I no longer think our goal is to find the only single, perfect remedy for the patient; I think it is to find a very similar remedy to the patient's symptoms. The more similar the better the result. If the prescription is very close we help the person a lot. If less close, we give glancing benefit and alter the symptoms of the case perhaps even producing proving symptoms. If superficially similar but actually more distant the remedy can remove symptoms that are being used as a release and the patient will become more ill. If the prescription is far away, nothing happens.

Most people can be helped by a wide range of similar remedies - we prescribe successfully through the Law of Similars, not Exacts, and there are many similars.

Polychrests are the remedies that are most often prescribed; remedies such as Sulphur, Calcarea, Pulsatilla, Sepia, Lycopodium, Mercury, etc. These are the remedies that we know very well; the ones that appear most often in our analyses. But these are generally not the most exact remedies for the patient.

Most of us assume that remedies became "polychrests" because they are more useful than other remedies; they are "remedies of many uses"; that Pulsatilla nigricans is far more useful than it's virtually unknown cousin Pulsatilla nuttalliana (Puls-n); that Lachesis is far more likely to work in a given case than Hydrophis cyanocinctus, the sea snake. We assume that enough research has been done that previous homeopaths knew which substances fit large numbers of people and which didn't; that there was a logical approach to choosing which remedies are proven and incorporated into our materia medica. But this isn't the case.

Substances became remedies because they were already used herbally or medicinally, were poisons, or were in the news. Sometimes it was because of a myth associated with them, or simply whimsy. Very very few of the millions of substances on the planet have been proven homeopathically. Given the way that substances have become remedies it is very unlikely that the patient's simillimum is in our pharmacopeia.

But here we have a piece of luck. It turns out that most people will respond well to a wide range of remedies. If we give a similar remedy (i.e. Lachesis instead of the more exact remedy, say Hydrophis) we will usually get a good response. What is most important is the similarity; the more similar, the better the response. The law of similars allows us to help many people even if we know only a couple dozen remedies.