Clarke’s 13

In his “Prescriber”, John Henry Clarke observed:

The beginner in homoeopathic practice should, in the first instance, make himself absolute master of some dozen of the most widely useful remedies, with all their characteristics and peculiarities, of the conditions under which their symptoms appear and cease, and of their special times of occurrence, if they have any. The following is a list I recommend, the medicines being named in the order of what I regard as their importance : –Sulphur , Lycopodium , Calcarea, Arsenicum , Thuja, Aconitum , Nux vomica, Pulsatilla , Silica , Hepar , China , Belladonna, Bryonia . An accurate knowledge of the symptomatology of these drugs will enable the practitioner to deal successfully with the majority of cases he meets. But it will also do more than this for him ; it will give him a solid basis on which to build up a knowledge of the rest of the materia medica.

Here are Clarke’s Thirteen remedies: