This is the computer version of a repertory that was based on using paper cards to work the case. This obviously was before computers but had the same idea of making the work easier by having these cards you could select instead of writing out the rubric by hand. The cards looked like this:
You can that the rubric is “Cough” and then the applicable remedies are punched out holes in the card. The practitioner would select two or three symptoms that were important to the case, pull out the appropriate cards and layer them over each other. Then, holding them up to the light, the light would shine through the holes that were punched out for all the cards. This was then an eliminative analysis.
Boger’s Card Repertory
About This Repertory
C. M. Boger’s General Analysis is a very restricted repertory of about 450 rubrics and this restriction was done deliberately. The title “General Analysis” means that the rubrics are general ones rather than particulars. It was designed to be used primarily with chronic cases that were lacking characteristic or guiding symptoms, especially cases that were vague, muddled, or confused. So if you study the rubrics you will see that, to a very great extent, they have been generalized. For example, there is a rubric just for “respiration” and another for “bones”. How to understand this? You may have a patient with a respiratory problem of some sort and you have already tried to analyze it in more detail without success. Perhaps you used a rubric like “respiration, difficult” or “respiration, accelerated” and were not able to successfully find the remedy you needed. Dr. Boger realized that many cases, especially chronic ones, are often obscured by previous treatment or by the development of pathology. So some of the apparent detail you see in your patient may, in fact, be a distortion of the natural image of the disease. You can compensate for that by using a rubric like “respiration” that is not so detailed. The way to understand the rubric would be this translation: any condition or symptom that has affected the respiration. It is surprising how often this approach is more accurate than the usual detailed analysis.
A few additional rubrics from Boger’s Synoptic Key have been added to round out the General Analysis. There is a closeness between the rubrics from the Synoptic Key and they fit in nicely.
The Analysis Page
Here is how it looks when a case is worked up:
This analysis has used only two symptoms which you can see listed. This is an eliminative analysis which narrows down the remedies for consideration. Then, on the right, there is a grading of the remedies by number of rubrics and remedy grade.
The Rubric Listing Page
Another part of this is where the rubrics are listed and where searches for rubrics can be done. It looks like this:
There is an additional repertory, mostly from Boenninghausen’s Repertory (but also some other selected sources) which has been added to the General Analysis which makes the program more useful because we can draw on another almost 2000 rubrics. The ones from the added sources are in red color; the General Analysis rubrics (the original ones) are in black color.
There are many other features that help with study, that allow exporting rubric listings that you have created (even into MacRepertory for further analysis). You have to explore it to see all that it can do for you.