Organon §95

Pay special attention to the smallest details in cases of chronic disease.

In cases of chronic disease, the investigation of the above mentioned and all remaining signs of disease must be conducted as carefully and minutely as possible, and one must go into the smallest details. This is because:

1. In chronic diseases, these details are the most peculiar and least resemble the signs of rapidly passing [acute] diseases. These cannot be taken too exactly if a cure is to be achieved.

2. Chronically ill patients become so accustomed to their long sufferings that they pay little or no attention to the smaller, often very characteristic accompanying befallments which are so decisive in singling out the remedy. They view them as almost a part of their natural state, nearly mistaking them for health, whose true feeling they have fairly well forgotten during the course of their fifteen to twenty year long suffering. It hardly occurs to them to believe that these accompanying symptoms, these remaining smaller or greater deviations from the healthy state, could have a connection with their main malady.