100Take a through case when investigating an epidemic or sporadic disease. With little exception, each reigning epidemic differs from all previous ones.In the investigation of symptom complex of epidemic disease, it makes no difference if something similar has ever appeared before under the same or any other name .The noveltry or peculiarity of such a contagion makes no difference, either in its examination or its cure, since the physician presupposes that the pure image of each and every presently reigning disease is new and unknown. He must explore it for himself from the ground up if he wants to be a genuine ,through medical-art practitioner who never put conjecture in the place of prescription and never assumes (with out carefully spying out all of the disease manifestation)that the treatment for a case of disease entrusted to him is either entirely or partially known .This is all the more case here since each reigning epidemic is in many regards a phenomenon of a particular kind that is found, by exact investigation, to deviate greatly from all former epidemics(which have been falsely labeled with certain names)this is true of all contagious disease except those that stem from an invariable infectious tinde ,such as smallpox, measles etc

101The symptom complex of an epidemic disease only comes to light through the observation of several cases involving different bodily constitutions

It is may well be that the physician does not get a prescription of complete image of the epidemic disease with first case he encounters since each such collective disease only brings the complex of its symptoms to the light of day with the closer observations of several cases. Mean while ,the carefully investigating physician can often come so close to the true state, even with the first or second patient, that he become alive to the characteristic image of the disease, and then finds a fitting, homeopathically commensurate remedy for it.102Upon recording the symptoms of several cases of this kind ,the sketch of the disease image become more and more complete-not larger and more verbose, but more characteristic ,more encomposing of the peculiarity of this collective disease .On one hand the general signs (e.g.-loss of appetite ,sleeplessness)obtain their own narrower determinations .On the other hand ,the more marked ,particular and(at least in this connection)rarer symptoms ,belonging to only a few disease, emerge from what is characteristic for this epidemic.To be sure, all those afflicted by this epidemic at that time have the same disease, following from one and the same source. However the entire extent of such an epidemic disease and the totality of its symptoms (knowledge of which belongs to the overviews of the complete disease-image, so one can choose the most fitting homoeopathic remedy for this symptom-complex) cannot be perceived in a single patient, but can only be completely abstracted and gathered (inferred) from the suffering of several patients of different bodily constitutions-Hahnemann s Organon of the Medical Art translated by Wenda Brewster Oreilly PhDHahnemann is against the nosological classification of disease not because it has no utility but because it is misleading for treatment purpose. In epidemic disease, the disease cause (WHETHER PHYSCICAL OR BIOLOGICAL) might be identical or of a nature of a fixed miasm, giving rise to a general picture of the disease which all the patient conform to; but general picture of the disease which all the patient confirm to; but each individual patient add his quota to this general symptom-complex to make each patient unique and different from other patients.As for example in a cholera epidemic all cholera patients present such common picture as to render the diagnosis of cholera very easy.But if each individual patient is carefully investigated, enough symptoms might be ascertained to individualize one from other. So that ten cholera patients might eacg require different remedy which is most similar in symptoms to each of them.Thus treatment by the name of disease, in a stereotyped way, is not possible in the homoeopathic mode of treatment. Individuals vary from each other and even the generic picture of the epidemic disease may vary from year to year.So Hahnemann says these useless and misused names of disease ought to have no influence on the practice of a true physician, who knows that he has to judge of and to cure diseases, not according to the similarity of the names of a single one of their symptoms, but according to the to the totality of the signs of individual state of each particular patient ,whose affection it is his duty carefully to investigate, but never give to hypothetical gues at it. If ,however it is deemed necessary sometimes to make use of names of disease, in order ,when talking about patient to ordinary person ,to render ourselves intelligible in few words, we ought only to employ them as collective names and tell them.eg the patient has a kind of St. Vitu s dance, a kind of dropsy, a kind of typhus, a kind of auge; but(in order to go away once for all with the mistaken notions these names give rise to) we should never say he has the St .Vitus dance ,the typhus, the dropsy ,the ague ,as there are certainly no disease of these and similar of these and similar names of fixed unvarying character(vide foot note of 81)So Hahnemann recommends to investigate each sporadic and epidemic disease as a new and unknown case and select medicine according to symptoms similarity.In epidemic disease a complete picture of the disease becomes apparent to a physician only when he observes a number of cases during the epidemic .No disease is fully manifested through symptoms in one individual case. Epidemic disease may be taken as providing or a particular noxious agent on a gigantic scale ,as a complete picture of a drug disease is obtained after collecting the different groups of symptoms from good many provers; similarly the complete picture of a natural disease is grasped through observation of a good many persons falling victims of that epidemic disease. commentary by Dr.B.K Sarkar