Foreword to
The Homeopathic Emergency Guide—A Quick Reference Handbook to Effective Homeopathic Care of Thomas Kruzel, N.D., 1993.
by André Saine, N.D., F.C.A.H.

All cases of dynamic diseases, acute or chronic, even when resulting from mechanical or psychological injuries, are amenable to homeopathy, the science of therapeutics. By carefully applying the law of similars, the physician will observe that all cases of curable dynamic disease are curable with homeopathy. To achieve this noble goal the physician must be thoroughly familiar with the principles of homeopathy as taught in the Organon and must know how to make use of the reliable materia medica such as Hahnemann's Chronic Diseases. Repertories are used as essential links between the patient's symptoms and our vast materia medica.

Clinical guides, such as this Homeopathic Emergency Manual, provide the practitioner with a synopsis of the most characteristic symptoms of the leading remedies in a given condition. Their object is to give assistance, especially to the less experienced practitioner, in those acute cases where long research for the simillimum is not always practical. It is often in these acute cases that the younger practitioner will develop confidence in his/her skills, and in homeopathy, as there is no context where the patient responds as quickly to the indicated remedy.

I would like to point out two general drawbacks of clinical guides. First, any clinical guide fails through its inherent incompleteness because only the leading remedies in a given condition can be presented. The symptomatology of each remedy presented is also limited to only the leading, characteristic symptoms. In clinical practice the patient will most of the time present some symptoms that can only be found in a more complete materia medica.

Second, there is the inevitable temptation to associate remedies, the "best" remedies, for a given disease. The practice of pure homeopathy consists of constant individualization. The more we understand our science the more we individualize. Allopathy tends to treat diseases by generalizing. Such and such drugs are indentified with a class of disease and vice versa.

In homeopathy our aim is to restore health by treating the sick through constant individualization. Any remedy could be indicated in any given case even if never reported or suggested before. This unlimited possibility of correspondence between the symptoms of the patient and the simillimum is denied to us in a clinical guide. For allopathy the diagnosis of a pathological entity is generally essential for the administration of the treatment. For the practice of homeopathy it is not essential to know the name of the disease and the more pathognomonic a symptom is, the less value it has for finding the indicated remedy. However the knowledge of pathology and diagnosis remains as important for the homeopath as it is for the allopath but for different purposes. Adolph Lippe, the great homeopathic master, wrote, "The more knowledge the healer has of pathology the better will he be able to discern these very characteristic and valuable symptoms essentially belonging to the individual and not to the sick physiology; therefore the best pathologist will make the best healer."

Hahnemann developed homeopathy during a period of over 50 years. He never published any of his clinical cases or came close to writing a clinical guide. He was very adamant about not associating remedies with the name of a disease. In fact he was greatly annoyed when Franz Hartmann, one of his close students, published in 1831, Therapeutics of Acute Diseases. In this clinical guide Hartmann had attempted to facilitate the practice of homeopathy for beginners and for allopaths by associating remedies with names of diseases. Hahnemann wrote at once to Hartmann the following: "Owing to the difficult nature of our homeopathic method of treatment, which requires so much thought and subtle differentiation for it to be successfully practiced, to try and popularise and render it empirical to the extent you intend, seems an impossible and uneasy task, even harmful in the hands of the laity who have received no training."

In March 1833, about 18 months after the publication of Hartmann's Therapeutics, Hahnemann wrote in the preface of the 5th edition of the Organon: "Homeopathy is a perfectly simple system of medicine, remaining always fixed in its principles as in its practice, which, like the doctrine whereon it is based, if rightly apprehended will be found to be so exclusive (and only in that way serviceable), that as the doctrine must be accepted in its purity, so it must be purely practiced, and all backward straying to the pernicious routine of the old scool (whose opposite it is, as day to night) is totally inadmissible, otherwise it ceases to deserve the honourable name of homeopathy.

"That some misguided physicians who would wish to be considered homeopaths, engraft some, to them more familiar, allopathic malpractices upon their nominally homeopathic treatment, is owing to ignorance of the doctrine, laziness, contempt for the suffering humanity, and ridiculous conceit; and, besides showing unpardonnable negligence in searching for the best homeopathic specific for each case of disease, has often a base love of gain and other sordid motives for its spring and for its results? that they cannot cure all important and serious diseases (which pure and careful homeopathy can), and that they send many of their patients to that place whence no one returns, whilst the friends console themselves with the reflection that everything (including every hurtful allopathic process!) has been done for the departed."

Hahnemann intended that his reprimand of Hartmann be seen as a warning to prevent future misrepresentation of our strict and exacting method in the attempt to make its practice more accessible, all of it at the expense of the patient's welfare. Since that time, a great number of clinical guides have been published most of them neglecting Hahnemann's warning by being gross misrepresentations of our science. However a small number of clinical guides have been presented which are within the realms of pure homeopathy. Jahr's Clinical Guide was one of the first ones to provide better differential materia medica. Then we saw the appearance of Boenninghausen's Therapeutics of Intermittent Fevers and later Treatment of Hooping Cough. Here in America some true classics were published such as Bell's Diarrhea, Guernsey's Obstetrics, Minton's Uterine Therapeutics, Allen's Therapeutics of Fever, Yingling's Accoucheur's Emergency Manual, Nash's Leaders in Respiratory Organs, Pulford's Pneumonia, Roberts' Rheumatic Remedies, etc and in England Tyler's Pointers.

Dr. Kruzel is now presenting to the profession in this Homeopathic Emergency Manual a very practical and reliable guide to assist the practitioner in those cases during acute crisis when "time is short and judgement difficult." Every conscientious practitioner of homeopathy will find this guide a quick and valuable reference. If this guide is used with the understanding of the absolute necessity to constantly individualize our cases it can only increase our clinical success. Generalization and routinist thinking will inevitably spell failure, failure only for the practitioner and the patient, and not for homeopathy or the the law of similars. Since Hahnemann, the key to success has always been to first make a thorough and skillful examination of the sick, and then carefully choose the remedy the most similar to the totality of the characteristic symptoms of the patient.

Often at the bedside of the sick in acute crisis the symptoms may appear deficient, especially in cases presenting with a lowered state of consciousness. One will have then to patiently and carefully examine the sick person and question the attendants until clues indicating the simillimum are discovered. Lippe, the prince of prescribers, was so right when he said, "Patients do not often give us the symptoms as we would wish them given, and we have then to apply our individual judgement to find by interrogation what the real, true, symptoms of the sick are. But we must never rest till we obtain a clear conception of the case before us."

Some imperfections may be found in this work like in any other work of this type. As this manual is the cumulative experience of the profession such a guide matures with time. Additions must be constantly entered, refinements and corrections made to the point of precision, and differentiation pushed further. When future editions of this manual become warranted the author will judiciously add that cumulative experience and further complete this already very reliable manual.

I recommend this practical and valuable manual coming from the hands of Dr. Kruzel, an able and honest worker of homeopathy.