Thus, as an example, a patient originally treated with medicinal ointments for a body-wide rash, later became asthmatic, and was now being treated homeopathically for suicidal depression, would tend first to recover emotionally while experiencing transient asthma symptoms and the reappearance of his skin rash, which would leave the core of his body first and his extremities last. Although this set of observations later became known as "Hering's Law of Direction of Cure", it is not a strict law but a clinical pattern whose presence indicates a high likelihood that deep cure has taken place and that recurrence is unlikely.