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you could impress the student with a few characteristics as you go along, and in that way require him to remember those very marked features of the drug. I take issue, therefore, with Dr. Hughes, and say that our students are very well grounded in the study of the materia medica.

DR. A. L. MONROE.-I have been looking about since Dr. Allen was speaking, and I have recognized in this room at least ten of the sixteen professors of materia medica of the American colleges. And the remainder of our audience, or the great majority of the remainder, are men and women who are known in the journals for their special admiration and study of materia medica. Therefore I want to say that I never saw a better. time for an experience meeting. I must say with Dr. Allen that I do not quite understand Dr. Hughes' remonstrance with our ways of teaching. I think he is very much mistaken about us; indeed I know he is. I have watched the journals, and I have talked with students of the different professors and am more or less familiar with their work and ways of teaching materia medica. I do not know of more than one or two who read from manuscript or from the text-book. They may sometimes do this for an explanatory or historical note, but if they persist in taking up the whole hour with reading they ought to I think it best to begin the teaching of students by showing that each remedy produces one or two of three effects upon the human body; either an increase of function, or a decrease of function, or a perversion of function. If it produces increase of function we distinguish carefully where and why that occurs; we get that from the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy. Where it reduces the function we make a similar investigation, and so on. These are the primary or central symptoms. For secondary, sympathetic, distant symptoms we have to study anatomy, physiology, and pathology, as well as materia medica. If we find a perversion of function we must study out. the origin of the perversion. After we get our students grounded in the generalities of our subject, in the material action of the drug, then we begin to go about from place to place and show other symptoms more or less remarkable and more or less intimately connected, and thus fasten them upon the mind. We can do that theoretically in every remedy, but not always practically, for we cannot always tell what material changes in the brain arise that make the difference between the sleeplessness of Ignatia and Coffea, the one from grief, the other from joy. This is where the theory of the dynamic action of our homœopathic remedies comes in; but it is difficult to explain. And it is also the great dividing line between our therapeutics and that of the allopath; that shows our superiority

over the allopath in haying better and bigger means upon which to base our prescriptions. My plan is not to endeavor to cover the whole materia medica; I concede that such would be an unwise attempt; but to lecture on the polychrests. Most colleges have several assistants who can cover other ground. You take a drug like Euphrasia which you rarely think of except in eye troubles, and it would be manifestly a loss of valuable time to dilate upon that with the energy and study that one would give to Aconite or Sulphur. Still it is important to know it, and it therefore comes in either at a later time in the course or through the assistants to the chair. I generally begin with Aconite and run along pretty close to the old and well tried remedies, viewing each remedy in its various relationships to all other remedies; placing it in classes according to its special actions. The students very soon begin to learn this relationship by a species of association of ideas, so that the old fashion of memorizing is practically done away with, and philosophy, a nobler mental attribute, supplies its place. I generally begin by saying that Sulphur is the best remedy, the biggest polychrest to use as a foot rule in studying chronic diseases; and why is it a chronic disease remedy ? Simply because it is a venous remedy. Lycopodium is very much like it but different in its physical characteristics. I begin the study of the acute remedies with Aconite; it is a polychrest for a similar reason that Sulphur is, because it causes congestion of the arterial capillaries and affects every organ and tissue that contains a capillary; that it is an acute acting remedy because its congestions are sudden, violent, acute, arterial; then I compare such remedies as Bell., Arsen., Gels., Verat. Vir., etc. with it. So I run along associating remedies of a class, and declaring their relationship, their aggravations and ameliorations, until the student has taken hold of the idea and is enabled to piece it out at his leisure with more accurate and closer fitting relationships.

DR. C. S. MACK.-As Dr. Hughes' paper was being read, two or three things entered my mind which I think entirely justify the remarks he has made. The study of materia medica pura is a study of drug pathogenesy, and he is concerned lest our records of pathogenesy be marred by things other than pathogenesy. One illustration to which he refers, or has an allusion, is the matter of clinical symptoms and clinical verifications. I think he questions the propriety of according to clinical symptoms the prominent place they are given in most of our materia medica text-books of to-day. I tell my classes that clinical symptoms are merely deductions from medical practice which is often wholly empirical,-that clinical symptoms and clinical verifications have no place in pathogenesy, and that

homoeopathicity cannot be determined without regard to pathogenesy; I caution them in regard to the value of these clinical verifications, and I direct them carefully to the proper study of the drug. A great many of the text-books are so arranged that you will find in one line something that is perfectly marked and very peculiar in the pathogenesy of a given drug, and in the very next line you will find something that has nothing to do with drug pathogenesy and is an observation from purely empirical practice; and in this book there will be nothing to show which items are from pathogenesy, and which from empirical practice. I think that this system of studying a drug, the inclusion of its clinical symptoms, is measurably dying out. To-day there is a disposition to study pathogenesy. It is absolutely wrong and indefensible to say that, because you have relieved a patient of such and such a symptom with a certain remedy, therefore a similar to that symptom belongs to the pathogenetic action of that drug.

