Why adding more rubrics makes your repertorisation worse

More data, worse answer

It feels rigorous to add everything. Twenty rubrics looks thorough next to six. But repertorisation is not a search for the remedy that appears most often — it is a search for the remedy that covers what actually individualises this patient. Those are different questions, and padding the analysis answers the wrong one.

What happens mechanically

Every common rubric you add carries a large remedy list. Add enough of them and the polychrests — Sulphur, Lycopodium, Pulsatilla, Phosphorus — accumulate marks simply because they appear nearly everywhere. The small, sharply indicated remedy that covers the three peculiar symptoms gets pushed down the page.

This is not a flaw in the repertory. It is arithmetic doing exactly what you asked.

A working discipline

Aim for four to eight rubrics. If you have twenty, you have not finished the case — you have merely recorded it.

Select them like this:

1. One or two strange, rare and peculiar symptoms. These carry the most weight and the smallest remedy lists.
2. The mentals the patient actually demonstrated — not the ones they claimed. A patient who says "I''m quite calm" while gripping the chair is giving you an observation, not a statement.
3. General modalities — thermals, time aggravation, position, food desires and aversions. Generals outrank particulars.
4. One or two characteristic particulars, with the modality attached. "Headache" is not a rubric worth having. "Headache, better from firm pressure" is.

Grading, not just selecting

Weighting matters as much as selection. A symptom volunteered spontaneously, repeatedly, with emotion, is worth more than one extracted after three attempts. Most repertory software lets you weight a rubric; most students never touch that control.

The check that catches the error

Before you analyse, look at your rubric list and ask: "Could this list belong to a different patient?"

If it could — if it reads like a textbook description of a diagnosis rather than a portrait of one person — you have selected common symptoms, and the analysis will hand you a polychrest whatever you do.

Then verify against the text

The repertory narrows the field; it never decides. Take your top three to five candidates into the Materia Medica and read the full picture. The remedy that ranked second is very often the one the text confirms — and that outcome is normal, not a sign you did something wrong.