubrics for anatomy, physiology and the mind. Boericke’s repertory is the second repertory the curriculum introduces, and its arrival invites comparison: two books built for the same purpose, organised in their own ways.

It then studies the representation of different pathologies and pathogenesis in Boericke’s and Kent’s repertories. This is where the second-year Repertory course meets the second-year Pathology course, and it is the reason the chapter sits in the second year rather than the first. A student who is learning how disease develops, in Pathology, is here shown how that knowledge is indexed in the repertories.

It closes with the holistic concept of disease, constitution, diathesis, susceptibility and temperament. These words link the repertory to the rest of the year: susceptibility is on the Organon syllabus, temperament returns from first-year Psychology, and the holistic concept of disease is the thread the whole course is built on.

**How this year fits the whole.** The first-year terminology chapter defined case taking, the analysis and evaluation of a case, and the longitudinal and cross-section study of a case. The second year turns those definitions into something seen and practised. It also sets up the later years, in which the repertories are studied in more depth and the work of repertorisation grows.

For the student, the practical advice follows from the syllabus. Attend the demonstrations closely and write down how the case was taken, not only what was found. Read the Organon’s case-taking aphorisms in the same weeks. When Boericke’s repertory arrives, keep Kent’s beside it and compare how each treats the same area.

As this room fills, a student will find pieces written to this syllabus: orientations to case taking in simple, acute and chronic cases, study notes that pair the Organon’s case-taking aphorisms with the practical demonstration, an introduction to Boericke’s repertory set beside Kent’s, and explainers on constitution, diathesis, susceptibility and temperament as the repertory uses them. Everything here carries the second-year tag and the Repertory category, so it also stands on the Repertory topic in Homoeopathy Knowledge. The room is short of writing today, not of purpose.