Concordance Repertory of Materia Medica

Heritage

n the introduction, Gentry explains that in 1876 he was looking for a particular symptom- a dull frontal headache, worse in the temples, with aching in the umbilicus.

After searching through repertories and materia medicae for several days, he thought,

"If we only had a repertory arranged on the plan of Cruden's Concordance of the Bible it would have to be necessary only to refer to the letter 'U' and under "umbilicus' find at once the desired symptom."

These massive volumes were the end product of that desire.

Julian Winston writes:
These volumes were not widely used. Julia M. Green characterized it was "absolutely worthless on account of bulk and repetition without useful method."

Of the work, Kents says, "...the most shameful work that ever appeared, and it is no wonder the author has gone over to Christian Science and abandoned medicine entirely. Not over 40 percent of the genuine materia medica is in this pretended complete work, while one half of Gentry's symptoms cannot be found in any materia medica. It is a mess of trash."

As an experiment, Dr. K-H. Gypser noted the symptoms that appear at the top right page of every 100 pages, and checked them for accuracy. He could trace them all back to provings and reliable sources.

Who to believe? Was Kent simply trashing the competition?

From:
The Heritage of Homoeopathic Literature
copyright 2001 by Julian Winston
Reprinted with the permission of the author

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