This book review is reprinted with the permission of the International Foundation for Homeopathy
PO Box 7
Edmonds, WA 98020
(206) 776-4147

New Repertory
from the Macintosh/MacRepertory community
Reviewed by Dean Crothers, MD
The Complete Repertory: Mind - by Roger van Zandvoort
Institute for Research in Homeopathic Information and Symptomatology
Delftsekade 23, 2266 AJ Leidshendam, The Netherlands. 1994
449 pages. $119.00 (thumb index), $99.00 (without thumb index)

When I first opened a copy of Kent's Repertory of the Homccopathic Materia Medica in 1976 1 was truly impressed by the overwhelming amount of detail involved in the work. This catalog of odd symptoms and strange abbreviations contains words like "lienteric" and "mania-a-potu," and archaic spellings like "haemorrhage" and "oesophagus."

The book, of course, made no sense to me at all at that time. I was encouraged by my teachers to trust this venerable book to provide insights for the healing of sick people. But, such a "leap of faith" is difficult for someone coming out of contemporary medical training and seeking a scientific alternative to conventional medical practice.

As I became familiar with the book, studying it and using it regularly for about 14 years, I did develop a kind of reverence for it. It is a masterful work from which patterns of remedies emerge and show their similarities to patterns of illness seen in the practice of the observant physician.

The development of this reverence created a dilemma for me. I found myself becoming somewhat defensive about the content of the book when challenged by new students of homeopathy who demanded something modern, something readable, something that is understandable to the "uninitiated." On the other hand, I was also more than a little embarrassed to share this book with non-homeopathic colleagues; the book is just too out-of-date and apparently irrelevant to contemporary life.

In fact, Kent's Repertory is still extremely useful. It has been an integral tool used in the healing of innumerable patients, friends, and family members since it first was published in 1877. But, it is more difficult to use than it needs to be.

In the publisher's preface to the third edition, James Tyler Kent is quoted, "This third edition completes my life work. I have brought it up to date. I have rearranged and made numerous corrections in addition to adding many new remedies. I have verified every symptom in the book. You will find all remedies of any value contained herein. The book is complete."

There remained numerous inconsistencies and errors. J.T. Kent's widow, Clara Louise Kent, MD, died in 1943, having edited and revised her deceased husband's work. The fifth edition was published in 1945 by Ehrhart and Karl. Many of the errors and inconsistencies remained in spite of the five revisions to the 1423-page Kent's Repertory. Laudable attempts to produce improvements were published in the past two decades. The first, to my knowledge, was the Synthetic Repertory, covering the Mind, Generals, Sex, and Food sections only. Many of the remedy additions in this work were found to be suspect. Later, Jost Kunsli published his Repertorium Generale, representing a tremendous amount of work on his part, but still leaving much to be desired.

Last year Robin Murphy published his Homeopathic Medical Repertory, a Modern Alphabetical Repertory. This dramatic departure from the time-honored organization and structure of Kent's Repertory touched off critical reviews and a rather warm debate over the book's style and content. Murphy's book is divided into chapters, and these chapters are listed in alphabetical order, Feet following Face, Mind following Male, which is the chapter after Lungs. For many experienced homeopaths, this book was too much of a change to incorporate easily into practice. Others complained about the lack of documentation as to the sources of remedy additions found in the book.

During the past few years, computers have had a significant impact on the ability to compile, sort, index, and search the homeopathic materia medica. With this enhanced capability, two major computerized repertories have emerged, one from the IBM-compatible computer "camp," and the other from users of Macintosh computers. The former, Synthesis, was reviewed in the November-December issue of Resonance. The latter, van Zandvoort's Complete Repertory, is the subject of this review.

It is obvious from the briefest exposure to this new repertory that Roger van Zandvoort has done an incredible job. He has gone to great lengths to uncover errors in Kent's Repertory, to investigate into the reason for each error, and to arrive at the proper correction. This became clear to me in listening to his discussion of some rubrics at the IFH Case Conference this past June.

There are many additions included in this work. For example, The Mind chapter of Kent's Repertory comprises 95 pages, in the Complete Repertory, the Mind chapter comprises 377 pages! Kent called his final version complete. Van Zandvoort names his version "Complete." Yet, I feel quite certain that there is a great amount of work yet to be done.

I must admit that I am partial to Synthesis. This is partly because I have been ever-so-slightly involved in its creation, and partly because it impresses me as being somewhat more conservative in approaching the prospect of adding a new remedy to a rubric.

This is not meant to take away from the value of the Complete Repertory. The first volume, "The Mind," is all that is available so far. The finished product, coming soon I understand, with all of the volumes, will be a truly great work. At $119.00 per volume, though, it is going to mean a substantial investment.

RESONANCE JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1995