Book Review on Boger’s Legacy by Dr Shashikant Tiwari

I had an opportunity to go through Boger’s Legacy (earlier Boger’s Legacy & Augmenting the Synoptic Key’s Repertory) published now by B. Jain Publishers and authored by Dr. Anil Singhal, a known academician and ex-visiting faculty of Bakson Homoeopathic Medical College, Nehru Homoeopathic Medical College, and Dr BR Sur Homoeopathic Medical College.
At the outset I congratulate Dr. Singhal for his outstanding and innovative work which takes the reader into a deeper aspect of the life and work of Dr Boger. The facts which were not much known to the profession are brought into the light by the author.
Going through the pages of this book one can experience the Boger from very close and can understand the philosophy explained through his work and derived from his different articles and books.
The author has also incorporated and acknowledged the ideas of 30 renowned stalwarts Homoeopaths in this unique book in Homoeopathy.
The book under the chapter Boger’s Journey has delineated the life of Boger from his childhood, early education till his transformation into a great author and a practitioner of the true rational healing art. The author has tried to connect the missing links of Boger’s philosophy and clinical practice through his various writings, lectures, and events, and emanated the true meaning of Boger’s understanding and logic of Homoeopathic prescribing. The author has made it more authentic by illustrating a few rare photographs and inscriptions. It shows the real hard and an unquenchable interest of the author in the life and work of Boger.
Under the chapter The foundation of Boger’s Legacy the author has highlighted the impact of Boenninghausen specially in relation to the methodology of understanding as well as the working out of cases. The impact, transforming Boger in to a thoughtful composer of MM and Repertory is brought into light by author step by step, a quite impressive and awe-inspiring way to the learners of Homoeopathy. This also gives a close look into the development and emergence of Boger’s logics in Homoeopathic practice. How the Boenninghausen’s various works in relation to MM and repertory were resuscitated by Boger leading to the publication of BBCR is well explained in this book.
He has described various facts and concepts of BSK through the chapters The Synoptic Key: The Apex of Boger’s Legacy. It would be worth going through the various editions of BSK with the details of facts and changes in each edition. This only shows the depth of work done by the author.
The author’s extensive and unique work Augmenting the Synoptic Key‘s Repertory needs a great appreciation and special attention from the whole fraternity of Homoeopathy. The author has described each edition of BSK and given a reasonable explanation of the changes deriving the logical evolution of Boger’s philosophy of understanding Homoeopathy and its application in clinical practice.
Dr. Anil has gone through every page of BSK and also undertaken the study of BBCR which in itself is a great strenuous work requiring a great patience as well as dedication with commitment. He has compared the rubrics of BSK with similar rubrics in BBCR and noted the variations. ‘All these variations in high marks are to be incorporated to enrich BSK’ is the beneficial plea of the author. The author has carefully extracted the ‘missing’ medicines in BSK from BBCR and has enlisted chapter wise in a tabular form. A total of 104 rubrics needs to be enriched and improved upon with the help of provided list in this book. This discovery will certainly help to enrich the knowledge of Repertory and would also help the students and practitioners to work out cases successfully with the better and enriched matters in hand. I strongly hope that Dr Anil would take up the publication of the next edition of BSK incorporating these meticulously discovered facts.
I strongly recommend this book for those who have a deeper interest in knowing Boger’s work and wish to utilize that for academic and clinical purpose. For those who have still more interest in Boenninghausen and Boger it would be advisable to have a glans to Boenninghausen-Boger Final General Repertory which is an amalgamation of twelve books of these two stalwarts.