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People often forget that those qualities in a man which make him popular and delightful in company, quick in perception, generous to his friends, and forgiving to his enemies, are the very qualities that often conduce to the sowing of wild oats; but I do mean to say that I have carefully considered many medical classes and find that dissipation and vice and a tendency to vulgar conceptions and low-born instincts are the exceptions and not the rule in the medical student of to-day. I say, moreover, when the wild boys kick over the traces, that it is a mistake to suppose them lost forever; it is a mistake to keep them down; it's better, much better, to help them up, to point them to the blue sky and bright horizon, afar though it be, than to render them desperate with ruthless unforgiveness and suggestions of fire and brimstone.

Youth is youth. Temptations exist in big cities, especially for those of bright imaginations and ready wit, who have not been reared among the bricks and mortar, which it is very difficult to overcome without aid; but the secret of coming out right in the end rests in one thing, viz., the cultivation of the "still, small voice." A man with a clean conscience, if he will only allow it to guide him, is pretty sure to ultimately come straight. Cultivate a conscience. You may slip around in the shoals of temptation; you may fall into the outskirts of vice; you may become neglectful of your duty at times; but I say to you this thing, my dear boys; when your conscience, in the small hours of the night, says to you "pull up" then pull up, and every time you pull up the chances are you will help somebody else to "pull up ;" some other of your student friends, who may thus be saved from ruin. Conscience is the monitor set by God Almighty to direct the actions of our human bodies. When you obey your conscience you obey the great Creator of the universe; and to Him it is we must look for assistance and support throughout our whole lives. Let me close this lecture then with a short text bearing upon this subject. It is to be found in II. Chronicles xvi., 12, and reads thus:

"And Asa, in the thirty and ninth year of his reign, was diseased in his feet until the disease was exceeding great, yet in his disease he sought not the Lord, but the physicians and Asa slept with his fathers."

"The

BANANA JUICE FOR CHRONIC BRONCHITIS. - The Medical Times says: juice of bananas is recommended as a remedy for chronic bronchitis with insufficient expectoration and marked dyspnoea. A drachm eight or ten times a day during the first days is usually prescribed, and later the dose can be diminished. The syrup is prepared as follows: Cut the fruit in slices and place in a glass jar; sprinkle with sugar and cover the jar, which is then enveloped in straw and placed in cold water, and the latter is heated to the boiling point. The jar is then removed, allowed to cool, and the juice is poured into bottles. To this we may add that the juices of other fruits, with sugar, is equally good."—Herald of Health.

EMASCULATION; OR, "WHAT'S IN A NAME?”
BY CONRAD WESSELHOEFT, BOSTON, MASS.

Nothing could be more gratifying and encouraging than the reception of the essay, "Demands of Modern Science in DrugProving," and the attention it was able to attract. Its author now requests the privilege of a closing argument, as would have been his right had he been able to be present.

All the participants in the discussion generously agree in their appreciation of the work done by the writer toward the purification of the materia medica, the fundamental idea and object of which is to insist on harmony of provings, and on the elimination of that which, on due and generous consideration, is found to be discordant and incongruous with the principle that we should retain only the pure drug effects; that is, those effects which come only from the drug.

It is perfectly natural that no one should unreservedly accept a principle so boldly expressed; although it is just what Hahnemann said and wanted, with this difference, that the subject had exchanged its periwig, breeches and knee-buckles for modern habiliments, though not made by a fashionable tailor; but it is safe to predict that, if not the tailor, his style will be fashionable by and by. That is probably what Dr. J. C. Morgan dimly foreshadowed by his allusion to the " Sartor Resartus.

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It is likewise safe to assume that hereafter, as more physicians grasp the idea and advocate it, fewer prudential considerations will prevail in regard to the omission of incongruous symptoms, the proposed elimination of which Dr. T. F. Allen styles the "emasculation" of the materia medica.

What a word, and what an effect it must have had, especially among the majority floundering in the sea of doubt!

A poetical metaphor to be true must bear strict comparison. The error of this metaphor becomes clearly apparent when applied to the real spirit of critical analysis which exposes defects to be remedied. If the errors exposed by critical analysis relate to effects of vital parts, vitiating the whole, of which they should be an integral part, they should, indeed, be cut out. But a materia medica, purified of its errors, great and small, is not to be compared with impotent and sterile human beings without doing frightful violence to the good sense of the critic, or serious injustice to the criticised.

The conviction is gaining ground daily among homœopathists, that it is the excessive faith in the results of inaccurate methods of proving, and of pharmacy, which threatens the "castration of the materia medica; and this faith has been held for so

* Transactions of the International Homœopathic Congress of 1891.

long a time, that symptoms of impotency and infecundity are beginning to be quite alarming. Hence, far from endeavor. ing to increase the evil, a few workers, among whom Dr. T. F. Allen is the most honored and conspicuous, have thus far endeavored to save our materia medica from becoming unproductive in the not distant future. But no good will come of praising a worker and his work, and at once condemning it with a phrase which, though its sound is worse than its meaning, misleads the young, and the older ones also, to whom a figure of speech is equivalent to an idea.

Denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen,

Da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein.

