Case Taking 2 - Centre of the Case - Acute V. Chronic

[Soroush Ebrahimi]

Acute v. Chronic

Acute diseases are by nature short in duration and self limiting.
A disease may last 3 or 4 weeks and still be regarded as acute. Indeed some
childhood acute diseases can take nearly a month for the patient to recover.
e.g Whooping cough.

Acutes are self limiting because the body - with or without external help -
will either recover or die!

However, many chronic diseases have an acute aetiology. (Never been since
flu ...) But they go on & on and eventually the patient dies from the
primary or secondary symptoms of the disease. As a rule, without
homeopathic treatment, there is no recovery from chronic diseases.

So a gastric set of symptoms from badly cooked food - where there is no
history of such symptoms - is still an acute even if the pt has not
recovered after a couple of weeks.

The on-set of the disease is of course of importance and if you look at my
'acute' case taking notes, you will note that attention is drawn about the
on set of the disease. One would want to be able to quickly distinguish
between Acon / Bell & Bry / Gels type cases.

The way a body reacts to a disease is very much dependant on its
susceptibility. If it is not susceptible, then it will be rather like water
off a duck's back. The patient will not perhaps even notice that they were
in contact with disease elements or had drank contaminated water.

However, those who are susceptible, may be knocked out in a very short time.
Perhaps just a block of contaminated ice in their drink will see to it that
they are bed-ridden for a number of days.

In my view the case taker must take note of the important and critical
symptoms of the patient. The homeopath must ALWAYS interfere with the
course of a disease if the disease is causing undue pain and discomfort or
if the safety of the patient is at risk. So in an acute - because one's
time may be short - you need your wits about you to seek the information to
the best of your ability.

Rgds
Soroush

[Ahmed N. Currim]

Study Kent Lectures on Homeopathic Philosopy Lecture XXVI.
ancurrim@earthlink.net