Drug Statistics is a statistical analysis of rubrics in Kent's Repertory (3rd Ed). There are several reasons why we chose Kent's repertory, but before we go into these, it should be clear that these are useful ideas - that can and should be copied by other commercial homoeopathic software for the benefit of homoeopathic practitioners and their patients. The ideas can be applied to any repertory of one's choice.
Kent's repertory represents a definite fixed point in Homoeopathy. There are many subsequent repertories which are constantly being added to, modified etc... often to include spurious drugs/provings in a bid to be the most "complete and up-to-date". With Kent's repertory, there was very little theorizing, fantasizing etc. JT Kent was a meticulous and fastidious master of homoeopathy. His repertory still forms the basis of all modern repertories, with a few modifications. While it is true that there are errors in Kent's repertory 3rd edition, these are typographical errors or mistakes in the words. As Kent himself said of his third edition, it represents his life's work, and he had verified every symptom.
The purpose of this analysis is to know which are the well proved drugs, the ones we can confidently prescribe, the ones we should study especially well, and even stock in our clinic. If we had to limit ourselves to one drug only, which would we choose: Pellagorum peltatum or Sulphur? This is an extreme example, but it is very interesting to learn that most of us don't know carbo animalis, ranked 42nd with 2553 rubrics, nearly half as well as we do Aloe, which is ranked 108, with 1362 rubrics. A thousand rubrics less. This is not to suggest that Carb-an is more often indicated, but simply that it has had a more extensive proving, and it makes sense to study it carefully, and defer the study of Trifolium pratense to a later date. The reader is welcome to disagree with me!
The sectional study shows where the drug actually expends most of its action. For example, we know that Podophyllum has a strong action on the gastrointestinal tract, much greater than, for example, Agnus castus, which has a greater affinity for the reproductive system. So we analyzed how the rubrics of a drug are distributed. If Sulphur has 100 rubrics, which section has the greatest number? As expected, Extremities is the largest section for almost all drugs, and so whether you look at Cantharis or Chamomilla, that section comes up very high. Thus, it is not a real indicator of the drug's affinity, but simply the size of that section. For the analysis, therefore, we made a model of how many rubrics an "average drug" has in each section - and then compared the rubrics for each drug for that section. This gives very useful information. It shows clearly that Berberis has a marked affinity for kidneys, bladder etc; Agnus for the reproductive system and so on. The sections are all sortable - so you can look at it in terms of actual number of rubrics per section, or how this section compares with an "average drug". In the case of Agnus, you will see that it affects the male organs 4x (four times) more strongly than an "average drug". Click on the section to see the actual rubrics!
None of this output is our choice - it's simply a statistical analysis of Kent's repertory, and gives some very interesting insights. There will be a video help for this section shortly, but hardly anyone using this website should need it. Most things are self-explanatory.