Second Visit: Finding the Treasure

In 1980 Ahmid Currim once again travelled again to India, having kept in sporadic contact with Dr. Mittal. And again it was difficult to locate Dr. Mittal.

But eventually he did, and travelled with him to a small village, Rampur, where he said he had hidden his copy of the repertory together with the remains of the Treasure.

At a house in Rampur the head of the family and Dr. Mittal conferred privately. They then told Dr. Currim that he would have to return another time — the books were hidden in a small wooden hut in the fields, and the required 20 km motorcycle trip was not possible at this time.

In vain, Dr. Currim explained that he had limited time and that he had come so far from the United States. After much persuasion, they finally asked him to return in 7 days.

Dr. Currim was very discouraged when he returned to Bombay. Despite his discouragement he vowed to try once more before returning to the U.S.

He left Bombay and met Dr. Mittal in Delhi and then journeyed together to Rampur. This time Dr. Mittal asked the man to produce his books.

After a lot of argument, a large bundle wrapped in a large dirty cloth was produced and the contents were dumped on the ground. Among them was Dr. Mittal's copy of the repertory, another Indian edition of the repertory, a copy of the First Edition of Kent's Repertory published in 1899, and two volumes of Lectures on Materia Medica — given by Kent and typed by his students.

Dr. Mittal told Ahmed Currim that he should take all material with him to the U.S. In addition he entrusted him with thousands of pieces of the Treasure that had been cut up. At the stopover in Frankfurt, Dr. Currim phoned Mme. Schmidt to tell her the joyful news — the Treasure was recovered!

Meticulous detective work

Since 1980 Dr. Currim has reviewed the material entrusted to him by Dr. Mittal.

There are several thousand pieces of the Treasure that were cut up. Ahmed Currim spent several hundred hours identifying several hundreds of these pieces to see where they fit in the Third, and later American Editions.

Next he compared them with Dr. Mittal's copy. He found that Mittal's copy had the exact same corrections found on these several hundred bits.

In addition, there were 44 almost complete pages of the original Treasure, easily identifiable as being from the Chapter of Extremities. The handwriting of Dr. J.T. Kent on these pages is also easily recognized — clearly quite different from the hand that appears on the facsimile page of the 1980 Indian Edition. That handwriting seems to be that of Dr. Mittal (slides from facsimile and Mittal's copy are shown).

The information in the bits of the Treasure duplicates exactly the data in the 44 almost complete pages of the MKR (Mittal's copy). This leads to the conclusion that Dr. Mittal's copy of the repertory is a true and correct version of the Treasure (Dr. Kent's personal copy of the Second Revised Edition).

The identifying and comparison work was also aided by the Homeopathic computer program RADAR. Dr. Currim finally succeeded in identifying each bit of the Treasure.

Conclusion

As was previously mentioned, in 1980 a revision of Kent's repertory was published in India under a new title — "Kent's Final General Repertory" instead of the original title, "Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica".

This book was "Revised, Corrected, Augmented and Edited" by Dr. Pierre Schmidt and Dr. Diwan Harish Chand. According to both the history described above and careful a examination of this book, it is clear that Dr. Mittal's copy was not used for this new edition, but rather the source was a copy from a Mr. Shindoo.

In the past, Mr. Shindoo had visited Dr. Mittal for a few days. He had hurriedly copied the corrections from the Mittal copy into his own repertory. Dr. D.H. Chand had then purchased this copy.

A comparison of several pages of the Mittal copy with the newly titled repertory shows errors in this 'Final General Repertory'. It is probable that many other inaccuracies crept up in such transcribing, done under such hurried conditions by Mr. Shindoo.

In addition, the Mittal copy contained not only the corrections from the Treasure, but also remedies that Dr. Mittal added from Kent's own copy of Hering's Guiding Symptoms.

Unfortunately Dr. Mittal did not stay in contact with Dr. Currim. Dr. Currim eventually did all the work himself, in cooperation with Archibel and Dr. Frederik Schroyens, and with additional help from the German Hahnemannian International Institute for Homeopathic Documentation.

To summarise, we can say that finally it is now possible to bring you the corrections of Kent repertory. These corrections are inserted into 'The Treasure Edition' of the Synthesis Repertory — the edition that follows after Synthesis 9.1. It includes all of Kent's corrections and additions, plus many other sources.

The history of our homeopathic literature can sometimes be a detective story. The original Treasure of Kent's personal repertory is transported to Pierre Schmidt in Switzerland, where it is stolen and brought to India where it gets cut to pieces. It ends up in a dirty cloth, hidden for years in a small cabin.

Finally, in the hand of the dogged, and tireless ex-mathematician, Ahmed Currim, the information is made available to the world.

Our grateful thanks to Dr. Ahmed Nooruddin Currim, M.D., Ph.D., Norwalk, Connecticut for finding this Treasure.

11,398 additions and corrections have been inserted into the 'Synthesis Treasure Edition', as noted by Kent in his personal copies of the different editions of his Repertory, including 333 handwritten additions from his copy of Guiding Symptoms by Hering.

In the new computer version of Synthesis the Treasure Edition, available with RADAR 10, these additions and corrections are abbreviated as follows:
"k1b1", "k1b2", "k1a1" and "k9".

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