What to do when a medicine does not work §249-§252 Organon §249

Any medicine that brings forth new and troublesome symptoms was not homeopathically selected.

Every medicine prescribed for a case of disease which, in the course of its action, brings forth new and troublesome symptoms that are not peculiar to the disease to be cured, is not capable of engendering true improvement. Such a medicine is not to be deemed as homeopathically selected. 204

1. If the aggravation is significant, it should be partly extinguished by an antidote, given as soon as possible. Then the next means should be given, which has been more precisely selected according to its similarity of action.

2. If the troublesome symptoms are not all-too-violently adverse, then the next means should be administered at once, to take the place of the incorrectly selected one. 205

Comment

204 According to all experience, almost no dose of a highly potentized, specifically fitting homeopathic medicine can be prepared so that it is too small to bring forth a distinct improvement in the disease for which it is suited (§161, §279). Therefore, one would be practicing inexpediently and detrimentally (as happens with the hitherto method of treatment) if one wanted to repeat or even increase the dose of the same medicine when there is no improvement or when there is a small aggravation, under the delusion that the medicine was not able to be of service on account of its small quantity (i.e. , its all-too-small dose). Every aggravation involving new symptoms (when nothing untoward has occurred in the mental or bodily regimen) always means that the previously taken medicine was inappropriate to this case of disease. It never indicates that the dose was too weak.

205 Antidotes will never be necessary in the practice of a well-trained and conscientiously careful physician if the physician begins treatment by giving his well-selected medicine in the smallest possible dose, as he should do. An equally minute dose of a better-selected medicine will put everything in order again.