Invention

My father, Late Prabhat Kumar Roy was a staunch supporter of homeopathic system of medicine. He used to treat us with homeopathic remedies. He had a good collection of homeopathic books which I used to read during my leisure. Somehow I developed interest in this system of medicine. As I studied more books, I discovered that I could help my relatives and friends with homeopathic medicines. I interacted with homeopathic doctors during my studies and tried to learn more about practical aspects of homeopathic prescribing. I compared the prescriptions of different doctors and analyzed the prescriptions that worked and that did not work. I found that the homeopathic remedies worked best when those were selected based on matching the symptoms of the patient with symptoms of the drug. This requires a very good memory on the part of the physician. Many persons are not endowed with a good memory and this is one of the reasons for which it is very difficult to practice homeopathy. It may be noted that the homeopathic doctor’s consulting chamber is full of books and many senior homeopaths frequently consult books while selecting a remedy.

On further study, I felt that repertorization was a basic process to arrive at a group of remedies suitable for a case. A remedy arrived at by repertorization may not always prove curative. But the process of repertorization brings into focus many important remedies which the prescriber had never thought of. Homeopathic doctors rarely repertorise the case as it would take lot of time to write down the data and calculate the result. I searched for a solution to solve this problem and found that punched card was the appropriate method. Then I studied all the punched cards available in the market and designed a complete new set of punched cards, the advertisement of which appeared in “The Homoeopathic Heritage” in its August 1996 issue (Fig.10). The response to this advertisement was very good and all the sets were sold out within a short period. I did not continue its publication further due to the arrival of computers. Even though I have the homeopathic software, I still use SPIRO as it is handy and easy to use. I have also made another two sets of large punched cards for my use the details of which are given in ‘Do it yourself’ page. It may be noted that anyone can make SPIRO type cards for himself by following instructions as given in ‘Do it yourself’ page.

For further details please see the following photographs.

SPIRO Punched cards in a teakwood box.Click Here...
Sample punched cards from five bunches.Click Here...
Punching machine designed and fabricated by me to punch SPIRO cards.Click Here...
Selecting cards from a bunch for repertorization. Click Here...
Holding the cards for weightage calculation. Click Here...