05/13/2026
Insights from Dr. R. F. Rabe during the great flu pandemic of 1918-19.
(In truth, to obtain the greatest success with homeopathy, physicians must apply the practical rules with meticulous exactness, and should therefore be able to prescribe any of the more than 500 remedies at their disposal. Comment by Dr. Saine).
Dr. R. F. Rabe wrote in a 1918 editorial in the "Homoeopathic Recorder": “Bryonia should not therefore be given when Phosphorus is required, and vice versa. The physician who boasts of seeing sixty to eighty cases a day is not able to prescribe correctly or successfully. The thing can’t be done! It may be good business, but it is very poor science. To prescribe successfully for the pneumonia patient requires that the physician sit down quietly at the bedside and calmly contemplate the case from every side and angle. We homeopaths are compelled to treat patients, not diseases and the recognition of the symptom image is by no means always easy. He who is not dominated in his actions by law and principle is likely to be easily stampeded, so that his therapeutics become a jumble of unrelated and antagonistic reme-dial measures.”
Dr. Rabe further described an example of excellence in prescribing: “The most frequently required remedies, both for the influenza and� pneumonia, have been Bryonia, Eupatorium perfoliatum, Gelsemium, Phosphorus, �Rhus tox, Ferrum phosphoricum, and Iodium. The indications for these are �well known to us all. Of course, other remedies have also been indicated. Among others, we saw a bronchopneumonia which had begun upon and� rapidly spread from the right side. The ten-year old patient was doing nicely �on Phosphorus when, without discoverable cause, a sudden extension of the� disease to uninvolved lung tissue took place with a sharp rise of temperature. Ferrum phosphoricum took the sharp edge off the violence, but did not check the �process. A mahogany-red right cheek (upon which the child had not been �lying, thank you) was sufficient to arouse our Sherlock Holmesian sense of �the mysterious. Judicious diplomatic sparring revealed the fact that our �little patient objected to having her feet warmly covered. This trinity of� symptoms, flushed right cheek, wants feet cool, right-sided pulmonary complaints, was quite sufficient to serve as the foundation for our therapeutic tool. Of course, Sanguinaria canadensis was given every 3 hours, and in the ridiculous �200th. Within twelve hours, the temperature dropped to normal and remained �there. Gentle reader, we defy any old school man to perform the same stunt! �It can't be done. �Neither can it be done by the routine prescriber, to whom pneumonia� spells Aconite, Bryonia, Phosphorus and Antimonium tartaricum. Successful prescribing is an art, and to� master the art means more than a superficial knowledge of a few headliner �keynotes in large type. Treat the patient, not the disease!”
