Allen's Keynotes and Characteristics
H.C. Allen · 1899 · 3rd edition (1910) · 187 remedies with a page here
The few symptoms that, when genuinely present, point at one remedy and not its neighbours.
H.C. Allen collected what he called keynotes: the small number of features so characteristic of a remedy that their presence is worth more than a long list of ordinary symptoms. The book is short by design, and the comparisons at the end of each remedy — this against that, and how to tell them apart — are the part practitioners return to.
A keynote is not a shortcut to a prescription and Allen does not claim it is. It is a reason to look harder at one remedy. Used as a substitute for taking the case it produces confident wrong prescriptions, which is the standard criticism of keynote prescribing and a fair one.
This is the third edition of 1910, published by Boericke & Tafel.
Reach for this one when: Two or three remedies survived your repertorisation and you need what separates them.
Create a free account — read all six books side by sideEvery remedy in Allen's Keynotes
187 remedies. Each page carries what this book says, alongside the other public-domain Materia Medicas that cover the same remedy.
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The other books
- Boericke's Homoeopathic Materia Medica — The concise clinical Materia Medica that most Indian colleges teach from, in full.
- Kent's Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica — Kent teaching a class, one remedy at a time — fewer remedies, far more on each.
- Boger's Synoptic Key of the Materia Medica — A compressed key — the generals and the characteristic modalities, with very little narrative.
- Farrington's Clinical Materia Medica — Lectures that teach remedies in families, by comparing them with each other.
Source and copyright status. Published 1910: public domain in the US (before 1931) and in India (author died 1909). Replaces B. Jain's 2005 "rearranged and classified" edition (© the publisher), per the owner's decision of 13 Sep 2026. Reproduced as the author wrote it. This is a historical reference for students and practitioners, not medical advice.