DR. CHAS. MOHR.-In the teaching of materia medica in the Hahnemann College of Philadelphia the method outlined by Dr. Hughes in his paper is pretty closely followed and therefore I may say that his paper is not a criticism of the methods of the Philadelphia school. I presume however that Dr. Hughes was led to write this paper because of the non-acceptance popularly in the profession of the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy, of which he is the principal author. I have not examined into that question but I have no doubt that if our College Announcements in which text-books are recommended, be examined, it would be found that very few of them recommend this Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy as a text-book; and I want to say that in my judgment it ought to be recommended as a text-book. So far as I am concerned I would base my lectures upon the Materia Medica Pura of Hahnemann and the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy as we have it now, rather than upon any other text-book that is issued, because there is a fundamental ground on which to base lectures; and I believe that if the pathogenesy was presented in accordance with the symptoms and in accordance with the explanatory notes in the beginning of each remedy in Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura we would give our students a good clear understanding of drug action which they can afterwards enlarge upon and apply according to the methods of Homoeopathy. While I say this I do not discourage the use of any other text-book; indeed, standing as I do the successor of Dunham and Hering and Farrington, I should perhaps stultify myself if my statements be taken as condemnatory of their work and text-books. Hering and Lippe and Guernsey and Farrington and Allen, their works are our text-books and

reference books and give the teacher incalculable aid in the teaching of materia medica, and in giving to their students a correct understanding of the correct action of drugs and do it also in a very desirable form; but they approach the subject from different stand-points. Let me give an illustration. Take Hering's Condensed Materia Medica. The student who has not had any lecture on materia medica, who has not been shown. how to study materia medica is very much at sea as to drug action if he tries to memorize the symptomatology recorded there. He must have something either before or in addition to Hering's forty-eight chapters, with which to give himself a foothold in materia medica. In other words the materia medica thus gained seems to be principally by memorizing so that the student when he goes out into practice and attempts to apply his memorized facts is wholly at sea. By studying the materia medica intelligently with the aid of Hahnemann's Materia Medica Pura and the Cyclopædia of Drug Pathogenesy he will find himself safely anchored in homœopathic materia medica.

DR. J. C. MORGAN.-I think Dr. Hughes has given us an admonition that is timely, though it would be wrong to follow his advice as if he were infallible and possessed of plenary inspiration. I do not think that Dr. Hughes would have us so do. I would say that his views are to a large extent an antithesis of those of our departed heroes, Dr. Hering, Dr. Lippe and Dr. Guernsey. While there is a great deal of truth in them a great many of those suggestions drive us back to first principles. In justification of Dr. Hughes' position it may be well first to declare that the profession are and have been divided, first of all, upon the paramount personal interests of this life, as are all mankind. The doctor must find the remedy for his patients as quickly as possible; he must often do his work by cross-cuts, through wildernesses. Much clinical work is done in this way; has to be so done, and always will be so done. The present generation of homoeopaths have a larger field in which to work than their immediate predecessors. Every day some new remedy is introduced to our notice, requiring new study and new application of homoeopathic rules. Where is the man with a practice, who can give the necessary time to such going back to the drug pathogenesy of every symptom he may use as a leader for his remedy? Naturally, such generalizations arise, as Rhus for sprains, Nux Vomica for constipation, etc. How do these generalizations arise? How were they first discovered? It was by the methods advised by Dr. Hughes. Drs. Jeanes, Hering, Lippe, Guernsey and Dunham discovered many such, and Dr. Allen and others have each contributed a quota. They are dis

covered in the practice of a life time, by their constant reappearance in many, many cases. Dr. Hering's life was largely given to this development of clinical symptoms; he was a clinician par excellence. When he found a symptom that was prominent in many patients, that disappeared repeatedly under the administration of a drug, even when it had not that symptom in its proving, he made a note of it; and if in the proving, he underlined it; at first, with lead pencil; if further verified, with blue; lastly, with red. Thus was he able to give to the world that masterpiece of homoeopathic therapeutics which is but now completed, viz: "The Guiding Symptoms." I want to identify Farrington's work with Dr. Hering's, as a matter of conscience. Dr. Farrington's book is simply Dr. Hering's, remodelled by a young and capable editor, added to with great ability and power of his own. From the first to the last pages, however, you will find Hering's classification by natural families-of minerals, plants and animals-and Hering's Clinical Observations; all being reduced to the fascinating form, which we owe to Farrington.

The work of the other men whom I have mentioned was also largely in clinical observation. What riches have they not bequeathed to us! Yet, it is still true that they amassed their first clinical wealth, as all really original wealth must be, forever, by the very method insisted upon by Dr. Hughes!

DR. J. P. DAKE.-It is nearly forty years since I stood upon the platform to teach materia medica in Philadelphia; and I know, and I think I appreciate the views stated by Dr. Hughes; his criticisms I quite agree in. I also agree with Dr. Allen that Dr. Hughes has formed his opinion largely from the textbooks and articles that have appeared in our literature in America. When I began to teach materia medica the text-books that we have to-day were not known, nor had we all the facili ties. Hull's Manual was the great store-house of symptoms. The symptoms were put there with little distinction between those that were taken from healthy subjects who had proven the drugs, or people sick and taking drugs to cure them; there were marks that would indicate curative symptoms; and different sized types were used to show whether symptoms were characteristic or common. My idea is this, and I have learned a great deal since that time; before I concluded the teaching of materia medica I had learned by closer study that all the symptoms there were not of equal value by any manner of means. I came to doubt the plan of reading symptoms growing out of clinical experiences, and I have come to believe that the only way in the world safely to get characteristic symptoms is to mark them down as the repeated experiences under thus and

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