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such a remedy on healthy provers (applause). It is the most unsafe thing, it has been so and is so yet in our profession, to take the symptoms of the sick room and assume or presume that a drug can produce certain symptoms because they disappeared in the sick while that remedy was being administered. And when we get down and back to it, and read the symptoms according to their frequency in the provers, then we get on safe ground, and in my judgment that is the only safe ground.

DR. C. B. GILBERT.-I want to say a few words from a clinical standpoint. I am thankful for every clinical verification I can find in the books or in my work, or from the mouth of my teachers. They are always welcome. I don't believe it is necessary to confine ourselves to the limited pathogenesy of drugs upon the healthy body. We can imitate disease in a healthy body, in a limited degree only; the processes are not the same, the causes are not the same. We can imitate partly, and the difference between the imitation and the actual disease must be filled in by clinical experience of physicians gained at the bedside. I am thankful for the symptoms in old Jahr and for those I get anywhere, and of course they increase in value as they are verified. Dr. Hughes' Cyclopædia is a one-sided affair. He has stopped with the twelfth potency, why I do not know; and yet every practising physician to-day knows that the symptoms. of drugs upon the healthy person have been repeated time and time again with potencies above the twelfth decimal, fully corroborating the symptoms below that power. Recently I read a paper for a medical society here, and I had occasion to state some facts in relation to Nux and Sulphur. I found in Dr. Allen's Encyclopedia that Nux vomica in the 1000th potency and in higher potencies produced symptoms diametrically opposite to those produced by the crude drug and by the lower potencies; and the same is true of Sulphur. That being a demonstrable fact, why were these symptoms omitted from the Cyclopædia. Is not this important information for the student to have? Should he not be armed with this action of Nux as well as the action when given in the other and cruder form? This proves to me that Nux is not indicated in diarrhoea nor Sulphur in constipation. The great trouble with our text-books is that they give primary and secondary symptoms without distinction. I am not in favor of throwing out the clinical verifications. They are godsends many times.

DR. J. S. MITCHELL.-I have had about twenty-five years experience in teaching, and I want to say that if there is any one thing that is well taught in our homœopathic colleges it is certainly materia medica. Whenever we find a student not quite up to the mark in general, we usually find if he knows

anything at all it is his materia medica. I was going to say it makes no difference from what college he comes, but it does make some difference. But from wherever he comes, he will usually pass well in materia medica. I have regretted all my medical life that I did not have, when my mind was young and receptive, a course of instruction in homoeopathic materia medica. I had the misfortune to graduate at an old school medical college; it was a good college, but it did not teach homœopathic materia medica; and I have had to burn a good deal of midnight oil in order to make up for that deficiency. I want to say to these ten professors of materia medica that I regret every time a new drug comes up like Antipyrine, &c. &c., to go to our homœopathic therapeutics and find a little paragraph perhaps an inch in length, briefly dismissing the subject. I want to see in our homœopathic materia medica an earlier, wider and more liberal study of the new additions to therapeutics. We ought to keep pace with the old school literature by having complete and full provings of all the new drugs. I want to see them made in the light of the very best examinations, physicial and otherwise. I am sure they can be made so with all the aids of science at our command to-day, and I want to see them equal in extent and importance the old school efforts.

DR. T. C. DUNCAN.- The point I want to speak about particularly is this: It is one thing to teach elementary materia medica-the primer for beginners; but it is quite another thing to teach it to practitioners. The professors in the old school commence where the student can remember something. He must commence with clinical symptoms; we ask what clinical symptoms have value; what have corroborative evidence of such value? It must be something that has been proven and repeatedly over and over again until we can say that is characteristic of that remedy. I don't like to see so much confusion created in the minds of the students and practitioners. Materia medica is a very broad field, and when the essayist tries to lay out a course for the professors of materia medica to follow he has got a big work on his hands. I think we need more elementary teaching. I once asked Dr. Lippe how he studied materia medica or a new remedy? He answered that he read the proving over carefully, and continued to read it over and over again until he saw by comparison, something that was different from all other remedies that he remembered — something that seemed absolutely characteristic; and the first time he got a chance to give the medicine, he would do so, and watch the effect upon that symptom, or series of symptoms, and if it produced an amelioration or decided the cure, he put it

down in his book as well as in his mind. Dr. Hughes is apt to be a little too critical. We are all apt to be so with those a little less experienced in our specialty. I think there is not an elementary materia medica, nor a book from which a student can get hold of the first laws of prescribing; practically that is therapeutics however. When I graduated I knew but two symptoms, and those were the aggravation (bry), and the amelioration from (rhus.) motion. But from that I was afterwards enabled to build up a fair amount of materia medica, or rather therapeutic knowledge. It seems to me that there ought to be some means devised whereby the student could gain a fair practical knowledge of the foundation of our materia medica.

