Glossary of homeopathic terms

Every technical term used across ItsHomeopathy — 70 definitions with examples, common misunderstandings, and links to the full study guides. Start with What Is Homeopathy, then learn these eleven words first: simillimum, proving, materia medica, repertory, modality, polychrest, potentization, miasm, aggravation, constitution, posology.

A

• Active and passive reaction — The body’s primary response to a remedy versus its secondary counter-response.
• Acute prescribing — Selecting a remedy for a recent, self-limited complaint with a clear exciting cause.
• Acute vs chronic disease — Hahnemann’s distinction between self-limited upsets and long-standing miasmatic patterns.
• Aetiology — The exciting cause or “never-well-since” event behind the current picture.
• Aggravation — A temporary intensification after a dose, classically read as a sensitivity signal.
• Antidote — A substance or remedy traditionally said to moderate an unwanted remedy effect.

C

• Case-taking — The structured interview recording main complaint plus sleep, digestion, temperature, fears, and modalities.
• Centesimal scale — C potencies made by 1:100 serial dilution with succussion at each step.
• Clinical rubric — A repertory entry built from cured clinical cases rather than provings alone.
• Compensated state — A balanced phase where the underlying pattern is masked by coping.
• Complementary remedy — A remedy traditionally following another well to complete the action.
• Concomitant — A symptom accompanying the main complaint without obvious pathological link.
• Constitutional prescribing — Matching the whole person — build, temperament, tendencies — over time.

D

• Decimal scale — X/D potencies made by 1:10 serial dilution with succussion.
• Dilution — The stepwise reduction of material quantity in potentization.
• Direction of cure — Hering’s observed healing direction: within-out, above-down, important-to-less.
• Doctrine of signatures — The old idea that plant form hints at use — of historical interest, not a prescribing rule.
• Drug picture — The full symptom pattern recorded for a remedy from provings, toxicology, and cases.

E

• Essence of a remedy — A teacher’s distilled core idea of a remedy for memory.

H

• Hering’s law of cure — Healing progresses from within out, above down, and in reverse order of appearance.

I

• Imponderabilia — Remedies prepared from non-material sources like light or magnetism (historical).
• Individualization — Different remedies for the same diagnosis based on personal modalities.

K

• Keynote — A striking characteristic symptom strongly suggesting a remedy.
• Kingdom classification — Grouping remedies by plant, mineral, or animal source with thematic tendencies.

L

• Laterality — Which side complaints begin or dominate.
• Law of similars — Like cures like: a substance causing symptoms in health may treat similar symptoms in illness.
• Levels of experience — Sankaran’s map from complaint to delusion to vital sensation.
• LM potency — Q potencies (1:50,000) for daily adjustable dosing in chronic care.

M

• Materia medica — Reference books of remedy pictures from provings, toxicology, and cases.
• Miasm — Hahnemann’s theory of chronic disease tendencies (psora, sycosis, syphilis; later additions).
• Miasmatic analysis — Classifying case features by miasmatic pattern to plan long-term strategy.
• Minimum dose — The smallest dose capable of response — central to homeopathic posology.
• Modality — What makes a symptom better or worse — often the deciding vote.
• Mother tincture — The original herbal extract (Ø) before potentization.

N

• Never well since — A clear onset point after which health never recovered.
• Nosode — Remedy prepared from diseased material (historical category).

O

• Organon — Hahnemann’s foundational text of homeopathic philosophy and method.

P

• Palliation — Temporary relief without changing the underlying pattern.
• Periodic table in homeopathy — Jan Scholten’s mapping of mineral remedies to periodic-table rows/columns.
• Pharmacopoeia — Official standards for remedy preparation and quality.
• Plussing method — Dissolving a dose in water with succussion before each repetition.
• Polychrest — A wide-use remedy appearing across many conditions.
• Posology — The study of potency, dose size, repetition, and timing.
• Potency — The labelled strength from dilution-succussion steps.
• Potentization — Serial dilution plus succussion/trituration to prepare remedies.
• Prover — A healthy volunteer recording effects in a proving trial.
• Proving — Systematic testing of a substance in health to map its picture.
• Psora — The fundamental miasm of deficiency and itch in Hahnemann’s model.

R

• Remedy — A potentized preparation matched to the symptom picture.
• Remedy relationships — How remedies follow, complement, antidote, or clash.
• Repertorization — Cross-referencing rubrics to shortlist candidate remedies.
• Repertory — Indexed symptom-to-remedy reference (Kent, Boenninghausen, Synthesis).
• Rubric — A single indexed symptom entry in a repertory.

S

• Sarcode — Remedy prepared from healthy tissue or secretion (category).
• Second prescription — What to do after the first dose: wait, repeat, change potency, or change remedy.
• Sensation level — The deepest felt experience words in Sankaran’s model.
• Simillimum — The single best-matching remedy for the totality.
• Single remedy — Classical rule of one remedy at a time.
• Source language — The patient’s exact words preserved verbatim in notes.
• Succussion — Vigorous shaking at each dilution step.
• Suppression — Driving an outer symptom inward without curing.
• Susceptibility — Individual proneness shaping which illnesses take hold.
• Symptom picture — The ordered totality used for matching.

T

• Thermal type — Whether the patient is predominantly chilly or warm-blooded.
• Tincture — Alcoholic herbal extract base.
• Tissue affinity — A remedy’s traditional tropism for certain tissues.
• Totality of symptoms — The whole characteristic picture used for matching.
• Trituration — Grinding insoluble substances with lactose for first potencies.

V

• Vital force — The self-regulating living principle in homeopathic philosophy.
• Vital sensation — The deepest consistent sensation words across complaints.

Build your homeopathic library

These are the books our guides cite most — the same editions students have used for generations. Compare formats (paperback, hardcover, Kindle) before choosing:

• Boericke’s Pocket Manual of Homoeopathic Materia Medica — the bedside differential companion. Search on Amazon
• Kent’s Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica — constitutional portraiture at full power. Search on Amazon
• Clarke’s Dictionary of Practical Materia Medica — clinical breadth across three volumes. Search on Amazon
• Hahnemann’s Organon of Medicine (6th edition) — the foundational text in modern translation. Search on Amazon
• Kent’s Repertory of the Homoeopathic Materia Medica — the most-used English repertory. Search on Amazon

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