Specificker Definition

Those who have been derisively termed specifickers by their opponents…usually arrogate to themselves the title of pures or Hahnemannians. Some difference there must be between the specifickers and the pures…[although it] does not, I believe, consist in any want of that spirit of individualization so necessary for the selection of the appropriate drug on the part of the so-called specifickers, but rather that they endeavour more than their rivals to bring the light of modern pathology to bear on the investigation of the morbid case, and seek to refer, when possible the array of symptoms to the derangement of some particular organ or system.

The so-called Specifickers…chiefly rely in the choice of the remedy on certain groups of symptoms, intimately related to the pathology and diagnosis of the disease, and to the so-called general character of the action of the medicine…and also allow great influence to the clinical experience in the final decision.

The more the specificker relies on the merely general action of the drug (often, indeed, partly ascertained ab usu in morbis), the more he approaches to the allopathists, who will, ere long, equal him or even surpass him.

It is true that there were in Germany, at that time, numbers of eminent physicians who differed greatly from Hahnemann on the question of the dose (for they administered the mother tinctures); whom he disowned, and designated “specifickers,” in terms of contempt and indignation.

They are…very similar to the practical observations of those of our school who draw the indications of the medicine mainly from clinical experience, guided by the more general physiological action of the medicines, i.e., those called specifickers by the more complete homœopathists, who keep in view the finer shades of the pathogenesis.