DR. T. F. ALLEN.- One of the most valuable modes of teaching materia medica is clinically, and I must say that I have learned something from every man who has spoken. The last two or three years have convinced me of the necessity of teaching materia medica clinically. I had never tried it until three years ago, and it proved so popular with the class that I wish all you teachers would try it. The first case I took from our professor of clinical medicine; he had during the previous hour had an extremely interesting case of chronic myo-carditis. I had never seen a case of that sort, and during the interval between the hours the history had been carefully written out by the assistants of the previous professor. Those symptoms remained upon the board when I entered the lecture room. I said to the class that here is the case of a man I had never seen, suffering from a disease I had never seen; there are his symptoms on the board. The man wants help and relief of his pain. No man has ever cured a case of this kind; what are you going to do about it? There were the symptoms so and so. We turned to the index of materia medica, or Bonninghausen's Therapeutic Pocket-Book, and we got forty or fifty drugs for the first symptom, another lot of drugs for the second symptom, another for the third, and so on to the bottom of the list, until we saw Rhus tox. standing out prominently, and the patient was put upon the prescription. That work impressed upon the minds of the class the importance of studying all the symptoms, and also fixed the leading lines of rhus tox. From that time on we have had a therapeutic clinic every week. We do not attempt any diagnosis; we take the symptoms of some case that has been in a preceding hour, or one that has been prepared before we get to the lecture platform; or if the case promises to be one of especial interest, I take the symptoms home with me the night before, and carefully look them over, in order to present the matter clearly the next day. Homœopathy depends upon our clear and precise understanding of the principles underlying our materia

medica. It is the most important subject we have to deal with, and I find that this clinical way is a very satisfactory one, and leaves an impression upon the student not easily erased; and one certainly which no amount of text-book reading could ever have produced.

DR. A. L. MONROE.-I generally begin the term by teaching my students what I call twelve aphorisms. They are not absolutely aphorisms, but they are a sort of multum in parco for the students.

One is in substance that anxiety, restlessness and thirst, are generally associated with rapid combustion of tissue as in arsen., and acon. Another, that conditions of debility are acid conditions, and are generally accompanied by weak, irregular pulse. That all of the acids in the materia medica have in their symptomatology weak, irregular pulse with great debility. Another, that the character of pain is generally an indication of the tissue effected as the tearing, aching, muscle pains of rhus., the sharp, shooting, stabbing nerve pains of spig., or lil. tig. and so on. I have about fourteen such aphorisms, and while I impress upon the student that aphorisms are only generalizations, I tell him that they will help teach him the A BC of thinking out materia medica for himself.

DR. J. D. GRAYBILL.--I desire to call attention to the teaching of chemical affinity in drug study. Every drug has some effect on the right or left side. For example, quinine and cinchonidia which were put in the same list, were found to be radically different in their power to turn the plane of polarization to the left or right. Quinine turning it to the left, while cinchonidiæ turning it to the right, veratum viride has the power to turn the plane of polarization to the right while veratrum album will turn it to the left. So we can go all through our materia medica. Every remedy has a distinct action upon the sides of the body. This is very clearly explained in Fownes' Elementary Chemistry.

A NEW PROVING OF APIUM VIRUS.

BY LYMAN CHASE, M.D.

The following account of the immediate effects of the sting of a honey bee is given, mainly in her own words, by a neice of the writer, a woman of middle age and in perfect health:

"While gathering raspberries in the near vicinity of a hive of bees I was stung on the back of my neck. I think the bee would not have stung me had I not attempted to brush him from the place. Never having experienced any serious results from former bee stings, I continued my work, giving scarcely a

thought to the matter. But in a very brief period I was conscious of a curious pricking and itching sensation in the palms of both hands. Even then I did not refer these strange sensations to the sting, but imagined I might have touched a nettle bush. But, as the stinging and itching increased so that I turned to hasten within doors, suddenly I became conscious of similar sensations in the soles of both feet. In fact, the pricking and itching became general, as the whole body was in like condition, though the sensations were not quite so unendurable as in the hands and feet. All this occurred within five minutes of receiving the sting. No pain was felt where the bee stung, though afterwards there was considerable swelling around the spot. To keep quiet was impossible; I felt impelled to move about, constantly rubbing my hands in a laughable manner (to others I mean), lifting first one foot and then the other. I applied all the known remedies, my hands and feet looking as though they had been scalded, obtaining the greatest relief from soaking them in soda-water, and afterwards wrapping them in bruised plantain leaves. The plantain leaves were very cooling. I think it was about two hours before I began to feel like my former self."

WAS IT LA GRIPPE?

BY S. L. EATON, M. D., NEWTON HIGHLANDS, MASS.
[Read before the Massachusetts Homœopathic Medical Society.]

The subject of this paper was an attractive little girl, six years old, of unusually bright intelligence and winning character. Early in January she was attacked with la grippe, and exhibited catarrhal symptoms incident to that epidemic, but was only moderately ill, and occasioned no anxiety. She received bryonia, and subsequently sulphur, and was, in a few days, discharged as convalescent. Two days later she showed a marked change for the worse, with an entirely new set of symptoms. Rising temperature, pale face, frontal headache, and thirst, indicated a fresh invasion of disease, and examination of the chest revealed some congestion of the left lung, although there was but little cough. Arsenic was prescribed, and, two hours later, at noon, she was found much worse; a deathly pallor of the face, combined with a temperature of 105°, making a startling picture. Noticing that the skin was wet with hot perspiration, and that the usually quick intelligence was dull and stupid, I prescribed opium, in potency, and was relieved by an improvement which was manifest within half an hour. The temperature fell seven degrees in seven hours, and during the night reached a point nearly two degrees below the normal.

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