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wounds and contusions, and the pure juice was given internally, with success.

6. Sras Martinez, who has been already referred to, had a slave suffering from arrest of the catamenia. A complete cure was effected by the treatment mentioned above in the fifth paragraph.

7. The late D. Francisco Espejo relates that a disease of the liver, which had afflicted him for a long time, having brought him into a desperate condition in the judgment of his physicians, a negro cured him with drinks of Guaco juice and cataplasms of the leaves put over the liver. A slave attacked with the same disease was given up by her physician, who said she could not survive five days more. Guaco was employed as in the previous case and succeeded in restoring her health so completely and so quickly that at the end of a month she returned to work and laboured on a par with the other slave.

8. Señor Pedro Edwards cured one of his slaves who had suffered for four years from a scrofulous ulcer in the neck, by giving the juice and applying cataplasms of the leaves.

9. Col. Diezo Vallenilla states that in Cumana, his country, no one dies of tetanus and spasm of the stomach when Guaco is used according to the directions given in the seventh paragraph. I do not know if this remedy has been employed in our city in such cases, which are rarely met with.

10. A slave of Señor Feliciano Palacios had all the symptoms of consumption resulting from suspended menstruation, and was cured with an infusion of the leaves prescribed by an Indian.

11. A slave of Col. Francisco Abendano was afflicted with asthma and had a severe attack of rheumatism. Guaco was administered for the latter, and it cured both diseases. The wife of Dr. F. Javier Yañey gave the tincture to a slave who was an asthmatic, and obtained the best results.

12. Señor Pedro Edwards, already cited, cured a Spaniard of a tertian fever contracted in the Antilles, by giving Guaco for a few days.

13. The author of the Memoir does not mention any specific cases of worms, but it is a fact that many persons who have resorted to Guaco for other reasons have destroyed these parasites.

14. Señor Eduardo, a frequent sufferer from violent hemicrania, got rid of it by taking Guaco tincture.

Hypodermic Injections of Filtered water to Relieve Pain.*

In the September number of the Art Médical, Dr. Jousset reports cases treated by him at the Hôpital St. Jacques. In three of these cases he made use of hypodermic injections of filtered water in the treatment of the symptom pain.

CASE 1.-G. L-, æt. 37, stone-cutter, was admitted on January 11th, and discharged March 20th. He was suffering from pleuritis when admitted, and while in the hospital he got an attack of acute rheumatism.

Up to February 18th patient was treated with Acon., Canth., Kali, Mang., Chin., Sul., Merc. sol., and on this day there was considerable amelioration, especially of the fever; the pulse had fallen to 84 since some days; at this stage we (Dr. Jousset) made some hypodermic injections of simple water; the pains diminished very perceptibly and the patient was at last able to sleep.

The pulse having fallen to 72, the pains having abated, the subcutaneous injections of filtered water having several times stopped attacks of pain, the Quinine was replaced by Chin., 3 trit., this by Sulph. 12., and the pleuritic exudation being pretty well absorbed, the patient was discharged on March 20th at his own request.

CASE 2.-M. T—, a man æt. 28, was admitted on February 11th, suffering from gouty arthritis confined to the right shoulder. The pain is very violent, the patient can make no use whatever of his arm, the joint is red, hot, and swelled.

On Saturday, January 15th, we made an injection of water simply filtered; twenty-five minutes thereafter the patient felt himself greatly relieved, and at night he got a little sleep.

On Sunday, the next day, we made another similar injection; after which the patient could readily move his arm, and he slept well the following night.

On Monday we made a third and last injection. Ever since the joint had been perfectly free, and, moreover, his sleep has been excellent. Hypodermic injections of filtered water exercise an incontestable action on the symptom pain, but here it is only right to mention that China, 3 trit., had already begun to effect improvement.

* From the Art Médical. Extracted by Dr. Burnett.

CASE 3.-A woman suffering from intercostal neuralgia. She was subjected to subcutaneous injections of filtered water; these injections relieved her, but one of them caused a subcutaneous abscess.

*

Dr. Jousset concludes thus: "Let us for a moment recur to this question of the hypodermic injection of water as a means of combating the symptom pain. This method at first seemed to us so very paradoxical that we most unwillingly consented to try an experiment with it. The conclusions which we have been enabled to arrive at from a consideration of the three cases in which we tried 'the experiment may be thus stated. Both in the rheumatic and in the gouty arthritis the pain was incontestably relieved after such injection. In the case of intercostal neuralgia the pain was not only not relieved, but the fourth or fifth injection resulted in an abscess of the size of a walnut. We have therefore the fact of the relief of the pain of arthritis by the injection of water, a fact which thus far appears inexplicable."+

Homœopathy and "Scientific Medicine."

THE following passage occurs in the Address delivered by Prof. Humphrey, of Cambridge, at the late annual meeting of the British Medical Association.

