Examination of the Patient

Organon Aphorism §95

In chronic diseases the investigation of the signs of disease above mentioned, and of all others, must be pursued as carefully and circumstantially as possible, and the most minute peculiarities must be attended to, partly because in these diseases they are the most characteristic and least resemble those of acute diseases, and if a cure is to be affected they cannot be too accurately noted; partly because the patients become so used to their long sufferings that they pay little or no heed to the lesser accessory symptoms, which are often very pregnant with meaning (characteristic) – often very useful in determining the choice of the remedy – and regard them almost as a necessary part of their condition, almost as health, the real feeling of which they have well-nigh forgotten in their sometimes fifteen or twenty years of suffering, and they can scarcely bring themselves to believe that these accessory symptoms, these greater or lesser deviations from the healthy state, can have any connection with their principal malady.

Samuel Hahnemann, Organon of Medicine, 6th edition, translated by William Boericke (1922, public domain). Checked word for word against the 1922 printing in October 2026.

Study notes for this aphorism are not published yet. They appear here once a homeopath has reviewed them.