It is said that there are 36 ways to find a remedy in homeopathy. (Totality of Symptoms, Keynotes, Constitutional, Miasms, Modality, Concomitants, Dreams, Mental Generals, Physical Generals, Peculiar Symptoms, Pathological Diagnosis, Therapeutic etc.) One of the very commonly used approaches is prescription on the basis of characteristic symptoms or uncommon symptoms. Uncommon symptoms are those that are found in few people and few medicines. They are usually characteristic because they aid in individualization. But sometimes it happens that there is a strong peculiar symptom with just one or two medicines listed against it in the repertory. Such a symptom can be a sensation, location, causative factor, modality or concomitant. When such strong uncommon symptom is found, homeopaths often make a prescription just on the basis of that particular symptom.

Some examples of such symptoms listed in this book are:

Adapted to bookworms: Cocculus
Always talks about pain: Mag-phos
Weakness of memory for faces: Syph.
Belching during urination: Rhus-tox
Chorea of tongue: Cina
Eructations tasting of apples: Agaricus

This book tries to list all such uncommon symptoms that are present in just one or two medicines and thus have a high specific value. In all, the book lists 3333 such symptoms. The symptoms are arranged in the following order: Mind, Sensations, Causation, Modalities, Concomittants and Miscellaneous. The author has collected such symptoms from the following sources:

Keynotes and Characteristics of Materia Medica - H. C. Allen
Pocket manuel of Homeopathic Materia Medica - William Boericke
Synthesis Repertory - Fredricke Schroyens
Concordance Repertory - Gentry
Repertory of Homeopathic MM - J. T. Kent
Repertory of Hering's Guiding Symptoms - Knerr
Keynotes of Materia Medica - Lippe
Extracted Materia Medica - Rafeeque
Homeopathic Medical Repertory – Murphy

The author wisely says: “The selection of a simillimum is based upon detailed case taking and evaluation of symptoms. So just prescribing on a single symptom is not advisable. However this work will be of great help for remembering these peculiar symptoms.”

The only thing that I found amiss in this work is that the author/editor has not given any indication regarding the exact source of each symptom. If the author had taken pains to give some numerical indicator about the actual source of the symptom, the book would have become more complete and useful as a reference tool. Still, this book is good enough and unique in many ways. It will not just serve as a reference index but will also help bring to memory these rare and peculiar symptoms. It will increase interest in Materia Medica and also serve as a good tool for creating homeopathic quizzes. A must have for homeopathic students.