This book review is reprinted with the permission of the National Center for Homeopathy
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Materia Medica with Repertory, ninth edition,
by William Boericke, MD, and Oscar Boericke, MD.
Published by Boericke & Tafel, Santa Rosa, CA.
Hardbound, $24.95 [Editor's note: As of January 1997 Minimum Price Books' price is $28.85]
Reviewed by Julian Winston

Well, B&T did it. They have released a new edition of their old standby. They have been using the same plates to print the book since 1927, and the plates have worn out. If you've seen a recent printing you've noticed that many of the letters are split and hard to read. Boericke & Tafel was running out of the last printing and they decided to re-typeset the present 9th edition. The new book is a bit smaller in size-getting back more to the original concept of a "pocket book." It does NOT look like a Bible any more. It's pretty classy. It has one page marker sewn in. The book now has photos of both William and Oscar Boericke, and includes the introductions to the prior editions- which gives one a sense of how the book developed. Included is also a brief glossary of terms that are used in the book - inimical, complementary, etc. which should help some people to understand the book a bit more.

Because it was all re-set, the type is a bit smaller. Therefore the page numbers are not the same as the previous editions we've had. On one level, this doesn't really matter. Coralium Rubrum, now on page 188, was on page 234 in the 3rd edition, on page 306 in the 6th edition, and on page 235 in the 9th, which is the one we're all used to. The problem is that we've been used to it for over 60 years. So when we say, "It's in Boericke on pg. xxx," it won't hold for the new edition. So it goes...

Unfortunately, some of the typographical errors of the old 9th edition have crept in. "CORNEA" in the "eye" section of the repertory is still listed as "ORNEA" although it is listed as "Cornea" in the therapeutic index. The list of "Pharmaceutical and Latin names" and "common names" are reversed. These are small details that can be corrected in future editions, and will be easy to correct since the entire book now exists not only as printing plates, but as a data file which can be corrected, updated, and revised for future editions.

And from some others...
Boericke's Materia Medica
Reviewed in American Homeopathist, September, 1901.
Frank Kraft, MD, ed.
There can never be too many homeopathic materia medica text books, especially when they come to us from so eminent a student, teacher, and practitioner as is this Boericke, who is already well known and famous for his many other ultra-homeopathic books. This little book is marvelously compact, considering that it carries all the remedies with which the well-read homeopath is familiar certainly as to name, though not always, or very rarely, with all the alleged virtues. In the very brief compass of half a page the author gives the most important point of each of all the remedies, and the rest thereupon becomes easy. We are reminded to say now, what we have frequently said before, that these little text-books are not to be considered as books from which to study a remedy. They are more in the nature of an encyclopedia, which teaches by suggestion rather than from the volume of matter contained. Having studied Arum, for instance, and then not used Arum for a year or more, the points of the remedy will, in great part, fall out of the memory; but a reference to one of these splendid books instantly, by association and suggestion, recall the larger study, and thus our memory is kept alive. No one for a moment supposes that Dr. Boericke intends to put this book on the market as a substitute for the larger and more necessary study of the remedies, as we all need in our lives to study and assimilate the remedies of our profession; it is merely in the light of an assistant, to recall the knowledge that we have stored away about our clothes; also to suggest to the busy man where he may find the remedy which he was not taught while at school; and so look it up and study it. The first few sentences under each remedy are alone worth the price of the book. They are range finders. After that the minute selection of the remedy becomes measurably easier. Needless to add that we admire the little pocketbook, and recommend it to our readers and good homeopaths everywhere.

Review in the Homeopathic Recorder, July, 1901
From Hering and Breyfogle, of old times, down to Fahnestock, "A, B, C," Clarke, and Boericke of the current year, what a host of "pocket" and "condensed" Materia Medicas have been issued. And unless the authors have re-proved the remedies (which they haven't), what new can they have to say? Yet they are one and all useful little books, for the very life of homeopathy is its Materia Medica; for minus that it has no reason for being, and we cannot have too much attention paid to this subject. Dr. Boericke's book is a very handsome production, printed on "bible paper" and fitted for size in the pocket.

Review in the Homeopathic Recorder, April, 1906.
The first part of this neat manual is comprised of 678 pages of Materia Medica, being 25 more than the second edition; followed by 356 pages of repertory, the remainder being a list of remedies. The repertory is the new feature of this edition and runs "Mind," "Head," "Eyes," 'Ears," and so on to "Modalities." The fact that a third edition should be called for speaks loudly for the intrinsic merit of this compact Materia Medica, or, as the author term it, "Pocket Encyclopedia of Homeopathic Materia Medica." We predict a steady and permanent sale for this book.

HOMEOPATHY TODAY JANUARY 1991