A serious, if brief, examination of these records was fraught with such interesting results, that we are tempted to make certain of these results public. First, it is to be noted, that out of the formidable total of more than 955 symptoms chronicled, no less than 300 are confessedly "clinical symptoms," and as such, by conservative and scientific homoeopathists, must be refused entrance to any thing claiming to be a pathogenesy of the substance on its trial as a remedial agent. We refer now to the clinical symptom per se; and not to that vastly valuable thing, the clinical verification of a symptom obtained from controlled and reliable proving. To those who claim homoeopathy to be a unique and divine revelation, it surely should not need to be explained that homœopathy means simply and only the administration, for the relief of certain symptoms manifested in the sick, of a drug which has proved itself capable of producing similar symptoms in the healthy organism. What, then, have "clinical symptoms" to do in the pathogenetic history of a drug, and what is their introduction there, but a form of that "empiricism" which is by no one so ridiculed and berated as by the physicians with whom the introduction of "clinical symptoms " is habitual? Of the 655 or more symptoms, then, which present themselves on behalf of lac caninum with the slightest claim to be pathogenetic, 404 symptoms are chronicled from a single prover. The "potencies" "proved" varied from the thirty-first to the cm. In several cases, all symptoms observed for a period of years after the taking of the last dose of the cm. of lac caninum, are chronicled as originating from that substance. One prover takes the substance for "proving" purposes while menstruating; another, while nursing. In no case is allowance made for any natural or pathological cause which might be operative in producing the symptoms attributed to lac caninum. In no case is there any evidence of the employment of control-test or countertest. To secure the complete bewilderment of the impartial, investigating mind, the symptoms are given, not in the order of their occurrence in the single prover, but arbitrarily pieced together into the Hahnemannian schema; numbers being added by which one may laboriously piece together disjointed symptoms into what proves a scarcely less disjointed whole. No bridle is put on the imagination on the one hand, or credulity on the other. In all this madness there is no trace of method. So much for generalities. To give in any detail the inconsistencies, the impossibilities, the absurdities, to be found in the several provings, would require well-nigh the sixty-four pages of the original record. We must content ourselves with calling attention to a few, not more flagrant than the rest. They are chosen from the records of the few provers who contribute the immense majority of the symptoms given. " aged One prover for Dr. Lippe is thus introduced: twenty-two. Three years ago prover had hard chancre on glans, removed by external application, and mercury internally. Since this suppression, has suffered from excessive mental depression, and has at no time since the chancre felt any of the buoyancy of youth. . . . He has an indolent and painless enlargement of the lymphatics, principally of the neck and submaxillary region." Not to dwell on the medical phenomenon of suppressing a hard chancre, how far does the above description suggest the "healthy organism" on which alone, under our rules, a substance can be reliably proved? --- Another prover, to whom the record is indebted for sixty-one symptoms, is described as being "subject to slight catarrh of head; occasional sick-headache;" and yet oh, shades of sweet reason! we find symptoms of catarrh occurring twenty-five days after taking lac caninum, and symptoms of sick-headache occurring forty-six days afterward, credited to the power of that substance, administered in the two-hundredth and thousandth attenuations! It must also be added that this proving was made during the menstrual period. Nothing in all the amazing records under consideration is more amazing than the willingness shown to seriously consider and accept symptoms reported as experienced while in that condition, when, in even the healthiest women of to-day, morbid sensitiveness of mind and body wages perpetual war against common-sense, and in the neurasthenic the wildest fancies run unchecked riot, and fact is trampled into insensibility, if not unto death. No better illustration of the quickening of the imagination, during the period alluded to, could be furnished than the last proving to which space permits our alluding. A single prover, as was said above, furnishes four hundred and four symptoms. These provings were made during menstruation; and not only so, but drug effects from the cm. potency are mentioned as noticeable at the menstrual period, occurring two hundred and twenty-six days after taking the dose! While struggling with this statement, we are confronted with the fact that certain symptoms from lac caninum manifested themselves in this prover, as per dates given, a year before the first dose was taken. In any other connection one might suspect typographical error; but in this pathogenetic wonderland, as in that explored by the immortal Alice, one grows hardened to marvels and to topsy-turviness generally, and an "unmitigated staggerer" more or less, ceases to count. "A large boil," and an attack of malignant diphtheria, are among the soberly-recorded effects of lac caninum. Also, a “first movement