"The physiologically antagonistic influences of atropia and physostigma, and the fact that a poisonous dose of the one may be given with impunity if the other is administered along with

* There is a discrepancy with regard to the result of the injection in the case of the intercostal neuralgia. Thus, on p. 162, Dr. Jousset says, "Ces injectiones la soulagèrent, &c.” i. e., these injections relieved her. But on p. 174 he says, “ Dans le cas de névralgie intercostale où ce moyen a été appliqué il a été inefficace contre la douleur, &c.," ie., in the case of intercostal neuralgia in which this means was adopted, it was inefficacious, &c.

† I think it is to be explained by the well-known action of pure water on protoplasm, upon which it acts as a strong stimulus, causing it to become contracted and finally to lose its irritability. According to J. Ranke, “distilled water acts as one of the most violent poisons to muscular and nervous substances" (Physiologie, p. 118). The cause is probably the great capacity for imbibition possessed by pure water. This acting in excess becomes a force first stimulating then destroying the very complex molecules of the living matter. This action of pure water seems not to have been hitherto sufficiently considered in the method of hypodermic injection.-J. DRYSDALE.

it, seem to open a prospect that really curative, that is, antidotal agents may be discovered, not simply for drugs, but for the effects induced by drugs, and also for the changes which constitute disease; and the observation that morphia, chloroform, and some other substances produce different and sometimes opposite effects, according to the doses in which they are given, renders it not improbable that poisonous agents may, in some instances, be antidotal to themselves, and that the word 'homœopathy' may be rescued from its position as the expression of a fallacy, and may yet take its place in the etymology of scientific medicine."

Professor Humphrey is a man of thought and science. But his qualities seem to fail him here, confused in the "lumen madidum" which the prejudice against homoeopathy never fails to diffuse. Let us analyse his paragraph into its component propositions.

1st. Antidotal agents are the really curative ones.

2nd. Some substances are found to produce opposite effects, according to the dose in which they are given.

3rd. Hence it may be that in some instances a small dose of a poisonous agent may antidote, i. e., cure, the effect of a large dose of the same, or a like change when occurring in disease.

4th. This would truly be "homoeopathy," and such practice, denoted by this appropriate name, would take its place unquestioned in "scientific medicine."

What, then, is the "fallacy" of which this word is at present the expression? Simply this,-that a methodus medendi confessedly applicable to certain cases, and here suggested as possibly of wider range than we at present know, is asserted by some to be of universal application within its own sphere,—such assertion being based upon experiment and observation carried on widely and continuously since the beginning of this century. Wherein is the "fallacy " here? The induction may be disproved or superseded; but at the most it can only be demonstrated to be partial; there is no "fallacy" about it. To assume it as already discredited is surely unworthy of a man of Prof. Humphrey's reputation. He should rather, by precept and example, encourage those who look up to him to " prove all things" in medicine, before they allow themselves to "hold fast *We suppose Prof. Humphrey means

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that which is good." Which is the more philosophical course, to test such a method by experiment, or to reject it as a "fallacy ?" All we are doing is to adopt the former course, allowing the doctrine to dominate our practice just so far as it becomes verified by fact, and no farther.*

But, alas! Professor Humphrey could not recommend this more philosophical course, even if he approved of it. He would be imperilling the future career of his pupils. Let us recall the following:

"On the 4th of January, 1856, under the presidency of Professor Cruveilhier, were expelled from the Anatomical Society of Paris with the unanimous consent of the members, 'Drs. J. P. Tessier, Gabalda, Fredault, and Jousset, as authors of homoeopathic publications, and M. W– an account of an infamous and felonious act already punished by the law.'" (See l'Art Médical, December, 1873.) Such a concatenation would seem to bear with it its own shame. But it is to be feared that such expulsion well expresses the medical mind of Great Britain at the present day. The name of Reith has to be added to those of Tessier and Henderson as instances of the utter intolerance of the most liberal and honest investigation, if its results happen to tend in a certain direction. Who then can dare to advise, and who dare to imitate, the rescue which Professor Humphrey anticipates? Suppose it leads, as it has already led in the case of such men as these, to a conviction that no rescue is needed, and that the word "homoeopathy" is even now the expression of no fallacy, but of a large body of ascertained and sifted truth. Were Professor Humphrey himself to follow (as he need not be ashamed of following) Tessier and Henderson to this conclusion, his place in Cambridge would know him no more. He would doubtless be above any such terrors when Truth invited him. But

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* A good instance of the comparative fruitfulness of such a course is seen in the case of the action of Rhus on the skin. In the London Medical Record of Aug: 27th, Dr. Ringer cites from the New York Medical Journal some observations on the power of Rhus toxicodendron and Rhus venenata to inflame the skin. The facts are recorded: but there they remain absolutely barren. To us, on the contrary, who use the method of Hahnemann, they have long ago suggested the use of the Rhus in such cutaneous affections, and with the distinguished success to which we all can testify. Which is the Medicine of the future, that which can utilize all pathogenetic facts, or that to which at least one half of them has no signification?

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