The fear of losing what Dr. Hughes terms "concomitants,' or what Dr. Drysdale terms "contingents," is groundless and unfounded, as any one who will take the pains to analyze a single proving, will easily discover. After the most searching process of this kind there are always more than enough of such contingents left over. The position most easily defended, in fact impregnable in its self-evidence, is that, while we do not wish to get rid of these contingent symptoms, we have to demand that they, like the main symptoms, should agree, or at least exhibit that degree of concordance which would vouch for their therapeutic value. As it is, the fear of losing such a symptom amounts almost to a morbid state on the part of homœopathic doctors, while a little study would convince them that, far from losing anything, the materia medica would gain by the elimination of many "concomitants" and "contingents," so called, obscuring the real and positive pathogenesis of the provioing.

This morbid fear of purification tempts the writer strongly to raise a storm by proposing the omission of a "contingent" from the "symptoms" of ambra; the one recorded as "anthropophobia before defecation," condensed, by Jahr, from Hahnemann's words, "a frequent urgency to evacuate which makes her anxious, and the presence of persons intolerable." (Symptom 185.) No body else had it, so away with just so much waste of paper and ink.

"Hold thy hand, oh Vandal," the defenders of the faith are heard to say. "Emasculate not the provings of ambra, for who knows how many lives that symptom has saved or may yet save!" Profound veneration of the esthetic prevents the completion of the picture and drops the curtain at a point where vulgar laughter might mar the solemnity of the scene-a prover in agony!

It is not difficult to disprove the argument brought forward by Dr. Cowperthwaite in favor of symptomatological and in op

position to pathological effects, by reminding the reader that a symptom of disease to be a symptom, must be of diseased, that is, in modern parlance, of pathological origin.

An unpathological symptom of disease it is impossible to conceive in mind. Hence, those symptoms which are to be retained in the materia medica shall not be imaginary, but actual to the best of our knowledge, no more; and they should agree in pathological sense. If they do not, they are useless for therapeutic purposes; and the only test of their possible utility is to be sought for in a reasonable degree of agreement between the provers who furnished them. Dr. Cowperthwaite avers that "you can't cure anything with pathology." Correct; but you can cure with a well-established pathological symptom while you will fail with a non-pathological "contingent," or by mistaking for symptoms those interminable lists of sensations recorded by healthy provers, who have taken no drug.

Such are the thoughts the writer would have had, and possibly might have uttered, had he been present at the Convention.

SOME SYMPTOMS PERTAINING TO THE SKIN, GLEANED FROM THE CYCLOPÆDIA OF DRUG PATHOGENESY;

WITH OCCASIONAL REMARKS THEREON.

BY JOHN L. COFFIN, M. D., BOSTON, MASS.

ANACARDIUM ORIENTALE.

Prover No. 3 b. 90 drops in 6 doses. - Same day, in evening, complained of incessant irritation of the skin, which she described as "furious." It lasted till she went to sleep, extending even to the toes. Took no more medicine, but had return of irritation, now and then, next day, and for four following nights.

Prover No. 4. Cardol painted on skin. - Painted on the sound skin it dries in rapidly, and in a few minutes causes a slight burning and itching, gradually followed by redness and swelling. In about twelve hours epidermis rises in wheals, firm and solid, like urticaria tuberosa. In course of time this exudation is saturated and softened by an effusion of serum and breaks down into a sero-purulent fluid, converting wheals into vesicles, at first pea-like and flat, but soon coalescing to form large flat bullæ, which open and discharge a turbid, purulent fluid; cuticle then falls off, leaving the exposed cutis swollen and congested, and suppurating profusely.

Prover No. 5. On the morning of February 16, Dr. Reil rubbed on back of the hand (space size of sixpence) a small quantity of the brown, slimy fluid found between the shell and kernel of an anacardium bean. In the evening the skin was slightly reddened. On the 17th, 18th and 19th nothing was noticed, only the redness seemed to increase in the warmth, and the skin became shrivelled somewhat. On the 20th, 21st and 22nd itching was felt; the place that had been rubbed with the juice was elevated above the rest of the skin; the skin, which was black in the furrows, seemed as though it would burst. The itching increased, and the epidermis desquamated in small pieces, but the new skin beneath it was not smooth but uneven and shining. On the 27th the whole place was clear of the old epidermis, and presented the appearance of an inflamed cutaneous surface, covered with small miliary pustules; the itching was considerable, especially during the night and in the heat. The elevation of the circumscribed spot, as well as of the surrounding skin, was increased, and was from a quarter to a half line high. Each pustule exuded from its apex a fluid which dried into a yellow crust. In the night of the 27th the itching was quite intolerable, and he must have scratched in his sleep, for the exudation the next morning was greater, and round about the place the skin was studded with red, inflamed spots; the whole back of the hand was swollen and hot. On the first of March the state was the same, and that, by the friction of the glove, apparently, the small spots surrounding the central spot swelled for some hours into wheals, and then disappeared; itching considerable. On the 2nd and 3rd the burning was less, as also the exudation and crust formation. The whole space had the appearance of an hypertrophy of the skin; the surrounding red spots only became more distinct by scratching. On the 3rd, in the evening, there was desquamation. During the following days this went from the periphery to the center, and was repeated several times till the 7th; but in proportion as the spot on which the juice had been rubbed became regenerated the surrounding inflammation increased, producing a surface covered with papules and wheals which did not exude, but on the slightest excitation became bright red and as if indurated, so that the movement of the wrist, over which towards the forearm the wheals extended, was hindered by formation of thick folds. During the subsequent days a bran-like desquamation occurred here also, which nearly ceased by the 11th, when the natural appearance of the skin was almost quite restored.

Poisoning No. 2 a. Nut hung about neck by string. In eight days there came an itching on the chest, aggravated by warmth and exercise, and compelling constant scratching; a few days

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