of the bowels for four days." Also, a "feeling as if she had taken cold, but was confident she had not." Also, a "dream of seeing the Devil;" in connection with which symptom, attention should be called to the similar effects of convivial suppers, perusal of Poe's Tales, and nocturnal consumption of mince-pie. "But oh, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!" that sixty-four pages of an able magazine should be given up to the detailed citation of such wildly droll nonsense, if viewed simply as humorous reading; of such exasperating and mischievous nonsense, if viewed from the standpoint of those engaged in a manly struggle to win over an enlightened public opinion to a belief in the scientific dignity of homoeopathy! What thoughtful mind can fancy Samuel Hahnemann, the patient truth-seeker, receiving approvingly the abundant incense burned on his shrine by physicians who gravely ascribe the insignificant symptoms of a menstruating woman, to a dose taken nearly a year before, and in the cm. potency, of a substance which the wise and vigorous "Doctor," who all too rarely "talks" through the pages of our muchesteemed contemporary "The Medical Era," characterizes as "puppy-milk"! or by physicians who wilfully blind themselves to the fact that in all this weary list of nearly a thousand symptoms, there is scarcely one that may not be readily explicable by the natural surroundings, if, indeed, their origin is not clearly traceable to the avowed tendencies and condition of the prover? Borne on the wind of ancient controversies, comes an echo breathing "clinical verification!" But oh, dearly beloved brethren of the I. H. A., are you prepared to admit the efficacy of Smith's Salutary Specific, and Robinson's Remarkable Regenerator, because acres of "clinical verification" can be brought to its support? And if not, why, wHY, ask modern science to listen with respectful credulity to your "clinical verifications” of lac caninum? And oh, dearly beloved brethren of the wide world of homoeopathic practitioners and students, can we, while our sight remains clear and our hearts remain honest, dream of accepting, so far as to put to the test, in our bitter warfare with disease and death, a weapon forged in such a furnace! EDITORIAL NOTES AND COMMENTS. THE PAPER BY DR. HUGHES, ON THE PRESENTATION OFf the MATERIA MEDICA, read before the International Homœopathic Congress at Bâle, cannot fail to give the keenest pleasure to the many earnest thinkers who are wholly in accord with the sentiments expressed, but who have been denied, by nature, that fine and facile gift of expression with which she has so pre-eminently dowered our honored English colleague. So deep and fervent is our own assent to Dr. Hughes's utterances, and especially to those paragraphs in which he sets forth the threefold mischievousness of the Hahnemannian schema, I. As prevailing "to rob Hahnemann of the honor which must otherwise, perforce, have accrued to him as an experimenter with drugs;" II. As acting as "a potent agent in hindering conversion to homœopathy; and, III. As tending to bring the homoeopathy of the present day to the level of mere empiricism, that we shall feel tempted to refer to these paragraphs forever, hereafter, as the deacon of country-newspaper fame did to his manuscript prayer. The legend goes, that a sore struggle between spirit and flesh. in the deacon aforesaid between his belief in the necessity of lengthy petitions, and his natural repugnance to remaining too - long out of bed when the thermometer stood at twenty degrees below zero ultimated in his writing out an elaborate schedule of his physical and spiritual needs, tying the same to his bedpost, and on particularly cold nights merely pointing to the same, casting his eyes heavenward with the solemn remark, "Them's my sentiments!" and seeking blameless and wellblanketed repose. So, in our "cold days" of controversy, when assailed with shivering doubts as to our ability to express ourselves with dignity and clearness, we shall rejoicingly point to Dr. Hughes's masterly little paper, fervently remark, “Them's our sentiments!" and retire, like the deacon, in the consciousness of having been equal to the occasion. CLINICAL NOTES FROM THE PEN OF DR. OZANAM OF PARIS, which appear in a recent issue of the "Revue Homœopathique de Belge," make very interesting and suggestive reading. Speaking of rectal and laryngeal polypi, Dr. Ozanam thinks operative measures called for in the fibroid and cancerous varieties, but believes the mucous and papillomatous ones to be quite within the control of medicine. Two cases of papillomatous polypus of the rectum in children under his care were completely cured by the use of Kali bromatum, 1x trit., three to five grammes a day; and he also cites five cases of laryngeal polypus successfully treated with berberis. Dr. Ozanam expresses much confidence in the serviceableness of guaiacum in acute tonsillary angina, pointing out that the pathogenesy of this drug presents the burning pain in the throat, so charac、 teristic of this difficulty. He employs it in from the 1x to the 3x trit. A case of chronic dysentery appearing during pregnancy, re-appearing with exacerbation of all the symptoms after delivery, subsequently complicated with purpura, and resisting all remedies during a month of treatment, was subdued with marvellous quickness by the use of ergotine Ix, one drop every two hours. A slight proctalgia, which retarded recovery, yielded without difficulty to @sculine, the alkaloid of esculus hippocas tanum. |